He handed the glasses to Captain Harrison, who had just come on to the bridge.
“Aye—she’s derelict right enough,” said the captain after a prolonged scrutiny. “Well, I’ll have to report her—can’t do anything more. It’s out of the question taking a ship in tow in a sea like this.”
He pulled at his sandy-grey beard in his worried way.
Kavanagh, in his gloomier moments, used to picture himself becoming like Captain Harrison. He was a harassed-looking little man, who was haunted by a nightmare-like dread of losing his ship and his ticket. He had a sickly wife and a brood of young children at home, and his indecision had prevented him from climbing any higher on the ladder of success than the rung which was represented by the command of the “Gairloch.”
“Glass falling,” mumbled the captain into his sparse beard, “sea rising ... in for a night of it....”
Kavanagh hardly heard him. His eyes glued to his glasses, he gazed with a passionate intensity at the abandoned vessel.
It was queer. He couldn’t explain it—couldn’t understand it! But there was something about that ship that made him feel that, at all costs, he must save her! He could no more turn tail and leave her to perish than if there had been human lives at stake. He could no more do it than a knight of old could calmly ride away and leave a distressed damsel making signals from a turret top. And, indeed, as her masts dipped and rose again in the sea, she did somehow seem to be making signals—personal signals—to him and to no one else: to be saying, “Come! You’re surely not going to leave me to it, are you?”
“She’d be well worth salving,” he said, trying to keep some of the eagerness out of his voice as he turned towards his captain. “Mean a lot of money ... if you could spare the hands——”
Captain Harrison shook his head. He looked almost terrified. But Kavanagh had seen the momentary gleam in his eyes at the mention of the money, and his hopes rose.
“I don’t see how I’m going to spare the men,” said the captain, “and besides what good would these chaps be for a job like that. I doubt if there’s more than two or three of ’em have ever been in sail at all.”