Joe still stood at the wheel, white-faced but calm.
“I don’t see what we can do now, Tom,” he shouted.
“Nothing but get down to the wireless, and do anything you can in the way of picking up some steamship,” Halstead answered. “We might get a tow, or, at least, another spread of canvas for a third try to ride out the gale. The chances aren’t big for us, but—well, Joe, we’re sailors, and can take our medicine.”
Joe smiled grittily as he edged away from the wheel after his chum had taken it.
“At least, if we go down, we go down in command of our own ship!” he yelled bravely in Tom’s ear through the wild racket of the gale.
Then Joe went below. The storage batteries held electricity enough to operate the few lights and keep the wireless going at intervals for some hours yet.
Once, in the minutes that dragged by, Hank 218 Butts thought of the fine spread he had been instructed to serve all hands that night. But no one else was thinking of food now. Coffee would have been more to the purpose, but to start a galley fire was to take the risk of adding fire at sea to the already more than sufficient perils of those aboard the “Restless.”
Every few minutes Captain Tom Halstead called down through the speaking tube that connected him with Joe Dawson at the sending table. Always Joe’s calm answer came, the same:
“Our wireless spark hasn’t picked up any other ship yet.”
Then, just as frequently, Joe would rest his hand on the sending key again, and send crashing off into space the signal: