For, unlike my usual custom, I had allowed myself to hope. In my conceit of my plan for gaining an interview with Gwen—in my hopes and fears of our meeting coming off—I had not dwelt much on the fact that it might end in failure—in despair. Gerry was partly responsible for this. For the last week he had continually dinned his sanguine reassurances into my ears till they had almost ousted my natural pessimism. I had forgotten to deceive Fate with a pretense of despondency, and she had turned to sneer wickedly in my face and to flout me for my inattention. I gripped the stanchion savagely as I thought of these things, I turned a silent face to the hubbub of the night, while every passion of my body rioted in my brain. I took an infuriate comfort in the thunderous grapple of the elements.
For, look at it how I would, I was condemned to hours—if not days—of smiling torture. Here was I cooped up in the same ship with the woman to whom I had utterly given over my heart, and honor—bare courtesy, in fact—forbade me to so much as hint to her my love. Mere common kindness bade me further the wooing of my rival. And he—I gnashed my teeth as I remembered it—if my luck had only allowed, might have been a thousand fathoms deep in this shrieking whirlpool of a sea. If ever the temptations of Cain filled a man’s heart, they crowded mine that tempest-ridden night.
I fought with my passion, thrusting these ideas back from me, conjuring up to myself every thought of chivalry that my upbringing could give birth to. I remembered my apathetic renunciation of Gwen when we parted six months before—my calm and fatalistic determination to live down dispassionately the desire of my life. None the more did it bring comfort as I told myself that now I had the right and the means to win her—that as before God, and not before a sordid, money-worshipping world, we were just man and maid, and had looked upon each other in natural love and liking. I cursed the narrow world of Society with an insistence that gained power from the fact that I stood in the very cradle of nature’s wrath, and Society was dimmed by the distance of three thousand miles—veiled behind a curtain of storm and dancing spray. Thus during the long hours of the night I battled with myself in disjointed, hopeless argument, and the storm rattled round me with growing clamor.
It was about three in the morning when the climax of the tempest came. A shock quivered up from our stern, vibrating through every timber of our hull as if by electricity—a tremor such as no mere breaking wave could have caused. It was as if we had been smitten by some Titan sledge-hammer. Above the bellow of the storm I heard Waller’s cry of dismay, and saw the wheel spin uselessly through his hands. He came headlong down from the bridge.
I sprang forward to steady him as he half stepped, half fell from the ladder, and he lurched into my arms. As the unguided ship swung round before the impact of the rollers, the deck stood up at an angle that shed our footing from it. We gripped each other unhandily. The bow leaped, and shook itself as if in pain. A ponderous surge charged into it. The ship gave before the shock, throbbing through every timber. It swayed, hesitated, and then, defeated in the unequal struggle, broached to, and lay in the trough of the sea. A great flood roared down the deck, snatching up the captain and myself in its green mane and dashing us stunningly against the deck-house. We spluttered and choked, gasping for breath.
“The rudder-chains are broken,” exclaimed Waller hoarsely, as he gulped and crowed, and he made a dash for the foc’sle, roaring aloud for the watch below. They never heard him till he thrust his face into the very door. Unsteadily they came tumbling out to scramble along the listed deck, and find and splice the sundered links. The rattle of their intermitting hammering and dragging could only be heard if you stood within a foot of them.
The seas boiled over us eternally while this was doing, and for half-an-hour we were practically beneath the waves, the ship settling under the weight of water as she rolled broadside into the seas. The engine still thrashed wearily round, but ungoverned as we were, our leeway was twice our speed of steam. We only butted our prow more and more under the combs of the great rollers. Finally six men were stationed with ropes spliced to the broken chains, and Waller mounted the bridge again. By strenuous tugs they hauled upon the tiller as his hand motioned to them, and slowly we came round to face the gale again. As we did there was a clang and a jar. The white wake faded from behind us, and came flying up past the sides. We were sidling back with gathering speed into our sternway. The cover was flung off the engine-room man-hole, and Eccles’s grizzled head appeared.
“The propeller-shaft, my lord,” he bawled, his voice rising screamingly in his excitement, “the propeller-shaft’s split. I daren’t give her another turn in this sea.”
As our way lost itself in the force of the contending waters, and died down into nothingness, we slowed, stopped, and a huge mass of ocean roared against our prow. It lifted, lifted, lifted, soaring towards the very heavens. I saw it eclipse a red, angry planet that I had noticed high above the bowsprit-stays a moment before. It hovered a single tense instant, and then with a swirl and heave came flying round, reeling and staggering. There was a rush of the crew to gain some hold or to brace themselves against some shelter. Then with a frightful roll we swung over, and lay on our beam ends, the hungry waves licking along our submerged decks like wolves ravening for their quarry.
Out of this hopelessness Waller led us like the brave man he was. After infinite research the carpenter produced a storm-sail, which had not been buried beneath the weight of superincumbent wreckage. Under the captain’s skilful supervision this was bent as a jib. Slowly, as the wind gained force upon it, we dragged from under the weight of the waves that were thrusting us deeper and deeper under their piled thronging, and drew round to show our stern to the wind. As we ploughed our way out of the trough of the sea, the waters rushed more and more from off our streaming decks. We rose; the ship shaking itself like a dog. We gained speed. The men took up the rudder ropes they had flung aside, and in another two minutes we were riding—racing, before the gale, back—straight back—to the regions of the Great South Wall.