The Riverman Part 51

In spite of the heavy smashing of head-on seas the SPRITE held her course straight out.

"Where's she going, anyway?" marvelled little Mr. Smith, the stationer.

"She's away beyond the wrecks already."

"Probably Marsh has found the seas heavier than he thought and is afraid to turn her broadside," guessed his companion.

"Afraid, h.e.l.l!" snorted a riverman who overheard.

Nevertheless the SPRITE was now so distant that the loom of the great seas on the horizon swallowed her from view, save when she rose on the crest of some mighty billow.

"Well, what is he doing 'way out there then?" challenged Mr. Smith's friend with some asperity.

"Do'no," replied the riverman, "but whatever it is, it's all right as long as Buck Marsh is at the wheel."

"There, she's turned now," Mr. Smith interposed.

Beneath the trail of black smoke she had shifted direction. And then with startling swiftness the SPRITE darted out of the horizon into full view. For the first time the spectators realised the size and weight of the seas. Not even the sullen pounding to pieces of the vessels on the bar had so impressed them as the sight of the tug coasting with railroad speed down the rush of a comber like a child's toy-boat in the surf. One moment the whole of her deck was visible as she was borne with the wave; the next her bow alone showed high as the back suction caught her and dragged her from the crest into the hollow. A sea rose behind. Nothing of the tug was to be seen. It seemed that no power or skill could prevent her feeling overwhelmed. Yet somehow always she staggered out of the gulf until she caught the force of the billow and was again cast forward like a chip.

"Maybe they ain't catchin' p'ticular h.e.l.l at that wheel to hold her from yawing!" muttered the tug captain to his neighbour, who happened to be Mr. Duncan, the minister.

Almost before Carroll had time to see that the little craft was coming in, she had arrived at the outer line of breakers. Here the combers, dragged by the bar underneath, crested, curled over, and fell with a roar, just as in milder weather the surf breaks on the beach. When the SPRITE rushed at this outer line of white-water, a woman in the crowd screamed.

But at the edge of destruction the SPRITE came to a shuddering stop. Her powerful propellers had been set to the reverse. They could not hold her against the forward fling of the water, but what she lost thus she regained on the seaward slopes of the waves and in their hollows. Thus she hovered on the edge of the breakers, awaiting her chance.

As long as the seas rolled in steadily, and nothing broke, she was safe.

But if one of the waves should happen to crest and break, as many of them did, the weight of water catching the tug on her flat, broad stern deck would indubitably bury her. The situation was awful in its extreme simplicity. Would Captain Marsh see his opportunity before the law of chances would bring along the wave that would overwhelm him?

A realisation of the crisis came to the crowd on the beach. At once the terrible strain of suspense tugged at their souls. Each conducted himself according to his nature. The hardy men of the river and the woods set their teeth until the cheek muscles turned white, and blasphemed softly and steadily. Two or three of the townsmen walked up and down the s.p.a.ce of a dozen feet. One, the woman who had screamed, prayed aloud in short hysterical sentences.

"O G.o.d! Save them, O Lord! O Lord!"

Orde stood on top of a half-buried log, his hat in his hand, his entire being concentrated on the manoeuvre being executed. Only Newmark apparently remained as calm as ever, leaning against an upright timber, his arms folded, and an unlighted cigar as usual between his lips.

Methodically every few moments he removed his eyegla.s.ses and wiped the lenses free of spray.

Suddenly, without warning, occurred one of those inexplicable lulls that interpose often amid the wildest uproars. For the briefest instant other sounds than the roar of the wind and surf were permitted the mult.i.tude on the beach. They heard the grinding of timbers from the stricken ships, and the draining away of waters. And distinctly they heard the faint, far tinkle of the jangler calling again for "full speed ahead."

Between two waves the SPRITE darted forward directly for the nearest of the wrecks. Straight as an arrow's flight she held until from the crowd went up a groan.

"She'll collide!" some one put it into words.

But at the latest moment the tug swerved, raced past, and turned on a long diagonal across the end of the bar toward the piers.

Captain Marsh had chosen his moment with exact.i.tude. To the utmost he had taken advantage of the brief lull of jumbled seas after the "three largest waves" had swept by. Yet in shallow water and with the strong insh.o.r.e set, even that lull was all too short. The SPRITE was staggered by the buffets of the smaller breakers; her speed was checked, her stern was dragged around. For an instant it seemed that the back suction would hold her in its grip. She tore herself from the grasp of the current.

Enveloped in a blinding hail of spray she struggled desperately to extricate herself from the maelstrom in which she was involved before the resumption of the larger seas should roll her over and over to destruction.

Already these larger seas were racing in from the open. To Carroll, watching breathless and wide-eyed in that strange pa.s.sive and receptive state peculiar to imaginative natures, they seemed alive. And the SPRITE, too, appeared to be, not a fabric and a mechanism controlled by men, but a sentient creature struggling gallantly on her own volition.

