Blow The Man Down Part 21

First of all, he gave full consideration to what had happened. The _Polly_ had been whipped over so quickly that she had been transformed into a sort of diving-bell.{*} That is to say, a considerable amount of air had been captured and was now retained in her. It was compressed by the water which was forced up from below through the windows and the shattered skylight. The pressure on Mayo's temples afforded him information on this point. The _Polly_ was floating, and he felt comforting confidence that she would continue to float for some time. But this prospect did not insure safety or promise life to the unfortunates who had been trapped in her bowels. The air must either escape gradually or become vitiated as they breathed it.

* The strange adventure of the _Polly_ is not an improbability of fiction. A Bath, Maine, schooner, lumber- laden, was tripped in exactly this fas.h.i.+on off Hatteras.

Captain Boyd Mayo's exploit has been paralleled in real life in all details. My good friend Captain Elliott C. Gardner, former skipper of the world's only seven-master, the _Thomas W. Lawson_, furnished those details to me, and after writing this part of the tale I submitted the narrative to him for confirmation. It has received his indors.e.m.e.nt.--H. D.

There was only one thing to do, he decided: take advantage of any period of truce which their ancient enemy, the sea, had allowed in that desperate battle.

A sailor is prey to hazards and victim of the unexpected in the ever-changing moods of the ocean; he must needs be master of expedients and ready grappler of emergencies.

"Where are your tools--a saw--a chisel?" demanded Mayo. He was obliged to repeat that query several times. His companions appeared to be wholly absorbed in their personal woes.

At last Mr. Speed checked his groans long enough to state that the tools were in "the lazareet."

The lazaret of a coaster is a storeroom under the quarter-deck--repository of general odds and ends and spare equipment.

"Any way to get at it except through the deck-hatch?"

"There's a door through, back of the companion ladder," said Mr. Speed, with listless indifference.

Mayo crowded his way past the ladder after he had waded and stumbled here and there and had located it. He set his shoulders against the slope of the steps and pushed at the door with his feet. After he had forced it open he waded into the storeroom. It was blind business, hunting for anything in that place. He knew the general habits of the hit-or-miss coasting crews, and was sure that the tools had been thrown in among the rest of the clutter by the person who used them last. If they had been loose on the floor they would now be loose on the ceiling.

He pushed his feet about, hoping to tread on something that felt like a saw or chisel.

"Ahoy, you men out there!" he called. "Don't you have any idea in what part of this lazaret the tools were?"

"Oh, they was probably just throwed in," said Mr. Speed. "I wish you wouldn't bother me so much! I'm trying to compose my mind to pray."

There were so much ruck and stuff under his feet that Mayo gave up searching after a time. He had held his breath and ducked his head under water so that he might investigate with his bare hands, but he found nothing which would help him, and his brain was dizzy after his efforts and his mouth was choked by the dirty water.

But when he groped his way back into the main cabin his hands came in contact with the inside of the lazaret door. In leather loops on the door he found saw, ax, chisel, and hammer. He was unable to keep back a few hearty and soul-satisfying oaths.

"Why didn't you tell me where the tools were? They're here on the door."

"I had forgot about picking 'em tip. And my mind ain't on tools, anyway."

"Your mind will be on 'em as soon as I can get forward there," growled the incensed captain.

Mayo was not sure of what he needed or what he would be obliged to do, therefore he took all the tools, holding them above water. When he waded past Captain Can-dage he heard the old skipper trying to comfort the girl, his voice low and broken by sobs. She had recovered consciousness and Mayo was a bit sorry; in her swoon she had not realized their plight; he feared hysterics and other feminine demonstrations, and he knew that he needed all his nerve.

"We're going to die--we're going to die!" the girl kept moaning.

"Yes, my poor baby, and I have brought you to it," blubbered her father.

"Please keep up your courage for a little while, Miss Candage," Mayo pleaded, wistfully.

"But there's no hope!"

"There's hope just as long as we have a little air and a little grit,"

he insisted. "Now, please!"

"I am afraid!" she whispered.

"So am I," he confessed. "But we're all going to work the best we know how. Can't you encourage us like a brave, good girl?" He went stumbling on. "Now tell me, mate," he commanded, briskly, "how thick is the bulkhead between the cabin, here, and the hold?"

"I can't bother to think," returned Mr. Speed.

"It's only sheathing between the beams, sir," stated Captain Candage.

"Mate, you and the cook lend a hand to help me."

Oak.u.m Otie broke off the prayer to which he had returned promptly.

"What's the use?" he demanded, with anger which his fright made juvenile. "I tell you I'm trying to compose my soul, and I want this rampage-round stopped."

"I say what's the use, too!" whined Dolph. "You can't row a biskit across a puddle of mola.s.ses with a couple of toothpicks," he added, with cook's metaphor for the absolutely hopeless.

Mayo shouted at them with a violence that made hideous din in that narrow s.p.a.ce. "You two men wade across here to me or I'll come after you with an ax in one hand and a hammer in the other! d.a.m.n you, I mean business!"

They were silent, then there sounded the splash of water and they came, muttering. They had recognized the ring of desperate resolve in his command.

Mayo, when he heard their stertorous breathing close at hand, groped for them and shoved tools into their clutch. He retained the hammer and chisel for himself.

"That's about all I need you for just now--for tool-racks," he growled.

"Make sure you don't drop those."

The upturned schooner rolled sluggishly, and every now and then the water swashed across her cabin with extra impetus, making footing insecure.

"If I tumble down I'll have to drop 'em," whimpered Oolph.

"Then don't come up. Drowning will be an easier death for you," declared the captain, menacingly. He was sounding the bulkhead with his hammer.

The tapping quickly showed him where the upright beams were located on the other side of the sheathing. In his own mind he was not as sanguine as his activity might have indicated. It was blind experiment--he could not estimate the obstacles which were ahead of him. But he did understand, well enough, that if they were to escape they must do so through the bottom of the vessel amids.h.i.+p; there, wallowing though she was, there might be some freeboard. He had seen vessels floating bottom up. Usually a section of the keel and a portion of the garboard streaks were in sight above the sea. But there could be no escape through the bottom of the craft above them where they stood in the cabin. He knew that the counter and b.u.t.tock must be well under water.

"Have you a full cargo belowdecks?" he asked.

"No," stated Captain Candage, hinting by his tone that he wondered what difference that would make to them in the straits in which they were placed.

Mayo felt a bit of fresh courage. He had been afraid that the _Polly's_ hold would be found to be stuffed full of lumber. His rising spirits prompted a little sarcasm.

"How did it ever happen that you didn't plug the trap you set for us?"

"Couldn't get but two-thirds cargo below because the lumber was sawed so long. Made it up by extra deck-lo'd."

"Yes, piled it all on deck so as to make her top-heavy--so as to be sure of catching us," suggested Mayo, beginning to work his hammer and chisel on the sheathing.

"'Tain't no such thing!" expostulated Captain Candage, missing the irony. "Them s.h.i.+ngles and laths is packet freight, and I couldn't put 'em below because I've got to deliver 'em this side of New York. And you don't expect me to overhaul a whole decklo'd so as to--"

"Not now," broke in Mayo. "The Atlantic Ocean has attended to the case of that deckload."

"My Gawd, yes!" mourned the master. "I was forgetting that we are upside down--and that shows what a state of mind I'm in!"