Geoffrey Hamstead Part 38

They had almost got around the Lighthouse Point at Toronto, after a desperately cold pa.s.sage, when a gale struck them, and, not being able to carry enough canvas to weather the point, they were thus driven down the lake again with the sails either blown from the bolt-ropes or split to ribbons, with the exception of a bit of the foresail, with which they ran before the wind. To go to South Bay would probably mean being frozen in all winter, and perhaps the loss of the ship, so the captain headed for Oswego, hoping the snow and sleet would clear off to enable them to see the harbor when they got there. On the way down a huge sea came over the stern, stove in the cabin, and smashed the compa.s.ses.

"We hedn't kept no dead reckonin', an' we cudn't tell anyways how fast we wus goin'. We just druv' on afore it for hours. Cudn't see more'n a vessel's length anywheres for snow, and, as for ice, we wus makin' ice on top of her like you'd think we wus a-loadin' ice from a elevator; we wus just one of 'Greenland's icy mountings' gone adrift. Waal, the old man guv it up at last, and acknowledged the corn right up and up. Says he, 'Boys, she's a goner. We've druv' down below and past Oswego, and that's the last of her.'"

"This looked pretty bad--fur the old man to collapse all up like this; fur all on yer knows as well as I do that to get down below Oswego in a westerly gale in December means that naathin' is goin' to survive but the insurance. There's no harbors, ner shelter, ner lifeboats, ner naathin'. Yer anchors are no more use to yer off that sh.o.r.e than a busted postage-stamp. Thet's the time, boys, fur to jine the Salvation Army and trample down Satan under yer feet and run her fur the sh.o.r.e and pray to G.o.d for a soft spot and lots of power fer to drive her well up into a farm.

"Waal, gents, the old man tuckered out, and went off to his cabin fur to make it all solid with his 'eavenly parents, and two or three of us chaps as hed been watchin' things pretty close come to the conclusion thet we hedn't got below Oswego yet. So we all went in a body, as a kind o' depitation from ourselves, and says us to the old man: 'Hev you guv up the nevigation of this vessel? becus, ef yer hev, there's others here as wud like to take a whack at playin' captain.'

"'All right,' says the old man from his knees (fur he was down gettin'

the prayers ready-made out of a book), 'I've guv her up,' says he; 'do you jibe your fores'l and head her fur the sutherd and look out for a soft spot. Yer kin do what yer likes with her.'

"So we jibes the fores'l then, just puttin' the wheel over and lettin'

the wind do the rest of it, fer there was six inches of ice on to the sheets, and yer couldn't touch a line anywheres unless yer got in to it with a axe. Waal, the old fores'l flickers across without carryin' away naathin', and, just as we did this, another vessel heaves right across the course we bed been a-driven' on. Our helm was over and the ship was a-swingin' when we sighted her, or else we'd have cut her in two like a bloomin' cowc.u.mber. And then we seed our chance. That ere vessel was goin' along, on the full kioodle, with every appearance of knowin' where she was goin' to--which we didn't. 'Hooray!' says we, 'we ain't below Oswego yet, and that vessel will show us the road. She's got the due course from somewheres, and she's our only chance.'

"And we follered her. You can bet your Sunday pants we was everlastin'ly right on her track. She was all we hed, boys, 'tween us and th' etarnal never-endin' psalm. Death seemed like a awful cold pa.s.sage that time, boys! We wus all frost-bit and froze up ginerally; and clothes weren't no better'n paper onto us."

"But she had a _leetle_ more fores'l onto her than we hed; and after a while she begun to draw away from us. We hed naathin' left more to set fer to catch up with her. We hollered to make her ease up, but she paid no attention. Guess she didn't hear, or thought we hed our compa.s.ses all right--which we hedn't. Waal, gents, it was a awful time. Our last chance was disappearin' in the snow-storm, and there wus us left there, 'most froze to death, and not knowin' where to go. Yer cudn't see her, thro' the snow, more'n two lengths ahead; and, when she got past that, all yer cud see was the track of her keel in the water right under our bows. Well, fellows, I got down furrud on the chains, and we 'stablished a line o' signals from me along the rest of them to the man at the wheel. If I once lost that tract in the water we wus done forever.

Sometimes I wus afeared I hed lost it, and then I got it again, and then it seemed to grow weaker; and I thought a little pray to G.o.d would do no harm. And I lifts up my hand--so--"

The man had left his seat and was crouching on the floor as he told this part of the story. The words rolled out with a terrific energy as he glared down at the floor, stooping in the att.i.tude in which he had watched the track in the water. The tones of his voice had a wild terror in them that thrilled Jack to the very core, and made him feel as if he could not breathe.

