He looked out over the sparkling sea. It was hard to believe that itmight have witnessed a marine tragedy within the last few hours.
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE MATE’S YARN.
Mr. Brown was soliloquizing.
“Nothing so bad as fire at sea,” said he. “Take any typical case. Theold man thinks he can fight it down and so do most of his crew. And sothey let it run on till it’s too late, and then it’s all off.
“I was on a coal ship once, Frisco to Hong-kong. Fire started in thebunkers in mid-Pacific. We passed two or three ships while it was stillsmoldering and you could smell the coal gas a mile away.
“Think the old man would call for help? Not much. If he did, his ownerswould have jumped him for costing them salvage money! That’s anotherreason so many ships sink and are burned,” he added in parenthesis.
“Well, sir, that old fire went from bad to worse. The crew had to berthaft and the decks,—she was a steel ship,—began to get so hot that youhad to walk pussy-footed on ’em. But still the old man wouldn’t quit.
“‘If we only get a wind,’ he says, ‘I’ll bring her into port even if shebusts up when we tie to the dock.’
“‘If you get a wind,’ says I, ‘you won’t have to wait fer that. She’llgo skyrocketing without any by your leave or thank you.’
“‘Pshaw, Brown, you’re nervous!’ says he.
“‘Of course I am,’ says I; ‘who wouldn’t be, going to sea with abloomin’ stove full of red-hot coals under their boots, instead of agood wholesome ship? Keel-haul me if ever I sail again with coal,’ saysI.
“Things goes along this way for about two weeks, and then comes thegrand bust-up. We couldn’t eat, we couldn’t sleep, we could hardlybreathe.
“‘Get out the boats,’ says the old man at last, as if he’d made up hismind that it was really time to get away.
“Well, sir, to see the way those bullies jumped for the boats you’d havethought there was pocket money in every one of ’em, or a prize put up bythe old man to see who’d be overboard first.
“We got away, all right, the skipper last, of course. But he had to gobelow to save his pet parrot. He’d just about reached the deck,when—confusion!—up she goes.
“The whole blows up sky high and the skipper with it. One of the mensaid he had stopped to light his pipe, and the flame of the matchtouched off all that gas. But I dunno just how that might be. Anyhow,for quite a while we could see that old skipper sailing up toheaven,—’twas the only way he’d ever get there, I heard one of the mensay. Then down he comes, kerplunk!
“It was a hard job for us in the boat to reckernize him. You see, he’dhad a fine, full beard when he went up, but he come down clean shaved!And the parrot,—well, sir, that parrot looked like a ship without arudder. Its gum-gasted tail had followed the skipper’s whiskers intooblivion,—as Shakespeare says. Well, we got him into the boat, and twodays after we were picked up, but neither the skipper nor the parrotwere ever the same man or the same bird again.”
At the conclusion of this touching narrative, Jack saw fit to put aquestion.
“By the way, what was the name of that ship, Mr. Brown?” he askedmischievously.
“The name?” asked Mr. Brown, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Yes, I’d like to look that craft up.”
“Well, sir, I’ll not deceive you,” said Mr. Brown. “Her name was the_Whatawhopper_. It’s an Injun name, they tell me, but gracious, I don’tknow anything about those matters! We had on board, besides the coal, acargo of beans,—took ’em on at Boston,—but they got wet and swelled andwe thought——”
But this was too much even for Jack.
“Mr. Brown, you’ve missed your vocation,” he said.
“How’s that?” inquired the mate with a serious face.
“You should have been a novelist,” laughed Jack. “With your imagination,you’d have made a fortune.”
“Well, I’ll never make one at sea, that’s one sure thing,” said Mr.Brown, with a conviction born of experience.
The crew managed the boat silently. They were cheered by Mr. Brown’sextensive vocabulary and picturesque speech, and stuck to their dutieslike real seamen.
As time passed, however, and there was not a sign of boats on the sea,and the sparkling water danced emptily under the burning sun, some ofthe crew become restive.
“Aw, you cawn’t moike me believe there’s a bloomin’ thing in this ballywireless,” muttered a British sailor. “It’s awl a bloomin’ bit of spoof,that’s what it is, moites. We moight as well go a choising the ghost ofAdmiral Nelson as be chivvying arter this old crawft.”
His attitude toward wireless was typical of that of most sailors, and itmay be added—some landsmen!
Their intelligence appears to balk at grasping the idea of an electricwave being volleyed through space, although they accept hearing andeyesight,—dependent, both of them, on sound and sight waves,—as aneveryday fact.
Jack felt like giving a little lecture on wireless right then and there.It nettled him to think that the wonderful invention which has done somuch to render sea-travel safe, accounts of which appear in the columnsof the newspapers every day, should be belittled by the very men whoowed so much to it.
“But what’s the use,” thought he. “It would only be wasted breath. Butif everyone could know it as I do, the world would be full of wirelessenthusiasts; and then what a job we’d have picking up messages!”
