Part 53 (1/2)
Out in the North Sea, wallowing sullenly in the trough of the waves, her masts gone by the board and her deck awash, lay the derelict schooner ”Valkyrie” of Bergen. She would have been at the bottom of the sea had it not been for her cargo of Norway pine, keeping her painfully afloat against her will. Fate, with its little finger, moved this uncharted peril right in the track of the ”Starlight,” beating close-reefed through the buffeting waves on the night of May 1st, while Larssen, in his London home, satisfied that his plans had foreseen every human eventuality, slept the easy sleep of the successful.
CHAPTER x.x.xV
INTERVENTION
The ”Starlight” struck the sodden derelict shortly before midnight, with a crash that jarred the yacht to her innermost fibres.
She struck it full abeam, like a motor-car smas.h.i.+ng in the dark into an unlighted farm-waggon drawn across a country lane. Bows crumpled up; bowsprit snapped away; foremast, loosed from its stay, and forced back by the pressure of a half-gale on the close-hauled foresail, carried over to port in a tangle of rope and wire and canvas.
Thrown back on her haunches, the ”Starlight” gasped and s.h.i.+vered and began to settle by the head from the rush of water into the forecastle.
”All on deck with lifebelts!”
A seaman rushed through the saloons, throwing wide the cabin doors, and shouting the captain's order.
Up above, men were ripping the canvas covers off the life-boats, flinging oilskins and rugs and provisions into them, slewing round the davits, hauling on the fall-ropes--a furious medley of energies.
Matheson rushed to his wife's cabin, helped her on with some clothes, tied her lifebelt, wrapped a rug around her, and hurried her on deck.
”What have we hit?” he snapped at the captain.
”Derelict.”
”How long d'you give her?”
”Ten minutes at the outside!” flung back the captain, and then into his megaphone: ”Lower away there with No. 4!”
Lifeboat No. 4 was the second boat on the port side--the leeward side.
No. 3 was buried under the tangle of wreckage from the collapse of the foremast, and therefore useless. The boat was already in the water, with the mate and four seamen aboard, when Matheson, who had hurried below, came again on deck with Olaf in his arms. Behind him panted the stewardess and Olive's maid, terrified and clutching some worthless finery of hers.
”Women and children to No. 4!” shouted the captain.
”I won't go without you!” cried Olive to her husband, clinging tight to him.
The captain wasted no precious moments on argument. He thrust the stewardess and the trembling maid before him, and stout arms bundled them down to the plunging boat. Then he pa.s.sed down the little boy.
”Is there room for all of us?” cried Olive.
”No!”
The mate cast off, and lifeboat No. 4 disappeared into the black night.
”Haul on the main and mizzen sheets!” ordered the captain, to bring the yacht round and get a leeward launch for Nos. 1 and 2.
Presently the two crackling sails gybed over with a thud, and the ”Starlight” lay on the starboard tack, head down and filling rapidly.
”Hurry like h.e.l.l!” shouted the captain.