PART II

"No loafing around the ship," I called to the little yellow chap who was sitting near the spring line which held the schooner _Tanner_ to the wharf at Honolulu. The man paid not the slightest attention to me.

"Hey, there, sonny! Move out! Beat it; make a getaway, you savvy?" I bawled in a louder tone.

Then he arose, and instead of a young fellow I was amazed to find him at least ten years older than myself--and I had been a ship's officer some years. He walked slowly to the vessel's side, and gazed up at me where I stood near the break of the poop, holding to a backstay.

She was a modern, short-poop schooner. The sallow little man was not a Chinaman, nor of Kanaka breed, but a full-blooded Japanese. He was stout, strong, yellow of skin, and his black hair was too long for his country's custom, sticking out from under the rim of a brown derby that had seen its best days. His eyes were slitlike, keen little eyes, but there was nothing repulsive in them. They attracted me. For one thing, he had an open frankness, an honest and fearless look, and his face was sad.

"What you doin' on the dock, Togi?" I asked, eying him humorously.

"If your august presence will listen, I'll tell you," he answered easily.

"Sure, Michael, let her go, and don't mind my gigantic--er--august self," I sniggered.

"In the first place," he said, "I'm not sonny, being, if your honorable temper allows, a man of forty. If fine schooner says so, I go with you as far as Tokyo. There I am the humble cousin of the Honorable Baron Komuri, son of a Samurai, under the former emperor. I should like indeed to sail with you, and will----" Here he stopped a moment, hesitating.

"Go on, king, old man; don't let anything stop you from telling your yarn. Sing it out, and I'll listen if it breaks a bone."

"No, no; not king, old man; just Mister Komuri--if your presence allows me to correct. Your humble servant is but a plain man. Better be plain man than dead lion, as your excellent books say. I accept plain man, and go that way if so ship says."

"We are not going to Tokyo, but if you see the skipper he'll take you clear to Manila for a hundred or two yen. You savvy him yen. Must pay, you know."

"Ah, that is of what I wish to tell your honorable self. Allow me to make myself so humble to tell I have not the yen you ask. I have not anything----"

"Nothing doing, kiddo; on your way," I said remorselessly.

"But I sit on dock end waiting----"

"Waiting for what?"

"Waiting for two hundred yen to fly up and knock me dead. I wait and no yen fly up to strike me on the cranium. Now I go with fine ship, and work like plain man."

"You have a sense of humor, king," said I, "and sink me if I don't try to get you a job wrastling the dishes aft. How about it? Can you sling the pots--are you a number-one pot-wrastler?"

"I never wrastle; a little jujutsu sometimes when necessary for take care, but I work at anything your august self tells. If honorable commander tells me to wrastle pots, I try him so. I pretty good with sword or short knife----"

"Not so fast, king; this isn't a man-of-war; no fighting here. All the fracasing done here is done by my august self and the other mate, Mr. Bill Slade, both, as you say, honorable men, and some hustlers when it comes right down to handling cloth in a blow. What I want--honorable ship wants--is a man to give the eats aft--savvy? Bring in the hash from honorable cook in galley--see? Set dish on table, wash dish off table. You know."

"But I am soldier--son of Samurai. I do not like dishwork; but if no other way, I do mean work to get to Tokyo," he said sadly.

"You're on," I hastened to say. "You're on, king, but in the future you will be known as Koko. Savvy?"

"As Mister Komuri," he interrupted, with a look from those slits of eyes that called my attention.

"No misters aboard here but my honorable self and mate. Rules of honorable ship, you know. Sorry, but august skipper has discipline, and you are soldier. You savvy? We'll compromise on Komuri. How's that--just plain Komuri, steward, hash boy, hey?"

"Your august self, yes; to common men, Mister Komuri, yes."

"Get aboard, then," I said. "Go forward to the galley. The cook--that big Kanaka there--he'll give you the line. In the meantime I'll square it with the boss."

Mister Komuri sprang over the rail, and made his way as directed. It was easy to see that he had been in ships before, as what Japanese hasn't, since they are a race of seamen.

