Dan Merrithew Part 5

"There's no use hunting for those barges," he said tentatively. "When that tow-line broke back there, it seemed as though one of my heart strings went too. But there was nothing to do about it; nothing we could do. It was all we could do to work the _Fledgling_ through."

"Most captains would 'a' cut them barges adrift long before the line broke," replied the mate; "no use thinkin' about them now; they've gone, long ago."

Dan worked his way along the pitching floor to the side windows. His face was tense and drawn. He had never lost a tow before--this was a part of his reputation. And now. . . . He turned slowly to resume his place at the wheel, when suddenly, as the tug was sidling down a wave, the tail of his eye caught a glimpse of a buff funnel protruding above the wave tops a good quarter of a mile away. His first impression was that the water had claimed all but the funnel. He was not sure. He waited. It seemed an age while the tug climbed to the top of the next comber. Slowly, slowly the buff funnel again came into view, and then as the tug still climbed he saw it all--a white, broad-waisted yacht cluttering in the grip of the waters, throwing her stern toward heaven, reeling over, taking water on one rail, letting it through the opposite scuppers, sticking her bow into the waves and rising, shaking off the water like a fat spaniel. Puffs of steam were escaping jerkily from the whistle valve, and, although Dan could not hear, he knew she was whistling for a.s.sistance.

It was all a quick, pulsating scene, as one views something in a kinetoscope, and then it was lost as the waters rose between them. Dan stumbled over to the wheel. He was not a man of many words.

"Boys, there's work for us to do. There's a yacht in distress about a quarter of a mile off on the port hand. We'll go over and see."

"It'll mean throwing her head off from seas that we've been bucking since morning," said the mate. And the inflection cast into the words suggested no protest, only a reminder that it would be no child's play.

"Yes," said Dan simply, leaning forward to take advantage of the uproll of the tug to locate the yacht more exactly. "There--there--throw her off three points---- That's it," he added, as the tug floundered on her new course,--a course no longer into, but across, the waves, which now began to come from everywhere, buffeting the tug, keel and bow, rail and pilot-house--crazy cross-seas, fighting among themselves, slas.h.i.+ng, cras.h.i.+ng, falling over one another.

But on the _Fledgling_ went, climbing the waves insanely now, sometimes bow on, sometimes crab-wise--but ever on. Each wave that was topped gave a better view of the yacht, also enabling those on that wallowing craft to see the tug, as evidence of which the continuous blasts of the whistle were borne to the towmen's ears.

Nearer, until the yacht was never lost to view. Evidently she was not under control; but, even so, it was plain that no high degree of intelligence was being exerted in handling her. She was not steaming at all, merely drifting in the trough, and none of the means to bring her head into the seas which sailors utilize at a pinch had even been attempted. Whatever was the matter with the yacht, Dan and his men were sure that the officers and crew were nothing less than blockheads.

Making a wide detour, they brought the tug around under the lee of the craft and about fifty yards away, where Dan, leaving the wheel to his men, seized a megaphone and ran on deck.

"What's the matter with you?" he shouted angrily through his megaphone, aimed toward a group of men on the shattered bridge. "Are you trying to see how quickly you can sink? Why don't you put her head up?"

A young officer in a wet and bedraggled uniform crawled along the swaying platform to the megaphone rack and, seizing a cone, shouted from a kneeling posture:

"Help us, for G.o.d's sake! Our thrust shaft has cracked!" The words came faintly. "Our Captain was washed from the bridge. . . . Tried to put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage way. . . . It broke adrift. . . . This . . . the _Veiled Ladye_, with Mr. Horace Howland and a party aboard."

The _Veiled Ladye_! Absorbed as Dan was, he felt a momentary flash of surprise that the announcement of that name came to him almost as a matter of course. Through the long course of nearly two years the conviction that a time would come when he should once more meet the girl who had spoken to him from the _Veiled Ladye's_ deck at Norfolk had strengthened inexplicably, until he had come to accept it as an a.s.sured fact. Was she aboard that yacht now? Aboard that laboring section of gingerbread, in the hands of incompetents and poltroons?

Was she? It could not be otherwise. And this was the nature of the meeting which had colored his dreams and intensified the ambitions of his waking moments!

A strange thrill quivered through him, and he glanced dazedly at Mulhatton, as a stout man in yachting garb stumbled to the officer's side and s.n.a.t.c.hed the megaphone from his hands.

"On board the tug!" he cried. "I'm Horace Howland of the Coastwise and West Indian s.h.i.+pping Company. We're helpless; we can't last an hour unless you hold our head up. Engineer making a collar for cracked shaft . . . have it made and fitted in twelve hours. Twelve hours.

Hold us up that long and we are safe! Do you hear me . . . twelve hours!"

Dan looked at the yacht, rolling to her beam ends almost every minute.

It would be a bad business fooling with that craft; and with iron will he fought back his surging emotions. He had his tug and his men to consider, if not himself. His tug was weakened by her long struggle, and to the best of his judgment he knew it would be wiser for his own interests to go his way, leaving the yacht to her life fight, while the _Fledgling_ fought hers. And yet he could not go away. Aside from the wild theory that the girl might be aboard, there were lives to save over there. That was it. There were lives to save over there. Duty called--a stern, clear call; at least, Dan so heard it, and he was willing to answer it with his life, if necessary. But he did not think of that part of it. It was the lives of those imperilled persons that concerned him. He and his tug were there that they might live. There were women aboard; he had seen their white faces gazing imploringly at him through the cabin portholes--bright, beautiful lives--and men in the glorious prime of their youth. His heart went out to them, and as Mr. Howland laid aside his megaphone the problem was clear. He waved his megaphone in a.s.sent and then, levelling it at the yacht, he cried:

"All right. Float a hawser down to us; you are pitching too wild-eyed to come within heaving-line distance." Pa.s.sing the pilot-house on his way below, he nodded and smiled at the men inside. There had been no need to question them. They had been too long with Dan, and too faithful, not to catch his drift of mind in all emergencies long before he expressed it in words; too brave and hardened to danger, in fact, to care what Dan wanted, just so that he was willing to lead them--to share with them the work to be done.

In the course of a few minutes a small raft, bearing a heaving-line which the yachtsmen had streamed, drifted down upon the tug, clearing the bow by a few feet. Dan leaned out and caught it with his boat-hook, bringing the line aboard. Then he and his fireman tailed on to the end of it, bringing in the attached hawser hand over hand. This they hurried to the stern bitts, taking a pa.s.s also around the steam winch. Leaving the fireman to watch it, Dan dashed into the pilot-house and sounded the jingle-bell in the engine-room.

For a few minutes the churnings of the screw were discounted by the bulk of the yacht plus the elemental forces which sought to keep her head just where it was--in the trough of the sea. The tow-line vibrated itself into a blur, the tug strained and quivered and groaned.

"Why don't you help us in some way, you fools!" roared Dan, struggling at the wheel. "You can at least steer, or--"

Before he could proceed there was a report like the bark of a cannon and a torn and shredded end of hawser came writhing and twisting up out of the sea, sluing across the face of the pilot-house as though possessed of all the venom of the living thing it resembled--a python.

There was silence on both the tug and the yacht for a full minute. Dan watched the distressed craft as she tossed up her bow and glided sternward from his view behind a jet of black wave, while the _Fledgling_ seemed to slide from under his feet in the opposite direction. As the yacht came up again he could see that this mishap had scattered all semblance of fort.i.tude to the winds. Except for the young second officer, Mr. Howland, and a sailor, all holding their places pluckily on the bridge, terror reigned. Sailors, men in yachting costumes, and women with hair flying flashed along the decks or in and out of doorways, while forward a group of three young men lashed to a big anchor held out their hands toward the tug.

Dan turned to his deck-hand, his face hard and determined.

"Pete," he said, "go down and get out the double cables. Welch is astern and will help you. I'm going to swerve the tug in close and you heave the lines aboard when we re near enough. We won't trust any more to their rotten hemp."

As a knight, with reckless abandon, might have urged his steed into the very midst of his foes, so Dan urged the _Fledgling_ up to the wildly pitching yacht. Nearer the tug advanced, so near that the tugmen could see the streaks through the red underbody. Nearer yet, head on, and then the wheel was swung broad, while Dan leaned out of the pilot-house, looking down at the two men forward, who were whirling weighted heaving-lines about their heads like lariats. "Now, now then!" yelled Dan, as the mate in response to a wave of his hand began to sheer off from the yacht. "Aye, aye," came the replies from below, and a second later two lines whistled clean over the forward decks of the white craft. Eager hands seized them and hauled in the great cables and made them fast.

Just for an instant Dan and the mate peered at the yacht to see if the lines had carried, an instant of which the wily sea took full advantage. An oily wave reared the bow of the yacht while the swell of its predecessor slued the _Fledgling_ in and around and upward, so that the two craft reared, side by side, bows up and not more than five feet apart. A scream fluttered from the bridge; men's voices raised in curses at the clumsy yacht were borne from the pilot-house. Dan, however, had not time for words; he stood with hands on the wheel watching the red, reeking bow rearing almost in his face; watched it, cool, ready to take the first chance of escape, if the present danger offered such a chance. Slowly, easily, the wave pa.s.sed, and down came the two bows with a crash. The bow of the _Veiled Ladye_ just grazed the _Fledgling's_ weather rail, tearing off a fender, while Dan signalled full speed astern. It was fortunate that he had his wits about him, for the erratic yacht, instead of falling back as she naturally should have done, suddenly moved forward under the impulse of a swell, b.u.t.ting the tug, almost gently, about ten feet from the bow.

