The Philistines

by Arlo Bates

"After all," he thought, "what we call a fool in this world is a man who has his own way at the expense of the wise. There's Candish, now; I call him a fool and he goes ahead and is damned virtuous and stupid and exasperating, and gets through life beautifully; while I, who wouldn't be such an idiot for any money, am always in some confounded scrape or other. I wonder, by the way, what's the connection between sanctity and a waistcoat put on hind side before. Candish and Edith wouldn't make a bad pair. She wouldn't mind his ugly mug in the least, and his idiocies of temperament would be rather pleasing to her. Heaven knows it was an ill day for her when she fell into my clutches. I can't say that it seems to have been any great advantage to any woman to be fond of me. Helen was awfully cut up when I went back on the Pagans, and as for Ninitta, I've played the very dickens with her. Upon my word I have my doubts if I could be really respectable without cutting my own acquaintance."

Fenton retired to his stateroom almost as soon as he went on board the steamer. He was tired with the strain of the last weeks, he hated the vulgar crowd one met in travelling, so that to sleep and avoid his companions seemed the only course desirable under the circumstances.

He was dimly conscious of the progress of the boat, the bustle in the saloon, which gradually subsided as the evening wore on; and then his slumber grew deeper. Even the frequent whistling which the ever-increasing fog made necessary only caused him, now and then, to turn uneasily in his berth. His stateroom was well aft, and in his drowsy, half-waking moments, he was conscious that the sea was running heavily. He remembered that the wind had been east all day, and that he had seen the danger-signal floating that afternoon.

Toward morning he grew more wakeful. The whistling of the fog-signal, which had now become almost constant, vanquished at length his inclination toward slumber. He found his watch, but it was too dark to tell the time. He raised himself up in his berth, and, pulling open the window blind, was able with difficulty to make out that it was almost four o'clock. Outside, he saw a bank of fog, as impenetrable to the eye as a wall. He pulled the blind to, with an impatient sigh.

"This confounded fog," he thought, "will make us late, and I sha'n't have time to see those pictures at the Academy."

He lay back in his berth, broad awake, with an objurgation at the whistle, which was shrieking furiously, and which, he suddenly became aware, was being answered by the dull bellow of a fog horn blown near at hand. At that moment the engines of the boat stopped, with that cessation of the quivering jar which is so terrifying. Fenton could feel the steamer losing its headway, and being more heavily tossed about by the waves as it did so. He sat up in his berth with a startled consciousness of danger, and at the same instant something struck the steamer with a terrific crash which seemed powerful enough to rend every timber apart. A tumult of sound broke forth, amid which a piercing human shriek rang out with awful sharpness. Fenton was thrown from his berth by the shock, and landed on the floor, bruised and half-stunned, but otherwise unhurt. His valise was dashed against him, but after the first concussion there was no further violent movement, and, as soon as he was able to recover himself, he had no difficulty in getting to his feet. The terrible cries which continued, reinforced by a babel of screams and confused noises, seemed to him to come from some stateroom near at hand. It was evident that some one had been seriously hurt in the collision which must have occurred. The trampling of feet, the voices of men and women and children, the sound of the wind and of the water, and those formless noises which are the more terrifying because it is impossible to tell whence they arise, filled the air on every side, and told Fenton that some serious calamity had befallen the steamer.

He felt about in the darkness for his clothing, then pulled open the shutter hastily, and dressed himself in the dim light as well as he was able. He was excited but not panic-stricken, yet the time seemed long, although in reality it was but a few moments before he was ready to open his door into the saloon. As he came out he had a startled impression of finding himself in an unexpected place, and then he realized that the side of the boat had been broken in clean through the range of staterooms, and that he was looking out into the heavy wall of fog through a hole made by the collision. He could see dimly the shape of a ship's prow, and the broken end of a bowsprit was not yet wholly disentangled from the rent in the side of the steamer. The two vessels, locked together like a pair of sea-monsters that had perished in the death grapple of a desperate encounter, tossed up and down on the long swell, swayed by the wind which seemed to be increasing in fury every moment.

On the floor of the saloon just before him, Fenton saw a wounded man, ghastly with blood, and moaning terribly. Half-dressed people hovered about him in utter bewilderment, while others continually hurried up simply to hasten away again in frantic confusion. The wounded man was in his night clothes, and a half-dressed old woman, her gray hair straggling about her face, seemed to be attempting to stanch the blood which was flowing freely. She was evidently a stranger, since from time to time she appealed to those around to take her place, and let her go and look after her own folk, but the kindly old creature plainly could not bring herself, even in that hour of peril, to desert one hurt and helpless.

On every side were the evidences of panic. Stateroom doors were open, people in all stages of disarray were hurrying wildly along, or clinging frantically to each other. The hysterical sobs of women, piercing cries from the thin voices of children, deep-toned curses and wild ejaculations from men sounded on every hand. People were donning life-preservers, some putting on two or three in their eagerness and fear; and here and there fighting for the possession of an extra one in a mad fury. The whole saloon was filled with a wild and terrifying tumult. It was a frenzied scene of fear and awful bewilderment.

However great his mental pluck, Fenton was physically a coward, and he knew it. The New England climate and life have given to most of her children, of any degree of cultivation, a nervous organization too acutely sensitive to pain for them to be physically brave; but to this disposition the New England training, the inherited manliness of sturdy ancestors, has added a splendid moral energy to overcome this weakness.