As It Was in the Beginning Part 3

His door had been flung widely open. Before he could reach the turning of the corridor, the one electric bulb, left glowing for the night, abruptly blackened. But he knew the way to Elaine.

He seemed to be plunging through a torture hall, so hurtling full was the darkness of fearful cries and confusion. The broken hulk of the steamer slightly lurched, as the plates broke yet farther apart.

Sidney was flung against a cabin wall, but he righted and pitched more rapidly down the already canted pa.s.sage.

"Elaine!" he called. "Elaine!"

"Yes!" she answered. "Yes! I can't get out!" She was not at all in a panic.

Someone, a man, rushed headlong by and nearly bowled Grenville over.

He was spilling golf clubs from a bag and calling for the steward.

Grenville caught at the k.n.o.b of Elaine's hard-fastened door and threw his weight upon it. A stubborn resistance met his effort. The frame had been distorted by the splitting of plates and ribs. The wedging was complete.

"Stand back!" he called out sharply. "I must break it in at once!"

He knew they were late already--that swarms of beings, nearer the exits, were wildly pouring from the ship's interior, to be first to the boats, so fatally reduced in numbers.

With all his might he hurled his shoulder against the door, that merely creaked at his impotent a.s.sault. The hall was narrow. He could gain no momentum for his blow. The second and third attack made no impression.

A clammy sweat exuded from his forehead. That the sea was tumbling torrentially into the helpless vessel he knew by countless indications.

Elaine must perish helplessly in her trap, could he not immediately force the barrier. He suddenly got down, full length, upon the floor, braced his shoulders against the opposite cabin, and, with knees slightly raised, placed both his feet against the door. Then he strained with superhuman strength. The door remained immovable, but its paneling slightly cracked.

Meantime the shrieks, the shouts, the roaring of steam, and the terrible chaos of destruction had increased to a horrifying chorus.

The corridor was filling with hot, moist vapor from the burst pipes. A dozen stokers had perished. Fire had attacked a portion of the vessel abaft the midships section.

Once more, with a wild, fanatic conjuring of energy, Grenville spent himself upon the door--and a panel snapped out, flinging little splinters on Elaine. In a fury of desperate activity the man on the floor beat out more with his driving feet.

"It's large enough! It's large enough!" cried the girl as the orifice widened. "Don't wait to break it larger!"

She was now fully dressed, having swiftly prepared for any sort of emergency. A candle, provided from her bag, was glowing in her hand.

This she thrust forth for Grenville to take, and then, with deliberate care, she wormed her way out through the jagged hole with the confident skill of a child.

"Not there!" called Grenville, as she hastened ahead to gain the forward companionway. "Everybody's there, all fighting for their lives!"

He caught her actively about the waist, as a further lurch and settling of the "Inca" would have hurled her to the floor. Down through a shorter pa.s.sage and up a strangely tilted stair he drew her rapidly, his heart a.s.sailed by a sickening fear of what their delay might have cost them. Yet less than five minutes had actually pa.s.sed since the first vast shock of disaster.

They emerged to a portion of the slanted deck that seemed to be utterly deserted. A gust of wind blew out the candle. The sky was clear. An uneven fragment of the aging moon shone dully on the broken ship, whence fearful sounds continued to arise.

Only one of the boats had been dropped to the tide--to be instantly whirled _inside_ the parting steamer, on the torrent filling her mighty belly, where the latest lurch had laid her widely open.

Grenville ran to the starboard rail for a glance towards the struggle farther forward. There, about the impotent crew, laboring hotly with people, boats and davits no longer adjusted to normal working order, the wildest confusion existed.

A boat that hung out above the sea was filled with screaming beings.

Some madman arose and slashed with maniacal fury at the rope of the blocks, to hasten the craft's descent. Of a sudden its bow shot perpendicularly downward, its stern still high in the air. Its cargo dropped out like leaden weights, while the empty sh.e.l.l, like a pendulum, swayed to and fro above the smothered cries.

To join such a throng would be but to choose a larger company in which to perish. Grenville saw that the steamer must presently drop from her rock and sound illimitable depths. This could hardly be delayed for more than ten minutes longer.

A sickening qualm a.s.sailed his vitals at the thought of Elaine, doomed to drown thus helplessly, along with himself and the others. He knew that not only were the boats insufficient, but there was no time left to load and launch them!

