CHAPTER V MID FOG AND ICE
A year had passed since David Downes lay grieving in the hospital over the great chance he had let slip to help mend the fortunes of Captain Bracewell and Margaret. The cadet no longer dreamed of giving up his life's work on the sea. He had sailed twelve voyages in the Roanoke, which every month ploughed her stately way across the Atlantic and return, through six thousand miles of hazards. Cadets had come and gone. Few of them who sought to make their careers in this way had the grit and patience to endure the machine-like routine in which advancement lay years and years ahead. But David had begun to understand the meaning of this slow process by which his mind was being taught to act with sure judgment, and he saw how very much there was to learn and suffer before a man could win the mastery of the sea.
Because he was strong, quick, and obedient, the navigating officers took a genuine interest in his welfare. They had begun to teach him the uses of their instruments and books. He knew the language of the fluttering signal flags by day and the sputtering Coston lights and winking lamps by night. The taffrail log and the Thompson sounding machine were no longer blind mysteries, and much of his leisure was spent in the chart room. The bos'n taught him what few tricks of old-fashioned seamanship were left to learn in a vessel whose spars were no more than cargo derricks. The cadet had begun to know the liner, the vast and intricate organization, whose ever-throbbing life extended through eight stories that were like so many hotels, machine shops, and factories. And he realized what it must mean to be that calm and ever-ready man in the captain's cabin, whose mind was in touch with every one of these myriad activities by night and day.
Meanwhile David had become more and more fond of and intimate with his sea waifs of the Pilgrim. Every time the Roanoke wove her way back to New York, like a giant shuttle plying over a vast blue carpet, the cadet was with Margaret and her grandfather as often as he was allowed ashore. Captain Bracewell had not found the ship for which he yearned, but his former owners had given him a berth as stevedore on their wharf, and in faithful drudgery he earned a living and a home for Margaret.
He had never become his old self again. He was like one of the splendid square-rigged ships which had been degraded to spend its last days as a coal barge. But he had learned to keep his sorrows and regrets to himself, and, gray-haired hero that he was, lived and toiled for the "little girl," who was the one anchor to hold him from drifting on the lee shore of a broken and useless old age.
David Downes had grown very close to the ship-master's heart. His young strength and his hope and pride in his calling were like a fresh sea-breeze. Nor did anything have quite as much power to kindle Captain Bracewell's emotions as David's confidence that somehow and some day the message would come that a master was needed on the quarter-deck of some fine deep-water sailing ship. Even the bos'n of the Roanoke, to whom David had told his dreams, took a lively interest in the matter and went so far as to declare:
"The very first Christmas what I makes my fortunes I vill put a four-masted Yankee ship in your stockings, boy, mit stores and crew ready for sea, and this granddaddy of yours walkin' up and down the poop, so?"
When the Roanoke was ordered into dry-dock at Southampton, at the end of David's first year in her, she missed a voyage and the cadet had to be content with letters from his friends in New York. In the first packet of mail was a surprising lot of news from Margaret, which read as follows:
Dear Brother Davy:
It is awful lonesome without you for seven whole weeks. Grandfather misses you more than he thinks he lets me see, and he is almost as fidgety as when we landed from the dear old Pilgrim. Mr. Becket is in port and is the cheerfulest of us all though he ought to be the saddest. After being chief officer in that coastwise steamer for three years, he was silly enough to play a joke on his skipper in Charleston last week. And, of course, the old man found it out. Mr. Becket is a perfect dear, but he hasn't much sense when he gets one of his fits of the do-funnies. The captain was in a barber shop ashore, getting his whiskers cut off for the summer season. And Mr. Becket paid two hackmen to walk in as if they just happened there, and begin to talk to each other about the fire on the wharves. Of course, the captain pricked up his ears, and then one of the men said:
"They tell me it blazed up just like an explosion and is right smack alongside the Chesapeake."
That was Mr. Becket's steamer, you know. One side of the captain's whiskers was off and the other wasn't, and he made a jump from the chair, took one of the hackmen by the neck, shoved him through the door, and threw him up on the box of his carriage. Then the captain hopped inside and told the man to drive to the wharf like fury. Of course, the hackman had not expected to be caught this way, but he had to go or else the captain would have broken his neck for him, at least that is what he said he would do.
