The fierce hissing of the continuous escape of steam excited alarm in those not accustomed to machinery. Men and women share the unreasoning panic of animals when an unknown force reveals its pent-up fury. They forget that safety-valves are provided, that diminished pressure means less risk; the knowledge that restraint, not freedom, is dangerous comes ever in the guise of a new discovery.

The mining engineers, of course, did not share this delusion.

“There must be something serious the matter, or they would not be wasting power like that,” murmured the American to one of his fellow-professionals.

“A smash-up in the engine-room. Nada es mas seguro,”^[1] was the answer.

[1] Nothing is more certain.

“Wonder if any one is hurt?”

The Spaniard bent a little nearer. “What can you expect?” he whispered sympathetically.

In the unnatural peacefulness of the ship’s progress, disturbed only by the roar of the superheated vapor, they all heard the opening of a door at the head of the saloon stairway. The third officer appeared—his wet oilskins gleaming and dripping.

“Dr. Christobal, the captain wishes to speak to you,” he said.

Christobal rose and crossed the saloon.

“As you are here, won’t you tell the ladies there is nothing to be afraid of in the mere stopping of the engines?” he suggested.

“Oh, the ship is right enough,” was the hasty response. “There has been an accident in the stokehold. That is all.”

“Want any help?” demanded the American.

“Well—I’ll ask the captain.”

Evidently anxious to avoid further questioning, he ran up the companion. Christobal followed, the door was closed and bolted again.

“I hate the word ‘accident.’ It covers so many horrid possibilities,” said Isobel.

“I am afraid some poor fellows have been injured, and that is why Captain Courtenay sent for Dr. Christobal,” said Elsie.

“Oh, of course, I meant that. I was not thinking of the mere delay, though it is annoying that a breakdown should occur here.”

“It would be equally bad anywhere else,” put in the missionary’s wife, timidly.

“By no means,” was the sharp response. “If we were in the Straits, for instance, we could signal to San Isidro or Sandy Point; and there would be other vessels passing. Here, we are in the worst possible place.”

Miss Baring’s acquaintance with the chief features of the South American coast-line had seemingly improved. To all appearance, she alone among the passengers, now that Christobal was gone, realized vaguely the perilous plight of the Kansas. The fact was that even a girl of her apparently frivolous disposition could not avoid the influences of environment.

In a maritime community like that of Valparaiso there was every reason to know and dread the rock-bound coast which fringed the southern path towards civilization. Strange, half-forgotten stories of the terrors which await a disabled ship caught in a southwesterly gale on the Pacific side of Tierra del Fuego rose dimly in her mind. And the advancing darkness did not tend towards cheerfulness. In her new track, the Kansas had turned her back on the murky light which penetrated the storm-clouds towards the west. Unhinged by the external gloom and the prevalent uncertainty, and finding that no one cared to dispute with her, Isobel felt that a scream or two would be a relief. For once, pride was helpful—it saved her from hysteria.

The curious sense of waiting, they knew not for what, which dulled the thoughts and stilled the tongues of the small company at the table, soon communicated itself to the stewards. The men stood in little knots, exchanging few words, and those mostly meaningless; but the chief steward, whose trained ear caught the regular beat of the donkey-engine, woke them up with a series of sharp orders.

“Switch on the lights,” he said loudly. “Clear the table and hurry up with the coffee. Get a move on those fellows, Gomez. Have you never before been in a ship when the screw stopped?”

The Gomez thus appealed to was the Englishman’s second-in-command; he acted as interpreter when anything out of the common was required. He muttered a few words in the Hispano-Indian patois which his hearers best understood, and the scene in the saloon changed with wondrous suddenness. The glow of the electric lamps banished the gathering shadows. The luxurious comfort of the apartment soon dispelled the notion of danger. Coffee was brought. The smoking saloon was inaccessible, owing to the closing of the gangway, but the chief steward suggested that the gentlemen might smoke if the ladies were agreeable. Under such circumstances the ladies always are agreeable, and the instant result was a distinct rise in the social barometer.

The noise of the steam exhaust ceased as abruptly as it began. The ship was riding easily in spite of the heavy sea. Drifting with wind and wave is a simple thing for a big vessel. There is no struggle, no tearing asunder of resisting forces. Thus might a boat caught in the pitiless current of Niagara glide towards the brink of the cataract with cunning smoothness.

