DAN FRAZIER'S PREDICAMENT
Imprisoned as he was in the hold of the _Kenilworth_, and feeling sure
that the steamer was to be abandoned by her crew as a hopeless wreck,
Dan Frazier became almost stupefied with terror and exhaustion. As long
as there was any strength in his athletic young body he had pushed
and tugged at the mass of freight which penned him in, shouting in
his frenzy until his voice failed him and died away in hoarse, broken
weeping.
At length his benumbed senses lost themselves in heavy slumber. He
dreamed of being at home with his mother in the palm-shaded cottage and
she was holding him in her lap and stroking his forehead with her cool
hands. But nightmares came to drive away this sweet dream, and he awoke
with a choking cry for help.
Dan thought he must have been asleep for hours and hours. More
torturing than the realization of his dreadful plight was his burning
thirst. But his brain was clearer and he listened to the medley of
noises around him with a glimmer of hope. The water had not reached the
deck on which he had been trapped, although he could hear it washing
to and fro in the bottom of the hold below. The hull of the ship had
ceased to pound on the Reef. The breakers beat against her steel sides
and fell solid on her upper decks with a sound like distant thunder,
but Dan began to feel confident that the gale was blowing itself out
and the steamer was going to live through it.
He thanked God that he had not been drowned, at any rate, even
though he seemed likely to perish where he was for lack of food and
drink. Youth grasps at slender hopes and finds strength in dubious
consolations. Dan had expected to be overwhelmed by the sea without a
ghost of a chance to fight for his life. Now that this peril seemed
to be passing, his wits began to return, and he fished his strong
bladed sailor's clasp-knife from his trousers pocket. To hack away at
his prison walls was better than doing nothing. He twisted painfully
about until he had located the widest crevices between the sides of
the packing-cases and began to chip away at the stout planking. It
was a task tedious and wearisome beyond words. There was no light,
his nerves were unstrung, and he worked with unsteady, groping hand.
Rats scampered over him, or squealed in the darkness close by, and he
slashed at them savagely. They startled him so that more than once he
gave up the task and wept like a little child.
At length Dan cut through the planking of a box which was wedged fast
between two larger ones and his knife clinked against tin. He managed
to break off a splintered end of board and pulled out a round can of
some kind of provisions. This was unexpected good fortune, and he
carefully cut into the lid with a muttered prayer of thanksgiving,
hoping to find enough liquid to wet his parched tongue. The can proved
to be full of French peas, packed in enough water to supply a long
drink of cool, refreshing soup. Dan scooped up the tiny peas with his
fingers, emptied the tin, and eagerly drove his knife into another of
them. The nourishment made him feel like a giant. He returned to his
task with genuine hope of being able to whittle a way out of his trap.
But as the weary hours dragged by, and the strokes of the knife became
more and more feeble, the prisoner gave himself up to despair. His
strength had ebbed so fast that he slumped down and slept with his face
in his arms.
A great noise awoke him. The cargo was shifting and tumbling with
fearful uproar. From below came the rumble of coal sliding across the
bunkers. The deck rolled violently and pitched Dan to the other end
of his pen. He expected to be crushed by the cargo, and thought the
ship must be turning over. But the commotion gradually ceased and, to
his great astonishment, he was alive and unhurt. The deck seemed to
have much less slant than before. He raised his arms and they touched
nothing over his head. Unable to realize the truth, he scrambled to
his feet and stood upright. The great package of freight which had
roofed him over had slid clear, carrying along the boxes piled above
it. Frantic with new hope of release, Dan clambered upward, tearing his
clothes to tatters, plunging headlong from one obstacle to another,
bruising his face, hands, and knees against sharp edges and corners.
Scrambling over the disordered cargo until he had to halt to get his
breath, Dan gasped to himself:
"I can't get on deck through a freight compartment. The hatches will be
fastened down above. I must find out how I blundered in here as far as
the broken bulkhead."
