“It will only alarm them,” said Tom.
“But they’ve got to have a chance if we go under,” replied Helen and with Margaret to help her, she hurled scores of life preservers out of the pilot house onto the deck.
The passengers had lost their first panic. They knew the Queen was making a valiant fight to reach shore but the tenseness, the grimness of the crew told them it was going to be close. In the emergency they used their heads and put on the life preservers as fast as Helen and Margaret could pull them from the lockers.
The lights of Rolfe were agonizingly close. Less than six hundred feet separated them from the safety of the sandy shore. On the upper deck the passengers were quiet, ready for the crisis.
Tom leaned close to the speaking tube. The chief engineer was talking.
“What’s he saying?” Helen demanded.
“Water’s in the engine room,” replied her brother. “The fires under the boiler will be out in another minute or two. Then blewy!”
“Isn’t there enough steam to make shore?” asked Margaret desperately, for after her experience on the lake earlier in the summer she had a very real fear of Dubar at night.
“All we can do is hope,” replied Tom. “They’ll keep the engines turning over as long as there is any steam left.”
The warning from the whistle was bringing people from town and they were gathering under the electrics along the beach. Helen wondered if they knew that death was riding on the bow of the Queen, that tragedy was waiting to swoop down on the old boat and its load of excursionists.