Читать книгу Dan Merrithew - Lawrence Perry - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Before the Winter passed, Dan had taken his master's examination with flying colors and was made Captain of the Fledgling, owned by the Phoenix Towboat Company. She was a new boat, rugged, powerful, one hundred and twenty-five feet water line, designed and built to go anywhere and do anything.

The Phoenix Company was known as a venturesome organization, as willing to send its fleet ramping out through the fog to the assistance of a distressed liner as to transport arms to West Indian or Central American revolutionists. Before Dan had commanded the Fledgling many months he had done both, and was beginning to be known up and down the coast as a captain to be called upon in emergencies verging upon the extraordinary, not to say extra-hazardous.

All of which he accepted joyously, as the portion of youth in search of experience that life has to offer. He was sufficiently introspective to rate the temper of his spirit at something approaching its real value, and he knew it was to be cherished, guarded, lest the fine edge be lost. As the world reckons things it was a humble calling upon which he had entered, a calling hardly qualified to enlist the pride of the family whose name he bore.

As a matter of fact, the pride of his few relations was not enlisted. He had been made to feel that. He did not complain. He appreciated their attitude. But that did not curb a high-hearted ambition to lift his vocation to the ideals he had formulated concerning it—and the future lay before him.

But he was not thinking of these things now. The face of the sea was gray in sullen fury. From a blue horizon, dulled and almost obliterated by long, jagged layers of steely clouds, came the ceaseless rush of deep-chested waves, as even, as fascinating as the vermiculations of a serpent. And the wind, tearing along the floor of the sea, whipped off the wave crests and sent them shivering, shimmering ahead, like the plumes of hard-riding cavalry.

The storm had passed. The effects remained, and Dan Merrithew shifted his wheel several spokes east of north and took the brunt bow on. She bore it well, did the stout Fledgling; she did that—she split the waves or crashed through them, or laughed over them, as a stout tug should when coaxed by hands of skill, guided by an iron will. The Long Island coast lay to port, a narrow band of ochre, and all about lay the heaving gray of mighty waters, in which the Fledgling was a black speck.

Dan's hat was off and his red-gold hair was flying wild; his teeth were bared. He was always thus in a fight. This was one; a dandy—a clinker! He gave the wheel another spoke and the Fledgling slued across a sea and smashed down hard. From below came a sliding rattle, a great crash of crockery, and then a series of imprecations. The next instant Arthur M'Gill, the steward, dashed up the companionway and burst into the pilot-house.

"Doggone it all, Cap'n!" yelled the angry man, "why in hell don't ye let me know when ye're goin' to sling 'er across seas? Here I had the table all set fur breakfast, an' ye put 'er inter a grayback afore I could hold on to anything; and smash goes the hull mess on the floor—plates, forks, vittles. Holee mackerel!" he exclaimed under increasing impulse of anger, "what am I?—a steward, or a—or a monkey?"

Dan, clutching grimly at the wheel, turned a genial smile upon his cook.

"Sorry, old man. Fact is, I forgot. But never mind. Pick up the best you can." He smiled again. "Just a little bit dusty out here, eh, Arthur?"

"That's what it is, Cap'n," replied Arthur, mollified by Dan's words of regret.

The steward looked at Dan admiringly. In a way he was the skipper's father confessor, not alone because he had a glib, advising tongue, but because he was possessed of a certain amount of raw, psychological instinct and knew his Shakespeare and could quote from Young's "Night Thoughts." Arthur had something of a fishy look and a slick way with him; but he was a good cook.

"It seems funny to call such a kid 'Cap'n,'" he said. And then he added apologetically, "It's 'cause I've sailed under so many grayheads, ye know."

"Oh, I'll be gray enough before long," laughed Dan, and his momentary inattention to his duties at the wheel was promptly seized upon by the wily sea, which smacked the rudder hard and nearly spun the wheel out of his grip. "Stop talking, will you!" roared Dan, wrestling at the spokes. "Do you want me to put you all into the trough?"

Mulhatton, the mate, stumbled into the pilot-house and glared at the cook.

"Artie," he cried, "you go below, or I'll just gently heft you down! I went in to git grub just now and 't was all on the floor. Go on now—git!" And Arthur went, grumbling and sighing that a man's stomach should govern his temper.

"Take the wheel a while, Cap'n?" said the mate; and as Dan nodded he stepped in close, braced his feet, and took the strain as Dan's hands left the spokes.

"We'll both be on the wheel together before long," remarked Dan, sitting heavily on the chart locker and opening and shutting his stiffened fingers.

"Where is she and what's ashore?" asked Mulhatton. "You jumped us out in such a hurry this morning, I ain't had time to ask you."

