loud, blamed if I could tell whether she was coming or going. She's got
no business coming down the Sound.”
Captain Mayo, his teeth set hard, his rigid face dripping with moisture,
as he stood in the open window, stopped the engines of his giant charge
and jingled for full speed astern in order to halt her. He had no desire
to battle for possession of the channel with what he saw ahead.
At that moment Manager Fogg came into the pilothouse, disregarding the
“No Admittance” sign by authority of his position. He lighted a cigar
and displayed the contented air of a man who has fed fully.
“You have been making a pretty slow drag of it, haven't you, Captain
Mayo? I've had time to eat dinner--and I'm quite a feeder at that! And
we haven't made the Gate yet!”
“We couldn't do a stroke better and be safe,” said the captain over his
shoulder, his eyes on the tow.
“What's the matter now?”
“A tug and three barges in the way.”
“Do you mean to say you're holding up a Vose liner with eight hundred
passengers, waiting for a tugboat? Look here, Mayo, we've got to hustle
folks to where they want to go, and get them there in time.”
“That tow is coming down with the current and has the right of way, sir.
And there's no chance of passing, for she's sweeping the channel.”
“I don't believe there's any law that makes a passenger-boat hold up
for scows,” grumbled Fogg. “If there is one, a good man knows how to
get around it and keep up his schedule.” He paced the pilot-house at the
extreme rear, puffing his cigar.
He grunted when Mayo gave the go-ahead bells and the throb of the
engines began.
“Now ram her along, boy. People in these days don't want to waste time
on the road. They're even speeding up the automobile hearses.”
Captain Mayo did not reply. He was grateful that the dangers of Hell
Gate had been revealed. The mists hung in wisps against North Brother
Island when he swung into the channel of the Gate, and he could see,
far ahead, the shaft of the lighthouse. It was a stretch where close
figuring was needed, and this freak of the mists had given him a fine
chance. He jingled for full speed and took a peep to note the bearing of
Sunken Meadow spindle.
“Nothe-east, five-eighths east!” he directed the quartermaster at the
wheel.
The man repeated the command mechanically and brought her to her course
for the Middle Ground passage.
After they had rounded North Brother, Whitestone Point tower was
revealed. It really seemed as if the fog were clearing, and even in the
channel between Execution Rocks and Sands Point his hopes were rising.
But in the wider waters off Race Rock the _Montana_ drove her black
snout once more into the white pall, and her whistle began to bray
again.
The young captain sighed. “East, a half nothe!”
“East, a half nothe, it is, sir!”
At least, he had conquered East River, the Gate, and the narrows beyond,
and had many miles straight ahead to the whistler off Point Judith. He
was resolved to be thankful for small favors.
He hoped that with the coming of the night and on account of the
prevalence of the fog he would find that shipping of the ordinary sort
had stopped moving. However, in a few minutes he heard telltale whistles
ahead, and he signaled half speed. A lumbering old lighter with a
yawing derrick passed close aboard. An auxiliary fisherman, his exhaust
snapping like a machine-gun, and seeming to depend on that noise for
warning, was overtaken.
“Can you leave that window for a minute, Captain Mayo?” asked the
general manager.
The captain promptly joined Mr. Fogg at the rear of the spacious
pilot-house.
“See here, Cap,” remonstrated his superior, “I came down through these
waters on the _Triton_ of the Union line the other day, and she made her
time. What's the matter with us?”
“I'm obeying the law, sir. And there are new warnings just issued.” He
pointed to the placard headed “Safety First” in big, red letters. “The
word has been passed that the first captain who is caught with the goods
will be made an example of.”
“Is that so?” commented Fogg, studying the end of his cigar. His tone
was a bit peculiar. “But the _Triton_ came along.”
“And she nigh rammed the _Nequasset_ in the fog the last trip I made up
the coast. It was simply touch and go, Mr. Fogg, and all her fault. We
were following the rules to the letter.”
“And that's one way of spoiling the business of a steamboat line,”
snapped Fogg. He added, to himself, “But it isn't my way!”
“I'm sorry, but I have been trained to believe that a record for safety
is better than all records for speed, sir.”
“I let Jacobs go because he was old-fashioned, Mayo. This is the age of
taking chances--taking chances and getting there! Business, politics,
railroading, and steam-boating. The people expect it. The right folks do
it.”
“You are general manager of this line, Mr. Fogg. Do you order me to make
schedule time, no matter what conditions are?”
