CHAPTER XVI
A GHOST SHIP
"Colder some to-night, Conrad."
"Yes, sir."
"Strait's freezing over, they say."
"Pretty stiff ice outside here already, sir."
The skipper glanced out and smiled confidently but without furthercomment; yet he took occasion to go down and pass along the car deckand observe the men who under direction of the mate were locking thelugs under the car wheels, as the trains came on board. The wind,which had risen with nightfall to a gale off the water, whipped snowwith it which swirled and back-eddied with the switching cars into thegreat, gaping stern of the ferry.
Officially, and to chief extent in actuality, navigation now had"closed" for the winter. Further up the harbor, beyond Number 25,glowed the white lanterns marking two vessels moored and "laid up" tillspring; another was still in the active process of "laying up." Marineinsurance, as regards all ordinary craft, had ceased; and theGovernment at sunrise, five days before, had taken the warning lightsfrom the Straits of Mackinaw, from Ile-aux-Galets, from north Manitou,and the Fox Islands; and the light at Beaver Island had but five nightsmore to burn.
Alan followed as the captain went below, and he went aft between thecar tracks, watching old Burr. Having no particular duty when the boatwas in dock, old Burr had gone toward the steamer "laying up," and nowwas standing watching with absorption the work going on. There was atug a little farther along, with steam up and black smoke pouring fromits short funnel. Old Burr observed this boat too and moved up alittle nearer. Alan, following the wheelsman, came opposite the sternof the freighter; the snow let through enough of the light from thedock to show the name _Stoughton_. It was, Alan knew, a Corvet,Sherrill, and Spearman ship. He moved closer to old Burr and watchedhim more intently.
"What's the matter?" he asked, as the old man halted and, looking downat the tug, shook his head.
"They're crossing," the wheelsman said aloud, but more to himself thanto Alan. "They're laying her up here," he jerked his head toward the_Stoughton_. "Then they're crossing to Manitowoc on the tug."
"What's the matter with that?" Alan cried.
Burr drew up his shoulders and ducked his head down as a gust blew. Itwas cold, very cold indeed in that wind, but the old man had on amackinaw and, out on the lake, Alan had seen him on deck coatless inweather almost as cold as this.
"It's a winter storm," Alan cried. "It's like it that way; butto-day's the 15th, not the 5th of December!"
"That's right," Burr agreed. "That's right."
The reply was absent, as though Alan had stumbled upon what he wasthinking, and Burr had no thought yet to wonder at it.
"And it's the _Stoughton_ they're laying up, not the--" he stopped andstared at Burr to let him supply the word and, when the old man didnot, he repeated again--"not the--"
"No," Burr agreed again, as though the name had been given. "No."
"It was the _Martha Corvet_ you laid up, wasn't it?" Alan criedquickly. "Tell me--that time on the 5th--it was the _Martha Corvet_?"
Burr jerked away; Alan caught him again and, with physical strength,detained him. "Wasn't it that?" he demanded. "Answer me; it was the_Martha Corvet_?"
The wheelsman struggled; he seemed suddenly terrified with the terrorwhich, instead of weakening, supplied infuriated strength. He threwAlan off for an instant and started to flee back toward the ferry; andnow Alan let him go, only following a few steps to make sure that thewheelsman returned to Number 25.
Watching old Burr until he was aboard the ferry, Alan spun about andwent back to the _Stoughton_.
Work of laying up the big steamer had been finished, and in thesnow-filled dusk her crew were coming ashore. Alan, boarding, went tothe captain's cabin, where he found the _Stoughton's_ master makingready to leave the ship. The captain, a man of forty-five or fifty,reminded Alan vaguely of one of the shipmasters who had been inSpearman's office when Alan first went there in the spring. If he hadbeen there, he showed no recollection of Alan now, but good-humoredlylooked up for the stranger to state his business.
"I'm from Number 25," Alan introduced himself. "This is a Corvet,Sherrill, and Spearman ship. Do you know Mr. Corvet when you see him,sir?"
"Know Ben Corvet?" the captain repeated. The manner of the young manfrom the car ferry told him it was not an idle question. "Yes; I knowBen Corvet. I ain't seen him much in late years."