Our new member took hold without further orders, and I saw him not again until the land was well astern, and we were on our way to Guam, with forty-seven chink coolies below, and two lady passengers aft.

This was the second part of our run, the first being from Frisco, where we had shipped the coolies under the leadership of their gigantic foreman, who had tried to take the ship and landed in jail for his pains. The few thousand dollars we now carried in the safe aft was not worthy of anxiety in regard to protection. Our voyage promised to be uneventful.

Among our crew were two new hands we had shipped at Honolulu to help run the ship, also to take care of the Chinese we carried. Our experience with the coolies had taught us that being short-handed was not either good or safe. Our arms were now ready, being, as they were, riot guns full of buckshot, and reliable six-shooters of heavy caliber. This going out with nearly half a hundred Chinks with but three men in a watch was all right if the Chinks were good, but we had found they were not to be trusted. With the leader of the uprising in jail for murder, and his lieutenant killed, we hoped for an easy life.

We now had four men in watch, with the engineer for the ever-ready steam winch bunking in his engine house with banked fires and enough steam always ready to handle line. We were really carrying a full crew for a schooner, and the expense of the engine was extra, there being now enough men to handle her canvas easily without the aid of the winches.

One of the new men was a strange-looking fellow, who was neither dago nor Dutchman. Just what he was I don't know, except that he was crafty, watchful, and dodged all work possible. He had a way of looking at you with eyes that seemed to fathom your inmost thoughts, an affected way of appearing to understand, and his peculiar silences gave support to the look. It deceived the old man.

It deceived both Slade and myself at first, but afterward we grew more discerning, peered deeper into his meaning, and saw--nothing. He was just a petty, crafty sea lawyer who was looking for trouble to carry back to the coast, where they love to get masters and mates mixed up in courts for some violation of the shipping articles.

This fellow's name was Dodd--Alfred Dodd--and he was called Alf by his shipmates. Komuri seemed to sense danger the moment he jostled the seaman in the gangway the first day out. I heard the row from the deck, and it was short.

"Hey, Jack," yelled Dodd to the regular steward we had signed on in Frisco, "Jack, you seem to belong to the nobility now--can't hand a man a pot of coffee during the mid-watch no more, hey? Let the king do it."

"Not king; just plain Mister Komuri," purred our little helper, as he grinned.

"What's the matter?" asked Dodd. "Don't four-flush at your title, hey?"

"Aw, give us rest," said Jack, who was good-natured and liked the little yellow man, for Komuri did all his work now, and there was no comeback.

"I don't know if honorable sailor means wrong by four-flush," said Komuri quietly, "but if he does the finger of Fate will point at him."

"Wow! Fate will point at me! What der you think o' that?" sneered Dodd. "Let's hope you ain't Fate, sonny, or I might p'int my own fair hand at you in return."

"If honorable seaman will step out to the fore end of ship I'll show him just what a son of Samurai means. It will take short time."

"Sure, king; I'll go you that explanation, all right. Come right along while the watch are getting their whack. No one will notice us."

Komuri jumped like a tiger without warning. He sprang upon the fellow, and had a strangle hold of his wrist, and twisted over his neck until I thought he was getting killed. I had to stop laughing to run up and stop the fracas. Dodd was sweating with pain, and cursing furiously, absolutely helpless. It was so quickly done that I wondered at it. Of course, a strong man might grab the small fellow and jerk him out of his shoes, but that was not Dodd.

"Drop it!" I commanded, and the second steward let go at once, smiling. "Now, get below, and quit this fooling," said I, and the sailor waited for no further orders. "You can show me some of your tricks, you Japanese juggler, when we have more time," I said to the little man. "You interest me considerable. Get to the hash, and don't waste time with a fool like that."

Of course, it might be expected that a man of Komuri's parts would be gallant, for it seems always the case when a man is able and unafraid that he is sure to love with more passion than discernment. Komuri was not an exception.

Not being at the first table with the passengers, I had small opportunity to see how he treated Miss MacDonald, but from what Slade told me I was concerned. The small chap was always in attendance upon the ladies when they were on deck. He was politeness itself, and he busied himself with all kinds of little efforts to make them more comfortable than they were.

