“Oh,” I said, “then I have to congratulate Miss Violet also. Mr. Garlicke, I presume?” I inquired with an air of savage festivity. Poor Gerry, his optimism was to get felled to earth along with mine. Well, I felt there was something in both being in the same boat. We could make our moans in company.
“Quite on a par with Gwendoline’s affair,” answered Lady Delahay, holding up a warning finger. “Nothing to be said about it yet, please. Is it possible I recognized Mr. Carver on the deck?”
“Quite possible,” I replied dryly, “you did. He and I and the Professor Lessaution—who is helping him tend the rescued men—are the only passengers aboard,” and as the girls gave over their useless competition with the litter of the crockery, and came and sat beside their mother, I began to give them the whole story.
For a girl who had just been dragged by main force out of the blackest shadow of death, I never saw anything to equal Gwen. Her eyes were bright, her complexion was pink and shining, the sparkle of the salt spray was on her hair. She looked as smiling and content as if she had found the desire of her heart, instead of having just seen fivescore of fellow-beings consigned to a frightful end. Her gaze dwelt upon my face as she listened intently to my story. She looked as complacent as if we were at anchor off Monaco, instead of driving Lord knows where into an uncharted sea, before one of the fiercest gales that ever started a ringbolt. I reflected with internal wretchedness that a girl’s horizon is bounded very narrowly when she is in love, and envied Denvarre under my breath furiously.
In their turn they told me of their adventure, and what had befallen them on that night of horror. How in the midst of light and life, and the friendly converse of the yacht’s saloon, a dishevelled lampman had appeared, grimy, hot, and with fear of death writ largely on his face, and beckoned out the captain from amidst the throng. How, restless in his continued absence, one or two unquiet passengers had followed him, and returned with vague reports of a fire in the lamp-room forward, and how on the word the whole mob of passengers had surged on deck. That then the iron sea discipline of a well-ordered British merchant vessel had been closed around them instantly, and they had been marshalled in parties to the boats to which they had been assigned. But the fire continuing to gain, and the sea to rise, they had been confronted by an awful death on either hand. When the captain had been obliged to abandon hope, he had lowered away the first boat, and within seconds they had seen it dashed to pieces like an eggshell on their bulwarks. The second and third boats had shared the same fate, and two more had been swamped in sight of the vessel. Then as a last chance the captain had had a boat swung from the bow with a long tether, and they had been transferred to it one by one as the seas swung it backward and forward between their passing and repassing, but when but a dozen of them were aboard, the painter had parted—worn with the constant to and fro against the timbers—and they had been swept to leeward as in a flash. Five minutes later the flames had covered the ship from stem to stern, and they shuddered when they told what they had seen, as dark forms began to drop from her red-hot decks into the merciful cold of the sea. And they ended the tale with the tears that are the due of utter terror and long despair, and I made no effort to stay this gracious relief of nature’s pity.
As the ship began to steady her plunging, we made efforts to find accommodation for the ladies, to whom, of course, we gave up our cabins. They were absolutely destitute of everything beyond what they stood up in, and were robed as it was in such rugs and blankets as had been collected while their outer garments were dried in the stoke-hole. We got them at last to retire and find a much-needed repose, a thing that their terror had forbidden so far, for the rolling of the masterless ship had been enough to make any one believe that she would only find a resting-place on the bottom of the furious sea.
I left them with good wishes for sleep and for forgetfulness of the horrors they had experienced. I sought the smoke-room to make inquiry for the rescued men, and found that they had all lapsed into unconsciousness, tucked up in the blankets which the crew had surrendered to their use. Lessaution and Gerry were stretched upon the floor, sleeping heavily after their strenuous attendance on the half-frozen folk, and I left them to their slumbers; amid my own misery I had a heartache to spare for Gerry’s awakening of sorrow.
I climbed up upon the bridge again and stood beside Waller. White-faced and haggard with the anxieties of the night, he was still at his post. He watched with hopeful eyes the coming of the dawn, which was already tingeing the east with an angry, lurid crimson. Still racing before the billows that hunted us we were plunging ever southward, returning swiftly down the track up which we had fought so ploddingly the last six days. The captain’s clothes hung about him in limp sodden clingings; he leaned wearily upon the wheel, guiding it delicately in the strong grip of Rafferty, who shared the toil of restraining it. There was weariness and exhaustion in his every pose, but his eye was still bright and his face set steadfastly upon his duty. I watched him with admiration—the strong, confident sailor who held our lives resourcefully in his unshaken grip. A glow of pride pulsed through my veins as I recognized that this was the type of commander who was lifting England’s honor high across the seas of two hemispheres, that what this staunch self-reliant man was doing would have been done in like case by unreckoned hundreds of his fellows. I thanked God again for the mercies of the night, with special acknowledgment for the fact that we were manned by a wholesome British crew.
I laid my hand lightly upon his shoulder.
“Take a rest, captain,” said I; “let Janson come and have his spell. You’ve been at it twelve long hours already. Surely there’s nothing left but to let her drive.”