"Will you come with me for a few minutes then, Captain?" Alan asked.As the skipper stared at him and hesitated, Alan made explanation, "Mr.Corvet has been missing for months. His friends have said he's beenaway somewhere for his health; but the truth is, he's been missing.There's a man I want you to look at, Captain--if you used to know Mr.Corvet."
"I've heard of that." The captain moved alertly now. "Where is he?"
Alan led the master to the Ferry. Old Burr had left the car deck; theyfound him on his way to the wheelhouse.
The _Stoughton's_ skipper stared. "That the man?" he demanded.
"Yes, sir. Remember to allow for his clothes and his not being shavedand that something has happened."
The _Stoughton's_ skipper followed to the wheelhouse and spoke to Burr.Alan's blood beat fast as he watched this conversation. Once or twicemore the skipper seemed surprised; but it was plain that his firstinterest in Burr quickly had vanished; when he left the wheelhouse, hereturned to Alan indulgently. "You thought that was Mr. Corvet?" heasked, amused.
"You don't think so?" Alan asked.
"Ben Corvet like that? Did you ever see Ben Corvet?"
"Only his picture," Alan confessed. "But you looked queer when youfirst saw Burr."
"That was a trick of his eyes. Say, they did give me a start. BenCorvet had just that sort of trick of looking through a man."
"And his eyes were like that?"
"Sure. But Ben Corvet couldn't be like that!"
Alan prepared to go on duty. He would not let himself be disappointedby the skipper's failure to identify old Burr; the skipper had knownimmediately at sight of the old man that he was the one whom Alanthought was Corvet, and he had found a definite resemblance. It mightwell have been only the impossibility of believing that Corvet couldhave become like this which had prevented fuller recognition. Mr.Sherrill, undoubtedly, would send some one more familiar with BenjaminCorvet and who might make proper allowances.
Alan went forward to his post as a blast from the steam whistle of theswitching engine, announcing that the cars all were on board, wasanswered by a warning blast from the ferry. On the car decks thetrains had been secured in place; and, because of the roughness of theweather, the wheels had been locked upon the tracks with additionalchains as well as with the blocks and chains usually used. Orders nowsounded from the bridge; the steel deck began to shake with thereverberations of the engines; the mooring lines were taken in; therails upon the fantail of the ferry separated from the rails upon thewharf, and clear water showed between. Alan took up his slow pace aslookout from rail to rail across the bow, straining his eyes forwardinto the thickness of the snow-filled night.
Because of the severe cold, the watches had been shortened. Alan wouldbe relieved from time to time to warm himself, and then he would returnto duty again. Old Burr at the wheel would be relieved and would go onduty at the same hours as Alan himself. Benjamin Corvet! The fancyreiterated itself to him. Could he be mistaken? Was that man, whoseeyes turned alternately from the compass to the bow of the ferry as itshifted and rose and fell, the same who had sat in that lonely chairturned toward the fireplace in the house on Astor Street? Were thosehands, which held the steamer to her course, the hands which hadwritten to Alan in secret from the little room off his bedroom andwhich pasted so carefully the newspaper clippings concealed in thelibrary?
Regularly at the end of every minute, a blast from the steam whistlereverberated; for a while, signals from the shore answered; for a fewminutes the shore lights glowed through the snow. Then the lights weregone, an
d the eddies of the gale ceased to bring echoes of theobscuration signals. Steadily, at short, sixty-second intervals, theblast of Number 25's warning burst from the whistle; then that toostopped. The great ferry was on the lake alone; in her course, Number25 was cutting across the lanes of all ordinary lake travel; but now,with ordinary navigation closed, the position of every other ship uponthe lake was known to the officers, and formal signals were not thoughtnecessary. Flat floes, driven by wind and wave, had windrowed in theircourse; as Number 25, which was capable of maintaining two thirds itsopen water speed when running through solid "green" ice two feet thick,met this obstruction, its undercut bow rose slightly; the ice, crusheddown and to the sides, hurled, pounding and scraping, under the keeland along the black, steel sides of the ship; Alan could hear the hullresounding to the buffeting as it hurled the floes away, and more came,or the wind threw them back. The water was washing high--higher thanAlan had experienced seas before. The wind, smashing almost straightacross the lake from the west, with only a gust or two from the north,was throwing up the water in great rushing ridges on which the bow ofNumber 25 rose jerkily up and up, suddenly to fall, as the supportpassed on, so that the next wave washed nearly to the rail.
