“That you can’t,” was Walker’s prompt assurance. “You’d bettaw stick to the saloon. I’ll tell the captain yo’ the-aw.”
“Tell him? Are you returning to the bridge?”
“Telephone!” shouted Walker, as an unusually heavy sea caused him to slam the door unceremoniously. He bolted it, too. Not if he could help it would his charge come out on that storm-swept deck unattended.
The electric light glowed brightly in Elsie’s cabin, exactly as she had left it an hour ago. This was one of the anomalous conditions of the disaster. It lent a queer sense of Midsummer madness to the night’s doings. In a few days it would be Christmas, the Christmas of sunshine and flowers known only to that lesser portion of the habitable earth south of the line. In Valparaiso the weather was stifling, yet here, not so very far away, it was bitterly cold. And the ship was driving headlong to destruction, though electric bells and switches were at command in a luxuriously furnished apartment, while the engineer had just spoken of the telephone as a means of conversing with the captain. Away down in her feminine heart the girl wondered why Courtenay himself had not come to her. Why had he sent Christobal first and Walker subsequently? Oh, of course he had more urgent matters to attend to, though, in the helpless condition of the ship, it was difficult to appreciate their precise degrees of importance.
Anyhow, he had sent word that she was to change her clothes, and he must be obeyed, as Dr. Christobal said. Then she discovered, as a quite new and physically disagreeable fact, that her skirts were soaked up to her knees, while her blouse was almost in the same condition owing to the quantity of spray which had run down inside her thick ulster.
It was an absurd thing to be afraid of after all she had endured, but Elsie cried a little when she realized that she had been literally wet to the skin without knowing it. In truth, she had a momentary dread of a fainting fit, and it was not until she untied the veil which held her Tam o’ Shanter in its place that she learnt how the knot had come near to suffocating her.
The prompt relief thus afforded brought an equally absurd desire to laugh. She yielded to that somewhat, but busied herself in procuring fresh clothing and boots. The outcome of the pleasant feeling of warmth and comfort was such as the girl herself would not have guessed in a week. The mere grateful touch of the dry garments induced an extraordinary drowsiness. She felt that she must lie down—just for a minute. She stretched herself on the bed, closed her eyes, and was straightway sound asleep. At the captain’s suggestion, Christobal had given her a strong dose of bromide in the wine!
It was better so. If the ship were dashed to pieces against the rocks which unquestionably lay ahead, Elsie would be whirled to the life eternal before she quite knew what was happening. If, on the other hand, some miracle of the sea enabled the men to construct a seaworthy raft in time, or the rising tide permitted the Kansas to escape, in so far as to run ashore again in a comparatively sheltered position, she would be none the worse for an hour’s sleep. And now that the ship was afloat, there were things to be done which only men could do. The saloon, the decks, the forecabin, were places of the dead. Fearing lest Elsie might pass, Christobal, before attending to Boyle, had thrown table-cloths over the bodies of men slain in the saloon, for Gray and Tollemache had sternly but vainly striven to repress the second revolt. Tollemache and Walker had dragged out of the smothering spray near the port davits three men who seemed to be merely stunned. These, with the chief officer, and perhaps four survivers of the explosion, made up the list of living but non-effective members of the ship’s company. There was one other, Gulielmo Frascuelo, who was bawling for dear life in his bunk in the forecastle, but in that dark hour no one chanced to remember him, and it needed more than a human voice to pit itself against the hurricane which roared over the vessel. The unhappy wretch knew that something out of the ordinary had taken place, and he was scared half out of his wits by the continued absence of the crew. Luckily for himself, he did not appreciate the real predicament of the ship, or he would have raved himself into madness.
Walker, in his brief catalogue of occupations, had suppressed one. To make sure, Christobal closed a water-tight bulkhead door which cut off the principal staterooms from the saloon. Then he and his two helpers carried out a painful but necessary task. It was his duty to certify whether or not life was extinct. There were very few exceptions. The three men lifted the bodies and threw them overboard. When they reached the corpses of the second officer and a Spanish engineer who had been knifed in the defense of the jolly-boat—his comrade had scrambled into one of the life-boats—Tollemache took possession of such money, documents, and valuables as were in their pockets, intending to draw up an inventory when an opportunity presented itself.
Though they knew not the moment when a sickening crash would herald the final dissolution of the ship, they proceeded with their work methodically. In half an hour they had reached the end. All the injured men—seven nondescript sailors and firemen—were carried to the saloon and placed under Christobal’s care. Walker dived below to the engine-room, where he had already disconnected the rods broken or bent by the fracture of a guard ring, which, in its turn, was injured by the blowing out of a junk-ring, a stout ring of forged steel secured to one of the pistons. He could do nothing more on deck. Whether he was destined to live fifty seconds or as many years he was ill content to hear his beloved engines knocking themselves to pieces with each roll of the ship.