THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"
Just an hour later the _Tampico_ lay burning at a point in the Atlantic
where if the white lights of Cape Fear and Cape Lookout had converged
ninety-two miles farther out to sea they would have rested full on the
reeking hull.
Dan had been fearful of the results of Mr. Howland's policy in loading
the _Tampico_ with inflammable cargo. He had been reared with the fear
of fire in his heart. From one of his voyages his grandfather, Daniel
Merrithew, had never returned. A charred name board had told the grim
tale, and so Dan had gone out into the world with a long, red, flaming
line across his fate, as in knightly days a man might have included the
bar sinister or some other portentous device among his symbols of
heraldry.
Pacing the forward deck with his pipe, thinking deeply of his talk with
Virginia, Dan had seen pitch bubbling out of the deck seams and
spilling into rich black pools. And thus the fire was discovered--some
fifteen minutes too late, however, to effect the rescue of several of
the crew, who shrieked and pounded at the bulkhead door, warped and
welded tight by the heat; shrieked and pounded, until the throttling
smoke bade them hold their peace.
First, Dan had the vessel swung about with her stern to the wind, the
fire being forward; and the crew had piled up on deck and rushed
without confusion or undue noise to their various stations. Some
unscrewed deck valves over the burning hold, fastening thereto the ends
of seven-inch rubber hose; while below, the engine-room staff, with
soldierly precision, attached the other ends to the boilers and stood
like statues until a signal gong sounded through the black depth.
Whereupon they handled certain valves, and with a hissing scream great
volumes of hot vapor poured into the blazing compartment. On deck
other seamen dragged lengths of hose forward, forced the nozzles
through narrow deck-vents, and held them there while the force pump
sent up thousands of gallons of brine.
Dan, ubiquitous, cheerful, commanding, lending a hand to one set of
men, directing another, came upon a station two short of its quota.
"Where are Phillips and Fagan?" asked Dan, sharply.
"They bunked in the steerage," replied a sailor, choking in the smoke
weltering up through the hose vent.
The young Captain's breath caught; but there was no time for sentiment.
He inspected the vessel, bow and stern, marshalled the members of the
Howland party into the saloon and bade them stay there until otherwise
ordered, and then went up to his men and fought with them. An hour
passed, and twenty more minutes. The lurid tinge to the smoke,
bellying up through the deck-vents, gave sharp hint of the undiminished
fury of the flames raging below.
"It's like pouring in oil," muttered Dan to himself; and then he added
aloud, "Keep right to it, men, you're holding it," and thus saying he
left them and ran aft to where the second mate and the reserve section
of eight men were growling impatiently.
"Take up your hose, men, and come with me down into hold No. 2. The
fire's going to clean out No. 1 to the skin, sure. We'll have to keep
it from breaking through to the other holds. Come on! Hurry!"
Without a word the men picked up the three lengths of emergency hose
and followed their Captain. As Dan ran along the deck, leading the way
to the hatch, he heard his name called, and looking up quickly, saw Mr.
Howland and Virginia approaching. The girl's hair was flying loose and
she had a long blue coat thrown over her shoulders. The deck was
filled with heavy smoke.
"Captain," said the shipping magnate, "how are we now?"
Dan paused just an instant.
"Fighting hard," he replied, and then he added quickly, "Mr. Howland,
we need men. Two of the crew are gone. Ask some of the men of your
party, please, to go forward and report to Mr. Jackson. And you, Miss
Howland, go into the saloon right away--and stay there. Tell the
others that if they appear on deck before I give the word I shall have
them locked in."
The girl obeyed silently, but Mr. Howland paused irresolutely a second,
in which time Dan had turned and was hastening after his men.
"I will do as you say," Mr. Howland called after the retreating form of
the Captain, "but I want to talk to you first."
"All right, sir, come on then. You'll have to talk to me down in the
hold, I'm afraid."
The second mate and his men had in the meantime pried the battens from
the hatch and thrown it open. The hold was about half full of cotton
bales, railroad ties, oakum, resin, and the like, and they descended to
them by means of a scaling ladder, clambering thence toward the forward
bulkhead. One of the men had a lantern which cast a pallid glow about
the immediate vicinity, bringing into vague relief the well-ordered
masses of cargo, and ending suddenly against a hard wall of dark as
palpable as a barrier of stone. The air was heavy with musty sweetness
and with yellow smoke which streaked lazily past the lantern globe--and
with silence, save for the dull roar in the adjoining hold.
"Make a stand right here," and Dan's voice sounded hollow through the
gloom. "Stand right here. You've got water in your hose; I want that
bulkhead kept soaked. Let her go."
As the streams of water plunged against the steel wall Dan turned to
his employer.
"You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Howland?"
"Yes, I want to compliment you on your discipline and--and what is the
exact situation?"
"Not so good; but a working chance. It will be a short and sharp go;
for the hold's lined with tar and sugar reek--otherwise the cotton
might go for days. It won't in that hold, though. The fight'll be
right here. If it breaks through into this we've got to run; if not,
it will burn out where it is."
"What are the chances that it won't?"
"Why, you know more about the structural strength of this boat than I
do. To be honest, I never liked your bulkheads, else I would have
opened a stop-cock and flooded the hold long ago. Still, what water
would burst through, fire might not."
Horace Howland, who had paid his own price for the _Tampico_, and who
by the same token had his own opinion of her, said nothing.
"I have arranged about the boats," resumed Dan. "If the worst comes,
my men know what to do and they are the men to do it. It's not too
rough to launch safely. Now, Mr. Howland, I've wasted too much time
talking. Don't forget to send two men to Mr. Jackson," and he sprang
up the ladder and hurried forward.
The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering. Dan
yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where
they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam. A broad
tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along
the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a
puff of red fire which floated away in the wind. A cargo port door
warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a
rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters; and the
wind, blowing from astern, was sucked into the opening, fanning the
flames to screaming ferocity.
The tale was plain for every one, and Dan read it to the last word.
Water would be of more service elsewhere, that was certain. So he
withdrew the four crews from their hose vents, ordered two of them to
take their lines into the second hold, and set the others flooding the
deck. He shifted two of his seven-inch steam lines to the midship
plugs, and then followed the hose men, who had joined their comrades in
the darkness of the second hold. Streams of water were hissing against
the steel barrier and flying back at the faces of the nozzle men in hot
spray.
"There's a bulge in the centre," reported the second officer.
"Yes," said Dan, who seized a lantern and held it above his head,
pointing out new objective marks for the water. The smoke had grown
thicker. One man gagged at a nozzle; but drinking from the pipe the
air which the water brought, he lowered his head and fought on.
They fought as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding
or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead,
following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and
splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed
about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless,
their streaked, sweating bodies gleamed dull and ghastly.
One of them straightened from the nozzle and glared at his side
partner; and Dan, whose eyes were everywhere, saw him and moved close
to him, where his fist could do best work if necessary. Any sign of
mutiny now called for decided measures.
"Say, Mike," said the man in a rich brogue, "give us a hunk o' yer
'bacca--this makes the mout' dry"; and Dan chuckled his admiration for
the fighting spirit of the Irish.
Once a tiny lance of flame leaped out through some hidden
crevice--leaped far out at the men as a rifle spits its deadly fire,
and then, curling about a sugar sack like a serpent's tongue, withdrew
so suddenly, so silently, that it seemed to those who saw it as
something which had flashed through their imaginations. A stream of
water sought the outlet and the flame came no more then.
Suddenly a cry came from one of the men, and all eyes turned to a point
in the bulkhead where a hectic flush glowed like a death's head. Four
streams struck it simultaneously. It went out, but reappeared in
another place. The water quenched this also, but it came back again
and widened, and the plunging water was dried to mist at the instant of
contact. The glow grew brighter, then dim, and then brighter, rising
and falling as life pulses in a fevered body. A flood of smoke choked
in from a viewless breach. Two of the men cried out, gurgled, fell on
their faces, and turned over on their backs, struggling; then they lay
still. Dan carried them to the deck, and returned with a sailor. The
two had just gained the sugar sacks when the centre bulkhead quivered.
A cross section collapsed into a V. A score of rivet holes yawned wide
and red-hot bolts fell on the sacks and set them on fire. A line of
plating, separating from its fellows, sagged open in a red grin and
gave view of the raging hell within.
