THE OCEAN NIGHT.
"Tristram!"
The artist started at his sister's voice. He had been lounging over the
steamer's side watching a full-rigged ship in the offing. Its majestic
sails glistened as white as snow, but the heaving motion from bow to
stern was apparent even at that distance. For the sea was all hills and
hollows, and the Yarmouth herself lay darkened under the shadow of a
cloud.
"Let me break in on your reverie. This is my brother--Miss Barlow--Miss
Ware."
"We shall have a storm," said Tristram, after the formalities.
"Oh, I hope not," cried all three ladies. They had become acquainted
while watching the patent log on the saloon-deck stern, which Beulah
Ware, who knew almost everything, had explained for Rosalie's
information.
"It was due when we started," said Tristram.
"And you never told me," cried Rosalie.
"You would have postponed the trip, my dear."
"Make everything tight," came the cheery voice of the captain. "Get your
wraps on, ladies. It's going to pour in a hurry."
"Do let us remain outside," cried Beulah. "I've nothing on that will
spoil, under a waterproof."
The others assented, and Tristram and Beulah disappeared for a few
moments, returning with mackintoshes and rubber cloaks.
"There, you look like fisher folk," said Tristram, when the ladies had
pulled the cowls of their glazed garments over their heads.
"And romantic for the first time, I suppose," said Rosalie. "Tristram is
a great stickler for barbarism, you know."
"Esthetically," said Tristram.
"He has positive ideas."
"Of negative value."
The rain had begun to spatter the deck beneath them and the cool wind
was working its own will with their garments. They were almost alone on
the quarter-deck. An officer eyed them loftily.
"That is the first mate," said Tristram.
"How can you tell?" asked Rosalie.
"Because he is so far off. The captain is always approachable. The first
mate is rather distant, the second mate more so. The third mate is
rarely visible to the naked eye."
"Hear that bell," cried Emily.
A ding-dong clangor resounded through the ship.
"Supper! All hands to supper!" piped the steward. "Early supper!
Captain's orders! Early supper!"
"Hang the captain's orders!" said Tristram. "This is better than
supper."
But the foamy crest of a great wave that was level with the bow was
caught just then by the wind and hurled up in their faces. The ladies
sputtered, drenched with the spray, and the water seethed at their feet.
Of course they shrieked and there was nothing for it but to descend and
repair to their staterooms to prepare for the supper.
The dishes were clattering and dancing like marionettes. Capt. Keen had
acted wisely in ordering an early supper. If the sea increased it would
soon be impossible to eat at all.
"Isn't this superb?" cried the enthusiast again, as the vessel
perceptibly rose under them, but she fell so suddenly that he probably
bit his tongue. At least for a moment his eloquence abated.
"Now to go above again," he said when at last the tipping of the dishes
made satisfactory eating no longer possible. "What a rare quality
portability is! The portable arts--music and poetry; the portable
instruments--fiddles, flutes, etc.; the portable eatables (excuse the
unhappy jingle)--oranges, bananas, biscuits."
Suiting the word to the action, he laid in a liberal supply himself and
pressed as much more on each of the ladies. He was not so unpractical as
he seemed, our friend Tristram, with all his badinage and transparent
sophistries.
"But you are not seriously going out on deck?" cried his sister in some
alarm, when he made for the stairs.
"And surely you are not going to remain in?" answered Tristram in
feigned astonishment. "Lose this glorious sea picture? Atmosphere,
nature's own murk; canvas, infinity; music furnished by old Boreas
himself, master of Beethoven and Rubinstein; accompaniments, night,
sleet, danger and the lightning."
"I fear we are philistines," said Beulah Ware; "we prefer painted storms
and the mimic thunders of the symphony."
"Accompaniment, dry dresses," added Rosalie. Whereupon Tristram
gallantly saw the ladies housed in his sister's cabin and left them,
lunching on his portable eatables, but not a little anxious while he
himself climbed up to his perch on the quarter-deck. The sea tumbled
over the steamer when she cut her way into a billow, but Tristram had
drawn on thick boots and felt prepared to rough it.
"Better lash yourself down," cried the captain warningly. The artist's
answer was lost in the tempest.
There was little sleep for the passengers on the Yarmouth that night.
Stewards and matrons passed about reassuring them. The boat was
seaworthy; everything was locked in; they could lie on their pillows
with an absolute certainty of rising on the morrow with the Nova Scotia
shore in view. Only they wouldn't. They dared not. And as Rosalie looked
as timid as any one, her new acquaintances conspired to remain with her
in her stateroom, all three sharing the two cots and getting what naps
they could.
They had run out of talk and were almost drowsing when the great crash
came. Have you felt your heart jump when a pistol-shot smites the
silence? No crack of land ordnance could inspire the fear that
resounding bump did in the breasts of the apprehensive girls.
"A rock!" was the thought of each, but they only expressed their terror
in an inarticulate shriek. Then the whimpering of women and the cries of
men were heard in the saloon.
"We are sinking!" cried some one, and the girls rushed out. A hundred
white-clad forms darted to and fro like gnats in a swarm, or clung
together, wringing their hands in misery. Some of the men fought to
unbar the doors. But they were bolted from the outside. The whole cabin
was penned in there to drown. Then each one felt for his dearest.
