The moon was making frantic efforts to break through the clouds, and, though there was a brisk wind blowing, I believed we would have an easy night, and so I turned in, but I never made a worse mistake. About one o’clock I awoke with a realization of that fact. What we had been through before was child’s play. I threw on my coat and got into the dimly lighted saloon. The place looked as though a ten-inch shell had burst. Broken glass, trunks turned upside down, clothes thrown from their hooks, and confusion everywhere. Outside the wind and waves roared like a thousand freight trains. It took me two minutes to get the hatch open against the wind which seemed to be blowing everywhere at once. I could not see my hand before my face, but felt my way along the rail to the engine room skylight, then to the deck-house, pausing to cling tight for the lurches that followed every succeeding dip. It had come off cold, and ice was forming everywhere. I felt the thin coating on bar and brace as I climbed to the bridge deck, and, watching my opportunity, crawled toward the wheel-house, half blinded by the spray which swept the ship from end to end. The noise was too great for conversation, but the grim faces of the men at the wheel bespoke their views of the situation louder than words. They were two strong men, but flung this way and that they were, as they wrestled with the wheel, which spun and jerked under their hands like a live thing, as it answered the writhings of the rudder beaten by the seas that lashed astern. I tried to stand on the bridge, but snow and sleet-like darts of fiery steel bit my face and drove me back for shelter to the wheel-house. Every time we struck a sea the spray rose in solid sheets, beating against the thick glass windows until we had to raise the wooden storm sashes to keep them from breaking. The spume of the waves, whipped from their crest by the wind, blew across our decks in torrents, and high above the funnels. Every time she rose to take the sea in her teeth I drew my breath for the dip and surge of water that followed. Every time she plunged downward it seemed as though it must be her last. Again and again she buried her nose in the seething vortex, and then, trembling in every fiber, she would shake herself clear and rise to clinch the next sea that swept upon her. I stood there for hours watching the struggle. Puny man and the fragile creation of his hand against the forces of nature. Alone and in the blackness of night, we fought it out to the tune of the howling wind and the crash of water dashing itself to spray against our decks. Hour after hour passed and still she responded to the gallant little engines that never faltered. Half the time the screw would be beating air, the engines racing and shaking the boat as in an ague. The engineers clung desperately to the iron frame of the engine as they dropped in the oil on the working bearings. The firemen in the stoke hole braced themselves against the bulk-head as they heaved the coal.
WHEN THE FRANCE ENTERED ODESSA HARBOR AFTER THE STORM
SHE WAS PRETTY WELL SHAKEN UP
SULINA—THE MOUTH OF THE DANUBE RIVER
The struggle lay in steam and the endurance of the engines, and they knew it, and each man shut his teeth and did his part.
Two o’clock came, three o’clock, four o’clock, and still we struggled on. Suddenly the wind stopped, the sea began to subside and the moon came out. All was lovely, only cold, so cold that one’s marrow seemed to freeze. Three hours more and the sun rose red in the east, flanked by two sun-dogs that justified the cold we felt. It was a perfect winter’s day. Way off on the port bow a great bluff began to loom up, and little by little the towers of a great city were discernible.
An hour later, cased in ice, with icicles hanging from every part, the France crept into port. We were wreathed in ice from stem to stern. The thermometer marked ten degrees below zero. I did not speak Greek, but the grip old man Gileti gave my hand, spoke his relief louder than words as we rounded to behind the breakwater in the haven, for which we had struggled for sixty-five hours—[Odessa!]