From above him, through the clangor of the cars, came the four blasts of the steam whistle. The indifference with which Alan had heard them a few minutes before had changed now to a twinge of terror. When men had been dying about him, in their attempts to save the ship, it had seemed a small thing for him to be crushed or to drown with them and with Benjamin Corvet, whom he had found at last. But Constance! Recollection of her was stirring in Corvet the torture of will to live; in Alan—he struggled and tried to free himself. As well as he could tell by feeling, the weight above him confined but was not crushing him; yet what gain for her if he only saved himself and not Corvet too? He turned back to Corvet.
"She's going to marry him, Ben Corvet!" he called. "They're betrothed; and they're going to be married, she and Henry Spearman!"
"Who are you?" Corvet seemed only with an effort to become conscious of Alan's presence.
"I'm Alan Conrad, whom you used to take care of. I'm from Blue Rapids. You know about me; are you my father, Ben Corvet? Are you my father or what—what are you to me?"
"Your father?" Corvet repeated. "Did he tell you that? He killed your father."
"Killed him? Killed him how?"
"Of course. He killed them all—all. But your father—he shot him; he shot him through the head!"
Alan twinged. Sight of Spearman came before him as he had first seen Spearman, cowering in Corvet's library in terror at an apparition. "And the bullet hole above the eye!" So that was the hole made by the shot Spearman fired which had killed Alan's father—which shot him through the head! Alan peered at Corvet and called to him.
"Father Benitot!" Corvet called in response, not directly in reply to Alan's question, rather in response to what those questions stirred. "Father Benitot!" he appealed. "Father Benitot!"
Some one, drawn by the cry, was moving wreckage near them. A hand and arm with a torn sleeve showed; Alan could not see the rest of the figure, but by the sleeve he recognized that it was the mate.