“You are the captain of this boat. I simply want you to deliver
up-to-date goods. As to how you do it, that is not my business. I'm not
a sea-captain, and I don't presume to advise as to details.”
Captain Mayo was young, He knew the 'longcoast game. He was ambitious.
Opportunity had presented itself. He understood the unreasoning temper
of those who sought dividends without bothering much about details. He
knew how other passenger captains were making good with the powers who
controlled transportation interests. He confessed to himself that he had
envied the master of the rushing _Triton_ who had swaggered past as if
he owned the sea.
Till then Mayo had been the meek and apologetic passer-by along the
ocean lane, expecting to be crowded to one side, dodging when the big
fellow bawled for open road.
He remembered with what haste he always manouvered the old _Nequasset_
out of the way of harm when he heard the lordly summons of the passenger
liners. Was not that the general method of the freighter skippers? Why
should he not expect them to get out of his way, now that he was one of
the swaggerers of the sea? Let them do the worrying now, as he had done
the worrying and dodging in the past! He stepped back to his window,
those reflections whirling in his brain.
“This is no freighter,” he told himself. “Fogg is right. If I don't
deliver the goods somebody else will be called on to do it, so what's
the use? I'll play the game. Just remember--will you, Mayo--that you've
got your heart's wish, and are captain of the _Montana_. If I lose this
job on account of a placard with red letters, I'll kick myself on board
a towboat, and stay there the rest of my life.”
He yanked a log-book from the rack and noted the steamer's average
speed from the entries. He signaled to the engine-room through the
speaking-tube.
“Give her two hundred a minute, chief!” he ordered.
And fifteen seconds later, her engines pulsing rhythmically, the big
craft was splitting fog and water at express speed, howling for little
fellows to get out from underfoot.
Down in the gleaming depths of her the orchestra was lilting a gay
waltz, silver clattered over the white napery of the dining-room, men
and women laughed and chattered and flirted; men wrote telegrams, making
appointments for the morrow at early hours, and the wireless flashed
them forth. They were sent with the certainty on the part of the senders
that no man in these days waits for tide or fog. The frothing waters
flashed past in the night outside, and they who ventured forth upon the
dripping decks glanced at the fan of white spume spreading into the fog,
and were glad to return to cozy chairs and the radiance of the saloon.
High up forward, in the pilot-house, were the eyes and the brains of
this rushing monster. It was dark there except for the soft, yellow
gleam of the binnacle lights. It was silent but for the low voice of a
mate who announced his notations.
Occasionally the mates glanced at each other in the gloom when a
steamer's whistle sounded ahead. This young captain seemed to be a chap
who carried his nerve with him! They were used to the more cautious
system of Captain Jacobs.
The master did not reduce speed. He leaned far out, his hand at his ear.
The third time an unknown sounded her blast he took a quick glance at
the compass.
“Two points shift--so she shows,” he said aloud. “We'll pass her all
right.”
The change in the direction of the sound had assured him. A few minutes
later the whistle voiced a location safely abeam. But the next whistle
they heard sounded dead ahead, and increased in volume of sound only
gradually. They were overtaking a vessel headed in the same direction.
Captain Mayo pulled the cord oftener and sounded more prolonged, more
imperious hoots. He ordered no change in his course. He was headed
for the Point Judith whistler, and did not propose to take chances on
fumbling by any detours. The craft ahead at last seemed to recognize the
voice of its master. The sound of the whistle showed that it had swung
off the course.
The mate mumbled notations.
“All ears out!” ordered the captain. “We ought to make that whistler!”
And in the next breath he said: “There she is!” He pointed a wet hand
ahead and slightly to port. A queer, booming grunt came to them. “You're
all right, old girl,” he declared. “Jacobs wasn't over-praising you.”
He reached over the sill and patted the woodwork of his giant pet.
He turned to the quartermaster. “East, five-eighths south,” was his
direction.
“East, five-eighths south, sir!”
“What's the next we make, captain?” asked the general manager from the
gloom at the rear of the pilot-house.
“Sow and Pigs Lightship, entrance of Vineyard Sound, sir.”
“Good work! I'm going to take a turn below. See you again! What can
I tell any uneasy gentleman who is afraid he'll miss a business
appointment in the morning?”
“Tell him we'll be on time to the dot,” declared the captain, quietly.
