You may, with caution, partially recover and come on deck.
A.
Sealing this, he inscribed it to Miss Olive Carew at a number in the women’s cabins, and sent it by a stewardess. Then, pulling down his cap, and turning up his collar and lighting a cigar, he stepped out on deck.
He had sensed from the vibration when he was below that the engines were turning over at not even half speed. The fog still shut off everything but two hundred yards of the gray, greasy waves; but it gave enough sight of these to show that the ship’s progress was slow indeed. In the intervals between the deafening blasts of the great steam whistle overhead, the fog signals of another ship sounded, now ahead, now—confusingly—abeam; now ahead again.
He walked forward on the dripping promenade. Though such daylight as there was had been established for two hours, the deck electrics still burned to give light to groups of pallid, ulstered passengers, rug-tucked into their steamer chairs, nibbling biscuit and sipping chicken bouillon for their breakfast. These chatted, with an exciting sense of adventure, of Roberta Leigh; others communicated details of some rescue during the night. As he turned to the opposite side of the ship, Andy saw a crowd about an old and battered seaboat hanging in the Cumberland’s davits, which was clearly not an appendage of the liner. He pushed nearer, and smelled fish, and saw the name Susan Daw in battered paint upon the little boat’s stern.
“That’s what we stopped for early this morning,” volunteered the relief wireless operator, just going off duty for the day.
“I didn’t know we stopped.”
“Yes; a trawler went to pieces out here a couple of days ago. They were blown out here right in the steamer lanes; the crew were in two boats; but no one saw them till we picked this one up. The other boat’s somewhere out there yet; no ship’s reported it. We made a circle, and have been going slower to look for it. I’ve reported picking this up and told about the other; so every other ship coming through here will be on the watch. That shows what wireless does. Those boats drifted right across the steamer lanes for five days, and no one found one, till we happened right across this, because there was no wireless on the trawler to call help.”
“I slept right through the stop, I guess; mine’s an inside cabin,” Andy explained. “How long were we stopped?”
“Pretty long; and we spent some time searching for the other boat.”