A moment later he fetched up against solid tiers of cargo which had
not been dislodged and knew he must be headed wrong. This gave him a
clue, however, and with fast-failing strength he stumbled back over
the way he had come. At last he saw a streak of daylight filter down
from a skylight far above. Yes, there was a road to the upper deck.
Dan glimpsed the shadowy outline of a ladder. It was all he could do
to muster courage to attempt the long and dizzy climb. But he set his
teeth and clung like a barnacle to one round after another until he
fell against the iron door of a deck-house, fumbled with the fastening,
and tottered out into daylight.
Half-blinded and blinking like an owl, Dan Frazier covered his face
with his hands until his eyes could bear the dazzling reflection of
sea and sky which were flooded with glorious sunshine. The wind sang
through the shrouds and funnel-stays and the blue ocean upheaved
in swollen billows, but the gale had passed. Dan's bewildered gaze
fell upon the empty chocks, the dangling falls and the davits swung
outboard, where the steamer's life-boats had been. These signs were
enough to tell him that the ship had been abandoned. He was left alone
in her, and he went forward with a feeling of uncanny isolation. Water
to drink was what he wanted more than anything else, and before making
a survey of the ship he sought the tank in the chart-room and fairly
guzzled his fill. Then he made a ferocious onslaught on the cabin
pantry and carried on deck a kettle full of cold boiled potatoes, beef
and hard bread, and climbed to the battered bridge.
Looking down at the steamer from this lofty perch, Dan understood what
had caused the violent roll and lunge that set him free from his prison
below decks. The storm had driven her, head-on, far up the outer slope
of the Reef, where she had lain as if about to break in pieces, with
the seas washing clean over her. But while her forward compartments
had filled with water, her stern was still buoyant. When the gale had
subsided the ship was hanging over the deep water on the inner side of
the Reef, and the next high tide had lifted her stern so that she slid
bow-first, for half her length, down the opposite side of the shelf
which had held her keel fast. It looked like a miracle to Dan, but here
was the ship still solid under his feet. Gazing down from one end of
the bridge, he could see the inner edge of the Reef shimmering far down
through the clear water and the hull of the _Kenilworth_, hanging only
by the after part.
"Where, oh where, is Uncle Jim?" he thought. "He might patch up her
bulkheads, lift the water out with his wrecking pumps, and pull her off
yet. And I'll bet he'd keep her afloat somehow."
Then a stupendous thought flashed into Dan's mind. It was such a
dazzling, gorgeous idea that it made him dizzy with delight. Yes,
it was all true. The _Kenilworth_ had been abandoned by her captain
and crew as a wreck. She was like a derelict at sea. Whoever should
find and board her would have the right to claim heavy salvage on the
vessel and her cargo if they were saved and brought into port. It was
the unwritten law of the Reef that the first man to set foot on an
abandoned wreck was the wrecking master, to be obeyed as such, with
first claim on salvage.
Dan tried to arrange his thoughts in some kind of order, and at length
he said to himself with an air of decision:
"The wrecking master on this job is Daniel P. Frazier. I earned it all
right, and Key West will back me up whether Jerry Pringle likes it or
not. And I'm going to hold her down till Uncle Jim comes back. There
can't be any more question about who has the wrecking of her. General
cargo, too!--I'll bet it's worth several hundred thousand dollars!--and
a four thousand ton steel steamer. If we can save her, the owners will
have to give up fifty or a hundred thousand dollars in clean salvage
money."
The weight of his responsibility soon tamed Dan's high spirits. He
could make no resistance if a crew of hostile wreckers should happen
along to dispute his title in the absence of Captain Jim Wetherly. The
morning sun was no more than three hours high. He must watch and wait
through a long, long day, any hour of which might bring in sight the
sails of a fleet of wrecking schooners. Dan reckoned that he had been
penned below for about thirty hours and that this was the morning of
the second day after the wreck. Captain Jim must have a tug on the way
by this time. But, on the other hand, if Captain Bruce and his men had
been picked up and carried to Key West, their tidings would send Jerry
Pringle and his horde of wreckers flying seaward by steam and sail.
