THE CHIEF MATE'S YARNS

TWELVE TALES OF THE SEA

BY

CAPT. MAYN CLEW GARNETT

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERSNEW YORK

[Pg 2]

Copyright, 1911, 1912, by STREET & SMITH Copyright, 1912, by G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

The White Ghost of Disaster

THE WHITE GHOST OF DISASTER

We had been sitting in at the game for more than an hour, and no life had entered it. The thoughts of all composing that little group of five in the most secluded corner of the ship's smoking room were certainly not on the game, and three aces lay down to fours up.

The morose and listless ship's officer out of a berth, although he spoke little—if at all—seemed to put a spell of uneasiness and unrest on the party. The others did not know him or his history; but his looks spelled disaster and misfortune.

At last Charlie Spangler, the noted journalist, keen for a story or two, threw down his cards, exclaiming: "Let's quit. None of us is less uneasy than the rest of the ship's passengers."

"Yes," chimed in Arthur Linch, the noted stock-broker. "We have endeavored to banish the all-pervading thought, 'will the ship arrive safely without being wrecked,' and have failed miserably. Cards will not do it." This seemed to express the[Pg 6] sentiments of everybody except the morose mariner, whose thoughts nobody could read or fathom. He sat there, deep in his chair, gazing at a scene or scenes none of us could see or appreciate.

"Well! Since we cannot take our thoughts off 'shipwreck,' we may as well discuss the subject and ease our minds," added the journalist again, still hot on the scent of the possible story which he felt that the ship's officer hoarded.

The mariner, however, did not respond to this, and continued with his memories, apparently oblivious of our presence.

Under the leadership of the journalist the discussion waxed warm for some time, until the stock-broker, ever solicitous for the welfare of the stock-market and conforming his opinions thereto, exclaimed loudly: "The officers and the crew were not responsible for the collision with the berg. It was an 'act of God!' and as such we are daily taking chances with it. What will be, will be. We cannot escape Destiny!"

"Destiny be damned!" came like a thunderbolt from the heretofore silent mariner, and we all looked to see the face now full of rage and passion. "What do you know of the sea, you land pirate? What do you know of sea dangers and responsibility for the safety of human lives? Man! you're crazy. There is no such thing as Destiny at sea. A seaman knows what to expect when he takes chances. If you call that an 'act of God,' you deserve to have been there and submitted to it."

The face of Charlie Spangler was glowing. His[Pg 7] heart beat so fast when he heard this sea clam open up, that he was afraid it might overwork and stop. "Our friend is right!" he exclaimed. "I infer that he speaks from knowledge and experience. We are hardly qualified to discuss such matters properly.

"You have something on your mind, friend. Unburden it to us. We are sympathetic, you know. Our position here makes us so," saying which, Spangler filled the mariner's half-empty glass and looked at him with sympathy streaming out of his trained eyes. We all nodded our assent.

Having fortified himself with the contents of the glass before him, the mariner spoke: "Yes, gentlemen, I am going to speak from knowledge and experience. It was my luck to be aboard of the vessel which had the shortest of lives, but which will live in the memory of man for many a year.

"It is my misfortune to be one of its surviving officers. I am going to give you the facts as they happened this last time, and a few other times besides. It is the experiences through which I have passed that make me wish I had gone down with the last one. I must now live on with memories, indelibly stamped on my brain, which I would gladly forget. Your attention, gentlemen—"

Captain Brownson came upon the bridge. It was early morning, and the liner was tearing through a smooth sea in about forty-three north latitude. The sun had not yet risen, but the gray of the coming daylight showed a heaving swell that rolled with the steadiness that told of a long stretch of[Pg 8] calm water behind it. The men of the morning watch showed their pale faces white with that peculiar pallor which comes from the loss of the healthful sleep between midnight and morning. It was the second mate's watch, and that officer greeted the commander as he came to the bridge rail where the mate stood staring into the gray ahead.

"See anything?" asked the master curtly.

"No, sir—but I smell it—feel it," said the mate, without turning his head.

"What?" asked Brownson.

"Don't you feel it?—the chill, the—well, it's ice, sir—ice, if I know anything."

"Ice?" snarled the captain. "You're crazy! What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, very well—you asked me—I told you—that's all."

