# The Saturday Evening Post/A Little Matter of Salvage

It almost made him sick to look at it. There she lay—a clear thirty thousand dollars at the very least. McNaughton had never heard of a bigger bunch of salvage so near and yet so far away.
A Little Matter of Salvage
The fighting Scotchman Hangs On
By PETER B. KYNE
LUMBER freights were decidedly off. As a matter of fact, the market had gone to pieces, and "Old" Hickman was disturbed. Standing before the grimy window of his private office in the faded old red-brick building in East Street, Old Hickman looked out over the waterfront- out across the bay, beyond Goat Island, to where the fleecy clouds drifted over the summit of Mount Diablo. Before him the white ferryboats surged backward and forward between the big ferry depot and the Oakland mole.
Up the bay, toward Mission Rock, an Italian cruiser swung at anchor, side by side with three big battle-ships of the Pacific squadron. Beyond the warships a score of full-rigged ships lay awaiting grain charters.
There was something in that forest of masts—in the little launches coughing to and fro between the great hulls, with their black-painted ports looming up along the gray sides—something in that grand panorama of wharf and bay and mountain that soothed and thrilled Old Hickman always. In all his busy life he had known no odor so sweet as the smell of the docks. He sniffed it now through the open window as it floated up from Howard Street bulkhead, where a whaler, just back from the South Seas, disgorged the season's catch.
To Old Hickman's money-worried soul it all whispered of life. The red, white and blue funnels of the army transports smiled at him over the roof of the transport dock. The black bulk of the dirty Norwegian collier, steaming in past Alcatraz, was always beautiful to him. Whenever harassed or worried he sought the window and gazed on life—his life—a life he had helped to create. Even now as he gazed his hard old face softened, his wizened hands ceased their restless tattoo on the window-sash. A steam schooner slipped down the bay past the dirty Norwegian collier and turned her blunt nose in toward her berth at Pier 12. Old Hickman turned from the window.
"The Trinidad's in from San Pedro," he announced to the outer office. "Just making up to the dock."
Young Hickman rose from his desk and joined his father at the window. He was a clean-cut, well-dressed young man, possessed of a kindly, humorous mouth and calm, gray eyes. To the casual observer Young Hickman seemed to convey the impression that the world was his oyster, which he would open at his leisure.
"Just watch that Scotchman berth her against a flood tide," he said, pulling out his watch. "There isn't a skipper on the coast that can handle a boat like McNaughton. He'll have her tied hard and fast in four minutes."
Old Hickman frowned. "Yes," he answered irritably, "and in five minutes he'll be up here with a requisition as long as original sin. That McNaughton is a good man, Johnny, but uppish, sir—very uppish. He must be taught that a steam schooner can't be run as expensively as a yacht."
"The Trinidad really needs new lines," his son ventured. "He'll dock her in three minutes, by George! or I'm an Indian. And look at that tide! Oh, rats! His spring line has parted."
Young Hickman laughed. "That'll put Mac in a pretty temper," he said as he walked back to his desk. "Handle him with gloves, Dad. Mac is a whirlwind, and we can't afford to lose him."
Old Hickman grunted. He was seldom satisfied. It was a pet theory of his that, no matter how able a skipper might be, there were dozens of skippers on the beach just as able. He watched the Trinidad finish docking. That task accomplished to his satisfaction, Old Hickman's dry mind returned to the subject of dull freights, while his eyes sought comfort for his worried soul out where the fleet of foreign bottoms lay awaiting the cargoes that were to send them homeward to the United Kingdom.
He was still at the window when McNaughton entered the general office and leaned his elbows on the counter. McNaughton was second-growth Scotch—young, big, rawboned. Large, snappy black eyes shadowed a stern, strong face, handsome only in its suggestion of strength and clean manhood. He wore a double-breasted suit of heavy blue serge. A uniform cap was cocked truculently over one eye.
Old Hickman turned from the window and met him at the counter.
"Well, Captain? Have a good trip?" Old Hickman assumed a cheerfulness he was far from feeling.
"Fair." McNaughton looked the old man square in the eye. "I want a hawser," he said, "a new seven-inch Manila."
Old Hickman's beetling white brows came together in a sudden scowl. McNaughton scented fight. His snappy-black eyes gave notice that he was entirely prepared to meet it.
"What's the matter with your old towline?"
"Rotten!" McNaughton rasped. "Old and rotten! Sisal line. Never was any good. Couldn't tow a ship's boat with it. I want a new seven-inch Manila."
Old Hickman glanced at the clock. The insubordination that shone in McNaughton's eyes, the half-insolent tone of McNaughton's voice, were lost on Old Hickman. He thought only of the expense.
"Can't do it just now," he answered firmly, "with freights from the Sound to Pedro down to four dollars. You'll have to get along with the old towline for a trip or two."
Again Old Hickman glanced at the clock—infallible sign that, so far as he was concerned, the interview was at an end. But the Scotch was up in McNaughton.
"I've listened to that tale for eight months. Mr. Hickman, the inspectors are after me. We sail at five o'clock, and I want that line today. Do I get it?"
Old Hickman walked toward the private office. "No!" he roared, turning for an instant to glare at McNaughton.
The skipper's black eyes blazed fire. His great fist came down on the counter with a thud that jarred the ancient inkstand with its ill- assorted array of corroded and worthless pens.
"Then I quit!" he roared back. "When I finish this trip to the Sound you have a new skipper to take charge of your floating coffin. I'm through."
The office door closed with a crash. McNaughton was gone. Young Hickman came in from the private office.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Left in a hurry, didn't he?"
"He's quit," fumed Hickman senior. "Wants a new seven-inch Manila and wants it now. Now! Now!" The old man's voice rose to half a scream. He was furious. McNaughton having resigned, Old Hickman was denied the pleasure of firing him. "He can't have it. So he's quitting next trip. The idea! Freights down to bedrock and sinking three hundred dollars in a new hemp line that he won't use once in five years. A brand-new hemp line to lay in the lazaret and rot. And it's all your fault. Dang you, Johnny! I'd have fired that Scotchman long ago if it hadn't been for you. He's uppish, sir. Uppish to an extreme."
Johnny Hickman bit off the end of a cigar to hide the smile that fringed his humorous mouth. He was a good son. In dealing with his father Johnny always followed the lines of least resistance, for Old Hickman was dwelling in the past and Johnny was a product of the twentieth century. At four o'clock the Bach Ship Chandlery Company received a 'phone order from Hickman & Son to rush a coil of seven-inch Manila down to the steam schooner Trinidad, Pier 12. The Trinidad would sail at five. The Bach Ship Chandlery Company promised delivery at four-thirty, without fail. Young Mr. Hickman hung up and softly whistled the opening bars of the sextet from Lucia. At the window of the outer office Old Hickman watched a gravel scow beating up the bay.
At four-thirty Young Hickman donned overcoat and gloves and called it a day. In the outer office he paused to close down his father's desk, then with good-natured force he jostled the old man away from the window.
"Young man," he said sternly, "you're working yourself to death. Come on up to the club. I can trim you in one rubber of crib. Are you on?"
Old Hickman was touched on his weak spot. He smiled. After all, he was only working for his boy. "You bet I'm on," he answered, and as he looked up into Johnny's smiling face the memory of McNaughton and the Trinidad, rotten towlines and dull freights, vanished from his mind. He reached for his hat and, arm in arm, the two left the office.
At five o'clock, just as Miss Turner, the stenographer, was leaving the office, the 'phone rang.
