The night was still fine, and the wind almost nothing at all. The banks of vapor rising in the east told of a change; but the change was not yet. James noticed the weather mechanically, as a good seaman does, from a small boat when at sea at night; but he was thinking of the huge shadow which now drew close aboard.
As the boat came under the port side, he could see the passengers crowding the rail in the waist, where the lifeboats were being filled and sent away as fast as men could work them. Seven boats were alongside full of human beings. Two more were being lowered. Three came from under the stern as he drew alongside.
There was a mass of people still to be taken off. He saw at a glance that the liner had twenty large lifeboats for her complement. One was smashed. There was every reason to believe she would send out nineteen with at least a thousand people in them. There would be several hundred more to take besides these. The life rafts might do it, but he knew the danger of life rafts in the furious struggle in a sinking ship.
The thing would be to save the passengers with his own boats. This he might do if the ship floated long enough. She was sinking fast, as he could see by her rising bows. She was probably even now hanging solely by her midship bulkhead, and that would most likely be badly smashed by the collision, for he had struck the ship far enough forward to do it damage, although his vessel had only cut into her well aft. The blow had been slanting. A little more time, perhaps a few seconds, and the ships would have swung clear.
He came alongside and hailed the deck.
"Send them down lively—come along now, quick!" he called up in his natural voice. It was the first time since the collision he had spoken. It sounded strange to hear his own tones coming natural again.
In a few moments he was crowding and seating the women and children in his boat. Then came the men from everywhere. They crowded down the falls, jumped into the sea, and swam alongside, begging to be hauled aboard, or climbed over the high gunwales themselves. One powerful young man, stripped to the waist, dived clean from the hurricane deck, and almost instantly rose alongside. Then he swung himself into the boat, and stood amidships hauling others in until the craft settled down to her bearings and the men at the oars could hardly row.
"Shove off—give way," ordered James.
The boat started back slowly, the men rowing gingerly, poking and striking the passengers in the backs with the oars until the crowd settled itself. Then she went along slowly toward the ship, and the women in her prayed, the men swore, and the children wept and sobbed. And all the time the fact that he was the cause of it all impressed James queerly. He could not understand it, could not quite see why he had done it, and yet he knew he had. One man spoke to the athlete who had dived.
"They should burn a man who would sink a ship like this on a clear night; they should burn him to a stake—the drunken, cowardly scoundrel——"