His wife half raised herself from the couch which had been her abiding
place for more than twenty years. "My broken flower," the captain named
her in his prayers at sea. The One to whom these petitions arose each
night his liner throbbed along the Western Ocean track had granted that
the heart and soul of the wife should wax in strength and sweetness
while her body lay bound in chains of suffering. Because to-night there
was worry in the tired, brave eyes which strove so well to mirror only
gladness when the captain was at home, he was much disturbed, the more
because he had made the cloud to come.
She looked, indeed, like a "broken flower" beside the towering strength
of the captain, who growled through his flaming beard when he would
speak most softly, who moved in a series of small earthquakes as
he tried to pace with gentlest tread, while they thrashed out the
momentous problem.
"To think of the new home is wonderful," she said in German, for this
they talked when together. "Do the doctors truly believe I shall be
stronger if we live at New York? Is there, indeed, hope of health
again? Ah, but it is risking all we have saved in these twenty-five
years, and----"
The captain no longer withheld his voice and it boomed through the
little house with a hurricane note, though he meant it to be only
reassuring:
"But the gain is wonderful. Such a home as I have found last voyage--in
the country, in the hills, near New York. There is life in the air,
and it will make you well every day. And better than that, what is
everything to you and me, I shall be with you almost a whole week every
voyage--almost a week in a month. Now, when I must sail from Liverpool,
I am home here in Antwerp with you perhaps two days a month, perhaps
not at all when storm and fog delay my ship, or when the passage is
bad for the North Sea packet in winter.
"The doctors say you cannot live in wet, gloomy England, and here it
is not much better. You will get well where we are going. We can be
together as much as when I was chief officer in the old _Deepdale_,
running out of Antwerp. The deeds of the home are ready to sign. I pay
the ten thousand dollars when I come to New York this voyage. Then
you come out the voyage after with me, for the company makes for us
exception to the rule that a wife cannot sail on her husband's vessel."
She wistfully smiled as if led by a beautiful dream, thinking in her
heart that to be sure of seeing her husband so often would be more than
ever she dare hope for. Even beckoning health must yield first place
to such a gift as this, but not yet satisfied she asked with tremulous
insistence:
"But the bank will send the money over without risk, and it is all we
have in the world, dear Max. Do you remember how the nest-egg was put
away so long ago, when we hoped for children, and this was to be the
beginning of their fortune? Why carry the money on your ship? Why take
it with you?"
"_Mein Gott_, sweetheart mine, is not the old _Wasdale_ safe as the dry
land? Is not the old vessel safer than the banks, which, as they say in
New York, bust higher as a kite every little while? Perhaps they give
me a piece of paper worth ten thousand dollars in Antwerp. When I dock
in New York, perhaps the bank has gebust while I am in mid-ocean, then
my paper is worth nothing; the money is a total loss. In the _Wasdale_,
in my room, in my safe, it is mine, and I have never lost a life, much
less ten thousand good dollars. You do not worry when I go to sea. Am
I not worth as much as our stocking full of gold? Answer me that, my
Flora."
He did not know through how many nights, when she heard the winter
gales from the North Sea cry over the roof, a quivering agony of fear
had gripped her wide-eyed lest the _Wasdale_ might have met disaster.
But experience had taught the wife that no argument could prevail in
which the safety and strength of the ship were questioned. Helpless to
make reply, she accepted defeat, for the parting hour was far gone and
the separation always taxed her fitful energy near to breaking.
Always as he raised her for the last kiss, and then halted reluctant
in the doorway, he was to her as her bright youth had first seen him,
a red viking, born to master steel and steam instead of the galleys of
his forebears. This night he smote his chest resoundingly before he
vanished into the hallway, and said in comforting farewell:
"It is here, in the old brown wallet, next my heart, where thou
dwellest, my Flora. Our money is soon on the old _Wasdale_. God keep
you!"
* * * * *
The biting wind of early March fairly whipped the captain up the side
of the liner lying, with shortened cable, mid-stream in the Mersey.
