The Cruise of the Dry Dock/The Last of the Vulcan
Out there lay adventure, mystery—more than either dreamed.
CHAPTER III
THE LAST OF THE VULCAN
A temporary rudder had been installed on the unwieldy dry dock, and each twenty-four hours Mate Malone detailed seven men to stand watch, which gave the regulation dog watch, although there was no need of it with a double complement of men. Thanks to his bruised ribs, the American had thus far escaped duty at the wheel. About a week after the pilchard incident, he reported ready for this service, when a twist of circumstance rendered it unnecessary.
A long stretch of fair weather had been enjoyed by the dock painters on a steadily dropping barometer. On this particular day a cold puffy wind developed out of the northeast, bringing with it a rack of clouds and spreading a choppy sea below.
From where Madden painted on the corner of the dock, he had a good view of these chasing
waves that rose a moment in the gray seascape, nodded a white cap, then dropped back into the waste of water.
“Wonder if a storm would affect this old box much?” he queried of Caradoc.
“Probably have a chance to see,” opined Smith, looking out with a speculative eye. “By the by, what's that?”
Caradoc pointed toward the Vulcan, which already exhibited the motion of the rollers.
Madden looked. A sailor stood on the tug's round stern waving two flags toward the dock.
The American arose from his work, funneled his hands before his lips and called to the man, but the spitting wind whisked away his words, and the sailor went on with his flag.
Madden regarded it attentively a few moments. “He's wig-wagging—wants to speak to the mate. I'll go for him.” He trotted aft.
Leonard found the officer in his cabin and told his mission. The mate arose at once and came out with the lad. “Don't know w'ot 'e wants, do you?” he inquired.
“I only spelled his message till I found he wanted you.”
“Huh—understand flag signals, do ye?” grunted Malone, shifting his inflamed eyes to Madden's face.
“Learned it in my engineering course,” explained the lad.
The two passed on to the bow, when the sailor on the tug starting waving once more. Mate Malone watched the man until he had finished spelling out the message, then he turned to Leonard and asked:
“Know w'ot 'e said?”
“Parker's sick and they need you,” translated the American.
“Good,” grinned the mate with more fellowship than he had ever shown before. “Now, lookee here, young chap. They're going to send a cutter for me to come and take Parker's place. You strike me as a decent sort, so I'll leave you in my berth till I get back. You won't have nothin' to do hexcept tell off th' watches an' keep th' boys paintin'. Softer'n your fo'cs'l job, though you won't git no hextra pay—wot about it?”
“That goes with me,” agreed Madden readily.
“All right, you signal me about anything you don't understand. Make the men step, lively, same as if you was me.”
By this time the tug had slowed down a trifle and a boat put out from her. While it came bobbing over the water, Malone bawled his men together and briefly explained his transfer of authority.
“Be back jest as soon as Parker's all right,” he said as he climbed from dock to dancing boat below. “And, by the way, Mr. Madden, you will bunk in my cabin.”
That “Mister Madden” from the mate was the great seal of authority. The men looked at him with new eyes.
Somehow, Malone's confidence pleased Madden. That uncouth, bullet-headed officer had not spent his whole life on the high seas, belaboring all classes of men into serviceableness, without being able to judge the genus homo pretty shrewdly.
The navvies accepted the new officer in stolid submission, but Hogan clapped his hands. “Hey, a spache fr-rom th' new boss!” he grinned.
Leonard laughed. “My speech is to get back to work, and I'll do the same,” said the boy, returning to his bucket.
This appealed to the cockneys, who gave a dull English cheer, and then everybody settled back to their tasks once more.
“What's the use in your painting, Madden?” asked Caradoc, “You don't have to.”
Leonard was amused, “They tell me a chap whose work is no bigger than his contract, never gets a contract for bigger work.”
“What's that?” frowned Smith. “That sounds like Yankee smartness to me—seems to make a great deal more sense than it really does.”
“Anyway, I don't want to rat on you fellows, just because Malone left me in charge for a day or so.”
Caradoc made no answer, but stared after the rowboat which was just rounding into the tug. “If I'd played up to that officer a bit,” he smiled dourly, “I could have had the mate's berth, Madden.”
The American glanced up. The Englishman's smile recalled the look Leonard had seen under the bracket lamp.
“Well, there's very little in it for anyone, I'm thinking.”