Alan faced the wind with mackinaw buttoned about his throat; to makecertain his hearing, his ears were unprotected. They numbedfrequently, and he drew a hand out of the glove to rub them. Thewindows to protect the wheelsman had been dropped, as the snow hadgathered on the glass; and at intervals, as he glanced back, he couldsee old Burr's face as he switched on a dim light to look at thecompass. The strange placidity which usually characterized the oldman's face had not returned to it since Alan had spoken with him on thedock; its look was intent and queerly drawn. Was old Burr beginning toremember--remember that he was Benjamin Corvet? Alan did not believeit could be that; again and again he had spoken Corvet's name to himwithout effect. Yet there must have been times when, if he wasactually Corvet, he had remembered who he was. He must have rememberedthat when he had written directions to some one to send those things toConstance Sherrill; or, a strange thought had come to Alan, had hewritten those instructions to himself? Had there been a moment when hehad been so much himself that he had realized that he might not behimself again and so had written the order which later, mechanically,he had obeyed? This certainly would account for the package havingbeen mailed at Manitowoc and for Alan's failure to find out by whom ithad been mailed. It would account too for the unknown handwriting uponthe wrapper, if some one on the ferry had addressed the package for theold man. He must inquire whether any one among the crew had done that.
What could have brought back that moment of recollection to Corvet,Alan wondered; the finding of the things which he had sent? What mightbring another such moment? Would his seeing the Sherrills again--orSpearman--act to restore him?
For half an hour Alan paced steadily at the bow. The storm wasincreasing noticeably in fierceness; the wind-driven snowflakes hadchanged to hard pellets which, like little bullets, cut and stung theface; and it was growing colder. From a cabin window came the blueflash of the wireless, which had been silent after notifying the shorestations of their departure. It had commenced again; this was unusual.Something still more unusual followed at once; the direction of thegale seemed slowly to shift, and with it the wash of the water; insteadof the wind and the waves coming from dead ahead now, they moved to theport beam, and Number 25, still pitching with the thrust through theseas, also began to roll. This meant, of course, that the steamer hadchanged its course and was making almost due north. It seemed to Alanto force its engines faster; the deck vibrated more. Alan had notheard the orders for this change and could only speculate as to what itmight mean.
His relief came after a few minutes more.
"Where are we heading?" Alan asked.
"Radio," the relief announced. "The _H. C. Richardson_ calling; she'sup by the Manitous."
"What sort of trouble?"
"She's not in trouble; it's another ship."
"What ship?"
"No word as to that."
Alan, not delaying to question further, went back to the cabins.
These stretched aft, behind the bridge, along the upper deck, somescore on each side of the ship; they had accommodations for almost ahundred passengers; but on this crossing only a few were occupied.Alan had noticed some half dozen men--business men, no doubt, forced tomake the crossing and, one of them, a Catholic priest, returningprobably to some mission in the north; he had seen no women among them.A little group of passengers were gathered now in the door of or justoutside the wireless cabin, which was one of the row on the starboardside. Stewards stood with them and the cabin maid; within, and bendingover the table with the radio instrument, was the operator with thesecond officer beside him. The violet spark was rasping, and theoperator, his receivers strapped over his ears, strained to listen. Hegot no reply, evidently, and he struck his key again; now, as helistened, he wrote slowly on a pad.
"You got 'em?" some one cried. "You got 'em now?"
The operator continued to write; the second mate, reading, shook hishead, "It's only the _Richardson_ again."
"What is it?" Alan asked the officer.
