Chapter 20

There they had difficulty in getting close enough to see; but Bradford, preceding the two women, succeeded by patience and diplomacy in forcing a way. The SPRITE was lying close under the pier, the top of her pilot-house just about level with the feet of the people watching her. She rose and fell with the restless waters. Fat rope-yarn bumpers interposed between her sides and the piling. The pilot-house was empty, but Harvey, the negro engineer, leaned, elbows crossed against the sill of his little square door, smoking his pipe.

“I wouldn't go out there for a million dollars!” cried a man excitedly to Carroll and Bradford. “Nothing on earth could live in that sea! Nothing! I've run a tug myself in my time, and I know what I'm talking about!”

“What are they going to do?” asked Carroll.

“Haven't you heard!” cried the other, turning to her. “Where you been? This is one of Orde's tugs, and she's going to try to get a line to them vessels. But I wouldn't--”

Bradford did not wait for him to finish. He turned abruptly, and with an air of authority brushed toward the tug, followed closely by Carroll and Mina. At the edge of the pier was the tug's captain, Marsh, listening to earnest expostulation by a half-dozen of the leading men of the town, among whom were both Newmark and Orde.

As the three came within earshot Captain Marsh spit forth the stump of cigar he had been chewing.

“Gentlemen,” said he crisply, “that isn't the question. I think I can do it; and I'm entirely willing to take all personal risks. The thing is hazardous and it's Mr. Orde's tug. It's for him to say whether he wants to risk her.”

“Good Lord, man, what's the tug in a case like this!” cried Orde, who was standing near. Carroll looked at him proudly, but she did not attempt to make her presence known.

“I thought so,” replied Captain Marsh. “So it's settled. I'll take her out, if I can get a crew. Harvey, step up here!”

The engineer slowly hoisted his long figure through the breast-high doorway, dragged his legs under him, then with extraordinary agility swung to the pier, his teeth shining like ivory in his black face.

“Yas, suh!” said he.

“Harvey,” said Captain Marsh briskly, “we're going to try to get a line aboard those vessels out there. It's dangerous. You don't have to go if you don't want to. Will you go?”

Harvey removed his cap and scratched his wool. The grin faded from his good-natured countenance.

“You-all goin', suh?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“I reckon I'll done haif to go, too,” said Harvey simply. Without further word he swung lightly back to the uneasy craft below him, and began to toss the slabs from the deck into the hold.

“I want a man with me at the wheel, two to handle the lines, and one to fire for Harvey,” said Captain Marsh to the crowd in general.

“That's our job,” announced the life-saving captain.

“Well, come on then. No use in delay,” said Captain Marsh.

The four men from the life-saving service dropped aboard. The five then went over the tug from stem to stern, tossing aside all movables, and lashing tight all essentials. From the pilot-house Captain Marsh distributed life preservers. Harvey declined his.

“Whaf-for I want dat?” he inquired. “Lots of good he gwine do me down here!”

Then all hatches were battened down. Captain Marsh reached up to shake the hand which Orde, stooping, offered him.

“I'll try to bring her back all right, sir,” said he.

“To hell with the tug!” cried Orde, impatient at this insistence on the mere property aspect. “Bring yourself back.”

Captain Marsh deliberately lit another cigar and entered the pilot-house with the other men.

“Cast off!” he cried; and the silent crowd heard clearly the single sharp bell ringing for attention, and then the “jangler” that called for full speed ahead. Awed, they watched the tiny sturdy craft move out into the stream and point to the fury of the open lake.

“Brave chaps! Brave chaps!” said Dr. McMullen to Carroll as they turned away. The physician drew his tall slender figure to its height. “Brave chaps, every one of them. But, do you know, to my mind, the bravest of them all are that nigger--and his fireman--nailed down in the hold where they can't see nor know what's going on, and if--if--” the good doctor blew his nose vigorously five or six times--“well, it's just like a rat in a hole.” He shook his head vigorously and looked out to sea. “I read last evening, sir,” said he to Bradford, “in a blasted fool medical journal I take, that the race is degenerating. Good God!”