Clutching a stiff hat with one hand, baggy trousers fluttering,
the tails of his frieze ulster tripping him, it was an odd and
ungainly figure of a man that gained the deck and lumbered forward. A
quartermaster near the gangway grinned when the pot-hat bounced from
the bristling red head and carromed merrily off the deck-house, but
a glance from the tail of Captain Arendt's eye froze the mahogany
countenance of the offender into instant solemnity. It was a hint that
the master of the ship was coming into his own. A few moments later
he emerged from his quarters transformed. The smartly setting uniform
of blue and the flat cap jammed down hard were so evidently what he
belonged in, that the shore-going clothes had been like a clumsy
disguise. A small boy flattened himself against the rail and saluted
with immense dignity. The captain pinched him with a hairy paw and
chuckled:
"Hello, Moses, or vas it Josephs I calls you last woyage? Holy
Schmokes! If you keep my room no better dis woyage, I bites your head
off close to your neck. You hear? Scoo-o-t."
"Moses-Josephs" fled, and Captain Arendt turned on his heel to go back
to his room, remembering with a start that he had not placed the
precious wallet in his safe, but had transferred it to his blouse. He
clapped his hand to the breast pocket, hove an explosive sigh of relief
when he found it there, and was instantly bent on banishing all chance
of loss, when the chief engineer popped up from below and sought him
out in breathless haste with these tidings:
"Sorry to trouble you, sir, but a drunken dock-rat of a Liverpool
fireman refuses to go on watch, and he's reinforced the argument with a
slice-bar, and laid out two of my oilers and a stoker, and I need more
help to get him in irons. He's raising hell, and no mistake, sir."
The captain was halfway down the ladder before the chief had done
speaking, and despite the bigness of him, made his way to the fire-room
like a squirrel. The pallid, sodden mutineer, backed into a corner, was
swinging the iron bar in empty circles, fighting the dancing shadows
from an open furnace door, cursing and muttering. His bleary vision
had no time to focus on the big man with the red face and snapping
blue eye, who ducked under the weapon, smashed him in the face with one
hand, squeezed his neck in the other, and flung him against a bunker
door with such force that he lay as he fell, a dirty, huddled heap.
"Vash him off on deck, and put him in the hospital," said the captain.
"He's a goot man ven sober. He vas vit me in anudder ship once. I knows
him. Only his ribs is cracked, I t'ink."
When the five thousand ton _Wasdale_ began to crawl down the Mersey, a
hundred emigrants clustered along the after-rail, and shivered as they
chattered. Two score cabin passengers walked the saloon deck amidships,
and watched the great gray docks slip past. Twilight brooded over the
Irish Sea and the filmy Welsh coast when dinner called them to make
swift acquaintance, from which the ponderous good humor of the captain
was missing. He dined alone in his room, and hastily, because he
preferred to keep close to the bridge in these jostling waters. Yet the
night had become almost windless, and so clear that the twin lanterns
of the light-ship off Carnarvon Bay gleamed like jewels on a canopy
of black velvet. Captain Arendt leaned on the rail at the end of the
bridge, and sniffed the sparkling air as the evening wore late.
"It looks goot," he muttered; "but I schmell fog. Yes, I schmell fog,
and the rail is schticky, and the paint is schticky, and dere will be
fog before morning."
He rubbed a massive shoulder and turned to the chief officer:
"And my rheumatism tells me dere vill be wet fog. I am coldt, and vill
change my coat. I am also an old fool; but tell the engine-room to
stand by for fog, not before morning, but before midnight, by Chiminy!
I schmelled it strong dot time, and I never schmelled him wrong."
"Moses-Josephs" was caught in the act of brushing and laying away the
captain's shore togs with absorbed attention to detail.
"Choke dot vistlin' noise off, and run avay," was the order that sent
the boy scurrying toward the door. "Vait, I tells you," halted him as
if he had fetched up against a wall. "How is your mudder, boy? She
was pretty sick last voyage, you tells me. Better? Dot is fine. When
we come again to Liverpool, if you are a goot boy, you can lay off one
trip mit wages, and help her get well. Now scoo-o-t. I don't want you
around. You is a tamned nuisance."
"Moses-Josephs" ducked in thanks, and the captain locked the door
behind him, and sat at his desk with the "old brown wallet" before him.
"I vill count him once," he confided to the barometer, "for fear he may
have ewaporated while I forgot him."
