"A trifle better, I think."

"I have sent for some refreshments. Let us have another _dekko_[Footnote: Hindustani for "look"--word much used by sailors in the East.] before we tackle them."

The two officers pa.s.sed out into the hurricane. Instantly the wind endeavored to tear the charthouse from off the deck. They looked aloft and ahead. The officer on duty saw them and nodded silent comprehension. It was useless to attempt to speak. The weather was perceptibly clearer.

Then all three peered ahead again. They stood, pressing against the wind, seeking to penetrate the murkiness in front. Suddenly they were galvanized into strenuous activity.

A wild howl came from the lookout forward. The eyes of the three men glared at a huge dismasted Chinese junk, wallowing helplessly in the trough of the sea, dead under the bows.

The captain sprang to the charthouse and signaled in fierce pantomime that the wheel should be put hard over.

The officer in charge of the bridge pressed the telegraph lever to "stop" and "full speed astern," whilst with his disengaged hand he pulled hard at the siren cord, and a raucous warning sent stewards flying through the ship to close collision bulkhead doors. The "chief"

darted to the port rail, for the _Sirdar's_ instant response to the helm seemed to clear her nose from the junk as if by magic.

It all happened so quickly that whilst the hoa.r.s.e signal was still vibrating through the ship, the junk swept past her quarter. The chief officer, joined now by the commander, looked down into the wretched craft. They could see her crew lashed in a bunch around the capstan on her elevated p.o.o.p. She was laden with timber. Although water-logged, she could not sink if she held together.

A great wave sucked her away from the steamer and then hurled her back with irresistible force. The _Sirdar_ was just completing her turning movement, and she heeled over, yielding to the mighty power of the gale. For an appreciable instant her engines stopped. The ma.s.s of water that swayed the junk like a cork lifted the great ship high by the stern. The propeller began to revolve in air--for the third officer had corrected his signal to "full speed ahead" again--and the c.u.mbrous Chinese vessel struck the _Sirdar_ a terrible blow in the counter, smashing off the screw close to the thrust-block and wrenching the rudder from its bearings.

There was an awful race by the engines before the engineers could shut off steam. The junk vanished into the wilderness of noise and tumbling seas beyond, and the fine steamer of a few seconds ago, replete with magnificent energy, struggled like a wounded leviathan in the grasp of a vengeful foe.

She swung round, as if in wrath, to pursue the puny a.s.sailant which had dealt her this mortal stroke. No longer breasting the storm with stubborn persistency, she now drifted aimlessly before wind and wave.

She was merely a larger plaything, tossed about by t.i.tantic gambols.

The junk was burst asunder by the collision. Her planks and cargo littered the waves, were even tossed in derision on to the decks of the _Sirdar_. Of what avail was strong timber or bolted iron against the spleen of the unchained and formless monster who loudly proclaimed his triumph? The great steamship drifted on through chaos. The typhoon had broken the lance.

But brave men, skilfully directed, wrought hard to avert further disaster. After the first moment of stupor, gallant British sailors risked life and limb to bring the vessel under control.

By their calm courage they shamed the paralyzed Lascars into activity.

A sail was rigged on the foremast, and a sea anchor hastily constructed as soon as it was discovered that the helm was useless. Rockets flared up into the sky at regular intervals, in the faint hope that should they attract the attention of another vessel she would follow the disabled _Sirdar_ and render help when the weather moderated.

When the captain ascertained that no water was being shipped, the damage being wholly external, the collision doors were opened and the pa.s.sengers admitted to the saloon, a brilliant palace, superbly indifferent to the wreck and ruin without.

Captain Ross himself came down and addressed a few comforting words to the quiet men and pallid women gathered there. He told them exactly what had happened.

Sir John Tozer, self-possessed and critical, asked a question.

"The junk is destroyed, I a.s.sume?" he said.

"It is."

"Would it not have been better to have struck her end on?"

"Much better, but that is not the view we should take if we encountered a vessel relatively as big as the _Sirdar_ was to the unfortunate junk."

"But," persisted the lawyer, "what would have been the result?"

"You would never have known that the incident had happened, Sir John."

"In other words, the poor despairing Chinamen, clinging to their little craft with some chance of escape, would be quietly murdered to suit our convenience."

It was Iris's clear voice that rang out this downright exposition of the facts. Sir John shook his head; he carried the discussion no further.

The hours pa.s.sed in tedious misery after Captain Ross's visit. Every one was eager to get a glimpse of the unknown terrors without from the deck. This was out of the question, so people sat around the tables to listen eagerly to Experience and his wise saws on drifting ships and their prospects.

Some cautious persons visited their cabins to secure valuables in case of further disaster. A few hardy spirits returned to bed.

Meanwhile, in the charthouse, the captain and chief officer were gravely pondering over an open chart, and discussing a fresh risk that loomed ominously before them. The ship was a long way out of her usual course when the accident happened. She was drifting now, they estimated, eleven knots an hour, with wind, sea, and current all forcing her in the same direction, drifting into one of the most dangerous places in the known world, the south China Sea, with its numberless reefs, shoals, and isolated rocks, and the great island of Borneo stretching right across the path of the cyclone.

