"ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP!"
Nobody was more dumfounded by the ramming of the tug _Henry Foster_
than Captain Bruce of the steamer aground on the Reef. In a twinkling
his wicked partnership with Jeremiah Pringle had been smashed beyond
mending. He could no longer refuse to accept help from the victorious
_Resolute_. This meant that Captain Jim Wetherly would take charge of
the wrecking of the steamer and try to save her and her cargo by every
means in his power. Jerry Pringle had been driven from the scene. He
was on board his shattered tug which was drifting to the southward,
in no great danger of going ashore, while several schooners were
clustering around to give her aid.
Dan Frazier paid no attention to Captain Bruce, but ran to the stern of
the _Kenilworth_ to watch the _Resolute's_ crew send its towing hawser
aboard. Captain Jim was at his best in such an undertaking as this,
and his men were obeying his shouted orders with disciplined skill and
haste. The hawser writhed after the yawl like a sea-serpent and was
dragged up the side of the stranded vessel by her own crew, who were
jubilant at seeing active operations under way. When the line was made
fast, Captain Jim bellowed through his megaphone:
"We have wasted time and lost the best of the tide, Captain Bruce, but
I'm going to pull for an hour anyhow. Set your engines going full speed
astern and throw your helm to port."
Captain Bruce obeyed with eager energy. He seemed to be coming to
himself and honestly anxious to get his ship afloat. His broad
shoulders were thrown back, and he held his head erect, while his deep
voice had a tone of masterful decision. If he had made a compact with
the Evil One, he acted like a man who regretted the bargain and wanted
to repair the damage already done. Fate had suddenly snatched him out
of the clutches of Jeremiah Pringle and perhaps he was glad of it. At
least, Dan Frazier was ready to look at it in this way, and as Captain
Bruce came aft to examine the hawser the lad said to himself with a
wisdom born of his own experience:
"Last night he kind of behaved like a boy that had done something he
was awful ashamed of, but was scared to own up to it. Now he looks as
if he felt the way I do when I've decided to tell mother all about it
and promise her I'll do the best I can to make things all square again."
Dan found time to take an anxious look at the weather, and a sweeping
survey of sea and sky told him why Captain Jim did not want to wait for
the next flood tide before beginning work. The ocean had turned from
green and blue to a dull gray. The clouds were low and far-spread and
the wind was seesawing in fretful gusts, now from the north-east, again
from the north-west. The barometer had sought a lower level overnight,
and all these signs declared that a gale was brewing. If it came out of
the north-west, the charging seas would drive the _Kenilworth_ farther
on the Reef and perhaps lift her clear across the coral barrier to
sink, with a broken back, in the deep water of the Hawk Channel.
The _Resolute's_ whistle signalled that she was ready to match her
power against the Reef. As she forged ahead, the sagging hawser
tautened and twanged like a huge banjo string, while the sea was
churned to froth in her wake. At the same time the _Kenilworth's_
engines lent their mighty strength to the task. Her hull vibrated as
if the rivets were being pulled from their steel plates, but the keel
did not move an inch. Dan's faith in Captain Jim's word was so implicit
that he expected to feel the steamer start seaward in the first ten
minutes. At the end of the hour, however, the _Resolute_ was still
tugging away without result, like a man trying to lift himself by his
boot-straps. Then she slackened up on the hawser as if to get her
breath for the next tussle.
The wind was blowing with more and more violence. It picked up the
white-topped seas and hurled them high against the _Kenilworth_, while
the tug rolled and plunged amid driving foam and spray. Gulls were
flying in from seaward to seek the shelter of the distant keys. But
it was not yet rough enough to daunt Captain Jim Wetherly and he was
evidently waiting to make a second attempt on the afternoon tide.
Dan had seen these northerly gales blow themselves out in a few hours
and he felt no uneasiness at being left in the _Kenilworth_, although
he muttered to himself as he felt the helpless steamer tremble to the
shock of the seas:
"I don't see why Uncle Jim left me here now that Pringle is out of the
way. I guess he hasn't time to remember that he is shy one deck-hand."
