Cadogan looked into the smoking-room. Lavis was gone. He hesitated,
wheeled quickly, returned to the deck, sought the nearest gangway, and
rapidly descended four decks. He traversed one passageway, another, and
entered what looked like a carpenter's shop, where, he knew, was a
thick-topped wooden table with its legs held by small angle-irons to the
wooden planking over the steel-deck floor.
Cadogan crawled under the table, hunched his shoulders, straightened his
legs, and had the table up by the roots. He stepped out from under it,
grasped it across the beam, raised it high, brought two of the legs down
against the deck, once, twice; reversed the ends and brought the other
two legs down to the deck, once, twice. The legs were gone.
He set the table top on his head. A man stood in the doorway. Cadogan
motioned him out of the way. "Where yuh goin' with that?" snarled the
man. Cadogan set the end of his plank against the man's chest, walked
straight ahead, and stepped over the man's body. In the passageway some
one seized his table from behind. Cadogan let go entirely, wheeled
sharply, caught the man by the collar and trousers, smashed him against
the bulkhead, and, as the other dropped his hold of the table top, threw
him a dozen feet down the passage. The man, rising to his feet, ran the
other way. Cadogan picked up his plank and resumed his way.
At a place where a boat-falls dropped past the ship's rail Cadogan laid
down his burden. This was on the lowest open deck, where not many people
would be coming to bother him; but, to reduce the chance of loss, he set
his table top up on edge in the shadow of the rail, while he went off
for an armful of steamer chairs.
He needed lashings for his chairs. A transverse passageway opened on to
the deck near by. Staterooms opened off either side of the passage. The
door of the nearest room was locked. "Bright people," he muttered, "who
didn't intend anybody should steal anything while they were gone!" He
set one foot under the door-knob, rested his back against the bulkhead
across the narrow aisle, and straightened his leg. The lock gave way;
the door swung open. "When they return I hope you won't miss the fine
bed sheets," he murmured, and swished them--one, two--from the berths,
with the blankets and one pillow. He slit the hemmed edges of the sheets
and tore them into strips lengthwise. With these strips he lashed his
chairs compactly together. The chairs in turn he lashed to the heavy
plank.
Cadogan had taken off dinner coat, waistcoat, collar, tie, and linen
shirt to work more freely. Now he looked about for the coat. All the
while he had been working he was not unaware that forms of men had
flitted by him, and that more than one had stopped as if curious to know
what he was at. He knew that more than one of these were now prowling
within leaping distance and that from them were coming muffled words of
comment. Also he was not unaware that the ship was nearing her end. He
could detect the first pitching of her hull, the settling of the deck
under his feet, even as he could hear the half-tones of the menacing
voices from out of the shadows. He was aware, too, that a despairing
multitude were massing on the decks above him.
Up there, he knew, they were preparing to meet the end in a hundred
different fashions. Up there would be those who smiled and those who
cried, those who joked or moaned, who prayed or blasphemed, those who
were going with pity in their hearts and consumed with bitterness
others; forgiving whoever it was that had brought it on, or wishing, the
others, that they had the negligent ones to coldly and calmly wring
their necks before they went themselves.
Cadogan, having found his coat, laid it on a bitt near by while he
should launch his little raft. He balanced it on the rail, inserted a
hook under one of his lashings at each end, folded his blankets on top,
and, a boat-falls in each hand, paid out carefully, slowly. He could not
have lowered a human body more tenderly. Easily, gently, he felt it
settle on the bosom of the sea. He took a turn of his falls around the
bitt, and, always with one eye peeping sidewise into the shadows,
reached for his coat. In the pocket of that coat was the photograph of
his beloved.
"You've everything fixed nicely, have you, matie?"
Cadogan had had his eye out for him, and was expecting some such
salutation; and the revolver within two feet of his head was also not
unexpected. A man could not attend to everything at once.
"Everything nice, yes," responded Cadogan, now with his coat in his
hand.
"I'm glad o' that, matie, because, you see, I'm needing it."
"Would you take that from a man after all the work he put in on it?" He
was kneading the coat into a ball in his right hand. With his left hand
he was taking in a hole or two in his belt.
"You _are_ a soft un! And a swell toff, too. You'll 'ave to st'y aboard,
matie. I'm needing that tidy little floatin' thing you've moored below,
and I'm plannin' to take it."
"Well, why don't you take it?"
"No larkin'. I'm fightin' for my life."
