Part 2

That was the picture. The echoes came down from the hills; the Lime Point siren roared straight ahead of him; and over there to the right the Fort Point diaphone was bellowing like a hundred fear-maddened bulls. The ship crept on.

In his mind’s eye MacKenzie saw the steep, black prow approaching Lime Point--until, within a minute, he must say the word which would compel the _Empress_ to turn to the right in order to avoid the rocky promotory as she passed through the narrows.

Then a strange and terrible change came.

The echoes from the steep hills dwindled and died away. The roaring of the Lime Point siren grew fainter, more remote, as if the ship were being shoved off to the right. The crashing diapason from Fort Point was growing with appalling suddenness.

At this same moment the color of the waters which swirled against the steel flanks of the _Empress_ deepened to a turgid brown. The ebb tide was rushing seaward.

The captain halted abruptly. His tall form was erect no longer; he leaned forward, and his face was pallid as he peered into the fog toward the spot from which that diaphone’s blare emerged.

In the instant, MacKenzie became rigid. He stood like a grim statue. His shaggy brows seemed to hide the eyes beneath them. Under his heavy, gray mustache his lips pressed tightly together. And he asked himself a question:

Had he erred?

If he had--if in the painting of that mental picture he had been mistaken--by a quarter of a mile in distance, by two minutes in time--this seven-knot ebb tide would be carrying the liner far over to her right. She would be steaming toward Fort Point. It had occurred once. Another ship, laden, like this one, with hundreds of men and women, had been swung off her course in a fog by the ebb tide, lusty with freshet waters, and driven on those rocks. The bones of that ship lay somewhere on the bottom mingled with the skeletons of her passengers.

Two minutes! And that narrow interval of time depended to a hair upon the superiority of the _Empress’_ throbbing propellers over the opposition of the waters. What man could measure the results of that struggle down there under the surface? Or tell to exactness what might the currents were putting forth to-day?

The hillsides gave no echo now. The Lime Point siren died away entirely. The Fort Point diaphone crashed louder. The minute at whose expiration MacKenzie had intended to speak the word by which the liner would turn reached its final second. He put that question by. He had made his calculation in the beginning.

Now he spoke. The ship turned.

Her bow swung toward Fort Point; she steamed straight into that blaring warning as if she were defying it.

Her captain sprang toward MacKenzie; his right hand was upraised in a gesture of terrible protest; he was sweating; great beads of water stood out on his forehead. “Man!” he shouted hoarsely. “The current! Can’t you see?” He pointed frantically into the din of the diaphone as though it were a visible thing. “Can’t you hear? You’re piling her up on Fort Point!”

MacKenzie stood rigid. His head was thrust forward as if he were straining to listen for some other sound than that reverberating thunder which was overwhelming the entire ship; as if in this moment he were hoping to catch some shred of noise from the Lime Point siren in the place where he had pictured it. But there was no answer from that quarter.

The _Empress_ kept on turning. Over her bows now, nearer, louder, terrible in volume and intensity, Fort Point’s warning came. The captain leaped in front of MacKenzie. His hand flew out toward the marine telegraph.

“Stop her!” His voice was heavy with horror.

MacKenzie seized the captain’s arm, and his fingers were like iron as he pulled it back from the handle of the telegraph. There was a sharp struggle; the captain tore away from him and whirled toward the man at the wheel. His lips parted; but even as he uttered the first word of that order to alter her course, MacKenzie drowned that order with his own deep-voiced command:

“Keep her headed as she is now!”

Then, as the ship moved on into the grayness, while the blare from Fort Point welled straight above her lofty prow, the captain groaned and clutched the rail instinctively, as though to save himself against the impact of the collision with those rocks.

In that final instant the fog, like a faint-hearted conspirator who gives up and flees before his companions, began to retreat up the slope toward the distant mountain. But the hill wind remained stubborn. So, as MacKenzie touched the captain on the shoulder, pointing over there straight to their left, they gazed upon the ragged rocks from which her pilot had preserved the ship, and they saw the pallid jets of steam emanating from the siren behind the white lighthouse; but as yet they could hear nothing of the warning which the siren bellowed.

On her beam now; and now it receded to her quarter; and now the _Empress_ had passed the place into the channel. The harbor showed clear before her bows; the sunlight was flecking the waters. MacKenzie moved his hand upon the lever of the telegraph, and the great liner ceased that creeping to resume her proud pace toward the wharves.

* * * * *

“It was that wind in the hills,” MacKenzie told the secretary in the office of the Bar Pilots’ Association, while he was leaving the order for fees which the captain had signed. “Come on thick for a few minutes, John; and just as I got her under Lime Point that wind played a dirty trick on me. Lime Point siren kept carrying off toward the mountain somewheres, and Fort Point came on so loud you couldn’t hear another thing. For a minute they had me pretty near to guessing. I’d of been in trouble--if I hadn’t been sure o’ my bearings.”

Which was all the comment that he made, for he was in a hurry to get home for that birthday festival.

At home, he rested as a good workman should rest. He shook off that sea harshness of his; his voice was gentle as he played with his grandchildren. He dispensed with that quarter-deck authoritativeness; he became the slave of the whole shrieking brood and did their smallest bidding. As if it were wearisome now, he forsook that calmness which he had worn while he was dealing with the hostile elements; he fairly trembled with nervousness when he stole into the sitting room to place the two dolls on the center table, so fearful was he lest one of the twins would catch him at it.

But there was a thing which he could not shake off, a trait which had fastened itself too firmly during his hours of facing the unexpected. One of his daughters mentioned it to her mother at the close of the evening, after the children had been put to bed, and while the rest of them were talking in front of the fire. MacKenzie was arguing with his two sons-in-law.

“Don’t you go quoting government statistics at me,” he was saying implacably; “I don’t care what they say; I’m right!”

His daughter’s voice was full of amused tolerance as she spoke to her mother: “He is _so_ sure!”

And if the elements were--as men of old believed them--gifted with the power of speech, there is no doubt that on their next meeting at the inner portal of the Golden Gate the hill wind and the fog would have echoed that sentiment.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the January 5, 1923 issue of _Sea Stories_ magazine.]