Those Who Never Knew

by Roy Norton

Those Who Never Knew

A TALE OF HEROISM WITH NONE TO APPLAUD

By Roy Norton
Author of “The Vanishing Fleets,” etc.

 

SHE was swinging moored, black, and ungainly when I boarded her in the bay of Naples. Her ladder was down, and no one barred my entrance when I climbed the long flight of teak steps and found myself on her half-lighted deck.

“McIntyre?” I said to the watchman who came hurrying toward me from somewhere aft.

“Oh, him? He’s below.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and I, familiar with the old Anvic, wended my way to the for’ard gangway, descended, turned to the left amidships, and entered the precinct sacred to engineers, a petty officer or two, and the ship’s dispensary. I poked my head into three doors in succession before I found him. He was off watch, but his hands were unclean and covered with something that looked like metal polish. He furtively thrust an object beneath the blankets of his berth, with a swabbing motion wiped the offending paws on the legs of his old uniform, and with much pains spat through the open port-hole before he gave me the salutation.

“Hello!” he said. “Where in sin did you come from?”

I grinned appreciatively, knowing that the brusqueness of his greeting had been a rare sign of friendliness. And we were friends, though for two years I had believed him dead, sea rumor having spread the false report. I felt choky when, holding his hand, I told him so, and that by accident only I had learned otherwise.

He shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hand with a gesture which said, “not yet,” but in the shrug and the hand-lift was something cramped and distorted. Looking more keenly I saw that, beneath the grease of the engine-rooms which we of the engines wear, his face had the thin pallor of one who has known hospitals and that grim suffering which grabs a man by thew and bone and twists him into a writhing, squirming thing which moans between shut teeth and stares from dim, unrecognizing eyes at those who come around. I knew the signs. I had been there.

And so it was that later, when we’d spoken all those common words which all men say, and six bells of the watch brought us to the time when the tongue runs free, he lounged back on the blankets of his bunk and told me why for nearly two years he had disappeared from my ken. I give it to you, this story, as it was told to me, with frank dearth of embellishment, for I am not a story-teller, and if I were could not furbish a tale which flowed so straight and virile from his lips. I give it as he told it because I can forget neither it nor him, as he sat there in the dusky shadows of his little stateroom, the eyes dull sometimes with introspection and again flaming with recollection; the mouth twisted at the corner beneath his close-cropped mustache and above his square cleft chin; the hand—the half crippled one—that, gnarled and distorted, now and then shook itself in the air to emphasize some thought for which his words were inadequate.

“It’s what really happened to the Lauritan,” he began, and I, startled, sat suddenly erect. “Yes,” he went on with his twisted smile, “you start. All that you heard was that after she passed out of New York, plunged through the Narrows in the roll of an inbound sea, spoke the Sandy Hook lightship and steamed away, she was reported lost with two hundred excursionists aboard. Her foretops weren’t littered with humming wires so that she could speak to other ships beyond the sky-line, and she was supposed to have foundered in a great storm encountered off the Banks until, six weeks later, she half drifted and half sailed into the Azores, rust covered, dismasted, bedraggled, and with strips of dirty canvas guyed against her funnel. You remember the testimonial from her passengers, who took it as a joke and declared they had suffered no inconvenience beyond delay, and the company’s statement that she had unfortunately slipped her screw.”

His smile had become cynical as he went on with the story of those who never knew.

“It wasn’t bad when we cleared, and the only thing I recall quite plainly was my annoyance because we were short handed, for the short-handedness brought in as third engineer Bob Gaines. I didn’t like him because, to tell the truth, he had the best of me in two ways. One was his youth, that splendid age of tireless strength which we on the down-hill side cannot help but envy, and the other—the girl. I first met him at her house, and as I’m going to be honest in explaining this, I may as well admit that for two years I’d hoped for and dreamed of those associations a mature man calls home.”

He stopped abruptly, rested back a trifle more, and for a moment his face was drawn; but in shifting his position his hand struck the lump under the bedding, his scowl relaxed, and when he resumed his voice betrayed no unrest.

“Did I tell you I was first engineer? Well, I didn’t try to make it any too easy for Gaines, and crusty old Donald Barr let me have pretty much my own way. Go slow there! I know your inclination to swear at the mention of old Don, but you just throttle down till I’m through, and then you’ll swear no more.

“Well, we’d cleared the Banks before the storm you read about hit us as if everything devilish in the Atlantic Ocean had turned loose, intent on putting one floating scrap-heap—ours—off its surface forever. It was as if it was tired of carrying us and wanted to batter us until we went down, smothering and gurgling, to stop for good and all on the bottom. The Lauritan was old, she’d seen her best days; but she turned her nose into it, swung over to starboard, and wallowed ahead, throwing the slapping Atlantic off her nose in this fight to the death, while her engines raced and we fellows below thought sometimes they’d go mad and whirl themselves to pieces in their ponderous struggle. It was a case of stand by the wheels all the time, and the telegraph dial danced and jumped as the men on the bridge above fought it out and lent us blind men their eyes.

“A chip wrestling with the sea, that’s all the Lauritan was, and every minute made all of us more anxious. In the first few hours of this smash a wave came ripping over its crest, half drowning the man in the crow’s-nest and slatting the ribs of an officer against a stanchion until he was off duty for a month. We fellows down in the engine-rooms heard about it and, as I said, were anxious; but with the screw racing in spite of all we could do, and a leak aft which was drenching the bilge and the runway of the shaft. tunnel, we had enough to do to hold our scrap-heap together and leave the men above and the rest of it to the Lord Almighty.

“I think it was a little before eight bells, midnight, of the second day when this thing I’m about to tell you of happened. We were all down there, even the men off watch, because a bunch of flying, whirling, straining steel needs mothering. They’d just got the leak aft blocked, and we were high with hope that we could clear our flooded engine-rooms of water and give the stoke-hole a chance. As you know, the old Lauritan had transverse boilers teamed in six, that fool method which placed them with their back ends square up against a ship’s sides and cut out the bunkers to give room for stokers in a runway where there wasn’t good ventilation.

“When the sea was at its wickedest there came a sudden smashing jar on the first boiler, and the chocks which anchored it gave way. It dropped to the cradle beneath, which cracked like a cannon, and her connections tore loose. With its main support gone, the second boiler tore away with a snap. A funnel sagged down with a rending sound, and the whole place was full of live steam that roared and surged as if a cyclone of hell had been turned loose. Just then the ship wrenched herself as if everything had gone to pieces, and my recollection is still quite clear of the way stokers, oilers, and engineers threw themselves to the gratings and smothered their faces to keep from breathing that vapor which meant a shriveling of the lungs, a quick contorting of the limbs, and—death.

“Old Donald, who had leaped toward the first boiler when it cast loose, ran through the murk, and I saw him standing there with his hard hands stretched out as he shut her down and clung to the valves, a phantom man in a fog. A thin spurt of steam was working down across his hands from a crack above, and he turned his face away to avoid breathing it. God knows how he lived through it—I don't; for when it had cleared some through the ventilators, and the other boilers had stopped dropping like a row of ended checkers toppled by a blow on the first, we found him on the floor, his hands cooked until they were mere pieces of parboiled flesh and bones, and him unconscious. The steam was slowly clearing when I staggered to my feet and ran toward him in the stifling haze. As I stooped a stoker ran past me. Without straightening up I grabbed him by the leg and threw him to the floor. They began to dash out as if to run were their only salvation, and I jumped to the foot of the steel steps leading up to the mid-gratings and struck like a madman to drive them back, the impact of my fists against terrified, grimy faces spatting loud and sharp above all the hiss and hell that had been stirred up by the waves outside. In the runway stood Bob Gaines, squarely planted on his feet, and he was striking, too, trying to whip into submission the fear that men call panic.

“When the screw stopped, the Lauritan sloughed round into the trough. Another noise held us in thrall. Thump! Thump! Thump! The great boilers, round-bellied and hot, began swinging in their loosened cradles as the ship felt the roll. Now they swayed and struck like huge loosened devils bent on hammering themselves through the plates, plunging out into the sea, and beating us in the final dive to the bottom. There was an instant’s pause as we realized the danger, then there were shouts, screams, and curses as we, a lot of gibbering, begrimed, and frantic men, tore up and down that steel coffin through the mist of dying steam, seeking some way of holding our loosened giants. But the panic was gone. The telegraph from the bridge ticked wildly, and the tubes were shrilling in thin, high, wailing voices. I tried to answer, but couldn’t make myself heard. I beckoned to two or three of those nearest to care for the fallen chief, and ran up the steps and to the inside fiddley, not daring to trust myself on the main deck, which was taking water at every throw.

