SPATTERDOCK POINT.
The three boys in the boat soon reached the stern of the burning
steamboat. Here the wind kept them entirely free from smoke and sparks,
and they rowed several times around the stern, shouting loudly, so as
to attract the attention of any one who might be on board.
But no answer came to them, and they saw no signs of any living being
on the vessel. The tide carried them along with the steamboat, but the
wind had so much influence on the larger craft that Chap had to row
quite steadily to keep up with her.
Phil, who was forward, threw the rope of the small boat over the chain
on the rudder of the steamboat, and held fast.
“Look out!” cried Chap, as he turned around. “We don’t want to go down
with her if she sinks!”
“You needn’t be afraid of that,” replied Phil; “I’ll let go in time.”
“She’s not going to be in any hurry to sink,” said Phœnix. “The fire is
all forward and in her upper works; but there’s no use in hanging on to
her, there’s nobody on board.”
“Boys,” cried Phil, “this chain is loose at the other end! We’re
pulling it out. The pilot-house and wheel must be all burnt up.”
“Let’s pull the whole of it out!” cried Chap. “We might as well save
something from the fire. We could use the chain in our work on the
wreck.”
“We couldn’t get it loose from the rudder,” said Phil, “and it wouldn’t
be ours if we did save it.”
“It’s a great pity,” said Phœnix, “that this big steamboat should burn
up, and everything be lost. There are people on the shore on the other
side, and the folks are coming over the field on our side, but none of
them can do any good.”
“Nothing could do any good,” said Chap, “except a steamboat with a
fire-engine on board. It would be no use for any other kind of boat to
come near her.”
“If she would only drift ashore,” said Phœnix, “it would be better than
her sinking out here.”
“The current is so strong it keeps her out,” said Chap. “If the tide
wasn’t running down so hard the wind would blow her in on our side.”
“If we could get this rudder round,” said Phil, “and keep it hard up, I
believe the wind would take her in shore.”
“Yes,” said Chap; “but how are you going to do it? You couldn’t push a
rudder around and make it fast.”
“Boys,” cried Phil, “let’s go aboard! There isn’t any danger, and if we
can find a tiller up there we can ship it, and perhaps we can steer the
old Wistar in shore.”
“But how would you get up?” asked Phœnix.
“If we stand up in the bow we can reach that little window,” said Phil.
“If somebody below would give us a boost then we could throw up one
hand and get hold of the railings. After that it would all be easy
enough.”
“But who is going to boost the last fellow?” asked Chap.
“One of us ought to stay in the boat anyway,” said Phil, “to row around
and pick us up if we have to jump overboard.”
“You talk as if you were going, anyway,” said Chap.
“I’d like to,” answered Phil; “and suppose, Chap, you stay in the boat.
You can boost better than any of us, because you are so tall.”
“All right!” said Chap. “I suppose somebody ought to stay in the boat.”
“It will be a ticklish job,” remarked Phœnix, as he took off his coat.
“But I guess we’ll try it.”
Chap now stood up in the boat, balancing himself as carefully as he
could, and when Phil had taken hold of the window-sill, which he could
just reach, Chap gave him a lift which enabled him, at the first grasp,
to seize the railing of the lower deck.
For a moment he dangled there, looking into the window. He could see
nothing, for there were goods piled up inside. Then he got one foot on
the window-sill, and scrambled on board.
Phœnix found the feat more difficult. His first trouble was that he
could not reach the window-sill. Chap offered to lift him bodily, but
Phœnix objected.
“If I haven’t got hold of something above,” he said, “we’ll go over,
boat and all.”
Then Chap hauled out an old box from under the stern, and set it upon
one of the seats. On this Phœnix cautiously mounted, and reached the
window-sill. Then Chap attempted to boost him, but Phœnix was so heavy
that he found it no easy thing to do.
On his first attempt his vigorous efforts nearly upset the boat, but
he succeeded at last, and when Phœnix got hold of the railing he very
quickly hauled himself up.
He found Phil hard at work untying a tiller which had been made fast on
one side of the deck.
“Get that other end loose,” cried Phil, “and we’ll ship her in a
minute.”
The boys quickly unfastened the tiller, and then they ran it into one
of the square holes in the end of the rudder-post, which projected
above the lower deck on which they stood.
“Now, pull around!” cried Phil. “Push her over towards the wind!”
Phil had frequently been out with his uncle in a sail-boat, and had
some pretty clear ideas about navigation. The boys pushed against the
end of the tiller with all their force, and gradually it moved around.
The smoke rolled up from the forward part of the vessel, the sparks
flew far ahead; but there was no heat at the stern of the boat, and the
boys did not believe that there was any fire beneath them.
“Hurrah!” cried Chap, from below. “She’s going around a little! Stick
to her, boys, and hold her hard. If it’s too much for you, I’ll get
aboard and help.”
“Don’t you do it!” shouted Phil. “We want that boat to be ready for
us. Don’t you leave her, Chap.”
“All right!” shouted Chap. “Put her round harder yet, boys, and hold
her.”
The Thomas Wistar, now held by her rudder, was being gradually turned
by the wind, so that her bow was directed towards the Hyson Hall side
of the river. The breeze was still on one side of her, but more astern
than it had been, and it was evident that if the rudder could be held
in its present position she would, before long, be blown in shore; but
whether or not Phil and Phœnix could remain aboard long enough for this
to happen was a question both to them and to Chap, who kept an anxious
watch on them from below. Even now, for aught any of them knew, the
fire might be spreading beneath them.