And then, while the occupants of the saloon were endeavoring to persuade each other that all was well, the loud wail of the siren thrilled them with increased foreboding. It was not the warning note of a fog, nor the sharp course-signal for the guidance of a passing ship, but a sustained trumpeting, which announced to any steamer hidden in the darkening waste of waters that the Kansas was not under control. It was a wild, sinister appeal for help, the voice of the disabled vessel proclaiming her need; and the answer seemed to come in a fiercer shriek of the gale, while the added fury of the blast brought a curling sea over the poop. The Kansas staggered and shook herself clear. The wave smashed its way onward; several iron stanchions snapped with reports like pistol-shots, and there was an intolerable rending of woodwork. But, whatever the damage, the powerful hull rose triumphantly from the clutch of its assailant. Shattered streams of water poured off the decks like so many cascades. Loud above the splash of these miniature cataracts vibrated the tense boom of the fog-horn.

It was a nerve-racking moment. It demanded the leadership of a strong man, and there are few gatherings in Anglo-Saxondom which cannot produce a Caesar when required.

“Say,” shouted the American, his clear voice dominating the turmoil, “that gave us a shower-bath. If we could just stand outside and see ourselves, we should look like an illuminated fountain.”

That was the right note—belief in the ship, contempt of the darkness and the gale. The crisis passed.

“There really cannot be a heavy sea,” said Elsie, cheerfully inaccurate. “Otherwise we should be pitching or rolling, perhaps both, whereas we are actually far more steady than when dinner commenced.”

“I find these lulls in the storm most trying,” complained Isobel. “They remind me of some wild animal hunting its prey, creeping up with silent stealth, and then springing.”

“I have never before heard a fog-horn sounded so continuously,” said the missionary’s wife, a Mrs. Somerville. “Don’t you think they are whistling for assistance?”

“Assistance! What sort of assistance can anybody give us here? Unless the ship rights herself very soon we don’t know what may happen.”

Isobel seemed to have a premonition of evil, and she paid no heed to the effect her words might have on the others. Although the saloon was warm—almost uncomfortably hot owing to the closing of the main air-passages—she shivered.

Mr. Somerville drew a book from his pocket. “If that be so,” he said gently, “may I suggest that we seek aid from One who is all-powerful? We are few, and of different religions, but in this hour we can surely worship at a common altar.”

“Right!” said the taciturn Englishman, varying his adjective for once. The missionary offered up a short but heartfelt prayer, and, finding that he carried his congregation with him, read the opening verse of Hymn No. 370, “For those at Sea.”

The stewards, most of whom understood a few words of English, readily grasped the fact that the padri was asking for help in a situation which they well knew to be desperate. They drew near reverently, and even joined in the simple lines:

O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.

During the brief silence which followed the singing of the hymn it did, indeed, seem to their strained senses that the fierce violence of the gale had somewhat abated. It was not so, in reality. A steady fall in the barometer foretold even worse weather to come. Courtenay, assured now that the main engines were absolutely useless, thought it advisable to get steering way on the ship by rigging the foresail, double-reefed and trapped. The result was quickly perceptible. The Kansas might not be pooped again, but she would travel more rapidly into the unknown.

Yet this only afforded another instance of the way men reason when they seek to explain cause from effect. The hoisting of that strip of stout canvas was one of the time-factors in the story of an eventful night, for it was with gray-faced despair that the captain gave the requisite order when the second engineer reported that his senior was dead, the crown of two furnaces destroyed, and the engines clogged, if not irretrievably damaged, by fallen debris. None realized better than the young commander what a disastrous fate awaited his ship in the gloom of the flying scud ahead. There was a faint chance of encountering another steamship which would respond to his signals. Then he would risk all by laying the Kansas broadside on in the effort to take a tow-rope aboard. Meanwhile, it was best to bring her under some sort of control, the steam steering-gear, driven by the uninjured donkey-engine, being yet available.

In the saloon, Elsie had shielded her face in her hands, to hide the tears which the entreaty of the hymn had brought to her eyes. Some one whispered to her:

“Won’t you sing something, Miss Maxwell?”

It was the American. He judged that the sweet voice which unconsciously led the singing of the hymn must be skilled in other music.

She looked up at him, her eyes shining.

