He got up and Cartwright pondered. If outsiders knew his shareholders were dissatisfied, things were worse than he had thought and he might expect trouble at the next meeting. Then he looked at his watch, but his chair was deep and when he tried to get up his leg hurt. He sank back again. Gavin knew where to find him if a reply from St. Johns arrived.
By and by his office boy, carrying a cable company's envelope, came in, and Cartwright's hand shook when he opened the message. It stated that an easterly gale and snowstorm raged about the Newfoundland coast and the thermometer was very low. The gale would drive the drift ice up the Gulf and pack the floes. Things looked bad. Cartwright felt he ought to get about and make some plans to meet the threatened blow, but he did not see what he could do.
He sat still. The other customers had gone, and all was quiet but for the faint rumble of traffic and soothing throb of an electric fan. Cartwright mused about Oreana and pictured Davies sheltering behind the wind-screens on his bridge and trying to pierce the snow, and the look-out man half frozen in the spray that leaped about the forecastle. Oreana was a wet boat when she was loaded deep. Now and then, perhaps, a buoy loomed in the tossing flakes. One tried to read the number and see the color. Then the steering-engine rattled as the rudder was pulled across and Oreana headed for another mark.
The work was nervous, because dangerous shoals bordered the channels and Davies must let the steamer go. He knew when a risk must be run and the engineer was staunch. The trouble was, Oreana's boilers were bad; the money Cartwright durst not spend on repairs would have been a good investment now. Still, the old boat was fast, and Davies would drive her full-speed.
The captain's job would not be easier when he left the shoals. The easterly gale would send the floes up stream. Cartwright knew the strange chill one felt when ice was about and the faint elusive blink that marked its edge in the dark. Sometimes one did not see the blink until the floe was almost at the bows, and when the look-out's startled cry reached the bridge one must trust to luck and pull the helm over quick. Then to dodge the floe might mean one crashed upon the next. It was steering blind, but, as a rule, the sailor's instinct guided him right. Farther on, the river got wide and in thick weather one saw no lights: Davies must keep mid-channel and trust his reckoning while he rushed her along. For a thousand miles the old boat's track was haunted by dangers against which one could not guard, and Cartwright thought she carried his last chance to mend his broken fortunes.
If she were wrecked, the reckoning he had long put off must be fronted, for when his embarrassments were known his antagonists would combine and try to pull him down. One must pay for one's extravagance, but to pay would break him, and if he were broken, Mortimer would sneer and Grace treat him with humiliating pity. He would be their mother's pensioner, and to lose his independence was hard. He had long ruled, and bullied, others.
By and by a waitress moved some glasses and Cartwright looked up with a start. The afternoon was nearly over; he must have gone to sleep. Returning to the office, he gave his bookkeeper some orders and then went to the station. The pavements were slippery with frost, and tall buildings with yellow lights loomed in the fog. Cartwright shivered, but reflected that Davies, fighting the snow and gale, was no doubt colder. For a day or two he must bear the suspense, and then, if no cablegram arrived, he could take it for granted that Oreana had reached the Atlantic. After dinner he sat by the fire and smoked while Mrs. Cartwright knitted.
"In the afternoon I went to Mrs. Oliver's and met Mrs. Seaton," she said presently. "She talked to me for some time. At the beginning, I thought it strange!"
"It's pretty obvious that you don't like her," Cartwright remarked.
"Ellen Seaton is not my sort, but I understand she was a friend of yours."