"Tristram!" moaned Rosalie, knocking at his stateroom door. "Tristram!"
But there came no answer. "He is out on the deck! He is swept away and
drowned!" she cried, with truer tears than the imagined sorrows of
Desdemona had ever drawn from her eyes. But Tristram was safe in the
pilot's box, where Capt. Keen was signaling the engineer to reverse his
engines; and the engineer, shut in amid the deafening clangor of his
machinery, ignorant of what had happened but trained to his duty, obeyed
promptly his bell and forced the great vessel back.
The headlights of the Yarmouth had been doused out long before, and
there was no lantern that could live in that surge, even if it were
possible to hang a second one aloft From time to time the captain had
ordered a rocket sent up, to warn approaching vessels, for the air was
densely opaque. Only out of the gloom before them, just before the shock
came, Tristram could see a long row of lights, feeble and flickering.
His imagination constructed the broadside of a steamship about them and
once it seemed that he really did catch a vague, shadowy outline. But
the reality became certain to another sense. Before the Yarmouth's
engines were reversed and her bow disengaged itself, a wail of terror
reached him out of the night, and a tearing as of parted timbers. Then
hoarse shouts were heard from the emptiness soaring high above the wind.
"We stove in her side," said the captain. Then a signal rocket, hissing
into the quenching rain, told him of his fellow's distress. The Yarmouth
still receded. The double row of lights was withdrawn into the gloom.
But the wailing increased and from the covered cabin below rose the
responsive clamor of the passengers.
"Say that we have struck a vessel," telephoned the captain to the
steward. After several repetitions the message was understood and it
quieted the half-clad throng a little. But anxiety was legible on every
face.
Twice more the signal of distress went up and the captain answered it,
though helpless to assist. Then the air was blank.
"Head her east," said the captain to the pilot. He knew by the lights
that the other vessel was pointed to the larboard when she crossed his
bow. He could not back forever or heave to in that sea. He must
circumnavigate the vessel or the vortex if she were sunk. So he nosed
his prow oceanward into the teeth of the wind. Under these
circumstances the headway of his boat was slow.
"Ahoy!"
Was it a voice from the darkness? A huge wave rose over them like a
cliff and hurled itself against the strong glass of the pilot's window.
In a moment they were soused and the wind blowing in upon them told them
that their brittle sheath was shattered. But the electric globes still
cast their white gleams over the foredeck and revealed a dark object
that was not there before.
"A boat!" cried Tristram.
"Save them!" shouted Capt. Keen, rushing down the steps, with the artist
at his heels. It was indeed a lifeboat, which had been carried on the
crest of a billow clear over the Yarmouth's gunwale and left high, if
not dry. Only five forms could be seen--three of them stirring, the
other two motionless. All were men.
"Climb!" shouted Keen, seizing one of the limp bodies in his arms.
Tristram caught up the other and staggered back in the direction of the
light, the three wrecked men following and grappling at them in their
bewilderment. Another wave like the last and they were lost, all seven.
But these great surges come in rhythmic intervals. Rescuers and rescued
reached the pilot house in safety.
"Who are you, shipmates?" asked the captain, pouring brandy down the
mouths of the unconscious men. The others answered in German.
"The Hamburg liner, Osric," translated Tristram. "She broke her rudder
and was driven off her course by the gale."
"Heaven save us from meeting any more such driftwood," said the pilot
unsteadily with a hiccough.
"Were any other boats out?" asked Capt. Keen. Tristram interpreted
question and answer.
"Two others, but they were swamped. All on board are lost."
A thrill went through the strong men. Usage does not render sailors
callous to the perils of the sea. Death under the ocean is still the
most awe-inspiring of fates--the doom of the irrecoverable body, of the
skeleton lying on the bottom, like a coral freak.
"Mostly immigrants from Germany and Sweden," answered the spokesman to
the next question. All five were common sailors. They had waited their
turn and the captain had ordered them into the lifeboat when it came. He
himself had stood by his sinking ship to the end.
In a lull of the breaking seas, Tristram and Capt. Keen picked their way
down into the cabin. The captain's appearance was a signal for a cheer.
He addressed the passengers briefly, outlined the terrible event and
assured them that, as lightning never strikes twice in the same spot,
they might turn in and count on a clear voyage oceanward for the rest of
the night. He could not control the weather or promise them sleep. But
he felt so safe himself that he had just come down to retire for his own
spell of slumber.
This little lie was one of those which the recording angel will blot
away with tears. The old salt would no more have slept that night than
he would have taken a dose of poison. Even for the few minutes he was
below he had been as uneasy within as a young mother when she sees her
baby in the arms of some one whose carelessness she has good reason to
dread. The pilot was in liquor, and Capt. Keen, making a quick tour aft
so that every one might get a view of him and a cheery word, together
with a brazen repetition of his salutary invention, simply turned into
the cook's room forward and swung himself out by its skylight-hatch.
Meanwhile Tristram elbowed his way through the crowd to Rosalie. His
reappearance soothed her, but she was still hysterical, and the good
offices of the other two ladies were found seasonable during the night.