CHAPTER X DAN'S DREAMS COME TRUE
The first pull on the stranded steamer had been halted by the tragedy of Jeremiah Pringle's heroic death. As soon as possible Captain Jim Wetherly hastened back from Key West to the Reef and Dan rejoined his shipmates in the Resolute. They were very loth to leave the widow and the son of the wrecking-master who, with all his faults, had died as he had lived, unflinching in the face of the perils of the sea. But Duty sounded a trumpet-call to save the Kenilworth, and with flags at half-mast the tireless tugs again hovered about her under the vigilant direction of Captain Wetherly.
Meanwhile the wreckers had been toiling in night and day shifts, taking out more cargo. When at length the tugs were summoned for another titanic tussle, every man felt that the supreme moment was at hand. It was now or never. Captain Wetherly voiced the feelings of all with passionate energy:
"She has got to go. That's all there is to it."
The tugs had been pulling a scant hour when Captain Jim felt the keel of the Kenilworth grind on the coral bottom. It was no more than a slight shock which made the ship tremble as if she felt a thrill of returning life and freedom. Then she hung fast for a long time, moved again, and perceptibly righted herself. Another interval of futile effort, and at last the steamer slid forward with a dull, harsh roar as her broken keel ripped through the coral and ploughed slowly down the sloping shelf into the deep water on the landward side of the Reef.
The frantic tugs behaved as if they could not believe the Kenilworth was actually afloat. They refused to stop pulling with might and main until their prize was trailing after them down the fairway of the Hawk Channel. Their whistles bellowed jubilation while Captain Jim signalled the Resolute:
"Keep her going for Key West."
The panting tugs led the sluggish, battered steamer out through the nearest gap in the Reef, and she rolled solemnly in the swells of the open sea where she belonged. Captain Bruce was pacing the bridge of his ship, nervous, absorbed in his own thoughts, and oblivious of the general rejoicing. Above the stern of the Kenilworth the British ensign still flew at half-mast and served to recall a tragedy which Captain Bruce wanted to forget. His partnership with Jerry Pringle had been ill-fated from the start. In a flash of splendid manliness Pringle had given his life to save the man who had smashed the evil partnership. And was he, Malcolm Bruce, ship-master, willing to let this Jim Wetherly stand accused of the crime planned in Pensacola harbor? No, he had not come to such depths of degradation as this. He had fought it out with himself and he was ready to take the consequences. Dan Frazier came on board the Kenilworth for orders when the tugs slackened way to shift their hawsers, and Captain Bruce beckoned him to a corner of the bridge where Captain Wetherly was standing. The haggard ship-master placed his hand on the lad's shoulder as he began to speak:
"I want Dan to hear what I have to say, Captain Wetherly. He came aboard my ship when she went on the Reef and refused to believe the worst of me, though he knew it all the time. I abandoned the ship and left him on board instead of sticking by her as I honestly intended to do. But I see now that my will had been undermined. There was a rotten spot in my heart."
"You didn't mean to abandon me, sir," spoke up Dan. "I never held that against you."