Front matter (continued 3)

The breeze had by this time died away, the junk was scarcely moving. A moment later their oars rattled against the side. Captain Sheldon scrambled aboard. He gave a rapid glance along the low maindeck, but saw nothing to arouse his suspicion. A man, evidently the captain of the craft, was advancing toward him; the crew were crowding around to overhear the conversation. But all this was only natural. An ordinary trading junk, of course; heaven alone knew what all these native craft really were doing. After a moment's scrutiny, he dismissed from his mind any thought that may secretly have been aroused by Wang's warning and the mate's unfortunate remark.

"You losee ship—ha?" The captain of the junk accosted him in good pidgin English.

"Yes—she burned this morning. I want you to take me to Hong Kong"

Within half an hour the bargain had been struck, and they were comfortably established on the new deck. The breeze had freshened, the junk's head had been put about, the two ship's boats trailed astern in single file at the end of a long line. The Retriever's company had partaken of a Chinese supper; many of them were spending the last hour of daylight in examining the queer craft, passing remarks on her strange nautical points, while the native crew watched their movements with furtive gaze.

Captain Sheldon paced to and fro on the high poop deck, chewing the end of a cigar and ruminating on the unaccountable turns of fortune. The adventure of boarding the junk had for a time broken the savage current of his thoughts; but now, with the affair settled and night closing in, the mood of anger and bitterness claimed him again with redoubled intensity.

The mate ranged up beside him with a friendly air. He felt the need of a reconciliation.

"You'll be interested to hear, Captain, that old Wang has found a pipeful of opium"

"The devil you say! I wondered where the old rascal had disappeared to. How do you know?"

"He's been hanging around the Chinese crew, sir, ever since we came aboard. I went through their quarters down below forward a while ago, and there he lay in one of their bunks, dead to the world, with the pipe across his chest"

"The useless old sot!" exclaimed Captain Sheldon "I had made up my mind to get rid of him this time, anyway. You know he has been in the family, so to speak. But I don't like the idea of his going off with his native gang. Combined with the opium business, it looks suspicious. You'd better keep an eye on him. He's got a grudge against me, you know, since I took away his stuff"

"I guess they'll all bear watching, sir"

"Oh, nonsense! There isn't the slightest cause for alarm. It's perfectly evident that this craft is a peaceful trader, and we could handle the whole gang of 'em if they began to make trouble. They won't, though, never fear; a Chinaman is too big a coward. This captain seems to be quite an intelligent fellow; I've just been having a yarn with him. He has given up his room to me; well, not much of a room, nothing but a bunk and a door, but such as it is, it's all he has. Funny quarters they have down below, like a labyrinth of passages, all leading nowhere.

The mate laughed. "Funny enough forward, too; a damned stinking hole, if you ask me, sir"

While they were talking on the poop, Wang appeared on deck forward, went to the weather rail and sniffed a deep breath of the land breeze. He had had an hour's opium sleep—an hour of heaven, an hour of life again. Now he could command his faculties. Blindness was no hindrance to work in the dark; was even an advantage, since for many months now he had been accustomed to feeling and groping his way. Fate had been good to him, at the last. Now he possessed the strength to do what he would have to do.

The familiar voices of the mate and the captain came to his ears, but he did not glance in their direction. The least move on his part to give information would have been his last. He had heard enough already to know that the death of the whole ship's company that night was being actively planned, for the sake of the boats and the mysterious tin box that Captain Sheldon carried.

III

In spite of physical exhaustion, it was nearly midnight before Captain Sheldon left the deck and crawled into the narrow den under the poop-deck that had been given up to him by the Chinese captain. He could not get to sleep for a long while. He was taking his loss very hard; that inflexible, proud disposition would almost have met death sooner than admit an error. At length, however, he fell into a light and uneasy slumber.

He was awakened some time later by a light touch on the arm—a touch that started him from sleep without alarming him into action. A voice whispered softly in his ear

"Cappen! Cappen! This b'long Wang. No makee speakee" A firm hand was laid over his mouth.

In the pitchy darkness of the close room, Captain Sheldon could see absolutely nothing. Listening intently, he heard stealthy movements outside the door. On deck there was utter silence. He became aware instinctively that the junk was no longer moving, that the wind had gone.

He lay perfectly still. The suddenness of the occasion had brought an unaccountable conflict of impulses and emotions. He felt that an alarming crisis was in the air. Along with this feeling came another, strange enough at such a time—a sense of confidence in the old steward. He had immediately recognized the voice in his ear. Why hadn't he jumped out of bed? Why wasn't he lying there in momentary expectation of a knife in the ribs—why didn't he throw himself aside to avoid it? He could not understand his own immobility; yet he remained quiet. Something in the old Chinaman's whisper held him in its command. Pride had succumbed to intrinsic authority.

The rapid whisper began again, panting and insistent.

"Cappen, you come now. Mus' come quick. I savvy how can do. Maybe got time. S'pose stay here, finishee chop-chop" The hand was removed from his mouth, as if conscious that discretion had sufficiently been imposed.

"What has happened, Wang?" whispered the agitated captain.

"Makee killee, all samee I know"

"Where's the mate? Where's the crew?"

"All go, Cappen" Again the hand came over his mouth "You come quick. Bym'by, no can do"

Captain Sheldon flung the steward's arm aside and sat up wildly. "Good God, let me go, Wang! I must go out...."

"Cappen, make no bobbery"

"Where's my revolver?" The captain was hunting distractedly through the bed.

"He go, too" The whisper took on a despairing tone. "Cappen, s'pose you gotee match?"

"Yes"

"Makee one light"

Captain Sheldon found the box and struck a match. The tiny illumination filled the narrow cabin. As the flame brightened, Wang rolled over on the floor, disclosing one hand held against his left breast, a hand holding a bloody wad of tunic against a hidden wound. A sop of blood on the floor marked the spot where he had been lying.

The match burned out. Again came the painful whisper.

"Maybe can do now. Bym'by, no can do"

"My God, Wang! You're wounded! How can we get out? I'll carry you"

"No, sir, Cappen. I savvy way. You feelee here, Cappen"

The steward was already fumbling with his free hand at a ringbolt in the floor. He guided the captain's arm to it. Captain Sheldon grasped the ringbolt, pulled up a trap-door that seemed to lead into the hold. Letting himself over the edge, his feet found a deck not far below. He stood upright in the opening, and lifted Wang bodily to the lower level. The old Chinaman struggled to be put down.

"Wang, keep still—let me carry you"

"No, sir, Cappen. Walkee-walkee, can do. You no savvy way"

Stooping and keeping an arm half around him, Captain Sheldon followed Wang through a shallow lazaret. It led forward into the open hold. They passed beneath a hatch, where Wang drew aside in the deeper shadow, listening. Not a sound came from overhead. Again they stole forward. The wounded man held on indomitably, bearing his pain in a silence that seemed almost supernatural, as if unknown to the other he had been rendered invulnerable by a magic spell. Beyond the hatch they entered a narrow passage-way, and came out suddenly into the junk's forecastle, the quarters of the Chinese crew. A ladder led to another open hatch in the deck above.

As they reached the foot of the ladder, a fearful yelling suddenly broke out toward the stern, a sound of savage anger. Naked feet pattered on the deck overhead going aft. Wang grasped the captain's arm.

"S'pose breakee in door, no findee. One minute have got! Boat stand off, waitee! Go quickee, Cappen, jump ovelboa'!"

Captain Sheldon heard him with a shock of incredulity. "The boats are standing off? The crew haven't been killed?"

"No, sir, Cappen. All hand savee! You go now"

He felt the old man sag in his arms.

"Wang, I can't leave you here!"

"Why for, Cappen? Wang no good. Quickee! Makee jump!"

The voice broke; the frail body crumpled and slipped to the floor.

Gathering all his strength, Captain Sheldon slung the old steward's unconscious form over his shoulder and swarmed up the ladder. As he gained the deck, a tall figure dashed between him and the rail; other figures were racing through the waist of the junk. An angry chatter broke out at the foot of the ladder up which he had just come.

Holding Wang to one side, he struck out heavily at the man who blocked his path, felling him to the deck. Darkness and surprise saved the day for him; their quarry had appeared like a whirlwind in their very midst. The next instant Captain Sheldon had gained the rail, and jumped clear of the junk's side. The two bodies made a loud splash that echoed through the calmness of the night. As he came to the surface, desperately striking away from the junk and trying to keep Wang's head above water, he heard a shout a little distance off in the darkness, and the rattle of oars as the boats sprang into action.

IV

The longboat was the first to reach him. They pulled him in with his burden still in his arms. The mate, appearing beside them in the other boat, gave vent to his anxiety.

"Good God, Captain Sheldon, I thought you were done for! Why didn't you come, sir? Wang gave me your orders; we hauled up the boats very quietly as you said, and got into them, while he kept the Chinamen busy forward with talk. He said you would come, sir; but we were discovered, and I had to sheer off. I was afraid they'd sink the boats, sir, before we could do anything. I didn't know what weapons they had. I was just planning an attack, sir. Then I thought I saw them stab old Wang...."

"I've got Wang" said Captain Sheldon solemnly "They did stab him. Those weren't my orders—they were his. And he's the only one to pay the price!" The young captain was beginning to face a harder lesson than the mere loss of a vessel.

"I don't understand, sir. Wasn't it the right thing to do?" The mate was completely puzzled by this new development.

"Yes, yes, it was the right thing to do!" cried Captain Sheldon impatiently "He was right, and I was wrong. Now leave me alone"

He bent above the shrunken form of the old steward. Wang's eyelids fluttered; he was slowly regaining consciousness.

"Wang, why didn't you come and tell me, in time to save all this?"

The Chinaman's eyes regarded him with a stare of mingled surprise and affection, a stare that somehow suggested a wise and quiet amusement.

"I tellee you, Cappen. You no savvy. S'pose no savvy, no can do. Mus' wait, makee savvy."

It was a terrible condemnation. Captain Sheldon ground his teeth at the bitter truth of it. His own obstinacy, his own evil! Nothing that Wang could have said, before the thing had happened, would possibly have changed his mind. He had committed himself to error. The old servant had been forced to save them single-handed, to retrieve his master's failure with his own life.

Wang was muttering, as he neared the end. He was about to join "Old Cappen" With a good report and a clean record. No one could have known the depth of the calm that had come to that aged heart. Even the awful pain of the wound had stopped, under the shock of the cool water. He seemed to be drifting off into an eternal opium dream.

"What is it, Wang? Can I do anything for you?"

"No, sir, Cappen. Bym'by, finishee"

He lay quiet for a moment, then plucked at the other's sleeve.

"Old Cappen say, boy step high. Look out! Maybe more-better stop, look-see"

Captain Sheldon buried his face in his hand. Had the words come with lesser force, they would have infuriated him; had the advice been given as advice, it would have defeated its own ends. But now it came with the authority of death, sealed with the final service it came with the meaning of life, and could not be denied.

RESCUE AT SEA

RESCUE AT SEA

When an Arctic blizzard strikes the Atlantic Coast without warning, the coal laden schooner that puts to sea trusting in an uncertain Providence catches it off to the northward of Cape Cod or down along the Jersey shore; and you read in your morning paper how some steamer reached her in the nick of time, and rescued her frozen crew as she was on the point of going down.

But this was not always the way of it; a mechanical age has completely forgotten the day when steam was an innovation on the sea, when sailing ships were the accepted mode of travel and transportation, and when the details of rescue breathed a more romantic story. It was not so many years ago that steamers themselves were heavily rigged, relying to a large extent on their canvas when the wind was favourable. Then the lanes of the sea were crowded with handsome square-rigged sailing vessels; and your morning paper reported more often how sail had lent a hand to steam, than steam to sail.

But let me tell it in the captain's own words.

* * * * *

I was coming home that time from Liverpool to New York in the ship Pactolus, a moderate clipper of the early seventies. A regular run, it was; voyage after voyage I'd been the rounds from New York with general cargo to San Francisco, from San Francisco with wheat to Liverpool, thence home in ballast, less than a year for the complete circuit. A famous course, the course that had called into being the extreme clipper ship, and the one on which her best and most astonishing records had been made.

So we were flying light, in a great hurry to swing across the Western Ocean; for my owners had cabled that the cargo was ready and the ship badly needed. A spell of dirty weather had followed us ever since leaving Liverpool; it had kept me on deck night and day, but I wasn't complaining so long as the wind hung on our tail. At length, however, the easterly spell seemed to have blown itself out, and a change of weather was imminent. Nightfall of the day that brought us abreast of the Banks of Newfoundland closed in with threatening signs. I kept the deck till midnight, saw the wind shift into the sout'ard, but at last decided that we weren't to catch a blow that night. It was early autumn, a season when storms in the Atlantic aren't always dependable. Soon after the watch was changed I went below, leaving word to be called in case things took a turn.

At four o'clock in the morning, when they changed the watch again, the mate stepped below and rapped at the cabin door. I came out of my bunk all-standing, thinking at once of a change of weather and trying to feel it in the angle of the deck.

"What's up, Mr Ridley?" I called "Is it breezing on from the southeast?"

"No, sir" he answered through the door "But there's a strange light on the weather bow, sir, a long way off. I wish you'd come up and have a look at it. I think it must be a ship afire"

I dressed immediately, and went on deck. Off about three points on the weather bow a big glow lit up the heavens, like an island burning somewhere below the horizon. It was impossible to estimate the distance it was away; but only one thing could cause it, there on the broad Atlantic with no land nearer than five hundred miles. That thing was fire. For it distinctly wasn't a natural phenomenon; all those hard violet rays that characterize electrical disturbances were lacking, and in their place were the warm tones of smoke and flame, reflected brightly in the low-hanging sky.

I hauled the ship up as close to the wind as possible, trimmed the yards carefully, and found that I could just fetch the light of the conflagration by jamming her hard. Before this, we had been running free, with the wind a couple of points abaft the beam. Almost as soon as we brought her to the wind, it began to breeze on in little gusts; the delayed southeaster, I realized, was at last rapping at the door. The skysails were already furled, and under ordinary conditions I should now have taken in the royals; but I kept them set and let her go. She was a smart vessel on the wind; the more sail she carried, up to a certain point, the better she liked it and the higher she would point. She heeled a little harder as she felt the squalls, gave a lift and a lunge, then found her pace and settled to it, heading directly for the lurid glow in the western, sky.

Within an hour we were able to make out the tops of flame above the horizon, and saw that there must be a big vessel afire. The flames flickered, appearing and vanishing behind the rim of the ocean, as if the world had caught ablaze and was trying to touch off the sky. A wild sight, almost supernatural; it sent a chill through our hearts, and the whole ship's company were terribly excited. I thought of trying to set the skysails, but my better judgment prevailed. It wouldn't do to carry anything aloft at such a time. In the freshening breeze the Pactolus had all the canvas she wanted, and was making an excellent run of it, as if she realized that time might be a matter of life and death.

The burning ship, when the mate first called me, must have been about thirty-five miles away. At half past six we had her well in view. She looked like an enormous torch dropped on a black and angry ocean; solid flames mounted hundreds of feet in air, illuminating a wide arc of the western horizon. Long before we reached her, the fire lighted our own decks with a wild glare and painted our sails a hideous red.

At seven o'clock, just as dawn was beginning to break, we passed a hundred yards to windward of her, took up a favourable position a short distance beyond, and swung our main yard. She was a large three-masted bark-rigged steamer, a passenger vessel, I saw with increasing alarm. Her main and mizzen masts had already been burned away, the middle section of her hull was red-hot like a stove, and the sheet of solid flame that we'd been watching for hours rose above her with a steady appalling roar, as if a great bellows were blowing under her keel.

It had been apparent to us from the first that nobody could be left aboard—nobody left alive, that is. I felt certain, however, that if they had managed to get away in the boats, they'd be clinging to the vicinity of the disaster, in the knowledge that she would attract everything afloat through a radius of fifty miles or more. Almost immediately, this notion was confirmed; we sighted a bright light on the water just astern of the steamer, then another, and in a few minutes three flare-ups were burning in as many boats and as many directions. Nothing for us to do but keep our mainyard aback and let them row to us. Thus fifteen or twenty minutes passed, while I was on tenterhooks over the ship's situation.

At length, after a desperate struggle, they dragged one by one under our lee. The mate had charge of getting the people aboard. Men in the main channels passed a bow and stern line to each boat, others fended them off with boat-hooks, still others helped the castaways over the rail. It was a lucky chance that we reached them when we did; the three boats were badly overloaded, half full of water, the wind by this time was breezing on sharply, and the sea making up minute by minute. They wouldn't have been able to keep themselves afloat another hour.

The captain's boat was the first to come alongside. I saw them pass up a woman with a year-old baby, then an invalid man. Next came another woman, who proved to be the stewardess of the steamer; she was carrying a heavy parcel done up in a tablecloth, that rattled and jangled like a bag of doubloons. In an overloaded boat, in half a gale of wind, she had salvaged the ship's tableware! The rest of the crowd were indiscriminate; except for the women, of whom there weren't many, I couldn't tell passengers from crew. As I stood watching at the break of the poop, a man with a long beard and a blanket wrapped around him came up to me. He seemed half dazed; he was carrying in his hand a small hatchet, the blade stained with blood.

"What the devil are you doing with that thing?" I demanded.

"I killed the ox, sir" he answered wildly—it came over me in a flash that he must be the cook. "I couldn't leave him there to burn"

The captain was the last man from that boat to come over the side. I shook his hand, but had no time just then for conversation; a fact that he recognized at a glance, drawing a little way aft along the weather alley and leaving me alone. For everything had to be done at once, you know; these people saved, and my own ship looked after. We were in a ticklish position. With main yard aback, and every squall heavier than the last, we might easily get stern-way on and that would never do. I felt pretty confident of my gear aloft, but if anything carried away to hinder the handling of the sails, we should find ourselves in a pretty kettle of fish. Above all, I kept a sharp eye on the relative position of the burning steamer. Aback as we were, with so much canvas spread, we must, I thought, be drifting steadily down toward her; and it would be the end of us to run afoul of that inferno, or even to fall to leeward of her. Watching closely, I soon made out that we held our distance from the craft, or rather, that she held her distance from us; incredible as it seemed, she was drifting as fast as we were. I turned to her captain, calling his attention to this mystery.

"Yes, I noticed it" said he "It seems to me that the sheet of flame must in some way be acting like an enormous sail. I can think of no other explanation"

Neither could I—and I believe that he was right. She had been barque-rigged, as I said, and the foremast with its heavy yards, still standing, kept her head three or four points off the wind, so that she lay in the position of running free; her sides, too, were high, caught a lot of wind, and gave her headway. But the sheet of flame must have helped her progress. For here we were with a ship flying light, and sufficient canvas spread to drive us to leeward at a rate of four or five knots an hour, even with the main yard holding her dead.

Too much canvas, in fact; the wind had begun to come with a new weight and no time afforded for proper seamanship. No time. We had taken in the royals before we reached the steamer; had clewed them up, but been obliged to leave them hanging, we'd ranged past her so rapidly. As we backed the main yard, we had let all three of the topgallant yards run down, and hauled down the flying jib. All these light sails were threshing and pounding aloft, while the men who should have furled them were busy saving life in the lee channels; the jib was slatting itself to pieces on the end of the jibboom. At that very moment, under ordinary conditions, we should have been housed down under reefed upper topsails.

The captain of the steamer had been waiting for me to find a free moment. Now he pulled up beside me.

"My name is Potter, Captain Clark" said he "I just heard your mate call you by name. It's needless to say anything, sir, about what you are doing for us"

"Yes" I answered "save that for the coffee. We haven't got through the soup yet"

He gave a short laugh. "Speaking of grub, Captain, how about fresh water? We haven't much in the boats, and we're adding a good many to your ship's company"

"I've water enough to last a hundred men for a month" I told him "Water enough for washing, and all purposes" The iron tank below the main-deck, five thousand gallons, had just been filled in Liverpool.

He looked at me a little incredulously. "Thank God!" said he "I've been worrying about that ever since I came aboard. Your American ships go well provided for"

The third boat had then come alongside. "Is this your whole outfit, Captain Potter?" I asked.

"Good God, no!" he cried "There's another boat somewhere—if it hasn't gone down"

"We sighted only three. But we'll find it for you, all in due time" I reassured him.

"It's the second mate's boat" said he "The poor fellow was half blind from fighting the fire, but he insisted that he could take charge of a boat. He couldn't have lost her—he was no more heavily loaded than we were. I expect he's been left somewhere to windward, Captain; we have drifted away from him. You'd hardly believe it, but we had tough work, rowing our strongest, to keep up with the drift of the vessel. My orders were to keep her in company as long as she burned"

"Well, if your second mate is to windward, we may have difficulty in reaching him" I pointed out "You see how it is, sir; this will be a living gale inside of an hour. But we will do everything possible. Wait till it grows a little lighter. In the meantime, what about these boats of yours?"

"I'm done with them, Captain" he answered "You can do what you like"

There were two big steel lifeboats, and a smaller Whitehall boat. "I'll swing the lifeboats aboard, then, and let the other go" said I "We may have a fire of our own before we reach New York; and my boats would barely accommodate my own ship's company. Mr. Ridley, rig a preventor lift on the lee main yard-arm, and hoist those two big boats aboard"

My mate, I'm sorry to say, had lost his head in the excitement and confusion. A fine old man, an excellent seaman, came from down Deer Island way; but he had outlived his usefulness, as many of us do. He was running fore and aft the ship, accomplishing nothing, and chiefly whining about his sails being slat to pieces.

Just as I gave the order to hoist in the boats, the third group of castaways, in charge of the steamer's boatswain, were coming over the rail. These men were mostly from the forecastle; for she had been heavily sparred, crossed a couple of royal yards, and carried fourteen men before the mast to handle her sails. The boatswain was an impudent little Londoner, every inch a sailor, and one of your old-fashioned chanty-men. He caught my eye from the maindeck, and whipped out his whistle.

"Shall I tyke the order, Captain?" he roared through the din.

"Go ahead!" I told him, waving my hand. Old Ridley hadn't heard me, anyway.

"Aloft there, men!" cried the boatswain with a swagger, giving a long blow on his whistle "Here's a bloomin' deck under yer feet again, an' Di-vy Jones'll wyt a while longer. D'ye hear the Old Man's orders? Preventor lift on the lee main yard-arm, there, and hoist in the bloomin' boats. Lively now, lend a hand, my lads, an' show 'em what ye knows"

They sprang up the ratlines like monkeys; heaven knows, a tarry rope must have felt good in their hands again! In a jiffy they had rigged the lift, and got a sling under the first boat. A few moments later, as the boat rose slowly across the rail, I heard the little Cockney's voice aloft, raised in a hauling chanty:

"Oh, Bony was a war-ri-or,

A-way! Ay-yah!

A war-ri-or, a ter-ri-or,

Jean Fran-swar!"

His men came in loudly on the chorus; their voices gave me a turn, to think of the vicissitudes of fortune. For they had been snatched from certain death, and they knew it already. As it happened, that tall fire in mid-ocean was not reported by anyone else; we were the only ship in all those waters to sight and come up with it. And in less than an hour after we had taken the last man aboard, we were stripped to three lower topsails, hove-to in a howling gale.

Full daylight had come while they were hoisting in the boats. We still lay with the main yard aback, to windward of the burning steamer; forty minutes, perhaps, had passed since we'd come into the wind. In a few minutes more we should be ready to get under way—and no sign yet of the fourth boat with her load of frightened humanity.

I caught a young scamp running by, a boy from home that I'd had for the round voyage. "Here, you young rascal, jump aloft and see if you can pick up another boat anywhere" said I "She's likely to be to windward. Hustle, now! You've been nothing but trouble all the voyage; now earn your salt" I knew that he had the sharpest pair of eyes aboard.

He was up the mainmast in a flash, slipped past the slatting topgallant-sail, and reached the sky-sail yard. In a few minutes he sang out

"I see a boat to leeward, sir!"

"Where away?"

"Just abeam, beyond the steamer"

I feared that his imagination had run away with him, so sent the second mate into the mizzen cross-trees with a pair of binoculars. He reported a boat sure enough to leeward—a boat with a tiny sail set.

"That accounts for it!" exclaimed Captain Potter "I forgot that leg-o'-mutton sail in the second mate's boat. But why has he used it, to run away from the steamer, when I ordered him to stand by her?"

"I'm afraid it means that he is hard pressed" I answered "He's had to run for it, in order to keep afloat. We must fill away at once. I hope we can manage to reach him in time"

While we were swinging the main yard, Captain Potter stood on the after house, alone beside the mizzen mast, watching his burning vessel. She was a splendid steamer, only a few years old. He watched her soberly. I left him to himself. After we had got the Pactolus off before the wind, with things around decks a little under control, he said good-bye to his command, as it were, turned aft, and took his place beside me on the quarterdeck.

"Can you make out the boat yet from the deck?"

"She's dead ahead. They have seen her from the forecastle"

We looked aloft. Yards were groaning, gear was cracking; under full upper-topsails the ship swept down the wind like a racehorse, fairly leaping through the water. She must have been a splendid sight to those poor fellows in the second mate's boat, waiting for her at the door of death.

"You have a fine ship, sir" said Captain Potter. "I've never seen a ship handled so smartly, in such a breeze and under so much sail. You must avail yourself of any help that my crew can give you. My officers are thorough seamen, brought up under sail"

"Thank you, sir—I see that they are" I answered "But after we have things straightened around once more, I think we won't need any assistance" My pride was up, you know, now that the affair was beginning to turn out so well. She was a British steamer, and these officers, fine young Englishmen of the best breed, ambitious and well-trained in the school of sailing ships, were watching me and my vessel with critical eyes. I'd show them what it meant to be picked up by a Yankee clipper.

"I make this passage every year, Captain" I went on "and always carry extra men for it. After leaving my wheat in Liverpool, I have to get back to New York in the quickest possible time, to load again for California. It's much like your steamer with her schedule. With extra men I'm able to carry on sail a little longer, handle her in ordinary weather with one watch, and save the wear and tear on the crew. The wear and tear comes mostly on me. I'll have your crew to fall back on now, and will be able to hold my sail still longer. A sort of reserve force, you know, ready to jump in an emergency"

He glanced over the stern-rail, where the steamer lay blazing in our wake. In falling off we had swung a wide circle around her, to escape the path of the sparks as they whirled down the wind; and now had left her a couple of miles astern.

