A DARING FEAT
Out along the wet and slippery decks, spray-dashed and awash, rushed the
boy. He was headed for the bridge. He found the first officer, Mr.
Metcalf, on duty.
The officer was shrouded in gleaming oil-skins and sou’wester. Spray
glistened on his cheeks and big mustache as the dim light from the
binnacle revealed his features. Ahead of them Jack could make out dimly
the big, plunging forepart of the ship as it rushed up a water mountain
with glowing phosphorescent head, and then with a swirling roar went
sliding down the other side.
“Well, Ready, what’s the trouble?” boomed out Mr. Metcalf
good-naturedly. “You seem excited.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve just had a message.”
The officer was alert in a moment.
“A vessel in distress?”
“No, sir. Although——”
“Well, well, be quick. On a night like this any call may be urgent.”
“This was from a yacht. The _Endymion_, she said her name was.”
“And she’s in trouble?”
Mr. Metcalf was one of those men who leap to instant conclusions.
Already he was considering the best method of proceeding to the
distressed—as he thought—ship’s assistance.
“No, in no trouble, sir. She had a message for a passenger, but in the
middle of it something happened to our aërials.”
“They’ve parted?”
“I don’t know, sir. Anyhow, I’m going aloft to see. I came to report to
you.”
“Nonsense, Ready, you can’t go aloft to-night. I’ll send a man.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Metcalf,” broke in Jack. “I don’t want to be
disrespectful, but there’s not a man on this ship who could repair those
aërials but myself.”
“But you are not used to going aloft,” protested Mr. Metcalf.
“I’ve been up on the _Ajax’s_ masts in worse weather than this to fix
anything that was wrong,” he said. “I’ll be all right. And besides, I
must go. It’s my duty to do so.”
“Very well, then, but for heaven’s sake be careful. You’ve no idea what
the trouble is?”
“No, sir, but I’m inclined to think it is the insulation that has worn
and caused a short circuit somewhere. That could easily happen on a
night like this.”
“Well, be off with you, Ready,” said the officer, not without
reluctance. “Good luck.”
Jack descended from the bridge deck to the main deck. The ship was
plunging and jumping like a race-horse. He could catch the wild movement
of the foremast light as it swung in crazy arcs against the dark sky.
“Not a very nice night to go aloft,” thought the boy, with a shrug, “but
it must be done.”
Temporarily he had forgotten all about Jarrold. All that lay in front of
him was his duty, the stern necessity of repairing the aërials upon
which it was possible human lives might depend. In the event of accident
to the _Tropic Queen_, the existence of all on board might hang on the
good condition of those slender strands of copper wire which alone
connected the ship with other craft and dry land.
The wind screamed across the exposed main deck with locomotive-like
velocity. Big waves, nosed aside by the bow, viciously took their
revenge by sweeping like waterfalls across the ship’s stem. Jack was
drenched through before he had fought his way to the weather shrouds, by
which slender ladder he had to climb to the top of the swaying steel
fore-mast, fully fifty feet above the lurching decks.
He had not put on oil skins and his blue serge uniform, soaked through,
clung to his body like an athlete’s tights. But he was not thinking of
this as he grabbed the lower end of the shrouds and prepared to mount
aloft. A big sea swept across the exposed foredeck, almost beating the
breath out of his body. But he clung with the desperation of despair to
the steel rigging, and the next moment, taking advantage of a momentary
lull, he began to mount.
Long before he reached the cross-trees, his hands were cut and sore and
every muscle in his body taut as fiddle strings. About him the confusion
and the noise of the storm shrieked and tore like Bedlam let loose.
But stubbornly the figure of the young wireless boy crept upward,
flattened out by the wind at times against the ratlines to which he
clung, and again, taking every fighting chance he could seize, battling
his way up slowly once more. The cross-trees gained, Jack paused to draw
breath. He looked downward. He could see, amid the inferno of raging
waters, the dim outline of the hull. From that height it looked like a
darning needle. As the mast swung, it appeared that with every dizzy
list of the narrow body of the ship beneath, she must overturn.
Jack had been aloft often and knew the curious feeling that comes over a
novice at the work: that his weight must overbalance the slender hull
below. But never had he experienced the sensation in such full measure
as he did that night, clinging there panting, wet, bruised,
half-exhausted, but yet with the fighting spirit within him unsubdued
and still determined to win this furious battle against the elements.
As he clung there, catching his breath and coughing the salt water from
his lungs, he recollected with a flash of satisfaction that he had his
rubber gloves in his pocket. These gloves are used for handling wires in
which current might be on, and are practically shock-proof. Jack knew
that he would have to handle the aërials when he got aloft, and if he
had not his gloves with him, he would have stood the risk of getting a
severe shock.
With one more glance down, in which he could perceive a dim, wet
radiance surrounding the ship like a halo, proceeding from such lights
as still were aglow on board, the boy resumed his climb.
The most perilous part of it still lay before him. So far, he had
climbed a good broad “ladder”—the ratlines stretched between the three
stout steel shrouds. From the cross-trees to the top of the slender
mast, there was but a single-breadth foothold between the two shrouds
running from the tip of the foremast to the cross-trees.
Far above him, cut off from his vision by darkness and flying scud, Jack
knew that the footpath he had to follow narrowed to less than a foot in
breadth. At that height the vicious kicking of the mast must be
tremendous.
It was equivalent to being placed on the end of a giant, pliable whip
while a Gargantuan Brobdingnagian driver tried to flick you off.
But Jack gritted his teeth, and through the screeching wind began the
last lap of his soul-rasping ascent.
He was flung about till his head swam. His ascent was pitifully slow and
tortuous. The reeling mast seemed to have a vicious determination to
hurtle him through space into the vortex of waters below him, over which
he was swung dizzily hither and yon.
But at last, somehow, with reeling brain, cut and bleeding hands and
exhausted limbs, he reached the summit and stretched out cramped fingers
for the aërials.
With the other hand he clung to the shrouds, and with legs wrapped round
them in a death-like grip, he was dashed back and forth through midair
like a shuttle-cock.