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Title: Lost Island
Author: Ralph Henry Barbour
H. P. Holt
Illustrator: C. M. Relyea
Release date: July 6, 2025 [eBook #76451]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Century Co, 1917
Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOST ISLAND ***
[Illustration: “The camel, Tempest! The camel!” Dave shouted]
LOST ISLAND
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AND
H. P. HOLT
ILLUSTRATED BY
C. M. RELYEA
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918
Copyright, 1917, 1918
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, September, 1918_
DEDICATED TO
H. P. H. BY R. H. B.
TO
R. H. B. BY H. P. H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN WHICH DAVE HALLARD HEARS THE CALL OF THE SEA 3
II THE MYSTERY OF THE BARK _Hatteras_ 21
III OFF TO SEA 38
IV THE DERELICT 57
V IN WHICH THE _Pacific Queen_ LOSES A PRIZE 69
VI BARNES ADVISES AND DAVE RESOLVES 85
VII THE WRECKING OF THE _Kingfisher_ 98
VIII IN WHICH DAVE FINDS A FRIEND 117
IX UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS 131
X CAPTAIN GRUMMITT GETS WET 149
XI “IF EVER YOU GET THE CHANCE――” 164
XII A BROKEN HAWSER 178
XIII WHEREIN TEMPEST STAYS BEHIND 195
XIV MAROONED! 209
XV LAUNCHING THE _Mud Turtle_ 231
XVI ADVENTURES AHEAD 249
XVII INTRODUCING MR. JOE FLAGG 262
XVIII IN WHICH THE _Firefly_ DISAPPEARS 280
XIX LOST ISLAND! 294
XX SHOTS FROM THE BEACH 308
XXI THE PARLEY 326
XXII A MIDNIGHT VENTURE 344
XXIII THE SKELETON IN THE SAND 357
XXIV THE PRIZE IS WON 372
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“The camel, Tempest! The camel!” Dave shouted _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
“Were you ever shipwrecked?” the boy asked 6
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the boy stammered 62
“Here it is――Fanning Island,” Dave announced 172
Dave, Tempest, and the Kanaka stood watching the boat
glide away 206
“Who told you I’d lend it?” he asked acidly 282
Three forms emerged and moved in the direction of the
_Nautilus_ 332
Tempest laughed at the Kanaka’s comical expression of
disappointment 382
LOST ISLAND
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH DAVID HALLARD HEARS THE CALL OF THE SEA
“I dare say you’ve seen a lot of strange things in the South Seas,”
said Dave Hallard, a bit wistfully.
“Aye, there’s queer sights in them latitudes,” agreed the old sailor,
pausing in his task of slapping paint on the side of the ship and
gazing thoughtfully across the sunlit harbor. “Lots an’ lots of ’em,”
he added after a moment as, lighting his pipe again, he went on with
his work. “I suppose you’ve never been to sea, have you?” he asked,
casting a sidelong glance at the boy who for the last half-hour had
been perched on the string-piece of the wharf, his legs dangling above
the oily water.
“Not yet,” answered Dave regretfully.
“An’ I guess you’re seventeen, eh? Or maybe a bit more.”
“Sixteen,” the boy replied. He was, however, tall for sixteen, and
there was the promise of much strength in his broad shoulders. A keen
enthusiasm for outdoor sports had developed his body and, without
doubt, fostered the determination apparent in the firm mouth, the
square chin, and the steady grey eyes.
“Well, when I was your age,” said the mariner, “I was cabin-boy under
old Captain Zebalon Pratt. He was one of your old-fashioned Yankee
skippers, and no mistake, and many’s the dose of rope’s-end I got, my
hearty. Barrin’ the rope’s-end, though, I liked it all well enough.
It’s a hard life, but it’s the only life for me. It gets a hold over
you, but it ain’t a bed of roses at any time. We’ve just finished a
rough enough time this last voyage, after we left Honolulu for home,
and I won’t say there wasn’t a while when I’d have given a month’s pay
to feel solid land under my feet. But it’s forgotten now.”
“Were you ever shipwrecked?” the boy asked.
[Illustration: “Were you ever shipwrecked?” the boy asked]
“Three times. Once off the coast of China, once in the Mediterranean,
and once hard by New Guinea.”
He paused for a moment, while allowing his memory to dwell upon those
vivid moments.
“I don’t know, though,” he went on, “that any of them shipwrecks ever
proved quite so excitin’ as the last shakin’ up we had in this steamer.
When you get an easterly gale blowin’ in that part of the Pacific,
it suttinly comes good and hard. We were making a course ’most due
sou’east when the wind hit us. It came sudden, cuttin’ slices clean
off the surface, and the old ship listed over till I thought she was
a goner. Her port rail was right under water, and the big waves that
broke over us sometimes reached half-way up the funnel. One man must
have gone overboard at once, and the mate was knocked senseless against
a stanchion. He’d have gone too, but he got entangled in some gear, and
after a while we dragged him under shelter.
“It sure was blowin’ for about an hour, and then it eased off quick
like, but we knew what to expect when it started again. Everything
loose had been shot over the side, and one of the boats had been stove
in. We just had time to get ready for the next snorter before it
arrived, and then the old ship was nearly lifted clean out of water.
You’ve heard of seas runnin’ mountains high, p’raps. Well, them seas
was like mountains, and we were slidin’ down the sides same as the
coasters at Coney, only it didn’t cost ten cents a time, and we didn’t
know exactly what was going to happen when we got to the bottom.”
The sailor put down the paint-brush and recharged his pipe with
great care before continuing:
“Give me an old wind-jammer for weatherin’ a gale. You never know
what’s going to happen to these new-fangled steam contraptions. The
ship’s engines was ’most shook to pieces after two days of it, and we
all made up our minds we’d seen the last of New York or anywhere else
on dry land. The ship was leakin’ enough to scare any one, and it was
too rough to use the hand-pumps. We’d drifted some distance out of our
course between Fanning and Christmas Islands when the current and wind
took us under the lee of another island, and that saved us. Before you
could say ‘knife’ we had the anchor down and were ridin’ as comfortable
and snug as any man could want.
“We sheltered for three days under that bit of a place. As a rule, you
don’t get much besides low coral islands in them waters, but there was
a hill on this one. I remember that, from where we were lyin’, part of
the island looked a good deal like a camel’s back.
“We were anchored off a little lagoon, and one day the captain sees
something that might have been a wreck half buried in the sand. When
the gale had spent itself he went ashore in a boat, thinkin’ p’raps
there might be a chance of a bit of salvage. But there wasn’t. It
was an old bark that must have been lost some years ago. We reckoned
she’d struck a reef of rocks outside the lagoon, drifted over them
afterwards, and landed inside the cove where we found her. Only the
stumps of her masts were left. I remember her name. We could just
make it out on a copper plate where the bell had hung. She was the
_Hatteras_.”
“Had the crew been saved?” Dave asked.
“Bless you, I dunno,” replied the mariner. “There’s hundreds and
hundreds of ships breakin’ to pieces off the track of regular traffic,
and only the sea knows what became of the men on ’em; and she don’t
tell. No, siree! she holds her secrets fast.”
“But didn’t the people on the island know?” the boy queried.
There was a comical look in the old man’s eyes as he regarded his
questioner.
“Say, sonny,” he said, “you don’t think there’s trolley-cars runnin’
and department stores on every little two-by-four dump in the South
Seas?”
“I thought there might be a few natives,” Dave suggested.
“Well, sometimes you find a bunch of them stoppin’ on an island, but
we didn’t see anything livin’ there except a few turtles and sea-birds
that knew nothing and cared less about how the _Hatteras_ got there.
You never know what luck is comin’ your way when you’re a sailor.
It might be our turn to get piled up on a rock after we leave here
to-night at high water.”
Somebody on deck called to the mariner. Dave, with a curious feeling,
watched him clamber over the side and disappear. At high water the old
salt was to begin a new series of adventures, all with the smack of the
sea in them. In his imagination the boy depicted the mariner undergoing
hairbreadth escapes and encountering perils of every description, all
of which he would overcome so that when the ship reached port he could
sit contentedly in a swinging cradle, painting the hull, and applying
innumerable matches to a most obstinate pipe.
Dave came of sea-going stock, the Hallards having followed the sea for
generations. Dave’s father created a record in his early manhood by
driving a clipper from Hong Kong to San Francisco in thirty-three days;
and old Phineas Hallard, David’s grandfather, had been a pioneer in the
copra trade with the West Indies.
From one window of his home in Brooklyn the boy could obtain a
panoramic view of the ceaseless traffic in the harbor to and from New
York――big, stately mail-boats with tugs puffing fussily at their
side; mysterious, bird-like sailing-ships with crowded canvas; strings
of barges in tow; rusty and lazy tramp steamers homeward bound after
wonderful voyages to foreign lands. The sight of these messengers of
the deep stirred something in the blood of Dave Hallard. He liked
to go down to the wharf on his way home from school and drift into
conversation, just as he had done to-day, with men who had sailed to
distant ports. On this occasion he had been lucky. The old mariner with
the paint-brush had been full of reminiscences; and for the first time,
Dave, as he walked home, felt that the glamour of the sea was something
real to him――something that was bound to have a vital influence over
him. Hitherto his life had been wrapped up in school, sports, and
his home; but now it was dawning on him that there was a great world
outside that in which he had moved so far, a world in which he would,
sooner or later, take his place. Some day he, too, might stand on a
ship scudding before the breeze, under the wonderful Southern Cross
where flying-fish skimmed the water and turtles lived on desert
islands. He threw out his chest a little and sniffed the crisp air
of early spring straight from the broad Atlantic. It seemed good. He
felt a vague regret that he was not with the old mariner on the tramp
steamer, learning the mysteries of sails and halyards and hovering on
the brink of great unknown adventures.
Dave was quiet when he entered the house. His Aunt Martha, who had been
a mother to him ever since he could remember, glanced at him curiously
several times, thinking something was worrying the boy, for he was
usually bubbling over with good spirits.
“What’s amiss, Dave?” she asked at last, while preparing supper.
“You’re not sick, are you?”
“I’m all right,” he said, coming out of a reverie with a start. “I was
only thinking, Aunt Martha, what do people do when――when they want to
be sailors?”
“For the land’s sake, this boy has got it too!” she exclaimed, with a
touch of pathos in her voice. “All the Hallards go the same way, and
there’s no stopping them as soon as they get out of short pants.”
Dave’s thoughts were far away. The sting of salt air on his cheeks that
afternoon, and the sailor’s reminiscences, had stirred him strangely.
Hitherto he had not been directly thrown into association much with
sailors. True, there were in his home a dozen distinctive signs that
his father had spent many years at sea――a full-rigged four-master
careening over on a painted ocean, under a glass case, in the parlor;
two assagais and a knobkerrie picked up at some South African port;
a compass and an old brass sextant kept in a sacred place; a pair of
powerful binoculars; strangely carved figures which might at one time
have been idols in some heathenish land. But these relics had been
collected years before. Andrew Hallard gave up the sea soon after Dave
was born.
“Supper is ready,” said Aunt Martha, resignedly. “Go and tell your dad.”
Dave obeyed mechanically.
“The sea is calling this boy already,” Miss Hallard said a little later
as she served their frugal meal. “He’s puzzling how to get afloat now.”
Captain Hallard cast an uneasy glance at his son. He had always
expected this eventually, but somehow the possibility of the wrench had
seemed a long way off.
“There’s time enough to think about that, lad,” he declared; but even
as he said it he knew the boy’s days ashore must be numbered now. Once,
long ago, he, and generations of his menfolk, had passed through the
same phase.
Dave was Captain Hallard’s only son, and there was a strong affinity
between them. The man dreaded the moment when his boy must go, only to
return occasionally between long voyages, but he knew the power with
which the sea must be calling Dave.
There had been a time when a business career had seemed probable for
Dave. That was when Andrew Hallard first gave up the sea. He had made
a considerable fortune by sea trading and wise investment. Everything
appeared rosy in those days, and if Captain Hallard had rested on
his laurels, all would have been well. He was a true sailor and knew
his work thoroughly, but success had made him ambitious for greater
things. The business of underwriting ships is one which needs not only
a close knowledge of shipping, but also considerable skill in the
world of finance. It appeared, however, to Andrew Hallard to offer
excellent opportunities, and he launched forth into it. For a while
luck went with him, but one or two of his speculations came to grief.
In order to recoup himself of these losses he plunged a shade deeper,
taking risks about which more experienced men would have hesitated. At
this critical moment two vessels were lost, and in order to pay the
insurance he had to raise a mortgage on his own property which left
him financially crippled. It did not take him long to discover that
without the power of money behind him his position in business amounted
to nothing, and he had to hunt for the command of another ship. On
his first voyage, however, rheumatism, brought on by long exposure
in bad weather, left him unfit for the one profession he had at his
finger-tips. Then he was compelled to settle down ashore and share his
home with his sister Martha.
Aunt Martha had a very small income and few relatives. She was a
prim, elderly lady with a profound distrust of anything in the way of
speculation. Several times before Andrew Hallard’s crash arrived she
warned him that a bird in the hand was safer than ten in a bush, but
when he came back, almost a physical wreck, to his motherless boy, her
heart softened, and she threw in her lot with his. It was sometimes a
struggle for them to make ends meet, but her brother Andrew had been
good to her in his successful days, so it gave her additional pleasure
to help him now.
The bitterest blow was when his little estate on Long Island went――the
home he had worked for during so many years. It was just the sort of
place a sea-captain might picture, during his travels, as that in
which he could spend the autumn of his life contentedly. When it was
built, and he went to live there, he called the house “Journey’s End.”
It was perched high on a cliff, facing the sea he loved, and while he
lived there he spent many hours watching the distant ships through a
telescope. Once or twice in recent years he had taken Dave with him to
look at the old place, drawn to it by happy memories, but the visit
always made him unhappy.
“Journey’s End” was now occupied by Stephen Strong, an old friend of
Captain Hallard, who had come to the rescue when the mortgage was
foreclosed. Mr. Strong was a New Englander, and when the time came for
him to take possession he did so regretfully, declaring that at any
time the fortunes of the Hallards changed once more he would be willing
to leave the house.
“I’m a wanderer, anyway,” he said, “so I guess this won’t be the end of
my journey. Besides, I was bred and born in Gloucester, and when I drop
my anchor the last time it ought to be there. Cheer up, Hallard, you’ll
be heaving me out of this place yet.”
Mr. Strong often made some similar remark when Captain Hallard
revisited the house on the cliff, and Captain Hallard laughed at such
cheery optimism, for he knew his days of fortune-hunting were over.
Dave, however, was imbued with a youthful notion of retrieving the
family fortunes, and he realized that as it must be many years before
he could obtain command of a ship himself, the sooner he got to work
the better. A few days after his encounter with the ancient mariner he
spoke to his father on the subject.
“Tush, lad, what’s put such notions into your head?” Andrew Hallard
asked, anxious to draw from the boy his real feelings.
“I don’t think I should like to be anything but a sailor, Dad,” the boy
said. Then he told his father of his talk with the old salt. Captain
Hallard listened, and nodded. It came to him as an echo of his own
boyhood. Thus encouraged, Dave warmed up, and repeated some of the
sailor’s stories. When he came to the discovery of the _Hatteras_ on a
desert island his father turned quickly in his chair.
“_Hatteras, Hatteras_,” he repeated, wrinkling his brows. “I seem to
remember something about a ship called the _Hatteras_, years ago, but I
don’t recall exactly what for the moment.”
He drummed his finger-tips on the edge of the chair and looked up at
the ceiling.
“Why!” he exclaimed after a pause; “wasn’t there a ship called the
_Hatteras_ disappeared once? I think I’ve got something about it in my
book of newspaper cuttings. Let me see.”
He foraged in a drawer, fished out an old collection of clippings, and
turned over the leaves.
CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERY OF THE BARK HATTERAS
“Here she is,” he said at last. “This can’t be the same _Hatteras_ that
you’re talking about though, because they searched everywhere for her
at the time.”
Adjusting his glasses, Captain Hallard read:
“A strange mystery of the sea is recalled now that the bark
_Hatteras_ is definitely given up for lost. Six months have
elapsed since she was last heard of in the Pacific Ocean, and
the owners have no alternative but to regard her as sunk. The
vessel herself was fully insured, but not the cargo, and it now
appears that the latter included one small shipment which was
of considerable value, consisting of a quantity of platinum. A
good deal of money has been spent, since she was first reported
missing, in searching for any trace of the _Hatteras_, but no
sign of her has been discovered.
“A curious feature of the story is that no man knows, or ever
will know, exactly where this valuable consignment came from
originally. Possibly it was mined in New Guinea, where platinum
is known to exist, or possibly in some part of Australia, but
that must always remain a matter of conjecture.
“About a year ago Messrs. Jacobs & Krantz of San Francisco,
dealers in precious metals, received a letter from one Vance
Peters, written at Sydney, New South Wales. Peters stated that
he had discovered a rich deposit of platinum, and had worked
on it for two years until the supply was exhausted. He said
he had melted it down into bars, had deposited it in a Sydney
bank, and now wanted Jacobs & Krantz to market it for him, as
facilities for disposing of it in Sydney were not good.
“The San Francisco firm consented to handle the transaction,
and in due course received a letter from Peters announcing
that he was sailing from Sydney on the _Hatteras_, bringing
the platinum with him. There the known history of the platinum
almost ends. After the _Hatteras_ put to sea she was spoken
twice between Sydney and Honolulu. Then there swept over that
part of the Pacific the succession of devastating northeasterly
gales which wreaked havoc among shipping there six months ago.
Vessels of all kinds were blown far out of their course, and
many of them were lost. The last heard of the _Hatteras_ was
a report from the ship _Minerva_ that she had passed within a
mile of her in the neighbourhood of Fanning Island. The bark
was then partly dismasted and flying signals of distress. The
_Minerva_ herself was in great difficulties, and was unable
to go to her assistance. From that moment the _Hatteras_
became a thing of mystery. It is probable that she foundered
with all hands in water a mile deep. There are many islands,
mostly low-lying coral reefs, in that part of the Pacific. In
the faint hope that the treasure-ship might have gone on one
of these, Messrs. Jacobs & Krantz arranged with a vessel that
was due to pass there to explore the region thoroughly, and
the captains of other ships were offered a reward for definite
news. But nothing has ever been heard of the ill-fated vessel
or those who were on her.”
While his father was reading the old newspaper cutting Dave Hallard sat
motionless, his hands gripping the arms of the chair tightly.
“That sailor told me the _Hatteras_ they saw was near Fanning Island,
Dad,” he said eagerly.
Captain Hallard looked up quickly.
“That’s queer,” he said. “I wonder if she could have been the same
ship.”
“Well, if she was, Dad, and nobody’s got that platinum out of her――”
“_If_,” Captain Hallard interrupted, laughing. “I guess there are lots
of ifs. To begin with, your sailor probably was spinning a yarn, and
even if he did see the old wreck of the _Hatteras_, she must have been
nearly smashed to pieces long ago. Everything in her would be washed
away by now. Besides, where was this island he saw her on?”
“I remember he mentioned Fanning Island when you read it just now,”
said Dave, “and besides that he said they were sailing between there
and an island called Christmas when they came across the wreck of the
_Hatteras_.”
“That’s a pretty wide field,” commented Captain Hallard. “Those two
places are hundreds of miles apart, and you might spend a lifetime
hunting about there for what you were after.”
“He also said there was a hill,” declared Dave, as the ancient
mariner’s story came back to his memory, “that looked like the back of
a camel.”
“You’re sure he didn’t say a cow, or a rabbit?” Captain Hallard asked
jocularly. “I’m afraid, Dave, he was having fun with you.”
“I don’t think so,” Dave replied quietly. He had the greatest faith in
his father’s judgment, but on the other hand he had a vivid memory of
the old sailor’s simple directness.
Aunt Martha, who had been sitting knitting industriously, as usual,
throughout the conversation, made no comment, and registered a mental
note of the fact that Dave was growing more like his father every
day. The Hallards did not have those steady grey eyes for nothing. It
had been inflexible devotion to one purpose which enabled the retired
sea-captain to amass his original fortune, and Dave was already
exhibiting the same capacity for sticking to his guns, whatever object
he wished to achieve. And she knew that the boy’s determination to go
to sea would never leave him until the salt water was rolling under
him. This new notion that had entered his head, of treasure-ships lying
waiting to disgorge their precious stores, would most likely add a
romantic tinge to his desire, making certain that still another of the
Hallards was to take to the roving life.
A day or two later, after supper, Dave produced a school atlas, and
pored over it with a pencil and paper, measuring off distances.
“Dad, how long would it take for a bark to sail a hundred and fifty
miles?” he asked.
“About a thousand years if there wasn’t any wind.”
“Yes, but with a fair wind?”
“Oh, maybe a day or two. Why?”
“Then it only takes a day or two to go from Fanning Island to Christmas
Island in a bark in a fair wind?” said Dave.
“It depends how long you waste on the way picking up that treasure,”
replied Captain Hallard, with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t you worry,
my lad. Hard dollars don’t come like that. You’re just as likely to
bump up in Broadway against a solid chunk of gold so big that it holds
up the traffic as anybody is to rescue a fortune that’s been lost in
the sea for years.”
“I know that, Dad,” Dave agreed. “But it does seem an awful shame that
the man who spent two years mining the stuff should never have got here
with it safely. I asked Billy Tench yesterday to find out from his
father what platinum is worth. Billy’s father works in a jewelry store.
I wrote down what he said to show you. How much do you guess Mr. Peters
would have got for the stuff if he had reached America with it?”
Captain Hallard puffed at his pipe and wrinkled his brows in an effort
of mental arithmetic.
“I suppose somewhere between ten and twenty dollars an ounce,” he
guessed.
“Wrong,” corrected Dave. “At that time it was worth over thirty dollars
an ounce.”
“Rough luck on Peters,” commented Captain Hallard. He knew by bitter
experience what it felt like to lose a fortune.
“But that isn’t all,” Dave went on. “The price of platinum has gone
up to three times its old value since then. That means if any one
were lucky enough to find the treasure now, it would be worth about a
hundred dollars an ounce.”
Captain Hallard raised his eyebrows.
“I vote we start an expedition to find treasure-ships, Dave,” he said,
wincing as his rheumatism gave an extra twinge. “Then we’ll be able to
come back and buy Aunt Martha that new coffee-percolator she’s set her
heart on. Then we might go over to Europe and hunt up some of those
Spanish galleons. There were lots of ’em sunk, half full of gold coins.
I’m badly in need of a new pipe.”
“Yes, and we’d buy ‘Journey’s End’ back, eh, Dad?” Dave suggested.
“Aye, lad,” his father agreed, with a sigh. The loss of his home on the
cliff was still a very sore point to Captain Hallard. “But don’t ever
get such notions of easy money into your head. You have a lot of hard
work to put in at school yet before you earn your first cent.”
“How soon can I go to sea?” Dave asked abruptly.
“Not until this time next year,” said his father. “I don’t suppose
you’ll ever rest contentedly until you have tried it out and found
that a sailor’s life isn’t a bit as they say it is in story-books. I
went through it. I thought I was going to have a wonderful time when
I joined my first ship. She was a square-rigger, of the old-fashioned
type. I remember I had a coat with some brass buttons on it, and I
had an idea that I should spend most of my time on the poop, or the
fo’c’sle-head, looking through a long telescope. But they set me on to
peeling potatoes, and kept me at it though I was so seasick I didn’t
care whether I lived or died. Then the mate told me to dress up, as I
had to do something special for the captain. I put on my best duds,
including the coat with the brass buttons, and they started me on the
job of tarring the rigging. By the time I’d got through with that, and
after I’d upset the tar-bucket when the ship gave an extra hard roll,
I was so messed up from head to foot I hardly knew my own name, though
I’d learnt that sailoring didn’t consist chiefly of looking smart in
brass buttons and navigating the ship.”
“But you didn’t give up the sea for years and years after that, did
you?” the boy persisted.
“No, I’ll admit that, though there was many a time I’d have done ’most
anything to get back home and put on some dry clothes. The grub wasn’t
too good, either, in those days, and the older hands got the pick of
what was going. Ship-owners don’t believe in overfeeding their crews.
The men might get too fat to shin up the rigging if they had three
square meals a day, so they’re given ship’s biscuits to keep ’em in
condition and cut expenses down.”
Dave plied his father with questions about life afloat, and Captain
Hallard gave him as accurate a picture as he could of routine on
board ship. To the boy it all seemed fascinating, including the hard,
dirty work and the “salt horse” which, he gathered, together with the
extremely hard biscuits, formed the staple diet on many craft.
The only thing worrying him was that he had to start at high school and
wait a whole year before he would be allowed to eat “salt horse” and
feel the motion of the boat under him as she nosed her way out of the
harbor, past that flashing light in the distance at Sandy Hook, and
carried him to those entrancing distant lands of which he had heard so
much.
School seemed a dull affair during the next two months when such
radiant possibilities lay in store. Dave went on with his studies,
but his heart was not in them. Every day, after dark, he spent hours
at the window from which he could see the lights of passing vessels,
and in the afternoons he haunted the wharves, where screaming winches
were hauling bales and cases from the mysterious depths of different
vessels. The smell of tarred ropes became a thing of joy to him, and
when, on occasions, the mate or “bo’sun” of some ship invited him on
board to look around after they had had a long chat, Dave thrilled with
a new delight. The snug cabins and berths, not always as clean or tidy
as they might have been, were a source of infinite wonder.
Though he did not realize it, Dave was fanning the flame within him.
At home he came out with nautical terms which he had picked up, to
the great distress of Aunt Martha, for, to her, it was clearly the
beginning of the end. Secretly she had always treasured the hope
that her brother would put his foot down firmly and prevent Dave from
risking his life on the sea, and occasionally, even now, she would have
a passage of arms with Captain Hallard on the subject.
“Let the boy have a taste of it,” he always declared. “You wouldn’t
bring ducks up without water, and the Hallards are worse than any ducks
I ever knew, only they want salt water. He’ll go whether I let him or
not, so I might just as well let him, when he’s old enough.”
Aunt Martha bent over her knitting on these occasions, making the
needles fly and missing stitches, because you can’t see to knit, even
with spectacles, when your eyes are full of tears.
“Don’t worry, Martha dear,” Andrew Hallard said once, when this
happened. “He won’t come to any harm, and if I had my time over again,
I’d be a sailor just the same, so we can’t blame him. Now, stop crying.
It’s a healthy life at sea, after all; and to listen to you, one would
think every mariner who left the wharf went straight to Davy Jones’s
locker as soon as he got into deep water.”
Soon after the summer vacation began, Dave stood on one of the wharves
within a mile of his home and watched a trim-looking steamer sidle to
her berth. She was low in the water with a heavy cargo. Some time after
the gangway was let down and traffic on it had started, an undersized
youth, whose pockets bulged strangely, strolled casually ashore. He
was about Dave’s age, had red hair, and an extremely dirty face.
Something about the boy attracted Dave’s attention. He noticed that
the red-headed youth looked quickly to the right and left, and then,
dodging behind a truck, began to walk hurriedly away from the ship.
Dave stepped across the wharf so that the owner of the red hair would
have to pass close to him. The boy was glancing over his shoulder and
nearly bumped into Dave.
“Hello, kid, which is the way to New York?” he asked jerkily.
“It’s miles from here. This is Brooklyn,” Dave said.
“Do you know the way around here?” the boy asked. “I want to get out of
this quick.”
“Come with me,” said Dave, growing more interested. He had learned
every turn and corner of the docks. Three minutes later they were in a
busy street, and the boy seemed to breathe more freely. His face began
to wear a triumphant smile.
“That’s fine!” he said. “I’ll be safe now.”
“Safe from what?”
“I’ve skipped the ship. I was scared to death somebody would spot me.
I’ve got all my things in my pockets.”
“What did you skip the ship for?” Dave asked, hugely pleased at being
concerned, even in a small way, with a nautical adventure.
“Wanted to see America,” responded the youth. “Don’t you let on that
you’ve seen me. So long.”
A moment later the owner of the red hair and dirty face was swallowed
up in Brooklyn, and Dave went back to the steamer with new interest. An
idea had occurred to him. It was only a vague idea, but it concerned
the fact that he felt perfectly capable of doing anything that
red-headed, undersized chap had done on the ship; and moreover, the
ship was now short of a boy.
A curious tight feeling gripped him at the throat. For the space of
perhaps five minutes he stood still, thinking hard, and then he boldly
walked down the gangway.
“Can I see the captain, please?” he said to a tall man who was standing
on deck talking to a companion.
“What do you want the captain for?”
“I want to see him on――on business,” said Dave.
The man looked down into the boy’s grey eyes which showed neither fear
nor disrespect.
“Well, sonny, I’m the captain,” he said. “What is it?”
“I guess you want a boy, sir,” said Dave. “The other one’s gone. I’d
like his job.”
CHAPTER III
OFF TO SEA
“Gone! Gone where?” asked the captain, with a frown of annoyance.
“I met him on the wharf and he said he’d left the ship, sir,” Dave
replied.
Suddenly the captain’s face wore a smile. The situation appeared to
amuse him.
“What d’you know about that!” he said, with a deep laugh. “You’ll get
on, son, if you’re always as smart as this. Come back and talk to me in
a week. From what I can see of you, I reckon you’ll fill the billet,
but I’m too busy to waste time on you now. Come along next Thursday,
and then I’ll run the rule over you.”
Dave’s heart beat a little faster than usual as he walked home. Nothing
had been farther from his mind earlier in the day than definitely to
ask for a job on a vessel. Now he was as good as booked to sail in a
week! In the excitement of the moment he had quite forgotten to ask
where the ship was bound for. All he knew was her name――the _Pacific
Queen_. As a matter of fact, he was not deeply concerned as to her
destination. Any point of the compass was equally satisfactory to him.
Perhaps he rather favored China or Japan, but any other old place would
do nearly as well. He felt supremely happy and much more important than
he ever remembered. Although he had not officially “signed on,” the
big captain with the deep laugh had said he would fill the billet, and
Dave was prepared to take the captain’s word for it. The only thing
that made him thoughtful was the fact that he would have to go without
telling his father or Aunt Martha. There did not seem to be any way out
of that difficulty. If he told Aunt Martha, she would make a fuss and
his father would hear of it, and Dave knew what that would lead to.
Captain Hallard had definitely said his son was not to go to sea until
the following year, and when Captain Hallard said a thing he meant
it. Dave weighed the whole situation up carefully on his way home and
decided the best thing was to disappear quietly to prevent a scene. He
would just leave a note for his dad, explaining matters, and promising
to return home immediately he got back to America.
That programme was all right in theory until he reached the house. As
soon as he entered the door he felt that Aunt Martha’s eyes were on
him, and that she somehow knew. As a matter of fact Aunt Martha did
glance at him, but not more closely than she always did. He was as
dear to her as her own son would have been. David tried to act in a
perfectly natural manner, but when a boy has just arranged to go to sea
on the impulse of the moment, he would be more than human if he failed
to show that something unusual was in the wind.
“What’s come over the lad?” Aunt Martha exclaimed after a while.
“You’re dancing around like a pea in a hot frying pan.”
This surprised Dave. He was under the impression that he was
exceptionally quiet.
“You’re all excited and worked up,” declared Aunt Martha. “I expect
you’ve been to one of these ball games or watching red Indians at the
movies, haven’t you?”
“No,” replied Dave, subsiding into a chair and making an iron
resolution not to move a muscle for five minutes at least.
“Then I guess you’re feverish. Why, I never saw your cheeks so flushed.”
Dave stood the ordeal well. He buried himself in a book, pretending to
read, but the words danced under his eyes. He, David Hallard, was a
sailor at last, or at least as good as a sailor. In seven short days
school and Brooklyn would be things of the past. He would be “outward
bound.” The words had a fine ring to them. There was to be no waiting
for twelve dreary months.
Dave lay awake many hours that night, and, with the first streaks of
dawn, crept quietly down the stairs, for he wanted to set his eyes on
the _Pacific Queen_ again. He felt an air of proprietorship in regard
to the vessel. Also, he half dreaded to find she had disappeared in the
night, and it was with positive relief that he saw her lying snugly
tied up at her berth.
He had learned in recent months to judge the cut of a vessel, and the
_Pacific Queen_ looked a trim craft to him. She was a single-screw
steel freighter that had not been launched more than three years.
No mail-boat that ever tore her way out of New York seemed half so
magnificent in Dave’s eyes as the _Pacific Queen_ lying at her moorings
that early summer morning. There was no sign of life on board except a
thin stream of smoke from the galley stack, and the boy stood feasting
his eyes on his future home for a full hour before a healthy appetite
sent him hurrying home to see what Aunt Martha had for breakfast.
The problem of what to take on the voyage puzzled him somewhat. There
were not many things he could take, as the money-box into which he
had been dropping dimes and five-cent pieces for a couple of years
contained only a few dollars. A large clasp-knife, of course, must be
included. Of that there was no question. Whoever heard of a sailor
without a clasp-knife? Dave was not absolutely certain what it was for,
but he knew it was indispensable, so he boldly laid out a dollar and a
half on a fearsome weapon with a bone handle. Fortunately, he had a new
pair of heavy shoes. One problem gave him many uneasy hours. His father
had once told him that when the time came for him to go to sea he could
have the binoculars that formed one of Captain Hallard’s souvenirs of
the sea. The clasp-knife was a treasure already, but those binoculars
were the crowning point of Dave’s desires. They had cost an awful lot
of money at one time and were not a necessary part of a boy’s outfit,
but Dave felt it would be a great thing to have them with him.
Choosing a suitable opportunity, he asked:
“Dad, do you remember saying I could have your glasses when the time
came?”
“Surely,” his father agreed, “and I hope you will remember always to
treat ’em as carefully as I have done. They’ve got fine lenses in them,
and I don’t know that I ever handled a better pair of binoculars in
my life. There’s many a sea-captain tramping round the ocean who’d
give a whole lot to own a pair of glasses like them, so you’ll have
to be careful or they will get stolen. Not that stealing is common on
board ship. It’s the unforgivable sin at sea. I have seen a man thrown
overboard and near drowned for taking what wasn’t his. All the same
you’ll have to keep your eyes open, but if you’ve still got them when
the time comes for you to be pacing the bridge they’ll be worth a
sight more to you than the junk you can pick up for good money at most
stores. When there’s a thick haze and you’re driving down on a vessel
that’s blowing her buzzer fit to wake the dead, you can’t tell which
direction the sound is coming from. The lives of everybody on board may
depend on your being able to spot the other boat. That’s when you want
a good pair of binoculars to see through.”
“Can I use them now just as if they were mine?” Dave put in anxiously.
He had a nice sense of honor. Nothing would have induced him to take
them on the _Pacific Queen_ without a favorable reply to this question.
“Why, I don’t see any objection,” Captain Hallard replied good-naturedly,
puffing away at his pipe. “Only, as I say, take care of them, and mind
you don’t scratch the lenses. They were given to me nigh on thirty years
ago by an old deep-sea pilot once when we were in the North Sea, making
Flushing on the Dutch coast. I was second mate at the time. It had been
blowing a regular gale, and we’d got to the lightship where the pilot
cutter was generally hanging around. Dark! You couldn’t see your hand
before you, away from a lamp; and there was a heavy ground swell
running. All of a sudden we saw the flare off the cutter, signalling
that a pilot was coming to us. It means fifty dollars at least for a few
hours’ work, so they’ll board you in a mighty bad sea if their small
boat can stand it. Our skipper didn’t reckon they could make it, but he
sent up a flare in answer, and pretty soon the dory bumped alongside
with two men at the oars besides the pilot. I’d slung a rope ladder over
and was standing by. The pilot got ready to catch hold of the ladder
when the ship wasn’t rolling extra hard. The dory was bobbing up and
down and I felt kind of nervous for the old man. He had boarded hundreds
of ships in the dark, but the sea is a queer thing, my lad. She’s always
waiting. You never know when she’s going to get you. Just as the pilot
was reaching out for the ladder a big wave caught us on the starboard
quarter and rolled us right over on top of the dory. It crumpled up like
an egg, and I made sure all three men in her must have been killed.
“I gave a yell up to the bridge, bent a line on to a stanchion, took
hold of one end of it, and slipped over the side. I could swim quite
a bit in those days, but I didn’t fancy paddling around in the North
Sea under such conditions without something to hang on to the old ship
by. I couldn’t see a thing, but presently I touched a man’s head. I
got one arm round him and when we were heaved on board we found it was
the pilot. He’d got a nasty bump on the forehead, and was dazed for a
while, but he came round after the skipper had given him a stiff glass
of grog. We never saw anything of the other men. Before we dropped the
pilot he gave me these binoculars that he had in his overcoat pocket,
saying he’d made up his mind to retire anyhow, and reckoned he could
take a hint from the sea as well as any man.”
