Nobody was more dumfounded by the ramming of the tug Henry Foster than Captain Bruce of the steamer aground on the Reef. In a twinkling his wicked partnership with Jeremiah Pringle had been smashed beyond mending. He could no longer refuse to accept help from the victorious Resolute. This meant that Captain Jim Wetherly would take charge of the wrecking of the steamer and try to save her and her cargo by every means in his power. Jerry Pringle had been driven from the scene. He was on board his shattered tug which was drifting to the southward, in no great danger of going ashore, while several schooners were clustering around to give her aid.

Dan Frazier paid no attention to Captain Bruce, but ran to the stern of the Kenilworth to watch the Resolute's crew send its towing hawser aboard. Captain Jim was at his best in such an undertaking as this, and his men were obeying his shouted orders with disciplined skill and haste. The hawser writhed after the yawl like a sea-serpent and was dragged up the side of the stranded vessel by her own crew, who were jubilant at seeing active operations under way. When the line was made fast, Captain Jim bellowed through his megaphone:

"We have wasted time and lost the best of the tide, Captain Bruce, but I'm going to pull for an hour anyhow. Set your engines going full speed astern and throw your helm to port."

Captain Bruce obeyed with eager energy. He seemed to be coming to himself and honestly anxious to get his ship afloat. His broad shoulders were thrown back, and he held his head erect, while his deep voice had a tone of masterful decision. If he had made a compact with the Evil One, he acted like a man who regretted the bargain and wanted to repair the damage already done. Fate had suddenly snatched him out of the clutches of Jeremiah Pringle and perhaps he was glad of it. At least, Dan Frazier was ready to look at it in this way, and as Captain Bruce came aft to examine the hawser the lad said to himself with a wisdom born of his own experience:

"Last night he kind of behaved like a boy that had done something he was awful ashamed of, but was scared to own up to it. Now he looks as if he felt the way I do when I've decided to tell mother all about it and promise her I'll do the best I can to make things all square again."

Dan found time to take an anxious look at the weather, and a sweeping survey of sea and sky told him why Captain Jim did not want to wait for the next flood tide before beginning work. The ocean had turned from green and blue to a dull gray. The clouds were low and far-spread and the wind was seesawing in fretful gusts, now from the north-east, again from the north-west. The barometer had sought a lower level overnight, and all these signs declared that a gale was brewing. If it came out of the north-west, the charging seas would drive the Kenilworth farther on the Reef and perhaps lift her clear across the coral barrier to sink, with a broken back, in the deep water of the Hawk Channel.

The Resolute's whistle signalled that she was ready to match her power against the Reef. As she forged ahead, the sagging hawser tautened and twanged like a huge banjo string, while the sea was churned to froth in her wake. At the same time the Kenilworth's engines lent their mighty strength to the task. Her hull vibrated as if the rivets were being pulled from their steel plates, but the keel did not move an inch. Dan's faith in Captain Jim's word was so implicit that he expected to feel the steamer start seaward in the first ten minutes. At the end of the hour, however, the Resolute was still tugging away without result, like a man trying to lift himself by his boot-straps. Then she slackened up on the hawser as if to get her breath for the next tussle.

The wind was blowing with more and more violence. It picked up the white-topped seas and hurled them high against the Kenilworth, while the tug rolled and plunged amid driving foam and spray. Gulls were flying in from seaward to seek the shelter of the distant keys. But it was not yet rough enough to daunt Captain Jim Wetherly and he was evidently waiting to make a second attempt on the afternoon tide. Dan had seen these northerly gales blow themselves out in a few hours and he felt no uneasiness at being left in the Kenilworth, although he muttered to himself as he felt the helpless steamer tremble to the shock of the seas:

"I don't see why Uncle Jim left me here now that Pringle is out of the way. I guess he hasn't time to remember that he is shy one deck-hand."

