Part 7 (1/2)
”That's a rocket, you blamed old fool!” roared the steward.
”Good G.o.d!” gasped the exasperated banker. ”Are we having a celebration with fireworks?”
The dull, hapless occupants of the lifeboats watched with fascinated eyes the first of the giant rockets that whizzed and roared its way up from the deck of the s.h.i.+p, an endless arrow of fire piercing the night.
A loud report, the scattering of a hundred stars, and then--denser blackness than before.
Morning came. Up out of the east stole a sickly grey. It turned slowly into pink, and then suddenly the sea once more was blue and smiling.
In the heart of the dancing cordon lay the weirdly camouflaged Doraine, inert, sinister, as still and cold as death. No smoke issued from her stacks to cheer the wretched watchers; no foam, no spray leaped from her mighty bow. She was a great, lifeless thing. Waves lapped gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in the face of despair.
Men, stripped to the waist, grimy and s.h.i.+ning with the sweat of hours, moving about in knots of three and four--always in knots of three or four as if afraid to disintegrate--leaned upon the rail and watched the approach of the crowded boats, looked down into pallid, anguished faces with their eager, hungry eyes, eyes that devoured the groups along the rail. Now and then a glad shout of joy went up from one of the boats, and a figure in the huddled ma.s.s was transformed into a responsive thing of life.
In each of the square, black openings in the hull of the s.h.i.+p stood men with ropes and ladders. The great steel doors lay flat against the sides, swung wide to admit this time a human cargo. From the interior of the vessel came the brisk, incessant clatter of hammers against wood and steel; from the decks broke the loud, commanding voices of men calling out directions; from the gliding, slapping boats went up the hearty shouts of understanding and obedience, the rattling of boat-hooks, the grinding of oars in the locks, the murmur of voices revived.
”Vomen and children first!” was the shrill, oft-repeated exhortation from one of the boats.
And up in the centre of another sprang a fine, imposing figure, from whose lips rolled these thrilling words:
”By G.o.d, they're great! They're great, after all! G.o.d bless Captain Trigger and every man-jack of them!”
”Get down!” roared his still unpacified critic, the steward. ”You'll fall overboard, you dam' fool!”
The gaunt, coatless Mr. Mott commanded the port side of the vessel; Mr. Codge, the purser, the starboard. Fighting men in the breeches and leggings of the American Navy; blackened and bandaged stokers, sailors and landsmen comprised the motley company that stood ready to drag the occupants of the boats up into the dank, smoke-scented maw of the s.h.i.+p.
One by one, in regular, systematic order, the lifeboats came alongside.
There was no confusion, no bungling. They b.u.mped gently against the towering rows of plates, and, made fast by ropes with ample play, gave up in time their precious cargoes. No one lifted up his voice in rejoicing, for there were dead and injured back in the shadows; there were grief-stricken, anxious men and women crouching out there in the suns.h.i.+ne; there were limp, unconscious women and half-dead children; and over all still hung the ominous cloud of catastrophe fat with prophecies of perils yet to come.
They had gone out from a s.h.i.+p filled with a monstrous clangour and confusion, they were returning to a tomblike hulk, a lonely ma.s.s in which echoes would abound, a thing of sighs and silences, the corpse of a mammoth that had throbbed yesterday,--but never more.
Up in the curving triangle of the forward deck were two long, canvas-covered rows. The dead! Forty-six twisted, silent forms lying side by side, some calm in death, others charred and mutilated beyond all possibility of identification. Every man in the engine-room at the time of the explosion was now a mangled, unrecognizable thing.
Engineers, electricians, stokers,--all of them wiped out in the flash of an eye,--burnt, boiled, shattered. Half a dozen women, as many children, lay with the silent men.
The injured had been placed in staterooms on the promenade deck, regardless of previous occupancy or subsequent claim. There lay the score and a half of seriously injured, and there toiled the s.h.i.+p's surgeon and his volunteer helpers. Sailor and merchant, worker and idler, scholar and dolt, steerage and first cabin, wealth and poverty, shared alike in the disposition of quarters and shared alike in attention. There was no discrimination. One life was as good as another to the doctor and his men, the poor man's moan as full of suffering as that of the rich man, the wail of the steerage woman as piteous as that of her sister above.
Captain Trigger was one of the injured. He swore a great deal when the doctor ordered him to bed. Ribs and a broken arm? Why the devil should he be put to bed for something a schoolboy would laugh at? Mr. Shannon and two of the younger officers were killed by the explosion that wrecked the bridge and chart house. Chief Engineer Gray died in the engine-room. Cruise was blown to pieces in the wireless house. His a.s.sistant, the cripple with the charmed life, was dead.
A few seconds before the first explosion took place he blew out his brains with a big navy revolver. The last seen of Cruise was when he appeared in the door of his station, an expression of mingled rage and alarm on his face. Pointing frantically at the figure of his a.s.sistant as it shot down the steps and across the deck, he shouted:
”Get that man! Get him! For G.o.d's sake, get him!”
It all happened in a few seconds of time. The shrill laugh of the fleeing a.s.sistant, the report of the revolver, an instant of stupefaction,--and then the dull, grinding crash.
It will never be known what Cruise had heard or seen in the last moments of his life. No one on board the Doraine, however, doubted for an instant that he had discovered, too late, the truth about his misshapen a.s.sistant. They now knew with almost absolute certainty the ident.i.ty of the odd man in that devilish trio, the man whose footsteps Percival had heard, the man who stayed behind to guarantee the consummation of the hideous plot. Coward in the end, he s.h.i.+rked the death he was pledged to accept. He knew what was coming. Unlike his braver comrades, he took the simplest way.
The count began. Late in the afternoon it was completed. There were forty-six known dead on board the Doraine, the majority being members of the crew. Seventeen persons were missing, chiefly from the steerage.
Twenty-nine seriously injured were under the doctor's care. Some of them would not recover. A hundred or more persons suffered from shock, bruises, cuts and exposure, but only a few of them required or demanded attention. In spite of their injuries, they fell to with the spirit that makes for true heroism and devoted themselves to the care of the less fortunate, or to the a.s.sistance of the sorely-tried officers and men who strove to bring order out of chaos.