The captain snorted. He disliked the second officer exceedingly. Mr. Smith had been sent him by the company at the request of the manager of the London office. He had always picked his own men, and he resented the office picking them for him. Besides, he had a nephew, a passenger aboard, who was an officer out of a berth.

"What the devil do they know of a man, anyhow! I'm the one responsible for him. I'm the one, then, to choose him. They won't let me shift blame if anything happens, and yet they sent me a man I know nothing of except that he is young and strong. I'll wake him up some if he stays here." So he had commented to Mr. Wylie, the[Pg 9] chief mate. Mr. Wylie had listened, thought over the matter, and nodded his head sagely.

"Sure," he vouchsafed; "sure thing." That was as much as any one ever got out of Wylie. He was not a talkative mate. Yet when he knew Smith better, he retailed the master's conversation to him during a spell of generosity engendered by the donation of a few highballs by Macdowell, the chief engineer. Smith thanked him—and went his way as before, trying to do the best he could. He did not shirk duty on that account. Wylie insisted that the captain was right. A master was responsible, and it was always customary for him to pick his men as far as possible. Besides, as Wylie had learned from Macdowell, Brownson had a nephew in view that would have filled the berth about right—so Wylie thought—and Smith was a nuisance. Smith had taken it all in good part, and smiled. He liked Wylie.

Brownson sniffed the air hungrily as he stood there at the bridge rail. The air was chilly, but it was always chilly in that latitude even in summer.

"How does she head?" he asked savagely of the man at the steam-steering gear. The man spoke through the pilot-house window in a monotone:

"West—three degrees south, sir."

"That's west—one south by standard?" snapped Brownson.

"Yes, sir," said Smith.

"Let her go west—two south by binnacle—and mark the time accurately," ordered Brownson.

He would shift her a bit. The cool air seemed[Pg 10] to come from the northward. It was as if a door in an ice box were suddenly opened and the cold air within let out in a cold, damp mass. A thin haze covered the sea. The side wash rolled away noisily, and disappeared into the mist a few fathoms from the ship's side. It seemed to thicken as the minutes passed.

Brownson was nervous. He went inside the pilot house and spoke to the engineer through the tube leading to the engine room.

"How is she going?"

"Two hundred and ten, sir; never less than two and five the watch."

"Well, she's going too almighty fast—shut her down to one hundred," snapped Brownson. "She's been doing twenty-two knots—it's too fast—too fast, anyhow, in this weather. Ten knots will do until the sun scoffs off this mist. Shut her down."

The slowing engines eased their vibrations, and the side wash rolled less noisily. There was a strange stillness over the sea. The silence grew as the headway subsided.

The captain listened intently. He felt something.

There is always that strange something that a seaman feels in the presence of great danger when awake. It has never been explained. But all good—really good—masters have felt it; can tell you of it if they will. It is uncanny, but it is as true as gospel. The second officer had felt it in the air, felt it in his nerves. He felt—ice. It was danger.

Smith stood there watching the haze that seemed to deepen rather than disperse as the morning grew.[Pg 11] The men turned out and the hose was started, the decks were sluiced down, and the gang with the squeegees followed. Two bells struck—five o'clock. Smith strained his gaze straight into the haze ahead. He fixed and refixed his glasses—a pair of powerful lenses of fifteen lines. He had bought them for fifty dollars, and always kept them near him while on watch.

A man came up the bridge steps.

"Shall I send up your coffee, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, send it up," said Smith, in a whisper. He was listening.

Something sounded out there in the haze. It was a strange, vibrating sound, a sort of whispering murmur, soft and low, like the far-away notes of a harp. Then it ceased. Smith looked at the captain who stood within the pilot-house window gazing down at the men at work on the deck below. The noise of the rushing water from the hose and their low tones seemed to annoy him. They wore rubber boots, and their footsteps were silent; but he gruffly ordered the bos'n to make them "shut up."

"Better slow her down, sir—there's ice somewhere about here," said the second mate anxiously. He was thinking of the thousand and more souls below and the millions in cargo values.

"Who's running this ship—me or you?" snarled Brownson savagely.

