"Here comes Captain Bogart—we'll ask him," said the talkative man.
His listeners were grouped about one of the small tables in the smoking-room of the Moldavia, five days out. The question was when the master of a vessel should leave his ship. In the incident discussed every man had gone ashore—even the life-saving crew had given her up: the master had stuck to his post.
The captain listened gravely.
"Yes—if there's one chance in a thousand of saving her. Regulations are pretty plain; can't forget 'em unless you want to," and he walked on.
That night at dinner I received a message to come to the captain's cabin. He had some coffee that an old Brazilian had sent him. His steward hailed from Rio, and knew how to grind and boil it.
Over the making the talk veered to the inquiry in the smoking-room.
"When ought a commander to abandon his ship, Captain?" I asked.
"When his passengers need him. Passengers first, ship next, are the orders. They're clear and exact—can't mistake 'em."
"You speak as if you had had some experience." A leaf from out the note-book of a live man doing live things is as refreshing as a bucket of cool water from a deep well.
"Experience! Been forty years at sea."
"Some of them pretty exciting, I suppose."
"Yes. Half a dozen of 'em."
He emptied his cup, rose from his seat, and pushing back his chair, began pacing the floor, stepping into the connecting chart-room, bending for an instant over the map, and stepping back again, peering through the small window a-grime with the spray of a north-easter.
My question, I could see, had either revived some unpleasant memory or the anxiety due to the sudden shift of wind—it had been blowing south-west all day—had made him restless.
As my eyes followed his movements I began to realize the enormous size of the man. Walking the deck, head up, body erect, his broad shoulders pulled back, his round, solid girth tightly confined in his simple uniform, he looked the brawny, dominant, forceful commander that he was—big among the biggest passengers. Here, pacing the small cabin, his head almost touching the ceiling, his great frame filled the small narrow room as an elephant would fill a boudoir. Everything seemed too small for him—the table, even the chair which he had now regained, the tiny egg-shell cup which he was still grasping.
Looking closer—his head in full profile against the glow of the electric light—I caught the straight line of the ruddy, seamed neck—a bull's neck in strength, a Greek athlete's in refinement of line—sweeping up into the close-cropped, iron-gray hair. Then came the round of the head; the massive forehead, strong, straight nose; thin, compressed lips, moulded thin and kept compressed by a life of determined effort; square-cut chin and the iron jaw that held the lips and chin in place.
When he rose to his feet again I had another surprise. To my astonishment he was not a Colossus at all—not in pounds and inches. On the contrary, he was but little above the average size. What had impressed me had not been his bulk, but his reserve force. Tigers stretched out in cages produce this effect; so do powerful machines that dig, crunch, or pound—dormant until their life-steam sets them going.
The gale increased in violence. We got now the lift of the steamer's bow, staggering under tons of water, and the whir of the screw in mid-air. The captain glanced at the barometer, drew his body to its full height, reached for his storm-coat, slipped it on, and was about to swing back the door opening on the deck, when the chirp of a canary rang through the room. At the sound he turned quickly and walked back to where the cage hung.
"Ho, little man!" he cried in the same tone of voice in which he would have addressed a child; "woke you up, did we? Sorry, old fellow; tuck your head down again and take another nap."
The bird stretched out its bill, fluttered its wings, pecked at the captain's outstretched finger, and burst into song.
"Yours, captain?" I had not noticed the bird before.
"Yes; had him for years."
Instantly the absurdity of the companionship broke upon me. What possible comfort, I thought, could a man like the captain take in so tiny a creature? It was the lion and the mouse over again—the eagle and the tom-tit—the bear and the rabbit. He must have noticed my surprise and amusement, for he added with a smile:
"Must have something. Gets pretty lonesome sometimes when you have no wife nor children, and there are none anywheres for me." He had withdrawn his fingers now, and was buttoning his coat close about his broad chest, his eyes still on the bird that was splitting its little throat in a burst of song.
"But he's so small," I laughed. "I should think you'd have a dog—seems nearer your size."
I once saw a man struck by a spent bullet. I remember the sudden pallor, the half gasp, and the expression of pain that followed. Then the man uttered a cry. The same expression crossed the captain's face, but there was no gasp and no cry; only a straightening of the lips and a tightening-up of the iron jaw. Then, without a word of any kind in answer, he caught up his cap, swung back the door, and with the wind full on his chest, breasted his way to the bridge.
When the door swung open a moment later it closed on the first officer—a square, thick-set, round-headed man, with mild blue eyes set in a face framed by a half-circle of reddish-brown whiskers, the face tanned by twenty-five years of sea service, fifteen of them with Captain Bogart.