There was some truth in this surmise, for Captain Wetherly was having all he could do to keep the Resolute at her station and her propeller clear of the hawser which he refused to let go because he feared the weather might make it impossible to lower the yawl for another trip to the Kenilworth. He knew what Captain Bruce was not aware of, that the steamer had been shoved on a shelving slope of the Reef where she could withstand a terrific pounding without having the bottom torn out of her, and that if she once started to move astern she would quickly slide off into deep water. Therefore Captain Jim was ready to take long chances with his tug before he would run to Key West for refuge from wind and sea.

In the afternoon, when the Resolute whistled that she was about to go ahead again on the hawser, the green billows were breaking over her bow and flooding aft in booming torrents. Her funnel was white with sea-salt from the spindrift as she plunged and reared like a bucking bronco. Dan was watching the laboring Resolute from the stranded steamer's bridge when Captain Bruce put a hand on his shoulder and said with hearty frankness:

"That skipper of yours is plucky, and he is a first-class seaman. But he will lose his vessel if he stays out here much longer."

"He may have to give you a wider berth by dark," said Dan. "In ordinary weather he could take the Resolute over the Reef along here, but now the seas would pick her up and drop her on the ledges. I guess he will have to leave me aboard here overnight, Captain. There's no getting a boat over to me now. And he can't take the Resolute to leeward of you, on the inside of the Reef, for there isn't a deep water passage through, for miles and miles."

"You are welcome to stay aboard with me, lad," replied Captain Bruce. "We may have a tough time of it ourselves before morning, and I fancy your uncle is sorry he did not take you off with him. But that can't be helped."

The Resolute had begun to pull. It was a thrilling battle to watch. The seas were so heavy that her power was applied in a series of tremendous lunges which threatened to snap the hawser every time her stern rose skyward. Dan held his breath and gripped the rail with both hands as the tug surged ahead again and again. Her mate and two deck-hands were crouched far aft, ready to cast loose the hawser whenever the captain dared to hold on no longer. After a while Dan saw the chief engineer waddle back to the overhang to take a look at the situation. There was something cheering in the sight of this bulky, stout-hearted veteran of many a desperate venture at sea. Bill McKnight plucked off his cap and waved it in greeting to Dan, as if signalling him that all was well.

"I guess he's clamped down his safety-valve long before this," said Dan aloud as he flourished an arm at Bill McKnight.

"My word but you are a desperate lot," observed Captain Bruce, and a smile lightened his anxious face and weary eyes. "I think we are safer aboard the Kenilworth."

He turned away to talk to his own chief engineer and his first officer. They had come up from below to report that the crew were beginning to talk of quitting the ship, and that it was hard to keep them at their stations. The news aroused Captain Bruce like a bugle-call to action. If he had been weak in an hour of temptation he was now once more the able, resolute ship-master, trained by long years at sea to face such a crisis as this.

"Do the cowards want to abandon ship while we are trying to work her off?" he thundered. "Look at that tug-boat out yonder. She isn't afraid to stay by us in a bit of a breeze. Come along with me. I'll handle them."

He hurried after the first officer, and Dan was left alone to gaze at the brave struggle of the Resolute. It seemed impossible that she could hold on much longer. Her hull was buried by one sea after another, but she shook herself free and plunged ahead with dogged, unflinching power. The afternoon was nearly spent. A stormy dusk was beginning to steal over the tossing sea.

Dan perceived that Captain Jim was trying to stand to his task until high water might help to lift the Kenilworth. But for once that square-jawed uncle of his had dared too much. The Resolute had endured more than steel and timber could be expected to endure. Dan yelled with dismay as he saw the massive timber framework of the towing-bitts fairly jump out of the deck, splintered and broken, and vanish in the sea astern while the hawser slackened and buried itself in the waves. The mate and deck-hands were hurled this way and that. An instant later the wind bore a terrific crashing noise to Dan's ears. A gaping hole showed in her after deck as the Resolute dove ahead, suddenly released from her grip on the Kenilworth.

But for once that square-jawed uncle of his had dared too much

"Great Scott, she jerked the towing-bitts clean out of her," cried Dan. "It was just like pulling the stem out of an apple. Now we are done for. Is anybody killed?"