The tug had rounded the end of the pier. The first of her thousand enemies, sweeping in from the open, had struck her fair. A great sheet of white water, slanting back and up, shot with terrific impact against the house and beyond. For an instant the little craft seemed buried; but almost immediately the gleam of her black hull showed her plunging forward dauntlessly.

“That's nothin'!” said the tug captain who had first spoken. “Wait 'til she gets outside!” The watchers streamed down from the pier for a better view. Carroll and Miss Heinzman followed. They saw the staunch little craft drive into three big seas, each of which appeared to bury her completely, save for her upper works. She managed, however, to keep her headway.

“She can stand that, all right,” said one of the life-saving crew who had been watching her critically. “The trouble will come when she drops down to the vessels.”

In spite of the heavy smashing of head-on seas the SPRITE held her course straight out.

“Where's she going, anyway?” marvelled little Mr. Smith, the stationer. “She's away beyond the wrecks already.”

“Probably Marsh has found the seas heavier than he thought and is afraid to turn her broadside,” guessed his companion.

“Afraid, hell!” snorted a riverman who overheard.

Nevertheless the SPRITE was now so distant that the loom of the great seas on the horizon swallowed her from view, save when she rose on the crest of some mighty billow.

“Well, what is he doing 'way out there then?” challenged Mr. Smith's friend with some asperity.

“Do'no,” replied the riverman, “but whatever it is, it's all right as long as Buck Marsh is at the wheel.”

“There, she's turned now,” Mr. Smith interposed.

Beneath the trail of black smoke she had shifted direction. And then with startling swiftness the SPRITE darted out of the horizon into full view. For the first time the spectators realised the size and weight of the seas. Not even the sullen pounding to pieces of the vessels on the bar had so impressed them as the sight of the tug coasting with railroad speed down the rush of a comber like a child's toy-boat in the surf. One moment the whole of her deck was visible as she was borne with the wave; the next her bow alone showed high as the back suction caught her and dragged her from the crest into the hollow. A sea rose behind. Nothing of the tug was to be seen. It seemed that no power or skill could prevent her feeling overwhelmed. Yet somehow always she staggered out of the gulf until she caught the force of the billow and was again cast forward like a chip.

“Maybe they ain't catchin' p'ticular hell at that wheel to hold her from yawing!” muttered the tug captain to his neighbour, who happened to be Mr. Duncan, the minister.

Almost before Carroll had time to see that the little craft was coming in, she had arrived at the outer line of breakers. Here the combers, dragged by the bar underneath, crested, curled over, and fell with a roar, just as in milder weather the surf breaks on the beach. When the SPRITE rushed at this outer line of white-water, a woman in the crowd screamed.

But at the edge of destruction the SPRITE came to a shuddering stop. Her powerful propellers had been set to the reverse. They could not hold her against the forward fling of the water, but what she lost thus she regained on the seaward slopes of the waves and in their hollows. Thus she hovered on the edge of the breakers, awaiting her chance.

As long as the seas rolled in steadily, and nothing broke, she was safe. But if one of the waves should happen to crest and break, as many of them did, the weight of water catching the tug on her flat, broad stern deck would indubitably bury her. The situation was awful in its extreme simplicity. Would Captain Marsh see his opportunity before the law of chances would bring along the wave that would overwhelm him?

A realisation of the crisis came to the crowd on the beach. At once the terrible strain of suspense tugged at their souls. Each conducted himself according to his nature. The hardy men of the river and the woods set their teeth until the cheek muscles turned white, and blasphemed softly and steadily. Two or three of the townsmen walked up and down the space of a dozen feet. One, the woman who had screamed, prayed aloud in short hysterical sentences.

“O God! Save them, O Lord! O Lord!”

Orde stood on top of a half-buried log, his hat in his hand, his entire being concentrated on the manoeuvre being executed. Only Newmark apparently remained as calm as ever, leaning against an upright timber, his arms folded, and an unlighted cigar as usual between his lips.

Methodically every few moments he removed his eyeglasses and wiped the lenses free of spray.

