The Grey Lady Part 35

Still there was no breath of wind. The darkness was less intense.

A yellow glow seemed to be behind the cloud.

Then a strange feeling of being drawn upward came to all, and strong men gasped for breath. It was only for a moment. But the sensation was that the air was being sucked up to the sky, leaving a vacuum on the face of the waters.

Suddenly the captain's voice startled the night, rising trumpet-like above the hiss of the steam.

"Stand BY!" he cried.

Luke looked down to the lower bridge.

"You had better hold on to something," he called, and as he spoke the hurricane struck the Croonah. It can only be described as a pus.h.i.+ng smack. She rolled slowly over before it, and it seemed that she would never stop.

CHAPTER VIII. A GREAT FIGHT.

Who knows? The man is proven by the hour.

The sea seemed to rise up and fall on the disabled s.h.i.+p with a wild fury. There was a strange suggestion of pa.s.sion in every wave as it crashed over the bulwarks. In the roar of the hurricane there was a faint sound of crackling wood. The deck was at an angle of thirty.

The port boats on their davits were invisible; they were under water. If the Croonah righted quickly those boats would break up like old baskets.

The two men on the lower bridge stood on the uprights of the rail, leaning against the deck as against a wall. The crackling sound like breaking matchwood seemed to come from above. Carr looked up and saw the captain and Luke at the wheel. The wheelhouse had collapsed like a card house; it had simply been blown away, and one of the helmsmen with it. The other was lying huddled up at the lower end of the narrow bridge.

For a moment the darkness lifted and the survivors saw a weird sight. One of the starboard boats, attached to the davit by only one fall, was held by the wind like a flag straight out over the deck. Already two men were clambering to the upper bridge to take the place of the helmsmen who were dead. Relieved from the wheel, Luke dragged himself up to the ladder leading from the upper to the lower deck. A few moments later they saw him cutting with a hatchet at the ropes holding the boat to the davit. There were four, for it was a heavy boat, held by a double block. He cut two at a stroke: the others ran out instantly. The boat disappeared to leeward like a runaway hat, and fell with a splash into the foaming sea.

The Croonah seemed to feel the relief. She rose a little to windward, but her lee-rail was still under water. Down in the scuppers, in the tangle of ropes and splintered wood, sundry dark forms, looking more like bundles of dirty rags than anything else, rolled and tossed helplessly. These were dead and drowning men.

Already the European sailors were at work, some cutting away useless top-hamper, others attempting to drag the terror-stricken Malays to a place of comparative safety. Luke FitzHenry took command of these men, as was his duty, working like one of them, with infinite daring. He could only communicate with his captain by signs, speech being impossible. It was a seaman's fight. Each man did that which seemed to him expedient for the safety of the s.h.i.+p. The Croonah was fully equipped for fine weather--for cleaning bra.s.ses and swabbing decks and bending awnings; but for bad weather--notably for a cyclone--she was perilously undermanned. Half of the native crew were paralysed by fear, many were killed, others drowned from a mere incapacity to hold on.

The other officers of the s.h.i.+p had their hands more than full. The doctor was below in the saloon surrounded by a babel of shrieking women and white-faced men; the engineers were on watch at their deadly posts in the heart of the s.h.i.+p.

Carr turned and clambered down the iron ladder to the upper deck.

He was half a sailor and quite an Englishman. Moreover he came from Harrow, where they teach a certain bull-dog courage.

Luke, working half blinded by spray and salt water, presently found a strong man working at his side. Together they cut away the submerged boats, standing to their waists in water, at infinite peril of their lives; together they made their way forward to help the chief officer and his devoted gang, who were cutting away the foremast and the wreckage of forward boats.

Through the long hours of the night these dauntless men worked unceasingly, and--incongruous practical details--the stewards brought them food at stated intervals, while two men served out spirits all the while. Slowly, inch by inch, they righted the s.h.i.+p, bringing her stubborn prow gradually into the wind; and all the while the engines throbbed, all the while the grimy stokers shovelled coal into the furnaces, all the while the engineers stood and watched their engines.