"And I lifts up me hand--so (and, gents, I wus lookin' at that streak in the water. I want yer to understand I was a-lookin' at it). And I lifts up me hand--so--and I says 'Holy Christ, don't let that vessel get off no farderer--'"

The story was never finished.

A sound came to them that seemed to Jack to be only a continuation of the horror of the story he had heard. A crash sounded through the ship and they were all knocked off their seats into the fore-peak with a sudden shock. They tumbled up on deck in a flash, and there they saw that a great steamer had mounted partly on top of the schooner's counter. The mainmast had gone over the side to leeward.

The schooner had been about to cross the steamer's course when they first saw her lights in the fog, and, partly mistaking her direction, the sailing captain had put his ship about. This brought the stern of the schooner, as she swung in stays, directly in line with the course of the steamer. The steamer's helm was put hard over, and the engines were reversed, but not until within fifty feet of the schooner. The stern of the schooner swung around as she turned to go off on the other tack, so that, although the stem or cut.w.a.ter of the steamer got past, the counter of the schooner was struck and forced through the steamer's starboard bow under the false sides. When they struck, the schooner's stern was depressed in the seaway and the steamer's bow was high in the air, so that the latter received a deadly blow which tore a hole about six feet high by ten long in her bow. Both boats went ahead together, chiefly owing to the momentum of the huge steamer. And for a moment the steamer's false sides rested on what was left of the schooner's counter on the port side.

A man leaning over from the upper deck of the steamer cried:

"What schooner is that?"

"Schooner North Star, of Toronto," was the reply.

The man vaulted over the bulwarks and slid actively down the sloping side of the steamer to the deck of the schooner and looked around him.

No sooner had he done so than the motion of the waves parted the two boats. The steamer ceased to move ahead. The forward canvas of the schooner had caught the wind and she was beginning to pay off on the port tack, the mainmast, mainsail, and rigging dragging in the water.

Jack, who was filled with helpless anxiety, then discovered that the steamer was the Eleusinian. At the same moment he heard a shriek from the bow of the steamer and there he saw Nina, her long hair driving behind her, beckoning him to come to help her. The steamer, filling like a broken bottle, had already taken one lurch preparatory to going down and Jack yelled:

"Jump, Nina! Jump into the water and I will save you!"

But Nina, not knowing that the steamer was going down, had not the courage to cast herself into the black heaving waves.

Jack saw this hesitation, and yelled to her again to jump. He made fast the end of a coil of light line, and then sprang to the bulwarks to jump overboard so that when he swam to the bows of the steamer Nina could jump into the water near him.

He knew without looking that the schooner, with no after-canvas set, could do nothing at present but fall off and drift away before the wind, as she was now doing, and as her one yawl boat had been smashed to dust in the collision, the only chance for Nina was for him to have a line in his hand whereby to regain the schooner as it drifted off. It was a wild moment for Jack, but his nerve was equal to the occasion. While he belayed the end of the light line to a ring on the bulwarks, he called to his mates on the schooner to let go everything and douse their forward canvas.

It takes a long time even to read what had to be done. What Jack did was done in a moment; but as he sprang to the bulwarks to vault over the side, a strong pair of arms seized him from behind and held him like a vice with his arms at his sides.

"Let me go," he cried, as he struggled in the grasp of a stranger.

"No, sir. You're wanted. I have had trouble enough to get you without letting you drown yourself."

Jack struggled wildly; but the more frantic he became the more he roused the detective to ferocity. He heaved forward to throw Dearborn over his head; but the two fell together, crashing their heads upon the deck, where they writhed convulsively.

The iron grip never relaxed. At last Jack, lifting Dearborn with him, got on his feet and, seizing something on the bulwarks to hold himself in position, he stopped his efforts to escape. "For G.o.d's sake," he cried brokenly, "for Christ's sake, let me go! See, there she is! She is going to be my wife!"

In his excitement Dearborn forgot that the woman on the steamer might have the stolen money with her. To him Jack's jumping overboard promised certain death and the loss of a prisoner.

As Jack tried to point to Nina, who was clasping the little flag-pole at the bow of the steamer--a white figure in the surrounding gloom, waving and apparently calling to him--he saw the steamer take a slow, sickening lurch forward, and then a long lurch aft. The bows rose high in the air, with that poor desolate figure clasping the flag-pole, and then the Eleusinian slowly disappeared.

