BY H. W. LUCY.
THROUGH FIRE AND WATER.
Six hours before the time Fenella beheld with fevered fancy the light
cast by the burning ship over the illimitable waters, the _Danic_,
with steam shut down, was slowly drifting outside Cork Harbor. She was
waiting for the tender to come alongside to take off the mails and bear
away the passengers who, having had enough of the open sea, preferred
to take the short cut by train across Ireland and so home by Holyhead.
There had not chanced to be any special cause for quitting snug
quarters on board the steamer. The _Danic_ had made a splendid
voyage. Not once had the “fiddles” appeared on the dining-table to
the accompaniment of smashing crockery in the steward’s pantry. Day
after day the passengers had been able to sit out on their deck chairs
enjoying the sunshine, the fresh breeze and the sparkling sea, through
which for hours together the tireless dolphins swam, emulous of the
vessel’s voyant speed. Two days out they had passed close by a whale,
who cheerily spouted farewell as they speeded by.
Ronny looked on with grave eyes. He had often heard of a whale, but
never before seen one.
“Will Jonah come out by and by?” he asked Jacynth, his constant
companion, who held him standing on the rail.
“No, I think not,” Jacynth answered gravely. “Jonah, you remember,
did not find the quarters so comfortable that he was likely ever to
seek them again of his own free will. Residence in a whale, however
temporary, is an experience that satisfies an ordinary man for a
lifetime. The whale is only spouting, getting rid of superfluous water
taken in from the great depths.”
“Well,” said Ronny, his quick sympathies moved in another direction,
“he must get very thirsty if he does that often.”
Ronny had thriven wondrously on the broad Atlantic, which had in no
sense proved a disappointment to him. He was a prime favorite with all
on board, the pet of the sailors, more particularly of the bos’n, whose
whistle he was sometimes privileged to sound. Next to Jacynth he was
fonder of the bos’n than anyone else, even than of his father, whose
mood was less attuned to that of the light-hearted, healthy lad whom
the stewards did their best to endow with dyspepsia by surreptitiously
feeding him at unlawful hours with spoil from the dessert. He would
sit by the hour on a coil of ropes, his big eyes fixed intently on the
brown-visaged bos’n, who told him stirring tales (probably not all
true) of seafaring life.
At first he had full run of the ship, and availed himself of the
privilege.
“Father,” he said, running breathlessly up to Lord Francis one morning
when they were in mid-Atlantic, “what do you think? I’ve seen Mrs.
Clutterbuck.”
The little fellow, who in ordinary circumstances seemed to know no
fear, trembled in every limb, and as far as was possible with sun and
wind tanned face was pitifully pale.
“Where?” asked Lord Francis with a sign of equal perturbation.
“Forrard,” said Ronny, who had not in vain sat with the bos’n, and
never now spoke of going downstairs when he should say going below. “I
was standing by the rail at the end of the hurricane deck looking at
the passengers playing cards on the steerage deck, when she came along.
She beckoned to me to go down to her, but I turned and bolted.”
“Was she by herself?”
“No, there were a lot of people around. She wasn’t speaking to anyone
nor anyone to her.”
“Are you sure it was her?”
“Quite; she smiled just as she did when she came down in the country to
take me away to join mother. I liked her smile then, but I don’t now.”
“Ronny,” said his father, taking his hand and leading him aft, “I want
you to promise me something; will you?”
“Yes, father,” said the boy promptly, looking straight at him with eyes
that never lied.
“Then you must never leave this deck for the lower one, whether in the
steerage or amidships. It’s quite big enough for a little fellow like
you. You promise me?”
“Yes, father,” said Ronny, and he kept his word to something more
than the letter, limiting his excursions forward to the capstan some
distance from the steerage end. Perhaps he would not have gone so far,
but it was here his friend the bos’n’, when his turn came, kept his
watch, and sitting there Ronny was careful to turn his back upon the
bow, so that by no chance might he again see that evil face with the
smile he, though all unused to the world, recognized as false.
