At last he turned onto the bridge and moved toward the binnacle light.
"You'll find 'er a little 'ard, sir," remarked the steersman as he
turned over the wheel to Madden. "Good night, sir."
"Good night," returned the American, and he watched the fellow's form
disappear in the darkness.
Madden gripped the spokes of the wheel and fell to watching the signal
light in the center of the forward bridge and the stern lantern of the
distant tug. These two plunging spots in the black void of night he must
keep aligned.
The enormous dock leaped and shivered under his feet. Huge waves roared
by, of such vastness that Madden could hear their crests crashing and
thundering high above the level of the bridge. These moving mountains
shook tons of black water into dim, ghostlike spray, and sent it hissing
down into cavernous troughs. The weight of the wind-swept spume flashing
out of darkness through the binnacle light almost took the boy off his
feet. It pounded his oilskin, stung his face. The enormous iron dock
groaned and clanged under the mad bastinado. The long arms of the
shoring stanchions smote the walls in a kind of terrific anvil chorus to
the blaring orchestra of the tempest. The joints of the three huge
pontoons sounded as if they were being rent asunder every moment.
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