The Captain of the Kansas Part 13

And Joey was becoming restless. He danced backwards and forwards on the table where he had taken refuge from the invading flood. Indeed, the dog knew, long before Elsie, that the _Kansas_ was afloat again.

At last she noticed that the water in the cabin was gurgling to and fro, and, in the same instant, she felt the regular swing of the moving s.h.i.+p. She was speculating on the outcome of this new condition of affairs when the door opened and Walker thrust his lantern-jawed face within. He grinned cheerfully.

"I've come to fetch you to yo' cabin, miss," he announced. "The s.h.i.+p's under weigh, an', as yo' pwobably winging wet, the captain says you ought to change yo' clo'es."

Joey followed her out, but deserted her instantly. She saw the reason, when Walker helped her to reach the bridge companion. Courtenay was in the chart-house, at the wheel. He gave her a friendly nod as she pa.s.sed. Somehow, Elsie felt safe now that the s.h.i.+p was in the captain's hands again.

CHAPTER VII

UNTIL THE DAWN

Walker was about to take her to the saloon, whence an inner staircase communicated with the princ.i.p.al staterooms, but she knew that the door leading to the promenade deck had been left unlocked, so she signaled him to lead her the speediest way. Speak she could not. Although there was a perceptible improvement in the weather, Elsie found the wind even harder to combat than when she traversed the deck with Courtenay. This apparent contradiction arose from the fact that during their early dealing with the boats the sailors had cut away the greater part of the canvas s.h.i.+eld rigged to protect pa.s.sengers from adventurous seas.

Nevertheless, all fl.u.s.tered and breathless as she was, she held Walker back when he would have left her in the shelter of her cabin.

"Do spare me one moment," she pleaded. "When I have put on dry clothing, what am I to do? Where am I to go? I will do anything rather than remain alone."

Walker jammed himself in the doorway to break the violence of the unceasing deluge of spray.

"Well, missie," he said, "I'm examining the engines, Mistaw Tollemache is fi-wing up the donkey-boiler, an' Doctaw Chwistobal is with Mistaw Boyle.

You know whe-aw the captain is, so I weckon yo' best place is the saloon."

"Dr. Christobal said you were making a raft?"

"That's wight. But when the s.h.i.+p got off, we tackled othaw jobs. She is ow-ah best waft."

"And--do you think--we have any chance."

"Nevah say 'die,' missie. Owt can happen at sea."

She made a guess at the meaning of "owt."

"May I not look after some of the injured men?"

"That you can't," was Walker's prompt a.s.surance. "You'd bettaw stick to the saloon. I'll tell the captain yo' the-aw."

"Tell him? Are you returning to the bridge?"

"Telephone!" shouted Walker, as an unusually heavy sea caused him to slam the door unceremoniously. He bolted it, too. Not if he could help it would his charge come out on that storm-swept deck unattended.

The electric light glowed brightly in Elsie's cabin, exactly as she had left it an hour ago. This was one of the anomalous conditions of the disaster. It lent a queer sense of Midsummer madness to the night's doings. In a few days it would be Christmas, the Christmas of suns.h.i.+ne and flowers known only to that lesser portion of the habitable earth south of the line. In Valparaiso the weather was stifling, yet here, not so very far away, it was bitterly cold. And the s.h.i.+p was driving headlong to destruction, though electric bells and switches were at command in a luxuriously furnished apartment, while the engineer had just spoken of the telephone as a means of conversing with the captain. Away down in her feminine heart the girl wondered why Courtenay himself had not come to her. Why had he sent Christobal first and Walker subsequently? Oh, of course he had more urgent matters to attend to, though, in the helpless condition of the s.h.i.+p, it was difficult to appreciate their precise degrees of importance.

Anyhow, he had sent word that she was to change her clothes, and he must be obeyed, as Dr. Christobal said. Then she discovered, as a quite new and physically disagreeable fact, that her skirts were soaked up to her knees, while her blouse was almost in the same condition owing to the quant.i.ty of spray which had run down inside her thick ulster.

It was an absurd thing to be afraid of after all she had endured, but Elsie cried a little when she realized that she had been literally wet to the skin without knowing it. In truth, she had a momentary dread of a fainting fit, and it was not until she untied the veil which held her Tam o' Shanter in its place that she learnt how the knot had come near to suffocating her.

The prompt relief thus afforded brought an equally absurd desire to laugh. She yielded to that somewhat, but busied herself in procuring fresh clothing and boots. The outcome of the pleasant feeling of warmth and comfort was such as the girl herself would not have guessed in a week. The mere grateful touch of the dry garments induced an extraordinary drowsiness. She felt that she must lie down--just for a minute. She stretched herself on the bed, closed her eyes, and was straightway sound asleep. At the captain's suggestion, Christobal had given her a strong dose of bromide in the wine!

