This final waiting for the chance of succor seemed to be the hardest
trial of all. The door had been hooked back to keep it wide open, so
wind and sea invaded the trim privacy of the cabin. Spray leaped over
the ship in such dense sheets that a considerable quantity of water
quickly lodged on the port side where Courtenay's bunk was fixed.
There was no means of escape for it in that quarter, and the angle at
which the Kansas lay would permit a depth of at least two feet to
accumulate ere the water began to flow out through the door to the
starboard.
At the great crises of existence the stream of thought is apt to form
strange eddies. Courtenay, when the ship struck, and it was possible
that each second might register his last conscious impression, found
himself coolly reviewing various explanations of the existence of an
uncharted shoal in a locality situate many miles from the known danger
zone. Elsie, strung half-consciously to the highest tension by the
affrighting probability of being set adrift in a small boat at the
mercy of the sea roaring without--a sea which pounded the steel hull of
the Kansas with such force that the great ship seemed to flinch from
each blow like a creature in pain--Elsie, then, faced by such an
intolerable prospect, was a prey to real anxiety because the wearing
apparel scattered by Courtenay on the floor was becoming soaked in
brine.
She actually stooped to rescue a coat which was not yet saturated
beyond redemption. As she lifted the garment, a packet of letters,
tied with a tape, fell from its folds. She placed the coat on the
writing-table, and endeavored to stuff the letters into a pigeon-hole.
They were too bulky, so she laid them on the coat. In doing this she
could not avoid seeing the words, "Your loving sister, Madge," written
on the outer fold of the last letter in the bundle.
And that brought a memory of her previous visit to the captain's
stateroom; the contrast between the careless chatter of that glorious
summer afternoon and the appalling midnight of this fourth day of the
voyage was something quite immeasurable; it was marked by a void as
that which separates life and death. She was incapable of reasoned
reflection. A series of mental pictures, a startling jumble of
ideas--trivial as the wish to save the clothes from a wetting,
tremendous as the near prospect of eternity--danced through her brain
with bewildering clearness. She felt that if she were fated to live to
a ripe old age she would never forget a single detail of the furniture
and decorations of the room. She would hear forever the dolorous
howling of the gale, the thumping of the waves against the quivering
plates, the rapid, methodic thud of the donkey-engine, which, long
since deserted by its cowardly attendant, was faithfully doing its work
and flooding the ship with electric light.