"How's all else?"
"Couldn't be better, sir." He had to yell to make himself heard. "Are we
holding our own, sir?"
"A full revolution better than any watch since we left port."
The man nodded as if he had been expecting it, but presently chuckled
and swung one foot playfully toward the glittering gray cross-head as it
went driving down into the pit. "A full revolution!" he
echoed--"t-t-t"--and spat with obvious significance into the pit.
"T-t-t--" mimicked Linnell, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder
before he turned to Lavis.
"Will you go farther or wait here?"
"I'll wait here, if you don't mind, and stand part of the watch with
Andie."
"Very good! I'll pick you up later."
Lavis, standing beside Andie and gazing into the pit, pointed to the
great cross-head driving by. "If that were to fly out and go through the
bottom of the ship, Andie, would it sink her?"
Andie projected his lower lip. "It _might_ sink her, sir, though it
don't seem possible-like. But if it _did_ sink her, 'twould be _about_
the only way _to_ sink her, sir."
Lavis let his eyes roam above and about him. Andie observed the
direction of his gaze. "A wonderful sight, aren't it?" he commented.
"What wi' so many polished rods an' shafts all whity-gray, an' all them
many beams an' bars so beautiful green an' red-painted!"
Lavis, still interested in the wonderful machinery, felt the deck lifted
the least bit under him. It was as if the ship had risen to a rolling
head sea. He laid hold of a handy stanchion to steady himself, but he
saw Andie, unsupported, go sliding easily, gently, irresistibly to the
bulkhead behind them. Lavis saw Andie brace his legs, and then,
remindful and resentful, bound back to his station and set a hand to
each of two levers. The iron deck beneath them was still rolling easily;
from beneath the deck came a chafing noise, a slow, heavy grinding.
Lavis saw that with hands to levers, eyes on indicator, and ears to
gong, the man in dungarees had become oblivious to all but the expected
order from the bridge. It came after a time--the warning clang and the
needle pointing to ASTERN SLOW.
Andie shifted his levers. Rods and shafts reversed. Andie, eyes set on
the bridge dial, waited.
Lavis could hear Linnell's voice sharply hailing somebody in the
boiler-room passage. Presently he saw him running by the bulkhead door;
and then, from the far end of the passage, his voice cracking out like a
whip: "Back, I say! Back, you dogs, back to your stations! I'll tell you
when you're to go."
He came bounding in and past Lavis and Andie, up the narrow iron ladder,
up the wider one above it. Again Lavis heard him: "You thought to
forelay me, eh--and breed panic above? You misbegotten spawn, I'd kill
you as I'd kill a cockroach--and every last one of you, if you force me.
You dogs--go back!"
Cries and oaths, then the thud of a heavy weapon on bone and flesh, the
falling of stumbling bodies on the iron grating above. A silence, and
then Linnell's voice again, now more controlled: "You there, Wallace?
Well, stay there. An' let not a single one of 'em pass without my
orders. Shoot 'em down if you have to, but keep 'em below."
The ship was still backing. _Wh-r-r-i-ng!_ went the gong. Stop!
commanded the indicator. Andie shifted the levers. The tremendous
machinery hung motionless.
All was quiet. Not a quiver from out of the great compartment. Through
the grating over his head Lavis saw the figure of the chief hurriedly
descending. He saw him turn, pause a moment at the head of the narrow
ladder, and then come sliding down.
"Doing our best, some of 'em will get up above," he said quietly. "But
we've enough left for a watch." He stepped to Andie's side, all the
while with his eyes roaming over the machinery. "She answered her bells
promptly, Andie?"
"To the stroke, sir."
"Good! Stay by her. Pass the word to me if aught goes wrong."
He was through the bulkhead door and into the passageway before he had
completed the order.
Lavis saw Andie pout his lower lip, and with a "T-t-t--" shift his gaze
to the pit. "The blind bats!" burst from him, and he spat into the pit.
"See there, sir!" he called out to Lavis.