Suddenly, without warning, occurred one of those inexplicable lulls that interpose often amid the wildest uproars. For the briefest instant other sounds than the roar of the wind and surf were permitted the multitude on the beach. They heard the grinding of timbers from the stricken ships, and the draining away of waters. And distinctly they heard the faint, far tinkle of the jangler calling again for “full speed ahead.”

Between two waves the SPRITE darted forward directly for the nearest of the wrecks. Straight as an arrow's flight she held until from the crowd went up a groan.

“She'll collide!” some one put it into words.

But at the latest moment the tug swerved, raced past, and turned on a long diagonal across the end of the bar toward the piers.

Captain Marsh had chosen his moment with exactitude. To the utmost he had taken advantage of the brief lull of jumbled seas after the “three largest waves” had swept by. Yet in shallow water and with the strong inshore set, even that lull was all too short. The SPRITE was staggered by the buffets of the smaller breakers; her speed was checked, her stern was dragged around. For an instant it seemed that the back suction would hold her in its grip. She tore herself from the grasp of the current. Enveloped in a blinding hail of spray she struggled desperately to extricate herself from the maelstrom in which she was involved before the resumption of the larger seas should roll her over and over to destruction.

Already these larger seas were racing in from the open. To Carroll, watching breathless and wide-eyed in that strange passive and receptive state peculiar to imaginative natures, they seemed alive. And the SPRITE, too, appeared to be, not a fabric and a mechanism controlled by men, but a sentient creature struggling gallantly on her own volition.

Far out in the lake against the tumbling horizon she saw heave up for a second the shoulder of a mighty wave. And instinctively she perceived this wave as a deadly enemy of the little tug, and saw it bending all its great energies to hurrying in on time to catch the victim before it could escape. To this wave she gave all her attention, watching for it after it had sunk momentarily below its fellows, recognising it instantly as it rose again. The spasms of dismay and relief among the crowd about her she did not share at all. The crises they indicated did not exist for her. Until the wave came in, Carroll knew, the SPRITE, no matter how battered and tossed, would be safe. Her whole being was concentrated in a continually shifting calculation of the respective distances between the tug and the piers, the tug and the relentlessly advancing wave.

“Oh, go!” she exhorted the SPRITE under her breath.

Then the crowd, too, caught with its slower perceptions the import of the wave. Carroll felt the electric thrill of apprehension shiver through it. Huge and towering, green and flecked with foam the wave came on now calmly and deliberately as though sure. The SPRITE was off the end of the pier when the wave lifted her, just in the position her enemy would have selected to crush her life out against the cribs. Slowly the tug rose against its shoulder, was lifted onward, poised; and then with a swift forward thrust the wave broke, smothering the pier and lighthouse beneath tons of water.

A low, agonised wail broke from the crowd. And then--and then--over beyond the pier down which the wave, broken and spent but formidable still, was ripping its way, they saw gliding a battered black stack from which still poured defiantly clouds of gray smoke.

For ten seconds the spectators could not believe their eyes. They had distinctly seen the SPRITE caught between a resistless wall of water and the pier; where she should have been crushed like the proverbial egg-shell. Yet there she was--or her ghost.

Then a great cheer rose up against the wind. The crowd went crazy. Mere acquaintances hugged each other and danced around and around through the heavy sands. Several women had hysterics. The riverman next to Mr. Duncan opened his mouth and swore so picturesquely that, as he afterward told his chum, “I must've been plumb inspired for the occasion.” Yet it never entered Mr. Duncan's ministerial head to reprove the blasphemy. Orde jumped down from his half-buried log and clapped his hat on his head. Newmark did not alter his attitude nor his expression.

The SPRITE was safe. For the few moments before she glided the length of the long pier to stiller water this fact sufficed.

“I wonder if she got the line aboard,” speculated the tug-boat captain at last.

The crowd surged over to the piers again. Below them rose and fell the SPRITE. All the fancy scroll-work of her upper works, the cornice of her deck house, the light rigging of her cabin had disappeared, leaving raw and splintered wood to mark their attachments. The tall smokestack was bent awry, but its supports had held, which was fortunate since otherwise the fires would have been drowned out. At the moment, Captain Marsh was bending over examining a bad break in the overhang--the only material damage the tug had sustained.