There was some truth in this surmise, for Captain Wetherly was having
all he could do to keep the _Resolute_ at her station and her propeller
clear of the hawser which he refused to let go because he feared the
weather might make it impossible to lower the yawl for another trip to
the _Kenilworth_. He knew what Captain Bruce was not aware of, that
the steamer had been shoved on a shelving slope of the Reef where she
could withstand a terrific pounding without having the bottom torn out
of her, and that if she once started to move astern she would quickly
slide off into deep water. Therefore Captain Jim was ready to take long
chances with his tug before he would run to Key West for refuge from
wind and sea.
In the afternoon, when the _Resolute_ whistled that she was about to
go ahead again on the hawser, the green billows were breaking over her
bow and flooding aft in booming torrents. Her funnel was white with
sea-salt from the spindrift as she plunged and reared like a bucking
bronco. Dan was watching the laboring _Resolute_ from the stranded
steamer's bridge when Captain Bruce put a hand on his shoulder and said
with hearty frankness:
"That skipper of yours is plucky, and he is a first-class seaman. But
he will lose his vessel if he stays out here much longer."
"He may have to give you a wider berth by dark," said Dan. "In ordinary
weather he could take the _Resolute_ over the Reef along here, but now
the seas would pick her up and drop her on the ledges. I guess he will
have to leave me aboard here overnight, Captain. There's no getting a
boat over to me now. And he can't take the _Resolute_ to leeward of
you, on the inside of the Reef, for there isn't a deep water passage
through, for miles and miles."
"You are welcome to stay aboard with me, lad," replied Captain Bruce.
"We may have a tough time of it ourselves before morning, and I fancy
your uncle is sorry he did not take you off with him. But that can't be
helped."
The _Resolute_ had begun to pull. It was a thrilling battle to watch.
The seas were so heavy that her power was applied in a series of
tremendous lunges which threatened to snap the hawser every time her
stern rose skyward. Dan held his breath and gripped the rail with
both hands as the tug surged ahead again and again. Her mate and two
deck-hands were crouched far aft, ready to cast loose the hawser
whenever the captain dared to hold on no longer. After a while Dan saw
the chief engineer waddle back to the overhang to take a look at the
situation. There was something cheering in the sight of this bulky,
stout-hearted veteran of many a desperate venture at sea. Bill McKnight
plucked off his cap and waved it in greeting to Dan, as if signalling
him that all was well.
"I guess he's clamped down his safety-valve long before this," said Dan
aloud as he flourished an arm at Bill McKnight.
"My word but you are a desperate lot," observed Captain Bruce, and a
smile lightened his anxious face and weary eyes. "I think we are safer
aboard the _Kenilworth_."
He turned away to talk to his own chief engineer and his first officer.
They had come up from below to report that the crew were beginning to
talk of quitting the ship, and that it was hard to keep them at their
stations. The news aroused Captain Bruce like a bugle-call to action.
If he had been weak in an hour of temptation he was now once more the
able, resolute ship-master, trained by long years at sea to face such a
crisis as this.
"Do the cowards want to abandon ship while we are trying to work her
off?" he thundered. "Look at that tug-boat out yonder. She isn't afraid
to stay by us in a bit of a breeze. Come along with me. I'll handle
them."
He hurried after the first officer, and Dan was left alone to gaze
at the brave struggle of the _Resolute_. It seemed impossible that
she could hold on much longer. Her hull was buried by one sea after
another, but she shook herself free and plunged ahead with dogged,
unflinching power. The afternoon was nearly spent. A stormy dusk was
beginning to steal over the tossing sea.
Dan perceived that Captain Jim was trying to stand to his task until
high water might help to lift the _Kenilworth_. But for once that
square-jawed uncle of his had dared too much. The _Resolute_ had
endured more than steel and timber could be expected to endure. Dan
yelled with dismay as he saw the massive timber framework of the
towing-bitts fairly jump out of the deck, splintered and broken, and
vanish in the sea astern while the hawser slackened and buried itself
in the waves. The mate and deck-hands were hurled this way and that. An
instant later the wind bore a terrific crashing noise to Dan's ears.
A gaping hole showed in her after deck as the _Resolute_ dove ahead,
suddenly released from her grip on the _Kenilworth_.
[Illustration: But for once that square-jawed uncle of his had dared
too much]
"Great Scott, she jerked the towing-bitts clean out of her," cried Dan.
