West Wind Drift. George Barr McCutcheon

Mr. Codge, the purser, the starboard. Fighting men in the breeches and leggings of the American Navy; blackened and bandaged stokers, sailors and landsmen comprised the motley company that stood ready to drag the occupants of the boats up into the dank, smoke-scented maw of the ship.

      One by one, in regular, systematic order, the lifeboats came alongside. There was no confusion, no bungling. They bumped gently against the towering rows of plates, and, made fast by ropes with ample play, gave up in time their precious cargoes. No one lifted up his voice in rejoicing, for there were dead and injured back in the shadows; there were grief-stricken, anxious men and women crouching out there in the sunshine; there were limp, unconscious women and half-dead children; and over all still hung the ominous cloud of catastrophe fat with prophecies of perils yet to come.

      They had gone out from a ship filled with a monstrous clangour and confusion, they were returning to a tomblike hulk, a lonely mass in which echoes would abound, a thing of sighs and silences, the corpse of a mammoth that had throbbed yesterday,—but never more.

      Up in the curving triangle of the forward deck were two long, canvas-covered rows. The dead! Forty-six twisted, silent forms lying side by side, some calm in death, others charred and mutilated beyond all possibility of identification. Every man in the engine-room at the time of the explosion was now a mangled, unrecognizable thing. Engineers, electricians, stokers,—all of them wiped out in the flash of an eye,—burnt, boiled, shattered. Half a dozen women, as many children, lay with the silent men.

      The injured had been placed in staterooms on the promenade deck, regardless of previous occupancy or subsequent claim. There lay the score and a half of seriously injured, and there toiled the ship's surgeon and his volunteer helpers. Sailor and merchant, worker and idler, scholar and dolt, steerage and first cabin, wealth and poverty, shared alike in the disposition of quarters and shared alike in attention. There was no discrimination. One life was as good as another to the doctor and his men, the poor man's moan as full of suffering as that of the rich man, the wail of the steerage woman as piteous as that of her sister above.

      Captain Trigger was one of the injured. He swore a great deal when the doctor ordered him to bed. Ribs and a broken arm? Why the devil should he be put to bed for something a schoolboy would laugh at? Mr. Shannon and two of the younger officers were killed by the explosion that wrecked the bridge and chart house. Chief Engineer Gray died in the engine-room. Cruise was blown to pieces in the wireless house. His assistant, the cripple with the charmed life, was dead.

      A few seconds before the first explosion took place he blew out his brains with a big navy revolver. The last seen of Cruise was when he appeared in the door of his station, an expression of mingled rage and alarm on his face. Pointing frantically at the figure of his assistant as it shot down the steps and across the deck, he shouted:

      “Get that man! Get him! For God's sake, get him!”

      It all happened in a few seconds of time. The shrill laugh of the fleeing assistant, the report of the revolver, an instant of stupefaction,—and then the dull, grinding crash.

      It will never be known what Cruise had heard or seen in the last moments of his life. No one on board the Doraine, however, doubted for an instant that he had discovered, too late, the truth about his misshapen assistant. They now knew with almost absolute certainty the identity of the odd man in that devilish trio, the man whose footsteps Percival had heard, the man who stayed behind to guarantee the consummation of the hideous plot. Coward in the end, he shirked the death he was pledged to accept. He knew what was coming. Unlike his braver comrades, he took the simplest way.

      The count began. Late in the afternoon it was completed. There were forty-six known dead on board the Doraine, the majority being members of the crew. Seventeen persons were missing, chiefly from the steerage. Twenty-nine seriously injured were under the doctor's care. Some of them would not recover. A hundred or more persons suffered from shock, bruises, cuts and exposure, but only a few of them required or demanded attention. In spite of their injuries, they fell to with the spirit that makes for true heroism and devoted themselves to the care of the less fortunate, or to the assistance of the sorely-tried officers and men who strove to bring order out of chaos.

      Among the survivors were two American surgeons and a physician from Rio Janeiro. They, with the nurses, all of whom had been saved, immediately went to the relief of the ship's doctor, and in short order an improvised hospital was established. There was a remarkable unanimity of self-sacrifice among the passengers. High and low, they fell to in a frenzy of comradeship, and worked side by side in whatsoever capacity they were needed, whether fitted for it or not. No man, no woman, who was able to lift a helping hand, failed in this hour of need. The bereaved, as well as those who were untouched by a personal grief, gave all that was in them, tearfully, grimly, ardently.

      Menial labour fell to the lot of the lordly but uncomplaining Landover, to Block and Nicklestick, Jones and Snipe, and even to the precious Signor Joseppi, who, forgetting his Caruso-like throat, toiled and sweated in the smoky saloon.

      Morris Shine, the motion picture magnate, the while he laboured amidst the wreckage of the after deck, lamented not the cheerless task but the evil fate that prevented the making of the most spectacular film the world had ever known.

      Madame Careni-Amori, Madame Obosky and her dancers; bejewelled Jewesses and half-clad emigrants; gentle women unused to toil and women who were born to it; the old and the young—all of them, without exception,—rose from the depths of despair and faced the rigours of the day with unflinching courage, gave out of a limitless store of tenderness all that their strength could spare.

      And through a neglected, abandoned field of pearls and gold and precious stones, limped unchallenged the tireless figure of “Soapy” Shay, diamond thief, a bloody bandage about his head, an exalted light in his pain-stricken eyes. His one-time captor lay stark and cold in the gruesome line in the bow of the boat. It was “Soapy” Shay who staggered out of the rack and smoke with the burly, stricken detective in his arms, and it was “Soapy” Shay who wept when the last breath of life cased out through his tortured lips. For of all the company on board the Doraine, there was but one whom “Soapy” knew, but one who called him by name and shared tobacco with him,—and that one was William Spinney, the man who was taking him back to a place where mercy would not be shown.

      After the sun had set and the decks were dark and deserted except for the men employed in the gruesome business, the dead were lowered into the sea, swathed in canvas and weighted with things that were made to kill,—shells from the gunners' hoard. Swiftly, methodically, one after the other, they slid down to the black, greedy waters, sank to the grave that is never still yet always silent, to the vast, unexplored wilderness that stretches around the world. The thin little missionary from the barren plateaus of Patagonia and the plump priest from the heart of Buenos Aires monotonously commended each and every one of them to the mercy of God!

      The sun came up again in the morning over a smiling, happy sea that licked the sides of the Doraine with the tenderness of a dog.

CHAPTER V.

       Table of Contents

      The plight of the hapless steamer could not be disguised. Even the most ignorant passenger knew that the wrecked engines could not be repaired or compounded. They knew that the Doraine was completely paralysed. The power to move at will was for ever lost, the force that had driven her resistlessly along the chosen path was still. The powerful propellers were idle, the huge stern-post wrenched so badly that the rudder was useless. She was adrift, helplessly adrift. Of what avail the wheel and a patched-up rudder to the mass that lay inert, motionless on the smiling sea?

      Every one on board realized, with sinking heart, that the Doraine was to go on drifting, drifting no man knew whither, until she crossed the path of a friendly stranger out there in the mighty waste. No cry of distress, no call for help could go crackling into the boundless reaches. That was the plight of the Doraine and her people on the mocking day that followed the disaster, and unless fate intervened that