A GHOST SHIP
"Colder some to-night, Conrad."
"Yes, sir."
"Strait's freezing over, they say."
"Pretty stiff ice outside here already, sir."
The skipper glanced out and smiled confidently but without further
comment; yet he took occasion to go down and pass along the car deck
and observe the men who under direction of the mate were locking the
lugs under the car wheels, as the trains came on board. The wind,
which had risen with nightfall to a gale off the water, whipped snow
with it which swirled and back-eddied with the switching cars into the
great, gaping stern of the ferry.
Officially, and to chief extent in actuality, navigation now had
"closed" for the winter. Further up the harbor, beyond Number 25,
glowed the white lanterns marking two vessels moored and "laid up" till
spring; another was still in the active process of "laying up." Marine
insurance, as regards all ordinary craft, had ceased; and the
Government at sunrise, five days before, had taken the warning lights
from the Straits of Mackinaw, from Ile-aux-Galets, from north Manitou,
and the Fox Islands; and the light at Beaver Island had but five nights
more to burn.
Alan followed as the captain went below, and he went aft between the
car tracks, watching old Burr. Having no particular duty when the boat
was in dock, old Burr had gone toward the steamer "laying up," and now
was standing watching with absorption the work going on. There was a
tug a little farther along, with steam up and black smoke pouring from
its short funnel. Old Burr observed this boat too and moved up a
little nearer. Alan, following the wheelsman, came opposite the stern
of the freighter; the snow let through enough of the light from the
dock to show the name _Stoughton_. It was, Alan knew, a Corvet,
Sherrill, and Spearman ship. He moved closer to old Burr and watched
him more intently.
"What's the matter?" he asked, as the old man halted and, looking down
at the tug, shook his head.
"They're crossing," the wheelsman said aloud, but more to himself than
to Alan. "They're laying her up here," he jerked his head toward the
_Stoughton_. "Then they're crossing to Manitowoc on the tug."
"What's the matter with that?" Alan cried.
Burr drew up his shoulders and ducked his head down as a gust blew. It
was cold, very cold indeed in that wind, but the old man had on a
mackinaw and, out on the lake, Alan had seen him on deck coatless in
weather almost as cold as this.
"It's a winter storm," Alan cried. "It's like it that way; but
to-day's the 15th, not the 5th of December!"
"That's right," Burr agreed. "That's right."
The reply was absent, as though Alan had stumbled upon what he was
thinking, and Burr had no thought yet to wonder at it.
"And it's the _Stoughton_ they're laying up, not the--" he stopped and
stared at Burr to let him supply the word and, when the old man did
not, he repeated again--"not the--"
"No," Burr agreed again, as though the name had been given. "No."
"It was the _Martha Corvet_ you laid up, wasn't it?" Alan cried
quickly. "Tell me--that time on the 5th--it was the _Martha Corvet_?"
Burr jerked away; Alan caught him again and, with physical strength,
detained him. "Wasn't it that?" he demanded. "Answer me; it was the
_Martha Corvet_?"
The wheelsman struggled; he seemed suddenly terrified with the terror
which, instead of weakening, supplied infuriated strength. He threw
Alan off for an instant and started to flee back toward the ferry; and
now Alan let him go, only following a few steps to make sure that the
wheelsman returned to Number 25.
Watching old Burr until he was aboard the ferry, Alan spun about and
went back to the _Stoughton_.
Work of laying up the big steamer had been finished, and in the
snow-filled dusk her crew were coming ashore. Alan, boarding, went to
the captain's cabin, where he found the _Stoughton's_ master making
ready to leave the ship. The captain, a man of forty-five or fifty,
reminded Alan vaguely of one of the shipmasters who had been in
Spearman's office when Alan first went there in the spring. If he had
been there, he showed no recollection of Alan now, but good-humoredly
looked up for the stranger to state his business.
"I'm from Number 25," Alan introduced himself. "This is a Corvet,
Sherrill, and Spearman ship. Do you know Mr. Corvet when you see him,
sir?"
"Know Ben Corvet?" the captain repeated. The manner of the young man
from the car ferry told him it was not an idle question. "Yes; I know
Ben Corvet. I ain't seen him much in late years."
