Part 3

She stopped only for one more meeting of their lips, and then, no longer wondering at her obedience, she disappeared down the nearest companionway. Andy moved in an ecstasy down the deck; if he had had doubts before of what he was about to do, they were unfelt in this incredible delight. He loved little Bobs; she loved him; they could be married if he carried through what already he had planned. He was reckless to, oblivious of the confusion on deck except as it threatened his plans. Then most of the men moving about and running back and forth from the bridge vanished below; they left the decks almost deserted, and gave him his opportunity to act. He crept up to the wireless cabin. The rasp of the current in sending a communication came to him clearly. He waited tensely till it ceased; then he opened the door and entered the cabin, swiftly shutting the door behind him and locking it. The relief wireless operator was alone within, seated before his instruments.

“All right?” Andy demanded of him.

“The _Corinthian’s_ in easy communication, of course--a little ahead of us, and twenty or thirty miles to the south.”

“She’s also within communication radius of the _Wellington_?”

“Sure; the _Wellington’s_ now about a hundred miles east of us. If we sent out a call as if it came from the _Wellington_, the _Corinthian_ couldn’t tell whether it came from us or the _Wellington_.”

“Good! And the _Wellington_ wouldn’t know we were impersonating them? The _Wellington’s_ operator has gone to bed now?”

“He certainly isn’t at his station.”

“Now’s the time, then. Quick, man. The S. O. S.! Send it! We’re the _Wellington_, in trouble. This ship is now the _Wellington_, a hundred miles east of us; and you’re sending out the S. O. S. call as the _Wellington’s_ sinking!”

The operator shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Can’t! Why not?”

“I’ve been thinking it over.”

“Well?”

“We can’t call ‘Wolf!’ on the ocean. The wireless must always bring a ship to a ship in distress; no captain must doubt it a minute.”

“Once won’t do any harm,” Andy argued recklessly. “We’ll merely put the _Corinthian_ back a hundred miles, and maybe bring back some other ship which gets the call. And think of the excitement we’ll give the passengers on the _Corinthian_ till they find the _Wellington_ isn’t sinking.”

“Yes; and when they find it out?”

“No one can ever find that you did it,” Andy returned impatiently. “We’ve gone all over this, man. No one can tell where a wireless message comes from. The _Corinthian_ will think it comes from the _Wellington_. The _Wellington_ won’t know we’ve called since the operator’s in bed. The _Corinthian_ will call her, of course, and when there’s no answer that makes sure the _Wellington’s_ in trouble. If the _Corinthian_ calls us to go back to help the _Wellington_, too, we don’t get the call; our installation’s out of order for a few hours. Nothing could be simpler than that.”

“Still, it’s too much risk for five hundred.”

“Oh, all right. I expected a raise. A thousand for you, then.”

“No.”

“Two.”

“Not enough.”

“Three.”

“It might be found out here. The S. O. S. call is distinctive. You can hear the sending outside. If it is, I’m fired, and don’t get another job.”

“All right; four, then.”

The operator looked at Andy keenly. “How much higher will you go?” he asked frankly.

“Highbinder!” Andy accused him, and snatched pencil and pad. “S. O. S. _Wellington_ sinking. S. O. S.,” he scribbled.

“Five thousand for four words; cash down!” He drew money from his pocket. “Five more if you’re caught and fired. My word for that. That’s all I had left on my letter of credit when I cashed it at Glasgow; but you know there’s more where this came from.”

The operator held his hand over his key and listened nervously. “Can they know about this now?” he asked. There seemed, indeed, to be already a movement on the bridge as if the officers had heard the scheme or suspected something. But Andy did not sense this, or was reckless of it. He pushed his money halfway across the table.

“I pay as you send. Ah, that’s it! S. O. S. That’s the stuff; there’s a thousand. Is that _Wellington_ you’re spelling? Right; there’s a thousand more. ‘Sinking.’ Now ‘S. O. S.’ Four thousand and a fifth for the repeat to clinch it! Sent? Good! Put it away; put it away. They’re coming now!”