His glance fell next on the picture of his wife, framed in silver
against the wall. As he slowly counted the rustling notes, he talked
aloud to her in German, as he had done many times in sheer loneliness
and longing:
"Four hundred pounds--the first four hundred pounds came hard, my
Flora, didn't it? Ten years we saved it while I was fourth and third
officer in the company. One thousand pounds--we had a grand celebration
when that was landed high and dry, eh? Fifteen hundred--it is a grand
investment this. Two thousand pounds--it is a fine fortune, but we
would be rich with nothing."
The square-hewn face softened and the flinty blue eye was misty as
the captain bundled the notes into the wallet and stooped to open the
little safe beneath the desk. The combination, always puzzling for him,
was unusually tricky, and as he wrestled with it the speaking tube
whistled near his ear.
"There's thick fog ahead, sir. We'll be into it before long," rumbled
the voice of the chief officer from the bridge.
The captain hastily thrust the wallet into the top drawer of his desk,
wriggled into a heavy reefer, and went on the bridge. A dense belt of
darkness hung low ahead on the water and curtained the stars. Presently
this barrier strangely streaking the clear sky was changed to dirty,
gray clouds, then into blinking mist. Thus the fog shut down like wool.
The lamenting whistle of the _Wasdale_ at once began to protest against
this game of hide-and-seek. The bridge indicator signaled "half speed,"
and the vessel stole ahead as if in nervous dread, like a blind horse
in a crowded thoroughfare.
Before long she began to feel her way with frequent pauses, while
those on watch, from bridge to crow's nest, listened, listened. Their
eyes were useless; their ears dreaded lest they hear too loud reply
to the siren that shouted over and over again to this world of gray
nothingness that the _Wasdale_ was abroad. The ship crept ahead, slowed
to listen, crept ahead again, but the responses to her outcries so soon
became softened or silent that they held no menace.
The hour was near midnight. In their staterooms, the cabin passengers
awoke to cast sleepy abuse at the fog-horn, and turn over again to
slumber, warm and dry, believing themselves as secure as in their own
homes. On the bridge an uncouth, dripping specter in oil-skins suddenly
threw back his head and spun round to face the starboard quarter as if
he had felt the sting of a bullet.
A moment's waiting, the fog-horn of the _Wasdale_ moaned again, and
from out in the baffling pallor came the ghost of a reply, nearer than
when last heard, louder than when its previous warning had startled the
captain.
The other steamer, groping to nose a clear path through the hazards of
these waters, steadily became more clamorous.
The _Wasdale_ called with loud, imploring blasts as if asking the
stranger to speak more distinctly. The chief officer said as he glanced
at the helm indicator:
"She's barely got steerage way now, sir."
"Let her go as she is for a liddle bit," replied the captain. "Dot
feller is going up channel, I t'ink. But vat he do heading our way in
such a devil of a hurry?" For a deadened hoot told that the unknown
was drawing close aboard. The straining eyes on the _Wasdale's_ bridge
could see not more than two ship-lengths into the midnight fog.
"It is like dot game they play in the steerage," was the captain's
whispered comment. "Two fellers is blindfold, and the udder sundowners
make 'em chase one anudder round the deck."
The warnings from beyond had assumed definite direction, as if the
stranger were guided by a fell instinct beyond the ken of her own
officers. The _Wasdale's_ siren ripped the night with quavering
exhortation to hold hard and beware.
Suddenly the captain gripped the bridge rail and lifted himself on his
toes with a smothered "Gott!" that was wrenched from the depths of
his broad chest. Two lights blinked, red and green, almost abeam, and
between them a towering mass dead black against the shrouding night,
while amazed voices were heard screaming a flurry of orders from the
fog, even before the roar of both whistles sounded a belated duet.
Captain Arendt was at his indicator with a leap and was like to pull
the handle from its sockets as he signaled to reverse his engines,
while his chief officer was shouting down the tube the same momentous
summons. The third officer was softly treading a little jig-step, in
a frenzy of impatience to have the thing done without more suspense.
The _Wasdale_ groaned and trembled to the furious reaction of her
screw, lost headway, hung helpless, and showed a fair broadside to the
assault of the other ship, which, wholly at fault, had begun to swing
in fatal blundering, as if trying to pass under the _Wasdale's_ stern.