For an instant the bows remained above the surface while the air escaped from the interior, and the last that could be seen was the white figure clinging desperately to the little mast as if forsaken by all. No power had answered her agonies of prayer for deliverance.

After the strong man who had pinioned Jack saw the vessel go down, he became aware that he was holding his culprit up rather than down. He looked around at his face, and there saw a pair of staring eyes that discerned nothing. He laid him on the deck then, and finally placed him in the after-cabin on the floor. Jack did not regain consciousness. His breathing returned only to allow a delirium to supervene. Dearborn and a sailor had again to hold him, or he would have plunged over the bulwarks, thinking the steamer had not yet sunk.

The captain's wife, who had been sleeping in the extra berth off the after-cabin, had been crushed between the timbers when the collision took place, and under the frantic orders of the captain the rest of the crew were trying to extricate the screaming woman. The mate had been disabled in the falling of the mainmast, so that no attempts were made to save those who were left swimming when the Eleusinian went down, and the schooner, under her forward canvas, sailed off, dragging her wreckage after her, slowly, of course, but faster than any one could swim. Thus no one was saved from the steamer except the detective, who had not thought of saving his own life when he had dropped to the deck of the schooner, but only of seizing Jack.

The mate was able, after a time, to give his directions while lying on the deck. The wreckage was chopped away, and the vessel was brought nearer the wind to raise the injured port quarter well above the waves until canvas could be nailed over the gaping aperture. When this was done they squared away before the wind, hoisted the center-board, and made good time up the lake. They had a fair wind to Port Dalhousie--the only place available for dockyards and refitting--where they arrived at two o'clock in the day.

After raving in delirium until they arrived at Port Dalhousie, Jack fell off then into a sleep, and when the Empress of India was ready to leave at four o'clock for Toronto, Dearborn woke him up and found that his consciousness seemed to have partly returned. The detective was pleased that the disabled vessel had sought a Canadian port, where his warrant for Jack's arrest was good. However, the prisoner made no resistance, and at nine o'clock he was duly locked up at Toronto, having remained in a sort of stupor from which nothing could arouse him.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The time is out of joint;--O cursed spite.

That I was ever born to set it right.

_Hamlet._

As the afternoon wore on, on that day when the bank lost its $50,000, Geoffrey Hampstead was back at his work as usual. He did not change his waistcoat while at his rooms, because he thought this might be remarked.

He merely left the money there, and went back to his work as if nothing had happened. The excitement among the clerks in the bank was feverish.

Geoffrey let them know what he and Dearborn had seen in Jack's room, and that the confusion there clearly showed that he had gone off somewhere.

Most faces looked black at this, but there were several who, in spite of the worst appearances, refused to believe in Jack's guilt. Geoffrey was one of them. Geoffrey was quite broken down. Everybody felt sorry for him. He had made a great friend of Jack, and every one could see that the blow had almost prostrated him.

Toward the end of the afternoon he said to a couple of his friends: "I wish you fellows would dine with me to-night. I feel as if I had to have somebody with me."

These two did so. In the evening they picked up some more of the bank men, and all repaired to Geoffrey's quarters. They saw he was drinking heavily, and perhaps out of fellow-feeling for a man who had had a blow, they also drank a good deal themselves, and lapsed into hilarity, partly in order to draw Geoffrey out of his gloom.

At one o'clock the night was still young so far as they were concerned, and the liquor in the rooms had run short. Geoffrey did not wish to be left alone. The noise and foolishness of his friends diverted his thoughts from more unpleasant subjects. When the wine ran out, he said they must have some more. They said it would be impossible to get it; but Geoffrey said Patsey Priest could procure it, and he rang on Mrs.

Priest's bell until Patsey appeared, looking like a disheveled monkey.

He was received with an ovation. Geoffrey gave him the money, and sent him to a neighboring large hotel to get a case of champagne. When he returned, having accomplished his errand, the young gentlemen were enthusiastic over him. He was made to stand on a table and take an affidavit on an alb.u.m that he had brought the right change back. Then some jacka.s.s said a collection must be taken up for Patsey, and he headed the list with a dollar. Of course, everybody else gave a dollar also, because this was such a fine idea. Mr. St. George Le Mesurier Hector Northcote was delighted with Patsey. "Mr. Priest," he said, "you are a gentleman and a man of finish; but it grieves me to notice that your garments, although compatible with genius, do not, of themselves, suggest that luxury which genius should command. Wait here for a moment; you must be clad in costly raiment."