Trouble on His Wings

 

Tossed to the crest and let down like a roller coaster into the trough, he could not see what was happening, save for the growing bulk of the steamer. Was it going to run him down? For the matchstick thing it had appeared from the air, it certainly was increased in size. Johnny hadn’t ever seen anything so big.

 

He was growing tired, and the chill was eating through him like knives. Wouldn’t the fools ever get busy? Were they going to let a guy drown?

 

Suddenly a boat hook fixed on his collar, choking him. He was towed to the gunwale of the lifeboat and sailors snatched him over the edge, to drop him in the bottom, like a floundering cod.

 

“Okay,” said the mate, standing at the tiller. “Prepare to give way. Give way all together! Stroke!”

 

Johnny sighed with relief and watched the brawny sailors heave-ho on their oars, sending the lifeboat on its crazy, tipsy journey back to the side of the drifting steamer. Johnny grinned a little to himself. It wasn’t everybody that could stop a ship like that.

 

Tackles were hooked into the boat fore and aft, and blocks creaked as they were lifted up the palisade of rusty steel toward the boat deck. The davits swung, first one, then the other, and the lifeboat was over the side and back into its cradle.

 

A thunderously scowling man wearing tarnished braid, fastened upon Johnny. “What’s the idea? I thought your ship was coming down, but it’s flown off by itself! Is this some new kind of a ———, ———, ———, ——— stunt?”

 

“Johnny Brice, of World News. Get your picture in all the theaters, Captain—”

 

“News! Why, you young—”

 

“Ah, ah!” warned Johnny. “Ladies present, Captain.” And he slid out of the irate mariner’s grasp and through the crowd.

 

As he went, a young lady suddenly backed out of the crowd and appeared to be on her way into a passage. The movement attracted Johnny’s eye and the girl looked as though she was unhappy to be noticed. Johnny decided that it might be shock from the wreck. She was too beautiful to be swimming around in the ocean and scorched by flame.

 

“World News,” said Johnny. “We bought some pictures by radio. Whoever’s got ’em, trot ’em out.” He spoke to the crowd but he noted that the girl was more uneasy than before, though reluctant to retreat. Her wide blue eyes were almost frightened, strange in their intensity upon him.

 

Several passengers ran to get their salvaged films. There were plenty of rolls, thanks to the penchant of tourists for movie cameras.

 

“Sight unseen,” said Johnny. “Five hundred dollars a roll.”

 

A little fat man wearing nothing much more than a blanket, but gripping his precious film, stared at Johnny with disbelief. “You won’t even have to see if it shows in the pictures?”

 

“Somebody was bound to get some,” said Johnny. “Come on, the rest of you. Shell out.” He took his checkbook in hand and started to write.

 

Ten minutes later he had spent three thousand dollars of company money and had a questionable batch of film rolled up in his rubber bag.

 

“You’re a fool,” snapped the captain, still peeved. “You could have bought all this when we docked. You won’t get it there any sooner.”

 

“Oh, won’t I?” grinned Johnny. “Collect from the company for the delay. World News pays for its exclusives.”

 

The amphib was hovering in the sky and Johnny turned to the passengers. Again he noticed that the girl shrank back, though her appearance and not her conduct made the bigger impression upon him. In this mob of out-of-shape men and variously misbuilt tourist women, all in blankets or borrowed sailor clothes, the girl was the only one whose poise was not shattered by exterior appearance.

 

Johnny moved over to the rail, taking the captain with him. “Have you got a Mrs. Felznick aboard? A sort of lumpy old dame, I think. She’d have her hands full of jewels if she drowned, unless she let go.”

 

The captain had melted ever so little under the persuasive smile of the young man. It was said in the business, that Johnny could talk and grin his way through the place to which all newsreel cameramen probably go. Calling an officer of the ill-fated Kalolo, the captain put the question.

 

The man, singed and chagrined at the loss of his ship, shook his head impatiently. “Just finished compiling the list. We haven’t any such name aboard this ship—and we haven’t our passenger list, though there’s a duplicate in the company office. I seem to remember the name, but—” he swallowed hard. The loss of passengers was too heavy upon him, “But I guess she must have been among the dead.”

 

“The old man is going to take this hard,” muttered Johnny. “Thanks, Skipper, for the lift.”

 

“Huh?” said the captain.

 

Johnny had acted before anyone else realized what he was doing. He went over the rail in a long, clean dive, far out from the ship, so as to miss the propellers—if he could. He came up and saw the side terrifyingly close to him. He struck out as fast as he could, rubber container clutched against his side. The steamer swirled on past to leave Johnny floundering and half-drowned in the boiling wake. He fought to keep afloat, spluttering and coughing. The world was a tangle of green mountains, snowcapped with froth, and all the peaks were falling in upon him. He turned about wildly to locate Irish and found that he faced the stern of the slowing steamer. And as he looked he saw a white figure perch on the rail and soar seaward, straight into the propeller boil. He had no time to speculate on the identity of the mad diver, he was too occupied with the possibility that he would be keeping company, in a moment, with a chewed-up corpse.

 

“And me without a camera!” he swore.

 

The steamer had stopped its way for a moment, but now, with a sizzling sea curse the captain rang for headway and the SS Birmingham Alabama departed from Johnny’s life, just as abruptly as all things parted from a man in such an unstable career.

 

He heard an engine barking and bellowing as a cunning hand worked the throttle to keep the nose into the waves. A wing was a few feet from Johnny and he thankfully struggled toward it. As it dipped, he grasped it to be pulled bodily out of the sea with the ship’s next lurch. Ducked twice, he finally made the catwalk to find Irish wildly pointing to starboard.

 

“What’s the matter?” shouted Johnny. And then he needed no answer. Somebody was swimming strongly toward them and Johnny understood that the propellers had been cheated of a meal.