The blow came, therefore, a little abaft the bridge. Succeeding a
prodigious crash and rending of plates came a moment of impressive
stillness, as the _Wasdale_ tried to right herself from the shock, and
then a foolish clatter of falling china and glass.
"He's waltzed clean through our pantry," said the third officer to
himself.
Captain Arendt had only to rise from the planks where he had been
flung, to command a bird's-eye view of the disaster. He looked down on
the crumpled bows of the other ship, driven twenty feet into his own
saloon-deck, and making a trumpet of his hands, shouted across to the
other bridge, on which he could see figures moving like agitated black
smudges:
"You is cut us half in two. Keep going ahead. Don't back out, vatever
you do. Keep the hole plugged until I gets my peoples off."
The other ship seemed to hang as if wedged in the gap she had made,
but before the officers of the _Wasdale_ could reach the saloon deck
the hideous, rending noise was renewed. The black bows of the stranger
wrenched themselves loose, slid clear, and with a sobbing roar the
sea rushed in as water falls over a dam. The withdrawn mass ground
alongside, tearing woodwork into kindling, and then began to melt
softly into the fog. Captain Arendt clambered back to his bridge,
shouting as he ran:
"Ship ahoy, you! You have sunk us. Stand by to safe life. Get out mit
your boats. Blow your vistle. You pig swine of a ----!"
Without reply the slayer faded like a phantom and was gone. From far
down in the _Wasdale's_ hold came a sound which made her captain thrill
to feel that discipline had stood its first grim test. Collision doors
in bulk-heads were grinding shut with the mutter of far-off thunder.
The electric lights on deck and in the saloons had been snuffed out.
The ship was in darkness almost everywhere. From staterooms came
screams of women and the wails of little children. The few stewards
on watch were first to join the seamen on deck and those who had been
flung from their bunks forward by the shock of collision. Into the ruck
began to pour firemen and coal-passers from below, already flooded out
of their compartments. It was perhaps three minutes before a welter of
men began to flow in eddies toward the boats.
Meantime a wonderful thing was being done. The compelling personality
of one man rose dominant as if he had been given the strength of ten.
Panic was on tiptoe, ready to make an inferno of these decks, when it
was routed because a hundred and forty men in the _Wasdale_ had learned
by the hard drill of experience that what this man said must be done
on the instant. Captain Arendt called for light, and four sailors
came running with the globe lamps snatched from the steerage and the
wheelhouse. He swung one of these over the hole in the ship's side, and
there was no need to wait for the reports of those sent below to make
examination. Her bulk-heads could not save her, and she was settling
fast.
"The old _Wasdale_ vas not builded for this," he said to the chief
officer. "She will sink in one half hour--no longer. We must safe life.
Get the men to their stations at the boats, joost like boat-drill we
have every woyage. If they don't go, shoot 'em. But they vill go.
I knows. Send an officer in charge of some goot men to handle the
steerage."
The captain passed his own cabin door three times in the next handful
of seconds. It was only a step, only an instant snatched from this
priceless flight of time, to save the wallet in the top drawer of the
desk. Each time he passed the door the desire to enter pulled him as if
strong hands clutched his shoulders, but he went on.
Once he hesitated, and just then a grimy figure rushed past him
headlong, and flung itself at the falls of the nearest boat, tearing
at the canvas cover with teeth and nails, moaning as if hurt. At his
heels came three others from below decks, knocking down all who blocked
their escape. The captain tore their leader from the boat, and, like a
red bear, seized him around the waist and tossed him overboard like a
bundle of rags. Those near heard the choking yell of a drowning man.
The captain turned, and for the only time shouted at the top of his
great voice:
"Men, the ship is in a sinking condition. The only coward on board vas
gone. To your stations. We must all safe life."
A group of stokers huddled near the rail dropped the bundles of
clothing they had brought on deck, and one of them, whose head was
bound in rags, cried back:
"We're wid ye. You near kilt me to-day, you big Dutch ---- ----, but by
---- ----, you're a man. All right, sorr; we'll go after thim dummies
in th' steerage."