Dawn broke on a terrific sea and a falling wind. The night was over and the dread Bay had had her thousand lives and more, for a cyclone simply wipes out the native craft like writing on a slate. The Croonah had been right through the corner of the worst cyclone of a generation. Luke crawled back to the bridge where the captain stood, as he had stood all night, motionless. Sheer skill and a great experience had pulled the Croonah through.

When the danger was past those who were on deck saw a man in s.h.i.+rt and trousers only, his grey hair ruffled, his clothes glued to his limbs by perspiration, emerge from the bowels of the s.h.i.+p. He came on deck, pa.s.sed by those who scarce knew him without his gold braid, and slowly climbed the ladder to the bridge. There, in the early morning light, the two men who had saved three hundred lives--the captain and the chief engineer--silently shook hands.

"I had to keep you down there for the safety of the s.h.i.+p," said the captain gruffly.

"All right, old man, I knew that."

The old engineer turned and looked fore and aft over the wrecked decks with a curious smile as if he had come back from another world.

While they stood there the saloon doors were opened and a haggard row of faces peered out. A quarter-master held the pa.s.sengers back, for the decks were unsafe. Railings and bulwarks were gone, boats smashed, awning stanchions twisted and bent. No landsmen could be trusted to move safely amid such confusion.

And all the while the engines throbbed, and the Croonah held proudly on her course to the north--battered, torn, and sore stricken, yet a victor.

After changing their clothes, Luke and Carr breakfasted together at the after-end of the second officer's table in the saloon. With a certain humour the captain allowed of no relaxation in the discipline of the s.h.i.+p. The breakfast bell was rung at the usual time, the meal was served with the usual profusion, even the menus were written as carefully as ever; and some good ladies opined that the captain must be a G.o.dless man, because forsooth he did not cringe beneath the wing of the pa.s.sing Angel of Death.

"I am glad I saw that," said Carr, neat and clean, hearty and smiling as usual.

Luke looked up from a generous plate. He thought that Carr was indulging in bravado, but he relinquished this opinion when he saw the man's face and his helping of bacon and eggs. Carr seemed to have enjoyed the cyclone, as he had no doubt enjoyed many a game of football in his youth, and many a spin across country later. For this man kept his hunters. He was moved thereto by that form of self-respect which urges some men to live like gentlemen, to, as they express it, "do themselves well," whether their mere monetary circ.u.mstances allow of it or no; and some one usually pays for these philosophers--that is the annoying part of it.

"By gad! I didn't think it could blow like that, though!" Carr went on, with his mouth full.

"I don't think it can often," replied Luke. He could not help liking this man, despite his first prejudice against him. Besides, they had stood shoulder to shoulder, with death around them, and such moments draw differing men together. It is the required touch of Nature, this same death, which frightens us before it comes and seems so gentle when it is here.

"I always wanted to see a cyclone," went on Carr conversationally, "and now I'm satisfied. I have had enough. I shouldn't have cared for more. Pa.s.s, cyclones!"

"It is not many men who have your laudable thirst for experience,"

said Luke. "It is rather a strenuous form of pleasure."

"Pleasure!" answered Carr, with one of his sharp glances.

"Pleasure, be d--d! It's business, sir, business. I mean to make money out of cyclones."

"How? Bottle them up and make them turn a windmill?"

"No, sir."

Carr turned round to make sure that he could not be overheard.

"No, sir. Your idea is not bad in the main, though hardly practicable. No. I know a dodge worth two of that! I told you before that I am in the marine insurance line. Now, the funny part of the marine insurance line is that the majority of the men engaged in it do not know their business. Now I propose to teach these gentlemen their business."

"Will they thank you for it?" asked Luke.

"They'll pay me for it, which is better, by a long chalk! Ha, ha!

b.u.t.ter, please."

"And what have cyclones got to do with it?"

Again one of the sharp glances which sat so strangely on Carr's open countenance.

"I understand there is a science of cyclones," he said quietly.

"Yes."

"Which means that you chaps knew what was coming forty-eight hours ago?"

"Yes," replied Luke.

"That that steamer flying signals yesterday was talking to you about it?"

"Yes."