_ CHAPTER XXIV. DOWN A GALLOPING SEA
I saddled me an Arab steed and saddled her another,
And off we rode together just like sister and like brother,
Singing, "Blow ye winds in the morning!
Blow ye winds, hi ho! Brush away the morning dew,
Blow ye winds, hi ho!"
--Blew Ye Winds.
With anxiety that was almost despairing Mayo looked up at the shrouds, stays, and halyards, which were set like nets to right and left and overhead.
A big roller tumbled inboard and filled the space forward of the break of the main-deck. The swirling water touched the sides of the long-boat and then receded when the stricken schooner struggled up from the welter. A scuttle-butt was torn from its lashings and went by the board, and other flotsam followed it.
Mayo found that spectacle encouraging. But the longboat sat high in its chocks; when it did float it might be too late.
Another wave roared past, and the long-boat quivered. Then Mayo took a chance without reckoning on consequences. He made a double turn of the cable around his forearm and leaped out of the boat and stood on deck, his shoulder against the stem. The next wave washed him to his waist, tore at him, beat him against the long-boat's shoe, but he clung fast and lifted and pushed with all his strength.
That push did it!
The boat needed just that impetus to free her from the chocks. She lifted and rushed stern foremost to lee, and the young man dragged after her.
When the boat dipped and halted in a hollow of the sea he clutched the bow and clambered in. Tugging mightily, he managed to dump the sea-anchor over.
The next wave caught her on the quarter and slopped a barrel of water into her. But she kept right side up, and in a few moments the cable straightened and she rode head into the tumult of the ocean; the sea-anchor was dragging and performing its service.
Mayo was obliged to kick the two men with considerable heartiness before he could stir them to bailing with the buckets. The bedraggled cat fled to the shelter of the girl's arms. Mayo struggled aft, in order to take his weight from the bow of the boat, and when he sat down beside the girl she was "mothering" the animal.
"It's coming in faster than I can throw it out!" wailed Bradish.
"Bail faster, then! Bail or drown!"
"She's leaking," announced the cook. "She has been on deck so long she has got all dried out."
"Bail or drown!" repeated Mayo. To the girl he said: "This seems to be the only way of getting work out of cowards. They'll have to do it. I'm about done for."
The waves were lifting and dropping them in dizzying fashion. There was suddenly a more violent tossing of the water.
"That's the old packet! She went under then!" Mayo explained. "Thank the Lord we are out of her clutches! I was afraid we were stuck there."
"Is there any hope for us now?" she inquired.
"I don't know. If the boat stays afloat and the wind doesn't haul and knock this sea crossways, if somebody sees us in the morning, if we don't get rolled onto the coast in the breakers and--" He did not finish.
"It seems that a lot of things can happen at sea," she suggested.
"That fact has been proved to me in the past few weeks."
"You mean in the past few hours, don't you?"
"Miss Marston, what has happened on that schooner is a part of the business, and a sailor must take it as it comes along. I wish nothing worse had happened to me than what's happening now."
She made no reply.
"But no matter about it," he said, curtly.
The two men, kneeling amidships, clutching a thwart and bailing with their free hands, toiled away; even Bradish had wakened to the fact that he was working for his own salvation.
In the obscurity the waves which rose ahead seemed like mountains topped with snow. Hollows and hills of water swept past on their right and left. But the crests of the waves were not breaking, and this fact meant respite from immediate danger.
"I'm sorry it was all left to you to do," ventured the girl, breaking a long silence. "I thought Ralph had more man in him," she added, bitterly. "I feel that he ought to apologize to you for--for several things."
He, on his part, did not reply to that. He was afraid that she intended to draw him into argument or explanation. Just what he would be able to say to her on that topic was not clear to him.
"It seems as if years had gone by instead of hours. It seems as if I had lived half a life since I left home. It seems as if I had changed my nature and had grown up to see things in a different light. It is all very strange to me."
He did not know whether she were talking to herself or to him. He did not offer comment.
There was a long period of silence. The sound of rushing waters filled, that silence and made their conversation audible only to themselves when they talked.
"I don't understand how you happened to be on that schooner--as--as you were," she said, hesitating.
"I didn't rig myself out this way to play any practical jokes, Miss Marston," he returned, bitterly.
"I would like to know how it all happened--your side of it."
"I have talked too much already."
