West Wind Drift

CHAPTER VI.

For three days and nights the Doraine drifted lazily in a calm and rippling sea, always to the southward. The days were bright and warm, the nights black and chill. It was the spring of the year in that zone. Without adequate navigation instruments, Mr. Mott was forced to rely to a great extent on speculation. He was able to make certain calculations with reasonable accuracy, but they were of little real significance. It was, of course, possible to determine the general direction in which they were drifting, and the speed. They were slowly but surely edging into the strong west wind drift. The Falkland Islands would soon be off to the right, with South Georgia and the Sandwich group farther to the south and east, the southernmost tip of Africa to the left.

Not a sail had been sighted, not a sign of smoke appeared on the spotless horizon. At regular intervals the gun on the forward deck boomed thrice in quick succession, startling the lifeless hulk into a sort of spasmodic vitality. Then she would sink back once more into the old, irksome lethargy, incapable of resisting the gentlest wave, submissive to the whim of the slightest breeze. The ship's carpenter and his men were making slow headway in the well-nigh impossible task of repairing the rudder. Attempts were being made to rig up makeshift sails to replace those licked from the supplemental spars by flames that had earned considerable progress along the roof of the upper deck building before they were subdued. Blackened, charred masts and yards, stripped of rigging, reared themselves like pines at the edge of a fire-swept forest. Sail-makers and riggers laboured stubbornly, but the work was slow and the means of restoration limited.

The occupants of the derelict had settled down to a dull, almost dogged state of resignation. There were several deaths and burials, incidents that made but little impression on the waiting, watchful survivors. Each succeeding day brought forth additional watchers to swell the anxious throng,—resolute and sometimes ungovernable men who, defying their wounds and the nurses, refused to stay where they could not have a hand in all that was going on.

Back of all this pitiful courage, however, lurked the unholy fear that they might be left to their fate in case the ship had to be hurriedly abandoned.

Mr. Mott watched the weather. Every seaman on board the Doraine scanned the cloudless sky with searching, anxious eyes. They sniffed the steady wind that blew them farther south. Always they scanned the sky and sniffed the wind.

“It's got to come sometime,” repeated Captain Trigger, after each report from Mr. Mott.

“I've known weather like this to last for weeks,” said the First Officer.

“In the South Pacific, yes,” said the Captain grimly. “But we're in the South Atlantic, Mott.”

On the sixth day the barometer began to fall. The breeze stiffened. The sea became choppy, and white-caps danced fitfully over the greenish stretches, growing wilder and wilder under the whip of a flouting wind. The two patchwork sails on the lumbering Doraine flapped noisily for awhile, as if shaking off their tor-por, then suddenly grew taut and fat with prosperity. The twisted, half-jammed rudder,—far from worthy despite the efforts of its repairers,—whiningly obeyed the man at the wheel, and once more the ship felt the caress of the deep on her cleaving bows.

The horizon to the north and west seemed to draw nearer, the contrast between the deepening blue of the water and the clear azure of the contracting dome more sharply defined. The sky that had been cloudless for days still remained barren, but the sailor knew what lay beyond the clear-cut rim of the world. The man of the sea could look far beyond the horizon. He could see the ugly clouds that were even now speeding down from the north, invisible as yet but soon to creep into view; he could see the mighty billows on the other side of that distant line; he could hear the roar and shriek of the tempest that was still hundreds of miles away. It was the matter of but a few hours before the wind and the billows would rush up to smite the Doraine with all their might under the cover of a black and storm-rent sky. And what was to become of the vessel, floundering in the path of the hurricane?

Late afternoon brought the forerunner of the gale, a whistling, howling squall that frantically strove, it would seem, to outrace the baleful clouds. Then the Doraine was in the thick of the furious revel of sea and sky, plunging, leaping, rolling like a monstrous cork....

How she managed to weather the storm, God knows, and He alone. At the mercy of wave and wind, she was tossed and hammered and racked for two frightful days and nights, and yet she remained afloat, battered, smashed, raked from stem to stern, stripped of everything the tempest could wrench from her in its fury. And yet on the third day, when the storm abated, the sturdy ship was still riding the waves, flayed but un-conquered, and the baffled sea was licking the sides of her once more with servile though deceitful tenderness.

But there was water in the hold. The ship was leaking badly.

Up from the stifling interior straggled the unhappy inmates. They looked again upon the unbelievable: a smiling, dancing sea of blue under a canopy clean and spotless. It was unbelievable. Even the stouthearted Captain and the faithful mate, blear-eyed and haggard from loss of sleep, were filled with wonder.

“I can't understand it,” muttered Mr. Mott a dozen times that day, shaking his head in a bewildered sort of way. “I can't understand how she did it. By right, she ought to be at the bottom of the ocean, and here she is on top of it, same as ever.”

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Mott?” asked the Captain solemnly.

“I do,” said Mr. Mott emphatically. After a moment he added: “I've been a long time coming to it, Captain Trigger, but I do. Nothing short of an Almighty Being could have steered this ship for the past two days.”

The Captain nodded his head slowly, his gaze fixed on something above and far beyond the horizon.

“I suppose it's too much to ask of Him, though,” said he, audibly completing a thought.

Mr. Mott evidently had been thinking of the same thing, for he said:

“I'm sorry to say it's gained about two feet on the pumps since last night.”

Captain Trigger's face was very grave. “That means a couple of days more at the outside.” His eyes rested speculatively on the three lifeboats still hanging above the starboard rail. There was another being repaired on the port side. “More than six hundred of us on board, Andrew.” His head dropped suddenly, his chin twitched. Mr. Mott looked away.

“I don't believe it will come to that,” said he, an odd note of confidence in his voice. “'Tain't likely, old friend, that God would see us safely through all we've had to tackle and then desert us in the end. Something's bound to turn up. I've a feeling,—a queer feeling,—that we're going to pull out of this all right. I know it looks mighty hopeless, but—”

“Just the same, Mr. Mott,” broke in the Captain, lifting his head and setting his jaw, “you'd better set all available hands to work on the rafts immediately. It's true God has helped us through a lot, but it strikes me we'd better be on the safe side and help God a little at this stage of the game. He is wonderful, Andrew, but He isn't wonderful enough to keep man afloat very long unless man himself builds the raft. So don't lose a minute.”

Anxious, inquiring eyes followed the Captain and his First Officer wherever they went. On all sides were silent, beaten people who asked no questions, for they were afraid of the answers. Sick, dazed, haggard, they stared hopelessly, drearily out over the water; for all that their faces revealed the end was near at hand and they cared but little. They had been through one hell; death could bring nothing worse.

Here and there a stout-hearted optimist appeared among them, but his very cheerfulness seemed to offend. They did not want to hear his silly, stupid predictions that something was “sure to turn up.” They knew that water was coming into the hold; they knew that there were but four lifeboats and seven hundred men and women; they knew that the Doraine was going down in a very few hours; they knew that the Captain had given up all hope of rescue. Nothing could “turn up” now but death.

Madame Obosky had taken a great fancy to Algernon Adonis Percival, and for a most peculiar reason. He had, it appears, abused her roundly on the first night of the storm for venturing on deck against orders, compelling him to risk what he considered a very precious life in a successful effort to drag her back to safety. As a matter of fact, he did not drag her back to safety. That feat was accomplished by two sailors who managed to reach both of them before another devastating wave came up to tear his grip loose from the broken rail to which he clung with one bandaged hand while he kept her from sliding into the sea with the other.

He was very angry. In the first place, his hands hurt him dreadfully, and in the second place she had forced him to disobey orders by going out to save her. He did not mutter his complaints. He told her in plain and violent English what he thought of her, and if she went out there again he'd be damned happy to let her drown.

Now, it had been some time since any man had had the hardihood or temerity to upbraid Madame Obosky. No male had cursed her since she left Petrograd,—and that was four years ago. She had been cursed often enough by her own sex,—professionally, of course,—but the men she had encountered since leaving Russia were either too chivalrous or too cowardly to abuse her, and she missed it terribly.

She had gone through a very hard school in order to become one of the principal dancers in her land. Teachers had cursed her, teachers had beaten her,—and they always were men.