Indeed, the alarm, vague before, had become definite and loud. Men hammered on the locked door to the right of the wireless cabin and cried for entrance; and all about the noise of disturbance and haste increased.

“I told you they could hear it!” the operator gasped. He was bent over his table, his receivers to his ears, listening to the result of his message.

“You haven’t done any harm,” Andy steadied him. “And look here! Now you’ve done it, you’ve got to stand by what you did! You can’t take back all that!” He pulled the operator away from his instruments as the beating on the door threatened the panels. “If you want excuse for not taking it back, just don’t get that fixed for a few hours!” He seized a stool, and raised it to break some of the connections of the wireless apparatus. The wireless operator, opposing him in fright, tripped him, and Andy fell, his full weight crashing the heavy stool into the condensers and coils before him. The operator pressed down his key as he bent over the wreck in horror.

There came a yellow splutter, a loud crash of the powerful current, a blinding blue flash; then the smell of insulation burned, metal fused. And the door on the right to the deck burst open. Already Andy had unlocked the door on the other side; he pushed the wireless operator before him, and himself stumbled out upon the dark and slippery deck, where the spray from the sea flew in their faces.

The operator disappeared; Andy, left alone, slowly understood that some general alarm, which could not have been caused by his act in the wireless station, was spreading through the ship. Passengers, unsteady and in panic, were appearing on deck; and now the air was not salt with the smack of the sea; some strange, subtle, sickening scent changed it; and there came the cry in wild fright:

“Fire! Fire below! The ship’s on fire!”

Men, women, and children, half dressed, or with overcoats over night robes, rushed out from crowded companionways. Sailors and stewards and stewardesses attempted to control these; there was no fire, they said; or it was not serious; it was now being put out. But more passengers in night robes overwhelmed them. Andy stood, dazed, as they crushed toward the wireless station and clamored:

“Fire! The ship’s on fire! Call help! Call the _Corinthian_. We’re burning up!”

The touch of some one, quite calm and controlled, made him look about. Roberta was beside him, still dressed as she had been; she had not gone to bed; she had heard the first reports of the fire.

“There was an accident in the stores. Oil got afire and scattered. It seems to be beyond control. Get people to dress. The stewards and ones like you and I can bring out their clothes. Of course, we’ve called help by wireless. The _Corinthian_ can’t be more than thirty miles away.”

“We can’t call it; it can’t come! It’s been called on an S. O. S. call to the _Wellington_!”

“What’s happened to the _Wellington_?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why is the _Corinthian_ going to it?”

Andy told her.

“They must have our wireless repaired now,” she said, as they moved forward with the other passengers. “You couldn’t have broken it badly.”

But panic and terror of the passengers increased as they neared the wireless station. “There is no immediate danger. Everybody dress warmly!” Stewards and sailors attempted to command.

“What’s the matter with the wireless?” the cries about the cabin announced the silence of the instruments.

“What ship is coming to us? Why don’t we hear the wireless?”

In response a second officer showed himself at the door of the silent cabin. “The _Corinthian_ is close to us!” he shouted. “Keep calm. She must soon come up!”

“When did you get her?” the shouts returned. “What’s the matter with the wireless? Can’t you call the _Corinthian_? Can’t you call any ship?”

“We’ve called the _Corinthian_; she’s coming now!” the officer lied loudly; but the people in panic sensed the lie.

“The wireless isn’t working! They haven’t called any ship! They can’t use it! It’s not working!”

The crazed crowds stumbling from the companionways heard and shouted it back over the ship. Denial of the danger below no longer was possible; the flames below were beginning to be felt; smoke seeped through the whole ship and hovered, a hot, steaming cloud, over the holds where the stores were blazing. Stewards and some of the men of the first cabin still moved about, attempting to quiet and reassure; but the seamen, in the details defined in the orders to abandon ship, were freeing the lifeboats, putting food and water in them; and officers directed with revolvers strapped over their uniforms and cartridges in the boxes on their belts.

