THE _ESCAMBIA_ TO THE RESCUE
The _Escambia_ met the waves like a stubborn bull dog. As each new one
broke over her, the laboring oarsmen were deluged. Bob and Jerry took
the bow seat and caught up the idle oars. Both were soaked to the skin.
His teeth set, his arms straining at his heavy oar and his body
chilled, Bob’s only thought was: could he hold out? He was already
trembling from exhaustion but he gave no sign of it. He was no longer
a half invalid seeking rest――he was one of six persons exerting every
ounce of energy to save human lives.
In the wind swept black night, rearing skyward one moment and dropping
as in a canyon the next, twisting and turning beneath the crushing
combers and dropping their heads to lessen the smother of the sea, the
four young oarsmen pulled desperately. With eyes closed, Bob’s oar rose
and fell to the loud sea chant of the steersman. Now and then all could
feel the heavy plunge of Captain Joe’s guiding oar. And, even against
the storm, the boys knew that the chugging engine was helping.
In time, Bob’s fear of being swamped grew less. The _Escambia_, almost
beneath the boil of water at times, would struggle to the surface
again, shaking her rounded sides. Not a boy spoke, and not a boy
wavered in his stroke. But the struggle was telling on Bob. How long
they had labored, he did not know. He knew he had nearly reached the
limit of his efforts but he hung over his oar, his teeth tight to hold
in his exhausted breath and his muscles quivering.
At last there was a new lunge to the boat. It rose on a wave, dipped
almost to capsizing, and then, suddenly, the smothering spray rolled
over the stern. Bob somehow understood that Captain Joe’s sharp command
was permission to cease work. As his closed eyes opened, he was
conscious that Mac or Captain Joe was waving the ship’s lantern.
With an effort, Bob forced his head up. The other boys were shipping
oars, and Mac and Captain Joe were calling above the roar of water.
Then the engine ceased and, with the lantern in his arms, Mac stumbled
forward between the panting boys.
“Ship ahoy!” Mac was yelling frantically. “Give us a line. Board the
boat!” he shouted, clinging to the bow and waving his lantern.
The _Escambia_ had passed to the windward of the craft in distress and
was now plunging swiftly toward the distress signal. Suddenly, out of
the black night, a blacker hulk shaped itself and then the blazing
signal seemed almost directly above the lunging life boat. There were
no cries for help; no sound but the boom of the gale. The next instant,
the _Escambia_ swept under the black, low stern of a vessel.
“Fall to,” came Captain Joe’s quick command. Doggedly the four spent
boys dug their oars into the water once more, as they felt the strong
armed Romano sweep the life boat about. The sombre hulk faded from
sight. Bob knew that the _Escambia_, having missed the wreck, was now
working up into the lee of the vessel. In its lee, the tumbling waves
slid into a whirl of angry water, and the _Escambia_ shot forward with
new life.
“Bring her under the bow,” yelled Mac, braced forward. “Here, Jerry,
bear a hand.”
As the three remaining boys laid to the oars, Jerry and Mac freed the
life line that had been made fast for Bob’s and Jerry’s security.
“Must be abandoned,” spluttered Mac, as he followed the line aft. Then,
at the stern, he panted, “Get her under bow chains, Captain Joe, an’
I’ll git a hitch on ’em. Must be a pack o’ dead ones――not ready with no
line――after we showed ’em our light.”
At the instant, the distress signal blazed up anew like a rocket. As
the unexpected light lit up the scene, the boys dropped their stroke.
Even Captain Joe paused to make a quick survey. What they had taken to
be a schooner was a small steamer, wallowing in the trough of the sea.
There were neither side, port nor spar lights. But, just forward of the
aft deck cabins, a bedraggled man, on his knees, was dipping oil or
pitch into a blazing barrel.
“Fall to!” shouted Captain Joe sharply again. As the three oarsmen
swung their long sweeps once more in the quieter waters in the
steamer’s lee, the _Escambia_ crawled under the foundering steamer’s
cut water. There was a crash. Believing that the vessel in distress was
a sailing craft, Captain Joe and Mac had planned to make fast to her
bowsprit stays. Too late to alter the _Escambia’s_ course, the life
boat plunged alongside the rolling steamer’s smooth bow.
But the gritty Mac was not to be thwarted. As the lifeboat rose on the
roll of water the “expelled” member of the boat club hurled himself
forward in the darkness. There was another smash against the steamer’s
side but Bob’s bullying enemy held fast and, one arm about a still
standing deck rail stanchion, as the life boat fell off once more in
the rush of the storm, there was a thick shout of, “All right here,”
and those in the boat knew that Mac had found lodgment on the steamer.