"She burns well, Captain" I observed "That's the hottest fire I ever felt, or ever wanted to feel"

He gave a bitter laugh. "They loaded her especially for it" said he "Cotton goods, and butter, and bacon, and hams" As if not caring to look at her any longer, he turned forward, mounted the steps to the top of the house, and took up his old position by the mizzen mast.

In twenty minutes after filling away, we had reached the second mate's boat. A look through the binoculars showed me that things were indeed in a bad way with them; there wasn't a moment to lose. The boat seemed momentarily on the point of filling, while half a dozen men along her sides baled frantically with buckets and other utensils. A man in the stern sheets was waving wildly at us, as if to communicate some information. I had a notion what it was; they were trying to tell us that they wouldn't be able to bring the boat into the wind. I saw that plainly. Captain Potter, coming hurriedly to the after end of the house, evidently saw it, too.

"How will you pick them up, Captain?" he asked nervously.

"I think we can do it without difficulty" I answered, as if such measures were a matter of course. In point of fact, I had never executed the manoeuvre that seemed necessary in this pass, and had never heard of its being tried by anyone else. As we approached the boat, I hauled the ship well out on their starboard quarter, passed them several hundred yards to port and left them a quarter of a mile astern; then swung the ship across their course, came up to leeward of them with a shock and a crash, backed the main yard, lost headway, and stopped in exactly the right position for them to fetch our stern as they ran before the wind. In other words, I cut a half circle around them and placed myself athwart their hawse, in the way of an old-fashioned naval manoeuvre.

We looked down on them from the quarter-deck as they raced toward us. Several men seemed disabled, water was washing nearly up to her thwarts, but a few oars were poised in readiness, showing intelligence and discipline somewhere aboard. In a moment she was on the point of our weather quarter, sweeping past our stern.

"Round the stern!" shouted Captain Potter and I together "Get under the lee, and jump for the main channels!"

But they had already seized their last and only opportunity. A smooth patch on the water favoured them; they made the turn nicely, let go their sail, and succeeded in paddling up under our quarter.

"Jump while it's smooth!" I cried "Let the boat go"

My crew had by this time become expert channelsmen. One of them caught the painter, others used their boathooks; and the last load of castaways from the steamer tumbled over the side, more dead than alive, but alive enough to know that they'd been saved. The painter was cast off, the boat drifted clear of the quarter, filled, overturned, and was whirled away on the top of a breaking sea. Safely on our decks, watching this symbol of elemental destruction, stood every soul of the steamer's company.

"I really must congratulate you again!" said Captain Potter heartily "That was a feat of seamanship, sir. You seem to be able to put your ship through the eye of a needle"

"She handles nicely, doesn't she?" I agreed. As a matter of fact, I felt like congratulating myself; I won't deny that I had a feeling of pride, as well as a prayer of thankfulness for our universal good luck. Things had gone without a hitch, at a time when a hitch might easily have called for payment in human life.

So here we were, with sixty people landed suddenly on our decks; with whole topsails set, and a gale of wind turned loose upon us. I'd been obliged to abandon the upper sails, while we were saving the first three boatloads; they had slat themselves to shreds before we could find time to furl them. The chief thing now was to get the upper topsails in. I made up my mind that we would shorten sail with our own crew. The crowd from the steamer were completely fagged out; they had been fighting fire and the Atlantic for twenty-four hours. I told them to go below, in the after cabin or the forward house, anywhere, have a smoke, and rest wherever they could find a chance to lie down; and instructed my steward to pass round a supply of dry tobacco.

When they had faded away and the decks were cleared for action, Captain Potter approached me again. "I hardly dare ask about provisions" he began "I'm sorry to tell you that we brought very little. The fire cleaned out our galley and store-rooms first of all, and we were barely able to save a meal or two of biscuits and canned grub"

I thought a minute, making a rough estimate. "We can furnish provisions to go with the water, Captain" I told him.

"What!—without allowance?" he cried.

"Without allowance" said I "I never liked the idea of putting people on an allowance; it's too much like starving yourself by degrees. I can guarantee you provisions to last us for a month or six weeks, three good meals a day; and we can't in common fortune be out that long. The best of provisions, I think you'll find"

"How does it happen, sir?" he demanded.

"It doesn't happen. We're always prepared for just such an emergency. More than once I've met a ship short of provisions, and furnished her with a boatload or two. You can't anticipate what is liable to happen; but a lazaret full of beef and flour and potatoes fills in almost anywhere"

He shook his head in amazement. "I've often heard it said that American ships were remarkably well-found" he observed "But I shouldn't have believed a yarn like this from my best friend. Let's see, we've brought you three times your ordinary ship's company; and you have provisions and water for all hands to last longer than twice your usual run to New York. Are you positive, sir?"

"Positive. Give yourself no further worry on that score"

"Back there in the boats" said Captain Potter "I was thinking that, if God was good to us, we might be picked up by some Slavonian bark, with only macaroni enough aboard to take him to the Banks of Newfoundland, where he'd depend on catching a few codfish, and water or not according as it rained. Then it would have been a case of Halifax or St. Johns, or else a transfer in open boats to another vessel, with more danger to my passengers and crew. This, Captain, seems like a pleasant dream"

There was no necessity for telling him how it really did happen. In the line for which I was sailing, a captain had the fitting out of his own vessel, and was given practically a free hand. I'd found that there were many things that I could buy cheaper and better in Liverpool; and I always laid in a supply of these for the round trip. Things like hams, and bacon, and tobacco; yes, tobacco, the best American plug at a shilling a pound, the same article that I would have had to pay fifty cents for in New York. At Liverpool, too, we could get the finest French and Irish potatoes; though they wouldn't keep for the round trip, I used to lay in enough to last me to New York and down to the Line on the outward passage. We had a ton and a half of potatoes on board that trip, when we sailed from Liverpool; we reached New York with half a ton of them left, so you can judge how short of provisions we were. Then there were certain things, especially flour, and canned fruits, vegetables and preserves of all kinds, which I could buy cheapest and best in San Francisco; I'd supplied the ship there with these articles, for the round trip, and a good half of the stock still remained. Butter—we had barrels of it. In fact, we could actually have fed all hands of them for two or three months without allowance; but I didn't want to spoil the effect by overdoing it. I let them continue to think that this was the accepted fashion on board of an American ship crossing the Western Ocean.

That afternoon, when the Pactolus was at last shortened down, the empty bolt-ropes unbent from the upper yards, and the decks cleared for heavy weather, the question of accommodations had to be disposed of. We started with the after cabin; the woman with her baby had one spare stateroom, the invalid man another. To Captain Potter I assigned a third spare stateroom, so that he could be by himself. My own room, with double bunk, sofa, and mattresses on the floor, I gave up to the rest of the women passengers; the stewardess slept on the sofa in the after cabin, and generally looked after the ladies' quarters.

This accounted for all the spare staterooms we had. For myself, I took the upper bunk in the mate's room, at the same time moving the second mate to this room, where he and the mate, having alternate watches, could share the same bunk. This left the second mate's room free for the accommodation of the steamer's three deck officers, with two single bunks and a knock-down of pillows and blankets on the floor. In the steward's room also there were two berths; my steward kept the lower, the first steward of the steamer had the upper, and her second steward another knock-down on the floor.

In the forward house there were the galley, carpenter's shop, and sail room, all narrow rooms running from side to side of the house, each with two doors and two windows; forward of the sail room were the two forecastles, separated from each other by a fore-and-aft partition in the middle of the house, and opening forward on either side of the fore hatch. I moved all of my crew into one forecastle, since my only watch would be sleeping at a time; and put the steamer's crew into the vacated one, where bunks and bed clothes were ready for them to use. The engine room crowd were assigned to the carpenter's shop; the rest of the men-folk, a miscellaneous lot, first, second, and third class passengers all together, were given the sail room.

We had on board quantities of second-hand burlap and old sails, rolls and rolls of them, to be put down under the cargo of wheat, enough to line the whole inside of the ship when she was loaded; these were rolled up in the 'tween-decks after we discharged at Liverpool, to be overhauled and repaired on the passage across to New York, before being stowed away for use again in San Francisco. They were just what we needed for beds and coverings. In the two narrow rooms in the forward house, spread plenty thick on the floors, they made the finest possible knock-downs; although they were packed in pretty tight, the men couldn't have been more comfortable in their own berths.

Captain Potter wanted me to put them below the hatches. We were ballasted with salt in the lower hold, but the 'tween-decks were clean and empty; she was in splendid trim for sailing, dry as a bone in heavy weather. Undoubtedly, the 'tween-decks would have made a comfortable place for the men, with plenty of room all around. But my objection was a perfectly practical one. Every one of these men had saved his pipe; in many cases it seemed to be about all that he had saved. Pipes had been going in every mouth since they'd come aboard. And the sight of that burning steamer was seared into my eyes. It gave me the shivers merely to think of sending all those pipes to sit on a bed of sail-cloth below the hatches. Some kind of a fire was only to be expected; but a fire in the forward house would be the lesser of two evils.

