The Philistines

by Arlo Bates

In the first terrible shock of fear which followed his discovery that the steamer had been run down, Fenton's body trembled with terror. He felt a wild and dizzy impulse to rush somewhere madly; but in a moment his will reasserted itself. He was intensely frightened, but he beat down his fear with the lash of self-scorn, as he would have whipped a hound that refused to do his bidding. He steadied himself for a moment against the doorway with tense muscles, setting his teeth together. He drew a deep breath, turned back into his stateroom, and put on a cork jacket. He was cool enough. Before he buckled it he transferred his wallet and papers from the pocket of his coat to that on the inside of his waistcoat. Then he hurried out through the saloon on to the afterdeck. The place was crowded, and the confusion was indescribable. Fenton's first impulse was to put his hands over his ears, to shut out the horrible din. The officers were shouting orders and getting the boats manned, for even in this short time the steamer was settling. The hissing swash of the waves beating into the breach, the prayers, the imprecations, the hysterical sobs, the agonized cries of the struggling passengers, the darkness, the terror, the yawning abyss of death beneath them,—combined to sweep away all human feelings save the instinct of self-preservation. The brute side of human nature revealed itself with a hideousness more horrible than the terror of the night and the sea. Unprotected women were crushed and trampled, and as the boats were lowered a fierce hand-to-hand conflict ensued, men fighting like wild cats to force their way into them. The officers beat them back, and made way for the women as well as they could, struggling at the same time with the difficult task of maintaining discipline among the crew.

Shrill amid the uproar, a child's cry smote Fenton's ear as he came out upon the deck. Directly before him a man was trying to pull a life-preserver off from a boy, while a woman fought with him in a desperate endeavor to shield her child. The lad was about the size of Caldwell and in the confused light not wholly unlike him. With a sob and a curse, Fenton struck the man full in the face with all his force, sending the brute reeling backward into the crowd which was too dense to allow of his falling. The mother hurriedly pulled the child into the dense stream of people crowding toward the boats, and Fenton saw the pair disappear over the side of the steamer, helped by one of the officers.

There ran through his mind a momentary speculation of their chances of escape, and the thought brought him back to the consideration of his own situation. A sudden unreasonable disgust of the conditions which made his salvation so improbable seized upon him. He reflected that he might still baffle fate by taking his own life, and for an instant the idea of thus escaping from all the vexations which surrounded him presented itself to his mind in alluring colors. The idea of self-destruction was one with which he had played so often that he entertained it without a shock; and he realized now, almost with a conviction that the fact forced him to suicide for the sake of consistency, that his death under these circumstances would surely be attributed to accident. He even began to fumble with the buckles of his life-preserver; then with a smile of bitter scorn he looked down at his hands, of which the fingers were trembling with nervous fear.

"Bah," he said to himself, "why should I pose to myself? Fate is too much for me; if a gentle and beneficent Providence intends to make away with me, so be it. I haven't the nerve to anticipate it."

He started toward the boats, and at that instant he caught sight of the face of Ninitta. She was standing perfectly quiet, with her arm around one of the small pillars supporting the covering to the deck. She was fully dressed, though her head was uncovered and the rings of hair clung about her face. Fenton forgot everything else at sight of her. In a moment of supreme egotism there flashed through his mind the consequences of Ninitta's being here. The consciousness of all that lay between them made him keenly alive to the evil construction which might be placed upon her having fled from home on the same boat which carried him. He realized, with a profound feeling of impotence, that if they were lost together he should be forever unable to explain or to dispel the suspicion to which her presence might give rise; he felt with keen bitterness how useless would be all his cleverness, and his heart swelled with rage at the thought that his adroitness would be wasted for lack of opportunity.

He forgot the danger, the terror of the wreck, the shrieking of the women, the brutality of the men, and, for the moment, felt with the keen desperation of enormous vanity the danger to his reputation. He forced his way madly across the deck and confronted her in the ghastly light of the swinging lantern and the gray foregleams of the coming dawn.

"You followed me!" he cried with bitter harshness.

She looked at him in a calm, stunned way, as if she were past suffering and almost past feeling. The recognition in her eyes came slowly, as if she were dazed or as if some powerful mental stress held her attention.

"Now," he began, "your boy"—He was going to add, "will grow up to believe you ran away with me;" but his manliness asserted itself and he could not continue. It was like striking a woman, and the brutal words died on his lip.

At the mention of her boy a sudden passion flamed in her eyes. She loosed her hold upon the pillar and a sudden lurch of the sinking ship threw her into Fenton's arms. She clung to him frantically.