As Jack tried to point to Nina, who was clasping the little flag-pole at the bow of the steamer—a white figure in the surrounding gloom, waving and apparently calling to him—he saw the steamer take a slow, sickening lurch forward, and then a long lurch aft. The bows rose high in the air, with that poor desolate figure clasping the flag-pole, and then the Eleusinian slowly disappeared.
For an instant the bows remained above the surface while the air escaped from the interior, and the last that could be seen was the white figure clinging desperately to the little mast as if forsaken by all. No power had answered her agonies of prayer for deliverance.
After the strong man who had pinioned Jack saw the vessel go down, he became aware that he was holding his culprit up rather than down. He looked around at his face, and there saw a pair of staring eyes that discerned nothing. He laid him on the deck then, and finally placed him in the after-cabin on the floor. Jack did not regain consciousness. His breathing returned only to allow a delirium to supervene. Dearborn and a sailor had again to hold him, or he would have plunged over the bulwarks, thinking the steamer had not yet sunk.
The captain's wife, who had been sleeping in the extra berth off the after-cabin, had been crushed between the timbers when the collision took place, and under the frantic orders of the captain the rest of the crew were trying to extricate the screaming woman. The mate had been disabled in the falling of the mainmast, so that no attempts were made to save those who were left swimming when the Eleusinian went down, and the schooner, under her forward canvas, sailed off, dragging her wreckage after her, slowly, of course, but faster than any one could swim. Thus no one was saved from the steamer except the detective, who had not thought of saving his own life when he had dropped to the deck of the schooner, but only of seizing Jack.
The mate was able, after a time, to give his directions while lying on the deck. The wreckage was chopped away, and the vessel was brought nearer the wind to raise the injured port quarter well above the waves until canvas could be nailed over the gaping aperture. When this was done they squared away before the wind, hoisted the center-board, and made good time up the lake. They had a fair wind to Port Dalhousie—the only place available for dockyards and refitting—where they arrived at two o'clock in the day.
After raving in delirium until they arrived at Port Dalhousie, Jack fell off then into a sleep, and when the Empress of India was ready to leave at four o'clock for Toronto, Dearborn woke him up and found that his consciousness seemed to have partly returned. The detective was pleased that the disabled vessel had sought a Canadian port, where his warrant for Jack's arrest was good. However, the prisoner made no resistance, and at nine o'clock he was duly locked up at Toronto, having remained in a sort of stupor from which nothing could arouse him.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The time is out of joint;—O cursed spite.
That I was ever born to set it right.