It was perhaps a half hour later when another message came winging its way through space. Captain Thrasher read it aloud, with frowning earnestness:
Fire spreading aft. Must abandon ship before long. Lives in danger. Help! Help!
The figures of latitude and longitude were repeated at the end of the message, and the previous mistakes corrected. The chart showed that the burning vessel lay about forty miles to the south-east of the helpless Roanoke.
"Why doesn't he say who and what he is?" growled Captain Thrasher. "If he is a big passenger steamer he is in a bad fix and no mistake. Tell the operator to ask him more about it, quick. And tell him we are in no shape to go after him. My own people have to come first."
Captain Thrasher was more anxious than surprised. He had long since learned that nothing was too improbable to happen at sea, and he took it almost as a matter of course that collision and fire should occur fifty miles apart in the same twenty-four hours. It went sorely against his training to leave these other victims of disaster to shift for themselves, and he walked the bridge with restless tread until a third message was brought to him. It read:
Yacht "Restless." New York for Cherbourg. Owner on board. This may be last message. No hope of saving vessel. For God's sake pick us up.
"I have seen that steamer somewhere in port," said Captain Thrasher. "She must carry a crew of forty or fifty men. Well, I can't pick 'em up if the gilt-edged owner sends me a million dollars by wireless. Give them our position again and tell them we will keep a sharp lookout for their boats till nightfall and maybe longer."
As if in answer to the captain's words a final call came from the Restless:
Owner give you million dollars to come at once. Good-by. I'm off.