When she was eighteen she married a lion-tamer. Who would have thought that a man who trained lions could be gentle and mild, and as tame as the beasts he had beaten for years? She was barely nineteen when he died, quite suddenly. There was a dark rumour that she had poisoned him. True or false, the rumour persisted, and she soon became one of the most popular dancers in the Empire. For three years she had a manager who treated her so vilely, so contemptuously that she tried to kill his wife, whereupon the unnatural husband refused to have anything more to do with her.

She was dancing in Germany when the War broke out, but succeeded in getting over into Holland within a week or two, thereby escaping what she was pleased to describe as “something zat no woman could endure, no matter how long she have live' in Russia.” Paris and London had treated her kindly, courteously, but that was to be expected, she repined, because all of the real men were off at the front fighting. Instead of being scowled at and ordered about by managers and orchestra leaders, or brow-beaten by hotel-clerks and head-waiters, she met with nothing but the most servile politeness,—due, she was prone to argue, to the unquestioned decadence of the French and English races. They were a bloodless lot, those Frenchmen and Englishmen.

It was the same in Rio Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Santiago,—and it would be even worse in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The Americans, she had heard, were the worst of them all. They didn't know the first thing about the majesty of sex. The Indian, she understood, was an exception. From all accounts, he knew how to treat his woman.

She was homesick. Her heart leaped with joy when she discovered in Percival what she believed to be a domineering, masterful man. He had been neither servile, nor polite, nor afraid. He had treated her,—at least for an illuminating, transcendent ten minutes,—as if she were the dirt under his feet,—and he was an American at that. True, he had apologized a little later on, and had blushed quite becomingly in doing so, but nothing,—nothing in the world,—would ever make her believe that he was not the sort of man who could be depended upon to put a woman in her place and keep her there. He might apologize until he was black in the face and still be unable to take back the words he had uttered. Notwithstanding that he, in his apology, professed to have mistaken her in the darkness for one of the Portuguese immigrant women who didn't understand a word of English, she forgave him quite humbly, and that was going pretty far for Olga Obosky, whose identity ought not to have been a matter of doubt, even on the darkest of nights.

She was a lithe, perfectly formed young woman, beautiful in an unusual way. Her body was as sinuous as that of a woodland nymph. Indeed, in one of her most spectacular dances, she appeared as a nymph, barefooted, bare-legged, and,—as Mrs. Spofford caustically remarked,—bare-faced. She possessed the marvellously clear, colourless complexion found only among the purely Slavic women. Her lips were red and sensuous, her eyes darkly mysterious and brooding, her hair as black as the raven's wing.

When she smiled her face became strikingly alive, radiant, transforming her into a jolly, good-natured, wholesome girl in whom not the faintest trace of the carnal was left. Every move, every thought, every impulse was feminine; her imagination was feminine; she cast the spell of her femininity over all with whom she came in contact. Primitively sensuous, she was also primitively wary,—and so she was ineffably feminine.

Prior to the time of her dramatic encounter with the American, she had favoured him with no more than a glance or two of curiosity. He was a stowaway; for a brief while he was suspected of being involved in the plot to blow up the ship. That was enough for her. Twice she had seen Miss Clinton talking with him, and once, just before the storm set in, she had paused to watch the young American girl renew the bandages on his hands after dressing the burns. Half an hour after he had apologized for speaking so roughly to her, she decided that it was her duty to hunt him up and minister to him. The ship was rolling terribly, the din of the elements was deafening, but Olga Obosky was not a faint-hearted person. She went forth boldly, confidently. Terrified, clinging observers marvelled at her sure-footedness, at the graceful way in which her sinuous body bent itself to the perilous heavings of the vessel.

She found him in the reading-room, seated in a corner. Miss Clinton was readjusting the bandage on one of his hands. Half a dozen people were in the room, manfully defying the turmoil that had sent nearly every one else to bed in terror and distress. Without hesitation the dancer joined the couple in the corner. Her smile was engaging; a faint line between her eyebrows signified the concern she felt for him.

WEST WIND DRIFT

Miss Clinton looked up from her work. Her smile was politely accusative,—and brief.