"If honorable ladies will allow, I fix the rugs in chairs," he would say, and although the weather was tropical, a rug made a softer seat when they took the air on deck, which they did nearly all daytime while we ran our westing down beneath the tropic of Cancer.

With a good full month or six weeks before us, and a fair wind on the starboard quarter all the time, we had a stretch of water to cross that put one in mind of steamers. The ship ran steadily day and night at about from eight to ten knots an hour. We seldom touched a sheet or halyard except to set it up, and the gentle heeling with the trade swell made the voyage seem like a yachting trip.

Komuri had much time to devote to the comfort of the ladies, and the elder one seemed to like him very much indeed. He told them stories of the warlike Samurai, and honor and self-respect stood out plainly in them all. It was not a bad thing, except that he always seemed to be something of a hero, and no steward either second or first should be such a thing where there are seamen around waiting for the job.

"I have always believed that you heathen were very able people," said Miss Aline, "and if you were treated properly you would be just as gentle and tractable as the European races."

"Heathen," said Komuri calmly, "are those who do not accept your own honorable views. Who knows which is right? It is a word we never use in Japan."

She looked at him a moment, and said: "You are quite incorrigible. I hope you are not really bad, after all."

"Honorable lady must see by how I do--not how I talk; she judge humble self most true. Her heart right," said the Japanese, which I thought was going some for a second steward, especially when I remembered how Slade stood, or wished to stand, in a certain quarter. I thought it best to let the humble steward see he was going far enough.

"Say, king, old man," I interrupted, "Jack wants you to get busy with the potatoes for dinner. He's waiting for the peelings."

Komuri nodded to me respectfully.

"At once, august mate, I go," he said, and went.

"Quite a superior steward, that Japanese boy," said the elder lady to me.

"Oh, he's a wonder, all right," I assented; "but his place is in the galley, and not on the quarter-deck--if I may be allowed to speak of it."

"And I do hope you will treat him kindly--not as you did the Chinese man who went bad," said Miss Aline.

"No fear of it--not the king. He wouldn't stand roughing--and don't call for it. You see, while he goes with the Chinks altogether too much for their own good, and talks altogether too much for his own, he is not a Chinaman. Oh, no; he is far removed from the coolie Chinks, as far as the skipper himself. He's just a plain little fighting man, that a good-sized mate like myself could bite in two; but I know him--just what he'd do."

"Why, what?" asked Miss Aline.

"I'd hate to tell you," I grinned.

"You may be a good seaman, but you're somewhat stupid," said Miss Aline, and I laughed outright at her humor.

"What do you think of this fine weather?" asked her aunt to change the conversation.

"It's good as it goes, but it's the hurricane season, and we can't count on it lasting all the way, you know," I said. "Maybe we'll hook right into a typhoon before----"

"Oh, you always want something rough, something bad," put in Miss Aline. "I never saw such a man. Why do you always look for trouble? Don't you find it often enough without hunting it always?"

"Sure as eggs," I said; "but I'm only telling you what I believe, what the signs show me. I'm not trying to frighten you at all."

"I think you are perfectly horrid," said the young woman.

"I hope I'm wrong, at least," I answered. But as I scanned the perfect sky I felt that indeed I was trespassing upon the feelings of the passengers too much, in spite of the fact that I had a mercury glass to observe in Slade's room.

The coolies came on deck in the daytime now, and sat in rows along the waterways, eating their rice and chewing some sort of stuff to fill in the interval between meals. They chattered a lot, and appeared not to feel abashed at their former behavior.

At these times the old man would come on deck--it being about the time he'd take the noon sight--and gaze down at them dismally. He hated Chinks, and their presence in his ship was more than he could get used to.

"What good are Chinks, anyway?" he would say.

"Somebody's got to do the work in hot countries, and you can't always get the blacks. They are just like mules, carabao buffalo, or jacks. They'll work on ten cents a day and get fat; they don't know any better," I'd tell him.

But he would shake his old, shaggy head and mutter:

"What good, what good, anyway?"

