Eight boats; and each boat might hold
twenty-five people--that is, if it was in a mill-pond. But a night like
this--how many--even if the running gear were sound? "No, no," said Jan
to himself, and reinspected the lone life-raft on the top deck. Two
cigar-shaped steel air-cylinders with a thin connecting deck was the
life-raft. Jan had seen better ones; but a raft, at least, would not
capsize.
He descended to the main deck, to where, in the gangway between house
and rail, he could find a little quiet and think things over. While
there, amidships, a sea swept up under the paddle-wheel casing. It
boomed like a gun. With it went some crackling. Again a booming--again a
crackling. The boat broached to. Sea-water was running the length of her
deck.
From out of the snow and night another sea came; and this one came
straight aboard, roaring as it came. Jan knew what it meant--there is
always the first sea by itself. Not long now before there would be
another.
And not long before there was another.
And soon there would be a hundred of them, one racing after the other.
And a thousand more of them--only this rust-eaten hull, with her
scrollwork topsides, would not hold together long enough to see a
thousand of them.
Jan tried to figure out how far they were from the Cape Cod shore. Ten,
fifteen, twenty miles. Call it twenty. Jan doubted if she would live to
get there, even with the gale behind her.
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