Captain Cary approved. The engines were idle while the Valkyrie rolled with an easy motion, and Charlie’s assistants hammered and forged and drilled. Night came down with clouds and rain, and strong gusts of wind. There was nothing to indicate seriously heavy weather. It was murky, however, with a rising sea. Soon after dark Captain Cary went to the bridge to relieve Mr. Duff.
“With no steerage way she slops about like a barge,” said the latter. “It may turn a bit nasty before morning. The barometer doesn’t say so, but my feet ache more than usual.”
“It will be a thick night, and some sea running, most likely,” remarked Cary. “I don’t look for a gale of wind.”
“In a steamer not under control it feels worse than it is, sir. How is Charlie coming along with his shaft collar?”
“He’ll have us shoving ahead by morning, Mr. Duff. And a couple of days more will see us in Panama Bay.”
Walking the bridge alone, Captain Cary had never seen a blacker night than this, with the rain beating into his face and the spray driving like mist. Her engines stilled, the ship felt helpless and dead, while the seas swung her this way and that. It was a tedious watch to stand while the captain fought off drowsiness as the hours wore on.
It was almost time to go below when he saw a steamer’s lights so close at hand that it startled him. Invisible at a distance, they suddenly appeared, glimmering red and green, out of this shrouded night. They indicated that this other steamer was on a course to strike the disabled Valkyrie which could do nothing to avert collision.
Cary held his breath, expecting to see the vessel turn in time to pass ahead of him. Instead of this, she threw her helm over too late. Blundering hesitation and a poor lookout made a smash inevitable. Richard Cary gripped a bridge stanchion and awaited the shock. There was nothing else to do. He heard a confused shouting in Italian. Then the vague shadow of a prow loomed a little way forward of the Valkyrie’s bridge, moving slowly as the other steamer trembled to the thrust of a propeller thrashing hard astern.
They came together with an infernal din of fractured plates and twisting frames. With a fatal momentum, the stranger clove her way deep into the Valkyrie’s side. It cracked her like an egg. Here was one peril of the deep which she was entirely too decrepit to withstand. It could not fairly be expected of her. She heeled over with a lugubrious lamentation of rivets snapping, of beams buckling and groaning. It shook the bridge like an earthquake. Captain Cary clung to his stanchion for dear life and stared with a horrified fascination. He was wondering whether this misbegotten Italian freighter proposed to cut clean through the Valkyrie, like a knife through a cheese, and proceed on her way. The crumpled bow could drive ahead no farther, however, and the two ships hung locked together.
“Hold where you are!” roared Captain Cary. “Keep the hole plugged! Don’t back out! Let me get my people off before this vessel sinks.”