"Will you come with me for a few minutes then, Captain?" Alan asked.
As the skipper stared at him and hesitated, Alan made explanation, "Mr.
Corvet has been missing for months. His friends have said he's been
away somewhere for his health; but the truth is, he's been missing.
There's a man I want you to look at, Captain--if you used to know Mr.
Corvet."
"I've heard of that." The captain moved alertly now. "Where is he?"
Alan led the master to the Ferry. Old Burr had left the car deck; they
found him on his way to the wheelhouse.
The _Stoughton's_ skipper stared. "That the man?" he demanded.
"Yes, sir. Remember to allow for his clothes and his not being shaved
and that something has happened."
The _Stoughton's_ skipper followed to the wheelhouse and spoke to Burr.
Alan's blood beat fast as he watched this conversation. Once or twice
more the skipper seemed surprised; but it was plain that his first
interest in Burr quickly had vanished; when he left the wheelhouse, he
returned to Alan indulgently. "You thought that was Mr. Corvet?" he
asked, amused.
"You don't think so?" Alan asked.
"Ben Corvet like that? Did you ever see Ben Corvet?"
"Only his picture," Alan confessed. "But you looked queer when you
first saw Burr."
"That was a trick of his eyes. Say, they did give me a start. Ben
Corvet had just that sort of trick of looking through a man."
"And his eyes were like that?"
"Sure. But Ben Corvet couldn't be like that!"
Alan prepared to go on duty. He would not let himself be disappointed
by the skipper's failure to identify old Burr; the skipper had known
immediately at sight of the old man that he was the one whom Alan
thought was Corvet, and he had found a definite resemblance. It might
well have been only the impossibility of believing that Corvet could
have become like this which had prevented fuller recognition. Mr.
Sherrill, undoubtedly, would send some one more familiar with Benjamin
Corvet and who might make proper allowances.
Alan went forward to his post as a blast from the steam whistle of the
switching engine, announcing that the cars all were on board, was
answered by a warning blast from the ferry. On the car decks the
trains had been secured in place; and, because of the roughness of the
weather, the wheels had been locked upon the tracks with additional
chains as well as with the blocks and chains usually used. Orders now
sounded from the bridge; the steel deck began to shake with the
reverberations of the engines; the mooring lines were taken in; the
rails upon the fantail of the ferry separated from the rails upon the
wharf, and clear water showed between. Alan took up his slow pace as
lookout from rail to rail across the bow, straining his eyes forward
into the thickness of the snow-filled night.
Because of the severe cold, the watches had been shortened. Alan would
be relieved from time to time to warm himself, and then he would return
to duty again. Old Burr at the wheel would be relieved and would go on
duty at the same hours as Alan himself. Benjamin Corvet! The fancy
reiterated itself to him. Could he be mistaken? Was that man, whose
eyes turned alternately from the compass to the bow of the ferry as it
shifted and rose and fell, the same who had sat in that lonely chair
turned toward the fireplace in the house on Astor Street? Were those
hands, which held the steamer to her course, the hands which had
written to Alan in secret from the little room off his bedroom and
which pasted so carefully the newspaper clippings concealed in the
library?
Regularly at the end of every minute, a blast from the steam whistle
reverberated; for a while, signals from the shore answered; for a few
minutes the shore lights glowed through the snow. Then the lights were
gone, and the eddies of the gale ceased to bring echoes of the
obscuration signals. Steadily, at short, sixty-second intervals, the
blast of Number 25's warning burst from the whistle; then that too
stopped. The great ferry was on the lake alone; in her course, Number
25 was cutting across the lanes of all ordinary lake travel; but now,
with ordinary navigation closed, the position of every other ship upon
the lake was known to the officers, and formal signals were not thought
necessary. Flat floes, driven by wind and wave, had windrowed in their
course; as Number 25, which was capable of maintaining two thirds its
open water speed when running through solid "green" ice two feet thick,
met this obstruction, its undercut bow rose slightly; the ice, crushed
down and to the sides, hurled, pounding and scraping, under the keel
and along the black, steel sides of the ship; Alan could hear the hull
resounding to the buffeting as it hurled the floes away, and more came,
or the wind threw them back. The water was washing high--higher than
Alan had experienced seas before. The wind, smashing almost straight
across the lake from the west, with only a gust or two from the north,
was throwing up the water in great rushing ridges on which the bow of
Number 25 rose jerkily up and up, suddenly to fall, as the support
passed on, so that the next wave washed nearly to the rail.
