Drowned Gold/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV
THE deck of the Hector, the only craft afloat in the little bay, was, immediately she stopped, crowded with all the men aboard her, including the engineer, and all were exchanging apprehensive glances.
"It looks mighty bad, Tom," said Jimmy, with a shake of his head, and I was compelled to agree with him. "She surely didn't make in in here, and that means—"
He had no need to complete his sentence, for the failure of the tug to make this harbor was ominous. It was quite certain she could have found no port of refuge farther south, unless, by a miracle, she succeeded in surviving until she reached the northwest coast of Santa Lucia. This, although not more than forty miles away, would necessitate her facing the full blast of the tempest that would sweep in across the open channel between Martinique and the former island. It seemed an impossibility. If the Sea-Gull and her convoy had succeeded in keeping afloat, they would have had to light their way against a strong westward drift, but if able to make headway, might have found shelter at Castries. If they had not made this port of safety, it was probable that the tug, barge, and all aboard had foundered and were gone.
We went ashore at Le Marin to make inquiries, and there learned that on the night previous a report had been received from Castries that a boat in distress had been sighted below Gros Island, but we were unable to get any further information owing to a break in communication, and therefore returned to the Hector, resolved to cruise southward to Castries to learn if the unfortunate craft was ours. It was late when we arrived there and cautiously made our way into the harbor. We ran slowly past a bulky old tramp steamer, that looked as if she had barely survived the hurricane after suffering much damage in the conflict, and were proceeding toward the quay when we were hailed. We stopped our progress to answer.
"Is that the submarine Hector?" demanded a voice from the gloom of the wing of the bridge above us, and when I answered in the affirmative the voice resumed:
"This is the British ship Hartlepool, Captain Bartlett speaking. Your tug, the Sea-Gull, is lying over against number four pier. We got her in yesterday. She had a narrow shave, sir, I can tell you."
"How about her tow?" I called to him.
"Lost, with one man aboard. Pretty tough luck, but so it goes."
"How soon are you leaving port, Captain?" I asked.
"Can't tell yet," he replied; "got a lot of overhauling to do. We had a pretty close call ourselves. You will have plenty of time to see me, because I shall be here for probably a week."
Assuring him that I should call upon him on the first opportunity, we resumed our way until we came abreast with what was left of the Sea-Gull. She was moored fore and aft to a stone quay, and seemed nothing more than a hull. She was practically stripped of upper works and inert. Her funnel, as well as her single mast, were gone, and she was crusted with salt until she resembled nothing so much as the gray ghost of a boat lying there at rest. As we came alongside Rogers hailed us, and directed us where to proceed a little farther on. A wharf watchman ran down to guide us to a berth and we tied up and climbed ashore to meet the men from the Sea-Gull, who had jumped to the wharf and rushed to greet us.
"Who was lost aboard the barge?" was the first question I asked.
"Poor old Mike Cochrane, sir. He stuck on alone, although he knew that he didn't have a chance in a thousand. We succeeded, with drag-lines, in getting the other boys off and aboard the tug. When it looked absolutely hopeless, with the big number two hawser gone, and the number one chafed until there weren't a half-dozen strands left, I tried to get Mike to come aboard; but he wouldn't do it. The last thing he said was to tell you and Jimmy that he had made good, whatever he meant by that; and then came another jerk on the line, it parted, and the last we saw of the barge and the pontoons was when they slipped off into the darkness. We got nearly up to the lee-shore of Gros Island, when a particularly nasty one came aboard, took away most of the deck-house, as you see, and the funnel, and then her rudder chains went, and it looked as though it was all off with us. Old man Hart had a leg broken at the thigh, was washed off the deck, and then washed back again by another wave, and we got him aboard all right. He is up at the hospital now. Mellin had a right arm broken, and he is up there with him. Cary got a bump on the head that put him out of business for five hours, but the doctor says he doesn't think his skull is fractured. Whipple had his thumb torn off, and there is scarcely one of the boys that didn't get more or less knocked about. Otherwise everything is all right."