"The _Richardson_ heard four blasts of a steam whistle about an hourago when she was opposite the Manitous. She answered with the whistleand turned toward the blasts. She couldn't find any ship." Theofficer's reply was interrupted by some of the others. "Then ... thatwas a few minutes ago ... they heard the four long again.... They'dtried to pick up the other ship with radio before.... Yes; we got thathere.... Tried again and got no answer.... But they heard the blastsfor half an hour.... They said they seemed to be almost beside theship once.... But they didn't see anything. Then the blasts stopped... sudden, cut off short in the middle as though somethinghappened.... She was blowing distress all right.... The_Richardson's_ searching again now.... Yes, she's searching for boats."
"Any one else answered?" Alan asked.
"Shore stations on both sides."
"Do they know what ship it is?"
"No."
"What ship might be there now?"
The officer could not answer that. He had known where the _Richardson_must be; he knew of no other likely to be there at this season. Thespray from the waves had frozen upon Alan; ice gleamed and glinted fromthe rail and from the deck. Alan's shoulders drew up in a spasm. The_Richardson_, they said, was looking for boats; how long could men livein little boats exposed to that gale and cold?
He turned back to the others about the radio cabin; the glow fromwithin showed him faces as gray as his; it lighted a face on theopposite side of the door--a face haggard with dreadful fright. OldBurr jerked about as Alan spoke to him and moved away alone; Alanfollowed him and seized his arm.
"What's the matter?" Alan demanded, holding to him.
"The four blasts!" the wheelsman repeated. "They heard the fourblasts!" He iterated it once more.
"Yes," Alan urged. "Why not?"
"But where no ship ought to be; so they couldn't find the ship--theycouldn't find the ship!" Terror, of awful abjectness, came over theold man. He freed himself from Alan and went forward.
Alan followed him to the quarters of the crew, where night lunch forthe men relieved from watch had been set out, and took a seat at thetable opposite him. The louder echoing of the steel hull and the rolland pitching of the vessel, which set the table with its dishesswaying, showed that the sea was still increasing, and also that theywere now meeting heavier ice. At the table men computed that Number 25had now made some twenty miles north off its course, and must thereforebe approaching the neighborhood where the distress signals had beenheard; they speculated uselessly as to what ship could have been inthat part of the lake and made the signals. Old Burr took no part inthis conversation, but listened to it with frightened eyes, andpresently got up and went away, leaving his coffee unfinished.
Number 25 was blowing its steam whistl
e again at the end of everyminute.
Alan, after taking a second cup of coffee, went aft to the car deck.The roar and echoing tumult of the ice against the hull here drownedall other sounds. The thirty-two freight cars, in their four longlines, stood wedged and chained and blocked in place; they tipped andtilted, rolled and swayed like the stanchions and sides of the ship,fixed and secure. Jacks on the steel deck under the edges of the cars,kept them from rocking on their trucks. Men paced watchfully betweenthe tracks, observing the movement of the cars. The cars creaked andgroaned, as they worked a little this way and that; the men sprang withsledges and drove the blocks tight again or took an additional turnupon the jacks.
As Alan ascended and went forward to his duty, the increase in theseverity of the gale was very evident; the thermometer, the wheelsmansaid, had dropped below zero. Ice was making rapidly on the hull ofthe ferry, where the spray, flying thicker through the snow, wasfreezing as it struck. The deck was all ice now underfoot, and therails were swollen to great gleaming slabs which joined and grewtogether; a parapet of ice had appeared on the bow; and all about theswirling snow screen shut off everything. A searchlight which hadflared from the bridge while Alan was below, pierced that screen not aship's length ahead, or on the beam, before the glare dimmed to a glowwhich served to show no more than the fine, flying pellets of thestorm. Except for the noise of the wind and the water, there had beenno echo from beyond that screen since the shore signals were lost; nowa low, far-away sound came down the wind; it maintained itself for afew seconds, ceased, and then came again, and continued at unevenintervals longer than the timed blasts of Number 25's whistle. Itmight be the horn of some struggling sailing vessel, which in spite ofthe storm and the closed season was braving the seas; at the end ofeach interval of silence, the horn blew twice now; the echo came abeam,passed astern, and was no longer to be heard. How far away its originhad been, Alan could only guess; probably the sailing vessel, away towindward, had not heard the whistle of Number 25 at all.
Alan saw old Burr who, on his way to the wheelhouse, had halted tolisten too. For several minutes the old man stood motionless; he cameon again and stopped to listen. There had been no sound for quite fiveminutes now.
"You hear 'em?" Burr's voice quavered in Alan's ear. "You hear 'em?"
"What?" Alan asked.
"The four blasts! You hear 'em now? The four blasts!"
Burr was straining as he listened, and Alan stood still too; no soundcame to him but the noise of the storm. "No," he replied. "I don'thear anything. Do you hear them now?"
Burr stood beside him without making reply; the searchlight, which hadbeen pointed abeam, shot its glare forward, and Alan could see Burr'sface in the dancing reflection of the flare. The man had never moreplainly resembled the picture of Benjamin Corvet; that which had beenin the picture, that strange sensation of something haunting him, wasupon this man's face, a thousand times intensified; but instead ofdistorting the features away from all likeness to the picture, it madeit grotesquely identical.
And Burr was hearing something--something distinct and terrifying; buthe seemed not surprised, but rather satisfied that Alan had not heard.He nodded his head at Alan's denial, and, without reply to Alan'sdemand, he stood listening. Something bent him forward; hestraightened; again the something came; again he straightened. Fourtimes Alan counted the motions. Burr was hearing again the four longblasts of distress! But there was no noise but the gale. "The fourblasts!" He recalled old Burr's terror outside the radio cabin. Theold man was hearing blasts which were not blown!
He moved on and took the wheel. He was a good wheelsman; the vesselseemed to be steadier on her course and, somehow, to steam easier whenthe old man steered. His illusions of hearing could do no harm, Alanconsidered; they were of concern only to Burr and to him.
Alan, relieving the lookout at the bow, stood on watch again. Theferry thrust on alone; in the wireless cabin the flame played steadily.They had been able to get the shore stations again on both sides of thelake and also the _Richardson_. As the ferry had worked northward, the_Richardson_ had been working north too, evidently under the impressionthat the vessel in distress, if it had headway, was moving in thatdirection. By its position, which the _Richardson_ gave, the steamerswere about twenty miles apart.
Alan fought to keep his thought all to his duty; they must be now verynearly at the position where the _Richardson_ last had heard the fourlong blasts; searching for a ship or for boats, in that snow, wasalmost hopeless. With sight even along the searchlight's beamshortened to a few hundred yards, only accident could bring Number 25up for rescue, only chance could carry the ship where the shouts--orthe blasts of distress if the wreck still floated and had steam--wouldbe heard.
Half numbed by the cold, Alan stamped and beat his arms about his body;the swing of the searchlight in the circle about the ship had becomelong ago monotonous, purely mechanical, like the blowing of thewhistle; Alan stared patiently along the beam as it turned through thesector where he watched. They were meeting frequent and heavy floes,and Alan gave warning of these by hails to the bridge; the bridgeanswered and when possible the steamer avoided the floes; when it couldnot do that, it cut through them. The windrowed ice beating andcrushing under the bows took strange, distorted, glistening shapes.Now another such shape appeared before them; where the glare dissipatedto a bare glow in the swirling snow, he saw a vague shadow. The manmoving the searchlight failed to see it, for he swung the beam on. Theshadow was so dim, so ghostly, that Alan sought for it again before hehailed; he could see nothing now, yet he was surer, somehow, that hehad seen.
"Something dead ahead, sir!" he shouted back to the bridge.
The bridge answered the hail as the searchlight pointed forward again.A gust carried the snow in a fierce flurry which the light failed topierce; from the flurry suddenly, silently, spar by spar, a shadowemerged--the shadow of a ship. It was a steamer, Alan saw, a long,low-lying old vessel without lights and without smoke from the funnelslanting up just forward of the after deckhouse; it rolled in thetrough of the sea. The sides and all the lower works gleamed inghostly phosphorescence, it was refraction of the searchlight beam fromthe ice sheathing all the ship, Alan's brain told him; but the sight ofthat soundless, shimmering ship materializing from behind the screen ofsnow struck a tremor through him.
"Ship!" he hailed. "Ahead! Dead ahead, sir! Ship!"
The shout of quick commands echoed to him from the bridge. Underfoothe could feel a new tumult of the deck; the engines, instantly stopped,were being set full speed astern. But Number 25, instead of sheeringoff to right or to left to avoid the collision, steered straight on.
