The Second Class Passenger Part 46

When dawn came up the sea had mounted; the Bay was going to be true to its name. Captain Price went to his chart-house at midnight, to sleep on a settle; but by his orders the Burdock was kept to her course and her gait, battering away at the gale contentedly.

After breakfast, he took another look round and then went below to rest in his bunk, while the tell-tale swam in wild eccentrics above his upturned face. After a while he dozed off to sleep, lulled by the click of furnishings that rendered to the ship's roll, the drum of the seas on her plates, and the swish of loose water across the deck.

He was roused by his steward. That menial laid a hand on his shoulder and he was forthwith awake and competent.

"A ship to windward, sir, showin' flags," said the steward. "The mate 'ud be glad if you'd go to the bridge."

"A' right," said the Captain, and stood up. "In distress, eh?"

"By the looks of her, sir," admitted the steward, who had been a waiter ash.o.r.e. "She seems to be a mast or two short, sir, so far as I can tell. But I couldn't be sure."

He helped the Captain into his oilskins deftly, pulling his jacket down under the long coat, and held the door open for him.

Some three miles to windward the stranger lay, an appealing vagabond.

The Captain found his son standing on the flag-chest, braced against a stanchion, watching her through a pair of gla.s.ses, when she peeped up, a momentary silhouette, over the tall seas. He turned as the Captain approached.

"Can't make out her flags, sir," he said. "Too much wind. Looks like a barque with only her mizzen standing."

"Gimme the gla.s.s," said the Captain, climbing up beside him. He braced himself against the irons and took a look at her, swinging accurately to the roll of the ship. Beneath him the wind-whipped water tumbled in grey leagues; the stranger seemed poised on the rim of it. From her gaff, a dot of a flag showed a blur against the sky, and a string from her mast-head was equally vague.

"That'll be her ensign upside down at the gaff," he said. "Port your helm there; we'll go down and look at her."

"Aye, aye, sir." The mate pa.s.sed the word and came over. "How would it be to see one of the boats clear, father!"

"Aren't the boats clear?" demanded the Captain.

"Oh yes, they're clear," replied the mate. "You had us put new pins in the blocks, you know." He met his father's steady eye defiantly.

"When are a steamer's boats ever clear for hoisting out?" he asked.

"Always, when the mate's fit for his job," was the answer. "Go and make sure of the starboard lifeboat, and call the watch."

The Captain took his ship round to windward of the distressed vessel, running astern of her within a quarter of a mile. She proved to be the remains of a barque, as the mate had guessed, a deep-laden wooden ship badly swept by the sea. From the wing of the bridge the Captain's gla.s.ses showed him the length of her deck, cluttered with the wreck of houses torn up by the roots, while the fall of the spars had taken her starboard bulwarks with it. Her boats were gone; a davit stuck up at the end of the p.o.o.p crumpled like a ram's horn; and by the taffrail her worn and sodden crew cl.u.s.tered and cheered the Burdock.

The Captain rang off his engines and rang again to stand by in the engine-room. The mate came up the ladder to him while his hand was yet at the telegraph.

"Lifeboat's all clear for lowering, sir," he said. "n.o.ble, Peters, Hansen, and Kyland are to go in her." He waited.

The old captain stood looking at the wreck, while the steamship rolled tumultuously in the trough.

"Who goes in charge?" he asked, after a minute's silence.

"I'll go, father," said the mate eagerly. He paused, but the Captain said nothing.

"You know," proceeded the mate, "father, you do know there's none of 'em here can handle a boat like me."

"Aye," said the Captain, "you can do it." He looked at his son keenly. "It 'ud make a good yarn to spin to Minnie," he said, with an unwilling smile.

The mate laughed agreeably. "Dear Minnie," he said. "Then I'll go, father."

"And I'll just see to the hoisting out of that boat," said the Captain. "Good thing I had you put in the new pins."

The third mate on the bridge rang for steam and made a lee for the lowering of the lifeboat, the hands put a strain on the tackles, and the carpenter and bo'sun went to work to knock out the chocks on which she rested. Her steel-shod keel had rusted into them.

"Hoist away on your forward tackle," ordered the Captain. "Belay!

Make fast! Now get a hold of this guy. Lively there, you men. n.o.ble, aloft on the booms and shoulder her over."

She canted clear of the groove in the chocks as they swung the forward davit out and the Captain stepped abaft the men who hauled.

"Lively now," he called. "Don't keep those chaps waiting, men. After davit tackle, haul! Up with her."

The bo'sun, stooping, looped the fall of the tackle into the s.n.a.t.c.h- block; the men, under the Captain's eye, tumbled to and gave way, holding the weight gallantly as the rail swung down and putting their backs into the pull as she rolled back.

"Up with her!" shouted the Captain, and she tore loose from her bed.

"Vast hauling! Belay! Now out with the davit, men."

He stepped a pace forward as they pa.s.sed out the line. "Haul away,"

he was saying, when the bo'sun shouted hoa.r.s.ely and tried to reach him with a dash across the slippery deck planks. The mate screamed, the Captain humped his shoulders for the blow. It all happened in a flash of disaster; the boat's weight pulled the pin from the cheeks of the block and down she came, her stern thudding thickly into the deck, while the Captain, limp and senseless, rolled inertly to the scuppers.

When he came to he was in his bunk. He opened his eyes with a shiver upon the familiar cabin, with its atmosphere of compact neatness, its gleaming paint and bright-work. A throb of brutal pain in his head wrung a grunt from him, and then he realized that something was wrong with his right arm. He tried to move it, to bring it above the bedclothes to look at it, and the effort surprised an oath from him, and left him dizzy and shaking. The white jacket of the steward came through a mist that was about him.

"Better, I hope, sir?" the steward was saying. "Beggin' your pardon, but you'd better lie still, sir. Is there anything I could bring you, sir?"

"Did the boat fall on me?" asked the Captain, carefully. His voice seemed thin to himself.

"Not on you, sir," replied the steward. "Not so to speak, on top of you. The keel 'it you on the shoulder, sir, an' you contracted a thump on the 'ead."

"And the wreck?" asked the Captain.

"The wreck's crew is aboard, sir; barque Vavasour, of London, sir.

The mate brought 'em off most gallantly, sir. I was to tell 'im when you come to, sir."

"Tell him, then," said the Captain, and closed his eyes wearily. The pain in his head blurred his thoughts, but his lifelong habit of waking from sleep to full consciousness, with no twilight of muddled faculties intervening, held good yet. He remembered, now, the new pins in the blocks, and there was even a tincture of amus.e.m.e.nt in his reflections. A soft tread beside him made him open his eyes.

"Well, Arthur," he said.

The tall young mate was beside him.

"Ah, father," he said cheerfully. "Picking up a bit, eh? That's good.

Ugly accident, that."

"Yes," replied the Captain, looking up into his face. "Block split, I suppose?"

"Yes," said the mate. "That's it. How do you feel?"

"You didn't notice the block, I suppose, when you put the new pins in?" asked the Captain.

"Can't say I did," answered the mate, "or I'd have changed it. You're not going to blame me surely, father?"

The Captain smiled. "No, Arthur, I'm not going to blame you," he said. "I want to hear how you brought off that barque's crew. Is it a good yarn for Minnie?"