"Getting soapy," he said; "wind haulin' to the east'ard. Goin' to have a nasty night." As he spoke he stripped off his tarpaulins, hung them to a hook in the chart-room, and wiping the salt grime from his face with his coat cuff, took the captain's empty seat at the table.
I knew by the captain's silent departure that I had made a break of some kind, but I could not locate it. Perhaps the first officer might explain.
"Captain lost his wife, didn't he?" I asked, moving my chair to make room.
"No—never had one." He leaned forward and filled one of the empty cups. "Why did you think so?"
"Well, more from the tone of his voice than anything else. Some trouble about it, wasn't there?"
"There was. His sweetheart was burned to death ten years ago—lamp got upset." These men are direct in their speech. It comes from their life-long habit of giving short, crisp, meaning orders. He had reached for the sugar now, and was dropping the lumps slowly into his cup.
"That explains it, then," I answered. "We were talking about the bird over there, and he said a man must have something to love, being without wife or children, and then I told him a big man like himself, I should think, would rather have a dog—"
The first officer put down his cup, jerked his body around, and said, his blue eyes looking into mine:
"You didn't say that, did you?"
I nodded my head.
"Mighty sorry. Don't any of us talk to him of his dog. What did he say?"
"Nothing. Turned a little pale, got up, and went out."
"Too bad! You didn't know, of course—wish I'd posted you."
"Then he DID have a dog?"
"Yes, belonged to that poor girl."
"What became of him?"
The first officer leaned over the table and rested his elbows on the cloth, his chin in the palms of his hands. For some time he did not speak. Outside I could hear the thrash of the sea and the slosh of spent waves coursing through the deck gutters.
"You want to hear about that dog, do you?" he asked, straightening up. "Well, I can tell you if any man can, but you're to keep mum about it to the captain."
Again I nodded.
He fumbled in his outside pocket, drew forth a short pipe, rapped out the dead ashes, refilled it slowly from a pouch on the table, lighted it, and settled himself in his chair.
"I'll begin at the beginning, for then you'll understand how I came to be mixed up in it. I saw that dog when he first came aboard, and I want to say right here that the sight of him raised a lump in my throat big as your fist, for he was just the mate of the one I owned when I used to look after my father's sheep on the hills where we lived. Then, again, I took to him because he wasn't the kind of a pet I'd ever seen at sea before—we'd had monkeys and parrots and a bobtail cat, but never a dog—not a real, human dog.
"He was one of those brown-and-white combed-out collies we have up in my country, with a long, pointed nose that could smell a mile and eyes like your mother's—they were so soft and tender. One of those dogs that when he put his cold nose alongside your cheek and snuffed around your whiskers you loved him—you couldn't help it—and you knew he loved you. As for the captain—the dog was never three feet from his heels. Night or day, it was just the same—up on the bridge, followin' him with his eyes every time he turned, or stretched out beside his berth when he was asleep. Hard to understand how such a man can love a dog until you saw that one. Then, again, this dog had another hold upon the captain, for the girl had loved him just the same way.
"And he had the best nose in a fog—seemed as if he could sniff things as they went by or came on dead ahead. After a while the captain would send him out with the bow-watch in thick weather, and there he'd crouch, his nose restin' on the rail, his eyes peerin' ahead. Once he got on to a brigantine comin' bow on minutes before the lookout could see her—smelt her, the men said, just as he used to smell the sheep lost on the hillside at home. It was thick as mud—one of those pasty fogs that choke you like hot steam. We had three men in the cro'nest and two for'ard hangin' over her bow-rail. The dog began to grow restless. Then his ears went up and his tail straightened out, and he began to growl as if he had seen another dog. The captain was listenin' from the bridge, and he suspected somethin' was wrong and rang 'Slow down!' just in time to save us from smashing bow on into that brigantine. Another time he rose on his hind legs and 'let out' a yelp that peeled everybody's eyes. Then the slippery, barnacle-covered bottom of a water-logged derelict went scootin' by a few yards off our starboard quarter. After that the men got to dependin' on him—'Ought to have a first mate's pay,' I used to tell the captain, at which he would laugh and pat the dog on the head.
"One morning about eight bells, some two hundred miles off Rio—we were 'board the Zampa, one of our South American line, with eighteen first-class passengers, half of 'em women, and ten or twelve emigrants—when word came to the bridge that a fire had started in the cargo. We had a lot of light freight on board and some explosives which were to be used in the mines in the mountains off the coast, so fire was the last thing we wanted. Bayard—did I tell you the dog's name was Bayard?—that's what the girl called him—was on the bridge with Captain Bogart. I was asleep in my bunk. First thing I knew I felt the dog's cold nose in my face, and the next thing I was on the dead run for the after-hatch. I've had it big and ugly a good many times in my life; was washed upon a pile of rocks once stickin' up about a cable's length off our coast, and hung to the cracks until I dropped into a lifeboat; and another time I was picked up for dead off Natal and rolled on a barrel till I came to. But that racket aboard the Zampa was the worst yet.