“I do believe,” said Phil, “that this deck is beginning to feel hot
under my feet.”
“I guess it’s because you’re so hot yourself,” said Phœnix. “We’d see
smoke coming out of some of the cracks if the fire was getting under
us.”
There was no doubt, however, that the fire was approaching the stern
of the vessel. The wind was not blowing so hard as it had been, and
whenever there was a partial lull in it the boys would feel great puffs
of heat, and clouds of smoke would gather over them; then, when the
breeze freshened again, the heat and the smoke would be blown away,
and they could breathe freer. They could see people on shore, who were
shouting to them, but the fire made such a roaring noise they could not
hear what was said.
“Lash that tiller to the railings and come off!” shouted Chap, who kept
his boat quite near them. “The fire will spread to the stern before you
know it, and the whole thing will blaze up in a flash. Come off, I tell
you, if you don’t want to be cooked alive.”
“I wish we could find a piece of rope,” said Phil, “and we’d tie this
tiller fast, and get off.”
“I believe we chucked those bits overboard when we cut the tiller
loose,” said Phœnix, “for I can’t see them; but they weren’t strong
enough, anyway.”
“It will take a pretty stout rope to hold this tiller,” said Phil.
He was right, for every muscle of the boys was strained to keep the
rudder in its position. If it had not been for the great strength of
Phœnix, it is probable that they could not have done it.
The wind now seemed to have shifted, for a sudden cloud of smoke was
blown right over the stern of the boat. In ten seconds more the boys
would have let go the tiller and jumped overboard, but the smoke was
blown away again, and they stood to their work.
“I hate to give it up now,” said Phil. “We must be going in, for the
shore is getting nearer and nearer.”
Chap, who kept steadfastly on the windward side of the steamboat, and
as near as possible to his friends, had been about to shout when the
last puff of smoke came over them, that if they didn’t come off he
would come on board and pitch them off, but suddenly changed his tune.
He had fallen a little astern, and glancing shoreward, had pulled his
boat to the other side of the Wistar, where he could see both the shore
and her bow. Pulling back to the boys, he shouted,--
“Stick to her! Stick to her! She’s heading splendidly for Spatterdock
Point! She’ll be aground in a minute!”
This encouragement came none too soon. The air was getting decidedly
hot around the boys, and the sides of the saloon cabin, which rose
before them and prevented their seeing the fire, were beginning to
smoke. This was not certainly a sign of immediate danger, for the cabin
was probably filled with smoke, which was escaping from the cracks
around the windows, which, fortunately, were all closed.
Phœnix had just been on the point of proposing that they should get
out of this thing as quickly as they could, when Chap’s words came, and
he forbore.
The eyes of the boys smarted with smoke and heat, and their backs and
legs began to ache with the great strain of holding that swashing
rudder. If the boat had been going faster through the water they could
not have done it.
But their hearts held out, and if they were nearing the shore they
would not give out just yet.
Directly, there was a gentle jar, which ran from the bow to the stern,
and which the boys distinctly felt beneath their feet.
“The bow has touched!” shouted Phil. “Now put the rudder round and let
the wind blow her stern in shore.”
With renewed vigor the boys pushed the end of the tiller to the other
side of the deck, and, as Phil had said, the wind slowly blew the stern
of the boat shoreward.
“She’s all right now!” cried Phil. “Let her go and skip.”
Whereupon they skipped.
Over the railings and down the side of the steamboat they went, sliding
or dropping, they scarcely knew which, and if Chap had not been ready
with his boat, they would both have gone into the water. There was no
more danger than there had been a few minutes before, but the moment
their work was done a panic had seized them, and they felt they could
not get away from that steamboat too soon.
“If you fellows had fallen into the water,” said Chap, as he hurriedly
pulled ashore, “you would have taken your deaths of cold, for I never
saw you look so hot.”
By the time the Wistar had been blown ashore, there was a little crowd
of people on the beach. Some of them had followed the burning steamboat
for some distance, and had run over the fields to the river when they
saw her coming in. Even Joel’s apathy had yielded to the general
excitement, and he waded into the water and pulled in the bow of the
boys’ boat before it touched the sand.
“If ever there was a pair of boys,” he said, addressing the red-faced
Phil and Phœnix, “as wanted a gar-deen, it’s you two. If your uncle had
seen you aboard that bonfire,” he continued, addressing Phil, “he’d ’a’
gone wild.”
Neither Phil nor Phœnix made any reply to this remark, but walking up
the bank out of the way of the heat and the smoke, they sat down to
watch the subsequent proceedings. For the present they felt as if they
had done enough. Chap, however, rushed in among the people, hoping at
last that he might be able to do something.
Now that the boat was securely aground in shallow water, and there was
a good chance of their getting off if the fire came too near, the men
on shore, who would not have dared to go near the blazing steamer when
she was out in the river, showed a determination to do what they could
to save at least a portion of the boat and cargo.
The boards were torn from a neighboring fence and placed from the shore
to the lower deck of the Wistar, and up these slippery and very much
inclined gang-planks several men quickly clambered. A heavy hawser
which lay on deck was passed on shore, and the boat was made fast to a
tree.
The forward part of the Thomas Wistar was now burned to the water’s
edge, and although the freight in that part of the vessel was still
burning, it was believed the fire did not now extend abaft the engine.
Late in the afternoon, a steam-tug from the city, which had been
telegraphed for from Boontown, arrived, with a fire-engine on board,
and the fire on the Thomas Wistar was soon extinguished.
Long before this event occurred, however, three very hungry boys went
up to Hyson Hall to dinner.
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