His eyes filled with hot tears as he saw Bill McKnight rush aft and help pick up the mate and deck-hands who lay sprawled in the scuppers. The mate was huddled in a heap where he had been flung, and the rescuers dragged him clear and carried him forward between them, his legs and arms swaying limp.

"He looks dead," moaned Dan. "And it leaves Uncle Jim single-handed. He can't run home before this sea with a hole in his after deck like that. She'd swamp in no time. He'll have to buck into it and try to fetch Miami. And we can't get any help to him."

The Resolute steamed very slowly away from the Reef, fighting for her life. Three long blasts from her whistle came down the wind as she spoke her farewell. Before long her reeling shape was lost to view on the shadowy sea; then her mast-head light gleamed for a little longer before she wholly vanished from Dan Frazier's yearning gaze.

Captain Bruce had rushed on deck at the sound of her whistle and Dan pointed to the dim outline of the beaten and crippled Resolute while in a voice broken with grief and excitement he explained what had happened to the tug.

"Uncle Jim will have other tugs on the way as soon as he can wire for them," added Dan. "I think he ordered a schooner to run to Miami this morning with orders for more help to be sent you."

"They can't get out to us until this blow is over," said the captain. "We are in for a bad night, my boy. I wish you were out of it. But Captain Wetherly couldn't have taken you off to save his soul."

"I wouldn't have been here if you had been square—" Dan began to say with a sudden rush of anger. But it seemed as though Captain Bruce had not heard him, for he went on to say:

"If my boy had lived he would have been about your age now, Dan. He was just your kind of a youngster, too. Go below and get some supper, and some sleep if you can."

There was to be little sleep aboard the Kenilworth through this night. The gale had no more than begun to blow when the Resolute was forced to retreat. Long before midnight it was lashing the shoal water of the Reef into huge breakers which assailed the Kenilworth with thundering fury. Her keel began to pound as she was lifted and driven a little farther on the Reef by one shock after another. The decks sloped more and more until it was not easy to keep a foothold. The noise of the water breaking over her hull, the booming cry of the wind, the groaning and grating and shrieking of her steel plates as the Reef strove to pull them asunder, made it seem as if the steamer could not hold together until daylight.

The grimy men from the engine-room and stoke-hole had fled to the shelter of the steel deck-houses where they huddled with the seamen, shouting to each other in English, Norwegian, and Spanish. Captain Bruce and his officers finally gathered in the chart-room and discussed the chances of launching the boats if matters should grow much worse. Dan Frazier was doubled up in a corner chair, half-dead for sleep, but fighting hard to keep his wits about him and tell the others what he knew of the Reef and the water that stretched to leeward of the ship.

In answer to a question from Captain Bruce he said:

"This is the narrowest part of the Reef, Captain Wetherly told me, and if you can get your boats away in the lee of the ship and keep them afloat through the breaking water you will be in the Hawk Channel, only three miles from a string of keys. The channels between the islands are deep enough for a ship's boat. You don't need any chart to find smooth water in those lagoons, sir."

"Her bottom plates are opening up," growled the chief engineer who had just come up to report. "The sea is coming in fast. It has begun to flood the fire-room, and I can't make steam to keep the pumps going much longer."

"The bulkheads forward are twisting like so much paper," added the first officer. "They can't stand up if she racks herself any worse. Then she will be flooded fore and aft."

Captain Bruce jumped to his feet and gruffly broke into this dismal kind of talk:

"Get all the men you can and come below with me. Her after part is still afloat and tight, and if we can brace the midship bulkheads with enough timbers and cargo, they may hold for a while yet."

It was a forlorn hope, but even the seamen and stokers were glad to be doing something to save the ship, and most of them rallied to the call of the captain and mate and followed them down into the gloomy hold. Dan went along to try to do what he could, and also because he remembered that Captain Jim had told him to "keep his eyes and ears open."