"It was just like pulling the stem out of an apple. Now we _are_ done
for. Is anybody killed?"
His eyes filled with hot tears as he saw Bill McKnight rush aft and
help pick up the mate and deck-hands who lay sprawled in the scuppers.
The mate was huddled in a heap where he had been flung, and the
rescuers dragged him clear and carried him forward between them, his
legs and arms swaying limp.
"He looks dead," moaned Dan. "And it leaves Uncle Jim single-handed. He
can't run home before this sea with a hole in his after deck like that.
She'd swamp in no time. He'll have to buck into it and try to fetch
Miami. And we can't get any help to him."
The _Resolute_ steamed very slowly away from the Reef, fighting for
her life. Three long blasts from her whistle came down the wind as she
spoke her farewell. Before long her reeling shape was lost to view on
the shadowy sea; then her mast-head light gleamed for a little longer
before she wholly vanished from Dan Frazier's yearning gaze.
Captain Bruce had rushed on deck at the sound of her whistle and Dan
pointed to the dim outline of the beaten and crippled _Resolute_ while
in a voice broken with grief and excitement he explained what had
happened to the tug.
"Uncle Jim will have other tugs on the way as soon as he can wire for
them," added Dan. "I think he ordered a schooner to run to Miami this
morning with orders for more help to be sent you."
"They can't get out to us until this blow is over," said the captain.
"We are in for a bad night, my boy. I wish you were out of it. But
Captain Wetherly couldn't have taken you off to save his soul."
"I wouldn't have been here if you had been square--" Dan began to say
with a sudden rush of anger. But it seemed as though Captain Bruce had
not heard him, for he went on to say:
"If my boy had lived he would have been about your age now, Dan. He was
just your kind of a youngster, too. Go below and get some supper, and
some sleep if you can."
There was to be little sleep aboard the _Kenilworth_ through this
night. The gale had no more than begun to blow when the _Resolute_ was
forced to retreat. Long before midnight it was lashing the shoal water
of the Reef into huge breakers which assailed the _Kenilworth_ with
thundering fury. Her keel began to pound as she was lifted and driven
a little farther on the Reef by one shock after another. The decks
sloped more and more until it was not easy to keep a foothold. The
noise of the water breaking over her hull, the booming cry of the wind,
the groaning and grating and shrieking of her steel plates as the Reef
strove to pull them asunder, made it seem as if the steamer could not
hold together until daylight.
The grimy men from the engine-room and stoke-hole had fled to the
shelter of the steel deck-houses where they huddled with the seamen,
shouting to each other in English, Norwegian, and Spanish. Captain
Bruce and his officers finally gathered in the chart-room and discussed
the chances of launching the boats if matters should grow much worse.
Dan Frazier was doubled up in a corner chair, half-dead for sleep, but
fighting hard to keep his wits about him and tell the others what he
knew of the Reef and the water that stretched to leeward of the ship.
In answer to a question from Captain Bruce he said:
"This is the narrowest part of the Reef, Captain Wetherly told me, and
if you can get your boats away in the lee of the ship and keep them
afloat through the breaking water you will be in the Hawk Channel, only
three miles from a string of keys. The channels between the islands are
deep enough for a ship's boat. You don't need any chart to find smooth
water in those lagoons, sir."
"Her bottom plates are opening up," growled the chief engineer who had
just come up to report. "The sea is coming in fast. It has begun to
flood the fire-room, and I can't make steam to keep the pumps going
much longer."
"The bulkheads forward are twisting like so much paper," added the
first officer. "They can't stand up if she racks herself any worse.
Then she will be flooded fore and aft."
Captain Bruce jumped to his feet and gruffly broke into this dismal
kind of talk:
"Get all the men you can and come below with me. Her after part is
still afloat and tight, and if we can brace the midship bulkheads with
enough timbers and cargo, they may hold for a while yet."
It was a forlorn hope, but even the seamen and stokers were glad to
be doing something to save the ship, and most of them rallied to the
call of the captain and mate and followed them down into the gloomy
hold. Dan went along to try to do what he could, and also because he
remembered that Captain Jim had told him to "keep his eyes and ears
open."
