His Unknown Wife - Louis Tracy (large ebook reader .TXT) 📗
- Author: Louis Tracy
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Maseden saw them, however, and shouted again, striving his uttermost now that he had attracted attention.
With each effort at speech his voice was becoming stronger. Though it was useless to think of conveying an intelligible message through the uproar of wind and water, he fancied he could get into communication with the inmates of the chartroom, provided they were on the alert. In effect, he had a knife, and was surrounded by an abundance of tangled cordage, and it would be a strange thing if after so many years of active life on a South American ranch he could not cast a weighted lasso as far as the bridge.
He began fashioning the necessary coil at once, working with feverish haste, because his refuge was on the move again, and ever towards the land. A trial cast fell short, as he had not allowed enough lee-way for the wind. He was gathering up the rope preparatory to another effort when a great voice boomed at him from the shadows:
“You have no chance here. You are as well off where you are. If you hear me, hail three times!”
The captain was using a megaphone.
Maseden yelled “Hi!” three times, thinking the short, sharp syllable would carry best. Then, with splendid judgment, he threw the lasso in a lateral parabola that landed its end across the rail of the bridge, where it was promptly made fast by the first officer.
Again came that mighty voice:
“Is there any hope of escape on your side? If so, hail three times.”
He replied. After a short delay he heard the order:
“Haul in!”
Attached to the noose of his rope was another rope, and a second thinner one, rigged as a “whip,” or communicating cord. Tied at the junction was the megaphone. The intent of the senders was plain. He was to bawl directions, and they would obey.
He fancied that by this time the topmast must be near the rock, if not quite touching it, but he had decided already that he would either save those hapless people in the chartroom or die in the attempt.
Perhaps his “wife” was there yet. Unless those American sailors had broken the first law of their order of chivalry, the women committed to their care had been safeguarded.
Well, he owed her a life. Now he might be able to repay the debt in full.
He had never before handled a speaking trumpet, so his initial essay was brief:
“Can you hear?”
He could just catch three faint sounds in answer.
“As soon as a sailor can cross by the rope, send one,” he shouted, “I shall need help at this end. I have made fast the heavy rope. Shall I haul in the whip?”
There was a pause of a few seconds, but he counted on that. Then he felt three tugs on the thinner cord, and began to haul steadily. Soon, by the sagging of the main rope and the weight at the end of the whip, he realized that some one was making the transit.
Before long he discerned a figure coming towards him hand over hand along the rope. The man’s feet were caught midway by the seas boiling over the reef, but Maseden knew that the gallant fellow’s forward movement was never checked, and in a very little while the breathless chief officer was seated astride the mast beneath him.
“Who in the world are you?” demanded the newcomer; at any rate, he used words to that effect.
Maseden answered in kind, and explained his project; whereupon the chief officer seized the megaphone and bellowed the necessary instructions. On a given signal the two men hauled on the whip.
This time a figure lashed to a life-buoy, which, in turn, was tied to a pulley traveling on the guide-rope, came to them out of the darkness. It was a woman, hardly in her senses, yet able to obey when told to sit astride the mast and hold fast to a ring.
“We can hardly find room for five more people here,” shouted the chief officer. “Are you game to shin along the mast and see if that loose spar is practicable yet?”
“Yes,” said Maseden.
He vanished in the darkness. He was absent fully five minutes, a period which, to the waiting chief officer, who alone knew what was actually happening, must have seemed like as many hours. Then Maseden returned. By this time there were two more astride the foremast, four in all. He tied the nearest one to his back with a rope.
“Can you steady yourself by placing your hands on my shoulders, but not around my neck?” he said.
For answer two slim hands caught his shoulders. He began working his way forward into the gloom.
Maseden’s prolonged absence on the first occasion was readily accounted for by what he had done. When he reached the end of the foremast-at the junction of spars known to the sailor as the couplings-he found that the topmast was, in fact, thrust tightly against the rock wall.
Thus far, his most sanguine calculations had been justified to the letter.
It was impossible to determine how the other end of that precarious bridge was secured. He saw at once, however, that a great strain was being placed already on the stays which attached it, by chance and loosely at first, but now with ever-increasing rigidity, to the lower mast. He thought that a vigorous kick would ease the pressure by partly freeing one of the wire ropes which had become entangled in the splintered wood.