It is consistent with few narratives of disaster at sea, but there was
no more shouting among the crew of the _Wasdale_. They bent fiercely
to their business, with whispers and muttered directions. It was not
the nearness of death that stifled their outcries so much as the
imminent neighborhood of a man with a stout heart and a cool head, who
had hammered iron-fisted obedience into his crews through a stormy
lifetime at sea.
The _Wasdale_ had cleared with three hundred men, women, and children
on board. There were boats to hold twice that number. It was only a
question of time in which to stow these precious cargoes, a race with
the sea which each moment sucked the _Wasdale_ lower, as her decks
sloped with a sickening list to starboard. A minute bungled meant many
lives lost.
The captain seemed rather to drift than rush from one part of the decks
to another. Going down the saloon stairway, he found a line of stewards
passing passengers up as if they were so much baggage. The water was in
the staterooms and washing along the alleys. Weeping women, clad only
in their night-clothes, were shoved into cork jackets, bundled above,
handed to the waiting seamen, and laid shivering in the boats without
touching foot to deck. After ransacking the rooms to search out all the
cabin people, the captain returned on deck to find confusion and some
outcry where he had left an orderly flight to the boats. A white-faced
passenger was on his knees, arms raised on high, his mouth contorted in
trembling and husky appeal:
"We are doomed, and prayer alone can save. The ship is going down, the
ship is going down, and we must be lost forever unless we gather in
prayer. Come round me, and let us pray together. Oh, make a last appeal
to your Maker to forgive us, before we go to meet Him with sin-stained
souls. Man can do nothing, God can do all. Oh, save us, save our lives,
we beseech Thee!"
A dozen half-naked passengers wavered, broke away from control, and
fell around him, sobbing or trying to join in broken prayer. The voice
of the suppliant rose to a shriek, and some of the crew balked, as if
panic were stealing among them. Captain Arendt crashed through the
pitiful circle and thundered:
"Choke dot idiot performance. Let the vimmen do the prayin'. Tumble
into dot boat, you. You vill make the devil to pay here, I tells you.
Be still!"
Fear had made the wretch deaf to reason. He subsided only to stagger
to another corner of the deck, where his prayers again drew after him
many who were convinced that death was inevitable.
"Jam him into the boat, and set on him," was the captain's order.
"Break him in two pieces mit an oar if he makes one more yell."
Twenty minutes after the collision, the saloon deck of the _Wasdale_
was only a few feet from the sea. The cheering creak of the falls as
they ripped through the sheaves was sounding from one end of the deck
to the other, as the boats descended while the captain counted them
and held his breath, lest some unlooked-for lurch of the helpless ship
should crush them against her sides like so many egg-shells. Were all
hands out? He did not know, but it was time to leave. Some one jogged
his elbow, and he turned to see little "Moses-Josephs," who said with
trembling lip:
"I'm all ready to go when you are, sir. Anything more I can do? I took
care of the stewardess and her cat, sir."
"Joost run to my room quick, and get the pocket-book in the top-- No,
stay here mit me. Yump into Number T'ree boat this minute, you liddle
nuisance."
"I cannot let him go," groaned the captain, "and risk the child be
drownded. Vat his sick mudder say to me if he don't come back?"
Surely there was time for the captain to rush up to his room, only
half the length of the deck, and rescue the savings of his long life
at sea. The wistful, troubled face of the wife as he had last seen
her, the hope of home and health, fairly drove him to run forward with
head down. He looked overside as he ran, and the gray sea was lipping
so close that he could have touched it from the deck below. The planks
under his feet rolled once with a weary, sluggish heave. He had once
been in a sailing vessel which foundered in such a smooth sea as this,
and he recalled that just before she plunged under there had been a
series of these long labored rolls as if the ship were gasping for
breath before the sea should wholly smother her.
He had almost gained the ladder to the bridge when he saw a moving
blotch of white almost hidden behind the bow of a disabled boat.
Swerving, he found a woman, a little girl, and a man, plainly their
husband and father. The man was leaning over the rail, trying to call
to the nearest boat, which was warily pushing away from the sinking
ship. Spasms of fear so clutched his throat that his cries were only
whispers, as one shrieks without voice amid nightmare perils. The woman
clung to his coat, the little girl to her mother's garment. Evidently
they had been overlooked because of the hiding place to which the man
had blindly led them. As the captain reached the rail, the man tore
himself loose from his wife and child with a great cry, and plunged
headlong overside, not into the sea, but into the boat, which, at great
risk, had been pulled close to save the group. With a crash, he smote
the metal gunwale and fell inboard.
