His Unknown Wife

Singularly enough, he either forgot or was afraid to voice his own prediction as to a possible alternative. The big foremast which had struck the ship’s quarter was stout enough, most unluckily, to support a thin wire rope, and this unseen assailant had fouled the propeller. In all likelihood, had the captain given the order “Full speed ahead,” the evil thing might have been thrown clear before mischief was done.

As it was, the very care with which the Southern Cross was navigated led to her undoing. With each slow turn of the screw the snake-like rope which was destined to choke the life out of a gallant ship had coiled itself into a death grip.

Soon some of the strands were forced between propeller and shaft-casing. The solid steel cylinder of the shaft became fixed as in a vise. The engines were powerless. To apply their force was only to increase the resistance. They could not be driven either ahead or astern.

The Southern Cross promptly fell away to the southeast under the stress of wind and tide. After her, forming a sort of sea-anchor, lolloped the derelict foremast which, by its buoyancy, was the first cause of all the mischief.

Mostly it was towed astern. Sometimes a giant wave would snatch it up and drive it like a battering ram against the ship’s counter.

These blows were generally harmless, the rounded butt of the spar glancing off from the acute angle presented by the molded stern-plates. Once or twice, however, the rudder was struck squarely, so the chief officer, aided by some of the men, quickly put an end to the capacity of this novel battering-ram for inflating further damage by lassoing and hauling aboard the whole mass of wreckage – mast, yards and tattered sails alike.

Then a gruesome discovery was made. Tied to the mast was the corpse of a man, but so bruised and battered as to be wholly unrecognizable. The poor body, nearly naked, and maimed and torn almost out of human semblance, was stitched in a strip of wet canvas, weighted with a few furnace bars, and committed to the deep again without a moment’s loss of time.

But its brief presence had not been helpful. Singularly enough, sailors are not only fatalists, which they may well be, but superstitious. No man voiced his sentiments; nevertheless, each felt in his heart the ship was doomed.

Collectively, they would try to save the ship. As individuals, the paramount question now was – how and when might they endeavor to save their own lives?

Of course there was neither any sign of panic nor shirking of orders. The ship was stanch and eminently seaworthy. She was actually far more comfortable while drifting thus helplessly before the gale than when battling through it.

Yet every sailor on board, from the captain down to the scullery-man, knew that some forty miles ahead lay a shore so forbidding and inhospitable that the United States government charts – than which there are none so detailed and up-to-date – give navigators the significant warning to keep well out to sea, as the coast-line has not been surveyed in detail.

Yet the case was not immediately desperate. Forty miles of sea-room was better than none. If the gale abated, and an anchor was dropped, it was probable that the engineers’ cold chisels would soon cut away the wire octopus.

Moreover, there was a chance that some other steamer might pick them up and earn a magnificent salvage by a tow to Punta Arenas.

So after breakfast the uncanny harbinger of disaster provided by the body of the drowned sailor was, if not forgotten, at least generally ignored. Pipes were lighted. Men not otherwise occupied gathered in groups, while every eye strove to pierce the gray haze of the spindrift whipped off the waves by each furious gust, each hoping to be the first to discover the friendly smoke-pall of a passing ship.

Certain ominous preparations were made, however. Boats were cleared of their wrappings and stocked with water and provisions. Life-belts were examined, and their straps adjusted.

As the day wore, and noon was reached, the chance of encountering another ship became increasingly remote. Sea and wind showed no signs of falling. Indeed, a slight rise in the barometer was not an encouraging token. “First rise after low foretells stronger blow” is as true to-day as when Admiral Fitzroy wrote his weather-lore doggerel, and the principles of meteorology hold good equally north and south of the equator.

For a time the captain tried to steady the ship with the canvas fore-and-aft sails which big steamships use occasionally in fine weather to help the rudder. This devise certainly got the Southern Cross under control again, and the crew were vastly astonished when bid furl the sails after half an hour.

Surprise ceased when some of them got an opportunity to squint into a compass. The wind had veered from northwest to a point south of west.

