THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR

As Dan seized the strip with its gilt letters and was about to reply, the yacht slung sideways, and a wave arising amidships smote the deck-house a lusty, full-bodied blow. It suddenly occurred to the tugboat captain that the craft, all the time he had been aboard trying to collect his bewildered senses, had acted strangely. He turned to Mr. Howland.

"What's the matter with your yacht?"

Howland was a good deal of a thoroughbred, and yet he could not conceal his eagerness as he spoke.

"The yacht was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Captain," he said. "I know I have no right to ask anything more of you, but if you have pulled together, I think we seem to need your assistance. Our Captain was washed off the bridge, and the first mate is below with a broken leg. The situation, I am afraid, is beyond young Terry, the second mate; I—"

As the import of what Mr. Howland was trying to say flashed across Dan's mind, he turned abruptly, without waiting for the completion of the sentence, and ran for the bridge.

Without a glance at the second officer, who seemed on the verge of a complete funk, he shouldered the two sailors from the wheel and hauled on the spokes with all the strength of his long arms. As the yacht began to respond he seized the indicator crank and called for full speed ahead. The whistle of the bridge speaking-tube sounded viciously, and Dan, placing his ear to the receiver, caught the words of the old chief engineer as they flowed up in profane vehemence.

"Say, do you know what you want up there? If I had a man down here who knew an engine from a plate of fruit, I'd 'a' been up there and snaked you off the bridge long ago. I've been on my back under that triply damned shaft for twelve hours and now—" the rest of the sentence was an assortment of well-chosen oaths.

The outburst greeted Dan's ears sweetly. Evidently Howland had a man down below the water line, anyway. He grinned as he clapped his lips to the tube.

"I've just come aboard to take charge of this craft," he yelled; "now you do as I say and do it quick. See!"

A great relieved, blasphemous roar came up the tube, and the next instant the engines were laying down to their work.

The bow began to cut nicely into the waves, and Dan turned to the two sailors.

"Here, you boys, tail on here and steer as I tell you." Whereupon, fingering a pocket compass, he called the course, after which he fastened the little instrument to the wreck of the binnacle.

"We will pull through," he said, turning to Mr. Howland, who, with his daughter, had followed him to the bridge. "We are somewhere off the Winter Quarter Shoals; if I can get the sun at noon I'll know exactly; anyway, we will make Norfolk if that shaft holds. If it doesn't—well, banking on that engineer you've got down below, I think it will hold." Then inclining his head in the direction of Miss Howland, he added, "I'd advise you to go below, Miss Howland." He thrilled as he uttered her name, "You're wet; and then—I may have to swear."

"I should love awfully to hear some one swear to some purpose," she replied. "Oh, I want to stay," she cried, speaking to her father, as Dan suddenly turned his back and spoke to the second mate. "Father, I am going to stay. The rest are seasick or frightened to pieces. I feel braver up here."

She was perfectly candid. She did feel braver there on the bridge. For Dan was the one dominant personality aboard the yacht. In her eyes he typified bravery, skill, strength—safety, in a word, for all. It was as though out of the wrack of despair and the overriding elements had arisen the spirit of a man and all that at best he stands for, to reclaim the lost honors of the darker hours. And so she clung to him with her eyes and felt she could smile at danger; her soul went out to him and enveloped him with gratitude and tenderness. And she neither knew nor cared whether in these emotions was the uprearing of woman's submerged, primal nature, giving all to the sheer power of the stronger sex, or whether it was the result of a burden of dread suddenly lifted from her heart—it made no difference which. She was living the moment—here and now—clear, serene, justified, and ennobled.

And standing thus she watched him as he snapped the yacht slantwise from the grip of succeeding sea hollows and guided her over the gray hills, panting and straining, with much of pudgy deliberation, but surely.

"We will make it easily," said Dan, "if nothing happens."

"Good," cried Mr. Rowland, and, taking his daughter by the arm, he added, "come below, Virginia, and give them the good news. Your friend Oddington has forgotten his cigarettes for a full twenty-four hours, and the Dale girls are candidates for a sanitarium." There was a chuckle of relief in his voice.

Dan turned to watch the girl as she followed her father from the bridge. He was certain he had never seen anything so inspiring as Virginia Howland standing braced square to the wind, her trim blue skirt winding and unwinding; her cap in her hand; the wind tossing her heavy hair in myriads of glowing pennons, which beat on the blush-surged cheeks, alternately hiding and disclosing the sparkle of the deep gray eyes or the flash of perfect teeth from between parted lips.

