A Master of Fortune Part 36

Captain Kettle, being human, had greatly needed some one during the last half-hour to ease his feelings on--though he was not the man to own up to such a weakness, even to himself--and the boat came neatly to supply his want. It was long enough since he had found occasion for such an outburst, but the perfection of his early training stood him in good stead then. Every biting insult in his vocabulary, every lashing word that is used upon the seas, every gibe, national, personal, or professional, that a lifetime of hard language could teach, he poured out on that shivering boat's crew then.

They were Germans certainly, but being an English shipmaster, he had, of course, many a time sailed with a forecastle filled with their nationality, and had acquired the special art of adapting his abuse to the "Dutchman's" sensibilities, even as he had other harangues suited for Coolie or Dago mariners, or even for that rare sea-bird, the English sailorman. And as a final wind-up, after having made them writhe sufficiently, he ordered them to go back whence they came, and take a share in rescuing their fellows.

"Bud we shall trown," shouted back one speaker from the wildly jumping boat.

"Then drown, and be hanged to you," shouted Kettle. "I'm sure I don't care if you do. But I'm not going to have cowards like you dirtying my deck-planks." He cast off the line to which their boat rode under the steamer's heaving side. "You go and do your whack at getting the people off that packet, or, so help me James! none of you shall ever see your happy Dutchland again."

Meanwhile, so the irony of the fates ordered it, the two mates, each in charge of one of the _Flamingo's_ lifeboats, were commanding crews made up entirely of Germans and Scandinavians, and pluckier and more careful sailormen could not have been wished for. The work was dangerous, and required more than ordinary nerve and endurance and skill. A heavy sea ran, and from its crests a spindrift blew which cut the face like whips, and numbed all parts of the body with its chill. The boats were tossed about like playthings, and required constant bailing to keep them from being waterlogged. But Kettle had brought the _Flamingo_ to windward of the _Grosser Carl_, and each boat carried a line, so that the steam winches could help her with the return trips.

Getting a cargo was, however, the chief difficulty. All attempt at killing the fire was given up by this time. All vestige of order was swamped in unutterable panic. The people on board had given themselves up to wild, uncontrollable anarchy. If a boat had been brought alongside, they would have tumbled into her like sheep, till their numbers swamped her. They cursed the flames, cursed the sea, cursed their own brothers and sisters who jostled them. They were the sweepings from half-fed middle Europe, born with raw nerves; and under the sudden stress of danger, and the absence of some strong man to thrust discipline on them, they became practically maniacs. They were beyond speech, many of them. They yammered at the boats which came to their relief, with noises like those of scared beasts.

Now the _Flamingo's_ boats were officered by two cool, profane mates, who had no nerves themselves, and did not see the use of nerves in other people. Neither of them spoke German, but (after the style of their island) presuming that some of those who listened would understand English, they made proclamation in their own tongue to the effect that the women were to be taken off first.

"Kids with them," added the second mate.

"And if any of you rats of men shove your way down here," said the chief mate, "before all the skirt is ferried across, you'll get knocked on the head, that's all. Savvy that belaying-pin I got in my fist? Now then, get some bowlines, and sway out the ladies."

As well might the order have been addressed to a flock of sheep. They heard what was said in an agonized silence. Then each poor soul there stretched out his arms or hers, and clamored to be saved--and--never mind the rest. And meanwhile the flames bit deeper and deeper into the fabric of the steamer, and the breath of them grew more searching, as the roaring gale blew them into strength.

"You ruddy Dutchmen," shouted the second mate. "It would serve you blooming well right if you were left to be frizzled up into one big sausage stew together. However, we'll see if kindness can't tame you a bit yet." He waited till the swirl of a sea swung his boat under one of the dangling davit falls, and caught hold of it, and climbed nimbly on board. Then he proceeded to clear a s.p.a.ce by the primitive method of crashing his fist into every face within reach.

"Now then," he shouted, "if there are any sailormen here worth their salt, let them come and help. Am I to break up the whole of this ship's company by myself?"

