Dan Merrithew. Lawrence Perry
was the ice, lazily rolling and cracking in the heavy wake of the tug, grinding against the sides of the rowboat, until it seemed that they must be crushed. There was great danger that they would be. There was danger also that the tow-line might slue both men into the icy waters and upset the boat.
Captain Barney was tingling with fear. Dan knew it, and smiled. It was not often that any one had the privilege of seeing Captain Barney frightened.
As the tug veered to starboard to round Governor's Island the tow-line slued to port and thence quickly to starboard. The rowboat was snapped over on her gunwales and the water poured in like a mill-race. A roar of an oath escaped Captain Barney's lips, but before he had closed them the boat had righted.
"Shut up, will you?" hissed Dan. "Do you want them to discover and drown us? Ugh—she skated clean over that ice-cake!"
"You've got me out here to kill me, Dan," whimpered Captain Barney. "'A Christmas present!' I see—now."
"Will you keep still?" whispered Dan. "If they hear us, you'll find out who wants to kill you. The root she took that time was nothing. There'll be worse ones—this boat is not through rooting yet."
Neither was she. Ahead the tug loomed, a great dark shape; and the pulse of her engines was lost in the roiling water rising from the screw blades and the hiss of it as it raced by the row-boat. There was a dim blur of light from one of the after-cabin portholes and the shadow of figures passing to and fro inside could be seen. The decks were deserted. It was too cold to brave the night wind except under necessity—a night wind that cut through the pea-jackets and ear-caps and thick woollen gloves of the two men in the rowboat. Captain Barney felt a fierce resentment that the Quinn's men should be so warm and comfortable while he was shivering.
"Christmas Eve!" he exclaimed. "Fine, ain't it?" and he flailed his arms about to keep the blood in circulation.
"Christmas Eve," said Dan solemnly, as though to himself, "the finest I ever spent"; and he added apologetically, "even if I am making an eternal fool of myself."
On they sped. Frequently the tug would hit a large stretch of clear water, and at such times the jingle-bell would sound in the engine-room and the Quinn would shoot forward at a rate that fairly lifted the rowboat out of the water, while Dan, kneeling astern, oar in hand, muscles tense, and mind alert, was ready to do anything that lay in his skill to prevent an untoward accident.
Swish! Zip! and the rowboat would suddenly shoot to one side or the other, compelling Dan to dig his oar way down into the water, bending all his strength in efforts to keep the bow straight.
"She's rooting every second," he grumbled, opening and shutting his hand to drive away the stiffness and then casting a vindictive glance at Captain Barney, the source of all the trouble.
And as for the tugboat-skipper, he sat and watched his companion, and resolved that, after all, there were a few things he did not know about watermanship.
Between the shadowy banks of the Narrows shot the Quinn. Out of the harbor in a rowboat! Even professional Battery boatmen do this about once in a generation. The immense, shadowless darkness smote their eyes so that they turned to the cabin light for relief.
There was likely to be little ice out there, and the northwest wind had knocked the sea flat, as Dan knew would be the case when he figured his chances at the start. It was bad enough though, for there was certain to be something of a swell—and other things; and now that he was in the midst of it, he had grave doubts as to what would happen. But his strange exaltation rose supreme to all fears; no danger seemed too great, no possibility too ominous, to dampen the ardor of this, his first big act of self-sacrifice. The song the Salvation woman sang passed through his mind.
"Gawd is mighty and grateful;
No act of my brother's or mine
Escapes His understandin',
In the good old Christmas time."
"As soon as we get near the Kentigern," he said, "we'll cut loose from the Quinn, and while she is warping alongside we'll make a dash, and you can hail 'em and get 'em to lower a ladder. You can beat Skelly that way. That's what I'm banking on."
"You just put me alongside and I'll see to the rest," replied the Captain impatiently. He would have attempted to scale the steel sides of the vessel themselves, if only to escape from that little boat, tailing astern of the Quinn in the heart of the darkness, rooting, twisting, threatening to dive under the water.
"What are you goin' to do after I get aboard?" asked Captain Barney, rubbing his hands as though the victory were already won. "I declare, I never thought of you! You can't row back."
Dan raised his head angrily and started to utter a sneering reply, when the first good swell caught the boat—a great lazy, greasy fellow. The Quinn went up and then down, and after her shot the rowboat, like a young colt frisking at the end of her tether, then careening down the incline on her side as though to ram the stern of the tug ahead, which, fortunately, was climbing another hill.
What the rowboat had been through before was child's play to this, and Dan's face grew very stern. Reaching down with one hand, he seized the other oar and shoved it along to Captain Barney. "Put that down on the port side. Hang on for your life and keep her steady!" he cried.
Then he gave his attention to his side of the boat while Captain Barney struggled in the bow. It was a fight that would have thrilled the soul of whoever could have seen it. But that is always the way in the bravest, most hopeless fights—no one ever sees them. They are fought alone, in the dark, on the sea; and sometimes the lion-hearted live to make a modest tale of it around a winter's fire; but more often the sequel is, "Found drowned"—if even that.
Captain Barney, frightened into desperate courage, and Dan, in grim realization that the measure of his good deed this night was the measure of the soul he was getting to know, fought sternly. They were on the open sea with all its mystery and lurking fate, and the dark was all about. There was not even the impression of distance; the swells arose as though at their elbows, tossed them with great, slimy ease, let them down again, plucked them this way and that, while the humming tow-line ran out to the vague, phantom, reeling tug ahead.
There was a suspicion of snow in the veiled sky, and the wind stabbed like a knife. Twice the tug cut through a field of ice making out on an offshore current, and the thumping the little row-boat received seemed likely to rend her into drift-wood. But that was only one of the chances; and the two men went on into the icy blast with jaws so tightly clenched that their cheek muscles stood out in great knots.
The silence, the danger, the vagueness hung heavily. As Dan cast his eyes gloomily into the wake of the tug, he saw a dark object shoot out of the foam and dart down upon them like a torpedo; in fact a torpedo could not have worked more serious effect upon the boat than did that heavy, water-soaked log.
"Starboard your oar!" shouted Dan, at the same time digging his own oar deep down on the port side and pulling upon it with all the magnificent strength of his arms until it bent like a reed. There was just time to avert the direct impact, not to escape altogether.
It was a glancing blow just above the water line; it punched a great, jagged hole and gouged out the paint clear to the stern. Dan drew a long breath and murmured in a half-sick voice, "They might as well kill a man as scare him to death," while Captain Barney's face made a gray streak in the darkness.
The Quinn was now past the point of Sandy Hook and was skirting the shore. The muffled beat of the breakers could be heard through the gloom, which was riven every second by the great, swinging search-light in the Navesink. Not a mile ahead was the bar; and the masthead light of the Kentigern could be seen, twinkling like a planet.
In twenty minutes the dark hull of the Kentigern came looming out of the night. A hail shot from the Quinn, and a faint reply came back. Dark figures could now be seen, outlined by the cabin lights in the forward section of the tramp.
"Hello, what tug is that?" sounded from the bridge. "Is that you, Captain Barney?"