The night was black and thick with a drizzle of rain, and a heavy breeze snored through the Flamingo's scanty rigging. The second mate on the bridge was beating his fingerless woollen gloves against his ribs as a cure for cold fingers. The first mate and the third had already turned out, and were on the boatskids helping the carpenter with the housings, and overhauling davit falls. On that part of the horizon against which the Flamingo's bows sawed with great sweeping dives was a streaky, flickering yellow glow.
Kettle went on to an end of the bridge and peered ahead through the bridge binoculars. "A steamer," he commented, "and a big one too; and she's finely ablaze. Not much help we shall be able to give. It will be a case of taking off the crew, if they aren't already cooked before we get there." He looked over the side at the eddy of water that clung to the ship's flank. "I see you're shoving her along," he said to the second mate.
"I sent word down to the engine-room to give her all they knew the moment we raised the glow. I thought you wouldn't grudge the coal, sir."
"No, quite right. Hope there aren't too many of them to be picked off, or we shall make a tight fit on board here."
"Funny we should be carrying the biggest cargo the old boat's ever had packed into her. But we shall find room to house a few poor old sailormen. They won't mind much where they stow, as long as they're picked up out of the wet. B-r-r-rh!" shivered the second mate, "I shouldn't much fancy open-boat cruising in the Western Ocean this weather."
Captain Kettle stared on through the shiny brass binoculars. "Call all hands," he said quietly. "That's a big ship ahead of us, and she'll carry a lot of people. God send she's only an old tramp. At those lifeboats there!" he shouted. "Swing the davits outboard, and pass your painters forward. Hump yourselves, now."
"There's a lot of ice here, sir," came a grumbling voice out of the darkness, "and the boats are frozen on to the chocks. We've got to hammer it away before they'll hoist. The falls are that froze, too, that they'll not render--"
"You call yourself a mate and hold a master's ticket, and want to get a ship of your own!"--Kettle vaulted over the rail on to the top of the fiddley, and made for his second in command. "Here, my man, if your delicate fingers can't do this bit of a job, give me that marlinspike. By James! do you hear me? Give up the marlinspike. Did you never see a boat iced up before? Now then, carpenter. Are you worth your salt? Or am I to clear both ends in this boat by myself?"
So, by example and tongue, Captain Kettle got his boats swung outboard, and the Flamingo, with her engines working at an unusual strain, surged rapidly nearer and nearer to the blaze.
On shore a house on fire at any hour draws a crowd. At sea, in the bleak cold wastes of the water desert, even one other shipload of sympathizers is too often wished for vainly. Wind, cold, and breakdowns of machinery the sailor accepts with dull indifference; shipwrecks, strandings, and disease he looks forward to as part of an inevitable fate; but fire goes nearer to cowing him than all other disasters put together; and the sight of his fellow-seamen attacked by these same desolating flames arouses in him the warmest of his sympathy, and the full of his resourcefulness. Moreover, in Kettle's case, he had known the feel of a ship afire under his own feet, and so he could appreciate all the better the agony of these others.