On this bright evening off Queenstown Ronny was in a condition of
special glee. Jacynth had put in the sweepstakes on the day’s run a
sovereign in the name of Ronny, and Ronny had won the stake.
“Good gracious!” cried Jacynth, holding him at arm’s length, “what on
earth is a little mite like you going to do with £50?”
“I know,” said Ronny, his eyes beaming with delight. “I remember when
we were staying at Harrogate having a ride in a donkey chaise. It was
very nice, but mother told me that the donkeys here are nothing like
what grow in the streets of Cairo. When she was there she had two white
donkeys as tall as a horse, with beautiful ears as long as my arm, and
great brown eyes that look at you as if they wondered whether you could
be so cruel as to want them to trot through dusty streets on a hot day.
Mother often said she would like to have a pair of donkeys like she had
in Cairo. ‘Pharaoh’ and ‘Rameses’ were their names, together with a
little carriage to hold her and me. I’ll buy her the whole turnout with
my £50, and we’ll go driving about all by ourselves through Jersey,
Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark.”
“Well, that’s pretty selfish of you,” said Jacynth, who keenly realized
the joys of the situation as pictured by the boy, only he would liked
to have rearranged the company behind “Rameses and Pharaoh.” They were
all and always thinking of a woman waiting and watching in Guernsey.
Lord Francis, with wistful eyes, thought of love, Jacynth with dumb,
gnawing pain, Ronny with eager desire to see her smile, hear her voice,
and feel her arms sheltering him, Lord Castleton having some doubt as
to whether she was worthy of it all, and Mme. de Vigny----
Well, Mme. de Vigny did not talk of the direction her thoughts took.
It was so near the dinner hour that it had been decided to postpone
dinner till the mails and passengers bound for Queenstown had left. The
tender was close in sight, rolling and pitching in a manner that seemed
inscrutable to the throng leaning over the taffrail. The magnificent
_Danic_ stood immovable as a stone pier on the rolling tide. The tender
was speedily freighted with innumerable bags containing the mails,
some thirty passengers followed amid hearty farewells from newly-made
friends left behind, and many appointments were registered to meet
again in London or Paris. With the last group there stepped toward the
gangway a tall figure, a woman closely veiled, carrying a small bag
in her hand. Just as she was stepping on the gangway the tender gave
a lurch that dislodged the railed plank. Two passengers already on it
narrowly escaped the disaster. They had just managed to skip on to
the paddle-box of the tender, when, amid loud cries of “Stand back,”
addressed to the group pressing forward on to the _Danic_, half a dozen
ready hands hauled the gangway out of its aslant position, and made
things smooth again. Once more the tall veiled figure pressed forward,
when one of the steerage passengers roughly gripped her by the shoulder
and thrust her back. “Not this journey, madame,” he said, seizing her
wrist with a grip of iron. “Your passage is booked all the way to
Liverpool, and we may as well make the most of the journey.” The woman
turned on her captor with the fury of a trapped lioness. For a moment
it seemed as if she would grapple with him, and since she was nearly
his height it would have been a desperate conflict, probably ending
with a death grip under water.
For a moment the idea flashed over the mind of Mme. de Vigny. She felt
her game was up; wearied with the squalor of her unused condition, she
did not care how soon she handed in the checks.
But she remembered that she had still one card to play, over which she
had brooded in the dead, unhappy night as she lay wide awake in her
narrow berth.
“Perhaps you’d better have let me go,” she said to the man, whose
plain clothes disguised his vocation of police sergeant. Then she
sauntered slowly back, conscious that among the crowd on the hurricane
deck curiously watching this episode was the man she really began to
love with desperate affection now that her charms no longer lured him,
and he was restlessly counting every mile that separated him from the
white-curtained, rose-garlanded cottage in Guernsey where his wife
awaited his coming.