Once again the almost exhausted boys bent to their oars and Captain Joe
swung the _Escambia_ back in the lee of the steamer. Jerry was braced
in the bow, and at the first call from Mac he cast the line. It fell
short, and again he tried. This time there was a pause and then another
panting cry, “All fast here――haul away.”
“Gimme a hand, youse kids,” was Jerry’s peremptory orders. Three spent
oarsmen tumbled forward into the bow.
“Haul away and pass up the light,” sang out Mac again. Four pairs of
strong young arms drew the _Escambia_ slowly toward the steamer and, as
the life boat bumped against the steamer’s hull once more, Captain Joe,
pushing the straining boys aside, grasped the line, and with a turn
made the rope fast about the bow post. Jerry already had the light high
above his head. Mac, with a turn of the rope about the top of a fender
was holding on desperately.
[Illustration: JERRY ALREADY HAD THE LIGHT HIGH ABOVE HIS HEAD.]
The _Escambia_ rolled and plunged but it was fast to its quest. Tom
was already bracing himself to swing aboard the wreck when Captain Joe
shouted:
“Stow dem oars make ’em safe.”
Hal and Bob crawled back into the rocking boat and did so, and then
Captain Joe standing in the bow with one arm about the taut straining
line tossed the lantern to Mac. It was ticklish work, boarding the
steamer, but, with Mac’s assistance, one after another of the lifeboat
crew scrambled on to the vessel. For a moment, each boy was glad to
throw himself on the deck. And, as they did so, it could be seen that
the man at the fire barrel had not even noticed their presence. In the
howl of the wind and crashing of the waves, he had heard nothing.
Captain Joe’s first work was to make a survey shoreward. All was black
except in one place. To the starboard and slightly abaft the drifting
steamer, a flickering light could be seen. It was the still burning
campfire on the lee of the sand spit. Even the inexperienced Bob saw at
once that the _Escambia_ had followed the steamer some distance east of
the pass. He also realized that, dead ahead, the beach confronted the
unfortunate steamer. Before he had time to speculate on what was to be
done, Captain Joe caught up the lantern.
The steamer was not a large one, and its iron deck forward and amidship
was clear of cargo. Grasping the rail, the rescuers crept toward the
solitary man crouched forward of the deck house.
“Ahoy there!” called Captain Joe. As the boys all joined in the cry,
the man arose, shaded his eyes from the brilliant glow of his signal,
and with a moan sank on the deck.
“Ye the skipper?” shouted Romano, springing to the man’s side.
With a fear-stricken look, the man, who did not seem to be a sailor,
struggled to his feet.
“We’re on the breakers,” he gasped. “You the life boat?” he added
wildly.
“What’s the matter with your engines?” shouted Mac. “An’ where’s the
crew? What’s doin’?”
“Gone,” moaned the man. “I couldn’t stop ’em――in the boats.”
“The skipper?” added Captain Joe with scorn. “He gone?”
The agitated man pointed toward the cabins beyond him.
“Fever,” he mumbled thickly, making an effort to compose himself.
“Fever and whisky――drunk.”
Captain Joe started forward, as if to discover the officer who should
have been in charge.
“No use,” cried out the man. “He hasn’t known anything all day. I’m
done. We’re in the breakers. We’re lost,” he shouted again. “And not a
man to help me.”
“The engine?” repeated Tom, crowding forward. “What’s the matter?”
The man seemed, suddenly, to lose his head completely. With a wild
stare at the light glimmering on the shore, he rushed toward the rail.
“Save me,” he shouted. “Not a man among ’em all! Cowards!” he yelled,
and shook his fist toward the black swirl of water. Captain Joe caught
the bewildered man by the shoulder and whirled him about.
“Your anchors?” he demanded. “Where’s your anchors?”
The lone man threw his hands to his face.
“I couldn’t do it――I didn’t know how.”
“But your engine?” exclaimed Mac again.
“The shaft broke yesterday,” answered the man at last. “We’ve been
driftin’――we’re on the breakers, I tell you,” he shouted again. “Can’t
you save her?” he wailed.
The storm had not abated. The low lying steamer rose and fell
sluggishly but with each roll, it drifted closer to a certain doom on
the wave pounded beach. The crew of the _Escambia_ huddled about the
bewildered man. Captain Romano grasped the lantern again, and lowered
it over the steamer’s rail.
