INTERVENTION
The "Starlight" struck the sodden derelict shortly before midnight, with
a crash that jarred the yacht to her innermost fibres.
She struck it full abeam, like a motor-car smashing in the dark into an
unlighted farm-waggon drawn across a country lane. Bows crumpled up;
bowsprit snapped away; foremast, loosed from its stay, and forced back
by the pressure of a half-gale on the close-hauled foresail, carried
over to port in a tangle of rope and wire and canvas.
Thrown back on her haunches, the "Starlight" gasped and shivered and
began to settle by the head from the rush of water into the forecastle.
"All on deck with lifebelts!"
A seaman rushed through the saloons, throwing wide the cabin doors, and
shouting the captain's order.
Up above, men were ripping the canvas covers off the life-boats,
flinging oilskins and rugs and provisions into them, slewing round the
davits, hauling on the fall-ropes--a furious medley of energies.
Matheson rushed to his wife's cabin, helped her on with some clothes,
tied her lifebelt, wrapped a rug around her, and hurried her on deck.
"What have we hit?" he snapped at the captain.
"Derelict."
"How long d'you give her?"
"Ten minutes at the outside!" flung back the captain, and then into his
megaphone: "Lower away there with No. 4!"
Lifeboat No. 4 was the second boat on the port side--the leeward side.
No. 3 was buried under the tangle of wreckage from the collapse of the
foremast, and therefore useless. The boat was already in the water, with
the mate and four seamen aboard, when Matheson, who had hurried below,
came again on deck with Olaf in his arms. Behind him panted the
stewardess and Olive's maid, terrified and clutching some worthless
finery of hers.
"Women and children to No. 4!" shouted the captain.
"I won't go without you!" cried Olive to her husband, clinging tight to
him.
The captain wasted no precious moments on argument. He thrust the
stewardess and the trembling maid before him, and stout arms bundled
them down to the plunging boat. Then he passed down the little boy.
"Is there room for all of us?" cried Olive.
"No!"
The mate cast off, and lifeboat No. 4 disappeared into the black night.
"Haul on the main and mizzen sheets!" ordered the captain, to bring the
yacht round and get a leeward launch for Nos. 1 and 2.
Presently the two crackling sails gybed over with a thud, and the
"Starlight" lay on the starboard tack, head down and filling rapidly.
"Hurry like hell!" shouted the captain.
Into No. 1, with the boatswain in charge and four seamen, went Olive and
her husband and the cook; and into No. 2 crowded the carpenter, the two
stewards, and the rest of the crew. For the captain was left the frail
dinghy, slung from the stern. True to the tradition of the sea, he had
refused a place in any of the lifeboats.
Lifeboat No. 2 got away first of the two. It was being tossed dizzily
amongst the inky combers twenty yards distant, the men rowing feverishly
to get clear of the yacht before she sank and sucked them under. But
with No. 1 there was some hitch. The boatswain had unshackled the
fall-ropes aft, and the boat slewed off with the jerk of a heavy wave.
"Clear away there forward, blast you!"
Two seamen were tugging at the fall-block. Something had fouled. The
"Starlight" was rearing head stern up; her shattered bows were already
under the waves; her life was now a matter of seconds only.
"Cut the ropes, you blasted idiots!"
Before the two men could get their knives through the tough rope, the
"Starlight" reared like a bucking mare and plunged to her grave,
dragging with her lifeboat No. 1 and its eight occupants.
"Jump for it!" yelled the boatswain.
Matheson, one foot caught under a seat, was dragged down and down until
his heart hammered like a piston and his lungs were bursting with the
fierce effort to hold his breath.
To the drowning man there comes a moment when he perforce gives up the
fight and abandons himself to the blessed peace of unconsciousness, like
a wanderer in a snowstorm lying down to rest. That moment had come to
Matheson, when suddenly the half-severed rope that shackled the lifeboat
to the doomed yacht gave way, and with a mutinous jerk the boat rushed
itself to the surface, bottom upwards, flinging Matheson clear.
His craving lungs opened to the free air; he lay back on his cork-jacket
gulping it in greedily as the whirlpool formed by the sinking yacht
carried him round and round in dizzy circles.
The moments of recuperation past, his first thought was for his wife. He
caught sight of a shapeless something at the further side of the
whirlpool, and with all his strength beat round towards it. It was
Olive, clinging to an oar.
He reached her; shouted some words of hope above the roar of the wind;
searched around the blackness of the night for a place of safety. Thirty
yards away, tossed upwards on a giant wave as though in signal to them,
there showed for a brief moment the silhouette of an upturned boat, with
two men clinging to it.
"Our boat--over there!" he cried to Olive, and clutching her by the arm,
fought the combers towards the hope of refuge.
Straddled across the upturned lifeboat were the boatswain and a seaman.
The others had disappeared. On such a night it was impossible to rescue
them unless by the accident of chance.
Matheson, buffeted and blinded by the thrash of the waves, just managed
to drag Olive to the boat's side. The boatswain, Fraser by name, lent
him a hand while he recuperated sufficiently to hoist Olive across the
keel of the storm-tossed boat.
"Where are the other boats?" he asked of Fraser, when he had recovered
speech.
The boatswain made a gesture of helplessness. In that inky night, who
could say where lifeboats No. 2 and 4 might be?
Presently a rocket flung a rain of white stars across the black curtain
of the sky. It must be from one of their own boats. But it was far away
across the waters. They shouted with all their might. The wind hurled
their words away in disdain of the puny effort.
Matheson had pocketed a flask of brandy when the call of all hands on
deck had sent him tumbling out of his berth. He now poured some of the
spirit down Olive's throat, and passed the flask on to the men.
"Be sparing with it," he warned.
Then he set to work to make his moaning wife as comfortable as the
terrible circumstances of their plight would permit. He took off his
coat and got her into it, binding her cork jacket around. A rope was
trailing from the stern and he secured this and tied it round her waist,
giving one end to Fraser to hold and keeping tight hold of the other
himself.
Very little was said as the endless hours of the night dragged their
leaden length to a sullen dawn.
"Give me the morphia!" Olive had moaned at intervals, in a delirium of
fever.
The seaman, who had been the man on watch when the "Starlight" struck
the unlighted derelict, had cursed intermittently at the cause of the
disaster. "Why didn't they show a blasted light?" he kept on repeating
with obstinate illogicality. "Why didn't the fools show a blasted
light?"
"Old man Larssen will give you hell when we get to shore."
Olive, in her delirium, caught at the words. "I can see the shore!" she
cried. "Over there--over there! Why don't you row? You want to kill me
first!"
Matheson tried to soothe her.
"We'll soon be on shore. A boat will pick us up at daybreak."
"Why didn't they show a blasted light?" cursed the seaman.
The sullen dawn uncurtained a waste of slag-coloured, heaving waters.
The gale had spent its sudden fury, as though its work were now
accomplished, but the sky was grey and inhospitable. Matheson raised
himself on his knees on the keel of the boat again and again to search
around, but no sail or steamer-smoke gave hope of rescue.
It was not until ten o'clock that a trawler came within distance of
seeing them, but apparently their signals of distress were not noticed,
for the fishing vessel passed on to its work and disappeared over the
horizon.
A few fitful gleams of sunlight mocked their shiverings with promise of
warmth--promise unfulfilled. Their brandy was now exhausted, and some
ship's biscuits in the boatswain's pocket were sodden and uneatable.
Thirst began to add to the horrors of the situation. Olive was moaning
for water, and they had none to give her.
The afternoon was far advanced before a Copenhagen-Hull packet ran
across them, taking on board three exhausted men and a woman in
delirium.