The struggle of the engines against the momentum of the ferry told thatothers had seen the gleaming ship or, at least, had heard the hail.The skipper's instant decision had been to put to starboard; he hadbawled that to the wheelsman, "Hard over!" But, though the screwsturned full astern, Number 25 steered straight on. The flurry wasblowing before the bow again; back through the snow the ice-shroudedshimmer ahead retreated. Alan leaped away and up to the wheelhouse.
Men were struggling there--the skipper, a mate, and old Burr, who hadheld the wheel. He clung to it yet, as one in a trance, fixed, staringahead; his arms, stiff, had been holding Number 25 to her course. Theskipper struck him and beat him away, while the mate tugged at thewheel. Burr was torn from the wheel now, and he made no resistance tothe skipper's blows; but the skipper, in his frenzy, struck him againand knocked him to the deck.
Slowly, steadily, Number 25 was responding to her helm. The bowpointed away, and the beam of the ferry came beside the beam of thesilent steamer; they were very close now, so close that thesearchlight, which had turned to keep on the other vessel, shot aboveits shimmering deck and lighted only the spars; and, as the water roseand fell between them, the ships sucked closer. Number 25 shook withan effort; it seemed opposing with all the power of its screws someforce fatally drawing it on--opposing with t
he last resistance beforegiving way. Then, as the water fell again, the ferry seemed to slipand be drawn toward the other vessel; they mounted, side by side ...crashed ... recoiled ... crashed again. That second crash threw allwho had nothing to hold by, flat upon the deck; then Number 25 movedby; astern her now the silent steamer vanished in the snow.
Gongs boomed below; through the new confusion and the cries of men,orders began to become audible. Alan, scrambling to his knees, put anarm under old Burr, half raising him; the form encircled by his armstruggled up. The skipper, who had knocked Burr away from the wheel,ignored him now. The old man, dragging himself up and holding to Alan,was staring with terror at the snow screen behind which the vessel haddisappeared. His lips moved.
"It was a ship!" he said; he seemed sneaking more to himself than toAlan.
"Yes"; Alan said. "It was a ship; and you thought--"
"It wasn't there!" the wheelsman cried. "It's--it's been there all thetime all night, and I'd--I'd steered through it ten times, twentytimes, every few minutes; and then--that time it was a ship!"
Alan's excitement grew greater; he seized the old man again. "Youthought it was the _Miwaka_!" Alan exclaimed. "The _Miwaka_! And youtried to steer through it again."
"The _Miwaka_!" old Burr's lips reiterated the word. "Yes; yes--the_Miwaka_!"
He struggled, writhing with some agony not physical. Alan tried tohold him, but now the old man was beside himself with dismay. He brokeaway and started aft. The captain's voice recalled Alan to himself, ashe was about to follow, and he turned back to the wheelhouse.
The mate was at the wheel. He shouted to the captain about followingthe other ship; neither of them had seen sign of any one aboard it."Derelict!" the skipper thought. The mate was swinging Number 25 aboutto follow and look at the ship again; and the searchlight beam sweptback and forth through the snow; the blasts of the steam whistle, whichhad ceased after the collision, burst out again. As before, noresponse came from behind the snow. The searchlight picked up thesilent ship again; it had settled down deeper now by the bow, Alan saw;the blow from Number 25 had robbed it of its last buoyancy; it wassinking. It dove down, then rose a little--sounds came from itnow--sudden, explosive sounds; air pressure within hurled up a hatch;the tops of the cabins blew off, and the stem of the ship slipped downdeep again, stopped, then dove without halt or recovery this time, andthe stern, upraised with the screw motionless, met the high wash of awave, and went down with it and disappeared.
No man had shown himself; no shout had been heard; no little boat wasseen or signalled.
The second officer, who had gone below to ascertain the damage done tothe ferry, came up to report. Two of the compartments, those which hadtaken the crush of the collision, had flooded instantly; the bulkheadswere holding--only leaking a little, the officer declared. Water wascoming into a third compartment, that at the stern; the pumps werefighting this water. The shock had sprung seams elsewhere; but if theafter compartment did not fill, the pumps might handle the rest.