Still, there was nothing to be done save to make a few un.o.btrusive preparations and trust to idle chance. To attempt to anchor and ride out the gale in their present position was out of the question.

Two, three, four o'clock came, and went. Another half-hour would witness the dawn and a further clearing of the weather. The barometer was rapidly rising. The center of the cyclone had swept far ahead.

There was only left the aftermath of heavy seas and furious but steadier wind.

Captain Ross entered the charthouse for the twentieth time.

He had aged many years in appearance. The smiling, confident, debonair officer was changed into a stricken, mournful man. He had altered with his ship. The _Sirdar_ and her master could hardly be recognized, so cruel were the blows they had received.

"It is impossible to see a yard ahead," he confided to his second in command. "I have never been so anxious before in my life. Thank G.o.d the night is drawing to a close. Perhaps, when day breaks----"

His last words contained a prayer and a hope. Even as he spoke the ship seemed to lift herself bodily with an unusual effort for a vessel moving before the wind.

The next instant there was a horrible grinding crash forward. Each person who did not chance to be holding fast to an upright was thrown violently down. The deck was tilted to a dangerous angle and remained there, whilst the heavy buffeting of the sea, now raging afresh at this unlooked-for resistance, drowned the despairing yells raised by the Lascars on duty.

The _Sirdar_ had completed her last voyage. She was now a battered wreck on a barrier reef. She hung thus for one heart-breaking second.

Then another wave, riding triumphantly through its fellows, caught the great steamer in its tremendous grasp, carried her onward for half her length and smashed her down on the rocks. Her back was broken. She parted in two halves. Both sections turned completely over in the utter wantonness of destruction, and everything--masts, funnels, boats, hull, with every living soul on board--was at once engulfed in a maelstrom of rushing water and far-flung spray.

CHAPTER II

THE SURVIVORS

When the _Sirdar_ parted amidships, the floor of the saloon heaved up in the center with a mighty crash of rending woodwork and iron. Men and women, too stupefied to sob out a prayer, were pitched headlong into chaos. Iris, torn from the terrified grasp of her maid, fell through a corridor, and would have gone down with the ship had not a sailor, clinging to a companion ladder, caught her as she whirled along the steep slope of the deck.

He did not know what had happened. With the instinct of self-preservation he seized the nearest support when the vessel struck.

It was the mere impulse of ready helpfulness that caused him to stretch out his left arm and clasp the girl's waist as she fluttered past. By idle chance they were on the port side, and the ship, after pausing for one awful second, fell over to starboard.

The man was not prepared for this second gyration. Even as the stairway canted he lost his balance; they were both thrown violently through the open hatchway, and swept off into the boiling surf. Under such conditions thought itself was impossible. A series of impressions, a number of fantastic pictures, were received by the benumbed faculties, and afterwards painfully sorted out by the memory. Fear, anguish, amazement--none of these could exist. All he knew was that the lifeless form of a woman--for Iris had happily fainted--must be held until death itself wrenched her from him. Then there came the headlong plunge into the swirling sea, followed by an indefinite period of gasping oblivion.

Something that felt like a moving rock rose up beneath his feet. He was driven clear out of the water and seemed to recognize a familiar object rising rigid and bright close at hand. It was the binnacle pillar, screwed to a portion of the deck which came away from the charthouse and was rent from the upper framework by contact with the reef.

He seized this unlooked-for support with his disengaged hand. For one fleet instant he had a confused vision of the destruction of the ship.

Both the fore and aft portions were burst asunder by the force of compressed air. Wreckage and human forms were tossing about foolishly.

The sea pounded upon the opposing rocks with the noise of ten thousand mighty steam-hammers.

A uniformed figure--he thought it was the captain--stretched out an unavailing arm to clasp the queer raft which supported the sailor and the girl. But a jealous wave rose under the platform with devilish energy and turned it completely over, hurling the man with his inanimate burthen into the depths. He rose, fighting madly for his life. Now surely he was doomed! But again, as if human existence depended on naught more serious than the spinning of a coin, his knees rested on the same few staunch timbers, now the ceiling of the music-room, and he was given a brief respite. His greatest difficulty was to get his breath, so dense was the spray through which he was driven. Even in that terrible moment he kept his senses. The girl, utterly unconscious, showed by the convulsive heaving of her breast that she was choking. With a wild effort he swung her head round to shield her from the flying scud with his own form.

The tiny air-s.p.a.ce thus provided gave her some relief, and in that instant the sailor seemed to recognize her. He was not remotely capable of a definite idea. Just as he vaguely realized the ident.i.ty of the woman in his arms the unsteady support on which he rested toppled over.

Again he renewed the unequal contest. A strong resolute man and a typhoon sea wrestled for supremacy.