They were all there except Resolved Forbes, who had just been relieved by his skipper and had no doubt turned in.
Had they picked a time when the mate was asleep? Or was that chance?
They all nodded, and the Rellison boy touched his cap.
Adam didn't say anything.
How could I've missed this? he was asking himself. It must have been making up for days—and me bunking there!
Abel Rellison went to the tiller, as he was in duty-bound to do at this hour; but it was plain from the way he had walked aft vith them and the way he faced them now, that he was part of it.
Jet Gardner was not part of it, though he was there. He stayed a bit to one side. He was troubled, and kept watching Adam, to whom it was clear that the bosun, though sympathizing with the men, still thought of himself as an officer and was not going to have any part of any remonstrance.
Carl Peterson and Eb Waters were there. They had been released after only a couple of days in irons. They were not obliged to work, though they could work if they felt like it. They were not drawing any pay now.
John Bond was there, shuffling from foot to foot, striving to look grim, actually unsure of himself, side-watching Seth Selden for a cue.
Seth was the ringleader. That was obvious. Seth ordinarily went out of his way to be informal with the skipper, taking advantage of his age and of the fact that he owned a lay in the schooner. But today he was angry. He cleared his throat.
"Cap'n, we want to speak to you."
Adam nodded. He glanced toward the scuttle. It was open a trifle. It'd have to be. There was no port in that cabin, and if the slide was fully closed for long in weather like this, Maisie'd stifle down there. Unless she was asleep now she could not help overhearing everything.
"Captain, we demand that you put back for Jamaica and discharge our passenger."
"Oh, you do, eh?"
"We do."
"You demand it?"
"Yes, sir."
"I am the master ot this vessel," said Adam.
He should be seething. Instead he felt only sorrow—sorrow for the end of those talks here on the afterdeck. They had been such a comfort! Why was it that they had to cease? He looked around him, nodding thoughtfully, studying their faces; and he saw clearly that, come what may, he and Lady Maisie would never again be permitted the childish delight in one another's company they had known these past nine days. That's exactly what it had been, too—childish. It was innocent. He wondered whether these men, his hands, thought it was anything else. The Seth Selden who faced him had, again, a bobbing Adam's apple, an out-jutting chin that suggested a pumphandle: this was the meetinghouse Seth Selden, not the scamp off soundings. Acid was in his eyes; flint clipped along the edges of his voice.
Adam hooked his thumbs into the top of his breeches. His feet were spread—though the truth is Goodwill barely moved, having found a dead spot in the air just off the eastern tip of Cuba.
"When I need advice," Adam added, "I'll ask for it."
Nobody moved. Indeed, even the schooner, which had been shushing along languidly enough, as though striving to listen to this talk, slid to an utter, soundless stop; and the canvas, no longer spottily filling and falling, hung lank entirely.
Seth Selden took a step toward the skipper. Adam did not double his fist. With one blow he could have knocked Deborah's uncle clear into the sea; but he forbore.
Truth is, he admired Seth Selden in just that moment. Seth made him think of the screeching prophets of the Book, the men who were always scolding folks. Those men could not have been very pleasant company; you wouldn't want to pull up a stool and have a gam with any of them; but they possessed magnificence—Amos, Ezekial, Habakkuk Jeremiah, all the rest.
"That woman"—and a bony forefinger went toward the hatch slide as though Seth were hurling a javelin—"has you bewitched!"
Adam swallowed, holding himself. His chin rested on his chest. He did not look down at the deck, for that might have seemed cowhearted, but neither did he look directly at Seth Selden, afraid that a sight of the man's quivering face would cause rage to leap uncontrollably within him.
"I tell you the woman's a witch. She's a slave of the Arch-Fiend, pledged to him with her blood!"
"Speaking of blood—"
But Seth Selden was out of control now. He windmilled his arms.
"She's put her sign upon you and upon this vessel! She's delivering us all into the hands of Satan!"
"If there's any witch has anything to do with this," said Adam, still tolerably mild, "it's your niece. There's somebody that's really possessed."
"You lie! There never was a witch in our family!" He jabbed his finger again, in that splendid Old Testament manner, at the scuttle. "Do you deny that that woman has wheedled you and blinded you—as sure as ever Delilah blinded Samson at Gaza?"
"She didn't. Delilah, I mean. All she did was cut off his hair. The Philistines blinded him later."
"Do you deny that she has cast a diabolical net over you and—"
Adam glanced at the scuttle. He shouldn't have let himself get into a word-battle like this. It was undignified, even indecent.
Coldly he cut in: "The Honorable Miss Treadway-Paul is our passenger. She'll require an apology. But not now. Go forward."
"The Honorable Miss Treadway-Paul is a Whore of Babylon!" shrieked Seth, whereupon Adam knocked him down.
I oughtn't to have done that, Adam thought right away. It made him a mite sick to look at the man, crumpled up in the scuppers there, limp as a rag, moaning. He had punched without meaning to, stirred by a word. It was true that he was the skipper of the schooner and faced with what might be the beginning of a mutiny. Something had had to be done; and Seth Selden, in his state of frenzy, never would have listened to mere words, no matter how loudly shouted. All the same, Seth was a smaller man than Adam and twice Adam's age.
Seth got to his hands and knees, and the moaning ceased. It was Adam's impulse to go to him, to help him up, tell him he was sorry, even conceivably to give him some of the second half of that bottle of rum. But a captain has his position to think of.
Adam cleared his throat, hooked his right thumb back into the top of his breeches. He nodded at Seth Selden, and said to the bosun: "Put him in his bunk."
Truculent, though troubled, afraid to look Adam in the eye but with his fists made, Carl Peterson stepped out.
"Ain't you going to listen to what we got to say?"
Adam looked at him.
"No," said Adam.
So that's the way they all stood, there in that space none too big for such a crowd, and each, frightened, was wondering what if anything he ought to do.
The Rellison boy had both hands on the tiller, though Goodwill lay in a dead calm with no way on her at all, and no doubt he was debating whether he'd have time to pull this out and get swinging it, in case of a fracas—or perhaps whether he'd have the nerve to do so.
John Bond looked more shocked than scared, as though at something sacrilegious.
Seth Selden rose, groggy; but his head was clearing. Left alone, he would recover his senses, might even apologize to Adam afterward—not that Adam cared about that, one way or the other. But the madness had not completely ebbed out of Seth. In a fight right now he'd be a maniac, finding strength no man should have.
Peterson glared at the deck at the skipper's feet, trying to screw up courage for a rush; and behind him his friend Eb Waters waited for the signal.
Jeth Gardner the bosun was trying to make up his mind whether to obey orders and take Seth Selden forward or to run forward himself and fetch the mate. Either way, he would leave his skipper unsupported for a spell.
Bewitched, eh? was Adam's thought. And they had been so happy, the two of them, sitting here talking about things.