At sight of him the crowd set up a yell. He paid no attention. One of the life-saving men tossed a mooring line ashore. It was seized by a dozen men. Then for the first time somebody noticed that although the tug had come to a standstill, her screw was still turning slowly over and over, holding her against the erratic strong jerking of a slender rope that ran through her stern chocks and into the water.

“He got it aboard!” yelled the man, pointing.

Another cheer broke out. The life-saving crew leaped to the deck. They were immediately followed by a crowd of enthusiasts eager to congratulate and question. But Captain Marsh would have none of them.

“Get off my tug!” he shouted. “Do you want to swamp her? What do you suppose we put that line aboard for? Fun? Get busy and use it! Rescue that crew now!”

Abashed, the enthusiasts scrambled back. The life-saving crew took charge. It was necessary to pass the line around the end of the pier and back to the beach. This was a dangerous job, and one requiring considerable power and ingenuity, for the strain on the line imposed by the waters was terrific; and the breaking seas rendered work on the piers extremely hazardous. However, the life-saving captain took charge confidently enough. His crew began to struggle out the pier, while volunteers, under his personal direction, manipulated the reel.

A number of the curious lingered about the SPRITE. Marsh and Orde were in consultation over the smashed stern, and did not look as though they cared to be disturbed. Harvey leaned out his little square door.

“Don' know nuffin 'bout it,” said he, “'ceptin' she done rolled 'way over 'bout foh times. Yass she did, suh! I know. I felt her doin' it.”

“No,” he answered a query. “I wasn't what you-all would call scairt, that is, not really SCAIRT--jess a little ne'vous. All I had to do was to feed her slabs and listen foh my bell. You see, Cap'n Ma'sh, he was in cha'ge.”

“No, sir,” Captain Marsh was saying emphatically to his employer. “I can't figure it out except on one thing. You see it's stove from UNDERNEATH. A sea would have smashed it from above.”

“Perhaps you grounded in between seas out there,” suggested Orde.

Marsh smiled grimly.

“I reckon I'd have known it,” said he. “No, sir! It sounds wild, but it's the only possible guess. That last sea must've lifted us bodily right over the corner of the pier.”

“Well--maybe,” assented Orde doubtfully.

“Sure thing,” repeated Marsh with conviction.

“Well, you'd better not tell 'em so unless you want to rank in with Old Man Ananias,” ended Orde. “It was a good job. Pretty dusty out there, wasn't it?”

“Pretty dusty,” grinned Marsh.

They turned away together and were at once pounced on by Leopold Lincoln Bunn, the local reporter, a callow youth aflame with the chance for a big story of more than local interest.

“Oh, Captain Marsh!” he cried. “How did you get around the pier? It looked as though the wave had you caught.”

Orde glanced at his companion in curiosity.

“On roller skates,” replied Marsh.

Leopold tittered nervously.

“Could you tell me how you felt when you were out there in the worst of it?” he inquired.

“Oh, hell!” said Marsh grumpily, stalking away.

“Don't interview for a cent, does he?” grinned Orde.

“Oh, Mr. Orde! Perhaps you--”

“Don't you think we'd better lend a hand below?” suggested Orde, pointing to the beach.

The wild and picturesque work of rescue was under way. The line had been successfully brought to the left of the lighthouse. To it had been attached the rope, and to that the heavy cable. These the crew of the schooner had dragged out and made fast to a mast. The shore end passed over a tall scissors. When the cable was tightened the breeches buoy was put into commission, and before long the first member of the crew was hauled ashore, plunging in and out of the waves as the rope tightened or slackened. He was a flaxen-haired Norwegian, who stamped his feet, shook his body and grinned comically at those about him. He accepted with equanimity a dozen drinks of whisky thrust at him from all sides, swigged a mug of the coffee a few practical women were making over an open fire, and opposed to Leopold Lincoln Bunn's frantic efforts a stolid and baffling density. Of none of these attentions did he seem to stand in especial need.

The crew and its volunteers worked quickly. When the last man had come ashore, the captain of the life-saving service entered the breeches buoy and caused himself to be hauled through the smother to the wreck. After an interval, a signal jerked back. The buoy was pulled in empty and the surf car substituted. In it were piled various utensils of equipment. One man went with it, and several more on its next trip, until nearly the whole crew were aboard the wreck.