"Did you caught that dirty loafer?" shouted the captain.
The voice of the fourth officer in charge of the boat bellowed:
"Yes, sir; but I think he's dead as a mackerel. He landed square on his
head; and one of the men who's picking him up says his neck is broken.
Shall we stand by?"
"Holy Schmokes, yes. Sving that lantern so you can see to caught the
voman first."
It was not an easy task. Another uneasy roll of the deck told him that
the _Wasdale_ was in the death throes. The water lapped through the
scuppers as she lurched back and down to port. There were only a few
steps to the bridge, the room, and the old brown wallet. He worked with
furious haste. The mother had sunk to the deck, fainting and inert. She
had seen her husband desert her on a sinking ship; she had heard of his
death below. Her arms had locked around the waist of the child, hardly
more than a baby, whose wisp of a night-dress was tattered about its
neck. The captain tugged at the mother's hands to free the child, for
he dare not toss them over thus embraced.
Each second imperiled the lives of the three, and also the fate of the
ten thousand dollars that "was safer in the old _Wasdale_ than in the
bank ashore." At length the captain wrapped the child in his reefer,
and tossed her into the waiting boat with a warning shout. The mother
was a wrenching weight to swing clear, but when she had followed, a
cheer from the boat told him that she had been safely caught.
He wiped the sweat and mist from his purpling face, and muttered:
"I must safe life; I must safe life, my Flora, as long as she floats."
The _Wasdale_ still floated, as if the old ship were prolonging the
struggle in order that the master who loved her might yet save the
fortune that meant so much to him. He picked up a life-preserver thrown
aside on deck, slipped into it, and looked around him, now desperately
bent on reaching the bridge, even though the ship should sink beneath
him. Surely none else than he was left on board.
A blob of light flickered far aft on deck--a globe lamp such as the
sailors had been working with. He saw it, and caught hold of an
awning stanchion to steady himself. It must be only a sailor dutifully
standing by, before getting away in the last boat. Surely he could
take care of himself. Was it not enough that he, the captain, should
have done all that could be expected of mortal man, more than almost
any other commander had ever done, to save his passengers and crew,
hundreds of them, from a ship run down and sunk in half an hour? Was he
not justified, in sight of God and man, in saving his fortune, not for
himself, but for the helpless wife at home? It was all they had, on it
was builded all they hoped for. He swayed in his tracks, as the warring
motives pulled him this way and that.
"Oh, my wife," he gasped. "I must be the last man to leave the ship, or
I must go down mit her. I cannot, no, by Gott, I cannot go to my room."
He fled aft as if the devil had tried to snare his soul. The sea caught
at his heels as he ran, even on deck. Aft of the steerage deck-house,
the lamp he had glimpsed was dancing in crazy circles, where two
firemen were struggling with a heap of Hungarian emigrants, who
violently refused to help themselves. One of the would-be rescuers,
whose head was bound in rags, spoke as the captain drew near:
"Don't hit me agin, sorr. Me ribs is stove in, an' I can't be handlin'
these loony Dagoes in proper style. We had 'em all in the boat, sorr,
but they swar-r-med back unbeknownst after their filthy bundles of
duffle."
The emigrants were, indeed, difficult to pry loose from their huge
packages of clothing, and as the disabled fireman was of little use in
the pitched battle raging, his comrade was unable to wrest himself free
of the frenzied men whom he was trying to save. The great strength and
weight of the captain piled into the tangled mass like a battering ram,
and one by one the reinforced firemen pitched the foreigners overboard
to be fished out by the boat that lingered perilously under the counter.
"Yump yourselves!" yelled the captain; and as they dove, the stern of
the _Wasdale_ reared and seemed to be climbing skyward. Her commander
cast one hungry glance toward the bridge, and saw her bows vanish in a
smother of foam. As he jumped, he felt a shudder, as if every plate was
drawing from its rivets. When his head rose on the crest of a roller, a
boat-hook was twisted into his shirt, and he was yanked inboard by half
a dozen hands, while the seamen bent to the sweeps for life or death as
they strove to pull beyond reach of the coming suction.