"Now, into it, boys!" yelled Dan, and the men, bowing their heads,
advanced five feet, directing the streams into the fiery pit. For a
minute the flames were driven back by the concentrated rush of water;
two minutes, and then a gush of fire flared through the break. It
broke as a stream hit it, but its ghost, in the guise of hot gases,
choked the men.
A great roar of flame almost enveloped them, and the heat crisped their
hair and seared their bodies, and they dropped their hose and raced for
the ladder.
"Go on, men!" shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold. "You've
done all I can ask. Hurry! Get out!" and they got out and then turned
to batten the hatch cover down. But the rush of fire was too swift to
be denied. A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and
spouted to the top of the funnel--great gouts of the devouring element
pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and
shrivelled a life raft. Long tongues and jets of fire were bursting
everywhere out of the forward deck.
It had come at last, just as Dan had seen it coming all through the
night--all through the years. His voice roared from the bridge:
"To the boats--every man to his station!"
The command was taken up and carried along, and noiseless shapes limned
briefly in the fire glow, scuttled quickly to their appointed places.
Mr. Howland and his party stumbled out of the saloon with blanched
faces and parted lips, but quietly.
"Women to the rail!" The cry echoed out over the sea,--over the sea,
which has heard these chivalrous words so often.
"Women first--women to the rail!" Dan's cry was taken up by the
officers. Silent figures in trailing garments moved as they were bid.
From the port quarter a gruff voice sounded.
"Ready, men--ease away." Came the creak of tackle, the thud of iron
upon steel--then a silence--then a rattle of oars in thole-pins--then a
clear hail from the darkness: "All's well, Captain Merrithew!"
Another boat clattered down the steel sides and cleared safely, and
still another. The last boat was filling with the last of the crew.
"Everybody accounted for?" Dan's shout as he rushed down from the
curling bridge brought Mr. Howland up with a sudden fear. He had taken
his daughter to the starboard boat only to find it full, and had sent
her across to the third boat, while he superintended the adjustment of
a wedged block. This done, he had hurried to the starboard, only to
find the third boat overboard and well away. He had assumed that she
was all right. But a cold rush of doubt assailed him.
"Virginia, Virginia--are you all right?" he called in tones of agony.
"I saw her at the third boat," said the first officer. "You must look
alive, Mr. Howland--we'll have to lower directly the Captain comes.
The deck's going now."
The ship-owner heard these words with a sigh of relief and stepped into
the boat without further ado.
"Every one accounted for?" repeated Dan as he dashed along deck to the
boat.
Something, a faint suggestion of sound rather than sound itself caused
him to pause. He heard nothing more, though he listened for a full
minute. Instinctively he turned to a stateroom in the midship
deck-house.
"Captain Merrithew--are--you--coming?" The first officer's voice arose
in impatient cadence.
"Yes--hold there a minute!" replied Dan, twisting the knob of the door.
It was locked. He ran back a few paces and sprang at it with his
shoulder. It trembled and gave. He rushed again and the door crashed
inward. The room was filling with smoke.
And on the bunk sat Virginia, her hands on her knees, her head hanging
low and swaying dazedly from side to side. She was on the verge of
collapse; but she looked up and smiled faintly as Dan burst in. Then
her head fell again.
"I knew you would come," she muttered.
Without a word Dan seized her by the arm and led her swiftly to the
shattered door. As they reached the threshold there came a dull boom
from below--the vessel shivered. A sheet of flame swept the entire
forward deck, and Dan looked out into a red, pulsing wall.
In terror the men in the fourth and last boat, the fire licking their
faces, let go the falls, and the little craft struck the water with a
crash, but on an even keel.
Knowing he could not reach the boat even were it still on the davits,
Dan left the stateroom and half led, half carried the girl toward the
stern.
The forward deck was now a seething inferno. The foremast, a pillar of
thin name, flickered like a pennon of gold until it broke in the middle
and sent up a shower of sparks. The shrouds and ratlines which went
with it had barred the black heavens with ruddy lines. From all the
openings dull red clouds rolled and bellied skyward, cloud upon cloud;
the funnel spouted like a blast furnace.