Far out in the lake against the tumbling horizon she saw heave up for a second the shoulder of a mighty wave. And instinctively she perceived this wave as a deadly enemy of the little tug, and saw it bending all its great energies to hurrying in on time to catch the victim before it could escape. To this wave she gave all her attention, watching for it after it had sunk momentarily below its fellows, recognising it instantly as it rose again. The spasms of dismay and relief among the crowd about her she did not share at all. The crises they indicated did not exist for her. Until the wave came in, Carroll knew, the SPRITE, no matter how battered and tossed, would be safe. Her whole being was concentrated in a continually shifting calculation of the respective distances between the tug and the piers, the tug and the relentlessly advancing wave.

"Oh, go!" she exhorted the SPRITE under her breath.

Then the crowd, too, caught with its slower perceptions the import of the wave. Carroll felt the electric thrill of apprehension shiver through it. Huge and towering, green and flecked with foam the wave came on now calmly and deliberately as though sure. The SPRITE was off the end of the pier when the wave lifted her, just in the position her enemy would have selected to crush her life out against the cribs. Slowly the tug rose against its shoulder, was lifted onward, poised; and then with a swift forward thrust the wave broke, smothering the pier and lighthouse beneath tons of water.

A low, agonised wail broke from the crowd. And then--and then--over beyond the pier down which the wave, broken and spent but formidable still, was ripping its way, they saw gliding a battered black stack from which still poured defiantly clouds of gray smoke.

For ten seconds the spectators could not believe their eyes. They had distinctly seen the SPRITE caught between a resistless wall of water and the pier; where she should have been crushed like the proverbial egg-sh.e.l.l. Yet there she was--or her ghost.

Then a great cheer rose up against the wind. The crowd went crazy. Mere acquaintances hugged each other and danced around and around through the heavy sands. Several women had hysterics. The riverman next to Mr.

Duncan opened his mouth and swore so picturesquely that, as he afterward told his chum, "I must've been plumb inspired for the occasion." Yet it never entered Mr. Duncan's ministerial head to reprove the blasphemy.

Orde jumped down from his half-buried log and clapped his hat on his head. Newmark did not alter his att.i.tude nor his expression.

The SPRITE was safe. For the few moments before she glided the length of the long pier to stiller water this fact sufficed.

"I wonder if she got the line aboard," speculated the tug-boat captain at last.

The crowd surged over to the piers again. Below them rose and fell the SPRITE. All the fancy scroll-work of her upper works, the cornice of her deck house, the light rigging of her cabin had disappeared, leaving raw and splintered wood to mark their attachments. The tall smokestack was bent awry, but its supports had held, which was fortunate since otherwise the fires would have been drowned out. At the moment, Captain Marsh was bending over examining a bad break in the overhang--the only material damage the tug had sustained.

At sight of him the crowd set up a yell. He paid no attention. One of the life-saving men tossed a mooring line ash.o.r.e. It was seized by a dozen men. Then for the first time somebody noticed that although the tug had come to a standstill, her screw was still turning slowly over and over, holding her against the erratic strong jerking of a slender rope that ran through her stern chocks and into the water.

"He got it aboard!" yelled the man, pointing.

Another cheer broke out. The life-saving crew leaped to the deck.

They were immediately followed by a crowd of enthusiasts eager to congratulate and question. But Captain Marsh would have none of them.

"Get off my tug!" he shouted. "Do you want to swamp her? What do you suppose we put that line aboard for? Fun? Get busy and use it! Rescue that crew now!"

Abashed, the enthusiasts scrambled back. The life-saving crew took charge. It was necessary to pa.s.s the line around the end of the pier and back to the beach. This was a dangerous job, and one requiring considerable power and ingenuity, for the strain on the line imposed by the waters was terrific; and the breaking seas rendered work on the piers extremely hazardous. However, the life-saving captain took charge confidently enough. His crew began to struggle out the pier, while volunteers, under his personal direction, manipulated the reel.

A number of the curious lingered about the SPRITE. Marsh and Orde were in consultation over the smashed stern, and did not look as though they cared to be disturbed. Harvey leaned out his little square door.

"Don' know nuffin 'bout it," said he, "'ceptin' she done rolled 'way over 'bout foh times. Ya.s.s she did, suh! I know. I felt her doin' it."

"No," he answered a query. "I wasn't what you-all would call scairt, that is, not really SCAIRT--jess a little ne'vous. All I had to do was to feed her slabs and listen foh my bell. You see, Cap'n Ma'sh, he was in cha'ge."

"No, sir," Captain Marsh was saying emphatically to his employer.

"I can't figure it out except on one thing. You see it's stove from UNDERNEATH. A sea would have smashed it from above."

"Perhaps you grounded in between seas out there," suggested Orde.

Marsh smiled grimly.

"I reckon I'd have known it," said he. "No, sir! It sounds wild, but it's the only possible guess. That last sea must've lifted us bodily right over the corner of the pier."

"Well--maybe," a.s.sented Orde doubtfully.

"Sure thing," repeated Marsh with conviction.