Every boy who plays foot-ball has dreamed of breaking through the line,
blocking a kick, scooping up the ball, and running down the field like
a whirlwind to score the winning touchdown with the other eleven vainly
pounding along in his wake. So most of us have dreamed of playing the
hero by stopping a runaway horse, saving the life of the prettiest girl
that ever was, and being splendidly rewarded by her millionaire father.
Dan Frazier's pet dream had a salt-water background. It was of being
the first to find an abandoned ship with a rich cargo, triumphantly
bringing her into port, and winning a fortune in salvage. At last he
had found his ship, but the lone hero had an elephant on his hands.
Dan was too weary in body and mind to roam about the steamer. He rigged
a bit of awning on the bridge, dragged a mattress up from below, and
lay gazing through the rents in the canvas weather screen until noon.
A mail steamer northward-bound passed close to the Reef, slowed down
to make sure the crew had left the wreck, and ploughed on her way. Dan
grew tired of looking to the southward for schooners beating up from
Key West and concluded that the head wind and heavy sea were holding
them in harbor. There was no black smudge of smoke to the northward to
show that Captain Jim was coming out from Miami in a tow-boat. Over
to seaward, however, in the east-north-east, three sails glinted like
flecks of cloud. They were close together, and Dan gazed at them idly,
thinking they might be coastwise merchant vessels hauling southward
before the piping wind. But as they lifted higher, he noticed that
they were shaping a straight course for the Reef instead of swinging
off to follow the track through the Florida Straits. They were
schooners coming with great speed and showing a reckless spread of
canvas.
Soon the low hulls gleamed beneath the towering piles of sail and Dan
jumped to his feet as he scanned the beautiful sea picture they made.
"Bahama schooners; I know their cut!" he exclaimed. "They've smelled a
wreck on the Reef as sure as guns. The news must have reached Nassau
by cable yesterday. And those pirates have got a clear field for once.
What _can_ I do? They won't listen to my story, not for a minute.
They'll swarm aboard like rats and be ripping the cargo out of this
vessel in a jiffy."
The youthful wrecking master was at his wits' end and his head began
to throb as if it would split, for he had little endurance left. He
remained in hiding on the bridge and tried to think out a plan of
action as the Bahama schooners swooped across the frothing sea, laying
their courses in a bee line for the _Kenilworth_. Dan's only hope was
that he might be able to stay aboard until Captain Jim should return
to enforce the law of the Reef with his crew of hard-fisted tow-boat
men to back him up. He thought of telling the wreckers that he was
a stowaway, left behind when the steamer's men deserted her, but,
although Dan Frazier was far from perfect, he hated the notion of lying
his way out of this tight corner. He was truthful by habit, for one
thing, and there was another reason which he muttered to himself:
"There's been lying enough on this job. The poor old ship has been
rotten with lies ever since her skipper first ran afoul of Jerry
Pringle. Even her grounding on the Reef was a lie. And I don't believe
Uncle Jim would lie to save the ship, or his own skin either. No, this
poor old vessel has been good to me so far. I got out of her hold by
good luck and I'll trust to luck to pull me out of this scrape."
Dan picked up a pair of glasses and looked at the nearest schooner
which had boldly crossed the Reef and was rounding to in the smoother
water of the Hawk Channel while a group of black-skinned, ragged
wreckers were shoving a boat over the side. Dan felt a new thrill of
surprise and alarm as he scrutinized a burly figure poised at the
schooner's rail. It was "Black Sam" Hurley, a Bahama wrecker of such
evil repute that he had been pointed out to Dan in Nassau harbor as one
of the notorious characters of the islands.
[Illustration: Dan felt a new thrill of surprise and alarm]
"There are plenty of honest wreckers in the Bahamas," said the lad to
himself, while his teeth chattered. "But they don't sail with 'Black
Sam.' And he was alongside the _Resolute_ at Nassau, talking to the
cook. He'd know me again. It's a good thing I chucked up that idea of
lying out of this. It's time for me to get under cover, all right."