As a matter of fact, they did no harm aboard besides befouling the air of the alleyways with their eternal opium smoking. They had nothing at all to do with the men forward, and the only person who appeared to be able to hold intercourse with them was Komuri. He understood their lingo or singsong way of telling it, and he would talk to them for hours during the evening after the supper things were washed up, and Jack, the steward, had turned in.

I was a bit suspicious of this, for I don't like men of the after guard to be intimate with either the crew or the passengers. It starts something before long, and the voyage across the Pacific is a long one if nothing else. Slade commented upon the Japanese often, and he rather disliked our little second steward for his untiring efforts in behalf of the ladies. Slade was a jealous man, although he was a seaman from clew to earing, and his attentions to Miss Aline were more and more marked as the schooner sped on her course.

"Why shouldn't I get married?" he used to say to me when we had a chance to be together, which was seldom enough. "Why shouldn't I get a wife, and take up the simple life of the farmer? I've been through all the hardness of seagoing, and I'm tired of it. What is a man, after all, if he sticks to it? He gets to be a skipper of some blamed hooker that'll make him a couple of thousand a year when he is too old to enjoy spending it. Then he loses her, maybe, and then where is he? A fit subject, for the sailors' home. No, I'm going to marry that woman and get a berth ashore. You watch me."

Of course, I encouraged him all I thought necessary. I even grinned at times when I thought of the picture he would make as a husband of a woman like Miss Aline MacDonald--after he had been on the beach for a year or two.

And so we ran our westing down, and drew near the one hundred and sixtieth meridian to the northward of the Marshall Islands. Here the trade failed us for a wonder, and began to get fitful and squally. At times it would come with a rush, and then die away altogether, the squalls being accompanied by rain. A mighty swell began to heave in from the southeast diagonally across the trade swell, and it lumped up some, heaving the schooner over and rolling her down to her bearings when the wind failed to hold her.

The glass fell, and the air became sultry, the sun glowing like a ball of red copper in the hazy atmosphere. The squall clouds grew heavier, and when the sun shone between them it sent long rays, fan-shaped, through the mist.

The old man came on deck, and viewed the sea with a critical eye. It was nearly eight bells, and Slade was on watch. I came out and watched them take the sun for meridian altitude--both of them sometimes did this together--and when the bells struck off, Slade came down from the poop, and joined me on the main deck.

"What'd you make of the weather, old man?" he asked.

"Looks dirty to me; glass falling and the hot squalls coming from that quarter--whew! Look at it!"

As I spoke a huge roller swept under the schooner, lifting her skyward, and then dropping her slowly down the side. It was an enormous sea--a hill of water full forty feet high--and it rolled like a living mountain, a mighty mass that made nothing of the trade swell, and told of some tremendous power behind it.

The sea ran swiftly, with a quick, live feeling. As sure as death there was awful wind somewhere in that peaceful ocean, driving with immense force and resistless power.

Slade looked askance at the topsails. As he gazed the old man sang out from aft:

"Clew up the topsails and roll them up snug. Put extra gaskets on them!"

Then came the main and mizzen along with the outer jibs, and by the time the watch had their dinner we were close reefing the mizzen and taking the bonnet out of the foresail.

Miss Aline was on deck, as the sudden motion was so extraordinary that to remain below meant to be seasick. Her aunt came up from a hasty meal, and clung to the poop rail and watched us work.

"Oh, those gallant men!" she murmured to her niece. "See how they climb like monkeys upon that awful sail. Romantic heroes! Yes, Aline, they are wonderful, and the way that officer talks to them is a revelation. Just hear him."

I was at that moment holding forth to a couple of squareheads upon the evident virtues of passing reef points properly, and I may have slipped my etiquette a bit, for my language was such that I was almost persuaded to follow it with action. But I had heard enough. I stopped. The men went on lazily, growling at the work.

"Reefing a ship in a dead calm," grumbled one, "ten minutes for the eats, and then we'll loose these here p'ints out ag'in, and take the sail to the winch."

I was too angry to hear more. Here was an old lady putting me queer with men who ought to know better than talk when they were expected to hurry. At least they should not criticize their officers.

"Get along, you Scandaluvian sons of Haman! Get those points in lively, or the squall'll break before you know it--an' I'll be the rain, thunder, and lightning!" I roared.

I refused to look at the two passengers, and went to the forward end of the poop, and looked down at the Chinks, who were seated in the waterways eating their rice and long-lick--molasses. Just what to do with these fellows seemed to me a problem. We could hardly lock them in now, and if trouble came along quickly they would be in it, right in the middle.

The old man came from below, and gazed solemnly across the misty sea, and I went to him.

"How about it?" he asked. "Hadn't we better house them Chinks now, before it's too late? They'll die of suffocation in those alleyways with the ports shut fast--I suppose you shut the ports in, didn't you?" he said.

"Sure. Everything is snugged in below. Komuri saw to it. He knows how to talk to the Mongolians--tell them they must keep the ports shut. But I don't like leaving them on deck, even if it is hot enough to roast potatoes on the deck planks. How's the glass, sir?"

"Bottom dropped out of it somehow; mercury concave and 'way down. There's some unusual disturbance knocking about this sea. There's trouble ahead--typhoon season, you know. Nothing but wind moves that awful swell. Look at that!"

A hill of water rolled majestically onward, catching us under the counter, and sending us along its great, smooth crest, then dropping us again as we had hardly steering way under the short canvas.

"I'd like to know which way it's coming--lay our course to drift out of it, or run, but who knows--who knows before it strikes? I wish you would see to the gear forward. I don't want things to get loose. And take charge. No, sir; don't let anything out of the way happen while you're on deck."

I saw the old man was getting nervous. The low pressure and the sultriness were telling on him. He knew what was coming well enough, and fretted under it. It was hard waiting, even for an old seaman like himself. Slade came on deck, and puffed carelessly at his pipe, gazing about, and then going aft to chat with the ladies. He was always ready to cheer them up. Nothing would happen--positively nothing. There was no use of their getting nervous at the heavy swell. It had often happened before--a heavy swell and no wind, 'way out here in the middle of the Pacific. No telling where the storm might be, but, of course it wouldn't be near us--oh, no.

Oleson came aft to me.

"Shall I lock in the Chinks?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered. "Lock 'em up, put a padlock on both doors, and see that they don't get loose again until this is over."

Oleson went to Komuri. The Jap listened to him, and then repeated the order, passing the word like a seaman should, without comment. The Chinks followed him into their quarters in the alleyways, and Oleson locked the doors on the outside, putting extra padlocks on them. The alleyways were upon the main deck, and shut off from the lazaret by a bulkhead.

"If honorable mate will let me open those ports inside, Chinese men will be able to breathe better--air very hot in there," said Komuri.

"All right, king; go ahead. And if she lists over and drowns them like rats in a trap you'll be the man to loose them--see?" I warned him.

"I'll take care them, me," said Komuri. "If honorable ship, she turns over, me, Komuri, will see to ports. Very hot inside there."

I turned away and watched the horizon. The haze was thickening, and the squalls were beginning to come with more force than before. A sudden spurt of wind sang hoarsely in the rigging, and a drift of spray flew upward.

The men were still at work making things snug when I heard a murmuring, a moaning, vast, filling the air, then dying away again. It was all about us, seemingly upon all sides. Then again I heard a harplike note of great volume. The horizon disappeared in the southeast, and the blue-steel bank of vapor shut off the sunlight. It grew dark and gloomy.

"She's coming along all right in a few minutes," said Slade, who came near to me and passed on to his room. He came on deck in a couple of minutes, with an oilskin coat buttoned fast about him, and he sweltered in its heat. I still stood at the weather rigging.

"Go get your rain clothes on," he said, coming to relieve me.

"Nix! Let her go as it is--better wet with salt water than sweat," I replied.

The skipper came forward. He suggested that the two passengers go below, and Jack, the steward, with Komuri to assist him, managed to get them below without protest, although it was something like ninety-six or seven in that saloon.

A white streak spread upon the sea. The squall struck, snoring away with a vigor that told of more coming. The spumedrift flew over us. Then another, and another furious blast of wind bore down upon the schooner, and she lay slowly over until her rail was submerged.