"It's an old lumber hooker, and she's ashore on Jones Inlet bar; stranded just before midnight last night. Lord knows how much there is left of her by this time. But I took it a good salvage job to go after. Cripes!" The Fledgling on her altered course had topped a wave forward, which wave, travelling swiftly aft, had withdrawn from the bow the support of its mighty shoulder. Down went the bow with a great slap and up went the stern, screw racing and racking the engines, sending Mulhatton crashing to the floor. But bruised as he was and dazed, he was on his feet with the quickness of a cat, and seizing the spokes, assisted Dan in bringing up the tug's head to where it ought to be.

"It's a-goin' to be lively work salvin' any hooker to-day," said the mate.

"It is," replied Dan, "but I'll tell you this, Mul; we'll land her if anybody can. For I've a tug under me built under my very eyes. I know every beam and bolt in her. And I've a crew of rustlers," he added, gazing proudly at Mulhatton's broad back—Mulhatton, with round, red, bristly, laughing face and eyes like raw onions.

The next minute Dan, in all the delight of the struggle, was making his way along the lower deck to the engine-room door. The water was racing past the rail like a wet blur and the deck sloshed ankle deep. High up a wave climbed the Fledgling, and as she paused on the top for a downward glide, Dan hastily opened the door and clambered down the iron ladder.

"Well, Sam, how are they working?" he shouted to Crampton, the chief, bending over a fizzing valve bonnet.

Sam rose, pushed back his oily peaked cap until the straight raven hair flowed out from under like a cataract, and gave his thin, waterfall moustache a twist, while his swarthy, parchment face cracked into a hundred smiles.

"Workin'," he said, "as sweet as a babe breathin'."

Up reared the stern, lifting the propeller clear of the water. The engines expending their force in air, raced free. The clatter was infernal; the pistons seemed trying to jump out of the cylinders, while the throws and eccentrics lost all semblance of good order.

"Oh, damn!" cried Sam, who, being hurled to the iron floor, swore as though he enjoyed it.

Whitey Welch, the fireman, burst into a huge guffaw, in which Sam finally joined.

"You're all right down here," laughed Dan, "as happy as a sewing circle! There may be some pulling to do later."

"You get something to pull; we'll tend to the rest," and Sam Crampton grinned.

Emerging on deck, Dan collided with Pete Noonan, the deck-hand, with shoulders as big as Dan's and a bigger chest. Pete smiled genially.

"This'll put hair on yer teeth, eh, Cap'n, this will," he said, while from the galley below floated Arthur's voice in a deep sea chanty:

"I'll go no more a-roaming,

No more a-ro-o-o-a-ming with you, fair maid."

"Go on back to harbor, you little lobster pot; we'll take care of the wreck."

The corpulent captain of the great wrecking tug Sovereign, lying outside the breakers off Jones Inlet, megaphoned this insult to the deck of the Fledgling, as she drew near the scene of the wreck, rising and falling on the waves like a piece of driftwood.

It was a deadly day. The promise of the sunlight had waned with the earlier hours, and heavy blue-black clouds palled the heavens. Not one hundred yards apart lay the two tugs, rolling and pitching in the seaway; the Fledgling trim and stanch, the Sovereign big and cumbersome, the funnel belching thunderclouds of sepia, her derrick booms creaking and rattling and slatting infernally.

Straight on ahead, where the line of swelling waves burst into breakers, where the spume sang like whip-lashes, and where the whine of the wind tore itself into a nasty snarl, lay the wreck of the schooner Zeitgeist. She lay half on her side and the waves licked up and over the faded gray hull, completing the work that time already had begun. One mast was very far forward, the other very far aft—Great Lake rig; and between the two was a deck-load of thousands of feet of Maine lumber. The topmasts had snapped off, leaving the stumps.

Lashed in the foremast were two men; and in the mainmast were Captain Ephraim Sayles and three more of his crew. At first glance they seemed lifeless; at first glance, indeed, they seemed nothing more than faded lengths of canvas. But an occasional lifting of a hand, a flash of a gray face, showed that they were men and that they still lived and hoped. Under them, over the deck raced the breakers, waist deep, each one a swift, excited trip-hammer. It was only the lumber that was holding the aged hull together. As it was, sections of the sides had ripped out and planks and pieces of deal issuing from the gashes littered the waters. Three times had the life-savers launched their boats, and three times they had been cast on the beach like logs, while thrice had the lines from their mortars fallen short.

"Go on back; we'll take care of her."

And Dan, his teeth bared and coated with blood from anger-bitten lips, gave the wheel to Mulhatton, ran from the pilot-house, and shook his fist at the big wrecking tug.