Alan faced the wind with mackinaw buttoned about his throat; to make
certain his hearing, his ears were unprotected. They numbed
frequently, and he drew a hand out of the glove to rub them. The
windows to protect the wheelsman had been dropped, as the snow had
gathered on the glass; and at intervals, as he glanced back, he could
see old Burr's face as he switched on a dim light to look at the
compass. The strange placidity which usually characterized the old
man's face had not returned to it since Alan had spoken with him on the
dock; its look was intent and queerly drawn. Was old Burr beginning to
remember--remember that he was Benjamin Corvet? Alan did not believe
it could be that; again and again he had spoken Corvet's name to him
without effect. Yet there must have been times when, if he was
actually Corvet, he had remembered who he was. He must have remembered
that when he had written directions to some one to send those things to
Constance Sherrill; or, a strange thought had come to Alan, had he
written those instructions to himself? Had there been a moment when he
had been so much himself that he had realized that he might not be
himself again and so had written the order which later, mechanically,
he had obeyed? This certainly would account for the package having
been mailed at Manitowoc and for Alan's failure to find out by whom it
had been mailed. It would account too for the unknown handwriting upon
the wrapper, if some one on the ferry had addressed the package for the
old man. He must inquire whether any one among the crew had done that.
What could have brought back that moment of recollection to Corvet,
Alan wondered; the finding of the things which he had sent? What might
bring another such moment? Would his seeing the Sherrills again--or
Spearman--act to restore him?
For half an hour Alan paced steadily at the bow. The storm was
increasing noticeably in fierceness; the wind-driven snowflakes had
changed to hard pellets which, like little bullets, cut and stung the
face; and it was growing colder. From a cabin window came the blue
flash of the wireless, which had been silent after notifying the shore
stations of their departure. It had commenced again; this was unusual.
Something still more unusual followed at once; the direction of the
gale seemed slowly to shift, and with it the wash of the water; instead
of the wind and the waves coming from dead ahead now, they moved to the
port beam, and Number 25, still pitching with the thrust through the
seas, also began to roll. This meant, of course, that the steamer had
changed its course and was making almost due north. It seemed to Alan
to force its engines faster; the deck vibrated more. Alan had not
heard the orders for this change and could only speculate as to what it
might mean.
His relief came after a few minutes more.
"Where are we heading?" Alan asked.
"Radio," the relief announced. "The _H. C. Richardson_ calling; she's
up by the Manitous."
"What sort of trouble?"
"She's not in trouble; it's another ship."
"What ship?"
"No word as to that."
Alan, not delaying to question further, went back to the cabins.
These stretched aft, behind the bridge, along the upper deck, some
score on each side of the ship; they had accommodations for almost a
hundred passengers; but on this crossing only a few were occupied.
Alan had noticed some half dozen men--business men, no doubt, forced to
make the crossing and, one of them, a Catholic priest, returning
probably to some mission in the north; he had seen no women among them.
A little group of passengers were gathered now in the door of or just
outside the wireless cabin, which was one of the row on the starboard
side. Stewards stood with them and the cabin maid; within, and bending
over the table with the radio instrument, was the operator with the
second officer beside him. The violet spark was rasping, and the
operator, his receivers strapped over his ears, strained to listen. He
got no reply, evidently, and he struck his key again; now, as he
listened, he wrote slowly on a pad.
"You got 'em?" some one cried. "You got 'em now?"
The operator continued to write; the second mate, reading, shook his
head, "It's only the _Richardson_ again."
"What is it?" Alan asked the officer.