Lavis nodded. He had already noticed it. There was a foot or so of water
in the pit.
"How the devil came it there?" Andie stooped and scooped a handful of
it, tasted it, and held it up for Lavis to view. "Salt! _And_ cold.
T-t-t--" Andie let his breath whistle softly through his parted teeth.
The water was rising. By and by it was over the top of the pit and
crawling across the shiny deck. Andie looked about for relief.
"I'll tell him," volunteered Lavis.
"Thank you, sir. An' you might say, sir, there must be somethin' wrong
wi' the bulkhead doors. They aren't closed yet."
Lavis met Linnell returning in the passageway. "Buttons in place of eyes
in their heads aloft!" he was muttering. "An' for all o' forty mechanics
brought specially to set things right, they can't close the doors
below."
Together they waded in to where Andie was now to his knees in water.
"Let be your levers, Andie, an' take a spell o' rest for yourself,"
commanded Linnell.
Andie slowly relaxed his fingers, pulled a bunch of waste from his hip
pocket, and wiped his hands.
"She's hard hit," said Linnell to Lavis, "though there's few know it
yet. And won't in a hurry."
"Then I'd better be going above?"
"That's right, do. Will you be back this way again?"
Lavis let his hand rest lightly on Andie's head. "I'm not sure." He
extended his hand to Linnell. "If I don't see you again, good-by."
"Good-by, Mr. Lavis." The engineer stepped closer and whispered: "If any
honest chance offers to leave the ship, leave her."
* * * * *
Lavis found his way through the crew's quarters to the lowest sleeping
deck of steerage. Here a few old people and some children, too
discouraged, too indifferent, or too helpless, were clinging to their
bunks. On the next deck he found a gathering in the open space
surrounding a freight hatch. One whom he knew for a Polish woman, with
her baby at her breast, was on the edge of the crowd, and, like most of
the others, glancing up to see what was doing on the higher decks. The
Polish woman was too concerned with her baby to see exactly what they
were doing on that high deck where all the boats were, but another woman
was telling her how it was.
Lavis stepped closer and listened. She was telling, the tall one, how
there were many men running about excitedly--ship's men with only shirts
above their trousers some, and others with coats buttoned up. And they
were pulling and hauling and knocking away blocks. Such a clear night
one could see them--see their forms--and hear, too, their blows and
shouts. The woman with the baby nodded. Without looking up she could
hear the blows. And now the electric light had come, resumed the tall
one; she could see that many women had gathered there, and some were
pushing forward and others pushing back, and now women--yes, and a
man--were being put into a boat.
"And now the boat is lowered," resumed the tall one.
"I can hear them," said the young mother. "And now it is rowing away
from the ship in the dark."
"And there is another," informed the tall one by and by.
"I can hear that, too, rowing away in the dark. And from the water--do
you hear it, too, baby--such a lonesome cry in the darkness?"
At that moment Lavis spoke to her in her own language. The young mother
greeted him warmly. "Ah-h, baby," she said, "here is the good gentleman
who lives in the country where your father is waiting." She turned from
the baby to ply Lavis with rapid questions in Polish.
What did that mean--the boats leaving the great ship? Surely it must be
true what the men had said, the ship's men--that there was no danger?
Surely it must be true that such a monster of a ship, it could not sink?
Surely it could not! And yet why were all the rich ladies being sent
away and the gates to the upper decks closed, so that the poor people in
the steerage could not get out? Was it really true there was no danger?
Surely those officers would not deceive poor, friendless people! And yet
here the oily men, the greasy ones who worked deep down in the ship,
rushing every moment from below! And saying nothing but low-spoken words
to each other, and into their rooms and out again in no time, but with
more and heavier clothes upon them! Did men dress more warmly to work
where the engines and hot fires were?
"Wait. I will return," said Lavis to her, and stepped over to where two
stewards were on guard over a gate. One, observing him, turned to the
other and remarked, with vast negligence: "A silly lot, steerage, ain't
they? Always airin' a growl about something or other, as if ship's
rulin's was a-goin' to be changed for the likes o' them!"
