The Wrecking Master

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

At length Dan cut through the planking of a box which was wedged fast between two larger ones and his knife clinked against tin. He managed to break off a splintered end of board and pulled out a round can of some kind of provisions. This was unexpected good fortune, and he carefully cut into the lid with a muttered prayer of thanksgiving, hoping to find enough liquid to wet his parched tongue. The can proved to be full of French peas, packed in enough water to supply a long drink of cool, refreshing soup. Dan scooped up the tiny peas with his fingers, emptied the tin, and eagerly drove his knife into another of them. The nourishment made him feel like a giant. He returned to his task with genuine hope of being able to whittle a way out of his trap.

But as the weary hours dragged by, and the strokes of the knife became more and more feeble, the prisoner gave himself up to despair. His strength had ebbed so fast that he slumped down and slept with his face in his arms.

A great noise awoke him. The cargo was shifting and tumbling with fearful uproar. From below came the rumble of coal sliding across the bunkers. The deck rolled violently and pitched Dan to the other end of his pen. He expected to be crushed by the cargo, and thought the ship must be turning over. But the commotion gradually ceased and, to his great astonishment, he was alive and unhurt. The deck seemed to have much less slant than before. He raised his arms and they touched nothing over his head. Unable to realize the truth, he scrambled to his feet and stood upright. The great package of freight which had roofed him over had slid clear, carrying along the boxes piled above it. Frantic with new hope of release, Dan clambered upward, tearing his clothes to tatters, plunging headlong from one obstacle to another, bruising his face, hands, and knees against sharp edges and corners. Scrambling over the disordered cargo until he had to halt to get his breath, Dan gasped to himself:

"I can't get on deck through a freight compartment. The hatches will be fastened down above. I must find out how I blundered in here as far as the broken bulkhead."

A moment later he fetched up against solid tiers of cargo which had not been dislodged and knew he must be headed wrong. This gave him a clue, however, and with fast-failing strength he stumbled back over the way he had come. At last he saw a streak of daylight filter down from a skylight far above. Yes, there was a road to the upper deck. Dan glimpsed the shadowy outline of a ladder. It was all he could do to muster courage to attempt the long and dizzy climb. But he set his teeth and clung like a barnacle to one round after another until he fell against the iron door of a deck-house, fumbled with the fastening, and tottered out into daylight.

Half-blinded and blinking like an owl, Dan Frazier covered his face with his hands until his eyes could bear the dazzling reflection of sea and sky which were flooded with glorious sunshine. The wind sang through the shrouds and funnel-stays and the blue ocean upheaved in swollen billows, but the gale had passed. Dan's bewildered gaze fell upon the empty chocks, the dangling falls and the davits swung outboard, where the steamer's life-boats had been. These signs were enough to tell him that the ship had been abandoned. He was left alone in her, and he went forward with a feeling of uncanny isolation. Water to drink was what he wanted more than anything else, and before making a survey of the ship he sought the tank in the chart-room and fairly guzzled his fill. Then he made a ferocious onslaught on the cabin pantry and carried on deck a kettle full of cold boiled potatoes, beef and hard bread, and climbed to the battered bridge.

Looking down at the steamer from this lofty perch, Dan understood what had caused the violent roll and lunge that set him free from his prison below decks. The storm had driven her, head-on, far up the outer slope of the Reef, where she had lain as if about to break in pieces, with the seas washing clean over her. But while her forward compartments had filled with water, her stern was still buoyant. When the gale had subsided the ship was hanging over the deep water on the inner side of the Reef, and the next high tide had lifted her stern so that she slid bow-first, for half her length, down the opposite side of the shelf which had held her keel fast. It looked like a miracle to Dan, but here was the ship still solid under his feet. Gazing down from one end of the bridge, he could see the inner edge of the Reef shimmering far down through the clear water and the hull of the Kenilworth, hanging only by the after part.

"Where, oh where, is Uncle Jim?" he thought. "He might patch up her bulkheads, lift the water out with his wrecking pumps, and pull her off yet. And I'll bet he'd keep her afloat somehow."

Then a stupendous thought flashed into Dan's mind. It was such a dazzling, gorgeous idea that it made him dizzy with delight. Yes, it was all true. The Kenilworth had been abandoned by her captain and crew as a wreck. She was like a derelict at sea. Whoever should find and board her would have the right to claim heavy salvage on the vessel and her cargo if they were saved and brought into port. It was the unwritten law of the Reef that the first man to set foot on an abandoned wreck was the wrecking master, to be obeyed as such, with first claim on salvage.

Dan tried to arrange his thoughts in some kind of order, and at length he said to himself with an air of decision: