Lawrence Perry

“ Dan placed his hand on her arm.
"Get down here, then, under the lee of this cabin. We are not going to die. At least not yet a while."
So the storm came. With his patch of sail Dan had headed the craft up into the wind; and thus, with the boat already beginning to rise and fall, with the broad bow groaning, and oozing ends of planking, and dirty water, and the deck, contracting and expanding like the belly of a stricken whale, he settled down to the long fight. ”

“ The Long Island coast lay to port, a narrow band of ochre, and all about lay the heaving gray of mighty waters, in which the Fledgling was a black speck.
Dan's hat was off and his red-gold hair was flying wild; his teeth were bared. He was always thus in a fight. This was one; a dandy—a clinker! He gave the wheel another spoke and the Fledgling slued across a sea and smashed down hard. From below came a sliding rattle, a great crash of crockery, and then a series of imprecations. The next instant Arthur M'Gill, the steward, dashed up the companionway and burst into the pilot-house. ”

“ As Captain Ephraim crouched for the leap, the sough of the rotten hull, working and heaving like the carcass of a shark, was bursting out in a score of places and the lumber deck-load rose and fell and quivered and flailed huge planks into the waves. The end was near. Dan shouted the skipper to hurry. Ephraim obeyed, and had fought his way through the caldron to the boat and was dragged aboard, when suddenly, with a great straining sigh, the hull of the wreck parted amidships, both ends sinking in the waters. A comber rushed in between, swelling and hissing. ”

“ Howland and his party stumbled out of the saloon with blanched faces and parted lips, but quietly.
"Women to the rail!" The cry echoed out over the sea,—over the sea, which has heard these chivalrous words so often.
"Women first—women to the rail!" Dan's cry was taken up by the officers. Silent figures in trailing garments moved as they were bid.
From the port quarter a gruff voice sounded.
"Ready, men—ease away." Came the creak of tackle, the thud of iron upon steel—then a silence—then a rattle of oars in thole-pins—then a clear hail from the darkness: "All's well, Captain Merrithew!" ”

“ Half crouching, half kneeling, his eyes were fastened upon the vague deck ahead. Now, as though the elements had worked to give him sight, the black sky was suddenly seared by a long, lurid line of lightning. It was but the fraction of a second; it was long enough. In that blue glow the derelict took form, grim, ghostly, heaving, as a spirit picture might be thrown upon a black cloth, every detail limned in filmy perfection.
With a cry Dan leaped to his feet and seized an axe lying by his side.
"We are not breaking," he shouted. "The mast has torn out of its step and is pounding us. ”

“ Half an hour later, Dan, in warm clothes, sat upon the pitching deck of the yacht, at the doorway of the saloon.
The Fledgling gone and Welch and Crampton—that was all he could think of as he sat gazing into the gray of the waters, which in closing over the black tragedy immediately presented a surface as free from all evidence of guilt as the placid surface of a mill-pond. He had made himself in the Fledgling,—had rounded to the measure of a man aboard of her,—had grown in the plenitude of man's strength and will and courage and success. He felt the loss of his tug ”

“ He well knew that impulses which might move a woman in the arms of a man, no matter who, battling for her life, might be for the moment only and lead to nothing but regret and alarm afterwards. How could it be otherwise with Virginia Howland? The girl, as though she had not heard him, as though she had forgotten the emotions which had swayed her, closed her eyes wearily and turned her face away.
The ship was yawing again. Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, licking above Dan's red-gold hair and his back, but never touching the girl. Then the swing of the vessel and the wind again ”

“ He and his tug were there that they might live. There were women aboard; he had seen their white faces gazing imploringly at him through the cabin portholes—bright, beautiful lives—and men in the glorious prime of their youth. His heart went out to them, and as Mr. Howland laid aside his megaphone the problem was clear. He waved his megaphone in assent and then, levelling it at the yacht, he cried:
"All right. Float a hawser down to us; you are pitching too wild-eyed to come within heaving-line distance." Passing the pilot-house on his way below, he nodded and smiled at the men inside. ”

“ With a hiss and a crunch the bow swung in square to the watery thunderbolts and the stanch craft, survivor of a hundred perils, a ten-foot section of her port rail gone, a great dent in the steel deck-house forward, began to climb over the water hills with much of her usual precision—down on her side, clear to the bottom of a hollow, then settling on an even keel with a jerk, climbing the slaty incline, stiff as a church, then down, down, half on her side again, then up once more. ”

“ One beautiful April morning, a company, wonderfully well selected according to the view-point of Virginia and her aunt, boarded the Tampico and merrily set sail. Not the least of that company was Howland himself, who, standing upon the bridge beside Dan, smiled as he thought of the dozen Hotchkiss guns and the two very grim eight-inch rifles resting in the darkness of the forward hold, and then spoke almost in parables.
"It is always well, Captain, to divine the trend of the wind before weather vanes give information to all who care to look for it." ”

“ He walked slowly out of the house and turned into South Street. In the life of this quaint thoroughfare he had cast his lot, and here he spent his leisure hours; not that he had ever found the place or the men he met there especially congenial. But they were the men he knew, the men he worked with or worked against; and any young fellow who is lonely in a big city and placed as Dan was is just as liable, until he has found himself and located his rut in life, to mingle with persons as strange, with natures as alien, and to frequent places which in later years fill him with repulsive memories. ”

