West Wind Drift

by George Barr McCutcheon

“I don't believe it will come to that,” said he, an odd note of confidence in his voice. “'Tain't likely, old friend, that God would see us safely through all we've had to tackle and then desert us in the end. Something's bound to turn up. I've a feeling,—a queer feeling,—that we're going to pull out of this all right. I know it looks mighty hopeless, but—”

“Just the same, Mr. Mott,” broke in the Captain, lifting his head and setting his jaw, “you'd better set all available hands to work on the rafts immediately. It's true God has helped us through a lot, but it strikes me we'd better be on the safe side and help God a little at this stage of the game. He is wonderful, Andrew, but He isn't wonderful enough to keep man afloat very long unless man himself builds the raft. So don't lose a minute.”

Anxious, inquiring eyes followed the Captain and his First Officer wherever they went. On all sides were silent, beaten people who asked no questions, for they were afraid of the answers. Sick, dazed, haggard, they stared hopelessly, drearily out over the water; for all that their faces revealed the end was near at hand and they cared but little. They had been through one hell; death could bring nothing worse.

Here and there a stout-hearted optimist appeared among them, but his very cheerfulness seemed to offend. They did not want to hear his silly, stupid predictions that something was “sure to turn up.” They knew that water was coming into the hold; they knew that there were but four lifeboats and seven hundred men and women; they knew that the Doraine was going down in a very few hours; they knew that the Captain had given up all hope of rescue. Nothing could “turn up” now but death.

Madame Obosky had taken a great fancy to Algernon Adonis Percival, and for a most peculiar reason. He had, it appears, abused her roundly on the first night of the storm for venturing on deck against orders, compelling him to risk what he considered a very precious life in a successful effort to drag her back to safety. As a matter of fact, he did not drag her back to safety. That feat was accomplished by two sailors who managed to reach both of them before another devastating wave came up to tear his grip loose from the broken rail to which he clung with one bandaged hand while he kept her from sliding into the sea with the other.

He was very angry. In the first place, his hands hurt him dreadfully, and in the second place she had forced him to disobey orders by going out to save her. He did not mutter his complaints. He told her in plain and violent English what he thought of her, and if she went out there again he'd be damned happy to let her drown.

Now, it had been some time since any man had had the hardihood or temerity to upbraid Madame Obosky. No male had cursed her since she left Petrograd,—and that was four years ago. She had been cursed often enough by her own sex,—professionally, of course,—but the men she had encountered since leaving Russia were either too chivalrous or too cowardly to abuse her, and she missed it terribly.

She had gone through a very hard school in order to become one of the principal dancers in her land. Teachers had cursed her, teachers had beaten her,—and they always were men.

When she was eighteen she married a lion-tamer. Who would have thought that a man who trained lions could be gentle and mild, and as tame as the beasts he had beaten for years? She was barely nineteen when he died, quite suddenly. There was a dark rumour that she had poisoned him. True or false, the rumour persisted, and she soon became one of the most popular dancers in the Empire. For three years she had a manager who treated her so vilely, so contemptuously that she tried to kill his wife, whereupon the unnatural husband refused to have anything more to do with her.

She was dancing in Germany when the War broke out, but succeeded in getting over into Holland within a week or two, thereby escaping what she was pleased to describe as “something zat no woman could endure, no matter how long she have live' in Russia.” Paris and London had treated her kindly, courteously, but that was to be expected, she repined, because all of the real men were off at the front fighting. Instead of being scowled at and ordered about by managers and orchestra leaders, or brow-beaten by hotel-clerks and head-waiters, she met with nothing but the most servile politeness,—due, she was prone to argue, to the unquestioned decadence of the French and English races. They were a bloodless lot, those Frenchmen and Englishmen.