CHAPTER 12That knocked the legend of the Nantucket sleigh ride and the death of Captain Parrish on the head and brought the idle talking to a stop. In the moonlight the men looked at one another with strange faces. Mastheading a man was, Culver understood, some sort of punishment; but he could not conceive of such a grotesquerie as putting the Finn up there at a masthead, that spear point trembling in the sky, for the sake of whistling up a wind.
A faint murmur passed among the others as Birger Ukko went aft. He stood under the break of the poop, saying: “Ay-ay, sir. But what’s the use? I ain’t a signal flag to raise the wind!”
“Bosun!” thundered Burke from the poop. “Masthead Ukko to look us up a breeze!”
“He’s drunk,” whispered Alec.
Big Jemmison began to laugh. He liked trouble in a