Gradually, by ones and twos, the _Grosser Carl's_ remaining officers and deck hands came shamefacedly toward this new nucleus of authority and order, and then the real work began. The emigrants, with sea sights and sea usage new to them, were still full of the unreasoning panic of cattle, and like cattle they were herded and handled, and their women and young cut out from the general mob. These last were got into the swaying, dancing boats as tenderly as might be, and the men were bidden to watch, and wait their turn. When they grew restive, as the scorching fire drew more near, they were beaten savagely; the _Grosser Carl's_ crew, with the shame of their own panic still raw on them, knew no mercy; and the second mate of the _Flamingo_, who stood against a davit, insulted them all with impartial cheerfulness. He was a very apt pupil, this young man, of that master of ruling men at the expense of their feelings, Captain Owen Kettle.

Meanwhile the two lifeboats took one risky journey after another, being drawn up to their own ship by a chattering winch, discharging their draggled freight with dexterity and little ceremony, and then laboring back under oars for another. The light of the burning steamer turned a great sphere of night into day, and the heat from her made the sweat pour down the faces of the toiling men, though the gale still roared, and the icy spindrift still whipped and stung. On the _Flamingo_, Captain Kettle cast into the sea with a free hand what represented the savings of a lifetime, provision for his wife and children, and an old-age pension for himself.

The _Grosser Carl_ had carried thirty first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, and these were crammed into the _Flamingo's_ slender cabin accommodation, filling it to overflowing. The emigrants--Austrians, Bohemians, wild Poles, filthy, crawling Russian Jews, b.e.s.t.i.a.l Armenians, human _debris_ which even soldier-coveting Middle Europe rejected--these were herded down into the holds, as rich cargo was dug out by the straining winches, and given to the thankless sea to make s.p.a.ce for them.

"Kindly walk up," said Kettle, with bitter hospitality, as fresh flocks of them were heaved up over the bulwarks. "Don't hesitate to grumble if the accommodation isn't exactly to your liking. We're most pleased to strike out cargo to provide you with an elegant parlor, and what's left I'm sure you'll be able to sit on and spoil. Oh, you filthy, long-haired cattle! Did none of you ever wash?"

Fiercely the _Grosser Carl_ burned to the fanning of the gale, and like furies worked the men in the boats. The _Grosser Carl's_ own boat joined the other two, once the ferrying was well under way. She had hung alongside after Kettle cast off her line, with her people madly clamoring to be taken on board; but as all they received for their pains was abuse and coal-lumps--mostly, by the way, from their own fellow-countrymen, who made up the majority of the _Flamingo's_ crew--they were presently driven to help in the salving work through sheer scare at being left behind to drown unless they carried out the fierce little English Captain's orders.

The _Flamingo's_ chief mate oversaw the dangerous ferrying, and though every soul that was transshipped might be said to have had ten narrow escapes in transit over that piece of tossing water, luck and good seamanship carried the day, and none was lost. And on the _Grosser Carl_ the second mate, a stronger man, brazenly took entire command, and commended to the nether G.o.ds all who suggested ousting him from that position. "I don't care a red what your official post was on this ship before I came," said the second mate to several indignant officers. "You should have held on to it when you had it. I've never been a skipper before, but I'm skipper here now by sheer right of conquest, and I'm going to stay on at that till the blooming old ship's burnt out. If you bother me, I'll knock your silly nose into your watch-pocket. Turn-to there and pa.s.s down another batch of those squalling pa.s.sengers into the boats. Don't you spill any of them overboard either, or, by the Big Mischief, I'll just step down and teach you handiness."

The second mate was almost fainting with the heat before he left the _Grosser Carl_, but he insisted on being the last man on board, and then guyed the whole performance with caustic gayety when he was dragged out of the water, into which he had been forced to jump, and was set to drain on the floor gratings of a boat.

The _Grosser Carl_ had fallen away before the wind, and was spouting flame from stem-head to p.o.o.p-staff by the time the last of the rescuers and the rescued were put on the _Flamingo's_ deck, and on that travel-worn steamboat were some six hundred and fifty visitors that somehow or other had to be provided for.

The detail of famine now became of next importance. They were still five days' steam away from port, and their official provision supply was only calculated to last the _Flamingos_ themselves for a little over that time. Things are cut pretty fine in these days of steam voyages to scheduled time. So there was no sentimental waiting to see the _Grosser Carl_ finally burn out and sink. The boats were cast adrift, as the crews were too exhausted to hoist them in, and the _Flamingo's_ nose was turned toward Liverpool. Pratt, the chief engineer, figured out to half a ton what coal he had remaining, and set the pace so as to run in with empty bunkers. They were cool now, all hands, from the excitement of the burning ship, and the objectionable prospect of semi-starvation made them regard their visitors less than ever in the light of men and brothers.

