THE CATTLE SHIP.
The awesome sound continued while the boats were being lowered. The
weird nature of the uproar and its mystery made even the rough seamen
apprehensive. The more religious among them crossed themselves
fervently.
"Bad cess to it, if it don't sound like the howling of poor sowls in
purgathory," muttered one of them.
As the boat in which he and Bill were sitting beside Mr. Smallwood was
lowered, Jack glanced upward and had a view of the lighted decks, the
rails being lined with the heads of curious and excited passengers. Then
came a sickening swing outward as the ship rolled.
"Let go all or we'll be smashed!" shouted Mr. Smallwood.
For a moment, as the ship heaved back, it seemed indeed, as if the boat
was doomed to be dashed against her steel sides and smashed into
splinters. But in the nick of time the "falls" were let go "all
standing." The boat rushed downward and struck the top of a great wave
with a force that shook her. The next instant, the patent blocks opened
and on the crest of the great comber Mr. Smallwood's boat, and the
others, were swept off into the darkness.
Behind them arose a mighty cheer, but they hardly noticed it in the
excitement and danger of the launching.
"A bad night for this work," muttered Mr. Smallwood as the boat was
lifted heavenward and then rushed down into a dark profundity from which
it seemed impossible she could emerge. A blood red glow from the leaping
flames enveloping the stern of the doomed craft, which was a large,
single funneled steamer, lay on the roughened sea.
"Are there passengers on board, do you think?" asked Jack, rather
tremulously, as the blood-chilling uproar from the burning vessel
continued.
"Looks to me more like a freighter--hard there on the bow-oars,--meet
that sea,--she has no upper decks," replied the third officer.
"I don't see anybody on board her, either," said Bill, after an
interval, during which the boat escaped swamping, as it seemed to the
boys, by a miracle only.
"Let's hope they got away," said the third officer, "but that devil's
concert on board beats me. It's not human, that's one sure thing. What
in blazes is it?"
"It gives me the shivers," confessed Bill.
The noise grew positively deafening as they got closer. The intense heat
of the blaze and the shower of falling embers that enveloped them added
to their discomfort.
"Row toward the bow," roared Mr. Smallwood, cupping his hands, "or we'll
have the boats afire next."
Already several of the seamen had hastily extinguished portions of their
clothing that had caught, and burns on hands and faces were plentiful.
But as they pulled toward the blazing craft's bow, this annoyance was
avoided, the wind blowing the heat and embers from them.
All at once, as they swung upward on the crest of an immense comber,
Jack uttered a shout:
"The mystery's solved."
"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Smallwood.
"The mystery of that horrible noise. That's a cattle ship yonder, and
the poor beasts are mad with fear."
The next wave gave them a clear view of tossing horns and heads as the
unfortunate cattle, penned on the burning craft, rushed madly about the
decks, in vain seeking some means of relief. It was a piteous sight, for
there was no way of saving them from being burned alive unless the ship
sank first.
"Oh, but that's awful!" gasped Jack, with a shudder.
"Look, look up on the bow!" cried Bill suddenly. "There's a man. He's
seen us."
"He's waving," cried Mr. Smallwood. "Hurrah! Give way, men! There's a
poor beggar roasting on that ship."
But the boat's crew needed no urging. In the lee of the burning cattle
ship the water was smoother and they could make better time. Silhouetted
against the glare, too, every man of them could see, by a twist of his
head, that solitary marooned figure on the bow of the fire ship.
As the first boat,--Mr. Smallwood's,--ranged in alongside the high steel
prow, Jack's quick eye caught sight of a rope dangling from the great
steel anchor chains. By what impulse he did it he could not have
explained, but as the boat ranged close alongside he poised for an
instant on the heaving gunwale and then launched his body forward into
space.
"Come back, boy!" shouted Mr. Smallwood. But by the time the words had
left his mouth, Jack was scrambling up the rope amidst the cheers of the
men in the tossing boats now far below him. It was the work of a few
moments only to gain the anchor chain, and to climb up them was, for a
lad of Jack's brawn and activity, an easy task.
"Thank heaven you came before it was too late," cried the solitary man
on the fore deck, staggering toward the boy with outstretched arms.
"Are you the only man on board?" demanded the boy, deciding to leave
explanations till later.
"No, Dick Sanders is sick in his bunk below."
"Where, down this hatchway? In the forecastle?" asked Jack quickly.
"Yes, I was too weak to carry him up, heaven help me," muttered the
other reeling weakly.
Jack did not stop to listen. He knew that within a few minutes his
shipmates would be on board and would rescue the half-crazed man on the
bow. It was his duty to go after the sick man below. Into the
ill-smelling darkness of the forecastle of the cattle ship he plunged,
clawing his way down an iron ladder. At the bottom he struck a match. As
its light flared up he heard a groan, and looking in the direction from
which it came he espied the emaciated form of a boy lying in a bunk.
"Have you come to save me?" gasped out the sick lad, who was almost a
skeleton and whose eyes glowed with unnatural brightness in his
parchment-like face.
"Yes, but you must do exactly what I tell you," instructed Jack.
"I will, oh, I will," choked out the other. "Only save me. I was afraid
I was going to be left here to die alone."
"Don't talk about dying now," ordered Jack. "Now clasp your arms round
my neck and hold on tight. Do you think you can keep your grip till we
get to the top of that ladder?"
"Yes--that is, I think so," returned the sick lad, who had been cabin
boy on the doomed ship.
"Then, hold on," ordered Jack as, having carried his pitifully light
burden across the forecastle to the foot of the ladder, he prepared to
ascend the rounds. Once or twice he had to stop on the way up, and
holding on with one hand, grasp Dick Sanders with his other arm to allow
the lad to recruit his strength. At last they reached the deck and Jack,
who was almost exhausted, laid his frail burden down with a sigh of
relief.
He looked about for his companions, who he fully expected to see on the
forecastle. There was no sign of them.
The lone man who had waved to them from the bow had also vanished. A
rope ladder, one end of which was secured inboard, showed the way they
had gone.
"Queer that they didn't wait for me," muttered Jack. "They must have
known I was below. I wonder----"
There was a sudden warning shout from somewhere.
"Look out for your life!" came in Mr. Smallwood's voice.
Jack looked up, startled. The burning ship was a flush-decked craft.
That is, her forecastle was not raised, but was on a level with the main
deck where the cattle pens were. The terrified creatures, in their
frenzy of fear, had broken loose from the flimsy timber structure, and
now, urged on by the flames behind them, were charging down in a wild
stampede upon Jack and the half-conscious form of the sick boy at his
feet.
It was not possible to effect a retreat down the forecastle hatch, for
his efforts to support himself on the journey up had been too much for
Dick Sanders' strength.
Jack looked about him. It was imperative to act with desperate
swiftness.
Now, not fifty feet from him was the advance guard of the maddened,
fear-crazed steers. In a few seconds, if he did not act swiftly, both he
and the lad he had rescued would be pounded by their sharp hoofs into an
unrecognizable mass.
Suddenly he formed a resolution. With desperate eagerness he stripped
off his oilskins and kicked off the light deck shoes he had not thought
to change in the hurry of embarkment. Then, picking up the fragile form
of Dick in his arms, he sped for the side of the forecastle.
As the long-horned steers swept down so close to him that he could feel
their breaths and see the whites of their frenzied eyes, the boy leaped
up and outward into the night.