"I've been fighting for more than my life, or yours, and----"
His right arm had been hanging loosely down by his side. He snapped his
right wrist against his hip. The coat, in a tight ball, was jolted into
the man's face, just as Cadogan's left arm shot up and caught the man's
pistol wrist. His open right hand followed the coat and gripped the
man's throat. He had no mind for a scuffle which would attract
attention, nor did he wish the man when he dropped overboard to fall too
near his raft; so, with his finger to the man's windpipe, he bore him
along the passageway toward the stern of the ship. The tide was setting
that way. The man was kicking out with both legs, striking out with his
free hand. Cadogan held the man's arm over the rail the while he twisted
the pistol wrist. The revolver dropped overboard. Cadogan took a fresh
hold of him, spun around with him, and let him fly. He went where the
revolver went.
Cadogan, arrived back at his raft, found a man standing by the falls and
calling down to somebody below: "How is it now?"
There was no answer. The man by the falls repeated his question. Only
silence from below.
Cadogan was looking for his coat, when the man grasped the falls and
swiftly lowered himself over the side. Cadogan let be his coat and slid
down the falls after him. His feet fetched up against the man's fingers.
He pressed with all his weight. The man cursed softly, let go his hold,
and fell into the sea. Cadogan dropped after him. When the man came up
Cadogan gripped him by the throat and held him under water.
The dim outline of another fellow was standing erect on the end of the
little raft. "Norrie, me lad," he was saying in a cold voice, "it's a
tidy little floater with nice warm blankets, but it will never hold up
two." Cadogan could see a long spanner, or bar, held ready on the
shoulder of the man on the raft. The man in the water was now twining
his legs about him, whereupon, still clinging to his man, Cadogan dived,
porpoise-like, head down into the sea. When he felt his feet under he
kicked once, twice, three times powerfully. Deep down he went.
He came up alone.
He clung to one of the hooks of the falls to get his breath. A cap
floated up to him. Smiling grimly, he set it on his head. The man on the
end of the raft poised himself above him and aimed the long spanner at
the cap. Cadogan diverted the blow with his free forearm, and before the
other could recover wrenched the spanner from him and dropped it into
the sea.
"Oh, ho! that's how it is, is it, Norrie, me lad?" He swung one foot
viciously at Cadogan's hand where it was gripped around the hook.
Cadogan swooped again with his free hand, caught the man by the swinging
ankle, and hauled him off the raft. He released his grip of the man's
ankle, only to shift it to his throat. The man seized Cadogan's free
wrist with both hands. Cadogan, hanging to the hook with one hand and
gripping the man's throat with the other, continued to squeeze the man's
throat. The man's legs kicked convulsively. Cadogan continued to
squeeze. When the legs stopped kicking, Cadogan forced the head under
water and eased up on his grip. Bubbles rose up and burst on the
surface. Cadogan placed his ear close to the water to hear. When he
could no longer hear the bubbles he loosed his grip.
With hands to the falls and feet against the ship's side, Cadogan
climbed to the deck where he had left his coat. He found it kicked to
one side and trampled upon. But the little photograph was still
there--in the inside pocket.
He took off his cap, the cap of the drowned man, while he kissed the
little photograph. "Coming, coming, oh, coming!" he murmured.
"Have you room for a passenger?" came in a man's voice from the dark.
Cadogan whirled. "Passenger? Passenger! I've fought and schemed
and--Oh!"
It was Lavis, and, clinging to his hand, was somebody in a man's long
ulster.
"It's the woman--you remember her?--who passed her baby boy into the
boat so that he would be saved."
Cadogan said nothing.
"A few minutes ago I found her. She was weeping for her baby. I asked
her why she should be weeping now that her baby was safe, and she
answered me: 'But who will be there to give him the breast when he
wakes?'"
Cadogan rested his left hand, with the fingers clinched around the cap,
on the ship's rail.
"If Christ on earth were to be with us once more," went on Lavis
softly, "would he not say again: 'Greater love hath no man than this'?
'Who will be there to give him the breast when he wakes?'--and she about
to die. Have you room for her as a passenger on your raft?"
"It will bear only one."
Lavis waited.
Cadogan unloosed the fingers of the hand on the rail. The cap dropped
into the sea.
"She shall be the one," he said presently.
In the rosy flush of a beautiful dawn a lone woman on a tiny raft
drifted down to her crying baby and gave him suck.
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|Transcriber's Notes: Minor changes have been made to make spelling and |
|punctuation consistent throughout the work. Italics have been replaced |
|with "_"(underline). Instances of ligature "oe" have been replaced with|
|simple "oe". |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+