THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR
As Dan seized the strip with its gilt letters and was about to reply,
the yacht slung sideways, and a wave arising amidships smote the
deck-house a lusty, full-bodied blow. It suddenly occurred to the
tugboat captain that the craft, all the time he had been aboard trying
to collect his bewildered senses, had acted strangely. He turned to
Mr. Howland.
"What's the matter with your yacht?"
Howland was a good deal of a thoroughbred, and yet he could not conceal
his eagerness as he spoke.
"The yacht was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Captain," he
said. "I know I have no right to ask anything more of you, but if you
have pulled together, I think we seem to need your assistance. Our
Captain was washed off the bridge, and the first mate is below with a
broken leg. The situation, I am afraid, is beyond young Terry, the
second mate; I--"
As the import of what Mr. Howland was trying to say flashed across
Dan's mind, he turned abruptly, without waiting for the completion of
the sentence, and ran for the bridge.
Without a glance at the second officer, who seemed on the verge of a
complete funk, he shouldered the two sailors from the wheel and hauled
on the spokes with all the strength of his long arms. As the yacht
began to respond he seized the indicator crank and called for full
speed ahead. The whistle of the bridge speaking-tube sounded
viciously, and Dan, placing his ear to the receiver, caught the words
of the old chief engineer as they flowed up in profane vehemence.
"Say, do you know what you want up there? If I had a man down here who
knew an engine from a plate of fruit, I'd 'a' been up there and snaked
you off the bridge long ago. I've been on my back under that triply
damned shaft for twelve hours and now--" the rest of the sentence was
an assortment of well-chosen oaths.
The outburst greeted Dan's ears sweetly. Evidently Howland had a man
down below the water line, anyway. He grinned as he clapped his lips
to the tube.
"I've just come aboard to take charge of this craft," he yelled; "now
you do as I say and do it quick. See!"
A great relieved, blasphemous roar came up the tube, and the next
instant the engines were laying down to their work.
The bow began to cut nicely into the waves, and Dan turned to the two
sailors.
"Here, you boys, tail on here and steer as I tell you." Whereupon,
fingering a pocket compass, he called the course, after which he
fastened the little instrument to the wreck of the binnacle.
"We will pull through," he said, turning to Mr. Howland, who, with his
daughter, had followed him to the bridge. "We are somewhere off the
Winter Quarter Shoals; if I can get the sun at noon I'll know exactly;
anyway, we will make Norfolk if that shaft holds. If it doesn't--well,
banking on that engineer you've got down below, I think it will hold."
Then inclining his head in the direction of Miss Howland, he added,
"I'd advise you to go below, Miss Howland." He thrilled as he uttered
her name, "You're wet; and then--I may have to swear."
"I should love awfully to hear some one swear to some purpose," she
replied. "Oh, I want to stay," she cried, speaking to her father, as
Dan suddenly turned his back and spoke to the second mate. "Father, I
am going to stay. The rest are seasick or frightened to pieces. I
feel braver up here."
She was perfectly candid. She did feel braver there on the bridge.
For Dan was the one dominant personality aboard the yacht. In her eyes
he typified bravery, skill, strength--safety, in a word, for all. It
was as though out of the wrack of despair and the overriding elements
had arisen the spirit of a man and all that at best he stands for, to
reclaim the lost honors of the darker hours. And so she clung to him
with her eyes and felt she could smile at danger; her soul went out to
him and enveloped him with gratitude and tenderness. And she neither
knew nor cared whether in these emotions was the uprearing of woman's
submerged, primal nature, giving all to the sheer power of the stronger
sex, or whether it was the result of a burden of dread suddenly lifted
from her heart--it made no difference which. She was living the
moment--here and now--clear, serene, justified, and ennobled.
And standing thus she watched him as he snapped the yacht slantwise
from the grip of succeeding sea hollows and guided her over the gray
hills, panting and straining, with much of pudgy deliberation, but
surely.
"We will make it easily," said Dan, "if nothing happens."
"Good," cried Mr. Rowland, and, taking his daughter by the arm, he
added, "come below, Virginia, and give them the good news. Your friend
Oddington has forgotten his cigarettes for a full twenty-four hours,
and the Dale girls are candidates for a sanitarium." There was a
chuckle of relief in his voice.
Dan turned to watch the girl as she followed her father from the
bridge. He was certain he had never seen anything so inspiring as
Virginia Howland standing braced square to the wind, her trim blue
skirt winding and unwinding; her cap in her hand; the wind tossing her
heavy hair in myriads of glowing pennons, which beat on the
blush-surged cheeks, alternately hiding and disclosing the sparkle of
the deep gray eyes or the flash of perfect teeth from between parted
lips.
