Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel

by Stinson Jarvis

"Then it is only a question of time," said Jack. "The buckets and pumps won't keep her afloat long. She is working the caulking out of her seams, and that will get worse every moment."

There were no loiterers on board after that. They all "turned to" and worked like machines. Even the steward and cook were on deck to take their trick at the pumps. Five men in soaking trousers and shirts worked five buckets in the cabin, heaving the water out of the companion-way. Of these five, some dropped out from time to time exhausted, but the others relieved them, and so kept the five buckets going as fast as they could be worked. Some fell deadly sick with the heat, hard work, and terrible pitching and driving motion of the boat, but nobody said a word. If a man fell sick, he had something else to think of than his comfort, and he staggered around as well as he could. From the companion-way to the well, and from the well to the companion-way, for two hours more they kept up the incessant toil. At first some had attempted to be pleasant by saying it was easy to get water enough for the whisky, and by making other light remarks. But now it was changed. They said nothing on the exhausting and dreary round, but worked with their teeth clinched—while the sweat poured off them as if they, too, had started every seam and were leaking out their very lives.

Still the pitiless great mass of a steamer in front of the yacht plunged and yawed and dragged them without mercy through the black waters, where a huge surge could now be occasionally discerned sweeping its foaming crest past the little yacht, which was gradually succumbing to the wild forces about it.

Margaret was back again in the cabin now. She had wedged herself in, with her back against the bunks, and one foot up against the table as a prop to keep her in position. In one hand she held a bottle of brandy and in the other a glass. And when a man fell out sick and exhausted she attended to him. There was no water asked for. They took the brandy "neat." She had succeeded in quieting the other women, and as they could not hear the bailing in the after-cabin they were in happy ignorance of the worst. Whatever fears she had had when the knowledge of danger first came to her, she showed no sign of them now—but only a compassion for the exhausted workers that heartened them up and did them good.

A third hour had nearly expired since they began to use the buckets, and Margaret for a long time had been watching the water, in which the bailers worked, gradually creeping up over their feet as they spent themselves on a dreary round, to which the toil of Sisyphus was satisfactory. The water was rising steadily in spite of their best efforts to keep the boat afloat. Margaret had quietly made up her mind that they would never see the land again. There did not seem to be any chance left, and she was going, as men say, to "die game." Her courage and cheering words inspired the others to endless exertions. She was like a big sister to them all. At times she was hilarious and almost boisterous, and when she waved the bottle in the air and declared that there was no Scott Act on board, her conduct can not be defended. Maurice Rankin tried to say he wished they could get a Scott Act on the water, but the remark seemed to lack intrinsic energy, and he failed from exhaustion to utter it.

Another half-hour passed, and while the men trudged through the ever-deepening water Margaret experienced new thoughts whenever she gazed at Geoffrey, who had worked almost incessantly. She looked at the knotted cords on his arms and on his forehead, at the long tenacious jaw set as she had seen it in the hurdle race, and she knew from the swelling nostril and glittering eye that the idea of defeat in this battle with the waters was one which he spurned from him. His clothes were dripping with water. The neck-button of his shirt had carried away, his trousers were rolled up at the bottom, and his face perspired freely with the extraordinary strain, and yet in spite of his appearance she felt as if she had never cared for him so much as when she now saw him. On through the night she sat there doing her woman's part beside those who fought with the water for their lives. She saw the treacherous enemy gaining on them in spite of all their efforts, and in her heart felt fully convinced that she could not have more than two hours to live. The hot steam from men working frantically filled the cabin, the weaker ones grew ill before her, and she looked after them without blenching. Hers was no place for a toy woman. She was there to help all those about to die; and to do this rightly, to force back her own nausea, and face anxiety and death with a smile.

As for Geoffrey, life seemed sweet to him that night. For him, it was Margaret or—nothing. To him, this facing of death did just one thing. It raised the tiger in him. He had what Shakespeare and prize-fighters call "gall," that indomitable courage which women worship hereditarily, although better kinds of courage may exist.

Another long half-hour passed, and then Maurice fell over his bucket, keel-up. He had fainted from exhaustion, and was dosed by Margaret in the usual way, and after this he was set on his pins and sent on deck for the lighter work at the pumps. After that, the paid hands, having in some way purloined too much whisky, mutinied, and said they would be blanketty-blanketted if they would sling another bucket.

The others went on as steadily as before, while the crew went forward to wait sulkily for the end.

Jack and Charley then consulted as to what was best to be done. To hold on in this way meant going to the bottom, without a shadow of doubt. They had tried to signal to the steamer, to get her to slow up and take all hands on board. But the watchers at the stern of the steamer had been taken off to work at the steamer's pumps; for, as was afterward found, she also was leaking badly and in a dangerous condition.