"Yes, it was Cone who left his wife—so they said—left her, deserted her and the children. It was Cone who acted in every disgraceful way the old women tell about, Cone who raised hell and paid the devil wherever he went, Cone who only got command of the Champion after pulling shares and playing the game for all it was worth—no, don't tell me—don't, I say—I don't want to hear about what he did. I'll tell you how he lost the ship, and you say you'll believe anything poor Redding said—so would I. If there was truth in any man it was in Dan Redding—poor devil."
"Yes," I assented, "Redding was all right."
Simpson scorned to notice me. He talked at Johnson, or rather talked at me through Johnson, over him, and—Simpson could talk, talk like an Admiralty lawyer with two noggins of rum under his ribs. Jackson came in and took Cone's vacated chair. He rubbed his hands. Cone had been a good buyer, had needed plenty of stuff—and he got it at the highest rates. Jackson approved of Redding also, approved of him for the sake of memory—Redding had always paid a full bill—never asked rake-off, pourboire, "graft," or other money from him.
"You heard all that stuff about Cone, too," said Simpson, sneeringly at Jackson; "and I dare say you believe it like a good old woman you are, but I'll tell you just how he lost the ship—if you believe Redding.
"They cleared at daylight, bound for St. John's—had twenty passengers first class and about seventy second—no steerage those days. Redding said the weather was hell and something worse from the time they dropped the land, and you men know how it is on the coast in the winter time. The old Champion came across and poked her nose into the fog bank off Sable Island—bad place? Well, I reckon it is. Bad because you can't tell where the devil you are and can't keep any kind of reckoning in that current. That Sable Island bank is nearly as bad as Hatteras for us windjammers.
"Cone slowed his ship that last morning—according to Redding—slowed her down to a few knots, made the passengers keep off the decks in order to have peace and quiet aboard. One old lady didn't like it at all. She insisted she had a right to go where she pleased aboard—told the skipper so to his face and dared him to put her below. Some of the other women folks followed her example—did Cone do it? Well, he just called his quartermaster and told him to remove the objectionable old women, told him to carry them below if necessary—and that square-head did. Yes, sir, he just picked up the leader and carried her off in his arms while she screamed and clawed him, calling to the men to save her from the brutal assault.
"Oh, yes, he got a nice name for that. The passengers told how he acted, told how he brutally made his men remove innocent and unoffending females—oh, what's the use? He was a brute and they made it out plain—it was all published in the papers.
"It was along about five o'clock and the sun must have been well along to the nor'west horizon, tho' of course he couldn't see it in the fog—that a horn blared out faintly right ahead. The man on lookout heard it—for it was now quiet on deck—and the siren roared out its reply. Then he got a faint blow right off his starboard bow, a blow as if from a small fishing schooner. He kept along blowing regular blasts, kept along very slow.
"Right out of the setting sun a bit of wind seemed to make. It lifted the bank enough to show him a four-masted ship standing right into him not two hundred feet from his bow. She was heeling with the growing breeze and going about six knots or better with just a white bone across her forefoot. Cone rang off his engines.
"It is in these moments, you know, that things happen. Had Cone rang ahead full speed like Chambers did in the old Lawrence, rang and shoved into her full swing, he would have either gone clear or cut out enough to give her his stern on the turn and probably not sink either ship. He kept to the rules by British force of habit of abiding by them—and, well, the Potomack, under three skysails and shoving along with four thousand tons of cargo in her, hit him fair upon the side while he was swinging to port. The ship's jibboom reached over and drove a hole through the deckhouse first, poked right through and ripped off his blowoff pipe, letting the steam come roaring out of her, and then the heavy forefoot sunk like a wedge fair in her, right in the wake of her engines. It was the worst possible place to get it—you know that—right in the wake of the engines and close enough to the engine-room bulkhead to smash it so it was useless. Then it cut, shore down under the water line, and there he was with a hole in him big enough to drive in a trolley car, a hole and nothing but the forward bulkheads to hold him up—no, he was badly hit, hit right in the vitals, and the roar of the steam told him plainly that the ship was going to be put to it to float.