Only a miracle could save the ship now. It seemed as though the very forces of nature had conspired to bring about her undoing.

From that moment a gloom fell on the little community. Men muttered brief words, or chatted in whispers. A few paid furtive visits to their bunks, and rummaged in kit-bags for some treasured curio or personal belonging which could be stowed away in a pocket. It was not a question now as to whether the Southern Cross would survive, but when and where she would strike, and what sort of fighting chance would be given of reaching a bleak shore alive.

Every one knew that it would be the wildest folly to lower a boat in such a heavy sea. The sole remaining hope was that the ship would escape the outer fringe of reefs, and drive into some rock-bound creek where the boats might live.

By means of a properly constructed sea-anchor the captain kept the vessel’s head toward the east. Thus, when land was sighted, if any semblance of a channel offered, it might be possible to steer in that direction.

Men were told off to be in readiness to hoist the sails again at a moment’s notice. The anchors were cleared, both fore and aft. Nothing else could be done but watch and wait, while the great ship rolled into yawning gulfs or slid down huge curves of yellow-gray water, rolled and slid ever onward to sure destruction.

During those weary hours, so slow in passing, so swift in succession when sped, Maseden had not once set eyes on his wife or her sister. He had seen Sturgess talking to the captain and first officer, but neither of the ladies appeared on deck.

Still it was an easy thing to imagine just what was going on. The two women were the only persons on board left in ignorance of the certain fate awaiting the Southern Cross. They were told the half truth that the engines were disabled, but that the vessel was in no immediate danger.

It was better so. Of what avail to frighten them needlessly? The ship would have been absolutely safe if the gale blew from the east instead of the west. Even now she might survive. Her chances were of the slenderest nature, but there would be ample time to get the women into an upper deck saloon or the chart-room when the position became desperate. Why embitter the few hours of life yet remaining by knowledge of the dreadful fate which threatened when the end came?

About two o’clock an undulating blur on the eastern horizon told of land. To the best of the captain’s judgment the Southern Cross was off Hanover Island when the accident happened, and her relative longitude had altered but very slightly during the forty-mile drift. It was now or never if anything was to be done to save her.

The forbidding and mountainous coast-line straight ahead was broken up by all manner of deep-water channels, each giving access, by devious ways, to the sheltered Smyth’s Channel; but so barricaded by sunken reefs and steep islets as to present almost insuperable obstacles to the free passage of a large vessel.

Small whalers and guano-boats would not dare any of these straits in fine weather. For the Southern Cross to make the attempt, even provided she ran the gantlet of the barrier reef, was indeed the forlornest of forlorn hopes.

The chief engineer had already assured the captain many times that any further pressure by the engines would inflict irreparable damage, so, risking everything on the throw of the dice and wishful to know the worst, at any rate, before daylight vanished, he ordered the sails to be hoisted again.

All hands were brought on deck, life-belts were adjusted, and boats’ crews stood by. At that moment Maseden caught a glimpse of the two girls. They, with other passengers, were summoned by the ship’s officers and placed in the smoke-room, which, by reason of its situation beneath the bridge, provided a convenient gathering ground in case the boats were lowered.

He saw them only for a moment – two cloaked figures, wearing cloth caps tied tightly to their heads with motor-veils. He could not distinguish Madge from Nina.

It was a strange and most bizarre notion that when the gates of eternity were opening a second time before his eyes the woman who was his lawful wife should now be sharing his peril, yet be separated from him far more effectually than in the Castle of San Juan.

The incongruity of their position did not trouble him greatly, however. Soon he ceased thinking about it. He realized that he, as an individual, could do nothing but obey orders and abide by the decree of Providence.

He was not frightened. Some hours earlier, knowing the physical features of the western coast of South America, he had decided that the odds were a thousand to one against the escape of the ship and her seventy-four occupants. He hoped that when the end came it might not be a long drawn-out agony – that was all. For the rest, he looked forward with a certain spice of curiosity to the fight which captain and crew would make against the giant forces of nature.