“It is all my fault,” began Madame Obosky, standing before them, her feet wide apart, her knees bent slightly to meet the varying slants and lurches of the vessel. She spoke the English language confidently and well. Her accent, which was scarcely noticeable, betrayed the fact that she had mastered French long before attempting English. There was a piquant boldness in the occasional misplacing of words and in the haphazard construction of sentences. She was unafraid.

“I have subject him to much pain and discomfort,” she went on, addressing the girl. “Those poor hand! It is I who should kiss them, Mademoiselle, not you.”

“Kiss them?” gasped Miss Clinton.

“Of no doubt,” said Madame Obosky readily. “Do they not pain because of me? Should I not kiss the hand who snatch me from the horrible death? From the Kingdom Come, as the doctor he say to me such a little time ago. And you, Mademoiselle, who have not been save by him from the Kingdom Come, you attend his hands and make him to be greatly comfortable.”

“I am merely dressing the burns, Madame Obosky,” said the other, coldly. “I have done as much for the other poor fellows who—”

“I know, I know,” broke in the Russian, smiling. “You must not be offend with me if I speak your language so badly.”

“It strikes me you speak it most acceptably,” interposed Percival.

“What is your name?” she asked abruptly. “I have heard you called the stowaway. No one has speak your name to me.”

“My name is Percival,” said he.

“It is a pretty name,” said she, dubiously. “But surely you do not approve of me to call you Percival so quick. What is the other name, the name I am to—”

“That's the trouble with a name like mine. It sounds so beastly informal when you leave off the Mister, and it sounds as if you'd been a servant in the family for at least one generation if you stick it on. If you could only call me Monsieur Percival, or Senor Percival, or even Herr Percival, it wouldn't seem so bad, but Mister Percival,—well, it's pretty soft, isn't it, Miss Clinton?”

“Please hold your hand still, Mr. Percival,” ordered the girl. She smiled up at the puzzled dancer. “His name is Mr. Percival, Madame Obosky. That's the poor creature's last name.”

“Oh, I see. Then even you, Mademoiselle, may not call him Percival?”

“No, I do not call him Percival.”

“You see, she's known me such a very short time,” explained the subject of these remarks.

For a few moments Madame Obosky watched the bandaging process in silence. When she spoke again it was to say:

“You are so skilful, so gentle, Mademoiselle. I am taking a lesson in gentleness from you.”

“It is quite simple, Madame. I am very awkward. I have had no experience. But if we ever live to see home again, I shall prepare myself at once for work in France. We are needed over there. We will be needed more than ever, now that America has gone in. Our own soldiers are over there, God bless them.”

Madame Obosky gave her a pitying look.

“You may thank your God that you do not live in a land of soldiers, Mademoiselle. If you did, you would not be so eager to nurse them back to life. Do I shock you? Voila! When you train a boy to be a soldier, as the boys are trained in my country and in Germany, you make an animal of him,—and not a very nice animal at that. You nurse him back to life and strength and in return for your kindness he outrages you, and goes his way rejoicing. No, I do not like the soldiers.”

Miss Clinton did not look up. Percival stared at the Russian for a moment and then observed:

“I don't think you can say that of the French or the English, Madame.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Quite true. But the French and the English, Mr. Percival, are decadent races,” she said coolly, as if there were nothing more to be said on the subject. “Please, Mademoiselle,” she went on, briskly, “will you not let me see how you have prepared his hands? I mean, how have you,—is it right to say fixed them?”

“Dressed them, you mean, Madame Obosky.”

“I see. First you undress them, then you dress them, is it not so?”

Ruth Clinton laughed. The woman was quaint.

“I am about to begin on the left hand. You may watch me, if you care to do so.”

“Will it not make you embarrass?”

“Why should I be embarrassed?” inquired Ruth, flushing.

“I have said the wrong word,” lamented the other. “Nervous,—zat,—that is the word.”

“They're not very lovely things to look at,” said Percival. “All red and blistery and greasy. Miss Clinton is a regular heroine to tackle 'em.”

“I have witnessed some very terrible sights, Mr. Percival,” said the Russian, her eyes narrowing. “Have you ever seen a little Jewish girl,—but no, Mademoiselle, no! I have catch the look in your eyes. I shall not tell you what I have seen. Go on! I shall be silent and take my first lesson.”