"The _Richardson_ heard four blasts of a steam whistle about an hour
ago when she was opposite the Manitous. She answered with the whistle
and turned toward the blasts. She couldn't find any ship." The
officer's reply was interrupted by some of the others. "Then ... that
was a few minutes ago ... they heard the four long again.... They'd
tried to pick up the other ship with radio before.... Yes; we got that
here.... Tried again and got no answer.... But they heard the blasts
for half an hour.... They said they seemed to be almost beside the
ship once.... But they didn't see anything. Then the blasts stopped
... sudden, cut off short in the middle as though something
happened.... She was blowing distress all right.... The
_Richardson's_ searching again now.... Yes, she's searching for boats."
"Any one else answered?" Alan asked.
"Shore stations on both sides."
"Do they know what ship it is?"
"No."
"What ship might be there now?"
The officer could not answer that. He had known where the _Richardson_
must be; he knew of no other likely to be there at this season. The
spray from the waves had frozen upon Alan; ice gleamed and glinted from
the rail and from the deck. Alan's shoulders drew up in a spasm. The
_Richardson_, they said, was looking for boats; how long could men live
in little boats exposed to that gale and cold?
He turned back to the others about the radio cabin; the glow from
within showed him faces as gray as his; it lighted a face on the
opposite side of the door--a face haggard with dreadful fright. Old
Burr jerked about as Alan spoke to him and moved away alone; Alan
followed him and seized his arm.
"What's the matter?" Alan demanded, holding to him.
"The four blasts!" the wheelsman repeated. "They heard the four
blasts!" He iterated it once more.
"Yes," Alan urged. "Why not?"
"But where no ship ought to be; so they couldn't find the ship--they
couldn't find the ship!" Terror, of awful abjectness, came over the
old man. He freed himself from Alan and went forward.
Alan followed him to the quarters of the crew, where night lunch for
the men relieved from watch had been set out, and took a seat at the
table opposite him. The louder echoing of the steel hull and the roll
and pitching of the vessel, which set the table with its dishes
swaying, showed that the sea was still increasing, and also that they
were now meeting heavier ice. At the table men computed that Number 25
had now made some twenty miles north off its course, and must therefore
be approaching the neighborhood where the distress signals had been
heard; they speculated uselessly as to what ship could have been in
that part of the lake and made the signals. Old Burr took no part in
this conversation, but listened to it with frightened eyes, and
presently got up and went away, leaving his coffee unfinished.
Number 25 was blowing its steam whistle again at the end of every
minute.
Alan, after taking a second cup of coffee, went aft to the car deck.
The roar and echoing tumult of the ice against the hull here drowned
all other sounds. The thirty-two freight cars, in their four long
lines, stood wedged and chained and blocked in place; they tipped and
tilted, rolled and swayed like the stanchions and sides of the ship,
fixed and secure. Jacks on the steel deck under the edges of the cars,
kept them from rocking on their trucks. Men paced watchfully between
the tracks, observing the movement of the cars. The cars creaked and
groaned, as they worked a little this way and that; the men sprang with
sledges and drove the blocks tight again or took an additional turn
upon the jacks.
As Alan ascended and went forward to his duty, the increase in the
severity of the gale was very evident; the thermometer, the wheelsman
said, had dropped below zero. Ice was making rapidly on the hull of
the ferry, where the spray, flying thicker through the snow, was
freezing as it struck. The deck was all ice now underfoot, and the
rails were swollen to great gleaming slabs which joined and grew
together; a parapet of ice had appeared on the bow; and all about the
swirling snow screen shut off everything. A searchlight which had
flared from the bridge while Alan was below, pierced that screen not a
ship's length ahead, or on the beam, before the glare dimmed to a glow
which served to show no more than the fine, flying pellets of the
storm. Except for the noise of the wind and the water, there had been
no echo from beyond that screen since the shore signals were lost; now
a low, far-away sound came down the wind; it maintained itself for a
few seconds, ceased, and then came again, and continued at uneven
intervals longer than the timed blasts of Number 25's whistle. It
might be the horn of some struggling sailing vessel, which in spite of
the storm and the closed season was braving the seas; at the end of
each interval of silence, the horn blew twice now; the echo came abeam,
passed astern, and was no longer to be heard. How far away its origin
had been, Alan could only guess; probably the sailing vessel, away to
windward, had not heard the whistle of Number 25 at all.
Alan saw old Burr who, on his way to the wheelhouse, had halted to
listen too. For several minutes the old man stood motionless; he came
on again and stopped to listen. There had been no sound for quite five
minutes now.