It was a picture upon which he permitted himself to ponder but an
instant, however, for the wind was shifting again from the northeast,
growling ominously, and the yacht, humping along at a ridiculous speed
of six knots, made the situation less satisfactory than it had been.
He spoke to Terry over his shoulder.
"As you see," he said, "we're running into some new sort of hell," and
he glanced impatiently at the potential riot ahead. "Have these men
keep the course and look out for things, will you? I'm going down to
the engine-room for a few minutes."
"Very well, sir," said the young officer.
Dan found old Jim Arthur, the chief, swearing softly as he moved about
his engines with a long-spouted oil can.
"It is beginning to breeze again," said Dan. "I'm the new Captain and
I came down to tell you I don't think much of your machinery, and to
ask if the shaft will hold out."
"The shaft'll hold," said the engineer. Then he paused and looked at
Dan in supreme disgust. "Engines!" he snorted. "I've been holdin' 'em
together with my fingers since we left San Domingo. Cap'n, they'd been
fine for a Swiss cuckoo clock. Why, they're only held together by gilt
paint and polish. See how old Howland's had 'em painted--like a
bedizened old maid! I do believe he's got 'em perfumed. Well, they
may hold--"
Dan, who had been glancing about the engine-room, interrupted the
engineer's pessimistic outburst.
"What are your force pumps going for?" he asked.
"Well, it ain't fur to water no flowers," said Arthur, beckoning Dan to
the shaft tunnel, where a foot and a half of frothy water was rolling
to and fro, slushing against the stuffing box, laving the engine-room
bulkhead.
Leaking! Dan's first impulse was to drop his hands then and there and
let the yacht sink or do what she would for all he cared. He had
fought out his fight with a better craft than this and had lost her.
He did not yield to this; in truth, before he could think of yielding
there came a second impulse--to relieve his mind of several hundred
accumulated metaphors, to which inclination he surrendered
unconditionally, while Arthur, in the face of the verbal torrent, gazed
at the source in humble admiration.
"How--how much is she taking in?" the young man finally gasped.
"About thirty strokes a minute. I'd 'a' whistled up the tube about it
before, only I thought you had enough to fill your mind."
"How does it strike you?" asked Dan.
"It's gained only six inches in the past hour. I will say that much.
But if you ask me my honest opinion, I'd say this rotten old pleasure
hull is a-gettin' ready to open up and spread out like a--like
a--balloon with the epizoötic."
"All right, when she begins, come on up with your men without asking
leave. Report every half-hour. I'll be on the bridge, of course. If
I can pick up a steamship I'll call her and desert ship; if not--well,
we're somewhere outside the Winter Quarter light-ship. I'll need about
five hours of the speed we're making to pick up the light vessel and
beach the yacht in the lee of Assateague; maybe not quite five hours, I
can't say exactly."
"I think we can keep ahead of the water we're makin' that long,"
replied Arthur, cheerfully.
As Dan regained the bridge, the bad news he had received below was
slightly compensated for by the fact that the storm seemed to be taking
a new kink, swirling away to sea. The gray combers, however, were
still disagreeably to be reckoned with. The second officer had by this
time pulled himself together, and as he reported to Dan, the young
Captain was happy to feel that he had at least a lieutenant who could
be counted on. Now if Mulhatton were only with him--but "Mul" was
below, flat on his back, suffering technically from submersion, and so
were the other men of the _Fledgling_ who had been pulled aboard the
yacht.
At ten o'clock Arthur reported that the water had gained another six
inches.
As Dan snapped back the tube a burst of laughter from the saloon
reached his ears. Seasickness, fear, everything evil had been
forgotten in the spirit of confidence and assurance of ultimate safety
which Dan's skill and personality had infused throughout the wallowing
craft. He shrugged his shoulders, staring vacantly into the angry sea.
At length his eyes turned to the distress signals he had ordered
hoisted; and suddenly the gulf between his lot in life and theirs,
which the merriment suggested, disappeared, and his emotions thereby
aroused,--emotions not untinged with self-pity, changed to deepest
sympathy for those light-hearted ones who might soon be plunged into
that gloom which heralds death. Grim, silent, he turned to his work,
determined that so far as in him lay no shadow of death should invest a
single one of those persons who must find so much in life to make it
worth while. Another hour passed while the yacht stumbled her clumsy
course to safety. Arthur reported another half-foot; in all three feet
six inches of water swishing against the engine-room bulkhead.
"It will keep seepin' through," he said, "and wop! Suddenly the whole
bulkhead'll go."
"Don't get caught," replied Dan. "Give us three more hours, chief.
Oh, I say, there's not a drop getting into the fire room yet? Thank
God for that!"
"For what?"