There was no more conversation for a long time. He wondered how she had mustered courage to talk at all. They were in a predicament to try the courage of even a seasoned seaman. In the night, tossed by that wild sea, drifting they knew not where, she had apparently disregarded danger. He asked himself if she had not merely exhibited feminine ignorance of what their situation meant. He had often seen cases where apparent bravado was based on such ignorance.
"I must say that you told me at least one truth a while ago--you are not a coward," he said at last.
She was comforting the wretched cat. "But I am miserably frightened," she admitted. "I don't dare to think about the thing. I don't dare to look at the waves. I talked to you so as to take my mind off my troubles. I didn't mean to be prying."
"I'll tell you what has been done to me," he blurted. "Hearing somebody's troubles may take your mind off your own."
While the two men amidships bailed doggedly and weariedly, he told his story as briefly as he could. The gray dawn showed her face to him after a time, and he was peculiarly comforted by the sympathy he saw there. He did not communicate to her any suspicions he may have entertained. With sailor directness he related how he had hoped, and how all had been snatched away from him. But on one topic the mouths of both seemed to be sealed!
After a time Bradish and the cook were enabled to rest from the work of bailing. The planks of the boat swelled and the leak was stopped.
"You'd better crawl aft here and sit beside Miss Marston," advised Mayo. "Be careful how you move."
He passed Bradish and took the latter's place with the cook, and felt a sense of relief; he had feared that the one, the dreaded topic would force itself upon him.
"I don't see no sense in prolonging all this agony," averred his despondent companion. "We ain't ever going to get out of this alive. We're drifting in on the coast, and you know what that means."
"You may jump overboard any time you see fit," said the skipper of the craft. "I don't need you any longer for bailing!"
"If that's the way you feel about it, you won't get rid of me so easy," declared the cook, malevolence in his single eye.
Mayo noticed, with some surprise, that after the two had exchanged a few words there was silence between Bradish and the girl. The New-Yorker was pale and trembling, and his jaw still sagged, and he threw glances to right and left as the surges galloped under them. He was plainly and wholly occupied with his fears.
When day came at last without rain, but with heavy skies, in which masses of vapor dragged, Mayo began eager search of the sea. He had no way of determining their whereabouts; he hoped they were far enough off-shore to be in the track of traffic. However, he could see no sail, no encouraging trail of smoke. But after a time he did behold something which was not encouraging. He stood up and balanced himself and gazed westward, in the direction in which they were drifting; every now and then a lifting wave enabled him to command a wide expanse of the sea.
He saw a white ribbon of foam that stretched its way north and south into the obscurity of the mists. He did not report this finding at once. He looked at his companions and pondered.
"I think you have something to say to me," suggested the girl.
"I suppose I ought to say it. I've been wondering just how it ought to be said. It's not pleasant news."
"I am prepared to hear anything, Captain Mayo. Nothing matters a great deal just now."
"We are being driven on to the coast. I don't know whether it's the Delaware or the New Jersey coast. It doesn't make much difference. The breakers are just as bad in one place as in the other."
"Why don't you anchor this boat? Are you going to let it go ashore and be wrecked?" asked Bradish, with anger that was childish.
"The anchor seems to have been overlooked when we started on this little excursion. As I remember it, there was some hurry and bustle," returned Mayo, dryly.
"Why didn't you remember it? You got us into this scrape. You slammed and bossed everybody around. You didn't give anybody else a chance to think. You call yourself a sailor! You're a devil of a sailor to come off without an anchor."
"I suppose so," admitted Mayo.
"And there wasn't any sense, in coming off in this little boat. We ought to have stayed on the schooner."
"Ralph!" protested the girl. "Have you completely lost your mind? Don't you know that the schooner sank almost the minute we left it?"
"Mr. Bradish's mind was very much occupied at the time," said Captain Mayo.
"I don't believe the schooner sank. What does a girl know about such things? That fellow got scared, that's the trouble. There isn't any sense in leaving a big boat in a storm. We would have been taken off before this. We would have been all right. This is what comes of letting a fool boss you around when he is scared," he raved.
"You are the fool!" she cried, with passion. "Captain Mayo saved us."
"Saved us from what? Here we are going into the breakers--and he says so--and there's no anchor on here. He took everything out of my hands. Now why doesn't he do something?"
"Don't pay any attention to him," she pleaded.
"We are going to be drowned! You can't deny it, can you? We're going to die!" He pulled a trembling hand from between his knees, where he had held both hands pinched in order to steady them. He shook his fist at Mayo. "Own up, now. We're going to die, aren't we?"
