"By George! That's great stuff," declared the managing editor," I thought Jim Falkner had it in him." And then the great man, than whom there was none more powerful in the estimation of the Herald's reporters, tossed upon the owner's desk a story which the youngest reporter was crowding upon the wires two hundred miles away. "Now you know why I sent him. Just read it, Fred."
It is the groaning, wailing horror of five thousand human voices that rises above the thunder of the sea, a deep-throated rumbling of men punctuated by the shrill screams of women—a sound that, has grown and grown for hours until all other sounds have seemingly died away. The wind lashes by unheard, and from where the waves sweep in almost to the feet of the assembled watchers there comes but a subdued murmur.
For hour after hour that multitude has stood here, facing one of the most terrific storms that has ever been known on Lake Michigan. At times it has prayed, but more often it has cursed. Even the women have shrieked into the teeth of the fearful hurricane the hope, the horror, and the malediction of that great crowd, changing—for ever changing— as to particular individuals, but always, to those who are privileged to observe, the same writhing, maddened concourse of helpless humanity. It is drenched, exhausted, and hopeless; drenched by the chilling spume shot in by the gale, weakened to delirium by the sight before its eyes, and hopeless—as hopeless as... One voice has said that, in maddened shriek, and it was a woman's voice. The woman lies crumpled in the sand; the spray falling over her in sheets. Her long black hair clings to her in drenched masses; her eyes are insanely terrible and her lips are bleeding. She has cried against God—and cursed the men behind her. An old man, with white hair and beard, clutches her dress and has joined her in unheard imprecation, though more often he is mumbling a voiceless prayer, his sand-blistered eyes turned red and wild toward the raging sea.
Four hundred—five hundred—yards out there a ship is going to pieces, a black steel thing of eight thousand tons or so. Aboard her there have been thirty living creatures like those that make up the watching multitude. Now there remain but six. The assembled watchers can see them—four clinging like ants to the forward upper works and two twisting and swinging to the end of the life-line aft. Between the two and the four the ship's back has broken, and as the midship has sunk and the sea spurted over it in a frothing maelstrom there has risen above all other tumult that great sobbing moan of human voices.
But that is all thus far. There has been no effort toward rescue. A boat might possibly live in those seas, but it would have no more than a thousand to one chance. Even the little group of men at the lifesaving station, a third of a mile away, deem it folly to take that thousandth chance. The multitude has cursed and threatened; but no one person among them all has offered himself as a sacrifice, with the exception of the old white-haired man kneeling in the sand beside the woman. He is a retired captain. named McVee. The woman who has joined him in his exhortation is a stranger in this locality.
"It's no use, Cap'n," the chief of the life-saving crew said to the old man. "We couldn't live two minutes in that sea! It would be death—"
"You lie!" shouted the old man. "You lie! You're afraid-afraid—"
The Herald's owner laid the yellow sheets carefully upon his desk, slowly removed his spectacles, and seemed about to comment—when a copy boy rushed in with additional material just as the throbbing wire had brought it.
Captain McVee has turned back to the crowd, the panting, wild-eyed woman close behind him, and called for men. Who will go with him? Who will join him in an attempt to rescue? His thin voice is half-unheard. The wind has caught and twisted it into unintelligible sound. Women have stilled their sobs and cries while men fall back quietly and let him pass. Those who have cursed the cowardice of the life-savers have become mute. The woman is upon her knees where the spume of the sea falls over her in torrents, and has stretched her arms out to the ship.
Only the old captain seems to have heard her moaning cry. He puts a thin trembling arm about her shoulders. The wind has whipped the masses of her hair around him, but the freighter has broken apart and she has torn herself away, with him clinging to her dress. Two men are hanging aft. There are four ahead. Only six—out of thirty! Something must have burst in her head, and swaying as if about to fall, she gropes blindly toward the old mariner for support.
Now there is momentarily a terrible silence. From the distant life- saving station the crowded thousands have become an immobile line of black—lifeless and motionless. In an instant every voice has been hushed, and every eye is turned toward the wreck. The after part of the ship, where the two men clung, is sinking. It is going foot by foot, with an excruciating, torturing slowness. The multitude has seen twenty-four other human souls swept into eternity, but they have been swallowed in huge bursting seas that have quickly hidden detail. This is different. It is death measured by inches.
The forward part of the ship is solid, rammed hard upon the bottom. The life-line leading from it to the aft cabin is still unbroken, and an almost imperceptible stir has swept through the crowd as one of the two men has poised himself, with his arms stretched over his head. It is a black smoky city of lake people that lies over beyond the beach and those gathered upon the shore know what is about to happen. The stir is caused by women—and men—but mostly women, turning away. They might look upon death in certain forms stolidly—but not this.
For a brief spell the man has stood there, gargoyle-like, leaning over the end of the galley. Through the grey mist of wind-torn waves there has been no movement by him visible at that distance of four hundred yards. The sharpest eyes have seen, however, that his head is turned toward his companion, who, no more than a formless blot, has flattened himself against a davit. A man with a glass declares that this blot is a boy.
