[GERTRUDE KING TUFTS]
Mrs. Gertrude King Tufts, author of The Landlubbers, was born in Boone county, Kentucky, in 1877, the daughter of Col. William S. King. She was educated in Kentucky and at private schools in Philadelphia, after which she took a library course and went to New York to work. The property she had inherited had been squandered, so she was compelled to seek her own fortune. For a while she did well, but her struggle for success was most severe. For nearly two years Miss King knew "physical pain and the utter want of money." Finally, however, in 1907, she became editor of the educational department of the Macmillan Company, and then she set to work upon her novel, The Landlubbers (New York, 1909), which was first conceived as a short story, and was finished in the hot summer of 1908. Polly, heroine, is a school teacher out West, who hates her job, saves her money, and decides to see the world. On the trip across the Atlantic, she falls in with Flossie, confidence queen, and she is soon "broke." Suicide seems to be the only way out of her predicament and, at midnight, she quits her state-room to silently slip into the ocean. She is no sooner on deck, however, than she is confronted with cries from the crew and captain that the ship has struck an iceberg and is sinking. The next day Polly finds herself and Dick, hero-lover, on the old battered ship and alone. They, then, are "the landlubbers," and their experiences on the drifting, water-soaked craft, is the story. Miss King dramatized her novel, as she is anxious to become famous as a playwright, "not as a mere yarn-spinner." She also prepared a wonderful human document of her struggles in New York that was most interesting as an excellent piece of writing, and as an advertisement for her book. At the present time Miss King is said to be engaged upon a "long novel——a leisurely, picturesque thing into which I want to put a good deal of life." Miss King was married on February 26, 1912, to Mr. Walter B. Tufts, a New York business man. She is a kinswoman of Mr. Credo Harris, the Kentucky novelist.
Bibliography. The Bookman (May, 1909); Lexington Leader (May 16, 1909).
SHIPWRECKED[88]
[From The Landlubbers (New York, 1909)]
I woke, not roused by any unusual sound or motion, but disturbed by a sense of hovering evil, a horror imminent and unescapable. I sat up, looked at my watch—for I had not turned off the light—and saw that it was toward half-past eleven o'clock. The great ship was silent, save for the throbbing of her iron pulses. As I listened, the fog-horn moaned out its warning, and as the deep note died away seven bells rang faintly from above. My watch, then, was right—and it was time!
I remembered what I had to do, and obeyed the decision of my more wakeful self, though I was far more influenced by the sense of vague, impersonal fear. Still muffled in the stupor of sleep, and shaken from head to foot by a nervous trembling, I rose, put on my long cloak, and flung a scarf over my disordered hair, for if I were to meet anyone I must seem merely a restless passenger seeking a breath of fresh air. I moved rapidly as I grew more wakeful, and tried not to think. From habit I folded my rugs neatly, and plumped up the pillow on which I had been lying. My throat and lips were dry, and I drank a glass of water before I unlocked my door and stepped out into the passage.
There rose above me a long, horrible cry, a shout blent discordantly of the voices of two-score men, a fearful sound as of the essence of brute fear. Many feet pattered upon the deck. There were wordless shouts, shrieked oaths, sharp commands, the boatswain's whistle piercing through the whole mass of confused sound. The great horn boomed just once more—I heard it through my hands upon my ears as I cowered against the wall.
Then the deck quivered under my feet as a horrible, grinding, rending crash shut out every other sound, and the great ship trembled throughout her length, and began to reel drunkenly from side to side, settling over, with every swing, further and further to port.