The Burning Bridge by Philip Verrill Mighels (the best novels to read TXT) 📕

ever we two get home."

Already Elaine was retreating from the place.

"Never!" she answered, wildly. "Never, never, never!—do you hear?—not if it takes this boat a hundred years!" And gropingly, almost blinded by her sense of shame and rage, she fled from the deck and down the stairs, leaving him shaken where he stood.

CHAPTER III A MIDNIGHT TRAGEDY

Not the slightest alarm had invaded the ship, when Grenville finally urged his senses back to the normal, notwithstanding the unaccustomed suddenness with which the aspect of the day had been reversed.

The storm broke at last, about one in the afternoon, with a deluge of rain and an onslaught of wind that seemed for a time refreshing. The huge steel leviathan appeared to elevate her nose, give her shoulders a shake that settled her firmly in the gray disorder of the elements, and then to accept the rude old contest with a certain indifference, born of well-established prowess.

By two o'clock there was nothing refreshing suggested. A dull, stubborn struggle was waging in the drab of a wild and narrow field of commotion. Chill, musty billows of air, made thick by something that was neither scud nor mist, pounced heavily upon the laboring "Inca" in a manner chaotic and irregular. The sea was rising sullenly, its waves, like tumultuous cohorts, with ragged white banners, ceaselessly advancing.

With an easy, monotonous assurance the great device of steam and iron plugged steadily onward. It could ride out a sea of tremendously greater violence. It knew from long experience every crest and every abyss of these mountains of air and water. It met huge impacts majestically, with a prow that cleaved them through, while its huge, wet bulk plowed up its mileage with a barely diminished speed.

Few of the passengers were actually alarmed. A storm evolved so suddenly, they were confidently informed, would expend itself in one brief spasm of impotent fury and subside almost as it had come. It was all some mere local disturbance that the spell of dry, calm weather had accumulated too swiftly for any save a violent discharge.

Discomfort increased to a certain pitch; locomotion about the saloon became impracticable. The crew alone remained upon their legs. It seemed like the climax to the storm. But another stage swiftly developed.

It might have been somewhat after three P.M. when a shroud of darkness settled from the heavens, its substance foreign both to cloud and sea. It was thicker than before, and decidedly more musty. As black as night, but unrelated to all ordinary essences of darkness, it wrapped the stormy universe in Stygian folds with a suddenness strangely disquieting.

The cataclysm followed almost instantly, as if from behind a concealing curtain. It came in dimensions incredible, a prodigious wall of rumpled water, like a mobile mountain chain. It towered forbiddingly above the quivering vessel for one terrible moment of threat, then confusion, utter and seemingly eternal, plunged roaringly over and under the helpless ocean toy of steel, submerging the very sea itself in Niagaras of sound and weight and motion.

A hideous shudder quivered through the feeble plaything of the elements. Strange, muffled thunderings, sensations of oblivion sweeping miles deep across the ocean, and a horrible conviction of the ship's insignificance, impressed themselves pellmell upon the senses, while ebon blackness closed instantly down, like annihilation's swift accompaniment, and the hull seemed sinking countless fathoms.

Such a moment expands to an æon. Doom seemed an old acquaintance when a complex gyration, a sense of being flung through space, and a reassertion of the engine's throb preceded the struggle to the surface. Yet it seemed as if no miracle of buoyancy and might could survive till the great steel body rose once more to the air. Men held their breath as if they must drown if the top were not immediately achieved.

A stupendous lurch, an incredible list to starboard, another streaming by of immeasurable torrents, and the steamer wallowed pantingly out into daylight once again, to flounder like a thing exhausted till she steadied once more to the roll and pitch of the former storm-driven sea.

There had been no time for any man to act till the monstrous thing had come and gone its way. As helplessly as all the others, Grenville had clutched at the table, there beside Elaine, while death passed and roared in their faces. He had gone to her chiefly for appearances, yet quite as if nothing had happened, despite their scene above, while Elaine had issued from her stateroom in terror of the storm. It was not till new, sharp sounds of activity broke on his senses, from above, that Sid left her side and went to inquire concerning the sum of their damage.

His face had lost a shade only of its usual cheerfulness, when he finally returned. The ship was rolling heavily, fairly in the trough.

"Our rudder is gone, with six of the lifeboats and as many men," he told his charge, whose courage he had previously gauged. "The worst is undoubtedly over. We can steer with the screws, sufficiently to make the nearest port."

"Our rudder!—half a dozen men," Elaine faintly echoed, her brown eyes ablaze with dread and sympathy, as she steadied from the shock of Grenville's news. "What was it? How did it happen?"

"A tidal wave. There must have been a huge volcanic disturbance, doubtless under the sea. Or it may have been an earthquake, tremendously violent. Nothing else, according to the Captain, could account for a storm so sudden, or for all this strange thickness of the air. He is confident now of our safety. The storm may subside in an hour."

There was not the slightest cessation of the storm, however, till eight o'clock in the evening. Even then the night continued thick and wild.