“It was quieter up there, and as I ran past the saloon door I took it all in with a glance and a swift earshot: the ship’s surgeon calmly assuring them that there was no danger whatever and laughing in a high, nervous voice; a facetious drummer whose ignorance gave him confidence seconding the doctor’s attempts and declaring he’d been in ships that rolled a hundred times worse and that they ‘should have been with him on the ——’ The voices died away as I dove for the steps, out onto the reeling, shivering boat-deck and up to the officer, who was clinging to a stanchion to keep from being pitched into the smother at the wings. The captain came running toward me, and I bellowed into his ear. The foremast snapped off, bringing down a lot of wreckage, just as I told what had happened. I started back on the run and heard him shouting orders for a sea-drag and to clear wreckage, all in the same breath, his voice rising trumpet-like above the storm. The boats loomed white and mocking beside me, useless toys in such a strait; but as I again dashed past the saloon door the doctor was quietly saying that to lose a mast meant nothing and that if the danger had amounted to much the boats would have been called out. The boats!

“As I plunged down the grating I saw that the water had gained a little and that the floor of the boiler-room was awash, the men standing in it as it eddied about their feet with its muck of coal-dust and coating of oil. Gaines was holding the stokers in check.

“‘Can’t anchor them down, sir,’ he said as I came. ‘Only chance to hold them is to cut through a beam above the middle boiler, catch it up, and, with it fast, rig chains fore and aft to keep the others down.’

“I took a hurried look myself and saw he was right; but I shuddered. I knew what it meant—that with hammer and chisel in hand some of us, lying outstretched on the asbestos covering above those swinging, plunging masses, with but eighteen inches of space between their thousands of tons and the cold, hard steel above, would pay our lives for the endeavor. The cargo deck above was so deeply laden that to clear its burden and work from a point of safety would have required hours instead of minutes.

“We didn’t waste words or loud talk, we four engineers who would ask no stoker to give his life, for we understood that probably the first two men lifted up for the work would have to die, and that between the other two the big chain must be passed through the hard-bought hole to save the Lauritan and those aboard. I pulled a coin from my pocket. The other three understood, and we matched to see who would die first, who would die second, who—third—would have a chance, and who should be the fourth and last man to carry out our uncompleted task. I came first!

“I admit it now with shame that in the littleness of me I had a swift flash of resentment against the fate that had permitted Bobby Gaines to draw the third. He had beaten me in this lottery of death, this grim game of chance. He was always to win; first, his youth, second, the girl, and now an opportunity to enjoy life and her and all those things which I, relinquishing, was leaving behind as they lifted me up to the top of the great boiler with a hammer and a cold chisel in my hands! Yes, they hoisted me up, that grimy group of men with strained faces, and but one man bade me good-by and he without words—Bobby Gaines, whose hand clutched mine and whose eyes looked into mine with that clutch and look that men give to those who are about to die. Before I could straighten my body out he had turned and was giving orders for an attempt to stop the leak.

“I planted my steel and drove it home, lying there on my back, before I felt the boiler give. It rolled sluggishly up in its great useless cradle as if to flatten me out against the plates above. The first time was the most terrifying, and when the Lauritan answered a broadside swell it lifted slowly, insistently, and remorselessly. It had an air of caution as if testing its strength and me. It settled back, and I threw my arm out and struck as I never struck before or since and gloated as I felt the biting edge of the chisel eating home through the thin spot of the beam above and knew that each chip of riven steel meant one more chance for the lives of those who were depending on my straining thews.

“Bang! Bang! Bang! I struck with feverish energy when I had space to move my arms, and then would come that awful, horrifying moment when the boiler lifted itself in an effort to end my work and my life. Time and again the Lauritan settled over deeply, and I waited for the recurrent swing of the keel which, perhaps, might be for the last. Sometimes it came quickly, and the monster beneath me would rear up as if angered by its burden. It became to me a malicious, living giant, biding its time to give that last destructive squeeze and playing with me as a tiger plays with and mauls its victim, secure in the knowledge of ultimate mastery. Now and then it paused while I, the puny, futile madman, strove with every ounce of strength to drive that chisel farther on. It whispered to me of what it would do when the next wave came. It muttered horrible stories of how in due time, when a big enough swell assisted, it would come up, and up, and up, to smash me in one last crushing, grinding, agonizing embrace and leave me a shapeless, pulped, and inert thing, to be lifted down and replaced by another victim, and perhaps yet another.

