“It might make a difference to more than me—if he wasn’t looked after. I believe I’ll go and do it. Good-night, Good Girl!”
The couple of hours of chill sunshine after breakfast showed a waveless sea. Far off against the eastern horizon were single icebergs, that looked like the white tents pitched on the glassy surface of the sound.
To the passengers on the grounded ship the calm weather was only a goad to rage. The rest of the Nome fleet—they were profiting by open water and absence of head winds! But as for us of the Los Angeles, we’ve left our families, sold our farms, risked all we have on earth for the pleasure of sitting on a sand-bank a hundred and fifty miles from the gold-fields!
From hour to hour the disaffection spread. Every one on board had a remedy for the disaster. Where it had been thought were miners, attorneys, doctors, politicians, it turned out they were navigators to a man.
No glimpse of Cheviot till an hour after breakfast. Even then only a nod and “Good-morning,” as he went by deep in talk with the chief engineer. Toward ten o’clock a little wind sprang out of the northeast and brought down a thin veil of fog. The air took on a keener edge, yet no one left the deck or even seemed to feel the cold, for a rumor had run about the ship like fire over dry stubble: “The captain says we’ll never get off this —— bar till we unload.”
“Unload! Unload what?”
Pat the answer: “First, the coal.”
“Throw away coal!”
Such a counsel of despair struck grave enough on the ears of men who knew the fabulous sums paid in Nome for fuel. But not the coal, it was the little word “first” that presented the keenest barb to each man’s consciousness. Just as though the immense sacrifice of the coal were not fit and sufficient climax to the misadventure! “First!” What possible second? Why, after the coal, overboard with McKeown and Dingley and the rest of the heavy stuff!