Fortunately the sea was vast and deep. There was nothing known in two hundred miles on which the ship could blunder. Hour after hour the crippled "Inca" limped erratically onward, buffeted helplessly here and there, and scalloping angry abysses of darkness and water, as first one screw and then the other was driven full speed, or slowed to half, or reversed altogether, to hold her nose to the altered course that would finally fetch them to a port for highly essential repairs.

The rage of the elements, abating at last a trifle, had far exceeded the Captain's expectations. And when at length the center was passed, and comparative ease had supervened, the wind was still a considerable gale, while the sea would run high till nearly morning.

The passengers, however, were sufficiently assured to retire at a fairly early hour. Elaine had readily responded to Grenville's matter-of-fact instructions, and, long before midnight, was fitfully sleeping, although she had not undressed.

When eight bells struck from the bridge somewhere above him, Grenville still sat on the edge of his berth, rumpling his hair with one vigorous hand, while the other prisoned a book on his knee with a piece of white paper upon it. The paper was literally covered with mechanical designs and hieroglyphics, involved in his latest problem.

He arose at last, removed his coat, and began to fumble with his tie. His eyes were fixed upon his paper. The problem's spell was cast again upon him. He sank, as before, to his inconvenient seat, and drew yet another design.

How long he remained there, tranced by the lines that represented levers, gears, and eccentrics, the man could never have stated. He was dimly subconscious it was time to go to bed, and from time to time one hand would return to his collar. As a matter of fact, the hour was past one of the morning.

Then, of a sudden, apparently beneath his very feet, the frightful thing occurred.

It came all together—the grinding crunch, the colossal upheaval of the ship's great belly full of vitals, the scream of iron ripped from iron, the roar of steam from broken pipes, and the tremor of death-throes, shuddering thus promptly down to the canted bow and stern from the wedge-shaped split amidships.

They had struck on a rock, upheaved by the earthquake, where a hundred fathoms of crystal brine had existed the previous noon!

The hideous conviction of doom and horror sped as swiftly as the shiver of destruction to the farthest confines of the vessel. Screams far and near, hoarse bellowing, a shrill, high pæan of mortal fright, and sounds of disordered scurrying followed with a promptness fairly appalling.

Grenville waited for nothing. As well as the most experienced officer on board, he realized the significance of the impact, the ship's awful buckling, and the quiver stilling the creature's heart—the engines that had ceased at once to throb.

His door had been flung widely open. Before he could reach the turning of the corridor, the one electric bulb, left glowing for the night, abruptly blackened. But he knew the way to Elaine.

He seemed to be plunging through a torture hall, so hurtling full was the darkness of fearful cries and confusion. The broken hulk of the steamer slightly lurched, as the plates broke yet farther apart. Sidney was flung against a cabin wall, but he righted and pitched more rapidly down the already canted passage.

"Elaine!" he called. "Elaine!"

"Yes!" she answered. "Yes! I can't get out!" She was not at all in a panic.

Someone, a man, rushed headlong by and nearly bowled Grenville over. He was spilling golf clubs from a bag and calling for the steward.

Grenville caught at the knob of Elaine's hard-fastened door and threw his weight upon it. A stubborn resistance met his effort. The frame had been distorted by the splitting of plates and ribs. The wedging was complete.

"Stand back!" he called out sharply. "I must break it in at once!"

He knew they were late already—that swarms of beings, nearer the exits, were wildly pouring from the ship's interior, to be first to the boats, so fatally reduced in numbers.

With all his might he hurled his shoulder against the door, that merely creaked at his impotent assault. The hall was narrow. He could gain no momentum for his blow. The second and third attack made no impression.

A clammy sweat exuded from his forehead. That the sea was tumbling torrentially into the helpless vessel he knew by countless indications. Elaine must perish helplessly in her trap, could he not immediately force the barrier. He suddenly got down, full length, upon the floor, braced his shoulders against the opposite cabin, and, with knees slightly raised, placed both his feet against the door. Then he strained with superhuman strength. The door remained immovable, but its paneling slightly cracked.

Meantime the shrieks, the shouts, the roaring of steam, and the terrible chaos of destruction had increased to a horrifying chorus. The corridor was filling with hot, moist vapor from the burst pipes. A dozen stokers had perished. Fire had attacked a portion of the vessel abaft the midships section.

Once more, with a wild, fanatic conjuring of energy, Grenville spent himself upon the door—and a panel snapped out, flinging little splinters on Elaine. In a fury of desperate activity the man on the floor beat out more with his driving feet.

"It's large enough! It's large enough!" cried the girl as the orifice widened. "Don't wait to break it larger!"

She was now fully dressed, having swiftly prepared for any sort of emergency. A candle, provided from her bag, was glowing in her hand.

This she thrust forth for Grenville to take, and then, with deliberate care, she wormed her way out through the jagged hole with the confident skill of a child.

"Not there!" called Grenville, as she hastened ahead to gain the forward companionway. "Everybody's there, all fighting for their lives!"

He caught her actively about the waist, as a further lurch and settling of the "Inca" would have hurled her to the floor. Down through a shorter passage and up a strangely tilted stair he drew her rapidly, his heart assailed by a sickening fear of what their delay might have cost them. Yet less than five minutes had actually passed since the first vast shock of disaster.

They emerged to