Mr. Fogg closed the pilot-house door behind himself and chuckled when he
eased his way down the slippery ladder.
Mr. Fogg sauntered through the brilliantly lighted saloon, hands in his
pockets, giving forth an impression of a man entirely at ease. Nobody
appeared to recognize the new general manager of the Vose line, and he
attracted no special attention. But if any one had been sufficiently
interested in Mr. Fogg to note him closely it would have been observed
that his mouth worked nervously when he stood at the head of the grand
stairway and stared about him. His jowls sagged. When he pulled out his
handkerchief his hand trembled.
He descended the stairs to the main-deck and peered about in the
smoking-quarters, running his eyes over the faces of the men gathered
there. All at once he lifted his chin with a little jerk and climbed the
stairs again. A big man tossed away a cigar and followed at a respectful
distance. He pursued Mr. Fogg through the saloon and down a corridor and
went into a stateroom on the general manager's heels.
“By gad, Burkett, I'm getting cold chills!” exploded Mr. Fogg, as soon
as the door was closed.
“Don't understand just why.”
“Those people out there--I've just been looking 'em over. It's monkeying
with too big a proposition, Burkett. You can't reckon ahead on a thing
like this.”
“Sure you can. I've doped it right.”
“Oh, I know you understand what you're talking about, but--”
“Well, I ought to know. I've been pilot for the re-survey party on the
shoals for the last two months. I know every inch of the bottom.”
“But the panic. There's bound to be one. The rest of 'em won't
understand, Burkett. It's going to be awful on board here. I'll be here
myself. I can't stand it.”
“Look here, governor; there won't be any panic. She'll slide into the
sand like a baby nestling down into a crib. There isn't a pebble in
that sand for miles. Half of this bunch of passengers will be abed and
asleep. They won't wake up. The rest will never know anything special
except that the engines have stopped. And that ain't anything unusual
in a fog. It's a quiet night--not a ripple. Nothing to hurt us. The
wireless will bring the revenue cutter out from Wood's Hole, and she'll
stand by till morning and take 'em off.”
“The theory is good. It's mostly my own idea, and I'm proud of it, and I
was mighty glad to find a man of your experience to back me up with the
practical details,” said Fogg, trying to fortify his faith with words
but failing. “But now that it's coming down to cases I'm afraid of it.”
“Well, it's up to you, of course, governor. I insist it can be done, and
done smooth, and you'll lay off this steamer nice, slick, and easy!
That will put a crimp into the Vose line and make them stockholders take
notice the next time a fair offer is made.”
“It's the thing to do, and I know it. The conditions are just right,
and we've got a green captain to make the goat of. All set! But it's
an awful thing to monkey with--eight hundred people, and no knowing how
they'll take it! It came over me while I stood there and looked at 'em!”
“Sand is sand, and the whole, round earth is braced up under that sand.
She can't sink. She'll simply gouge her way like a plow into a furrow,
and there she'll stick, sitting straight, solid as an island--and it
will be a devil of a while before they'll be able to dig her out. It's
a crimp for the Vose line, I say, governor!” Malevolence glowed in
Burkett's little eyes.
“Of course, the money I'm getting for this job looks good to me,
governor, but my chance to put a wallop into anything that old Vose and
his sons are interested in looks just as good. I wouldn't be in this
just for the money end of it. I'm no pirate, but when they kicked me
out of the pilot-house and posted me up and down this coast, they put
themselves in line to get what's coming to 'em from me.”
“But have you considered every side of it?” pleaded Fogg. “You're the
practical man in this proposition. What can happen?”
“If you do exactly what I tell you to do nothing can happen but what's
on our program. Just let me stiffen you up by running the thing over
once more.”
He pulled a hand-smutched, folded chart from his breast pocket and
spread it over his knees. With blunt forefinger he indicated the points
to which he made reference in his explanation.
“When he fetches Nobska horn on his port, bearing nor'west by west,
he'll shift his course. After about five miles he's due to shift again,
swinging six points to nor-rard. You'll hear the mate name the bearing
of West Chop steam-whistle. Then you walk right up to the left of the
compass and stand there. You may hear a little tongue-clattering for
a few seconds. There'll be a little cussing, maybe, but you won't be
cussed, of course. You stand right there, calm and cool, never batting
an eyelid. And then it will happen, and when it does happen it will be a
surprise-party all right.”
“It's wrecking a seven-thousand-ton passenger-steamer in the night!”
mourned the general manager.