But the vessel slowly, but very surely, was falling off the wind; it
would soon blow astern. The shelter of the after deck-house would
serve for a while, perhaps until some vessel, attracted by the terrible
light, would bring them succor. Dan placed the girl behind this steel
structure and then, running to the taffrail, leaned far out and called
to the boats. But the roar of the flames drowned his cries, and the
boats, which had moved out to windward, could not see him. Foot by
foot crept the fire; but the stiff wind which finally came over the
stern did its work well, and the red avalanche began to slant toward
the bow. This meant respite. But he knew that at the very best it
could be only a respite, and short at that.
Again and again and again he called for the boats, until his voice grew
husky and faint. Then, hopeless of aid from his men, he returned to
the girl. She was exactly where he had left her, slightly crouching as
though to shut from her eyes the fearful red light.
The wind rush had revived her smoke-dimmed senses. When she was
approaching the star-board boat to which her father had directed her
she had lost her head, as persons will do in time of fire, and had
wandered mechanically, unconsciously, to her cabin and locked herself
in. But she was not frightened now. There was that in Dan which she
trusted. She looked at him strangely and smiled. She caressed him
with her eyes, trusting in, hanging upon, the strength of a man who
possessed in divine measure all of man's strength.
A half-hour they crouched together, until the steel walls of their
shelter burned to the touch, until the flames licked up over the
forward end, ran over the roof, and looked down upon them. But still
they remained as they were, while the _Tampico_ circled again and
brought the wind in their faces, which they drank greedily.
There came a time when the fire hissed constantly on the
deck-house--when, indeed, flames plunged around it and touched the two
figures. Swiftly Dan reached out his arm and encircled the waist of
his companion and drew her to the taffrail.
Four feet below the gilded name on the stern was a six-inch ledge. He
lifted the girl as he would a child and placed her on this ledge,
bidding her hold to the rail. Then he passed a section of small chain
about a stanchion, allowing the end to hang over. If the rail became
too hot for their hands they could hold by the chain.
As Dan joined Virginia on the ledge the vessel slued around, bringing
the wind full over the bow. With a roaring shout of exultation the
fire bridged the last gap, bursting clear over the stern. It bit at
their hands; they withdrew them, supporting themselves by the swinging
chain.
The girl moaned. Nearer drew the hot breath. She felt Dan's arm
tighten about her waist. It was like a curved bar of steel. Looking
down, she saw the water racing below--she saw a wave leap up--she felt
it touch her foot with its feathery head, gently, beneficently, and yet
traitorously; for how quickly would it quench the lives that it seemed
to tempt from the flames!
"Put your face tight against my chest--put your hands over your nose
and mouth--quick!"
She obeyed upon the word and a thrill, not of pain, shot to Dan's
brain. He could feel her, soft and trembling, against him, and her
warm hair brushed his cheek. With an effort he choked back the
flooding emotion. Was it fair, was it right to her--now? But his arm
unconsciously tightened about her.
The red glow shone through the girl's closed eyelids--a great heat
scorched the back of her neck, and she felt a quiver in the body
shielding her; but the grip of the arm remained. There came a blast of
God's merciful salt cold air, and she opened her eyes. He was looking
down at her--and he saw what he saw. For they were two souls hanging
together on the verge of eternity--alone; two souls with death all
about fusing them until they were as one. She looked at him long.
"Are you hurt?" she asked. The words sounded thick.
"No--a little. It got my neck and ears. The ship was yawing, though,
and that saved us. It was like snapping your hand through a gas flame."
"I'm afraid," said the girl with a sob catching her voice.
"No--don't be afraid! I'll save you--some way."
She opened her eyes and looked in his face again.
"My nobleman! my--"
"Don't!" cried Dan, interrupting her. "You don't know what you are
saying. It's so different now." He well knew that impulses which
might move a woman in the arms of a man, no matter who, battling for
her life, might be for the moment only and lead to nothing but regret
and alarm afterwards. How could it be otherwise with Virginia Howland?
The girl, as though she had not heard him, as though she had forgotten
the emotions which had swayed her, closed her eyes wearily and turned
her face away.
