"HE KILLED YOUR FATHER"
Alan ran aft along the starboard side, catching at the rail as the deck
tilted; the sounds within the hull and the tremors following each sound
came to him more distinctly as he advanced. Taking the shortest way to
the car deck, he turned into the cabins to reach the passengers'
companionway. The noises from the car deck, no longer muffled by the
cabins, clanged and resounded in terrible tumult; with the clang and
rumble of metal, rose shouts and roars of men.
To liberate and throw overboard heavily loaded cars from an endangered
ship was so desperate an undertaking and so certain to cost life that
men attempted it only in final extremities, when the ship must be
lightened at any cost. Alan had never seen the effect of such an
attempt, but he had heard of it as the fear which sat always on the
hearts of the men who navigate the ferries--the cars loose on a
rolling, lurching ship! He was going to that now. Two figures
appeared before him, one half supporting, half dragging the other.
Alan sprang and offered aid; but the injured man called to him to go
on; others needed him. Alan went past them and down the steps to the
car deck. Half-way down, the priest whom he had noticed among the
passengers stood staring aft, a tense, black figure; beside him other
passengers were clinging to the handrail and staring down in awestruck
fascination. The lowest steps had been crushed back and half up-torn;
some monstrous, inanimate thing was battering about below; but the
space at the foot of the steps was clear at that moment. Alan leaped
over the ruin of the steps and down upon the car deck.
A giant iron casting six feet high and yards across and tons in weight,
tumbled and ground before him; it was this which had swept away the
steps; he had seen it, with two others like it, upon a flat car which
had been shunted upon one of the tracks on the starboard side of the
ferry, one of the tracks on his left now as he faced the stern. He
leaped upon and over the great casting, which turned and spun with the
motion of the ship as he vaulted it. The car deck was a pitching,
swaying slope; the cars nearest him were still upon their tracks, but
they tilted and swayed uglily from side to side; the jacks were gone
from under them; the next cars already were hurled from the rails,
their wheels screaming on the steel deck, clanging and thudding
together in their couplings.
Alan ran aft between them. All the crew who could be called from deck
and engine room and firehold were struggling at the fantail, under the
direction of the captain, to throw off the cars. The mate was working
as one of the men, and with him was Benjamin Corvet. The crew already
must have loosened and thrown over the stern three cars from the two
tracks on the port side; for there was a space vacant; and as the train
charged into that space and the men threw themselves upon it, Alan
leaped with them.
The leading car--a box car, heavily laden--swayed and shrieked with the
pitching of the ship. Corvet sprang between it and the car coupled
behind; he drew out the pin from the coupling, and the men with
pinch-bars attacked the car to isolate it and force it aft along the
track. It moved slowly at first; then leaped its length; sharply with
the lift of the deck, it stopped, toppled toward the men who, yelling
to one another, scrambled away. The hundred-ton mass swung from side
to side; the ship dropped swiftly to starboard, and the stern went
down; the car charged, and its aftermost wheels left the deck; it swung
about, slewed, and jammed across both port tracks. The men attacked it
with dismay; Corvet's shout called them away and rallied them farther
back; they ran with him to the car from which he had uncoupled it.
It was a flat car laden with steel beams. At Corvet's command, the
crew ranged themselves beside it with bars. The bow of the ferry rose
to some great wave and, with a cry to the men, Corvet pulled the pin.
The others thrust with their bars, and the car slid down the sloping
track; and Corvet, caught by some lashing of the beams, came with it.
The car crashed into the box car, splintered it, turned it, shoved it,
and thrust it over the fantail into the water; the flat car, telescoped
into it, was dragged after. Alan leaped upon it and catching at
Corvet, freed him and flung him down to the deck, and dropped with him.
A cheer rose as the car cleared the fantail, dove, and disappeared.