Closely, intently she watched the process. When it was all over and the bottle containing ointment had been restored to the patient's pocket, she spread out her hands and exclaimed:

“It is not difficult. May I inquire where the gauze bandages are to be obtained, Miss Clinton? And do you always use the same safety pins?”

She arose early the next morning. Rousing her maid, she ordered her to apply to the ship's surgeon for bandages and to fetch them to her at once.

“I know,—yes, I know. You are dying, but do as I tell you. This instant! Why should you, a great hulking beast of a woman, be dying every minute of the day while I, not half your size, am tingling all over with life? Go!”

“But, Madame,” groaned the wretched woman, rolling her eyes, “I shall be dashed to pieces against the walls. I cannot stand. My legs will not hold me up. They—”

“Enough! That is no excuse. My legs manage to hold me up.”

“But, Madame, it is my legs I am speaking of. My legs are not like yours.”

“Any fool can see that,” retorted her mistress, and the ungainly maid staggered out on her mission.

Later on, supplied with a roll of gauze, Madame Obosky set out in quest of her preserver. Even the veterans among the seamen gazed upon her in wondering admiration as she made her way about the ship. She was a revelation to them. The increasing fury of the storm had driven all save the hardiest sailors and a few of the non-praying male passengers to their rooms. Now and then one or two of the courageous, devoted nurses appeared in the corridors, reeling from patient to patient, but except for them the ship seemed entirely bereft of women. Small wonder then that the lithe, undaunted Russian created a sensation among the sailors who themselves were cold with dread.

She discovered him at last, coming up the steps from the devastated engine room. He was with Mr. Mott and several other half-dressed men. Their faces were grave,—more serious than ever. They had been down to investigate the leak. Percival was stripped to the waist. The glare of the lanterns fell upon his broad shoulders and powerful arms, bronzed and burnished by the sun of the high hills.

“Come,” she said, laying her hand on one of his brawny arms, “I have with me the bandages.” She sent a swift glance over him, and smiled. “But I see you have not the bottle. Is it in your cabin, Mr. Percivail?”

He flushed darkly under his coat of tan. His companions stared for a moment, and then went on.

“I am busy,” he said. “I haven't the time now, Madame Obosky. Thank you, just the same.” Then a sense of loyalty to the girl who had been kind to him impelled him to add: “Besides, Miss Clinton has been taking care of my hands. She has got used to dressing them, so I—”

“But it is my duty now,” she protested. “She owes so little to you and I so much. Come, let us procure the lotion. Where is your cabin?”

He held back. “You can't go to my cabin.”

“And why not?” she exclaimed, in surprise. “Does not Miss Clinton go to your cabin?”

“No, she does not!”

“But she goes to the cabins of other men who are wounded. I have see her with my own eyes.”

“That's different. They can't come to her.”

She looked searchingly into his eyes.

“I see,” she said after a moment. “You are in love with her.”

“Ridiculous,” he exclaimed, scowling.

“And so you prefer to have her fix your hands. I see, my friend. Voila! If so is the case, I am outcast.”

“But, confound it, it isn't the case,” he cried. “It's simply this: I wouldn't for the world have her feel that I am not grateful, and that's exactly what it would look like if I allowed you or any one else to butt in, Madame Obosky.”

“Butt in?” she said, a puzzled look in her dark eyes. “What is that?”

“It's English for interfere,” said he, shortly.

She removed her hand from his arm. He was conscious of the abrupt termination of an exquisite thrill.

“Very well,” she said, lifting her chin. “I shall not interfere.”

“Forgive me, please,” he said. “It's mighty good of you. Please don't think me ungracious. You understand, however,—don't you?”

“No, I do not,” she replied, shaking her head slowly. Suddenly her eyes widened. “Is it because I dance in my bare feet, in my bare legs, that you think so vilely of me?”

He stared. “Good Lord! I don't think vilely of you, Madame Obosky. I wasn't even aware that you danced in your bare feet and legs.”

“You have never seen Obosky dance?” she cried in astonishment.

“Never.”

