"How is that stranded friend of yours, Captain Bracewell and his pretty granddaughter?"
"They are well, sir, but Mr. Becket has lost his—his—" David bit his tongue. He had almost said too much. The captain did not know Mr. Becket from a marline-spike, and his affairs must not be dragged in unless asked for. But Captain Thrasher showed no interest in whatever it was that Mr. Becket had lost, and abruptly ended the interview with:
"You will be put on the ship's papers as an able seaman next voyage. But you will berth with the cadets, understand? Don't thank me. You have earned promotion. That's all. You are a nuisance. Get out."
David saluted, and his radiant face expressed his thanks which the captain had forbidden him to put in words. Once on deck, the new-fledged able seaman danced a shuffle and cracked his heels together. His wages would be doubled, and he had left one round of the long ladder behind him. For the next three days he went about his duties in a kind of blissful trance, but he was none the less determined to earn another step in promotion hour by hour, one task at a time, done as well and faithfully as he knew how.
The voyage which had begun so brightly was fated to test the mettle, not only of David Downes, but of every man of the ship's company. The fog, which shut down on the third day like a gray curtain, made navigation a perilous game of hide and seek. Captain Thrasher took his post on the bridge, to stay there until the fog should clear. Far down in the clanging engine rooms the chief engineer and his army of toilers were alert to respond to signals on the instant. The safety of thousands of lives and millions of property was in their keeping also. They were like bold and resourceful pygmies among the mighty monsters of clanging steel which they were ready to tame and check at the call from above.
Through a long night the Roanoke groped her way over a shrouded sea on which the fog hung so thick that the ghostly figures on the bridge could not see the bow of their own ship. It was no better when daylight wiped the blackness from the fog. The steamer was wrapped in a blind world in which there was no sound except the bellowing of the automatic whistle.
David had seen Captain Thrasher pick his sure way through days and nights of such weather as this, but now the master appeared to be more cautious and absorbed in his great responsibility than ever before. Some unusual strain and uneasiness were picking at his nerves, and his officers were aware of it, but they kept their thoughts to themselves. Nor would David have guessed the truth so soon had not Captain Thrasher tossed away a wireless message slip instead of tearing it up. David caught it as it fluttered past the wheel-house and began to read without thinking it to be more than a greeting from some passing vessel. Beneath the figures of latitude and longitude was written:
S.S. Hanoverian.
Dense fog clearing. Many large icebergs in sight just to the northward of us. Most unusual southerly ice drift directly in west-bound track. If you are in fog advise great caution. Please repeat warning to any other vessels behind you.
Greenfelt, Master.
David let the bit of paper blow overside and slipped into the chart room to calculate the position of the Hanoverian. The chart showed him that she was a hundred and fifty miles west and considerably to the southward of the Roanoke when the message was sent. When David returned to the deck an officer was already making reports of the temperature of the water, and Captain Thrasher was standing with head cocked and a hand at his ear, listening, on the chance that the clamor of the fog-whistle might fling back a telltale echo from some hidden mountain of ice that lay in ambush.