Then, at length, he remembered the life-raft on the roof. Once more, with his arm supporting Elaine, he clambered up a tilted stairway. The place was deserted. The raft was there--but securely fastened to the planking, fore and aft and at the sides! The ropes that bound it down were thick and doubled!

With his knife the man attacked them desperately. The blade broke out of the handle when one strand only had been severed. His second blade was small and useless for such a labor.

He groaned, for a ghastly tremor was seizing the "Inca" as she hung above some crumbling abyss for a final plunge to the bottom. Then the moonlight gleamed on the carpenter's adze, which had slid down the deck to the railing. He darted upon it like an animal, and, hastening back, swung it with swift and savage blows that severed the ropes like cheese.

"Quick! Quick!" he shouted to Elaine, as he flung the implement from him; and, catching her roughly about the waist, he bore her face downward beside himself, full length upon the raft.

It was already slightly in motion, where the ship was toppling to her grave!

CHAPTER IV

THE NIGHT--AND MORNING

With a rattle and sc.r.a.ping along the deck, the device with the two p.r.o.ne figures desperately clinging to its surface, was halted and tilted nearly level as it struck a spar and partially mounted upon it.

A sudden glare lit up the scene where the fire had burst through shattered windows. Screams yet more appalling than those already piercing the gale arose with the movement of the vessel. A picture grotesque and monstrous was for one awful moment presented. The huge iron entrails of the vessel heaved up into sight with her breaking.

Her funnels, masts, and superstructure pointed outward, strangely horizontal. Innumerable loose things rattled down the decks. She belched forth flame and clouds of steam, against which one huge iron rib, rudely torn on its end to the semblance of a giant finger, seemed pointing the way to inscrutable eternity.

The lantern, up at the "Inca's" masthead, describing an arc as it swept across the heavens, was the last thing Grenville noted. He thought how insignificantly it would sizzle in the sea! Then he and Elaine, with raft and all, were flung far out, by the suddenly accelerated velocity of the doomed leviathan, turning keel upwards as it sank. When they struck, their puny float dived under like a crockery platter, shied from some t.i.tanic hand.

With all his strength the man clung fast to Elaine and the lattice-like planking of their deck. It seemed to Grenville, still submerged, he could never resist the force of the waves to wash them backwards to death. It appeared, moreover, the raft would never return to the top.

A million bubbles broke about his ears. He felt they were diving to deeps illimitable.

With a rush of waters drumming on their senses, it shot precipitately upward at last, till air and spray greeted them together. Then, sucked deep under, anew, and backward, by the gurgling vortex where the ship had gone, and swirling about, pivoting wildly, as the raft now threatened to plunge edge downward to the nethermost caverns of the hungry sea, they met a counter-violence that forced it once more towards the surface.

The boilers had burst in the steamer's hold, with confusion to all those tides of suction. Erratically diving here and there, a helpless prey to chaotic cross currents in all directions, the float swung giddily in the mid abyss, while the water walls baffled one another.

Elaine, even more than Grenville, was bursting with explosive breath when, at length, the raft came twisting once more to the chill, sweet region of the gale. And even then strong currents drew it fiercely in their wake before it rode freely on the waters.

Dripping and gasping, Grenville half rose to scan the troubled billows for companions in distress. Not a sound could he hear, save the swash of the waves. Not a light appeared in all that void, save the distant, indifferent stars.

Elaine, too, stirred, and raised herself up to a posture half sitting.

She was hatless. Her hair was streaming down across her face and shoulders in strands too wet for the wind to ravel. Her eyes were blazing wildly.

"The ship?" she said. "What happened?"

"Sunk." He stood up. Their platform was steadying buoyantly as it drifted in the breeze. "I can't even see the spot," he added, presently. "We couldn't propel this raft to the place, no matter who might be floating."

"It's terrible!" she whispered, faintly, as one afraid to accuse the Fates aloud. "Couldn't we even---- You think they are all--all gone?"

"I'll shout," said Grenville, merely to humor the pity in her breast.

His long, loud "Halloo" rolled weirdly out across the wolf-like pack of waves, three--four--a half dozen times.

There was not the feeblest murmur of response. Yet he felt that, perhaps, one boatload at least might have sped away in safety.