The Girl of the Golden Gate - William Brown Meloney

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of a frail woman in black—one with her cage in the zoo of life like himself—were the only friendly touches which had come to him. Elsie of Shanghai was grateful, and had sought him out the night of sailing to tell him so, because he had kept her alive. She would never forget that he had sheltered her from death in the Shanghai riots. Chang would lay down his life to pay the debt he considered he owed him for saving his yellow carcass from the knives of a drunken mob of sailors. Everybody wanted to cling to life and he smiled grimly to himself in the darkness at the thought. He had removed his overcoat and coat and as he put out his hand to grope for the electric flash he muttered, "What a comedy! What a comedy!"

      The next instant he was pitched headlong against the side of the vessel by a shock which rattled her like an empty basket. A sea slapped through the open port of the room and choked him with its brine.

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      Lavelle dragged himself to his feet with his breath gone from him. For a moment he thought he was paralyzed—limbs, heart, nor brain seemed to respond. The night was filled with a multisonous orgy of sound.

      Then, his strength returned to him as quickly as it had gone. He leaped to the door and plunged into the alleyway outside. He knew full well what had happened as he ran aft and up through the gangway which led from the main to the promenade deck. Another vessel had piled into the Cambodia. There was no land—there were no rocks in the liner's track; nothing but two, three, and four mile deeps on every hand. Lights sprang up in the staterooms as he passed. Somebody flashed them on in the reception hall as he went through there. Thence he took the social hall gangway and came to the boat deck in a bound.

      A quartermaster—barely more than a boy—catapulted into his arms. Fear was driving him.

      "Let me go!" he cried like a thing in a trap.

      "Let me go!" and he cursed. Lavelle held him firmly.

      "Stand fast, son! You're all right!"

      Lavelle spoke in almost a normal tone. Whether it was what he said or what he saw in Lavelle's face that stilled the panic in the youngster's heart no one will ever know. But when Lavelle let him go and beckoned to him to follow him the quartermaster went at his side.

      "Everything's gone for'ard!" he yelled at Lavelle above the noise. "Windjammer—big lumberman—no lights—piled into us! Foremast came over—by the board! Bridge—Old Man—chart house—everybody—everything gone!"

      Lavelle snatched these things visually out of the blackness even as the boy shouted.

      The Cambodia rolled back slowly to starboard, but one who knew what Lavelle knew could feel the life going out of her. Her engines had stopped.

      The shape of a sailing vessel—a bark—drew away over on the starboard side and the grinding of metal against metal ceased only to have its place taken by the thunder of the Cambodia beginning to exhaust. Lavelle could hear and feel the stranger ripping at the steamer as she went by. The Cambodia gave a lurch like a drunken man getting out of a gutter.

      "She's going!" he shouted in the boy's ear, snatching his head to his lips. "Engineers—all officers report here! Me! Find out what water's in her! Find out how long lights'll last! Tell 'em give us plenty of light. Be a man!"

      The boy fled and Lavelle ran up to starboard and bawled against the night:

      "Stand by if you're able! Stand by!" There was an answering cry, but all he caught was—"Hell!"

      Groping he found an electric cluster on each side of the social hall house and flashed it on. He ran aft and flashed on similar clusters on the sides of the smoke-room house. These lights embraced the eight small boats davited along the Cambodia's sides.

      From below men began to come by twos and threes, some supporting women on their arms, some carrying them, some carrying children, some alone with fear tangling their feet and some half curiously. One came lighting a cigarette—a fair-faced young chap—and Lavelle grabbed him in the social hall gangway and told him to let only women and children pass.

      "Right O!" was his answer and he took off his coat and threw it away, accepting his task.

      The glow of a man who would be obeyed was on Lavelle's brow. Men knew he spoke with the voice of authority and heeded it. They saw the purser refuse to hold the gangway in the social hall beside the fair-faced man and they saw Lavelle smash him to the deck with a blow of his fist.

      Looking up from the deck below Emily Granville saw this, too, and, terrified, fled from succoring hands. She saw only a fiend at work.

      "Twenty minutes! No longer! Lights—ten minutes!" shouted the quartermaster struggling to his side.

      "What about the steerage?"

      "Gone like rats! Whole bow's gone!"

      He pantomimed him to take charge of a boat forward on the starboard side. A grimy engineer came through the crowd and reported. Others came and accepted his mastership—men who needed but to be told what to do to find their bearings and run in them.

      Like a flame he moved upon that deck. Who he might be few knew, but wheresoever he went disorder became order and the spirits of brave men grew stronger and smiled at death as upon a friend. Like another self—the shadow of the flame—there moved Chang whither he went, striking as he struck and lifting up as he lifted up.

      Of a sudden Lavelle saw Emily Granville standing in the port gangway of the smoke-room house, alone, hesitant, terror-stricken. She saw him and as he ran to her with open arms she drew back and then, remembering that he had but turned away from a boat in which she had seen him put a little girl, who cried that God must be upon the sea, she paused in her flight.

      In that instant the guards whom Lavelle had stationed there were swept away by a yellow horde from below. It burst out of the gangway and engulfed him in its tide.

      There was an explosion as of a cannon fired in the distance where another bulkhead gave way. The ship lurched with a downward twisting motion. The lights flickered and went out and the pregnant darkness burst in disorder and panic.

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      Dawn suddenly broke upon a sea snarling under the lash of a heavy northeasterly. Emily Granville, her eyes pressed against the blackness, saw it as from a mountain peak. The next instant she was hurtling, twisting downward through space, sightless; her breath stopped.

      The sensation of falling ceased. There was a hardly perceptible pause amid a stinging smother of spray and then came the sensation of being lifted—of rising swiftly. She caught a breath and opened her eyes; and again from a seeming great height she beheld in awe the youth of the day striding across an angry waste of waters.

      The terrific buffeting of the boat, under the gunwale of which she crouched, had been going on for hours. Until this moment she had been only dimly conscious of it because the darkness gives one no background; no line of contrast by which the mind may measure its impressions. One thought only had lived persistently: that her reason might leave her. It still endured. But the human mind installed in a normal, healthy body like hers does not break so easily. No one becomes insane quickly any more than one becomes a thief quickly. A long process of decay must precede.

      As Emily's body readjusted itself to the cockleshell's wild movements her senses began to recover their power of apprehension. She realized that she was clutching a hand—a hand she remembered snatching out of the night as the vortex of the sinking Cambodia seemed about to suck the boat down to the deeps. Through the eternity of blackness which had passed its touch had been her link to sentient life. She held it up now and saw that it was the hand of a strong man, with a strange ring

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