At times Dave felt almost bursting with the desire to tell one of his
school friends the wonderful thing that was to happen on the following
Thursday, but he kept his own counsel and waited as patiently as he
could. On his last night at home he wrote two letters, one to his
father and one to Aunt Martha. The first ran:
Dear Dad:
I couldn’t wait, and I’m going to sea. Please forgive me. I’ll
take good care of the binoculars and write to you often.
Your loving son,
DAVID.
He propped the two letters up against the clock on the mantelpiece
and then went to bed in his own room for the last time, after packing
his few possessions in an old suitcase. Dave hardly dared close his
eyes lest he should sleep too long. Before it was light he slipped
on his clothes. The stairs creaked as he walked down them in his
stocking-feet, with his shoes in one hand and the suitcase in the
other. He dreaded waking either his father or Aunt Martha, and yet had
to fight with a desire to say good-by to them. He had to bite his lips
hard and a lump came into his throat when he passed his father’s door.
The lock and bolt on the front door took an eternity to manipulate in
the dark. His fingers seemed to be all thumbs. He had never noticed
before how much noise the key made in that lock. He wondered vaguely
how long it would be before he turned it again. Quite a lot had to
happen before then. The lump in his throat grew bigger. Not until he
had closed the door ever so softly, and stood on the path, did he
realize exactly how dear home was to him, or what a lot Aunt Martha had
done for him in her prim fashion. The great adventure was starting.
No, it had actually started! From that moment onwards he was to be a
wage-earner and a sailor.
For three hours Dave waited on the wharf, until there were signs of
life on the _Pacific Queen_. When Captain Chisholm turned out of his
berth he was told there was a boy waiting to see him.
“A boy!” he said. “What does he want?”
“Says you told him to come, sir. He’s been on deck since four o’clock.”
“Oh, I know,” said the captain. “Send him here.”
The master mariner was having breakfast when Dave was ushered in. He
had already ascertained that the boat was bound for Auckland, New
Zealand, and other Australasian ports.
“So you want to go to sea, eh?” the big man asked, attacking a pile of
bacon and eggs.
“Yes, sir,” Dave replied.
“Ever been afloat?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“David Hallard.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen, sir.”
“Got a father?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What does he say about it?”
“He says I can be a sailor, sir,” he answered, after a moment’s
hesitation. “He was a ship’s master, but he’s got rheumatism now.”
“Well, you seem a smart enough lad. You’ll have to jump around a bit at
sea. We’ve no use for lazy folk here. Go and report to Mr. Quick, the
first mate. He will tell you what to do. He’s rough and ready, but he
knows his business. Don’t let him have to tell you twice and you’ll be
all right. We sail at noon. Run along now.”
Dave found that Mr. Quick was a very different type of man from the
captain. He seemed to bark instead of talking, nor did he appear to be
in a particularly pleasant frame of mind that morning. He had fiery
red hair and piercing eyes. Mr. Quick devoted precisely sixty seconds
to the new hand, during which he gave Dave some terse and emphatic
advice, after which he hustled him off to the galley, where he was
placed under the wing of Barnes, the ship’s cook.
“Well, and what have they sent to plague the life out of me now?”
Barnes asked in a high, squeaky voice. If Dave had not been trying
hard to make a good impression on every one he might have laughed,
for Barnes had the most comical face he had ever seen. In reality he
was good-natured enough, but for some reason he always tried to give
the impression that he was cranky and unapproachable, perhaps because
people had been taking advantage of his amiability for forty years at
sea. His fat cheeks were red, and his eyebrows stood out like two white
bushes. In spite of the greeting, Dave liked Barnes instinctively on
sight, and grew to like him still more in the course of time; and he is
a lucky person who makes a friend of the cook afloat.
“I’ve come to help you,” the boy said. “So far, I only know how to peel
potatoes, though.”
“Well, I sha’n’t be askin’ you to bake doughnuts or fry chickens for
the passengers yet a while,” the cook growled, “’cause there ain’t no
passengers this trip, and again there ain’t no chickens to fry. Ship’s
biscuits, cold, with plenty o’ weevils in ’em, is all the hands get
on this ship week-days. Sundays it’s different. We has to warm the
biscuits up into a puddin’ for a change.”
“Then what do we want a cook for?” asked Dave, with a grin.
“Look here, youngster, I’ll not stand for any impidence,” Barnes
declared, puffing out his cheeks and doing wonderful things with his
bushy eyebrows. “You’ll have a frying-pan about your ears in a brace of
shakes. Don’t stand there like a dummy! Why don’t you get to work? Do
you expect me to wash all them dishes?”
Dave whipped off his coat and started on the task with a celerity which
brought a grunt of satisfaction from the cook――a sound which Barnes
hastily strove to hide with a cough.
It occurred to the new hand that he might be able to extract some
information from the cook.
“Can you tell me what other duties I’ll have on board this boat, Mr.
Barnes, besides washing dishes?”
The cook glared at him.
“Not a thing, my son,” he said. “It’s one of the rules on this ship
that the boy isn’t allowed to do anything but wash dishes. When he’s
got through he has to part his hair in the middle and dine with the
skipper――if there isn’t some more dishes to wash, which there allus
is. What are you pesterin’ me with fool questions for, anyhow? Do you
take me for the navigatin’ officer or only the owner? Reach me that
frying-pan down and I’ll belay your ears with it.”
Dave promptly obeyed, and got a thump on the shoulders with it for
“more impidence.” After that, he was kept busy with various duties in
the galley until, for the first time in his life, he felt the peculiar
vibration of a ship’s engines. The propeller had begun its endless
song of “_chug-chug-a-chug_.”
Another Hallard had started on his first voyage.
“Can I go on deck a few minutes, Mr. Barnes, please?” he asked. The
idea of cutting up cabbages while the lights of his home town dropped
astern did not appeal to him.
“Why, yes, son,” the cook replied, working his eyebrows so ridiculously
that the boy had to laugh in spite of the curious feeling it gave him
to know that Aunt Martha was probably in tears at the moment and that
his dad was possibly watching that very ship from the window upstairs.
“Go right along. Don’t forget to ask Mr. Quick for a deck-chair and
plenty of cushions. You’ll need the cushions if Mr. Quick catches you
admirin’ the scenery.”
Dave slipped up the companion-way. Already they were steaming along at
seven or eight miles an hour, a thick trail of smoke hanging astern.
All was hustle and hurry on deck. The boy dodged out of the way of
the sailors, and, standing on a coil of rope, watched familiar scenes
disappear. It seemed difficult to realize that he was not dreaming. The
lump was there in his throat bigger than ever when he went back to the
galley, and something in his expression caught the watchful eye of the
cook.
“Never mind, laddie,” said Barnes. “This is your first trip, isn’t it?
Left the old folks behind, eh? We’ve all been through it. It’s a dog’s
life at sea, but you’ll be back eatin’ corn-beef an’ cabbage at home
afore you know it.”
CHAPTER IV
THE DERELICT
The new hand’s sleeping quarters were in the “fo’c’sle,” but he did not
sleep much the first night, for everything was strange. So far, the
ship was very steady, only giving a roll occasionally. When the boy
turned out next morning they were far out to sea and running to the
south, the coast-line of New Jersey looming up in the distance on the
starboard beam.
Dave soon discovered that he was to lead a strenuous existence on
board. With only one pair of hands, he was to do all sorts of odd jobs
for the cook, help the steward to wait on the captain, who had his
meals alone, obey orders from any one who took it into his head to
issue commands, and make himself generally useful. He got a good many
hints from Barnes when that queer individual was in the mood to be
communicative, though Dave had to sort out the hints from a maze of
contradictory statements.
“It’s a reg’lar dog’s life at sea,” said the cook, while Dave was
stirring a mysterious compound in a large basin. Barnes seemed to have
a fondness for that expression. “I dunno why kids like you want to
come on a ship. An’ yet it’s all right at times, such as when you get
ashore. The best part of bein’ at sea is goin’ ashore, I allus says.
Didn’t I see you runnin’ your legs off for Oleson this morning?” he
demanded ferociously, without the slightest warning.
“Who’s Oleson?” Dave asked. He had been performing a variety of duties
for so many people.
“Oleson is that great, lumbering, Swedish seaman who looks like a
one-eyed mule.” Dave recognized the vague description by the fact that
one man wore a patch over his left eye.
“Yes, he asked me to――”
“Never mind what he asked you to do,” the cook snapped. “You’ve got
to learn to look after yourself, kid, or nobody on this ship won’t be
doin’ nothing soon. You’ll be doing it all. Oleson wants a couple of
valets to run about after him, and somebody to carry his breakfast to
him in the morning so that he can have it in bed nice and comfortable.
Don’t tell him so or he might screw your neck round five times, but I’m
just puttin’ you wise, see? Hi, there!” he added quickly, Dave having
stopped stirring to listen. “I’ll break every bone in your body if you
spoil that puddin’.”
Mr. Quick, who was reputed to have eyes in the back of his head, took
no notice of the new hand except to give him an occasional sharp order.
Dave, being new to ship’s discipline, disliked the chief mate’s manner,
but made a mental resolve not to incur that officer’s wrath. The third
day out, however, an incident occurred which made a permanent enemy of
Mr. Quick.
A steady wind had begun to blow, whistling through the rigging and
giving the steamer a most unpleasant motion known as the “cork-screw.”
That is to say, she neither pitched all the time nor rolled all the
time, but kept up an aggravating combination of both. Dave was getting
rather white in consequence, and did not by any means feel sure of his
legs. He had a strong desire to lie down and wait until he got used to
the motion, but there were many things for him to do. In the middle of
this the steward popped his head into the galley.
“Shake up the skipper’s dinner in a hurry,” he said. “The old man says
he wants it right now. I’m going to fix up the table, so send the kid
on with the soup soon as you can.”
“Tell the captain to go to Jerusalem,” spluttered Barnes, who hated to
be hurried. “Reg’lar dog’s life, this is. Here, Dave, take this soup
along to the steward, and get a move on.”
David, anxious to do his best, but feeling more shaky than ever, took
the plate and hurried, according to instructions. Even without the soup
he would have found it most difficult to retain his balance; as it was,
he only kept upright by a miracle. His mind was concentrated solely on
his task, and there was no reason for him to suppose that Mr. Quick
would come around the corner suddenly.
Before the boy had the slightest warning, the apparition of Mr. Quick
towered in front of him. Both the mate and the boy were apparently
in a hurry. Dave realized what was inevitable a fiftieth part of a
second before it happened, but he was utterly powerless to prevent the
disaster.
The plate struck Mr. Quick just about on the lowest button of his
waistcoat, and Dave, being unable to check himself, followed the plate.
Mr. Quick gave a yell of pain, for the soup, which trickled its greasy
course down his trousers, was scalding hot. Dave remembered that fact
while he was scrambling to his feet with one eye on the mate’s red
hair, which appeared to bristle and stand erect.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the boy stammered. “The boat swayed just then.”
[Illustration: “I’m very sorry, sir,” the boy stammered]
Mr. Quick’s arm was raised and an angry light shone in his eyes.
“You lubberly pup!” he bellowed. “I’ll teach you better manners than to
throw soup over an officer of the ship. She swayed, did she? Then this
is where you sway!” and he struck at the boy with a huge fist.
Had the blow landed where Mr. Quick intended it to, Dave would probably
have been knocked unconscious, but he dodged just in time, and the
mate, still hurling abuse at Dave, and mopping himself down with a
handkerchief, turned on his heel and disappeared along the alleyway;
while Dave, very crestfallen, went back to the galley for more soup.
There more trouble was awaiting him, for Barnes seemed to be in the
worst of tempers until he learned of the calamity. Then, however,
his anger vanished and his fat sides shook with laughter. He did
not love the chief mate and rejoiced exceedingly at the latter’s
discomfiture.
“But take my tip, Dave,” he said severely, “and keep out of that man’s
way after this, or he’ll make things hot for you.”
Dave, unfortunately, could not altogether keep out of Mr. Quick’s way,
though he would have been glad to follow the advice. The mate was of
an unforgiving nature and nursed his grievance. He set Dave to all
manner of disagreeable tasks, and more than once cuffed him on slight
provocation, thereby arousing the intense indignation of Barnes.
“If only I could depend on the steward,” the cook said explosively,
“I’d give Mr. Bloomin’ Quick something in his dinner that would do his
heart good. It’s the likes of him that makes it a dog’s life at sea.
Say, kid,” he went on in fiery tones, “I’ll make you eat them potato
peelin’s raw if you don’t hurry up.”
The weather continued rough, and the _Pacific Queen_ was nearly a week
out of port before Dave began to lose the topsyturvy feeling in his
stomach. What with seasickness and Mr. Quick’s studied unkindness, he
felt exceedingly miserable sometimes, but he kept a stiff upper lip,
thereby earning the secret admiration of Barnes, who was a good deal
more human than even he suspected himself of being.
When Dave was gaining his sea legs he noticed a ship, hull down, on the
port bow and remembered the binoculars, which he usually kept fastened
up in his suitcase. Slipping down for them, he returned, and was
standing in the well-deck, peering out at the distant vessel, when the
skipper passed near.
“Well, sonny, what d’you make of her? Is she a pirate, or what? Those
look like good glasses. Let me have a peek through them.”
The captain took the binoculars, and after studying the ship on the
horizon a moment, said:
“These are uncommonly fine glasses. I believe they’re as good as my
own, if not better. Whose are they?”
“Mine, sir,” replied Dave, with a touch of pride.
“Yours!” said the captain incredulously, glancing down with an air of
suspicion at Dave’s clothes――an old suit that had grown much the worse
for wear with rough work afloat. “Where did you get them?” the big man
went on sharply.
Dave flushed, stung by the suggestion conveyed in the captain’s words.
He was not used to having his honesty questioned.
“They were my father’s, sir,” he said, unconsciously drawing himself
up. “Dad said I might use them. They were given to him by a pilot after
Dad had saved his life.”
“All right, lad; don’t ever get cross with the captain,” the big man
said, in kindly fashion, patting the boy’s shoulder. “But take my
advice and look after those binoculars in your travels, because they’re
worth as much as you’ll earn in a month of Sundays.”
Still feeling a little wounded, Dave was returning the glasses to the
suitcase, when one of the deck hands informed him that Mr. Quick wanted
him immediately and was “raging something ’orrible.”
The boy hurried away without locking the case up, and found Mr. Quick
had upset a bottle of some evil-smelling liquid over the floor of his
cabin. He was wiping it up, fuming, and calling for a bucket of hot
water, all at the same time. Dave was fully occupied for ten minutes
and then, remembering the glasses, returned to lock the case.
To his dismay they had disappeared. That they had been stolen was
obvious. There could be no other explanation. And he had promised his
father to take such care of them!
In consternation he sought the cook. Barnes grew red with indignation.
“It’s dollars to doughnuts one of them engine-room scum has done it,”
he declared. “_I’ll_ see into this.”
The second engineer was on friendly terms with the cook, and Barnes
readily enlisted his sympathy.
“I’ll speak to the chief,” he said, “and we’ll make a search.”
Making a search, however, was not as easy as it sounded. The only hope
was that the thief had not had time to secrete the glasses in one of
the many inaccessible nooks with which every ship abounds. Barnes
and the second engineer together went through the men’s quarters,
but without success. Those deck-hands who were off duty――as a class,
deck-hands hate a thief on board like poison――offered to join in the
search, and soon half a dozen men were rummaging in every hole and
corner. Dave’s hopes were sinking lower and lower. He was beginning
to regard the glasses as gone forever, when Barnes started to ferret
about in the after wheel-house; and there he came upon them hidden away
on the top of a beam.
“You’re not fit to have a ten-cent spy-glass,” he snorted, glaring at
Dave from under his fearsome eyebrows. “In my locker they’ll stay now
till we finish the trip, except when I take ’em out to look for your
brains. If I could find the scum that swiped ’em I’d make chop suey of
him, to feed Mr. Quick with. Just about the sort of diet to suit him.”
“Hello, what’s the cap’n up to?” he went on suddenly. “If he isn’t
turning off his course, I’m a Dutchman.”
Going to the side of the boat he saw they were heading directly for a
steamer which lay with a heavy list, perhaps five miles away. No smoke
emerged from her funnel. Adjusting the glasses, the cook examined the
craft for a while.
“By jiminy!” he exclaimed. “If she ain’t a derelict, I’ll eat my hat.”
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH THE PACIFIC QUEEN LOSES A PRIZE
“A derelict?” Dave said, not quite sure what a derelict was. “Doesn’t
that mean a――”
“A derelict, my son,” said Barnes, “is the sort of thing a cap’n spends
all his life lookin’ for, but most generally he doesn’t find it; and
even when he finds it, it might be lucky and it might be powerful
unlucky. If the old man has a hoodoo, he’ll either find the derelict in
the dark by punching bow on into it, or the derelict won’t be worth the
trouble of takin’ to port. But if the skipper who runs across it is one
of them people that can’t go wrong, he’ll be able to tow the thing into
port and live happy ever after on what he gets out of the salvage.”
Dave, consumed with curiosity, held out his hand for the glasses.
“Away, child, away,” commanded the cook with his eyes still glued to
them. “Here is work for men, not infants. A two-thousand-ton steamer,
as I live. We’ll all have rings on our fingers and bells on our toes
after this, for the cap’n doesn’t get all the salvage money. I dunno
what share the cook gets, eggsactly, but it ought to be about half, I
reckon. You’ll pick up a few hundred dollars too, kid, maybe, though
I’m sure you don’t deserve it. Here, take a squint through these
binoculars; though you don’t deserve that, either.”
Dave, rapidly growing more excited as they ran nearer the vessel, tried
to discern some sign of life on board her, but could not. He did not
understand quite what the cook meant about salvage, though it sounded
good.
The engine-room telegraph rang, and the _Pacific Queen_ slowed down.
The order came from the bridge for a boat to be swung out. Mr. Quick,
hustling a crew into her, took charge and put off to the other vessel.
Everybody waited impatiently for their return. The ship bobbing up and
down, a hundred yards away, had evidently encountered trouble of some
sort. Her bows were dangerously low in the water, as if the forward
compartments were flooded, and there was a list which made one think
she was going to topple over any minute. A number of plates were stove
in, showing she had hit something with tremendous force.
The boarding party remained away half an hour, and on his return the
chief mate reported that the vessel was the _Miriam_, of Boston,
apparently laden with a general cargo. She was deserted and sinking.
The forward hold and engine-room were full of water, and he thought
that only the bulkheads holding out were saving her. Once the pressure
of water broke those down, she would sink.
“She’s been worth a power of money, Mr. Quick,” commented Captain
Chisholm, “to say nothing of the cargo in her. I guess I’ll just slip
over myself and see what sort of a chance there is of doing anything
with her. She’s been in collision during a gale, and the boat that hit
her probably took the men off. We’re within twenty-four hours’ run of
Charleston. A salvage job like this would just tickle me to death. If
it can possibly be done, Mr. Mate, I’m going to try it.”
The captain’s inspection of the derelict was not so lengthy.
“There’s a sporting chance of getting her into dock,” he announced as
he climbed back onto the _Pacific Queen_, “but there isn’t a minute
to lose. We must get the pumps to work immediately. It will be tricky
work, because she may sink like a stone when she does go. Now, Mr.
Quick, get that new manila hawser bent on to her, and look alive there.
You’ll want a dozen men on her. Better take only volunteers, as it’s
risky.”
Volunteers were ready enough. Dave moved forward to join them, but
Barnes pulled him back by the ear.
“That’s work for men, not babies, didn’t I tell you?” he said.
“Besides, who d’you s’pose is going to wash the dishes on this packet
if you go and get drownded? It’s no use me askin’ the cap’n to do it,
and I’m sure I won’t. Yon is a death-trap, lad. It’s a desperate chance
to make big money, and, mark my words, they’ll hang on to the last
minute. We’ll get our share of the salvage money just the same, so stop
where you are. Blow you, anyway; you’re more trouble than you’re worth!”
In the next few minutes Dave learnt what real hustling at sea was.
Mr. Quick knew the art of driving men in an emergency, and in an
incredibly short time the derelict was pulling heavily behind the
_Pacific Queen_ at the end of the long hawser, and looking strangely
awkward with her heavy list. Mr. Quick’s task was a formidable one,
but he set about it with grim determination, for the prize was one well
worth having. There was a ground swell running, but no water was coming
inboard; so after having hand pumps rigged up and setting four men to
work at top speed on these, he had the hatches ripped off. As he had
surmised, the cargo had shifted badly, and that was what made her lean
over so perilously. Bales, boxes, and merchandise of all kinds were
lying in indescribable confusion, and it was a Herculean task to get
the hold anything like ship-shape without the aid of steam-winches. Mr.
Quick, however, threw off his coat and worked as hard as any of the
men. The derelict was not in imminent danger of turning turtle so long
as the sea did not grow worse, but there was always the danger of a
strong wind getting up suddenly.
With aching backs, fingers lacerated by frenzied tugging at the jumbled
cargo, and perspiration pouring off them, the men toiled at their task
without a break all day, and Mr. Quick did not call them off until
there was an appreciable difference in the way the boat was riding in
the water. The men at the pumps, however, worked in vain. Thousands of
gallons of water gushed out of the hold for’ard without raising the bow
an inch in the sea. It was evident that a hole of considerable size
must have been torn in the side of the vessel, through which the water
rushed as fast as the overtaxed muscles of the seamen pumped it out.
Everybody on the _Pacific Queen_ was agog with excitement, casting many
an anxious glance back at the precious prize.
“Quick ain’t giving them men a picnic; no, sir!” Barnes said to Dave.
“They’ll be ’most dead by the time we get to port. That mate hasn’t
had a proper chance to let off steam in months, and my name isn’t Bill
Barnes if he doesn’t enjoy it more’n a big-league baseball game. That
man ain’t got no heart. He’s just made up of vinegar and guncotton.”
It was true that Mr. Quick was getting the last ounce out of the men,
and the pumping went on incessantly. There was always the bare chance
that they were lightening the derelict a trifle, and the mate did not
like to think of the tremendous strain those bulkheads were standing.
Every hour, though, brought them miles nearer Charleston.
When night had fallen Barnes stood at the stern of the _Pacific Queen_,
surveying the lurching light which alone showed that the stricken craft
was still above water.
“This is where I quit cookin’ puddin’s for a bunch of sailors,” he said
to Dave. “It’s more’n I ever hoped for to come my way, is pickin’ up
two hundred feet or so of a steamer without even a canary on board.
D’you know what I’m going to do with my share, kid? I’m going to found
a home for tired sea-cooks. Yes, sir. That’s what I’m going to do.
There’s going to be free grub and things, and no man in there will do a
stroke of work. Maybe there’ll be a steward engaged. Yes, sir, I’ve got
his duties figgered out right now. When a tired sea-cook is reclinin’
at his ease, with a good cargo of roast beef stowed aboard, running his
mind over the days when he had the life plagued out of him afloat, that
steward’ll knock at the door soft-like and say it’s time the crew’s
dinner was ready. Yes, sir. There’ll only be one man in that home for
tired sea-cooks, and that’s me. And do you know what I’ll say to the
steward? I’ll tell him to tell the crew to go to Jericho.
“Laugh, you little lubber,” he added, glaring at Dave, “or I’ll drop
you overboard. What are you going to do with your share, Dave?”
The boy thought for a moment.
“I’ll pay some one to write a book teaching manners to sea-cooks,” he
said, side-stepping just in time to avoid Barnes’s hand.
The coming of darkness had not improved the position. There was an
atmosphere of grave anxiety on the _Pacific Queen_, for it needed no
very experienced eye to judge that the _Miriam’s_ chances were, to say
the least, slim; and none knew better than Mr. Quick how insecure was
the position of the men under him.
Dave slept fitfully, dreaming he was the skipper of a steamer that
encountered a whole fleet of derelicts. He had them all tied astern,
like a string of barges, reaching for miles. Then his chief engineer
came up to report that there was no more coal left on board, and
Captain David Hallard was struggling desperately with the problem of
what to do, when he awoke.
Through a porthole he saw that the first signs of dawn were visible in
the eastern sky. Dressing hastily, he went on deck.
Oleson and one or two other sailors were hovering round the stern,
discussing the _Miriam’s_ chances of keeping afloat.
“She’ll just about make Charleston,” one man said, “but she wouldn’t
get much farther.”
“I never expected to find her above water this morning,” commented
another, gloomily.
“Leave that to Quick,” said the first sailor. “He knows what he’s
doing. There’ll be a scramble for that dory they’re trailing astern,
though, if she does sink!”
The light was growing rapidly, and Dave could now make out the form of
the chief mate. The creak and thud of the pumps came faintly across the
heaving water.
Mr. Quick, as a matter of fact, was ill at ease. He had been standing
for some time over the flooded hold, listening, and fearing to hear a
repetition of an ominous sound――a dull groaning that seemed to come
from somewhere underneath him. Using his arms as a semaphore, he sent
a signal to Captain Chisholm, who had been restlessly pacing the
bridge.
“Afraid bulkheads giving way,” he signaled. “No lower yet, but stand by
ready to let go hawser if necessary!”
The captain frowned as he read the message. It was maddening to have
such valuable salvage snatched away when they were getting so near to
port. But he was responsible for the lives of the men.
“Don’t take chances,” he signaled back. “Have dory ready.”
Mr. Quick smiled grimly, but no one on the _Pacific Queen_ saw that
smile. It was not a pleasant sight. He was willing to run the same
risk of being drowned as the men, but as chief mate he would draw a
large proportion of the salvage money, and for the present he had no
intention of giving the order which would send the men into the dory.
Every now and again he went to the side of the ship to see if she had
settled farther. He was perfectly aware that the noise he had heard
indicated something sinister was happening down in the flooded interior
of the ship and that the derelict’s chances now hung on a single
thread. But while that thread held there was a hope of big salvage
money.
An hour passed――two hours. Mr. Quick, with every nerve strained to
breaking point, felt a peculiar motion of the derelict, and the deck
vibrated slightly. Though hard and cruel, he was brave. Very quietly,
and still puffing at the stump of a cigar which he had nearly bitten
through, he peered again over the side.
For three minutes he remained in that position, staring intently at the
water.
Oleson, on the _Pacific Queen_, took the glasses from Dave’s hand.
“She’s a full foot lower,” he said jerkily. “I’ll be veree surprised if
she keeps up another hour.”
Suddenly the cries of alarmed men on the _Miriam_ were heard. A
crashing, rumbling noise from under the decks had told them the end had
come.
Like a tired thing, the derelict lurched heavily, and before the men
on board had time to get half way to the dory, the doomed steamer’s
bows were in the sea. She canted over, making progress along the deck
difficult. Only eight of the crew, besides the mate, had dropped into
the small boat, when the stern of the derelict began to rise as her
bows went farther downward. To have delayed another second would have
meant death for all. With his own hands Mr. Quick cast the painter
when the dory was tilted at a perilous angle, and even as the piteous
cries of the four men left on board were ringing in their ears, the
sailors in the dory bent desperately to their oars in order to avoid
the whirlpool which the sinking ship would create on her plunge to the
bottom.
Though the muscles in their backs and arms cracked under the strain,
the men did not succeed in getting far enough away to avoid the eddy.
The instant he noticed what was happening, Captain Chisholm stopped the
engines of the _Pacific Queen_.
“Let go that hawser,” came the order from the bridge. “Get another boat
out quick. Be smart there.”
Like lightning the men obeyed. The loss of their prize was forgotten
for the moment, for human lives were in peril. There was no time to
pick and choose who was to man the second dory. Those near at hand
jumped in, Dave among them. Just as they pushed off from the side of
the _Pacific Queen_ the little craft containing Mr. Quick and eight men
was caught by the outside of the whirlpool and began to spin round.
“Easy with your oars, lads,” said the bo’sun in charge of the second
dory. “We must keep out of that.”
The irresistible suction drew the mate’s boat nearer and nearer that
swirling centre of the whirlpool in rapidly narrowing circles. The
men in her were now struggling frantically against overwhelming odds.
It seemed as though nothing could possibly save them from being drawn
under, to be shot far down in the track of the _Miriam_.
Dave gripped the gunwale of the boat tightly. He wanted to close his
eyes to shut out the impending tragedy. He forgot the mate’s brutality.
It was agonizing to have to sit still and do nothing while his
shipmates were on the verge of death.
CHAPTER VI
BARNES ADVISES AND DAVE RESOLVES
Just as the spinning dory reached the vortex, a change came over the
turbulent water. The fiercest suction seemed to have spent itself.
The whirlpool became a dozen smaller eddies, each with its rapidly
revolving current, and though the dory danced from one point of danger
to another it remained afloat. Loose spars and gear from the derelict
began to shoot up to the surface.
“Let her have it now, lads,” shouted the bo’sun. “This’ll be our only
chance of getting any one who went down.”
A minute later both dorys were over the place where the _Miriam_ had
sunk, and two unconscious forms were soon lifted out of the water.
“There’s two more somewhere,” Mr. Quick shouted across, as a number
of men in each boat began to apply artificial respiration to the
half-drowned victims.
Dave, happening to look a little way from the scene of the tragedy,
noticed something awash on the surface for a moment.
“There’s a man over there, Mr. Grimes,” he yelled to the bo’sun, and
the dory was urged across the intervening space.
“Sure enough there is,” said Grimes, as they drew near. “You’ve got
quick eyes, lad. If this chap has any kick left in him he’ll owe his
life to you.”
The man’s form was just sinking again when they got hold of it with a
boat hook. He was a deck hand named Hawke, who had gone out of his way
on more than one occasion to do an act of kindness to the boy.
For nearly half an hour the dorys cruised about the scene of the
disaster, in the hope of picking up the remaining member of the crew,
but the sea had claimed her toll; and for some days afterward there
brooded over the ship an air of gloom, the missing man having been not
only a good sailor but a popular comrade.
The rest of the voyage, until they made their first stop, at New
Orleans, was uneventful. Dave was bitterly disappointed to find that,
as they were only to remain in port a few hours, nobody was allowed
ashore, and he left the gate of Louisiana with only a confused memory
of docks. The weather remained favourable in the Gulf and the Caribbean
Sea; and the boy settled down to ship’s routine during the long run to
Cape Horn, where the _Pacific Queen_ ran into a furious gale, which
battered her for four days. It was Dave’s first experience of really
bad weather, and with it came more seasickness, for the ship sometimes
lay over at an angle of forty-five degrees, or seemed to be trying to
stand on her nose as she slid down the mountainous seas. Green waves
were shipped, but little damage was done, everything movable having
been securely lashed.
The cook had a miraculous faculty of keeping on his feet and
manipulating dishes and pans when by all known laws of gravitation he
should have been sprawling. The first time Dave was jerked off his
legs by a violent roll of the ship Barnes hurled a stream of invective
at him, performing wondrous gymnastics with his bushy eyebrows and
balancing a stew-pan on the galley stove the while.
“Do you want me to hold you up,” he fumed, “as well as do all the
work in this galley? This comes of goin’ to sea with babies! It’s a
cradle you ought to have. Me and the mate will take turns rockin’ you
to sleep. I’d never have come aboard this packet if I’d known you’d
be―― Come here,” he added, softening suddenly, noticing a red stain on
Dave’s shirt-sleeve. “You’re an idiot, that’s what you are. Why didn’t
you tell me you’d hurt yourself?”
He rolled up the boy’s sleeve and found a cut which, while not serious,
was causing considerable pain. With a tenderness that even Dave had not
suspected Barnes capable of, the cook bathed and bandaged it, leaving
the dinner to take care of itself until he had finished.
“Allus keep the dirt out of a cut, kid,” he said, “if you haven’t got
brains enough to keep out of cutting yourself, which you haven’t.”
As that day wore on the sea grew worse, and Barnes quietly took on to
his own shoulders a good many of the boy’s duties, for in spite of his
incessant, vitriolic grumbling, he knew well enough that Dave was a
willing worker, and an exceptionally useful one considering that he was
a “first tripper.” Moreover it was only with difficulty now, in spite
of his many years of experience, that Barnes could move about while the
ship was playing such antics.
“You’d better turn in, youngster,” he said during the evening.
“There’s nothing much for you to do.”
“Thanks, Mr. Barnes,” Dave said limply, profoundly grateful for the
chance of getting to his bunk. He was making his way for’ard and
feeling extremely sick, when he encountered Mr. Quick. The wild sea
had aroused all the man-driving quality in the mate, who promptly put
the lad to cleaning the chain-locker, which happened to be the most
disagreeable task he could think of at the moment.
David Hallard came of stubborn stock, and the situation had to be
pretty desperate for him to admit to himself that he was beaten, but
by the time he was able to crawl into his berth he had a craving to
be home, in his own bed, in the house that did not sway and try to
turn somersaults, and where there were no chain-lockers. It was the
worst hour of the gale, and Dave, though not actually frightened, was
more than a little awed. Added to that, his arm hurt a good deal.
And besides the seasickness, which alone was enough to make him
intensely miserable, he had the recent memory of Mr. Quick’s deliberate
unkindness.
The rolling of the steamer kept him awake for hours, during which
he made a grim resolution. After that his mind became easier and he
dropped off to sleep.
Next morning, to his great joy, the boy found the gale had almost
abated, and though a heavy sea was still running, the ship was riding
much more easily. His resolution involved one point which puzzled him,
and after a while he decided to consult the cook.
“I want to ask your advice, Mr. Barnes,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind
to do something.”
“What d’you take me for?” snapped Barnes, bustling about the galley.
“Do I look like a walkin’ encyclopedia? I’m too busy to fiddle about
with kids, anyway.”
The boy did not answer but went on steadily with his work.
Barnes continued to bustle, making perhaps a trifle more noise than was
absolutely necessary with his pans, and glancing occasionally in the
direction of his youthful assistant. At last he coughed awkwardly.
“What’s worryin’ you, Dave?” he asked, puffing out his red cheeks. He
liked the boy more than he was aware of, and took a fatherly pride in
giving him advice.
“Oh, only this, I’ve decided to leave the ship when we get to Auckland.”
Barnes stared and blinked his queer-looking eyes.
“Pity to do that,” he said. “By rights you ought to take the ship with
you. Isn’t the steam heat to your satisfaction, or is it ’cos you
haven’t got a private bath-room?”
Dave knew Barnes well enough by now to ignore his sarcasm.
“I’ll be real sorry to go and leave you, Mr. Barnes,” the lad went on,
“but Mr. Quick has never forgotten me upsetting that soup over his
legs, and he’s got it in for me.”
“I know,” the cook said. “That’s one of his playful little habits. It’s
the vinegar in him. But don’t forget, sonny, you might go further an’
fare worse.”
“Maybe,” Dave agreed ruefully, “but if I have my way, I’ll try to be
under a mate whose legs I haven’t upset hot soup over. Here is what I
want to know, though. This boat goes on to Australian ports and the
crew are paid off at Brisbane, aren’t they?”
“If we ever get there.”
“Well, how can I get my pay at Auckland?”
“You want some new clothes, don’t you?” Barnes said. “There’s nothing
in the slop-chest for kids. I’ll put in a word for you, and they’ll
advance you as much money as you’ve earned up to the time we hit New
Zealand.”
This relieved Dave’s mind considerably, because all the cash he
possessed was one dime, one nickel and four cents; and though he had
sufficient confidence to leave the ship at Auckland and find another
berth, he very naturally disliked the notion of finding himself in a
strange land, many thousands of miles from Aunt Martha’s flapjacks,
with a large appetite and only nineteen cents in his pocket.
Realizing that the more he knew about his new profession the more
easily he would be likely to obtain another ship in New Zealand, Dave
learnt all he could during the next few weeks, and here he found a
valuable tutor in Hawke. The sailor spent many hours of his watch below
teaching the boy some of the simpler arts of his craft, including
splicing and the tying of those baffling knots which form such an
important part of a nautical education. Hawke would also have pressed
some of his possessions on Dave as a mark of gratitude for what the
boy had done when he was in the water, but these Dave firmly refused,
accepting only Hawke’s clasp knife as a souvenir.
Very little occurred to relieve the monotony of the voyage through the
Southern Pacific. Dave, however, had not been at sea long enough to get
over the novelty of it all. They had left Cape Horn about four thousand
miles astern when the look-out one day reported a sail on the port bow.
An hour later Captain Chisholm altered his course, observing that the
ship was flying a signal for assistance. As the _Pacific Queen_ drew
near it was seen that the distressed vessel was a bark named the _Polly
E. Perkins_, with every stitch of canvas set. There was very little
wind and the sails flapped lazily. The _Polly E. Perkins_ reported that
she had been nearly two months beating her way from New Zealand against
adverse winds, and was now running out of water. The crew was already
on short rations. Captain Chisholm sent a supply of the precious liquid
and then, on learning that he could render no further assistance,
steamed once more westward, leaving the bark to resume her trying trip.
“Take my tip and never sign on an old wind-jammer,” Barnes said to Dave
as the other vessel dropped astern. “It’s a dog’s life on a steamer,
anyway, but I’d hate to tell you what it’s like on them floatin’
coffins.”
Dave smiled, remembering that the old mariner with the paint brush
at Brooklyn had spoken disparagingly of the “new-fangled steam
contraptions.”
“Hang you for a lubber,” spluttered the cook, “laughin’ at me that’s
old enough to be teaching your grandfather. If you don’t hop off this
ship when we touch Auckland I’ll report you to the cap’n and have you
fired for impidence.”
“I was only thinking of another sea-going man, older than you, who said
he preferred sailing craft,” said Dave, whereupon the cook proceeded to
tell some horrifying stories of wind-jammers that had drifted into that
strange region known as the Sargasso Sea and remained there helpless
for years until the starving crew fought among one another, even for
the rats in the hold, before they perished miserably.
“But if they all died how do you know they fought for the rats?” Dave
asked.
“The cap’n has to enter such things in the log,” replied Barnes acidly,
determined not to be beaten. “I remember the time, when I was a
youngster at sea, when people who asked half as many silly questions as
you do would have been put in irons and fed on salt water.”
As the _Pacific Queen_ neared Auckland, Dave wound up a long letter
which he had been writing to his father, bit by bit, ever since he left
Brooklyn. It was characteristic of the lad that he said very little of
such hardships as he had encountered. He explained that he was going to
join another ship, and added hopefully that he would find one homeward
bound if possible, little dreaming of the strange adventures that were
before him ere he could cross the threshold of his home again.
CHAPTER VII
THE WRECKING OF THE KINGFISHER
As soon as the _Pacific Queen_ was moored at Auckland, Barnes saw that
Dave got most of the money due to him as wages, urging that he had not
enough clothes to keep him warm. Barnes did not like to lose the lad,
but he had youngsters of his own, and he knew Dave had been submitted
to more unkindness than necessary at the hands of the mate.
“Good-bye, kid,” he said, wiping his greasy hand to shake that of the
boy. “Heaven knows it’ll be a stroke of bad luck for any ship’s cook
that gets you to help him. I’m glad to be rid of you. But remember what
I’ve told you. Don’t jump aboard any old tub. You’re a smart enough
youngster except for your lack of brains and your impidence, and you
know how to take care of yourself a bit better now, but ships isn’t
all as comfortable as the _Pacific Queen_. I expect I’ll be bumping up
against you again somewhere or other. Don’t sign on to any craft where
the crew speak an un-Christian lingo, or they might flay you alive. I
learnt my lesson that way on a Portugee boat, afore you were thought
of.”
Carrying his suitcase, Dave went up the gangway, thrilled at the idea
of putting his feet on foreign soil. He spent some hours walking along
the wharves, where vessels of all nationalities, rigs, and sizes were
lying, each one busily loading or unloading. He did not feel in any
hurry. There was more money in his pocket than he had ever possessed at
any one time, and it was money of which he was proud, for he had earned
it.
Dave felt no compunction about having left the _Pacific Queen_. Mr.
Quick did not want him, and he did not want Mr. Quick. Now both
parties were satisfied. Barnes was the only person who really might
be inconvenienced, and he had said he could easily get some one else
“more useful and less impident.”
After amusing himself by watching the shipping for a while, Dave
decided to keep out of the way until the following evening, by which
time his old ship would have sailed. Boarding a street car, he
travelled at random to another part of the town, where he began to
search for a room. Seeing an elderly man digging in a cottage garden,
he spoke to him over the fence.
“Can you tell me where I could get a room for a few nights?” the boy
asked.
The man straightened his back.
“I don’t jest know,” he said, surveying Dave, who was wearing his only
respectable suit of clothes. “I’ll speak to my missis.”
The “missis,” a portly soul with a jovial face, came out.
“I’ve got an empty room that my son had afore he went up-country,” she
said. “You can have that if you don’t mind roughing it.”
“I’m used to roughing it, being a sailor,” replied Dave, feeling just a
little bit important.
“For the land’s sake!” the woman exclaimed, scanning him more closely.
“I’d never have thought it. You’re only a boy although you are so
tanned.”
Mrs. Higgins made Dave very comfortable, he having fallen into her good
graces at once; and the old people listened with great interest to his
story of the voyage, punctuating it with many questions, for they had
always been a stay-at-home couple. The boy spent several days with
them, being glad of the chance to stretch his legs ashore, and never
tired of seeing the strange sights.
Once Mrs. Higgins managed to extract his Brooklyn address from him
without arousing his suspicion. In the course of time Aunt Martha
received a motherly letter in which she learnt that her Dave was “all
well,” that he had fallen into good hands during his stay in New
Zealand, and that all his shirt buttons were put on and his socks
mended before he went to sea again.
Dave encountered some disappointment in the matter of ships. Naturally,
he hoped to get a vessel bound for either New York or Boston, but as
luck would have it the ships seemed to be clearing for nearly every
part of the world except those he wanted to reach. The only two
steamers bound for New York had full crews, and in his inmost heart the
boy was glad, as neither of them looked equal to the _Pacific Queen_.
His task involved tramping along miles of wharves and docks, and his
reception was not always as pleasant as that accorded to him by Captain
Chisholm. He was always civil, though, and consequently got a direct
answer to his questions, even though it was sometimes given a little
brusquely.
On the fifth day he received a definite offer of a berth on a
large English boat bound to Capetown and London, and it was a sore
temptation, the vessel being one of the most up-to-date freighters,
of between five and six thousand tons. Dave, however, was strongly
opposed to the idea of going so far from home. As it was, he had made
a very long trip, and he had a great desire to double back on his
tracks if possible, so he declined the job. But after several more
days had passed he began to grow anxious for he had spent a good deal
of his money on various articles which experience had taught him were
necessary. With considerable misgiving he went on board a small tramp,
at last, determined to accept any berth that was going, and in a few
minutes found himself engaged on the ancient steamer _Kingfisher_,
bound for Adelaide and Fremantle, Australia, in the capacity of cook’s
help and cabin-boy.
Dave bitterly regretted his choice before he had been at sea twenty-four
hours. The ship was one of the oldest afloat in those waters, and
proportionately dirty. Rats scuttled among the cargo, and even found
their way to the crew’s quarters. Either because the owners were
mean about paint, or because the skipper was indifferent, the old
_Kingfisher_ had a dilapidated appearance, and in anything but the
calmest weather she was known pleasantly by the crew as “the submarine,”
by reason of her trick of digging her nose into the waves instead of
riding on top of them.
But bad as her appearance and sailing qualities were, it was her
machinery which was worst, and Dave found that MacTavish, her Scottish
engineer, never tired of bemoaning his fate in having to drive such
“scrap iron.” The _Kingfisher_ was a much smaller vessel than the one
which had carried Dave to New Zealand, and he found that the various
officers had a proportionately smaller idea of their own dignity.
MacTavish had many chats with the boy, taking a certain amount of
interest in him because his own wife was a New York woman. But most of
his conversation was about that “rattle-box doon below.”
“I only shipped in her for this voyage,” he said, “and if ever we get
back to New Zealand, aboot which I have me doubts, I mean to have a
word with them owners for sendin’ such a bunch of trouble to sea.”
“She seems to be working all right,” Dave suggested mildly.
“_Seems_ to!” the Scot said in scornful accents. “I s’pose you’re
deaf on one side so you canna hear that clackety-clack. It fair gives
me toothache to listen to it. Dinna say I told you, but I have my
suspicions them engines was once used by Noah in the Ark. They’re worn
out, and it passes my wit to know how they hold together. Every bearing
is as loose as old age can make it, there isn’t a steam pipe that
doesn’t leak, and at night when I turn in I expect to find the whole
lot of junk has punched a hole in the bottom of the ship and fallen
through by mornin’.”
Although Dave guessed much of this was exaggerated, it did not tend to
make him feel any happier about his choice of ships.
“She’s got through all right before,” he said. “Let’s hope she will
last out this time.”
“Aye, she may,” observed the melancholy Scot, “and then again she
mightn’t. You know what happens to the pitcher that goes oftenest to
the well. One day this tub is going to attend a funeral, and it’ll be
her own. It gives me a pain in the spine to think what may happen if we
strike rough weather and she starts kicking up her heels. If that old
propeller gets out of the water, with a full head of steam driving it
at racing speed, I’ll be wishing myself back in bonnie Scotland.”
Dave found that a similar state of dissatisfaction reigned everywhere
on board, and the mates accordingly had to employ harsh measures in
dealing with the men. The food, too, was far from satisfactory, and
Dave had to work incessantly, if not for the cook for one of the
mates, if not for one of the mates then for the captain. He was kept
running all day and soon began to wish he had heeded Barnes’s warning
that he might go farther and fare worse. He consoled himself with the
reflection, however, that he was gaining more experience, continually
adding to his stock of learning in nautical matters. Hard work and the
life in the pure salt air were keeping him in the pink of condition.
His muscles were setting, and he already possessed more strength than
the average boy of his age. Being naturally ambitious, he began to
study the rudiments of navigation in his few spare moments, and in this
the second mate gave him some slight assistance, lending him one or
two books to read on the subject. One of his greatest hopes was to be
allowed to take a trick at the wheel, but this, of course, was out of
the question at present.
In spite of MacTavish’s misgivings, the _Kingfisher_ chugged her weary
way more than a thousand miles to the west, passed through Bass Strait
(where Dave got his first glimpse of the coastline of Australia)
and finally brought up with a wheeze and a cough of her engines at
Adelaide. There the ship was tied up for three days, unloading and
loading; and on several occasions the boy found time for a run ashore.
Before sailing from there he wrote again to his father, stating that he
was well and happy, and relating various incidents which he knew would
be of interest. He covered a whole sheet in telling of MacTavish and
his “bunch of trouble” down below, never dreaming what an important
part those old engines were to play in his career.
After casting off at Adelaide, the _Kingfisher_ passed Kangaroo
Island on her port beam, and entered the vast and stormy bay known as
the Great Australian Bight, where great currents meet and where the
elements rarely seem to be at rest. For full six hundred miles the
_Kingfisher_ had to plough her way through a wild sea, and MacTavish’s
life became a nightmare. Even when he went to his bunk he could not
sleep for fear of the man with his hand on the throttle allowing the
propeller to “race” as the vessel kicked her heels up; and as luck
would have it the leaky steam pipes began to bother him more than ever.
Twice they had to lay to in the trough of the sea while all hands in
the engine room struggled to repair some defect. The captain, who had
been in command of the ship for a number of years, apparently took
it as a matter of course. A voyage in the _Kingfisher_ without some
serious engine trouble would have seemed almost unnatural to him.
“My hair’ll be snow white,” the chief engineer complained to Dave
during a breathing spell on deck. “There’s something uncanny aboot yon
machinery. It’s foolin’ us all the time. The thing is possessed. It
waits patiently until we get one part patched up, before breaking out
in a fresh place, but no sooner we’ve got her running than she gets up
to her old games. I’m only waitin’ for one of the cylinder heads to
blow off or the boilers to bust, and then I’ll be able to light my
pipe in peace and watch the rest of her lie doon and die.”
But the boilers held and the cylinders never faltered. Worse trouble
was waiting around the corner for the unhappy Scot. Right in the middle
of the Bight, when the wind was blowing big guns and giant waves
were careering along, the _Kingfisher_ gave a plunge which left her
propeller in mid air for the space of several seconds before there
was time to shut off steam. MacTavish, feeling the vibration, knew
what was happening, and burst into a cold perspiration. If it had
occurred on any other ship, he would not have been so concerned; but
his “rattle-box” was in no condition to stand treatment of that kind. A
few hours later his worst fears were realized. An oiler reported that a
crack had developed in the main shaft, near the propeller.
The ship was promptly stopped, and MacTavish made a careful inspection
of the damage. For once, the captain was deeply concerned. He, too,
went down into the bottom of the ship, to see how bad the trouble was.
“She’s cracked at a flaw in the steel,” MacTavish declared, “and it’s
only a question of how much strain is put on her before she rips right
off as clean as a carrot. You’ll have to run at half speed, anyway,
Cap’n. If you make Fremantle, you’ll be lucky.”
For days after that the _Kingfisher_ crawled westwards, with the
engineers nursing her “scrap iron” jealously. She managed to scrape out
of the Bight and was already within a few hundred miles of Fremantle
when a southerly gale struck her in all its fury.
Suddenly, while the ship was pitching, she shuddered convulsively.
There was a grating noise in the engine-room, and then silence.
The propeller-shaft had parted, and they were at the mercy of the sea.
The only thing that was of the slightest assistance was a fore-and-aft
sail which had been rigged, but the canvas was rotten, and it split
from top to bottom in a violent gust.
For the first time in his life Dave was facing real danger.
Helpless as a log, the _Kingfisher_ ran before the storm hour after
hour. The crew could now do nothing but wait for a possible shifting of
the wind. It kept steadily in one quarter, however, and, when darkness
fell, the hopes of every one on board fell to zero. Rockets were sent
up, but there was no answering signal. All through the night Dave, with
the rest of the crew, stood on deck, anxiously looking for something in
the nature of a miracle to happen.
Dawn broke after an apparent eternity, only to accentuate the misery
of their position. Everywhere the sea was a mass of foam and seething,
white-crested waves. Soon the loom of low-lying land ahead became
apparent, and toward this they were carried remorselessly. At the
end of their cables dangled the two anchors, which, now that the
_Kingfisher_ was in shallower water, dragged and retarded her progress
somewhat, but did not hold.
“Stand by the boats,” the captain bellowed at last through a megaphone.
There were breakers about three cable lengths ahead.
Every man was already wearing a life-belt. The chance of getting
ashore, even in the boats, seemed a forlorn one, with such a sea raging.
All waited tensely for the moment when the vessel should strike the
ground. Just outside the grasp of the hungry breakers she hit the
bottom with a mighty thud which jarred her from stem to stern. The next
wave lifted her. Then she struck for the last time, and the days of the
old _Kingfisher_ were over.
Waves were breaking right over her when the men were struggling to
lower the boats. One boat, containing as many of the crew as could
scramble into her, capsized instantly, and Dave shuddered as he heard
the cries of the doomed men. He was standing at the side of the ship,
waiting with others for a favorable instant to jump into a boat that
danced crazily alongside. For a second the small craft was lifted
almost up to the rail, and he made a leap, landing, more by good
fortune than anything else, in the middle of the boat just as the men
in her began to pull away.
The next ten minutes were thrilling. Dave could not think of them for
months afterward without a vivid picture of it all flashing into his
brain.
There were more than a dozen sailors huddled together in the dancing
craft. Dave never knew the exact number. Far too heavily laden, she
stood no chance of reaching shore. Straight at the breakers she went.
It was neck or nothing. At the worst, the men in her could only die,
but they could die fighting for their lives.
The first wave toyed with the craft, lifting it like a cork before
passing on. Twenty feet behind it towered a silent, green wall of
water, the crest of which was just beginning to topple over with a
hissing, ominous sound. Relentlessly it rushed on, and Dave’s heart
sank, for he believed that his last moment had come.
The boat shot upward and spun round dizzily, half full of water. The
boy clutched one of the seats with nerveless fingers. Every second
he expected to feel the wave closing over him. Rowing was out of the
question. They were at the mercy of the sea. The boat met the next wave
broadside on. It came like some devouring monster, eager for its prey.
One of the crew, his nerves strung to breaking point, uttered a hoarse
cry as the mass of water struck them. The boat turned completely over,
and its occupants sank in a smother of foam, many of them to their doom.
Aided by the life-belt he was wearing, the boy struck out, gasping.
At one instant he came to the surface and took a choking breath. The
next moment another swirling breaker had caught and overwhelmed him
again. His mouth, ears, and nose were full of water. He was rolling
over and over and the last of his strength was fast ebbing away. When
his head emerged from the foam the thunder of the surf sounded fainter,
as though it were drifting away into the distance. Vaguely he wondered
what his dad and Aunt Martha were doing, far away at home; but his
thoughts were disconnected. He felt an inclination to sleep, although
he was being smothered all the time. If only he could get one more
breath!
For a flash he returned fully to consciousness, when a sharp pain shot
through his knee as it struck a rock. Then came forgetfulness.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH DAVE FINDS A FRIEND
When the boy opened his eyes again he was lying full length on the
sand, some distance above the water’s edge. A man was bending over him.
“Where am I?” Dave asked, still dazed.
“Here,” the man replied, with a curious smile.
“Where’s here?”
“Where you’ve no right to be, judging by the way you and your friends
chose to come ashore. Really, you ought all to be drowned.”
“I remember now,” said Dave. “Are the others all right?”
“Four of them are fit to return to their jolly old families,” the man
replied. “Don’t worry about the others till you feel a bit better. Can
you stand up?”
Dave tried to get on his legs, but his knee hurt him considerably. He
looked at his companion attentively for the first time. The man was
shabbily clothed and did not appear to have shaved for days. His hair
was crying aloud for the attention of a pair of scissors, and his
shoes consisted chiefly of holes and cracks. There was something about
his face, however, which was not in keeping with his odd attire, in
spite of its unshaven condition. His eyes were clear and intelligent,
but they had a lazy look, as though care sat with difficulty on his
shoulders. Humorous lines were drawn about the corners of his mouth,
which was good-tempered but too easy-going. His tattered clothes were
flapping in the wind, wet through.
“You fetched me out of the water?” Dave asked wearily.
“I took that liberty,” was the reply. “I wasn’t doing anything else
just then, and I kind of guessed you might prefer it that way.”
“I’m ever so grateful,” the boy said. “Where are the others?”
“Gone up to the farm,” the man replied, waving his arm airily in the
direction of some trees. “You had better come along too. You ought to
have something hot to drink.”
“Was MacTavish saved?” Dave asked.
“If you mean a Scottish gentleman with a fiery light in his eyes, an
accent you can cut with a knife, and an infinite flow of language on
the subject of some mysterious engines, yes.”
“I guess that’s MacTavish,” Dave said, unable to resist a smile. “I’m
glad the _Kingfisher_ didn’t drown him. My name is Hallard――David
Hallard, of Brooklyn, New York.”
“Glad to know you. I am pleased you called, though the method you
adopted of coming ashore has its disadvantages. My name is Bruce
Tempest.”
Dave thought his companion’s slight accent was familiar.
“Are you an American?” he asked.
“Well, I am in a way. I started out under the Stars and Stripes, but
I have been a bit of a wanderer. Since we’ve got to know one another
so well, may I offer you such hospitality as I can in my shack? It’s
nearer than the farm. Come along, or you’ll get cold.”
A little way above the rim of the trees Tempest led Dave to a log hut.
“It’s my home for the present,” he said, thrusting open the door and
showing its bare interior. “I’m sorry the piano has been taken away to
be tuned, and both the cook and the parlor-maid are having the day off,
but I’ll have a cup of hot coffee ready for you inside of two shakes.
In the meanwhile, slip off those wet things until they’re dry and I’ll
allow you to wear my best trousers. There’s only one hole in them, and
I mean to mend that some day.”
While he continued to talk in a careless, half-bantering tone, he was
busying himself with an oil-stove and “Billie” kettle; and soon a
rough-and-ready meal had been prepared. Dave, now rapidly recovering
from the effects of his immersion, was beginning to feel ravenous, for
nobody on the _Kingfisher_ had eaten anything since the previous day.
Canned salmon, thick slices of bread and butter, and coffee, set out on
an upturned box innocent of a table-cover, formed the repast, and Bruce
Tempest played host politely.
“Do you live here all the time?” Dave asked, looking around at the
shack. Besides the box which served as a table, it contained two
chairs, one of which had a leg missing. Tempest was sitting on that by
the simple process of tilting it backward and putting his feet on a
ledge in the wall of the shack. In one corner were a couple of shelves
on which stood a frying-pan, cups and saucers, and a few plates, most
of them badly chipped. A mattress and bedding in another corner
virtually completed the inventory in that room. Through an open door
the boy saw a second room, as scantily furnished.
“Been here a month, resting,” replied Tempest. “I don’t think that game
knee of yours will carry you very far just now, will it?”
“I must have bumped it pretty hard,” said the boy. “It’s swelling.”
“Well, this isn’t exactly a first-class hotel,” Tempest went on, “but
I shall be glad to have you stay here till you get on your pins again.
Your four companions will probably go on to Albany, and be fed like
fighting-cocks by the Mariners’ Aid Society, or whatever it’s called.
I’m afraid there isn’t much chance of rescuing your kit from the wreck.
She’ll break up mighty soon with a sea like this running.”
Dave arose and took the binoculars from a capacious pocket which he had
torn while jamming them in.
“Glad I saved those,” he said, handing them over for inspection. “Dad
specially told me to take care of them.”
“They certainly are too good to lose. Have you been at sea long?”
“Only a few months,” the boy explained. “I wanted to get back to
America, but this doesn’t look much like it, does it?”
“It’s quite a step, so to speak, from here to New York,” agreed
Tempest, filling his pipe with strong black tobacco and balancing
himself precariously on the two back legs of the chair again. “Did you
come all the way on that little steamer?”
Dave recounted his adventures, which seemed to interest his companion,
who asked several questions which showed that he had an intimate
knowledge of ships.
“Have you been a sailor?” the boy asked.
“Sometimes,” Tempest replied. “I’ve knocked about the world a bit
before the mast, though I’m willing to admit it is more comfortable
in the passengers’ quarters. But funds don’t always run to taking a
passenger’s ticket, and a spell of sailoring keeps one in good trim,
besides providing the necessary cash for such things as tobacco and
having one’s trousers pressed. By the way, we ought to do something for
your knee. Let’s have a squint at it.”
Tempest made a careful examination of the damaged limb. The skin was
scarcely broken, but the joint was puffed up and beginning to turn blue.
“I’m no doctor,” said Tempest, “but I reckon you’ll be fairly all right
in a day or two if you rest it as much as possible. If not, there’s a
doctor lives about ten miles away.”
“Doctor!” cried Dave. “If he’s ten miles away, that’ll be twenty for
the round trip, and I haven’t got a red cent.”
“That’s all right. He is a particular friend of mine,” replied Tempest,
“and he just loves to admire the scenery in this neighborhood.”
He caught a questioning look in the boy’s eyes.
“Well, he won’t take us for a couple of bloated millionaires, anyway, if
he has two eyes in his head,” Tempest went on. “For the present you’ve
got to lie on a mattress outside in the sun and be as comfortable as
possible. The weather is beautiful now. It’s so long since I entertained
a guest that I’m enjoying the novelty of it.”
In spite of the sudden change in his circumstances and the exciting
incidents which he had just passed through, Dave felt very peaceful
lying there and listening to the easy chatter of his new friend, who
had a wonderful fund of tales to tell about many lands. He had drifted
almost all over the surface of the globe, picking up a living in
various casual ways, from diamond-mining in Kimberley to salmon-fishing
for the canneries. He spoke very modestly of what he had done, as
though nothing was more natural than to wander off a few thousand miles
and take up the threads of life there just as though he had always
lived in that particular spot.
“But haven’t you got a home?” David asked, thinking of the cottage at
Brooklyn.
“Yes,” said Tempest, grinning; “it’s under my hat. The beauty of having
a home like that is that you don’t have a lot of fuss when the time
comes for moving on. My baggage has consisted of a toothbrush and a
banjo for years. Now I only have the toothbrush. I had to part with
the banjo some time ago, owing to the fact that the landlady of a
boarding-house considered it necessary for me to pay my bill. That was
in England. It was a wrench, parting from the old banjo, because we’d
had some good times together, especially when we hadn’t got the price
of a ham sandwich for supper. It’s wonderful what power a little music
has to soothe the hungry beast in you. I often wonder whether somebody
else with a healthy appetite takes that banjo for supper these days.”
That night Dave slept for ten solid hours in Tempest’s “guest chamber,”
awakening with a delightful sense of freedom. It was a sort of
vacation for him, and he was not allowed to do any of the cooking or
dish-washing. His knee, however, troubled him a good deal, and after
breakfast Tempest went to summon the doctor. He walked all the way
there, riding back with the man of medicine in his buggy.
“Nothing broken,” was the doctor’s verdict, “and if you keep it in a
cold compress for a few days, you’ll have it all right again. How did
it happen?”
Dave told him.
“Tush, lad, you’re evidently not born to be drowned,” said the doctor
cheerily as he departed. Tempest followed him outside.
“What do I owe you, Doc?” he asked. “It’s no use your sending the bill
on afterward, as this is only our summer residence.”
He produced a purse from a pocket, containing a sadly depleted store of
coins. The doctor glanced at them.
“When I take money for patching up a shipwrecked kid,” he said
pleasantly, “I’ll change my profession. Good-by. Don’t hesitate to call
me again if it doesn’t go on all right.”
Under the new treatment, however, Dave’s knee rapidly began to grow
well, and by the time he could walk comfortably he and Tempest had
cemented a warm friendship. Altogether, they spent ten days in the
log-cabin. At the end of a week the boy, although he was thoroughly
happy, began to realize that it was about time for him to make for the
nearest port and find a ship.
“Why hurry?” Tempest protested. “We shall have to get a move on when
funds are finished. Besides, we haven’t made any plans. Leave it for a
day or two.”
Toward the end of their stay they lived largely on rabbits, which
were plentiful, caught in snares, supplementing these with bread and
potatoes bought at the farm.
“Where are you bound for when you leave here?” Dave asked when
necessity demanded that something must be done.
“Albany, I guess, the same as you,” replied Tempest. “One can nearly
always get a job on a ship there. I vote we make a start in the morning
and take to the road. My automobile isn’t running satisfactorily at the
moment.”
Dave felt real regret in breaking camp, for the simple life they had
been leading there appealed to him greatly after many weeks of hard
work at sea.
“Some day I’d like to come back and spend another holiday here,” he
said.
“Rubbish,” replied Tempest. “The world’s full of places like this if
you only take the trouble to find ’em. Don’t worry. That’s my motto.
Take things as they come, and you can’t help enjoying yourself. If I
had a million dollars for every little camp like that that I’ve had
a good time in, I should be quite rich, but I shouldn’t be nearly as
happy, because I’d have to spend most of my time wondering how to
spend the millions. There’s nothing like having an easy conscience and
nothing to bother about.”
After breakfast they packed up a huge parcel of sandwiches, for it was
extremely doubtful where their next meal was to come from, and then set
off in quest of further adventure.
CHAPTER IX
UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS
“They can’t call us sundowners, with this grub on board,” Tempest said,
shouldering the parcel. “I don’t mind having a lazy time now and again
when I’ve earned it, but no man breathing shall call me a sundowner.”
“What’s that,” asked Dave, trudging along.
“A sundowner, my son, is a peculiar breed of creature that would as
soon fondle a rattlesnake as do a day’s work. He is born tired and
never gets over it. He faints right away at the sight of a pick or
shovel; and if he should happen to do an honest day’s labor, he talks
about it for years afterward. He has reduced the art of dodging work to
a science. Most all farms in Australia will give a man a square meal
and some sort of place to sleep in in return for a few hours’ help,
but the sundowner is foxy. When he sees a farm on the horizon he lies
down and basks till evening. Then, just when it’s getting dark and too
late for him to be put to anything useful in the fields, he rolls up
for free board and lodging.”
“Talking of somewhere to sleep,” Dave said, “can you tell me where we
are likely to spend the night?”
Tempest laughed.
“It’s about ten hours too early even to think of that,” he said; “and
anyway we don’t need to worry, or else we sha’n’t sleep so well. What’s
wrong with a hay-stack for a bed? Once you’re fast asleep you might be
there just as well as in the best bed money can buy.”
The two amateur tramps had a total of thirty miles to walk to reach
Albany, and more than half that distance had been covered by the time
they decided to halt for the night. A barn containing plenty of dry hay
stood temptingly near.
“What could one want better than that?” Tempest asked, after a brief
inspection of the place. “There’s no electric light, but one mustn’t
expect too much at the price, and there’s a full moon. Neither of us
will need rocking to sleep to-night, and we shall want a good rest,
because we have a big walk in front of us to-morrow.”
Dave, having grown accustomed to strange sleeping-places, was in a
sound slumber five minutes after his head touched the pillow of hay.
When Bruce Tempest heard his deep, regular breathing he took his old
pipe from a pocket, sat on a fence near, and smoked placidly for half
an hour. He always made a point of not smoking in a barn when he was
appropriating it for a night’s lodging, partly because there was
always the danger of losing his lodgings by burning the barn down, and
partly because he felt the farmer might appreciate the little act of
courtesy if only he knew. As one who had not a care in the world he
knocked the ashes from his pipe at last, hummed a sailors’ ditty, and
then strolled to his primitive couch. He, too, was soon in the land of
dreams.
The sun was just peeping over the horizon when the two wanderers awoke;
and before having breakfast they went down to the adjacent beach for a
refreshing plunge into the sea. Afterward they pushed on, covering ten
miles before the sun “was over the yard-arm,” as Tempest put it, when
they fell in with a party of road-menders taking their midday rest.
With typical Australian hospitality, the road-menders invited Dave and
his companion to join them in their noon meal.
It was evening when the two arrived in Albany, tired, hungry, and with
the price of one scant meal in their possession.
“It would be fun if we could both get fixed up on the same boat,” Dave
suggested. “You’re not particular which way you go, are you?”
“North, south, east, or west, will do the same,” Tempest replied.
“Well, I’d rather go east,” Dave said, “if luck will let me. It isn’t
as though my dad had seen me off and all that sort of thing. I told him
when I wrote that I should be back by now, and I guess he’s kind of
expecting me. Goodness only knows when I shall get home again if I have
to sign on some ship bound westward from here.”
“Don’t worry, sonny. Things nearly always pan out right by themselves,
as I’ve said before. So long as you live clean, pay your way, and can
look every man straight in the eyes, there’s hardly a thing in the
world that is worth a wrinkle. Besides, if you fuss over every blessed
thing that comes along, you’ve got no steam left in you when the time
comes for you to make a big effort.”
“Such as what?” asked Dave, wondering what manner of thing could give
Bruce Tempest a wrinkle.
“Oh, I don’t know for the minute,” the man said. “Just once or twice
in everybody’s life there comes a time that he thinks it worth while
to forge ahead, whatever it costs. It doesn’t need to be something
selfish. Some people keep themselves tuned up all the time. I don’t.
Perhaps I’ve got too slack,” he added ruefully, glancing down at his
tattered coat. He was wearing his “best” trousers, having left the
other disreputable-looking garments behind when he sallied forth from
the log-cabin. “I wonder whether I should have enough pep left in me to
make a real effort now if I wanted to. Anyway, there’s a chance to get
a move on to-night if we want a berth to sleep in.”
There were several coastal boats tied up at the various wharves, and
Dave and his companion began a systematic search for work. The third
vessel they tried wanted hands, but she was bound up the west coast,
farther away from America than ever; so they left her, undecided,
pending a further search. At last fortune favored them. The _Neptune_,
a rusty old tramp, was leaving the following day on a leisurely trip
eastward, picking up cargo where she could for any port on the way
to Sydney; and she could do with a couple more deck-hands. Dave’s
experience hardly justified him in signing on as a deck hand, but no
question was raised as to his age, his build being equal to that of
many a boy two years older.
The mate who engaged him asked Dave several questions, which were
answered satisfactorily.
“You’re a bit young,” the mate said, “but I guess you’ll do.” And Dave
flushed with pride when he found himself enrolled as an ordinary member
of the crew.
It was fortunate that he had spent as much of his time at sea as
possible learning the ins and outs of his trade, for this knowledge
became of great value to him now. Bruce Tempest, too, gave him some
quiet coaching, and after a week as an able-bodied seaman Dave found
little difficulty in carrying out the routine duties of a tramp’s
deck-hand. He was in the watch of Mr. Slazenger, the mate who had
engaged him, and when that officer found the boy a hard worker and
willing to learn, he made allowance for his inexperience.
The _Neptune_ made slow headway, but she was a fairly good sea-boat,
and Dave enjoyed this ambling trip more than he had being on either
of the other vessels. So long as the crew did their work the captain
did not interfere with them unduly, though, as one of the older hands
explained: “When he do want to put up a kick he wears his heaviest
boots.”
On more than one occasion the captain, a Queenslander named Phelps,
gave Dave a kindly word of encouragement and chatted pleasantly. The
boy was coiling a rope when Captain Phelps showed how it could be done
more expeditiously.
“Do you come of a sea-going family?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Dave replied. “My father was a ship’s master, and so were
his brothers.”
“Your dad at sea now?”
“No, sir. He’s been retired for a good many years. He used to run
clippers, chiefly in the North Pacific trade.”
“Hallard, Hallard,” said the captain, rubbing his chin reflectively.
“I seem to remember the name somehow. It’s a long time since I traded
out of America to China, but the name seems familiar. What is his given
name?”
“Andrew.”
Suddenly the captain glanced at the boy with a gleam of amusement in
his eyes.
“Did you ever hear him speak of a clipper called the _Bessie M.
Dobbs_?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Dave. “That was the boat that he made a record run in.”
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Captain Phelps. “Why, I was in ’Frisco when
the _Bessie M. Dobbs_ shot through the Golden Gate on her thirty-fifth
day out of Hong Kong.”
“Thirty-third day, sir,” said Dave, never likely to be inaccurate about
that little bit of family history.
“Thirty-third, was it? Well, I know it just beat the record of the
schooner _Sierra Nevada_ by a day, and there was a lot of talk about
it at the time, because it was reckoned that the _Sierra Nevada’s_
record could never be beaten by a sailing ship. The _Bessie M. Dobbs_
nearly had her sticks torn out of her on the way. Captain Hallard only
shortened sail once during the whole run across, and that was when she
was poking her nose under water. Bless my soul, and here’s his slip of
a kid learning sailoring on the old _Neptune_! Well, Captain Hallard
wouldn’t remember me, though I was one of those who shook hands with
him after he landed, but when you get back home tell him I say he’s got
a son who’ll make a sailor.”
“Thank you, sir, I will,” said Dave, immensely pleased.
During their watch below, Tempest and Dave often had time for a yarn,
and sometimes during the hot, moonlight nights they would spend hours
on deck, chatting, under the wondrous spell of the Southern Cross.
“It is a mystery to me,” Tempest said one evening while they
were leaning over the rail and watching the antics of a shoal of
flying-fish, “how people can spend their lives cooped up in cities and
factories, working like slaves to pay big rents and getting mighty
little pleasure out of it all, when a life like this is possible. I
suppose, really, we can’t all go to sea, and lots of folk would think
this was rotten compared with an evening in a movie palace, but I know
which I like best, yes, siree. Why didn’t you wait till your father
said you could come, Dave? What was it about the old sea that got you?”
“Don’t know,” replied Dave reflectively. “It seemed to be growing on
me gradually without my knowing it, though of course I always knew I
should be a sailor sooner or later. I think what really set me off was
talking to an old man who was painting the side of a ship. He yarned
for about an hour, and after that I didn’t feel like waiting much
longer.”
“Well, was it anything like what the old man said?” Tempest queried.
“I don’t remember much of what he did say. One queer thing he told me,
though. It was about a derelict they’d found half buried in the sand
on some island in the South Seas. I didn’t forget the vessel’s name,
because it had been called after Cape Hatteras. When I got home I told
Dad about it, and he said there was a boat called the _Hatteras_ that
had been lost years and years ago with a lot of platinum on board.”
“Was it the same boat?” Tempest asked, lazily.
“Don’t know,” said Dave. “It sounded to me as though it might have
been, but Dad didn’t seem to think so.”
“Then your old friend the sailor didn’t get the treasure, eh?”
“He didn’t know anything about it. You see, his ship was only sheltering
off there, and they rowed ashore just to have a look at the derelict.
Perhaps they would have been a bit keener if only somebody had
remembered that there was a lost treasure-ship called the _Hatteras_.”
“Did the old man say exactly where it was?”
“No. He just mentioned that they were running between Christmas Island
and some other island, when they had to take shelter.”
“Well, there’s many a syndicate taken a sporting chance on a thing like
that and made a little fortune,” Tempest commented. “Now, after your
father told you there was a treasure-ship called the _Hatteras_, why
didn’t you go back and pump the old man to find out the exact bearings
of the island?”
“In the first place, as I say, Dad didn’t think it was any good after
all that time; and in the second place the old man’s ship had put to
sea again.”
“Where to?”
“Don’t know. I didn’t ask him.”
“Heigh-o,” Tempest laughed. “They say opportunity knocks at every man’s
door once in his life, and it seems to me, David Hallard, that you
weren’t listening when your turn came. You’ve kind of lost that island,
eh?”
“But you don’t think the stuff would be there, do you?”
“Me? How do I know, laddie? Maybe――and maybe not. Anyway, it isn’t any
use shedding tears over it now, is it?”
“I never did shed any tears over it,” Dave said. “I got excited about
it at the time, naturally, not because I wanted the money for myself
exactly, but――”
“But what?”