But, as it chanced, toward the evening of next day, a hurrying ocean greyhound overtook them in her race from New York toward the East, and the bunting talked out long sentences in the commercial code from the wire span between the _Flamingo's_ masts. Fresh quartettes of flags flicked up on both steamers, were acknowledged, and were replaced by others; and when the liner drew up alongside, and stopped with reversed propellers, she had a loaded boat ready swung out in davits, which dropped in the water the moment she had lost her way. The bunting had told the pith of the tale.

When the two steamers' bridges were level, the liner's captain touched his cap, and a crowd of well-dressed pa.s.sengers below him listened wonderingly. "Afternoon, Captain. Got 'em all?"

"Afternoon, Captain. Oh, we didn't lose any. But a few drowned their silly selves before we started to shepherd them."

"What ship was it? The French boat would be hardly due yet."

"No, the old _Grosser Carl_. She was astern of her time. Much obliged to you for the grub, Captain. We'd have been pretty hard pushed if we hadn't met you. I'm sending you a payment order. Sorry for spoiling your pa.s.sage."

The liner captain looked at his watch.

"Can't be helped. It's in a good cause, I suppose, though the mischief of it is we were trying to pull down the record by an hour or so. The boat, there! Are you going to be all night with that bit of stuff?"

The cases of food were transshipped with frantic haste, and the boat returned. The greyhound leaped out into her stride again the moment she had hooked on, and shot ahead, dipping a smart blue ensign in salute.

The _Flamingo_ dipped a dirty red ensign and followed, and, before dark fell, once more had the ocean to herself.

The voyage home was not one of oppressive gayety. The first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, who were crammed into the narrow cabin found the quarters uncomfortable, and the little shipmaster's manner repellent. Urged by the precedent in such matters, they "made a purse" for him, and a presentation address. But as they merely collected some thirty-one pounds in paper promises, which, so far, have never been paid, their grat.i.tude may be said to have had its economical side.

To the riffraff in the hold, for whose accommodation a poor man's fortune had been jettisoned, the thing "grat.i.tude" was an unknown emotion. They plotted mischief amongst themselves, stole when the opportunity came to them, were unspeakably foul in their habits, and, when they gave the matter any consideration at all, decided that this fierce little captain with the red torpedo beard had taken them on board merely to fulfil some selfish purpose of his own. To the theorist who has sampled them only from a distance, these off-scourings of Middle Europe are downtrodden people with souls; to those who happen to know them personally, all their qualities seem to be conspicuously negative.

The _Flamingo_ picked up the landmarks of the Southern Irish coast, and made her number to Lloyd's station on Brow Head, stood across for the Tuskar, and so on up St. George's Channel for Holyhead. She flew a pilot jack there, and off Point Lynus picked up a pilot, who, after the custom of his cla.s.s, stepped up over the side with a hard felt hat on his head, and a complete wardrobe, and a selection of daily papers in his pocket.

"Well, pilot, what's the news?" said Kettle, as the man of narrow waters swung himself up on to the bridge, and his boat swirled away astern.

"You are," said the pilot. "The papers are just full of you, Captain, all of them, from the _Shipping Telegraph_ to the London _Times_. The Cunard boat brought in the yarn. A pilot out of my schooner took her up."

"How do they spell the name? Cuttle?"

"Well, I think it's 'Kattle' mostly, though one paper has it 'Kelly.'"

"Curse their cheek," said the little sailor, flushing. "I'd like to get hold of some of those blowsy editors that come smelling round the dock after yarns and drink, and wring their necks."

"Starboard a point," said the pilot, and when the quartermaster at the wheel had duly repeated the course, he turned to Kettle with some amus.e.m.e.nt. "Blowsy or not, they don't seem to have done you much harm this journey, Captain. Why, they're getting up subscriptions for you all round. Shouldn't wonder but what the Board of Trade even stands you a pair of binoculars."

"I'm not a blessed mendicant," said Kettle stiffly, "and as for the Board of Trade, they can stick their binoculars up their trousers." He walked to the other end of the bridge, and stood there chewing savagely at the b.u.t.t end of his cigar.

