As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

There was not the slightest cessation of the storm, however, till eight o'clock in the evening. Even then the night continued thick and wild.

Fortunately the sea was vast and deep. There was nothing known in two hundred miles on which the ship could blunder. Hour after hour the crippled "Inca" limped erratically onward, buffeted helplessly here and there, and scalloping angry abysses of darkness and water, as first one screw and then the other was driven full speed, or slowed to half, or reversed altogether, to hold her nose to the altered course that would finally fetch them to a port for highly essential repairs.

The rage of the elements, abating at last a trifle, had far exceeded the Captain's expectations. And when at length the center was passed, and comparative ease had supervened, the wind was still a considerable gale, while the sea would run high till nearly morning.

The passengers, however, were sufficiently assured to retire at a fairly early hour. Elaine had readily responded to Grenville's matter-of-fact instructions, and, long before midnight, was fitfully sleeping, although she had not undressed.

When eight bells struck from the bridge somewhere above him, Grenville still sat on the edge of his berth, rumpling his hair with one vigorous hand, while the other prisoned a book on his knee with a piece of white paper upon it. The paper was literally covered with mechanical designs and hieroglyphics, involved in his latest problem.

He arose at last, removed his coat, and began to fumble with his tie. His eyes were fixed upon his paper. The problem's spell was cast again upon him. He sank, as before, to his inconvenient seat, and drew yet another design.

How long he remained there, tranced by the lines that represented levers, gears, and eccentrics, the man could never have stated. He was dimly subconscious it was time to go to bed, and from time to time one hand would return to his collar. As a matter of fact, the hour was past one of the morning.

Then, of a sudden, apparently beneath his very feet, the frightful thing occurred.

It came all together—the grinding crunch, the colossal upheaval of the ship's great belly full of vitals, the scream of iron ripped from iron, the roar of steam from broken pipes, and the tremor of death-throes, shuddering thus promptly down to the canted bow and stern from the wedge-shaped split amidships.

They had struck on a rock, upheaved by the earthquake, where a hundred fathoms of crystal brine had existed the previous noon!