"If we abandon the Kenilworth," thought Dan, "and I see Uncle Jim again, the first thing he will ask me is what shape we left the steamer in—had she begun to break in two, and how badly was she flooded, and so on. I guess it's part of my job to find out all I can."

He picked up a lantern which had been overlooked and crept after the men, down one slippery iron ladder after another. It was a terrifying trip below decks where the angry ocean sounded as if it were about to tear its way through the vessel's side, amid an awful hubbub of shifting cargo, and breaking beams and plates. Dan hesitated more than once and tried to choke down his fear. He was in strange quarters and the men ahead of him, used to finding their way all over the vessel, moved much faster than he. They had reached the engine-room and were moving forward while he was still clinging to the last ladder. Then a lurch of the ship dashed his lantern against the hand-rail. The glass globe was smashed and the light went out.

The electric lighting plant had been disabled and the cavern of an engine-room was in black darkness as Dan vainly searched his pockets for matches. He heard faint shouts from somewhere forward and thought he saw the gleam of lanterns. He tried to grope his way toward them, but stumbled and fell against a steel column. With aching head he staggered to his feet just as the whole hull of the ship seemed to be raised bodily and let fall on the Reef with a deafening crash. Dan was more frightened and confused than ever. A moment later his feet began to splash in water. He thought the sea had broken into the engine-room, and he tried, with frantic haste, to find his way back to the ladder and regain the deck above. By this time he had completely lost his bearings. He did not know whether he was going toward the bow or stern. At length his trembling fingers clutched the rail of a ladder which ran upward from a narrow passageway. It led him to another deck still far down in the vessel's hold, where he could find no more ladders to climb. After what seemed to him hours of feeling his way this way and that, he bumped against a solid steel wall. Dan knew it was a bulkhead of some kind, but it must be far from the toiling crew of the ship, for he had long since ceased to hear or see them. He had never been in such utter darkness nor so hopelessly lost and bewildered.

The frightened lad shouted for help, but his voice could not have been heard a dozen feet away, so great was the din around him. He tried to think, to get back his sense of direction, to feel his way along the bulkhead in the hope of getting his hands on some object with whose outline he was familiar, which might tell him into what part of the ship he had wandered.

He was leaning against the steel wall of the bulkhead when it buckled, sprang back, and then quivered as if it had been a sheet of tin. There was a tremendous noise of crackling, rending timber and steel above Dan's head. He whirled about and tried to flee as he heard the collapsing bulkhead give way.

The boy could hear the cargo toppling toward him with the roar of a landslide. He threw up his arms to shield his head, then something struck him in the back and hurled him to one side. He fell across a bulky box of some kind while other heavy boxes, a deluge of them, thundered from above and crashed all round him. Dan cowered in a frightened heap, expecting every instant to have his life crushed out. But gradually the descent of the cargo ceased, and he was still alive.

He tried to move his legs and found they had not been smashed. Struggling to turn over on his back he put up his arms and discovered that a huge packing case had so fallen as to make a bridge over him and keep clear the little space in which he crouched. But he was walled in by packing cases on all sides and he struggled in vain to move them. Until his fingers were torn and bleeding and his strength worn out, Dan tried to make an opening large enough to wriggle through and escape from this appalling prison.

When at length he lay still and panted aloud the prayers his mother had taught him, there came the echo of hoarse shouts above the clamor of the ship and the sea. Through a crevice between the boxes of freight that penned him fast he glimpsed the gleam of moving lanterns. The captain and crew were deserting the hold of the ship. Dan tried to call to them but his cries were unheard.

The shouts ceased, the gleams of light vanished one by one, and Dan was left alone in the flooded and shattered hold of the Kenilworth. Far above him Captain Bruce and his crew were making ready their life-boats, preferring to trust themselves to the storm-swept sea than to the steamer which they believed doomed to be torn to fragments within the next few hours.

"They must have given up the fight", moaned Dan between his sobs. "I guess it means all hands abandon ship at daylight. And they will think I've been washed overboard in the dark."