The Winds of Chance Part 23

"Not me! I've raised my last blister, and if ever I get another callous it'll be from layin' abed. Safe and sane, that's me. I--"

Bridges' words were cut short by an exclamation from Doret, who had approached, in company with the Countess Courteau.

"Hallo!" the French Canadian broke in. "Dere comes dat beeg barge."

Out from the lower end of the gorge the Kirby craft had emerged; it was plunging along with explosions of white foam from beneath its bow and with its sweeps rising and falling rhythmically. To Doret's companions it seemed that the scow had come through handily enough and was in little further danger, but 'Poleon, for some reason or other, had blazed into excitement. Down the bank he leaped; then he raised his voice and sent forth a loud cry. It was wasted effort, for it failed to carry. Nevertheless, the warning note in his voice brought his hearers running after him.

"What's the matter?" Pierce inquired.

The pilot paid no heed; he began waving his cap in long sweeps, cursing meanwhile in a patois which the others could not understand.

Even while they stared at the Rouletta she drove head on into an expanse of tumbling breakers, then--the onlookers could not believe their eyes--she stopped dead still, as if she had come to the end of a steel cable or as if she had collided with an invisible wall. Instantly her entire after part was smothered in white. Slowly her bow rose out of the chaos until perhaps ten feet of her bottom was exposed, then she a.s.sumed a list.

The Countess uttered a strangled exclamation. "Oh--h! Did you see?

There's a man overboard!"

Her eyes were quick, but others, too, had beheld a dark bundle picked up by some mysterious agency and flung end over end into the waves.

The Rouletta's deck-load was dissolving; a moment or two and she turned completely around, then drifted free.

"Why--they brought the GIRL along!" cried the Countess, in growing dismay. "Sam Kirby should have had better sense. He ought to be hung--"

From the tents and boats along the bank, from the village above, people were a.s.sembling hurriedly, a babel of oaths, of shouts arose.

'Poleon found his recent employer plucking at his sleeve.

"There's a woman out there--Kirby's girl," she was crying. "Can't you do something?"

"Wait!" He flung off her grasp and watched intently.

Soon the helpless scow was abreast of the encampment, and in spite of the frantic efforts of her crew to propel her sh.o.r.eward she drifted momentarily closer to the cataract below. Manifestly it was impossible to row out and intercept the derelict before she took the plunge, and so, helpless in this extremity, the audience began to stream down over the rounded boulders which formed the margin of the river. On the opposite bank another crowd was keeping pace with the wreck. As they ran, these people shouted at one another and gesticulated wildly. Their faces were white, their words were meaningless, for it was a spectacle tense with imminent disaster that they beheld; it turned them sick with apprehension.

Immediately above White Horse the current gathers itself for the final plunge, and although, at the last moment, the Rouletta seemed about to straighten herself out and take the rapids head on, some malign influence checked her swing and she lunged over quarteringly to the torrent.

A roar issued from the throats of the beholders; the craft reappeared, and then, a moment later, was half hidden again in the smother. It could be seen that she was completely awash and that those galloping white-maned horses were charging over her. She was buffeted about as by battering-rams; the remainder of her cargo was being rapidly torn from her deck. Soon another shout arose, for human figures could be seen still clinging to her.

Onward the scow went, until once again she fetched up on a reef or a rock which the low stage of the river had brought close to the surface; there she hung.

'Poleon Doret had gone into action ere this. Having satisfied himself that some of the Rouletta's crew remained alive, he cast loose the painter of the nearest skiff and called to Phillips, who was standing close by:

"Come on! We goin' get dose people!"

Now Pierce had had enough rough water for one day; it seemed to him that there must be other men in this crowd better qualified by training than he to undertake this rescue. But no one stepped forward, and so he obeyed Doret's order. As he slipped out of his coat and kicked off his boots, he reflected, with a sinking feeling of disappointment, that his emotions were not by any means such as a really courageous man would experience. He was completely lacking in enthusiasm for this enterprise, for it struck him as risky, nay, foolhardy, insane, to take a boat over that cataract in an attempt to s.n.a.t.c.h human beings out from the very midst of those threshing breakers. It seemed more than likely that all hands would be drowned in the undertaking, and he could not summon the reckless abandon necessary to face that likelihood with anything except the frankest apprehension. He was surprised at himself, for he had imagined that when his moment came, if ever it did, that he, Phillips, would prove to be a rather exceptional person; instead he discovered that he was something of a coward.

The unexpectedness of this discovery astonished the young man.

Being deeply and thoroughly frightened, it was nothing less than the abhorrence at allowing that fright to become known which stiffened his determination. In his own sight he dwindled to very small proportions; then came the realization that Doret was having difficulty in securing volunteers to go with them, and he was considerably heartened at finding he was not greatly different from the rest of these people.

"Who's goin' he'p us?" the Frenchman was shouting. "Come now, you stout fellers. Dere's lady on dat scow. 'Ain't n.o.body got nerve?"

It was a tribute to the manhood of the North that after a brief hesitation several men offered themselves. At the last moment, however, Broad and Bridges elbowed the others aside, saying: "Here, you! That's our boat and we know how she handles."

Into the skiff they piled and hurriedly stripped down; then, in obedience to Doret's command, they settled themselves at the forward oars, leaving Pierce to set the stroke.

