Page:Amazing Stories Volume 07 Number 08.djvu/70

Rh buried his bleeding and wounded head in his hands again.

Dr. Marsden did not fear losing his own life and his yacht. Loss of these things were trivial in his mind. But Patti—the thought of her, in the full glory of youth, being strangled to death in the merciless embrace of the sea, was too much for him. He shook his head sadly at the thought, while Bob applied caustic to his wound and began bandaging it.

Patti watched through eyes that displayed more than mere appreciation. Bob was vaguely conscious of her gaze upon him. He shrugged uncomfortably. In a moment his deft hands had finished the job. He stood up, smiled at Patti and started away.

"Bob," Patti called to him softly. He turned quickly. "Father told me about your fight with Captain Norton. It was brutal of him to attack you. I'm sorry you came to blows over me"

"Over you?" Bob feigned surprise.

"Yes," replied Patti unhesitatingly. "You see, Captain Norton was insanely jealous of me and resented your attentions, resented your being on this yacht with me. That's why he made you his underdog. He—"

"I'm not interested in the faults of your fiancé, Patti,” said Bob indifferently, "nor have I time to listen to excuses for his being a yellow dog—a stabber in the back!"

He saw tears well up suddenly in her eyes. They made him feel strangely like a cur for having been so abrupt and indifferent toward her. Deep in his heart he knew that he loved Patti Marsden. But hadn't he seen Captain Norton receiving her attention for months? She gave him a startled look.

"My fiancé?" she cried defiantly. "What made you think I was engaged to Captain Norton?"

Lieutenant Bob Allen, for a long moment, was completely flabbergasted. Then he felt a strong urge to step forward and crush her in his arms. But he held his ground incredulously.

"Well, er" he stammered. "I took it for granted, seeing you with him so much Men see such things, you know. Moreover, Norton once gave me to understand that you were engaged to him."

"I never was engaged to him, Bob Allen!" she cried angrily. "And I never want to be. He always seemed so gentle, so refined. I really couldn't help liking him a lot. But when he remonstrated with me for seeing you and threatened to smash you if he ever caught us together, I knew he was not the man for Patti Marsden to marry."

"Threatened to smash me, eh?" Bob's voice was as chilly as the wind that screamed outside. It made Dr. Marsden look up at him curiously.

"This is no time for carrying on a feud, Bob," he warned. "It's time when all men should be friends. We may all die quickly, you know."

"Father is right," encouraged Patti in a voice that was almost a whisper, "and I want you to know before the Scienta takes us down, that I—I—I love you. Bob Allen."

Dr. Marsden gave his daughter a wan, but pleased smile. He had known all along how Bob Allen stood with her. He buried his head in his hands once more when he observed him stepping toward her. Bob half suffocated her with a crushing embrace. She made no protest, but clung to him, sobbing quietly.

OB ALLEN remained only a few moments in the pilot house with Patti and her father. Then with his heart thudding against his ribs he went aft, eager to help in the work of rigging up the jury gear.

Norton, still clinging to the safety of the capstan head, greeted him with sullen silence. Whatever remarks he might have had on the tip of his tongue for the new skipper of the Scienta, he kept them to himself.

Rushing seas, cascading constantly over the decks, made the work on the gear a task of terror. After three men had been washed overboard, the others, fearful for their lives, had lashed themselves to the ship, allowing only enough rope for them to move about freely. They worked like bloodhounds on leashes.

The work had progressed slowly. Two four-inch joists had been made fast, hooked with blocks and tackles, to the after rigging to give purchase for steering an improvised rudder. The rudder, already fashioned out of spare planks by the ship's carpenter, had been thrown overboard, lashed to ropes and chains for hauling into position. It rose and fell dizzily on the mountainous waves astern like a raft of new lumber.

Bob stripped off his cumbersome oilskins and went into the work with indefatigable vigor. Norton clung to the capstan, making no attempt to engage in the desperate struggle. Bob glanced at him scornfully, despisingly. The Navy is not inclined to look upon cowards with any degree of respect. Allen was no exception.

"He's got the saffron streak of a mongrel," reflected Bob silently, "and the perfidy of a snake! A bad combination!"

Time crawled. The night seemed without end. The hurricane drove the derelict before it like a battering ram. Lashed in the crow’s nest high up on the fore-mast huddled the lookout, straining his spray-dimmed eyes for signs of assistance.

Suddenly he tensed and listened hard. Above the roar of the storm and the sizzle of the foam-capped combers he thought he detected the thunder of breakers uncoiling themselves on a rock-clad beach. He struggled desperately to peer through the blackness that surrounded him. Far below, in a haze of pale, blue light, men swarmed, toiling with the jury gear. Again and again with broken regularity he heard the thunder of breaking water. Then in the blackness dead ahead he saw something loom up that was even blacker than the night.

His blood suddenly froze in his veins. The Scienta wallowed up a foam crested mountain. The lookout peered intently ahead. He almost prayed for a flash of lightning to illuminate the space beyond. But the lightning had long since ceased, giving way to the howling, steady wind which drove the yacht before it.

The doomed vessel was sucked suddenly into a yawning hollow. Then the lookout realized that she was being blown or borne on an incoming tide head-on into a mountain which thrust its ugly head above the fretting sea. He looked again in horror. The base of the grotesque black shadow ahead showed white. The roar and thunder of pounding breakers reached him clearly now above the tumult of the storm.

"Land ho!" he hailed, hacking at his lashings with a knife. Dead ahead! We're running ashore!"