It was better so. If the s.h.i.+p were dashed to pieces against the rocks which unquestionably lay ahead, Elsie would be whirled to the life eternal before she quite knew what was happening. If, on the other hand, some miracle of the sea enabled the men to construct a seaworthy raft in time, or the rising tide permitted the _Kansas_ to escape, in so far as to run ash.o.r.e again in a comparatively sheltered position, she would be none the worse for an hour's sleep. And now that the s.h.i.+p was afloat, there were things to be done which only men could do. The saloon, the decks, the forecabin, were places of the dead. Fearing lest Elsie might pa.s.s, Christobal, before attending to Boyle, had thrown table-cloths over the bodies of men slain in the saloon, for Gray and Tollemache had sternly but vainly striven to repress the second revolt. Tollemache and Walker had dragged out of the smothering spray near the port davits three men who seemed to be merely stunned. These, with the chief officer, and perhaps four survivers of the explosion, made up the list of living but non-effective members of the s.h.i.+p's company. There was one other, Gulielmo Frascuelo, who was bawling for dear life in his bunk in the forecastle, but in that dark hour no one chanced to remember him, and it needed more than a human voice to pit itself against the hurricane which roared over the vessel. The unhappy wretch knew that something out of the ordinary had taken place, and he was scared half out of his wits by the continued absence of the crew. Luckily for himself, he did not appreciate the real predicament of the s.h.i.+p, or he would have raved himself into madness.

Walker, in his brief catalogue of occupations, had suppressed one. To make sure, Christobal closed a water-tight bulkhead door which cut off the princ.i.p.al staterooms from the saloon. Then he and his two helpers carried out a painful but necessary task. It was his duty to certify whether or not life was extinct. There were very few exceptions. The three men lifted the bodies and threw them overboard. When they reached the corpses of the second officer and a Spanish engineer who had been knifed in the defense of the jolly-boat--his comrade had scrambled into one of the life-boats--Tollemache took possession of such money, doc.u.ments, and valuables as were in their pockets, intending to draw up an inventory when an opportunity presented itself.

Though they knew not the moment when a sickening crash would herald the final dissolution of the s.h.i.+p, they proceeded with their work methodically. In half an hour they had reached the end. All the injured men--seven nondescript sailors and firemen--were carried to the saloon and placed under Christobal's care. Walker dived below to the engine-room, where he had already disconnected the rods broken or bent by the fracture of a guard ring, which, in its turn, was injured by the blowing out of a junk-ring, a stout ring of forged steel secured to one of the pistons. He could do nothing more on deck. Whether he was destined to live fifty seconds or as many years he was ill content to hear his beloved engines knocking themselves to pieces with each roll of the s.h.i.+p.

Tollemache, who undertook the firing of the donkey-boiler, which was situated on the main deck aft of the saloon--for the _Kansas_ was built chiefly to accommodate cargo--during his wanderings round the world had picked up sufficient knowledge of steam-power to shovel fuel into the furnace and regulate the water-level by the feed valve and pump. The small engine, more reliable and quite as powerful as a hundred men, was in perfect order. It abounded in valves and taps, but Walker's parting instructions were explicit:

"Keep yo' eye on the gla.s.s, an' pitch in a shovel of coal evewy ten minutes: she'll do the west."

So the new hand, satisfied that the gage was correct and the furnace lively, lit his pipe, sat down, and began to jot in a note-book the contents of his coat-pockets. The Spaniard's letters he could not read, though he gathered that one of them was from a wife in Vallodolid, who would travel overland early in January to meet her husband. But the Englishman's correspondence was terribly explicit. A "heart-broken mother" wrote from Liverpool that "Jack" had been shot during one of the many cold-weather campaigns on the Indian frontier. "I have no news, simply a telegram from the War Office. But of what avail to know how my darling died. My tears are blinding me. You and I alone are left, and you are thousands of miles away. May the Lord be merciful to me, a widow, and bring you home to comfort me." Yet the knife which killed him must have gone very near that letter.

Tollemache tried to grip his pipe in his teeth. He failed. It fell on the iron floor.

"Oh, this is rotten!" he growled. "Why couldn't he have been spared? No one would have missed me. I don't suppose Jennie would care tuppence."

The _Kansas_ rolled heavily. He waited a few seconds for the expected shock, but she swung back to an even keel. Then he stooped to pick up his pipe, and his mouth hardened.

"'Spared!' by gad!" he said. "What rot!" That roll of the s.h.i.+p was caused by an experimental twist of the wheel. Courtenay, peering into the darkness through the open window of the chart-house, saw that the weather was clearing. He had evolved a theory, and, for want of a better, he was determined to pursue it to a finish. The _Kansas_ was being swiftly carried along in a strong and deep tidal current. Happily, the wind followed the set of the sea, else there would be no chance of success for his daring plan. His expedient was the desperate one of keeping the vessel in the line of the current, and, if day broke before he reached the coast, he would steer for any opening which presented itself in the fringe of reefs which must a.s.suredly guard the mainland.