"You hear 'em?" Burr's voice quavered in Alan's ear. "You hear 'em?"
"What?" Alan asked.
"The four blasts! You hear 'em now? The four blasts!"
Burr was straining as he listened, and Alan stood still too; no sound
came to him but the noise of the storm. "No," he replied. "I don't
hear anything. Do you hear them now?"
Burr stood beside him without making reply; the searchlight, which had
been pointed abeam, shot its glare forward, and Alan could see Burr's
face in the dancing reflection of the flare. The man had never more
plainly resembled the picture of Benjamin Corvet; that which had been
in the picture, that strange sensation of something haunting him, was
upon this man's face, a thousand times intensified; but instead of
distorting the features away from all likeness to the picture, it made
it grotesquely identical.
And Burr was hearing something--something distinct and terrifying; but
he seemed not surprised, but rather satisfied that Alan had not heard.
He nodded his head at Alan's denial, and, without reply to Alan's
demand, he stood listening. Something bent him forward; he
straightened; again the something came; again he straightened. Four
times Alan counted the motions. Burr was hearing again the four long
blasts of distress! But there was no noise but the gale. "The four
blasts!" He recalled old Burr's terror outside the radio cabin. The
old man was hearing blasts which were not blown!
He moved on and took the wheel. He was a good wheelsman; the vessel
seemed to be steadier on her course and, somehow, to steam easier when
the old man steered. His illusions of hearing could do no harm, Alan
considered; they were of concern only to Burr and to him.
Alan, relieving the lookout at the bow, stood on watch again. The
ferry thrust on alone; in the wireless cabin the flame played steadily.
They had been able to get the shore stations again on both sides of the
lake and also the _Richardson_. As the ferry had worked northward, the
_Richardson_ had been working north too, evidently under the impression
that the vessel in distress, if it had headway, was moving in that
direction. By its position, which the _Richardson_ gave, the steamers
were about twenty miles apart.
Alan fought to keep his thought all to his duty; they must be now very
nearly at the position where the _Richardson_ last had heard the four
long blasts; searching for a ship or for boats, in that snow, was
almost hopeless. With sight even along the searchlight's beam
shortened to a few hundred yards, only accident could bring Number 25
up for rescue, only chance could carry the ship where the shouts--or
the blasts of distress if the wreck still floated and had steam--would
be heard.
Half numbed by the cold, Alan stamped and beat his arms about his body;
the swing of the searchlight in the circle about the ship had become
long ago monotonous, purely mechanical, like the blowing of the
whistle; Alan stared patiently along the beam as it turned through the
sector where he watched. They were meeting frequent and heavy floes,
and Alan gave warning of these by hails to the bridge; the bridge
answered and when possible the steamer avoided the floes; when it could
not do that, it cut through them. The windrowed ice beating and
crushing under the bows took strange, distorted, glistening shapes.
Now another such shape appeared before them; where the glare dissipated
to a bare glow in the swirling snow, he saw a vague shadow. The man
moving the searchlight failed to see it, for he swung the beam on. The
shadow was so dim, so ghostly, that Alan sought for it again before he
hailed; he could see nothing now, yet he was surer, somehow, that he
had seen.
"Something dead ahead, sir!" he shouted back to the bridge.
The bridge answered the hail as the searchlight pointed forward again.
A gust carried the snow in a fierce flurry which the light failed to
pierce; from the flurry suddenly, silently, spar by spar, a shadow
emerged--the shadow of a ship. It was a steamer, Alan saw, a long,
low-lying old vessel without lights and without smoke from the funnel
slanting up just forward of the after deckhouse; it rolled in the
trough of the sea. The sides and all the lower works gleamed in
ghostly phosphorescence, it was refraction of the searchlight beam from
the ice sheathing all the ship, Alan's brain told him; but the sight of
that soundless, shimmering ship materializing from behind the screen of
snow struck a tremor through him.
"Ship!" he hailed. "Ahead! Dead ahead, sir! Ship!"
The shout of quick commands echoed to him from the bridge. Underfoot
he could feel a new tumult of the deck; the engines, instantly stopped,
were being set full speed astern. But Number 25, instead of sheering
off to right or to left to avoid the collision, steered straight on.