"When I jumped in among the men the smoke was creepin' out between the lids of the hatch. We ripped that off and began diggin' up the cargo—crates of chairs, rolls of mattin', some spruce scantling—runnin' the nozzle of the hose down as far as we could get it. There were no water-tight compartments which we could have flooded in those days as there are now, or we could have smothered it first off. What we had to do was to fight it inch by inch. I knew where the explosives were, and so did the captain and purser, but the crew didn't—didn't even know they were aboard, and I was glad they didn't. We had picked most of 'em up at Rio—or they'd made a rush maybe for the boats, and then we'd had to shoot one or two of 'em to teach the others manners. In addition to every foot of hose we had 'board I started a line of buckets and then rushed a gang below to cut through the bulkhead to see if we could get at the stuff better.
"The men fell to with a will. Fire ain't so bad when you take hold of it in time, and as long as there is plenty of steam pressure—and there was—you can almost always get on top of it, unless something turns up you don't count on.
"That's what happened here. I was standin' on the coamings of the hatch at the time, peerin' down into the smoke and steam, thinking the fire was nearly out, directing the men what to h'ist out and what to leave, when first thing I knew there came a dull, heavy thump, as if we'd struck a rock amidships, and up puffed a cloud of smoke and sparks that keeled me over on my back and nearly blinded me.
"I knew then that the fire had just begun to take hold; that thump might have been a cask of rum or it might have been a box of nitro-glycerine. Whatever it was, there was no time to waste in stoppin' the blaze before it reached the rest of the cargo.
"Captain Bogart had felt the shock and now came runnin' down the deck with the dog at his heels. He knew I'd take care of the fire and he hadn't left the bridge, but the way she shook and heaved under the explosion was another thing.
"By this time the passengers were huddled together on the upper deck, frightened to death, as they always are, the women the coolest in the crowd. All except two little old women, sisters, who lived out of Rio and who had been with us before. Fire was one of the things that scared them to death, and they certainly were scared. They hung to the rail, their arms around each other—the two together didn't weigh a hundred and fifty pounds; always reminded me of two shiverin' little monkeys, these two old women, although maybe it ain't nice for me to say it—and looked down over the rail into the sea, and said they never could go down the ladder, and did all the things badly scared women do, short of pitching themselves overboard, which sometimes occurs. The captain stopped and talked to 'em—told 'em there was no danger—his ears open all the time for another let-go, and the dog nosed round and put out his paw as if to make good what the captain had promised.
"The water was goin' in now pretty lively—all the pumps at work—the light stuff bein' heaved overboard as fast as it came out. By dark we'd got the fire under so that we had steam where before we'd had smoke and flame. The passengers had quieted down and some of 'em had gone back to their staterooms to get their things together, and everything was going quiet and peaceable—this was about nine o'clock—when there came another half-smothered explosion and the stokers began crawlin' up like rats. Then the chief engineer stumbled out—no hat nor coat, his head all blood where a flying bolt had gashed him. Some of her bilge plates was loose, he said, and the water half up to the fire-boxes. Next a column of flame came pouring out of her companionway, which crisped up four of our boats and drove everybody for'ard. We knew then it was all up with us.
"The captain now sent every man to the boats—those that would float—and we began to get the passengers and crew together—about sixty, all told. That's pretty nasty business at any time. They're like a flock of sheep, huddlin' together, some wantin' to stay and some crazy to go; or they are shiverin' with fright and ready to knife each other—anything to get ahead or back or wherever they think it is safest. This time most of 'em had got on to the explosives; they knew something was up, either with the boilers or the cargo, and every one of them expected to be blown up any minute.
"I stood by the rail, of course, and had told off the men I could trust, puttin' 'em in two lines to let 'em through one at a time, women first, then the old men, and so on—same old story; you've seen it, no doubt—and had got four boats overboard and filled—the sea was pretty calm—and three of 'em away and out of range of fallin' pieces if she did take a notion to let go suddenly, when the dog sprang out of the door at the top of the stairs leading down to the main deck, barkin' like mad, runnin' up to the captain, who stood just behind me, pullin' at his trousers, and runnin' back again. Then a yell came from the boat below that one of the old women was missing: it was her sister. One half-crazy man said she'd jumped overboard—he was crowdin' up to the rail and didn't want to stop for anything—and another said she had gone off in the first boat, which I knew was a lie.