The thud of pumps throwing sea water on the flames confused the vibrations of the screws; still, the shaking of the ship told that the engines were being forced their fastest.

Yet the sea about the _Cumberland_ remained black and desolate. Rockets streaked into the sky from the _Cumberland’s_ forecastle, signaling desperately that the ship was in dire danger, confessing that the wireless had failed.

“They can’t work the wireless!” Women screamed and swooned in the crush about the lifeboats. “They’ll put us in boats, and we’ll drift till we die. There’s no ship called to us!”

Andy, blocking the crush off from Roberta, was borne with her against the side of the cabins. He smelled fresh paint, and felt the greasiness of it on his hands. They were where the painters had been working. He lost Roberta from beside him; she had stooped, and was feeling for something at their feet. She straightened, and he saw in her hands two bits of board--the blocks with sandpaper tacked to them which the painter had used and left there.

“Get me nearer the wireless cabin,” she directed.

Not understanding, but obeying, he worked a way for her. He got past one of the sailors on guard outside the cabin. An officer appeared; Roberta spoke to him; he motioned her in curtly, and Andy followed.

The chief operator and the relief man were working feverishly over the wreck of the wireless apparatus; they stopped and tested their tangle of connections and coils, looked to each other, and tore out their own repairs. Outside the rockets again roared into the air; cries of terror increased. Roberta, crouching inside the wireless cabin out of sight from the deck, struck her sandpapered blocks together; a harsh, grating rasp resulted. The second officer half opened the door to the deck so it could be better heard, and himself seized the blocks.

“Rasp!” the sound grated, like the rough crackle of the current of the wireless in order. “Ras-sp!” A few of the passengers heard it; they cried to others, and more made it out.

“The wireless is working! We’re getting help!”

Rockets still shot into the sky; but now, instead of increasing the panic, these aided to control it. The wireless was working and bringing ships to help the _Cumberland_; the rockets were rising to show the _Cumberland’s_ position as the rescue ships raced up.

In the wireless cabin, the second officer handed the blocks to another and nodded to him to keep them going.

“Some one ran in here half crazy just after the fire broke out, and did that.” He motioned Andy toward the wrecked apparatus. “A strange thing; the _Wellington_, a hundred miles east, just then was in trouble, too, and calling for help. Our man here heard the _Corinthian_ respond, and say she was starting back. He was going to respond for us, when that was done, and our own trouble came.”

“Now where are we going?” Andy asked anxiously.

“There was no use in trying to catch the _Corinthian_--she’s faster than we, and would be going her best on an S. O. S. call. Our only chance of getting help soon is from the _Elbe_--the German ship ahead. She was about sixty miles ahead of us, bound for New York. We are assuming that she also must have got the S. O. S. call from the _Wellington_--though our man heard only the _Corinthian_ respond. So we’re steering to run across the _Elbe_ if she’s coming back to the _Wellington_. If she is, we should see her lights now in half an hour.”

“But if she didn’t get the _Wellington’s_ call, and if she isn’t coming back?”

The officer set his lips firmly. “Then I guess we can get the women first into the boats, and keep them adrift until most of them, anyway, are picked up.” He looked to Roberta thankfully. “Since they think the wireless is going again, we can handle them more decently.”

Andy stared out over the dark sea. To the south and astern, the _Corinthian_, which could have been alongside before now, was racing more than a hundred miles away to pursue a sound ship. He had sent it on that pursuit. Somewhere out ahead--if the German _Elbe_ also had happened to hear his false S. O. S. calls and was responding to them--was the ship which they might meet in time to save the _Cumberland’s_ company. The rockets constantly exploded in the sky to attract it. Slowly, with terrible, heart-dragging counting of the minutes while the fire gained and gained again in spite of all the floods pumped into the hull, the half-hour passed. Still the electricians worked over the wireless apparatus; only the rasping of sandpapered blocks still tricked the passengers that the wireless was working.

“Time’s up!” the second officer shut his watch. “If we’re going to meet the _Elbe_, we should see her lights now.”

