PAGE 10
Salvage
by
* * * * *
“There’s a chance,” said the captain of this liner to the pilot, as he rejoined him on the bridge an hour later, “of international complications over this case, and I may have to lose a trip to testify. That’s the Afghan Prince and consort that I was telling you about. Strange, isn’t it, that I should pick up these fellows after picking up the legitimate crew going east? I don’t know which crew was the hungriest. The real crew charge this crowd with piracy. By George, it’s rather funny!”
“And these men,” said the pilot, with a laugh, “would have claimed salvage?”
“Yes, and had a good claim, too, for effort expended; but they’ve offset it by their violence. Their chance was good in the English courts, if they’d only allowed the steamer to go on; and then, too, they abandoned her in a more dangerous position than where they found her. You see, they met her off Nantucket with sea-room, and nothing wrong with her but broken tiller-ropes; and they quit her here close to Sandy Hook, in a fog, more than likely to hit the beach before morning. Then, in that case, she belongs to the owners or underwriters.”
“Why didn’t they make Boston?” asked the pilot.
“Tried to, but overran their distance. Chronometer must have been ‘way out. I talked to the one who navigated, and found that he’d never thought of allowing for local attraction,–didn’t happen to run against the boat’s deviation table,–and so, with all that railway iron below hatches, he fetched clear o’ Nantucket, and ‘way in here.”
“That’s tough. The salvage of that steamer would make them rich, wouldn’t it? And I think they might have got it if they could have held out.”
“Yes; think they might. But here’s another funny thing about it. They needn’t have starved. They needn’t have chopped her to pieces for fuel. I just remember, now. Her skipper told me there was good anthracite coal in her hold, and Chicago canned meats, Minnesota flour, beef, pork, and all sorts of good grub. He carried some of the rails in the ‘tween-deck for steadying ballast, and I suppose it prevented them looking farther. And now they’ll lose their salvage, and perhaps have to pay it on their own schooner if anything comes along and picks them up. That’s the craft that’ll get the salvage.”
“Not likely,” said the pilot; “not in this fog, and the wind and sea rising. I’ll give ’em six hours to fetch up on the Jersey coast. A mail contract with the government is sometimes a nuisance, isn’t it, captain? How many years would it take you to save money to equal your share of the salvage if you had yanked that tramp and the schooner into New York?”
“It would take more than one lifetime,” answered the captain, a little sadly. “A skipper on a mail-boat is the biggest fool that goes to sea.”
The liner did not reach quarantine until after sundown, hence remained there through the night. As she was lifting her anchor in the morning, preparatory to steaming up to her dock, the crew of the Rosebud, refreshed by food and sleep, but still weak and nerveless, came on deck to witness a harrowing sight. The Afghan Prince was coming toward the anchorage before a brisk southeast wind. Astern of her, held by the heavy iron chain, was their schooner. Moored to her, one on each side, were two garbage-scows; and at the head of the parade, pretending to tow them all,–puffing, rolling, and smoking in the effort to keep a strain on the tow-line,–and tooting joyously with her whistle, was a little, dingy tugboat, with a large gilt name on her pilot-house–J. C. Hawks.