The struggle of the engines against the momentum of the ferry told that
others had seen the gleaming ship or, at least, had heard the hail.
The skipper's instant decision had been to put to starboard; he had
bawled that to the wheelsman, "Hard over!" But, though the screws
turned full astern, Number 25 steered straight on. The flurry was
blowing before the bow again; back through the snow the ice-shrouded
shimmer ahead retreated. Alan leaped away and up to the wheelhouse.
Men were struggling there--the skipper, a mate, and old Burr, who had
held the wheel. He clung to it yet, as one in a trance, fixed, staring
ahead; his arms, stiff, had been holding Number 25 to her course. The
skipper struck him and beat him away, while the mate tugged at the
wheel. Burr was torn from the wheel now, and he made no resistance to
the skipper's blows; but the skipper, in his frenzy, struck him again
and knocked him to the deck.
Slowly, steadily, Number 25 was responding to her helm. The bow
pointed away, and the beam of the ferry came beside the beam of the
silent steamer; they were very close now, so close that the
searchlight, which had turned to keep on the other vessel, shot above
its shimmering deck and lighted only the spars; and, as the water rose
and fell between them, the ships sucked closer. Number 25 shook with
an effort; it seemed opposing with all the power of its screws some
force fatally drawing it on--opposing with the last resistance before
giving way. Then, as the water fell again, the ferry seemed to slip
and be drawn toward the other vessel; they mounted, side by side ...
crashed ... recoiled ... crashed again. That second crash threw all
who had nothing to hold by, flat upon the deck; then Number 25 moved
by; astern her now the silent steamer vanished in the snow.
Gongs boomed below; through the new confusion and the cries of men,
orders began to become audible. Alan, scrambling to his knees, put an
arm under old Burr, half raising him; the form encircled by his arm
struggled up. The skipper, who had knocked Burr away from the wheel,
ignored him now. The old man, dragging himself up and holding to Alan,
was staring with terror at the snow screen behind which the vessel had
disappeared. His lips moved.
"It was a ship!" he said; he seemed sneaking more to himself than to
Alan.
"Yes"; Alan said. "It was a ship; and you thought--"
"It wasn't there!" the wheelsman cried. "It's--it's been there all the
time all night, and I'd--I'd steered through it ten times, twenty
times, every few minutes; and then--that time it was a ship!"
Alan's excitement grew greater; he seized the old man again. "You
thought it was the _Miwaka_!" Alan exclaimed. "The _Miwaka_! And you
tried to steer through it again."
"The _Miwaka_!" old Burr's lips reiterated the word. "Yes; yes--the
_Miwaka_!"
He struggled, writhing with some agony not physical. Alan tried to
hold him, but now the old man was beside himself with dismay. He broke
away and started aft. The captain's voice recalled Alan to himself, as
he was about to follow, and he turned back to the wheelhouse.
The mate was at the wheel. He shouted to the captain about following
the other ship; neither of them had seen sign of any one aboard it.
"Derelict!" the skipper thought. The mate was swinging Number 25 about
to follow and look at the ship again; and the searchlight beam swept
back and forth through the snow; the blasts of the steam whistle, which
had ceased after the collision, burst out again. As before, no
response came from behind the snow. The searchlight picked up the
silent ship again; it had settled down deeper now by the bow, Alan saw;
the blow from Number 25 had robbed it of its last buoyancy; it was
sinking. It dove down, then rose a little--sounds came from it
now--sudden, explosive sounds; air pressure within hurled up a hatch;
the tops of the cabins blew off, and the stem of the ship slipped down
deep again, stopped, then dove without halt or recovery this time, and
the stern, upraised with the screw motionless, met the high wash of a
wave, and went down with it and disappeared.
No man had shown himself; no shout had been heard; no little boat was
seen or signalled.
The second officer, who had gone below to ascertain the damage done to
the ferry, came up to report. Two of the compartments, those which had
taken the crush of the collision, had flooded instantly; the bulkheads
were holding--only leaking a little, the officer declared. Water was
coming into a third compartment, that at the stern; the pumps were
fighting this water. The shock had sprung seams elsewhere; but if the
after compartment did not fill, the pumps might handle the rest.
