John Henry Goldfrap

“ Jukes was speeding uptown, wondering greatly how the young wireless operator happened to be in that part of the city at that hour of the night.
The next morning Jack awakened in his bed at the hospital with the impression that a boiler shop had taken up a temporary abode in his head. For a few minutes he thought he was in his bunk on the Ajax, then he shifted to the Venus and at last, as he blinkingly regarded the ceiling, memory came rushing back in a full flood.
The dark, deserted streets, the rough, brutal men, the mad run for life, and then a sudden crash and darkness. ”

“ It would be their duty to keep up the fires till the rising water put them out, and then—every man for himself!
Woo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo! boomed the siren.
“Ugh! You sound as cheerful as a funeral,” shuddered Jack; and, to divert his mind into a more cheerful channel, he fell to running the wireless scale, in the hope that he might find himself in tune with some other ship with fresh news of the white monsters of the northern polar cap.
But the white silences were broken by no winged messages; and so the afternoon waned to twilight, and night descended once more about the fog-bound ship. ”

“ The second officer and the carpenters were sounding the ship to discover if her wound were mortal or if she could make port somehow.
Somewhere off in the fog Jack could hear the swells breaking as if on a rocky coast. He knew they were beating against the iceberg that the ship had crashed against!
Jack looked up as the captain entered the wireless room. Never had he admired the man as he did in that instant. Pale, but stern and resolute, Captain Braceworth looked the man of the minute, a fit person to cope with the dire emergency that had befallen them. ”

“ The speed of the Ajax had been cut down till she could not have been making more than eight knots against the teeth of the wind.
The white-crested combers towered like mountains all about her. Nothing of the hull but the superstructures were visible, and the latter looked as if they had gone adrift,—with no hull under them,—in a smother of spume and green water. It was almost startling to look down from the rail outside his cabin and see nothing but water all about, as if the superstructure had been an island. ”

“ Won’t they open their eyes when they see who it is has come to their rescue!” he thought to himself. “Come to think of it, I must have been as rattled as the operator of the Halcyon or I’d have given the name of the ship.”
The smudge of smoke grew as they rowed and sailed toward it, till, from a mere discoloration of the blue horizon, it grew to be a flaring pillar of smoke.
“No ship ever burned coal at that rate,” decided Mr. Brown. “Yonder’s the blaze, men, and the old hooker is still on top, although it surprises me that she hasn’t gone down long ago.” ”

“ His father’s seafaring blood ran in his veins, and he could recall hearing both Captain Amos Ready and his Uncle Toby recounting to each other, over their pipes, tales of sea-rescues.
“Uncle Toby is right,” thought the boy, with a white-hot flush of indignation; “seamanship is dead nowadays. The men who go to sea in these steel tanks are without hearts.”
They rose on the top of another mountainous wave and Jack had his first good view of the forlorn wreck. She was evidently a sailing vessel, although of what rig could not be made out, for her masts were gone. ”

“ A huge wave had swept clear over the floundering hulk, and when it vanished one of the men in the stern had vanished, too.
“Oh! That’s terrible!” exclaimed Jack. “Why don’t we launch a boat?”
“No use sacrificing more lives,” said Raynor, with forced calmness, although he was white about the lips. “Braceworth knows what he’s doing, I reckon.”
“Yes, but to watch those poor fellows—it’s—it’s awful!”
Jack put his hands over his eyes to shut out, for an instant, the frantically waving arms of the men on the wreck. They were making desperate appeals. ”

“ If the village had been deserted, there was plenty of life—and life of a very doubtful sort—on the waterfront. Saloons blazed with light, and from within came discordant sounds of disorderly choruses and songs. These places were the haunt of ’longshoremen, stevedores and the lower class of sailors from the big liners, whose docks ranged northward in a majestic line.
Jack had no desire to go into one of these resorts, but he looked about in vain for some more respectable place in which to inquire. ”

“ The thoroughly cowed firemen took up their work and nothing more was heard of refusal to do duty. It had been a good object lesson to Jack who, in ranging himself by the side of Mr. Brown and the young engineer, had acted more on instinct than anything else.
Secretly he was glad it had ended as it had, without bloodshed, for, as he knew, discipline on a ship must be upheld at any cost. He realized that neither the captain nor Mr. Brown would have hesitated for an instant to hold the men back with firearms, had they persisted in their bull-headed rush. ”