She frowned. “Then, my friend, I was wrong in what I say just now. Most men who have seen me dance think I am a bad woman, and so they either covet me or despise me. If you have not had ze pleasure of seeing me, Mr. Percivail, you do not either covet me or despise me. That is fine. It is good to know that you do not despise me.” Observing the expression in his eyes, she went on calmly. “Oh, yes, I shall be very much please to have you covet me. Zat—that is all right. But if you despise me,—no, no, zat would be terrible.”

For a moment he was dashed. He did not know how to take her remark. She was a new, a strange type to him. After a sharp, quick look into her eyes, however, he came to the conclusion that she was absolutely sincere. So far as she was concerned, it was as if she had said nothing more outrageous than: “I shall be please to consider you one of my admirers.”

“My dear Madame,” he said, smiling, “permit me to express the hope that both of us may go on to the end of our days without having our peace of mind disturbed.”

She looked puzzled for a moment, and then favoured him with her broad, good-natured smile.

WEST WIND DRIFT 85

“Spoken like a Frenchman,” she cried, and added, “and with equal sincerity, I fear. Go your way, Monsieur Percivail. I shall keep my gauze. Some day when we are very old people and very old friends I may then be permitted to bandage your hands. At present, however, the risk is too great, eh? I am so inexperience. I might by accident tie your hands in my clumsiness, and zat—that would make so much trouble for Miss Clinton to untie zem,—yes?”

Now there was mockery in her eyes. His face hardened.

“I must be on my way,” he said curtly. “We have been looking things over down below. The Captain is waiting for our report.”

He bowed and started off. She swung along at his side.

“What have you discover, Mr. Percivail?” she inquired anxiously.

“That, Madame Obosky, is something that will have to come from Captain Trigger.”

“I see. That means it is bad. I see.”

The lurching of the ship threw her body against his. She righted herself promptly, but did not reveal the slightest confusion nor utter a word of apology.

“By Jove, you're a cool one!” he exclaimed. “I don't believe you know the meaning of fear. Don't you realize, Madame Obosky, that we are in the gravest peril? Don't you know this ship has but one chance in a thousand to pull through?”

“Ah, my friend, but it has the one chance, has it not? Surely I know the meaning of fear. I am afraid of rats and snakes and thieves—and drunken soldiers. I am afraid of death,—terribly afraid of death. Oh, yes, I know what fear is, Mr. Percivail.”

“Then, why don't you show it now?” he cried. “Good Lord, I don't mind confessing that I'm scared half to death. I don't want to die like this,—like a rat in a trap.”

“But you are not going to die,” she proclaimed. “I too would be groaning and praying in my bed if I thought we were going down to the bottom of zis dreadful ocean. But we are not. I have no fear. We shall come out all right on top, and some day we will laugh and tell funny stories about how everybody else was frightened but us,—us apiece, I mean.”

“Well, you're a wonder! And how the deuce do you manage to keep your feet with the ship rolling like this?”

“Two things I have been taught, since I am ten years old. First, to keep my head, and second to keep my feet. In my profession, one must do both. You will always find me doing that. Good-bye,—we part here. You will not forget zat—that I have retain the bandage for you? And you will not ever despise me?”

As she turned away a roll that must have caused the wallowing vessel to list thirty-five degrees at the very least, sent her headlong across the passage. She slipped down in a heap. The same lurch had sent him reeling against the wall some distance away. She sat up but did not at once attempt to arise. Instead she clutched frantically at her skirt to draw it down over her shapely ankles and calves. In the lantern light he saw the dismayed, shamed look in her eyes and the vivid blush of embarrassment that suffused her pale cheeks. As the ship rolled back, he moved forward to assist her, but she sprang lightly to her feet and hurried on ahead of him, disappearing around a corner.

“Well, by gosh!” he muttered aloud in his surprise. “And she dances half naked before thousands of people every night! Can you beat it! The last person in the world you'd think would care a whoop, and she turns out to be as finicky about her legs as your grandmother. Women certainly are queer.”

With this profound comment on the inconsistency of the sex, he took himself off in the direction of the Captain's quarters,—a forward cabin which served in lieu of the dismantled bridge.