“Very good,” he said. “Now, I suppose you’ve never heard of Wilfrid Earle, of New York, the man who undertook to hunt his way from Cairo to the Cape—”
“Oh! but of course I have,” interrupted Dick. “I’ve read about you in the papers—and, come to think of it, I’ve seen your photograph also in the papers. Somehow your face seemed familiar when I noticed you a while ago on the boat deck—”
“Sure!” cut in the other. “That’s me—Wilfrid Earle, the eccentric New Yorker, all right, all right. Only arrived home from Cape Town little more than a fortnight ago, with a whole caravan load of skins, horns, tusks, and so on; and now I guess they’re about half a mile down, in the hull of the Everest. Gee! Guess you’re thinking me a heartless brute for talking so lightly about the awful thing that’s just happened; but, man, I’ve got to do it—or else go clean crazy with thinking about it. Or, better still, not think about it at all, since thinking about it won’t mend matters the least little bit. Say! what are all those little lights dotted about over there?”
“Oh!” answered Dick, “they are the lights of the Everest’s boats. Each boat was provided with a lantern, in order that they might keep together, and be the more easily found when the rescuing ships come up.”
“Ah!” returned Earle. “A very excellent arrangement. But say! what about us? We have no lantern. How are we going to make our whereabouts known? Those boats are a good mile away, and—”
“I don’t think we need worry very greatly about that,” answered Dick. “Naturally, the Bolivia—or whatever the coming craft may be—will pick up the people in the boats directly she arrives; but she’ll lower her own boats, too, and send them away to search the sea in the immediate neighbourhood for people who may be floating about in lifebuoys or cork jackets. There must be quite a number of them at no great distance from us—though how long they are likely to survive, drifting about in the ice-cold water, I should not like to say. But I think we may take it for granted that, once they have arrived, the rescuing ships will not quit the scene of the disaster until they have made quite sure that they have got all the survivors. They will wait about until daylight comes, without a shadow of doubt.”
“Good! it is comforting to hear you say that,” returned Earle. “You see, I don’t know much about the sea and sailor ways, and it occurred to me that those rescuing ships might take it for granted that when they had recovered the people from the boats, they would have done all that was possible—and quit. Gee! but it’s cold here on this ice. Lucky that there’s no wind, or we should be frozen stiff in half an hour. We’ll have another nip of brandy each; it’ll do us both good. Lucky thing, too, that I had the sense to fill the flask and slip it into my pocket when I knew what had happened to the ship. I sort of foresaw some such experience as this, and concluded that a drop of brandy might be a good thing to have about one’s person.”
They had their nip and felt all the better for it; but it was necessary for them to keep moving briskly in order to combat the numbing chill of their wet clothes, and they resumed their pacing to and fro across their narrow block of ice.
For a time their conversation was of a desultory and fragmentary character, for they were both intently watching the progress of the approaching steamer, which continued to send up rockets until the glow of the flames from her funnels became clearly visible. Then the display of rockets suddenly ceased, no doubt because—as Dick surmised—the lights of the boats had been sighted by the eager look-outs aboard her. Then her mast-head light came into view, followed, a little later, by her port and starboard side lights; and at length the dark, scarcely discernible blotch that represented her hull lengthened out suddenly, revealing a long triple tier of brightly gleaming ports; and a few seconds later the roar of steam escaping as her engines stopped, reached the two watchers on the ice.
“Hurrah!” shouted Dick, “she is among the boats at last and doubtless picking them up. Now we must keep our ears open listening for the sound of oars, or hailing, for I’ll bet that the skipper will have had his boats swung out ready for lowering, and their crews standing by, long ago.”