Part 9 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI.
For three days and nights the Doraine drifted lazily in a calm and rippling sea, always to the southward. The days were bright and warm, the nights black and chill. It was the spring of the year in that zone.
Without adequate navigation instruments, Mr. Mott was forced to rely to a great extent on speculation. He was able to make certain calculations with reasonable accuracy, but they were of little real significance.
It was, of course, possible to determine the general direction in which they were drifting, and the speed. They were slowly but surely edging into the strong west wind drift. The Falkland Islands would soon be off to the right, with South Georgia and the Sandwich group farther to the south and east, the southernmost tip of Africa to the left.
Not a sail had been sighted, not a sign of smoke appeared on the spotless horizon. At regular intervals the gun on the forward deck boomed thrice in quick succession, startling the lifeless hulk into a sort of spasmodic vitality. Then she would sink back once more into the old, irksome lethargy, incapable of resisting the gentlest wave, submissive to the whim of the slightest breeze. The s.h.i.+p's carpenter and his men were making slow headway in the well-nigh impossible task of repairing the rudder. Attempts were being made to rig up makes.h.i.+ft sails to replace those licked from the supplemental spars by flames that had earned considerable progress along the roof of the upper deck building before they were subdued. Blackened, charred masts and yards, stripped of rigging, reared themselves like pines at the edge of a fire-swept forest. Sail-makers and riggers laboured stubbornly, but the work was slow and the means of restoration limited.
The occupants of the derelict had settled down to a dull, almost dogged state of resignation. There were several deaths and burials, incidents that made but little impression on the waiting, watchful survivors. Each succeeding day brought forth additional watchers to swell the anxious throng,--resolute and sometimes ungovernable men who, defying their wounds and the nurses, refused to stay where they could not have a hand in all that was going on.
Back of all this pitiful courage, however, lurked the unholy fear that they might be left to their fate in case the s.h.i.+p had to be hurriedly abandoned.
Mr. Mott watched the weather. Every seaman on board the Doraine scanned the cloudless sky with searching, anxious eyes. They sniffed the steady wind that blew them farther south. Always they scanned the sky and sniffed the wind.
”It's got to come sometime,” repeated Captain Trigger, after each report from Mr. Mott.
”I've known weather like this to last for weeks,” said the First Officer.
”In the South Pacific, yes,” said the Captain grimly. ”But we're in the South Atlantic, Mott.”
On the sixth day the barometer began to fall. The breeze stiffened.
The sea became choppy, and white-caps danced fitfully over the greenish stretches, growing wilder and wilder under the whip of a flouting wind.
The two patchwork sails on the lumbering Doraine flapped noisily for awhile, as if shaking off their tor-por, then suddenly grew taut and fat with prosperity. The twisted, half-jammed rudder,--far from worthy despite the efforts of its repairers,--whiningly obeyed the man at the wheel, and once more the s.h.i.+p felt the caress of the deep on her cleaving bows.
The horizon to the north and west seemed to draw nearer, the contrast between the deepening blue of the water and the clear azure of the contracting dome more sharply defined. The sky that had been cloudless for days still remained barren, but the sailor knew what lay beyond the clear-cut rim of the world. The man of the sea could look far beyond the horizon. He could see the ugly clouds that were even now speeding down from the north, invisible as yet but soon to creep into view; he could see the mighty billows on the other side of that distant line; he could hear the roar and shriek of the tempest that was still hundreds of miles away. It was the matter of but a few hours before the wind and the billows would rush up to smite the Doraine with all their might under the cover of a black and storm-rent sky. And what was to become of the vessel, floundering in the path of the hurricane?
Late afternoon brought the forerunner of the gale, a whistling, howling squall that frantically strove, it would seem, to outrace the baleful clouds. Then the Doraine was in the thick of the furious revel of sea and sky, plunging, leaping, rolling like a monstrous cork....
How she managed to weather the storm, G.o.d knows, and He alone. At the mercy of wave and wind, she was tossed and hammered and racked for two frightful days and nights, and yet she remained afloat, battered, smashed, raked from stem to stern, stripped of everything the tempest could wrench from her in its fury. And yet on the third day, when the storm abated, the st.u.r.dy s.h.i.+p was still riding the waves, flayed but un-conquered, and the baffled sea was licking the sides of her once more with servile though deceitful tenderness.
But there was water in the hold. The s.h.i.+p was leaking badly.
Up from the stifling interior straggled the unhappy inmates. They looked again upon the unbelievable: a smiling, dancing sea of blue under a canopy clean and spotless. It was unbelievable. Even the stouthearted Captain and the faithful mate, blear-eyed and haggard from loss of sleep, were filled with wonder.
”I can't understand it,” muttered Mr. Mott a dozen times that day, shaking his head in a bewildered sort of way. ”I can't understand how she did it. By right, she ought to be at the bottom of the ocean, and here she is on top of it, same as ever.”
”Do you believe in G.o.d, Mr. Mott?” asked the Captain solemnly.
”I do,” said Mr. Mott emphatically. After a moment he added: ”I've been a long time coming to it, Captain Trigger, but I do. Nothing short of an Almighty Being could have steered this s.h.i.+p for the past two days.”
The Captain nodded his head slowly, his gaze fixed on something above and far beyond the horizon.
”I suppose it's too much to ask of Him, though,” said he, audibly completing a thought.
Mr. Mott evidently had been thinking of the same thing, for he said:
”I'm sorry to say it's gained about two feet on the pumps since last night.”
Captain Trigger's face was very grave. ”That means a couple of days more at the outside.” His eyes rested speculatively on the three lifeboats still hanging above the starboard rail. There was another being repaired on the port side. ”More than six hundred of us on board, Andrew.” His head dropped suddenly, his chin twitched. Mr. Mott looked away.