IV

Captain Kendrick had no more time to bother with such trifles as the

outbreak of Valentine. Before this day had darkened the sky turned a

dirty yellow, and the weight of the wind was not enough to account

for the greasy, sluggish roll of the sea. The barometer needle slid

unwaveringly toward the danger point, and after some uncertain

shifting, the wind hauled to the northeast and grew steadily colder.

Stripped of all superfluous gear on deck, the _Suwannee_ was licked

into fighting trim, gaunt, streaming and naked. The weeping drizzle

that fogged the sky line changed to sleet, and soon after dusk came

blinding snow with a great fury of wind.

When the captain faced the storm on his quivering bridge, he felt

as if all breath and warmth were instantly blown out of him. No

fleecy snowflakes these, but hooting volleys of icy shot, incessantly

delivered. He groped along the canvased rail in a choking fight for

breath until he found Mr. Carr. They gasped and flinched as they vainly

tried to peer into the whirling smother.

The sea rose with incredible swiftness. Within the hour, the _Suwannee_

could no longer be held on her course. Yawing wildly whenever a vicious

onset of the sea smashed against her quarter and toppled on deck, the

ship was brought round and hove to, dead into it. Then the racing of

her screws shook her until it seemed as if the engines would tear her

hull apart, and speed was slowed as much as the captain dared.

Mr. Parlin was still locked in his stateroom, and as the deep-laden

_Suwannee_ wrestled with the blizzard, Captain Kendrick argued in his

mind whether the mutinous officer should be released at a time when all

hands were sorely needed. The third officer had not been long enough

promoted to shoulder any grave responsibility. In such a night as this,

whose menace was hourly increasing, the vital issue was to safeguard

the ship. But the captain's manhood rebelled against a compromise

with his deed of clean-cut justice. And rankling in his heart was a

damnable phrase, "prime of usefulness is past." It helped to give him

the strength of two, now that the test had come, and he decided to

fight it through with Peter Carr.

Before midnight the cold was so benumbing and deadly, without chance

of respite, that freezing fast to the rail to which they clung was

a fate that threatened master and mate. Each begged the other to

seek a little warmth and shelter, and their indomitable wills were

dead-locked time and again. At length the captain put it as a most

emphatic command, and fairly hustled Peter Carr down the steps to the

steam-heated wheelhouse. When the mate returned, hot with coffee and

protestations that the captain take a turn below, the old man refused

with a passionate gesture of finality.

Although he had striven to bank the fires of resentment, his thoughts

burned like coals that callow youth, sitting in judgment, should have

flung aside his faith and works together like so much trash. But never

for a moment did such introspections relax his alert understanding

of every symptom of the laboring tussle between ship and sea. So far

she had come unhurt. Now, once, as she climbed wearily and hung for an

instant like a giant see-saw, Captain Kendrick became tensely expectant

as he felt through the planking a strange jarring break, somewhere down

in her vitals.

Then, instead of splendidly crashing down the long slope into the

hidden wrath of water, the _Suwannee_ began to swing broadside as if on

a pivot. The wild impulse was unchecked, even as her bow slanted into

the tumbling barrier, and heaving far down to port, she rolled helpless

and exposed, as a bewildered boxer drops the guard that shields his jaw

from the knock-out blow.

"_Hard over, hard over_," yelled the captain down the tube to an

empty wheelhouse, for a pallid quartermaster darted from within, and

scrambled to the bridge, shouting:

"She won't steer, ---- ---- her, she won't steer. The gear has carried

away below."

With one look to windward, the captain crawled to the engine-room

indicator and sent clamoring signals to reverse the port and jam full

speed ahead with the starboard screw. But before the _Suwannee_ could

feel the altered drive of her engines, so huge a sea raced over her

lurching bow that the port side of the bridge crumpled under the attack

like a wire bird-cage smashed with a club. Roaring aft, the gray flood

ripped a string of boats from their lashings. It left their fragments

absurdly dangling from the twisted davits, and poured through the cabin

skylights, whose strength collapsed like pasteboard.

Peter Carr had seen the danger in time to shout a warning as he fled to

the starboard end of the bridge. On top of him came the captain, washed

along in a tangle of splintered oak and canvas. The mate crawled from

beneath and looked for the quartermaster. A sodden bundle of oil-skins

was doubled around a stanchion almost at his feet, and life was gone

from the battered features. Instinctively glancing seaward, the mate

noted that the _Suwannee_ had responded to the send of her screws, and

was veering now to port. He signaled to ease her, and as she headed

into it again, he made a rush and dragged the skipper clear. The

sleeted beard was matted with blood, but the old man stirred and opened

his eyes.

"We've got to nurse her along with the engines," he muttered brokenly.

"Thank God for twin screws. Stand by the indicator. Sing down for hands

to clear the wreckage, and overhaul the steering-gear. It felt to me

like the rudder went at the pintles. But have 'em man the hand-wheel

aft."

He wiped the blood from his eyes, and strove to get on his feet. One

leg gave way, and he hauled himself up by gripping what was left of the

rail.

"It's gone back on me again," he groaned, "but it wasn't much of a leg

at best. Lend a hand, and do as I tell ye."

Peter Carr passed a lashing around the skipper's waist, and so made

him fast to the steel pillar of the engine-room indicator. Now began

the infinitely wary coaxing of the ship to face the storm, now with

a thrust of her port screw, again with a kick of her starboard screw.

It was thus she must be steered, for word came up that there was no

mending the damage this side of port. The mate was afraid to take over

the task of keeping the ship headed into the storm, for this was his

first experience in a twin-screw steamer, yet he was as much afraid

that the skipper might die if he left him where he was.

The ship fought to wrest herself free from this shifting grip, she

seemed eager to slay herself by swinging to take the seas abeam, but

the man whose face and beard were dappled with blotches of crimson

held her hove to, as if his soul had pervaded her clanking depths.

When Peter Carr implored him to have his hurts cared for, the captain

answered with such shattered murmurings as these, for the cold and the

pain were biting into his brain:

"But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.... Let

not the water-flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up....

Oh, spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no

more.... Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved

them out of their distress...."

Peter Carr was a much younger man, and the violence of his exertions

had so warmed his blood that he had much strength left in him. Now

and then he tugged at the captain's arm, shouted in his ear, tried to

lift him, and the third officer, who had come from the task of mending

matters on deck, joined the heroic struggle. The captain awoke to chide

them as if they were impatient boys, but his eyes saw only the swirling

curtain of snow ahead and the great seas he must meet in their teeth.

Suddenly he tried to stand erect, and shouted as he swayed:

"Vessel dead ahead."

With the words, he sent a signal to his engine-room, and the _Suwannee_

shouldered the merest trifle off to port just as a great gray mass

slid past, so close that the watchers smelled a whiff of steam. The

blackness was beginning to fade out of the storm, day was breaking, and

they glimpsed alongside a cluster of jackies toiling in flooding seas

at hawsers lashed round two great turret guns. More than ever convinced

by this escape that his eyes were needed on the bridge, Captain

Kendrick stayed steadfast in his purpose. The two officers felt awe as

they looked at him, that he should have sensed, where their eyes could

not see, the danger they had shaved by a hair's breadth. Sometimes

now his head fell forward, but the hand on the indicator lever was

ever nervously alive to feel the ship and the raving seas, and he was

snatching her from death, inch by inch and hour by hour.

V

In the early hours of the storm, Arthur Valentine was battering like

a shuttle-cock between the sides of his berth, sicker in mind than

in body, for manifold terrors had come to prey upon him. Without

confidence in the captain of the ship, he felt that his own cowardice

was responsible for failure to act when the issue had been almost

within his grasp. Through the dragging hours, as the ship cried aloud

in every racking beam and rivet, or quaked as if her rearing bows had

rammed a rock, Valentine convinced himself that the captain would not

have dared refuse him if he had faced it out and insisted that the

first officer take command.

"Don't I own the steamer?" he groaned. "Can't a man do what he pleases

with his own property? And I let myself be bluffed out like a whipped

pup. Only a lunatic would have defied me. Of course he's tucked away in

a corner trying to pray down a storm like this. What did Carr tell me?

What did Parlin say?"

On the heels of these emotions came the dreadful instant when the

_Suwannee_ took aboard the sea that swept her bridge. Valentine was

flung out of his berth to the floor in a bruised heap, and heard the

crash of glass and the riot of water which tumbled solid into the

saloon outside his room. Before he could get footing his room was

awash, and floating luggage knocked him this way and that. He crawled

outside and collided with a half-clad man who was wringing his hands

as he wailed:

"Save yourself. We're sinking. Look at the whole Atlantic Ocean in

here."

"What's the matter? What's happened?" gasped Valentine.

"What's happened? I heard the captain had killed the first officer, or

strung him up, or something awful. And now there surely is hell to pay.

Why don't somebody come to our rescue?"

What passed with him for duty, even the high tide of heroic impulse

in his whole life, impelled Valentine to struggle up the stairway to

the "social hall" on the deck above. He believed that the risk of

being washed overboard was very great, he was almost certain the crazy

captain would knock him down or shoot him, but he was braced ready to

meet these things. It was a desperate situation demanding a desperate

remedy. He felt vague admiration and pity for himself, as he made ready

for the plunge on deck. But a dripping sailor barred the way.

"I'm willing to run the risk," protested the hero. "It's my duty to

save the ship. She belongs to me."

"So does Cape Horn an' the Statue of Liberty," returned the seaman

soothingly. "But you don't want to play with 'em now. They'll keep

all right. Nobody goes on deck. Them's orders. Just sit down an' play

you're a train of cars. It's lots of fun, an' it's safe an' dry."

