"Say," shouted the American, his clear voice dominating the turmoil,
"that gave us a shower-bath. If we could just stand outside and see
ourselves, we should look like an illuminated fountain."
That was the right note--belief in the ship, contempt of the darkness
and the gale. The crisis passed.
"There really cannot be a heavy sea," said Elsie, cheerfully
inaccurate. "Otherwise we should be pitching or rolling, perhaps both,
whereas we are actually far more steady than when dinner commenced."
"I find these lulls in the storm most trying," complained Isobel.
"They remind me of some wild animal hunting its prey, creeping up with
silent stealth, and then springing."
"I have never before heard a fog-horn sounded so continuously," said
the missionary's wife, a Mrs. Somerville. "Don't you think they are
whistling for assistance?"
"Assistance! What sort of assistance can anybody give us here? Unless
the ship rights herself very soon we don't know what may happen."
Isobel seemed to have a premonition of evil, and she paid no heed to
the effect her words might have on the others. Although the saloon was
warm--almost uncomfortably hot owing to the closing of the main
air-passages--she shivered.
Mr. Somerville drew a book from his pocket. "If that be so," he said
gently, "may I suggest that we seek aid from One who is all-powerful?
We are few, and of different religions, but in this hour we can surely
worship at a common altar."
"Right!" said the taciturn Englishman, varying his adjective for once.
The missionary offered up a short but heartfelt prayer, and, finding
that he carried his congregation with him, read the opening verse of
Hymn No. 370, "For those at Sea."
The stewards, most of whom understood a few words of English, readily
grasped the fact that the padri was asking for help in a situation
which they well knew to be desperate. They drew near reverently, and
even joined in the simple lines: O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.
During the brief silence which followed the singing of the hymn it did,
indeed, seem to their strained senses that the fierce violence of the
gale had somewhat abated. It was not so, in reality. A steady fall in
the barometer foretold even worse weather to come. Courtenay, assured
now that the main engines were absolutely useless, thought it advisable
to get steering way on the ship by rigging the foresail, double-reefed
and trapped. The result was quickly perceptible. The Kansas might
not be pooped again, but she would travel more rapidly into the unknown.
Yet this only afforded another instance of the way men reason when they
seek to explain cause from effect. The hoisting of that strip of stout
canvas was one of the time-factors in the story of an eventful night,
for it was with gray-faced despair that the captain gave the requisite
order when the second engineer reported that his senior was dead, the
crown of two furnaces destroyed, and the engines clogged, if not
irretrievably damaged, by fallen debris. None realized better than the
young commander what a disastrous fate awaited his ship in the gloom of
the flying scud ahead. There was a faint chance of encountering
another steamship which would respond to his signals. Then he would
risk all by laying the Kansas broadside on in the effort to take a
tow-rope aboard. Meanwhile, it was best to bring her under some sort
of control, the steam steering-gear, driven by the uninjured
donkey-engine, being yet available.