"I think it's right to tell the truth at this stage," said Mayo, in steady tones. "We're not children. Yonder is a beach with sand-reefs and breakers, and when we strike the sand this boat will go over and over and we shall be tossed out. The waves will throw us up and haul us back like a cat playing with mice. And we stand about the same chance as mice."
"And that's the best you can do for us--and you call yourself a sailor!" whined Bradish.
"I'm only a poor chap who has done his best as it came to his hand to do," said the young man, seeking the girl's eyes with his.
She gazed at him for a moment and then put both hands to her face and began to sob.
"It's a hard thing to face, but we'd better understand the truth and be as brave as we can," said Mayo, gently.
"For myself I ain't a mite surprised," averred the cook. "I had my hunch! I was resigned. But my plans was interfered with. I wanted to go down in good, deep, green, clean water like a sailor ought to. And now I'm going to get mauled into the sand and have a painful death."
"Shut up!" barked Mayo.
The girl was trembling, and he feared collapse.
Bradish began to blubber. "I'm not prepared to die," he protested.
Mayo studied his passenger for some time, wrinkling his brows. "Bradish, listen to me a moment!"
The New-Yorker gave him as much attention as terror and grief permitted.
"There isn't much we can do just now to fix up our general earthly affairs. But we may as well clean the slate between us two. That will help our consciences a little. I haven't any quarrel with you any more. We won't be mushy about it. But let's cross it off."
"It's all over," mourned Bradish. "So what's the use of bearing grudges?"
"I suppose it's true that the court has indicted me for manslaughter. Bradish, tell me, man to man, whether I've got to go into those breakers with that on my conscience!"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do! You know whether those men of the schooner
Warren were drowned by any criminal mistake of mine or not!"
Bradish did not speak.
"You wouldn't have said as much to Captain Downs if you hadn't known something," insisted the victim of the plot.
"It was only what Burkett let drop when he came after some money. I suppose he thought it was safe to talk to me. But what's the good of my giving you guesswork? I don't know anything definite. I don't understand sailor matters."
"Bradish, what Burkett said--was it something about the compass--about putting a job over on me by monkeying with the compass?"
"It was something like that." His tone exhibited indifference; it was evident that he was more occupied with his terror than with his confession.
"Didn't Burkett say something about a magnet?"
"He got off some kind of a joke about Fogg in the pilot-house and fog outside--but that the Fogg inside did the business. And he said something about Fogg's iron wishbone."
"So that was the way it was done--and done by the general manager of the line!" cried Mayo. "The general manager himself! It's no wonder I have smashed that suspicion between the eyes every time it bobbed up! I suspected--but I didn't dare to suspect! Is that some of your high finance, Bradish?"
"No, it isn't," declared the New-Yorker, with heat. "It's an understrapper like Fogg going ahead and producing results, so he calls it. The big men never bother with the details."
"The details! Taking away from me all I have worked for--my reputation as a master, my papers, my standing--my liberty. By the gods, I'm going to live! I'm going through those breakers! I'll face that gang like a man who has fought his way back from hell," raged the victim.
"This--this was none of my father's business! It could not have been," expostulated Miss Marston.
"Your father never knows anything about the details of Fogg's operations," declared Bradish.
"He ought to know," insisted the maddened scapegoat. "He gives off his orders, doesn't he? He sits in the middle of the web. What if he did know how Fogg was operating?"
"Probably wouldn't stand for it! But he doesn't know. And the Angel Gabriel himself wouldn't get a chance to tell him!" declared the clerk.
"A put-up job, then, is it--and all called high finance!" jeered Mayo.
"High finance isn't to blame for tricks the field-workers put out so that they can earn their money quick and easy. What's the good of pestering me with questions at this awful time? I'm going to die! I'm going to die!" he wailed.
Miss Marston slid from the seat to her knees, in order that she might be able to reach her hand to Mayo. "Will you let this handclasp tell you all I feel about it--all your trouble, all your brave work in this terrible time? I am so frightened, Captain Mayo! But I'm going to keep my eyes on you--and I'll be ashamed to show you how frightened I am."
He returned the fervent clasp of her fingers with gentle pressure and reassuring smile. "Honestly, I feel too ugly to die just now. Let's keep on hoping."
But when he stood up and beheld the white mountains of water between their little boat and the shore, and realized what would happen when they were in that savage tumult, with the undertow dragging and the surges lashing, he felt no hope within himself.
From the appearance of the coast he could not determine their probable location. The land was barren and sandy. There seemed to be no inlet. As far as he could see the line of frothing white was unbroken. The sea foamed across broad shallows, where no boat could possibly remain upright and no human being could hope to live.