Soddenness already was coming into the response of Number 25 to the
lift of the waves; the ferry rolled less to the right as she came
about, beam to the waves, and she dropped away more dully and deeply to
the left; the ship was listing to port and the lift of the ice-heaped
bow told of settling by the stern. Slowly Number 25 circled about, her
engines holding bare headway; the radio, Alan heard, was sending to the
_Richardson_ and to the shore stations word of the finding and sinking
of the ship and of the damage done to Number 25; whether that damage
yet was described in the dispatches as disaster, Alan did not know.
The steam whistle, which continued to roar, maintained the single,
separated blasts of a ship still seaworthy and able to steer and even
to give assistance. Alan was at the bow again on lookout duty, ordered
to listen and to look for the little boats.
He gave to that duty all his conscious attention; but through his
thought, whether he willed it or not, ran a riotous exultation. As he
paced from side to side and hailed and answered hails from the bridge,
and while he strained for sight and hearing through the gale-swept
snow, the leaping pulse within repeated, "I've found him! I've found
him!" Alan held no longer possibility of doubt of old Burr's identity
with Benjamin Corvet, since the old man had made plain to him that he
was haunted by the _Miwaka_. Since that night in the house on Astor
Street, when Spearman shouted to Alan that name, everything having to
do with the secret of Benjamin Corvet's life had led, so far as Alan
could follow it, to the _Miwaka_; all the change, which Sherrill
described but could not account for, Alan had laid to that. Corvet
only could have been so haunted by that ghostly ship, and there had
been guilt of some awful sort in the old man's cry. Alan had found the
man who had sent him away to Kansas when he was a child, who had
supported him there and then, at last, sent for him; who had
disappeared at his coming and left him all his possessions and his
heritage of disgrace, who had paid blackmail to Luke, and who had sent,
last, Captain Stafford's watch and the ring which came with it--the
wedding ring.
Alan pulled his hand from his glove and felt in his pocket for the
little band of gold. What would that mean to him now; what of that was
he to learn? And, as he thought of that, Constance Sherrill came more
insistently before him. What was he to learn for her, for his friend
and Benjamin Corvet's friend, whom he, Uncle Benny, had warned not to
care for Henry Spearman, and then had gone away to leave her to marry
him? For she was to marry him, Alan had read.
It was with this that cold terror suddenly closed over him. Would he
learn anything now from Benjamin Corvet, though he had found him? Only
for an instant--a fleeting instant--had Benjamin Corvet's brain become
clear as to the cause of his hallucination; consternation had
overwhelmed him then, and he struggled free to attempt to mend the
damage he had done.
More serious damage than first reported! The pumps certainly must be
losing their fight with the water in the port compartment aft; for the
bow steadily was lifting, the stern sinking. The starboard rail too
was raised, and the list had become so sharp that water washed the deck
abaft the forecastle to port. And the ferry was pointed straight into
the gale now; long ago she had ceased to circle and steam slowly in
search for boats; she struggled with all her power against the wind and
the seas, a desperate insistence throbbing in the thrusts of the
engines; for Number 25 was fleeing--fleeing for the western shore. She
dared not turn to the nearer eastern shore to expose that shattered
stern to the seas.
Four bells beat behind Alan; it was two o'clock. Relief should have
come long before; but no one came. He was numbed now; ice from the
spray crackled upon his clothing when he moved, and it fell in flakes
upon the deck. The stark figure on the bridge was that of the second
officer; so the thing which was happening below--the thing which was
sending strange, violent, wanton tremors through the ship--was serious
enough to call the skipper below, to make him abandon the bridge at
this time! The tremors, quite distinct from the steady tremble of the
engines and the thudding of the pumps, came again. Alan, feeling them,
jerked up and stamped and beat his arms to regain sensation. Some one
stumbled toward him from the cabins now, a short figure in a great
coat. It was a woman, he saw as she hailed him--the cabin maid.
"I'm taking your place!" she shouted to Alan. "You're wanted--every
one's wanted on the car deck! The cars--" The gale and her fright
stopped her voice as she struggled for speech, "The cars--the cars are
loose!"