Mr. Emmett held out a clenched fist with thumb jerked towards the reef.
"I wouldn't breathe a word if he wasn't gone," he said, "but the old man was drivin' her too hard. I knew it, and the chief knew it"—he meant the chief engineer—"but he wouldn't listen to either Mac or me. Fact is, he was fair crazy to set up a new record for the boat. She's been crossin' the Atlantic forty times a year for upwards of twenty years, and the recent alterations, although they added fifty feet to her length, only increased her engine-power in proportion."
"You surprise me," broke in Brand. "You speak as if the Chinook were nearly as old as this lighthouse, yet I have never even heard her name before."
"You know her well enough all the same," said the other ruefully. "This is her maiden voyage since she was altered; an' they rechristened her, too—always a d——d unlucky thing to do, I say. Bless your heart, man, she is the old Princess Royal. Eh? What's that?"
He guffawed mournfully at Brand's involuntary exclamation.
"Certain! Well, surely I ought to know. I have passed most of my service with the company in her, and when I took a crew to Cramp's to navigate her to New York after she was smartened up I little imagined I would see her laid by forever the next time we saw the lights of Old England. My goodness, even what was left of the old girl ought to know her way better'n that."
"But what did really happen?"
"Drivin' her, I tell you—drivin' her full pelt to land the mails at Southampton twelve hours ahead of schedule. With that awful sea liftin' her, and a shaft twenty feet longer, what could you expect? Poor Perkins! A rare hard worker, too. Now he's gone down with his ship an' over two hundred passengers an' crew."
"Judging by the number saved I feared that more were lost."
"It's the off season, you know. The passenger list was light. For the Lord's sake, think of what it might have been in May or June!"