Carroll and Mina stayed until dusk and after, watching the long heavy labour of rescue. Lines had to be rocketed from the schooner to the other vessels. Then by their means cable communication had to be established with the shore. After this it was really a matter of routine to run the crew to the beach, though cruel, hard work, and dangerous. The wrecks were continually swept by the great seas; and at any moment the tortured fabrics might give way, might dissolve completely in the elements that so battered them. The women making the hot coffee found their services becoming valuable. Big fires of driftwood were ignited. They were useful for light as well as warmth.

By their illumination finally Orde discovered the two girls standing, and paused long enough in his own heavy labour of assistance to draw Carroll one side.

“You'd better go home now, sweetheart,” said he. “Bobby'll be waiting for you, and the girls may be here in the crowd somewhere. There'll be nobody to take care of him.”

“I suppose so,” she assented. “But hasn't it been exciting? Whose vessels were they; do you know?”

Orde glanced at her strangely.

“They were ours,” said he.

She looked up at him, catching quickly the wrinkles of his brow and the harassed anxiety in his eyes. Impulsively she pulled him down to her and kissed him.

“Never mind, dear,” said she. “I care only if you do.”

She patted his great shoulders lightly and smiled up at him.

“Run, help!” she cried. “And come home as soon as you can. I'll have something nice and hot all ready for you.”

She turned away, the smile still on her lips; but as soon as she was out of sight, her face fell grave.

“Come, Mina!” she said to the younger girl. “Time to go.”

They toiled through the heavy sand to where, hours ago, they had left Prince. That faithful animal dozed in his tracks and awoke reluctantly.

Carroll looked back. The fires leaped red and yellow. Against them were the silhouettes of people, and in the farther circle of their illumination were more people cast in bronze that flickered red. In contrast to their glow the night was very dark. Only from the lake there disengaged a faint gray light where the waters broke. The strength of the failing wind still lifted the finer particles of sand. The organ of the pounding surf filled the night with the grandeur of its music.

XXXV

Orde mounted the office stairs next day with a very heavy step. The loss of the NORTH STAR and of the two schooners meant a great deal to him at that time.

“It kicks us into somewhat of a hole,” he grumbled to Newmark.

“A loss is never pleasant,” replied the latter, “and it puts us out of the carrying business for awhile. But we're insured.”

“I can't understand why Floyd started,” said Orde. “He ought to know better than to face sure prospects of a fall blow. I'll tan his soul for that, all right!”

“I'm afraid I'm partly responsible for his going,” put in Newmark.

“You!” cried Orde.

“Yes. You see that Smith and Mabley shipment was important enough to strain a point for--and it's only twenty-four hours or so--and it certainly didn't look to see me as if it were going to blow very soon. Poor Floyd feels bad enough. He's about sick.”

Orde for the first time began to appreciate the pressure of his circumstances. The loss on the cargo of “uppers” reached about 8,000,000 feet; which represented $20,000 in money. As for the NORTH STAR and her consorts, save for the insurance, they were simply eliminated. They had represented property. Now they were gone. The loss of $60,000 or so on them, however, did not mean a diminution of the company's present cash resources to that amount; and so did not immediately affect Orde's calculations as to the payment of the notes which were now soon to come due.

At this time the woods work increasingly demanded his attention. He disappeared for a week, his organising abilities claimed for the distribution of the road crews. When he returned to the office, Newmark, with an air of small triumph, showed him contracts for the construction of three new vessels.

“I get them for $55,000,” said he, “with $30,000 of it on long time.”

“Without consulting me!” cried Orde.

Newmark explained carefully that the action, seemingly so abrupt, had really been taking advantage of a lucky opportunity.

“Otherwise,” he finished, “we shouldn't have been able to get the job done for another year, at least. If that big Cronin contract goes through--well, you know what that would mean in the shipyards--nobody would get even a look-in. And McLeod is willing, in the meantime, to give us a price to keep his men busy. So you see I had to close at once. You can see what a short chance it was.”