The Wings of the Morning | Page 8

happened.
Sir John Tozer, self-possessed and critical, asked a question.
"The junk is destroyed, I assume?" 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 passed 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 unobtrusive 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 God 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