But as they sailed on and no sign of any boats appeared, even Jack’sfaith began to waver.
Could the message have been a hoax?
Such things, incredible as they may seem, have been known. The sailorsbegan to look at him derisively.
“I guess that kid dreamed that stuff about the bird cage aloft,”muttered one. “It stands to reason there ain’t no way of sendingmessages without wires. You might as well try to eat food without athing on yer plate!”
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
IN SIGHT OF SMOKE.
“I suppose I ought to take that view of the situation, too,” said Mr.Brown to Jack, “but somehow I don’t want to give this thing up yet.”
“But surely we should have seen some trace of the ship by this time,”objected Jack, who was beginning to get a little skeptical himself.
The blue line of the horizon was without a speck to mar its emptyspaciousness.
Mr. Brown had recourse to the glasses, which he had used frequentlysince they had set out. But the powerful binoculars failed to discloseany object the naked eye might not have discovered.
“If there really has been a fire on that yacht and the boats aredrifting about, it may prove an even more serious matter than weimagine,” said the officer at length.
“You mean they may be lost?” asked Jack.
“Just that,” was the reply. “If the boats should drift beyond theregular established routes and steamer lanes, it might be weeks and evenmonths before they are found.”
“Then the ocean beyond the regular routes is empty of life?” asked Jack.
“I wouldn’t say that exactly, but the Atlantic is covered with regularsailing routes just as a country is mapped out with railroads. Themaster of a ship usually makes no deviation from those routes; although,of course, in the case of some ships, they are sometimes compelled to.”
They sailed on for some little time further and the officer was on thepoint of giving up the search, when he once more resorted to thebinoculars.
He stood up and swept the sky line earnestly for some sign of what theysought.
“There’s nothing visible,” he was beginning, when suddenly he broke offand uttered a sharp exclamation:
“Jove! There’s something on the horizon. Looks like a tiny s
mudge on awhite wall, but it may be a steamer’s smoke!”
“If it is, it may be some other ship that has come to their rescue,”suggested Jack.
Mr. Brown gave orders to the men to give way with increased power. Thebreeze had dropped and the use of the oars was once more necessary.
“Should it be a steamer’s smoke, she may have rescued them,” observedthe officer; “if not, it may be the burning craft still floating.”
“Lay into it, bullies,” he added a moment later. “Let her have it!That’s the stuff!”
Jack’s excitement ran high. Putting aside the adventurous nature oftheir errand, the owner of the Titan Line from whom he had parted undersuch unpleasant circumstances in the Greenwich Hospital, was aboard, andhis friend,—for so he called him, despite their brief acquaintance,—TomJukes, might be there, too.
“My! Won’t they open their eyes when they see who it is has come totheir rescue!” he thought to himself. “Come to think of it, I must havebeen as rattled as the operator of the _Halcyon_ or I’d have given thename of the ship.”
The smudge of smoke grew as they rowed and sailed toward it, till, froma mere discoloration of the blue horizon, it grew to be a flaring pillarof smoke.
“No ship ever burned coal at that rate,” decided Mr. Brown. “Yonder’sthe blaze, men, and the old hooker is still on top, although itsurprises me that she hasn’t gone down long ago.”
While they all gazed, suspending their rowing for a moment in thefascination of the spectacle, Jack uttered a shout:
“Look!” he cried, “look!”
Something appeared to heave upward from the surface of the sea. Thesmoke spread out as if it had suddenly been converted into an immensefan of vapor, and the air was filled with black fragments.
Then the smoke slowly drifted away and the ocean was empty once more.
“Well, that’s good-night for her,” said Mr. Brown. “Ready, that operatorcertainly had a right to have a case of rattles.”
Jack did not answer. He was thinking of the wonder of the wireless, andhow by its agency the news of the disaster that had overtaken the_Halcyon_ had been flashed to the rescue party.
“She just blew up with one big puff and melted away,” he said presently.
“Yes, I’ll bet there isn’t a stick or timber of her left,” said Mr.Brown.
“Was she a fine boat?”
“A beauty.”
“Ever see her?”
“Yes, once in New York harbor. The old man was coming back from a cruiseto the Azores. That’s a favorite stamping ground of his, by the way.There’s nothing cheap about J. J. when he comes to gratifying his ownwhimsies, and the _Halcyon_ was one of them. Mahogany, velvet, mirrors,and I don’t know what all,—but never mind that now. We ought to besighting some of the boats.”
The men rowed like furies now. Even the most skeptical had becomeconvinced that, after all, there was something in wireless.
It was almost sunset when Mr. Brown tapped Jack’s shoulder after he hadtaken a long look through the binoculars.
“There’s something in sight off there,” said he; “take a look, if youlike.”
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
ADRIFT ON A LIFE RAFT.
“I can’t quite make it out,” said Jack, as he returned the glasses. “Isit a boat?”
“Looks like it. I’m sure I saw men on board it.”
“Let’s take another look.”
