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Page 112
The woman sat in the Quartermaster's boat, with her daughter in her
arms, and stared at the ship. The Quartermaster said the engineers
were still below and took off his cap. In her feeble way the woman
tried to pray, and found only childish, futile things to say; but in
her mind there was a great wonder--that they, who had once been life
each to the other, should part thus, and that now, as ever, the good
part was hers! The girl looked up into her mother's face.
"The redhaired little boy, mother--do you think he is safe?"
"First off, likely," mumbled the Quartermaster grimly.
All the passengers were off. Under the mist the sea rose and fell
quietly; the boats and rafts had drawn off to a safe distance. The
Greek, who had humour as well as imagination, kept up the spirits of
those about him while he held a child in his arms.
"Shall we," he inquired gravely, "think you--shall we pay extra to
the company for this excursion?"
* * * * *
The battle below had been fought and lost. It was of minutes now.
The Chief had given the order: "Every one for himself!" Some of the
men had gone, climbing to outer safety. The two Seconds had refused
to leave the Chief. All lights were off by that time. The after
stokehole was flooded and water rolled sickeningly in the
engine-pits. Each second it seemed the ship must take its fearful
dive into the quiet sea that so insistently reached up for her.
With infinite labour the Seconds got the Chief up to the fiddley,
twenty feet or less out of a hundred, and straight ladders instead
of a steel staircase. Ten men could not have lifted him without
gear, and there was not time!
Then, because the rest was hopeless, they left him there, propped
against the wall, with the lantern beside him. He shook hands with
them; the Junior was crying; the Senior went last, and after he had
gone up a little way he turned and came back.
"I can't do it, Chief!" he said. "I'll stick it out with you." But
the Chief drove him up, with the name of his wife and child. Far up
the shaft he turned and looked down. The lantern glowed faintly
below.
The Chief sat alone on his grating. He was faint with pain. The
blistering cylinders were growing cold; the steel floor beneath was
awash. More ominous still, as the ship's head sank, came crackings
and groanings from the engines below. They would fall through at the
last, ripping out the bulkheads and carrying her down bow first.
Pain had made the Chief rather dull. "'I ha' lived and I ha'
worked!'" he said several times--and waited for the end. Into his
stupor came the thought of the woman--and another thought of the
Red Un. Both of them had sold him out, so to speak; but the woman
had grown up with his heart and the boy was his by right of
salvage--only he thought of the woman as he dreamed of her, not as
he had seen her on the deck. He grew rather confused, after a time,
and said: "I ha' loved and I ha' worked!"
Just between life and death there comes a time when the fight seems
a draw, or as if each side, exhausted, had called a truce. There is
no more struggle, but it is not yet death. The ship lay so. The
upreaching sea had not conquered. The result was inevitable, but not
yet. And in the pause the Red Un came back, came crawling down the
ladder, his indomitable spirit driving his craven little body.
He had got as far as the boat and safety. The gripping devils of
fear that had followed him up from the engine room still hung to his
throat; but once on deck, with the silent men who were working
against time and eternity, he found he could not do it. He was the
Chief's boy--and the Chief was below and hurt!
The truce still held. As the ship rolled, water washed about the
foot of the ladder and lapped against the cylinders. The Chief tried
desperately to drive him up to the deck and failed.
"It's no place for you alone," said the Red Un. His voice had
lost its occasional soprano note; the Red Un was a grown man.
"I'm staying!" And after a hesitating moment he put his small,
frightened paw on the Chief's arm.
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