climbed another long watery mountain, then jerked out a warning "Look out!"
The mate turned just in time to escape the heavy wrench flung by the leader of the drunken pair whom he had laid out on the deck in the afternoon watch, and who, bent on vengeance, were clambering down the ladder. The flying missile hurtled over his scalp into the frail engine. The damage was done; the frail mechanism was injured beyond repair.
The topmost sailor escaped up the ladder, but his companion, crouching low, hurled a belaying pin at the mate. It, too, missed the mark by a hair's-breadth, smashing the swinging lamp instead, and leaving the hold in utter darkness just as a heavy sea shattered the hatches, deluging them and the engine-room with a foot of water. In the murk and cloud of escaping steam, they grappled, Ben seizing the sailor's throat, and choking the spluttered curses until they died to a hissing whisper. There was a splash as a limp form dropped in the water swishing from side to side—followed by silence within, bedlam without. Above, he found the crew frantically clearing away the wreckage of the fore-topmast. As swiftly as possible he made his way over the careening deck.
Suddenly the heaviest sea of all that night struck them, and the skipper, shouting some inaudible command, lurched, missed his footing, falling afoul of the binnacle. The mate bent over to help him, when above the din of the tempest, rose the warning cry of the lookout forward.
It came too late. Head-on, the Provincetown crashed into