Jack picked up the binoculars once more and gazed through them long andearnestly.
“It looks like a white dot,” he said, “and—yes, there are men on it!They’ve seen us! They’re waving!”
“Give me the glasses, boy,” said Mr. Brown, trying hard to repress hisexcitement.
The little officer stood up and focused the powerful binoculars on theobject that had aroused their attention.
“It’s not a boat,” he pronounced at length.
“Not a boat? Then what is it?” asked Jack, puzzled.
“It’s a life raft, one of those patent affairs. I can see men paddlingit with bits of wood. S’pose they had no time to get oars.”
The crew bent to their work with renewed fervor. They knew that not faroff from them there must be suffering and misery in its keenest form.
Mr. Brown did not need to urge them now, although he kept hopping aboutand shouting his favorite:
“Give it to her, my bullies!”
As they approached the raft, they could see that it was crowded almostto the water line with a wretched, forlorn-looking assemblage ofhumanity.
It was clear that the yacht must have been left in the most desperatehaste.
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“Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully, “Don’tworry; we’ll soon get you!”—_Page 293_]
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The clothes of the castaways were burned and their faces blistered andsmudged. They must have fought the fire desperately till the lastmoment, when they found further effort useless.
“Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully. “Don’t worry; we’ll soonget you!”
“We can wait a while longer,” came back a cheery voice.
It proceeded from a stout, good-natured looking man whose clothes wereperhaps a trifle more disreputable than any of the others.
“I’m Wireless Willie,” he cheerfully explained, as he climbed on board.“This is a fine note, isn’t it? I’ve lost everything and came prettynear losing my mind. Do you blame me? She caught fire forward,and—Pouf!—up she went like kindling wood.”
The others clambered on board, one after another, and last came twoseamen, who dragged a ragged, limp, smoke-blackened form from the raftand handed it to the mate in the boat.
For a moment Jack had a shock. He thought the man was dead. But a groanconvinced him otherwise. At last all were on board.
“Now, bullies,” said Mr. Brown, addressing his crew, “it’s a long, hardpull back to the ship, but think of what you’re going to get when J. J.comes to!”
“Is Mr. Jukes on board?” asked Jack. “I thought maybe he was in anotherboat and cast adrift.”
“What, you didn’t know him?” demanded the mate, in genuine astonishment.
“No, I——”
“Well, that’s J. J., right there.”
He indicated the unconscious form to which some of the sailors weretrying to administer nourishment.
“Yes, this is the owner, all of a heap,” volunteered one of them. “Hisheart’s gone back on him, I reckon.”
“Looks that way,” assented Mr. Brown, glancing at the recumbent form.
“But where is Tom?” cried Jack, the thought of the son of the magnatecoming suddenly to him.
“Hush,” said one of the sailors from the _Halcyon_, “don’t talk tooloud. He might hear you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jack, staring at the man.
“The boy went off in one of the boats. We lost them in the fog. The goodLord only knows where they are now.”
“Drive the old man crazy when he hears of it, I reckon,” put in anotherman, the mate of the yacht. “He thought the world and all of Tom, hedid.”
“As if I didn’t know that,” thought Jack; and then aloud to Mr. Brown:
“There’s another boat adrift, sir. Aren’t we going to look for it?”
Mr. Brown shook his head and pointed to the western horizon. The sun,like a big copper ball, was sinking.
“It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said. “Butcheer up, they’ll be picked up somehow. You can depend on that.”
“I only hope so,” said Jack sadly.
He looked around at the empty sea. It made him shiver to think thatsomewhere on that desolate expanse was a boat full of castaways lookingin vain for succor.
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CHAPTER XL.
THE RESCUE OF MR. JUKES.
“How did the fire happen?” asked Mr. Brown of the wireless man of the_Halcyon_ as they rowed back to the ship, for the wind had now entirelydropped.
“Well, it all came about so blessed quickly that I doubt if anyone knowsjust what the start of it was,” came the reply. “The skipper thought hecould fight it (Here Mr. Brown nodded knowingly to Jack as if to say, “Itold you so”), and we battled with it for a long time. The fire affectedmy dynamos, I guess, for my current was miserably weak.”
“I noticed that, all right,” said Jack.
“But you caught it though. Lucky for us you did. Well, to continue. Theold man,—Mr. Jukes, I mean, was furious. He wouldn’t hear of abandoningthe ship.
“He wanted to fight the fire to the last moment. But he sent his son offin a boat. The fog had lifted a bit, and we thought it would be no jobat all to pick them up. But then the smother shut down again, and whenit lifted and we were forced to leave the ship, there wasn’t a sign ofthat boat high or low.”
The prostrate figure of Mr. Jukes, who had been sedulously attended bythe sailors, stirred lightly and he gave a moan. Suddenly he sat boltupright.
The sight of him gave Jack a shock. Was this bedraggled, pallid,soot-smeared scarecrow the once pompous and lordly head of the TitanSteamship Company’s activities?