With his hands grasping the taut and, in one sense, irresponsive mechanism of a steering-wheel governed by steam, a sailor can "feel" the movement of his s.h.i.+p, a seaworthy vessel being a living thing, obedient as a docile horse to the least touch of the rein. But, in the unlikely event of fortune favoring Courtenay to the extent of giving him an opportunity to see the coming danger, it was essential that the s.h.i.+p should have a certain radius of action apart from the direction and force of the ocean stream. The two sails were helpful, and it was to a.s.sure himself of their efficiency that he put the helm to starboard. The _Kansas_ obeyed with an answering roll to port, showing clearly that she was traveling a little faster than the inrus.h.i.+ng tide would take her unaided. He brought her head back to nor'east again, and glanced over his shoulder at the s.h.i.+p's chronometer. It was a quarter to one. Two hours must pa.s.s before he would discern the first faint streaks of light.

At any rate, if he were spared to greet the dawn, it would be right ahead, and, as a few seconds might then be of utmost value, that was a small point in his favor. Yet, two hours! Could he dare to hope for so long a respite? How could the s.h.i.+p escape the unnumbered fangs which a storm-torn land thrust far out into the Pacific for its own protection?

He was quite sheltered from the wind and spray in the chart-house, and, all at once, he became aware of a burning thirst. There was water in a decanter close at hand, so he indulged in a long drink. That was wonderfully vivifying. Then his mind turned longingly to tobacco. For the first time in his life he broke the strict rule of the service in which he had been trained--and smoked a cigar while on duty.

Now and again he spoke cheerily to the dog. It would be:

"Well, Joey, here we are; still got a bark in us!" . . . Or, "You and I must have our names on the Admiralty chart, Joey:--'Channel surveyed by Captain Courtenay and pup; details uncertain.' How does that sound, old chap?" And again, "I suppose your friend, Miss Maxwell, is asleep by this time. If she calls you 'Joey,' do you call her 'Elsie'? I rather fancy Elsie as a name. What do you think?"

To all of which the dog, who had found a dry corner, would respond with a smile and a tail-wag. What? Joey couldn't smile! Make a friend of a fox-terrier and learn what a genuine, whole-hearted, delighted-to-see-you grin he will favor you with: he can smile as unmistakably as he can yawn.

If deeper emotions peeped up in Courtenay's soul, he crushed them resolutely. Men of the sea do not cultivate heroics. They leave sentiment to those imaginative people who evolve eery visions of a storm in the smug comfort of suburban villas. When the _Kansas_ lay on the shoal Courtenay was certain that the s.h.i.+p was lost, or he would never have dispatched some of his pa.s.sengers and crew in the only boat available. He acted to the best of his judgment then; he was acting similarly now in abandoning the last resource of a raft in order to keep the vessel on her present course. But, then or now, he paid no heed whatever to the obvious fact that he and the second engineer, and at least one of the male pa.s.sengers, must be the last to quit the s.h.i.+p.

That was the code of all true sailor-men--the women first, then the male pa.s.sengers and crew followed by the officers, beginning at the junior in rank. There could be room for no hesitancy or dispute--it was just a sailor-like way of doing one's duty, in the simple faith that the recording angel would enter up the log.

The long wait in the darkness would have broken many a man's nerve, but Courtenay was not cast in a mold to be either bent or broken by fear.

When his cigar was not in his mouth he whistled, he hummed s.n.a.t.c.hes of songs, and delivered short lectures to Joey on the absurdity of things in general, and the special ridiculousness of such a mighty combination of circ.u.mstances centering on one poor s.h.i.+p as had fore-gathered to crush the _Kansas_. Ever since he was aroused from sleep by the stopping of the screw, his mind had dwelt on the unprecedented nature of the break-down. Even before he discovered its cause he was wondering what evil chance bad contrived to cripple the engine at such a moment--in the worst possible place on the map.

"Joey!" he said suddenly, his thoughts reverting to a chance remark made to him in Valparaiso by Isobel's father, "what did Mr. Baring mean by saying there was a difficulty about the insurance?"

Joey gave it up, but he c.o.c.ked his ears and looked towards the door.

Christobal entered.

"Boyle will recover," he said, when he had wiped the spray off his face.

"He had a narrow escape; the knife just grazed the spinal cord. The shock to the dorsal nerves induced temporary paralysis, and that rather misled me. He is much better now. Under ordinary conditions he would be able to get about in a few days. As it is, he will probably live as long as any of us."

Christobal waved a hand towards the external void. He was not sailor enough to realize the change in the weather.

"That is good news," said Courtenay.