Nevertheless, he remained standing and peered under his hand, resolved to be alert till the last, determined to grasp any opportunity.
All at once he beheld certain black lines in perpendicular silhouette against the foam. At first he was not certain just what they could be, and he observed them narrowly as the boat tossed on its way.
At last their identity was revealed. They were weir-stakes. The weir itself was evidently dismantled. Such stakes as remained were set some distance from one another, like fence-posts located irregularly.
He made hasty observation of bearings as the boat drifted, and was certain that the sea would carry them down past the stakes. How near they would pass depended on the vagary of the waves and the tide. He realized that three men, even if they were able seamen, could do little in the way of rowing or guiding the longboat in the welter of that sea, now surging madly over the shoals. He knew that there was not much water under the keel, for the ocean was turbid with swirling sand, and the waves were more mountainous, heaped high by the friction of the water on the bottom. Every now and then the crest of a roller flaunted a banner of bursting spray, showing breakers near at hand.
Mayo hurried to the bow of the boat and pulled free a long stretch of cable. He made a bowline slip-knot, opened a noose as large as he could handle, coiled the rest of the cable carefully, and poised himself on a thwart.
"What now?" asked the cook.
"No matter," returned Mayo. His project was such a gamble that he did not care to canvass it in advance.
The nearer they drove to the stakes the more unattainable those objects seemed. They projected high above the water.
The cook perceived them and got up on his knees and squinted. "Huh!" he sniffed. "You'll never make it. It can't be done!"
In his fierce anxiety Mayo heaved his noose too soon, and it fell short. He dragged in the cable with all his quickness and strength and threw the noose again. The rope hit the stake three-quarters of the way up and fell into the sea.
"It needs a cowboy for that work," muttered the cook.
Mayo recovered his noose and poised himself again.
In the shallows where they were the boat which bore him became a veritable bucking bronco. It was flung high, it swooped down into the hollows. He made a desperate try for the next stake in line. The noose caught, and he snubbed quickly. The top of the stake came away with a dull crack of rotten wood when the next wave lifted the boat.
Mayo pulled in his rope hand over hand with frantic haste. He was obliged to free the broken stake from the noose and pull his extemporized lasso into position again. He made a wider noose. His failure had taught a point or two. He waited till the boat was on the top of a wave. He curbed his desperate impatience, set his teeth, and whirled the noose about his head in a widening circle. Then he cast just as the boat began to drop. The rope encircled the stake, dropped to the water, and he paid out all his free cable so that a good length of the heavy rope might lie in the water and form a makeshift bridle. When he snubbed carefully the noose drew close around the stake, and the latter held. The waves which rode under them were terrific, and Mayo's heart came into his mouth every time a tug and shock indicated that the rope had come taut.
However, after five minutes of anxious waiting, kneeling in the bow, his eyes on the cable, he found his courage rising and his hopes glowing.
"Does it mean--" gasped the girl, when he turned and looked at her.
"I don't know just what it will mean in the end, Miss Marston," he said, with emotion. "But it's a reprieve while that rope holds."
Bradish sat clutching the gunwale with both hands, staring over his shoulder at the waters frothing and roaring on the shore. The girl glanced at him occasionally with a certain wonderment in her expression. It seemed to Mayo that she was trying to assure herself that Bradish was some person whom she knew. But she did not appear to have much success in making him seem real. She spoke to him once or twice in an undertone, but he did not answer. Then she turned her back on him.
Suddenly Mayo leaped up and shouted.
A man was running along the sandy crest of a low hill near the beach. He disappeared in a little structure that was no larger than a sentry-box.
"There's a coast-guard patrol from the life-saving station. There must be one somewhere along here!"
The man rushed out and flourished his arms.
"He has telephoned," explained Mayo. "Those are the boys! There's hope for us!"
There was more than hope--there was rescue after some hours of dreary and anxious waiting.
The life-boat came frothing down the sea from the distant inlet, and they were lifted on board by strong arms.
And then Alma Marston gave Mayo the strangest look he had ever received from a woman's eyes. But her lips grew white and her eyes closed, and she lapsed into unconsciousness while he folded a blanket about her.
"You must have had quite a job of it, managing a woman through this scrape," suggested the captain of the crew.
"It's just the other way," declared Mayo. "I'm giving her credit for saving the whole of us."
"How's that?"
"I might find it a little hard to make you understand, captain. Let it stand as I have said it." _