“Better sense than what?” Travis asked, his anger stirred. “We went out for a little boat ride and caught a few fish. Have you got a rule against that?”
“Keep your voice down, Winslow,” Dalton said. “That’s no way to speak to Miss Matthews.”
Travis clamped his lips together, resolved to say no more. He listened as Rena delivered a little sermon, forbidding them all to do anything like this again. Travis saw that Maggie was crying and Pete was downcast. Rena finally dismissed the group.
Travis waited until later that night, knowing that Rena often came up on deck alone. When she arrived with Dalton Welborne, Travis waited nearby until he left. Travis walked up to the woman and said, “Rena, you were wrong to speak to us like that.”
Rena had been expecting his reproach. “You can keep your complaints to yourself, Travis,” she answered.
“I’ve told you this before. You need to be more kind. A woman without kindness is no woman at all.”
Rena was enraged. “I don’t want to hear another word from you, Travis Winslow! You can stay in Hawaii for all I care, and if you can’t do any better than you have, I wish you would. Make up your mind before we leave.”
Travis stared at her as she walked by him and went down the hatchway. Nothing would have pleased him more at that moment than to leave the ship, but he knew he could not do that. He shifted his focus to the moon, a huge yellow disk in the sky, and knew he would not sleep that night. He was rarely so angry, but he knew that Rena Matthews could make an angel weep!
****
Rena stared at her best friend in utter disbelief. “You’re going to do what?”
Jeanne’s face was pale, and she had none of her usual assurance. “I’m not going on to the islands with you, Rena. I know you think I’m foolish, but I just can’t.”
“What are you talking about? You said all along that God had called you to go to the mission field with us.”
“I made a mistake. I got caught up in the excitement of it all, but for some time now I’ve been having doubts.”
“We all have doubts, but we keep on going.”
“Not me.” Jeanne shook her head and met Rena’s gaze. “I know now that I’m not supposed to be a missionary. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it would be a mistake for me to go on. I’m catching the next ship back to the States.”
“But, Jeanne—!”
“There’s no use talking about it. I’ve made up my mind.” Jeanne bit her lip. “I’d just be a handicap, Rena. I’ll help all I can with money—but I can’t go if God isn’t calling me.”
Rena stood stock-still as Jeanne turned to leave. She felt a flash of anger and cried out, “But we’re The Twelve!”
But Jeanne was determined, and Rena knew that nothing would change her mind. She stood staring at the door as if she could will Jeanne to come back, but she knew this would not happen. She sat down and began wondering how she would explain Jeanne’s decision to the rest of the group. She was accustomed to making plans and carrying them out to the letter, and displeasure scored her face as she sat stiffly thinking of the inconvenience this event would cause. “I’ll just have to work harder,” she muttered and got up to tell the others what this would mean to them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“We’re in God’s Hands”
Karl Benson took his place at the rail in the stern of the Mary Anne, staring down at the foaming wake. In the six weeks they’d been at sea, they’d seen nothing so violent. Karl couldn’t help but wonder how the women were faring down below. Most of them had been sick back when the seas were calm. Of course that was back when they were all inexperienced seagoers.
After a time he was joined by Professor Dekker, who gripped the rail beside him and stared out over the sea. Finally he said, “You know, Karl, I’ve never been on a small ship like this at sea. All my experience has been on big liners.”
“Are you worried, Professor?”
Dekker lifted his chin. He was not a man to admit a weakness. “Of course not. This is a seaworthy vessel and she has a fine crew.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not worried—because I am.” Benson paused as the stern dipped down deep into the trough of the gray waters. He waited until the ship dove into another valley. “It’s a bit like a carnival ride, isn’t it? But more dangerous.”
“Don’t talk foolishness, Karl,” Dekker said hastily. “We’re in no danger.”
Benson grinned, but there was little humor in his blue eyes. “We’re always in danger. I never cease to be amazed at how fragile the human body is. The strongest man can be happy and cheerful and full of life one second and the next crushed by an automobile or a fall from a mountain. A tiny microbe, so small that you can’t even see it with a microscope, can destroy an emperor.”
“You’re sounding a bit cynical, Karl . . . but then you always are, aren’t you?”
“I prefer to call myself a realist.” Benson looked up at the foaming sea and shook his head. “Those waves look dangerous to me.”
The waves looked like enormous rolling hills. They rose to extraordinary heights without breaking; then a line of white would form along the lip and a Niagara of water would burst over the edge, pouring itself down into the trough. Overhead the sky was a dull, leprous gray, and the sun seemed to have died.
Professor Dekker cleared his throat and turned to Karl. “Why did you give up medicine?”
“It wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.” The reply was fair and did not welcome more inquiry, but as much as Professor Jan Dekker knew about books, he knew very little about human beings. “It seems like a waste of time to have quit. It took you years to get as far as you did in your studies, then you simply walked away from it.”
“Would you believe me,” Benson said, “if I told you that I felt God was calling me into a different life?”
“But you could have used your medical skills so wonderfully well. Medical missionaries are valuable to God.”
“All people are valuable to God, don’t you agree, Professor?”