"Why don't you take care of her then, curse you! Why don't you take care of her? Don't you see there are lives to save? Oh, you cowardly beasts!"

"Nothin' doin' till the sea goes down," came the reply, and Dan sobbed aloud in his rage as he entered the pilot-house, where most of the crew were gathered, peering out of the windows at the tragedy across the waters.

The men in the rigging could be seen plainly now. There was no excitement. They kept very still, watching the futile efforts of the life-savers, waving their hands occasionally as though in token of their thanks and their knowledge of the utter futility of human efforts. No, there was no excitement; the uncertainty that breeds that was lacking. Fate was simply clamping its damp hand down over those men. Such things are always quiet—there is nothing to thrill the heart or stir the soul in them. It is just a mighty thing dealing death to weaklings, that is all. And we wonder whether the All-seeing Eye does not sometimes close in sheer pity, to shut out the inequality of it.

While they looked, a venomous wave got under the bow and lifted it high. Then down it went as a man would crash his palms together, bursting out the forepeak like a rotten apple. Thus weakened forward, the loss of the foremast was an imminent certainty. And there were two men in the fore rigging! Captain Ephraim leaned far out from the mainmast; the tug men could see him plainly as he pointed at the tottering mast and then at the deck.

"He wants them to leave the mast and go into the mainmast," cried Mulhatton.

"But they won't—see, they are shaking their heads 'no,'" shouted Dan. "They couldn't; the breakers would sweep them away in a minute."

"Look!"

For man is brave and man does fight, even in the face of injustice, in the face of odds. Thus did Martin Loughran, in the fore rigging of the Zeitgeist, as with set jaws he struggled upward toward the stump of the topmast. Between the trucks of the fore and maintopmasts ran a horizontal line of wire. It is called the "triatic stay," and Loughran was climbing to it. Dan—all the Fledgling's crew and the crew of the Sovereign—foresaw his intention, and stentorian shouts, "You can't do it!" bounded over the water. But the sailor did not pause, if, indeed, he heard their warnings.

Slowly, laboriously he climbed. He stretched up one hand and grasped the stay. Up went the other hand. Then out against the glooming sky was limned the swaying form, working its way along the triatic stay hand over hand, in an effort to reach the mainmast. A faint cheer came from the men in the main rigging, while two of the Fledgling's crew cheered, and two bowed their heads in agony, and Dan sobbed aloud.

"Look at him," cried Dan. "Oh, God!"

"A sandy man cashin' in," muttered Mulhatton solemnly.

Out, out worked the swaying form. But he had more than one hundred feet to go. Twenty-five feet—progress ceased. It hung there silent, that figure—it seemed almost an eternity. It hung as silent as a piece of sail and as fitfully swaying. Suddenly one hand relaxed and fell limp. It was as though something had sucked the breath from every onlooker. The hand was feebly raised in a futile clutch to regain the lost hold. It fell again. Still there was silence.

A dark form cleaved the gloom and lay in a black huddle upon the lumber amidships, until a boarding wave kindly removed it and spurned it upon the beach as it would a drowned dog. Ten minutes later the foremast went and the life-savers, dashing into the surf, took out of the rigging a dead sea-cook.

And still the tugs lay like vultures awaiting carrion. Both had come down to the wreck in the hope of getting a line over her and pulling her from the sands, for which there would have been ample reward. But it was too rough to approach her and she was too far gone to warrant salving, even were it possible. But there were men dying before their eyes and no one was lifting a hand. Dan was in a red-headed glare of emotion. He was too young to look upon such things calmly. He turned his eyes from the wreck to the Sovereign, just as her bow went up on a wave, showing the red underbody. And it reminded him of the yawning mouth of some sea monster hungry for prey.

"We're lying here like bloodsuckers!" he yelled. "Waiting for salvage while good men are dying! Dying—and we're doing nothing! Fellows," he roared, "I'm going to take the tug in to her. I'm not afraid of a risk to save the lives of brave men."

"All right, Cap'n," said Mulhatton, "you know we'll go with you. But there's no use in bein' fools. Take the tug in—yes. But how'll you take her out again?"

Dan glared across the heaving waters with bloodshot eyes. "No use; you couldn't, couldn't get her out again. No, you couldn't." He repeated this several times. "Is there anything that could?" he added finally.

He looked at his men for the answer, but their eyes were still fastened on the wreck with almost hypnotic fascination.

"Her deck-load's beginning to shift. It'll be clear off soon and that'll take the other mast," announced Noonan.