The ship was yawing again. Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them,
licking above Dan's red-gold hair and his back, but never touching the
girl. Then the swing of the vessel and the wind again; then the fire
and the torturing heat. Once Dan saw his grandfather's vessel burning
as he had often pictured it in boyhood, and he trembled horribly for a
second, but only for a second; then he became rigid and smiled at the
apparition. The girl had evidently fainted; she hung a dead weight
upon his arm. Again the wind drove the flames far out over the stern.
There came a time when the fight for life was waged mechanically, when
all sense of thought vanished, and the carrying on of the struggle came
down to mere animal instinct. At such times a brave man need not be
ashamed to die--the time has long elapsed when cravens perish. But the
very brave, the physically as well as mentally brave, fight on to the
end, instinctively. And so Dan fought. He knew that Virginia Howland
hung on his arm--but the fire had gone from his ken; he was fighting
something, that was all he knew, or cared, since it was for her. Once
the red sheet enveloped them for a flashing second, but the merciful
wind came to save. It could not last long, though. Dan's arm weakened
about the limp form of the girl. He closed his eyes and ground his
teeth and brought new force to the encircling arm. He glared down at
the mass of soft hair scattering over his breast; he thought of that
beautiful life and quite impersonally asked himself if all this beauty
must die. Where would all the beauty of the world be then? This
question ran deliriously through his mind. Eh! where would it all be?
If they died together, would they wake together? And the flames came
again.
But as they swooped down with redoubled fury he saw almost
subconsciously a great tangled litter of wreckage passing beneath him.
He uttered a little cry, and with the girl still in his arm he dropped
from the ledge. With a sigh of relief he felt the cooling, revivifying
water, and the sharp, cold taste of brine in his mouth was like the
touch of a new life.
Instinctively he had put his free arm around a section of cargo boom,
with a grating caught in the twisted gear. Upon this he pushed and
lifted the half-unconscious girl. Then he clambered astride the boom.
Thus they drifted, while Dan, his mind slowly clearing, struggled
pitifully for full possession of his faculties. He had a dull sense of
pain, but the one dominant idea was the girl. Leaning slightly over,
he twisted his hand in the folds of her dress lest she slip into the
waters. The stars were paling; on the horizon were the first vague
hints of dawn. He gazed at the faint gray curtain with interest. It
was a dawn he had not expected to see, he told himself.
Then, as he looked, a shape arose before his eye out of the gloom. Dan
watched it with dumb fascination. Suddenly a realizing sense of the
nature of the apparition shot through his mind. A vessel--God! Dan's
voice raised in a long, hoarse cry for assistance. But there was no
answer. Yet the craft was bearing toward them, not a hundred yards
away, silently as a ship of the dead. Dan cried again, rising on his
rolling perch. But the hail died on his lips. He could see now. It
_was_ a ship of the dead. It was the derelict they had viewed from the
fancied security of the _Tampico's_ deck, a few short hours before. An
imprecation trembled upon Dan's lips. For the last half-hour Virginia,
who had crawled to a kneeling posture, had been watching Dan with
unlighted eyes. Now as he turned to her and pointed at the slowly
advancing vessel, she nodded slowly, as though comprehending his
meaning, and stretched out her arms to him.
Softly, quietly the bow of the hulk slid up and nuzzled gently among
the wreckage. Quickly Dan secured the litter to the bow by twisting a
length of wire cable through the rusty green fore-chains of the
derelict. Then gaining a footing in the mess of gear, he assisted the
girl to her feet on the tottering grating, and placed her hand on the
chains.
"Hold here tight," he said. She nodded, and Dan looked about for the
easiest way to the deck. It was not difficult to find. The end of the
jib-boom had dropped into the water, making an easy incline, and the
foremast had also fallen over the bow and was directly alongside. Both
were covered with sections of canvas and a maze of gear and rigging.
Dan clambered up, and then, lying flat across the bowsprit and the
mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled
her to his side. Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among
the wreckage to the deck.
And there with the dawn beginning to glow rosily far on the eastern rim
of the slaty waste the girl sighed and sank to her knees; and Dan, his
head reeling with sleep and exhaustion, sank also. When the darkness
had all gone and the sun had cleared the horizon, the first level rays
flooded the sullen deck of a gray-green hulk, sodden, desolate, and
fell upon the faces of a man and woman sleeping, her head resting on
his shoulder, strands of her dark hair lying across his face.