Dan crept off the bridge along the windward side of the deck-house and
kept well out of sight of the schooners until he reached the shelter
of the funnel and the engine-room skylights. Then he slipped into the
nearest door and made his way to the flight of ladders up which he
had climbed in the morning. He had fled in a state of panic, but one
glance down into the black hold made him draw back and take measures
to provision himself against a long siege below. There was no need
for great haste, and Dan delayed to equip himself with a lantern,
matches, a jug of water, and a canvas bag, crammed with food, which he
slung about his neck. Then he made his way below with lighted lantern,
seeking to find as secure and comfortable a refuge as possible. The
Bahama wreckers would begin to loot the part of the cargo easiest
to get at and handle, he reasoned, and therefore he passed by the
uppermost cargo deck and explored the region below, slowly making his
way aft.
It was a dangerous and desperate journey, but Dan was thinking only of
keeping out of the way of "Black Sam" until Captain Jim should come
back and retake the ship which belonged to him.
"I'm what the lawyers call a vital document when they're arguing a
salvage case in the Key West Court," thought Dan with a half-hearted
grin. "And from all I've heard of 'Black Sam' Hurley, he'd chuck this
vital document overboard if he thought it might interfere with his
possession of the wreck."
In this game of hide-and-seek the advantage was with the lad in the
hold, and fear of discovery by the wreckers did not greatly trouble
him. After a long time he heard clamorous voices somewhere above and
he doused his lantern. The wreckers seemed to be exploring the upper
cargo decks. Some kind of a dispute arose and the sides of the ship
flung back the echoes of it as from a great sounding board. Dan could
not make out what the quarrel was about, but at length the sounds grew
fainter as if the wreckers had returned to the outside world above.
Dan had felt a gush of cool wind from somewhere over his head and
shifted his quarters to get beneath it and out of the reeking, stifling
atmosphere of the hold. He knew it must come from a pipe running to
one of the great bell-mouthed ventilators on deck and was glad that it
had been turned so as to face and catch the invigorating breeze. He
had not dreamed that the ventilator might serve as a speaking-tube.
While he waited, however, to learn what the wreckers intended to do
next, some one began to talk, and he heard every word distinctly. The
voice sounded so near his ears that he was as startled as if a ghost
had stepped out of the darkness. Dan jumped to his feet, his nerves
all of a quiver. He would have fled anywhere to get away from this
uncanny voice, but a stronger gust of wind struck his upturned face and
the mysterious voice sounded even louder. He thought of the ventilator
pipe, got a grip on himself, and scarcely breathed as he listened
to the odd intonations of the Bahama negro speech. "Black Sam" was
talking. Dan remembered the peculiar guttural cadence of his voice as
he had heard it in Nassau harbor. He must have been standing directly
in front of the ventilator on deck, for every word carried down the
pipe to Dan:
"Ah don't care nuffin' 'bout de ship. We ain't got no tow-boats to pull
her off. An' if we don't work quick an' soon them Key Westers'll be
a-scatterin' down an' run us back home--you heah me? Take a big bag o'
powdah an' blow de side outen her. Dat's what I say do. De cargo ports
is all jammed fas'. We can't open 'em nohow. An' we ain't got no steam
to hoist wid a donkey-engine. Blow de side outen her. She's hung fas'
on de Reef. She ain't gwine sink. When we'se done loaded our schooners
wid cargo we can strip the brasses in de engine-room. Blow her up.
Ain't I wrecked plenty vessels? Don't I know?"
Dan heard one of the other wreckers rumble: "Sam knows bes'. Cut de
fuse to burn ten minutes an' let us get back aboard our schooners. Hang
de sack o' powder 'g'inst the ship's plates inside an' let her go.
Reckon we'll blow a hole in her fit to run a tow-boat froo, Sam."
To Dan Frazier these last words sounded faint and confused, as if
something was the matter with his hearing. He had only time to mutter
"They are going to blow her up and me with her." Then he felt so giddy
that he put out his arms to steady himself. His knees gave way and he
sank down in a heap.