It was an unnecessary remark, wholly uncalled for. Smith flushed under his tan and pallor. He had seldom been spoken to like that. He would have to stand it; but he would hunt a new ship as[Pg 12] soon as he came ashore again. It was bad enough to be treated like a boy; but to be talked to that way before the men made it impossible, absolutely impossible. It meant the end of discipline at once. A man would retail it, more would repeat it, and—then—Smith turned away from the bridge rail in utter disgust. He was furious.

"Blast the ship!" he muttered, as he turned away and gazed aft. His interest was over, entirely over. He would not have heard a gun fired at that moment, so furious was the passion at the unmerited insolence from his commander.

And then, as if to give insult to injury, Brownson called down the tube:

"Full speed ahead—give her all she'll do—I'm tired of loafing around here all the morning." Then he rang up the telegraph, and the sudden vibrations told of a giant let loose below.

The Admiral started ahead slowly. She was a giant liner, a ship of eight hundred feet in length. It took some moments to get headway upon that vast hull. But she started, and in a few minutes the snoring of the bow wave told of a tearing speed. She was doing twenty-two and a half knots an hour, or more than twenty-five miles, the speed of a train of cars.

The under steward came up the bridge steps with the coffee. Smith took his cup and drank it greedily, almost savagely. He was much hurt. His feelings had been roughly handled. Yet he had not even answered the captain back. He took his place at the bridge rail and gazed straight ahead[Pg 13] into the gray mist. He saw nothing, felt nothing, but the pain of his insult.

"Let him run the ship to hell and back," he said to himself.

There was a puff of colder air than usual. A chill as of death itself came floating over the silent ocean. A man on lookout stood staring straight into the mist ahead, and then sang out:

"Something right ahead, sir," he yelled in a voice that carried like the roar of a gun.

Brownson just seized the lever shutting the compartments, swung it, jammed it hard over, and screamed:

"Stop her—stop her—hard over your wheel—hard over——"

His voice ended in a vibrating screech that sounded wild, weird, uncanny in that awful silence. A hundred men stopped in their stride, or work, paralyzed at the tones coming from the bridge.

And then came the impact.

With a grinding, smashing roar as of thousands of tons coming together, the huge liner plunged headlong into the iceberg that rose grim and silent right ahead, towering over her in spite of her great height. The shock was terrific, and the grinding, thundering crash of falling tons of ice, coupled with the rending of steel plates and solid planks, made chaos of all sound.

The Admiral bit in, dug, plowed, kept on going, going, and the whole forward part of her almost disappeared into the wall of white. A thousand tons of huge flakes slammed and slid down her decks,[Pg 14] burying her to the fore hatch in the smother. A thousand tons more crashed, slid, and plunged down the slopes of the icy mountain and hurled themselves into the sea with giant splashes, sending torrents of water as high as the bridge rail. The men who had been forward were swept away by the avalanche. Many were never seen again. And then, with reversed engines, she finally came to a dead stop, with her bows jammed a hundred feet deep in the ice wall of the berg.

After that it was panic. All discipline seemed to end in the shock and struggle. Brownson howled and stormed from the bridge, and Smith shouted orders and sprang down to enforce them. The chief mate came on deck in his underclothes and passed the word to man the boats. A thousand passengers jammed the companionway and strove with panic and inhuman fury to reach the deck.

One man clad in a night robe gained the outside of the press, and, running swiftly along the deck, flitted like a ghost over the rail, and disappeared into the sea. He had gone crazy, violently insane in the panic.

Brownson tied down the siren cord, and the roar shook the atmosphere. The tremendous tones rose above the din of screaming men and cursing seamen; and then the master called down to the heart of the ship, the engine room.

"Is she going?" he asked.

"Water coming in like through a tunnel," came the response. "Nearly up to the grates now——"

That was all. The man left the tube to rush on[Pg 15] deck, and the captain knew the forward bulkheads had gone; had either jammed or burst under that terrific impact. The ship was going down.

Brownson stood upon the bridge and gazed down at the human tide below him. Men fought furiously for places in the small boats. The fireroom crew came on deck and mingled with the passengers. The coal dust showed upon their white faces, making them seem strange beings from an inferno that was soon to be abolished. They strove for places in the lifeboats and hurled the weaker passengers about recklessly. Some, on the other hand, helped the women. One man dragged two women with him into a boat, kicking, twisting, and roaring like a lion. He was a big fellow with a red beard, and Brownson watched him. The mate struck him over the head with a hand spike for refusing to get out of the boat, and his interest in things ended at once and forever.