And when they got to the wharf the captain flew out of the cab and down to his ship. The deck was full of passengers and they laughed till they cried, for the captain must have been a sight with only half his whiskers on. Mr. Becket says they were a fathom long, but he is a terrible exaggerator, as you know. Then the captain ran back after the hackman and caught him and scared him so that he told on Mr. Becket. Wasn't it a shame? Anyhow, he was a horrid captain to his officers and Mr. Becket says he is going to wait for the ship you expect to build for grandfather and me. Write soon and come home as quick as you can to
Your Most Affectionate Little Sister,
Margaret.
David tore open an envelope that bore the marks of Mr. Becket's ponderous fist, hoping for more light on this family tragedy. The luckless mate had no more to say, however, than this:
Dear Davy:
Do you need a strong and willing seaman in your gilt-edged packet? The coasting trade don't agree with my delicate health. I have left the Chesapeake owing to one of them cruel misunderstandings that makes a sailor's life as uncertain as the lilies of the field which are skylarkin' to-day and are cut down and perisheth to-morrow. It is too painful to bother your tender young feelings with. Hold on, I don't think I want to ship with you. Your skipper wears a fine crop of tan whiskers. They would be sure to fill me with sad and tormentin' memories. All's well, and they can't keep a good man down. Your shipmate,
Abel Y. Becket.
David read the letter to the bos'n, expecting sympathy, but that hard-hearted mariner laughed boisterously, and said:
"He got vat was comin' to him, the red-headed old sundowner. I know that Becket man. I wish he shipped as a seaman mit me. I make him yump mit a rope's end. He, ho, ho!—the old man mit his whiskers carried away on the port side. I give a month's wages to see him."
David grew a little hot at such callous treatment of a friend in distress, but could not help smiling as the bos'n trudged off about his work, wagging his head and muttering:
"Mit his whiskers under jury-rig. The red-headed old sundowner! He is a rascal, is that Becket man!"
"I am going to find out whether this line needs any more junior officers," sighed David to himself. "It seems as if all my family is hoodooed about keeping their berths afloat. I wish I was big enough to spank Mr. Abel Y. Becket."
A few days after this the Roanoke was ready for sea and all hands resumed their routine duties. The liner slid out into Southampton Water, and swung up Channel toward the North Sea and Antwerp to pick up her passengers and cargo for the homeward voyage. Clean and tuned up after her overhauling, the crack ship of the Black Star Line was fit for a record run across the Atlantic.
Nor had Captain Thrasher ever felt more pride and confidence in the power, speed, and seaworthiness of the Roanoke than when he dropped the Dutch pilot off Flushing a few days later and signalled "full speed ahead," with Sandy Hook a week away and waiting wives and sweethearts "hauling on the towline." Nor were any of the passengers who flocked along the rail in cheerful groups more eager to get home to their own than the stalwart cadet who tramped the boat deck and watched the Channel shipping sweep past like a panorama. An older cadet, with whom David had formed a fast sea friendship, listened with kindly interest to his hopes and anxiety that all was well with Captain John and Margaret. In David's thoughts the "little girl" was still the helpless child of the Pilgrim, who needed the constant and protecting care of a big brother. Margaret was fourteen now, on the threshold of her fair girlhood, but in her devotion to David there was no sentiment, save that of a sister's trusting and adoring affection.
Captain Thrasher had come to know these friends of David's through their occasional visits on board, when the ship was in port, and his manner toward them was always most cordial. Now and then he unbent a trifle at sea and asked David if Captain Bracewell had found another ship. David was not frightened, therefore, when the master of the liner beckoned him, while passing down from the bridge to supper. The cadet followed the bulky, resolute figure in blue into the sacred precincts of the captain's quarters, and stood silent, cap in hand. In his eyes, Captain Stephen Thrasher was the most enviable man alive, far outshining presidents and kings.
Perhaps because he had been longer away from his home than usual and was thinking of his own lads in school, the masterful captain of the liner addressed David almost as if he were a friend:
"Are you getting on all right, my boy? Do you peg away at your books off watch?"