He faced about quickly and looked into the eyes of Virginia Howland.
She was pale, but her face was brave. "I had just come out on deck,"
she said, "because somehow I was getting nervous--I wanted to be--to be
near the Captain." She smiled. "I heard you talking through the
speaking-tube; I didn't mean to listen--pardon me; I couldn't help it.
We're in danger, then, are we? Don't hesitate to answer truthfully,
Captain Merrithew."
"Why," replied Dan, "we--steady there, Mr. Terry; you men at the wheel
attend to your business. Excuse me," turning to the girl,
"danger--why, we've been in danger all the time; else I wouldn't be up
here."
"You are evading," said the girl, slowly. "But perhaps you are right.
I can say I trust you, Captain--we all do. I want to tell you again
how we all appreciate your--what you have done--putting the yacht
straight and--"
"I am doing it for myself as much as for you. More, perhaps; who
knows?"
The girl gazed intently at his square-cut, bronzed face. Then she
looked straight into his steel-gray eyes, peering hard ahead from under
the flat peak of a cap he had picked up on the bridge.
"Yes," she said, as though speaking to herself, "I think I know." Then
she started with an involuntary gesture.
"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Captain Merrithew? Yes, yes, I
have. Where could it have been? Do you recall?"
"Yes," was the simple reply. "I recall. It was about two years ago,
at Norfolk, when you were at the coal docks on this yacht."
Virginia flushed eagerly and was about to say something, when some
flashing thought, perhaps a realizing sense of their relative
positions, closed her lips. "I remember very clearly now." She spoke
quietly, then she closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them
they were stern and hard.
"Captain Merrithew," she said, as though to hasten from the subject, "I
know we are in danger. Your silence has said as much. Yet the yacht
seems to be going finely--"
Dan made no reply.
"Do you think I am a coward? Is that the reason you are silent?"
Dan made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.
"Well, Miss Howland, if you are not a coward, if you can keep what you
know to yourself, listen: We're taking in a little water. It's a race
between the yacht and the leak; the yacht ought to win out. Now you
know as much as I do."
"I am not frightened; my curiosity is natural. Is there a chance that
the yacht may not get where you are taking her?"
"To the Assateague beach--no, I don't think there is--if all goes well."
"If all goes well! Then there is a chance--a chance we may--"
"Oh, we'll be all right." Dan was temperamentally straightforward and
honest, and his assertions were uttered with a tentative inflection
which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses of the
girl.
She stepped closer to Dan.
"May I say something? We are in danger. I have been thinking of
things since you came aboard--since I have been sitting in the saloon
with the men who are different--"
Dan could see that the girl, always evidently one of dominant emotions,
was overwrought, and something told him she had no business to express
the thoughts which filled her mind, that she would be sorry later that
she had spoken. He had interrupted her by a gesture. Now his voice
came cool and even.
"Miss Howland, don't. I've got to take care of this yacht."
A quick sense of just what he meant shot through the girl's mind. She
raised her eyes and looked at him straight. They were blazing, not
altogether with anger. She trembled; she flushed and moved
uncertainly. Then, without a word, she turned and left him.
"A half-foot more water in the last half-hour," reported Arthur.
As Dan turned to Terry, that officer silently pointed to the northward,
where a tall column of black smoke seemed to rise from the waters. A
steamship! Yes, but was it coming toward them? Was it going away? Or
would it pass them far out to sea? For fifteen minutes he watched it
through his binoculars, and then he glanced down to the deck and called
to a sailor to send Mr. Howland to the bridge.
"Mr. Howland," said Dan, as the owner approached him, "I suppose Miss
Howland has told you our fix."
"Yes, but she has told no one else."
"Bully for her!" exclaimed Dan.
"She said you were hopeful."
"More so now than ever before, I was making for the beach, but
now--there's a steamship coming down on us. I wasn't sure at first, I
am now. That smoke out there is heading dead for us. I am going to
slow the boat down to steerage way and wait for her to come up. It's
better than trying to make for Assateague; it's better to wait."
"Will the bulkhead hold?"
Mr. Howland asked his question in the even monotone which had
characterized all his questions.
"I think so; if it doesn't, we'll get everybody off in the rafts and
the launch; the sea is going down by the minute."
Mr. Howland glanced down at the deck where the crew of Scandinavians,
inspired by the cool, cheerful commands of their new Captain, were
working nonchalantly in preparing for eventualities. From amidships
came the clatter of men trying to repair the launch, the one boat which
had not been carried away in the night's storm. Others were clearing
the life rafts so they could be launched without delay. He glanced at
Dan with admiring eyes.
"I want to compliment you, Captain Merrithew," he said. "You have your
crew well in hand."
