When at length he lay still and panted aloud the prayers his mother had taught him, there came the echo of hoarse shouts above the clamor of the ship and the sea. Through a crevice between the boxes of freight that penned him fast he glimpsed the gleam of moving lanterns. The captain and crew were deserting the hold of the ship. Dan tried to call to them but his cries were unheard.
The shouts ceased, the gleams of light vanished one by one, and Dan was left alone in the flooded and shattered hold of the Kenilworth. Far above him Captain Bruce and his crew were making ready their life-boats, preferring to trust themselves to the storm-swept sea than to the steamer which they believed doomed to be torn to fragments within the next few hours.
"They must have given up the fight", moaned Dan between his sobs. "I guess it means all hands abandon ship at daylight. And they will think I've been washed overboard in the dark."
CHAPTER VI DAN FRAZIER'S PREDICAMENT
Imprisoned as he was in the hold of the Kenilworth, and feeling sure that the steamer was to be abandoned by her crew as a hopeless wreck, Dan Frazier became almost stupefied with terror and exhaustion. As long as there was any strength in his athletic young body he had pushed and tugged at the mass of freight which penned him in, shouting in his frenzy until his voice failed him and died away in hoarse, broken weeping.
At length his benumbed senses lost themselves in heavy slumber. He dreamed of being at home with his mother in the palm-shaded cottage and she was holding him in her lap and stroking his forehead with her cool hands. But nightmares came to drive away this sweet dream, and he awoke with a choking cry for help.
Dan thought he must have been asleep for hours and hours. More torturing than the realization of his dreadful plight was his burning thirst. But his brain was clearer and he listened to the medley of noises around him with a glimmer of hope. The water had not reached the deck on which he had been trapped, although he could hear it washing to and fro in the bottom of the hold below. The hull of the ship had ceased to pound on the Reef. The breakers beat against her steel sides and fell solid on her upper decks with a sound like distant thunder, but Dan began to feel confident that the gale was blowing itself out and the steamer was going to live through it.
He thanked God that he had not been drowned, at any rate, even though he seemed likely to perish where he was for lack of food and drink. Youth grasps at slender hopes and finds strength in dubious consolations. Dan had expected to be overwhelmed by the sea without a ghost of a chance to fight for his life. Now that this peril seemed to be passing, his wits began to return, and he fished his strong bladed sailor's clasp-knife from his trousers pocket. To hack away at his prison walls was better than doing nothing. He twisted painfully about until he had located the widest crevices between the sides of the packing-cases and began to chip away at the stout planking. It was a task tedious and wearisome beyond words. There was no light, his nerves were unstrung, and he worked with unsteady, groping hand. Rats scampered over him, or squealed in the darkness close by, and he slashed at them savagely. They startled him so that more than once he gave up the task and wept like a little child.