Valentine tried to pass him and was thrust back so violently that he

fell upon a comatose passenger stretched on a set-tee. This victim

sputtered feeble protest and other voices were raised. Valentine

noticed now that several men and women were huddled in this corner of

the deck-house, fled from the desolation below stairs. One of them

screamed above the clamor of the wind:

"The ship is all smashed to pieces and nobody knows what to do next."

"I am going to get forward somehow, and put the first officer in

command, if he's alive," cried Valentine. "It's life or death for all

of us, and my word must go. Doesn't this fool sailor know who I am?"

Alas, these shivering refugees scented a new alarm. The poor young man

had gone mad with fright, and they, too, tried to soothe him, while a

woman of them sobbingly implored the sailor to take him away before he

became violent. Valentine cursed them all, and clawed his way down the

hand-rail to the saloon to seek some other exit. The way forward was

blocked by savage men dragging tarpaulins, and they kicked him out of

their path when he would argue with them. He splashed back and forth,

like a rat in a trap, falling against bulk-heads and furniture, or

pitched clear off his feet, until, worn out, he slunk back in sullen

silence up among the little company in the deck-house who waited for

they knew not what.

So much of Valentine's purpose had been hammered out of him that

nausea resumed its sway, and he clung to a cushion, helpless through

interminable hours. When he was able to pull himself together and

make feeble effort, it seemed as if the pitching of the steamer were

less terrifying, and through an after-port the daylight gleamed. He

dragged himself to it, and caught a glimpse of somber sea and sky. The

blizzard had passed.

Then strong hands were thumping on the outer door, and a steward tugged

at the inside fastenings. In a flurry of spray three burden-bearers

staggered into the room, between them a great limp bulk in oil-skins,

whose face was hidden by a sou'wester. As the seamen paused to veer

ever so gently around the corner of the hallway, Valentine went close

to the third officer who led the way, and said with a novel timidity in

his voice:

"I am Mr. Valentine, owner of the line. Can you tell me what has

happened, please?"

"It's the skipper--frozen up, busted up, dyin' it looks to me, sir,"

was the husky response. "He's brought her through the blow lone-handed.

I never seen another man afloat as could ha' done the trick he did."

The young man trailed after the stumbling procession which turned into

a large stateroom aft. Before swift hands had removed the boots and

outer garments, a physician from among the passengers was busy with

hot water and bandages. The Irish stewardess was weeping as she tried

to help. They paid no heed to Valentine, who returned to the doorway as

often as he was jostled to one side.

The three seamen huddled in the passage talked softly among themselves,

and Valentine heard:

"I tink he give der first mate vat vas comin' to him, eh? Und if der

skipper's room vas flooded out, den Mister Parlin must been sloshin'

round mit der door gelocked, most drownded. Goot enough."

"It's sure all right if the old man done it. An' him with two bum legs

to start with, buckin' her through last night. Him gettin' smashed

galley-west, rudder busted--Hell's Delight! what a mess! He looked as

if he was all in when we pried him loose from them slings that was

holdin' him up."

"Ask the doc if he can pull him through, will you?"

Valentine tiptoed in, as the doctor whispered with a warning gesture:

"I think so. His head needs a good many stitches, and there is an

ankle to set and some ribs to mend. But he will take a lot of killing

yet. Come, men, you must clear out of the hall. He will be coming to

presently."

What Valentine heard was mightily reinforced by that which he saw with

eyes that were misty and troubled. Before him lay such grim reality of

duty done as the shallows of his life had never touched. Groping in a

welter of new thoughts, he made his way to the deck and went forward

as far as he dared, amazed at sight of the havoc wrought overnight.

Perched on his wrecked bridge the figure of Peter Carr swung against

the brightening sky. He had learned who Valentine was, and called down:

"We'll work her up to Sandy Hook without any blisterin' salvage bills,

sir. There's a few of us left."

"And these are the kind of men I was going to stand on their heads,"

said Valentine to himself, as he clambered up and asked many eager

questions. Nor was Peter Carr at all backward in painting with vivid

word and gesture the story of the night, down to a parting shaft of

crafty comment:

"And there's them that thinks the old man is a softy an' ought to be

knittin' tidies in a home for derelict seafarin' men."

Restlessly seeking the captain's stateroom again and again, Valentine

was denied admittance until late in the afternoon. When the doctor

let him in, the old man opened his eyes and his weather-scarred face

lightened with a kindly gleam of recognition. Valentine flushed and

began hurried speech:

"I hope you'll forget that letter.... Is there anything I can do?... If

you want to go to sea again, or if you don't, or whatever else----"

The doctor raised a silencing finger. Valentine bent over to stroke a

bandaged hand which moved on the blanket just enough to pat his with a

little parental caress. The doctor nudged Valentine to withdraw, as the

captain whispered drowsily:

"All-l's well.... You didn't know any better, did you?... So He

bringeth them into their desired haven."

[Illustration: "_You are a disgrace to Yale, all of you._"]