QUARTERMASTER SCHULTZ VOLUNTEERS
Clinging with his interlocked lower limbs, Jack managed to draw on his
insulated rubber gloves. Then he fumbled, with fear gripping at his cold
heart, for his electric torch, which every wireless man carries for just
such emergencies.
He pressed the button and a small, pitifully small, arc of light fell on
the aërials where they were secured to the mast. Far beneath him on the
bridge, the first officer and the wondering captain—who had been
summoned from his berth—watched the infinitesimal fire-fly of light as
it flickered and swayed at the top of the mast.
The storm wrack flew low and at times it was shut out from their gaze
altogether. At such times both men gripped the rail with a dreadful fear
that the brave lad, working far above them, had paid the penalty of his
devotion to duty with his life.
But every time that they looked up after such a temporary extinguishment
of the flickering light, they saw it still winking like the tiny
night-eye of a gnome above them in dark space.
With fingers dulled by the thick rubber covering which he dared not
remove, Jack worked among the aërial terminals. One by one he counted
the strands.
One, two, three, four, five.
Yes, they were all there. But he did not count them as fast as that.
Instead, between the fingering of one and another an interval of ten
minutes might elapse, during which time he was flung from pole to pole,
dry mouthed and dizzy.
Then came a sudden flash of lightning outlining the rigging, the steel
hull far below him, the anxious figures on the bridge and the angry
heavens in blue, glaring flame. But Jack had no eye for this. The sudden
light had shown him a jagged rip in the insulation of the wires where
they were joined to the mast rigging. Through this, current had been
leaking into the mast and robbing the aërials of their power of sending
or receiving, short circuiting the Hertzian waves.
Jack waited for a lull and then, almost dead with nausea and brain
sickness from his wild buffeting, he reached for his electrician’s tape
and began making hasty repairs on the electric leak. He bound coil after
coil of the adhesive stuff around the exposed wire, till it was
blanketed beyond chance of “spilling” into the rain.
Then, his work done, he rested for an instant to steady his whirling
senses, and then began the long descent.
Now that the job was over, he felt that he could never live to reach the
deck, miles and miles—hundreds and hundreds of miles—below him. Step by
step, though, he descended, fighting for his life against the sense
numbness that was creeping over him. Limbs and intelligence seemed
equally absent. He felt as if he were a disembodied being, floating
through space on the wings of the storm.
He appeared to have no weight. Like a thistle bloom he thought that he
might be blown where the winds wished. Conquering this feeling, it was
succeeded by a leaden one. He was too heavy to move. His feet felt
enormous, and heavy as a deep-sea diver’s weighted boots. His head was
balloon-like and appeared to sway crazily on his shoulders.
But he still descended. Step by step, painfully, semi-consciously, the
brain-sick, nauseated boy clung to the ratlines. On his grip depended
his life, and this, in a dim, stupid sort of way, he realized.
If he could only reach the cross-trees! Here he could rest in
comparative security for a while.
He must reach them, he must! He wasn’t going to die like this. A furious
fighting spirit came over him. His head suddenly cleared; the deadly
nausea left him; his limbs grew light.
Jack shouted aloud and came swiftly down. He called out defiantly at the
storm. He raved, he yelled in wild delirium.
All at once he felt the cross-trees under his feet. With a last loud cry
of triumph he sank down on the projecting steel pieces that formed, at
any rate, a resting place.
Then came another wild swing of the ship, and a vicious gust.
Jack felt himself flung from the cross-trees and out into the dark void
of the storm.
Down, down, down he went, straight as a stone toward the dark, black,
raging vortex through which the ship was fighting.
He felt rather than heard a despairing cry; but did not know whether it
had come from his lips or not.
Then a rushing dark cloud enveloped him, and with a fearful roaring in
his ears, Jack’s senses swam out to sea.
“The light has disappeared, Metcalf. Do you think the poor lad is lost?”
Far below on the bridge, Captain McDonald, oil-skinned like his officer,
peered upward.
“The good Lord alone knows, sir,” was the fervent reply. “It was a
madcap thing to do. I should never have let him go.”
“It’s done now,” muttered the captain. “Though, had you consulted me, I
should have forbidden it. That boy is the bravest of the brave.”
“He is, sir. You may well say that. A seasoned sailorman might have
hesitated to go aloft to-night.”
“I wish to heaven I knew what had become of him and if he is safe, yet I
wouldn’t order another man up there in this inferno.”
There was a voice behind him.
“Vouldt you accepdt idt a volunteer, sir?”
“You, Schultz?” exclaimed the captain, turning around to the old
quartermaster who was just going off his trick of duty at the wheel.
“Why, man, you’d be taking your life in your hands.”
“I’ve been up der masts of sheeps off der Horn on vorse nights dan
dees,” was the calm reply. “Ledt me go, sir.”
“You go at your own responsibility, then,” was the reply. “I ought not
to let you up at all, and yet that boy—go ahead, then.”
The old German quartermaster saluted and was gone.
From the bridge they saw him for a moment, in the gleam of light from a
porthole, crossing the wet deck.
He clambered into the shrouds and then began climbing upward along the
perilous path Jack had already traveled.
“Pray Heaven we have not two deaths to our account to-night, Metcalf,”
said the captain earnestly to his first officer.
“Amen to that, sir,” was the reply.
And then there was nothing but the shriek of the wind and the beat of
the waves, while the two officers gazed piercingly upward into the
darkness where they knew not what tragedies might be taking place.