The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

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СКАЧАТЬ came sharp cries, oaths, and orders hoarsely bawled, and heavy feet that ran unsteadily along the decks. The pulsing engines suddenly grew still.

      “Bissagos Reef! Ethel!” These were his only thoughts.

      He leaped into some clothes, snatched his revolver, jerked open the cabin door, and ran out in his shirt-sleeves to the main saloon. It was already filled with grotesque, excited passengers. A babel swelled tumultuously, with high-pitched questions, curses, and screams.

      “Steady!” he shouted. “Steady, now! No danger if you all keep cool!”

      Hands clutched at him; he staved them off. “Lord!” thought he. “What cattle human beings in a panic are!”

      He heard the purser’s voice that reinforced his own—heard other officers—knew that for a moment his presence might be spared.

      “I must go!” he told himself; for in the thickening mob he caught no glimpse of Ethel or the invalid.

      “I’ve got to find them anyway!”

      He shoved by main force, along the up-tilted floor, toward their cabins. From behind him, on the aft staircase, Captain Lockhart’s mellow Scotch voice boomed out: “We’re good for fufteen mennets yet! No danger if ye’ll tak’ it easy—all han’s to th’ boats! Weemen fairrst!”

      Suddenly he came on Ethel and her palsied uncle. The old man’s halting steps had held her back. A flash of potent admiration lightened through Willard’s soul at the vision of the girl, pale and afraid, yet not startled or hastened from her duty.

      She came onward, helping the pitiful, twisted figure, step by step—a figure doubly grotesque now, in scant, disheveled clothing, with sweat of pain on the knit brow and terror staring from the widened eyes. She looked, the doctor thought, most dignified and noble in her long, loose dressing gown, over which the yellow braids hung to below her girdle. A sort of fine simplicity enshrouded her. And though he had witnessed bold, hard men in peril, he thought that never had he seen so brave a thing as that gently bred girl holding back her steps, timing her pace to the hobbling of the senile creature who now clung to her for safety.

      “What is it—tell me! Are we going down?” she cried to him, her voice trembling a little, but quite clear above the uproar of the crowd or the grinding and tearing of the ship. Her look was full of confidence; even in her fear he found no trace of panic. “Are we lost? What’s happened, can you tell me?”

      “We’re on Bissagos—probably no danger.” His body shielded her from the stampeding pack that weltered past them, herded by a dozen of the officers and crew. His nerves were ice. He felt nothing save joy and high elation at this chance to save her life, at this thought that Ethel now was looking up to him, trusting him for guidance and deliverance.

      “We mayn’t break up—for some time yet!” he shouted, bending toward her. “No danger—lots of boats—the mainland near! Come on, though—there’s no time to lose!”

      He stooped and gathered the cripple in his arms, then lurched ahead through the wild mob. Ethel followed; he felt the grasp of her hand upon his shoulder, and strange, mad thoughts seethed up in him.

      Thus presently, jostling and buffeted, they won through the panic and the uproar of the open lower deck, which shelved off sickeningly to the very water’s edge.

      The night still gloomed impenetrable round the wounded ship. The wind had risen and whipped furiously the wild, green flares which flung sick shadows over the features of the dead.

      Momentarily the waves boiled in spume-vortices over the sunken reef, sweeping the bulwarks, drenching the mad throng. At every heave and slide of the impaled monster a ghastly discord rose—“She’s going! Breaking up!” It mingled with the liner’s sirens and exhaust, which were ripping the sky with diapasons of appeal.

      A rocket screeched aloft, and by its glare the doctor saw a slashing, clawing frenzy at the rail—saw the davits rock and shudder as the boats were wrenched outboard and the horde swarmed them, bursting all constraint.

      “No chance for us there—with your uncle.” Willard made her understand. “They’d crush him in a second. We’ll have to wait.”

      He saw her nod. “Talk about women being cowards!” flashed the thought through his mind.

      Drawing her back into the shelter of a bulk, he put the cripple gently down. The old man, stunned, said nothing, but crouched low, with blinking eyes. Willard and the girl leaned up against the wall, bracing their feet upon the deck, which every moment settled at a steeper pitch.

      Now they could look down on the hideous fight. They saw the captain’s huge frame overtopping all, dominant as his voice that blared out in command. They caught a gleam of pistol steel in his hand—a spike of flame—and someone pitched across the rail.

      “Bairns and th’ weemen fairrst!” his brave old sea cry rang. Then, like lightning, a sudden something smote the captain’s head, and he was seen no more. Hell burst its bounds; panic reaped its certain due.

      III.

      “Don’t look! You mustn’t!” Willard cried, shielding from her the tragedy of the long-boat as a tackle jammed and spilled two-score clutching, yelling creatures in the swirl. The boat flailed—a giant pendulum—and shaking loose the few that clung to thwarts or gunwales, splintered to fragments on the liner’s iron skin.

      An instant, black, fighting things were sown broadcast upon the roaring sea—things that shrieked, went down bubbling, rose, then, with crisped fingers, disappeared forever.

      “There’s been an accident—don’t look!”

      “I’m not afraid,” he heard her answer, but the hand that grasped his arm trembled. He loved her for the very fear she knew so well to hold in leash.

      A shudder ran through the wreck—a roar that boomed above the sirens’ bellowing—then, where the bows had been, gaped a vast black emptiness, with death-screams choked by upswirling brine. A third of the whole ship had broken free and, with its fearful toll, had foundered like a plummet.

      The Sutherland, eased by this loss, ground back upon the reef more firmly than before, and settled at a safer pitch, but her survivors deemed their end was now upon them, and fought each other starkly at the boats. All but one of the green flares had burned away, and by this ghastly dim virescence Willard saw men trampled and women hurled aside.

      “Safer aboard than anywhere with madmen!” he cried in the girl’s ear. “Don’t move! Stay where you are!”

      He drove down into the wolf-pack—his duty called him there—and smote with hard fists that came back reddened from his blows, striving to scatter the crazed brutes. But in the dark and tumult he could compass nothing. A blow clipped his temple; he felt the blood run hot, but he only dashed it from his eyes and struck the harder, striving to wedge through and split the mob.

      He saw foul knife-play, heard the first mate grunt and double up, got sights of hands that strangled and glimpsed blind primitive anarchy as a second boat was launched.

      It foundered straightway, from gross overcrowding. Amid the drowning wretches, breaking off their hand-grasps, a third boat was got away with only five oars, her gunwales shipping water at each sea. Then went the life-raft. He helped fling it overboard, aided some to jump in safety, and vainly tried to hold back others СКАЧАТЬ