The helmsman's eyes bulged as he stared at the compa.s.s. While he had winked his eyes, so it seemed to him, the true course had fairly straddled away from the lubber line.

In his frantic haste Captain Mayo put her over too far. He helped the man set her on the right course. Then he signaled half speed. The devious and the narrow paths were ahead of them..

"That's an almighty funny jump the old dame made then," pondered the quartermaster. But he was too well trained to argue with a captain. He accepted the fault as his own, and now that she was on her course, he held her there doggedly.

Even the _Montana's_ half speed was a respectable gait, and the silent crew in her pilot-house could hear the sea lathering along her sides.

"What do you make of that, Mr. Bangs?" the captain asked, after a prolonged period of listening.

"Bell, sir!"

"But the only bell in that direction would be on Hedge Fence Lightship in case her whistle has been disabled."

"Sounds to me like a vessel at anchor."

"But it's right in the fairway." Captain Mayo convinced himself by a glance at the compa.s.s. "No craft would drop her hook in the fairway.

That's no bell on the Hedge Fence," reflected the captain. "It's a schooner's bell. But sound often gets freaky in a fog. We're on our course to the fraction, and we've got to keep going!"

And after a moment the bell ceased its clangor. It was a distant sound, and its location was indefinite even to a sharp ear.

"It strikes me that sounds in general are a little warded all of a sudden," said the captain to his mate. "I'll swear that I can hear Hedge Fence's five-second blasts now. But there she howls off the starboard bow. The clouds must be giving us an echo. We've got to leave it to the compa.s.s."

A skilful mariner is careful about forsaking the steady finger of a proved compa.s.s in order to chase sounds around the corner in foggy weather. He understands that air strata raise the d.i.c.kens with whistle-blasts. There are zones of silence--there is divergence of sound.

Fogg held his position, his legs braced, and n.o.body paid any especial attention to him. They in the pilothouse were too busy with other affairs.

There is one sound in thick weather that tells a navigator much. It is the echo of his own whistle.

The big steamer was hoa.r.s.ely hooting her way.

Suddenly there was a sound which fairly flew up and hit Captain Mayo in the face. It was an echo. It was the sound of the _Montana's_ whistle-blast flung back at him from some object so near at hand that there was barely a clock-tick between whistle and echo.

The captain yelped a great oath and yanked his bell-pulls furiously.

"That echo came from a schooner's sails," he shouted.

Then, dead ahead, clanged her bell. The next instant, plunging along at least eight miles an hour, in spite of engines clawing at full speed astern, the towering bow smashed into the obstacle in her path.

It was a mighty shock which sent a tremor from stem to stern of the great fabric. They saw that they hit her--a three-masted schooner at anchor, with her sails set, dingy canvas wet and idle in the foggy, breathless night. But their impact against her was almost as if they had hit a pier. The collision sent them reeling about the pilot-house. As they drove past they saw her go down, her stern a splintered ma.s.s of wreckage, in which men were frantically struggling.

"That's a granite-lugger! See her go down, like a stone!" gasped Mate Bangs. "My G.o.d! What do you suppose she has done to us forward?"

"Get there. Get there!" roared Captain Mayo. "Get there and report, sir!"

But before the chief mate was half-way down the ladder on his way the wailing voice of the lookout reported disaster. "Hole under the water-line forward," he cried.

"There are men in the water back there, sir," said a quartermaster.

"We're making water fast in the forward compartment," came a voice through the speaking-tube.

Already they in the pilot-house could hear the ululation of women in the depths of the ship, and then the husky clamor of the many voices of men drowned the shriller cries.

Captain Mayo had seen the survivors from the schooner struggling in the water. But he rang for full speed ahead and ordered the quartermaster to aim her into the north, knowing that land lay in that direction.

"Eight hundred lives on my shoulders and a hole in her," he told himself, while all his world of hope and ambition seemed rocking to ruin. "I can't wait to pick up those poor devils."

In a few minutes--in so few minutes that all his calculations as to his location were upset--the _Montana_ plowed herself to a shuddering halt on a shoal, her bow lifting slightly. And when the engines were stopped she rested there, st.u.r.dily upright, steady as an island. But in her saloon the men and women who fought and screamed and cursed, beating to and fro in windrows of humanity like waves in a cavern, were convinced that the shuddering shock had signaled the doom of the vessel.

Half-dressed men, still dizzy with sleep, confused by dreams which blended with the terrible reality, trampled the helpless underfoot, seeking exit from the saloon.

The hideous uproar which announced panic was a loud call to the master of the vessel. He understood what havoc might be wrought by the brutal senselessness of the struggle. He ran from the pilot-house, stepping on the feet of the general manager, who was stumbling about in bewildered fashion.

"Call all the crew to stations and guard the exits," Captain Mayo commanded the second mate.

On his precipitate way to the saloon the captain pa.s.sed the room of the wireless operator, and the tense crackle of the spark told him that the SOS signal was winging its beseeching flight through the night.

Three men, half dressed, with life-preservers buckled on in hit-or-miss fashion, met him on the deck, dodged his angry clutch, and leaped over the rail into the sea, yelling with all the power of their lungs.

A quartermaster was at the captain's heels.

"Get over a life-boat on each side and attend to those idiots!" roared Mayo.

He thrust his way into a crowded corridor, beating frantic men back with his fists, adjuring, a.s.suring, appealing, threatening. He mounted upon a chair in the saloon. He fairly outbellowed the rest of them. Men of the sea are trained to shout against the tempest.

"You are safe! Keep quiet! Sit down! This steamer is ash.o.r.e on a sand-bank. She's as solid as Bunker Hill." He shouted these a.s.surances over and over.

They began to look at him, to pay heed to him. His uniform marked his ident.i.ty.

"You lie!" screamed an excited man. "We're out to sea! We're sinking!

Where are your life-boats?"

Bedlam began again. Like the fool who shouts "Fire!" in a throng, this brainless individual revived all the fears of the frenzied pa.s.sengers.

Mayo realized that heroic action was necessary. He leaped down from the chair, seized the man who had shouted, and beat the fellow's face with the flat of his hard hand.

That scene of conflict was startling enough to serve as a real jolt to their attention. They hushed their cries; they looked on, impressed, cowed.

"If there's any other man in this crowd who wants to tell me I'm a liar, let him stand out and say so," shouted Captain Mayo. "You're making fools of yourselves. There's no danger."

He released the pallid and trembling man of whom he had made an example and stepped on to a chair. He put up his hand, dominating them until he had secured absolute silence.

"You--you--you!" he said, crisply, darting finger here and there, pointing out individuals. "You seem to have more level heads than the rest, you men! Go forward where the man is casting the lead. Cast the lead yourselves. Come back here and report to these pa.s.sengers, as their committee. I'm telling you the truth. There's no water under us to speak of." He remained in the saloon until his committee returned.

The man who reported looked a bit sheepish. "The captain is right, ladies and gentlemen. We could even see the sand where she has plowed it up--they've got lanterns over the rail. There's no danger."

A steward trotted to Captain Mayo and handed him a slip of paper. The captain read the message and shook the paper in the faces of the throng.

"The revenue cutter _Acushnet_ has our wireless call and is starting, and the _Itasca_ will follow. I advise you to go to bed and go to sleep.

You're perfectly, absolutely safe. You will be transferred when it's daylight. Now be men and women!"