"Better lash yourself down," cried the captain warningly. The artist's answer was lost in the tempest.
There was little sleep for the passengers on the Yarmouth that night. Stewards and matrons passed about reassuring them. The boat was seaworthy; everything was locked in; they could lie on their pillows with an absolute certainty of rising on the morrow with the Nova Scotia shore in view. Only they wouldn't. They dared not. And as Rosalie looked as timid as any one, her new acquaintances conspired to remain with her in her stateroom, all three sharing the two cots and getting what naps they could.
They had run out of talk and were almost drowsing when the great crash came. Have you felt your heart jump when a pistol-shot smites the silence? No crack of land ordnance could inspire the fear that resounding bump did in the breasts of the apprehensive girls.
"A rock!" was the thought of each, but they only expressed their terror in an inarticulate shriek. Then the whimpering of women and the cries of men were heard in the saloon.
"We are sinking!" cried some one, and the girls rushed out. A hundred white-clad forms darted to and fro like gnats in a swarm, or clung together, wringing their hands in misery. Some of the men fought to unbar the doors. But they were bolted from the outside. The whole cabin was penned in there to drown. Then each one felt for his dearest.
"Tristram!" moaned Rosalie, knocking at his stateroom door. "Tristram!" But there came no answer. "He is out on the deck! He is swept away and drowned!" she cried, with truer tears than the imagined sorrows of Desdemona had ever drawn from her eyes. But Tristram was safe in the pilot's box, where Capt. Keen was signaling the engineer to reverse his engines; and the engineer, shut in amid the deafening clangor of his machinery, ignorant of what had happened but trained to his duty, obeyed promptly his bell and forced the great vessel back.
The headlights of the Yarmouth had been doused out long before, and there was no lantern that could live in that surge, even if it were possible to hang a second one aloft From time to time the captain had ordered a rocket sent up, to warn approaching vessels, for the air was densely opaque. Only out of the gloom before them, just before the shock came, Tristram could see a long row of lights, feeble and flickering. His imagination constructed the broadside of a steamship about them and once it seemed that he really did catch a vague, shadowy outline. But the reality became certain to another sense. Before the Yarmouth's engines were reversed and her bow disengaged itself, a wail of terror reached him out of the night, and a tearing as of parted timbers. Then hoarse shouts were heard from the emptiness soaring high above the wind.
"We stove in her side," said the captain. Then a signal rocket, hissing into the quenching rain, told him of his fellow's distress. The Yarmouth still receded. The double row of lights was withdrawn into the gloom. But the wailing increased and from the covered cabin below rose the responsive clamor of the passengers.
"Say that we have struck a vessel," telephoned the captain to the steward. After several repetitions the message was understood and it quieted the half-clad throng a little. But anxiety was legible on every face.
Twice more the signal of distress went up and the captain answered it, though helpless to assist. Then the air was blank.