DISCOMFITURES AT SEA
The green and red lights on the starboard and port sides and the white
light on the foremast now burned brightly. The boatswain's shrill whistle
furled the sails snugly to every spar, leaving the sailors little time or
spirit for their usual song, as barometer-like they too sensed the
approaching storm. The ship's watch forward was increased as the wind
grew strong, and the weather ahead had become thick and hazy.
The captain quickly left the table when the steward placed in his hand
a bit of writing from the first officer, which read, "The barometer is
falling rapidly." Captain Morgan and an officer paced the bridge with
eyes alert. Heavy clouds of smoke from the triple stacks revealed that
a hundred glowing furnaces were being fed with fuel, assistant engineers
were busily inspecting, and oilers were active in lubricating the
ponderous engines that every emergency might be promptly met.
Ports were closed and every precaution taken. The anxiety of officers and
sailors and the increased agitation of the sea was soon noticed by the
ship's gay company. Before ten o'clock most of the passengers were glad
of the good-night excuse for retiring. The smoking room, however, was
crowded with devotees to the weed. Old-timers were busy with cards, or
forming pools on the first day's run from Sandy Hook, or speculating as
to the time of arrival at Queenstown.
The atmosphere of the room was as thick as the weather outside. It is
no wonder that a club man of New York, making his first trip to Europe,
inquired of his Philadelphia friend, "Why do Americans smoke so
continually?"
He answered, "It is easier to tell why the English drink tea and why
Americans drink coffee. But to answer your question, I suppose the
mixture of races quickens the flow of blood and produces the intense
activities we witness. Besides, the enlarged opportunities offered in
a new and growing country present attractive prizes in the commercial,
political, social, and religious world. To attain these the Anglo-Saxon
blood rushes through arteries and veins like the heated blood in a
thoroughbred horse on the last quarter. After these homestretch efforts
Americans feel the need often of stimulants, or of a soporific, and this
they try to find in a cigar."
"Your views are wrong, I think. One would naturally infer that the use of
tobacco shortens life. Let me relate to you an incident.
"I was once in Sandusky, Ohio, and spent an evening at a lecture given by
Trask, the great anti-tobacconist. In his discourse he had reached the
climax of his argument, proving as he thought that tobacco shortened
life, when a well dressed man in the audience rose and said, 'Mr. Trask,
will you pardon me if I say a few words?'
"'Oh, yes' said the lecturer, 'give us the facts only.'
"'Well, Mr. Trask, there is living to-day in Castalia, southwest of here,
a man nearly a hundred years old and he has been a constant user of
tobacco since early childhood.'
"For a moment Mr. Trask stood nonplussed. To gain time for thought
he fell back upon the Socratic method, and began asking questions.
'Stranger, won't you stand up again so that the audience can see you?
Thank you! Evidently you are an intelligent citizen and reliable witness.
Did you say you knew the man?'
"'O yes, I have known him for over fifty years.'
"'Did you ever know of his favoring schools or churches by gifts or
otherwise?'
"'No,' said the stranger.
"'There,' said Trask to the audience, 'this man's testimony only
strengthens what I have been attempting to prove here this evening,
that tobacco shortens life. This Castalia centenarian is dead to all the
demands of society and humanity, and his corpse should have been buried
half a century ago.' So the laugh was on the voluntary witness."
"Hold on, my friend, your Castalia centenarian proves just what I said at
the outset, that the use of tobacco prolongs life, but I am half inclined
myself to feel that the less tobacco active Americans use, the better."
Then throwing his cigar away, he said good-night and left the smoking
room.
Others stacked their cards, smoked cigarettes, and then sought their
staterooms, and finally the ship's bell rang out the last patron and
announced the midnight hour; the steward was left alone. He had been
unusually busy all the evening furnishing ale, porter, and beer, a few
only taking wine. The steward was glad to complete his report of sales
for the first day out, and turn off the lights and seek his berth for
the night.
The "Majestic" shot past Cape Cod and was plowing her way towards the
banks of Newfoundland. The strong winds were westerly and fast increasing
to a moderate gale. The north star was hidden and now failed to confirm
the accuracy of the ship's compasses.
The first and fourth officers were pacing the bridge. The latter was
glad that the engines were working at full speed, as every stroke of
the pistons carried him nearer his pretty cottage in the suburbs of
Liverpool. Captain Morgan had dropped asleep on the lounge in his cozy
room just back of the wheel. Most of the passengers and crew off duty
slept soundly, though some were dreaming of wife and children in far away
homes, and others of palaces, parks, and castles in foreign countries.
It was difficult for Mrs. Harris to get much rest as the waves dashing
against the ship often awakened her, and her thoughts would race with the
Cincinnati Express which was swiftly bearing her husband and Gertrude
back to Harrisville and perhaps to trouble and poverty. While Mrs. Harris
knew that her husband was wealthy, she was constantly troubled with fears
lest she and her family should sometime come to want. Her own father had
acquired a fortune in Ireland, but changes in the British tariff laws had
rendered him penniless, and poverty had driven her mother with seven
other children to America.