“Jacynth, I wish I was certain to live for ten years or even for
three,” said Lord Francis Onslow, in the low, nerveless voice that had
recently become habitual to him. The two friends were walking up and
down the deck smoking their last cigar. Four bells had sounded and they
had the deck pretty much to themselves, save for the ghostly figures
of the watch that moved with noiseless footsteps to and fro. When they
came on deck after dinner the moon was shining, and far away on the
starboard bow they could clearly discern the coast of Ireland, lying
like a dark shadow on the moonlit water. Even as they walked and talked
the scene changed. It had not at any time of the day been perfectly
calm, as the passengers on the tender found as they made their way into
Queenstown Harbor. Now it was blowing pretty fresh from the southwest,
bringing up angry-looking clouds that from time to time hid the moon,
promising presently finally to obscure its light. They were drawing up
to Carnsore Point, and were soon in the race of the channel. By this
time they had found their sea legs, and though the wind played havoc
with their cigars, as they paced about, and they gave up the attempt to
keep pace in walking, they held on, Jacynth’s spirits rising with the
boisterous breeze.
“Ten years, old man? Why, you’re only thirty at most, turned middle
milestone--good for another thirty at least--and why should you not see
threescore years and ten?”
“Because,” said Lord Francis, “I’m pretty well played out at thirty.
I’ve warmed both hands at the fire of life, and burnt them too. You
remember when we were in Paris, last year, going to see Emile Angier,
in the play ‘Jean de Thomeray’? Often of late one scene comes back to
me. The silent Quai Malaquais which, on the eve of the beleaguering of
Paris, the daylight even has deserted. Upon it _Jean_ enters, skeptic
and libertine, who jeers at his friend, who has taken the trouble to
get wounded in the struggle with the Germans closing round the capital.
Suddenly a military band approaches, playing a march _Thomeray_ knew
when a child in far-off Brittany. At sight of the Breton Mobiles
marching along at quick step to meet the enemy of the country,
_Thomeray’s_ heart swells and bursts the bonds in which his scoffing
nature had permitted itself to be bound. You remember how he steps
forward and claims a place in the Breton ranks. ‘_Qui êtes vous?_’
they ask, looking distrustfully at his fine gentleman’s clothes. ‘I
am,’ he said, ‘a man who has lived ill and would die well.’ That am I,
Jacynth, but it would not be meet that I should die just yet. I’ve been
a fool and worse. But if I had only three years, two years, one year to
pay some of my long debt to Fenella, I wouldn’t care about what might
follow. It’s been all my fault from first to last. I want time to tell
her that, and to make some slight amends.”
“Nonsense, Onslow, you are hipped; perhaps seasick. Shall we turn in?”
“You might, as we shall be in the Mersey early in the morning and
there’s packing up to be done. But I’ll take another turn. Good-night.”
“Well, if you send me to bed, good-night. I daresay another ten minutes
in the fresh air will take the blues out of you.”
For another hour Lord Francis tramped up and down, unconscious of
the unlit cigar in his mouth, thinking of the time when he first met
Fenella, of the years of idyllic happiness that followed their wedding
day, of Ronny’s appearance on the scene, of the little rift in the lute
that, unwatched, broadened slowly, and made all the music of their
young lives mute.
Softly he sang to himself:
Farewell, farewell,
A river flows between.
“Going to be a nasty night,” said a tarpaulined figure, looming out of
the murk that enveloped the fore-part of the deck, over which the spray
drifted as the _Danic_ plunged her head into the angry sea, and lifting
it again shook it as a retriever dashes the water off its front.
“So it seems, bos’n,” said Lord Francis. “But we’re not far off port
now. Good-night.”
“Good-night, my lord. Better not leave things loose about in your
stateroom to-night.”
* * * * *
Jacynth slept the sleep of a man with a quiet conscience and a good
digestion, who had passed the greater part of the day on deck of a
ship over which swept strong air blown across the broad Atlantic. He
rarely dreamt, but on this particular night, some two hours after he
had bidden Lord Francis good-night, and turned into the stateroom he
had all to himself, he began tossing about with a great weight on his
mind. If he had a weakness in the matter of personal dress it was
centered upon his stockings of rich red wool and ribbed as is the salt
sea sand. He had a shapely leg, and missed no opportunity when out
of town of displaying it with the advantage of knickerbocker dress.
