On shore a house on fire at any hour draws a crowd.  At sea, in the bleak cold wastes of the water desert, even one other shipload of sympathizers is too often wished for vainly.  Wind, cold, and breakdowns of machinery the sailor accepts with dull indifference; shipwrecks, strandings, and disease he looks forward to as part of an inevitable fate; but fire goes nearer to cowing him than all other disasters put together; and the sight of his fellow-seamen attacked by these same desolating flames arouses in him the warmest of his sympathy, and the full of his resourcefulness.  Moreover, in Kettle’s case, he had known the feel of a ship afire under his own feet, and so he could appreciate all the better the agony of these others.

But meanwhile, as the Flamingo made her way up wind against the charging seas, a fear was beginning to grip the little shipmaster by the heart that was deep enough to cause him a physical nausea.  The burning steamer ahead grew every minute more clear as they raced toward her.  She was on fire forward, and she lay almost head-on toward them, keeping her stern to the seas, so that the wind would have no help in driving the flames aft, and making her more uninhabitable.

From a distance it had been hard to make out anything beyond great stacks of yellow flame, topped by inky, oily smoke, which drove in thick columns down the wind.  As they drew nearer, and her size became more apparent, some one guessed her as a big cargo tramp from New Orleans with cotton that had overheated and fired, and Kettle took comfort from the suggestion and tried to believe that it might come true.

But as they closed with her, and came within earshot of her syren, which was sending frightened useless blares across the churning waters, there was no being blind to the true facts any longer.  This was no cargo boat, but a passenger liner; outward bound, too, and populous.  And as they came still nearer, they saw her after-decks black and wriggling with people, and Kettle got a glimpse of her structure and recognized the vessel herself.

“The Grosser Carl,” he muttered, “out of Hamburg for New York.  Next to no first-class, and she cuts rates for third and gets the bulk of the German emigrant traffic.  She’ll have six hundred on her this minute, and a hundred of a crew.  Call it seven hundred all told, and there’s hell waiting for them over yonder, and getting worse every minute.  Oh, great James!  I wonder what’s going to be done.  I couldn’t pack seventy of them on the old Flam here, if I filled her to bursting.”

He clapped the binoculars to his eyes again, and stared diligently round the rim of the night.  If only he could catch a glimpse of some other liner hurrying along her route, then these people could be saved easily.  He could drop his boats to take them till the other passenger ship came up.  But the wide sea was empty of lights; the Flamingo and the Grusser Carl had the stage severely to themselves; and between them they had the making of an intolerable weight of destiny.