And Burr was hearing something—something distinct and terrifying; but he seemed not surprised, but rather satisfied that Alan had not heard. He nodded his head at Alan's denial, and, without reply to Alan's demand, he stood listening. Something bent him forward; he straightened; again the something came; again he straightened. Four times Alan counted the motions. Burr was hearing again the four long blasts of distress! But there was no noise but the gale. "The four blasts!" He recalled old Burr's terror outside the radio cabin. The old man was hearing blasts which were not blown!
He moved on and took the wheel. He was a good wheelsman; the vessel seemed to be steadier on her course and, somehow, to steam easier when the old man steered. His illusions of hearing could do no harm, Alan considered; they were of concern only to Burr and to him.
Alan, relieving the lookout at the bow, stood on watch again. The ferry thrust on alone; in the wireless cabin the flame played steadily. They had been able to get the shore stations again on both sides of the lake and also the Richardson. As the ferry had worked northward, the Richardson had been working north too, evidently under the impression that the vessel in distress, if it had headway, was moving in that direction. By its position, which the Richardson gave, the steamers were about twenty miles apart.
Alan fought to keep his thought all to his duty; they must be now very nearly at the position where the Richardson last had heard the four long blasts; searching for a ship or for boats, in that snow, was almost hopeless. With sight even along the searchlight's beam shortened to a few hundred yards, only accident could bring Number 25 up for rescue, only chance could carry the ship where the shouts—or the blasts of distress if the wreck still floated and had steam—would be heard.
Half numbed by the cold, Alan stamped and beat his arms about his body; the swing of the searchlight in the circle about the ship had become long ago monotonous, purely mechanical, like the blowing of the whistle; Alan stared patiently along the beam as it turned through the sector where he watched. They were meeting frequent and heavy floes, and Alan gave warning of these by hails to the bridge; the bridge answered and when possible the steamer avoided the floes; when it could not do that, it cut through them. The windrowed ice beating and crushing under the bows took strange, distorted, glistening shapes. Now another such shape appeared before them; where the glare dissipated to a bare glow in the swirling snow, he saw a vague shadow. The man moving the searchlight failed to see it, for he swung the beam on. The shadow was so dim, so ghostly, that Alan sought for it again before he hailed; he could see nothing now, yet he was surer, somehow, that he had seen.
"Something dead ahead, sir!" he shouted back to the bridge.
The bridge answered the hail as the searchlight pointed forward again. A gust carried the snow in a fierce flurry which the light failed to pierce; from the flurry suddenly, silently, spar by spar, a shadow emerged—the shadow of a ship. It was a steamer, Alan saw, a long, low-lying old vessel without lights and without smoke from the funnel slanting up just forward of the after deckhouse; it rolled in the trough of the sea. The sides and all the lower works gleamed in ghostly phosphorescence, it was refraction of the searchlight beam from the ice sheathing all the ship, Alan's brain told him; but the sight of that soundless, shimmering ship materializing from behind the screen of snow struck a tremor through him.
"Ship!" he hailed. "Ahead! Dead ahead, sir! Ship!"
The shout of quick commands echoed to him from the bridge. Underfoot he could feel a new tumult of the deck; the engines, instantly stopped, were being set full speed astern. But Number 25, instead of sheering off to right or to left to avoid the collision, steered straight on.
The struggle of the engines against the momentum of the ferry told that others had seen the gleaming ship or, at least, had heard the hail. The skipper's instant decision had been to put to starboard; he had bawled that to the wheelsman, "Hard over!" But, though the screws turned full astern, Number 25 steered straight on. The flurry was blowing before the bow again; back through the snow the ice-shrouded shimmer ahead retreated. Alan leaped away and up to the wheelhouse.