“Well, yes, of course. I didn’t mean . . .” Dekker hated to be checkmated in an argument, so he changed the subject. “What did you think about Jeanne’s decision to go home?”
“I guess I wasn’t too surprised.”
“Really? Why not?”
“She’s never had her heart in this work. I think she probably would have gone home sooner or later.”
Professor Dekker nodded slowly. “You may be right. Well, I’m going below. This is too rough for me.”
Benson watched the small man leave the deck. He studied the sails overhead, but most of them had been taken down now. He held tightly to the rail as the Mary Anne rolled into a trough. He thought about the professor’s question. It was one he was often asked and one he was not willing to answer. He made his way along the deck, holding on to the rail, and encountered Lars Olsen struggling to secure one of the yardarms with a length of rope.
“You’d better get off the deck, sir,” Olsen said. “It’s not safe for you to be out here.”
“Not safe for you either, Lars.”
Olsen grinned. “I get paid for it. You don’t.”
Benson nodded but did not go below. He watched the tall blond man struggle with the rope, then turned and studied Captain Barkley through the glass of the pilot house. He was holding on to the wheel firmly with a serious expression. He’s worried, Benson thought, and if he’s worried, I am too. He went into the pilot house and stared out the window. “This is pretty bad, isn’t it, Captain?”
“I’ve seen worse.”
Benson laughed. “I’m sure you have, but that’s not a very comforting reply.”
Benson stood silently while Barkley fought to maintain control of the Mary Anne, turning the wheel one way or the other, glancing up at the sails from time to time. “If it gets worse,” he said finally, “we’ll just have to run before the wind.”
“I suppose that’s the trouble with a sailing ship. You have t
o go with the wind.”
“You can’t tack in weather like this.” Barkley shrugged. He turned to Benson and asked, “How’s everyone taking this?”
“Nobody likes a storm.”
Barkley smiled. “I do,” he said, “if it’s not too bad. There’s nothing quite like tearing along under the sky with the waves high, the ship reeling all over the place.”
“You have strange sources of pleasure, Captain.”
“We all do, don’t we?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
The two men said nothing again, and finally Barkley said soberly, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Mr. Benson.”
“What do you mean?”
“This may turn out to be a typhoon. If it is, I’d just as soon be anchored in San Francisco.”
“They’re bad, are they—typhoons?”
“I think the devil’s in every one of them.”
****
Abby got up from her bunk and took only two steps before the Mary Anne dropped out from beneath her feet. She uttered a shrill cry as she fell headlong on the floor.
“Are you hurt, sweetheart?” Jimmy was by his wife’s side immediately, his eyes filled with concern. He waited until the ship righted itself, then helped Abby to her feet. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“I’m afraid, Jimmy! I wish we weren’t here!”
“It’ll be all right,” Townsend said, trying to sound reassuring. But he himself had been feeling more than a little fear. The Mary Anne was being tossed about like a chip, and he was wishing fervently they had made the trip to the South Pacific in a more durable vessel. “Here, come sit down.” Helping Abby to her bunk, he said, “You’ve eaten hardly anything, and you’re pale.”
Abby threw her arms around her husband and cried, “We’re all going to die! I just know it!”
“Nonsense. Nobody’s going to die.”
But she shook her head and clung to him fiercely. Jimmy felt again the stirrings of doubt. He had secretly worried for some time that Abby was not nearly tough enough for the life of a missionary in a primitive land, but the idea of joining The Twelve and going out to such a glorious work had seemed so romantic. Now as the ship tossed and dipped and yawed, he felt the first taste of grim reality. He was willing enough to serve God, but he knew that he had led a rather sheltered life. Yet he had been so sure that God was calling him and Abby to spend their lives on the foreign field. Now as the two clung to each other, he tried to pray but found that praying was more difficult in a situation like this than in a nice quiet church in San Francisco!
****
Shep Riggs wiped the seawater from his face and tried to grin at Travis. “Well,” he said cheerfully, “it looks like we’re in for a bit of a blow.”
Travis was soaked to the skin from the waves that were now crashing over the sides of the Mary Anne as she dipped, then rose and rolled from side to side. “You call this a bit of a blow? I’d call it a bad storm.”
Shep looked at the sky, and doubt tinged his expression. “If it don’t get no worse than this, we’ll be all right.”
“What if it does get worse?”
“Then we’ll just have to run it out. We’ll put on as little sail as we can—just enough to keep us making headway—and hope this storm runs out of steam. We’re way off course now.”
“How do you know?”
“Why, can’t you tell? We’re not on a true course.”
“I don’t know anything about things like that.”
“I’m no navigator, but I know we’re miles from where we should be. Of course, as soon as this thing blows out and the sun comes along, the captain will take a bearing and set us right again.”
“I’m ready for that right now.”
“So am I,” Shep said, his voice steady but his face revealing the doubt he felt. “So am I, buddy!”
****
Neither Rena nor Meredith had said anything for ten minutes. Both of them were aware that the storm had increased in velocity, and when they looked out the porthole, there was nothing to see. Everything was so gray it was impossible to tell the sea from the sky. Finally Rena said in an unnaturally high voice, “Well, we’re having a little adventure.”