“I answered it, this enemy with which I was fighting to the end. I swore as I struck—I swore at it as it pounded upward upon me, I laughed at it in hoarse glee as it settled away, I damned it between shut teeth and bleeding lips as it returned to the charge, and croaked my defiance in panting breaths as it came lurching upon me. I lived days, years, and ages up there on that asbestos things until I grew old and nervous and desperate and my anger gave way to other thoughts which tore through my mind at such pace that the cells of my brain bear blotted records of that terrific mental turmoil.

“With strange velocity I viewed my death, and the thought that finally came uppermost was that, inasmuch as the girl loved Bob Gaines, I could save him for her happiness if I but cut through far enough. I lost recollection of the sea, the ship, and the passengers above, and became obsessed with the one fierce desire that I alone might be sacrificed on this altar of accident. I have never known, nor may I ever know again, such an instant of exultation, of victory, of triumph, as when that chisel bit through, and yet it was short lived. The boiler was coming; I felt it. I had but time to throw my head to one side with the vain desire to protect it, at least, from final mutilation. A deeper wave had caught us, a stronger swell. The Lauritan answered it, and the boiler gathered its strength. I heard the whisper of far spaces as it surged, caught, and lifted me until the pressure against my left side became such excruciating agony that I screamed and—everything was going black. I could strike no more. Dying, as I believed myself, I still tried to cling to the hammer, but, despite me, it dropped from my nerveless fingers and went clanging off in a roar of mocking sound. The pictures of the wild men on the bridge, the nervous passengers in the saloons, and the thunderous sea, all passed slowly away, faded and were gone as I, the plaything of fate, passed out into a great swooning void of pain, for all was dreamy and listless and floating, and all of life had become a trivial epoch to be looked back upon with contemplation. The crushed thing on top of the rearing boiler was not I, and I considered it without regret, wondering if my flying soul had ever been a part of it or interested in its tenantry.”

The swaying curtains of the port-hole caught in the fingers of a night breeze, flipped across his head, and he thrust them back. With his coat-sleeve he swept away the beads of sweat which had burst forth in the torture of his memory. He glared at the shaded light behind me with the sight of one who is coming back to the present from the far-reaches of another existence which he had almost gained, and with palpable effort controlled his voice, which had been trembling and throbbing.

When he resumed, his voice sounded far away, as if he, sitting there in his dingy little stateroom, were leaving, and only his thoughts, half voiceless, were left behind. “They say they took me off a crushed thing, spattered like a fly against a ceiling of steel, and that before their hands had laid my broken body on a grate above the wash another man had been hoisted to my place to take up my unfinished task. I don’t think you knew him. It was Charlie Martin—poor fellow! His shift was shorter than mine before the surge caught him, and when they lifted him away the life had been battered from him, and he was to be given to the sea which gluttered and chuckled without, while the boilers, still riotous and mad, lifted with the rhythmic swing of huge hammers bent on destruction.

“Bobby Gaines came next. They took him out with his ribs crushed in and a crumpled shoulder-blade. The, fourth man found it easy to pass the chain. A score of grimy men gave a mighty cheer and tugged at it with willing hands, waited until the boiler swung upward and held it in thrall. With this frail hold they madly lashed the others, and the life of the ship and those above was no longer jeopardized in the hazard of the storm. They carried us broken wrecks, the moaning engineer with the hands which never again could work, the crumpled man with the broken side, and me, a flattened, distorted thing, forward into the ship’s hospital. When the defeated sea was smooth they conquered the leak and rigged sails against the twisted funnels and ventilators of the Lauritan, and the passengers above danced, and sang, and played shovel-board while we drifted and sailed far away to the blue Azores—a travesty of joy and heedlessness above and a fight for maimed life below.

“The chief has a pension now, and I am this thing you see, kept on the pay-roll because I can still work a little; and as for the others—well——”

He stopped suddenly. The face which had known so much of pain twisted itself into a wry grin, and the eyes which in all their valiance had unflinchingly faced death took on a soft and twinkling light. The half useless and gnarled hands felt tentatively beneath the cover. The long body painfully dropped over to the side of the berth and straightened itself as best it might.

“See,” he said in quite another tone, which carried in it something of jubilance, “I don’t mind showing you since you’ve been so interested.” He, pulled out and thrust toward me the object which he had been so painfully polishing and which he had concealed as I entered. “This thing cost me a month’s pay, and it’s triple silver plated, because the feller that sold it said so. I couldn’t get a loving-cup, so I bought an ice-pitcher; but it’s beautifully engraved. It says, ‘To Jimmie McIntyre Gaines.’ I’m a godfather now, and that, after all, is something.”