Jan went to his room and put on his extra suit of underwear, and over his vest he drew his sweater. From his suit-case he took his mother's photograph and tucked it in his inside pocket. Then he went up again to the top deck and located a life-raft—made the rounds of the boat-deck and located the life-boats.
It was time now to study the storm. The snow was not so thick, but the sea was making and the wind colder and stronger. A gale from the northwest it would be when they were out in the open bay; and, besides the wind getting stronger the sea would be higher. And it was as high now as was good for this old-fashioned side-wheeler with her old-time single engine.
Jan shook his head and, still shaking his head, once more made the rounds of the boat-deck. Eight boats; and each boat might hold twenty-five people—that is, if it was in a mill-pond. But a night like this—how many—even if the running gear were sound? "No, no," said Jan to himself, and reinspected the lone life-raft on the top deck. Two cigar-shaped steel air-cylinders with a thin connecting deck was the life-raft. Jan had seen better ones; but a raft, at least, would not capsize.
[pg 252]
He descended to the main deck, to where, in the gangway between house and rail, he could find a little quiet and think things over. While there, amidships, a sea swept up under the paddle-wheel casing. It boomed like a gun. With it went some crackling. Again a booming—again a crackling. The boat broached to. Sea-water was running the length of her deck.
From out of the snow and night another sea came; and this one came straight aboard, roaring as it came. Jan knew what it meant—there is always the first sea by itself. Not long now before there would be another.
And not long before there was another.
And soon there would be a hundred of them, one racing after the other. And a thousand more of them—only this rust-eaten hull, with her scrollwork topsides, would not hold together long enough to see a thousand of them.
Jan tried to figure out how far they were from the Cape Cod shore. Ten, fifteen, twenty miles. Call it twenty. Jan doubted if she would live to get there, even with the gale behind her.