A rich uncle in Boston enabled her to get a fair education, and the early
years of her married life had been full of earnest effort, of economy and
heroic struggle, that her husband and family might gain a footing in the
world. The comforts of her early childhood in Ireland had given her a
keen relish for luxury. The pain inflicted by poverty that followed was
severely felt, and now, the pleasures of wealth again were all the more
enjoyed.
Mrs. Harris was not a church member, but woman-like she found her lips
saying, "God bless the colonel and my precious children." Then putting
her hand over upon Lucille, and satisfied that she was there by her side
and asleep, she too became drowsy and finally unconscious. Alfonso and
Leo occupied the adjoining stateroom, but both were in dreamland;
Alfonso in the art galleries of Holland and Leo in sunny Italy.
Before morning the storm center was moving rapidly down the St. Lawrence
Valley, and off the east coast of Maine. Long lines of white-capped waves
were dashing after each other like swift platoons in a cavalry charge.
The "Majestic," conscious of an enemy on her flank, sought earnestly to
outstrip the winds of Æolus. When Captain Morgan reached the bridge, the
sea and sky were most threatening. The first officer said, "Captain,
I have never seen the mercury go down so rapidly. We are in for a nasty
time of it, I fear."
Early the sailors were scrubbing the ship while the spray helped to wash
the decks, and they tightened the fastenings of the life-boats. The
firemen too were busy dropping cinders astern. Fires in the cook's
galley were lighted, and the steerage passengers were aroused for
breakfast, but few responded.
Mrs. Harris often tried to dress, but every time she fell back into her
berth, saying, "Stewardess, I shall surely die. Isn't the ship going
down?"
"No, no, madam," the stewardess replied, "I will return with beef tea,
and you will soon feel better."
Lucille was helped to put on a dark wrapper; and after repeated efforts
at a hasty toilet, she took the stewardess's arm and reached an easy
chair in the library. Alfonso and Leo, who were both members of a yacht
club in New York, came to the library from a short walk on the deck. It
required much urging with Lucille before she would attempt an entrance
into the dining-room. Several men and a few ladies were present.
"Good morning, Miss Harris, how brave you are," were words spoken so
encouragingly by Captain Morgan that Lucille's face brightened and she
responded as best she could.
"Thank you, captain, I believe I should much prefer to face a storm of
bullets on the land than a storm at sea; you courageous sailors really
deserve all the gold medals."
Leo, who was fond of the ocean, said to Alfonso, "Why can't we all be
sailors? What say you to this? Let us test who of our party shall lose
the fewest meals from New York to Queenstown. You and your mother or
Lucille and I?"
"Agreed," responded Alfonso, thinking it would help to keep the ladies in
good spirits.
"But what shall count for a meal?" inquired Alfonso.
"Not less than ten minutes at the table, and at dinner, soup at least."
Lucille thought Leo's idea a capital one. It was agreed that the contest
should commence with the next lunch, and that Alfonso and Leo should act
as captains for the two sides.
By this time Lucille had eaten a little toast and had sipped part of her
chocolate. A tenderloin steak and sweet omelet with French fried potatoes
were being served, when suddenly the color left her face. Another lurch
of the steamer sent a glass of ice water up her loose sleeve, and,
utterly discomfited, she begged to be excused and rushed from the table.
"Oh dear, mother, how terribly I feel; let me lie down. Oh dear! I wish
I were home with father and Gertrude."
"If the colonel were only here to help," murmured Mrs. Harris.
"Stewardess, where are you? Why don't you hurry when I ring? Go for the
doctor at once." It was now blowing a gale and the steamer was rolling
badly.
It was a long half-hour before the doctor entered the stateroom of Mrs.
Harris. Dr. Argyle was perfect in physical development and a model of
gentlemanly qualities. His education had been received in London and
Vienna, and he had joined the service of the "Majestic" that he might
enlarge his experiences as practitioner and man of the world. He had
correctly divined that here he was sure to touch intimately the restless
and wandering aristocracy of the globe.
While Dr. Argyle was ostensibly the ship's doctor, he was keenly alert
for an opportunity that would help him on to fame and fortune. Of the
two he preferred the latter, as he believed that humanity is just as
lazy as it dares to be. Therefore stateroom No. ---- was entered both
professionally and inquisitively. The doctor was half glad that the
Harrises were ill, as he had seen the family at Captain Morgan's table
and desired to meet them. Captain Morgan had incidentally mentioned to
the doctor the great wealth of the Harris family, and this also had
whetted his curiosity. Before him lay mother and daughter, helpless, both
in utter misery and the picture of despair.
"Beg pardon, ladies," said the doctor as he entered, "you sent for me
I believe?"
"Yes, yes," replied Mrs. Harris, "we thought you had forgotten us, as the
half-hour's delay seemed a full week. My daughter, Lucille, and I are
suffering terribly. How awful the storm! Last night, doctor, I thought
I should die before morning, and now I greatly fear that the ship will
go down."
"Do not fear, ladies," the doctor replied, "the wind is only brisk; most
people suffer a little on the ocean, especially on the first voyage."
"What is the cause of this terrible seasickness, doctor, and what can you
do for us?"
"Frankly, Mrs. Harris, no two physicians agree as to the cause. Usually
people suffer most from seasickness who come aboard weary from over-work
or nervous exhaustion. Most people waste vital forces by too much talking
or by over-exertion. Americans, especially, overcheck their deposits of
vitality, and as bankrupts they struggle to transact daily duties. Wise
management of nerve forces would enable them to accomplish more and enjoy
life better."
"I am a bankrupt then," said Mrs. Harris, "but how about my daughter
Lucille?"
"Your child, I fear, is the daughter of bankrupts and doubtless inherits
their qualities."
"But, doctor, can't you do something now for us?"
"Oh yes, madam, but first let me feel your pulse, please."
"Ninety-eight," he said to himself, but he added to Mrs. Harris, "you
need the very rest this voyage affords and you must not worry the least
about the storm or affairs at home. Our vessel is built of steel, and
Captain Morgan always outrides the storms. Ladies, I want you to take
this preparation of my own. It is a special remedy for seasickness, the
result of the study and experience of the medical force of the White Star
Line."
The faces of mother and daughter brightened. They had faith. This was
noticed by Dr. Argyle. Faith was the restorative principle upon which the
young doctor depended, and without it his medicine was worthless. The
White Star panacea prescribed was harmless, as his powders merely
inclined the patient to sleep and recovery followed, so faith or nature
worked the cure. Soon after the door closed behind the doctor, Lucille
was asleep, and Mrs. Harris passed into dreamland.
The winds veered into the southwest, and, reinforced, were controlled by
a violent hurricane that had rushed up the Atlantic coast from the West
Indies. The novice aboard was elated, for he thought that the fiercer the
wind blew behind the vessel, the faster the steamer would be driven
forward. How little some of us really know! The cyclone at sea is a
rotary storm, or hurricane, of extended circuit. Black clouds drive down
upon the sea and ship with a tiger's fierceness as if to crush all life
in their pathway.
Officers and crew, in waterproof garments, become as restless as bunched
cattle in a prairie blizzard. All eyes now roam from prow to stern, from
deck to top mast. The lightning's blue flame plays with the steel masts,
and overhead thunders drown the noise of engines and propellers. Thick
black smoke and red-hot cinders shoot forth from the three black-throated
smoke-stacks.
The huge steamer, no longer moving with the ease of the leviathan, seems
a tiny craft and almost helpless in the chopped seas that give to the
ship a complex motion so difficult, even for old sailors, to anticipate.
Tidal wave follows tidal wave in rapid succession. Both trough and crest
are whipped into whitecaps like tents afield, till sea and storm seem
leagued to deluge the world again.
Captain Morgan, lashed to the bridge, has full confidence in himself, his
doubled watch ahead, his compasses, and the throbbing engines below.
Dangers have now aroused the man and his courage grows apace. Moments
supreme come to every captain at sea, the same as to captains who wage
wars on the land.
The decks are drenched, great waves pound the forward deck and life-boats
are broken from their moorings. Battened hatches imprison below a
regiment of souls, some suffering the torments of stomachs in open
rebellion, others of heads swollen, while others lose entire control
of an army of nerves that center near and drive mad the brain.
To the uninitiated, words are powerless to reveal the torments of the
imprisoned in a modern steel inquisition, rocking and pitching at the
mercy of mighty torrents in a mid-ocean cyclone. Mephistopheles, seeking
severest punishment for the damned, displayed tenderness in not adopting
the super-heated and sooted pits where stokers in storms at sea are
forced to labor and suffer.
All that terrible second day and night at sea, the Harrises and others
tossed back and forth in their unstable berths, some suffering with
chills and others with burning heat. Some, Mrs. Harris and daughter among
them, lay for hours more dead than alive, their wills and muscles utterly
powerless to reach needed and much coveted blankets.
The dining saloon was deserted except by a few old sea-travelers. Before
dinner, Leo ventured above and for a moment put his head outside. The
gale blowing a hundred miles an hour hit him with the force of a club.
When he went below to see Alfonso, his face was pale, and his voice
trembled as he said, "Harris, before morning we shall all sink to the
bottom of the Atlantic with the 'Majestic' for our tomb." Half undressed,
Leo dropped again into his berth where he spent a miserable night.