"Birds will do a fat lot. Birds sent me to work up a connection in the Mexican Gulf, and I've done it, and they've raised my screw two pound a month after four years' service. I jettison the customers' cargo, and probably sha'n't be able to pay for half of it. Customers will get mad, and give their business to other lines which don't run foul of blazing emigrant packets."
"Birds would never dare to fire you out for that."
"Oh, Lord, no! They'd say: 'We don't like the way you've taken to wear your back hair, Captain. And, besides, we want younger blood amongst our skippers. You'll find your check ready for you in the outer office. Mind the step!'"
"I'm awfully sorry, Skipper. If there's anything I can do, sir--"
Captain Kettle sighed, and looked drearily out at the blazing ship and the tumbled waste of sea on which she floated. But he felt that he had been showing weakness, and pulled himself together again smartly. "Yes, there is, my lad. I'm a disappointed man, and I've been talking a lot more than's dignified. You'll do me a real kindness if you'll forget all that's been said. Away with you on to the main deck, and get hatches off, and whip the top tier of that cargo over the side as fast as you can make the winches travel. If the old Flamingo is going to serve out free hospitality, by James! she shall do it full weight. By James! I'd give the beggars champagne and spring mattresses if I'd got 'em."
Meanwhile, those on the German emigrant steamer had seen the coming of the shabby little English trader with bumping hearts. Till then the crew, with (so to speak) their backs up against a wall, had fought the fire with diligence; but when the nearness of a potential rescuer was reported, they discovered for themselves at once that the fire was beyond control. They were joined by the stokehold gangs, and they made at once for the boats, overpowering any officer who happened to come between them and their desires. The limp, tottery, half-fed, wholly seasick emigrants they easily shoved aside, and these in their turn by sheer mass thrust back the small handful of first-class passengers, and away screamed out the davit tackles, as the boats were lowered full of madly frightened deck hands and grimy handlers of coal.
Panic had sapped every trace of their manhood. They had concern only for their own skins; for the miserables remaining on the Grosser Carl they had none. And if for a minute any of them permitted himself to think, he decided that in the Herr Gott's good time the English would send boats and fetch them off. The English had always a special gusto for this meddling rescue work.
However, it is easy to decide on lowering boats, but not always so easy to carry it into safe fact if you are mad with scare, and there is no one whom you will listen to to give the necessary simple orders. And, as a consequence, one boat, chiefly manned by the coal interest, swamped alongside before it could be shoved clear; the forward davit fall of another jammed, and let it dangle vertically up and down when the after fall overhauled; and only one boat got away clear.
The reception which this small cargo of worthies met with surprised them. They pulled with terrified haste to the Flamingo, got under her lee, and clung desperately to the line which was thrown to them. But to the rail above them came the man who expected to be ruined by this night's work, and the pearls of speech which fell from his lips went home through even their thick hides.
Captain Kettle, being human, had greatly needed some one during the last half-hour to ease his feelings on--though he was not the man to own up to such a weakness, even to himself--and the boat came neatly to supply his want. It was long enough since he had found occasion for such an outburst, but the perfection of his early training stood him in good stead then. Every biting insult in his vocabulary, every lashing word that is used upon the seas, every gibe, national, personal, or professional, that a lifetime of hard language could teach, he poured out on that shivering boat's crew then.