Alan clambered to his feet. Corvet already was back among the cars
again, shouting orders; the mate and the men who had followed him
before leaped at his yells. The lurch which had cleared the two cars
together had jumped others away from the rails. They hurtled from side
to side, splintering against the stanchions which stayed them from
crashing across the center line of the ship; rebounding, they battered
against the cars on the outer tracks and crushed them against the side
of the ship. The wedges, blocks, and chains which had secured them
banged about on the deck, useless; the men who tried to control these
cars, dodging as they charged, no longer made attempt to secure the
wheels. Corvet called them to throw ropes and chains to bind the loads
which were letting go; the heavier loads--steel beams, castings,
machinery--snapped their lashings, tipped from their flat cars and
thundered down the deck. The cars tipped farther, turned over; others
balanced back; it was upon their wheels that they charged forward, half
riding one another, crashing and demolishing, as the ferry pitched; it
was upon their trucks that they tottered and battered from side to side
as the deck swayed. Now the stern again descended; a line of cars
swept for the fantail. Corvet's cry came to Alan through the screaming
of steel and the clangor of destruction. Corvet's cry sent men with
bars beside the cars as the fantail dipped into the water; Corvet,
again leading his crew, cleared the leader of those madly charging cars
and ran it over the stern.
The fore trucks fell and, before the rear trucks reached the edge, the
stern lifted and caught the car in the middle; it balanced, half over
the water, half over the deck. Corvet crouched under the car with a
crowbar; Alan and two others went with him; they worked the car on
until the weight of the end over the water tipped it down; the balance
broke, and the car tumbled and dived. Corvet, having cleared another
hundred tons, leaped back, calling to the crew.
They followed him again, unquestioning, obedient. Alan followed close
to him. It was not pity which stirred him now for Benjamin Corvet; nor
was it bitterness; but it certainly was not contempt. Of all the ways
in which he had fancied finding Benjamin Corvet, he had never thought
of seeing him like this!
It was, probably, only for a flash; but the great quality of leadership
which he once had possessed, which Sherrill had described to Alan and
which had been destroyed by the threat over him, had returned to him in
this desperate emergency which he had created. How much or how little
of his own condition Corvet understood, Alan could not tell; it was
plain only that he comprehended that he had been the cause of the
catastrophe, and in his fierce will to repair it he not only
disregarded all risk to himself; he also had summoned up from within
him and was spending the last strength of his spirit. But he was
spending it in a losing fight.
He got off two more cars; yet the deck only dipped lower, and water
washed farther and farther up over the fantail. New avalanches of iron
descended as box cars above burst open; monstrous dynamo drums,
broad-banded steel wheels and splintered crates of machinery battered
about. Men, leaping from before the charging cars, got caught in the
murderous melee of iron and steel and wheels; men's shrill cries came
amid the scream of metal. Alan, tugging at a crate which had struck
down a man, felt aid beside him and, turning, he saw the priest whom he
had passed on the stairs. The priest was bruised and bloody; this was
not his first effort to aid. Together they lifted an end of the crate;
they bent--Alan stepped back, and the priest knelt alone, his lips
repeating the prayer for absolution. Screams of men came from behind;
and the priest rose and turned. He saw men caught between two wrecks
of cars crushing together; there was no moment to reach them; he stood
and raised his arms to them, his head thrown back, his voice calling to
them, as they died, the words of absolution.
Three more cars at the cost of two more lives the crew cleared, while
the sheathing of ice spread over the steel inboard, and dissolution of
all the cargo became complete. Cut stone and motor parts, chasses and
castings, furniture and beams, swept back and forth, while the cars,
burst and splintered, became monstrous missiles hurtling forward,
sidewise, aslant, recoiling. Yet men, though scattered singly, tried
to stay them by ropes and chains while the water washed higher and
higher. Dimly, far away, deafened out by the clangor, the steam
whistle of Number 25 was blowing the four long blasts of distress; Alan
heard the sound now and then with indifferent wonder. All destruction
had come for him to be contained within this car deck; here the ship
loosed on itself all elements of annihilation; who could aid it from
without? Alan caught the end of a chain which Corvet flung him and,
though he knew it was useless, he carried it across from one stanchion
to the next. Something, sweeping across the deck, caught him and
carried him with it; it brought him before the coupled line of trucks
which hurtled back and forth where the rails of track three had been.
He was hurled before them and rolled over; something cold and heavy
pinned him down; and upon him, the car trucks came.
But, before them, something warm and living--a hand and bare arm
catching him quickly and pulling at him, tugged him a little farther
on. Alan, looking up, saw Corvet beside him; Corvet, unable to move
him farther, was crouching down there with him. Alan yelled to him to
leap, to twist aside and get out of the way; but Corvet only crouched
closer and put his arms over Alan; then the wreckage came upon them,
driving them apart. As the movement stopped, Alan still could see
Corvet dimly by the glow of the incandescent lamps overhead; the truck
separated them. It bore down upon Alan, holding him motionless and, on
the other side, it crushed upon Corvet's legs.