"Hello!" said a voice. "Is Mr. Hickman junior in? Oh, gone for the day, is he? Well, this is Bach—Bach Ship Chandlery Company. Tell him we didn't get that seven-inch line aboard the Trinidad. Got it down to the pier at four-forty, but the wharfinger says she sailed at four-thirty. We'll put it aboard next trip. Give him that message, please."
Miss Turner promised.
McNaughton bore down on Pier 12 like a huge black cloud. The Trinidad, with steam up, lay in her berth, rising and falling gently with the rip of the tide. She had been McNaughton's first command, and in spite of his anger he paused on the dock and looked her over half tenderly.
Beyond the fact that she was as clean as nine deckhands and a liberal application of holystone could make her, the steam schooner Trinidad had little to recommend her to the nautical eye. Her hull, old and rotten and pitifully lacking paint, was built on lines antiquated and ugly. She squatted in the water for all the world like a great fat duck. A faded house flag, flapping briskly from her maintopmast, proclaimed her one of the lumber fleet of Hickman & Son, though to the veriest roustabout of the San Francisco waterfront it was unnecessary to look to either her house flag or the dirty gilt lettering on her bows and stern as a means of identifying her ownership. The general appearance of the Hickman boats was usually sufficient, for it was a matter of common knowledge in lumber-shipping circles that Hickman & Son never spent a dollar on the upkeep of their boats until actual necessity and the inspectors finally forced them to it.
The Trinidad, oldest and least valuable of the Hickman fleet, insured to her full value and with her deck equipment run down to a degree that bordered on the criminal, was regarded by every soul that knew her, or pretended to know anything at all about shipping, as the essence of a marine joke. Throughout the entire length of the waterfront, from Meiggs wharf to Hunter's Point, there was but one man who spoke well of her. Henry Schmidt, her stout German engineer, always spoke of her as "an able liddle ship." But then Henry had been chief of the Trinidad since the days when she was considered a marvel of the shipbuilder's art—when she really was "an able liddle ship." Times had changed, but Henry had not. Twenty-eight years is a long, long time to be chief of a boat like the Trinidad.
After all, there was some excuse for Henry Schmidt's pride in the Trinidad. Old Hickman never grudged a dollar on his engines. He was too smart a man not to know the value of speed in a steam schooner as a dividend producer. The Trinidad had two new Scotch boilers, a "composition" wheel of latest design and as good a set of triple expansion engines as Henry Schmidt had ever wiped in all his forty years at sea. Old Hickman would as soon have contemplated bankruptcy as the denial of a requisition from the engine department. Moreover, Henry Schmidt never bothered him personally. McNaughton did. He was continually asking for things—paint, lines, a patent log, a sounding machine—innumerable things, and showing temper when he failed to get them. A smart marine engineer never fights for his requisitions, let freights be what they will. When Henry Schmidt wanted anything he got it. If it was not forthcoming promptly the Trinidad would lay up suddenly to install new brick in the furnace, or patch up the pumps, or repair a leaky tube. Henry always found a way.
McNaughton often wished he was an engineer. He wished it now as he stood on the dock and watched Henry superintending the taking on board of quite a quantity of supplies for the engine department, among which the captain noted ten gallons of boiled linseed oil and a fifty-pound keg of white lead. McNaughton surveyed the blistered sides of the Trinidad and was acutely conscious of the fact that boiled linseed oil and white lead, when properly mixed, make paint. He muttered something ugly and sprang aboard, disdaining the gangplank.
Townsend, the chief mate, saw him coming. "All ready, sir," he called as the skipper appeared on the bridge. McNaughton reached for the whistle cord as the last of Henry's treasure came over the rail. "Cast off your spring line!" he shouted, as with his right hand he reached for the handle of the marine telegraph. A bell jingled in the bowels of the Trinidad. The water around her stern began to boil. The second mate, a Swede, Nelson by name, cast off the stern line promptly at the captain's command, and, with a prolonged blast from her whistle, the Trinidad backed out into the bay. The strong flood tide caught her and swung her around, her blunt nose pointed toward the Golden Gate. McNaughton set her half speed ahead. As she crept slowly seaward past the end of the pier, a dray containing a huge yellow coil of hemp hawser drove in on the dock. The captain of the Trinidad looked back and saw it. Also, he saw the steam schooner John C . Wilkins lying in her berth on the other side of Pier 12. From the deck of the Wilkins "Doughface" Johnson, her captain, waved McNaughton an airy farewell.
McNaughton understood. "Swede luck!" he growled—though Doughface was a Finn—and set the Trinidad full speed ahead.
Groaning and muttering in her travail as she lifted to the heavy seas, the Trinidad plowed steadily up the coast. It was her third night out from San Francisco. With her squaresails set to take advantage of a stiff sou'east breeze, and her engines driving at full speed, the aged hulk was making a good twelve knots. At nine o'clock the captain left the bridge in charge of the second mate and retired to his cabin. The darkness was intense. The wind was freshening every minute, with a nasty, choppy sea running.
"Looks like we're in for a sou'easter, sir," the mate remarked as McNaughton left the bridge.
"Let her come," the captain answered; "we're running before it. We'll be into the Straits before she breaks in If the wind increases very much, take in her squaresails. Tell the first mate to call me when he picks up the Umatilla lightship."
It was a little past midnight when McNaughton, awakened by the violent pitching and straining of the Trinidad, reached up and turned on the electric light that hung at the head of his berth. Outside he could hear the rain and spray beating in great sheets on the deck and cabin, while the vibration from the engines told him all too plainly of the heavy seas in which they were racing.
"Blowing half a gale," he murmured as he climbed out of bed and peered at his barometer. "Wonder if that mate—— Holy sailor! Twenty-eight ten!"
Five minutes later, in gum boots, oilskins and sou'wester, he fought his way through the rain and wind up to the bridge. The first mate was at the speaking-tube calling for him as McNaughton reached the bridge. He shouted something about a light.
"Can't be the Umatilla light," the skipper answered. "We've been making fast time, but we shouldn't pick up the lightship till about four o'clock. Better go below and get into dry clothes and your oilskins."
Townsend left to change his rain-soaked clothing, and McNaughton backed up against the tiny pilot-house in an endeavor to escape the battery of rain and wind which beat in his face, blinding and choking him. Creaking and groaning and wallowing heavily in the furious sea, the little Trinidad leaped forward into the night. Suddenly out of the darkness a hand reached forth and touched McNaughton's arm. The man was shouting—something about a light.
"Louder, man! Use your lungs! What is it?"
"Lookout reports a flare-up light on the port bow!"
A flare-up light on the port bow!
McNaughton was out on the end of the bridge, hands gripping the cold, wet railing, eyes strained out into the darkness. For several minutes he looked, then away off on the port bow a light flickered faintly for a moment; then, gathering strength, it flared up brightly to several times the glare from an ordinary side light. For fully half a minute it burned, then went out.
"Bed linen dipped in oil," the captain muttered. "Must be in a bad way and running short of rockets. Ah! I thought so," as a blue light shot skyward.
McNaughton stuck his head down over the bridge into the wheelhouse. "Hard-a-port your helm!" he shouted. "Watch for rockets and a flare-up light on the port bow, and keep her headed that way."
Three minutes later a red light shot up from the Trinidad and her searchlight was beating backward and forward against the inky sky. Instantly a blue light answered from out of the darkness.
Presently Nelson came on deck, and the captain sent him below to call all hands. Mr. Townsend, the first mate, in sea boots and oilskins, returned to the bridge.
"Looks like a bit of salvage, sir," he shouted.
