Wheezer generally had the asthma, but the mild winter of the South had cleaned out his speaking-tubes, so that at this time he could talk fluently. "Judkins used to go master o' big steam-yachts, but the last time I seen him I was workin' for a ship-buildin' concern on the Delaware, 'n' we was buildin' a big steam-yacht that Judkins was superintendin' the buildin' of for a mult-eye millionaire. 'Anything Captain Judkins wants let him have: anything he wants—anything and everything,' says the millionaire, who had plenty o' money an' was a good sport. I'd like to been workin' for him myself.
"When Clarence'd get a little wine in—he never touched no beer nor cheap stuff—he used to like to have people listen to him talk," goes on Wheezer. 'D'y' s'pose I'm goin' to be standin' around 'n' lookin' on at those rich loafers havin' everythin' good in life an' me pikin' along on a hundred an' seventy-five a month? Not much!' says Clarence. 'Imagine a man o' my class havin' to stand to attention to a gangway when some o' those fat-waisted mushrooms an' their families come puffin' over the side! Look at me, that's got more brains 'n' looks, more class to me, than any owner ever I sailed out with—yeh, four times as much as most of 'em. An' some of 'em—why, I wouldn't use some of 'em to swab the decks o' their own yachts! Well, I might of their own yachts,' Clarence adds after a while, 'but not o' no yacht o' mine if I owned one. An' maybe I will be ownin' one afore long,' he says.
"An' he did. Outer the extra stuff he ordered for the big steam-yacht he built a little steam-yacht for himself 'n' sold her to a party that never asked him how he come to be gettin' so fine a bargain for twenty thousand dollars. So there's Slick Clarence Judkins," winds up Wheezer. "An' will youse tell me what he's doin' master of a noil-tanker at a hundred an' fifty a month?"
I couldn't tell him. But it was time to show up aboard the oil-ship, and I did; and we lay in the harbor for two days, and when we did put out, it was in weather that any longshoreman could have told was going to be thick even if 'twouldn't be rough outside. About forty miles to the east'ard of Bayport is Horseshoe Shoal. In thick weather inbound vessels once in a while went enough out of their reckoning to fetch up there; but anything outbound generally gave it a wide berth, because there was no need to be cutting close to it. It was a long sand-spit shoaling up so easy that in smooth weather a deep-draft ship could slide up on it while she was yet a long way from where any surf showed on it.
In less than four hours out of Bayport the Yucatan's bow fetches up nice and easy on Horseshoe and stays there. It was thick by now, with no sea to speak of; but there was a long swell and we were deep loaded, which meant that we were almost down to our main deck, and we carried an open rail amidships, which meant that when a swell heaved up against our side it didn't have to roll very high to roll aboard, and after rolling aboard it just naturally kept on rolling across our deck and over on the other side. It was like seeing surf breaking over a rock in the ocean; and to men not used to a deep-loaded oil-ship, and not knowing too much of the sea anyway, it wasn't hard to understand why they might think they were in great danger. Anyway, the seamen or deck-hands or seagoing laborers—whatever it was they shipped for—soon began to pick out safe, high spots and to cling tight to them.
Any shipmaster that wanted to could, of course, have stopped all that with ten words; but says Captain Clarence, waving his hand and singing out from the bridge: "Have no fear, my lads. Trust to me. I will bring you safe out of this." Which was a new one, he being, according to Wheezer's account of him, more often given to damning their hides and blue lights and in other little ways putting the fear of the bridge into the deck of what ships he'd ever been master of. "Have no fear, my men, I'll guard your lives," says Captain Clarence. And it sounded fine, only a couple of wrecking tugs would have walked her off, and certainly her own engines ought to have backed her off, if he'd only stop making speeches and try them.
But Wheezer never said that Captain Clarence was any fool, and he probably knew what he was doing every minute. He went for'ard now and hove the lead a few times, and then hove it aft, and then came back to the bridge looking more solemn than before; and, looking up at him, there was no doubt that most of the crew thought if they didn't get off that ship, and in a hurry, they were gone.
"But fear not," says Judkins; "we shall yet escape from this peril," and blows a distress signal, and right away comes an answer; and in about a minute and a half, from almost under our stern, comes a tugboat, the Niobe, with "Parson" Davies skipper of her. I'd never met Davies, but I'd heard of him; and I'd seen the Niobe laying off Bayport Harbor when we came out, and what would be bringing her so handy now, and she not hailing from Bayport at all, but from Westport, a hundred miles farther away?
Judkins hailed the Niobe to have a line ready, and then turns to us and says: "Men, it would be a great deed for me to imperil your lives to save this valuable ship and cargo to her owners; but what a nobler, what a far nobler, deed it is to save human lives! Not my life, men, but others'—your lives, fathers of families that I know some of you are, or loving husbands, brothers, and sons of loving mothers. But can we thus save her? No, no; we cannot. In a few hours it will be dark, and these seas, which you see breaking over this noble ship, will most surely batter her and all on her before morning. It would then be too late to escape from her. Not," he says, waving his hand, "that we shall not even now make a desperate attempt to get her off. We shall. Indeed we shall!" and orders a line taken from the Niobe. I made it my business—there was no competition—to be the man making the line fast to our after-bitts, and a worn and ancient piece of hemp I saw it was. The Niobe backed off, and the line parted. She passed us another line, and that parted. The second line was rottener than the first, and while she was doing it I knew there was a store-new 200-fathom coil of a 13-inch hawser in our hold.
When the second line parts, Judkins waves his arms in despair and orders the Niobe to make fast under our high lee quarter, where it is smooth as milk and plenty of water for a tug of her tonnage. "Captain Davies," he calls out then, "what a fortunate event for us you happened along!"