A steady fall in
the barometer foretold even worse weather to come. Courtenay, assured
now that the main engines were absolutely useless, thought it advisable
to get steering way on the ship by rigging the foresail, double-reefed
and trapped. The result was quickly perceptible. The _Kansas_ might
not be pooped again, but she would travel more rapidly into the unknown.
Yet this only afforded another instance of the way men reason when they
seek to explain cause from effect. The hoisting of that strip of stout
canvas was one of the time-factors in the story of an eventful night,
for it was with gray-faced despair that the captain gave the requisite
order when the second engineer reported that his senior was dead, the
crown of two furnaces destroyed, and the engines clogged, if not
irretrievably damaged, by fallen debris. None realized better than the
young commander what a disastrous fate awaited his ship in the gloom of
the flying scud ahead. There was a faint chance of encountering
another steamship which would respond to his signals. Then he would
risk all by laying the _Kansas_ broadside on in the effort to take a
tow-rope aboard.
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