His Unknown Wife

And all the time he was listening for the ominous crack which would be the precursor of that final sinking into the depths! The marvel was that the middle of the ship had held together so long, but by no miracle known to man could what was left of her survive the next tide.

Yet why should he add to misery already abyssmal? Death would be a blessed relief; waiting for certain death was the worst of tortures.

No one answered. The survivors – of the twelve four were dead now – were perishing with cold and dumbly resigned to their wretched fate. Had it not been for the protection afforded by the improvised screen, none would have been alive even then.

The wind still swirled and eddied into every nook and cranny. Though huddled together, the little group of men and women were conscious of no warmth. It was with the greatest difficulty that those not clad in oilskins kept any garments on their bodies.

So merciless is the havoc of the sea that its victims are stripped naked even while clinging to the battered hulk of a ship, though this last device of a seemingly demoniac savagery is easily accounted for. No product of loom or spinning machine can withstand the disintegrating effects of breaking waves helped by a fierce gale. The seams and fastenings of ordinary garments cannot resist the combined assault. In such circumstances, a woman’s flimsy attire will be torn off her in a few minutes, while the strongest of boots have been known to collapse after some hours of this kind of exposure.

Luckily a number of oilskins were kept in the chart-room of the Southern Cross; these were quickly served out to the shivering girls, whose clothing had practically melted away as though made of thin paper.

Soon after the captain had tried to hearten them with that scrap of proverbial philosophy, one of the girls, Nina, screamed in an elfin note that dominated even the roaring of the reef for an instant. Her father had collapsed. It was useless to pretend that he might only have fainted. They who fell now were doomed. In Mr. Gray’s case, he was dead ere he sank down.

The chief officer put a consoling hand on the girl’s shoulder. He was a Bostonian, and had daughters of his own. In that hour of tribulation his speech reverted to the homely accents of New England.

“It comes hard to see your father drop like that,” he said. “But it’s better so. He’s just spared a bit of the trouble we may have to face.”

“It is not that,” wailed the girl brokenly. “I’m thinking of my mother. She will never know. Oh, if I could only make her understand, I would not care!”

A strange answer, the sailor deemed it, most probably. At that instant he caught the captain’s eye. Both men had the same thought. The dead should be thrown overboard and thus lessen the weight supported by the one stanchion on the port side.

But of what avail were such precautions? They might as well all go together, the quick and the dead. Why should any of them wish to live on until the sea rose again in the small hours of the morning?

The girls were crying in each other’s arms. Two of the men lifted Gray’s body and placed it with four others. Five gone out of twelve!

The captain, speaking in the most matter-of-fact way, suggested that they should open and drink the last bottle of claret before the light failed.

“It’s a poor substitute for a meal,” he said, “but it’s the only thing we can lay hands on.”

The chief officer nodded his head towards the grief-stricken sisters.

“Maybe we can wait a bit longer,” he said. “You couldn’t persuade them to touch it just now… What’s that, sir? Did you hear anything?”

“No. What could we possibly hear?”

“It sounded like a voice, some one hailing.”

“I think I know whose voice it is,” said the captain. He himself had almost yielded to the delusion. It was distressing to find the same eery symptom of speedy breakdown in his old friend, the chief officer.

Both men listened, nevertheless, and were convinced. In silence they went out into the open, walking stealthily. Each knew that any undue movement might send the remains of the ship headlong to the reef. They strained their eyes in the only possible direction from which a voice might have come – the scrap of forecastle, sixty feet nearer the headland, or, incredible as it seemed, the headland itself. They could see nothing. Maseden’s body was not only in line with the receding angle of the foremast, but that piece of the wreck was merged in the gloom of the towering rock.

Maseden saw them, however, and shouted again, striving his uttermost now that he had attracted attention.

With each effort at speech his voice was becoming stronger. Though it was useless to think of conveying an intelligible message through the uproar of wind and water, he fancied he could get into communication with the inmates of the chart-room, provided they were on the alert. In effect, he had a knife, and was surrounded by an abundance of tangled cordage, and it would be a strange thing if after so many years of active life on a South American ranch he could not cast a weighted lasso as far as the bridge.

He began fashioning the necessary coil at once, working with feverish haste, because his refuge was on the move again, and ever towards the land. A trial cast fell short, as he had not allowed enough lee-way for the wind. He was gathering up the rope preparatory to another effort when a great voice boomed at him from the shadows:

“You have no chance here. You are as well off where you are. If you hear me, hail three times!”

The captain was using a megaphone.

Maseden yelled “Hi!” three times, thinking the short, sharp syllable would carry best. Then, with splendid judgment, he threw the lasso in a lateral parabola that landed its end across the rail of the bridge, where it was promptly made fast by the first officer.

Again came that mighty voice:

“Is there any hope of escape on your side? If so, hail three times.”

He replied. After a short delay he heard the order:

“Haul in!”

Attached to the noose of his rope was another rope, and a second thinner one, rigged as a “whip,” or communicating cord. Tied at the junction was the megaphone. The intent of the senders was plain. He was to bawl directions, and they would obey.

He fancied that by this time the topmast must be near the rock, if not quite touching it, but he had decided already that he would either save those hapless people in the chart-room or die in the attempt.

Perhaps his “wife” was there yet. Unless those American sailors had broken the first law of their order of chivalry, the women committed to their care had been safeguarded.

Well, he owed her a life. Now he might be able to repay the debt in full.

He had never before handled a speaking trumpet, so his initial essay was brief:

“Can you hear?”

He could just catch three faint sounds in answer.

“As soon as a sailor can cross by the rope, send one,” he shouted, “I shall need help at this end. I have made fast the heavy rope. Shall I haul in the whip?”

There was a pause of a few seconds, but he counted on that. Then he felt three tugs on the thinner cord, and began to haul steadily. Soon, by the sagging of the main rope and the weight at the end of the whip, he realized that some one was making the transit.

Before long he discerned a figure coming towards him hand over hand along the rope. The man’s feet were caught midway by the seas boiling over the reef, but Maseden knew that the gallant fellow’s forward movement was never checked, and in a very little while the breathless chief officer was seated astride the mast beneath him.

“Who in the world are you?” demanded the newcomer; at any rate, he used words to that effect.

Maseden answered in kind, and explained his project; whereupon the chief officer seized the megaphone and bellowed the necessary instructions. On a given signal the two men hauled on the whip.

This time a figure lashed to a life-buoy, which, in turn, was tied to a pulley traveling on the guide-rope, came to them out of the darkness. It was a woman, hardly in her senses, yet able to obey when told to sit astride the mast and hold fast to a ring.

“We can hardly find room for five more people here,” shouted the chief officer. “Are you game to shin along the mast and see if that loose spar is practicable yet?”

“Yes,” said Maseden.

He vanished in the darkness. He was absent fully five minutes, a period which, to the waiting chief officer, who alone knew what was actually happening, must have seemed like as many hours. Then Maseden returned. By this time there were two more astride the foremast, four in all. He tied the nearest one to his back with a rope.

“Can you steady yourself by placing your hands on my shoulders, but not around my neck?” he said.

For answer two slim hands caught his shoulders. He began working his way forward into the gloom.

CHAPTER IX