"Thank you," replied Dan, "if you will keep your party in hand there'll
be no danger at all. I don't care what happens, with the sea falling."
Another half-hour. The steamship, a stout coaster, had now climbed
over the horizon. Mr. Howland, through the glasses, had picked out her
red-and-black funnel and recognized her as one of his own boats. But
it had plainly come to a race between the steamship and the straining
bulkhead. No need now to tell any one of the situation. The _Veiled
Ladye_ was plainly settling astern. The engine-room bulkhead was
quivering, ready to break. Arthur and his men had piled up from the
engine-room, the engines still pulsing with no one to watch them. The
sailors were splendid, going about their work quietly, calmly. They
had carried the injured mate, groaning with his broken leg, to the
deck. Mrs. Van Vleck, Mr. Rowland's sister, the chaperone, sat with
her niece's arms about her, passing in and out of successive attacks of
hysteria. A sailor had knocked one of the young men of the party down
to quiet an incipient exhibition of panic. Ralph Oddington and
Reginald Wotherspoon stood at the rail, trying with nerveless fingers
to roll cigarettes. Two of the girls were weeping in each other's
arms. The water bubbled under the turn of the yacht's counters. Two
of the sailors were discharging blank shells from the rifle astern in
hopes of calling attention to the plight of the craft. The deck was a
conglomerate, nervous confusion of smart yachting costumes, uniforms,
and greasy overalls.
Dan, noting the flutter, leaned back from the wheel.
"Don't get excited down there," he roared. "If the bulkhead holds,
we're all right. If it doesn't, there'll be plenty of time for all.
Do you understand? We can float for a week on the ocean the way it is
now."
"It won't hold long, Mr. Howland," he added to the man at his side,
"but it will hold until that steamship reaches us. She's seen us and
is coming like hell."
A few minutes later a joyous shout sounded from the men on the bridge,
a cry vibrant with electricity, which thrilled through the yacht and
finally trembled on all tongues. For the steamship had sized the
situation and was fairly leaping toward them. Great clouds of smoke
were belching from her funnel. They could see sparks mingling with the
thunderclouds of sepia, and the _Veiled Ladye_ hobbled woundily to meet
her. On came the freighter; her hull was plainly discerned now,
picking the waves from under her bluff bows and throwing them
impatiently to either side.
Cries of joy and appeals for the succoring vessel to hurry sounded from
the yacht's decks.
As the vessel drew nearer. Miss Howland ran to the bridge and took her
father by the arm.
"Father!" she cried. "You must come now. Isn't there anything in your
cabin you want to save?" With a muttered "By George!" Mr. Howland
dived below and the girl faced Dan.
"Captain Merrithew--"
Oddington's voice thrilling in joyous, cadence sounded from beneath the
bridge.
"Virginia, Virginia, where are you? Oh, up there! Come down quickly!
Don't you see we are coming alongside? And Merrithew, old
chap--Virginia, will you come! You are to be put aboard after your
aunt. Hurry!" There was a half-note of proprietorship in his voice.
As the girl turned to leave, Dan gave the wheel to Terry and ran to the
deck with a speaking-trumpet in his hand. As he passed Oddington, who
had assisted Miss Howland from the bridge, he spoke to him quietly.
"The man with the broken leg leaves this ship first."
Below there was a dull crash and clouds of steam burst through the
ventilators and the engine-room gratings. The bulkhead had succumbed,
but no one cared now. The steamship was turning in about a hundred
yards away. Dan directed his trumpet to the bridge.
"Scrape close alongside," he yelled. "Open one of your cargo ports and
we'll board you through it."
The freighter's Captain had already anticipated this suggestion, and as
the vessel slid alongside, Dan ranged the sailors along the deck.
In perfect order the mate with the broken leg was slid into the port as
though he were merely being passed into another room. Then went the
women, then the men of the party, and after them the sailors. Dan and
Mr. Howland alone were left now. As the elder man prepared to enter
the port he looked at Dan a moment and smiled.
"Some day I hope to cancel this debt."
They were simple words, but potentially they meant much to Dan. He was
to find they involved the realization of dreams, ambitions he had long
held; another rung on the ladder which eventually---- But there was no
time to think of the future now. Turning from the porthole he ran
along the deck, calling to make sure that every one was off. When he
returned, Miss Howland and several others were leaning over the rail
above.
"For heaven's sake, Captain Merrithew, will you please come off that
yacht!" The girl's voice rang imperiously.
With a last look at the bridge upon which he had passed the recent
thrilling hours, he leaped aboard the freighter, and when ten minutes
later the white _Veiled Ladye_ threw up her bow with a great clanking
sigh and slid swiftly from view, Dan Merrithew was fast asleep in the
Captain's cabin.