"Rum bloke," commented the pilot to himself, though aloud he offered no comment, being a man whose business it was to keep on good terms with everybody. So he dropped his newspapers to one of the mates, and applied himself to the details of the pilotage.

Still, the pilot was right in saying that England was ringing with the news of Kettle's feat. The pa.s.sengers of the Cunarder, with nothing much else to interest them, had come home thrilled and ringing with it. A smart New Yorker had got a "scoop" by slipping ash.o.r.e at Queenstown and cabling a lavish account to the American Press a.s.sociation, so that the first news reached London from the States. Followed Reuter's man and the Liverpool reporters on Prince's landing-stage, who came to glean copy as in the ordinary course of events, and they being spurred on by wires from London for full details, got down all the facts available, and imagined others. Parliament was not sitting, and there had been no newspaper sensation for a week, and, as a natural consequence, the papers came out next morning with accounts of the rescue varying from two columns to a page in length.

It is one of the most wonderful attributes of the modern Press that it can, at any time between midnight and publishing hours, collate and elaborate the biography of a man who hitherto has been entirely obscure, and considering the speed of the work, and the difficulties which hedge it in, these lightning life sketches are often surprisingly full of accuracies. But let the frillings in this case be fact or fiction, there was no doubt that Kettle and his crew had saved a shipload of panic-stricken foreign emigrants, and (to help point the moral) within the year, in an almost similar case, another shipload had been drowned through that same blind, helpless, hopeless panic. The pride of race bubbled through the British Daily Press in prosaic long primer and double-leaded bourgeois. There was no saying aloud, "We rejoice that an Englishman has done this thing, after having it proved to us that it was above the foreigner's strength." The newspaper man does not rhapsodize.

But the sentiment was there all the same, and it was that which actuated the sudden wave of enthusiasm which thrilled the country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STRANGERS CAME UP AND WRUNG KETTLE'S UNWILLING HAND.]

The _Flamingo_ was worked into dock, and a cheering crowd surged aboard of her in unrestrainable thousands. Strangers came up and wrung Kettle's unwilling hand, and dropped tears on his coat-sleeve; and when he swore at them, they only wept the more and smiled through the drops. It was magnificent, splendid, gorgeous. Here was a man! Who said that England would ever lose her proud place among the nations when she could still find men like Oliver Kelly--or Kattle--or Cuttle, or whatever this man was called, amongst her obscure merchant captains?

Even Mr. Isaac Bird, managing owner, caught some of the general enthusiasm, and withheld, for the present, the unpleasant remarks which occurred to him as suitable, touching Kettle's neglect of the firm's interest in favor of a parcel of bankrupt foreigners. But Kettle himself had the subject well in mind. When all this absurd fuss was over, then would come the reckoning; and whilst the crowd was cheering him, he was figuring out the value of the jettisoned cargo, and whilst pompous Mr.

Isaac was shaking him by the hand and making a neat speech for the ear of casual reporters, poor Kettle was conjuring up visions of the workhouse and pauper's corduroy.

But the Fates were moving now in a manner which was beyond his experience. The public, which had ignored his bare existence before for all of a lifetime, suddenly discovered that he was a hero, and that, too, without knowing half the facts. The Press, with its finger on the public's pulse, published Kettle literature in lavish columns. It gave twenty different "eye-witnesses' accounts" of the rescue. It gave long lists of "previous similar disasters." It drew long morals in leading articles. And finally, it took all the little man's affairs under its consideration, and settled them with a lordly hand.

"Who pays for the cargo Captain Kuttle threw overboard?" one paper headed an article; whilst another wrote perfervidly about "Cattle ruined for his bravery." Here was a new and striking side issue. Lloyds' were not responsible. Should the week's hero pay the bill himself out of his miserable savings? Certainly not. The owners of the _Grosser Carl_ were the benefiting parties, and it was only just that they should take up the expense. So the entire Press wired off to the German firm, and next morning were able to publish a positive a.s.surance that of course these grateful foreigners would reimburse all possible outlay.

The subject of finance once broached, it was naturally discovered that the hero toiled for a very meagre pittance, that he was getting on in years, and had a wife and family depending on him--and--promptly, there opened out the subscription lists. People were stirred, and they gave nicely, on the lower scale certainly, with shillings and guineas predominating; but the lists totalled up to 2,400, which to some people, of course, is gilded affluence.