“ Jack ran out of his cabin.
As he did so the old watchman came pattering along the steel decks and clambered up the ladder to the superstructure, where Jack was standing.
“What is the matter?” demanded the boy.
“The firemen!” panted the watchman, pointing to the dock.
“Well, what’s the reason of all this racket? Are they fighting?”
“Fighting! They are trying to kill each other!” puffed the old watchman in a scared voice.
The lad knew that the firemen of big steamers are about as hard a crowd as can be found anywhere; but it was unusual for them to be making such a racket so close to the ship. ”

“ Jukes wanted him to leave the sea, to drop his beloved wireless work and take a desk in his office! He was also to act, it seemed, as a sort of companion for Tom. It was a life of ease and offered a future which few boys would have had the courage to decline.
Jack knew that every round of the ladder he had elected to climb could only be won by stern fighting and keeping the faith like a man. ”

“ Jack’s reply was startling.
“They’re police dogs!”
“Police dogs?”
“That’s right. They have them in New York, too, and I remember reading in the paper that they were imported from Belgium.”
Shouts came from behind them.
They were in French, but the boys readily guessed their import. As if to emphasize their cries, the police, who believed not unnaturally that they were in pursuit of the miscreants who had disturbed the midnight peace, drew their revolvers.
Bullets spattered at the heels of the boys.
“We’ve got to stop,” panted Raynor.
“If we do, we may get shot,” gasped Jack. “Quick, in here.” ”

“ Before he could report his failure to the captain that dignitary was back again. He was fairly bubbling with impatience.
“It’s enough to drive a man mad,” he growled. “They must be a crew of lunatics on that ship. I never heard of anything like it. Oh, I’d like to drum some sense into their fool heads!”
“Hullo! Wait a jiffy!” cried Jack, startled out of his customary deference. “By the great horn spoon, here comes something now!”
The captain’s burly form bent over the slim body of the young operator as Jack’s nimble fingers flew over the receiving pad. ”

“ It was the one Raynor had taken from the foot-pad; but its discovery made things look black for the boys. The officer’s eyes narrowed. He looked at them with a sneer.
“So,” he said, holding up the pistol, “you two honest, law-abiding lads carry pistols abroad at night! This discovery alone, messieurs, proves that your story is a concoction from beginning to end. If you really come off a ship, you are samples of the sort of sailors we don’t want here.”
Jack tried in vain to be heard, but a wave of the hand enjoining silence and a crisp command to the subordinate police silenced him. ”

“ The Ajax slowly cruised around the floundering wreck under reduced speed, with oil spouting constantly from the standpipes. At last all about the hulk there was spread a sort of magic circle of smooth, oily water.
Jack looked on in an agony of impatience.
“Surely he’ll send a boat now,” he said to Raynor.
But the young engineer shook his head.
“Braceworth isn’t a skipper who holds with doing things in a hurry,” he said; “wait a while.”
“Surely it is smooth enough to launch a boat now,” pursued Jack. ”

“ AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. He found Captain Dennis installed in a pleasant, though small, flat in that section of New York known as Greenwich Village. It is a queer old quarter, full of once fashionable houses with dormer windows and white doorsteps, and some of them with shutters. Captain Dennis had been unable to find another ship, and was working for a ship chandler. But he bore up bravely under his misfortunes, and as for his daughter Jack thought that she was the most charming, enslaving bit of budding womanhood he had ever seen. ”

“ Jack felt his indignation surging up again as the commander, in a steady, measured voice, gave a lot of orders which, so far as Jack could hear, had to deal with pipes, pumps and something about the cargo. At all events, the boy caught the word “oil.”
“Well, if that isn’t the limit for hard-heartedness!” thought the lad to himself as he heard the calm, even tones. “What have a lot of monkey-wrench sailors like those fellows in the engineers’ department to do with saving lives, I’d like to know! If this was my dad’s ship, I’ll bet that he’d have a boat on the way to that wreck now.” ”