It was a picture upon which he permitted himself to ponder but an instant, however, for the wind was shifting again from the northeast, growling ominously, and the yacht, humping along at a ridiculous speed of six knots, made the situation less satisfactory than it had been. He spoke to Terry over his shoulder.

"As you see," he said, "we're running into some new sort of hell," and he glanced impatiently at the potential riot ahead. "Have these men keep the course and look out for things, will you? I'm going down to the engine-room for a few minutes."

"Very well, sir," said the young officer.

Dan found old Jim Arthur, the chief, swearing softly as he moved about his engines with a long-spouted oil can.

"It is beginning to breeze again," said Dan. "I'm the new Captain and I came down to tell you I don't think much of your machinery, and to ask if the shaft will hold out."

"The shaft'll hold," said the engineer. Then he paused and looked at Dan in supreme disgust. "Engines!" he snorted. "I've been holdin' 'em together with my fingers since we left San Domingo. Cap'n, they'd been fine for a Swiss cuckoo clock. Why, they're only held together by gilt paint and polish. See how old Howland's had 'em painted—like a bedizened old maid! I do believe he's got 'em perfumed. Well, they may hold—"

Dan, who had been glancing about the engine-room, interrupted the engineer's pessimistic outburst.

"What are your force pumps going for?" he asked.

"Well, it ain't fur to water no flowers," said Arthur, beckoning Dan to the shaft tunnel, where a foot and a half of frothy water was rolling to and fro, slushing against the stuffing box, laving the engine-room bulkhead.

Leaking! Dan's first impulse was to drop his hands then and there and let the yacht sink or do what she would for all he cared. He had fought out his fight with a better craft than this and had lost her. He did not yield to this; in truth, before he could think of yielding there came a second impulse—to relieve his mind of several hundred accumulated metaphors, to which inclination he surrendered unconditionally, while Arthur, in the face of the verbal torrent, gazed at the source in humble admiration.

"How—how much is she taking in?" the young man finally gasped.

"About thirty strokes a minute. I'd 'a' whistled up the tube about it before, only I thought you had enough to fill your mind."

"How does it strike you?" asked Dan.

"It's gained only six inches in the past hour. I will say that much. But if you ask me my honest opinion, I'd say this rotten old pleasure hull is a-gettin' ready to open up and spread out like a—like a—balloon with the epizoötic."

"All right, when she begins, come on up with your men without asking leave. Report every half-hour. I'll be on the bridge, of course. If I can pick up a steamship I'll call her and desert ship; if not—well, we're somewhere outside the Winter Quarter light-ship. I'll need about five hours of the speed we're making to pick up the light vessel and beach the yacht in the lee of Assateague; maybe not quite five hours, I can't say exactly."

"I think we can keep ahead of the water we're makin' that long," replied Arthur, cheerfully.

As Dan regained the bridge, the bad news he had received below was slightly compensated for by the fact that the storm seemed to be taking a new kink, swirling away to sea. The gray combers, however, were still disagreeably to be reckoned with. The second officer had by this time pulled himself together, and as he reported to Dan, the young Captain was happy to feel that he had at least a lieutenant who could be counted on. Now if Mulhatton were only with him—but "Mul" was below, flat on his back, suffering technically from submersion, and so were the other men of the Fledgling who had been pulled aboard the yacht.

At ten o'clock Arthur reported that the water had gained another six inches.

As Dan snapped back the tube a burst of laughter from the saloon reached his ears. Seasickness, fear, everything evil had been forgotten in the spirit of confidence and assurance of ultimate safety which Dan's skill and personality had infused throughout the wallowing craft. He shrugged his shoulders, staring vacantly into the angry sea.

At length his eyes turned to the distress signals he had ordered hoisted; and suddenly the gulf between his lot in life and theirs, which the merriment suggested, disappeared, and his emotions thereby aroused,—emotions not untinged with self-pity, changed to deepest sympathy for those light-hearted ones who might soon be plunged into that gloom which heralds death. Grim, silent, he turned to his work, determined that so far as in him lay no shadow of death should invest a single one of those persons who must find so much in life to make it worth while. Another hour passed while the yacht stumbled her clumsy course to safety. Arthur reported another half-foot; in all three feet six inches of water swishing against the engine-room bulkhead.

"It will keep seepin' through," he said, "and wop! Suddenly the whole bulkhead'll go."

"Don't get caught," replied Dan. "Give us three more hours, chief. Oh, I say, there's not a drop getting into the fire room yet? Thank God for that!"

"For what?"