In five minutes the hurricane was roaring over us, and the _Tanner_ lay upon her beam ends while we struggled with the mizzen, and held the wheel hard up to throw her off, the weight of the wind holding her down with a giant hand.

Yelling and struggling, all hands now tried to get that mizzen in. It was a waste of time. I saw the skipper clinging to the boom and using his knife upon the canvas, and did likewise. With a thundering roar the sail split, torn to ribbons. We could not make ourselves heard in the chaos of sound, but waved frantically our orders and helped as only good seamen can.

But the _Tanner_ refused to go off. She lay flat out with her cross-trees in the lift of the sea, and she hung there. The forestaysail burst with a crack that we heard aft, and vanished as if it had been snow in a jet of steam. The bonneted foresail held with the wind roaring over the top of it, spilling away, but still keeping full enough to keep from slatting and bursting. It was the heaviest canvas and brand new, and all the time squall after squall bore upon the straining ship, roaring, screaming with the blast of a gun as the puffs came and went.

That wind was like a wall of something solid. To move in it was enough to tax the strength. It pressed one against what was to leeward--pressed him, held him and bore upon him like a weight of something solid. To let go meant to run the risk of being blown bodily away into the sea.

We clung along the weather rail, and hung on with both hands, watching the white smother fore and aft, but unable to look to windward for an instant against the blast. The outfly and uproar was so tremendous that all sounds were lost in it. I found myself near Slade and the old man, all three clinging to the rail, and gasping for breath. The skipper's gray head shone bare in the blast, and the white foam flecked it, and dripped from his beard, his ruddy cheeks glowing red in contrast. His teeth were set, and he was just holding on.

For a long time we three hung there, and did nothing but try to survive the fury of that hurricane. The forward part of the schooner was blotted out, and I just remember that to leeward, where I could look, the surge boiled and foamed clear up to the hatch coamings.

I thought of the women below, and knew they were safe for the time being. Then I remembered the starboard alleyway, and the ports that Komuri had left open to give the Chinks air. The alleyway was now completely submerged; the ports far below the surface of the sea, the Chinamen were caught there like rats in a trap.

The narrow space must even now be filling up, and I thought of the poor coolies struggling against that door the carpenter had so securely locked and fastened upon them. They could never break it open, for upon it we had placed our safety against another uprising, and the double, two-inch planks bolted crossways would stand more than the weight of the crowd that would be able to surge against it. The alleyway could fill entirely without any water getting below.

I grabbed Slade by the arm, and pointed at the lower deck.

"The Chinks--below--can't get out!" I roared against the hurricane.

Slade grinned a sickly grin and nodded. Then he ducked his head against the wind and bellowed back:

"Can't help it--can't go there--sure death!"

I fancied I could hear the outcries of the imprisoned men, but the deep, bass undertone of the hurricane roared away overhead and swept away the impression.

It was sickening to think of it. Fully twenty men were in that alleyway, and the four eight-inch ports were letting in four streams of sea water, for the Chinamen would not know enough to jam them full of clothes or anything they could get hold of, being little better than animals in point of intelligence.

If the schooner would only pay off she would right herself and let the openings come above the sea level; but she hung there dead, beaten down by a blast so terrific that it seemed like a solid wall of something heavy tearing upon her and crushing her life out. It took the breath away, and I found myself gasping, trying to get air to breathe, sucking in the flying drift and spray, and choking, holding one hand over my nose and mouth to keep from actually drowning in the smother.

It seemed as if we had already been hove down a full hour, and I was tiring. The schooner held doggedly broadside in the trough of the sea, which was now appalling in height, and was breaking solidly over her high rail and upturned side. We could not last much longer in the dangerous position, and I began to believe we were lost. Our hatches were closed, and no water could get below unless something gave way, but it was certain something would go before long under that strain.

I looked hopelessly at the man at the wheel, who had passed a lashing upon his waist, and was straddling the shaft, clinging to the spokes with desperation. I wondered if he still held the wheel hard up, but knew that in her present knocked-down state it would make little difference, for she would not steer without some headsail to swing her out and off that mighty sea.

I crawled along the rail, fighting my way hand over hand, passing the skipper and gaining the edge of the poop. I yelled to Douglas, who was the man straddling the wheel shaft, but he only shook his head and ducked from the squalls.

While I bawled for him to tell me what helm she carried, I was aware of a figure crawling from the companionway to the after cabin. It came creeping up just under me, up the almost perpendicular deck, and it looked like a big monkey until it came right into me, and then I recognized Komuri, our little steward.

Komuri was yellow, a pasty yellow, and his wrinkled face looked old and haggard. He was only partly dressed, and he clawed the rail frantically for a hand hold. He looked the worst-scared Jap I had ever seen or dreamed of. He climbed close to me.

"Men locked in--all die--ports open," he screeched in my ear.

"I know--can't help it--door under water--no tools," I yelled in reply, and he howled something that ended in a screech that was unintelligible, for over it all sounded that deep, bass roar, thundering, booming, vibrating into chaos all sounds.

I watched him, and he climbed past me, making his way forward with amazing speed, considering he was crawling along a wall which had been the deck. He made the break of the poop, and disappeared, going in the direction of the forward house, although how he ever expected to get there was beyond reason.

Something made me follow him, and soon Slade and myself were at the edge of the poop, and gazing down at the partly submerged door of the starboard alleyway. While we looked, Komuri came climbing along the rail of the ship, disappearing now and then under the solid water that swept her, but, to our amazement, still keeping hold of the pins, and gaining slowly toward us.

In one hand he held Oleson's ax, and he was coming toward us, coming to do a piece of work we had already given up as impossible.

No word was spoken as Komuri struggled up to where we clung and gasped for breath, half drowned in the rush of water.

I passed the end of a line about him after a fashion, and he dropped off to starboard down the steep slant, and instantly went under as a huge sea fell over the schooner.

We held the line. Then we saw him again, and he was hacking away at the door, chopping at the lock and staple while he swung scrambling with his feet against the planks. Slade thoughtfully dropped down other lines, and made them fast.

I could see little of what was going on. The seas were breaking over us now with tremendous volume, and it seemed only a question of a few minutes before the schooner must go down, anyhow, for she couldn't lie on her beam ends very long without something giving way.

The work of getting at those Chinks appeared to me now a useless labor. We would all be where there was no caste, no coolies, in a short time. And yet such is the habit of a seaman, he works on against certain failure at times, when ordinary folk would accept the verdict and quit.

I held Komuri until my arms were nearly paralyzed, and I was fainting with exertion and lack of air. The first thing I knew of what he had done was when a Chink came climbing monkey fashion up one of the lines, followed by another and another, their yellow faces pasty and drawn, and their pigtails streaming after them. They clung along the weather side, and lashed themselves fast to whatever they could find. I saw the dark figures of a couple fade away in the smother to leeward, and knew they had gone to where all Chinks go sooner or later, but the rest came up and clung for life there in the strident breath of the typhoon, and the booming roar drowned out even their shrieks and yelps.

I tried to haul Komuri up again, but could not. I howled for Slade to help me, but he was separated by a row of Chinks, and couldn't reach me. I hammered the nearest Chinaman over the head in frantic desperation to make him haul line and save the little Jap, but the fellow only ducked the blows, which were too weak to hurt much.

Komuri, exhausted, could not climb back. He could no longer help himself; and he was trusting to me to get him up from the white smother beneath that was drowning him. The madness of my weakness came over me. I had been a bucko mate with ready hand, and could take them by and large as they came from the dock to the forecastle, but here I was weakening, holding to a line at the end of which was the bravest little man I had even seen, the gamest little fighter--Komuri, son of Samurai, the fighting class of the Japanese.

And Komuri was going to his death because I couldn't help him. On and on I struggled with the line, bellowing curses, but I could get little or no line over the pin, and I was growing surely weaker and weaker.

Then I stopped, and tried to see if there was any chance to help, any chance to save the little hero. I saw Komuri dangling in the foam, his face upturned to me, and a smile upon his yellow, wrinkled visage. He waved feebly to me, and I knew he was signaling for me to haul him up--and was wondering why I didn't.

"Oh, my God, you poor little devil!" I howled. "It's too bad--too bad!"