“It isn't! It's putting her into a safe cradle.”
“But at this speed!”
“That chap in the pilot-house is no fool. He'll get his hint in time to
save her from real damage. You needn't worry!”
Fogg opened his traveling-bag and lifted out a strip of metal. He
handled it as gingerly as if it were a reptile, and he looked at it with
an air as if he feared it would bite him.
“That's the little joker,” said Burkett. “About two points deviation by
local attraction will do the business!”
“I'm tempted to throw it overboard and call it all off, Burkett. I have
put through a good many deals in my life in the big game, but this looks
almost too raw. I can't help it! I feel a hunch as if something was
going to miscue.”
“I've got no more to say, governor.”
“My crowd doesn't ask questions of me, but they expect results. If I
don't do it, I suppose I'll kick myself in the morning.” He cocked up
his ear and listened to the bawling of the liner's great whistle. “But
it seems different in the night.”
“You ain't leaving any tracks,” encouraged Burkett. “And this being his
first run makes it more plausible. You're here all naturally, yourself.
It might seem rather queer if you made another trip. It's his first run
on her, I remind you. If he makes a slip-up it won't surprise the wise
guys-a mite.”
“It seems to be all set--I've got to admit it. By gad, Burkett, I have
always put a thing through when I've started on it! That's why they
call in the little Fogg boy. I'd rather apologize to my conscience than
to--Well, never mind who he is.” He tucked the strip of metal into his
inside coat pocket and buttoned the coat. “Blast it! nothing that's very
bad can happen in this calm sea--and that last life-boat drill went off
fine. Here goes!” declared Fogg, with desperate emphasis.
“That's the boy!” declared Burkett, encouraged to familiarity by their
association in mischief.
The general manager found the night black when he edged his way along
the wet deck to the pilot-house. The steamer's lights made blurred
patches in the fog. Now she seemed to have the sea to herself; there
were no answering whistles.
“I'm back again, Captain Mayo,” he said, as he closed the door against
the night. “I hope I won't bother you folks here. I'll stay out from
underfoot.” He sat down on a transom at the extreme rear of the house
and smoked his cigar with nervous vehemence.
Another quartermaster succeeded the man at the wheel, the mate made his
notations of dead reckoning and pricked the chart, the usual routine was
proceeded with. Mayo continued at the window, head out-thrust, except
when he glanced at chart or compass or noted the dials which marked the
screws' revolutions.
Every now and then he put his ear to the submarine-signal receiver.
At last he heard the faint, far throb of the Sow and Pigs submarine
bell--seven strokes, with the four seconds' interval, then the seven
strokes repeated.
A bit later he got, sweet and low as an elfland horn, the lightship's
chime whistle. It was dead ahead, which was not exactly to his
calculation. The tide set had served stronger than he had reckoned. He
ordered the helmsman to ease her off a half-point, in order to make safe
offing for the turn into Vineyard Sound.
Well up in the sound the bell of Tarpaulin Cove reassured him, and after
a time he heard the unmistakable blast of the great reed horn of Nobska
uttering its triple hoot like a giant owl perched somewhere in the
mists.
“Nobska,” said the mate. “We are certainly coming on, sir.”
“Nobly,” agreed Captain Mayo, allowing himself a moment of jubilation,
even though the dreaded shoals were ahead.
“Are you going to keep this speed across the shoals, Captain Mayo?”
asked the general manager, displaying real deference.
“No, sir!” stated the captain with decision, bracing himself to give
Mr. Fogg a sharp word or two if that gentleman advanced any more of his
“business man's reasons” for speed. “It would not be showing due care.”
“I'm glad to hear you say that,” affirmed Mr. Fogg, heartily. “It may
be a little out of place, right now, but I want you to know that I feel
that I have picked out just the right man to command this ship. I'm glad
of a chance to say this where your mates can hear me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fogg,” returned the young man, gratefully. “This is
a soul-racking job, and I'm glad you are here to see what we are up
against. I don't feel that we'll be wasting much time in crossing the
shoals if we go carefully. We can let her out after we swing east of
Monomoy. She's a grand old packet.”
In the gloom Fogg ran his fingers gingerly over the outside of his coat
to make sure that the strip of metal was in its place.
There was silence in the pilot-house after that. Ahead there was
ticklish navigation. There were the narrow slues, the crowding shoals,
the blind turns of Nantucket Sound, dreaded in all weathers, but a
mariner's horror in a fog.
