“I cannot move the bolts!” she cried when she had struck away till her fingers bled.
“Oh, try again, Wahine, for the sake of dying men,” replied the voice as the gabbling ceased.
“Who are you? and why are you locked down there?” replied Sestrina as she stood breathless on the deck and for the first time realised her position. There were evidently many men locked up in that fetid hold, and she was there, a woman alone, about to release them. Her natural instincts had begun to warn her.
“Ah papalagi, kind Wahine, we are only poor men who have been taken away from our homes because we be ill.” There was an appealing, earnest note in the voice that said this, that sounded unerringly true.
Sestrina’s fears vanished. “Ill!” she cried, as the winds swept the deck and slashed her mass of wildly blown hair about her face. “Is that the only reason that you have been locked up down there?” she called back.
“’Tis all that is the matter with us, and by the light of truth and the great Kuahilo, Pelê, and the White God, I say this, O Wahine,” replied the voice in a trembling way.
Sestrina’s heart was touched. The next moment she had once again begun to deliver direct blows at the hatch bolts. Then she discovered that she had been knocking them the wrong way. Crash! out came the first bolt; crash! out came another. In a few minutes she stood still again; all the bolts were out except two, one bolt on either side. Dawn was stealing across the storm-tossed seas.
Though the first passion of the typhoon had blown itself out, a steady wind of hurricane force was still blowing. Up! up! rose the tremendous hills of water and the _Belle Isle_ creaked and groaned as she lifted and the great seas passed safely under her! For a moment the lonely Haytian girl stared seaward. It was a terrible, yet grand scene from the derelict schooner’s deck as the battered wreck laboured like a brave, conscious thing and the torn sails flapped and the seas leapt on board and romped about her like hungry monsters.
Sestrina had opened the hatchway, and had at once hastily retreated towards the cuddy’s doorway. As she stood there watching by the dim light of the breaking dawn, which had barely extinguished the stars to the west, she fancied she could hear the thumping of her own heart.