He hurried out on deck. His men were hoisting aboard the three dripping,
sputtering passengers who had run amuck.
"And those same men would look after a runaway horse and sneer that he
didn't have any brains," remarked Captain Mayo, disgustedly.
For the next half-hour he was a busy man. He investigated the
Montana's wound, first of all. He found her flooded forward--her nose
anchored into the sand with a rock-of-ages solidity.
His heart sank when he realized what her plight meant from the wrecking
and salvage viewpoint. In those shifting sands, winnowed constantly by
the rushing currents of the sound, digging her out might be a Gargantuan
task, working her free a hopeless undertaking.
His tour of investigation showed him that except for her smashed bow
the steamer was intact. Her helplessness there in the sand was the more
pitiable on that account.
He had not begun to take account of stock of his own responsibility for
this disaster. The whirl of events had been too dizzying. As master of
the ship he would be held to account for her mishap. But to what extent
had he been negligent? He could not figure it out. He realized that
excitement plays strange pranks with a man's consciousness of linked
events or of the passage of time. He could not understand why the
steamer piled up so quickly after the collision. According to his ample
knowledge of the shoals, he had been on his true course and well off the
dangerous shallows.
His first mate met him amidship. "I sent off one of our life-boats, sir.
Told 'em to go back and hunt for the men we saw in the water. They found
two. Others seem to be gone."
"I'm glad you thought of it, Mr. Bangs. I ought to have attended to it,
myself."
"You had enough on your hands, sir, as it was. She was the Lucretia
M. Warren, with granite from Vinal-haven. That's what gave us such an
awful tunk."
"Who are the men?"
"Mate and a sailor. They've had some hot drinks, and are coming along
all right."
"We'll have a word with them, Mr. Bangs."
The survivors of the Warren were forward in the crew's quarters, and
they were still dazed. They had not recovered from their fright; they
were sullen.
"I'm sorry, men! Sailor to sailor, you know what I mean if I don't say
any more. It's bad business on both sides. But what were you doing in
the fairway?"
"We wa'n't in the fairway," protested a grizzled man, evidently the
mate. He was uneasy in his borrowed clothes--he had surrendered his own
garments to a pantryman who had volunteered to dry them.