Then the tug backed clear, and, breasting the waves, began to take up the slack cables. A hundred yards she went and then stopped headway with a jerk as the men slipped the cables over the bitts.

The collision had not hurt the tug apparently, although there was no telling whether or not the jolt had weakened her structurally. But Dan was not the man to worry about eventualities. An hour's straining and hauling resulted in bringing the yacht's head full into the seas, and then at four o'clock Dan snuggled his craft to, for the long eleven hours' fight.

The afternoon waned into twilight, softly, impalpably, and the twilight wavered into night. A few lights quivered from the reeling yacht and her mast-head lamps described glimmering arcs against the heavens.

Silent and grim, the tug took the brunt of all the seas had to give--nose piercing the very heart of the waves, splitting them with beautiful precision, rising, falling, reeling, pitching, but, through all, hanging to the yacht with undying tenacity. So she fought, as she had ever fought.

Contrary to the promise of the afternoon, the gale had not abated; the seas, if anything, raced more fiercely, and the wind, which tore the dark with a wailing moan, departed with a venomous shriek. Dan and his mate stood hard at the wheel, Noonan, the deck-hand, was stationed astern, and Crampton, the stanch old chief, and his fireman were down in the heart of things, nursing the engines.

They were well nursed, too. The steady throb, the clank of the throws, and the hum of the eccentrics rose to the pilot-house in cadence as regular as the heart-throbs of a healthy ox. And the while Dan and his mate gingerly manipulated the wheel so that the strain on the tow-line was constant and even, with no slack or sudden jerks, which were truly to be avoided in the face of the mad sea.

The sea grew indefinite in the dark,--as indefinite as the undulations of a black shroud. It was as though the tug were tossing through some mysterious agency. There were times when the tall mast-head lights astern showed not a foot above the rim of that more intense darkness which marked where the water ended and the horizon began.

Again there were times when the glowing specks seemed to scale the heights of a sable vacuum. Once a section of the rail went ripping away in the gloom and once a shredded small boat was torn and hurled into the waters.

One hour, two hours, three hours, four hours--and still the wild night went on, and still the _Fledgling_ held to her work. Crampton, the chief engineer, struggled up from the engine-room at nine o'clock, his swart face lined and creased.

"She's like an old man dyin'," he said, and his voice quivered. "The old injines are drivin' as hard and brave as a man with a club; but a lot of the kick has gone out of them. Nothin' the matter of 'em that I can see--but just feel. My old injines are feelin' about fur an excuse to cave in."

"Well, hang on," replied Dan, "and don't tell me what you feel may happen; I can think up enough things myself."

"Well," and Crampton hesitated. "I didn't come up here fur anythin'

I've said--Cap'n," he added in a low voice; "we're takin' in water."

An imprecation trembled on Dan's lips, and one of his hands left the wheel in an involuntary gesture of resignation. Then he shut his teeth tight and talked slowly through them.

"Where the yacht hit us?" he asked.

"Yes, forward; it's opened up a little under the floor plates--about twenty strokes a minute I should say; the force-pump's kept it level so far."

"Good," said Dan; "there's nothing else to do but keep it going."

"Nothing," said the chief, and he reeled out of the pitching pilot-house.

Two, three, four hours more--the water had gained nine inches, so the chief reported through the speaking-tube. But still the _Fledgling_ held her tow, and Dan and Mulhatton stood silent at the wheel, the rush of the wind, which had long torn out the double windows, swirling their hair into their eyes and numbing their torn and bleeding hands. The elements, as though divining the weakening of the tug,--a tug which often had laughed them to scorn,--were making mad work of it; there were strange sounds, unforeseen blows--but still the tug hung on.

There came an hour in which she did not rise to the waves as she had been doing,--an hour when the leak gained terribly, and when the _Fledgling_, struggling bravely, if wearily, upward to meet a wave, would stop half-way with a jerk and a sigh, the wave gouging along the deck--breaking over the stern-board.

They could feel her going in the pilot-house. But she hung on to her lines with the grip of death. Dan stood at his mate's side, his eyes fixed straight ahead into the darkness. He had cast his die; he had chosen his lot--now the toll was to be paid. He thought, too, of the men who, without question, had taken their stand with him. He reached out his left hand and placed it gently on his mate's shoulder.

"Good boy, old Mul," he said, in words which, however inadequate, revealed all the heart of his meaning. And Mulhatton simply s.h.i.+fted his feet and gazed ahead, his hard, light eyes as expressionless as marble disks.

The dawn came filtering across the raven waters as the bloodless hand of an old man quivers across a chess-board,--gray dawn, cold dawn, even more merciless than the night, in that it heralded the rise of the sun to smile over the evil wrought in the darker hours. Astern, the white yacht alternately pierced the sky with her bow and sought the depths.