“Certainly, certainly,” Smith shrugged a broad shoulder and the subject was dismissed.
The blustery weather increased steadily, and by lunch time the wind was blowing half a gale. Regiments of waves marched against the dock and snapped spray high up the red sides. Their constant blows rang through the big iron structure. A feeling of security came to Madden as he saw the gray-green waves break white, and yet not shake the huge barge sufficiently to tip the paint from the men's buckets. Certainly the dock was monstrous.
The sea grew rougher as evening wore on and finally the boy went to the mate's cabin to pick out his men for the night's work. After his own cramped quarters, Malone's room proved delightful. Three glass ports admitted light. A table in the center of the room spread over with a Mercator's projection showed that Malone dutifully pricked the Vulcan's course on the chart, although it was not required of him. A sextant and quadrant told the American that the stolid Briton worked out his own reckonings. The sight of these things filled the boy with a respect for the uncouth fellow. He understood how doggedly Malone must have labored to acquire mastery over the instruments of navigation. Beyond this there were a number of flaring chromos on the walls, a decanter of wine and glasses in a chest. He found what he was looking for in the desk drawer, a roll of men checked off for watches. The coming night was arranged for, but for morning, the names of Heck Mulcher, Ben Galton and Caradoc Smith stood in order. Madden was just marking these men when there was a tap at the door.
Upon call, Gaskin, the cook, entered, bearing a big tray of dishes, “Yer dinner, sir,” he said, very respectfully.
Madden had not anticipated having the mate's meals served to him, and for a moment he came near asking the cook if he had not made a mistake; but the steaming tray and the pleasant odors kept the question unspoken. Only with this diet before him did he realize that he had been fairly starving on the poor ship's rations.
When Gaskin placed the soup on the table, Madden became aware that the dock was rolling Madden held the soup plate in his hand for steadiness, and sipped the hot, satisfying liquid while the great dock rose and fell. The fact that he was really in command of the vast iron fabric put the American in a serious humor. He ate dinner slowly, listening to the heavy clang of the waves against the iron hull, and to the wind whining and sobbing over the great metal sides.
When he had finished his meal, the youth arose with the intention of going to the sailors' mess house to see about the watches. He had no sooner stuck his head out of the door, however, than a whisk of spray leaped at him out of the darkness and drove him inside. He was preparing to venture out again, when Gaskin opened a locker and brought out an oilskin.
“Hit'll 'elp you keep dry, sir,” holding up the garment.
Swathed in its folds, Madden made a new start and walked out on the heaving, shifting pontoon.
Outside a renewed noise smote his ears. The air was full of flying spume that whipped in through the stern of the dock. Malone had planked up this open gateway to a height of thirty feet, which made it forty-two feet above the salt water line, but the spray already leaped this barrier and pelted throughout the dark heavy iron canyon.
The dock was made in three huge sections, in order that it might be self-docking when fouled. Now in the darkness, the groaning of these joints smote the blustering gale in a sort of vast distress. The many iron stanchions for the shoring of vessels began thrumming a devil's tattoo against the high iron walls, like a myriad giant fingers.
In the corners of the bow pontoon, Madden could see the signal lights heaving and dropping with the motion of the vast fabric. Now and then he caught a glimmer of the tug's light, and its erratic motions told how the staunch little vessel fared.
There was a faint radiance around the shut door of the mess hall, and Madden walked toward it rather unsteadily, with the spumy brine dashing into his face.
A signal lantern was attached to one of the shoring stanchions near the mess hall, and as Madden moved into its dull glow, another bundled form entered from the other side. The figure stopped and saluted.
“If you please, sor,” he bawled in Madden's ear, “th' nixt watch is sick.”
“Sick! The whole watch sick? What do you mean, Mike?”
The Irishman grinned in the dim light, “Yis, sor, they're in their bunks wishin' to die. They've niver been in a blow before. It's say-sick they ar-re.”
Both men were holding to the stanchion.
“Seasick!” ejaculated Madden. “How about Heck Mulcher and Ben Galton?” he recalled the names on the list.
“The whole sit of navvies, sor, ar-re down on their backs, not carin' at all, at all, whether we float, sink, swim, or go to Davy Jones' locker.”
“Well, Caradoc's next—come with me.”
They took hold of each other and went sliding and slipping along the iron deck, now skating down hill, now climbing a sharp tilt, shoulders hunched against the gusty spume, until they reached Smith's little cabin past the mess hall. Here they paused and rapped on the door. As this could not have been heard inside for the wind and the waves and the groaning of the dock, they pushed open the shutter.
