CHAPTER XIIIMAN OVERBOARD
For a moment there was pandemonium on the ship. No one seemed to know exactly what had happened, and shouts and cries rent the air as people blocked the stairs and companionways in a mad scramble for the deck.
Helen and Ruth were among the first to reach the deck, with Chess and Tom close behind them. There they were jostled by a seething mass of humanity and swept on toward the railing.
At the cry of “Man overboard” power had been shut off in the engine room. Fortunately the ship had been proceeding cautiously because of the storm, so that momentum carried it only a short distance from the scene of the accident.
Several lifeboats were lowered and rushed to the spot where life savers had already been thrown to the victim.
A small object was seen bobbing up and down on the water for several seconds and then disappeared.
“Oh, he will drown before they reach him!” cried Helen, putting a hand over her eyes.
“No,” cried Ruth, gripping the rail till the knuckles of both hands showed white, “there he is again! See? One of the life preservers has reached him. He can hold on now.”
“The boats are making good time,” said Tom, behind her. “He’s as good as rescued now.”
“Wonder who it is,” said Chess, and an obliging pleasant-faced man behind him volunteered the information:
“Old chap named Knowles. He was standing near the rail when we grazed the shoal——”
“Oh, so that’s what we heard below decks!” cried Helen.
“Yes’m,” said the stranger. “There was a grinding shock, if you remember, and this old boy was jarred loose from his hold on the rail and went overboard.”
The passengers watched with interest while the first lifeboat reached the elderly victim and lifted him aboard. The men in the other boats, seeing that the work of rescue had already been accomplished, turned back toward the steamer.
“Poor old fellow,” said Ruth commiseratingly. “The shock and the exposure are enough to kill an elderly man. I wonder,” she added thoughtfully, “if I couldn’t get him to take some of thetonic I have in my medicine kit. It might ward off a serious illness.”
Tom grinned.
“There’s the Red Cross nurse on the job again,” he said.
But Ruth did not smile with the others. She meant what she said, and when the lifeboat reached the ship and the victim was lifted to the deck, Ruth was one of the first at his side.
The ship’s doctor was already at the spot, well-supplied with restoratives, and when Ruth begged him to let her help, saying that she had had experience in nursing with the Red Cross, the physician smiled indulgently and invited her to the old gentleman’s cabin below.
Ruth ran for her favorite prescription, ignoring the good-natured rallying of her friends, and entered the old gentleman’s cabin just as they had made him comfortable in his berth.
The doctor examined the label on the bottle Ruth held out to him and nodded approvingly.
“Haven’t I met you somewhere before?” he asked, keen eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
The question surprised Ruth. But as she regarded the kindly, intelligent face of the physician, memory flashed back to her the vision of an emergency hospital somewhere back of the firing line; still figures on narrow cots of pain; soft-footed,busy nurses; grim-faced, competent surgeons, tireless in their service to humanity.
“I was with the Red Cross in France,” she suggested.
“Of course!” exclaimed the doctor. His manner was immediately cordial and he spoke as one member of the profession to another. “I have a fine memory for faces; but as to names—” He waved a deprecating hand. “Mr. Knowles is lucky in having so capable and willing a volunteer nurse,” he finished pleasantly.
At the mention of his name, the old gentleman on the bed opened his eyes wearily. His gaze rested on Ruth and an expression of pleasure overspread his face.
“This is Miss Fielding, isn’t it?” he asked, as Ruth came toward him hesitantly.
“Yes,” she said, surprised. “How did you know?”
The old gentleman smiled.
“Your fame has probably traveled faster than you think, my dear,” he said kindly. “A good many people are interested in the work you are doing.”
So it happened that Ruth stayed longer than she had intended with Mr. Knowles and visited the cabin oftener. The more they talked the more subjects of mutual interest they seemed to discover.
The indulgent doctor, seeing what a beneficial effect the girl’s presence was having upon his elderly patient, encouraged Ruth to visit him often and stay on and chat with him.
So started the friendship between Ruth and the lonely old man, a friendship that was destined to last throughout that long trip to St. Michael and for some time after, as well.
Mr. Knowles had received no serious injury from his fall overboard. The shock of the fall and the consequent exposure had to a large extent been counteracted by the prompt medical attention of the ship’s doctor and by Ruth’s careful nursing, so that in a day or two he was able to be on deck much the same as usual.
It was not until Ruth’s friendship with the old gentleman was some four days old that she learned the history of the Chase girls.
The story must have been very close to the old gentleman’s heart, for Ruth had several times sensed that he was on the point of making her his confidante.
On this particular occasion they were both chatting idly and pleasantly about some trivial amusing incidents that had happened aboard ship when the old gentleman turned to her suddenly and said:
“Miss Fielding, I am a lonely old man and I was wondering if you would mind my telling yousomething that has worried me greatly for some time past.”
Ruth felt surprised but professed her genuine interest in anything he might have to say to her.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said gratefully, and for a moment his eyes sought the hazy horizon where it merged with the gray of the sea.
“If you were not going fairly into their territory, I might not tell you this,” he said at last. “But since you are going there and because, being a girl, I feel that you may be interested in the troubles of two other girls nearly your own age, I would like to tell you about Mary and Ellen.”
“Mary and Ellen,” Ruth repeated softly. “How pretty they sound when you put them together, like the names in a story book.”
“Their adventures would read like a story, too.” The old man nodded, his face grave. “Only in real life these adventures are not so pleasant.
“These two girls,” he went on after a short pause, “are the daughters of a very dear friend of mine. His name was Maurice Chase. As young men together, he and my son were practically inseparable, and later—later Maurice took the place of a son to me.
“It was only when his health failed and he was threatened with tuberculosis that he thought of going to Alaska, not only for his health’s sakebut with some wild scheme for making his fortune in the gold fields.”
“Lots of people have done that before him,” said Ruth.
“Yes; but not middle-aged men with two nearly grown daughters to support, and with lung trouble to combat, too. It was an unequal fight, so unequal that death conquered after only two years of experiment in the gold fields.”
“Oh, and so your friend is dead!” said Ruth, in a hushed voice. “And the girls—how about them?”
“It was about them that Maurice wrote me just before his death,” replied Mr. Knowles. It was plain from the emotion in his voice that he and Maurice Chase had been very good friends indeed. “He had located a mine, he said——”
“Gold?” interrupted Ruth eagerly, leaning forward in her steamer chair.
“He thought there was gold,” said the old man soberly. “And that one thought helped him,” his voice trailed off almost to a whisper, “to die happy!”