'Poleon stood braced in the stern, like a gondolier, and when willing hands had shot the boat out into the current he leaned his weight upon the after oars; beneath his and Pierce's efforts the ash blades bent. Out into the hurrying flood the four men sent their craft; then, with a mighty heave, the pilot swung its bow down-stream and helped to drive it directly at the throat of the cataract.

There came a breath-taking plunge during which the rescuing skiff and its crew were hidden from the view of those on sh.o.r.e; out into sight they lunged again and, in a cloud of spray, went galloping through the stampeding waves. At risk of capsizing they turned around and, battling furiously against the current, were swept down, stern first, upon the stranded barge. Doret's face was turned back over his shoulder, he was measuring distance, gauging with practised eye the whims and vagaries of the tumbling torrent; when he flung himself upon the oars Pierce Phillips felt his own strength completely dwarfed by that of the big pilot. 'Poleon's hands inclosed his in a viselike grasp; he wielded the sweeps as if they were reeds, and with them he wielded Phillips.

Two people only were left upon the Rouletta, that sidewise plunge having carried the crew away. Once again Sam Kirby's artificial hand had proved its usefulness, and without its aid it is doubtful if either he or his daughter could have withstood the deluge. For a second time he had sunk that sharp steel hook into the solid wood and had managed, by virtue of that advantage, to save himself and his girl. Both of them were half drowned; they were well-nigh frozen, too; now, however, finding themselves in temporary security, Kirby had broached one of the few remaining cases of bottled goods. As the rowboat came close its occupants saw him press a drink upon his daughter, then gulp one for himself.

It was impossible either to lay the skiff alongside the wreck with any degree of care or to hold her there; as a matter of fact, the two hulls collided with a crash, Kid Bridges' oar snapped off short and the side of the lighter boat was smashed in. Water poured over the rescuers. For an instant it seemed that they were doomed, but, clawing fiercely at whatever they could lay hands upon, they checked their progress long enough for the castaways to obey Doret's shout of command. The girl flung herself into Pierce's arms; her father followed, landing in a heap amidships.

Even as they jumped the skiff was torn away and hurried onward by the flood. Sam Kirby raised himself to his knees and turned his ashen face to Rouletta.

"Hurt you any, kid?" he inquired.

The girl shook her head. She was very white, her teeth were chattering, her wet dress clung tightly to her figure.

Staring fixedly at the retreating barge the old man cried: "All gone! All gone!" Then, bracing himself with his good hand, he brandished his steel hook at the rapids and heaped curses upon them.

A half-mile below the wreck 'Poleon Doret brought his crippled skiff into an eddy, and there the crowd, which had kept pace with it down the river-bank, lent willing a.s.sistance in effecting a landing.

As Kirby stepped ash.o.r.e he shook hands with the men who had jeopardized their lives for him and his daughter; hi a cheerless, colorless voice he said, "It looks to me like you boys had a drink coming." From his coat pocket he drew a bottle of whisky; with a blow of that artificial hand he struck off its neck and then proffered it to Doret. "Drink hearty!" said he. "It's all that's left of a good outfit!"

CHAPTER XII

A chilly twilight had fallen by the time the castaways arrived at the encampment above the rapids. Kirby and his daughter were shaking from the cold. The Countess Courteau hurried on ahead to start a fire in her tent, and thither she insisted upon taking Rouletta, while her men attended to the father's comfort.

On the way up there had been considerable speculation among those who knew Sam Kirby best, for none of them had ever seen the old fellow in quite such a frame of mind as now. His misfortune had crushed him; he appeared to be numbed by the realization of his overwhelming loss; gone entirely was that gambler's nonchalance for which he was famous. The winning or the losing of large sums of money had never deeply stirred the old sporting-man; the turn of a card, the swift tattoo of horses' hoofs, often had meant far more to him in dollars and cents than the destruction of that barge-load of liquor; he had seen sizable fortunes come and go without a sign of emotion, and yet to-night he was utterly unnerved.

With a man of less physical courage such an ordeal as he had undergone might well have excused a nervous collapse, but Kirby had no nerves; he had, times without number, proved himself to be a man of steel, and so it greatly puzzled his friends to see him shaken and broken.

He referred often to Danny Royal's fate, speaking in a dazed and disbelieving manner, but through that daze ran lightning-bolts of blind, ferocious rage--rage at the river, rage at this hostile, sinister country and at the curse it had put upon him. Over and over, through blue lips and chattering teeth, he reviled the rapids; more than once he lifted the broken-necked bottle to his lips. Of thanksgiving, of grat.i.tude at his own and his daughter's deliverance, he appeared to have none, at least for the time being.

Rouletta's condition was pitiable enough, but she was concerned less with it than with her father's extraordinary behavior, and when the Countess undertook to procure for her dry clothing she protested:

"Please don't trouble. I'll warm up a bit; then I must go back to dad."

"My dear, you're chilled through--you'll die in those wet things,"

the older woman told her.

Miss Kirby shook her head and, in a queer, strained, apprehensive voice, said: "You don't understand. He's had a drink; if he gets started--" She shivered wretchedly and hid her white face in her hands, then moaned: "Oh, what a day! Danny's gone! I saw him drown--"

"There, there!" The Countess comforted her as best she could.

"You've had a terrible experience, but you mustn't think of it just yet. Now let me help you."

Finding that the girl's fingers were stiff and useless, the Countess removed the wet skirt and jacket, wrung them out, and hung them up. Then she produced some dry undergarments, but Miss Kirby refused to put them on.