“ Sometimes they caught the dull gray flash of breaking waters, but more often everything was hidden. The roar of the wind and wave was incessant.
Dan's efforts to keep the derelict's head to the seas had failed. The hulk had slued around and was driving before the tempest, whither he did not know. Groaning, crashing, crackling, the hulk lumbered on. Once a wave leaped over the stern, stunning them with its thunderous impact, dragging at them powerfully, as though to draw them back into the sea whence it came. ”

“ Just for an instant Dan and the mate peered at the yacht to see if the lines had carried, an instant of which the wily sea took full advantage. An oily wave reared the bow of the yacht while the swell of its predecessor slued the Fledgling in and around and upward, so that the two craft reared, side by side, bows up and not more than five feet apart. A scream fluttered from the bridge; men's voices raised in curses at the clumsy yacht were borne from the pilot-house. Dan, however, had not time for words; he stood with hands on the wheel watching the red, reeking bow rearing almost in his face ”

“ Lashed in the foremast were two men; and in the mainmast were Captain Ephraim Sayles and three more of his crew. At first glance they seemed lifeless; at first glance, indeed, they seemed nothing more than faded lengths of canvas. But an occasional lifting of a hand, a flash of a gray face, showed that they were men and that they still lived and hoped. Under them, over the deck raced the breakers, waist deep, each one a swift, excited trip-hammer. It was only the lumber that was holding the aged hull together. ”

“ As the girl was speaking she turned her eyes to the water rushing past the hull, just as a dull, wallowing shape flashed by the bow, assuming form right under her eyes—a dark, soughing, coughing derelict, moving in the waves spinelessly, like a serpent; black, slimy, repulsive, with broken, hemp-littered masts and rusty chains clanking over the bow.
"Oh!" Virginia jumped back with a startled cry and looked fearfully at her companion. He was smiling, and intuitively she recognized that it was not a smile of amusement, but of sympathy, reassurance. ”

“ It was a glancing blow just above the water line; it punched a great, jagged hole and gouged out the paint clear to the stern. Dan drew a long breath and murmured in a half-sick voice, "They might as well kill a man as scare him to death," while Captain Barney's face made a gray streak in the darkness.
The Quinn was now past the point of Sandy Hook and was skirting the shore. The muffled beat of the breakers could be heard through the gloom, which was riven every second by the great, swinging search-light in the Navesink. ”

“ The next minute Dan, in all the delight of the struggle, was making his way along the lower deck to the engine-room door. The water was racing past the rail like a wet blur and the deck sloshed ankle deep. High up a wave climbed the Fledgling, and as she paused on the top for a downward glide, Dan hastily opened the door and clambered down the iron ladder.
"Well, Sam, how are they working?" he shouted to Crampton, the chief, bending over a fizzing valve bonnet. ”

“ The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering. Dan yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam. A broad tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a puff of red fire which floated away in the wind. A cargo port door warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters ”

“ She—not Virginia Howland now—just She—turned toward the man who crouched with one hand still clutching the wheel, the other lying loosely, palm downward upon the deck. Her face was filled with the glow of returning blood, her hair streamed, her eyes shone.
Gone, the tempest. The waves were lashing, surly, hissing a monotone as old as Time is old. The darkness was the gloom of an age before the sun was born. ”

“ They fought as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead, following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless, their streaked, sweating bodies gleamed dull and ghastly.
One of them straightened from the nozzle and glared at his side partner; and Dan, whose eyes were everywhere, saw him and moved close to him, where his fist could do best work if necessary. ”

“ And Dan, his teeth bared and coated with blood from anger-bitten lips, gave the wheel to Mulhatton, ran from the pilot-house, and shook his fist at the big wrecking tug.
"Why don't you take care of her then, curse you! Why don't you take care of her? Don't you see there are lives to save? Oh, you cowardly beasts!"
"Nothin' doin' till the sea goes down," came the reply, and Dan sobbed aloud in his rage as he entered the pilot-house, where most of the crew were gathered, peering out of the windows at the tragedy across the waters.
The men in the rigging could be seen plainly now. ”

“ I used to see it sometimes at the table on the Tampico when Reggie was boasting, and—and sometimes when I was trying to be very brilliant. Do you know, sometimes I felt like boxing your ears, you seemed so superior."
"It was not superiority in your case," laughed Dan, "it was appreciation."
"Thank you," said Virginia; "and now?"
"Oh," smiled Dan, "the thought of fudge on a derelict was and is responsible for this twinkle."
"I don't care," she frowned. "It is the person that rises superior to conditions who triumphs in this world. ”

“ Admiral Congosto had no sooner raised his glass for the first toast than the two iron bulkhead doors slid together with a clang, followed by the rasp of bolts flying home. The Admiral of the fleet and his lords commanders were hopelessly imprisoned amid the luxury of saloon surroundings, as hopelessly imprisoned as though they had been shut into the darkness of the lower hold.
In the meantime, the Tampico, from hold to masthead, was blazing like a tall Sound steamboat. ”