He rose, emptied his pipe, and appeared anxious to drop the subject, but the curiosity of the steward led him to ask how those two had managed to escape. The bo’s’un seconded the request, so Morgan again seated himself, and after a short silence related the affair in these words:
The St. Lawrence was a neat little ship—you may have seen her,—and Captain Fairley was one of the finest men I ever met,—quiet, and a man of few words, but when he said a thing he meant it. I didn’t like his wife so well, but his daughter, Miss Marion,—oh, she was a lovely girl. She’d never lived on shore much, and had that shy, retiring disposition that you often see in such cases, where the captain’s children always go with him and have nobody of their own age to associate with. She never hankered after shore life though, and seemed perfectly happy to be always at sea.
Miss Marion had quite a liking for me, and many and many an evening would she pace the deck in my watch, telling me the names of the different stars and how far off some of them were, and all such things. That was her favorite study—astronomy. Then she read a great deal and used to tell me about her books. All the tidies for the cabin chairs were made by her hands. You remember that silk handkerchief I showed you,—that one with the M embroidered on it? She worked that letter and gave me the handkerchief on my birthday. It was the first birthday present I ever got, and I guess it’ll be the last. Poor girl! she wasn’t quite seventeen when the accident happened.
We came across from Hong Kong to San Francisco and found that the ship had been chartered to load coal on Puget Sound. We arrived at Nanaimo near the end of March. In those days there were no stevedores at most of the coal ports on the Sound, and it was the captain’s or mate’s business to superintend the work of the crew in loading the vessel. Captain Fairley had to go to Tacoma on some business matter, and as ill-luck would have it, I was taken sick the day after we got to Nanaimo, and the doctor made me turn in. I wasn’t able to get out of that bunk for ten days, with the result that the second mate had charge of loading the ship.
I won’t say anything here against Ike Summers,—all of us have our failings,—but what I do say is this: his being drunk while she was loading caused one of the worst accidents on record, and the loss of one of the finest ships I ever saw. Half of the crew were drunk of course, and twenty-six hundred tons of coal were pitched in at random. I’ll swear she wasn’t half trimmed, though I was just able to get about the morning we sailed. Captain Fairley, his wife and Miss Marion got back from Tacoma the afternoon before, and I told him that night it was my opinion that the second mate had been drinking a good deal. He looked serious, but Ike swore everything was all right,—he’d got pretty well sobered up that afternoon,—and as the clearance papers had been taken out, the captain concluded to sail next day. He wanted to get to San Francisco as quickly as possible, for we’d been chartered to load from there to New York. If it hadn’t been for that, I’ve always thought the captain would have looked into the way the cargo had been stowed. He must have suspected something was wrong, for he wanted Mrs. Fairley and Miss Marion to go back by rail, but they wouldn’t hear of it.
So we were towed to sea one fine April morning, having for company a crazy old bark named the Lizzie Williams. The St. Lawrence was rated A-1 at Lloyd’s, and that bark probably had no rating at all, but the old hulk was a good deal more fit to go to sea that morning than we were, as it soon turned out. Her cargo was stowed right, even if she did have to be pumped out three times a day.
Ike Summers had the afternoon watch, and when I turned in after dinner the tug had just cast us off, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. I heard Captain Fairley tell his wife that we must be going to have a blow on account of the falling glass, but he thought it wouldn’t amount to much. Miss Marion was doing some fancy work, I remember, and Ike had just ordered some of his men to spread an old cro’-jack out on deck to be mended. It was a warm, pleasant day, and the sun shone on the sails of the Lizzie Williams as she slumped along like an old canal boat a few miles to leeward. She was the last thing I saw before I went to my room and turned in. I soon dropped off, being dead tired and not very strong yet after my sickness.
How long my sleep lasted don’t matter,—it seemed about ten minutes, but must have been several hours,—when I was roused by the steward shaking me and yelling “Come on deck, Mr. Morgan, for God’s sake!” That brought me to my senses in an instant, and only stopping to throw on my shoes, I ran out.
What a change! A heavy squall was bearing down, and all hands were working like demons to get the ship stripped. Some were aloft cutting away the earings so as to let the sails go overboard, while others were letting go halyards, sheets and tacks. A kind of fog or mist was settling down, and the sails slatting against the masts and shrouds made a horrible din, to say nothing of the hoarse orders that the captain and Ike were bawling out.
I ran up the shrouds to help Summers cut away the mains’il.