Before he left the hospital, he had had visits from Captain Dennis and his daughter and from Tom Jukes, who came secretly and brought the information that, although his father was furious with the young wireless man for rejecting what he deemed a magnificent offer, he would yet pay Jack’s hospital bill.
“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” Jack had flared up, and when he left the institution, it was the lad himself who footed the bill.
It ate quite a hole in the check that was his reward for his share in the detection of the tobacco smugglers, but it would have choked him to think of accepting Mr. Jukes’ charity after the scene at his bedside the morning after he had received his injury.
But the disfavor with which he was regarded by Mr. Jukes was the only cloud on Jack’s horizon. Since that night in New York, Captain Braceworth’s manner toward the young wireless boy had changed. He was still austere and silent, but now and then, as he swung past the wireless room on his way forward or to his cabin, he would exchange a word or two with the lad. Perhaps he never guessed how much this encouraged the boy who, on his first voyage, had set down the skipper of the Ajax as a cruel, harsh despot.
Knot after knot the steadily revolving engines of the Ajax brought her closer to home. The weather continued fine until one day, when Jack was half wishing something would happen, the curtain began to draw up on what was to prove a drama of the deep, destined to test every man on board the big tanker.
A fog, dense, swirling and moist as a wet sponge, shut down all about the Ajax that morning soon after breakfast. The captain donned his oil-skins and took up his position on the bridge, to stay there, as was his custom, till the fog should lift and everything be secure again.
The chief engineer was sent for and instructed to keep his force in the grimy regions below, keyed up for instant obedience to orders from the bridge, for the Ajax was on the Atlantic lane, a well-traveled, crowded ocean track.
Like a blind man, the big tanker felt her way along, now starting forward and now almost stopping with an air of fright, as some fancied obstruction loomed in her path.
Through the weary day and the long night that followed, the Ajax groped her way through the fog blanket that hung like a dense mist-shroud over the sullenly heaving sea. It was a marine game of touch and go, with possibly death and disaster for the stakes.
The engine-room telegraph spun in a weary succession of “Come ahead”—“Slow”—“Ahead”—“Slow”—“Stop her”—and “Come ahead, slow” again.