McNaughton swore—a bitter torrent of salt-water oaths. "If it's a tow you know where we get off at, don't you? Townsend, that's a prize out there, burning those blue lights. I feel it in my bones, and I'll bet my bare-shanked Scotch soul she's a P. C. liner with a broken tailshaft, and twenty thousand in the job. And me quitting next trip. Yes, I gave him notice, the parsimonious hound. Curse his thin-skinned carcass, it serves him right! And yet, if it's salvage I could use my share——"
McNaughton's big, wet hand pressed up against his vest pocket and fingered a little square cardboard box. His thoughts for the moment were not of the sea. There was a girl in Pedro, and her hair was red—copper red. She was good to look upon, and McNaughton had planned for a house some day. A little white house with green shutters and a garden in front. A house with a wide porch and a little cupola up on top, fitted up like a pilot-house. He was in Pedro four days in every two weeks——
"Perhaps the old line will hold her." In the darkness the mate smiled. He understood.
McNaughton came back to earth, or, rather, to sea. "Hold your granny!" he raged. "It won't hold her head up to the sea. I'd as soon use my necktie, I tell you."
A sudden gust of wind blew a sheet of icy rain into the skipper's face and shut off further argument, though McNaughton continued to growl to himself as they steamed steadily toward the distressed vessel. Presently her side lights were in view, and clear above the scream of the gale through his rigging McNaughton heard a prolonged blast from her siren. Some sixth sense told McNaughton she was not a steam schooner. His sailor sense told him that no vessel could live long, wallowing in the trough of such a sea as was now running.
McNaughton was a born fighter. "Mr. Townsend," he shouted, "tell Mr. Nelson to get out that old hawser. And you stand by with the line gun to shoot it aboard if she needs it. We'll do our best. Ought to be close enough to pick her up with the searchlight pretty soon."
Ten minutes later the lights of the stranger showed up so close that McNaughton put the Trinidad under a slow bell. Cautiously the little steamer approached as if feeling her way through the darkness, and McNaughton bent his searchlight in the direction of the little twinkling lights. Three hundred yards away, laboring in the trough of the sea, broadside on and with every sea breaking over her, lay a big steel tramp steamer. Even in that brief, blinding glance McNaughton saw that she was heavily loaded, and under the magic spell of the word salvage he judged that she must have cost, new, not less than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Slowly the little Trinidad circled around the big tramp. McNaughton hailed her through the megaphone.
"Steamer ahoy-y-y-y! Who are you?"
The searchlight showed three men on the bridge of the tramp. The Trinidad circled around to leeward. Presently down the wind came the answer: "British steamer Falls o' Clyde, coal, Nanaimo to 'Frisco. Davidson, master. After web of crankshaft broken. Want a tow to 'Frisco, and let the court settle it. I won't bargain with you."
"Sensible man," muttered McNaughton. In the glare of the searchlight Townsend saw him break into a smile.
"Townsend, she has fifty thousand in coal aboard, and she's only three years old. I was in Glasgow when they launched her. Man, but there's a pretty penny in this," he cried exultingly. "And I'll have it. Stand by to shoot that old shoestring aboard. We'll take a chance."
Once more the Trinidad circled around the Falls o' Clyde, and McNaughton again threw his searchlight on the wave-beaten derelict. As they swung up into the wind and passed the tramp just forward of amidships, McNaughton grasped the whistle cord.
"Stand by for the line!" he roared through the big megaphone, and gave the signal to Townsend—one short blast of the whistle. It was a fair shot, and the heaving line from the Trinidad fell fairly athwart the deck of the tramp. Fifteen minutes of rapid work and the ancient hawser slowly grew taut—very slowly—for Henry Schmidt was on watch in the engine-room, and McNaughton never left the bridge. Gently, carefully, they nursed her. Little by little the line stretched out, and the great, black bulk of the tramp came up from a smother of foam and lay bow on to the wind and sea. Through the speaking-tube the captain's hoarse voice came down from the bridge into the engine-room where Henry Schmidt watched the play of his beloved engines.
"Nurse her, Henry! For the love of the Lord, nurse her easy. Don't let your assistants touch those engines till daybreak. We've hell's own prize on a rotten towline, and it's up to you and me. We'll just hold her head up to the sea until daylight, when we can see how she's acting."
"Ja, "answered Henry placidly. "Ve hold her all righd."
"Any leaks in your engine-room, Henry? This strain will pull the eternal whey out of her. I'm afraid when we start to tow she'll get rid of oakum like a seasick passenger."
Henry's patient voice was vibrant with pride as he answered: "No leaks. Ve hold her all righd. She iss a noble liddle ship."
Under date of 1:30 a.m., January 18, McNaughton made an entry in his log.
The Hickmans, father and son, always lunched together at the Merchants' Club. Punctually at two o'clock each day they entered the rooms of the Merchants' Exchange, where for half an hour they gossiped, smoked, made charters and assimilated the latest marine intelligence. It lacked a quarter of two when the Hickmans appeared on 'Change on the afternoon of January 20. Old Hickman hurried to the secretary's desk.
"Any new sof our Trinidad, Hayes?" he inquired anxiously. "She was due at Hadlock early yesterday, and up to noon today she hadn't arrived."
Hayes waved his hand toward the blackboard, around which quite a crowd of shipping men had gathered. "Maybe that explains it," he said.
Old Hickman hurried toward the board. Young Hickman was already there, reading the bulletin as the clerk chalked it down:
P. C. S. S. Co.'s City of Para, Harney, master, arrived at Victoria at 12: 30 today. Reports passing a large disabled steamer in tow of a steam schooner, fifteen miles off Cape Flattery at 8 a.m. on the 19th. Both vessels too far off to read their names. Steaming down the coast at the rate of about three knots. Steam schooner doing the towing is about six hundred thousand feet lumber capacity, engines amidships, black with white upperworks. Another steam schooner, thought to be the John C. Wilkins, following up the tow, evidently on chances of speck.
The love of gain swelled up in Old Hickman's money-loving heart. "The old Trinidad for a thousand!" he yelled. "Whoop!" and his rusty old stovepipe hat went sailing skyward. He caught it again as it came down. "Bet anybody a ten-dollar hat it's the Trinidad."
Leach, of Higgins & Leach, pressed through the crowd. "I'll go you for that hat!" he snapped. "Our Amy Lee is two days overdue at Port Townsend. She answers that description and should have been in that latitude on the eighteenth. A ten-dollar bonnet it's the Amy. And another hat that, even if it is the Trinidad, she hasn't a line aboard fit to tie a hog, and she'll lose her tow to the John C. Wilkins."
Old Hickman flushed. "I'll take you on the first hat," he said lamely. Already his conscience was troubling him. He was thinking of a new seven-inch Manila line.
"And I'll take that other bet." Young Hickman answered. "And if you want to show your sporting blood I'll bet you five thousand, even money, that if it is the Trinidad she brings her tow to a safe anchorage in San Francisco Bay, without help and with her own towline."
Old Hickman turned toward his son and raised his hands in agonized horror. "Johnny, boy, for Heaven's sake don't go crazy! You know her hawser is——"
"Taken!" snapped Leach. "I'll go you if I lose."
"You're on!" yelled Johnny Hickman. "We'll deposit our checks and a memorandum of the bet with Hayes. Here, Dad, let up. I know what I'm doing. I tell you. that big Scotchman is a bulldog. He'll never let go anything he sinks his teeth into. Come on, Leach. Let's see the color of your check."
The news spread through the Exchange like a drop of oil in a bucket of water. Men crowded around to gaze at Young Hickman, the loose-fingered son of a tight-fisted father; a cocksure young idiot who bet his money so recklessly that it gave the old fellows a heartache. The excitement was intense as, with each repetition of the story, the bet increased in magnitude. Old Hickman could be seen forcing his way through the crowd, arguing and pleading with his spendthrift son. Young Hickman only laughed as he wrote his check and handed it to Hayes. Old Hickman made a wild grab for the check, but was a little short. The crowd fell apart as Johnny came back from the secretary's desk, gently leading the irate old man toward the door.
"Come on, Dad. Let's get back to the office. Quit kicking now and don't raise a scene. I tell you it's all right."
"I'll see you further, you rat, you!" screamed Old Hickman. "You ought to be horsewhipped. It's gambling! It's wrong, Johnny, it's wrong. Dead wrong. Five thousand dollars!" he shrilled. "Why, it took me ten years to get half that much together. It's gambling! Don't you understand? It's gambling! What will you say to mother when this foolishness comes out in the papers? " He dragged his son over toward the weather chart. "Idiot!" he cried. "Can't you see she's out in a hurricane?"
With some difficulty Young Hickman succeeded in getting the old man out into the corridor and clear off the crowd. As they turned down California Street Johnny slipped his arm through his father's.
"Dad," he said gently, "it's like taking pennies from a blind beggar. I sent Mac down a new seven-inch Manila just before he left and after you refused him. 'Phoned Bach to rush it down to the dock P. D. Q."
Old Hickman paused dead in his tracks to let this unholy confession sink in. Gradually the knowledge circulated through his system. His shriveled old face broke into a cunning smile. He closed one eye knowingly and with a world of affection stiffened his thumb and dug Johnny in the short ribs. Johnny Hickman laughed. After all, the world was his oyster.
There was joy in the Hickman office that afternoon. Old Hickman was too excited to sit at his desk. He walked miles up and down the dingy outer office. Had the Hickman lair boasted an office cat, it is quite within the realms of possibility that Old Hickman would have refrained from kicking the cat. Occasionally he would pause to slap his thin leg and voice his ecstasy in such expressive exclamations as: "Well, by the Great Hanky Pank! If this isn't the slickest thing ever put over!"—already Old Hickman was taking the credit to himself—and: "Suffering Cyclops! If that Scotchman lets go! But no, he won't. Johnny is right. He'll hang to her while the Trinidad holds together."
In the private office Young Hickman rested his faultessly-shod feet on his desk and whistled the chorus of a song that had been running through his head of late. Presently he laughed—a long, jolly, satisfied laugh.
"Lord, what luck!" he said. "Mac never could have held her with the old line. What luck! What luck!"
Miss Turner looked up from her typewriting.
"Oh, is that the line you ordered from the Bach Ship Chandlery Company? Because if it is I forgot to tell you they didn't get it aboard. Mr. Bach 'phoned after you left that day. They got the line down to the wharf at four-forty. The Trinidad was scheduled to sail at five, but the wharfinger said she left at four-thirty. He told me to tell you and I forgot."
Young Mr. Hickman stiffened out in his chair. His calm, gray eyes stuck out like a crab's, and for one awful moment rested on Miss Turner. In the outer office Old Hickman was softly whistling Juanita—infallible sign that his soul was at peace.
"O-o-o-o-h, Mo-o-o-ses!" said Young Hickman. He said other things—to himself—for several minutes. Then he removed his feet from the desk, sighed and thoughtfully, very thoughtfully, bit off the end of a cigar.
The gray light, stealing out of the leaden east on the morning of January 18, found the Trinidad still fast to her prize, her head up to the storm, both vessels laboring in the heaviest sea McNaughton had ever seen. The wind was blowing with unabated fury, and a cold, biting rain, mixed with hail and occasional small flakes of snow, fell incessantly. Wet and chilled to the bone, McNaughton left the bridge in charge of Townsend and went aft for a look at his hawser. The line, frayed and worn and with a twelve-foot splice almost in its center, rose and fell on the crest of every wave. It was holding! But then, they were practically hove to! And when the actual towing commenced in the face of that wind and sea McNaughton knew the line would snap like twine.
It almost made him sick to look at it. There she lay—a clear thirty thousand dollars at the very least. McNaughton had never heard of a bigger bunch of salvage so near and yet so far away. He turned and walked forward to the galley for a cup of coffee. Here he found Nelson.
"Nelson," he said, "that line won't hold half an hour. It breaks my heart to cut the salvage in half, but half is better than nothing at all. We'll have to borrow a line from the tow. Finish your coffee and signal her for her line. Nice, elevating job for a sailor man, isn't it?"
Nelson gulped his coffee and withdrew. A little later he stuck his head into the galley.
"They'll put their line aboard whenever you're ready, sir."
"Tell Townsend to give her full speed ahead. We'll see how long she lasts."
Three hours passed and still the line held. Nelson, going aft to read the log, reported progress of a trifle less than three knots an hour. The wind, if anything, was increasing in velocity, and the seas broke over them with greater frequency. The lower deck was continually awash, and at McNaughton's command lifelines were stretched fore and aft. Suddenly, as the Trinidad lifted her creaking bulk on the summit of a huge green comber, McNaughton saw the line stretch taut, clear of the water. For barely a second it hung quivering, then with a report like a rifle-shot it parted at the splice.
"Hard-a-starboard!" yelled the captain. "Nelson, take an axe and cut away that hell-bent fragment. I don't want to see it again. Mr. Townsend, stand by to receive the line from the steamer."
It took three shots from the line gun and forty minutes of such seamanship as few men will ever see, before the hawser from the Falls o' Clyde was fast on the bitts of the Trinidad and both vessels stretching away once more into the south. McNaughton left the bridge and strode aft to look at the line. The men shrank back as the big Scotchman turned from them with a bitter, sneering laugh.
"That line will never hold her. Our British brother sails for a nickel-pincher, too, it seems." Growling and cursing, the skipper returned to the bridge.
All that day—all through the long, howling night, the brave little Trinidad hung to her prize and fought her way blindly down the coast through the rain and sleet. The weather was so thick that even in daylight they could not see more than half a mile in any direction, and the barometer, continuing low, gave no sign of any decrease in the fury of the storm, which doggedly contested every inch of their patient advance.
Just after daylight on the nineteenth the steam schooner, John C. Wilkins, northward bound, passed within a quarter of a mile of them. On her bridge McNaughton could see her captain, "Doughface" Johnson, with his binoculars up to his eyes. When McNaughton looked again the John C. Wilkins was turning, preparatory to following in the wake of the tow. The significance of the move was not lost on McNaughton, who cursed aloud:
"You damned Finn! You marine scavenger! You salt-water impostor! You see a chance to steal her, don't you? Don't you, you dog? I'll ram you before I let you get her."
The Wilkins was now steaming abreast the Falls o' Clyde, and as close as Doughface Johnson dared. All day he hung there. During the night the storm increased, and the Trinidad and her tow made but little progress. When morning dawned on the twentieth Doughface Johnson was still abreast the tramp, his hungry eyes always on the frayed towline. Frequently McNaughton saw him, megaphone in hand, talking with the British captain. Mentally, he promised the Finn a wonderful beating when next they met in port.
The patience of the Finn was surpassing, but not surprising. Doughface Johnson knew his chance would come, as did McNaughton also. At eleven-thirty on the twentieth McNaughton heard the sound for which they had both been waiting—the shotlike report of the hawser as it parted.
