As if in sheer perversity, the weather changed early in the evening,
and the night that followed was punctuated regularly by the blast of
the fog-whistle. The next day broke thick and damp, with a wall of
impenetrable mist shadowing the great vessel to half her length. Over
the tall sides the greasy green of the water could just be seen moving
by. The masts and funnels disappeared irregularly overhead. The fog
clung to everything; it rimed the rugs and capes of the passengers who
feared the close air of the 'tween-decks and lay recumbent in the
steamer-chairs, and it clung in little pearls to Miss Marcia Dorn's
curly front hair, that seemed to curl all the tighter for the wetting.
With Mr. Victor Masterson at her side, she was walking up and down the
hurricane-deck. His appearance was not quite so spruce or so comical
this morning; he looked as if he had been dipped overboard. He still
disdained a hat, and his hair was plastered over his forehead in an
uneven, scraggly bang. The weather seemed also to have dampened his
spirits. Miss Dorn found it difficult to lead him away from serious
subjects; his ideas on mental telepathy did not amuse her, nor the
fact that he was a fatalist.
"Oh, I wish you'd do something to make me laugh," she broke in
suddenly.
"Are you ticklish?" inquired the Silly Ass quite soberly.
Miss Dorn could not help but titter; she was not at all put out.
"There!" said Mr. Masterson. "Now, you see, I have done it! Please
thank me. Now let me go on. You know, there is no doubt that the mind
of one person when thinking of----"
"Oh, don't let's think!" Miss Dorn leaned back against the rail, half
hidden from the gangway. "Isn't it dreary," she said, "this weather?
And look at those people all stretched out. I wish we could do
something to wake them up! The whole ship seems to have the
glooms--even the captain; he wouldn't speak a word to me at
breakfast."
"I could wake 'em up," said Mr. Masterson emphatically. "I could wake
the whole ship up, and the captain too, and the lootenant, and the
quartermaster, and the squingerneer, and the crew of the _Nancy Brig_,
if I wanted to--and your Uncle Admiral Elephant here, asleep in the
steamer-chair."
"Why, sure enough, there he is!" cried Miss Dorn. "He's got the
glooms, too; he says he always gets 'em in foggy weather at sea." She
turned and touched Mr. Masterson lightly on the arm. "Wake him up!"
she said, her eyes twinkling.
"I hardly dare."
"Oh, go on! I don't believe you can. How would you do it?"
"How would I do it? Why, just this way." He crumpled his hands
together and blew between the knuckles of his thumbs a low, resonant,
gruffly humming note.
They were hidden now by the bow of the life-boat and were standing
quite close together. They noticed that the figure in the
steamer-chair nearest them had suddenly raised itself a little and
then had sat bolt upright. The old admiral, the mist in his gray
whiskers, turned one ear forward and listened attentively.
The gray wall had grown a little whiter, less opaque; they could see
now the whole length of the ship, out to the lifting stern.
"Oh, go on," tempted the girl; "do it again--louder!"
Mr. Masterson looked at her.
"Oh, _please_ do," she pleaded; "real loud. I dare you to!"
He slowly raised his hands, the thumb-knuckles to his lips again.
There sounded two deep, long-drawn, half-roaring, thrilling notes, for
all the world like steam in the cup of a great metal whistle.
Footsteps, hurried and quick, rushed overhead on the bridge. A hoarse
voice shouted orders. The quartermaster spun the wheel. Now:
"Full speed ahead, the starboard engine! Full speed astern, port!"
"Ay, ay, sir!"
There was the clank-clank of the semaphores, and suddenly two
bursting, answering blasts that hid the huge funnels in a cloud of
feathery white.
The admiral in the steamer-chair threw off his wrappings and leaped to
the rail.
A loud, anxious hail from above: "Lookout, there forward! Can you make
out anything?"
"Oh, see what I've done!" faltered the Silly Ass in a frightened
whisper.
Miss Dorn grasped his shoulder.
There had followed a sudden cry that rose in a diapason of mad fear:
"Vessel ahead! _Star_board your helm, sir! _Star_board your h-e-l-m!"
The helm was already over; the ship was swinging wide. Another quick
order. The second officer leaped again to the semaphores. The huge
fabric trembled, racking in every plate, as both engines reversed at
full speed, the screws churning and thundering astern. And now a rift
came in the encircling fog, as if it had been cut by a mighty sword.
Clear and distinct, not half a cable's length away, wallowed a great
black shape. The mighty bow swept veering past her quarter, then her
stern, and clear of it by no more than thirty yards!
Only those few on deck outside of the weather-cloth saw the sight, and
then for but an instant. Never would they forget it!
Lying low in the water, all awash from the break of her
topgallant-forecastle to the lift of her high poop-deck, the green
seas running under her bridge and about her superstructure, swayed a
great mass of iron and steel of full five thousand tons! Ship without
a soul! A wisp of a flag, upside down, still floated in her slackened
rigging; swinging falls dangled from her empty davits. Then the fog
closed in, and, as a picture on a lantern-slide fades and disappears,
she vanished and was gone!
A white-faced boy looked up into Miss Dorn's frightened eyes. His
lips moved, but made no sound.
On the bridge, the captain had grasped the second officer by the arm.
"My God! Fitzgerald, did you see that? It was the _Drachenburg_."
"Derelict and abandoned! But, by heaven, sir, _she signaled us!_"
The captain turned quickly. "Stop those engines!" he ordered hoarsely.
The tearing pulses down below ceased their beating; it was as if a
great heart had stopped! The ship, breathless at her own escape, lay
calm and quiet in the fog. The only sound was of the greasy waves
lapping her high steel flanks. Yet----
Admiral Dorn, still standing beneath the bridge, with both hands
grasping the rail, shivered and drew breath. What might have happened
if----He looked forward. He imagined he could hear the crash, see the
great bow sinking; he could hear the splintering of the bulk-heads,
the screams of the people tumbling up the companionways, the panic and
pandemonium, the mad rush for the boats, the horrid, slow subsidence.
But it was not to be; the danger had gone by!
Now he remembered having heard that first low whistle before the two
that had signaled so plainly: "_I have my helm to starboard--passing
to starboard of you!_" And yet, well did he know that no fires blazed
in those dead furnaces, no steam was coming from that rusty,
salt-incrusted funnel. It was as if the dead had spoken to warn the
living! He shivered once more, and staggered to the bridge-ladder,
holding on and listening.
Three, four, five times did the _Caronia's_ siren wail out into the
stillness. _No reply._ And then the throbbing pulses took up their
beat again.
Down in the corner of the main saloon, filled with chattering people,
romping children, and game-playing young folk, who knew not what had
passed on deck, sat the Silly Ass, the girl close to him.
"I'll never tell," she whispered. "What is it you're thinking of?"
The round eyes gazed into hers. "It's a long time since I did," he
said.
"Did what?"
"Prayed! God made me a fool just to do this some day, I guess." His
face showed the expression of a grown-up, sobered man.
On the bridge, the captain and the other officers were talking in low,
awe-struck tones.
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