Nearer, until the yacht was never lost to view. Evidently she was not
under control; but, even so, it was plain that no high degree of
intelligence was being exerted in handling her. She was not steaming
at all, merely drifting in the trough, and none of the means to bring
her head into the seas which sailors utilize at a pinch had even been
attempted. Whatever was the matter with the yacht, Dan and his men
were sure that the officers and crew were nothing less than blockheads.
Making a wide detour, they brought the tug around under the lee of the
craft and about fifty yards away, where Dan, leaving the wheel to his
men, seized a megaphone and ran on deck.
"What's the matter with you?" he shouted angrily through his megaphone,
aimed toward a group of men on the shattered bridge. "Are you trying
to see how quickly you can sink? Why don't you put her head up?"
A young officer in a wet and bedraggled uniform crawled along the
swaying platform to the megaphone rack and, seizing a cone, shouted
from a kneeling posture:
"Help us, for God's sake! Our thrust shaft has cracked!" The words
came faintly. "Our Captain was washed from the bridge. . . . Tried to
put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage
way. . . . It broke adrift. . . . This .
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