The Wrecking Master

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

"The wrecking master on this job is Daniel P. Frazier. I earned it all right, and Key West will back me up whether Jerry Pringle likes it or not. And I'm going to hold her down till Uncle Jim comes back. There can't be any more question about who has the wrecking of her. General cargo, too!—I'll bet it's worth several hundred thousand dollars!—and a four thousand ton steel steamer. If we can save her, the owners will have to give up fifty or a hundred thousand dollars in clean salvage money."

The weight of his responsibility soon tamed Dan's high spirits. He could make no resistance if a crew of hostile wreckers should happen along to dispute his title in the absence of Captain Jim Wetherly. The morning sun was no more than three hours high. He must watch and wait through a long, long day, any hour of which might bring in sight the sails of a fleet of wrecking schooners. Dan reckoned that he had been penned below for about thirty hours and that this was the morning of the second day after the wreck. Captain Jim must have a tug on the way by this time. But, on the other hand, if Captain Bruce and his men had been picked up and carried to Key West, their tidings would send Jerry Pringle and his horde of wreckers flying seaward by steam and sail.

Every boy who plays foot-ball has dreamed of breaking through the line, blocking a kick, scooping up the ball, and running down the field like a whirlwind to score the winning touchdown with the other eleven vainly pounding along in his wake. So most of us have dreamed of playing the hero by stopping a runaway horse, saving the life of the prettiest girl that ever was, and being splendidly rewarded by her millionaire father. Dan Frazier's pet dream had a salt-water background. It was of being the first to find an abandoned ship with a rich cargo, triumphantly bringing her into port, and winning a fortune in salvage. At last he had found his ship, but the lone hero had an elephant on his hands.

Dan was too weary in body and mind to roam about the steamer. He rigged a bit of awning on the bridge, dragged a mattress up from below, and lay gazing through the rents in the canvas weather screen until noon. A mail steamer northward-bound passed close to the Reef, slowed down to make sure the crew had left the wreck, and ploughed on her way. Dan grew tired of looking to the southward for schooners beating up from Key West and concluded that the head wind and heavy sea were holding them in harbor. There was no black smudge of smoke to the northward to show that Captain Jim was coming out from Miami in a tow-boat. Over to seaward, however, in the east-north-east, three sails glinted like flecks of cloud. They were close together, and Dan gazed at them idly, thinking they might be coastwise merchant vessels hauling southward before the piping wind. But as they lifted higher, he noticed that they were shaping a straight course for the Reef instead of swinging off to follow the track through the Florida Straits. They were schooners coming with great speed and showing a reckless spread of canvas.

Soon the low hulls gleamed beneath the towering piles of sail and Dan jumped to his feet as he scanned the beautiful sea picture they made.

"Bahama schooners; I know their cut!" he exclaimed. "They've smelled a wreck on the Reef as sure as guns. The news must have reached Nassau by cable yesterday. And those pirates have got a clear field for once. What can I do? They won't listen to my story, not for a minute. They'll swarm aboard like rats and be ripping the cargo out of this vessel in a jiffy."

The youthful wrecking master was at his wits' end and his head began to throb as if it would split, for he had little endurance left. He remained in hiding on the bridge and tried to think out a plan of action as the Bahama schooners swooped across the frothing sea, laying their courses in a bee line for the Kenilworth. Dan's only hope was that he might be able to stay aboard until Captain Jim should return to enforce the law of the Reef with his crew of hard-fisted tow-boat men to back him up. He thought of telling the wreckers that he was a stowaway, left behind when the steamer's men deserted her, but, although Dan Frazier was far from perfect, he hated the notion of lying his way out of this tight corner. He was truthful by habit, for one thing, and there was another reason which he muttered to himself:

"There's been lying enough on this job. The poor old ship has been rotten with lies ever since her skipper first ran afoul of Jerry Pringle. Even her grounding on the Reef was a lie. And I don't believe Uncle Jim would lie to save the ship, or his own skin either. No, this poor old vessel has been good to me so far. I got out of her hold by good luck and I'll trust to luck to pull me out of this scrape."

Dan picked up a pair of glasses and looked at the nearest schooner which had boldly crossed the Reef and was rounding to in the smoother water of the Hawk Channel while a group of black-skinned, ragged wreckers were shoving a boat over the side. Dan felt a new thrill of surprise and alarm as he scrutinized a burly figure poised at the schooner's rail. It was "Black Sam" Hurley, a Bahama wrecker of such evil repute that he had been pointed out to Dan in Nassau harbor as one of the notorious characters of the islands.