He faced about quickly and looked into the eyes of Virginia Howland. She was pale, but her face was brave. "I had just come out on deck," she said, "because somehow I was getting nervous—I wanted to be—to be near the Captain." She smiled. "I heard you talking through the speaking-tube; I didn't mean to listen—pardon me; I couldn't help it. We're in danger, then, are we? Don't hesitate to answer truthfully, Captain Merrithew."

"Why," replied Dan, "we—steady there, Mr. Terry; you men at the wheel attend to your business. Excuse me," turning to the girl, "danger—why, we've been in danger all the time; else I wouldn't be up here."

"You are evading," said the girl, slowly. "But perhaps you are right. I can say I trust you, Captain—we all do. I want to tell you again how we all appreciate your—what you have done—putting the yacht straight and—"

"I am doing it for myself as much as for you. More, perhaps; who knows?"

The girl gazed intently at his square-cut, bronzed face. Then she looked straight into his steel-gray eyes, peering hard ahead from under the flat peak of a cap he had picked up on the bridge.

"Yes," she said, as though speaking to herself, "I think I know." Then she started with an involuntary gesture.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Captain Merrithew? Yes, yes, I have. Where could it have been? Do you recall?"

"Yes," was the simple reply. "I recall. It was about two years ago, at Norfolk, when you were at the coal docks on this yacht."

Virginia flushed eagerly and was about to say something, when some flashing thought, perhaps a realizing sense of their relative positions, closed her lips. "I remember very clearly now." She spoke quietly, then she closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them they were stern and hard.

"Captain Merrithew," she said, as though to hasten from the subject, "I know we are in danger. Your silence has said as much. Yet the yacht seems to be going finely—"

Dan made no reply.

"Do you think I am a coward? Is that the reason you are silent?"

Dan made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.

"Well, Miss Howland, if you are not a coward, if you can keep what you know to yourself, listen: We're taking in a little water. It's a race between the yacht and the leak; the yacht ought to win out. Now you know as much as I do."

"I am not frightened; my curiosity is natural. Is there a chance that the yacht may not get where you are taking her?"

"To the Assateague beach—no, I don't think there is—if all goes well."

"If all goes well! Then there is a chance—a chance we may—"

"Oh, we'll be all right." Dan was temperamentally straightforward and honest, and his assertions were uttered with a tentative inflection which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses of the girl.

She stepped closer to Dan.

"May I say something? We are in danger. I have been thinking of things since you came aboard—since I have been sitting in the saloon with the men who are different—"

Dan could see that the girl, always evidently one of dominant emotions, was overwrought, and something told him she had no business to express the thoughts which filled her mind, that she would be sorry later that she had spoken. He had interrupted her by a gesture. Now his voice came cool and even.

"Miss Howland, don't. I've got to take care of this yacht."

A quick sense of just what he meant shot through the girl's mind. She raised her eyes and looked at him straight. They were blazing, not altogether with anger. She trembled; she flushed and moved uncertainly. Then, without a word, she turned and left him.

"A half-foot more water in the last half-hour," reported Arthur.

As Dan turned to Terry, that officer silently pointed to the northward, where a tall column of black smoke seemed to rise from the waters. A steamship! Yes, but was it coming toward them? Was it going away? Or would it pass them far out to sea? For fifteen minutes he watched it through his binoculars, and then he glanced down to the deck and called to a sailor to send Mr. Howland to the bridge.

"Mr. Howland," said Dan, as the owner approached him, "I suppose Miss Howland has told you our fix."

"Yes, but she has told no one else."

"Bully for her!" exclaimed Dan.

"She said you were hopeful."

"More so now than ever before, I was making for the beach, but now—there's a steamship coming down on us. I wasn't sure at first, I am now. That smoke out there is heading dead for us. I am going to slow the boat down to steerage way and wait for her to come up. It's better than trying to make for Assateague; it's better to wait."

"Will the bulkhead hold?"

Mr. Howland asked his question in the even monotone which had characterized all his questions.

"I think so; if it doesn't, we'll get everybody off in the rafts and the launch; the sea is going down by the minute."

Mr. Howland glanced down at the deck where the crew of Scandinavians, inspired by the cool, cheerful commands of their new Captain, were working nonchalantly in preparing for eventualities. From amidships came the clatter of men trying to repair the launch, the one boat which had not been carried away in the night's storm. Others were clearing the life rafts so they could be launched without delay. He glanced at Dan with admiring eyes.

"I want to compliment you, Captain Merrithew," he said. "You have your crew well in hand."

"Thank you," replied Dan, "if you will keep your party in hand there'll be no danger at all. I don't care what happens, with the sea falling."