“She’s opened her plates, or she’s been a shippin’ sea all even’in’,”
he commented. “Struck anything?” he asked abruptly, addressing the
bewildered passenger again.
The man shook his head helplessly.
“You’re founderin’,” added Romano. Then he drew himself up as if ready
to act. “De boat’s a West Indian, boys, an’ she mus’ had nigger crew.
Dey ain’t scuttle her, but all de hatch an’ port is wide open. What’s
de cargo?” he asked, turning again toward the man.
“Timber.”
“What kin’ timber?”
“Hard wood――mahogany from San Domingo――twenty thousand dollars worth of
it,” wailed the man. “And every dollar of it mine. I’m ruined.”
“Maybe so,” answered Captain Joe. “When yo’ tradin’ on de sea, yo’
mus’ ship white men. Go git some blanket on yo’ an’ bring two blanket
fo’ dese wet kids. Boys,” he exclaimed sharply, “heave dat bon fire
overboard. Den we see ef we kin keep her offen de beach.”
Instead of following instructions, the nearly demented mahogany trader
began again to bemoan his loss, and then fell to cursing the cowardly
crew.
“I don’t want a blanket,” exclaimed Bob. The excitement, and his
constant activity had long since set up a reaction against the chill
caused by his immersion on the beach. “I can’t work in a blanket.”
There was too much to do to argue the matter.
“Shall we let go the anchors, sir?” asked Mac, when the boys had hurled
the grease and oil laden barrel into the sea.
The experienced old sailor quickly explained his plan. The almost
water-logged steamer was too far into shallow water to be anchored with
safety. If the storm increased, there was danger of her pounding. Well
forward, there was a single, small mast――more for signal lights than
for sailing purposes――but it carried two jibs. If these could be set,
with them and the wheel, some slight control might be secured of the
drifting craft.
Mac, Jerry and Tom were as well qualified to tackle this bit of work
as the oldest sea dog. They sprang forward instantly, and when Captain
Joe, the other boys and the distracted owner of the cargo reached the
bow with the lantern, the amateur salts were already hauling on the
slatting jibs. With Captain Joe’s assistance, the canvas was got under
control.
“Now, lads,” said Captain Joe, “she’ll never come with them alone――but
they’ll help. Look lively an’ pick up a good bit o’ cable.”
After a search, about six fathoms of two inch rope was discovered, one
end of which the old fisherman made fast to the anchor ring on the
starboard bow.
“Bring de _Escambia_ forward,” he ordered, “and make de other end o’
de cable fas’ to de stern post. I’m goin’ to de wheel. Maybe de canvas
will help. We got to bring dis boat in de pass, or she good as los’. Ef
de jibs done do it, yo’ mus’ swing her over on de starboard tack. Yo’
got to pull an’ pull hard an’ make dat engine raise a rumpus. Ef she
came ’bout, I head her in de pass, an’ Mr. Man save his logs. An’ ef
she done come ’bout, I wave de lantern. Den stan’ by in de boat to take
us off fo’ she’s in de breakers.”
It was all plain enough. If there was power enough in four pairs of
willing arms and the _Escambia’s_ engine to help the steamer’s jibs
throw the craft on a starboard tack, Captain Joe’s skill at the wheel
might bring the steamer safely into the pass, and the protection of
Perdido Bay.
“Tumble overboard,” shouted Tom, and, fearless alike of the still
raging storm and the renewed exertion, one after another, the five
irrepressible youngsters dropped into the two or three inches of water
on the _Escambia’s_ bottom. While Jerry and Tom made fast the heavy
cable to the stern post, Mac was busy with the engine and Bob and Hal
got the oars ready.
“He’ll never start that engine with all that water about her,” said Hal
to Bob. But he had forgotten that that was one thing Mac understood.
And he had also forgotten that Mac never got so excited that he
neglected to care for his engine. It required the use of Captain
Joe’s lantern, several primings of gasoline and as many turns of the
flywheel, but, to Hal’s surprise, the engine did start and keep going.
Tossing the lantern back on to the deck, Mac caught up the steering
oar, and, as Captain Joe hauled in on the cable, the bow of the life
boat swept away from the steamer. The rush of the waves made taut the
cable, and as Mac gave the word to the eager oarsmen to “fall to,”
Captain Joe could be seen hastening aft to take the wheel. At his heels
followed the distraught cargo owner, still pleading for the rescue of
his property.