“Fight, men! Fight! Fight! There are dying men below! Stand by! Fight for them!”
He was bloody and almost unrecognizable as he stood there clutching a stanchion for support. His legs were rigid, his body swayed, but his spirit was as staunch as the star that had guided him for fifty years through the trackless waste.
And while these doughty, desperate spirits fought the fire and smoke with every means at their command, down in the suffocating depths of the ship, braving not only the peril visible and at hand, but the prospect of annihilation in the event that a belated bomb projected its hideous force into the nest of high explosives,—while these men fought, the smiling, placid sea was alive with small white craft that bobbed in the gleaming sunlight, life-boats crowded to the gunwales with shuddering, bleak-eyed men, women and children waiting to pick up those who stayed behind, and who inevitably would be driven overboard by the resistless, conquering flames.
Cruising about at a safe distance from the menacing hull, these boats managed to rescue a few of the beings who had leaped overboard in the first mad panic of fear, but many there were who went down never to be seen again. No boat was without its wounded—and its dead; no boat was without its stricken, anxious-eyed survivors who watched and prayed for the salvation of loved ones left behind. With straining eyes they searched the surface of the sea, peered at the occupants of near and distant boats, stared at the scurrying figures on the decks of the smoking steamer, hoping,—always hoping,—and always sobbing out the endless prayer.
At last, as the sun sank below the blue-black horizon, exhausted, red-eyed, gasping men struggled up from the drenched, smothering interior of the ship, and hurled themselves, not into the sea, but prone upon the decks! They had conquered! The scattered, vagrant fires, attacked in their infancy, while still in the creeping stage, had been subdued.
Darkness fell. A chill night air stole out of the east, stealthily trailing the sun. Will-o'-the-wisp lights bespecked the sea, surrounding the black hulk that lay motionless in the center of the circle. Lanterns in a score or more of small boats bobbed fitfully in the gentle swell. Presently lights appeared on board the Doraine, one here, one there, then others in twos and threes,—some of them stationary, others moving slowly from place to place. The life-boats crept closer, still closer. Then, out from the silent hulk, came the voice of man. It was the voice of the First Officer, hoarse and unrecognizable, but sharp with authority. Other voices repeated the commands from various parts of the ship,—commands to the encircling will-o'-the-wisps.
The word came down to the scores who filled the boats that they were to lie by until sunrise, keeping in close contact with each other and at no great distance from the ship. The most thorough, careful examination of the steamer was in progress. If it was found that she was in no danger of foundering,—and the word was most reassuring,—all of them would be taken aboard in the morning. Nothing could be done at present. A few hours more would tell the tale.
And then, for the first time since the disaster, the note of the croaker was heard. Each and every boat contained at least one individual who knew exactly what ought to be done in a crisis like this.
Mr. Landover addressed the benumbed, unresisting occupants of the boat into which he had climbed with commendable reluctance as one of the last persons to leave the ship.
“Why don't they begin sending out S. O. S. calls? What's the wireless for, if not to be used at a time like this? Say, you! Yell up there to some of those damned muddled-headed idiots and tell them what to do. Tell them that I say for them to send out calls for help. What's that? What did you say?”
The steward in charge of the boat repeated his remark and Mr. Landover at once said he would report him to Captain Trigger.
“But it won't do any good,” complained the banker despairingly. “Captain Trigger hasn't got the backbone of a fishworm. He'd let you tell him to go to hell and never think of jacking you up for it. No wonder we're in the fix we're in now. If he'd had the sense of a jelly-fish he'd have—Here! Sit still! You'll upset the boat, you fool! What—What are you going to do with that oar?”
“I'm going to crack you over the bean with it if you don't take back what you said about Captain Trigger,” said the steward, very earnestly. “Take it back, do you hear me?”
“My God, would you murder me for a little thing like that?”
Mr. Nicklestick aroused himself from the torpor of despair.
“Take it back, Mr. Landover,—please do. If he misses you, he'll get me sure, it's so dark, and so help me God, I got nothing but the deepest respect for Captain Trigger. He's a vonderful man, steward. Don't make any mistake. You hear me say he is a vonderful man? Veil,—”
“Oh, shut up, Nicklestick,” grated Landover, crouching down behind the gentleman addressed.
The steward sat down. “I'd do it in a minute if it wasn't for the women an' children in this boat.”
“I intend to have every officer on that steamer arrested for criminal negligence the instant I set foot in New York,” boomed the banker. “I call upon every one of you, my fellow-passengers, to testify to the utter lack of precaution taken by the men in charge of that ship. And what effort are they making to bring help to us now? By gad, if I was in command of that vessel I'd be shooting wireless calls to every—Great Scott! What's that?”
“That's a rocket, you blamed old fool!” roared the steward.
“Good God!” gasped the exasperated banker. “Are we having a celebration with fireworks?”
The dull, hapless occupants of the lifeboats watched with fascinated eyes the first of the giant rockets that whizzed and roared its way up from the deck of the ship, an endless arrow of fire piercing the night. A loud report, the scattering of a hundred stars, and then—denser blackness than before.
Morning came. Up out of the east stole a sickly grey. It turned slowly into pink, and then suddenly the sea once more was blue and smiling. In the heart of the dancing cordon lay the weirdly camouflaged Doraine, inert, sinister, as still and cold as death. No smoke issued from her stacks to cheer the wretched watchers; no foam, no spray leaped from her mighty bow. She was a great, lifeless thing. Waves lapped gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in the face of despair.
Men, stripped to the waist, grimy and shining with the sweat of hours, moving about in knots of three and four—always in knots of three or four as if afraid to disintegrate—leaned upon the rail and watched the approach of the crowded boats, looked down into pallid, anguished faces with their eager, hungry eyes, eyes that devoured the groups along the rail. Now and then a glad shout of joy went up from one of the boats, and a figure in the huddled mass was transformed into a responsive thing of life.
In each of the square, black openings in the hull of the ship stood men with ropes and ladders. The great steel doors lay flat against the sides, swung wide to admit this time a human cargo. From the interior of the vessel came the brisk, incessant clatter of hammers against wood and steel; from the decks broke the loud, commanding voices of men calling out directions; from the gliding, slapping boats went up the hearty shouts of understanding and obedience, the rattling of boat-hooks, the grinding of oars in the locks, the murmur of voices revived.
“Vomen and children first!” was the shrill, oft-repeated exhortation from one of the boats.
And up in the centre of another sprang a fine, imposing figure, from whose lips rolled these thrilling words:
“By God, they're great! They're great, after all! God bless Captain Trigger and every man-jack of them!”
“Get down!” roared his still unpacified critic, the steward. “You'll fall overboard, you dam' fool!”
The gaunt, coatless Mr. Mott