“Like a dizzy old miracle. Better than she knows how. It’s lucky I held all the firemen below. They are working short shifts, but it’s banging ’em around something awful.”
Twenty minutes later, Captain Cary hauled himself out of the bilge. The pumps were sturdily pulling water, and the flood in the engine-room had been checked. He went into the stokehold. Half-naked men were staggering and tumbling to and fro in a fog of steam from the hot ashes and salt water. Red coals spilled out when a furnace door was opened. Frequently the wretched toilers lost their footing and were flung headlong. Arms were seared with burns, bodies contused.
When the captain of the ship suddenly loomed among them, they cowered from him, dropping slice-bars, letting coal fall from their shovels. Their nerves were already rasped to breaking. They were disheartened men dumbly struggling for survival against the obliterating ocean. Instead of striking and cursing them, this mighty captain was smiling like a friend. He snatched a shovel from a half-dead fireman with a bleeding shoulder and pushed him out of the way. The shovel ate into a pile of coal on the floor and swiftly fed it into a furnace door.
The captain poised himself against the wild rolling of the ship and shot the coal into that furnace like three or four men. He was all grease and grime like themselves. He was El Diablo of a stoker, setting them an example to wonder at. The word passed that he had been in the bilges, making the pumps suck to save the fires. This was a new kind of captain. It restored their hope and made them oblivious of hurts and fatigue.
For some time the captain plied the shovel or raked the fires with a long slice-bar. They had heard of his prowess with an iron bar. It was the truth. He handled this heavy bar like a straw. They watched him with the eager excitement of children. The ship was safe with such a captain. He could do anything. It was certain that he would preserve their lives.
When, at length, the captain desisted from stoking like a giant, he shouted a few words of Spanish at them. They were all muchos buenos hombres, and viva el vapor! It was a little storm, nothing to worry brave sailors of Colombia. They grinned and clapped their hands together. He was not a yellow tiger, but El Capitan Grande.
When, at length, he climbed to the bridge, the sea seemed less violent and the sky not so somber. Mr. Duff was planted beside the engine-room indicator, jockeying the ship as best he could to ward off the blows of the toppling combers. His red face was streaked with salt. A sou’wester was jammed on his gray pow. The wind whipped his oilskin coat out behind him. At a glance he was competent, a man restored to his element.
“All right, Mr. Duff,” said Cary. “We have seen the worst of it. Go below and ease your feet. You may as well snooze till I call you. There was nothing I could do up here. I left the ship in good hands.”
“Thank you for that,” beamed the chief officer. “It shook the ship up some, but, by Judas, it’s worth the damage. It shook this flighty crew together. I don’t anticipate much more trouble with them.”
“Neither do I, Mr. Duff. This gale has blown some of the nonsense out of their heads. I think we can make it a contented ship.”