Lavelle dragged himself to his feet with his breath gone from him. For a
moment he thought he was paralyzed--limbs, heart, nor brain seemed to
respond. The night was filled with a multisonous orgy of sound.
Then, his strength returned to him as quickly as it had gone. He leaped
to the door and plunged into the alleyway outside. He knew full well
what had happened as he ran aft and up through the gangway which led
from the main to the promenade deck. Another vessel had piled into the
_Cambodia_. There was no land--there were no rocks in the liner's track;
nothing but two, three, and four mile deeps on every hand. Lights sprang
up in the staterooms as he passed. Somebody flashed them on in the
reception hall as he went through there. Thence he took the social hall
gangway and came to the boat deck in a bound.
A quartermaster--barely more than a boy--catapulted into his arms. Fear
was driving him.
"Let me go!" he cried like a thing in a trap.
"Let me go!" and he cursed. Lavelle held him firmly.
"Stand fast, son! You're all right!"
Lavelle spoke in almost a normal tone. Whether it was what he said or
what he saw in Lavelle's face that stilled the panic in the youngster's
heart no one will ever know. But when Lavelle let him go and beckoned to
him to follow him the quartermaster went at his side.
"Everything's gone for'ard!" he yelled at Lavelle above the noise.
"Windjammer--big lumberman--no lights--piled into us! Foremast came
over--by the board! Bridge--Old Man--chart house--everybody--everything
gone!"
Lavelle snatched these things visually out of the blackness even as the
boy shouted.
The _Cambodia_ rolled back slowly to starboard, but one who knew what
Lavelle knew could feel the life going out of her. Her engines had
stopped.
The shape of a sailing vessel--a bark--drew away over on the starboard
side and the grinding of metal against metal ceased only to have its
place taken by the thunder of the _Cambodia_ beginning to exhaust.
Lavelle could hear and feel the stranger ripping at the steamer as she
went by. The _Cambodia_ gave a lurch like a drunken man getting out of a
gutter.
"She's going!" he shouted in the boy's ear, snatching his head to his
lips. "Engineers--all officers report here! Me! Find out what water's in
her! Find out how long lights'll last! Tell 'em give us plenty of light.
Be a man!"
The boy fled and Lavelle ran up to starboard and bawled against the
night:
"Stand by if you're able! Stand by!" There was an answering cry, but all
he caught was--"Hell!"
Groping he found an electric cluster on each side of the social hall
house and flashed it on. He ran aft and flashed on similar clusters on
the sides of the smoke-room house. These lights embraced the eight small
boats davited along the _Cambodia's_ sides.
From below men began to come by twos and threes, some supporting women
on their arms, some carrying them, some carrying children, some alone
with fear tangling their feet and some half curiously. One came lighting
a cigarette--a fair-faced young chap--and Lavelle grabbed him in the
social hall gangway and told him to let only women and children pass.
"Right O!" was his answer and he took off his coat and threw it away,
accepting his task.
The glow of a man who would be obeyed was on Lavelle's brow. Men knew he
spoke with the voice of authority and heeded it. They saw the purser
refuse to hold the gangway in the social hall beside the fair-faced man
and they saw Lavelle smash him to the deck with a blow of his fist.
Looking up from the deck below Emily Granville saw this, too, and,
terrified, fled from succoring hands. She saw only a fiend at work.
"Twenty minutes! No longer! Lights--ten minutes!" shouted the
quartermaster struggling to his side.
"What about the steerage?"
"Gone like rats! Whole bow's gone!"
He pantomimed him to take charge of a boat forward on the starboard
side. A grimy engineer came through the crowd and reported. Others came
and accepted his mastership--men who needed but to be told what to do to
find their bearings and run in them.
Like a flame he moved upon that deck. Who he might be few knew, but
wheresoever he went disorder became order and the spirits of brave men
grew stronger and smiled at death as upon a friend. Like another
self--the shadow of the flame--there moved Chang whither he went,
striking as he struck and lifting up as he lifted up.
Of a sudden Lavelle saw Emily Granville standing in the port gangway of
the smoke-room house, alone, hesitant, terror-stricken. She saw him and
as he ran to her with open arms she drew back and then, remembering that
he had but turned away from a boat in which she had seen him put a
little girl, who cried that God must be upon the sea, she paused in her
flight.
In that instant the guards whom Lavelle had stationed there were swept
away by a yellow horde from below. It burst out of the gangway and
engulfed him in its tide.
There was an explosion as of a cannon fired in the distance where
another bulkhead gave way. The ship lurched with a downward twisting
motion. The lights flickered and went out and the pregnant darkness
burst in disorder and panic.