IV
A schemer of fame was Dixey of the Ice King. He stayed by the Durlich till the gale drove her to harbor, and then to harbor he ran with her. He proposed to stay by her, too, till further orders. A proposition to tow a used-up tramp steamer to Portland he waved off impatiently. He was playing for bigger game.
However, when after forty-eight hours in Provincetown Harbor the Durlich showed no signs of moving out, Dixey began to squirm. He instituted inquiries. Between the firemen of the two towboats existed an amity of feeling that might be turned to profit. So to the hold of the Durlich a begrimed party with a quart of the right stuff in his overcoat pocket found his way; and returned after an unconscionably long visit, somewhat befuddled, but able to report that the gentleman in the fur coat didn’t calculate to expose his precious life in such weather again off Cape Cod.
Dixey considered the situation again in this new light. A long contemplation from all angles, and he went ashore to telephone. He came back again and drew out his charts. “H’m! She’s left Chatham and she’s not been reported yet in Boston. She must be out here somewhere. But where, just?” A further thoughtful whirl of a pair of dividers on the chart. “He may’ve beat up by the Cape, but I don’t think so. It’s a good chance he went into the North Shoal, and if he did, of course he’s lost. But in case he did get by—in case he did—” Dixey whistled down the tube to his engineer. “Warm her up and we’ll get out of here.”
And so it came to pass that Dixey in time sighted the leaking bark, to every appearance a sinking bark, with a crew of imploring, frost-bitten men to her iced-up rail.
The master of the bark told a story of extreme hardship, of just escaping being lost on the shoals of Georges.
“The North Shoal?”
“Aye, the North Shoal. We all but bumped, we were that handy to it. A dozen times we thought we were lost. I don’t understand it myself, but we worked by, and here we are—our hold full of water, everything soaked in the cabin and forec’s’le, where the seas wet everything down. Nothing to eat, no fire fore or aft, and we’re most froze up. Put a boat out and take us off, for God’s sake!”
“Goin’ to abandon her?” Dixey’s voice almost betrayed his anxiety.
“Abandon her? Yes, and get as far away from her as anybody will take us. Why, man, we’re froze up, and she’s sinking!”
“Don’t you think you could keep some of your men aboard pumpin’ her out and take a line from me so I can tow you in? This steamer of mine could walk you home at a six-knot clip, deep as you are. It’d mean a lot of money to me. What d’y’ say?”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t stay aboard her another hour, let alone the men, for millions. You haven’t any notion of how things are aboard of her. Everything wet down below, grub and bedding both, and solid ice, man, from rail to rail—likely to go down under our feet any minute. And here’s some of these men half wild with suffering. Take us off, and do what you please with her afterward. For all I care she’s yours—she’s anybody’s that’ll take us off.”
“Blest if I don’t try and take them off just the same.” Dixey waved to his mate to unlash the boat.
The deck-hands of the Ice King seldom had occasion to launch a boat, and now they made a mess of it. When they should have fended the boat off, they allowed the sea to bear it in. Against the side of the towboat it came crashing.
Dixey swore blue oaths from the pilot-house. “What in the name of Beelzebub you tryin’ to do? Stove in, is she?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the mate.
“Bad?”
“So bad that I wouldn’t want to ask any men to go in her—and the men don’t want to go, either.”
“That so? A fine lot of able seamen! Well, they’ll have to take a line—” He hailed the bark. “We can’t help you unless you’ll take a line and let us tow you.”
“What’s the matter with your other boat?”
“They’d smash that, too, and——”
“Ho, Captain—” it was the voice of one of the bark’s crew—“here’s a sail bearing down.”