Now the standing figure has leaned out farther—slowly but perceptibly. He is almost horizontal as he swings down toward the frothing sea. For a few instants he has been hidden in a thunder of spume. Then the multitude has glimpsed him again, swinging like a toy on a string, with three hundred feet between him and the pilot-house. Hand over hand he is travelling along the life-line, with the sea now a dozen feet beneath him, now at his heels, setting him twisting and writhing whenever it can strike as high as his ankles. A few times he has doubled himself, like a jack-knife, and escaped the fury of the waves as they run under, but at each succeeding effort his legs dangle lower. He's gone a third of the distance! Now a half! The blot against the empty davit has lengthened itself, has crawled face downward to the line, and has risen to its knees. The boy is preparing to follow over the life-line.
From the woman there has been wrung a shriek of anguish—of warning— that was swallowed and smothered in the wind. There is no chance for him. The watching thousands know that, and again a murmur of horror has risen above the tumult of the sea.
The boy has slipped out, as the man before him had done, and he too has now gripped the cable. For a minute he waits and watches the struggling figure that is now within seventy feet of the pilot-house. It is progressing with terrible slowness. A minute more and it has stopped, arms and legs stretched down, as if weighted with lead. The cap of a sea has caught it as high as the waist, and for a few moments it has swung and twisted like a rag to the clothes-line Now the next sea has come, and the line is bare. The boy draws back, the multitude watching, still voiceless. He has gripped the empty davit-arm, and again flattened himself until he has become once more a lifeless, formless blot.
The woman in the sand has staggered to her feet and now stands swaying. She is a young woman, and with the exception of the spots of red on her lips her face is deathly white. Her hair and her eyes have doubtless made many men call her beautiful. She has turned to the crowd, but is unperceptive of detail, There is only a mass of pallid faces. In her heart there is a bitter hatred of them all. They are afraid—afraid! The words burn in her brain, her lips tremble with them, yet there is no sound.
Jim Falkner's report of the wreck of the Osceola ended at this point. There was no response to urgent demands for further particulars, though the presses were held until the last moment possible. Eventually, however, the Herald got the balance of the story from the Associated Press.
A young man who had been looking at the wreck through a glass came out from the black line along the shore to help her. She struck at him and tore her way through the crowd, panting at every step those soundless words—"cowards—cowards—cowards." The young man followed her. They passed beyond the black line of people. In their haste they scattered a frightened throng of children huddled farther back on the beach. They sped toward the life-saving station; but that, too, and the little group of hopeless men there, were unseen by the woman. That hot, burning something in her head had given way. She ran—swifter and swifter, she thought—but at each step her feet dragged deeper into the sand. Beyond the station she fell in a wide sweep of dunes and lay there as if dead.
But her brain was working. In a flash it leaped the distance of a hundred miles. She saw, in her moment's delirium, the little home there, their home, with its trees and its garden; she saw HIS room, with its pictures of ships, its charts, and its hundred memories of the lake he sailed. She had descended to that home, with its modest comfort and atmosphere of economy. She had given up a life of luxury to share this cottage with a man who would be a captain—soon. That was the story. And the man had failed—partly. He had not become a captain, and he brooded over the fact, mostly because of the woman.
"You were rich, Jean," he had said on his last short visit home. "You had everything that the world could give you, and I brought you to this. Sometimes—I—am—sorry."
That last scene came like a passing flash to the woman in the sand. She had put her arms up about his shoulders, and had smiled in her happiness, and had told him that there was one thing that the world had never held for her before—and that was love. After he had gone back to his ship the woman sat down and cried—for two reasons, but mostly for one. That abyss seemed always between them. A thousand times she had tried to bridge it. What did she care for what she had left so long as she had him! He had failed; at least he thought he had failed, but to the woman it was not failure. She loved him, and she loved the little cottage-nest that he had made for her, and there were times, when she remembered his thoughts, that she regretted the day she had been born in a mansion instead of in just such another little cottage, with the lilacs growing almost to its grey-aged roof. And then, one day, there came a sudden, thrilling knowledge into her soul, the knowledge that another soul—the embryo of a new life—had come into her being, and she was filled with a strange calm joy that remained always with her. Oh, how she longed to tell the man, how she longed to see him, and to tell him, with her face close up against his breast. She did not write. She waited, day after day; and then, urged by her great throbbing joy, she had gone to meet him—to surprise him- -at a port fully a hundred miles away. Then the storm, the daring rush for the harbour, the treacherous shoal beyond the breakwater! It had all happened before her eyes, and now it was ending with HER looking on!
She staggered to her feet and ran desperately down to where the sea beat in, wild-eyed, half mad. If she could only let him know! If she could only let him know! She stretched out her arms and called to him, again and again. She ran along the shore, looking, hunting, with an insane fire in her eyes, and moaning his name. If she could only reach him, just to die there at his side—AND LET HIM KNOW! It did not occur to her that he might have gone with the other twenty-five. He was there—still—with the five!
She ran farther and farther, until she came to a, ditch of water that divided the dunes—a narrow canal half filled with sand reaching back to a boathouse. Bobbing up and down in it was a skiff tied to an iron ring in an old spar. When the young man overtook her she was upon her knees beside the spar, her trembling fingers fumbling in futile efforts at the knot.
"Joe—Joe—I'm going out to Joe!"
Jim Falkner caught her by the arm. She could not hear his voice, but saw the negative shake of his head. "I'm going!" she shrieked up at him. "I'm going—going——"
Her companion turned his face toward the sea. For a moment he stood there, a furious heat in his soul warping his reason. If they went out—they two—and one of them a woman, would it inspire a spark of courage in those thousands? The woman was battling with the knot, sobbing for his help. Until yesterday she had been a stranger to him. On this beach he had learned a little of her story, and had rejoiced with her in the happiness that was to come with the ship. The blood of the lake-breed was strong within him. It grew hot now. New life throbbed in his limbs. He turned back to the woman with a knife in his hand, and cut the rope.
Together they climbed into the bobbing skiff, and the young man took both oars. The beach circled here, like the quarter of a cart-wheel, and the wind that beat in the face of the lifeboats aided the frail craft and swept it out into the heavy seas. The woman crouched in the stern, her hands gripping the gunwales. The deathly pallor had fled from her face. Her lips were parted. A feverish glow burned in her cheeks. Her eyes were luminous with excitement, hope, eagerness. They looked over and beyond the man—to the wreck. It was looming up larger every instant. She could see the pilot-house, like a grey rock outside the breakwater, and against it she saw black spots that were men. One of them—one of those remaining four—was Joe, her Joe! She reasoned no farther than this. And she was going to him! She released her hold of the gunwales to stretch out her arms and the wind caught her and tore her shrieked greeting. Did he see her? Did he know her? She heard her companion's voice cry out warningly, and shrank back, crumpled close down, as she remembered he had told her to lie. For a moment she turned her eyes upon him. He was fighting magnificently, like a giant. Backward—forward—backward—forward—she watched the movement of his oars. And she smiled, smiled in her madness until her face seemed the most beautiful thing Jim Falkner had ever looked upon. His eyes glowed with new courage and his arms pulled a little stronger.
From the shore the gathered thousands saw the skiff and there rose again that monotone of human voices, killed by the wind and the thunder of the sea. The black line moved. The group beside the distant lifeboat split into a dozen units. People were moving swiftly along the beach. But the woman saw nothing of this. Again her eyes were upon the wreck. She realized no danger in the fury of the seas that almost engulfed them; the smothering volleys of spume whipped from their crests caused her only momentary discomfort; the wind, tearing her hair and driving the breath from her frail body, was the blessing of God. This she realized, even in her insane oblivion to all things but the wreck and the men upon it. It was driving them nearer—nearer, every fierce blast of it shot them more and more abreast their goal, and now the young man was pulling on one oar alone, pulling with both hands, with the exultant strength of youth in this last supreme effort.
The creatures on the wreck had seen them. Through the blinding spray the woman saw one of them raise his arm. It was her husband—her Joe! He recognized her—knew that she was coming to him! It made no difference that the man was only a blot to her—a moving, living being with swinging arm. It was JOE. And he recognized her! In her madness she believed this, and she held out her arms again, and shrieked his name. She felt herself swaying. Something seemed clutching at her throat, stifling the breath in her bosom, and she fell forward upon her face, her dripping hair burying the rower's feet. In a few moments she heard him shouting down at her and she struggled to her knees. The black side of the ship was very near. Two men were there, leaning far over in the beat of the seas, their arms stretched down to receive them. Through the white mist she saw one face, a face filled with the terror that may fall once, but never twice, to the lot of a human being, and there came out through that mist a great cry—HER NAME!
The woman staggered to her feet, swaying between life and death, and Jim Falkner dropped from his seat and caught her protectingly about the knees.
She stretched up her arms as the skiff crashed against the steel wall, and then something lifted her up—up—and that something dragged her back out of the drench, and she knew that she was close, crushingly close, in a strong man's arms.
Back on the beach an old man turned and shouted: "By all that's good, they made it—safe!" And then there went up a roar from the multitude, as out into the seas, filled with men, went the lifeboat. What one man in a frail skiff could accomplish alone, a half-dozen in a stout lifeboat surely could also. Jim Falkner had given them an object lesson.
Reporting to the Herald, or any other paper, suddenly became most repulsive to Jim Falkner after that wreck and rescue. The lure of the Inland Seas was again upon the young man—and this time irresistibly. Henceforth he must be a working part of its life, no mere looker-on.