He turned over, as far as he could, and spoke to Alan. "You have been
saving me, so now I tried to save you," he said simply. "What reason
did you have for doing that? Why have you been keeping by me?"
"I'm Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids, Kansas," Alan cried to him. "And
you're Benjamin Corvet! You know me; you sent for me! Why did you do
that?"
Corvet made no reply to this. Alan, peering at him underneath the
truck, could see that his hands were pressed against his face and that
his body shook. Whether this was from some new physical pain from the
movement of the wreckage, Alan did not know till he lowered his hands
after a moment; and now he did not heed Alan or seem even to be aware
of him.
"Dear little Connie!" he said aloud. "Dear little Connie! She mustn't
marry him--not him! That must be seen to. What shall I do, what shall
I do?"
Alan worked nearer him. "Why mustn't she marry him?" he cried to
Corvet. "Why? Ben Corvet, tell me! Tell me why!"
From above him, through the clangor of the cars, came the four blasts
of the steam whistle. The indifference with which Alan had heard them
a few minutes before had changed now to a twinge of terror. When men
had been dying about him, in their attempts to save the ship, it had
seemed a small thing for him to be crushed or to drown with them and
with Benjamin Corvet, whom he had found at last. But Constance!
Recollection of her was stirring in Corvet the torture of will to live;
in Alan--he struggled and tried to free himself. As well as he could
tell by feeling, the weight above him confined but was not crushing
him; yet what gain for her if he only saved himself and not Corvet too?
He turned back to Corvet.
"She's going to marry him, Ben Corvet!" he called. "They're betrothed;
and they're going to be married, she and Henry Spearman!"
"Who are you?" Corvet seemed only with an effort to become conscious
of Alan's presence.
"I'm Alan Conrad, whom you used to take care of. I'm from Blue Rapids.
You know about me; are you my father, Ben Corvet? Are you my father or
what--what are you to me?"
"Your father?" Corvet repeated. "Did he tell you that? He killed your
father."
"Killed him? Killed him how?"
"Of course. He killed them all--all. But your father--he shot him; he
shot him through the head!"
Alan twinged. Sight of Spearman came before him as he had first seen
Spearman, cowering in Corvet's library in terror at an apparition.
"And the bullet hole above the eye!" So that was the hole made by the
shot Spearman fired which had killed Alan's father--which shot him
through the head! Alan peered at Corvet and called to him.
"Father Benitot!" Corvet called in response, not directly in reply to
Alan's question, rather in response to what those questions stirred.
"Father Benitot!" he appealed. "Father Benitot!"
Some one, drawn by the cry, was moving wreckage near them. A hand and
arm with a torn sleeve showed; Alan could not see the rest of the
figure, but by the sleeve he recognized that it was the mate.
"Who's caught here?" he called down.
"Benjamin Corvet of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, ship owners of
Chicago," Corvet's voice replied deeply, fully; there was authority in
it and wonder too--the wonder of a man finding himself in a situation
which his recollection cannot explain.
"Ben Corvet!" the mate shouted in surprise; he cried it to the others,
those who had followed Corvet and obeyed him during the hour before and
had not known why. The mate tried to pull the wreckage aside and make
his way to Corvet; but the old man stopped him. "The priest, Father
Benitot! Send him to me. I shall never leave here; send Father
Benitot!"
The word was passed without the mate moving away. The mate, after a
minute, made no further attempt to free Corvet; that indeed was
useless, and Corvet demanded his right of sacrament from the priest who
came and crouched under the wreckage beside him.
"Father Benitot!"
"I am not Father Benitot. I am Father Perron of L'Anse."
"It was to Father Benitot of St. Ignace I should have gone, Father! ..."
The priest got a little closer as Corvet spoke, and Alan heard only
voices now and then through the sounds of clanging metal and the drum
of ice against the hull. The mate and his helpers were working to get
him free. They had abandoned all effort to save the ship; it was
settling. And with the settling, the movement of the wreckage
imprisoning Alan was increasing. This movement made useless the
efforts of the mate; it would free Alan of itself in a moment, if it
did not kill him; it would free or finish Corvet too. But he, as Alan
saw him, was wholly oblivious of that now. His lips moved quietly,
firmly; and his eyes were fixed steadily on the eyes of the priest.