“ The captain, with bandages, instruments, antiseptics and so forth, sat by Raynor’s side, anxiously awaiting Jack’s first bulletin.
“Anything coming yet?” he asked more than once as Jack sat alert, waiting for the first word from the doctor who was to treat a surgical case across three hundred miles of ocean.
The silence was tense and taut, and broken only by the heavy breathing of the injured engineer.
“What is the man doing?” said the captain impatiently at length.
“It takes even shore doctors time to give a correct diagnosis in some cases, sir,” ventured Jack gravely. ”

“ It is one of the few places in Antwerp from which a clear view of the Cathedral can be obtained, mean-looking houses shouldering up to the great structure and spoiling it from other points of vision.
“Say, Jack,” exclaimed Raynor one evening as they walked rapidly shipward, “I’m getting tired of moldy old cathedrals and rusty old galleries full of Rubes,—beg pardon, I mean Rubens; can’t we do something more lively?” ”

“ Jack’s pay was not very large, nor was that of his chum, Raynor, but the two planned a trip one day on one of the canals. They boarded an odd-looking boat and for a very small sum they voyaged across the frontier into Holland with its quaintly dressed peasants, low, flat fields and general air of neatness.
It was drowsy work gliding along the canal at a rate of not more than six knots an hour. ”

“ American ships are largely manned by foreigners; but aboard the Ajax,—Captain Braceworth was particular in this respect,—the majority of the crew were American. Consequently, they needed no driving to do their duty when lives were at stake.
Jack, tugging at his oar, felt the strength of ten men. His whole being thrilled to the glory of the adventure. This was real seaman’s work. This was no job for a monkey-wrench sailor, but a man’s task, requiring strength, grit and nerve. ”

“ He made arrangements with the captain of that craft to transfer the castaways of the Ajax. This done, he informed the second officer, for the tired captain was taking a well-deserved rest, and then turned in himself.
Next morning the gale had blown itself out and the Ajax was pushing ahead at top speed to make up for lost time. Black smoke crowding out of her funnel showed that coal was not being spared in the furnace room. Everyone appeared to be in good spirits, and the late autumn sun shone down on a sparkling, dancing sea. ”

“ But Captain Dennis was wringing his hand as if he would shake it off.
“This is a great day for me, boy, even if my poor old ship does lie at the bottom of the Atlantic and Helen and I will have to start life all over again. Why, Captain Ready and I sailed together many a year, but I lost track of him and he of me. Where is he now?”
Jack sadly told him of his father’s death. Then there was only time for quick farewells and hand-shakings, for an officer came hurrying up to say that the boat was ready to transport the castaways to the Trojan. ”

“ When he finished, Tom Jukes sighed.
“Gracious! That’s interesting, though! I wish I had adventures like that. But they are doing their best to make a regular molly-coddle out of me. The yacht and Bar Harbor in the summer, Florida in the winter and a private tutor and a man-servant! It makes me sick!”
The lad shot out these last words with surprising vehemence. “I know a lot of fellows who’d change with you,” said Jack.
“You do! They must be sap-heads,” said the rich man’s son; and then suddenly, “How would you like to try the life for a time?” ”

“ What does a fine sailing ship want with a wireless? Take my word for it, Jack, wireless is only a newfangled idee, and it won’t last. Give a sailor sea-room and a good ship and all that fol-de-rol is only in his way.”
“And yet I saw the news of another rescue at sea by means of the wireless when I was looking at a newspaper bulletin-board to-day,” rejoined the lad. “The crew of a burning tramp steamer was rescued by a liner that had been summoned to their aid by the apparatus. ”

“ He hastened over to his officers and showed them the despatch. A lively consultation followed, which Jack wished he could have overheard. He would have liked to know what further steps could be taken to avert the dangers amid which they were crawling forward.
As a matter of fact, all that could be done had been done. Humanly speaking, the Ajax was as safe as she could be rendered in the midst of the invisible dangers that, like white specters, might be swarming about her even now. ”

“ Both my parents died when I was a kid, and except for a sister who lives way up New York state, I haven’t a relative in the world that I know of.”
“I am almost as badly off,” confessed Jack, and he went on to tell Raynor about his home life.
“What a jolly way to live,” cried the young engineer, “on a flower-garden schooner! That’s the greatest ever!”
“I didn’t think so all the time, I can assure you,” said Jack with a laugh, “but I guess the wireless I rigged up there made me think of this way of life.”
The ship was in the stream by this time and it was Raynor’s turn on watch. ”