Soddenness already was coming into the response of Number 25 to thelift of the waves; the ferry rolled less to the right as she cameabout, beam to the waves, and she dropped away more dully and deeply tothe left; the ship was listing to port and the lift of the ice-heapedbow told of settling by the stern. Slowly Number 25 circled about, herengines holding bare headway; the radio, Alan heard, was sending to the_Richardson_ and to the shore stations word of the finding and sinkingof the ship and of the damage done to Number 25; whether that damageyet was described in the dispatches as disaster, Alan did not know.The steam whistle, which continued to roar, maintained the single,separated blasts of a ship still seaworthy and able to steer and evento give assistance. Alan was at the bow again on lookout duty, orderedto listen and to look for the little boats.
He gave to that duty all his conscious attention; but through histhought, whether he willed it or not, ran a riotous exultation. As hepaced from side to side and hailed and answered hails from the bridge,and while he strained for sight and hearing through the gale-sweptsnow, the leaping pulse within repeated, "I've found him! I've foundhim!" Alan held no longer possibility of doubt of old Burr's identitywith Benjamin Corvet, since the old man had made plain to him that hewas haunted by the _Miwaka_. Since that night in the house on AstorStreet, when Spearman shouted to Alan that name, everything having todo with the secret of Benjamin Corvet's life had led, so far as Alancould follow it, to the _Miwaka_; all the change, which Sherrilldescribed but could not account for, Alan had laid to that. Corvetonly could have been so haunted by that ghostly ship, and there hadbeen guilt of some awful sort in the old man's cry. Alan had found theman who had sent him away to Kansas when he was a child, who hadsupported him there and then, at last, sent for him; who haddisappeared at his coming and left him all his possessions and hisheritage of disgrace, who had paid blackmail to Luke, and who had sent,last, Captain Stafford's watch and the ring which came with it--thewedding ring.
Alan pulled his hand from his glove and felt in his pocket for thelittle band of gold. What would that mean to him now; what of that washe to learn? And, as he thought of that, Constance Sherrill came moreinsistently before him. What was he to learn for her, for his friendand Benjamin Corvet's friend, whom he, Uncle Benny, had warned not tocare for Henry Spearman, and then had gone away to leave her to marryhim? For she was to marry him, Alan had read.
It was with this that cold terror suddenly closed over him. Would helearn anything now from Benjamin Corvet, though he had found him? Onlyfor an instant--a fleeting instant--had Benjamin Corvet's brain becomeclear as to the cause of his hallucination; consternation hadoverwhelmed him then, and he struggled free to attempt to mend thedamage he had done.
More serious damage than first reported! The pumps certainly must belosing their fight with the water in the port compartment aft; for thebow steadily was lifting, the stern sinking. The starboard rail toowas raised, and the list had become so sharp that water washed the deckabaft the forecastle to port. And the ferry was pointed straight intothe gale now; long ago she had ceased to circle and steam slowly insearch for boats; she struggled with all her power against the wind andthe seas, a desperate insistence throbbing in the thrusts of theengines; for Number 25 was fleeing--fleeing for the western shore. Shedared not turn to the nearer eastern shore to expose that shatteredstern to the seas.
Four bells beat behind Alan; it was two o'clock. Relief should havecome long before; but no one came. He was numbed now; ice from thespray crackled upon his clothing when he moved, and it fell in flakesupon the deck. The stark figure on the bridge was that of the secondofficer; so the thing which was happening below--the thing which wassending strange, violent, wanton tremors through the ship--was seriousenough to call the skipper below, to make him abandon the bridge atthis time! The tremors, quite distinct from the steady tremble of theengines and the thudding of the pumps, came again. Alan, feeling them,jerked up and stamped and beat his arms to regain sensation. Some onestumbled toward him from the cabins now, a short figure in a greatcoat. It was a woman, he saw as she hailed him--the cabin maid.
"I'm taking your place!" she shouted to Alan. "You're wanted--everyone's wanted on the car deck! The cars--" The gale and her frightstopped her voice as she struggled for speech, "The cars--the cars areloose!"
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