Another half-hour. The steamship, a stout coaster, had now climbed over the horizon. Mr. Howland, through the glasses, had picked out her red-and-black funnel and recognized her as one of his own boats. But it had plainly come to a race between the steamship and the straining bulkhead. No need now to tell any one of the situation. The Veiled Ladye was plainly settling astern. The engine-room bulkhead was quivering, ready to break. Arthur and his men had piled up from the engine-room, the engines still pulsing with no one to watch them. The sailors were splendid, going about their work quietly, calmly. They had carried the injured mate, groaning with his broken leg, to the deck. Mrs. Van Vleck, Mr. Rowland's sister, the chaperone, sat with her niece's arms about her, passing in and out of successive attacks of hysteria. A sailor had knocked one of the young men of the party down to quiet an incipient exhibition of panic. Ralph Oddington and Reginald Wotherspoon stood at the rail, trying with nerveless fingers to roll cigarettes. Two of the girls were weeping in each other's arms. The water bubbled under the turn of the yacht's counters. Two of the sailors were discharging blank shells from the rifle astern in hopes of calling attention to the plight of the craft. The deck was a conglomerate, nervous confusion of smart yachting costumes, uniforms, and greasy overalls.

Dan, noting the flutter, leaned back from the wheel.

"Don't get excited down there," he roared. "If the bulkhead holds, we're all right. If it doesn't, there'll be plenty of time for all. Do you understand? We can float for a week on the ocean the way it is now."

"It won't hold long, Mr. Howland," he added to the man at his side, "but it will hold until that steamship reaches us. She's seen us and is coming like hell."

A few minutes later a joyous shout sounded from the men on the bridge, a cry vibrant with electricity, which thrilled through the yacht and finally trembled on all tongues. For the steamship had sized the situation and was fairly leaping toward them. Great clouds of smoke were belching from her funnel. They could see sparks mingling with the thunderclouds of sepia, and the Veiled Ladye hobbled woundily to meet her. On came the freighter; her hull was plainly discerned now, picking the waves from under her bluff bows and throwing them impatiently to either side.

Cries of joy and appeals for the succoring vessel to hurry sounded from the yacht's decks.

As the vessel drew nearer. Miss Howland ran to the bridge and took her father by the arm.

"Father!" she cried. "You must come now. Isn't there anything in your cabin you want to save?" With a muttered "By George!" Mr. Howland dived below and the girl faced Dan.

"Captain Merrithew—"

Oddington's voice thrilling in joyous, cadence sounded from beneath the bridge.

"Virginia, Virginia, where are you? Oh, up there! Come down quickly! Don't you see we are coming alongside? And Merrithew, old chap—Virginia, will you come! You are to be put aboard after your aunt. Hurry!" There was a half-note of proprietorship in his voice.

As the girl turned to leave, Dan gave the wheel to Terry and ran to the deck with a speaking-trumpet in his hand. As he passed Oddington, who had assisted Miss Howland from the bridge, he spoke to him quietly.

"The man with the broken leg leaves this ship first."

Below there was a dull crash and clouds of steam burst through the ventilators and the engine-room gratings. The bulkhead had succumbed, but no one cared now. The steamship was turning in about a hundred yards away. Dan directed his trumpet to the bridge.

"Scrape close alongside," he yelled. "Open one of your cargo ports and we'll board you through it."

The freighter's Captain had already anticipated this suggestion, and as the vessel slid alongside, Dan ranged the sailors along the deck.

In perfect order the mate with the broken leg was slid into the port as though he were merely being passed into another room. Then went the women, then the men of the party, and after them the sailors. Dan and Mr. Howland alone were left now. As the elder man prepared to enter the port he looked at Dan a moment and smiled.

"Some day I hope to cancel this debt."

They were simple words, but potentially they meant much to Dan. He was to find they involved the realization of dreams, ambitions he had long held; another rung on the ladder which eventually—— But there was no time to think of the future now. Turning from the porthole he ran along the deck, calling to make sure that every one was off. When he returned, Miss Howland and several others were leaning over the rail above.

"For heaven's sake, Captain Merrithew, will you please come off that yacht!" The girl's voice rang imperiously.

With a last look at the bridge upon which he had passed the recent thrilling hours, he leaped aboard the freighter, and when ten minutes later the white Veiled Ladye threw up her bow with a great clanking sigh and slid swiftly from view, Dan Merrithew was fast asleep in the Captain's cabin.

XsjkrziAaXRsW0hDfV4F6GmEt3tWCT76yhKckaunr+j7NtmVIiiK+kmJddCEm4im