I wondered what "otherwise" there could be, and the whole crowd of us, save the watchman, went across to a water-front inn, where we could sit down and get the details.
The storm had burst upon the Sea-Gull with a violence that, while alarming, was not by any means overwhelming, and for a time, although laboring heavily, the tug succeeded in making way against it. Then, when safety was almost in sight, the second stage of the tempest broke, and this time the tug was powerless against it, and was slowly carried backward from land to sea, although fighting desperately for every inch. There came another slight lull, which was the one the chief mate had taken advantage of to bring the men off the barge to the tug-boat. He was convinced that, could he have induced Cochrane to come, it would have been better to cast the towline from the bits with a heavy sea-anchor, and take a chance to recover the barge later; but Cochrane, it appeared, had desperately opposed this, and told the last of the men who went off that he proposed to stick it if it cost him his life. Even when warned at the very last that the towline was parting he had obstinately refused to surrender, declaring that the barge was still sound. Long before this all the steel cylinders save two had been swept overboard, and these two were amidships of the barge. The men had done the best they could to clear away such portions of the steel cranes as were removable, but when last seen by the aid of a flash of lightning one of those had parted company with the barge.
There was a solemn concurrence of opinion among the whole crowd of those who had been aboard the surface boats that it was useless looking for either the barge or Mike Cochrane, and that they were foredoomed to destruction.
They fell to talking among themselves, and I sat there in that stuffy old lounge-room, thinking of all that Mike Cochrane had been in the time I had known him, and of how, at the last, he had retrieved himself completely by a most gallant, although foolish, loyalty. He had made one big mistake, and that was all, and it had been forgiven him and wiped off the slate on that evening in Maracaibo when we shook hands across the little table and called the old score off. It hurt me more than I can express to think that at the end, so intent had he been upon proving his fidelity, he had boldly passed out into the night and storm, hoping, possibly, to save for us what was left of our outfit. It did not seem fair to abandon him after so gallant an attempt as he had made without exerting every effort to discover whether he was still alive. The loss of the barge and our outfit did not enter into the calculation at all; for these were things that could be replaced, but not so a man who had indeed given such valiant proof of his sincerity. I was sorry that I had so long mistrusted him, and looking across at Jimmy, who sat with his jowls down over his collar, and staring absently at the top of a decanter, I fancied that similar thoughts were running through his mind. I obeyed an impulse, jumped to my feet, crossed the room, and addressed a man in uniform who stood leaning against the bar.
"Excuse me, sir," I said; "you are a harbor official, are you not?"
"I am the harbor-master," he answered. "You are Captain Hale, the owner of the Sea-Gull, aren't you?"
"I am Captain Hale," I replied, "and I should like to know what steamships are in port?"
"More of them at this moment than there have been at any time since the war began," he said bluntly. "There are seven of them here now, including your own."
"And how many of them capable of going to sea?" I asked.
"Four of them are uninjured, and none of them are liners. All of them tramps, and good ones, too."
I suppose I could get aboard them to see their skippers to-night, could I not?" I asked.
"You could," he answered dryly, "but you would not find them there. They are having a dinner at a hotel and probably won't go off to their ships until midnight."
"Can you take me to where they are?" I asked.
"I suppose I could; but why? What do you want of them?"
"As you know, I have lost a barge and an outfit. There was a man aboard that barge who is worth a whole lot more than money to me, and that I am going to try to save if he is still alive."
For a moment he looked at me incredulously, and then said, "I suppose you know it would probably cost you some thousands of dollars to make the search you would have to go through with, don't you?" He stared at me, as he asked this, with that same questioning look.
"Know it? Of course I do, and would spend a good deal more than it costs if I can find that man alive."
"Relative of yours?"
"Not at all. Merely one of the members of the crew."