Madden no sooner entered than his nostrils caught a pervading odor of alcohol. The Englishman's long figure lounged fully dressed on a bunk; a demijohn was jammed behind his kit bag to keep it from rolling.
“Smith!” called Madden, “I'll have to ask you to stand watch to-night; nearly all the navvies are sick.”
Caradoc lifted his head from the bunk and blinked at the two men in the door. “What?” he asked vacantly.
“You're to stand watch to-night,” Madden raised his voice.
“Stand watch!” cried the Englishman, sitting up, his face flushing darkly under the bracket lamp. “You have turned master, haven't you—bootlicker ordering me to stand watch!”
“It's your turn on the list!” commanded Madden brusquely, with ill-concealed disgust that Smith should be maudlin just when needed.
“My turn—Bah! I'd have been mate myself if I had toadied and flattered that upstart Malone as you did!” He laughed sarcastically. “Then I could have had decent dinners, been wearing the mate's sou'wester, been—”
“Cut it out!” snapped Madden. “Will you do your duty or not?”
The dock gave a great lurch that flattened both men against the door, juggled Caradoc in his berth and sent kit bag and demijohn sliding toward the visitors.
“Not!” bawled Smith. “I, Caradoc Smith-Wentworth, can't think of going to stand watch for a gang of siz-seasick navvies an' a t-toady American Yankee—Not!” he reiterated and laughed in tipsy irony.
A flush of anger went over Madden. He reached down suddenly and caught up the demijohn.
“You—you bet' not drink th-that, y-you little bossy Yankee; it-it'll m-make you d-drunk.”
“You sot!” trembled Madden. “Whiskey will not be your excuse next time!” He caught the Irishman's arm, “Come on!” And before Smith realized what had happened, the two men and his liquor were out of the door and gone.
Madden slammed the shutter viciously, and the tilt of a wave helped give it a loud bang. Then he gave the jug a wrathful swing and smashed it against the nearest stanchion.
“Smith'll have some sense when he can't get any more,” he shouted in Hogan's ear. Then after a moment, “Is there nobody else to take the watch?”
“There's Dashalong, sir,” bellowed Mike, “but he stood last night.”
“How about you?” inquired Leonard.
“All roight.” The Celt was about to turn for the high bridge at the stern, when Madden stopped him.
“When was your last watch, Mike?”
“This afternoon, sor.”
“When did Greer stand watch?”
“He's niver told anywan, sor; I think it must be a saycret.”
“Get to your cabin and turn in,” directed Madden. “I'll take it myself till midnight, eight bells. Then send Greer.”
Hogan saluted in the darkness and turned about for his cabin. Madden began a careful journey aft toward the wheel.
He fought his way to the ladder and climbed up into the night, sometimes clinging like a fly to the underside of the reeling wall, sometimes going up a steep slant. Gusts of spume and foam whipped him all the way up. Once on top of the wall, he clung to the inside rail and began pulling himself carefully around toward the rear bridge. At this height the full force of the wind almost tore him from his reeling anchorage. At last he turned onto the bridge and moved toward the binnacle light.
“You'll find 'er a little 'ard, sir,” remarked the steersman as he turned over the wheel to Madden. “Good night, sir.”
“Good night,” returned the American, and he watched the fellow's form disappear in the darkness.
Madden gripped the spokes of the wheel and fell to watching the signal light in the center of the forward bridge and the stern lantern of the distant tug. These two plunging spots in the black void of night he must keep aligned.
The enormous dock leaped and shivered under his feet. Huge waves roared by, of such vastness that Madden could hear their crests crashing and thundering high above the level of the bridge. These moving mountains shook tons of black water into dim, ghostlike spray, and sent it hissing down into cavernous troughs. The weight of the wind-swept spume flashing out of darkness through the binnacle light almost took the boy off his feet. It pounded his oilskin, stung his face. The enormous iron dock groaned and clanged under the mad bastinado. The long arms of the shoring stanchions smote the walls in a kind of terrific anvil chorus to the blaring orchestra of the tempest. The joints of the three huge pontoons sounded as if they were being rent asunder every moment. One minute the great structure would rise dizzily, high into the black blast, a skyscraper flung up on a mountain Madden could look far below on the lights of the struggling Vulcan. Up there the storm yelled and screamed at every corner and brace of the weltering dock, and wrenched at the midget helmsman. Then came the sickening drop, down, down, down, into the profound, and the Vulcan would swing far above her towering consort. For the instant the storm would be blanketed by the prodigious waves. Wild, formless ghosts of foam would stretch wide arms about the falling dock as if they were clasping it into the lowest crypts of the dead, and the night would be filled with a vast and dreadful whispering.
