THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"

Just an hour later the Tampico lay burning at a point in the Atlantic where if the white lights of Cape Fear and Cape Lookout had converged ninety-two miles farther out to sea they would have rested full on the reeking hull.

Dan had been fearful of the results of Mr. Howland's policy in loading the Tampico with inflammable cargo. He had been reared with the fear of fire in his heart. From one of his voyages his grandfather, Daniel Merrithew, had never returned. A charred name board had told the grim tale, and so Dan had gone out into the world with a long, red, flaming line across his fate, as in knightly days a man might have included the bar sinister or some other portentous device among his symbols of heraldry.

Pacing the forward deck with his pipe, thinking deeply of his talk with Virginia, Dan had seen pitch bubbling out of the deck seams and spilling into rich black pools. And thus the fire was discovered—some fifteen minutes too late, however, to effect the rescue of several of the crew, who shrieked and pounded at the bulkhead door, warped and welded tight by the heat; shrieked and pounded, until the throttling smoke bade them hold their peace.

First, Dan had the vessel swung about with her stern to the wind, the fire being forward; and the crew had piled up on deck and rushed without confusion or undue noise to their various stations. Some unscrewed deck valves over the burning hold, fastening thereto the ends of seven-inch rubber hose; while below, the engine-room staff, with soldierly precision, attached the other ends to the boilers and stood like statues until a signal gong sounded through the black depth. Whereupon they handled certain valves, and with a hissing scream great volumes of hot vapor poured into the blazing compartment. On deck other seamen dragged lengths of hose forward, forced the nozzles through narrow deck-vents, and held them there while the force pump sent up thousands of gallons of brine.

Dan, ubiquitous, cheerful, commanding, lending a hand to one set of men, directing another, came upon a station two short of its quota.

"Where are Phillips and Fagan?" asked Dan, sharply.

"They bunked in the steerage," replied a sailor, choking in the smoke weltering up through the hose vent.

The young Captain's breath caught; but there was no time for sentiment. He inspected the vessel, bow and stern, marshalled the members of the Howland party into the saloon and bade them stay there until otherwise ordered, and then went up to his men and fought with them. An hour passed, and twenty more minutes. The lurid tinge to the smoke, bellying up through the deck-vents, gave sharp hint of the undiminished fury of the flames raging below.

"It's like pouring in oil," muttered Dan to himself; and then he added aloud, "Keep right to it, men, you're holding it," and thus saying he left them and ran aft to where the second mate and the reserve section of eight men were growling impatiently.

"Take up your hose, men, and come with me down into hold No. 2. The fire's going to clean out No. 1 to the skin, sure. We'll have to keep it from breaking through to the other holds. Come on! Hurry!"

Without a word the men picked up the three lengths of emergency hose and followed their Captain. As Dan ran along the deck, leading the way to the hatch, he heard his name called, and looking up quickly, saw Mr. Howland and Virginia approaching. The girl's hair was flying loose and she had a long blue coat thrown over her shoulders. The deck was filled with heavy smoke.

"Captain," said the shipping magnate, "how are we now?"

Dan paused just an instant.

"Fighting hard," he replied, and then he added quickly, "Mr. Howland, we need men. Two of the crew are gone. Ask some of the men of your party, please, to go forward and report to Mr. Jackson. And you, Miss Howland, go into the saloon right away—and stay there. Tell the others that if they appear on deck before I give the word I shall have them locked in."

The girl obeyed silently, but Mr. Howland paused irresolutely a second, in which time Dan had turned and was hastening after his men.

"I will do as you say," Mr. Howland called after the retreating form of the Captain, "but I want to talk to you first."

"All right, sir, come on then. You'll have to talk to me down in the hold, I'm afraid."

The second mate and his men had in the meantime pried the battens from the hatch and thrown it open. The hold was about half full of cotton bales, railroad ties, oakum, resin, and the like, and they descended to them by means of a scaling ladder, clambering thence toward the forward bulkhead. One of the men had a lantern which cast a pallid glow about the immediate vicinity, bringing into vague relief the well-ordered masses of cargo, and ending suddenly against a hard wall of dark as palpable as a barrier of stone. The air was heavy with musty sweetness and with yellow smoke which streaked lazily past the lantern globe—and with silence, save for the dull roar in the adjoining hold.