Doughface Johnson's chance had come. Not for naught had he burned his coal for the past twenty-four hours. It took the Finn just twelve minutes to put his line aboard the tramp. It was a nice new line, stiff and yellow. As the Trinidad came about McNaughton eyed it through his glasses, praying that it might break, knowing that it wouldn't. He felt oppressed, crushed, disgraced—thoroughly humiliated. In every port from Puget Sound to San Diego he was to hear of this for months to come. He could almost hear the Swedes and Finns in the Fair Wind saloon in East Street bragging and laughing, telling, with much blowing of froth from tall schooners of steam beer, how Doughface Johnson had beaten the Scotch Devil to it.
Nelson rushed to the stern of the Trinidad and with an axe cut away the broken length of hawser still trailing from the bitts.
When his hawser was fast to the tramp and everything in readiness to commence the long tow, to Doughface Johnson, glancing back across the wild stretch of foaming, storm-tossed ocean, the Trinidad was but a black speck on the horizon, northward bound, to load lumber at Hadlock for San Pedro. The Finn chuckled as the gray mist swallowed her.
At four o'clock that afternoon a wireless from the Helena, of the North Pacific line, to the station at Tillamook Head, and by the Tillamook operator relayed to San Francisco, reported passing the steam schooner Trinidad off Columbia River, northward bound, and five miles farther on the British steamer Falls o' Clyde in tow of the steam schooner John C. Wilkins. The Merchants' Exchange 'phoned Hickman & Son. Leach, of Higgins & Leach, was low enough to ring up Johnny Hickman the same afternoon. Old Hickman did a war-dance and damned the McNaughton family, root and branch.
For several minutes after the rain and mist had closed in around the Falls o' Clyde and the John C. Wilkins, McNaughton continued to stare back into the smother of foam. Townsend, on watch, stood beside him. Neither man spoke, for to Townsend the air was pregnant with brimstone and silence appeared to be golden. Presently the captain spoke.
"I haven't slept for two nights," he said. "I guess I'll turn in."
But sleep to the exhausted McNaughton was as distant as his hopes of salvage from the Falls o' Clyde. He thought of many things, but mostly of towlines. With a new line aboard he would have followed Doughface Johnson into Kingdom Come and taken his chance of recovering the tow while the sou'easter continued. By dead reckoning he figured that they must be off Columbia River. For a moment he speculated wildly upon putting in to Astoria and purchasing a line, until it occurred to him that he might not be able to purchase a line of sufficient strength and thickness. Moreover, there was Columbia Bar to reckon with—and the Trinidad was old.
Heartsore, angry and humiliated, weary, but with sleep entirely out of the question, McNaughton turned to his desk. It was littered with shipping receipts, manifests of the up freight, tobacco and pipe. It occurred to McNaughton that he had not smoked in three days. As he reached for his pipe a duplicate shipping receipt, such as he always retained in order to make up his manifest of the up freight, fell out.
For several minutes, while McNaughton, seated on the side of his berth, elbows on knees, smoked away in silence, there floated before him but two pictures. The Falls o' Clyde with the big green waves breaking over her, and a red-haired girl in Pedro—a girl that he was almost ashamed to face. He had thought to come to her bearing happiness and a home in his big hands—happiness and a home wrested from the ravening maw of old ocean, and instead——
The hot tears of shame and mortification welled up in the Scotchman's eyes. He wiped them away with a corner of the bedspread. His pipe went out. He sat there, staring at the floor. Presently he was aware of a duplicate shipping receipt, face up, lying at his feet. Slowly and almost subconsciously he read it:
Received From The California Steel & Wire Co., to be delivered to the Puget Sound Lumber Company, in as good condition as received, excepting therefrom dangers of the sea and navigation, piracy, barratry of——
* Per steamer Trinidad:
* 25 kegs Acme shingle bands
* 6 kegs 12-D nails
* 3 reels $^1$⁄$_2$-inch extra flexible wire donkey lines
* 1 mile extra flexible plow steel wire rope, 1$^5$⁄$_8$-inch
* 1 coil galvanized wire
The receipt was signed by Nelson.
McNaughton rose and looked at the barometer. Still 28.10, and no change in the weather. He drew aside the little red curtain on his stateroom window and looked out over the heaving area of white caps. A large passenger steamer was passing, a quarter of a mile to starboard. For a few minutes she loomed up through the gray mist, and like a gray ghost faded away, southward bound. The captain of the Trinidad stared at her until she was gone, then returned to his seat on the side of his berth. The yellow shipping receipt still lay on the floor. McNaughton read it again:
* 25 kegs Acme shingle bands
* 6 kegs 12-D nails
* 3 reels $^1$⁄$_2$-inch extra flexible wire donkey lines
* 1 mile extra flexible plow steel wire rope, 1$^5$⁄$_8$-inch
* 1 coil gal——
One mile extra flexible plow steel wire rope, 1$^5$⁄$_8$-inch! Holy sailor!
In the alley amidships Second Mate Nelson met a crazy man waving aloft a moist sheet of yellow paper. With his other hand he struck at Nelson. The Swede dodged and grappled. For a second the two men stood locked in each other's arms, straining and cursing, then rolled together over the wet, heaving deck, McNaughton uppermost. His great hands closed over Nelson's throat.
"You fool! You eediot! You square-head! Where's that wire rope? You knew it was aboard. Tell me, you——"
Nelson's eyes rolled, his face grew purple. McNaughton let go his throat and raised his fist, just as the bosun and two deck-hands jerked him away from the half-conscious Swede.
"There's wire cable in the hold—in the up freight!" he yelled. "That fool mate signed for it himself. Wire cable, I tell you! Inch and five-eighths—a mile of it! Let go, you hounds! I tell you, let go! Get that wire rope on deck! Quick! or by——"
He broke away and raced for the bridge.
"Put her about, Townsend," he yelled. "I'm going back. We've a wire logging line in the up freight, and I'll follow that bloody Finn while the Trinidad holds together." He shook his fist under Townsend's nose. "I'll get her back again if I have to lower the ship's boat and cut his hawser. D'ye hear me?"
The light of battle, the sheer joy of the fight flickered up in Townsend's quiet eyes.
"Hard over!" he shouted to the man at the wheel. "Put her about! We're going back."
Down in the engine-room Henry Schmidt wiped his oil-soaked hands on his overalls. Presently he was aware that the Trinidad was coming about. He stepped to the speaking-tube and called the bridge. McNaughton answered. For a few moments the old chief stood with the tube to his ear. Then he placed the tube to his lips.
"Ja, ja. I bet you. Ve hold her all righd, so be ve get her once again yet. Ain'd it?"
For perhaps a minute Henry stood staring at the smooth, swift play of his engines. Then he picked up a torch and went back for a look at the coal-bunkers. Thereafter his assistants looked after the engines of the Trinidad. Henry Schmidt's attention centered on the firemen and the steam gauge.
Doughface Johnson superintended personally all of the details pertaining to getting his towline aboard the Falls o' Clyde and fastening his end of the line around the bitts of the John C. Wilkins. His broad, gorilla-like face was wreathed in smiles. He felt confident that his line would hold. He had an extra line if it did not. His chief engineer reported a goodly supply of coal in the bunkers. All in all, Doughface Johnson was not worrying. The sou'easter might blow for a week. He felt that he could hold on. Happy in the knowledge of his power and the certain prospects of at least two thousand dollars as his share of the salvage, the Finn went to his cabin and brought out a gallon demijohn of whisky. With his own hands he served his Scandinavian crew a stiff "five fingers" each. They cheered him, and it was as music to his soul.
The tramp signaled that the line was fast. Johnson gave the signal for half speed ahead. The shining yellow hawser tightened, the tramp lifted her bows from the foam and the tow was on. The Finn rang for full speed ahead. He could feel the throb of his engines, the vibration from bow to stern as the water boiled and churned and the powerful twin screws of the Wilkins took the water. Suddenly the vibration ceased. Doughface Johnson waited a minute—two minutes. He put his helm hard over, but to no avail. The John C. Wilkins had stopped—she was falling off into the trough of the sea. The Finn sprang to the telegraph and again rang for full speed ahead. Instantly the chief called him through the speaking-tube.
"What's the matter with you?" he cried angrily. "Why don't you keep her clear?"
"She is clear, "Johnson retorted. "Whose running this ship? Kick her ahead. What in blazes are you waiting for?"
"I can't kick her ahead. She won't kick an inch. Ain't you seaman enough to keep her screws clear of that towline?"
Calling his chief mate to take charge of the bridge, the Finn ran aft and looked over the stern of the Wilkins. His own line was clear. At the imminent risk of being washed overboard, Doughface Johnson bent far out over the stern railing and peered downward. As the stern of the Wilkins lifted, several lengths of frayed and ancient hemp hawser flew clear of the water. When the stern of the Wilkins settled down the fragment of hawser disappeared.
Doughface Johnson straightened up, and his face was white with rage as he shouted to the mate to give her half-speed astern. Instantly he returned to his position over the stern railing to await results. The water boiled for a second or two. The screws stopped. As the stern was once more lifted high in air, the skipper of the John C. Wilkins saw the fragment of hawser flash through the foam and disappear as the steamer settled. To add extremity to the situation, both vessels were rapidly being driven toward shore by the terrific wind and tide, and, with both vessels helpless, there was grave danger of a collision. To the Falls o' Clyde the situation was indeed desperate. Heavily loaded as she was and with the seas breaking over her, she was likely to founder at any moment.
For an hour Doughface Johnson tried—by every means in his power—to free his vessel from the deathlock of that clinging section of hawser, but in such a sea he was powerless. Presently, far to the north, a black spot appeared on the gray horizon. Immediately the tramp blew a prolonged blast from her siren and broke out her distress signals. Doughface Johnson mounted his bridge and brought his glasses to bear on the speck. He made it out to be a steam schooner, but the knowledge brought to the Finn no grain of comfort. Too well he knew the rules of the road—the unwritten law of the sea. Helpless, desperate, he would have to stand by and see the fruits of his bitter toil snatched from him in the very moment of victory. The stranger would do exactly as he would have done under similar circumstances—put her line aboard the boat that would pay most. Doughface Johnson knew that he must take his chances. Some other steamer would probably pick him up during the day.
Slowly the stranger bore down upon them. She was a small vessel, black, with white upperworks, engines amidships. To Doughface Johnson she looked a great deal like the Tatoosh. Both the Tatoosh and the John C. Wilkins were owned by Higgins & Leach. He looked again. Without a doubt it was the Tatoosh. Surely the gods were smiling on Doughface Johnson, for the Tatoosh could not abandon him. Her first duty she owed to Higgins & Leach.
The Finn reached for the whistle cord and the hoarse, long-drawn scream of his siren rose above the roar of wind and wave. Straight as an arrow, now lifted high on the crest of a monster green wave, now dropping swiftly till her stubby masts alone showed, sticking bravely out of the valley into which she had plunged, the little stranger came for the Falls o' Clyde. As she shot by the wallowing hulk her line gun belched forth, and the light heaving-line hurtled through the spray, fair across the deck of the tramp. As she swept grandly past a yell went up from the crew of the Wilkins, and Doughface Johnson choked with rage. On the bridge of the Trinidad, for it was indeed she, McNaughton stood, megaphone in hand.
"What's eating you, Doughface?" he shouted. "This ain't a funeral."
"Part of your rotten hawser is caught in my wheels. I'm helpless."
"Good-by, old man. Sorry, but it won't do to follow, even if you do kick loose. Steel cable in my up freight. I hope you sink."
Doughface Johnson cursed him till the Trinidad and the Falls o' Clyde had vanished in the sleet and spray.
It was after five o'clock, and young Mr. Hickman sat in the office of Hickman & Son. He presented a woeful spectacle. Inwardly, he was as dejected as his outward appearance signified. Old Hickman stood at the window, looking out across the bay. Frequently he turned and addressed his son. As a matter of strict fact he had done nothing for the past two hours but gaze out the window, merely turning at intervals to impress some new opinion upon his son and heir. Briefly, Old Hickman had constituted himself a verbal gatling gun, hurling hot adjectives at the helpless object of his wrath.
Young Mr. Hickman felt that he had very little to live for. Old Hickman told him so, and Johnny believed him. Life was indeed a delusion and a snare. He groaned as the 'phone rang. Otherwise he gave no sign of answering. The 'phone rang once more. Mr. Hickman moved one foot and spoke—a single word, and the Recording Angel made an entry on the debit side of young Mr. Hickman's account in the Book of Things. The third time the 'phone rang Mr. Hickman straightened up and feebly took the receiver from the hook.
"Hello!" he said sadly.
"That you, Johnny?" came a voice over the 'phone. "Hayes speaking. Just received a long-distance 'phone from Eureka. The Mary Banning arrived there at two o'clock and reports passing the Trinidad with the Falls o' Clyde in tow at ten o'clock this morning, off Crescent City."
"What?"
"Don't bite the telephone out. I said the Trinidad with the Falls o' Clyde in tow."
"Don't, Hayes. Don't spread it on when a fellow's down and out. Give me the straight of it. Has the Trinidad arrived at Hadlock?"
"No, I tell you, she's——"
"She isn't towing her. She lost the tramp, I tell you, and she has only one towline, and she must have parted that. The Trinidad can't be towing that tramp. It's a mistake on——"
Old Hickman fell upon his son like a hawk pouncing on a linnet.
"Gimme that 'phone," he yelled. "Gimme that 'phone——"
"Hello, Hayes, my boy. Yes, Hickman senior. Yes-s. … The devil you say! … Well, for the love of—— Of course it's Mac. Who else would hang on to her in such a storm? … You bet; finest skipper on the coast. Yes, yes. … Thanks, Hayes. Yes. … Good-by. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!"
Old Hickman squared off and struck Johnny's derby from that young gentleman's head. With a yell like a Comanche buck the old fellow jerked his son out of his chair and backed him into a corner, and with his skinny knuckles beat a polonaise on Johnny's ribs. Young Hickman grasped his father in his strong young arms and held him. For a moment they smiled into each other's face. Old Hickman was the first to speak.
"By Heck!" he said. "I'll buy. A bottle with a green neck."
At midnight of the twenty-fourth Henry Schmidt rapped on the door of McNaughton's stateroom. The skipper, who was fully dressed, was lying asleep on his couch, but at Henry's summons he awoke and opened the door. The moment McNaughton saw the old chief's face he knew that something was wrong.
"She's leaking," said Henry simply. "Der vater iss coming into der engine-room. Dot strain iss too much. It pulls out from der seams der oakum, und der liddle ship is not so young yet, vat?"
"Keep the pumps going, Chief. Both of them. I'll send six men below to try to stop up the worst leaks."
"Mit coal," said Henry plaintively, "dose leaks vos noddings. Mit der coal all oudt der engines vill die und der pumps—mein Gott! It iss not to my liking yet to lose der Trinidad. She iss a noble liddle ship."
"How much coal have you, Henry? How long will it last?"
Henry Schmidt looked up at the captain. "Mac," he said, "you haf your worries. I take care by mine own worries. Ven der coal iss oudt—vell? Until den ve vait und see. Ven der coal iss gone ve burn oil und oakum und cut out der timbers und decking in der alleys, und ve burn dot."
Henry turned to go. McNaughton let his huge paw rest for a moment on the old chief's greasy shoulder.
"We'll pull her through somehow," he said hopefully. "Turn in and try to get some sleep."
Henry Schmidt shook his head. With each wave that beat over her the old Trinidad called aloud to him for help; each creak and groan of her straining timbers seemed to him a sobbing cry. There could be no sleep for Henry Schmidt. He must stay awake and fight for the ship he loved. Fight for her? Of course he'd fight for her—fight till the last. Fight till the fires went out and the hungry green billows claimed her for their own. She was his pet—his darling. Twenty-eight years! Long time to be chief of a boat like the Trinidad.
There was a catch in Henry's voice as he said good-night. His greasy hand trembled for a moment as it sought McNaughton's. They each understood. Youth and Old Age, but bulldogs both. True sons of the sea, they would fight to the last, only they no longer thought of the salvage. All their lives the gray waste of Old Ocean had called to them. She was a hard mistress, though from her troubled breast they drew their sustenance. But they would fight her now—for the joy of the fight. They had set their faces to the task before them. They could not turn back. Away out there in the darkness half a hundred human beings hung to them. Back there in that maelstrom of wind and wave men pinned their faith to the Trinidad and a wire cable, and, calm in that faith, fell asleep. McNaughton clinched his great hands in the darkness and thought of the girl in Pedro. He knew the ship he had under him. He wanted very much to live, for life was sweet. And McNaughton was young, and so was the girl. As for the salvage—bah! What did it amount to now? It was all in the day's work—its reward the joy of accomplishment.
At noon on the twenty-fifth a wireless from the Table Bluff station reported the steam schooner Trinidad, with the Falls o' Clyde in tow, off Cape Mendocino. Young Hickman got the news from Hayes right off the bat. He was low enough to 'phone Leach, of Higgins & Leach. After lunch Old Hickman consulted the weather chart at the Exchange. The wind was eighty miles an hour off Point Reyes. The old man shook his gray head.
"She won't make any headway against that," he remarked to his son. "She'll about make the bar on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh."
At three o'clock on the twenty-seventh the Merchants' Exchange reported the Trinidad, with the Falls o' Clyde in tow, seven miles off the bar. Wind fifteen miles an hour, sou'west, off Point Reyes, bar breaking heavily. At four-thirty she was reported passing in through the Gate.
At three o'clock on the twenty-seventh Henry Schmidt appeared on the bridge of the Trinidad.
"Der coal is oudt," he announced.
"The cook has eight sacks piled on deck for use in the galley. He has some in the galley," McNaughton answered. "I'll send that down. Nelson will take all hands and cut up the planking in the alleys and the tables and berths in the fo'castle."
The chief glanced ahead to where the giant waves were breaking over the Potato Patch. He shook his gray head and his eyes met McNaughton's.
"It's—der—finish," he said sadly. "Der—Trinidad—vill—never—tie—up—to—der—dock—again. Dot"—he pointed to the breaking bar—"Dot vill be der finish. But ve must go on. Ve sink anyhow. Und if ve let go dot tow she pounds to pieces on Duxbury in an hour. Vat? Mac, my poy, it iss vot you call der devil und der deep sea."
McNaughton turned away. A fresh sou'west wind was blowing. The storm was broken. Away off Duxbury Reef he could hear the bell-buoy ringing their death knell. The sun, low in the heavens, shone beautifully, its dying rays lighting up the western slopes of the green Marin hills. For a moment only he looked. For one brief moment he thought of the red-haired girl in Pedro. If he could have lived a little longer—have tasted a little of the sweetness of life. Always it had been toil—hard, merciless toil. For nine days and nine nights they had fought the elements, slowly struggling south with their prize, inch by inch, to a safe anchorage in San Francisco Bay. And now, with but a few miles of angry bar between the Trinidad and her goal, the coal was gone. If they could only keep her alive till the bar was crossed! Down in the engine-room McNaughton knew the water was creeping slowly, remorselessly, up to the furnace doors, to still forever the pulse of the little Trinidad, to drag her down, down into the graveyard of the deep, to rest her battered carcass in the lap of Father Neptune, side by side with the grass-grown bones of her sisters—or, perhaps, fathoms and fathoms beneath Old Ocean's troubled breast, by the laws of Nature denied a resting-place, to drift and drift through the long years till she fell apart.
Neither McNaughton nor old Henry Schmidt thought for a moment of the life-rafts and the dory. In such a sea such puny craft could never live. Moreover, they had set their faces to the task. They could not desert the Falls o' Clyde. With the strange self-effacement of their calling in the hour of danger they thought first of their ship—their personal interests were subordinate to those of their owners. The traditions of the sea were strong in McNaughton and the old German chief. They would stick by their ship and battle to the last. Though Death rode the crest of the breakers before them, Life rode the steel cable behind them. They could not let go.
It was a forlorn hope. They had eight sacks of coal on deck. They had some oakum and oil, and the pine decking would burn. But McNaughton never faltered. It was to be a race for life, with the odds against them. They must cross the bar before the fires went out. The big Scotchman's jaw tightened as he turned and faced the chief, who read the verdict in the master's eyes. When shipmates part there are no heroics. McNaughton held out his hand.
"Good-by, Henry."
"Good-by, mine poy."
Half a minute later the old chief was down in the engine-room, ankle-deep in water. The long tow had been too much for the gallant old hulk, and though both pumps were working the water was pouring through her seams in twenty places and slowly gaining on them. She might last an hour. She might last two. Only, Henry Schmidt knew she must lose in the final battle on the bar. McNaughton had a forlorn hope, but Henry had none—he knew her too well; but with the stoicism of his race he faced the issue squarely. They must go on. There was no alternative. The bar or Duxbury. Which did it matter?
Nelson had brought down the eight sacks of coal from the galley. Up in the alleyways the chief could hear the crew breaking up the decking. The blows of their axes echoed through the engine-room as Henry and his men fed the hungry flames under those two good Scotch boilers. Presently the pine decking, cut into four-foot lengths, began to arrive in the engine-room. As fast as it arrived it went into the furnace. At three-thirty they were well up to the bar and the Trinidad was wallowing frightfully. The first assistant glanced at the steam gauge. It registered two hundred! And the inspectors only allowed her one hundred and ten!
Henry Schmidt met his startled exclamation with a monkey-wrench.
"Leave dot steam 'lone!" he growled. "I'm still chief of dis boat. Ve are on der bar—und it iss not veil to sleep. Vat?"
McNaughton had been over worse bars, but never in a rotten, dying ship with a twelve-thousand-ton tow behind him. As the Trinidad lifted to the first green comber he gripped the speaking-tube.
"Kick her ahead, Henry. Turn her wide open. We're there."
"Ja," answered the chief, and there was a quaver in his voice which the old man could not quite subdue. "Ja, Mac, she vill do it yet. Mein Gott, I'll make her!" he cried. "She never failed me yet. She is a noble liddle ship."
McNaughton looked aft just in time to see a mountain of water rush down on the Falls o' Clyde. The sea broke over her completely, almost hiding her from view. She staggered under the tons of water, but the steel cable stretched taut and she came up from the foam, the water pouring in huge cascades from her battered decks. The Trinidad groaned as the dead water from that shattered comber surged up and over her, and McNaughton prayed that her bitts might hold. If one of those huge green combers should ever break on her McNaughton felt her house would go and he with it.
Scarcely had the Trinidad shaken herself free when another sea was rushing upon them. The tramp rose grandly with it and swept up on to the Trinidad like a great Juggernaut. Just before the sea reached him McNaughton set her back to half speed. He was too good a seaman to trust his battered little Trinidad on the crest of a thirty-mile roller at full speed ahead. He had seen rudders snapped out on bars before. It meant a fifty-mile gait for his vessel for, perhaps, thirty seconds, to be brought up with a heart-breaking jerk as the sea passed under her. The Trinidad rose to it like a hunted thing, and the line stretched out gradually as the sea broke in front of them.
Again and again McNaughton set her forward and back. The sixth sea broke fairly over the Trinidad and every movable thing on her decks went overboard. The house quivered and shook; every door and window was crushed in and the galley completely gutted. Even as he clung for very life to the railing of the bridge McNaughton's hand sought the handle of the telegraph, and the Trinidad, rising slowly as the water poured off her decks, rushed forward undaunted.
Down in that death-haunted engine-room Henry Schmidt and his men sprinkled oil on the planking as it hurtled down from the deck above and splashed into the water, which crept slowly but relentlessly up to the furnace doors. The last sack of coal was gone. A small ship's boat which had been lashed on the main deck aft was torn loose and smashed to pieces against the railing of her port quarter. As the water receded Nelson and his men sprang from the shelter of the ruined galley where they clung, and hurled the fragments of the boat down into the engine-room.
On the iron grating over the engine-room a half dozen bales of oakum were piled. Suddenly a black, perspiring form climbed out of the engine-room and hurled them down. With his own hands Henry Schmidt broke the bales and thrust them into the hot maw of the furnace. Even as he did so he glanced at the steam gauge. It was down to one hundred and eighty. The water was four inches from the doors of the furnace.
Silently and desperately, down in the semi-darkness of the engine-room, Henry Schmidt and his crew fought for the life that would lift the Trinidad over the bar. The glare from the furnace lighted up their sooty, sweat-streaked faces with a ghostly radiance and flickered on the silvery streams of water spurting through her rotten seams.
Faintly to McNaughton on the bridge came the mournful echo of the whistling buoy off Mile Rock. The sun still shone against the western slopes of Marin. He glanced ahead. Only half a mile more and he would be safe from those giant seas. If Henry could only keep her alive!
The Trinidad rose to another sea. It broke over her bows and whirled away toward the Golden Gate, racing madly for the still waters under the lee of Point Bonita. McNaughton looked back and saw the pilot-house and the life-rafts of the Falls o' Clyde go overboard as a sea broke over her. The white, boiling waters surged over the decks of the Trinidad, and a scream echoed through the dying ship. McNaughton saw the body of a man disappear over the starboard quarter. For a moment the white face stared up at him from a halo of foam, and was gone. McNaughton looked away toward the sunny, green hills of Marin. Townsend hurled a life-preserver over the side and watched it float mournfully away. Father Neptune had claimed his tribute.
Down in the engine-room Henry Schmidt choked back a sob and watched the steam drop to one hundred and thirty. Between the intervals when the Trinidad lay struggling under the weight of waters Nelson and his men frantically chopped away the decking in the alleys. In the wheelhouse two men struggled with the wheel, which fought them like a live thing.
A quarter of a mile ahead of them the seas rolled smoothly in, to shatter their strength on the smooth, black sands of Baker's Beach. And the bitts still held! Looking back, McNaughton saw the tramp rise majestically to a sea fully thirty feet high. He watched the foam gathering on its crest, watched it sweep in over the stern of his brave old hulk. He clung with all his strength to the iron railing of his bridge. There was a grinding, fearing, wrenching sound. The water was upon them.
Bruised and gasping, McNaughton dashed the salt spray from his eyes and looked around. One corner of the house was swept away; the house itself was torn loose from the deck. Both lifeboats were gone; the smokestack was leaning at an angle of forty-five degrees. Townsend was gone—swept overboard. As the skipper turned to look for him he saw the mate's body lifted high on the crest of another wave and deposited with a deadly thud on the deck of the Trinidad. When the ship righted and shook herself free of the water the mate's body rolled over into the scuppers. It lay there.
Behind them another sea came rushing. McNaughton closed his eyes. The Trinidad lifted to it, her blunt bow high in the air, and the sea broke beyond them. McNaughton looked back. Behind him rode the Falls o' Clyde. Off to starboard he heard the whistling buoy, seeming to cheer him on to a plucky finish. In the distance he caught the reflection of the sun on the red brick walls of old Fort Winfield Scott, and the hills of Marin were never more beautiful. They were over the bar! But down in the engine-room the water crept up to the furnace doors, and the steam was down to one hundred.
As they crept through the Golden Gate and the long vista of bay opened up before them Townsend stirred and got to his knees. They were rounding the fort when he crawled up on the bridge. McNaughton looked him over and smiled. He loved a fighter.
On toward the Presidio, like some great, crippled gull, the Trinidad crept with her prize. The water was lapping the doors of her furnaces and the steam gauge registered eighty. A big motor-boat was coming down the bay toward them, the spray flying from her sharp bows.
The Trinidad was scarcely moving through the calm, blue waters that lapped her blistered sides almost caressingly, bidding her welcome to her own again. As the big motor-boat swept up to them McNaughton signaled the tramp to cast off, and the sound of her chains rushing through her rusty hawse-pipes, as her anchors dropped, seemed to the skipper the sweetest music he had ever heard.
Henry Schmidt's voice came up through the speaking-tube.
"Der fires vos oudt," he said. "Der vater vos pouring in."
The captain sprang down from the bridge as Johnny Hickman came up over the rail and the engine-room crew poured up from the womb of the doomed Trinidad.
Young Hickman glanced at the ruined house and the leaning smokestack. He looked into the haggard, white faces of her crew. His gaze wandered from Henry Schmidt's greasy, age-lined face into McNaughton's, young and dauntless. He grinned, and his wide, humorous mouth puckered in a whistle. Then his calm glance wandered back to where a wire cable trailed over the stern—and he thought of his bet with Leach: that the Trinidad would bring her tow to a safe anchorage and on her own towline. The smile faded.
"Whose cable is that?" he demanded.
"Belongs to the Trinidad," the skipper answered. "Dug it out of the up freight. It's a logging cable."
"Why don't you bring your prize up off Alcatraz instead of dropping her right here in the fairway?"
"It's a safe anchorage here," the Scotchman answered doggedly. "She couldn't steam another inch. The Trinidad has finished her last voyage. She's torn to pieces; her fires are out. She'll sink in an hour."
It was sunset when she sank. From the deck of Young Hickman's motor-boat her jaded crew watched her settle. She went down stern first, her pathetic bow lifted high in the air. As the blue waters closed over her Henry Schmidt burst into tears. Young Hickman laid his soft-gloved hand on the old chief's shoulder.
"Don't worry, Chief," he said kindly. "We have the St. Margaret coming out from the East in May. She carries a million and a half. You and Mac are too good for a little hooker like the Trinidad. You've earned a better boat, you two, and better money."
Standing in the bow of the motor-boat McNaughton smiled happily and dreamed of salvage and a red-haired girl in San Pedro. But Henry would not be comforted.
"She vos a noble—liddle—ship," he sobbed. "Twenty-eight years vos I chief. She vos a noble—liddle——"
Young Hickman laughed.
"My dear Henry, don't bother about the old tub. She was insured to the limit."
But Henry Schmidt only shook his head. The gray wastes of ocean had never called to Young Hickman. He didn't understand.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1957, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 66 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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