He was dreaming now that a great calamity had befallen his treasured
store of stockings. A spark from the funnel of the steamer, which, as
he went below, he had seen streaming fire into the dark night, had, in
the unaccountable way peculiar to dreams, fallen upon his bundle of
stockings snugly ensconced in his box in the stateroom, and they were
hopelessly smoldering; in vain he struggled to rise, seize a jug of
water, and souse them. Something held him down by the chest, and he
could not move. His terror seemed to have communicated itself to the
passengers and crew. Hurried feet trampled on deck overhead. Voices
sounded in eager talk, and the bos’n’s whistle shrilly rose above the
row of the waves that thunderously beat aft the shattered port-light.
Possibly help would come in time and some of the stockings would be
saved. A rattle at the door. Jacynth, almost awake, cried “Come in,” an
invitation quite superfluous, for the door was burst open.
“Look alive, sir!” shouted the bos’n, entering hurriedly. “Ship’s
afire, and the boats are being got ready!”
“And Ronny?” said Jacynth, wide awake now the nightmare of the burning
stockings uplifted.
“The young un’s all right, I seed to him first, and his father’s got
him in tow. Better slew on as many things as you can. It’ll be bad in
the boats till morning breaks.”
Jacynth was not long in dressing, foregoing in his haste the luxury of
his worsted stockings, which he had full time to regret. When he went
on deck a strange sight met his eye. The passengers, fully two hundred
in number, were massed together aft of the bridge, most of the women
bareheaded and all showing signs of hasty dressing. From one of the
hatches near the wheel a dense volume of smoke poured forth, now and
then with increasing frequency; lit up by tongues of flame on either
side of the hatch, a line of blue-jackets plied hose and bucket in
ineffectual struggle with the growing furnace. A singular quietness
prevailed. There was a murmur of conversation among the closely-packed
crowd of passengers. A sharp word of command from the first officer in
charge of the fire brigade rose from time to time above the howling
wind and the war of the turbulent waves that dashed against the
bulwarks as if possessed with passionate desire to get at the flames.
Ronny, his father holding one hand and Lord Castleton the other, stood
on the outer fringe of the crowd aft, as near as he could get to the
fire, which he was evidently enjoying as the best thing he had seen
since the whale disappeared. The captain and second officer stood on
the bridge, and through the wheel-house window could be seen four
grim faces of the blue-jacketed giants whose curiously cheery voices
answered the captain’s signals with the cry “Starboard,” “Steady it is,
sir.” The captain, leaning over the rail of the bridge and addressing
the crowd of trembling but quiet passengers, said: “Friends below
there, I hope you’re all comfortably wrapped up. This is a bad job,
but there’s no danger. If it had come an hour later we should have
made for Holyhead and put in all right. But with this wind and the
start the fire has got I don’t think we could carry on so far. The land
is close by. If there were daylight we could see it. The ship is now
making for the spit of land at the back of Pwlhelly. There is a smooth
mile of beach there, which, if I can make it, will bring the ship up
comfortably, and you can walk ashore in your slippers.”
Jacynth led a cheer for the gallant captain, which was taken up by
the passengers, and seemed to do them an immense amount of good.
After this the wonderful quietness once more fell over the doomed ship
that sped onward swiftly through the sea that was now as rough as the
bos’n’s forecast had pictured. On the crowded deck all was as orderly
as if, according to their daily habit, the passengers had mustered to
take a look round before going down to dinner. The wind, now blowing
what even a sailor would have admitted to be half a gale, whistled
shrilly through the creaking spars. The course taken by the ship
brought it more abaft, and sometimes a gust blew the smoke from the
burning hatch under and across the bridge, choking the passengers and
hiding the captain and second mate from view. But for the most part it
blew clear away over the starboard side, leaving the vessel amidships
and forward clear enough.
“Land ahead,” sung out the lookout man; the sing-song voice of the man
throwing the lead showed how nearly they were approaching the coast,
the outline of which was recognized in the deeper shadow on the horizon.