With all my care, I made a serious mistake in these arrangements; a mistake due to my ignorance of steamship etiquette. I assigned the chief engineer to a place forward with the engine-room crowd, and paid him no further attention. The status of engineers wasn't in my category; I thought of them, when I thought of them at all, as belonging to some indefinite lower region, and lumped them all together. But I was careful to make the proper distinction with the deck officers, for this was a matter within my own province.

Captain Potter gave me a broad hint that afternoon. "My chief engineer is a fine man, sir" he said "There has never been friction between us. He is highly thought of by the office"

I received the news as something in the way of conversation; wasn't much interested just then in the affairs of his vessel. What did I know of steamers? I'd been brought up under sail; and a steamer to me was nothing but a new-fangled usurper of the ocean, a thing to be sneered at, and to be outsailed when possible. It wasn't till some years afterwards, I remember, that I learned by accident that the chief engineer of a steamer was next in position to her master, above all of the deck officers. The knowledge was a shock to me; I recalled Captain Potter's remark, realized what I'd done, and saw how nice they had been about it. Even to-day, it annoys me to think of the mistake, and of the comment it must have caused.

We lived like kings; I gave free access to the provisions, fore and aft. The first steward of the steamer said "I'll wait at table" Our forward cabin table, hauled out to its full length, would seat fourteen people; he had to set it up three times for each meal, for all the passengers ate aft. The second steward said "I'll wash dishes" So he stood all day in the pantry, digging away at an endless job; for of course there weren't dishes enough to go around three whacks. The cook joined my cook and steward in the galley forward; among them they kept us fed. Made up a barrel of flour into bread every day, for one item. By chance, I overheard the steamer's first officer say one evening after supper, that her fare at its best hadn't equalled ours.

They were frank in admiration of the ship; of her equipment, her sailing qualities, her cleverness, dryness, and general seaworthiness; I could see that they were a little envious, too, of the way we handled her. We had a crew of Liverpool toughs, hard men, but experienced sailors, bred to American ships and their ways. They had caught the spirit of the game, filled the steamer's crew full of tall yarns in the dog-watch, and performed feats of seamanship for them on deck whenever the opportunity offered. Once the excitement of that first day was over, old Ridley's superb knowledge of his position emerged again. My second officer was one of your tall, fiery down-east youths, twenty-one years old, smart as a steel trap and able as a whirlwind.

We put the Pactolus through her paces, I can assure you; carried sail till all was blue. Luck sent us strong and favourable winds. In the dead of night I would often see the steamer's officers, dressed and wandering around the decks, or gathered in a group and holding low conversation; the ship would be scuppers under, the deck at a dangerous angle, masts and yards buckling and groaning, a spread of motionless canvas rising aloft as hard as a board; the whole hull humming like a top, as she raced through the water at a fourteen-knot clip. It made them nervous; they wanted to give me their advice, but being young and proud, they wouldn't do it. I suppose they called me a reckless Yankee. But I knew my ship and trusted in my gear, knew exactly what I could do with them; and didn't carry away so much as a rope-yarn throughout the passage.

Only once did I have to call on our visitors for help. Closing in with Nantucket, we had run full-tilt into another southerly wind. It wasn't more than half a gale, and I had kept her running under a heavy press of canvas. After twelve hours had gone by, I knew that soon the wind would jump into the westward in a flurry, as all southeasters do in the end. Feeling secure, with extra men to draw on in case I got caught aback, I held my sail and course till the last gun was fired. We were running with the wind on the port beam, under three whole topsails, whole mainsail and foresail, spanker, mizzen, main and foretopmast staysails, and inner jib.

And before I knew it, I had really got caught. The wind jumped without warning, jumped quick and hard; one minute it was our old half-gale from the southward, the next minute it was a howling westerly squall. Before we could possibly pay off to the northward, the ship was flat aback. Then it was "All hands on deck to shorten sail!" with a vengeance, the vessel lying down to port, the masts cracking, the shrouds slackening with an ominous sag, and things in general looking badly for a while. The officers of the steamer ran on deck feather white, feeling the ship go over to windward; her first mate ranged up close beside me, and kept glancing backward and forward from my face to the masts, as if he expected them to go over the side any minute and wanted to watch me when they fell.

As soon as I'd seen that we were caught aback, I had let the three upper topsails come down with a run. My crew were aloft now on fore, main and mizzen, furling these sails, which I couldn't afford to lose. Neither could I afford to lose the mainsail or break the main yard; but at that moment there were no men to spare from the topsails, where the second mate was working like a demon; while old Ridley had all that he could do on deck, letting go gear and attending to the three topsail yards. With every fresh puff of westerly wind, I saw the main yard bending like a bow; it was a big spar, over ninety feet long. The mainsail was a new piece of canvas, and probably would hold; but the tack or the weather brace might carry away under the unequal strain, and then the yard was gone.

"You can blow your whistle, sir" I said to the young officer who had been watching me so closely—they all carried whistles in their pockets, to call their men with. "Take charge of that mainsail, if you please, and get it off her as quickly as you can"

He needed no second invitation; was off in a flash, blowing a loud toot as he ran forward. I heard the call answered by another whistle in the waist; that little Cockney boatswain had been getting anxious, too. Out came the steamer's crew with a rush from their side of the forward house, where they'd fallen into the habit of loafing regardless of what went on outside. Clew-garnets and buntlines were manned with seamanlike precision, the tack was started, the sheet was eased away, and in a remarkably short time they had smothered the big sail and hauled it up to the yard.

But they didn't intend to leave the job half finished. "Aloft, boys, and out on the yard!" cried the mate. A moment later he sprang up the ratlines himself, to superintend the job; the little Cockney took the weather yardarm, piping a song as he perched above the water; they furled the sail smartly, reaching the deck along with our own men from the topsail yard.

Captain Potter, who had come on deck in the interval, was watching his men with manifest pride. I was glad that it happened so, and took especial pains to compliment the chief officer before all hands. He blushed like a school girl, now that the emergency was over. The little Cockney, however, couldn't resist a stroke of impudence.

"We thanks ye, Captain" he sang out loudly "That's the w'y we does it aboard of a bloomin' lime-juicer"

The sally brought a roar from the whole main-deck, in which I'd have been a stick if I hadn't joined.

"What do you do with such saucy rascals?" I called to Captain Potter "Shall I keel-haul him, or serve him an extra pint of grog?"

"Myke it a pint o' grog all around, Ol' Bo-ri-i" giggled the boatswain, dodging around the mast.

"I would if I could, my men" I laughed "But as you know, we have no grog or lime-juice in a Yankee ship. Beef and biscuit, work and wages, is what we sail on. You need no grog, if that's a sample of the way you feel" And I pointed aloft to the neatly furled mainsail.

With stern way on, we had by this time hauled out to port, braced the yards sharp up, and caught the wind in the foresail and three lower topsails. Our visitors perhaps had saved us from a serious accident; at any rate, they'd demonstrated their ability. It gave them something to brag about on their own account; while the effect on my crew was only to intensify the spirit of rivalry. In fact, the incident brought a great improvement to the tone of the ship; for I had noticed during the last couple of days a growing animosity between the steamer's forecastle and ours, due to the forced inactivity of the former.

On the following day the westerly breeze blew itself out; in the early afternoon a steamer overtook us, bound in for New York, passing about four miles to windward. We were then off to the southward of Nantucket, having come about on the starboard tack during the night. I set a string of signals "Come closer. Have important news to communicate" The steamer made them out, changed her course, and ran down within hailing distance. She was a German vessel, one of the first oil-tankers to cross the Atlantic, they told me in New York; her name was the Energie. Her captain couldn't speak English fluently; but he had picked up a New York pilot somewhere on the Banks, a man who'd been carried to sea by another vessel in a storm. He was the fellow who talked to me from the bridge, although I didn't know it at the time.

"Steamer ahoy!" I hailed; "The British steamer Santiago has burned at sea. I have on board her entire ship's company, and am taking them to New York. No one was lost, either passengers or crew. Please report us all well"

They held a consultation over this news on the bridge of the Energie. Soon I was hailed in a familiar South Street twang.

"Captain, don't you want to be relieved of your guests? You must be short of provisions"

I heard Captain Potter chuckle behind me.

"There's your chance to get to New York ahead of us" said I, turning to him. It was a smooth day on the water, with little prospect of wind.

"Do you want to be rid of us, Captain?" he asked.

"No, sir" said I emphatically.

"Then we'll stay aboard, if you don't mind, and reach New York when you do"

I hailed the steamer again. "We need no assistance, thank you. Please report us all well, and inform the steamship company"

The Energie went on about her business, and soon passed out of sight ahead. Late in the afternoon a fresh breeze sprang up unexpectedly from a little to the eastward of north; a breeze that was destined to carry us all the way to harbour. We braced the yards around to starboard, set every rag of sail, and laid a course for Sandy Hook with the wind a couple of points free on the starboard quarter.