"Make a stand right here," and Dan's voice sounded hollow through the gloom. "Stand right here. You've got water in your hose; I want that bulkhead kept soaked. Let her go."

As the streams of water plunged against the steel wall Dan turned to his employer.

"You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Howland?"

"Yes, I want to compliment you on your discipline and—and what is the exact situation?"

"Not so good; but a working chance. It will be a short and sharp go; for the hold's lined with tar and sugar reek—otherwise the cotton might go for days. It won't in that hold, though. The fight'll be right here. If it breaks through into this we've got to run; if not, it will burn out where it is."

"What are the chances that it won't?"

"Why, you know more about the structural strength of this boat than I do. To be honest, I never liked your bulkheads, else I would have opened a stop-cock and flooded the hold long ago. Still, what water would burst through, fire might not."

Horace Howland, who had paid his own price for the Tampico , and who by the same token had his own opinion of her, said nothing.

"I have arranged about the boats," resumed Dan. "If the worst comes, my men know what to do and they are the men to do it. It's not too rough to launch safely. Now, Mr. Howland, I've wasted too much time talking. Don't forget to send two men to Mr. Jackson," and he sprang up the ladder and hurried forward.

The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering. Dan yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam. A broad tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a puff of red fire which floated away in the wind. A cargo port door warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters; and the wind, blowing from astern, was sucked into the opening, fanning the flames to screaming ferocity.

The tale was plain for every one, and Dan read it to the last word. Water would be of more service elsewhere, that was certain. So he withdrew the four crews from their hose vents, ordered two of them to take their lines into the second hold, and set the others flooding the deck. He shifted two of his seven-inch steam lines to the midship plugs, and then followed the hose men, who had joined their comrades in the darkness of the second hold. Streams of water were hissing against the steel barrier and flying back at the faces of the nozzle men in hot spray.

"There's a bulge in the centre," reported the second officer.

"Yes," said Dan, who seized a lantern and held it above his head, pointing out new objective marks for the water. The smoke had grown thicker. One man gagged at a nozzle; but drinking from the pipe the air which the water brought, he lowered his head and fought on.

They fought as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead, following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless, their streaked, sweating bodies gleamed dull and ghastly.

One of them straightened from the nozzle and glared at his side partner; and Dan, whose eyes were everywhere, saw him and moved close to him, where his fist could do best work if necessary. Any sign of mutiny now called for decided measures.

"Say, Mike," said the man in a rich brogue, "give us a hunk o' yer 'bacca—this makes the mout' dry"; and Dan chuckled his admiration for the fighting spirit of the Irish.

Once a tiny lance of flame leaped out through some hidden crevice—leaped far out at the men as a rifle spits its deadly fire, and then, curling about a sugar sack like a serpent's tongue, withdrew so suddenly, so silently, that it seemed to those who saw it as something which had flashed through their imaginations. A stream of water sought the outlet and the flame came no more then.

Suddenly a cry came from one of the men, and all eyes turned to a point in the bulkhead where a hectic flush glowed like a death's head. Four streams struck it simultaneously. It went out, but reappeared in another place. The water quenched this also, but it came back again and widened, and the plunging water was dried to mist at the instant of contact. The glow grew brighter, then dim, and then brighter, rising and falling as life pulses in a fevered body. A flood of smoke choked in from a viewless breach. Two of the men cried out, gurgled, fell on their faces, and turned over on their backs, struggling; then they lay still. Dan carried them to the deck, and returned with a sailor. The two had just gained the sugar sacks when the centre bulkhead quivered. A cross section collapsed into a V. A score of rivet holes yawned wide and red-hot bolts fell on the sacks and set them on fire. A line of plating, separating from its fellows, sagged open in a red grin and gave view of the raging hell within.