“Half-speed” the captain signaled to the engine room. But the
half-speed of an Atlantic liner soon bridges space, and nearer and
nearer came the dark line of the coast. Straining eyes looking out from
beneath the bridge, could make out the outline of a mountain, at the
foot of which nestled the smooth beach that was to give them safety
and rest. Nearer and nearer it came, and higher and higher rose hope.
Nothing between it and them but the sea, rough enough, but nothing
to the majestic liner, even with its hatches full of fire. The water
steadily shallowed, as the monotonous cry of the leadsman marked minute
by minute the lessening fathoms.
Suddenly, even as the leadsman sang out his last record, a crash
resounded through every fiber of the ship. The _Danic_ came as suddenly
to a halt as if she had run up against Penmaenmawr. The crowd amidships
were knocked down pell-mell over each other, as if a giant hand had
swept across them at the level of the chin. The captain, leaning
against the rail of the bridge on the starboard side, was pitched
headlong into the sea.
That proved the worst thing of all. The second officer, left in command
on the bridge at this critical moment, signaled to the engine room, “Go
astern full speed.” That seemed an order natural enough, though the
veteran Captain Irving would not have been led into so fatal a mistake.
The _Danic_ had run on to a jagged rock which rose like a spear-head
out of the sea, and had literally embedded itself in the hull of the
steamer. Had the ship been kept head on, it might have hung suspended,
the jagged rock serving to stanch the wound it had made, at least long
enough for the boats to be launched and everyone to quit the ship.
The mighty screw, reversing its action in obedience to the word of
command, slowly but irresistibly drew the ship back. The terrified
passengers could hear the iron plates ripped open, and barely was the
vessel free from the rock than she began to go down by the head.
There was a rush for boats. They were ready and in perfect order. But
with the sea rushing in in tons through the great gap in the hull,
there was neither time nor opportunity for the marshaling of the now
terrified passengers. It was not generally known that the captain had
gone overboard, and the officers, expecting him to issue instructions,
hesitated. Somehow boats filled, and four were safely launched. The two
last had not far to fall from the height of the davits, the bulwarks
being now almost level with the water. Just as their keels touched the
sea, the great steamer went down by the head, sucking them under.
As soon as the collision came, Jacynth had darted forward to the
spot where he had seen Ronny standing, fearing no evil, for his hand
was in his father’s. When he came up to them, Lord Castleton had
disappeared--swept away, they surmised, in the rush for the boats.
Jacynth, as he made his way aft, caught sight of Mme. de Vigny and her
escort clambering into one of the boats.
“Come along, Onslow, I’ll carry Ronny,” said Jacynth.
“Yes, but let the women go first.”
“So we will; but not all the men,” said Jacynth, grimly eying the crowd
fighting round the nearest boat.
“My lord and you, sir,” said the bos’n, coming by, “take my advice.
Don’t be in a hurry about the boats. She’s settling down. In five
minutes there won’t be a bulwark above water-line, but the masts and
spars will be aloft safe and dry till morning. Fetch young un’ along,
and I’ll give you a hand up the mainmast. There’s nothing more I can
do below. Look alive, and hold on tight. You’ll feel a bump in another
moment.”
With a final lurch forward the ship went down, and the waves at last
had their will on the seething mass in the hatchway. From secure if not
comfortable quarters in the maintop Lord Francis, Jacynth, and Ronny
saw the two boatloads swamped, heard the seething roar of the waters as
they closed over the burning hatch, and listened with chilled hearts to
the shrieks of drowning men and women that filled the air.
It seemed a long night, but it was really only three hours before, with
the morning light, a steamship bound for Liverpool, after giving a fair
start down channel to its charge, caught sight of the wreck and took
off what at first seemed to be the only survivors.
“And,” said Jacynth, as he sat in the captain’s cabin, forgetful of
his own stockingless state, and chafed Lord Onslow’s numbed hands and
feet, “if we had been four strings of priceless pearls hanging on to
the yardarm, they couldn’t have been more delighted to have plucked us
off.”