Throughout the next day we were running along the southern shore of Long Island, in smooth water, the breeze still fresh and steady, every stitch of canvas drawing, and the ship at her best point for sailing, logging some fifteen knots an hour. The days of the extreme clipper ship had long since gone by, at the time I'm telling of; but many a moderate clipper of the later years, with fuller cargo carrying capacity, but retaining many of the fine lines of the greyhound of the seas, and embodying all the best of their experience, could reel off a day's run that might astonish the nautical historian. I'll never forget that wonderful reach in the Pactolus under the lee of the Long Island shore. She was a trim and lofty vessel, lean and graceful on the water; a cloud of canvas aloft, she heeled at a constant angle, as if moving through a picture, while the long curl of a wave rolled out steadily from her lee quarter, as she swept like a bird over the smooth sea.

At three in the afternoon, a steamer was reported dead ahead, some ten or a dozen miles away. Within half an hour, it was apparent that we were crawling up on her; and in an hour's time, we could estimate that we had overhauled her by something like five miles. I had a strong suspicion that she was our old friend, the Energie, but said nothing about it just then. Every one aboard was excited over the race, the Santiago's company no less so than my own. In fact, the young British officers could hardly contain themselves, wouldn't for anything have seen us fail to overtake her, kept running to me and suggesting this and that, or asking if the wind would hold.

Another hour of this terrific sailing brought us near enough to read her name. And she was the Energie, sure enough. I thought that handsome young first officer of the Santiago was going to fling his arms around me, when I took my eye from the long glass and told them the news.

"Hurrah for the Pactolus!" he shouted, running forward and waving both his hands "By Gad, they won't have the chance to report us this time! We'll do our own reporting"

"She must be foul—although these freighters don't pretend to any speed" observed Captain Potter, a little concerned, I thought, for the reputation of steam.

"She's making about ten knots" said I "And we are logging fifteen steady, and sixteen by spurts, when the breeze puffs a little"

"You don't tell me!" he exclaimed, glancing over the side. Then he looked up at the clumsy old steamer, ploughing along a quarter of a mile to leeward. "By Jove, Captain, we're passing her as if she were standing still!"

Indeed, we were; the spectacle, from a romantic point of view, was an inspiring one, although it must have been a jealous sight for the German captain. But now we were drawing in toward the approaches to New York harbour; our race had been with daylight as well as with steam. For I'd promised myself that, by hook or crook, we would arrive that night. I scanned the horizon anxiously for a pilot boat—in those days the New York pilot boats were small but exceptionally sea-worthy two-masted schooners; and at seven o'clock in the evening, with half an hour of daylight still remaining, caught sight of one standing toward us on the weather bow. We came together rapidly. By this time we had left the Energie a couple of miles astern.

When the pilot boat was within a mile of us, I called Mr. Ridley and the mate of the Santiago, and had a private conference with them; gave them instructions to place all hands in position for certain manoeuvres, but to keep the men out of sight behind the bulwarks. Stepping to the after companionway, I sang out below "Captain Potter, ask the ladies to come on deck and see us take the pilot on board" They hurried up in a flutter of excitement, the captain in their wake. A glance along the maindeck told him that something unusual was about to happen, but he kept his own counsel. It's hard to educate a taciturn Britisher to new ways, but the constant surprise of the experience through which Captain Potter was passing had begun to make an impression.

The pilot boat was now running down to us on the opposite tack, about four points on our weather bow. She expected us, of course, to heave-to and wait for her. We kept on, however, at a racing clip, making not the slightest movement to check our terrific progress. To add zest to the game, the wind puffed substantially at that moment, sending us through the water with a rush really magnificent.

I could see that, on board the pilot boat, they didn't know what to make of it. As we drew up on them, changing the angle of their bearing, they shifted their course little by little, letting their craft fall off before the wind and following us with her nose. In another moment she stood directly abeam of us, less than three hundred yards away. With a gesture of dismissal, as it were, they hauled the schooner up again on the port tack, prepared to stand away to sea and leave us to our own devices.

At that instant, I waved my hand, and gave a sharp order to the helmsman. The men jumped from their concealment under the bulwarks; up went the courses like a piece of magic, down went the helm, and ship and main yard swung together, as if both controlled by a single turn of the wheel. The Pactolus came into the wind with a bird-like swoop, felt the main yard aback, checked her pace, and stopped dead in her tracks; there she lay, nodding sweetly to the slight swell, the last rays of the setting sun striking through her sails.

A shout went up from the pilot boat. They fell off immediately, jibbed to the port tack, crossed our stern waving their hands, and dropped their skiff overboard. In a few moments the pilot nosed up under our lee quarter.

"Good Lord, Captain!" he cried, as he came over the rail "What are you running here, a packet ship? I haven't seen a trick like that turned since the days of the Black Ball Line"

"I'm in a hurry to get in" I answered "and I don't want to waste time over it. I have a double crew aboard to help me. This is Captain Potter, pilot, of the British steamship Santiago, burned at sea"

Later that evening we took a towboat off the lightship, and clewed up our sails. I thought I'd be extravagant and have a second tug, since I saw another coming toward us; the wind had suddenly shifted into the northwest, dead ahead, and every one was anxious to get in. A hard enough tow it turned out, even with two boats ahead, for the wind soon settled down in earnest for an old-fashioned off-shore gale. I told our passengers to go to bed as usual; that all was safe now, and they would wake up next morning to find the ship at anchor.

At three o'clock in the morning we came to off the Statue of Liberty, and dropped a hook into the bottom. They had passed us through quarantine under extraordinary dispensation, meanwhile sending word of the disaster and its happy outcome up the bay ahead of us. At daylight, the Santiago's company hurried their biggest tugboat alongside, stocked with emergency provision, if you please, for they expected us to be half starved. Captain Potter met the representative of his company at the rail; when they had talked for a while in private, I broke in on them.

"Captain" said I "it would give us the greatest pleasure if you and your ship's company would stay on board and have a last breakfast with us. Permit me to extend the invitation to this gentleman. Tell your tug to wait for you alongside until we're through"

"Thank you, sir—we'll do it" he answered heartily "Mr. Folsom, this is my good friend Captain Clark. He has treated us to a reception aboard the Pactolus unique in the annals of the Atlantic, as you'll be able to see for yourself when you go below. I'll promise you as good a breakfast as you would find ashore"

So the tugboat with her emergency provisions waited, while we enjoyed a hearty breakfast. I finished as soon as possible, however, and said good-bye to my guests; for a tugboat from my owners had come alongside in the meanwhile, and I was in a hurry to get ashore. Reaching the deck with my papers, I found the German tanker Energie churning past us, bound somewhere up the East River. She had already been discovered from our forecastle; all hands lined the bulwarks forward, laughing and jeering, waving their caps at her.

At my appearance on the quarter-deck, a group of three men, led by the Cockney boatswain of the Santiago, detached themselves from the others forward and met me at the break of the poop.

"Committee from the crew o' the Santiago, sir" announced the boatswain "We has to inform you, sir, that we votes your ship is a beauty, your officers is gentlemen, and yourself is a man we'd like to sail with whenever you're looking for a crew. You've treated us like kings, sir—and we're the boys as knows when we're well treated. We thanks ye, sir, from the bottom of our hearts"

I was taken aback for a minute, not being a ready speechmaker: "Well, boys" said I at last, blinking back a tear of emotion "it's been a pleasure to me to be able to make you comfortable. I can only answer you in the same words, in a way we all understand: if I needed a crew, I'd rather have you in the forecastle than any crowd I ever saw. You have handled yourselves like seamen under trying circumstances. And, well, I'm damned glad that I came along!"

I jumped aboard the tug, then, to forestall any further demonstration. But as I drew away from the ship's side, Captain Potter, with Folsom beside him, mounted the after-house.

"Now, my lads!" he cried "Three cheers for Captain Clark! And give them with a will!"

They gave them.

"Three cheers, now, for the good ship Pactolus! And when we're cast adrift again, pray God she picks us up!"

You could hear the cheer all over the upper harbour. The Staten Island ferryboat, on her way from the Battery to St. George, changed her course and passed close beside us, to see what the excitement was.

UNDER SAIL

UNDER SAIL

I

It was at the time of New England's success and prosperity on the sea that young Captain Bradley took the ship Viking on her maiden voyage. In those days the building and sending forth of a ship was a community enterprise. One sharp November morning, the seaport that had seen her keel laid down the previous winter, had watched her rise on the stocks through the long days of summer, and had launched her successfully in the early fall, turned out to bid the Viking good-bye and Godspeed. Her crew was made up of home boys; Captain Bradley himself had been born and reared in the town. He had started out before the mast at the age of fifteen; now, at twenty-four, he had set his foot on the top rung of the nautical ladder. The town was proud of him. It was proud of all its boys; but especially of one who had shown such steadiness and ability as young Frank Bradley, the old man Jabez Bradley's son.