"Now, into it, boys!" yelled Dan, and the men, bowing their heads, advanced five feet, directing the streams into the fiery pit. For a minute the flames were driven back by the concentrated rush of water; two minutes, and then a gush of fire flared through the break. It broke as a stream hit it, but its ghost, in the guise of hot gases, choked the men.

A great roar of flame almost enveloped them, and the heat crisped their hair and seared their bodies, and they dropped their hose and raced for the ladder.

"Go on, men!" shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold. "You've done all I can ask. Hurry! Get out!" and they got out and then turned to batten the hatch cover down. But the rush of fire was too swift to be denied. A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and spouted to the top of the funnel—great gouts of the devouring element pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and shrivelled a life raft. Long tongues and jets of fire were bursting everywhere out of the forward deck.

It had come at last, just as Dan had seen it coming all through the night—all through the years. His voice roared from the bridge:

"To the boats—every man to his station!"

The command was taken up and carried along, and noiseless shapes limned briefly in the fire glow, scuttled quickly to their appointed places. Mr. Howland and his party stumbled out of the saloon with blanched faces and parted lips, but quietly.

"Women to the rail!" The cry echoed out over the sea,—over the sea, which has heard these chivalrous words so often.

"Women first—women to the rail!" Dan's cry was taken up by the officers. Silent figures in trailing garments moved as they were bid.

From the port quarter a gruff voice sounded.

"Ready, men—ease away." Came the creak of tackle, the thud of iron upon steel—then a silence—then a rattle of oars in thole-pins—then a clear hail from the darkness: "All's well, Captain Merrithew!"

Another boat clattered down the steel sides and cleared safely, and still another. The last boat was filling with the last of the crew.

"Everybody accounted for?" Dan's shout as he rushed down from the curling bridge brought Mr. Howland up with a sudden fear. He had taken his daughter to the starboard boat only to find it full, and had sent her across to the third boat, while he superintended the adjustment of a wedged block. This done, he had hurried to the starboard, only to find the third boat overboard and well away. He had assumed that she was all right. But a cold rush of doubt assailed him.

"Virginia, Virginia—are you all right?" he called in tones of agony.

"I saw her at the third boat," said the first officer. "You must look alive, Mr. Howland—we'll have to lower directly the Captain comes. The deck's going now."

The ship-owner heard these words with a sigh of relief and stepped into the boat without further ado.

"Every one accounted for?" repeated Dan as he dashed along deck to the boat.

Something, a faint suggestion of sound rather than sound itself caused him to pause. He heard nothing more, though he listened for a full minute. Instinctively he turned to a stateroom in the midship deck-house.

"Captain Merrithew—are—you—coming?" The first officer's voice arose in impatient cadence.

"Yes—hold there a minute!" replied Dan, twisting the knob of the door. It was locked. He ran back a few paces and sprang at it with his shoulder. It trembled and gave. He rushed again and the door crashed inward. The room was filling with smoke.

And on the bunk sat Virginia, her hands on her knees, her head hanging low and swaying dazedly from side to side. She was on the verge of collapse; but she looked up and smiled faintly as Dan burst in. Then her head fell again.

"I knew you would come," she muttered.

Without a word Dan seized her by the arm and led her swiftly to the shattered door. As they reached the threshold there came a dull boom from below—the vessel shivered. A sheet of flame swept the entire forward deck, and Dan looked out into a red, pulsing wall.

In terror the men in the fourth and last boat, the fire licking their faces, let go the falls, and the little craft struck the water with a crash, but on an even keel.

Knowing he could not reach the boat even were it still on the davits, Dan left the stateroom and half led, half carried the girl toward the stern.

The forward deck was now a seething inferno. The foremast, a pillar of thin name, flickered like a pennon of gold until it broke in the middle and sent up a shower of sparks. The shrouds and ratlines which went with it had barred the black heavens with ruddy lines. From all the openings dull red clouds rolled and bellied skyward, cloud upon cloud; the funnel spouted like a blast furnace.

But the vessel slowly, but very surely, was falling off the wind; it would soon blow astern. The shelter of the after deck-house would serve for a while, perhaps until some vessel, attracted by the terrible light, would bring them succor. Dan placed the girl behind this steel structure and then, running to the taffrail, leaned far out and called to the boats. But the roar of the flames drowned his cries, and the boats, which had moved out to windward, could not see him. Foot by foot crept the fire; but the stiff wind which finally came over the stern did its work well, and the red avalanche began to slant toward the bow. This meant respite. But he knew that at the very best it could be only a respite, and short at that.

Again and again and again he called for the boats, until his voice grew husky and faint. Then, hopeless of aid from his men, he returned to the girl. She was exactly where he had left her, slightly crouching as though to shut from her eyes the fearful red light.

The wind rush had revived her smoke-dimmed senses. When she was approaching the star-board boat to which her father had directed her she had lost her head, as persons will do in time of fire, and had wandered mechanically, unconsciously, to her cabin and locked herself in. But she was not frightened now. There was that in Dan which she trusted. She looked at him strangely and smiled. She caressed him with her eyes, trusting in, hanging upon, the strength of a man who possessed in divine measure all of man's strength.

A half-hour they crouched together, until the steel walls of their shelter burned to the touch, until the flames licked up over the forward end, ran over the roof, and looked down upon them. But still they remained as they were, while the Tampico circled again and brought the wind in their faces, which they drank greedily.

There came a time when the fire hissed constantly on the deck-house—when, indeed, flames plunged around it and touched the two figures. Swiftly Dan reached out his arm and encircled the waist of his companion and drew her to the taffrail.

Four feet below the gilded name on the stern was a six-inch ledge. He lifted the girl as he would a child and placed her on this ledge, bidding her hold to the rail. Then he passed a section of small chain about a stanchion, allowing the end to hang over. If the rail became too hot for their hands they could hold by the chain.

As Dan joined Virginia on the ledge the vessel slued around, bringing the wind full over the bow. With a roaring shout of exultation the fire bridged the last gap, bursting clear over the stern. It bit at their hands; they withdrew them, supporting themselves by the swinging chain.

The girl moaned. Nearer drew the hot breath. She felt Dan's arm tighten about her waist. It was like a curved bar of steel. Looking down, she saw the water racing below—she saw a wave leap up—she felt it touch her foot with its feathery head, gently, beneficently, and yet traitorously; for how quickly would it quench the lives that it seemed to tempt from the flames!

"Put your face tight against my chest—put your hands over your nose and mouth—quick!"

She obeyed upon the word and a thrill, not of pain, shot to Dan's brain. He could feel her, soft and trembling, against him, and her warm hair brushed his cheek. With an effort he choked back the flooding emotion. Was it fair, was it right to her—now? But his arm unconsciously tightened about her.

The red glow shone through the girl's closed eyelids—a great heat scorched the back of her neck, and she felt a quiver in the body shielding her; but the grip of the arm remained. There came a blast of God's merciful salt cold air, and she opened her eyes. He was looking down at her—and he saw what he saw. For they were two souls hanging together on the verge of eternity—alone; two souls with death all about fusing them until they were as one. She looked at him long.

"Are you hurt?" she asked. The words sounded thick.

"No—a little. It got my neck and ears. The ship was yawing, though, and that saved us. It was like snapping your hand through a gas flame."

"I'm afraid," said the girl with a sob catching her voice.

"No—don't be afraid! I'll save you—some way."

She opened her eyes and looked in his face again.

"My nobleman! my—"

"Don't!" cried Dan, interrupting her. "You don't know what you are saying. It's so different now." He well knew that impulses which might move a woman in the arms of a man, no matter who, battling for her life, might be for the moment only and lead to nothing but regret and alarm afterwards. How could it be otherwise with Virginia Howland? The girl, as though she had not heard him, as though she had forgotten the emotions which had swayed her, closed her eyes wearily and turned her face away.