"'Have you sent them both down?' asked Captain Bogart.
"'No, sir; only one,' I said—and I hadn't.
"Just then a steward stepped up with a bundle of clothing in his hand.
"'I tried to get her out, but she'd locked herself in the stateroom, sir. It was all afire when I come up.'
"It took about two seconds for Captain Bogart to jump clear of the crowd, run half the length of the deck and plunge through the door leadin' to the main deck, the dog boundin' after him.
"I've been through a good many anxious minutes in my life, but those were the worst I'd had up to date. He and I had been pretty close ever since I went to sea. He's ten years older than I am, but he gave me my first chance. Yes; that kind of thing takes the heart out of you, and they were both in it. Hadn't been for the dog we wouldn't have missed her, maybe, although the captain was keeping tally of the passengers and crew.
"Three minutes, they said it was—more like three hours to me—I held the crowd back, wondering how long I ought to wait if he didn't come up, knowing my duty was to stay where I was, when the dog sprang out of the door, half his hair singed off him, barkin' and jumpin' as if he had been let out for a romp; and then came the captain staggerin' along, his face scorched, his coat half burned off him, the woman in his arms in a dead faint and pretty nigh smothered. The old fool had locked herself in her stateroom—he had to break down the door to get at her—cryin' she'd rather die there than be separated from her sister.
"We made room for the two—the half-crazy man fallin' back—and the captain lowered her himself into the boat alongside her sister, and then he sent me down the ladder behind her to catch the others when they came down and see that everything was ready to cast off.
"I could see the captain now from my position in the boat, up against the sky—he was the last man on the ship—holding the dog close to him. Once I thought he was going to bring him down in his arms, he held him so tight.
"Next time I looked he was coming down the ladder slowly, one foot at a time, the dog looking down at him, his big, human eyes peering into the captain's face, his long, pointed nose thrust out, his ears bent forward. If he could have spoken—and he looked as if he was speaking—he would be telling him how glad he felt at savin' the old woman, and how happy he was that they'd all three got clear. My own collie used to talk to me like that—had a kind of low whine when he'd get that way; tell me about his sheep stuck in the snow, and the way the—"
The first officer stopped, cleared his throat, shook the ashes from his pipe and laid it on the table. After a while he went on. His words came slower now, as if they hurt him.
"When the captain got half-way down the ladder I saw him stand still for a moment and look straight tip into the dog's eyes. Then I heard him say:
"'Down, Bayard! Stay where you are.'
"The dog crouched and lay with his paws on the edge of the rail. That's what he'd done all his life—just obeyed orders without question. Again I saw the captain stop. This time he slipped his hand into his side-pocket, half drew out his revolver, put it back again, and kept on his way down the ladder to the boat.
"Then the captain's order rang out:
"'Get ready to shove off!'
"Hardly had the words left his lips when there came another dull, muffled roar, and a sheet of flame licked the whole length of the deck. Then she fell over on her beam.
"'My God!' I cried; 'left that dog to die!'"
For a moment the first officer did not answer. Then he raised his eyes to mine and said in a voice full of emotion:
"Yes; there was nothin' else to do. It's against orders to take animals into life-boats. They take room and must be fed, and we hadn't a foot of space or an ounce of grub and water to spare, and we had two hundred miles to go. I begged the captain. 'I'll give Bayard my place,' I said. I knew he was right; but I couldn't help it. 'Let me go back and get him.' I know now it would have been foolish; but I'd have done it all the same. So would you, maybe, if you'd known that dog and seen his trusting eyes lookin' out of his scorched face and remembered what he'd just done.
"The captain never looked at me when he answered. He couldn't; his eyes were too full.
"'Your place is where you are, sir,' he said, short and crisp. 'Shove off, men.'
"He will never get over it. That dog stood for the girl he'd lost, somehow. That's the captain's bell. I'm wanted on the bridge. Good-night."
Again the cabin door swung free, letting in a blast of raw ice-house air, the kind that chills you to the bone. The gale had increased. Through the opening I could hear the combers sweeping the bow and the down-swash of the overflow striking the deck below.
With the outside roar came the captain, his tarpaulins glistening with spray, his cap pulled tight down to his ears, his storm-beaten face ruddy with the dash and cut of the wind. He looked like a sea Titan that had stepped aboard from the crest of a wave.
If he saw me—I was stretched out on the sofa by this time—he gave no sign. Opening his tarpaulins and thrashing the water from his cap, he walked straight to the cage, peered in, and said softly:
"Ah, my little man! Asleep, are you? I just came down to take a look at the chart and see how you were getting on. We're having some weather on the bridge."
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