“South 70° E., sir, weather’s a bit sulky and inclined to dirt before daylight, I should think. Lot of ships about. Bishop bore N. 20° W. fifteen miles off at eight bells (4 a.m.). Good morning.” And as he uttered the last words the second officer of the Kafirstan, 10,000-ton cargo steamer, London to Boston, U.S., swung his burly form down the lee-bridge ladder, and the darkness swallowed him up. The chief, who had just relieved him, mumbled out “G’mornin’” in the midst of a cavernous yawn, not because he was churlish or out of humour, but for the reason that be a man never so seasoned, the sudden transition from the cosy recesses of a warm bunk and sweet sleep to a narrow platform some forty feet above the sea, fully exposed to the wrathful edge of a winter gale at four o’clock in the morning, does not predispose him to cheerful conversation, or indeed any other of the amenities of life, until the wonderful adaptability of the human body has had time to adjust itself to the altered conditions.  
No; John Furness, chief mate, was anything but a sulky man. Buffeted by the storms of Fate from his earliest youth in far fiercer fashion than ever the gales of winter had smitten him, he was now by way of280 esteeming himself one of the most fortunate of mankind, for, after serving as second mate for several years with a chief and master’s ticket, and never getting a better berth than some thousand-ton tramp could afford him, he had suddenly taken unto himself a wife—a dear girl, as poor and as friendless as himself—with the quaint remark that the best thing to do with two lonely people was to make ’em one, on the principle that like cures like. And with his marriage his luck seemed to have turned. On the second day of his honeymoon he was taking his young wife round the docks, and pointing out to her the various ships—like introducing her to old acquaintances—when suddenly, with a bound, he left her side and disappeared over the edge of a jetty. He had caught sight of an old gentleman who had tripped his foot in a coil of rope and tumbled over it and the edge of the pier at the same time. John’s promptitude cost him a wetting, but got him his present berth, the best he had ever held in his life, and his heart beat high with hope that at last he was on the high road to fortune.
 
Still, all these pleasant recollections didn’t prevent him feeling sleepy and chilly upon relieving his shipmate. Vigorously he called up his resources of energy, peering through the thick gloom ahead at the twinkling gleams showing here and there, betokening the presence of other ships. Far beneath him the untiring engines, with their Titanic thrust and recover, kept his lofty station a-quiver as they drove the huge mass of the Kafirstan steadily onward against the fierce and increasing storm. Again and again he answered281 cheerily to the look-out man’s taps on the bells announcing lights “All right,” and as often by a word to the helmsman behind him, altered his great vessel’s course a little to port or starboard in order to avoid collision with the passing ships. All this in the usual course of routine—it is what hundreds of men like him are doing this morning, thinking no more of the magnitude of the forces they control than a cabman who navigates the crowded London streets dwells upon what would happen if he should spill his fare under a passing waggon. It is, above all things, necessary at sea to refrain from dwelling upon what may happen. The one thing needful is to be equal to each duty as it arises. And John Furness was undoubtedly that. But suddenly an awful crash flung him backwards; his head struck against a stanchion of the bridge, a myriad lights gleamed before his glazing eyes, and he knew no more—knew nothing, that is, of the short, stern agony through which his shipmates passed as the huge fabric beneath them admitted the supremacy of the ever-watchful sea. She had met—her mass of 10,000 tons or so being hurled along at the rate of twelve miles an hour—with the Terror of the Darkness, a derelict just awash, one of those ancient Norwegian timber-scows, the refuse of the sea, that crawl to and fro across the Atlantic on sufferance, until there comes a day when the half-frozen crew are swept from the top of the slippery deck-load, the sea pours in through a hundred openings, and she becomes one of the most awful dangers known to mariners—a water-logged derelict. Floating just awash at the will of ocean currents, she cannot be located with any degree of certainty, but solid almost as a rock she drifts silently across the great ocean highway invisible, unheard, a lier-in-wait for the lives of men.
 
When John Furness returned to consciousness again, he became aware of acute pains all over his body. Also that he was not drowning, although at intervals waves washed over him. Gradually he realized that he was clinging desperately, mechanically, but with such force that he could hardly unbend the grip of his hands, to a slimy rope. But where? As his mind cleared, and the certainty of the awful tragedy that had just passed over him and left him still alive became borne in upon him, he felt his heart swell. He thought of the handful of brave men, of whom he had already got to know every one, suddenly hurled into oblivion with all the hopes and love of which each was the centre. And a few heavy drops rolled out from his brine-encrusted eyes. Then he thought of Mary—his Mary—and at the same moment realized his duty: to strive after life for her sake. The impulse was needed, because that lethargy that means a loss of the desire to live was fast stealing over him. With a great effort that sent racking pains through his stiffened body he turned his face upwards, passed one hand across his face, and saw where he was. Lying upon the slope of a bank thickly overgrown with dank green weed like fine hair, and with a strong fishy smell. With awakening interest he peered at the rope he held—it, too, was thickly draped with the same growth, but in addition, beneath the weed, it was encrusted with jagged little shells. More than this he could hardly discern for the present, because it was still dark; but as his senses resumed their normal keenness of apprehension, he knew that he was afloat, and guessed the truth—that by some mysterious means he had been preserved from drowning by laying hold of the same cause that had sent all his late shipmates to their sudden end. A low, sullen murmur smote upon his ears, for the wind had gone down, and the resentful sea still rolled its broken surface violently in the direction in which it had been so fiercely driven, making John’s holding-on place roll and heave in a heavy, lifeless manner. Th............