One of the men in the rigging, a giant, tow-headed fellow, suddenly went crazy—at least so it seemed. For his lips writhed in a haunting scream as he whipped out his knife and cut his lashings. Then he turned a bloodless face toward the Fledgling, uttered a short, rasping shout, and jumped into the sea. A great wave seized him greedily and swirled him high. Dan caught a fleeting glimpse of that face, turned reproachfully, it seemed, toward him.

It set him crazy too. His mind was working like lightning.

"Mul," he screamed, "launch the lifeboat, with you fellows holding on to a line from her bow! We're to windward, and she'll drift right down to the wreck. Then you can haul us back again. It's been done before. God, why didn't I think of it sooner!"

Mulhatton looked at his Captain closely.

"One chance in a thousand that our boat would live to make the trip, Cap'n," he said.

Dan snarled his impatience.

"One chance in ten thousand, one chance in a million, I'll take it!" he cried in a sharp, metallic voice. "I never saw a man die until to-day—I'll see no more, God willing."

Without a word Mulhatton turned and rushed for the lifeboat.

"Remember, I go in that boat," yelled Dan as he followed his mate. But Mulhatton only turned back a defiant look. Together they wrenched the boat from its blocks and lowered it to Noonan, standing below on the main deck astern. Crampton, the engineer, was at the wheel, while Whitey Welch stood by the engines. As the lifeboat was straining on the top of a swell, Mulhatton attempted to leap in, but was viciously punched back by Dan, who then sprang out five feet and sprawled in the stern sheets.

"Damn!" cried the disappointed mate as he sprang to Noonan's side and seized the line, which was already paying out.

Into the riot went Dan. There was neither mercy nor tolerance in the waters—the waves ripped all about in wanton fury; the spume cloaked the face of them in wet clouds and the sea hollows lay like black pits. But merciless and intolerant as were the waters, Dan asked no odds of them. Crouching in the stern with one oar dug deep, he was hurled on his errand of mercy. The Sovereign whistled its commendation, while ashore the spectators and life-savers stood breathless. A stealthy wave slashed the oar, almost pulling his shoulder from its socket, but he kept the oar. Aye, he kept it and cursed the wave that sought to take it away. On, on, as determined, as indomitable as the elements. A wave cut the boat full. It skidded on its side and righted. A comber rose green behind, hiding the Fledgling. It caught the lifeboat before it broke. It hoisted it high and then, passing on, expended its crushing force against the wreck ahead. And Dan laughed, and the spindrift flying like buckshot beat against his teeth. On, on, until the wreck, boiling in water, loomed ahead. On past the stern of the wreck shot the small boat, until it was just under the lee of it. There he signalled to his men to pay out the line no more.

"Jump!" he called to the three men in the rigging. First jumped Daniel James, and Dan caught him out of the waters and hauled him in. And he caught the next, the boat careening, shipping a rush of water. As Captain Ephraim crouched for the leap, the sough of the rotten hull, working and heaving like the carcass of a shark, was bursting out in a score of places and the lumber deck-load rose and fell and quivered and flailed huge planks into the waves. The end was near. Dan shouted the skipper to hurry. Ephraim obeyed, and had fought his way through the caldron to the boat and was dragged aboard, when suddenly, with a great straining sigh, the hull of the wreck parted amidships, both ends sinking in the waters. A comber rushed in between, swelling and hissing. The lumber deck-load rose in the air like a living thing. The remaining fastenings holding it to the deck parted, and there was a rending and grinding as it slued off into the sea, carrying with it the main-mast, which crashed down and impaled the bar on which the wreck rested.

The currents had carried the rowboat almost—quite, in fact—in front of this terrible heaving mass of wood, one hundred feet long and chained together to a height of ten feet—and only the mainmast, which seemed to be serving as a sort of anchor, held it. Dan saw the danger, and the shouts of those on the Fledgling told him that they had seen it too. The line leading from the boat to the tug was taut and singing, evidence that the men were hauling upon it. But the pull of the shoreward rushing waters was as great as their strength. The boat made no movement out of her dangerous position. Dan was sculling like mad, but his efforts, compared to the might of the sea, were puny. In deep silence the mass of lumber worried at its unforeseen anchor. It ripped free and, rolling and twisting in spineless abandon, bore down upon the lifeboat with crushing momentum. On it came. They began to pay out the line in order that the boat might keep ahead of it for a few extra minutes. But Dan knew there could be no salvation in that. He could see every foot of the advancing mass. He could see the hundreds of planks flailing out in the air like arms; he could see the thick water spurting through thousands of cracks and crevices; could hear the gnashing of plank on plank. Nearer it came, as powerful, as inexorable as the glacial drift. It rose before him in all its crushing might.