“Well, perhaps it was silly, but it struck me it would be great to find
the treasure and fix up my dad again as he was before he lost all he
had in New York.”
“The spirit is all right,” commented Tempest, grinning, “if only you
hadn’t gone and lost your island as soon as you’d found it! Old Man
Opportunity doesn’t usually knock twice at the same man’s door, but if
ever he does come again, mind you listen with both ears, Dave.”
Port after port they called at, once they got through the Bight, and
Dave was filled with interest by the busy scenes of dock life. At
some places the _Neptune_ was only tied up for a few hours while the
chattering winches hauled several tons of cargo from her capacious
hold: at others they spent several days. Tempest was familiar with most
of these ports, and Dave found in him a most entertaining guide when
they got the opportunity of stretching their legs ashore.
While off Cape Otway, running towards Melbourne, the _Neptune_
encountered one of the great mail boats, with her engines stopped for
some trifling repair. The _Neptune’s_ course took her close to the side
of the big ship which towered like a mountain over the wallowing little
tramp.
Dave, having taken a message to the captain, happened to be on the
bridge as they ran alongside. Hundreds of passengers leaned over the
rail looking at the small steamer, which dipped her flag and received
the same polite salutation.
Captain Phelps, recognizing the grey-whiskered skipper of the liner,
waved his hand.
“Want a tow?” he called out laughingly.
“Not to-day, thanks,” replied the skipper of the liner. “You’re a bit
too fast for us. Where’re you bound?”
“China to Japan with hot water,” replied Captain Phelps, as the little
_Neptune_ waddled out of earshot.
Dave and Tempest had only signed on the tramp for the trip as far as
Sydney, and the boy was sorry when the run was drawing to a finish, for
the _Neptune_ was a comfortable ship, as tramps go, and the weather had
been almost perfect.
“I suppose you’ll join a vessel bound from Sydney to New York,” Tempest
said as they sat on the hatches, watching the coast of New South Wales
slide past.
“I was thinking of it,” Dave replied.
“What about a run in one of those trading vessels through the South
Sea Islands?” Tempest suggested. “There’s nothing like it in the wide
world. They poke about buying that dried cocoanut stuff they call
copra, and other things, from the natives, going from one island to the
other till they get a full cargo. I know the skippers of two or three
of the ships, and we could be almost certain of getting a berth. Like
to come?”
“I’d like to, of course,” Dave said. The romance of the South Sea
Islands had always appealed to him greatly. “About how long should we
be away?”
“Between two and three months, I guess. It depends on what sort of luck
the captain has in picking up a cargo.”
“I might not get a chance again in years,” Dave said thoughtfully.
“Perhaps Dad wouldn’t mind so much. I could be back in Brooklyn before
Christmas, anyhow.”
“Just as you say, sonny,” Tempest observed. “I don’t want to upset your
plans, but there’s the chance staring you in the face, and there’s
thousands of youngsters would give their ears for one like it.”
“I’ll go,” Dave agreed, unconsciously taking yet another step in the
direction Fate was drawing him.
CHAPTER X
CAPTAIN GRUMMITT GETS WET
The gateway to Sydney, by water, is said to be the most beautiful
natural harbor in the world, and Dave leaned over the taffrail
spellbound as the dawn dyed the sea a deep red. The rusty old tramp
was only one of a hundred vessels that were threading their way into
or out from Australia’s chief port. Birdlike sailing craft, crowded
with canvas to catch the least puff of wind, drifted along in leisurely
fashion; weather-beaten steamers from all parts of the world chugged
towards their goal, sometimes ten thousand miles away; and a cloud of
sea-birds, among them great fellows whose wing-tips seemed to stretch
full five feet apart, crowded round the stern of the _Neptune_.
“Well, my boy, what do you think of Sydney harbor?” said a voice at
Dave’s shoulder. It was Captain Phelps who spoke.
“It’s great, sir,” the junior deck-hand replied.
“It is,” said the skipper; “but don’t you say that to a Melbourne
man. They have no harbor to speak of at Melbourne, and the two places
are powerfully jealous of one another. Sydney folk always start a
conversation with a stranger by saying ‘Have you seen our harbor?’
and if it happens to be a Melbourne man they’re talking to, he says,
‘Nature made your harbor――why don’t you build a decent town on it?’ All
the same, there’s many a time I’ve been thankful enough, when running
before a snorter, to creep into this refuge, and I dare say the time
will come when you’ll do the same after you get command. How are you
getting on with your studies, eh? You’ve a lot to learn before you can
hold a master’s certificate, you know.”
Dave had kept up his reading until his books were lost on the
_Kingfisher_, and he received a congratulatory word when he explained
to Captain Phelps how far he had progressed.
“That’s the style. Stick to it, youngster,” said the skipper, “and
you’ll be pacing the bridge before long.”
Tempest and Dave had renewed their wardrobe from the slop-chest, and
still had enough money to draw in wages to give them time to look about
when they got ashore. The first thing they did was to make inquiries
about the boat they expected to find running to the South Sea Islands,
and here they faced a disappointment. The company had only three
vessels engaged in the trade, and they usually left at intervals of
about six weeks. Two days before the _Neptune_ arrived at Sydney one
of the three had sailed, and so Dave and his companion found they
would have to spend forty or fifty days ashore waiting for the next
one, called the _Manihiki_, to depart. Long before then they would be
reduced to their last penny.
“Well, what do you suggest?” Dave asked.
“It seems to me,” Tempest replied, “that we shall be under the painful
necessity of working, not being millionaires, but the problem is, at
what? Some of the things I have seen men do ashore for a living would
certainly not suit my constitution, and I wouldn’t recommend them for
you.”
“We might sign on a coastal boat for a few weeks,” Dave suggested.
“Yes, and just when we want to be in Sydney find ourselves in some
out-of-the-way hole. You don’t know these Australian trading coasters
as I do, my son. They go when they want to and get back when they get
back if they don’t happen to pick up a chance cargo for somewhere else.
I know what would be good sport, as I did it myself once, about five
years ago.”
“What is that?”
“A kangaroo shooting trip. I went into the bush with an old hand at the
game, and we had a perfectly gorgeous time barring when a snake crept
over me while I was sleeping. Nice little fellow he was, all the colors
of the rainbow. I could see the colors perfectly, as the moon was
shining, and I took particular notice of him because only the previous
day I’d had his tribe described to me. The old kangaroo hunter had been
saying there wasn’t a snake in the bush that he really minded except
that sort, as once he had a partner who trod on one and tied himself
into seventeen different kinds of knots before he died, all in the
course of ten minutes.”
“Did you get any kangaroos?”
“Lots of ’em, and wallabys and things. We skinned the beasts and hung
the pelts on trees in a straight line so that we could find them all
again. We were in the bush about two months, and came back with all
the skins our pack horses could carry. I’d signed on as a sort of
supercargo for that trip, not being an expert shot, but I got a third
of the proceeds, which amounted to seventy pounds, or about three
hundred and fifty dollars in American money.”
“Let’s go kangaroo hunting,” Dave urged, hugely delighted at the
prospect of life in the bush. “I can’t shoot, but I can cook finely.”
Tempest grinned.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said. “You tell me where we can put our
hands on the price of horses and guns, and enough grub to last a couple
of months, and then find a kangaroo hunter who is willing to take us
along, and I’ll fix the trip up, sure enough.”
“Is that all!” Dave said resignedly. “It does look as though we shall
have to work. But, I say, why didn’t you go with your old partner
again?”
“Two reasons,” Tempest replied. “First, I know that somewhere in the
vast Australian bush that nice, colored little snake is still prowling
around if he hasn’t had a cold or measles or something that stopped him
from prowling evermore; and moreover, he has a few million cousins
and sisters and aunts, and I wouldn’t have one of them crawl over me
in the moonlight again for all the kangaroo pelts in the country. I
fancied I could feel the knots coming on――all the seventeen different
kinds――while he was peeking at me through his nasty little eyes. No,
siree, I like snakes――to keep away from me. The other reason why I
didn’t go back was because my old partner got it into his crazy head
to go gold mining, as there was a ‘rush’ in Western Australia just
then, and as he’d had some luck at it once he thought he would have
another try. I never heard how he came out, though, because when I drew
what I had coming I sold my horse and took a trip to Ceylon and back
on an Orient boat as a passenger, just to see what it felt like to be
really respectable again. Heigh-o, I landed back in this very port
with exactly one enormous appetite, two white flannel suits, and three
Australian pennies; and I had to take to cleaning trolley cars the same
afternoon or sleep on a seat in the park.”
“That’s a good idea,” Dave put in. “Couldn’t we do that for the next
six weeks?”
“What? Sleep in the park?” Tempest said, aghast.
“No. Clean trolley cars.”
“Not on your life,” replied Tempest, pulling a wry face. “It’s good,
honest work, but I’d rather spend the day cleaning out the bilges of
ships than cleaning cars. There doesn’t seem to be any romance about
those things. Let’s find accommodation for the present, and something
will turn up.”
They soon found a clean boarding house, not far from the harbor, and
most of the next two days was spent in sight-seeing. In the city itself
they found more than one opportunity of getting work, but they were
not desperately hard up, and Tempest scorned the idea of cleaning out
stables, while he positively refused to agree to Dave tackling the job
of elevator boy in a hotel.
“How do you think you’ll learn sailoring by shooting up and down an
elevator shaft all day?” he asked. “No, my son. Our business is the
sea. From now on we’ll haunt the docks till our chance comes. I would
rather be tarring the sides of a coal hulk than cleaning out stables.”
Work that would meet their requirements, however, was not easy to get.
Tempest, rather than go on loafing, started as a “lumper,” as the men
are called who load and unload ships. The vessel was laden with heavy
planks of wood, each of which had to be carried off on the shoulder and
deposited on a cart. The work was too hard for Dave to tackle. Tempest
was in perfect physical trim, but only an experienced “lumper” can
stand heavy beams of timber on his shoulder from morning till night.
The pad he wore soon cut through into the flesh, and by noon he had to
throw up the job.
“I’ll go back to that when I’m forced to, and not before,” he told
Dave, filling his pipe contentedly. “Sailoring is sailoring, and I
don’t mind anything that comes along to be done, even if the ship is
trying to stand on its head in a gale, but I do bar turning myself into
a perambulating steam winch.”
It was not merely the sheer hard work that Bruce Tempest objected to.
There is a traditional feeling among sailors that dock laboring is not
their job. Tempest disappeared several evenings in succession, saying
he was looking for work. In reality he was earning good money with
strenuous labor on those occasions, for funds to keep them going, but
it was his whim not to mention that fact to Dave. Although a good many
years the lad’s senior, he found Dave a congenial companion in many
ways, and was looking forward to the trip with him in the South Seas.
They had been in Sydney a week, and Dave and Tempest were walking
along the wharves when the boy happened to notice an extremely fat man
attempting the somewhat perilous feat of walking across a very narrow
gangway to a steam tug. The gangway consisted merely of a plank,
which had never been intended for traffic. The wind was blowing in
violent gusts, and the plank wobbled in alarming fashion when the fat
man reached the middle of it. Suddenly either his foot slipped, the
wobbling of the plank was too much for him, or a puff of wind upset his
balance.
Waving his arms like a windmill, and emitting a hoarse cry of alarm, he
toppled over, disappearing into the water.
The whole thing occurred in a few seconds, while Tempest was looking
in another direction. With a shout, Dave leaped forward, and arrived
at the side of the dock just as the fat man bobbed up to the surface
like a very animated cork. He splashed furiously and bellowed, but Dave
could see at a glance that the man was not able to swim a stroke.
Without pausing a second, he jumped off the pier, landing within a few
feet of the drowning man.
“Heave a line,” he shouted to Tempest; “then I can manage him all
right!”
Dave knew better than to let the heavy man in the water clutch him.
He took a couple of strokes forward and grabbed the back of the fat
man’s coat with one hand, keeping himself afloat with the other, while
Tempest bounded across the plank on to a tug. In less than half a
minute the boy heard a shout from his friend and saw a rope shoot out.
He grasped the end of it, and then, taking a firm hold of the fat man’s
arm, was drawn to the side of a dory.
“Jumping Cæsar!” spluttered the rescued man, when his paw had closed
on the “gun’le.” “Me, at my time of life, too! Now, young man, I’ll
trouble you and your friend to heave on me a bit. I’m not so thin as I
was. That’s better. Phew!”
He sat on a seat in the dory and regarded his saturated figure with a
quaint expression.
“Man and boy, I’ve followed the sea all my life,” he went on, “and
that’s the very first time I’ve been overboard. Wait till I climb on
board the _Mary Ellen_, and I’ll fire every soul there is on her!”
Two or three faces had appeared over the rail of the tug, but the
threat did not seem to create any dismay.
“You lubbers!” exclaimed the fat man, shaking his fist at the faces.
“Are ye all fast asleep, or is it that ye don’t care if your old
skipper goes to Davy Jones’s locker? I’ll have ye remember that besides
being skipper I’m part owner of this packet, and I’ll fire every man
Jack of ye for leaving it to a baby in long clothes to pull me out.”
“We didn’t hear nothing, Cap’n. We was all down below,” said a voice.
“Well, youngster,” said the corpulent skipper amiably, having
apparently forgotten his wrath, “I’ve got an account to settle with you
and your friend. Cap’n Grummitt isn’t hauled out of a dock every day of
his life. What can I do for ye, eh? Come on board, me hearties, and
wait till I change, else my wife will be nursing a pneumonia patient.
Ye’d better slip them wet things off, too. There will be something on
board for ye to wear till yours dry in the engine-room.”
Tempest lit his pipe and smoked placidly while the two were changing.
“Now,” said Captain Grummitt, emerging a few moments later in dry
garments, “ye can’t put thanks in the bank. What d’ye mean by hanging
around my ship, anyway?”
Good humor was now shining in his rubicund countenance.
“Looking for work,” Dave said quietly.
“And I don’t know that ye deserve it,” commented the skipper, “having
just done my wife out of her insurance money. Are ye both sailors?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if ye fancy the notion of knocking about on an old tug where
there’s nothing to do, as far as I can make out, but eat and draw your
pay, along with the laziest crew that ever drew breath, why don’t ye
come with me?”
CHAPTER XI
“IF EVER YOU GET THE CHANCE――”
“Thank you very much,” said Dave, by no means inclined to jest at the
opportunity in spite of Captain Grummitt’s tone.
In another two minutes the question of wages had been disposed of, and
the two wanderers found themselves installed as members of the _Mary
Ellen’s_ crew, much to their own satisfaction.
The tug was one of a host of craft that spent most of their time
prowling about the waters off Sydney, looking for a ship that needed
towing to a berth in the vast harbor, seldom being away more than four
or five days at a time. There was little or no formality on board.
The skipper was as amiable as he was fat, and he did not expect the
crew to exert themselves unduly when they were afloat, waiting about.
Notwithstanding his bulk, however, he became like a live wire when
there was a chance of a tow. He was known familiarly as Lightning
Grummitt, and had earned the nickname. Not a tug captain in Sydney
harbor could hold a candle to him at his business. He seemed to have
an uncanny sixth sense which told him a ship in the distance wanted a
tug. He had spent the best part of a lifetime running trading-boats in
the Pacific, but for the last twenty years had done nothing but towing
work where he was now, and it was becoming second nature for him to
know the requirements of different vessels. It would often happen that
two or more rival tugs would “spot” a ship at the same time, and then
an exciting race would start, for one tug is as good as another to the
incoming vessel. On those occasions Captain Grummitt would ring down on
the engine-room telegraph “Full speed ahead” three times in succession,
and the men below were aware then that the time had come for them to
wake up. Every ounce of steam possible was got up, and the skipper knew
by experience that it was unnecessary for him to urge that department
on. He knew, too, that he could rely on his deck-hands to do their
utmost in an emergency.
The second day out the _Mary Ellen_ picked up a schooner that had
been beating her way down the coast, and Dave had an opportunity of
listening to the brief battle of wits which often takes place between
a tug captain and a skipper before the latter definitely agrees to pay
a certain price for a tow. During the war of words Captain Grummitt
waxed sarcastic and poured out biting comments before a final bargain
was struck. Once the hawser was fixed, however, his ruddy face became
wreathed in a smile.
“It’s all fish that comes to the net,” he said a few moments later to
Dave, “but we don’t care about getting a haul of this kind”――with a
contemptuous bend of the head in the direction of the schooner――“too
often. Greeks! They wouldn’t let you have the peelings from their
finger nails if they could help it. Some of ’em seem to think they’re
doing us an honor to tie up behind.”
The tug’s next engagement was to tow barges heavily laden with coal,
from one wharf to another, many miles away, after which the captain
proceeded to his favorite hunting ground, outside the entrance to the
harbor.
The days passed pleasantly enough for Dave, and he found very little
to do, as compared with life on tramps. Sometimes, after satisfying
himself that the lookout was wide-awake, the skipper would join the
rest of the crew in the cozy cabin, and join in telling yarns while
smoking fearsome black cigars that seemed to Dave to have an odor of
tarred rope.
One evening, when the tug was rolling gently in the ground-swell and
various reminiscences had been exchanged, the conversation drifted
towards pirates of other days and treasure-trove.
“That reminds me,” Tempest said, “of a queer bit of news Dave here
picked up some time ago in America. Do any of you remember hearing of a
treasure-ship called the _Hatteras_ being lost in the South Seas years
ago?”
“The _Hatteras_,” Captain Grummitt repeated slowly, taking the cigar
from his mouth and squinting at the swaying lamp overhead. “No, I don’t
seem to recall it for the minute. What did she have on board?”
“There was nothing special on board,” replied Tempest, “except a
consignment of platinum belonging to a passenger who had spent a couple
of years or so mining it. He was taking the stuff to San Francisco from
Sydney.”
“Wait a minute,” the skipper interrupted, unscrewing the cigar again,
pensively. “I seem to have a hazy recollection of something of the
sort, but it’s a good long while ago. What happened to the ship?
Wasn’t she set on fire, or something?”
“Nobody knows. She just disappeared.”
“Oh, yes, that was it! I was confusing her with another craft. The
_Hatteras_――let me see now――”
Captain Grummitt scratched his head vigorously, an action which always
seemed to assist his memory.
“Blow me if that wasn’t the boat there was a reward offered for,” he
said at length, his mind leaping back over the years. “But I don’t just
recall if ever she was found.”
“Never,” said Tempest. “There isn’t a man living to-day can say for a
fact what happened to her or to any one on board, except perhaps Dave,
and what he knows doesn’t amount to much, but it’s curious.”
Several pairs of eyes were turned on the boy in surprise.
“Shiver my timbers!” said Captain Grummitt. “Have you found her, lad?”
Dave shook his head regretfully, with a smile.
“No such luck,” he said, “though Tempest keeps joking with me about it.”
“It’s no joke, laddie,” said Tempest. “It seems to me you got nearer to
it than any one else ever did, only you didn’t realize it at the time.”
“Well, out with it,” urged Grummitt. “What happened?”
“As far as we know at present,” Tempest explained, “there has only
been one bark of that name lost in the South Seas. Dave happened to be
talking to an old sailor on the quay at Brooklyn this year, and got
wind of a bark called the _Hatteras_ that was lying half buried in sand
on some island.”
“Where?” Captain Grummitt asked, his interest aroused.
“Goodness knows! But wait a minute. The old sailor doesn’t appear
to have known, or remembered, that there was anything of value on
the _Hatteras_, but as soon as Dave told his father about it Captain
Hallard remembered the story, though he didn’t think there would be
anything of value left on the wreck after all this time. Whether that
is so or not, however, nobody can say, really, as nothing has ever been
heard of any one finding the platinum.”
“But didn’t the sailor give Dave any idea where he saw the wreck?”
Captain Grummitt asked.
“Somewhere near Christmas Island,” Dave put in.
“Now we’re getting on,” said the skipper. “How near?”
“Some distance away, I guess,” replied Dave. “They were running toward
Christmas Island from another place when they came across it.”
“Did he mention the name of the other place?”
“Yes, but I don’t remember what it was now.”
“Well, let’s see,” observed the skipper, diving into a deep locker.
“I’ve got an old chart of the Pacific somewhere here. P’raps that will
help you to remember. Ah, here it is!”
Captain Grummitt carefully spread the sheet on the cabin table, and
with a pudgy forefinger indicated the position of Christmas Island.
“Now, you run your eye over that section,” he said. “There’s precious
few places around there big enough to have a name, so it shouldn’t be a
difficult job.”
“Here it is――Fanning Island,” Dave announced.
[Illustration: “Here it is――Fanning Island,” Dave announced]
“Umph!” said the skipper, re-scratching his pate. “That gives you
your bearings, in a manner of speaking, but you know them two islands
aren’t quite as near to one another as they look on that chart. The
next question is, how long had they passed Fanning before they hit the
wreck?”
“I don’t think he mentioned any definite time, but he said something
about being a day’s steaming off their course,” said Dave, struggling
to recall more of the ancient mariner’s yarn.
“That helps in a way,” the skipper commented. “But which direction had
she drifted in――east or west?”
“I have no idea.”
“Umph!” The captain was silent, lost in thought for a moment or two.
“Did he say anything particular about the island?” he asked at length.
“The wreck was in a lagoon,” Dave said, “and there was a reef of rocks
outside the lagoon, because they thought the ship must have struck
those rocks and drifted over them afterward on a very high tide.”
“We’re getting on,” commented the skipper. “What else?”
“I only remember one other thing. There was a sort of hill on the
island, and in the distance it seemed to be shaped rather like a
camel’s back.”
“That’s definite enough. Of course there are lots of islands around
those waters with lagoons, and a lagoon most generally has a bunch of
rocks round it, but it’s long odds you wouldn’t find two islands there
with a lagoon and a hill like a camel on it. There’s another thing. If
you see a hill like a cow or a donkey, you’ll know it isn’t that one.”
“On the other hand,” said Tempest, who had been listening with curious
interest, “if you see the camel, it is worth making a mighty careful
search in that neighborhood for the treasure-ship.”
“You bet your sweet life it is!” said Captain Grummitt. “If I was
twenty years younger and didn’t have to spend my time dodging around
Sydney Harbor looking for the price of the family’s victuals and
rent, hang me if I wouldn’t put in a spell hunting for that old
treasure-ship.”
“Do you really think it might be worth while?” Tempest asked, his
habitual manner of carelessness cast aside for the moment.
“Well, if you put it up to me that way,” said the skipper, blowing
rings of smoke between each few words, “it’s a hard question. You
see, you can’t get away from the fact that there is, or there was, a
bark called the _Hatteras_ there not very long ago, unless this old
sailor invented it, and there’s no sensible reason for supposing he did
that. Then again, if any one had ever found that treasure, the papers
would have had a long yarn about it, and none of us ever heard of that
happening. I could tell you a whole lot more of what I think about it
if only I could get one peek at the wreck. Such a lot depends on what
state she is in. Mebbe there’s nothing but her ribs left by now, in
which case, good-by treasure. But if she’s pretty deep in the sand, and
if she hasn’t broken in half, I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a fair
chance of this stuff still being on board. You see, there’s a powerful
difference between leaving it all these years in the main street of
Sydney and leaving it stranded on a little island where nobody in their
sane senses would think of poking their noses. There’s islands there
that don’t have a human being on them once in a hundred years or more,
and then, as likely as not, they might not happen to spot a half-buried
wreck.”
As he listened to Captain Grummitt, Dave began to see new interest in
the lost _Hatteras_, and he would have liked to kick himself for not
pumping his ancient mariner more.
“I think some fine day we shall have to go treasure-hunting, Dave,”
Tempest said with a quiet smile.
“If ever we get the chance,” agreed Dave, cheerfully, as though a
little trip to the neighborhood of Christmas Island was as simple as a
jaunt on a trolley-car.
“If ever you get the chance,” said Captain Grummitt, nodding his head
with each word, “don’t you miss it! But how in thunder you’re to get
the chance is more than I know, because there ain’t no ferry-boats
running to Christmas Island this summer, nor any other summer, and you
can take it from me the walking from here to there is pretty bad. Yes,
sir. Pretty bad!”
CHAPTER XII
A BROKEN HAWSER
It was during his stay on the _Mary Ellen_ that Dave first learned,
under the personal supervision of Captain Grummitt, who spent most
of his time on the bridge, the art of taking a trick at the wheel.
And during those watches in the little, boxlike wheel-house the boy
also learned many other things appertaining to the ways of ships, for
Captain Grummitt took a great interest in the lad. The time was not far
distant, moreover, when Dave was to be thankful for such lore as he
gathered from the portly old sea-dog.
Life on the tug was by no means devoid of its adventurous side. There
were days and nights when the water was as calm as the proverbial
mill-pond, and when the work of the _Mary Ellen_ could be carried on
without excitement; but there were also times when nerves of iron were
needed. Picking up casual sailing craft which needed a tow was child’s
play compared with the _Mary Ellen’s_ task of taking a ship under its
sheltering wing on a dirty night. The worse the weather was, the more
likely the tug was to be needed outside the entrance to the harbor, and
the skipper took a grim pleasure in riding out a gale when other craft
found it prudent to take shelter.
One wild night, when Dave had been on the tug about a month, even the
skipper was thinking of getting under the shelter of the Bluff, for the
_Mary Ellen_ was tossing about so heavily that her crew could barely
keep their feet, and more than one hissing comber had deluged the deck.
Rain was falling in sheets, and it was the darkest hour of the night.
Dave was on duty with Grummitt in the little wheel-house. The tug was
right in the track of all incoming vessels, but few passed, except one
or two dark forms of steamers laboring along like gray ghosts of the
ocean.
“It’s a rare night for trouble,” Captain Grummitt said, “but I think
this is where we get under the lee of the land for a spell.”
Still he kept his hand off the engine-room telegraph. Once or twice
during the last quarter of an hour he had been peering through his
night glasses away to the southeast.
“Blow me if I didn’t see a light down that way,” he muttered. “Mebbe
I’m beginning to fancy things in my old age. If only this rain would
ease up for a minute―― Gosh! There it is again. Now what in thunder is
up?” he said, suddenly moving the lever over to the signal “Full speed
ahead.”
The _Mary Ellen_ plunged forward, rolling over at a terrific angle as
the heavy seas struck her port beam.
“What do you make of it, Cap’n?” Dave asked.
“Dunno.” Captain Grummitt was scratching his pate in perplexity. “She
doesn’t seem to have shifted for a long while, so I guess we’ll just
find out.”
Ten minutes’ run brought them near enough to see what was happening. A
large Swedish sailing ship, with poles bared, was riding uneasily at
the stern of a tug. Apparently they were making no progress.
“Great mackerel, if that isn’t the _Dolphin_, bitten more off than she
can chew!” Grummitt said, scrutinizing the tug carefully. “I’ll hate to
butt in here, because Jim Cross is a pal of mine, but I allus told him
them hawsers he bought would go back on him when the pinch came.”
“Is Jim Cross the skipper of the tug?”
“Yes, and he’s part owner, same as I am. He bought three new hawsers
this year, thinking he was getting a bargain just because they only
cost him half as much as they ought to have done, but I warned him.
Now I bet he’s wishing he’d paid double,” the skipper went on grimly,
manœuvring his tug around all the time. “There isn’t a tug in these
waters with more powerful engines than the _Dolphin_, and now Jim Cross
daren’t set ’em going at full speed, because he knows he’d bust the
cable. A ship that size is a tough proposition to haul along in calm
weather, but when you’ve got both sea and wind running against you it
takes a proper cable to stand the strain. He’s playing foxy now, going
easy till the wind shifts.”
By this time the _Mary Ellen_ was within hailing distance of the
_Dolphin_.
“Want any help?” Grummitt bawled through a megaphone.
“No, thanks.” The words came back faintly, almost drowned in the gale.
At the same time the _Dolphin_ began to forge ahead.
“We’ll see,” commented Grummitt. For five minutes he kept going, a
trifle astern of the tug, until a savage swirl of wind caught the
sailing ship simultaneously with a hungry wave. The _Dolphin_ shot
forward perceptibly, and Grummitt edged in nearer the Swedish ship.
The cable had parted.
“Slip down on deck,” Grummitt said sharply to Dave. “This ain’t going
to be no picnic.”
Steering with consummate skill, Grummitt brought the tug close
alongside the Swede, and the boy heard fragments of a conversation
between the two captains, from which he gathered that that was the
second cable that had broken. A young giant stood by the rail of the
_Mary Ellen_, poised ready to hurl a coiled lanyard across. It was
a hazardous moment, for the slightest error in steering would have
brought about a collision. At exactly the right second the rope flew
out. The wind carried it aside, but some one on the sailing ship
managed to grab the end. Eager hands drew the end of the _Mary Ellen’s_
finest hawser across, and a moment later the tug was moving ahead.
While this operation was in progress the _Mary Ellen_ was plunging
wildly, and Dave was almost knocked into the scuppers by a sea while
giving a hand.
He found Captain Grummitt singing a sailors’ chanty merrily when he
returned to the wheel-house. The skipper had a habit of doing that when
he had fought a hard battle and won.
“I’m sorry for Jimmie Cross,” he said to the boy, “but he shouldn’t
try to use rotten gear in a howling gale. It might have cost a pile of
lives to-night.”
An hour or two later they had rounded the Bluff, chugging along in
comparatively smooth water, and the Swedish ship was berthed without
further mishap.
The tug remained at her own berth in Sydney until the following day,
and during that time Tempest again made inquiries about the boat he and
Dave were waiting for to take them into the South Seas. He discovered
that the _Manihiki_ was due to leave in fifteen days.
“Well, I don’t blame ye,” said Captain Grummitt, when he heard their
plans. “I don’t know a trip that I’d enjoy much better myself. There’s
something about the South Seas that gets you――a sort of mystery. By
the way, Dave, I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten that little
thing you did for me when I toppled over into the dock.” His hand went
towards his pocketbook, where he always kept a roll of bills, but a
look of dismay came into the boy’s face.
“That was nothing. Anybody would have done it,” Dave said.
“It may have meant nothing to you, my boy,” Captain Grummitt replied
with a grin, “but I still feel powerfully obliged, if it’s all the same
to you, and I’d like you to keep something of mine as a souvenir.”
Acting on a happy impulse, he drew from his pocket a plain silver watch
and handed it to the boy. “It isn’t the value of the thing I want you
to remember, lad, so much as the idea of the thing. It’s a mark of an
old sailor’s gratitude.”
The delicate spirit in which the gift was made pleased Dave even more
than the watch.
“Thanks, Cap’n,” he said. “I’ll always be proud of that watch.”
“An’ if ever you come back to Sydney and want a job,” said the skipper,
“don’t forget to look up Lightning Grummitt. If I haven’t got room on
board for you, I’ll make room, see?”
The captain of the _Manihiki_ was a middle-aged man named Peters,
whom Tempest had met before, and neither Dave nor his friend had any
difficulty in joining the ship. The _Manihiki_ was no flyer. She had
been built for her own particular trade, and did not draw too much
water, so that she could be navigated in places where the captain had
to rely more on common sense and experience than charts, for those who
engage in trading with the islands must pick their way gingerly between
treacherous reefs, often gaging the depth of the water by its color
only. Usually, the _Manihiki_ jogged along at a comfortable ten or
eleven miles an hour, with a slight reserve of speed in hand in case of
an emergency.
From Sydney she had a run of nearly two thousand miles before reaching
the neighborhood of Fiji, and then began the part of the journey which
interested Dave most. From one wondrous beauty-spot to another they
went, sometimes lying at anchor off an island and sending a dory ashore
to do the trading, and sometimes poking their nose so close to the land
that it was possible to tie up against a tree. In some places a white
man had established himself and did a thriving, if lonely, business
by accumulating copra and other native products and driving a hard
bargain with Captain Peters. One man in particular Dave remembered. He
had built a wooden bungalow facing the sea, and the chief article of
furniture it contained was a wheezy old harmonium on which its owner
played comic songs, ten years old, extremely badly. In response to a
pressing invitation Captain Peters and some of the men, including
Tempest and Dave, paid a visit to the bungalow and took coffee there.
One of the crew fetched an accordion from the ship, and for the first
time in history a concert was held on the island, before a rapturous
audience of fifty or sixty niggers who crowded around the bungalow.
“It’s the accordion they’re listening to,” the trader explained. “The
beggars thought the harmonium was a sort of magic when I first got it,
and I had no end of a game with ’em, but familiarity breeds contempt.
I remember the time when they used to bring any one who was sick,
an’ let ’em listen to the strains of a vaudeville ditty that Sydney
and New York had forgotten, and ’pon my word the patient used to get
well again straight away. They’re funny creatures, natives. They’ve
only got to make up their minds that they’re going to die and even
‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’ on the old wheeze bag won’t save ’em.”
In some places the natives displayed a keenness for bargaining
which would not have disgraced a dealer in second-hand clothes. The
_Manihiki_ had passed beyond the Fiji Islands and was working among the
Tonga group when an incident occurred which might have led to serious
consequences but for the prompt action of Captain Peters.
No boat had called at this particular island for nearly a year, and the
natives had an exaggerated notion of the value of their accumulated
wares. After a good deal of haggling between Captain Peters and the
dusky traders, conducted in fragments of English and disjointed words
in the native lingo, a bargain was struck, and all hands set to work on
the task of stowing the copra away. While this was being done, however,
the natives set up a noisy chattering among themselves, a disagreement
having arisen, apparently as to what they were to get in exchange.
Two members of the crew stood guarding the knives, brightly colored
cloth and ornaments which had been selected as the “price” of the
copra, the last of which had just been put into the hold, when the
chattering developed into a howl, and there were signs of an ugly rush.
Scenting danger, Captain Peters gave a quick signal for the anchor to
be heaved.
“Push off those canoes there,” he ordered quietly, at the same time
producing a small revolver from his hip pocket. “Hi, you, Johnson,”
he added to one of the men who had seized a marline spike and assumed
a threatening attitude, “if you hit one of those chaps I’ll put you
under arrest. Remember some other boat is coming here some day, and if
we have a rumpus now they’ll get ready for regular trouble next time.”
The propeller was revolving, and the _Manihiki_ was slowly sliding
away from her anchorage. “A bargain is a bargain, you squint-eyed lump
of mahogany,” the captain went on, leaning over the side and hurling
his words at the chief, who was brandishing his arms, “even if it is
between a gentleman in command of a first-class trading steamer and a
low-down, sneak-thief Kanaka.”
Then, as the canoes dropped behind, he waved his hand to their
occupants, afterwards taking his place on the bridge to conduct the
delicate operation of navigating his way through a mass of jagged rocks
and cross currents.
This was almost the only occasion, however, on which the _Manihiki_
encountered trouble with the natives. As a rule they had learned by
experience that it paid best to come to some understanding and stick
to it. There was probably a good deal of squabbling among themselves,
after the steamer had left, on the question of a fair division of the
spoil, but that was not Captain Peters’s affair.
On the whole, the cruise promised to be a very satisfactory one, and
the _Manihiki_ was favored with ideal weather week after week, running
under azure skies on an ocean that looked as though it must have been
painted.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Tempest said early one morning when he
came upon Dave leaning over the taffrail, staring out at the beautiful
picture. The gray sky in the east was just becoming tinged with red,
stained with the promise of the sun, and little wisps of mist floated
in vague shapes, like scenes from Fairyland.
“It looks like――like a dream,” Dave said.
“Doesn’t it!” Tempest agreed. “One of the queer things about these
waters is that mist, which looks so dreamy, can become a regular
nightmare before you know where you are. One has to navigate with
brains instead of charts hereabouts, and the skipper doesn’t take quite
the same view of fog as you do. He’s been grumbling for two days about
it. It was pretty bad while we were down below in our bunks last night,
and he had the engines running at half speed for some hours.”
“But there’s plenty of water where we are, isn’t there?” Dave asked.
“Cap’n thinks so, evidently, because he’s pounding away at top speed,
but it’s mighty tricky work, because the current will carry you a mile
off your course in no time.”
Usually the mist melted and disappeared soon after the sun peeked over
the horizon, but this morning it hung obstinately and grew thicker,
looking like a vast curtain of down spread over the water. Before
midday the captain slowed the engines again, and crept forward for
several hours. As near as he could reckon, they were within a mile or
two of an island marked on the chart, which he wished to see so that he
could make doubly sure of his bearings.
Dave was below, in his bunk, fast asleep, when a peculiar, grating
noise startled him.
“What’s that?” he said, rubbing his eyes.
Again the grating, accompanied this time by a distinct bump.
“The old man’s done it now!” a sailor exclaimed, jumping out of his
berth and hastening into some clothes. “Bless my soul if he ain’t
tryin’ to scrape seaweed off’n the rocks with the keel!”
Dave was on deck in less than sixty seconds. The engines were
stationary, and the captain was barking out sharp orders. Instead of
rising and falling gently, the _Manihiki_ was firm as a rock at the bow
and canting over slightly, while her stern hung a foot too low in the
water.
“Some plates are stove in for’ard, sir,” Dave heard a voice shout, “and
the sea’s coming in through a big hole!”
Four or five gulls hung gracefully overhead, as though waiting for the
pickings.
Dave saw Tempest coming toward him.
“Shall we be able to back off, do you think?” the boy asked.
“I hope not,” said Tempest. “If she slips off that rock, she’ll sink in
about three minutes.”
CHAPTER XIII
WHEREIN TEMPEST STAYS BEHIND
Captain Peters went below to inspect the damage. His face looked
troubled when he returned.
“She’s piled up on top of high water,” he said, “and I’m afraid she’ll
stay there. It’s a lucky thing the sea is dead calm.”
About an hour too late a gentle breeze sprang up, brushing away the
veil of mist and revealing their position to the _Manihiki’s_ crew.
The reef on which she had struck was submerged at all states of the
tide, leaving nothing to disclose its existence but the dark color of
the water, which the mist had hidden. Half a mile away on the starboard
bow lay the island which the skipper had wanted to take his bearings
from. Even at that distance it presented a beautiful sight, lying low
like a vast, half-submerged emerald. At its highest point it did not
seem to rise much more than fifty feet out of the water, and the slope
down to the sea was covered with tropical growth.
As the tide went down, the slope on the steamer’s deck became more
apparent, and Captain Peters reluctantly ordered all hands ashore in
the boats.
“Gather together anything you want particularly,” he said. “You never
know when a gale is coming along here, and she may slip off suddenly,
but I guess we’ll have more time than we care about to take things
ashore.”
Two boats were lowered, and the men got into them with a strange
collection of bundles and things. Among the articles Dave took were his
binoculars.
The boats grounded on a silvery beach of sand which nestled in a little
bay that looked more fairylike than anything Dave had seen in his
travels through the South Seas. There were no tall trees near, but
foliage of wonderful colors covered most of the ground. As the men
stepped ashore, a flock of birds with gorgeous plumage flew up from the
bushes, uttering strident calls of indignation at the intrusion.
“It’s quite clear there’s nobody at home on this island,” Tempest said.
“I don’t expect those birds have ever seen a human being before. Well,
Dave, we’re all going to play a little game of _Robinson Crusoe_, so
cheer up. How would you like to spend the next ten years here?” It was
characteristic of Bruce Tempest that he was not in the least perturbed
by being marooned. Already he seemed perfectly at home, although he had
not been on the island five minutes.
“Ten years!” Dave said, looking at his friend to see whether he was
serious. A picture of the small house near the water in far-away
Brooklyn flashed into his brain at that second. “How long do you think
we might be stuck here?”
“Goodness knows,” replied Tempest; “but do let me persuade you not to
worry. That won’t get us off a minute sooner. The worst of it is that
we are just about as far off the track of vessels as we could well be,
and the wireless station on this benighted place doesn’t seem to be in
working order.”
“Then you really think we are likely to be here for a long time?”
Tempest glanced at the boy and saw no fear in his grey eyes, but very
natural concern.
“Some of us, yes,” he said. “I heard the mate saying something about
taking a chance in the long-boat, and I guess that is what will happen.
But, as you know, the long-boat won’t hold us all. It’s too early to
think about that yet, though. You’ll find we shall have a pretty busy
time at present getting all that’s wanted off the poor old _Manihiki_.”
There was, indeed, a strenuous time ahead. Although the weather was
so perfect, Captain Peters was reluctant to let a minute be wasted
in the task of fetching ashore everything that could possibly be
useful to them. Bedding and food were his first consideration, and
before nightfall both boats had made several trips, returning to shore
laden down almost to the gunwale. The longest spar obtainable was
rigged up on the highest point on the island, and a flag was sent up,
fluttering in the breeze, while near by, a great pile of dry brushwood
was gathered together, ready to send out a flaming signal in the very
unlikely event of the lights of a passing ship being observed at night.
When these operations had been concluded, Captain Peters realized that
he had done all that could be done, for the time being, to attract
attention. The shipwrecked crew established their quarters on a grassy
stretch of ground a little distance from the shore, and slept, that
first night, with the blue heaven for a roof, every man tired out.
Before dawn, however, they were up again, salving stores. The men
needed no driving. It was only too obvious to them what would happen
if they did not save enough provisions before the _Manihiki_ broke up
or sank. Barrels of biscuits, beef and flour, cases of canned goods,
tobacco, clothes from the slop-chest, the carpenter’s entire equipment,
and the navigation instruments, being the most important articles,
were first brought ashore, and then followed tackle of all sorts,
canvas from the sail-locker, and, finally, quantities of coal. The
chief engineer was desperately anxious to unship a donkey-engine and
convey that to the island; but as nobody could think of the remotest
possibility of using the thing, it was left behind, partly dismantled,
to crumble into rust.
Just ten days were occupied in stripping the steamer of everything
movable, including doors and glass which “Chips,” the ship’s carpenter,
welcomed, as he was already busily engaged erecting shelters from
the torrential downpours of rain which were to be expected in that
latitude.
By common consent the first hut finished was handed over to the cook.
His apparatus had been transferred bodily from the ship, and he dished
out meals as regularly and satisfactorily as before. He was the only
man of the party who had any real knowledge of that department, and
when he realized how much every one was dependent on him he developed a
slight touch of swollen head. Nobody minded that, however, so long as
he had something to cook and kept on cooking it.
Tempest’s first impression that the island was uninhabited proved
correct. Nor was there any sign of a ship or natives having visited
the place. The island was about a mile long and half a mile wide
in the centre. A clear spring bubbled near the camping-ground, so,
fortunately, no dread of thirst faced the men. Snakes were conspicuous
by their absence. The only animal they encountered was a small species
of wild hog. These creatures scurried about in the undergrowth, peeping
out in alarm when any one went near and then fleeing, squealing
loudly. How they ever came to be on the island was one of the mysteries
of the mysterious Pacific. Captain Peters and Bruce Tempest discussed
the point at great length, but were unable to come to any conclusion
except that the ancestors of the hogs must have landed there from some
wreck.
“What does it matter, anyway?” said Tempest, smiling. “We’re all fond
of roast pork whether we know its history or not.”
The twentieth day after the _Manihiki_ ran on the rocks saw the end of
her. One of those savage storms that come down so suddenly near the
equator burst over the island. Black clouds appeared as if by magic,
and long streamers of lightning lit up the boiling ocean. The air was
filled with spindrift which swept half-way over the land, and some of
the half-finished huts were torn down by the wind. Night fell while the
tempest was at its height, but before dawn it vanished as suddenly as
it had come. Not even a wisp of mist rested on the sea, and, as soon
as the sun rose, the sky was of the same brilliant blue as before.
Of the _Manihiki_, however, there was nothing to be seen. Lifted from
her rocky bed by giant waves, she had slid off the reef and now lay
many fathoms below the surface.
The men began to grow restless as time wore on. They did not face with
calmness the prospect of being marooned indefinitely.
“If we’ve got to die, we’d rather do it putting up a fight to get
somewhere in the long-boat than lying around here, Cap’n,” said one of
the men while the subject was being threshed out.
“I quite agree with you,” said the skipper, “though I wouldn’t give
much for the chances of the boat if another tornado like the last one
comes along and hits her. Still, it’s no use waiting here like rats in
a trap when there is a run of only about four hundred miles to Suva in
the Fijis.”
“How long do you reckon it should take us to make Suva, sir?”
“That’s a problem,” replied Captain Peters. “There isn’t any wind to
speak of most days, and, unless it happens to come from a favorable
quarter, we might be beating about for a month or more. Still, if
you’re all game, I’m ready to start as soon as you like.”
The project met with general approval. The only thing that remained to
be settled was who should stay behind. Even by taxing the boat to its
fullest capacity, consistent with safety, at least three of them would
have to remain on the island. It was decided to settle that question by
casting lots, and Captain Peters placed a number of slips of paper in a
hat. On all but three of the slips there was a cross; the others were
blank.
There was an air of anxiety about the crew as they clustered round the
skipper to pick their chance. Although the long trip in the boat would
be attended with much hardship and considerable danger, everybody
there preferred that to remaining marooned. Hopeless though it had
seemed with the whole crew there, the prospect of being left with only
two companions was regarded as considerably worse.
Captain Peters took the first slip out of the hat and grunted with
satisfaction. Although the men would have preferred to have him with
them on the trip, he had shared in the casting of lots. Dave watched
the men’s faces with curious interest as each dipped a hand into the
hat. Some did so with a jest; others grabbed a folded paper eagerly,
opening it in a feverish fashion. The first one to draw a blank was the
carpenter.
“Well,” he said, forcing a smile, “I’ll get you to take a message for
my wife and kids, sir.”
Dave’s fingers trembled a shade when his turn came. There was no cross
on his paper.
The third blank was drawn by a stolid Kanaka fireman, who shrugged his
shoulders, but said nothing. He was an islander by birth, and the idea
of being marooned did not seem so very terrible to him.
Dave looked at the colored fireman and the carpenter, and wondered how
long they were to be his companions on that lonely isle.
Once this ordeal was over, the men set to work enthusiastically,
preparing the boat for its journey. She was not built for sailing, but
a mast, jib-boom, and cleats were soon rigged. When ready she was taken
for a short trial-trip, and Captain Peters reported that she was good
for any distance in fair weather.
Provisions and water to last three weeks, with care, were placed
on board, and the castaways clambered into the boat while a steady
easterly breeze was blowing.
The Kanaka sat on a rock, digging his bare toes into the silvery sand
and looking utterly unmoved by these proceedings.
“Good-by, lads,” said the skipper. “Don’t get into mischief or spend
all your money. You won’t be here very long if we make Fiji all right.
I’ll pass the word along to the first trading-boat bound this way, and
they’ll pick you up. Come on, Tempest, get in.”
“I’m not going,” said Tempest, lighting his pipe and squatting
comfortably on the sand. “I’ve taken rather a fancy to the scenery
around here. You take the lad in my place.”
“I’m very much obliged to you, Tempest,” Dave said, looking his friend
squarely in the eyes, “but I can’t do that. We all picked our slips
fairly, and I was unlucky, that’s all.”
“Then you’d better go, Chips,” Tempest said casually to the carpenter,
with a wink.
“You’re certainly a white man,” said the carpenter, who realized
Tempest was making the sacrifice to stand by his friend. The two
gripped hands for an instant, and then the boat was quickly pushed off
the beach.
Dave, Tempest, and the Kanaka stood watching the boat glide away until
it was only a speck in the distance.
[Illustration: Dave, Tempest, and the Kanaka stood watching the boat
glide away]
“Well,” said Tempest, at last, “we’re both _Robinson Crusoes_ now, and
we only have one Man Friday between us.”
CHAPTER XIV
MAROONED!
Although those who had gone were naturally very much missed, the trio
settled down to their lonely life a good deal more contentedly than
they had anticipated. A more ideal camping-ground could not have been
found, and, for the present, at least, they had all the necessities
of life at their elbows. One of their chief recreations was fishing.
The gear was primitive, Tempest fashioning hooks out of wire with the
aid of a file, but the sport was excellent and provided a welcome
change of diet. They were a little anxious at first about some of their
catches, Tempest doubting whether several of the brilliantly hued fish
were edible, but the Kanaka came to their rescue, picking out those
which were poisonous, and also showing how fish were cooked in native
fashion, by baking them in clay in the ground――a process which both
Dave and Tempest were forced to admit put the old-fashioned frying pan
to shame.
On one occasion a fishing expedition nearly led to disaster. While
Tempest was busy ashore the boy went off in the dory with the Kanaka,
and the sport was so good that they were tempted to remain at anchor
some distance off the shore in spite of a brisk breeze that had sprung
up. At last the weather-wise Kanaka, scenting danger, began to heave
on the anchor. Instead of coming in puffs, the wind was now steady,
dotting the surface of the water everywhere with “white horses.”
The two pulled at the oars for ten minutes until Dave, glancing over
his shoulder, realized that they were making no progress.
Only then did the gravity of the situation dawn upon him. The Kanaka
knew, but he gave no sign. The muscles under his bare arms and back
played like ripples of velvet. He seemed to be made of sinew and steel.
Toughened though Dave was by months of hard work, the strain began to
tell on him before long, but the Kanaka kept plugging away, even when
it became apparent that they were losing ground. The little island,
from which Tempest was doubtless watching the struggle anxiously, was
slowly but surely dropping farther away, and to make matters worse
darkness shut down on the dory, swiftly following the sinking of the
sun as it always does in the tropics.
They were still more or less under the shelter of the land, but the
size of the waves had increased alarmingly, and more than one white
crest toppled into the little craft. Soon they were up to their ankles
in water, about which the dead fish floated.
“Bail um water out,” said the Kanaka, pulling a little harder to make
up for the deficiency when Dave shipped his oars.
The boy seized the tin and bailed furiously, but each time he got the
dory nearly empty another curling wave hit the prow and hissed its way
along the gunwale, slopping over the edge ominously as it went.
The stolid demeanour and dogged perseverance of the Kanaka helped
Dave to keep up his spirits, although there were times when he saw no
earthly hope of their getting back to the shore, especially when one
wave, angrier than the rest, spun the tiny craft half round and left it
half full.
“Bail um,” the Kanaka urged, heading the boat round again into the
teeth of the wind.
“Bail um,” indeed, Dave did, for his very life. Had another wave hit
them at that moment the dory would have sunk, but the fates were kind,
and he got most of the water out before more came in.
When the situation seemed as desperate as it very well could be, the
moon began to show a faint gleam, in which Dave could dimly discern
the outlines of the island, and a little while later, as though tired
of toying with its victims, the wind dropped suddenly. Dave and the
Kanaka had about three miles to row to the beach, and both were utterly
exhausted by the time the dory grounded.
Tempest, who, naturally, had feared they were both blown out to sea,
lectured the pair of them in a fatherly fashion.
“And as for you, Jim,” he said, turning to the Kanaka, “I should have
thought you had more sense than to take such chances with an off-shore
wind like that blowing. If you hadn’t got back with the dory I’d have
pulled your ears off.”
Jim grinned.
“Sea she no tell me about her fool tricks,” he replied in his curious
polyglot English picked up partly from the cosmopolitan crowds in
stokeholds and partly in the Philippines.
The Kanaka was by no means an unwelcome member of the party. He had
intelligence of an unusual order for his kind and displayed great
ingenuity on occasions. What his age was neither Dave nor Tempest
could determine, and Jim certainly did not know. Probably he was in
the neighborhood of forty. He was not particularly communicative, but
piece by piece the other two extracted some of his history. His early
boyhood had been spent in the Sandwich Islands; but being by nature a
roamer, he left there and became stranded at Tahiti, far to the south
of Honolulu. He did not remain there long, however, moving from one
place to another, sometimes as a sailor, sometimes picking up a scant
subsistence as a fisherman, and sometimes living a life which was more
than half savage. His knowledge of the islands in the South Seas was
extensive and peculiar; and like Tempest, he had the trick of making
himself completely at home wherever fate happened to set him down.
“Have you ever been to Christmas Island?” Dave once asked him,
wonderingly.
“Lived there two summers,” Jim explained. “Nice place. Not many
people.”
“I should judge not,” Tempest commented. “Did you ever get to Fanning
Island?”
“Know um; not lived there,” the Kanaka said.
“Ha! Ha! The plot thickens,” said Tempest. “You know some of the other
islands round about there perhaps, eh?”
“Some,” said Jim. “Lived in Philippines since then. Lot of years ago.”
“It seems to me that Jim would be a mighty useful man to take along
with us if ever we go hunting for your treasure-ship, Dave,” said
Tempest. “He isn’t a bad old sort, and he might be able to pilot us
around a bit.”
“That’s a good idea,” the boy agreed. “I suppose we aren’t so very far
off the place now, are we?”
“No-o,” replied Tempest, “if you don’t reckon two or three thousand
miles far, and add to that that we’re marooned on an island for an
extremely indefinite period. Outside of that, you can fairly count on
the treasure being ours and make a few inquiries as to to-day’s market
price of platinum to see how much you’re worth.”
“You’re laughing now,” Dave said, “but you won’t laugh once you see me
sitting on the deck of the good ship _Hatteras_ counting up a fortune.”
“She hasn’t any deck left. It’s all been washed away.”
“How do you know? You haven’t seen it. Jim, are you coming with us to
Christmas Island?”
The Kanaka shrugged his shoulders. He thought it was some silly joke.
“I expect we’ll have to bribe him,” Tempest said. “Jim, what would you
like best of all in the world?”
The Kanaka was squatting with crossed legs on the sand, screwing his
eyes into the sun to watch the graceful flight of a gull. He was
wearing all that remained of just two garments――a shirt, the sleeves
of which he had removed by main force, and a pair of cotton trousers
rolled above his knees. Back on one of his beloved islands, where there
was no coal to shovel into greedy furnaces and where time was a word
that had almost ceased to have any meaning, he was fast reverting to
nature. He looked like a person whose highest ambition would be to lie
on his back and bask in the sunshine for ever and ever.
As the gull seemed to disappear in the burning sun Jim turned round
slowly with a lazy smile.
“More than all the other things in the world, um?” he repeated, looking
at Tempest, who nodded.
“One time,” Jim said with quaint gravity, “I sailed on a big ship round
Cape Horn to a place where all the ships come from, bigger’n Manila,
bigger’n Iquique, called Hobroken.”
“Hobroken?” Tempest queried, wrinkling his brows in perplexity. “Where
in the name of fortune is that?”
“Great big place,” declared Jim, extending his arms wide as though to
indicate the size. “Hobroken up a river.”
“You don’t happen to mean Hoboken, by any chance, do you, Jim?” Dave
asked.
“Hobroken――dat’s um, Hobroken,” the Kanaka said, hugely pleased.
Dave rolled backward and roared with laughter.
“That’s almost a part of a place called New York City, Jim,” he said at
last. “Didn’t you ever hear of New York?”
The Kanaka nodded, but looked puzzled. He saw no cause for mirth.
“New York somewhere near there,” he said.
“Well, what about Hoboken, Jim?” Tempest asked.
“One time I’d lika go to Hobroken again,” was the reply, uttered
impressively, “with two three dollars.”
“Funny thing,” said Tempest, blowing rings of smoke; “you’re not the
first person I’ve heard express the desire to go to New York with
dollars, but ‘two three’ wouldn’t carry you very far there, Jim.”
The Kanaka, who had worked wonders on that sum in Manila, was coldly
incredulous.
“What would you do when you got there?” Dave asked.
Again Jim smiled happily. The prospect was evidently one which he had
treasured in his moments of leisure while basking on various islands in
the South Seas.
“Wear clothes like um other peoples,” he said, “and ride in um
trolley-cars.”
“And stop there always?” Tempest suggested.
The Kanaka shook his head slowly, now watching another gull skim the
water.
“Just for a bit while,” he said, “then p’raps come back here or some
other place.”
“He’s got the New York fever,” Tempest laughed, “but it is the most
comical case I ever heard of. I expect New York would soon cure him,
especially when his two three dollars were gone, and then he’d begin to
pine for something really exciting again, like the fight he had with
that twelve-pound fish yesterday.”
“Never mind him, Jim,” Dave said. “You come to Christmas Island with
us, and after that I’ll take you to Hoboken, where you can ride about
in trolley-cars in a tall silk hat with feathers in it if you like.
Will you come?”
Jim shrugged his shoulders and extended his hands――a gesture with which
he always expressed agreement.
As the days drifted on, and Dave and Tempest grew to know their island
home better, they came to the conclusion that there were worse things
than being shipwrecked under such conditions. As a rule the cooking
was done by Dave, he being the accepted expert, but in the hunting and
fishing they all three joined, and they obtained much excellent sport.
Jim, with a native’s cunning in the chase, devised various methods of
catching birds as a change for their food, but their best sport was
the hunting of pigs. The little wild animals were by no means easy to
catch, and this was only done occasionally, neither Dave nor Tempest
liking the idea of killing them. Excepting the creatures with gorgeous
plumage which still made strident noises when any one approached them,
the birds were remarkably tame, no doubt because the hand of man had
never been raised against them. There were boatswain birds, wideawake
tern, puffins by the thousand, and white-cap noddys, besides others
which Tempest could not name, though the Kanaka had an unpronounceable
name for every kind. Some of the birds were so unused to fear that they
merely strutted out of the way when any one passed.
On one occasion Jim, with great pride, prepared a special dish which
was evidently a sort of islanders’ omelette. It consisted largely of
sea-birds’ eggs and tasted rather like cod-liver oil. Rather than
hurt Jim’s feelings, Tempest and the boy gulped down their share and
congratulated him on his skill, but after that they were careful not to
encourage him in a repetition of the experiment.
Dave’s greatest joy was a pig-hunt. The little wild animals were by no
means easy to catch, but they formed a delicious dish which rewarded
the hunters for their trouble. The chief difficulty in capturing them
was the natural shelter they sought in the thick, tangled undergrowth.
Fully half the island’s surface was covered with impenetrable bush,
intertwined with a fearsome form of cactus whose leaves were like saws.
It was utterly impossible to force an entry into this natural fortress,
through which the small hogs had beaten innumerable run-ways but little
wider than their own bodies. Once a pig got into the maze of run-ways
it was as safe as though in the heart of a jungle, but occasionally
the hunters were able to surprise their quarry in some of the isolated
clumps of bushes. In this the Kanaka’s assistance proved of the utmost
value. Like most other men who have lived in a semi-wild state, his
hearing was extraordinarily acute.
“I’ll get um li’le pig,” he said once when they had tried several times
to make a capture and failed utterly.
“What are you going to do?” asked Tempest. “Make a noise like a sweet
potato and bang ’em on the head while they’re standing still trying to
scent it?”
Jim did not deign to make any reply, but occupied himself during the
greater part of the next few days in making a number of strong nets
from twine, each about five feet square, with small lengths of twine
attached to the corners. While this operation was in progress the other
two, considerably mystified, submitted the Kanaka to good natured
joking.
“I know,” said Dave, “he’s going to fish for them.”
“Great,” commented Tempest. “I hear that pig fishing is one of the
chief sports in the Sandwich Islands. What do you use for bait, Jim?”
Jim, however, worked on stolidly, finally surveying the crude nets he
had constructed, with much satisfaction.
“Now I show you how to catch um li’le pig,” he observed with a grim
smile.
With an ax he cut three formidable looking clubs from a tree, and then
leading the way to a clump of bushes some distance from their camp he
tied the nets loosely across the entrances to the various runways.
“Lie still,” he ordered. “Bimeby we hear him say ‘grump-grump’ maybe
p’raps.”
Each holding one of the murderous clubs, they squatted on the ground.
There seemed to be perfect stillness, such as one can find on an isle
in the Pacific on a calm day. Not even the soft soothing sound of a
ripple on the sea shore reached them. Once or twice the melancholy
call of a distant gull reached their ears, otherwise they were in a
soundless world.
Suddenly the Kanaka raised a warning finger. The porker had betrayed
its presence to him, though neither of the other two had detected it.
He motioned Tempest and Dave to the place where the animal was most
likely to break away. Once he saw they were ready at their stations he
went round to the other side of the bushes and set up an unearthly din
that was calculated to drive any self-respecting hog out of its senses.
Yelling himself hoarse, and beating on the tangled branches like a
mad thing with his club, he kept up a running fire of warning to the
others, sometimes lapsing into a heathenish tongue in his excitement.
At last, without the slightest warning, an alarmed pig, squealing as
though a pack of hounds were at its trotters, bolted at full gallop.
Full tilt it went at a net near which the boy and his companion were
waiting in breathless suspense. The net came away from its moorings,
as Jim had intended it to, with one or more of the porker’s legs
hopelessly entangled in the meshes; and there ascended heavenwards
a squealing the like of which had probably never been heard on the
island. Over and over the pig rolled, struggling frantically to free
itself. Both Dave and Tempest were rushing towards it, with clubs
upraised, when confusion was added to the situation by another pig
bolting into a second net.
Dave spun round, leaving Tempest to deal with the first animal, and
knocked his captive out with a lucky blow just as the Kanaka came
rushing round the edge of the bushes.
“Hoo-la! hoo-la!” Jim yelled in ecstasy; and rather than take any
chances he despatched the little hog quickly.
Tempest, meanwhile, was in difficulties. Before he could reach his pig
it had extricated all but one foot from the net, and was careering
madly away, dragging the net with it. Tempest tore after the quarry
which was making instinctively for a run-way in the main jungle, but
after he had run a dozen yards he caught his foot in the root of a
tree. By the time he had picked himself up again the porker had bolted
like a rabbit up the tunnel, shedding the net at the entrance as it
went.
He went back to the others and offered his congratulations to the boy.
“That’s one to you, Dave,” he said. “He looks a nice young one, too. If
I’m any judge he’d make a supper for the gods. I don’t believe I could
stop a tortoise in a passage.”
“Never mind,” Dave said. “It will be your turn next time, and anyway
we couldn’t eat two pigs at once, even if we are starving shipwrecked
mariners with only the stores off one ship to keep us alive.”
The prize was conveyed back to the camp, where a heated discussion took
place as to how it should be cooked. Tempest, who confessed he knew
nothing about such matters, argued that it should be done one way.
Dave, whose experience in the galley gave his word a certain degree
of authority, protested that it should be cooked another way. Jim,
on the other hand, declared it should be baked whole, in the ground,
native fashion; and finally the other two gave in to him. They watched
the process with great interest, and when it was ready to eat they
unanimously decided that whatever Jim’s omelettes were like, no Fifth
Avenue chef had anything on the Kanaka when it came to roast pork.
On the morning following the pig hunt Tempest announced that, while
the others were out fishing, he was off on a little exploration tour.
Although the island was so small, there were many parts of it which
they had not yet reached. In places it was difficult to get down to the
beach, and at the northern end there were rugged peaks in a trackless
district, where one had to climb laboriously.
Dave and the Kanaka returned to the shore soon after noon, and were
surprised when Tempest did not arrive for the midday meal. Not until
the swift setting of the sun, however, did Dave grow anxious, and then
he began to realize that something untoward must have happened, for
Tempest had taken no food with him and the boy could think of no reason
why his friend should remain away until after dark.
He and Jim ascended the nearest hill and shouted continually, but no
reply came from the silent jungle nor beyond.
“Come on, let’s get some lanterns,” said the boy at length. “I’m going
to make a search.”
Leaving a light burning at the camp, for there was no moon and the
stars were almost obscured by clouds, they set out in the darkness,
Dave feeling distinctly uneasy. He racked his brain to think of some
plausible explanation of Tempest’s failure to return. Until after
midnight the two searched and called in vain. Then, with a heavy
heart, the boy returned to the camp, to toss about uneasily, fully
dressed, until dawn.
Tempest had disappeared, and Dave was alone now, but for the
half-savage Kanaka. The boy, however, did not think of his own
position. It was the thought of his friend which kept him awake.
CHAPTER XV
LAUNCHING THE MUD TURTLE
There was still no sign of the missing man at the camp when the sun
rose, and a fear that had haunted Dave began to become very real. He
was now firmly convinced that his friend had gone for a swim and been
drowned. In a very dismal mood he walked down to the bay where they
usually took their dip, and searched, fearing to find what he was
searching for.
“Jim,” he said at last, “we’ll put up some lunch and spend the rest of
the day going over every foot of this island. There’s always a chance.”
Systematically they explored the southern and western extremities of
the place, and the sun was already slanting westward when they came to
the rugged territory in the north. Dave had very little hope left,
when suddenly Jim gave a cry of delight which brought the boy to his
side at a run.
On one of the few patches of ground which did not consist of hard rock
two or three footmarks were distinctly visible.
“We get him yet,” declared the Kanaka, now moving quickly from place to
place like a hound eagerly picking up scent. A score of yards farther
on he stooped over a broken twig and silently pointed to it. Under it
was the faint imprint of a shoe heel.
Gradually they progressed almost to the northern shore, guided by one
indistinct mark after another and shouting as loudly as possible every
few minutes.
At length the Kanaka put his hand on Dave’s shoulder suddenly, his head
bent in a listening attitude.
A faint cry reached the boy’s ears.
“Thank goodness!” he said solemnly.
Five minutes later he was by Tempest’s side.
“Hello, old top,” said the latter, in a weak voice. “You don’t happen
to have a plate of ham and eggs about you, and a quart or so of coffee,
do you? I’m ravenous. I couldn’t find a restaurant open anywhere round
here.”
“Stop fooling!” said Dave. “Where are you hurt?”
“I guess I ought to be nearly all right by now,” Tempest said with a
grin. “I’ve been doing nothing particular but nurse it for about thirty
hours. I twisted my ankle a bit yesterday, and I must have bumped my
head in falling, because I don’t remember much about it.”
“Well, cheer up,” said Dave. “We’ll soon get you home now.”
“Oh, I’ve been cheered up for the best part of an hour,” said Tempest.
“I heard you and Jim yelling the top of your heads off, but the wind
was in the wrong direction for you to hear me shouting back. I knew
you’d roll up sooner or later. Sorry to give you so much trouble. Jim,
you’re as strong as a rhinoceros, if not so good-looking. If there
isn’t any sign of a taxicab, would you mind giving me a pickaback as
far as our little dump, and I’ll promise never to call you an ugly old
sinner again?”
Without a word the Kanaka stooped, and Tempest scrambled onto his back.
He winced once or twice as they traveled over uneven ground, for, in
spite of his cheerfulness, his ankle was very painful. Tireless as a
horse, Jim carried him all the way, and deposited him gently at the
camp, where Dave assumed the rôle of doctor. It was now his turn to
apply a cold compress, but the sprain had been a severe one, and the
swelling did not go down appreciably for three days.
While the patient was lying resting his injury he and Dave had a long
talk on the possibility of their being picked up. Five weeks had
elapsed since the crew of the ill-fated _Manihiki_ set sail. It was
only possible to speculate, of course, as to what had happened to the
small craft. There had been no very rough weather on the island, but
that was not much to go by, as a terrific storm might sweep by within
fifty miles and never be noticed where they were.
“It is a little early to get impatient, yet,” Tempest commented. “If
they have all been sunk, we may be left here till we have beards down
to our knees, and not a soul would be the wiser; but we can safely wait
three months before making up our minds for that sort of thing.”
“I suppose we couldn’t possibly try to make the trip in our dory?” Dave
suggested.
“There’s no law against it,” Tempest said, “but you don’t catch this
child trying the experiment. You remember what happened not long ago
when you and Jim were out fishing and the wind got up a bit. And you
were practically under the shelter of this island all the time. You can
imagine what it would be like if a regular gale hit that cockleshell.”
“Well, couldn’t we build a boat?”
“I’ve thought of that. But it’s a big undertaking, you know, and I
never made anything out of wood but a dog-kennel. I’m game to try,
though, if you like. It’ll amuse us if it does nothing else. Let us
start by giving her a name. What are you going to call this wonderful
craft? How will the _Mud Turtle_ do?”
“That’ll do finely,” said the boy. “We will start on her as soon as you
can walk.”
Though neither Tempest nor Dave knew it, the day they laid the keel
of the _Mud Turtle_ the crew of the _Manihiki_ were being landed at
Melbourne, their plans having gone somewhat astray. They had covered
half the distance to Fiji laboriously by tacking against adverse winds
most of the time, and had reduced their ration of water by half, as
their supply of that precious liquid was getting perilously low, when
a steamer nearly ran them down in the middle of the night, the only
lamp on the long-boat having been broken. The helmsman on the steamer
heard their cries just in time to swing aside, and the men from the
_Manihiki_ were only too thankful to accept the offer of a passage
to the first port the vessel was bound for. There was no wireless on
board, so until he reached Melbourne Captain Peters was unable to
notify his owners of the loss of their vessel and the plight of those
he had left on the island. A month was to elapse, moreover, before the
next vessel was to leave Sydney for the scene of the shipwreck.
The task of building the _Mud Turtle_ was a more formidable one than
even Tempest had anticipated. To begin with they had very few planks
that were of any service for the purpose. One of the spars off the
_Manihiki_ made a rough keel, but almost all the rest of the material
had to be hewn out of green trees. They had plenty of tools, however,
and though the skeleton of the craft would probably have convulsed
a professional boat builder with laughter, it had at least more
resemblance to a boat than a dog kennel, as Tempest pointed out.
The _Mud Turtle_ was sixteen feet in length, and somewhat narrow in
order to overcome some of the difficulty of getting curves. As a matter
of fact she consisted chiefly of angles. From the first she had no
pretentions to elegance, and in spite of her builders’ ingenuity there
were awkward gaps where the rough planks positively refused to meet,
this necessitating a great deal more caulking and patching than was
consistent with beauty.
“How fast do you think she will sail?” Dave asked when they had her
about half finished.
“About a knot an hour, if we get out and push,” Tempest replied
lugubriously. “Pity we didn’t let that engineer bring the donkey engine
ashore. We could have rigged it up and converted our wonderful boat
into a steamer, maybe p’raps, as Jim says.”
The Kanaka, who had distinct ideas on the subject of boat building,
but whose ideas had been overruled because Tempest thought a catamaran
such as they could construct would be as dangerous as a bundle of
dynamite, viewed the _Mud Turtle_ with something akin to suspicion, if
not actual distrust; but he worked on her just as cheerfully as the
others, putting in long hours with the saw on green timber and using
other carpenter’s tools with remarkable skill considering they were all
strange to him.
It was decided to have the boat half decked in, lest they should
encounter bad weather, but before tackling that part of the job Tempest
and Dave made up their minds to set their vessel afloat for a trial
trip, just to see how she took to the water. Before sliding her down
the beach they went over every seam and applied pitch liberally. She
looked more like a disjointed miniature coal hulk than anything by the
time they had her ready, and when Dave ran a critical eye over her he
had certain misgivings.
“She’s no racer, certainly,” he said, “but considering she is the first
boat we ever made the result isn’t so bad, is it?”
Tempest glanced over her awkward lines.
“I’ll tell you better when I see her dancing over the silvery waves,”
he replied cautiously.
“We’re ready now, aren’t we? All together. Push.”
The _Mud Turtle_ slid down the greased boards with the grace of
a lumbering elephant, Dave, Tempest and Jim hanging on to her
tenaciously. Just as she plunged into the water they all three leaped
up the side. The boat had come down a considerable slope, and threw
up a large wave as she dived. The water was dead calm, and the _Mud
Turtle_ shot out twenty feet from the shore, but even as she was doing
so her builders realized that something was radically wrong. She was
canting over at a perilous angle, and the strain of being launched had
strained her timbers alarmingly. In half a dozen places jets of water
were squirting into her, and in one place where a patch had been
sprung the sea was coming in faster than it could have been bailed out.
Jim looked at the wreck of their hopes with a perfectly blank
expression. Perhaps he had anticipated something of the sort all the
time. Dave, standing ankle deep in the bottom of the boat, frowned
gloomily. Tempest, leaning against the side of the craft that was
highest out of the water, in an attempt to keep her balanced, laughed
long and loudly.
“I don’t call it a bit funny,” the boy said, watching the _Mud Turtle_
slowly settle down.
“I refuse to burst into tears about it,” Tempest said. “It is a whole
lot funnier to see her going down now right here than it would have
been if we had got about fifty miles away from shore in her and then
she had started to play tricks on us.”
“I suppose it is, really,” agreed Dave, who was beginning to absorb
from Bruce Tempest some of his unquenchable good spirits whatever
happened. “But can you suggest what we’re going to do with her now?”
“She would fetch a lot of money anywhere――as a curiosity,” said
Tempest. “But I’m afraid the buyers of this interesting maritime
monster will have to be quick, because in a few more minutes the sad
sea waves will have closed over her for ever.”
“Can’t we do anything with her?” the boy asked, smiling now in spite of
his disappointment.
“She is getting too wet to burn. That’s all I can think of.”
“What about putting ballast in to keep her upright?”
“You’d have to put enough rocks in to force the bottom out of her. No,
I’m sorry to say it, Dave, but the _Mud Turtle_ is a hopeless failure.
Come on, we have either to swim ashore or go down with the brute.”
And so, in six feet of water, they pushed off from the boat a few
minutes before it quietly sank. Its gunwale was disappearing as they
reached shore.
During all the time the trio were marooned they kept a fixed rule that
every three hours during the day one of them was to ascend the hill
where the flagpole stood and scan the horizon through the binoculars.
As the weeks sped into months they became more hopeful, for the time
was now nearing when the steamer sent by the crew of the _Manihiki_
might put in an appearance. Whatever doubts Tempest may have had on
that score, he said nothing about them. He knew well enough the grim
possibilities that might overtake a small, crowded boat on a trip of
four hundred miles, and there were times when he thanked his stars
that neither Dave nor he had undertaken the trip. At the same time,
it occurred to him there was a distinct chance that they might have
to remain where they were for a year or more, and, rather than miss
the opportunity of attracting some boat that might pass in the night,
he kept the bonfire of brushwood near the flagpole ready to light.
Sometimes he and the boy would stroll up to the look-out post during
the evening and yarn, while keeping a watch on the dark waters.
One night――it was the night of their seventy-second day on the
island――Dave, having dozed most of the afternoon, felt little
inclination to sleep. His two companions were in the land of dreams.
Stepping softly, to avoid waking them, he passed out of the hut, and
strolled out into the night air. A thin crescent of the moon shed a
pale light, and the stars glistened like a myriad of diamonds set in
the sky. First he strolled slowly down the silvery beach and stood near
the edge of the water, whose waves were lapping the sand gently. He
stood there a few minutes, drinking in the tropic beauty of the scene,
and then, to get a wider view, walked up the hill to the flagpole.
Scanning the horizon as a matter of habit, his eye rested for a second
on something far away where the starlit sky seemed to dip down into the
ocean. He stood still as a statue and tried to find it again. Surely
it was imagination――or was it? He could have been positive that just
for a fraction of a second a greenish light twinkled in the distance.
Perhaps it was a star. At any rate he could not pick it out again with
the naked eye, so he walked down for his binoculars. Five minutes later
he was back on the hill, peering through the glasses.
Suddenly his heart gave a thump. That was no star. The greenish hue
was unmistakable. Like a hare, he leaped down to the camp, shouting to
awaken Tempest.
“Matches, quick!” he yelled excitedly, fumbling in Tempest’s pocket.
“There’s a ship away off, fifteen or twenty miles to the south’ard.”
“And I was just getting off to sleep so beautifully!” expostulated
Tempest, who, however, did not allow any grass to grow under his feet.
He and Dave made a dead heat of it up to the flagpole, Jim lumbering
up in the rear.
“Where away?” asked Tempest, while Dave put a light to the dry twigs.
“Right over there, in a line with my finger. Use the glasses, or else
you can’t see it.” The boy’s finger shook a trifle as he pointed.
“Thunder! You’re right, laddie!” Tempest said after a moment. “More
brushwood, quick. Jim, you scalawag, I’ll skin you alive if you don’t
get busy. The fourth of July isn’t in it with this for a bonfire. Get
an ax, you Kanaka. Bushes――trees――whole forests if you can find ’em!”
Already the flames were licking their way above the pile of brushwood,
and Dave and Tempest were wildly tearing at the branches near by. Soon
the Kanaka, with gleaming eyes and mighty strokes, was tearing off more
fuel, which was quickly flung to the top of the bonfire.
“That’s the style!” Tempest shouted as the fire threw their figures up
in its glare. “If she’s going straight by there, we may only have a
little while to attract her attention. Jiminy! We ought to have a fire
they could see in Australia!”
Regardless of scratches and cuts, they toiled on, while the flames rose
higher and higher, Tempest pausing only now and again to take a squint
through the binoculars. At that distance it was very difficult to see
whether the vessel was putting about.
After about half an hour of this strenuous labor he leaned, breathless,
against the pole to steady the glasses.
“I can’t see a blessed thing of her now,” he said. “Here, Dave, you
have a try.”
The boy looked long and carefully.
“I don’t see the green,” he said, “but if I’m not mistaken there’s a
white light in about the same place.”
“More trees――more forests, Jim, or I’ll tear your ears off. That’s the
mast head light. She’s put about. Say good-bye to the little pigs on
this island, Dave, because I’m a Dutchman if you’ll get the chance to
do it soon. We’ll be bound for furrin parts before you know where you
are.”
Another half-hour showed unmistakably that the ship was heading direct
for the beacon. The trio still kept the flames leaping until the vessel
was about a mile off, and then they went down to the beach, where the
steady thump of her propeller was distinctly audible. Soon the rattle
of an anchor-chain came over the water, and the dark form of a dory
came creeping over the lagoon.
Dave was wildly elated. Tempest, now that the suspense was over, almost
seemed to be losing interest. It was beginning to dawn on him that he
had been as happy on the island as he ever was anywhere. The Kanaka
squatted on the sand with expressionless face, not even giving a grunt
of satisfaction when the dory ran on the sand.
“Hello, there!” said a voice. “Anybody at home?”
CHAPTER XVI
ADVENTURES AHEAD
“Three of us,” replied Dave. “And all mighty glad to see you.”
“What is it? A picnic party? Well, I’m hanged!” said the voice, the
owner of which jumped out of the boat. He was a big, broad-shouldered
man, with a pleasant ring in his voice.
“Much obliged to you for calling,” said Tempest. “Hope we haven’t
inconvenienced you.”
“It’s a wonder we’re here at all,” said the big man. “I saw your beacon
as I was going below. Marooned?”
“Our ship had a bit of an argument with a rock out there,” said
Tempest, “and the rock won. We’d be glad of a passage out of this. You
in a hurry? There’s lots of stores worth taking.”
“Stores, eh?” said the big man, who proved to be the mate. “Guess I’d
better see the skipper about that. It’ll be daylight in a few hours.
You come off and see him.”
A dozen faces peered curiously over the side of the steamer as they
approached it.
“Bless my soul!” said the skipper, when Dave and his companions stepped
aboard. “What have we got here?”
Tempest explained briefly, thanked the captain for stopping, and
mentioned the stores.
“Why, yes, I’ll be glad to have them,” said the skipper. “We’re not
over provisioned. Those natives at Fiji wanted too much for their
things for my liking, so I only took enough to last till we hit
’Frisco.”
As soon as it was light the captain himself went off and inspected the
mass of stuff that had been landed from the _Manihiki_.
“Jer-usalem!” he said, “but this lot is worth a young fortune. Who’s
the real owner of it?”
“You’ll have to fight that out with the owners of the _Manihiki_,”
said Tempest. “May I ask if you’re calling anywhere on the way to San
Francisco?”
“A few places in Samoa, then Washington Island and Honolulu,” replied
the skipper.
Tempest smiled.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I was going to ask you to oblige us with a
passage at the expense of the _Manihiki’s_ owners, but since you’re
bound for Washington Island I think it would be much better if you
could sign us on as members of your crew till we get there.”
“Why, certainly. I can do that,” said the skipper. “What’s the idea?”
“Nothing much,” Tempest observed, “except that we might have a
little――er――business not so far from Washington Island; and though
we’re not stuck for funds, a bit of extra cash might come in very handy
when we get there.”
The captain displayed no further curiosity in the matter. He had
knocked about the South Seas too long to be surprised by the mysterious
movements of men there. He turned his attention to hustling out to the
ship all the miscellaneous articles which had to be got aboard and
checked; and long before midday his vessel was again heading for the
northeast.
“Do you know where we are going to get off this packet, Dave?” Tempest
asked as soon as they got the opportunity for a quiet chat.
“Not exactly,” the boy replied. “I heard you saying something about
Washington Island, but I never heard of it. What is the scheme?”
“I’m afraid they never taught you your geography very well,” said
Tempest, stuffing tobacco into his now well-worn pipe with an air of
great contentment. “Some people never can see a piece of luck when it
comes their way, even if it is sticking out half a yard.”
An idea flashed into the boy’s mind. Christmas Island was away to the
northeast. They were going northeast as fast as their engines could
take them.
“Are you thinking about the _Hatteras_?” Dave said in a low voice. He
was conscious of a little thrill even as he put the question. Hitherto,
their discussions about the treasure-ship had been more or less vague.
True, there had been wagging of wise heads and solemn discussions over
charts in smoky cabins, but they had always taken place many thousands
of miles from that mysterious island where the semblance of a camel’s
back loomed up over a lagoon. The subject had been interesting, but
intangible. Now, in a flash, it seemed different.
“Tell me what Washington Island has got to do with it?” Dave asked,
with a serious light in his grey eyes.
“Only this――that if we get off there, we shall be within something
like three hundred miles of the spot where your old mariner says the
bones of the _Hatteras_ are sticking up out of the sand,” Tempest
replied. “Even three hundred miles is a mighty long distance, in a
way, but it’s better than three thousand, and it looks to me as though
Old Man Opportunity was going out of his way to knock at your door a
second time. Do you remember that I once told you there comes a time in
everybody’s life when it’s worth while to go full steam ahead whatever
effort it costs? Fussy people, who get excited over every blessed thing
from sunrise to sunset, haven’t got any steam left in ’em when the big
chance bobs up. They fuss along just the same as they always have done,
but they haven’t got any punch to it. Now, it looks to me as though
this is where you and I should wake up.”
“Well, you know, Tempest, whatever you say, I’m with you.” A queer
sense of excitement was beginning to creep over the boy. It was only
at rare moments that Bruce Tempest dropped the mask of light-hearted
carelessness, and he was unquestionably serious now. “What do you
suggest?”
“I can’t say,” Tempest replied with a light laugh, seeing how intent
the boy had suddenly become. “Don’t let this make an old man of you.
We may be on a wild-goose chase all the time――but then again we might
not. And what we’ve got to do is to assume that it _isn’t_ a wild-goose
chase. We’ve got to try this thing out, somehow or other.”
“Well, there’s one thing,” Dave commented. “One might go to sea for
a hundred years and never get as near as three hundred miles to Lost
Island again.”
“That’s just my point,” said Tempest. “To tell you the truth, I can’t
see very far ahead at the moment. If we had a private yacht and plenty
of money, the thing would be simplified; but we haven’t too much money
between us, and our yacht is now rotting at the bottom of the Pacific.
That is as far as the _Mud Turtle_ ever got. Anyway, we’ve got arms and
legs, and Jim is going to stick with us.”
“By the way, Tempest,” Dave said, “has it ever occurred to you to
wonder whether that treasure really would be ours if we did happen to
find it?”
“It has, and it would,” the other replied. “I know what you mean――the
man who mined it turning up and claiming it and all that sort of thing.
Yes, I have thought of that, and I should think it’s about a million
to one that nothing of the sort could possibly happen after all these
years. I talked that over with old Lightning Grummitt, and he took
the same view that I do. No, laddie, put that right out of your mind.
Never cross your bridges before you get to them. The man who dug that
platinum up is as dead as mutton; and though I’m sure I should be only
too pleased to let him have his share if he did bob up, it just won’t
happen. If he were alive, don’t you think he would have moved heaven
and earth to get back to the wreck of the _Hatteras_ and rescue his
blessed stuff?”
“I suppose he would,” Dave agreed. “But if it comes to that, how do we
know that he never did go back to the _Hatteras_ and get it, the same
way that we propose to do now?”
“How do you know that pigs can’t fly when you aren’t watching ’em?”
Tempest expostulated. “How do you know the earth isn’t flat? How do
you know the moon isn’t made of green cheese? You’ve never been up to
see. The only thing we shall know definitely, if ever we do handle
the treasure, is that that platinum miner was too dead to go for it
himself.”
“There’s no getting away from that,” Dave agreed, now satisfied on the
subject.
During his watch below, Dave spent some time during the run to the
Samoan Islands writing to his father, knowing that Captain Hallard
must be growing anxious. He told how they had been cast away, and
wrote cheerfully about all the adventures he had had since leaving
Australia. Of the immediate future, however, he said very little, not
being sure himself of what was likely to happen.
“I am leaving this ship,” he added, “at Washington Island, with
my friend Bruce Tempest, and we may stop a week or two in that
neighborhood.”
Dave nibbled the end of his pen thoughtfully for a while. He was
wondering whether his father would look Washington Island up on the map
and connect his making a stop there with the old _Hatteras_.
“After that,” he went on, “I am surely coming home, as I want to see
you both again very much. I started out for just one trip away and
back, but it seems to have got mixed up somehow, doesn’t it? Ask Aunt
Martha to be ready to make me some flapjacks, as I haven’t had any
since I left Brooklyn.”
Knowing nothing of what was in store, Dave thought the time was not far
distant when he would be eating those flapjacks and proudly relating
his own stories of the sea to his father.
Tempest, however, did not seem to share that view. For him, he was
growing curiously serious. He rarely lost his old, bantering way, but
there were moments when he was unusually thoughtful. He was wrestling
with the problem of how one man, one boy, and one Kanaka were to
perform the prodigious feat they had set themselves on an extremely
limited capital with the best possible chance of success. It was not
an easy problem. It would be galling to get so far and not be able to
get any farther. And yet Tempest had the conviction that they would
find a solution to some of their difficulties. As to the treasure, his
mind was perfectly open on that point. To him the matter was merely an
interesting possibility. There were a dozen reasons why, even if they
ever did reach the end of this curious journey they were planning, they
would never find what they were seeking at the end of it; but the bare
possibility of success made it worth trying. And when Tempest did find
anything in life that he considered worth going after, he went after it
very hard.
The steamer made one or two calls on her way, and Dave was surprised
to find such signs of civilization in remote places like Apia, where a
trim little mail boat was just arriving, crowded with tourists. Even
here, Tempest was not unfamiliar with the sights. Once before he had
landed at Apia for a few hours, and now was able to show Dave around.
But the boy’s interest was not in the beautiful home of the Samoans for
the moment. The adventures that lay ahead filled him with suppressed
excitement. That they might be pretty desperate he knew: exactly
how desperate he could only conjecture. He was all agog to sight
Washington, from which point they would have to start shaping their
course in real earnest, and when the steamer cleared Apia at last for
that island he stared ahead at the blue, tumbled ocean as though trying
to read the riddle of the future.
CHAPTER XVII
INTRODUCING MR. JOE FLAGG
The weather was sizzling hot as the steamer neared Washington Island,
which is only about two hundred and fifty miles north of the equator.
Dave and Tempest received the pay they had earned on board, according
to arrangement, and added it to their joint capital with a feeling
of thankfulness, for it seemed likely that every penny they could
accumulate would come in handy when the pinch arrived.
The first thing Tempest did when he got ashore was to inquire whether
there was likely to be a vessel of any kind going to Christmas Island
soon, but he was disappointed. Traders calling at Washington were few
and far between.
The population consisted chiefly of colored folk, who appeared to have
nothing much to do except bask in the sweltering heat. Dave was feeling
distinctly glum, when a short, rotund man, remotely resembling a barrel
in shape, rode past on an extremely lean pony. Recognizing strangers,
the man nodded and drew rein.
“Can I offer you any assistance?” he asked. Perspiration was oozing
in streams from his brow, which he constantly wiped with a very large
handkerchief.
“Thanks,” Dave said; “we wanted to get to Christmas Island.”
“Why, that’s worse than Washington,” said the fat man, “and heaven
knows this is bad enough. Nothing ever happens here except the rising
of the sun, and then all we can do is to wait till it goes down again.
Christmas Island is so near the equator that you could almost jump onto
it from there.”
“Well, we’re going the first chance we get. Can you say when that might
be?”
“Maybe a month,” said the stranger. “You can’t tell. What’re you going
to do in the meantime?” In the intervals between mopping his brow he
was studying the boy and Tempest closely, and apparently the inspection
pleased him.
“I guess we shall have to find somewhere to stop,” Dave said. “It
doesn’t look like a place where we are likely to get work.”
“Work!” the man laughed. “No. I’ve been here as a planter for some
years now, and I confess I never did see any one work yet. To tell you
the truth, it’s always a mystery to me how anything ever gets done. You
have to explode a stick of dynamite behind these colored people to get
a move on them. When I was running a store in Dogtooth City, Dakota, I
wouldn’t have stood for this sort of thing, no siree! I was strictly
business every time and all the time there. I made my pile in Dogtooth
City, and I won’t say I didn’t come pretty near to making Dogtooth
City, too. I was mayor of that little burg three times, and sometimes
I wonder which particular kind of a fool I am to be here now, when I
could go back to Dogtooth and be mayor a fourth time if I liked. They
know there that Joe Flagg won’t stand any nonsense.”
Clearly, Mr. Flagg was naturally garrulous, and he was letting off
steam, not having had the opportunity to speak to a stranger for some
time. But also he was thinking while he talked, and evidently made up
his mind at length.
“It’s mighty lonely up at my bungalow,” he went on after a scarcely
perceptible pause, during which he gave a final and comprehensive
glance at the pair, “but I’d sure be tickled to death if you’d come up
and stop with me for a while. It seems as though I hadn’t had any one
to talk to in years. Now when I was in Dogtooth City――”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Tempest, leaping at the chance. “To
tell you the truth, we were just beginning to wonder what was going to
happen to us. If we can give you any help about the place――”
“Tush, tush!” said Mr. Flagg. “You are doing me a favor. I like to let
my tongue wag sometimes, and I’ve got nobody to talk to up there but
Kanakas.”
“By the way, we’ve got a Kanaka that we’re taking along with us,”
Tempest said, nodding his head in Jim’s direction. “If you wouldn’t
mind giving him a shake-down too――”
“Sure! Bring him right along. This reminds me of old times. Why, my
house was Liberty Hall when I lived in Dogtooth City. I remember once――”
Mr. Flagg talked on as his skinny pony walked in leisurely fashion
over the brow of a hill, along a lane between the waving trees of the
plantation, and finally to a rambling house with a wide veranda running
all round it.
“Here we are,” said Mr. Flagg. “And when I tell you you’re the first
people I have had staying under my roof for nearly eighteen months,
perhaps you’ll understand how glad I am to have you. It’s no hotel,
mind you. We have to put up with a lot of things besides heat on
Washington Island, but I’ve drilled my boy into cooking till he is one
splendid artist with the pots and pans, though he didn’t even know how
to open a can of beans when I first took him in hand. Yessir, Joe Flagg
knows how to cook, though I do say it. When I was in Dogtooth City――”
“He’s a decent sort of chap, isn’t he?” said Tempest to Dave a little
later, when they were alone for a few minutes.
“He’s great, so far as his hospitality goes,” the boy replied. “This
suits us down to the ground, but I fancy we shall get a bit tired of
Dogtooth City before we say good-by, sha’n’t we?”
“That’s easy,” said Tempest. “All you have to do when you see it coming
is to butt in with some other subject, and he switches off all right.”
Mr. Flagg certainly went out of his way to be agreeable to his guests,
and both Dave and his companion found it a particularly pleasant
change to live in a comparatively comfortable house and be waited on.
Joe Flagg was as amusing as he was fat, and he often sat by the hour
puffing at his pipe, telling remarkable stories of his early life in
the West, when men really carried six-shooters just as they do to-day
in the movies. In spite of his rotundity Joe Flagg was a very active
man. He was always wiping perspiration from his brow with the great
handkerchief, but the way he got round on foot put his scraggy pony to
shame. Also he was an amateur sailor of no mean ability, and often went
for a long cruise, accompanied by a couple of Kanakas, in a three-ton
sailing craft in which he seemed to take more interest than he did in
his plantation or anything else. He appeared to be devoid of fear. His
boat certainly rode well in a heavy sea, but the rougher the weather
the more Flagg liked it.
“I’d run the three of you over to Christmas Island myself,” he said one
day, “only I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’ve never been as far as there, have you?” Tempest asked.
“Not quite, but pretty nearly.”
“You must know these waters well, then.”
“I ought to,” said Flagg. “I’ve been pottering around in ’em for years.”
Tempest was thoughtful for a few moments. He caught Dave’s eye. The
same idea had occurred to both of them at that instant.
“There was a bark called the _Hatteras_ went ashore somewhere around
here years ago,” Tempest said at last. “Did you ever hear anything of
it?”
Joe Flagg rubbed his chin with a pudgy forefinger.
“The name is kind of familiar,” he said, “but I don’t place it for the
minute. There’s a good many ships have hit trouble in this locality at
one time or another.”
“Did you ever land on Fanning Island?” Dave asked.
“Why, yes, more than once,” replied Flagg. “We sheltered under there
three days last fall when it was blowing hard.”
“Do you know any of the islands to the south of there――in the direction
of Christmas Island, I mean?” asked Tempest.
“Yes, in a way,” Flagg said. “There aren’t many of ’em till you get
nearer the equator. Pretty lonely spots too, let me tell you.”
“Did you ever notice a wreck on one of them?” Dave said.
“More than one,” replied their host, “but I don’t remember anything
particular about any of ’em. The sea doesn’t leave much of them except
a few ribs after a year or so.”
Again Dave and Tempest exchanged glances.
“I wonder whether you happen to know of an island round about there
that has a biggish hill on it that looks like a camel’s back,” Tempest
said.
“There is one with a hill on it,” replied Flagg, reaching for a chart,
“and that may be the one you’re talking of. You see, they’re all very
low in the water. That island with the hill must have been bumped up by
an earthquake or something. I never noticed a camel’s back on it, but
you’d probably only see the resemblance from one side. I’m not quite
sure, but I think this is it,” he went on, indicating the point on the
chart with the stem of his pipe. “You thinking of setting up a real
estate business there?” he asked, with an amused smile. “I give you my
word that it’s one dreary place.”
How many times had Dave and Tempest pored over their chart and
speculated idly on which of the little dots indicated the island that
was their goal!
“It certainly does just about fit in, doesn’t it?” Tempest said to
Dave with a touch of enthusiasm. “We’ll make for there first, anyway.”
“Well, it’s none of my business,” said Mr. Flagg, “but if there’s any
way I can help you, put a name to it.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Tempest, apparently absorbed for
the moment in getting an obstinate pipe to burn. Here was Old Man
Opportunity hammering hard. Mr. Flagg had a boat that was perfectly
suitable for the trip. Mr. Flagg and his two Kanaka sailors knew the
waters as well as any one else. Mr. Flagg, also, probably knew the very
place Dave and Tempest were so anxious to reach. Tempest did some hard
and quick thinking in a very few seconds. It would only be fair, if
they took Mr. Flagg into partnership, to give him a full share of the
possible proceeds. After burning his second match Tempest had decided
that he and Dave would carry out their original program and do the
whole thing off their own bat if possible. At least they could make
their one big effort. If that failed,――if they could not get a boat,
or if they got a boat and could not find the place they were looking
for,――it would always be possible to come back to Joe Flagg and put the
proposition up to him on a proper business basis.
“No, I don’t see exactly that you can do anything for us,” Tempest
added at length. “There’s a wreck there that Dave and I have a
particular fancy to look over, and we’re going to make a trip in that
direction from Christmas Island, when we get there. It may be waste of
time, but we’ve set our minds on it. There was some stuff worth a pile
of money on the _Hatteras_ when she was lost, but that’s a good many
years since.”
“Go to it,” said Flagg encouragingly. “Never let a chance slip by.
That has always been my motto, because if you don’t grab your chances
in this world, you won’t get anywhere. But if I may express an opinion
without discouraging you, it seems like a mighty slender chance to me.
Perhaps you’ve never seen a real storm in this part of the world, eh? I
mean the sort of storm that smashes everything. Well, I tell you that
anything but rocks on the beach gets beaten up into splinters in very
little time. I’m afraid you won’t find any wreck there. If I’m not too
inquisitive, what is the stuff in the vessel? You’ve got a nice job on
if it is at all bulky.”
“Platinum,” Tempest replied. “It is worth a good deal more than gold
nowadays. It would be easy enough to handle if ever we got the chance
to handle it.”
Joe Flagg shook his head slowly many, many times.
“I hate to sound like a wet blanket,” he said, “but you’re up against
some proposition. Do you know what part of the ship this treasure stuff
was stored in?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be in the hold,” Tempest said. “We figure on it
being in one of the cabins, or perhaps the owner had given it into the
captain’s care. He might have had it locked up in his quarters.”
“Yes, but my dear man,” Flagg said, “you don’t tell me seriously that
you expect to find the captain’s cabin there now, with the remains of
his breakfast on the table just as he left it!”
“Well, we’re going, anyway, aren’t we, Dave?” replied Tempest. “You
see, Mr. Flagg, there is just this point. The bark isn’t lying in an
exposed place. She is――or was――squatting snugly, weighted down with
sand, in the shelter of a lagoon where the sea practically couldn’t
smash her up. At any rate, she would have a far better chance in there
than she would if she were just lying stranded on the rocks in the
open.”
“That makes a difference,” said Flagg, more encouragingly, “though
you’ll have to go there to find out how much difference. Listen to
me, Tempest. I’m a man of business, as any one in Dogtooth City will
tell you, and all my life I’ve been willing to take a chance when
there was a good thing going. You know well enough that there are big
difficulties ahead of you. Now, why not let me come in on the deal? My
boat is lying here in Shavay Bay doing nothing in particular. I could
provision her for the trip and land you right back here on this beach
with the stuff――if we found it. What do you say? Of course, I wouldn’t
want to do it for nothing. The whole thing is a matter of speculation.
I suppose there’s only you and the boy in on the proposition. Suppose
we say split the proceeds into three?”
Dave looked at his friend inquiringly. He had great respect for
Tempest’s judgment, and would have fallen in with any suggestion
Tempest thought fit to agree to. The idea sounded fair enough. Anyway,
Dave was not actuated by any mercenary motive; so far, the love of
adventure had carried him toward the _Hatteras_ as much as had any
hope of monetary reward. Tempest knew that, and he avoided the boy’s
eyes for the moment. Of course, it would have been by far the easiest
course to do as Flagg said, but from a purely business point of view
the notion struck Tempest as being stupid. If Mr. Flagg had suddenly
descended with his boat on them while they were marooned after the
wreck of the _Manihiki_, it was very possible that Tempest would have
leaped at the chance of making the little fat man a partner in the
matter. But as things were, it was different. Fortune had favored them
greatly by bringing them so close to the spot they were struggling to
reach. Perhaps fortune would do more for them. The weather remained
perfect. It would be so easy to offer a third of a possible fortune in
return for this proffered assistance.
“I’m very much obliged to you,” he said, after careful deliberation,
“and I don’t mind saying it’s a big temptation, because it sounds fair;
but you see, Mr. Flagg, we’ve made up our minds to worry through alone.
I’m not very obstinate in the ordinary way, but when I do set my teeth
into a thing it takes a whole lot to get ’em out again. I’ll tell you
what I would be very glad to do, though. We want a boat. You know that.
Let us have yours for the trip, and in return we will pay you whatever
you think is reasonable for the hire of it. And on the top of that,
we’ll undertake to hand over a thousand dollars more in case we are
successful. Are you agreeable?”
The discussion of high finance evidently made Joe Flagg perspire more
than ever. He mopped his brow industriously, but shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said. “Nobody goes off in the _Firefly_ except when I’m
in her. I’ve allus made that a rule, and I allus shall. I come in as a
partner for a third of the spoil, or the _Firefly_ stops where she is.”
“Then there is nothing more to be said on the subject, Mr. Flagg, and
I’m sorry we can’t do business with you,” said Tempest, with an air of
finality.
“All right,” said their rotund host, indifferently. “I don’t blame
you. Probably I’d feel the same way myself if I were in your shoes.
A difference of opinion in a little matter of business needn’t alter
friendship, need it? Now, I remember when I was mayor of Dogtooth
City――”
CHAPTER XVIII
IN WHICH THE FIREFLY DISAPPEARS
In spite of his obvious disappointment, Joe Flagg remained as suave and
courteous to his two guests as ever. Both Tempest and Dave, however,
began to grow restless as time slipped along. There was still no sign
of a vessel calling to take them to Christmas Island, and they felt
they could not impose on Mr. Flagg’s generous hospitality much longer.
When Mr. Flagg was engaged with affairs connected with his plantation,
the other two often went for a long hike together. It was seven miles
from one end of the island to the other. There were few houses except
those near Invisible Bay, where the chief settlement was situated.
The idea of hiring another boat had already occurred to Tempest, but
unfortunately there was not one that appeared to be suitable for the
purpose. A good many of the island’s residents owned small craft, but
Tempest was not inclined to trust his own life and that of Dave to such
cockle-shells.
During one of their rambles they heard that there was an Englishman
named Cresswell living near the north shore who had a fairly useful
sailing-boat called the _Nautilus_, and the pair promptly started off
on a tour of inspection. Cresswell, they found, was a taciturn soul,
who spent most of his life nursing a grouch and a bad leg. He could
only hobble about with the aid of a stick, and his boat was lying far
up on the beach, exposed to the merciless glare of the tropic sun. The
paint on its side was blistered, and the heat was fast reducing it to
the condition of a sieve.
Tempest examined it carefully before bearding Cresswell, and though far
from pleased with the craft, he decided it might be made seaworthy.
The task of putting the matter before Cresswell, however, was a
somewhat delicate one, for their funds were not in a flourishing
condition, and all the money they possessed would be needed for
provisions, unless they were to run the risk of starving to death out
of sight of land.
“We want to make a little trip on the water, sir,” said Tempest, “and
we thought perhaps you might loan your boat to us, for a consideration.”
Cresswell glared from one to the other.
“And who told you I’d lend it?” he asked acidly.
[Illustration: “Who told you I’d lend it?” he asked acidly]
“Nobody,” replied Tempest. “But we need it rather badly, and as you
weren’t using it just now we thought you perhaps might――”
“What are you doing on the island, anyway?” interrupted Cresswell. “You
don’t live here. We get too many strangers prowling about these days.”
“We’re waiting for a steamer to take us off, sir,” said Tempest in his
most affable tones. “Now, about the boat. She’s just getting ruined
by lying there in the sun. If you would be so kind as to allow us to
use her for a while, I’ll make her seaworthy for you.”
“Don’t know as I want her made seaworthy,” the man replied. “She’s
comfortable enough lying where she is.”
“I’m sorry we can’t offer to pay for it in advance, Mr. Cresswell,”
Dave said, “but I’ll give you my word that the money shall be sent to
you sooner or later.”
Cresswell laughed. Something about the notion seemed to amuse him. He
scrutinized the boy carefully for a few moments.
“Hang me if I don’t put you to the test, youngster,” he said. “Ten
dollars a day is what I’ll charge you, and you’re to make good anything
that gets broken. And if you find she’s sinking and you’re going to
drown, don’t annoy me by throwing farewell messages overboard in
bottles.”
Before Dave or Tempest had time to thank him properly Mr. Cresswell
hobbled back into his house.
“He’s a queer sort,” Dave said.
“Never mind, we have a boat now,” commented Tempest, with a new flash
of enthusiasm. “She isn’t exactly the sort of craft I should have
chosen for monkeying about with in the Pacific, but she’s better than
nothing. Now, my lad, off with that coat of yours. We have a nice
little job ahead of us to fix the tub.”
Near the boat was a shed in which the sails were stored. They were in
passable condition. Some of the lanyards were rotten, but there was
other rope that could be utilized for the purpose. The first thing they
did was to haul the boat down to the water’s edge and half sink her to
swell her timbers. They put in the rest of that day repairing the gear.
Next morning they found their boat considerably improved. They hauled
her high and dry, and set to work caulking the leaky cracks. Before
nightfall Tempest nodded approvingly as he surveyed the result of their
labors.
“I’m satisfied,” he said. “If only we have fairly decent weather, there
isn’t the least cause for us to feel anxious. Come on, Dave. Let’s take
her for a spin.”
When afloat, the _Nautilus_ exceeded Tempest’s expectations. They tried
her both before the wind and tacking, and their spirits rose joyously
when they found how handy she was.
Up to the present they had said nothing to Joe Flagg about their
acquisition of the _Nautilus_, out of consideration for that
individual’s feelings, but now it was necessary to mention the matter,
as all that remained to be done before they could start was to lay in
the necessary stock of food and water.
“I hope he won’t feel sore about it,” said Dave, as they walked back.
“I believe he thought we should change our minds eventually and take
him into partnership.”
“He certainly has been mighty good to us,” Tempest replied, “and I
wouldn’t do anything to make him feel peeved if I could help it, bless
his heart. But business is business, Dave, and we should be foolish to
let sentiment interfere with an affair of this kind.”
Joe Flagg was awaiting them on the veranda, beaming as usual and
working diligently with the handkerchief upon his moist brow.
“I thought you’d deserted me,” he said. “What have you two rascals been
up to all day?”
“Getting ready to desert you, Mr. Flagg,” said Tempest. “We have
changed our program a little instead of going to Christmas Island. I’m
afraid we have almost overstayed our welcome as it is.”
“What’s this――what’s this?” puffed their host. “What d’you mean about
overstaying your welcome? Wait till I say anything like that. I know of
no vessel coming here for a week or more yet.”
“That is so,” said Tempest. “Fortunately we have been able to hire a
small sailing-boat that will do for our purpose.”
Mr. Flagg did not speak for a moment.
“All right, my lads,” he said at last. “You know your own affairs best.
But don’t get any crazy notion into your heads that I’m wanting to turn
you out. Under my roof you can stop as long as you have a mind to, see?”
Mr. Flagg was so amiable about the matter, and treated his guests with
such marked affability during the rest of the evening that Tempest
almost found it in his heart to relent. Only the fact that the trim
little _Nautilus_ was lying snugly at anchor caused him to refrain.
After an early breakfast next morning Dave and his companion started
out for the north shore to take possession of their boat and bid its
owner a more or less fond farewell.
“Don’t bother me!” Cresswell snapped. “I want nothing from you but ten
dollars a day. And mind you, no messages in bottles as you’re sinking.
Ouch!” he added, putting a hand to his lame leg and turning his back on
them.
Five minutes later the _Nautilus_ was heading round the bend toward
Shavay Bay, both her occupants feeling more than a little pleased with
themselves.
“Hello, Flagg’s boat is out, I see,” Dave said when they reached their
destination.
“I suppose he has gone fishing,” Tempest observed.
“No, he said he was going to be very busy on the plantation all day. He
will kick up a nice rumpus with his two Kanakas if they have taken the
_Firefly_.”
For some hours Tempest and Dave were exceedingly busy. It was probable
that their very lives would depend on what they took on board, so they
laid out their scant capital with the utmost care at the island’s
solitary store. A couple of axes, shovels, and a few simple cooking
utensils were placed on board.
“I’m afraid we haven’t got much in the way of navigating instruments,”
Tempest said, “but Jim will help us to worry through. This
pocket-compass of mine is fairly accurate, and with our old chart we
ought to manage all right. Heigho! I’ve known amateur yachtsmen who’d
be scared to death at the idea of making the trip that is in front of
us without a sextant, chronometer, patent log, barometer, dividers, and
parallel rulers, besides compass and charts. Never mind, it’s a comfort
to reflect that you can only be drowned once. Dave, my son, we’re in
for it now. A life on the ocean wave, eh? In my time I’ve done some
funny things, but I never before set out in a cockle-shell like ours,
with one boy and a Kanaka, looking for lost treasure. Well, we’re ready
now,” he added, as they placed the last beaker of fresh water in the
_Nautilus_. “I only want to see the wind shift round a bit and then we
will start.”
“It’s due east now, isn’t it?” Dave said.
“Pretty near, and a nice job we should have beating up against it. I
should regard it as a good omen if the fates sent us a gentle breeze
from the northwest to start us nicely on our journey. Let’s go up to
the bungalow and say good-by to old Flagg, bless him! He has been a
real friend to us.”
But Flagg was not there, nor did he put in an appearance when the sun
was dipping in a crimson sky to the westward.
“Bother him!” Tempest said. “We can’t very well slide off without
wagging his paw and saying a few nice things. I wish he’d come. The
breeze is dodging round more to the west’ard, and we should get a fine
start now.”
After darkness had fallen Tempest began to grow anxious about Flagg.
The men employed on the plantation reported that they had seen nothing
of him all day, and his scraggy pony was securely tethered in its
stable.
“This is beginning to get mysterious,” Dave said.
“I think perhaps we ought to organize a search-party and hunt for him,”
Tempest suggested. “He may be lying injured somewhere.”
Dave was looking out over the darkened sea. He said nothing for several
minutes.
“I wonder whether a search-party would find him,” he observed after a
lengthy pause.
“Why, what do you mean?” Tempest asked quickly. His own nerves were
almost on edge.
“I mean,” said Dave, slowly, “do you really think he is on Washington
Island at the present minute?”
“Great Mackerel, Dave, but I’m glad you’ve said it! Do you know, the
same idea has been worrying me ever since sunset, and yet I hated to
put it into words.”
“Well, since we have put it into words, what about it?”
There was a steely glitter in the boy’s eyes which Tempest had never
seen there. The same glitter had come once or twice before, when
Dave suddenly found himself in danger or when faced with apparently
insurmountable obstacles, just as it had come into the eyes of his
father and his grandfather on similar occasions.
“There is no sign of the _Firefly_,” agreed Tempest. “I wonder if the
old villain is trying to beat us to it.”
“Now I come to think of it,” said Dave, “he never could look one
straight in the face. Tempest, I’ve got my suspicions!”
“And so have I, Dave,” Tempest replied, now thoroughly strung up. “The
longer we hang around here, the better start he has. Fortunately, the
wind hasn’t been in the right quarter to please him all day. Come on,
Dave,” he added, already hurrying in the direction of their boat. “I
don’t know what speed Flagg can knock out of the _Firefly_, but we’ll
give him a run for his money in the _Nautilus_.”
CHAPTER XIX
LOST ISLAND!
Followed by Jim, they scrambled into their boat, and shot the sails up;
and in a few minutes the _Nautilus_ was bobbing her way out of Shavay
Bay on a course almost due southeast, her bow being in a straight line
for Fanning Island. From the latter place Tempest intended to take his
bearings, and then veer slightly to the south in the direction of the
island Joe Flagg had indicated on the chart.
“I’ll tell you what, Tempest,” the boy said when the sails were
bellying and the waves were flopping against the boat’s nose, “if we do
happen to have made a mistake in judging Mr. Flagg, and he’s only gone
to pay a visit to some one, he will think us a queer lot to have bolted
like this.”
“_If!_” commented Tempest, grimly. “I’ve got a good deal of faith in
human nature, my lad, but I’d rather believe our friend was ’way back
in his precious Dogtooth City than where he is at this minute. Foxy old
rascal! He’d have given his ears for a breeze like this during the day.
As it is, I don’t believe he can be much more than two or three hours’
sailing in front of us. Who would have thought of him sneaking off like
that? I don’t know whether he expected we should smell a rat and come
after him quickly, but he reckoned on getting a full day’s lead of us
anyhow.”
“It will be an interesting moment when we do meet him,” Dave said with
a smile.
“He will be polite, even under those circumstances, and try to work in
a few funny stories. I’ve met his kind before.”
“By the way,” said Dave seriously, “does it occur to you to wonder what
will happen if Flagg does happen to get there first and collar the
platinum?”
“It doesn’t,” replied Tempest. “I know. It is a case of ‘finding’s
keepings.’ The first party to grab that treasure has just as much right
to it, legally, as he has to his own bank balance. That is why we are
not going to stop to gather daisies on the way. As a matter of fact, if
only we can find our way without wasting too much time, Mr. Flagg won’t
have had a chance to do much by the time we arrive on the scene; and
then there is likely to be some fun.”
“_Fun!_” Dave exclaimed.
“Well,” said Tempest, “as the heads of nations put it, we shall have
‘severed diplomatic relations.’ In other words, if we find Joe Flagg
picking the bones of the old _Hatteras_, the fat will be in the fire.”
“It was a mean trick,” Dave commented, gloomily.
“Oh, cheer up!” Tempest laughed. “It’s all in the game. If you will
come treasure-hunting you must be prepared to hit a snag or two, or a
head or two if necessary. I’m rather looking forward to hearing what he
has to say on the subject.”
A little wisp of spray shot over the side as the _Nautilus_ plunged
before the wind, which was increasing as the night wore on.
“That’s right, blow!” said Tempest, hanging on to the tiller and
gripping the stem of his pipe hard with his teeth. “I’d hate a dead
calm just now.”
“It looks like a dirty night,” said Dave.
“Well, we can’t wash it,” the other replied, grinning. “It’s ‘neck or
nothing’ now. There is no turning back for us, and I give you my word
it will have to be a lot dirtier than this before Flagg shortens sail
or tries to take shelter. He has a pretty fair idea now that the hounds
are at his heels. Isn’t she a peach in a strong wind, eh?”
The _Nautilus_ was certainly acquitting herself most creditably. She
careened over under the pressure of wind, but shipped nothing except
flying spume.
“I only hope that mast isn’t rotten,” Tempest said, glancing upwards.
“We should be properly in the soup if that snapped.”
“Are you thinking of taking in a reef?”
“Take in nothing! We’ll nail our colors to the mast, so to speak, Dave.
If the thing goes bust we go bust too, so far as getting anywhere is
concerned. All the same, I’m glad those halyards are of fairly new
manila.”
Jim, who did not know precisely what this new game Dave and Tempest
were playing was, sat steadying the boat and staring hour after hour
over the black expanse of water. He knew they were bound for an
island, and that the pair were looking for a wreck; but beyond that
he was not concerned. They had all been distressed mariners together,
and therefore had a bond of sympathy between them. Moreover, he had
nowhere else to go, and might just as well be on the _Nautilus_ as
anywhere else.
“Grr,” he muttered suddenly about midnight, peering almost straight
ahead. “Him light over there.”
The others looked but could see nothing.
“Sure?” asked Tempest.
“Him light not there now. Him gone,” said the Kanaka.
“That’s strange,” said Dave. “What do you make of it, Tempest? It
couldn’t have been the _Firefly_, could it?”
“Can’t say. These Kanakas have wonderful sight, but the _Firefly_ must
be a mighty long way off.”
“But they won’t be carrying regulation lights, any more than we are.”
“That’s true, but I expect they have some sort of a lamp on board like
ours, to keep an eye on the compass, and one of them may have been
holding it up at that minute. All the same, we have to take our hats
off to Jim if he really did see it.”
Although the wind continued to blow moderately hard that night, it was
steady, and therefore caused no particular anxiety. The _Nautilus_ was
eating up the knots like a racer, and Tempest awaited dawn anxiously in
the hope of sighting Fanning Island.
“Keep your eyes skinned for land, Jim,” he said.
Jim merely nodded. The sky was growing fairly light when he pointed
with a brown forefinger away on the starboard bow.
“Him land,” he declared.
“Rubbish!” commented Tempest. “That’s a bit of a cloud on the horizon.”
Dave was levelling the binoculars in the direction.
“He’s right, Tempest,” he said.
“Gee, but that’s fine!” said Tempest. “I hardly expected to hit it
off quite as near as that, not knowing anything about the currents.
Allow me to remark, Dave, that that was some feat of seamanship on my
part. Jim, you bottle-nosed squab, glue your eyes to these glasses and
tell me if you see anything of a sailing boat in the offing. There’s a
friend of mine in it, and I particularly want to say ‘good morning’ to
him.”
Jim obeyed instructions, and searched in every direction without
success.
“I guess they’ve taken a short cut,” Tempest observed. “Flagg didn’t
have to make Fanning Island first. Well, well, that’s a point in his
favor. It puts him another hour, or maybe two, ahead. I hope one of his
sails splits, and that’s the most charitable thing I can say for him.”
As the breeze remained steady and there was no indication of any change
in the weather, Tempest gave the tiller to Dave during the morning,
and snatched a couple of hours’ sleep, curled up in the bottom of the
boat. It was afternoon when the boy aroused him. He would not have done
so then, but for the unexpected happening. Within the space of twenty
minutes the wind developed a chilly tang, and ominous clouds gathered
overhead.
The weather-wise Kanaka constantly glanced upwards, but made no comment
until a sudden rain squall hit them.
“We’ll have um sea get up pretty soon,” he said then, without any
change of expression.
“You’re right, I believe, Jim,” Dave agreed. “This is where we rouse
the skipper, I guess.”
Tempest frowned as he took the tiller again. He did not like the look
of things. They had taken a chance in a small open boat, and if a real
storm broke they would be entirely at its mercy, for they were many
miles from the nearest shelter.
Three minutes later the wind dropped to a dead calm and the sails hung
limp, while a curious yellow tinge developed in the northern sky.
“Now we’re in for it!” Tempest muttered. “Here Jim, you hang on to this
rudder. Dave, the mainsail, quick,” he added, letting go the sheet.
“That’s right. Now the jib――stop! It’s too late. Hang on for your life.
Here she comes.”
A furious blast struck the _Nautilus_ on the starboard quarter. The
little craft quivered and then wallowed in a welter of seething water.
The jib gave a crack like a mighty whip, one rope tore away, and
the canvas flapped madly as it hung over the side. Tempest gave one
glance at it, decided nothing could be done to make it secure in such
an emergency, and crawled to the Kanaka’s side. At all costs they
had to keep the boat running before the wind. She was slewing round
desperately, spun by the corkscrew action of the growing waves. In
an incredibly short space of time the whole surface of the ocean had
become a smother of white, boiling crests, with yawning valleys of
water between them. At one moment the trim little _Nautilus_ was buried
down, down, with great swirling walls on every side. Then she climbed,
stern first, up the side of an endless hill of green, pausing dizzily
at the crest and careening over perilously under the pressure of wind.
Instead of moderating, the gale grew steadily worse, and both Dave and
Tempest thought their end was approaching. There seemed no possible
hope of the _Nautilus_ keeping afloat. A dozen times she was on the
verge of being swamped but always struggled bravely to right herself.
“It’s my fault, lad,” Tempest said, gripping the boy’s hand. “I ought
to have had more sense.”
Dave’s face was white. He looked a little older at that fearful moment.
It was terribly hard to have to lie there, braced up against a seat,
and do nothing but wait.
“Nobody could have known this was coming,” he said quietly.
For about half an hour the storm lashed the surface of the sea with
unbridled fury, and then, with startling suddenness, the wind dropped.
Tempest did not trust this latest antic of the gale. There was
something majestic and awe-inspiring about the turbulent water without
a breath of wind blowing. He cast an eye at the jib, which now swung
like a pendulum as the _Nautilus_ rocked. At any minute the storm might
smash down on them again.
“You stop there,” he said to the boy; and made his way for’ard to save
the sail while the chance lasted. He had barely accomplished this
when the treacherous wind struck the _Nautilus_ once more. It seemed,
however, to have spent most of its energy. Warily Tempest made his
way to a locker and began fumbling in it for a sea-anchor which he
remembered was there.
“We may win out yet,” he said to Dave, with a return of his old
optimism, as he attached a few yards of rope to the canvas bag and
heaved it over the bow. The steadying effect of the dragging bag was
noticeable immediately, keeping the craft head on with its resistance.
After that there remained nothing to do but let the gale wear itself
out. It was impossible to get anything to eat or drink, for the little
craft never stopped dancing crazily. It was very near sunset when there
came a marked moderation of the wind.
“Put um sail up bimeby,” commented Jim.
“You’ve said it,” agreed Tempest. “The worst is over, and it’s getting
better all the time. This is where we thank our lucky stars, if we have
any. I don’t mind admitting now that I didn’t expect to be alive by
night. What do you say, Jim?”
Jim shrugged his shoulders. Whatever his feelings were he was not in
the habit of exhibiting them.
“We have some grub now, eh?” he said.
With this practical suggestion the others heartily agreed. Now that
immediate danger was past they felt half starved.
During the day Tempest had constantly kept an eye on his compass, and
he calculated that they must have been blown a dozen or more miles
off their course. The first thing to do was to take a reef in the main
sail and get back in the proper direction. A tremendous groundswell
was running, but the water was no longer broken. The _Nautilus_ bumped
and thudded her way through it heavily, shaking her occupants like
peas in a pan; but Tempest was able to keep her running until dawn, by
which time he considered they must be arriving somewhere near their
destination. Two islands loomed up during the forenoon, and after a
careful consultation of the chart it was decided that these probably
lay to the north of the one which they were seeking.
Tempest bent his course south accordingly, and was greatly elated a few
hours later to pick up the outline of land.
CHAPTER XX
SHOTS FROM THE BEACH
It was Jim, as usual, who first caught sight of it, and Dave looked at
it for a long time through the binoculars, full of wonder and hope.
Either they were doomed to disappointment or this was the mysterious
place that they had struggled so persistently to reach.
“I’d give something to know just what happened to the _Firefly_ in that
gale,” he said, turning to Tempest.
“So would I,” was the reply. “They had their full share of it, you may
be certain, but, as we weathered it, it’s most likely that they did the
same unless an unlucky wave flopped on board and foundered them.”
“If that is Lost Island, I suppose we shall soon have a fair idea what
happened to Joe Flagg,” said Dave.
“You can wager your last cent on that. If they haven’t got ashore there
by now they never will step ashore anywhere on this earth. It’ll be
a comical situation, anyway, to meet them. I can almost hear Flagg
already saying ‘Dear me, what a surprise! Now, when I was in Dogtooth
City――’”
Another hour brought the _Nautilus_ so close that it was possible to
get a fair notion of the island’s appearance through the glasses.
Both Dave and Tempest were filled with suppressed excitement. There
certainly was a prominent hill there, which might have been cast up
by volcanic action, but from where they lay it bore no resemblance to
either a camel or any other animal.
Dave spoke of that fact in disappointed tones.
“Shucks! What of it?” said Tempest encouragingly. “You don’t know where
the lagoon is yet, if there is one there. Probably you can’t see the
resemblance except from that side. Patience, sonny. It is early yet to
give up hope. Wait till we get closer in and then we will make a little
trip right round the place on the look-out for zoological specimens
like camels.”
There were many dangerous rocks, some of them only half submerged, when
they got within a mile of the coast, making navigation a hazardous
business. Tempest placed Jim in the bow on the look-out for snags, and
decided to beat his way round the northern point of the island. More
than once a warning shout from the Kanaka only just saved them from
tearing out the bottom of the _Nautilus_ on a jagged peak; and it was a
relief when they got round to the western side to find the water there
clear of such death-traps.
All the time Dave’s eyes were glued on the crag-strewn hill, on which
he sought feverishly to distinguish something remotely resembling a
camel.
“Gee,” exclaimed Tempest at last, “if there isn’t a lagoon down there
I’ll eat my hat! We shall be able to make sure on that point soon,
anyway.”
“The camel, Tempest! The camel!” Dave shouted a few minutes later as
they got farther to the south. “Don’t you see it?”
“It’s a funny sort of camel,” the other commented with a dry smile.
“Wait till we get a bit down the coast. It may show up a little clearer
then.”
“It _is_ the camel, Tempest. Look! Look!” Dave cried as the formation
of the hill gradually resolved itself into the shape he was looking
for. The resemblance was by no means perfect. Its most noticeable
feature was the lump in the middle. Further behind there was a rising
sweep which might roughly be spoken of as the hind quarters of the
animal. The shoulders were fairly distinct, and also the rise of the
neck, but there was no head.
“Great guns and little fishes, Dave, but you’re right! We’re there at
last. Now, where the dickens is the entrance to this lagoon? We don’t
want a smash up now after all our trouble. Jim, you tinted heathen, how
do you reckon we can get in?”
[Illustration: LOST ISLAND]
The Kanaka stood up and surveyed the reef of rocks which formed the
lagoon.
“Maybe p’raps over there,” he said, pointing. “Go easy.”
The islander’s instinct proved right. He directed Tempest to the only
channel leading into the calm water beyond the reef.
“You’ve never seen this place before, I suppose, have you, Jim?”
Tempest asked.
The Kanaka nodded.
“Never been on him though. He called Tai-o-Vai. Used to sail past
sometimes long time ago.”
“Tai-o-Vai, eh?” said Dave. “Why didn’t you tell us so before?”
“You didn’t ask him, idiot,” laughed Tempest. “Probably he’s never seen
a camel in his life, so it’s no use pulling off that stunt. Jiminy! but
isn’t this one pretty lagoon?”
Dave did not answer. They were just rounding a bend and the boy put one
hand on Tempest’s shoulder, pointing with the other.
“As I live,” Tempest exclaimed, “it’s the remains of the old _Hatteras_
after all!”
The wreck lay embedded in the sand, just as the ancient mariner had
described it in Brooklyn so long ago. She was not in an excellent state
of preservation, but the mere sight of her gladdened the hearts of the
adventurers.
Tempest pulled the tiller over and turned the nose of the _Nautilus_
straight towards the remains of the old barque. They were within about
four hundred yards of her when the sharp crack of a rifle echoed over
the water, and a bullet skimmed the surface uncomfortably near.
“Somebody is at home!” said Tempest with a puzzled expression. “I
suppose that is just to show us how pleased they are to see us.”
He jibed the boat, which then lay with her sails flapping.
“It’s Flagg,” Dave suggested.
“Dear old Joe Flagg, late of Dogtooth City,” Tempest muttered. “And he
sent that bullet as a present. The old villain wasn’t drowned in that
gale, Dave.”
“What are you going to do now?” the boy asked. “We’re not going to turn
tail at this stage.”
“If Mr. Flagg imagines that one shot from a pop-gun is going to keep us
off he never made a bigger mistake in his life,” Tempest said. “But
as it is a question of life and death, when people are throwing lead
around, we’d better come to an understanding. I know you’re no coward,
Dave, but I don’t want to take chances without you agreeing. What do
you say?”
“I’m game for anything,” said the boy. “Perhaps he only intended to
frighten us off. He would hardly be likely to shoot us in cold blood
when we got near, would he?”
“Jim, your skin is as precious to you as ours is to us,” Tempest said.
“Are you agreeable to running the risk of looking like a sieve?”
“Sieve?” the Kanaka repeated without understanding.
“There’s a kindly disposed gentleman over there who wants to make
little holes in us with a gun, and he may do so if we go much nearer.
But we particularly do want to go nearer. Do you mind?”
Jim shrugged his shoulders.
“Good enough,” said Tempest. “Now, Joe Flagg, we’ll just see a little
further into this matter. I’ll have a word with you if it kills me.”
He brought the boat round and she moved once more towards the wreck.
There was no sign of any human being ashore. The _Nautilus_ ran another
hundred yards without interruption before the crack of another shot
rang out, and there was a splash sixty feet ahead of them.
“Keep your heads ducked well down, boys,” said Tempest. “He couldn’t
shoot a haystack in a passage. If only we can get ashore we may be all
right.”
They were twenty yards from the beach when a bullet crashed through the
side of the _Nautilus_ just above her water line, and grazed Jim’s leg.
At the same moment the form of Joe Flagg emerged from the trees.
Holding his rifle up menacingly he advanced to meet the incoming boat.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Flagg,” greeted Tempest. “You’re looking very
well. Pretty scenery about here, isn’t it.”
“If you come any nearer I’ll shoot the lot of you,” snarled the fat
man. There was nothing urbane about his manner. The mask was off now.
“You’re not feeling very well, Mr. Flagg,” said Tempest. “Perhaps you
had a bad night’s rest. I’m afraid you’ve had a long journey and you
must be tired.”
“This island is private property,” snapped Flagg. “It’s mine, see?
And I don’t allow any trespassing. Keep off, or there’ll be a quick
funeral.”
“You’ve bought it in a mighty hurry,” replied Tempest. “You don’t
happen to have the title-deeds about you, do you? Now, don’t try to
be funny,” he added sharply. “We’re a long way from civilization, but
even in the middle of the Pacific you can’t kill people with impunity.
There’s a law against it, you know, Mr. Flagg.”
“Dead men don’t tell tales,” Flagg snapped, “and I warn you you’ll be
as dead as mutton if you land here. It’s my island, and I won’t have
any one on it.”
“I hate to argue with you under the circumstances,” said Tempest, “but
I’m afraid I don’t believe that yarn. Now, listen, I’ll make you a
little business proposition.”
“What is it?” asked Flagg.
“We will assume that we are all here for the same purpose.”
“I’m not here for my health,” said Flagg ungraciously.
“Precisely. You came after our treasure.”
“That’s my business.”
“And it is mine too, Mr. Flagg,” said Tempest. “If I had a gun I
shouldn’t feel inclined to be so amiable about it, either. However,
I’ll make you a sporting offer, to save further unpleasantness. You’ve
been very good to us at your home, even if you did finish up with a
sneaking trick by trying to steal a march on us. Look here, I’ll agree
to give you a third of anything we may find.”
“Nothing doing,” replied Flagg without a moment’s hesitation. He was
perfectly aware that he held the trump card in his hand, and moreover
he was not in the mood to accept anything less than the lot.
“Now be reasonable,” Tempest urged. “We may have an awful lot of
trouble before we get it, anyway, even if we ever do get it, and so we
might just as well be friends instead of enemies. Because you don’t
think we’re going to slip away quietly and leave you in possession of
the field, do you?”
“I neither know nor care. Clear out.”
“But I told you we were not going to clear out.”
“That’s up to you,” said Flagg in level tones. “I’m tired of this. If
you like getting shot that’s your own affair.”
Without further warning he pulled the trigger again, and a splinter
jumped into the air from the gunwale of the _Nautilus_.
“You murderous old crook,” shouted Dave.
“That’s nothing. I’m only finding the range,” Flagg said with a
mirthless laugh, as the rifle spoke once more.
“It’s no use committing suicide,” muttered Tempest, swinging the boat
round. “Good afternoon, Mr. Flagg. I hope you will take great care of
your health until I see you again. I’m afraid you’re not exactly in
training, so I shall anticipate the pleasure of giving you the biggest
walloping you ever had when I wade into you.”
Flagg’s reply, as the _Nautilus_ began to gather speed, was another
shot which ricochetted past.
“All right,” Tempest shouted back over his shoulder. “You’re only
storing up trouble for yourself.”
“Isn’t he a nice, kind-hearted gentleman?” commented Dave. “Let’s try
to land somewhere on the other side of the island.”
“We can try,” said Tempest, “but to tell you the truth I don’t think
we shall stand a dog’s chance. That brute doesn’t mean to stop at
anything. I believe he would polish the lot of us off without the
slightest scruple. There was nothing playful about the way he handled
that gun of his, you must remember. And I do hate being shot on a
Tuesday. This is Tuesday, isn’t it? The blooming island is so small
that he can dodge round as fast as we can. However, we’ll fool him if
we can. Here goes.”
Tempest ran the boat straight out to sea until the sun dipped under the
horizon. It was far from dark, for the stars were aggravatingly bright,
and a full moon was soon due to appear on the scene.
“It’s a chance,” Tempest said, as he headed once more for Tai-o-Vai,
“but an extremely rotten chance. We’ll see what we can do at the back
of the island now. I doubt whether we could land there anyhow because
of the surf.”
A slight haze partly obscured the moon when it rose, but there was
far too much light to please Dave and Tempest, who would have liked a
coal-black night for such work as they had on hand. Trusting to memory
to avoid the dangerous patch of rocks through which they had threaded
their way earlier in the day, they made a wide detour, and then headed
straight for the surf. The thunderous roar of it reached them when they
were still a quarter of a mile off.
“That sounds lively, doesn’t it!” Dave commented. “There’s no earthly
hope of making the beach in that without smashing the _Nautilus_ up and
probably ourselves too.”
“Jim,” said Tempest, “you can see like a cat in the dark. Can you tell
us how we’re going to get ashore?”
The Kanaka shook his head. That was a problem beyond him.
“Maybe p’raps there’s a li’le cove somewhere along here,” he suggested.
“Try bit furth’r down.”
“All right,” said Tempest. “It’s rocky along here, and we can’t see
where we are going, so don’t be surprised if we have to swim for it all
of a sudden.”
More by good fortune than by good management they escaped piling the
boat up, and, sure enough, Jim piloted them to a sheltered cove.
“’Pon my word, I believe we’ve caught him napping, Dave,” Tempest said
as they approached the beach.
“There’s no sign of anybody,” agreed the boy, eagerly scanning the
shore.
They were within fifty yards――forty――thirty.
Crack!
A little spurt of light flashed out and a bullet sang its way over
their heads.
Tempest ground his teeth. Had he been alone he would have made a dash
for it. Reluctantly he put the helm over and swung the boat away again.
“That is one extra thump in the ribs he will get from me when we do
meet,” he said bitterly. “Hang me if I know what we are going to do
now! We can’t mess about like this indefinitely.”
“He certainly has got us in a corner,” said the boy.
“It is a corner we have got to wriggle out of, somehow,” observed
Tempest. “I think I’ve got a scheme that will work, though. It seems to
me the only way. Desperate situations demand desperate measures. Dave,
I want you to stop in the _Nautilus_ whatever happens until I tell you
to come ashore. I’m going to swim to the beach.”
“And what then?”
“I’ll deal with Flagg once I get on dry land with him. We’ll go round
to the lagoon, where the wreck is. That is the best place.”
“But he’ll shoot you the moment he sets eyes on you.”
“He’ll probably try to, but I’m going to take the risk. I may be able
to take him off his guard.”
“Um rain pretty soon, pretty hard,” said the Kanaka, sniffing the air
as they ran round to the lagoon. Clouds were already gathering.
“Tempest, let’s wait a while and see exactly what is going to happen.
I’ve got an idea that we might be able to land after all, without your
running an almost certain chance of getting hit with a bullet.”
A few heavy drops were beginning to fall, and the light was failing.
“If a regular tropical shower does come down, that will work the
trick,” Tempest said.
Almost as he spoke the patter of the rain drops increased. They got
through the channel into the lagoon just in time before the shower
became a drenching storm, blotting everything out of sight.
“Now for it!” said Tempest. “Not a sound, boys!”
CHAPTER XXI
THE PARLEY
As the keel grated on the beach they all sprang out. In spite of
the danger they ran of being attacked any instant, Dave glowed with
excitement at the idea of actually setting foot at last on the island.
“What about the boat?” he said.
“The tide is going down,” Tempest replied. “She’ll be all right for the
present. Anyway, we can’t carry her.”
They took the precaution of carrying an anchor ashore and digging it
into the sand, and then drifted like shadows through the bushes.
“Listen,” said Tempest, softly; “I took my bearings as well as
possible, but we’re working very blindly in the dark. I want to make
for that hill. We shall be safest there. It will be mighty rough
going, and you must look out that you don’t break your necks. Stick
together as much as you can. I grabbed a few biscuits before we left
the boat. Goodness only knows when we shall get our next meal, but
there’s no time to fool about with provisions now. Follow me, and don’t
call out unless you’re in trouble.”
The next hour was like a nightmare to all three of them. Only desperate
necessity drove them forward. Behind lay the possibility of being
shot; somewhere in front stood a hill, the nature of which was unknown
to them. Their only hope was to find some crevice which would not
only provide shelter from the torrential rain, but also form a sort
of stronghold. In broad daylight their task would not have been so
difficult, but the darkness was intense, and Tempest had to feel his
way with nothing to guide him toward his goal except memory, which was
fast becoming confused in the maze of tangled undergrowth. So long as
the ground seemed to be rising, Tempest felt fairly confident in spite
of the baffling conditions, but at length, when he stumbled into a
gully and scrambled out, thankful that no bones were broken, he had to
confess himself beaten. He no longer knew north from south, east from
west. He had tried to force a passage through an impenetrable cluster
of trees and had utterly lost his sense of direction while turning and
twisting.
On consulting the others he found them equally befogged. Even the
Kanaka could only guess in which direction the hill lay, and an
incorrect guess might prove dangerous.
“Well, here we are, and here we’ll stop for the present,” said Tempest.
“I fancy the rain is easing off a trifle. There isn’t much fear of
Flagg prowling around in this particular spot with his pop-gun till it
gets lighter, so we are safe as far as he is concerned. The moment we
get a glimmer of the moon we can push on.”
Standing there, with the rain trickling down his neck and his clothing
sticking to him uncomfortably, bewildered, and more than a little
tired, Dave began to wonder for the first time whether treasure-hunting
such as this was worth the trouble. The chance of success was extremely
vague, anyway; and the difficulties immediately in front of them were
sufficient to damp the ardor of any one. He almost felt at that moment
that he could barter his share of the problematical treasure for a
square meal and a sleep round the clock, in his own comfortable bed in
far-away Brooklyn. He was fast becoming despondent when Bruce Tempest
came to the rescue with his wonderful fund of cheerfulness.
“You’re very quiet, sonny,” he said. “I can’t see you, but you don’t
sound as though you were enjoying this.”
“It’s exciting, anyway,” said Dave.
“I’ll wager you never got anything at the movies that thrilled you as
much,” Tempest declared. “Everything is real, this trip, including the
rain. You will remember it as long as you live. ’Pon my word, I believe
it’s getting a shade lighter! Don’t you think so, Jim?”
“See to go ahead bimeby p’raps,” the Kanaka responded. “Rain stop
pretty soon.”
As a weather-prophet, Jim was a wonder. Sure enough, the rain did ease
off about half an hour later, and a pale light showed from a hazy moon.
Tempest, however, could not make out much of their position, as they
were hemmed in with trees.
“Goodness only knows how we got here,” he said. “Jim, do you think you
could nose around a bit and try to spot where that blessed hill is?”
Without a word the Kanaka disappeared, nor did he return for some time.
Dave was beginning to wonder whether the man had got lost, and was
on the point of suggesting that they should give a call to him, when
Jim reappeared as silently as he had gone. The moon was growing more
distinct every moment now.
“Um hill over there,” said Jim, pointing. “Come round this way.”
Leaving him to take the rôle of guide, Dave and Tempest followed, and
after a while emerged from the trees. A few hundred yards away the hill
towered, but the ascent was difficult enough, even though they could
now see where they were putting their feet.
“Why, we must have wandered half-way round the island,” said Tempest.
“Jim, where is the lagoon?”
“’Way across there, I think,” the Kanaka replied, pointing.
“Well, all I can say is that it’s a mercy we didn’t blunder down to
the beach where old Flagg is,” Tempest commented. “We went round in a
half-circle.”
It took the trio nearly half an hour to reach the summit, but when they
gained the top of the “camel’s back” they were in a fine position for
observation. Not far below them was the placid water of the lagoon,
and the black hull of the _Hatteras_ was plainly discernible. Here,
too, they solved the mystery of the _Firefly’s_ whereabouts. They had
wondered where Flagg had hidden her. Now they could see her moored
behind the wreck, in such a position that she would not be observed by
any one entering the lagoon.
“I wish I had brought my glasses,” Dave said.
“You’d only have lost ’em in the scramble,” his companion commented.
“Besides, we shall be able to see all we want in a few minutes. Those
clouds are rolling away fast.”
Half hidden behind a rock, the three peered down at the strange scene
for some time. The rain had ceased altogether, and the sand glistened
silvery in the moonlight.
Suddenly Dave took a quick inward breath, and his fingers tightened on
the rock he was leaning against.
Stealthily, silently, three forms emerged from the shadow below, and
moved in the direction of the _Nautilus_, which now lay awash,
canting over slightly. Of the three forms it was easy to distinguish
that of Joe Flagg.
[Illustration: Three forms emerged and moved in the direction of the
_Nautilus_]
“What’s their game now?” Dave asked, speaking in a low voice, as though
afraid of being heard by those beneath, even at that distance.
“A little midnight exploration party of some sort,” Tempest replied.
“We’ve got Flagg guessing, and he wants to be sure how things stand.
He’s not getting much sleep, anyway, since we disturbed his operations.
Look, they’re making a bee-line for our old tub, but what on earth they
are after I cannot imagine, unless it is to make sure we are not on
board.”
“There isn’t much there for them to steal,” said the boy.
Tempest laughed softly.
“Flagg isn’t that sort of a thief, lad,” he observed. “It takes bigger
things than what we have there to interest him. He is quite brainy, in
a fashion. I guess they would tell us that in Dogtooth City, if we
could ask them; but they haven’t got any pleasant memories of him, you
may be dead sure. No siree! Joe Flagg is up to some scheme, and I’d
give a lot to know what it is. He has the advantage over us for the
moment, though. We can do nothing――except keep our eyes open.”
Dave nodded. As a matter of fact it was all he could do to keep his
eyes open, in spite of the mysterious manœuver that was going on under
them.
Warily Flagg approached the _Nautilus_, and while he stood on guard
with the rifle his two Kanakas climbed over the side.
“Good-by, binoculars!” muttered Dave.
“Good-by nothing!” was Tempest’s rejoinder. “He may score here again,
but the game isn’t over yet. No, by jiminy, it’s only just beginning,
Dave,” he went on, warming up. “We’re all guessing now, but we’ll see
who wins out in the long run. You can’t argue much with a man who is
holding up a loaded gun at you, and he knows it. So far that has been
his one big advantage――that and the low cunning of sneaking off ahead
of us. It’s going to be a battle of wits, boy, and there’s absolutely
no telling what may happen, because he is foxy.”
“We are three to three,” Dave said.
“Three to three and a gun at present,” Tempest corrected. “Great
Mackerel! What are they doing with the _Nautilus_?”
The beach dropped at a sharp angle at the place where the boat had been
left, so that in spite of the falling tide she still remained almost
afloat. Flagg and his two assistants were putting their shoulders to
her bow and heaving her off.
“They can’t be going to cast her adrift,” Tempest said, puzzled. “What
would they gain by that?”
“They could starve us into accepting their terms,” the boy suggested.
Instead of leaving the _Nautilus_ to drift away onto the rocks, Flagg
and his men climbed on board.
“See, they are taking her over toward the _Firefly_,” said Tempest.
“Well, they’ve captured her fairly. Still another point in their favor.
Dave, boy, the battle is not going well with us. It’s about time for us
to do a bit of scoring, but I shall feel like a piece of wet rag until
I have had a good sleep. Jim, you did a bit of snoring yesterday. Do
you think you could keep a watch on them while we turn in?”
“I sleep to-morrow,” replied the Kanaka. “You sleep now.”
He did not move from his position, leaning over the rock, while the
others sought out a dry patch under a sheltering ledge; and like
typical sailors they were both in the land of dreams a few moments
later. It was broad daylight when they awoke, and the Kanaka still
stood there like a statue.
With Dave at his elbow, Tempest looked down from their secure nook;
and for the first time they were able to get a clear view of Tai-o-Vai.
The peak on which they stood dominated the whole island, enabling them
to obtain a wonderful panoramic view. The place was virtually oval
in shape, sloping down gradually on three sides from the hill to the
shore, and covered nearly from end to end with the impenetrable mass
of trees which had proved such a formidable obstacle in the darkness.
Beyond the trees the sea, now calm again, lapped the beach lazily. On
the fourth side of the hill the slope was precipitous, forming almost
a cliff, overlooking the lagoon cupped in its semicircle of rocks. No
pathway led down that untrodden ground, but it was possible to scramble
to the sea by taking a zigzag route.
“All is quiet in the enemy’s camp,” Tempest said. “There’s nobody
moving about on the deck of the _Firefly_.”
“What puzzles me,” Dave said, “is why are they stopping here so long?
Evidently they haven’t found the platinum, or we shouldn’t see their
heels for dust. They must have made a fairly good search on the
_Hatteras_ by now.”
“Surely!” Tempest agreed. “But Flagg must still have some hope, or he
would have cleared out. The trouble is that we shall lose the game
altogether if they do happen to strike the stuff while they are holding
us off, for then they can put up their sails and leave us guessing
worse than ever.”
“The sooner we take a hand, the better, then,” Dave said. “What about
making another attempt to come to terms with the old villain?”
“It’s worth trying,” said Tempest. “At least we couldn’t lose anything.
Let’s hold a council of war. Jim, we want to have a little pow-wow with
that nice kind gentleman down there with the pop-gun, but he’s got a
horrid temper, and he might forget himself and start shooting if he saw
any of us. We won’t trust him any more than he trusts us. What do you
suggest?”
Jim looked down thoughtfully at the scene below for a while.
“Um talk with Meester Flagg and no shooting, eh?” he said at last.
“You’ve got the idea,” said Tempest, encouragingly.
“Jim fix um up,” he declared. “You come half-way down hill and wait.”
“Don’t you do anything rash, now,” Tempest said. “We don’t want to have
him taking potshots at you.”
The Kanaka grinned, which was the nearest he ever came to actually
laughing. Without another word he began the descent, the others
following. When they had gone within a hundred yards of the edge of the
trees near the _Hatteras_, he motioned them to stop, and then he crept
forward alone. While still hidden by the bushes he uttered a peculiar
call, evidently intended to attract the attention of the other Kanakas.
There was no response the first time, and Jim repeated the cry.
This time an answer reached them faintly through the trees.
Jim began to speak in his native tongue. The sounds were meaningless to
Dave and Tempest, who could only listen and wonder. After a while Jim
came back toward them and beckoned.
“Meester Flagg stand ashore without gun and talk if you no go too
close,” he reported. “If you go close, he’ll grab gun and shoot.”
“Very amiable of him, I’m sure,” Tempest said, as they went down to the
beach. “I take my hat off to you, Jim, all the same.”
Flagg had come off the _Firefly_ in a dory, near which he was standing.
Evidently the rifle was lying in the boat ready for any emergency.
“You’re looking well this morning,” Tempest greeted him. “Evidently
this climate agrees with you.”
“I’ve no time for fool talk,” the other jerked back. “What have you got
to say to me?”
“We just thought we should like to know how you are progressing.”
“That’s my business,” Flagg snapped.
“_Our_ business, if you don’t mind,” Tempest corrected. “And really it
is very generous of me to include you like that. Anyhow, I’m willing
to make one last offer to you. Let us work together on this job, and
forget any unpleasantness there may have been, and split the proceeds
into three.”
“You’re in a nice position to dictate terms to me, aren’t you?” Flagg
sneered. “No, there is only one thing I will agree to.”
“And that is?”
“I’ve got your boat and your grub. I didn’t ask you to come here. You
can starve to death for all I care. You will do that pretty soon. The
only alternative is that I’ll give your boat back to you if you clear
right out.”
“I am afraid Dave Hallard and I have come too far to agree to that,
Mr. Flagg,” replied Tempest, striving to keep his temper under these
difficult circumstances. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to change
your mind?”
“That’s all I have to say on the subject,” said Flagg.
“In that case, all I can do is to wish you a good morning. It is to
be war to the finish. I’m sorry, because, to tell you the truth, I’m
beginning to believe we’re all on a wild goose chase.”
“What makes you think that?” Flagg asked suspiciously.
“That is my business,” Tempest responded, turning his back.
“You’ll sing another tune when your stomachs get empty,” Flagg snarled
after him, a remark which Tempest did not deign to answer.
“Back to our stronghold for the present, Dave,” he said to the boy.
“He’s as obstinate as a mule, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least
if he tried to hunt us out and force us off the island at the point of
the rifle.”
“Did you mean that――when you said you thought we were all on a
wild-goose chase?”
“Partly,” Tempest replied. “As a matter of fact, things don’t look too
rosy, do they? But I really said it to see how he felt on the subject.”
“He did look a bit sick,” Dave commented.
CHAPTER XXII
A MIDNIGHT VENTURE
Dave and Tempest were by no means cheerful when they regained their
refuge on the hill. The last of the biscuits had already been eagerly
devoured, and all three of them had an uncomfortable desire to attack a
hearty meal. Thirst, also, was bothering them a good deal.
“Something has got to give way soon,” Tempest said, “or else Flagg will
have a complete walk-over.”
“What a horrible thought!” Dave ejaculated. “And yet I don’t see how
we can live on the memory of a few biscuits for more than another
forty-eight hours.”
Tempest was leaning over the rock with his eyes glued on the
_Hatteras_. Flagg and his assistants were doing something on the
wreck, and sounds of hammering ascended――as though they were smashing
woodwork. It was evident he meant to leave no stone unturned before
abandoning his search.
“Sometimes I feel sorry I dragged you into this, Tempest,” the boy
said. “It looks as if it were going to turn out a fizzle.”
“I’m not sorry――yet,” Tempest replied. “I’ll be able to tell you more
about my feelings to-morrow. I’m wondering whether that old villain
really would shoot in cold blood if we went down there boldly and got
busy on the _Hatteras_. It would be an exciting experiment.”
“Too exciting for me,” said Dave. “I don’t like the look in his eye
when he’s pointing the business end of that rifle at us. Yes, I’m
afraid he would shoot, because he knows it’s a long way to the nearest
policeman. He could polish us off without a soul being the wiser except
his Kanakas, and at a pinch he could say it was done in self-defense.”
“I’m afraid it may come to that at the finish,” said Tempest, grimly.
“Personally, I haven’t the least desire to have holes bored in me. A
crazy sailor once put a bullet into my ribs, and it was a distinctly
unpleasant experience. All the same, I don’t see how anything can be
done now but make an attack in force. Once I got hold of his firearms,
I’d make him dance. Whether we ever get any treasure or not, I should
just love to come out on top in this deal, wouldn’t you?”
“We might make a surprise attack somehow. I expect one of them is
always on the lookout for something of the sort, though.”
“A surprise attack is what I have been thinking of for hours,” Tempest
said. “But it’s a pretty difficult proposition, let me tell you. Jim,
are you willing to take a bit of a risk? I’ll buy you anything in the
wide world that you fancy, as soon as I can, if you’ll stand by me in
this.”
“What you do, Jim does,” the Kanaka responded nonchalantly.
“Good man! All we can do is to wait for an opportunity, and then we’ll
rush the citadel, so to speak. Not just now, however. It doesn’t look
to me as though it would be exactly healthy down there at the present
minute.”
All day long the trio watched and waited, while the hammering and
smashing on the wrecked _Hatteras_ continued and the gnawing pangs of
hunger grew steadily.
“I believe I could eat my shoes,” Dave said desperately toward evening
of the longest day he could remember.
“You’ll probably get all you want in the way of grub before morning,
somehow or other,” Tempest replied. “We are staking everything on this
next throw, you know. If we lose and don’t get hurt in the gun-play, we
shall get our boat back, anyway. Flagg will be only too glad to see the
back of us. If we win, we shall get our boat back just the same. So you
can make up your mind to be ready for supper or a funeral.”
At sunset Flagg and his Kanakas left the _Hatteras_ and returned to
the _Firefly_ in their dory, one solitary figure remaining on deck on
guard. An early moon lit up the scene distinctly――much too distinctly
for Tempest’s liking.
“Jumping Cæsar!” exclaimed Tempest, several hours later, “but I’ve got
a notion. Jim, you can swim like a fish, can’t you? I have seen you
doing stunts in the water that would make an otter green with envy.
Thank goodness, I’m fairly good myself at that game. There is one
positive, certain thing, and that is that two of the men on that boat
will be snoring like pigs about midnight. Two from three leaves one,
or at least it did when I went to school. Dave, my son, I’m afraid we
shall have to leave you out of this little performance except as a
spectator, though you’ll come in useful after the first stage. Jim, it
is risky, but it is worth while under the circumstances. We will wait
until the ‘witching hour,’ and then do our fish act. One of us may get
potted in the excitement, and perhaps both of us, but we simply must
do something, and this looks to me like a golden opportunity to catch
Flagg napping.”
As all remained quiet at midnight, the three descended the hill and
made for the beach inside the lagoon, but a considerable distance away
from the _Firefly_.
“Not a sound, mind!” Tempest cautioned. “Everything depends on being
able to steal a march on them. I know you’re just burning to come along
with us, Dave, but you couldn’t do any good and two can do the thing
more quietly than three. I want you to stop right here for about twenty
minutes. I’m afraid, if you move, you will be heard by their sentry,
and the less alert he is the better. After a while you can creep
through the edge of the trees until you are opposite the _Firefly_, and
there ought to be something doing by then, though goodness only knows
what it may be.”
Stripped of their clothes, Tempest and Jim crawled down to the water’s
edge, taking advantage of a ridge of sand for cover most of the way.
Dave stood watching, with his heart beating fast. This was the climax
of their adventures, and he dreaded to think of the danger Tempest was
running. He would have attempted to dissuade his friend from going,
but Tempest was in no mood to brook interference. Nothing short of an
earthquake would have held him back.
Sliding into the water like seals, the pair struck straight out, with
the intention of making a wide detour, so that they could approach the
_Firefly_ from the seaward side. That, Tempest considered, would at
least give them a better chance of reaching their goal without being
detected. He was fully aware of the enormous odds that were against
them――odds much greater than he had allowed Dave to suspect. Only
desperate need had driven him to this undertaking. His chief fear was
that they would be seen from the _Firefly_, and probably shot before
they had a chance to board her. If they did happen to be lucky enough
to get onto the boat unobserved, they would still have their work cut
out. He knew he could depend on Jim to stand by him, whatever occurred,
but two men, unarmed, were not likely to have much chance against Flagg
and his crew if it came to a rough-and-tumble.
These thoughts raced through Tempest’s brain as the pair glided along
for the first ten minutes. When he considered it safe to turn they
headed straight for the _Firefly_, and then the most hazardous part
of the journey began. It was now more necessary than ever to exercise
caution, for though the dark form of the Kanaka was almost invisible,
Tempest’s face gleamed in the moonlight occasionally. He swam under
water as much as possible, coming to the surface only to take breath,
and moving slowly so that scarcely a ripple marked their progress. It
was eery work; and though Tempest was a brave man, a chill ran down
his spine more than once when he reflected how probable it was that
a bullet would be their greeting. One careless splash would be almost
certain to attract the attention of the sentry on the _Firefly_, and
Tempest did not like to think what an easy target his face would make.
The _Nautilus_ lay anchored near the _Firefly_, and their object
was to reach her safely first if possible. The suspense of the last
stretch was terrible. The Kanaka now disappeared under the water for
long distances, and showed little more than his mouth and nose when he
came up again; but Tempest had not the marvelous skill of the South
Sea Islanders. While completely submerged he progressed with powerful
strokes, and he did not venture to take breath until his lungs seemed
to be bursting.
He was never more thankful for anything in his life than when they
reached the side of the _Nautilus_. Hanging on there, and taking a much
needed rest, he listened intently before daring to make the next move.
Not a sound reached his ears. With infinite caution he paddled round
the prow and, grasping the cable of his boat, raised his head a trifle.
This nearly ended in his undoing. At the stern of the _Firefly_ one of
Flagg’s Kanakas was squatting, his head resting on his hand. Across his
knees was balanced the rifle which had hitherto kept the invading force
at bay. This much Tempest took in at one lightning glance, when his
hand slipped on the wet cable, and the Kanaka spun round as he heard
the slight splash Tempest could not avoid making.
Like a stone the swimmer sank and made for shelter behind the
_Nautilus_, with a dreadful fear that the lookout had seen him. The
Kanaka, however, after staring with suspicion in the direction of the
noise, came to the conclusion it must have been made by a fish, and
settled down again to his long, monotonous vigil.
Tempest waited impatiently for a while, and then ventured to take
another peep. The sentry did not appear to be particularly alert. On
the contrary, it almost looked at that distance as though his head was
nodding sleepily. Tempest held up a warning finger to Jim, motioned
him to remain where he was, and glided through the water nearer to the
_Firefly_. With infinite caution he placed his hands on the side of the
boat and raised himself partly out of the water, until his face was
within a few feet of the sentry.
The Kanaka was fast asleep at his post.
Tempest could hardly believe his good fortune. Quietly as a ghost he
disappeared back into the sea, and swam to where Jim was waiting. At
the far side of the _Nautilus_ he gave his companion a few whispered
instructions, and then the pair of them stole to the stern of Flagg’s
craft.
Inch by inch the two men raised themselves over the side, fearing to
awaken the sleeping Kanaka with the slightest oscillation, but so
carefully did they work that the boat hardly moved. The sentry was
nodding peacefully when Tempest’s hand closed over his mouth like a
steel vise, and Jim gripped his legs.
The startled sentry instantly began to struggle, but he could only
squirm. Tempest had him by the throat, and his fingers tightened.
The terrified Kanaka showed no sign of submission. So far there had
scarcely been a sound, but it would not have needed much of a scuffle
to bring the other two on the scene. Tempest had no intention of
choking the sentry. The situation was extremely critical, when Jim
wrested the rifle away and gave the victim a blow on the head with the
butt end.
The sentry collapsed, unconscious, and Tempest stood motionless for
a while, listening to see if the sound of the blow had disturbed the
others. There was no sign of movement, however, in the little cabin,
so the unconscious Kanaka was lowered over the side, and Tempest and
Jim towed his form to the beach. Dave appeared out of the shadows and
approached them.
“You haven’t killed him?” the boy asked anxiously in a whisper.
“No. You keep guard over him. Thump him on the head with a rock or
something if he gets too lively. We may have our hands quite full
enough with the others. Come on, Jim, quick as you like.”
While Dave stood on guard over the captive, Tempest and Jim swam off
again to the _Firefly_ and regained her deck as silently as before.
Flagg’s bunk was in the cabin just forward of the cockpit. An oil lamp
was burning, and by its light Tempest could see the form of their arch
enemy reclining in his bunk. Within reach of the sleeping man lay a
revolver, which glistened in the rays of the lamp. At the far end of
the cabin was a door, evidently leading to the place where the other
Kanaka was asleep.
With Jim at his heels, Tempest took a step forward.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SKELETON IN THE SAND
Advancing on tiptoes, Tempest stretched out his hand to gain possession
of the revolver, and his fingers were almost closing on it when one of
the flooring boards creaked. Flagg, who had evidently been slumbering
lightly, stirred uneasily. Casting caution to the winds, Tempest
reached forward impulsively, bumping against a table as he did so.
With a startled exclamation, Flagg half raised himself in his bunk, but
by that time the weapon was in the other man’s hand, and the muzzle was
pointing straight between Flagg’s eyes.
“Don’t move an inch!” Tempest said in a voice which carried conviction.
“Jim, fasten that door. We’ll bottle up the other Kanaka till this
gentleman has thoroughly grasped the situation.”
“That――that thing’s loaded,” gasped Flagg, beginning to regain his
self-possession after the shock of being so rudely awakened.
“I suspected the fact,” said Tempest. “And just because it is loaded,
you will be more reasonable.”
“Well, don’t point it at me. It might go off.”
“It not only might, but it will if you make a move. Jim, see if you can
find any more rifles or six-shooters around.”
Jim turned out lockers and ransacked pockets, but was unable to find
anything except a box of cartridges, of which Tempest immediately took
possession.
“Now,” said the latter, “the game is up, as far as you are concerned.”
If looks could have killed, Tempest would have been a dead man. Flagg,
however, had wonderful control over himself, and his expression altered.
“We’ve all come on a fool’s errand, Tempest,” he said, in tones that
were intended to be ingratiating. “There may have been treasure here at
one time, but there isn’t now.”
“All the more reason why you can scoot back to Washington Island at top
speed with an easy mind,” was the uncompromising reply.
“Of course, there’s always a chance, if we searched long enough――”
“You’ve had your chance, Flagg, and you took it dishonorably. You won’t
get another until we have had ours.”
“But couldn’t we all work together? It’s a bigger job than you seem
to think.” The man still, apparently, cherished the hope that the
_Hatteras_ treasure might be located.
“Listen to me,” said Tempest. “I did intend, if ever I got this
opportunity, to give you the biggest hiding you ever heard of. You
deserve it――and worse. I’m not sure I shouldn’t be doing a kindness to
you by teaching you a lesson. You’re a sneak, Flagg, a low sneak-thief.
I have felt like punching your fat head until you cried for mercy.
But now that you are where I can do it, I won’t soil my hands on you.
A bullet is more the sort of medicine you need,” he added, suddenly
warming up and pushing the muzzle of the revolver within an inch of the
man’s forehead.
Flagg squirmed. For a moment fear showed in his eyes.
“Bah!” said Tempest. “You’re a chicken-hearted old scoundrel, after
all, when it comes to a pinch, and when you aren’t holding the gun.
See, I’ll give you ten minutes to clear out. Jim, take the dory ashore,
and bring off the Kanaka. You needn’t be afraid of leaving us alone.
I’ve got something here that will keep our friend quiet.”
Jim rowed to the beach and there found Dave standing on guard over his
prisoner, with a stout piece of driftwood in his hand. The man had
recovered, but was lying still, evidently realizing that the boy had
him at a disadvantage.
“What’s happened?” Dave asked eagerly.
“Meester Flagg going for li’le trip,” Jim replied. “He take this feller
with him.”
Dave ordered the prisoner forward, and the trio pushed off again in
the dory. They found Tempest, as Jim had left him, still master of the
situation.
“Say good-by to Mr. Flagg, Dave,” Tempest observed quizzically. “He is
just about to take a sea voyage for his health, and you may not see him
again.”
“Sorry he can’t stop,” said the boy, dryly. “Why, we were just
beginning to like him! Say, Tempest, I don’t want to interfere with the
program, but the sooner I get some grub, the sooner I shall begin to
forgive him.”
“Righto. A pleasant journey, Flagg. And let it be clearly understood
that if we see you hanging around here again, I’ll shoot in dead
earnest. Savvy?”
Flagg had been lying on his back, apparently accepting the situation
now as one in which he was hopelessly beaten. Neither his cunning nor
his tenacity, however, had deserted him. As a last desperate resort he
made a sudden grab to wrest the revolver from Tempest’s hands, knowing
that if the move succeeded he would turn the tables again. His wrist
was powerful, but fortunately the other man was half expecting some
such trick. He bent the weapon down, involuntarily tightening his
pressure on the trigger as he did so. There was a deafening explosion,
and a bullet bored its way through the bottom of the bunk, missing
Flagg by the breadth of a finger.
Flagg sank back limply.
“I give in,” he murmured. “Let me get out of this.”
“You’d better,” said Tempest. “If that had killed you, it would have
been your own fault. Jim, Dave, hop into that dory. Take the rifle with
you. Now, Flagg, you’re to make a start as soon as we get off this
boat, see? If you don’t, I shall begin boring holes in it.”
But Mr. Flagg was thoroughly subdued, and the sails of the _Firefly_
began to flutter without the slightest delay.
“I don’t think he will come back, somehow,” Tempest commented as the
craft passed through the channel and into the open sea. “All the same,
we must keep our eyes skinned. But for the love of Mike, let’s get
something to eat.”
Nothing had been disturbed in the _Nautilus_. Even Dave’s cherished
binoculars were exactly where he had left them. In a few minutes the
trio were ravenously devouring a meal and regaling themselves with
steaming cups of coffee, after which they took turn and turn about in
keeping watch until dawn.
As soon as it was light, Dave and Tempest paid their first long-deferred
visit to the _Hatteras_, and the boy’s face fell as he scrambled onto
the ruins of the bark. The ravages of time had not left much of her
framework. Her hull was more or less intact, being embedded deeply in
sand which had silted around her. In places her deck had caved in, and
most of the woodwork had either been rotted or washed away. Flagg had
evidently been breaking away timbers in the neighborhood of the poop,
endeavoring to reveal any locker which might contain the platinum, but
the task did not seem to have been a very promising one.
Tempest scratched his head and pulled a wry face.
“It’s no use spoiling the ship for a penn’orth of tar,” he said
lugubriously. “Now that we are here, we might as well finish the
search; but it’s pretty clear that this isn’t where we get rich quick,
eh, Dave?”
Though their hopes had now dwindled down to zero, they worked hard
throughout that day and the following one without the slightest
encouragement. With an immense amount of labor they dug into a cavity
which appeared to have been the captain’s cabin, and cleared it of tons
of sand. They came across sundry half-decayed articles, and tore away
the covers of one or two lockers, the contents of which had all nearly
rotted.
By the end of the second day it was obvious that there remained no
reasonable prospect of recovering the lost platinum from the wreck.
“It’s no good,” said Tempest, taking a seat on one of the ship’s old
ribs and lighting his pipe. “We’ve had a run for our money, and that’s
about all we can say. I’ve no regrets, and I hope you haven’t either,
Dave. It was a sporting chance, and a good one at that, so far as we
could judge. You don’t get a good sporting chance every day of your
life. Poor old Jim, here, gets the thin end of it, because we can’t pay
him any wages at all. I’m sorry for that, because he has been a brick.”
Jim shrugged his shoulders. He did not seem to feel that the others
were under any obligation to him.
“Well, we’d better make a move for Washington Island, I suppose,” Dave
observed lugubriously. “We can’t spend the rest of our lives here.”
Jim was scanning the sky and the horizon carefully.
“Better stop here to-night,” he said. “Pretty rough bimeby. Big wind
coming.”
“Bother you, Jim! No, I won’t say that. You’re a great weather-prophet,
though how in thunder you know there’s going to be a storm without
looking at a barometer is more than I can tell. I guess you feel it
in your bones. The sky certainly did look a bit angry as the sun went
down, but nothing very special. Let’s get back to the _Nautilus_.
Good-by, _Hatteras_! Sorry there’s nothing doing, but you certainly
have provided us with an interesting trip, if not a particularly
profitable one.”
Dave looked back regretfully at the old wreck as he left her for the
last time. He was disappointed, not so much on his own account as on
that of his father, whom he had so much hoped to cheer with visions of
wealth. With Tempest, the matter seemed to have been already forgotten.
He was laughing as gaily as though such a thing as a treasure-hunt had
never been suggested to him.
Before it was time to turn in for the night the storm that Jim had
prophesied began to put in an appearance. Dark clouds raced across
the sky, and sudden gusts of wind screamed through the rigging of the
_Nautilus_.
“No need to keep a lookout for Flagg to-night,” Dave commented, with
mingled emotions. “He could come and camp here as long as he liked now,
so far as we are concerned. If he hasn’t got back to Washington Island
yet, he will be having a rough night.”
“Plenty more wind coming,” declared Jim.
“If that is so, I’m glad I’m not out in the open sea in a
twenty-five-foot boat,” observed Tempest. “A lagoon like ours is a
blessing under such circumstances. Dave, I have a fancy for a stroll
on the shore to-night. Coming? It will be the last time we shall tread
on Tai-o-Vai.”
They all three dropped into the dory and paddled to the beach. There
was no rain, and the great camel’s back sheltered them from the wind.
They had not landed five minutes, however, before the gale switched
round with startling suddenness, and a fierce blast, coming straight in
from over the lagoon, nearly knocked them off their feet and enveloped
them in a whirl of fiercely driven sand.
“Gosh!” Tempest shouted, endeavoring to wipe some of the grit out of
his eyes. “Now who’d have expected that? It’s a regular typhoon. Looks
to me as though we were going to have some difficulty in getting back
to the _Nautilus_.”
“Plenty more wind bimeby,” said Jim, impassively.
“If it gets much worse, it’ll blow the blooming island away,”
complained Tempest. “Ouch! Here comes another dose of sand!”
This time the storm burst on them with all its force, and they
staggered in the overwhelming cloud of fine sand which beat savagely
on their backs, filled their hair, ears, mouths and clothing, and left
them temporarily blinded, although instinctively they covered their
eyes with their hands. Dave stumbled and fell, but Tempest dragged
him to his feet again. Grasping the boy’s shoulder, and keeping his
own back to the force of the blast as much as possible, he forced his
way in the direction of the trees. It was like moving in a nightmare,
for he could only guess vaguely in which direction that shelter lay.
He called hoarsely to Jim, but his voice was swallowed up in the roar
of the gale. Sometimes falling, himself, and regaining his feet with
difficulty, he pushed grimly on. It seemed a long while before he felt
the low bushes on the outskirts of the wood brushing against his legs.
They gave him renewed hope. Unable to see a thing, he forced his way
under the trees, dragging Dave, and at length, having struggled a
little way into the timber, sank down panting, and choking with sand.
They lay there well over an hour before the force of the storm
decreased, and then, having recovered somewhat, began to shout for Jim.
Presently they heard an answering call, and the Kanaka came toward them
through the trees. As soon as he had lost sight of the others he, too,
had sought shelter.
“For goodness’ sake, don’t say it’s going to blow harder soon, Jim,”
said Tempest.
“Pretty near finished,” replied the Kanaka. “Fine again quick.”
Like most sudden tropical storms, it died down rapidly, and before long
the island was bathed again in radiant moonlight, without a breath
of air stirring. Only the thunder of the surf on the outer reef, and
curious shallow cavities dug in the silvery sand by the whirling wind,
remained to show how terrific had been the force of the storm. In
places, whole stretches of beach had been scooped away, to be piled up
farther on like drifts of snow.
Dave and Tempest surveyed this strange effect of nature in her angriest
mood.
“Gee, but it is a wonder we came out of that alive!” said Tempest,
thankfully.
Dave did not answer for a moment. He was leaning forward a little,
with his eyes fixed on an object which protruded through the sand in
one of the excavations left by the gale far above high-water mark, at
the edge of the trees. The object gleamed like a streak of silver in
the moonlight. Prompted by curiosity, he stepped down toward it. An
instant later he called to his friend, his voice sharp with restrained
excitement:
“Tempest! Come here! It’s――it’s a skeleton!”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PRIZE IS WON
“That’s queer!” Tempest exclaimed, coming to his side and prodding
aimlessly into the bank of sand with his foot. “It must be some poor
beggar who died here after the _Hatteras_ came to grief.”
“Sure to be,” agreed the boy, quietly. “I wonder if he――if it happened
when he was alone. Why, here’s a piece of timber――a beam!”
He scooped the sand away with his hands, and revealed another beam
running parallel with the first one.
“It looks like a hut that has been covered over with sand,” said the
boy.
“That’s it, sure enough,” agreed Tempest. “I wonder how long this chap
existed after he was marooned. Ugh! It’s gruesome. Let’s get back on
board.”
They found the _Nautilus_ had dragged her anchor in the storm and
nearly been beached; but she was unharmed, and they soon had her back
in her old moorings. Shortly after midnight the trio were asleep, with
only the moon to watch peacefully over the dead, the living, and the
scene of Tai-o-Vai’s unsolved mystery. Dave slept fitfully, however,
the events of the last few days crowding into his brain every time he
awoke. He tossed and turned in his narrow bunk, thinking of what might
have been the fate of Flagg in the storm, wondering when he would set
foot in Brooklyn again, guessing what secret the skeleton might reveal
if it could but speak, and above all trying to imagine what could have
happened to the treasure that had vanished from the _Hatteras_, for
vanished it obviously had. At last, weary in mind and body, he dozed
off, and did not awaken until broad daylight.
It was a rather subdued party that sat down to their last breakfast
in the beautiful lagoon of Tai-o-Vai. Jim was, as usual, apparently
immersed in his own thoughts and uncommunicative. The reaction after
the recent excitement had left even Tempest quiet. He kept casting a
professional eye at the sky, and seemed engrossed only in the thought
of their long run back. Dave glanced occasionally in the direction of
the silvery beach. His grey eyes were thoughtful. This was the end of
their adventures, and the least satisfactory part of them because it
involved failure. And failure was a thing which rankled in the minds of
all the Hallards. Like his father and his grandfather, Dave hated to be
beaten, whatever object he had set his mind on.
“You look mighty pensive, sonny,” Tempest observed, dipping a hard
biscuit into his coffee and munching it. “Always remember there are as
good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.”
“It’s not the size of the fish I am concerned about, so much as losing
it,” the boy replied. “Tempest, I’m really sorry now that I ever
mentioned this rotten treasure to you. You’ve been fine right through.
I do wish you could have got a fortune out of it.”
“A fortune!” said his friend. “I’d be as miserable as a yellow pup with
a tin can tied to its tail if I had a fortune.”
“Well, half of what we might have found, anyway,” said Dave.
“That would have depended on the amount of the treasure,” mused
Tempest. “If I had a lot of money, I should be unhappy till it was
all gone except about five thousand dollars. That’s the share of the
treasure I should have taken――just enough to let me settle down on
a small farm in South Carolina where I was reared. I wouldn’t have
touched another penny, not only because I shouldn’t want it, but
because I shouldn’t feel I had any right to accept more. You see,
I’m only one of your crew, the same as Jim, really. However, that’s
neither here nor there now. When you’re quite ready we will make a
move. There’s a fair breeze.”
Dave, however, was not inclined to hurry away.
“I can’t get the idea of that hut out of my mind,” he said slowly.
“What about it?”
“Well, suppose some of the people off the _Hatteras_ got ashore here,
don’t you think they would have made an effort to fetch the platinum
off the bark as soon as they had a chance?”
“Why, yes, I suppose they would,” agreed Tempest, wrinkling his
brows. “I’ve thought of that already. Even at this minute it may be
buried somewhere on Tai-o-Vai, but we’re not out exactly on a mining
expedition. You are not proposing digging all over the island, are you?”
“No, Tempest,” said Dave, seriously, “but I surely would like to see
exactly what there is in that hut. It wouldn’t take us very long to dig
it out, would it?”
“Certainly not. I’m game. Let’s take the shovels ashore and get to
work.”
Tempest had not much faith in the new venture, and he worked more to
satisfy the boy’s curiosity than anything else. Prior to the storm,
sand had evidently sifted over the hut to a considerable depth, but the
upheaval had made the task of the treasure-hunters easier. The roof of
the hut was now covered with only a couple of feet of sand, and this
they cleared off quickly. The next problem was to find the entrance,
and this involved much hard work, but eventually they found an opening.
For over an hour they delved steadily, gradually emptying the place,
after digging a hole and placing the skeleton in it.
There was but little to reward their search――a few rusty tins, the
handle of a knife, and the case of a silver watch, blackened with age.
“It looks to me like a place built for one man,” commented Tempest,
during a momentary pause in their labors.
“It may have been the man who owned the platinum,” said Dave.
“More than likely. I can quite imagine that if he did land with the
stuff, and the crew wanted to make Christmas Island in an open boat, he
might prefer to stop on dry land with his blessed treasure until they
sent a steamer of some kind to pick him up.”
“If that’s what did happen,” said Dave, “the dory they went off in must
have been lost, and that accounts for nobody ever hearing what happened
to the _Hatteras_.”
“’Pon my word, Dave, you’re getting me quite excited about the thing
again!” declared Tempest. “It’s only a theory, but it fits in with the
facts perfectly. I don’t know who the chap was who died here, but I
do wish he’d been considerate enough to leave a message of some sort
corked up in a bottle, giving us instructions how to find his old
treasure.”
“Perhaps he did,” said Dave. “Anyway, let’s go on till we get the
cabin emptied of sand. If we don’t find anything, then we will chuck
it.”
Again they plied the shovels vigorously, until nothing remained within
the bare walls of the rudely constructed cabin.
“That settles it,” commented Tempest, at last. “Now are you satisfied,
Dave?”
“I suppose so,” said the boy ruefully, straightening his back and
resting on his shovel. “There’s nothing more to be done, is there?”
“No, I’m afraid this is the finish. Not even the message in a bottle to
lure us on.”
“But,” Dave exclaimed, with a touch of impatience, “what the dickens
can the man have done with the platinum? He couldn’t eat it.”
“Buried it somewhere, I guess. People generally do bury treasure, you
know.”
“Maybe he buried it under the floor here,” said Dave, casually digging
his shovel deep into the sand. There was a metallic click as the steel
struck something hard.
“Gosh! That’s funny!” the boy exclaimed, looking round at his friend as
he lifted out the sand on the shovel. “Tempest, do you suppose――”
“Rock, I expect,” said Tempest, not waiting a second, however, before
he too had his shovel at work on the same spot.
“Rock be hanged!” shouted Dave, a moment later, as the unmistakable
sound of metal striking metal reached their ears. “Tempest, it can’t
be――it can’t be――”
“Can’t it, though!” replied Tempest, joyously. “It’s a metal-bound box,
or my name’s Joe Flagg. Now don’t get so excited. Wait a minute till we
get it out.”
Dave was excited, however――wildly excited. He and Tempest fell on their
knees and tugged at the box, but its weight was considerable, and they
could not lift it out until Jim gave them a hand. It was a small chest
made of oak or some other hard wood, encircled with solid bands of
iron which had almost rusted through in places. The woodwork was in a
fair state of preservation.
“It’s the treasure――it’s the treasure!” Dave sang out gleefully.
“Well, if it isn’t, it ought to be,” said Tempest, trying in vain to
prize off one of the metal bands with his shovel. “Jim, streak to the
_Nautilus_ for an ax――a couple of axes――a dozen――before I burst!”
The Kanaka shot across the water in the dory, and returned in a few
minutes.
Even with the aid of an ax it was not easy to burst the chest open, for
there were hinges and a lock to force, beside the iron bands.
At last, with a creak, the lid was lifted, and Dave and Tempest stared
at the contents of the box, fascinated.
Lying neatly stacked in rows were bars and bars of silvery-white metal
which, in spite of their long burial in the sand, shone as brightly as
when placed there years before by the man who had mined and molded them.
Tempest laughed at the Kanaka’s comical expression of disappointment.
He had evidently expected something much more exciting. Dave stooped
and took one of the small bars in his hand with a curious thrill.
[Illustration: Tempest laughed at the Kanaka’s comical expression of
disappointment]
“You don’t suppose it’s just――just lead or something like that?” he
asked anxiously. “It’s frightfully heavy!”
“It would be,” answered Tempest, striving to keep the excitement from
his voice. “It’s platinum all right, and it’s worth a fortune, Dave.”
“A fortune!” repeated the boy, gazing down in awe at the serried rows
of silvery bars. “Yes, it must be, for it’s worth more than a hundred
dollars an ounce. Tempest, we――we’re rich!”
“_You_ are,” said Tempest. “All I’ll accept is that five thousand for
my little farm in Carolina. Gee! I never saw anything that pleased
me so much in all my life!”
He weighed the bar in his hand.
“There’s a good sixteen ounces in that, I fancy: maybe more,” he added.
“Let’s see how many bars there are.”
With trembling fingers they laid the metal out on the sand, counting as
they did so.
“Twenty-seven!” they said at last in chorus.
“Over four hundred ounces, sure as you’re alive!” Tempest added. “I
reckon it must be worth between forty and forty-five thousand dollars
altogether, if it’s worth a cent!”
“Goodness!” Dave exclaimed. “Enough to buy back my dad’s place ten
times over.”
* * * * *
Three pairs of eyes were staring from the _Nautilus_ at an old tramp
steamer which, two days later, had overhauled the little sailing-boat
in a dead calm.
“That’s a stroke of luck,” said Tempest, while the vessel was bearing
down upon them. “Somehow, I don’t fancy Mr. Cresswell will ever get his
_Nautilus_ back after all.”
“What are you going to do?” Dave asked.
“Do? Why, I’m going to heave this treasure on to that tramp steamer and
sit on it till we reach civilization.”
“What about the _Nautilus_?”
“Let her go adrift. She isn’t worth much, anyhow, and Mr. Cresswell
will be the surprisedest man living when he receives a check for five
hundred dollars――or make it a thousand, if you like, for overweight. We
owe him a debt of gratitude.”
The steamer was now within a cable’s length of them, with her engines
stopped. A dozen faces appeared over her rail.
“You look lonely there. Want any help?” called a deep voice.
“Glad of a passage,” Tempest replied, as a rope ladder was slung over
the side. “Lower a rope, will you? There’s a box here I’d like to take
along with me.”
The crew of the _Seven Seas_ stared with curiosity as the trio
scrambled on board. One sees strange things in those lonely waters, but
not often such a strange thing as two men and a boy at the mercy of the
waves in a cockle-shell of a boat.
“Been on a little pleasure-trip?” asked the captain, coming forward
with a smile.
The engines had already started again, and the _Nautilus_, left to her
doom, was dropping astern.
“Shipwrecked,” Tempest replied briefly. “Much obliged to you for
picking us up, Cap’n. May I ask where you are bound?”
“Frisco the next stop. We’ve got a pretty full crew, but I don’t doubt
we can keep you busy till we hit America.”
Tempest exchanged glances with Dave, and laughed.
“I think, sir,” he said, “for once we’ll enjoy the luxury of being
passengers, if it’s all the same to you. We’ve had rather a rough time,
one way and another, and just at present there’s no shortage of funds.
But that’s another story. I’ll tell you all about it later. Meanwhile,
if you could oblige us with a decent square meal, we’d appreciate it a
whole lot.”
“Sure!” said the captain, turning to one of the hands. “Slip below and
tell Bill Barnes to fix these men up with something special as a treat.”
“Barnes!” repeated Dave, with a puzzled look. “He doesn’t happen to be
a comical-looking chap with one tooth and bushy eyebrows, does he?”
“I guess that’s his photograph,” said the skipper, amused. “Do you know
him?”
Dave, hardly waiting to reply, dived after the sailor to the galley,
and astonished his old friend of the _Pacific Queen_ by bursting in
upon him.
“Great Mackerel, kid! Sha’n’t I ever get clear of you?” exclaimed that
worthy, wiping his greasy hands as he came toward the boy. “Who in
thunder would have thought of this? Jerusalem, but I am glad to see
you! What d’you mean by bobbing up out of the sea like this?” His face
had grown red with astonishment, and he was performing gymnastics with
his mighty eyebrows.
“Been treasure-hunting, dear Barnsey,” said Dave. “Come on, pour out
some of that stew. We’re starved. Haven’t had a proper sailor’s meal
since goodness knows――”
“Treasure-hunting!” spluttered the cook, as he filled a dish with
savory-smelling stew. “You’ve got the brains of a caterpillar. Haven’t
you learnt yet to stick to your job? Treasure-hunting, indeed!” he
snorted.
“Wait till we’ve finished dinner, Barnsey,” said Dave, “and then I’ll
tell you something that will make you sing a different tune!”
* * * * *
Nearly four weeks later the _Seven Seas_ entered the Golden Gate,
and deposited Dave, Tempest, and the Kanaka at San Francisco, where
Tempest immediately took steps to turn the platinum into money. He
found that he had slightly underestimated its value. After deducting
the five thousand dollars for his farm, he placed the balance in a bank
in Dave’s name, and it was a proud moment for the boy when he made out
one check for Mr. Cresswell, one for the passage-money on the _Seven
Seas_, and one for current expenses. Jim was arrayed in bright colors,
such as gladden the heart of his kind, and his cup of joy was filled
when Dave and Tempest showed him the sights of the city in a fleet
taxicab. He soon grew weary of city life, however, and on the second
day insisted on joining an outward-bound steamer for China.
“Tempest,” the boy said when they had seen him off, “I’m going to ask
a favor of you. We’ll be traveling together as far as Chicago, anyway.
Won’t you come on to New York and stop a few days with me before you go
south? Dad will want to see you, and――and I want you to meet him; and
Aunt Martha, too. Will you?”
“Well, it’s a long time, Dave, since I’ve mingled in polite society,”
replied Tempest, with a smile; “but I’d like mighty well to see your
folks, and so, if you think they won’t mind entertaining a tramp――”
“Tramp!” Dave exclaimed, indignantly. “Don’t be silly! And anyway,” he
added, laughing, “tramps don’t buy five-thousand-dollar farms!”
“That’s so,” replied Tempest. “After this I’m a regular farmer. And
you’re a――a――what are you, by the way, with all that money in the bank?”
“I’m――” Dave hesitated. Then, “I’m just your chum,” he finished shyly.
“Come on, let’s beat it for the train!”
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to
follow the text that they illustrate.
――Printer’s, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
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