Nobska's clarion call drew slowly abeam to port, and after due lapse
of time West Chop's steam-whistle lifted its guiding voice in the mists
ahead.
“Better use the pelorus and be careful about West Chop's bearing after
we pass her, Mr. Bangs,” Captain Mayo warned his first mate.
As a sailor well knows, the bearing of West Chop gives the compass
direction for passage between the shoals known as Hedge Fence and Squash
Meadow--a ten-mile run to Cross Rip Lightship. In a fog it is vitally
important to have West Chop exact to the eighth of a point.
Fogg was glad that he was alone where he sat. He trembled so violently
that he set an unlighted cigar between his teeth to keep them from
rattling together.
The mate was outlined against the window, his eyes on the instrument,
his ear cocked. Every half-minute West Chop's whistle hooted.
“Right, sir!” the mate reported at last, speaking briskly. “I make it
west by nothe, five-eighths nothe.”
Fogg rose and half staggered forward, taking a position just to the left
of the wheel and compass.
“East by south, five-eighths south,” the captain directed the helmsman.
“Careful attention, sir. Tide is flood, four knots. Make the course
good!”
The quartermaster repeated and twirled his wheel for the usual number of
revolutions to allow a three-points change.
Captain Mayo stepped back and glanced at the compass to make certain
that his helmsman was finding his course properly. “What in tophet's
name is the matter with you, man?” he shouted. “Bring this ship around!
Bring her around!” He grabbed the wheel and spun it. “You're slower than
the devil drawing molasses,” raged Mayo, forgetting his dignity.
“She must have yawed,” protested the man. “I had her on her course, sir.
I supposed I had her over.”
“You are not to suppose. You are to keep your eyes on that compass card
and move quicker when I give an order.”
The helmsman's eyes bulged as he stared at the compass. While he
had winked his eyes, so it seemed to him, the true course had fairly
straddled away from the lubber line.
In his frantic haste Captain Mayo put her over too far. He helped
the man set her on the right course. Then he signaled half speed. The
devious and the narrow paths were ahead of them..
“That's an almighty funny jump the old dame made then,” pondered the
quartermaster. But he was too well trained to argue with a captain. He
accepted the fault as his own, and now that she was on her course, he
held her there doggedly.
Even the _Montana's_ half speed was a respectable gait, and the silent
crew in her pilot-house could hear the sea lathering along her sides.
“What do you make of that, Mr. Bangs?” the captain asked, after a
prolonged period of listening.
“Bell, sir!”
“But the only bell in that direction would be on Hedge Fence Lightship
in case her whistle has been disabled.”
“Sounds to me like a vessel at anchor.”
“But it's right in the fairway.” Captain Mayo convinced himself by a
glance at the compass. “No craft would drop her hook in the fairway.
That's no bell on the Hedge Fence,” reflected the captain. “It's a
schooner's bell. But sound often gets freaky in a fog. We're on our
course to the fraction, and we've got to keep going!”
And after a moment the bell ceased its clangor. It was a distant sound,
and its location was indefinite even to a sharp ear.
“It strikes me that sounds in general are a little warded all of a
sudden,” said the captain to his mate. “I'll swear that I can hear Hedge
Fence's five-second blasts now. But there she howls off the starboard
bow. The clouds must be giving us an echo. We've got to leave it to the
compass.”
A skilful mariner is careful about forsaking the steady finger of a
proved compass in order to chase sounds around the corner in foggy
weather. He understands that air strata raise the dickens with
whistle-blasts. There are zones of silence--there is divergence of
sound.
Fogg held his position, his legs braced, and nobody paid any especial
attention to him. They in the pilothouse were too busy with other
affairs.
There is one sound in thick weather that tells a navigator much. It is
the echo of his own whistle.
The big steamer was hoarsely hooting her way.
Suddenly there was a sound which fairly flew up and hit Captain Mayo
in the face. It was an echo. It was the sound of the _Montana's_
whistle-blast flung back at him from some object so near at hand that
there was barely a clock-tick between whistle and echo.
The captain yelped a great oath and yanked his bell-pulls furiously.
“That echo came from a schooner's sails,” he shouted.
Then, dead ahead, clanged her bell. The next instant, plunging along
at least eight miles an hour, in spite of engines clawing at full speed
astern, the towering bow smashed into the obstacle in her path.