DORA FLETCHER'S CHANCE
"From what you have told me, I assume you have no mother," Calamity went
on. The note of pity had left his voice, and his manner, if not brusque,
was cold and judicial.
"No," answered the girl, "my mother died when I was four years old." Her
manner, too, had changed; all the heat and defiance had left it and she
spoke in a subdued, colourless voice, as though these matters hardly
concerned her.
"And you have no relatives living?"
"I have a couple of aunts in Sunderland. I stayed with them until I was
eight years old. I--I hate them!" She made a passionate gesture as
though the very mention of these people aroused bitter memories. "It was
not that they were unkind exactly; but--well, it doesn't matter now.
Soon after my eighth birthday my father took me away with him on a
voyage to the East, and after that I went with him on nearly all his
voyages. He educated me, too; taught me French, mathematics, navigation,
and so on."
"Navigation, eh?" remarked Calamity with a note of surprise in his
voice.
"Yes; if I had been a man I could have passed for mate and got my
master's ticket long ago. I'd pit my knowledge of seamanship against
that of any man on this ship," she concluded defiantly.
"That wouldn't be a very hard test," answered the Captain with a cynical
smile. "But what did your father intend you to be; surely he didn't
suppose you would eventually command a ship?"
"I don't know what his intentions were; but the trip before this last
one, he bought a fruit farm near Los Angeles, California, and I think he
meant to settle down there when he retired from the sea."
"Probably he thought it might provide you with an occupation."
"Perhaps so; but he never spoke of it."
"Then he had no home of his own in England?"
"No. The house my aunts occupy and several others in Sunderland were
his, but he never lived in any of them."
"He made a will, I suppose?"
"Yes, it's among those papers that I handed over to you. I know
everything's left to me, because he told me so when he made his will."
"H'm, then you're not so badly off after all. I should strongly advise
you to go to California and see what you can do with the fruit-farm.
It's both a healthy and remunerative occupation I've been told."
The girl nodded, but made no answer.
"What I propose to do is to take you to Singapore and place you under
the protection of the British Consul, who, no doubt, will advise you
concerning the proving of your father's will and so forth, for I know
nothing of such matters."
"It's very kind of you," murmured the girl.
"Well now, I think that's all we can arrange for the present," said
Calamity in a tone which intimated that the interview was at an end.
She rose, and, with a murmured "Good-night," left the cabin and mounted
the companion-way to the deck. Slowly, as one in a dream, she made her
way to her cabin, casting no glance at the unruffled sea with its
millions of scintillating reflections. Her bold statement to Calamity,
admittedly a declaration of love, had met with a rebuff which would have
induced in most women a feeling of intolerable shame and, in all
probability, inspired them with a lasting hatred of the man who had so
humiliated them. But this was not the case with Dora Fletcher; she felt
neither shame nor anger. Indeed, she would have been puzzled to say
exactly what her feelings were, so incoherent and altogether strange
were they. But she knew she had met a hitherto unrecognised force; that
she had been awed not so much by a man as by a mysterious something
inherent in him; by a quality rather than an individual.
During the next few days she avoided the Captain in every possible way.
Not that he ever attempted to seek her out, for, since that memorable
interview he seemed to have forgotten her existence as completely as
though she had ceased to be. He had again become the grim, taciturn, and
mysterious individual she had first encountered. Yet, despite the girl's
avoidance of him, there was gradually developing in her mind a desire to
do something which would exalt her in his eyes. She wanted to bridge
that vague gulf between them; to achieve something which would prove her
worth. It was a delightfully ingenuous dream, only possible to a girl as
unsophisticated and natural as this young Amazon of the Seas.
In due time and through no effort of her own, the hoped-for opportunity
did occur and the girl was able to play the part she had so often
pictured in her waking dreams. It came about, as such things usually do,
in quite a fortuitous manner.
One day, about a week after her interview with Calamity, the weather,
which had been remarkably fine since they left the island, showed signs
of a change and before mid-day the sun had disappeared behind a curtain
of sombre-tinted clouds. A wind sprang up and freshened as the day wore
on, the sea became choppy, and a great bank of black clouds spread over
the sky till there was barely sufficient light by which to read the
compass on the bridge. Soon the _Hawk_ was rolling and pitching in a
nasty fashion and shipping seas over her weather-bow every time she
ducked her nose. In view of the approaching storm, hand-lines were
rigged across the decks, the prisoner in the wheel-house was transferred
to the hold, and a couple of men stationed at the hand steering-gear in
case the steam-gear should break down at a critical moment.
Swiftly and with ever-increasing violence the hurricane swept down upon
them. The seas, a turbid green, with great, foaming crests, had
increased in fury and every moment grew higher, while the valleys
between them, streaked and mottled with patches of foam, became deeper
and more engulfing. In the midst of the _mêlée_ of raging waters, the
_Hawk_ lurched and rolled and pitched, curveted and plunged as though
she were on gimbals. Blacker and blacker grew the sky, higher and higher
leapt the waves. Now they rose in front of the straining ship in solid
walls of inky water, to plunge down upon the forecastle with a roar like
thunder and a force which made her reel and stagger. Then a great wave
would leap high above the weather-bow, and, rushing past her listing
beam, descend with a mighty crash upon the starboard quarter, filling
the wheel-house waist-deep with seething water.