For hours it seemed that every ascent, every descent, must mark the end. But the storm was so terrific, Madden's sense of personal fear was blotted out in the tremendous conflict about him. Indeed, there was something deeply moving, almost gratifying in this elemental rage. Then he discovered that he was taking a part in it. Mechanically he had been straining and pulling at the wheel to hold those signal lights in line. Now he realized that his tiny human force formed a third contender in this vast battle. As he eased the great dock down the rushing sheer of a wave so the shock would not break the straining cable, he had won a point over two violent antagonists. His puny arm, that could raise perhaps two hundred pounds, was lifted against enemies that could fling about billions of tons. Without his force, tug and dock would part company instantly. Each watery mountain that he climbed, each gulf that he fathomed, was a victory over infinite odds.
However, if the man worked with subtlety, the sea likewise worked with subtlety. As the long hours of Madden's watch roared by, one thing was borne in on the youth: the rudder gradually was becoming harder to manage. Madden thought this was caused by the rising storm and strained more rigidly against the wheel.
Then, in the latter part of his vigil, an odd thing happened. A blast of spray struck Madden with some slimy thing that whipped about his neck and chest and almost tore him from the wheel. With convulsive repugnance, he jerked it loose and held the clammy stuff toward the binnacle light. He saw it was seaweed. Presently more strands came beating down on the spume to sting him.
The youth was crouching in his oilskins for protection, when he was surprised by a hand laid on his arm. He looked around and saw it was Deschaillon and the silent Farnol Greer.
“Eet makes bad weather,” remarked the Frenchman, peering at the dark rolling Alps about the dock.
“Good thing both of you came,” shouted Madden, turning the tiller over to the men. “It's as stiff as cold molasses—how are the sick ones?”
The boy saw Deschaillon grin and twirl his pointed mustache in the faint illumination. “Zay are very numerous,” he laughed. But the Gaul had no sooner swung his weight against the wheel than his grimace vanished.
“Parbleu! Here, Greer, pull zis wheel with me!”
The two men caught the spokes and set their weight to it. Greer remained silent.
“Zis ees bad!” exclaimed Deschaillon. “Zis wheel will not go around!”
“What's the matter, do you think?” cried Leonard.
“Zee gear ees clogged, I think me.”
“Go get a lantern and some men, Hogan—anybody who isn't lifeless. We've got to do something!”
The Frenchman obeyed, hurrying off into the darkness. Leonard resumed his place at the wheel with Greer to aid him. But both men could not swing the big dock around. The tiller was growing utterly unmanageable. Nearly every dash of foam brought with it biting bits of seaweed now. The silent Greer endured the whipping without wincing or speaking. Even in the midst of their work, Leonard found time to wonder why this fellow had stolen his medicine chest.
Presently the two helmsmen could barely turn the wheel. Madden could feel the jerking of the cable even through the great mass of pitching iron. Then the wheel clamped viselike. The dock's headlight and the intermittent glow of the tug teetered, swung out of line, crossed each other, like dancing fires. In a sort of panic, the two strained at the solid wheel. A huger wave came roaring by, flung the enormous square prow high in air. As it fell off with a shock, Madden felt a little quiver pass over the lumbering pontoons. The dock ceased taking the upheaved water with her slow, constant, aggressive movement.
The cable had parted!
Madden wondered dully what sort of cataclysm had occurred on the little tug at that tremendous strain.
Both men still hung to the hand-grips on the useless wheel as the dock rose and dropped, thundered and groaned. Now and then from the storm-swept wave tops Madden could catch the glimmer of the Vulcan's light. This slipped farther and farther into the void, heaving night, then he saw it no more.
A sense of vast desolation swept over the American, and he was still staring into the black pandemonium ahead when Deschaillon, Hogan and a third man came struggling toward him.
“You may go back!” he yelled wearily above the uproar. “Go back—there's nothing to do. The cable's broke—the Vulcan is gone.”