"I would like to get to the upper deck," interrupted Lavis.
"_You_ would like to get to the upper deck, would you? And who, may I
ask, do you take yourself for, a-trying to speak like a toff?" The man
turned his back to Lavis. "Swine!" he repeated to his mate.
Lavis glanced down at himself. He had overlooked the effect of the old
linen duster and the old cap.
"When _he_ gets to 'arbor, of course there will be tugboat visitors and
customs officers arskin' for 'im, won't they?"
The other cast half an eye on Lavis. "When the clarss will look down on
the tops o' their heads and remark: 'What a mob of 'em there! How many
of 'em did you cart along this time, Captain?' I fancy he'll have only
to cock his ear up to hear 'em."
"Bloody foreigners, most of 'em."
Lavis returned to the Polish mother. "Come," he said. "There is another
way out of here."
"Please, sir, the big, jolly Irisher--what is she saying?"
Lavis listened to the big, jolly Irish girl, who, however, was not now
so jolly. Lavis had seen a thousand like her gathering kelp on the west
Irish coast--tall, deep-bosomed, barefooted girls with black hair to the
waist, and glorious dark eyes. She was standing on the covered hatch,
and pointing at the moment to one of the ship's men who had passed.
"Wet to his knees. Where is it he should be getting wet to his knees?
And another one. And where is it they are going? And is it we that has
to stay here till that kind"--she pointed to the two stewards on guard
at the steerage gate--"are pleased to let us out? Haven't we as much
right to our lives as them that lives higher up? Five hundred of us
here, women and childther, and which of them above cares whether we live
or die?"
She pointed to a woman with her brood clinging to her hands and skirts.
"Look at that poor woman with her five childther. And that poor little
thing"--she indicated the Polish woman--"that has a husband waiting for
herself and her baby in New York. And that other one, and that one, and
that one. God in heaven, mothers with their children to their breasts,
and not to be given a chance to live at all! If 'tis a mother I was, and
a child to my breast, it's not images of men in uniforms would hinder me
from saving my baby this night! And myself with my baby, if my baby was
in need of me, an' I could."
The two ship's men on guard were gazing, not at the steerage, but up at
the higher decks, when a dozen or more of the steerage women swept
across the deck. "Grand work for strong men," the Irish girl cried,
"preventin' poor women and childther from looking out for themselves.
It's not even shadows of men ye are!" and with that bowled the near one
over; and her companions, sweeping up behind her, bowled the other one
over. The two stewards had a look up and a look down, and then, with an
outraged look at each other, they flew after the disappearing steerage
women.
"Come, now." Lavis took the Polish mother's hand.
"Sh-h!" she warned. "He is sleeping."
Lavis, nodding that he saw, helped her carefully to her feet, and led
her through the now unguarded gate, and by way of several ladders, to
that high deck where the boats were.
A boat was all but ready for lowering. The last woman had been crowded
into it. The Polish woman removed her shawl and wrapped it around her
baby. "Baby!" Lavis could hear her saying over and over again in Polish.
"Oh, my baby! my baby boy!" but softly, so as not to waken him. She
stepped into the circle of light which surrounded the boat and the
ship's people. "Sa-ave beb-by," she said in English, and held shawl and
baby up at the end of her outstretched arms.
A rough hand gripped her by the shoulder.
"Stand back! Stand back, you! You've no right here! Saloon goes first,
don't y' understand?"
She stepped back in discouragement.
The men, busy at the falls, had swung the boat clear and were about to
lower away. "Now!" said Lavis sharply in her ear, and pointed to the
boat.
"Ah-h," she murmured, and darted under the arms of the ship's men and
thrust her baby into the bosom of the nearest woman in the life-boat.
"Save beb-by!" she breathed, and darted back into the crowd.
"I meant yourself also," said Lavis reproachfully.
"No, no, no--they would take baby, but me--no." Her eyes followed the
lowered boat.