An awesome panorama of mighty cliffs, inaccessible islands and isolated rocks over which the seas dashed with extraordinary fury, was opening up with ever-increasing clearness. A mist of driven froth and spindrift hung low over the surface of the water, but the great hills of the interior were distinctly visible.

Irregular white patches near their summits marked the presence of huge glaciers. Lower down the valleys were choked with black masses of firs. Countless generations of trees had grown, and fallen, and rotted, ultimately forming a new, if unstable, basis for more recent growths.

An occasional red scar down a hillside revealed the latest landslide. A cascade would leap out from the topmost part of a forest and bury itself again in the depths.

These outstanding features were all on a huge scale. It was a weird, monstrous land, a place utterly unfitted for human habitation, a part of creation quite out of keeping with the rest of the world. Surveying it impartially, one might wonder whether it had traveled far in advance of the general scheme of things or lagged millions of years behind.

But its aspect was sinister and forbidding in the extreme, and never have its depressing characteristics been etched in darker shadows than when viewed that January day from the decks of the ill-fated Southern Cross.

CHAPTER VII

THE WRECK

Up to the last the ship’s path was dogged by misfortune. She approached Hanover Island at a point where the sea was comparatively open; hence, the tremendous waves rolling in from the Pacific were not only unchecked by island breakwaters, but their volume and force were actually increased by the gradual upward trend of the rock floor.

Still, undaunted by conditions which suggested the plight of a doomed craft being hurried to the lip of a cataract, keen eyes searched the frowning coast-line for one of the many estuaries which pierced the land, some merely the mouths of short-lived rivers, others again carrying the ocean currents to the very base of the Andes.

At last an opening did seem to present itself. The great rock walls, springing sheer from sea level to a height of a thousand feet or more, fell apart, and, so far as might be judged, a wide and deep channel flowed inland.

It was at this crisis, when life or death for all on board might depend on the veriest trifle, that the captain had to decide whether or not to let go both anchors and endeavor to ride out the gale.

He was an experienced and cool-headed sailor. He knew quite well that the odds were heavy against an anchor holding in such ground, or, if it held, against any cable standing the strain of a six-thousand-ton ship in that terrific sea. But, as Maseden learned subsequently, he sought advice.

The first and second officers were consulted in turn, and each confirmed their chief’s opinion that the only practicable course was to run into the passage which still offered a comparatively clear way ahead.

So the Southern Cross sped on.

The second officer came forward with some of the crew to superintend the dropping of the anchor. The fourth officer took charge of the aft anchor. All other members of the crew stood by the boats.

Maseden, feeling oddly remote and unclassed among men of his own race, followed the second officer to the forecastle deck. There, at least, he could stare his fill at the inferno of rock and broken water which the vessel was approaching, though even his landsman’s eyes saw that she was in a waterway of considerable width, while each mile now traversed must tend to diminish the seas and bring a secure anchorage within the bounds of possibility.

No one paid heed to him. Among these stolid sailor-men he was a “Dago,” a somewhat dandified specimen of the swaggering vaqueros they had met at times in the drinking dens of South American ports. He was minded to have speech with the second officer, and proclaim once and for all that he was of the same kith and kin; but the impulse was stayed by a glance at the set, resolute face, intent only on obeying a signal from the captain. It was no time for confidences. He questioned even if the sailor would have answered.

A touch on a lever would set a winch spinning as the anchor leaped to its task. The man charged with carrying out that duty without hitch or delay could spare thought for nothing else.

One of the deck-hands, stationed near the chocks, chanced to be the very Spaniard whose life had been endangered by the falling block on the day after the ship left Cartagena. The ship’s carpenter was ill, and the Spaniard was carpenter’s mate.

Maseden caught his eye, and the man smiled wanly.

“You did me a good turn the other day, señor,” he said. “Let me repay you now.”

“But how?” came the surprised inquiry.

“Underneath my bunk, the lowest one on the left in number seven berth, you will find my kit-bag. Beneath some clothes is a bottle of good old brandy. Get it, and drink it quickly.”