The ship was yawing again. Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, licking above Dan's red-gold hair and his back, but never touching the girl. Then the swing of the vessel and the wind again; then the fire and the torturing heat. Once Dan saw his grandfather's vessel burning as he had often pictured it in boyhood, and he trembled horribly for a second, but only for a second; then he became rigid and smiled at the apparition. The girl had evidently fainted; she hung a dead weight upon his arm. Again the wind drove the flames far out over the stern.

There came a time when the fight for life was waged mechanically, when all sense of thought vanished, and the carrying on of the struggle came down to mere animal instinct. At such times a brave man need not be ashamed to die—the time has long elapsed when cravens perish. But the very brave, the physically as well as mentally brave, fight on to the end, instinctively. And so Dan fought. He knew that Virginia Howland hung on his arm—but the fire had gone from his ken; he was fighting something, that was all he knew, or cared, since it was for her. Once the red sheet enveloped them for a flashing second, but the merciful wind came to save. It could not last long, though. Dan's arm weakened about the limp form of the girl. He closed his eyes and ground his teeth and brought new force to the encircling arm. He glared down at the mass of soft hair scattering over his breast; he thought of that beautiful life and quite impersonally asked himself if all this beauty must die. Where would all the beauty of the world be then? This question ran deliriously through his mind. Eh! where would it all be? If they died together, would they wake together? And the flames came again.

But as they swooped down with redoubled fury he saw almost subconsciously a great tangled litter of wreckage passing beneath him. He uttered a little cry, and with the girl still in his arm he dropped from the ledge. With a sigh of relief he felt the cooling, revivifying water, and the sharp, cold taste of brine in his mouth was like the touch of a new life.

Instinctively he had put his free arm around a section of cargo boom, with a grating caught in the twisted gear. Upon this he pushed and lifted the half-unconscious girl. Then he clambered astride the boom. Thus they drifted, while Dan, his mind slowly clearing, struggled pitifully for full possession of his faculties. He had a dull sense of pain, but the one dominant idea was the girl. Leaning slightly over, he twisted his hand in the folds of her dress lest she slip into the waters. The stars were paling; on the horizon were the first vague hints of dawn. He gazed at the faint gray curtain with interest. It was a dawn he had not expected to see, he told himself.

Then, as he looked, a shape arose before his eye out of the gloom. Dan watched it with dumb fascination. Suddenly a realizing sense of the nature of the apparition shot through his mind. A vessel—God! Dan's voice raised in a long, hoarse cry for assistance. But there was no answer. Yet the craft was bearing toward them, not a hundred yards away, silently as a ship of the dead. Dan cried again, rising on his rolling perch. But the hail died on his lips. He could see now. It was a ship of the dead. It was the derelict they had viewed from the fancied security of the Tampico's deck, a few short hours before. An imprecation trembled upon Dan's lips. For the last half-hour Virginia, who had crawled to a kneeling posture, had been watching Dan with unlighted eyes. Now as he turned to her and pointed at the slowly advancing vessel, she nodded slowly, as though comprehending his meaning, and stretched out her arms to him.

Softly, quietly the bow of the hulk slid up and nuzzled gently among the wreckage. Quickly Dan secured the litter to the bow by twisting a length of wire cable through the rusty green fore-chains of the derelict. Then gaining a footing in the mess of gear, he assisted the girl to her feet on the tottering grating, and placed her hand on the chains.

"Hold here tight," he said. She nodded, and Dan looked about for the easiest way to the deck. It was not difficult to find. The end of the jib-boom had dropped into the water, making an easy incline, and the foremast had also fallen over the bow and was directly alongside. Both were covered with sections of canvas and a maze of gear and rigging.

Dan clambered up, and then, lying flat across the bowsprit and the mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled her to his side. Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among the wreckage to the deck.

And there with the dawn beginning to glow rosily far on the eastern rim of the slaty waste the girl sighed and sank to her knees; and Dan, his head reeling with sleep and exhaustion, sank also. When the darkness had all gone and the sun had cleared the horizon, the first level rays flooded the sullen deck of a gray-green hulk, sodden, desolate, and fell upon the faces of a man and woman sleeping, her head resting on his shoulder, strands of her dark hair lying across his face.

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