"Yes, sir. The chief officer thinks I have a turn for navigation. That is, sir, he said that whatever once got inside my thick head was pretty sure to stick there."
Captain Thrasher chuckled, and looked the boy over from head to foot before he resumed:
"How is that stranded friend of yours, Captain Bracewell and his pretty granddaughter?"
"They are well, sir, but Mr. Becket has lost his—his—" David bit his tongue. He had almost said too much. The captain did not know Mr. Becket from a marline-spike, and his affairs must not be dragged in unless asked for. But Captain Thrasher showed no interest in whatever it was that Mr. Becket had lost, and abruptly ended the interview with:
"You will be put on the ship's papers as an able seaman next voyage. But you will berth with the cadets, understand? Don't thank me. You have earned promotion. That's all. You are a nuisance. Get out."
David saluted, and his radiant face expressed his thanks which the captain had forbidden him to put in words. Once on deck, the new-fledged able seaman danced a shuffle and cracked his heels together. His wages would be doubled, and he had left one round of the long ladder behind him. For the next three days he went about his duties in a kind of blissful trance, but he was none the less determined to earn another step in promotion hour by hour, one task at a time, done as well and faithfully as he knew how.
The voyage which had begun so brightly was fated to test the mettle, not only of David Downes, but of every man of the ship's company. The fog, which shut down on the third day like a gray curtain, made navigation a perilous game of hide and seek. Captain Thrasher took his post on the bridge, to stay there until the fog should clear. Far down in the clanging engine rooms the chief engineer and his army of toilers were alert to respond to signals on the instant. The safety of thousands of lives and millions of property was in their keeping also. They were like bold and resourceful pygmies among the mighty monsters of clanging steel which they were ready to tame and check at the call from above.
Through a long night the Roanoke groped her way over a shrouded sea on which the fog hung so thick that the ghostly figures on the bridge could not see the bow of their own ship. It was no better when daylight wiped the blackness from the fog. The steamer was wrapped in a blind world in which there was no sound except the bellowing of the automatic whistle.
David had seen Captain Thrasher pick his sure way through days and nights of such weather as this, but now the master appeared to be more cautious and absorbed in his great responsibility than ever before. Some unusual strain and uneasiness were picking at his nerves, and his officers were aware of it, but they kept their thoughts to themselves. Nor would David have guessed the truth so soon had not Captain Thrasher tossed away a wireless message slip instead of tearing it up. David caught it as it fluttered past the wheel-house and began to read without thinking it to be more than a greeting from some passing vessel. Beneath the figures of latitude and longitude was written:
S.S. Hanoverian.
Dense fog clearing. Many large icebergs in sight just to the northward of us. Most unusual southerly ice drift directly in west-bound track. If you are in fog advise great caution. Please repeat warning to any other vessels behind you.
Greenfelt, Master.
David let the bit of paper blow overside and slipped into the chart room to calculate the position of the Hanoverian. The chart showed him that she was a hundred and fifty miles west and considerably to the southward of the Roanoke when the message was sent. When David returned to the deck an officer was already making reports of the temperature of the water, and Captain Thrasher was standing with head cocked and a hand at his ear, listening, on the chance that the clamor of the fog-whistle might fling back a telltale echo from some hidden mountain of ice that lay in ambush.
Before long David was ordered to stand by the wireless operator's room and fetch to the bridge any messages that might leap from his rattling, sparking instruments. But the Roanoke was left to work out her fate alone. Even the Hanoverian, having picked up her speed with clearing weather, had hurried beyond calling distance of the slow-creeping Black Star liner.
The second night of the fog stole softly around the ship. As the chill and dripping air changed from pearly gray to starless gloom, the hoarse and frequent whistle seemed to be appealing for guidance on this sightless sea. Bridge, deck, and engine room were unceasingly vigilant. Their first warning of deadly peril came when a blast from the whistle was hurled back in a volley of echoes from somewhere dead ahead. Captain Thrasher leaped to the engine-room indicator and signalled full speed astern, with both screws.