“Why?”

“You will put a pint of honest liquor to good use, and in ten minutes you won’t care what happens.”

“I have no desire to die drunk,” said Maseden quietly.

The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders.

“You’ll never have a better excuse for swallowing excellent cognac,” he grinned.

“Shut up, you two!” growled the officer.

He had not understood a word of their talk. He simply voiced the eminently American notion that anything said in the Spanish language could not be of the least importance just then.

Oddly enough, Maseden was angered by being thus outcasted, as it were. He was tempted to retort, but happily checked the words on his lips. Nerves were apt to be on a raw edge in such conditions, he remembered. Even the stern-faced ship’s officer, awaiting a command which would settle the fate of the Southern Cross once and for all, might well resent the magpie chattering of a couple of Spaniards.

Maseden turned for an instant to look at the bridge. The captain stood there, apparently the most unmoved person on board. The sails, tugging fiercely at their rings and bolts, still kept the ship under control, notwithstanding the ten-knot tidal current which carried her onward irresistibly. The foresail was bellied out to port, so the captain remained on the starboard side of the bridge, whence he had an uninterrupted view ahead.

Suddenly two cloaked figures emerged from the obscurity of the smoking-room and hurried to the transverse rail which guarded the fore part of the promenade deck. With them came some men, among whom Maseden recognized Sturgess; while another man, who caught the arm of one of the girls in a helpless sort of way, was probably Mr. Gray.

Evidently there was no concealing the ship’s peril from the passengers now. Everyone wore a life-belt, and was clothed to resist the cold. A plausible explanation of this general flocking out on to the deck was that they had discerned the cleft in the rocky heights through a blurred window, and refused to remain any longer in the sheltered uncertainty of the smoking-room.

At this period there was little or no difficulty in keeping one’s feet. The great hull of the Southern Cross swung easily on an even keel with the onrush of the sea-river. The ship was not fighting now, but yielding – a complacent leviathan held captive by a most puissant and ruthless enemy.

During the few seconds Maseden stared at the veiled women. One of those two – which one he could not tell – was his wife. It was the maddest, most fantastic thing he had ever heard of. In a spirit of sheer deviltry he waved a greeting. One of the girls raised a hand to her face – perhaps to her lips.

What did it matter? In all human probability that was their eternal farewell. He waved again, and turned resolutely to scan the frowning headlands now rapidly closing in on both sides of the vessel’s path.

About that time a new and disturbing sound reached his ears. Hitherto there had been nothing but the unceasing chant of the gale, the thud and swish of the seas, the steady plaint of the ship, and an occasional crash like a volley of musketry when the crest was torn off some giant roller and flung against poop or superstructure. But now there came a crashing, booming noise, irregular, yet almost continuous, and ever growing louder and more insistent; a noise almost exactly similar to distant gun-fire and the snarling explosions of heavy projectiles.

It was the noise of the bitterest and longest war ever waged. Those old enemies, sea and land, were engaged in deadly combat, and, as ever, the sea was winning.

Even while the Southern Cross swung past an overhanging fortress of rock, a mighty bastion crumbled into ruin. It was singular to watch a cloud of dust mingle with the spindrift – to note how the next breaker climbed higher in assault over the vantage ground provided by the successful sap.

A disconcerting feature of the ship’s hurried transit into this unchartered territory was the clearness with which all things were visible above a height of some twelve feet from the surface of the sea; whereas, below that level, the clouds of spray and flying scud formed an almost impenetrable wall.

Taking his eyes from the everchanging panorama, Maseden looked over the side. The foam-flecked water was black but fairly transparent. In its depths he was astounded by the sight of writhing, sinister shapes like the arms of innumerable devil-fish.

At first he experienced a shock of surprise so close akin to horror that he felt the chill of it, as though one of these fearsome tentacles were already twined around his shrinking body. Then he realized that he had been startled by some gigantic species of seaweed. The ship was crossing a submarine forest. Down there in the depths on this January day in the southern hemisphere some mysterious form of plant life was enjoying its leafy June.