Night came on, scarce darker than the afternoon which had preceded it,
and with never a friendly star nor a rift in the solid blackness. Above
the wild, devouring waste of tumbling seas the mast-head light tossed
and circled--a dim, luminous speck in the fathomless darkness. The wind
howled and shrieked and moaned like a chorus of lost souls in torment.
Throughout that seemingly endless night Calamity and Smith kept
the bridge together, drenched and cold despite their oilskins; their
faces whipped by the stinging wind, their eyes sore with the salt
spray that was flung in ghostly eddies against them. Two bells
struck--four--six--eight; the two relief quartermasters fought their way
along the sea-swept for'ad deck and took over the wheel from the
worn-out men who clutched it. Two--four--six--eight bells over again;
another four hours had passed, and another two quartermasters had come
upon the bridge to take their "trick" and release the exhausted men at
the wheel.
Soon after this--it was four o'clock in the morning--Calamity staggered
up the inclined deck to the spot where Smith was standing.
"You'd better get below," he yelled above the roar of the gale. "You've
been up here over twelve hours."
"I'm all right, sir," answered the second-mate, as he clung to the
bridge-rail.
"Never mind, get to your bunk."
Though well-nigh exhausted and shivering with cold, the little Cockney
obeyed with reluctance, being loth to leave the Captain up there to con
the ship alone. But he knew better than to disobey or argue, and so,
grumbling to himself, he crawled down the companion-ladder and sought
his cabin.
At last the dawn broke, chill and sombre and leaden. Calamity, weary and
heavy-eyed, scanned the forbidding, sullen sky in the hope of glimpsing
a break in its glowering expanse. But no break was there; only
wind-torn, tattered shreds of black cloud driving across it to assemble
eastward in a massed and solid bank of evil aspect.
At six bells--seven o'clock in the morning watch--Smith tumbled out of
his bunk after three hours' unbroken slumber, dragged on his oilskins,
and stepped into the alleyway with the object of relieving the Captain,
who had now been on the bridge over twenty hours. As he reached the
deck, still only half awake, he was caught up by a huge sea which came
leaping over the bulwarks, swept him off his feet, and dashed him
violently against the iron ladder leading up to the bridge. It was a
miracle that the wave, as it receded, did not carry him overboard. As it
was, it left him a limp, crumpled figure, lying motionless under the
ladder with one foot jammed beneath the lowest rung.
Calamity, who alone had witnessed the accident, took the wheel from the
quartermasters and sent them to rescue the second-mate from his perilous
position. After some difficulty they succeeded in releasing the
imprisoned foot and then carried the unconscious man, whose left leg
dangled loosely from the knee, to his cabin. Here, after roughly
bandaging a wound on his forehead, they stripped him of his dripping
garments and laid him in his bunk.
When these details were reported to the Captain he frowned and muttered
something under his breath. He dared not leave the bridge, and yet
there was no one on board but himself who could set a broken leg or even
administer first-aid. No one, that is, except----
"Tell Miss Fletcher," he said curtly.
That order, probably, represented the biggest humiliation he had ever
suffered.
One of the men went to Miss Fletcher's cabin and informed her of what
had taken place, adding that he had been sent by the Captain.
"What did he say?" asked the girl.
"All 'e says was 'Tell Miss Fletcher,'" answered the man.
"Tell him I will attend to Mr. Smith," she said with a curtness that
matched Calamity's own. "Stop," she added as the man was leaving, "send
the steward along first."
There was a look of triumph in the girl's eyes as she stepped out of her
cabin and went over to the one occupied by the hapless second-mate. He
was still unconscious and she at once proceeded to remove the crude
bandage from his forehead and bathe the wound properly. While she was in
the act of binding it up again Sing-hi entered.
"I want you to help me fix Mr. Smith's broken leg," said the girl. "Do
you think you can manage it?"
"Plenty savee," answered the Chinaman with a grin, "two piecee man fixee
one piecee leg." He had often assisted Calamity with surgical cases and
was proud of his experience.
"Yes, that's right. Can you make me a splint?"
"One piecee leg wantchee two piecee wood?" inquired Sing-hi.
"Yes."
The Chinaman glanced round the cabin, then removed the books from a
narrow shelf just above the bunk and took it down. He split this in two
with his hands, and, without awaiting further instructions, started to
wind a towel round it to form a pad on which the injured limb could
rest.
"Excellent," she said, watching him. "You're a splendid assistant."
Sing-hi understood her tone more than her words.
"Plenty muchee helpee," he replied modestly.
At that moment Smith opened his eyes, stared about him in bewilderment,
and then uttered a loud groan.
"Gawd, what's happened?" he ejaculated.
"Your left leg is broken and there's a nasty gash on your forehead,"
answered the girl tersely.
"Just my bloomin' bad luck. As if----" he broke off suddenly, a new
thought having occurred to him. "What the devil will the old man do now?
He's been on watch over twenty hours, and there ain't a soul to relieve
him. Dykes is on that blighted packet astern--leastways, I suppose he is
if she's still afloat--and I'm half corpsed. It's a cheerful look-out
and no bloomin' error."
"Don't worry," answered the girl calmly as she took the improvised
splint from Sing-hi. "I'll relieve the Captain myself presently."
"What--you!" And Smith, despite the pain he was suffering, laughed
outright. "Oh my stars, I can see him going below and leaving you in
charge of the ship--I don't think."
"Then the sooner you do think, the better," retorted the girl
cheerfully.