The Roanoke shook herself as if her rivets were pulling out, as the engines strove to hold her back, but the momentum of the vast bulk could not be checked on the instant. Then there came a far more violent shock, a grinding roar, and the sound of rending steel and timber. Every man on deck was pitched off his feet. The stricken steamer listed heavily to port and then slowly righted, as the masses of ice dislodged from the berg by the collision slid off her fore deck.
What Captain Thrasher most dreaded had come to pass. In spite of his utmost care his ship had crashed into the ice that lay hidden in the fog and night. But every man of his crew knew that if his ship should go down, he was ready to go down with her. He stood on his bridge without sign of alarm or excitement, shouting swift, clean-cut orders. Before the steamer had ceased to grind against the pale and ghastly ice that towered above her, the water-tight doors in the scores of bulkheads were being closed by men who knew their stations in such a time as this.
Stewards were hastening among the cabin passengers to quiet their panic. Down in the steerage quarters hundreds of hysterical immigrants were running to and fro with prayers and screams, but a squad of hard-fisted seamen soon herded them like sheep and threatened death to any who should try to force a way to the boat deck. The chief officer and the carpenters were forward with lanterns, and other men were in the holds seeking to find how much damage had been done.
The order came from the bridge for the boat crews to stand by, ready to abandon ship if need be. David took his station as he had been taught to do in the boat drill of voyage after voyage. It was very hard to wait in the darkness, but, far more than the cadet knew, his year of training under the relentless rule of the captain's discipline had been fitting him for the test.
The decks had begun to slope downward toward the bow. The forward compartments were filling, and the fate of the Roanoke hung on the strength of the collision bulkhead just aft of the wound the ice had made. David heard the chief officer sing out to the bridge:
"She's flooded to the first bulkhead, sir, but I think she will stay afloat. Will you come and see for yourself? The whole bow of her is stove in below the water line."
The Roanoke was slowly moving astern to try to go clear of the iceberg against which the long swells could be heard breaking as on a rock-bound beach. It seemed an eternity to David before Captain Thrasher returned to the bridge and shouted to an officer:
"Tell the people below we are in no danger before daylight. Better put it stronger than that. Tell them we will make port."
Up in the darkness they listened to the frantic cheers that rose from cabins and steerage, but the passengers had not heard the captain's grim comment to himself:
"If it comes on to blow, there may be another story to tell."
When daylight came the liner made an astonishing sea picture. The fog had lifted a little and the sombre sea was visible for a few lengths away. The steamer's bow was gone. In its place was a jagged cavern of twisted, crumpled steel, into which the waves washed and broke with the sound of distant thunder. The captain dared risk no more pressure against his straining bulkhead which kept the vessel afloat, and the Roanoke lay motionless, while all hands that could be mustered for the work were bracing the inside of the bulkhead with timbers and piles of heavy cargo. There could be no driving the ship ahead against the tremendous weight of the sea until this task was done.
The barometer had risen overnight and the liner's chances were slightly more hopeful. Her wireless instrument was chattering to the world beyond the sky line that she was in sore straits, but if any steamers passed within unseen hailing distance they were not equipped to talk through the air. The Roanoke was left to make the best of her plight.
David Downes had little thought for the fears of the passengers. His confidence in Captain Thrasher was supreme, and he knew that if it should come to the worst, the boats would be got away with orderly promptness. As for the crew, David hoped there might be room for him, and there was a lump in his throat and his breath seemed choked when he thought of being left to struggle and drown, but he felt himself to be a full-fledged American seaman, and he was proud of it. Whatever fate might befall Captain Thrasher was good enough for him.
David was musing in this fashion as he hastened with urgent orders between the fore-hold and the bridge. On one of these trips he found the captain and the senior second officer poring over one of the yellow sheets on which the wireless messages were written.
"Some vessel is within helping distance," thought David, with a thrill of joy, and lingered, hoping to hear the good news.
Presently the captain went to his room, and the officer, taking pity on the youngster's open curiosity, confided:
"Here is a pretty kettle of fish. Those people are asking us to come to their assistance. That's the way it goes. Disasters always run in twos and threes. We can't make head or tail of the message except 'Help' and 'No hope of gaining control.' It sounds like fire, to me."