The boat was not more than a hundred yards astern when the _Wasdale_
pitched again, rolled once, and vanished with a thunderous farewell as
her decks blew up in clouds of hissing steam.
As if the killing fog had waited for this sacrifice, it began to lift
until the scattered lights in the eight boats began to flock together
and the flotilla lay waiting for daybreak. The captain knew not whether
any souls had been left on board, and miserably impatient he longed for
light to count them.
"It is a bad night's vork," he said to the bos'n at the tiller. "I haf
lost my ship, and I may never get anudder. I haf lost all my money,
and I vill not get him again, for I am too old. But I hope I haf safed
all my peoples, and if dot is so, I tank Gott."
Before day came their rockets were answered, and a big steamer loafed
sluggishly toward the clustered life-boats. When she hove to, it was
apparent that she had been in collision. Her bows were jumbled back
to her fore bulkhead, and it seemed a miracle that she had been kept
afloat.
"It is the svine vat runned into us," said the captain, "and den runned
avay. I vish a few vords mit her skipper."
When the crew of the _Wasdale_, scrambling up the Jacob's ladders,
had hoisted the bruised and benumbed passengers aboard, the crippled
vessel limped on her course toward Liverpool. She was an Italian tramp,
inbound from South American ports, and her captain had a taste of
regions even more torrid when interviewed on his bridge by the late
commander of the _Wasdale_, who returned aft to find his people vainly
trying to find shelter from the cold.
"Why aren't dose poor miserable vimmen in the cabins?" he asked.
"The cabins are all locked, sir," replied one of the men, "and the Dago
cook won't let us in the galley to get something to eat."
"Break open the cabin doors, and pitch the Eyetalian swab out on his
dirty head, and cook whatefer you find in this schow," was the order,
and these things were done on the instant. Coffee and hash were made by
the _Wasdale's_ cooks, and passed by the _Wasdale's_ stewards, and the
invaded cabins ransacked for whatever blankets and clothing might serve
to warm the pitiable castaways.
A little later the crew of the _Wasdale_ was mustered for roll call.
Each department rallied to its chief. As down the lines of shivering
men the "Here, sir," ran without a gap, the captain found himself
choking back the tears, for at the same time the purser made tally of
the cabin and steerage passengers, and found all present, even to the
silent figure under a tarpaulin of the man who had slain himself.
The crew cheered, and the chief engineer stepped forward and began:
"Beg pardon, captain, but when we remember the _Elbe_ and the
_Bourgogne_, we have a right to think----"
The captain silenced him with a gesture and left them. Now, first he
could think of his own crushing disaster, which, in his thoughts,
eclipsed the great deliverance he had wrought by grace of his own
courage and loyalty. He did not see that he had done anything to merit
praise, rather was his plight almost worse than if he had gone down
with the _Wasdale_. Brooding and unnerved, he did not rouse himself
until the battered tramp was in the Mersey, and then he sent a tug
ashore with tidings for his company, bidding them meet and succor his
helpless people.
The melancholy procession had filed ashore before he gripped his
resolution, and, coatless and ragged, sought his superintendent to make
report of what had happened. This interview was brief, for the formal
investigation must wait the captain's written word. The superintendent
was also a man among men, and he was silent for a little time, looking
at the bowed figure of the captain, who sat with his tousled red head
in his hands, thinking now of the telegram he must send to Antwerp. A
few broken words had told the superintendent of the wife and the old
brown wallet.
Finally the captain wrote this message:
_I have lost my ship and all our money, but saved every soul on
board._
He handed this to the superintendent, whispered, "Please send it to
her," and started to go out of the office, he scarcely knew whither.
The superintendent halted him, grasping the bruised right hand that
hung all nerveless.
"You have much to live for, Captain Arendt, and more to be proud of.
Don't think for one moment that the company will forget a man who can
do such a night's work as you have put to your credit. You take my
unofficial word for it, this is a cloud with a silver lining."
Shortly before Captain Arendt was ready to take train that night for
the Harwich boat to Antwerp, a telegram was handed him. He read it
with a smile such as made his haggard face seem beautiful:
_What care I, if thou hast saved thine honor and thyself? Come to
me._
_Flora._