Perhaps Captain Bradley was a little proud of his own achievement. He could look back over a clean, hard record. In his nine years of seafaring he had not spared himself. Obey, work, learn, develop judgment and decision, be able to handle any job or meet any emergency; these principles had ruled his life, the sine qua non of old-fashioned seamanship. The reward had come unexpectedly. Captain Marshall, the leading shipowner of the town, whose fortune and influence lay behind the building of the Viking, had offered him the ship that summer as she stood on the stocks.

"I've had my eye on you for a long time, Frank" the old man had told him "I knew your father before you, and you're a chip off the same block. I guess you're just the man for my new ship"

But young Bradley had already received too many hard knocks, had learned too thoroughly how to discipline himself, to be unduly puffed up over success that came in the course of a deserved advancement. His real pride, from that moment, was in his ship. She was the finest square-rigger that had ever been launched in the town, a ship of eighteen hundred tons, crossing three skysail yards. Her lines were those of the moderate or commercial clipper. As he looked up from the quarter-deck at her lofty spars that November morning, while they waited for the tide—at the maze of freshly tarred rigging and new manila running gear, at the brightly varnished yards, at the furled sails that stretched from yardarm to yardarm like caps of snow—a thrill of genuine sentiment coursed through his blood. His ship—and he loved her already. Soon those white sails would be set to the breeze, soon those strong, slender masts would sway against the sky, bearing aloft their press of flattened canvas, soon those new ropes would snap and sing, settling into a taut network from deck to truck and from masthead to masthead, whose every strand would have its use and meaning. Soon the ship would surge beneath him—his to control, to guide, to learn, to play upon, as an organist brings out the tone and volume of his instrument. His trust, too, and his future; at moments like this responsibility weighed with crushing force. The greater the chance, the greater the danger; the greater the success, the greater the failure if things went wrong.

"I won't fail her!" he cried in a rush of emotion "We're going on together, the Viking and I. By God, I'll sail her as long as she stays afloat. She shall be my first and last command"

Suddenly he thought of the face that would be appearing every few minutes, on this morning of his departure, at the southern window of a house in town. He could see the house plainly, a high brick mansion facing the bay. "It will be only a year" he had told her the previous evening "Then I'll be back, dear, and we can be married, and you can go to sea with me. No more of this sailing and staying at home alone; it's a miserable business"

She had looked up at him bravely. "Yes, Frank, I know. But come back safely. Think what might happen in a year!" It was the cry of the sailor-woman. She had learned it from her mother—and from her father, who had been lost at sea with all hands on one voyage when his family had remained at home.

An hour later, when, with all sail set, the Viking had gathered headway before the light land-breeze, taking her first steps into the world, Captain Bradley went to the stern-rail and gazed back at the lessening town. He stood there a long while, lost in thought. He could still make out the familiar pattern of streets and houses. Home. It seemed to him as if he had always been either leaving or returning. His short, quick boyhood was already half-forgotten, like a snatch of another existence. Five years before, his mother had died there in the town; he had received the news on his arrival in Singapore. His father had vanished in a sea tragedy long before he could remember. No home for him remained, either there or here; he would have to make one. What was this seafaring life, that he had now asked a young girl to share? Every day he heard men call it a dog's life, growl that the game wasn't worth the candle. Perhaps so—but she knew all about it. She had been born in a ship's cabin; she loved the sea. And here was the Viking, young, strong and beautiful—what better? A fierce determination swept over him to make life worth while, even the life beyond the horizon; to give her a worthy gift, a home of love and happiness, all he had. Any life could be worth while, if full enough of love.

Glancing over his shoulder, to make sure that no one observed him, for it would not do to give his men the materials of a jest, he leaned across the rail and waved his handkerchief toward the town. She would expect it—would be watching with the glasses from that southern window. Sailor women saw the last of their grief; they didn't turn away and hide.

"I'll try to make up for the waiting, Grace" he whispered; then swung forward resolutely, to face the coming years.

II

Autumn returned to the old seaport, and with it the Viking, back from her first China voyage. Captain Bradley was welcomed with a hearty "well done" The voyage had been prosperous; the homeward run from Hong Kong had been made in the remarkably fast time of eighty-two days. Hereafter the Viking would be a favourite among Chinese shippers.

A month after his arrival, young Captain Bradley was married in the high house fronting the bay. That night he and his wife left town to join the ship, loading in New York for Yokohama.

Then began ten happy years of life. They were the last ten years of American maritime prosperity, the close of the sailing ship era. Charters were plentiful; the Viking made money. Captain Bradley found himself a man of means. Without question, he invested his earnings in ship-property; most of the transactions passed through Captain Marshall's hands. Why not put his money into ships? Ships had been his life and the life of five generations before him, had made him a good living, had taught him all he knew. Most of his friends were doing the same thing. Few there were in those days among the old shipping people, who saw into the next quarter-century, who realized the nature and magnitude of the coming change.

One year, five thousand dollars went to build a new house in the home town. Every captain built a new house, whether he used it or not. Captain Bradley's house was occupied for the length of one China voyage, while Mrs. Bradley remained ashore and gave birth to a son, their only child. Except for this voyage, she accompanied her husband constantly on the sea. She had been reared to the life of wind and wave. In the Viking's spacious and comfortable cabin, they made their home from year to year. Their son passed his boyhood on ship-board. He was the apple of his father's eye. Captain Bradley invariably spoke of him as "my Frankie" with a note of pride and affection in his voice. Sturdy and manly, the little boy filled the ship with the interest and activity of childhood.

On a quiet evening in the trade winds, when Frankie had placed his mother's deck-chair near the weather rail and crouched beside her, perhaps weaving for her amusement one of the strange fancies of which his head was full, it seemed to Captain Bradley that life had brought him all that a man could desire. A happy wife, a beautiful son, a splendid ship—good times, comfortable circumstances, a pleasant prospect: in youth he had dared to hope for such things, but had not expected to see the hope come true. Now life had given him confidence. He would sit on the weather bitts beside them, dreaming of the future, of that day when their son would be grown up, when he and his wife would retire from the sea.

But the future, in those years, after all seemed unsubstantial; Captain Bradley believed in enjoying the present reality. A large share of the money that he earned he spent. He spent it extravagantly, spent it with a flush hand. In the China ports whither all of his charters led him, there were always a dozen or twenty American vessels lying in the roads. Lavish entertainment went the round of the fleet. "What's a little money, more or less?" Captain Bradley was fond of saying. "Times are good, aren't they? More will come" He was for ever buying pieces of cloisonné and rare porcelain for his empty house at home, silks and embroideries for his wife; things to be packed away in camphor wood chests after she was dead. The habit of extravagance grew upon him; he spent more money than he realized.

In fact, from a selfish standpoint, Captain Bradley was a poor business man. Seamanship was his vocation; he understood few of the ins and outs of a financial order founded on usury. Its sentiment and psychology he understood not at all; these were considerations entirely alien to him. To his mind, money, to be clean, had to be straightforwardly earned. The plain transactions of a ship's business were all he needed to know. A certain sum of money put into a ship would, if she were properly handled, yield certain dividends: a charter at so much the lump sum, would pay so much on the voyage. Thus it always had been; thus, if he ever gave the matter a thought, he supposed it always would be.

As the flush years went by, he developed into a typical sea captain of the old school; a man of honour, of ideals, of simple dignity and original thought, careless, buoyant, at times a little reckless, a stern disciplinarian, a wise judge of human nature, a sentimentalist at heart, a believer in the inherent righteousness of things, a man of sincerity and individuality. Dishonesty, laziness, hypocrisy, he hated as he hated crime. Inefficient men found him a hard taskmaster. By nature and training he was arrogant and imperious; the instinct of command ran strongly in his blood. He spoke his mind at all times; he was equally ready to defend his position. His pride in his wife, in his boy, in his ship, in everything he loved, was enormous. In short, he was a man singularly adapted to the high and responsible calling of master mariner—singularly ill-fitted for his coming encounter with the world.

III

The first stroke fell out of a clear sky. Captain Marshall died suddenly, leaving his business affairs in a bad way. For three months, the town was in turmoil. At the end of that time, it became apparent that the old shipowner had involved all of his own property, as well as that of many others, in a series of disastrous speculations. No one hinted at dishonesty, but the hard fact remained. Ship property had greatly fallen off in value in the last few years; this, it would seem, had been the immediate cause of Captain Marshall's financial stringency. He, too, had banked heavily on the old times.

Captain Bradley arrived that year from Hong Kong, to find himself poorer by more than half of his modest fortune. All of his ready money was gone in the wreck; what remained was a bundle of pieces of vessels, quarters and sixteenths and thirty-seconds. Worst of all, the Viking, the one ship that Captain Marshall had owned outright, with the exception of the eighth share standing in Captain Bradley's name, would have to be sold by auction to satisfy the creditors. In this crisis, Captain Bradley's idealism overcame all other considerations. "By God, I'll buy her myself!" he cried. His friends told him that he was a fool; but this only heightened his determination. He called the creditors together, and made them an offer. By great exertions, he managed to negotiate on his various ship holdings, disposing of some at figures below their value, mortgaging others, selling the house, and finally raising sufficient money to carry out his word. It took all he had; but he was glad that he possessed enough property to do it. When he sailed from New York on the next voyage, he was the sole owner of the vessel. His confidence, momentarily shaken by the failure of one of the pillars of his world, had begun to return. He realized that times were not what they had been; but it seemed impossible that the demand for sailing ships would ever wholly go by.

