Some of the doors of the staterooms had burst from their fastenings, and were sagging and swaying inward, offering pitfalls for the unwary, and, in that wild and excited group, Ducie alone bethought himself of precaution. “Look out for the boy, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,—he may fall through one of those open doors into deep water or into the furnace,—I don’t know what is now beneath this part of the saloon,—the boat seems twisted and broken to pieces.”
The suggestion of danger to the child was like a potent elixir to Paula. Her eyes, strained and set, recovered their normal look of perception, wild and haggard though they were. She caught the child in her arms and, although trembling and occasionally staggering under his weight, she would not relinquish him to Ducie as he desired, but carried him herself safely along the precarious way. Ducie aided her to clamber up the steep incline where the doors ceased and the wall was unbroken, there being here the barber-shop and the office, and the large space utilized as a smoking-room. Through the windows streamed a deluge of rain, and broken glass lay scattered all about.
Most of the passengers had gathered here in an attitude of tense expectancy. A man stood at a speaking-tube and, with a lordly urgency, was insisting that the Captain should take immediate measures to put the passengers ashore in the yawl. It was no moment to relish a conspicuous pose, and Floyd-Rosney was too well habituated to the first place to give it undue value, but he was obviously in his element and carrying all before him. It was a one-sided conversation, but the comprehension of his listeners was quickened by their personal interest in its progress and result.
“No danger?” a sarcastic laugh. “We take the liberty of differing as to that. The boat may go to pieces on the sand-bar.”
“A shelter? yes,—as long as she lasts, but how long will that be? The boat not much injured except in the furnishings and glass? You think not?” very sarcastically.
“Oh, you guarantee? Now what is your guaranty worth to people drowned in one hundred feet of water?”
“No, we won’t wait to be taken off by the next packet. The river is rising, and the sand-bar might be covered. We demand it,—the passengers demand to be set ashore in the yawl.”
“Well, then, we will hold you and the owners liable.”
“We are not prisoners. What’s that? Responsibility? humanity?—shelter? I’ll take care of the shelter. Duciehurst mansion is scarcely ten miles down the river. I own it, and the yawl could put us in it in a trice.”
“Yes,—we will risk it,—we will risk the wind and the current. All right. All right.”