Meredith had been trying to read, but as the ship jerked itself around, it became more and more difficult. Closing the book, she put it down on her bunk and looked over toward Rena. “I suppose we are.”
“I think I’ll go up and ask the captain how long this is likely to last.”
“You’ll get soaked,” Meredith warned.
“I suppose so, but I’d really like to hear what he thinks.”
Leaving the cabin, Rena moved along the corridor. She climbed the ladder that led to the deck, and when she opened the door, she gasped as a torrent of water struck her in the face and soaked every thread of her garments. She gasped and hung on until the ship had rolled so that she could get outside, then shut the door. She made her way into the wheelhouse and saw that Cerny Novak was standing beside Barkley. They could not hear her with the crashing waves and whistling wind. But she could just hear Novak shouting, “We’re gonna founder if this gets any worse, Captain.”
“Take down all topsails. We’re going to have to run before the wind.”
“Yes, sir.”
Novak turned and stopped briefly when he saw Rena. Then he nodded to her without speaking and left the wheelhouse. Rena pulled herself forward, hanging on to the side and said, “Captain, how long is this going to last?”
“I have no way of knowing, Miss Rena. But we’ve got to run before the wind now.”
“What does that mean?”
“We take down all except the lower sails and go where the wind is pushing us. We’ll be way off course by the time this blow is over, so it’ll take longer than we thought to arrive at our destination.”
“But we’ll be all right, won’t we?”
“If it doesn’t get any worse.”
Rena stared at the captain. “Well . . . what if it does get worse?”
Captain Barkley did not answer for a time, then turned his frosty eyes on her. “We’ll just have to see what happens.” His reply was short, his voice spare.
Rena felt something close around her throat. She did not analyze the sensation enough to know that it was fear, for she had experienced little of that emotion. But as she watched the sailors frantically trimming the sails and saw the captain using brute force to control the wheel, for the first time in her life she felt frail and vulnerable. The Mary Anne was a speck, an atom, out on the raging Pacific, caught in the midst of a storm. She had no idea how much punishment the vessel could take. She had always thought of a ship as being like any other vehicle, something you got into, made a pleasant journey, and then stepped off at a safe harbor.
But there was nothing safe about what was going on outside. The horizon was impossible to see, and flashes of lightning broke the darkness of the sky. The wind howled with a demonic screaming as it raced across the sea. Towering waves shattered relentlessly over the Mary Anne, one of them catching a sailor—she thought it was Charlie Day—sweeping the small man off his feet and washing him toward the edge. He would have gone overboard if Lars Olsen had not caught him and helped him back to his feet.
Rena shouted to the captain, “It-it’ll be all right, won’t it? I mean the ship won’t sink, will it?”
“I don’t mean to frighten you, Miss Rena, but any ship can sink.” He turned to her, his face frozen by a terrible sobriety. He was not a man given to fear, Rena knew, but she had never seen this look before. “If I were you,” he said evenly, “I’d go down and tell all your friends to start praying. We’re going to need God to get us out of this.”
The captain’s words frightened Rena more than the wind and the waves, and she could not move for a moment. But finally she turned and made her way back belowdecks. She considered doing what the captain had suggested, but she feared the team would panic. She herself was very close to losing control. Sh
e was on her way back to her own cabin when Dalton suddenly appeared.
“You’ve been on the main deck?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What did the captain say?”
“He said . . . that all of us had better pray.”
Dalton looked as though he had been struck. He did not move for a moment, then swallowed hard. “I guess he thinks it’s pretty serious, then.”
“It is serious, Dalton. This ship could sink.”
Dalton considered this, then said, “I’ll go up and talk to him.”
“It won’t do any good.”
“I’ll go anyway.”
Rena watched him go, then had a thought. She knocked on one of the cabin doors and it opened at once. Lanie stood there, her eyes wide. “What is it? Are we going to sink?”
Maggie was sitting on the bunk, her hands clasped together. She whispered, “What is it, Rena?”
“The ship’s in danger. The captain wants us all to pray.” She entered, shut the door, and the three women began to pray—that is, Lanie did. The other two appeared to be half paralyzed. Rena was usually the one to lead in prayer, but now her mind seemed frozen. She could no more speak than she could have flown away, and as Lanie prayed, Rena found that the strength had drained out of her. She sank down next to Maggie, and the two women threw their arms around each other as if they were small children afraid of the dark.
****
After twenty-four hours the storm had only increased in velocity. The crew had been living on cold sandwiches, but most of the passengers cared little for food. It was Benson who went around insisting that they all eat. He was now joined by Travis, who was helping Oscar in the galley with the food.
“Have you ever been in a storm like this, Oscar?” Travis asked as he braced himself against the roll of the ship and laid a thick chunk of ham between two slices of bread.
“Once . . . back in twenty-nine. I was on a steamer then. We all thought it was gonna go down.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t.” Oscar turned to face Travis. “You Christians ain’t afraid to die, are you?”
“I’d just as soon not.”
The Royal Handmaid Page 9