Of course, he was only choosing the lesser of two evils. If the spar snapped a second time, the last hope of rescue was absolutely destroyed. On the other hand, by reducing the thrust on the retaining spar, the forecastle might slip.
He kicked, and the stay was released! To the best of his belief the wreck did not move.
Fastening the seaward end of the topmast in a rough and ready fashion, in such wise that it was held in position, yet allowed some play if subjected to irresistible weight, he tested it with one hand. It remained taut. Then, murmuring something which had the semblance of a prayer, he committed himself to the crossing.
The wind carried his body out at an astonishing angle, but he held on. Of course, he had not far to travel, because a steamer’s topmast is of no great length, but, if he lives to become a centenarian, Maseden will never forget the extraordinary thrill of thankfulness and jubilation which ran through every fibre when his right foot rested on a projecting knob of rock.
A ghostly light coming from the white maelstrom beneath enabled him to make sure that the crevice in which the spar had stuck extended some distance into the face of the cliff. He scrambled ashore, and found that a narrow ledge ran inward about the height of his breast. It was practicable as far as a hand could reach; so, well knowing how precious was every second, he commenced the return journey.
He simply did not allow himself to think. The slightest hesitation might have been fatal. He could form no sort of estimate of his own nervous strength. He knew that any man’s willpower may carry him to a certain point and then desert him. He realized that he was leaving a sort of safety for a no mean chance of speedy death; but there is safety that is dishonor, and death that is everlastingly honorable.
Without any semblance of hesitation, this gallant young American swung forth to the desolation and chaos he had just quitted.
Nor did his spirit quail when he had deposited a helpless woman on the ledge. But his hands fumbled in untying the rope which had bound her to him, and he became conscious of an affrighting lassitude which brought with it a grimmer menace than the howling furies of the reef.
He tried to persuade himself that the poncho strapped to his back had made the burden of another body almost unbearable. Hurriedly unfastening it, he said to his collapsed companion-or, rather shouted, because the din created by the breakers was almost stupefying:
“Are you able to hold this? “
Probably she replied, but her utterance was swept away by the wind ere the words had crossed her lips. She took the folded cloak in her hands, and the action sufficed.
Then Maseden left her. During this second crossing to the forecastle he knew beyond range of doubt that he had reached the limit of physical endurance. He had eaten nothing during many hours, he had been knocked insensible and had lost a good deal of blood. It was not in human nature that any man, howsoever fit and active he might be, could survive these heavy drains on his energies and yet put forth the sustained effort now called for.
It tasked his grit to the uttermost to go on this time. He knew in his heart that a third double passage was not to be thought of.
So, during the brief respite while a wholly insensible woman was being tied to him, he contrived to shout to the nearest man on the spar:
“I’m all in! You fellows must follow as best you can. It’s not so bad for a man crossing alone. Turn your back to the wind.”
He had adopted that method while carrying the girl already on the rock, and the force of the gale had seemed to exert less drag on his arms.
It needed a real life-and-death struggle to gain the ledge this time. During a minute or longer he could not even endeavor to undo the rope. He merely lurched forward on to the tiny platform and sank in a heap with the inert body of a girl bound to his back. Then he felt dizzily that someone was gaining a foothold on the rock behind. With a mighty effort he bundled his own body and the girl’s out of the way.
He fancied he heard a shout and a scream, but was beyond knowing or caring what had happened. Had he slipped down into the raging vortex beneath and been whirled to almost instant death he would have felt a sense of relief that the long drawn-out and unequal fight was ended.
He revived under the stress of a new horror. He found himself gazing blankly into a dim obscurity in which there was neither broken topmast nor unheaved forecastle. The tons of metal piled on a slippery rock had vanished completely, and the hapless few who had survived the slow agony of those hours of waiting in the chartroom were hurled to death at the very moment when fate tantalized them with the prospect of rescue!
Someone bawled huskily in his ear:
“They’ve gone! My God! What rotten luck! I could almost have touched the man crossing behind me!… Can we get these girls out of this?… Which way did you come?”
It was the young American passenger, Sturgess. He imagined that the man who had brought hope and life to the doomed survivors of the Southern Cross had reached the vessel from the land and could now pilot the three who alone were saved to some place where food and repose would be attainable.
“I’m tied to someone,” Maseden contrived to say. “Try and unfasten the rope, and shove me up on to the ledge…. I’m all in,
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