“Sing! Do you think it possible?” she asked.

“Yes. You can do a brave thing, I guess, and that would be brave.”

“I will try,” she said, and she walked to the piano which was screwed athwart the deck in front of the polished mahogany sheath of the steel mainmast. It was in her mind to play some lively excerpts from the light operas then in vogue, but the secret influences of the hour were stronger than her studied intent, and, when her fingers touched the keys, they wandered, almost without volition, into the subtle harmonies of Gounod’s “Ave Maria.” She played the air first; then, gaining confidence, she sang the words, using a Spanish version which had caught her fancy. It was good to see the flashing eyes and impassioned gestures of the Chilean stewards when they found that she was singing in their own language. These men, owing to their acquaintance with the sea and knowledge of the coast, were now in a state of panic; they would have burst the bonds of discipline on the least pretext. So, as it chanced, the voice of the English seÑorita reached them as the message of an angel, and the spell she cast over them did not lose its potency during some hours of dangerous toil. Here, again, was found one of the comparatively trivial incidents which contributed materially to the working out of a strange drama, because anything in the nature of a mutinous orgy breaking out in the first part of that soul-destroying night must have instantly converted the ship into a blood-bespattered Inferno.

Excited applause rewarded the song. Fired by example, the dapper French Count approached the piano and asked Elsie if she could play Beranger’s “Roi d’Yvetot.” She repressed a smile at his choice, but the chance that presented itself of initiating a concert on the spur of the moment was too good to be lost, so M. de Poincilit, in a nice light tenor, told how

Il Était un roi d’Yvetot
Peu connu dans l’histoire,
Se levant tard, se couchant tÔt,
Dormant fort bien sans gloire.

The Frenchman took the merry monarch seriously, but the lilting melody pleased everybody except “Mr. Wood.” The “Oh, Oh’s” and “Ah, Ah’s” of the chorus apparently stirred him to speech. He strolled from a corner of the saloon to the side of Gray, the American engineer, and said, with a contemptuous nod towards the singer:

“What rot!”

“Not a bit of it. He’s all right. Won’t you give us a song next?”

If Gray showed the face of a sphinx, so did “Mr. Wood,” whose real name was Tollemache. He bent a little nearer.

“Seen the rockets?” he asked.

“No. Are we signaling?”

“Every minute. Have counted fifteen.”

“You don’t say. Things are in a pretty bad shape, then?”

“Rotten.”

“Well, like Brer Rabbit, we must lie low and say nothing.”

This opinion was incontrovertible. Moreover, Tollemache was not one who needed urging to keep his mouth shut. Indeed, this was by far the longest conversation he had indulged in since he came aboard; nor was he finished with it.

“Ship will strike soon,” he said.

Gray turned on him sharply. “Oh, nonsense!” he exclaimed. “What has put that absurd notion into your head?”

“Know this coast.”

“But we are far out at sea.”

“Fifty miles from danger line, two hours ago. Thirty now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain.”

“Do you mean to tell me that in three hours, or less, the ship may be a wreck?”

“Will be,” said Tollemache. “Have a cigar,” and he passed a well-filled case to his companion.

The American was beginning to take the silent one’s measure. He bit off the end of a cigar and lit it.

“What’s at the back of your head?” he asked coolly. The other looked towards the Chileans.

“Those chaps are rotters,” he said.

“You think they will cut up rough? What can they do? We must all sink or swim together.”

“Yes; but there are the women, you know. They must be looked after. You can count on me. Tell the chief steward—and the padri.”

Gray felt that here was a man after his own heart, the native-born American having a rough-and-ready way of classifying nationalities when the last test of manhood is applied by a shipwreck, or a fire.

“Got a gun?” he inquired.

“Cabin. Goin’ for it first opportunity.”

“Same here. But the captain will give us some sort of warning?”

“Perhaps not. Die quick, die happy.”

Then Gray smiled, and he could not help saying: “Tell you what, cousin, if you shoot as straight as you talk, these stewards will come to heel, no matter what happens.”

“Fair shot,” admitted Tollemache, and he stalked off to his stateroom, while the Count was vociferating, for the last time:

Quel bon p’tit roi c’Était la!
La, la!

Between Elsie and de Poincilit the chorus made quite a respectable din. Few noticed that the saloon main companion had been opened again, until the sharp bark of a dog joining in the hand-clapping turned every eye towards the stairway. Captain Courtenay was descending. In front ran Joey, who, of course, imagined that the plaudits of the audience demanded recognition. Courtenay had removed his oilskins before leaving the bridge. His dark blue uniform was flecked with white foam, and a sou’wester was tied under his chin, otherwise his appearance gave little sign of the wild tumult without. Joey, on the other hand, was a very wet dog, and inclined to be snappy. When, in obedience to a stern command, he ceased barking, he shook himself violently, and sent a shower of spray over the carpet. Then he cocked an eye at the chief steward, who represented bones and such-like dainties.

Courtenay, removing his glistening head-gear, advanced a couple of paces into the saloon. He seemed to avoid looking at any individual, but took in all present in a comprehensive glance. Elsie, who had exchanged very few words with him since the first afternoon she came on board, thought he looked worn and haggard, but his speech soon revealed good cause for any lack of sprightliness.

“I regret to have to inform you,” he said, with the measured deliberation of a man who has made up his mind exactly what to say, “that the ship has been disabled by some accident, the cause of which is unknown at present. The unfortunate result is that she is in a position of some peril.”

There was a sudden stir among the Chilean stewards, whose wits were sharpened sufficiently to render the captain’s statement quite clear to them. Isobel uttered a little sob of terror, and Mrs. Somerville gasped audibly, “Oh, my poor children!” Elsie, her lips parted, sat forward on the piano-stool. Her senses seemed to have become intensified all at once. She could see everything, hear everything. Some of the Chileans and Spaniards crossed themselves; others swore. Count Edouard breathed hard and muttered “Grand Dieu!” She wondered why the captain and Mr. Tollemache, who had returned from his stateroom, and was standing in the half light of a doorway, should simultaneously drop their right hands into a coat pocket. Mr. Tollemache, too, gave a queer little nod to the American, who had moved near to Isobel and placed a hand on her shoulder. Elsie was quite sure that Gray whispered: “For goodness’ sake, don’t cause a scene!” And, indeed, he did ask Isobel and Mrs. Somerville, with some curtness, to restrain themselves.

Courtenay, with one cold glance, chilled into silence the muttered prayers and curses of the Chileans.

“It may be necessary, about daybreak, to endeavor to beach the ship,” he continued. “I wish you all, therefore, to guard against possible exposure by wearing warm clothes, especially furs and overcoats. Money and jewelry should be secured, but no baggage of any sort, not even the smallest handbag, can be carried, as all other personal belongings must be left on board. Passengers will gather here, and remain here until I send one of the officers for them. The companion doors will not be closed again, but the decks are quite impassable. You hear for yourselves that they are momentarily swept by heavy seas.”

He turned to the chief steward.

“Your men, Mr. Malcolm,” he said, “will begin at once, under your directions, to draw stores for each boat. There need be no hurry or excitement. We are, as yet, many miles distant from the nearest known land. If the wind changes, or one of several possible things happens, the Kansas will suffer no damage whatever. I wish all hands to be prepared, however, for the chance, the remote chance, I trust, of the ship’s being driven ashore, and I beg each one of you to remember that discipline and strict obedience to orders are not only more necessary now than ever, but also that they will be strictly enforced.”

The concluding sentence was uttered very slowly and clearly. It was evident he meant the ship’s company to understand him. Before any of his hearers attempted to question him, he jammed the sou’wester on his head and ran up the stairs. The dog followed, somewhat ruefully, the cozy saloon being far more to his liking than the wind-swept, spray-lashed chart-house. Mr. Malcolm promptly stirred his myrmidons with a command to fall in by boats’ crews, and Gomez won his chief’s approval by quietly translating the captain’s orders. Beyond Mrs. Somerville’s subdued sobbing there was little outward manifestation that another crisis in the history of the Kansas and her human freight had come and gone.

“The skipper did turn up, you see,” said the American, when Tollemache came to him. The silent man screwed his lips together as if he would put a padlock on them.

“From your knowledge of the coast, do you think he will be able to beach the ship?” went on Gray, some humorous imp prompting him, even in that tense moment, to draw the expected answer from his new friend and ally.

“Yes, in pieces,” said Tollemache, and the reply was neither humorous nor expected.