quickly put an end to the capacity [Pg 104]of this novel battering-ram for inflating further damage by lassoing and hauling aboard the whole mass of wreckage—mast, yards and tattered sails alike. [Pg 104] Then a gruesome discovery was made. Tied to the mast was the corpse of a man, but so bruised and battered as to be wholly unrecognizable. The poor body, nearly naked, and maimed and torn almost out of human semblance, was stitched in a strip of wet canvas, weighted with a few furnace bars, and committed to the deep again without a moment’s loss of time. But its brief presence had not been helpful. Singularly enough, sailors are not only fatalists, which they may well be, but superstitious. No man voiced his sentiments; nevertheless, each felt in his heart the ship was doomed. Collectively, they would try to save the ship. As individuals, the paramount question now was—how and when might they endeavor to save their own lives? Of course there was neither any sign of panic nor shirking of orders. The ship was stanch and eminently seaworthy. She was actually far more comfortable while drifting thus helplessly before the gale than when battling through it. Yet every sailor on board, from the captain down to the scullery-man, knew that some forty [Pg 105]miles ahead lay a shore so forbidding and inhospitable that the United States government charts—than which there are none so detailed and up-to-date—give navigators the significant warning to keep well out to sea, as the coast-line has not been surveyed in detail. [Pg 105] Yet the case was not immediately desperate. Forty miles of sea-room was better than none. If the gale abated, and an anchor was dropped, it was probable that the engineers’ cold chisels would soon cut away the wire octopus. Moreover, there was a chance that some other steamer might pick them up and earn a magnificent salvage by a tow to Punta Arenas. So after breakfast the uncanny harbinger of disaster provided by the body of the drowned sailor was, if not forgotten, at least generally ignored. Pipes were lighted. Men not otherwise occupied gathered in groups, while every eye strove to pierce the gray haze of the spindrift whipped off the waves by each furious gust, each hoping to be the first to discover the friendly smoke-pall of a passing ship.
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