The wheel! Tod turned his eyes aloft in ecstasy. He stood in silence while the men scattered fore and aft, above and below. Neil brushed past. Tod caught his arm. "Neil, we've done it," he whispered; "done what we started out to do. We've saved your name —and Tom Jarvis's too."
Neil smiled queerly in the lantern light. "Kid," he said, "you've got a lot yet to learn about seafaring men. Do you think that was the only reason that Jarvis did this?"
Tod looked puzzled.
"Well, there's another." He lowered his voice. "When I first came aboard I thought that I recognized this ship. Her superstructure was changed somewhat; but one night I went forward to the forecastle head and rubbed the bell on the far side. I knew then. Her old name, very faintly, was still engraved there."
"Her old name?"
"Yes, the Annie Jamison. Now do you understand what this means to Jarvis? His first command! His ship."
CHAPTER VII
MAKING PORT
FOG ahead, sir," called the lookout. At the cry, Tod Moran swung up the ladder to the bridge. It was midnight some sixteen days later, and his trick at the wheel. Mr. Burton, now second mate, was relieving the third officer, whom they had taken on at Balboa. Tod entered the wheel house, was given his bearings, and after glancing down into the lighted binnacle, stood with both hands gripping the spokes.
Pigeon Point had just come abeam. The great light was winking through the starlit night. Tod gave a spoke, steering north by west toward the dark promontory of Point San Pedro. Looking ahead, he saw the Araby's blunt bows ploughing through long swinging seas toward San Francisco, toward home. The foremast cleaved the star-strewn heavens like a knife thrust; high up in the crow's nest Toppy's head was vaguely visible. Eight bells sounded, and the lookout's cry came back on the still air: "Lights burning brightly, sir."
The ship entered a gray bank of fog hanging low over the water. Mr. Burton stepped to the lever that connected the bridge with the great bronze whistle on the funnel and leaned upon it. For six seconds, a blast sent out its mournful note of warning. The mist swept athwart the ship, blotting out the decks below and hazing past the foremast. But above, Tod could still see the quivering arch of the Milky Way.
"Well, Moran," said Mr. Burton, stopping at the window, "how'll it feel to set foot on ground again?"
Tod laughed softly. "When I touch the old wharf at the foot of Powell Street, I'm going to do a sailor's hornpipe."
"Be sure you do, then. Here's the skipper," he added as steps sounded on the ladder.
Captain Tom Jarvis emerged from the companion. As he stepped to the canvas wind dodger and stared ahead, Tod glimpsed his big frame, clothed in blue serge, outlined against the sky. "Our last night out," he remarked in a voice that carried out into the mist. "The fog's thickening, Mr. Burton. Place a lookout on the fo'c's'le head and signal below for half speed."
"Very good, sir." Mr. Burton swung the telegraph indicator upward.
The captain walked to the starboard wing, peered out across the sea of fog, and swung back to the wheel-house window. "Moran, are you signing on another ship?" he asked, pushing back the cap from his tawny head.
Tod took a spoke, then replied. "I hardly think I will, sir—at least, not soon."
He stood with braced feet as the captain crossed to the weather cloth. Now that Jarvis had become master of the Araby only rarely did a conversation pass between them. The rules of the bridge are rigid, and, with surprising ease, the former cook had slipped into the place of the vanished captain. Tod gazed through the glass of the binnacle at the swaying card within. The ship was on her course. He lifted his eyes through the filmy haze to the stars. His nightly trick at the wheel had counted here; he could name them now: cold Polaris straight ahead, blue Vega shining out of those inaccessible depths of space, the constellations of Orion and the Great Bear. A strange longing drifted into his consciousness, a longing to push back the mystery of those stars.
Night after night at the helm had brought him the realization of what they were, and the little place that his own world held with them. He had unloosed all those misconceptions which he had brought with him aboard ship. Here, before his very eyes, lay reality, a reality more magnificent, more glorious, than any childhood fairy tale. Standing here in the presence of the fleeting centuries, he was imbued with a new clarity of vision. Civilizations with their customs, their morals, and religions, were born, lived for their pitiful moment, and died even as those stars above him would flicker out some day. And what lay ahead?.. Surely in that direction lay work for a god: to harness those half-known powers that might perhaps hold back the day when his own little universe would cool in frozen space. Or would it meet some wanderer of the heavens and in a fiery cataclysm hurl itself into dissolution? Ah, that would be living! That would be reality short of all illusion.
A sluggish pitch of the ship brought him back to the helm. "Hold her five points east of north!" ordered the captain.
"Five points east of north." Tod swung the wheel on the new course.
The captain turned to converse in low tones with Burton, who stood with one hand on the whistle lever, the other on the engine-room telegraph. Again the stillness was pierced by a warning blast. The ship steamed on through the night. Tod had the sensation of riding atop the world, as though the Araby, alone upon a murmuring sea, beneath the star-flung vault of Heaven, was only a bit of time adrift between two eternities.
Once more the whistle sent out its wailing note of warning. Almost at once, somewhere off the starboard bow, came an answer, a quick frightened blast. Tod gripped the spokes, with feet braced.
"Hard astarboard!" snapped Captain Jarvis. "Full ahead!" He sprang for the whistle lever and jerked it twice, quickly.
A low shape crept toward them out of the mist. The Araby's bow swung to port. A cry came across the intervening distance, as the stern of the other ship grazed the Araby's forecastle head.
"A narrow escape—that," acknowledged the captain. "Hard aport!"
Tod Moran spun the wheel and the Araby quivered as she surged forward, passing the slim vessel on the starboard beam. From the other ship a red flare was flung aloft. It disclosed a low schooner with masts fore and aft and a funnel amidships.
"The pilot boat," affirmed Mr. Burton shortly. "Are they asleep? Shall I give four blasts, sir?"
Jarvis crossed to the starboard wing. "No; these are home waters to me. We won't take on a pilot. Half speed ahead."
As the ship once more swung oh her course and the pilot ship fell away astern, Tod perceived that a rising breeze was driving the fog in to land. A light blinked far ahead; and presently they came abreast of the lightship. Tod knew that they were now three miles outside the bar. Captain Jarvis, raising his night glasses, scanned the black waters of the entrance. Soon the lights of Fort Point, and Alcatraz Island came into range, and the Araby entered the channel to San Francisco Bay. The dark outline of Point Lobos loomed up. Ahead lay the Golden Gate.
Tod Moran, with mounting pulse, gripped the helm and let his eyes peer across the forecastle head. Every five seconds the great light on Alcatraz sent a long beam flashing toward them across the water. Cliffs rose up on the starboard beam; to port, Lime Point lifted and fell astern.