A cry from the point of the deck forward--light--a streaking flame in the sky ahead. The German liner _Elbe_ was in sight! It answered the rockets of the _Cumberland_. The two ships raced on to each other.

* * * * *

The fast German mail steamer, _Elbe_--which every one knows was responding to an unexplained false call from the _Wellington_--took off the passengers from the burning _Cumberland_; and, as the crew of the _Cumberland_ remained to fight the fire, the _Elbe_ stood by till the _Corinthian_ came back from its useless chase. As the _Corinthian_ was a British ship of an allied line, it stayed with the _Cumberland_, and finally brought it into port after the fire had gutted the ship and burned out. Accordingly, the _Elbe_, with the _Cumberland’s_ passengers, reached New York on Saturday afternoon, while the _Corinthian_ was still at sea.

The arrest at New York of Roberta Leigh for her high crimes committed in England therefore was postponed till the _Corinthian_ docked. But this arrest was meant to be only postponed. The British government, thoroughly aroused to the need of decisive and drastic measures for the suppression of the suffragist outrages, were determined to show no quarter. The crown officers waited doggedly for the coming of the _Corinthian_ on Monday.

Wherefore, on Sunday night, Mr. Andrew Farnham called on Miss Roberta Leigh at the quiet country place of one of her classmates up the Hudson.

“Bobs,” he said, when he was alone with her, “the Britishers are in for bitter disappointment when the _Corinthian_ gets to quarantine to-morrow. They’ve been oiling up the thumbscrews in the tower and sharpening the spikes of the Iron Maiden for you. When they find they haven’t got you, our recent acts of evasion will be kindergarten games compared to what may be required to keep you from being extradited. And, to confess the truth, dear, this having all but slaughtered a shipload of people has scared me. I don’t know what I’d find myself doing if they got after you again. So, just to protect me, won’t you marry me now? Come on; let’s become woman and husband!”

Roberta kissed him and laughed. “You didn’t really hurt any one. Everybody got off the _Cumberland_, and the _Corinthian_ couldn’t have put out the fire even if it had come right away. I didn’t hurt anybody in England; and, as for their precious old property, I told my lawyer this morning to pay what was right for that.”

“You did that? Why?”

“I didn’t do those things for votes for women I’d never seen. I--I did them because you made me so mad, and I wanted to show you I didn’t care a thing about you.”

“Why?”

“Because I did--and thought you didn’t really care for me.”

“But now?”

“I know.”

“Then give me another kiss, Bobs. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you over the garden gate and you dared me. Why did you do that?”

“Because I knew I was going to love you, I guess, and tried to deny it.”

He held her close a long time, and their kisses no longer could be counted. “Dear, what a dangerous thing is the mating impulse!”

“Yes; if you try to deny it.”

“Then we’re stopping that right now, aren’t we?”

“Right now!”

Wherefore upon the passenger list of the steamer for Brazil which sailed from New York next morning appeared the names of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Farnham in the royal suite. By wireless, as they sailed out to sea, they heard of the horror of the British government at finding that the girl on the _Corinthian_ was not Roberta Leigh, and that the very militant suffragette again had escaped.

But, in equal sense of outrage, the suffragist leaders in England received the news that Roberta Leigh had paid for all damage done by her in the name of the suffrage cause.

“We have long suspected,” the chief starver for the suffrage cause was quoted in the newspapers, “the sincerity of the suffragist support from the young women of America. Miss Leigh has proved by this weak reparation that her acts here were performed without sense of conviction. It is such as she who seem to justify, to the thoughtless, the charge that there is nothing new in principle in our attitude toward men. Her traitorous repairing of damage which we supposed was done in good faith will certainly cause us to be more certain of the sincerity and conviction of other recruits in our ranks before intrusting them with important acts of destruction. The rumored marriage of Miss Leigh is, under the circumstances, perfectly comprehensible, and only a final evidence of her defection.”

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 15, 1914 issue of The Popular Magazine.]