Once he hesitated, and just then a grimy figure rushed past him headlong, and flung itself at the falls of the nearest boat, tearing at the canvas cover with teeth and nails, moaning as if hurt. At his heels came three others from below decks, knocking down all who blocked their escape. The captain tore their leader from the boat, and, like a red bear, seized him around the waist and tossed him overboard like a bundle of rags. Those near heard the choking yell of a drowning man.
The captain turned, and for the only time shouted at the top of his great voice:
"Men, the ship is in a sinking condition. The only coward on board vas gone. To your stations. We must all safe life."
A group of stokers huddled near the rail dropped the bundles of clothing they had brought on deck, and one of them, whose head was bound in rags, cried back:
"We're wid ye. You near kilt me to-day, you big Dutch —— ——, but by —— ----, you're a man. All right, sorr; we'll go after thim dummies in th' steerage."
It is consistent with few narratives of disaster at sea, but there was no more shouting among the crew of the Wasdale. They bent fiercely to their business, with whispers and muttered directions. It was not the nearness of death that stifled their outcries so much as the imminent neighborhood of a man with a stout heart and a cool head, who had hammered iron-fisted obedience into his crews through a stormy lifetime at sea.
The Wasdale had cleared with three hundred men, women, and children on board. There were boats to hold twice that number. It was only a question of time in which to stow these precious cargoes, a race with the sea which each moment sucked the Wasdale lower, as her decks sloped with a sickening list to starboard. A minute bungled meant many lives lost.
The captain seemed rather to drift than rush from one part of the decks to another. Going down the saloon stairway, he found a line of stewards passing passengers up as if they were so much baggage. The water was in the staterooms and washing along the alleys. Weeping women, clad only in their night-clothes, were shoved into cork jackets, bundled above, handed to the waiting seamen, and laid shivering in the boats without touching foot to deck. After ransacking the rooms to search out all the cabin people, the captain returned on deck to find confusion and some outcry where he had left an orderly flight to the boats. A white-faced passenger was on his knees, arms raised on high, his mouth contorted in trembling and husky appeal:
"We are doomed, and prayer alone can save. The ship is going down, the ship is going down, and we must be lost forever unless we gather in prayer. Come round me, and let us pray together. Oh, make a last appeal to your Maker to forgive us, before we go to meet Him with sin-stained souls. Man can do nothing, God can do all. Oh, save us, save our lives, we beseech Thee!"
A dozen half-naked passengers wavered, broke away from control, and fell around him, sobbing or trying to join in broken prayer. The voice of the suppliant rose to a shriek, and some of the crew balked, as if panic were stealing among them. Captain Arendt crashed through the pitiful circle and thundered: