Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1914-01-11

DUSK, tnere came a WI1fIlpeI, ILeli Nliilie
then blast fraught of menace. At mid
night it was a gale, and Croghan hove to-
At coffee time, five O'Clock, sea beaked
two of the weather windows of the wheel
house, and drenched Danny into salty
mouthed wakefulness where an hour before
he had curled down in a corner. As he
crawled to his feet he saw a red side light
abeam to leeward and close aboard. In
exultation he forgot wetness and cold. 1t
must be the Red Stack! Dawn, coming
swiftly, confirmed his faith. There lay the
Lion, not more than two cable lengths away,
head to the swapping smother, and her fun
mel tossing and bobbing like red can buoy
on the harbor bar.
4There's Swanson" he cried to Croghan;
but without answer, for Deep Water was
snatching the wheel from Marble and point
ing down forward through one OF the
smashed windows. The sacked coal had
washed aft and covered the peak scuttle.
The deck crew were prisoners in the fore
castle.
@Clear that!' Croghan snapped at Mar
BILE, and, bending to the engine room speak
ing tube to order man up on deck, he did
not see Danny follow the mate from the
wheelhouse But as he Strengthened again
he discovered the boy at Marbles side,
dropping over the bridge railing to the main
deck And with single cry of warning his
throat closed. A veritable mountain of
water was rolling over the Dreadnought's
bows. 1t whelmed her. For breath-long
space she was not on the face of the earth.
As she staggered up from the mol Marble
alone was clinging to the railing. Down to
1eeward, beyond reach, in the wind-whipped
name of gray comber, an arm uphfted for
a second in farewell, and Deep Water
Croghan cursed Almighty God and the sea
and all things upon it.
IN the moment that Croghan flung forth
l that black speech he and all who were
with him in the Dreadnought were hurled
against the very gates of eternity. And in
that hour when all who were in her stood
breast to breast and cheek by jowl with
death, Danny, half smothered in blankets,
was opening his eyes, to find John Swanson
and Joe Cottle at his side.
@This must-must be help" said he in
terrogatively, and with something Of awe as
he recognized the Red Stack faces.
mo, you're aboard the Sea Lion, an
swered Swanson, being without imagination
and not approaching Danny's ASSOCIATION
of ideas. @You were washed aboard here
right over the rail. Don't you remember
Danny laughed vapidly, and then his eye
voice of Swanson saying, THAT bratll live
to make trouble yet; but don't you give
him any more of that brandy to drink
There was another awakening for Danny
five hours later, an awakening to quick con-
seriousness which apprehended great engines
throbbing and racing beneath him and
voices shouting varying orders.
Il got you beaten, Croghan!7 suddenly
doomed one voice above all the rest. 1t was
Swanson's, and at that Danny leaped from
his berth to port opposite. Just outside
was Bob Long greasing his naked body while
Swanson made ready the end of dipsey
lead line for his neck Five hundred yards
ahead, lifting her grass-grown sides and a
spar-tangled mass against the blood-red disk
of the setting sun, rolled the derelict Saxon
King As he discovered her the Lion slowed
down to round to, and astern, a quarter of a
mile away, the boy saw the Dreadnought,
his pride, stumbling now. Her black funnel
was rent and white with salt; her mainmast
was stump, her boat davits empty. He
could not know the scalding hell of steam
that reigned in her below decks nor what the
parboiled and bleeding men who stood at
wheel and engine lever and furnace door had
come through since he had been washed
away. The one fact that stood out above
everything else was that the idol of his life,
Jim Croghan, was being beaten-and by a