But science had no joys for him in that hour. Better the outlook on crag and clearing sky than a furtive glimpse of the limbs and foliage of that monstrous growth.

All at once a cry from the look-out in the bows sent a quiver through every hearer.

“Rock ahead!”

After a pause, measured by seconds, but seeming like as many minutes, the same voice shouted:

“Channel opens to starboard!”

The ship answered the helm. She swept past a jagged little islet so closely that a sailor could have cast a coil of rope ashore.

Forthwith another sound mingled with the crash of the breakers. The rock had been bored right through by the waves, and the gale set up a note in the tunnel such as no organ-builder ever dreamed of.

That mighty chord pursued the Southern Cross for nearly half a mile. It was a melancholy and depressing wail. Maseden, whose faculties were supernaturally alert, noticed that the South American sailor’s face had turned a sickly green. The man was paralyzed with fright. His right hand fumbled in a weak attempt to cross himself.

Out of the tail of his eye the second officer caught the gesture.

“Pull yourself together, you swab!” he said bitingly. “What the hell good will you be if you give way like that?”

The Spaniard grasped the sense of command in the words rather than their meaning. He was no coward. He even contrived to grin. It was a tonic to be cursed by an American, even though the pierced rock howled like a lost soul!

Still the Southern Cross drove on. The tidal stream was, if anything, swifter than ever, but the size of the waves had diminished sensibly. The walls of the straits had closed in to within a half-mile span. There could not be the slightest doubt that the vessel was actually passing through one of the waterways which connect the Pacific with Smyth’s Channel.

Maseden, after scanning the interior highlands for the hundredth time, glanced again at the second officer. The grimness of the clean-cut, stern face had somewhat relaxed. Quite unconsciously the sailor’s expression showed that hope had replaced calm-visaged despair. Given an unhindered run of another mile, the ship could at least drop anchor with some prospect of success.

The strength of the tide would diminish in less than an hour, and it might be possible to maneuver in the slack water for a comparatively safe berth. Next day, if the weather moderated as promised by the barometer, the steam pinnace could spy out the land in front.

Smyth’s Channel was not so far away – perhaps fifty miles. Once there, the Southern Cross could repair damage and proceed under her own steam to Punta Arenas.

A gleam of yellow light irradiated the surface mist, which had grown markedly denser. The clouds were parting, and the sun was vouchsafing some thin rays from the northwest.

The mere sight was cheering. The blood ran warmer in the veins. It was as though the ship’s company, after days and nights of cold and starvation, had been miraculously supplied with food and hot liquids.

Then the golden radiance died away, and simultaneously came the cry:

“Reef ahead!”

There was no need for further warning by the men in the bows. The Southern Cross had hardly traveled her own length before every person in the fore part of the ship, together with the occupants of bridge and promenade deck, became aware that a seemingly impassable barrier lay right across the channel. At the same time the line of cliffs fell away to the southward.

Beyond the reef, then, lay a wide stretch of land-locked water; its unexpected existence explained the frantic haste of the tidal current. It was cruel luck that nature should have thrown one of her defensive works across that bottle-neck entrance. A few cables’ lengths away was safety; here, unavoidable – sullen and rigid as death himself – were the rock fangs.

At the supreme moment the second officer never turned his head. His eyes were riveted on the motionless figure standing on the starboard side of the bridge.

The captain raised his hand; the sails flapped loudly in the wind; both anchors splashed overboard with hoarse rattling of chains. The after anchor failed, but the forward one held at a depth of ten fathoms.

The second officer was quick to note the sudden strain, and eased it – once, twice, three times. But it was now or never. The ship was swinging in the stream, and her stern-post would just clear the fringe of the reef if the anchor made good its grip.

The Southern Cross had gone round, with a heavy lurch to port, caused by the tremendous pressure of wind and wave, and was almost stationary when the cable parted. The thick chain flew back with all the impetus of six thousand tons in motion behind it.