The next few years, however, seriously undermined his assurance. Freights were falling rapidly, were even becoming hard to get. One time he had laid her up in Hong Kong for six months, resolving to wait for a better figure than had been offered, and had at length been obliged to accept a charter that barely paid the ship's way. Steam was to blame for it all. He began to hate steamers with a bitter and unreasoning hatred. They were driving the fine old sailing ships off the sea.

Then, as suddenly as the financial crash, came the blow from which he never fully recovered. On the homeward passage, shortly after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, his wife sickened and died. She had been ailing ever since they left Anjer, but he had not realized the seriousness of her condition. They had already caught the trades in the South Atlantic; it was hopeless to think of putting back to Capetown. He urged the ship with every rag of sail, trying to reach St. Helena in time; but the trades held light, the elements were against him. For three days of nearly flat calm he paced the deck in agony, or sat beside his wife's bunk while she talked to him in a low voice, telling him of her love, of what to do when she was gone; trying to make it easy for him, for she knew that she was dying. On the third day, she died in his arms. That night his hair turned from black to white. He came on deck the next morning an old and broken man. The wind continued light and uncertain, there was no chance of reaching St. Helena in time for the last rites; and he buried her there in the deep sea.

That voyage, they had left their son at home in school. Alone now in the empty cabin, Captain Bradley's thoughts were much of his boy. He himself could stand it, must stand it. But how could he tell Frankie, his Frankie? Night after night he paced the narrow floor below, going back over life, living in the past from which he had now been definitely cut adrift. Perhaps he was not quite sane for the remainder of the passage; he could never remember clearly those weeks before his arrival. But always, behind every conscious thought, lay the dread of what he would have to tell Frankie. This he remembered; it seemed to have been beaten into his brain.

Then a wonderful thing happened. He arrived home to find that the boy they had left behind had grown into a young man, had developed a strong and resolute character of his own. He came to meet his father at the train; the news had reached him already. "I did all that I could, Frankie" were Captain Bradley's first words, as they faced each other on the gloomy platform. His son looked at him steadily, fighting back the tears. "I know you did, sir" It was the son who put his arms around the father's shoulders; Captain Bradley had felt a strange hesitation, almost akin to shame or fear. But now his heart rose for the first time since his wife had gone. This was the stuff that men were made of. His son.

They entered the house together—the old Bradley house, where Frankie lived with his aunt when he was at home. Captain Bradley greeted his sister, took off his hat and sat down heavily. Suddenly the boy cried out and fell at his father's feet, holding him by the knees, his whole body shaking.

"My God, father, your hair is white!"

"Yes, yes, Frankie. That doesn't matter. Poor mother, poor mother!" He leaned forward to hold the heaving shoulders. For a long while they cried in each other's arms.

As the days went by, Captain Bradley found himself depending more and more on the new young strength. The two were inseparable; they seemed to meet on common ground. Captain Bradley was one of those men who never lose their youthful outlook; while the boy was in reality older than his years.

When the time came to sail on another voyage, Frankie insisted on leaving school and going away with his father. For the next eighteen months they lived together on the ship, at sea and in foreign ports, and their intimacy grew profound. They talked, read aloud in the evenings, studied navigation and history, discussed the mysteries of life and love; side by side they stood on the quarter-deck through storm and fair weather, and Frankie learned the lore of seamanship at the hands of a past-master. Gradually, Captain Bradley got back his grip on life. The boy had renewed his courage. He even began to dream of the future again—of marriage and a career for Frankie, no following the sea, but a safe career ashore.

Then another long voyage, alone this time, for Frankie had entered college to tackle his education in earnest. He had decided to become a civil engineer. This voyage was in many ways a hard one for Captain Bradley. Business was poor; he had a great deal of trouble with his crew, for only the outcasts of society could now be induced to enter the forecastle of a sailing ship; a succession of storms followed him, and at last he lost a foretopmast off the coast of Luzon. He had to face the fact that the Viking was growing old; for several years he had been acutely aware that her top-hamper needed extensive overhauling.

As for himself, he knew too well that he had turned the corner of life. The voyage dragged on to its close. He reached the Atlantic Coast in the dead of winter. Three weeks of threshing around outside in the teeth of northeast snowstorms and icy northwesters completed the disheartenment. But at length ship and man, ice-bound and weary, passed in by Sandy Hook and made a harbour once more.

The news that met Captain Bradley seemed too heavy to be borne. A month before his arrival, when the Viking had been somewhere off the Windward Islands, running up in the northeast trades, his son, skating on the river beside the college, had fallen through the ice and been drowned.

IV

After a while, Captain Bradley gathered up the fag-ends of his life and started out in the Viking on another voyage. She was all he had now. A few more years went by, years of increasing discouragement, aimless and fugitive. Times were becoming very hard. The day of China charters was over; steamers monopolized that business now. The Viking became a tramp ship, they picked up what freights they could get, and the old ports knew them no longer. The vessel barely paid her way; operating expenses were retrenched on every hand, there was no money left for upkeep, and Captain Bradley saw her literally falling to pieces before his eyes. But the old hull remained sound.

He lived a blank life; but he continued to live, which was something. The old days were indeed passing, and with them the ships and the men. Sailors were not what they used to be; business ethics was not what it used to be. He began to feel as if the very fibre of mankind had changed. Nothing seemed left but memory and the remnants of an invincible pride. He could not realize that he had made what would be commonly called a mistake, in buying the Viking with his last dollar. His philosophy did not provide the materials for such a conception.

The day came when the old Viking was almost the last of her race, the only wooden full-rigged three-masted ship to sail out of Atlantic ports. All her lofty companions had passed away, or had been converted into coal barges. Her arrival in New York was an item of news. This was the one substantial reward of Captain Bradley's declining years as a ship-master; he had sailed his ship beyond her era, he had flaunted her in the face of a new generation. That compact made with the Viking in her maiden hour had been no idle sentiment; it had been life's supremest dedication, and he had kept the vow.

A few old friends remained to him, though he had made no new ones in the latter years. These friends kept urging him, every voyage, to sell the Viking for a coal barge while there was time, while even this way offered for the disposal of an outworn hull. The coal companies were beginning to build their own barges. The Viking would still be worth some fifteen thousand dollars as a coal barge. He could retire on the proceeds, and live in modest comfort for the rest of his days.

"Never!" he invariably answered "Do I look like a man who needs to retire? She shall never be a coal barge while I live"

Yet it had to come to that; perhaps he had long foreseen it, perhaps the vehemence of his denial was only the face of pride set against the inevitable. On a certain voyage he had been obliged to run into debt, to fit out the vessel. The voyage netted less than nothing. When he returned to New York the ship was attached for the debt. There was no business in sight; the bottom had at last dropped out of the shipping world. He did all that was possible, but he could not raise the money; he and the Viking were no longer a good risk as borrowers—their credit was gone. The ship was sold at auction, in equity proceedings, and was bid in by one of the large coal companies operating along the Atlantic Coast. Captain Bradley, at sixty years of age, found himself stranded on South Street without a penny in his pocket. The proceeds of the sale had barely covered the debt. But his honour, at any rate, was clear.

"Another wreck for Snug Harbour" the word was passed, as he stalked out of the room where the transaction had been completed. But they reckoned without their host. That afternoon the Viking was towed to Erie Basin, to be stripped for a coal barge. At almost the same hour, Captain Bradley disappeared from South Street. The shipping world never saw him again.

V

A tramp steamer, dirty and ill-kept about decks, streaked with iron-rust alongside, came up the bay from Sandy Hook and anchored off Quarantine. She had arrived from a long and wandering voyage. When the health officer had left the vessel, the captain called the second mate to the bridge. An old man stumbled up the steps.

"Mr. Bradley, get your things together and go ashore with me. I'll pay you off at once. You old trouble-maker, you're not going to stay aboard the ship an hour longer"

The old mate gazed at his superior officer in silence. Tears of anger rose to his eyes. He turned away to hide them, walking to the end of the bridge. His cup of bitterness was running over. Frank Bradley, commander on the high seas for forty years, discharged from a second mate's billet on a tramp steamer—discharged by an incompetent captain, because his incompetence had been found out. He shut his jaws grimly, recalling the scene of two days before. Out there in the fog he had refused to obey the captain's orders; had wrested the wheel from the hands of the quartermaster, had held them both off with threats of physical violence, while he steered the ship himself; and thus had kept her from running ashore on Diamond Shoal. The captain's orders had been completely wrong. He had probably said some sharp things about them; it had been no time for mincing words. Touch and go—but he had saved the ship—saved the captain's certificate, too.