"If we abandon the _Kenilworth_," thought Dan, "and I see Uncle Jim
again, the first thing he will ask me is what shape we left the steamer
in--had she begun to break in two, and how badly was she flooded, and
so on. I guess it's part of my job to find out all I can."
He picked up a lantern which had been overlooked and crept after the
men, down one slippery iron ladder after another. It was a terrifying
trip below decks where the angry ocean sounded as if it were about
to tear its way through the vessel's side, amid an awful hubbub of
shifting cargo, and breaking beams and plates. Dan hesitated more than
once and tried to choke down his fear. He was in strange quarters and
the men ahead of him, used to finding their way all over the vessel,
moved much faster than he. They had reached the engine-room and were
moving forward while he was still clinging to the last ladder. Then a
lurch of the ship dashed his lantern against the hand-rail. The glass
globe was smashed and the light went out.
The electric lighting plant had been disabled and the cavern of an
engine-room was in black darkness as Dan vainly searched his pockets
for matches. He heard faint shouts from somewhere forward and thought
he saw the gleam of lanterns. He tried to grope his way toward them,
but stumbled and fell against a steel column. With aching head he
staggered to his feet just as the whole hull of the ship seemed to be
raised bodily and let fall on the Reef with a deafening crash. Dan was
more frightened and confused than ever. A moment later his feet began
to splash in water. He thought the sea had broken into the engine-room,
and he tried, with frantic haste, to find his way back to the ladder
and regain the deck above. By this time he had completely lost his
bearings. He did not know whether he was going toward the bow or stern.
At length his trembling fingers clutched the rail of a ladder which
ran upward from a narrow passageway. It led him to another deck still
far down in the vessel's hold, where he could find no more ladders to
climb. After what seemed to him hours of feeling his way this way and
that, he bumped against a solid steel wall. Dan knew it was a bulkhead
of some kind, but it must be far from the toiling crew of the ship, for
he had long since ceased to hear or see them. He had never been in such
utter darkness nor so hopelessly lost and bewildered.
The frightened lad shouted for help, but his voice could not have been
heard a dozen feet away, so great was the din around him. He tried to
think, to get back his sense of direction, to feel his way along the
bulkhead in the hope of getting his hands on some object with whose
outline he was familiar, which might tell him into what part of the
ship he had wandered.
He was leaning against the steel wall of the bulkhead when it buckled,
sprang back, and then quivered as if it had been a sheet of tin.
There was a tremendous noise of crackling, rending timber and steel
above Dan's head. He whirled about and tried to flee as he heard the
collapsing bulkhead give way.
The boy could hear the cargo toppling toward him with the roar of a
landslide. He threw up his arms to shield his head, then something
struck him in the back and hurled him to one side. He fell across a
bulky box of some kind while other heavy boxes, a deluge of them,
thundered from above and crashed all round him. Dan cowered in a
frightened heap, expecting every instant to have his life crushed out.
But gradually the descent of the cargo ceased, and he was still alive.
He tried to move his legs and found they had not been smashed.
Struggling to turn over on his back he put up his arms and discovered
that a huge packing case had so fallen as to make a bridge over him and
keep clear the little space in which he crouched. But he was walled in
by packing cases on all sides and he struggled in vain to move them.
Until his fingers were torn and bleeding and his strength worn out, Dan
tried to make an opening large enough to wriggle through and escape
from this appalling prison.
When at length he lay still and panted aloud the prayers his mother had
taught him, there came the echo of hoarse shouts above the clamor of
the ship and the sea. Through a crevice between the boxes of freight
that penned him fast he glimpsed the gleam of moving lanterns. The
captain and crew were deserting the hold of the ship. Dan tried to call
to them but his cries were unheard.
The shouts ceased, the gleams of light vanished one by one, and Dan
was left alone in the flooded and shattered hold of the _Kenilworth_.
Far above him Captain Bruce and his crew were making ready their
life-boats, preferring to trust themselves to the storm-swept sea than
to the steamer which they believed doomed to be torn to fragments
within the next few hours.
"They must have given up the fight", moaned Dan between his sobs. "I
guess it means all hands abandon ship at daylight. And they will think
I've been washed overboard in the dark."