The crew, on the whole, behaved well. Officers and men tried to keep some sort of discipline. Finally six boats went down alongside into the sea, and were promptly swarmed by the crowds above, who either slid down the falls or jumped overboard and climbed in from the sides. The sea was as still as a lake; only the slight swell heaved it. Great fields of floating particles of ice from the berg floated about, and those who were drenched in the spray shivered with the cold.

The Admiral, running at twenty-two knots an hour, had struck straight into the wall of an iceberg that reached as far as the eye could see in the haze.[Pg 16] It towered at least three hundred feet in the air, showing that its depth was colossal, probably at least half a mile. It was a giant ice mountain that had broken adrift from its northern home, and, drifting southward, had survived the heat of summer and the breaking of the sea upon its base.

Smith had felt its dread presence, felt its proximity long before he had come to close quarters. The chill in the air, the peculiar feeling of danger, the icy breath of death—all had told him of a danger that was near. And yet Brownson had scoffed at him, railed at his intuition and sense. Upon the captain the whole blame of the disaster must fall if Smith told.

The second officer almost smiled as he struggled with his boat.

"The pig-headed fool!" he muttered between his set teeth. "The murdering monster—he's done it now! He's killed himself, and a thousand people along with him——"

Smith fought savagely for the discipline of his boat. His men had rushed to their stations at the first call. The deck was beginning to slant dangerously as the falls were slacked off and the lifeboat lowered into the sea. Smith stood in the press about him and grew strangely calm. The action was good for him, good for the burning fury that had warped him, scorched him like a hot blast while he had stood silently upon the bridge and taken the insults of his commander. Women pleaded with him for places in the boat. Men begged and took hold of him. One lady, half clothed, dropped upon[Pg 17] her knees and, holding his hand, which hung at his side, prayed to him as if he were a deity, a being to whom all should defer. He flung her off savagely.

Bareheaded now, coatless, and with his shirt ripped, he stood there, and saw his men pass down sixteen women into his craft; pass them down without comment or favor, age or condition. Thirty souls went into his boat before he sprang into the falls and slid down himself. A dozen men tried to follow him, but he shoved off, and they went into the sea. His men got their oars out and rowed off a short distance.

Muttering, praying, and crying, the passengers in his boat huddled themselves in her bottom. He spoke savagely to them, ordered them under pain of death to sit down. One man, who shivered as he spoke, insisted upon crawling about and shifting his position. Smith struck him over the head, knocking him senseless. Another, a woman, must stand upon the thwarts, to get as far away as possible from the dread and icy element about her. He swung his fist upon her jaw, and she went whimpering down into the boat's bottom, lying there and sobbing softly.

Furiously swearing at the herd of helpless passengers who endangered his boat at every movement, he swung the craft's head about and stood gazing at his ship. After a little while the crowd became more manageable, and he saw he could keep them aboard without the certainty of upsetting the craft He had just been debating which of them he[Pg 18] would throw overboard to save the rest; save them from their own struggling and fighting for their own selfish ends. He was as cold as steel, hard, inflexible. His men knew him for a ship's officer who would maintain his place under all hazards, and they watched him furtively, and were ready to obey him to the end without question.

"Oh, the monster, the murdering monster!" he muttered again and again.

His eyes were fixed upon the bridge. High up there stood Brownson—the captain who had sent his liner to her death, with hundreds of passengers.

Brownson stood calmly watching the press gain and lose places in the boats. Two boats actually overloaded rolled over under the immense load of human freight. The others did not stop to pick them up. They had enough to do to save themselves. The ship was sinking. That was certain. She must have struck so hard that even the 'midship bulkheads gave way, or were so twisted out of place that the doors failed. The chief engineer came below him and glanced up.

As he did so, a tremendous, roaring blast of steam blew the superstructure upward. The boilers had gone. Macdowell just gave Brownson a look. That was all. Then he rushed for a boat.

Brownson grinned; actually smiled at him.

The man at the wheel asked permission to go.

"I'm a married man, sir—it's no use of me staying here any longer," he ventured.

"Go—go to the devil!" said Brownson, without interest. The man fled.