Dan Merrithew Part 7

"What are your force pumps going for?" he asked.

"Well, it ain't fur to water no flowers," said Arthur, beckoning Dan to the shaft tunnel, where a foot and a half of frothy water was rolling to and fro, slus.h.i.+ng against the stuffing box, laving the engine-room bulkhead.

Leaking! Dan's first impulse was to drop his hands then and there and let the yacht sink or do what she would for all he cared. He had fought out his fight with a better craft than this and had lost her.

He did not yield to this; in truth, before he could think of yielding there came a second impulse--to relieve his mind of several hundred acc.u.mulated metaphors, to which inclination he surrendered unconditionally, while Arthur, in the face of the verbal torrent, gazed at the source in humble admiration.

"How--how much is she taking in?" the young man finally gasped.

"About thirty strokes a minute. I'd 'a' whistled up the tube about it before, only I thought you had enough to fill your mind."

"How does it strike you?" asked Dan.

"It's gained only six inches in the past hour. I will say that much.

But if you ask me my honest opinion, I'd say this rotten old pleasure hull is a-gettin' ready to open up and spread out like a--like a--balloon with the epizootic."

"All right, when she begins, come on up with your men without asking leave. Report every half-hour. I'll be on the bridge, of course. If I can pick up a steams.h.i.+p I'll call her and desert s.h.i.+p; if not--well, we're somewhere outside the Winter Quarter light-s.h.i.+p. I'll need about five hours of the speed we're making to pick up the light vessel and beach the yacht in the lee of a.s.sateague; maybe not quite five hours, I can't say exactly."

"I think we can keep ahead of the water we're makin' that long,"

replied Arthur, cheerfully.

As Dan regained the bridge, the bad news he had received below was slightly compensated for by the fact that the storm seemed to be taking a new kink, swirling away to sea. The gray combers, however, were still disagreeably to be reckoned with. The second officer had by this time pulled himself together, and as he reported to Dan, the young Captain was happy to feel that he had at least a lieutenant who could be counted on. Now if Mulhatton were only with him--but "Mul" was below, flat on his back, suffering technically from submersion, and so were the other men of the _Fledgling_ who had been pulled aboard the yacht.

At ten o'clock Arthur reported that the water had gained another six inches.

As Dan snapped back the tube a burst of laughter from the saloon reached his ears. Seasickness, fear, everything evil had been forgotten in the spirit of confidence and a.s.surance of ultimate safety which Dan's skill and personality had infused throughout the wallowing craft. He shrugged his shoulders, staring vacantly into the angry sea.

At length his eyes turned to the distress signals he had ordered hoisted; and suddenly the gulf between his lot in life and theirs, which the merriment suggested, disappeared, and his emotions thereby aroused,--emotions not untinged with self-pity, changed to deepest sympathy for those light-hearted ones who might soon be plunged into that gloom which heralds death. Grim, silent, he turned to his work, determined that so far as in him lay no shadow of death should invest a single one of those persons who must find so much in life to make it worth while. Another hour pa.s.sed while the yacht stumbled her clumsy course to safety. Arthur reported another half-foot; in all three feet six inches of water swis.h.i.+ng against the engine-room bulkhead.

"It will keep seepin' through," he said, "and wop! Suddenly the whole bulkhead'll go."

"Don't get caught," replied Dan. "Give us three more hours, chief.

Oh, I say, there's not a drop getting into the fire room yet? Thank G.o.d for that!"

"For what?"

He faced about quickly and looked into the eyes of Virginia Howland.

She was pale, but her face was brave. "I had just come out on deck,"

she said, "because somehow I was getting nervous--I wanted to be--to be near the Captain." She smiled. "I heard you talking through the speaking-tube; I didn't mean to listen--pardon me; I couldn't help it.

We're in danger, then, are we? Don't hesitate to answer truthfully, Captain Merrithew."

"Why," replied Dan, "we--steady there, Mr. Terry; you men at the wheel attend to your business. Excuse me," turning to the girl, "danger--why, we've been in danger all the time; else I wouldn't be up here."

"You are evading," said the girl, slowly. "But perhaps you are right.

I can say I trust you, Captain--we all do. I want to tell you again how we all appreciate your--what you have done--putting the yacht straight and--"

"I am doing it for myself as much as for you. More, perhaps; who knows?"

The girl gazed intently at his square-cut, bronzed face. Then she looked straight into his steel-gray eyes, peering hard ahead from under the flat peak of a cap he had picked up on the bridge.

"Yes," she said, as though speaking to herself, "I think I know." Then she started with an involuntary gesture.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Captain Merrithew? Yes, yes, I have. Where could it have been? Do you recall?"

"Yes," was the simple reply. "I recall. It was about two years ago, at Norfolk, when you were at the coal docks on this yacht."

Virginia flushed eagerly and was about to say something, when some flas.h.i.+ng thought, perhaps a realizing sense of their relative positions, closed her lips. "I remember very clearly now." She spoke quietly, then she closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them they were stern and hard.

"Captain Merrithew," she said, as though to hasten from the subject, "I know we are in danger. Your silence has said as much. Yet the yacht seems to be going finely--"

Dan made no reply.

"Do you think I am a coward? Is that the reason you are silent?"

Dan made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.

"Well, Miss Howland, if you are not a coward, if you can keep what you know to yourself, listen: We're taking in a little water. It's a race between the yacht and the leak; the yacht ought to win out. Now you know as much as I do."

"I am not frightened; my curiosity is natural. Is there a chance that the yacht may not get where you are taking her?"

"To the a.s.sateague beach--no, I don't think there is--if all goes well."

"If all goes well! Then there is a chance--a chance we may--"

"Oh, we'll be all right." Dan was temperamentally straightforward and honest, and his a.s.sertions were uttered with a tentative inflection which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses of the girl.

She stepped closer to Dan.

"May I say something? We are in danger. I have been thinking of things since you came aboard--since I have been sitting in the saloon with the men who are different--"

Dan could see that the girl, always evidently one of dominant emotions, was overwrought, and something told him she had no business to express the thoughts which filled her mind, that she would be sorry later that she had spoken. He had interrupted her by a gesture. Now his voice came cool and even.

"Miss Howland, don't. I've got to take care of this yacht."

A quick sense of just what he meant shot through the girl's mind. She raised her eyes and looked at him straight. They were blazing, not altogether with anger. She trembled; she flushed and moved uncertainly. Then, without a word, she turned and left him.

"A half-foot more water in the last half-hour," reported Arthur.

As Dan turned to Terry, that officer silently pointed to the northward, where a tall column of black smoke seemed to rise from the waters. A steams.h.i.+p! Yes, but was it coming toward them? Was it going away? Or would it pa.s.s them far out to sea? For fifteen minutes he watched it through his binoculars, and then he glanced down to the deck and called to a sailor to send Mr. Howland to the bridge.

"Mr. Howland," said Dan, as the owner approached him, "I suppose Miss Howland has told you our fix."

"Yes, but she has told no one else."

"Bully for her!" exclaimed Dan.

"She said you were hopeful."

"More so now than ever before, I was making for the beach, but now--there's a steams.h.i.+p coming down on us. I wasn't sure at first, I am now. That smoke out there is heading dead for us. I am going to slow the boat down to steerage way and wait for her to come up. It's better than trying to make for a.s.sateague; it's better to wait."