At last it was done. The length of line had one end secured to the spar and the other to Beamish's belt. The man was safe for the moment-so long as the spar kept in its place.
"Listen, Beamish." Septimus spoke with his mouth close to the man's ear. "You're lashed to this spar. If you slip, you won't fall. So you can safely finish the trip. Do you understand?
"I unnerstand," Beamish said faintly. "But I've got no strength left. I can't move-I can't, sir!"
"You can," said the midshipman firmly. "And you're going to. I'm going to tow you-and you'll have to help me or I'll fall off myself. Come on-heave!"
As he spoke the word, he got his free hand into the seaman's collar and began to edge back again towards the shrouds.
Wriggling backwards and slightly uphill, he could really exert very little force on Beamish, who was twice his size. But the slight full, and his cheerful "Heave ho! Heave!" brought to the half-conscious seaman enough encouragement to make him use his failing strength in one last effort. Inch by inch the two hitched themselves towards safety. Septimus felt the shrouds behind him and reached for a grip on them. Beamish was almost within reach of them. He looked at the end of the spar. It was very near falling-and Beamish was tied to it.
"Steady does it," said Septimus between his teeth. And, as Beamish reached both hands and grasped the shrouds, he plucked the man's sheath-knife from his waist and slashed through the linking line.
He had barely done so, and got his hand once more to Beamish's collar to haul him the last foot, when the spar slipped from the cordage and swung down into space.
"Hang on!" yelled the midshipman.
But Beamish was safely planted, with both feet in the shrouds and his big hands locked on the rope.
Septimus, keeping one hand pressed against the seaman's broad back, prayed that he would not lose consciousness now. He himself was feeling very shaky after that effort and could do little more than keep himself from falling. But voices, breathless and anxious, hailed him from close below.
"Hold on, sir! . . . We're coming!"
Half-a-dozen topmen were racing up the mainmast shrouds to their assistance. In less than a minute brawny arms were grasping them. With an agile seaman on each side of them, the rescuer and the rescued were brought down to the deck and safety.
"I'm no hand at speeches, Mr. Quinn, sir," said Tod Beamish, looking down awkwardly from his six-and-a-half feet, "but-well, I'd not be here, but for you. Thankee, sir."
"Pray don't mention it, Beamish," replied Mr. Midshipman Quinn gravely. "Who knows? You may have occasion to do the same for me one day."
It was the morning after Septimus had been sent to the masthead, and the Althea was flying across a rolling blue sea under all plain sail. The gale had blown itself out In the night. From the maindeck where the two were standing, swaying easily to the motion of the vessel, the Spanish coast could just be seen as a long pale-brown line on the eastern horizon.
"I trust," Septimus added, "that your head is mending?" Beamish raised a hand to the bandage that swathed his tow coloured head.
"Mending well, sir," he grinned. "Surgeon says it's lucky it was me head that was hit-any other part of me would have been bust good and proper, he says."
He knuckled his forehead in a gesture of salute and trotted away as Midshipman the Honourable Charles Barry, very trim in his uniform coat with telescope under arm, hurried up from the direction of the quarterdeck.
"Captain's compliments, Mr. Quinn," he said with great solemnity, "and he'll be infinitely obliged if you'd do him the honour of being so good as to step to the quarterdeck for a word with him."
"Pray inform Captain Sainsbury that I can spare him a moment of my valuable time and will be with him directly," returned Septimus with equal solemnity.
"And you'd better step lively, Sep," added Barry, a grin displacing his gravity. "You know he don't like to be kept waiting."
As he made all speed for the quarterdeck, Septimus remembered Charles Barry's silent grip of the hand when he had come down from his ordeal of yesterday, and felt that he was no longer "one out" in the midshipmen's berth.
Captain Sainsbury, a tall lean figure in blue coat and white knee-breeches, was standing at the quarterdeck rail gazing towards the coast of Spain. He raised a thin hand to his cocked hat in acknowledgment of the midshipman's stiff salute, and then turned away to resume his gazing.
"Mr. Quinn," he said without looking round, "I do not propose to ask you which gentleman of the midshipmen's berth conceived the idea of dicing instead of studying during the afternoon watch yesterday. I would only say that such procedure is not Duty."
He paused.
"No, sir," said Septimus.
"Nor," continued the captain, still without turning, "can I make any comment on Mr. Pyke's action in sending you to the masthead during a gale. You understand that, I hope?"
"Yes, sir," said Septimus.
"But I do propose," went on his superior officer, "to congratulate you on a brave and seamanlike piece of work, Mr. Quinn."
Captain Sainsbury swung round suddenly to face his junior midshipman. His stern face was lighted by the first smile Septimus had ever seen there.
"Mr. Quinn," he said, "I think that some day we shall make a sea officer of you. That is all."
"Aye aye, sir!" said Mr. Midshipman Quinn.
Chapter THREE
The Coward
OUT OF THE flat blue of the Mediterranean rose a sunlit yellow cliff a thousand feet high, so mighty a precipice that the frigate moving past its base with her dazzling white sails spread looked like a tiny toy. Gibraltar. The guardian fortress of a great sea two thousand miles long whose coastline was all in the powerful hands of Napoleon Bonaparte or trembling in fear of him.
Midshipman Quinn, standing at the rail of His Majesty's frigate Althea to watch the famous "Rock" fall astern as she sailed eastward, smiled grimly to himself as he thought of Napoleon Bonaparte, dictator of all Europe, ruling a nation three times the size of Britain but quite unable to prevent a British frigate trom entering that great sea-because that guardian fortress was not French or Spanish but British. He told this thought to Midshipman the Honourable Charles Barry, who was standing beside him.
"Boney would give his ears for Gib, I'll wager," drawled Barry. "And if it wasn't for us, Sep-the Navy-we couldn't keep Gib, you know. I wonder," he added, glancing towards the quarterdeck where Captain Sainsbury and his First Lieutenant paced in conversation, "I wonder what our orders are."
Everyone aboard Althea-except her captain-had been wondering that ever since she left Portsmouth fourteen days ago.
"Cocker thinks we are to join Lord Nelson off Toulon," said Septimus.
"That's because Fitz has set his heart on fighting under Nelson. He wants broadsides and cutlass-waving and plenty of-of blood and thunder."
Charles Barry spoke the words lightly, but there was an odd note in his voice-almost as if he disliked saying them. Septimus Quinn glanced quickly at him. Since the junior midshipman's rescue of Tad Beamish in mid-air, Barry and he had got to know each other rather better. Fitzroy Cocker still treated Septimus as he considered a large senior midshipman ought to treat a small junior one--with scorn and insult--but Barry had conceived a sincere respect for the younger boy's courage. Septimus liked him in spite of his rather spiritless bearing and drawling speech, and he had discovered some time ago that Barry had some secret trouble on his mind.