He suddenly thrust a huge fist toward me, got my hand in a grip that hurt, and exclaimed:
"By God, sir, you are a man! There are not many owners who would take that trouble and expense on a hundred-to-one chance. I would bet that you will never find the fellow you have lost, or the barge either; but I honor you for being willing to take a try. Come with me and I will take you to where these skippers are, and if I don't lose my guess, there is not a one of them that won't put in three or four days helping you if you will pay nothing more than the expenses of the effort. They are a white lot, the whole outfit of them. Three of them are British, and one of them a Yankee."
I did not tell the others of my crew where I was going, but called Twisted Jimmy to me, and together we went up the dark street to the hotel where the tramp-masters were found in a tiny room, sitting round a table, in an atmosphere so laden with smoke that for a moment we could scarcely distinguish their faces. The harbor-master took it upon himself to explain the object of my visit, and for me it was most embarrassing, because he said a great many things concerning me that were not entirely justified. He had a gift of crude eloquence, which he interlarded with oaths that proved most effective. Twice I tried to silence him, for I considered myself the leader of the proposition and wanted an opportunity to express my own views and get down to a business working; but he silenced me with an abrupt remark: "Captain Hale, you are not on your own vessel here. I am the harbor-master of this port, and I am doing the talking."
I admit now, at this late date, that he did a better job of it than I should have done, for he enthused those three stolid British ship-masters and that one calculating Yankee, until they thumped their fists upon the table and declared their readiness to steam out that night and trust to my word that sufficient should be paid to satisfy their owners after the short cruise was done. The harbor-master himself proved invaluable in conference; for being somewhat of an expert of the sea, coming to port through age alone, he told us fully and exactly the course taken by the storm, as gathered from reports that had come into his office during the preceding two days. He bellowed for a chart, got it, swept aside the litter of dishes, bottles, and glasses on the table, and with a stumpy lead pencil marked out the storm's pathway. He computed the drift of the barge from the known force of the wind, and finally put a cross on a white spot and asserted, triumphantly, as if convinced by his own reckoning: "If that barge is still afloat there is where she will be found at this hour! Anybody here who disagrees with me?"
The other six of us were leaning forward with our heads close together over the chart, each checking the harbor-master's computations, and we now arose in complete agreement. It was very characteristic of the British skippers that, without any speech at all, they nodded and began reaching for their caps and coats. The Cape Cod ship-master delved into the depths of a hip-pocket and drawled: "My ship will be clear of this harbor in just one hour. Her fires are banked; but she's got a bully good forced draft, and can do a neat fourteen knots."
We stopped long enough to organize our search, and decided that we should keep in touch, steaming north-west, until daybreak, when we were to spread out, thus enabling ourselves to cover an area of nearly fifty miles in width, and the captains agreed that I should take passage on one of the central ships and be in command of the operations. There was no fuss about our preparations or our departure. It was exactly as if we were bent on a common enterprise of far less moment than the saving of a man's life from a derelict barge or discovering proof that further search was useless. There was not even an appearance of sentimental interest or humanitarian motive in the phlegmatic way in which the bill was paid and we tramped noisily downstairs and out into the night with the harbor-master still in the lead; but there must have been considerable surprise aboard the four sea-tramps when their crews were ordered out and all of their boilers put under forced draft for a midnight sailing. I left instructions for the submarine and the Sea-Gull to remain in port until my return, and Jimmy and I went aboard the Nelson, of Liverpool, a thirty-six-hundred-ton ship, with a remarkable turn of speed, heard her anchors pulled home, felt the first throbs of her engines, the first turn of her screws, and watched her as she swung her head slowly out toward the open Caribbean. An hour later, driving closely together, we could observe the lights of the three other tramps, all steaming steadily on a given course, and I went to sleep with the satisfaction of knowing that four competent wanderers of the sea were heading off into the darkness with but one intent, that of saving the life of one man for whose welfare I felt greatly responsible, a man who had once been my enemy and betrayed me, but if still alive, had proven himself my friend.
It was all that I could do, and I was not ashamed. Although not hopeful, I had at least the serenity which comes from a conscience that is clear.