A gigantic sea crashed over the schooner, a mountain of water. I passed the line about my waist, and snatched a turn to keep from being washed away. That was the last I remembered for some time.

When I regained my senses I was lying on the deck, and Slade was dragging me by the arm toward the cabin doors. The roar of the hurricane still boomed over us--the wild rush of the sea--but it came from aft now, and I knew they had at last got her off the wind, and were running her either to hell or safety.

Ten minutes later I was struggling up the companionway again to the deck, where the old man was now conning her, and watching her run seventeen knots an hour before a series of hurricane squalls that simply lifted her almost bodily out of the sea.

I saw we had passed the center of the cyclone, for we had the wind almost directly opposite from where it was when we lay knocked down. I got to the shelter of the mizzen, and from there watched the men at the wheel hold her as she ran. Some one had loosed a bit of canvas forward, but it had blown away, and the ribbon streamers stretched and cracked until they vanished in the blast.

"How'd you do it?" I yelled to Slade, who clung in the lee.

"Squalls let up sudden--hit the center--she righted, and then ran off when we hit the other side of it!" howled the mate.

"Where's Komuri?" I howled.

"Don't know--must have gone to leeward. Some Chinks gone, too--you came near going."

That was all I could get from Slade. But I knew all that was necessary. Komuri had gone to the port of missing ships. He had died as a Samurai should, facing his end fearlessly, fighting to the last for others in the hope to save them, the ones he had tried to help by giving them air and leaving their ports open when they should have been closed. He had known his responsibility, and had done what we had failed to do.

There were three Chinamen missing, but our own men were safe. They had got under the side of the engine house, where they were protected from both the sea and wind. They clung there until the vessel righted, and then turned to with a will to save the ship.

We ran the _Tanner_ all that day and the following night, keeping her before a mighty sea that almost overran us. She steered well once she got off before it, and after we got canvas on her forward she was safe enough. It had been a close squeak for all hands, and we breathed easier as she ran out of the disturbance and came again upon her course. A week later we ran her in behind the reef of Guam, and came to anchor off the town of Agaña, where we were to discharge part of our cargo and the Chinese.

In behind the barrier we ran her without further incident, and as the wind fell we rolled up the canvas and let her drift into fifteen fathoms before letting go the hook.

The ladies came on deck for the first time since the typhoon, and gazed happily at the beautiful island crowned with green, tropical foliage--a welcome relief to the eye that had seen only the blue water for so long. They were to leave us here, and we were to go on to Manila, coming later to take them back upon the return voyage. It would give them three months on Guam.

"Where is our little Jap, Kamuri--we haven't seen him for a week?" asked Miss Aline. "He was nice about getting our things together--we really must have him help us ashore."

"Hasn't Slade told you?" I said.

"No. What do you mean?" she asked in surprise.

"Komuri is dead--lost in the typhoon--he saved the Chinks," I answered.

Both women gasped their surprise.

"I am so sorry!" exclaimed the younger.

"And he was so good," said her aunt. "I wondered why Mr. Slade hadn't spoken of him before. I suppose it's because Mr. Slade feels that he is now to be your guardian and must protect you from all ill news--oh, I forgot--you hadn't heard. Yes, Mr. Slade is the man. He saved Aline's life, you know, and they are to be married after we get back. Strange he didn't tell you."

I thought so, too. Slade was a sly dog--and he had used my collars, also, in his wooing. I was--well, I was ready to congratulate any man who could make up his mind to marry.

But I turned away so abruptly that I thought I had to apologize to Slade afterward, to keep from getting in a row with him. But Slade understood, and squeezed my hand.

"There's some of that port left over below," he said, and he led the way down.

He filled two glasses to the brim, handing me one.

"To your health--and that of Miss Aline," I said stiffly, feeling that there was something to say, or do.

"No," said Slade slowly, thoughtfully, "to the best man."

"Sure--to me, the best man at the wedding?" I said, in feigned surprise.

"Oh, no," corrected the mate. "Not at all--although you are not so bad, old chap." He raised his eyes and looked straight into mine. "We drink to the best man in the ship--who was in the ship--to Komuri."

And we drained our glasses.

AT THE END OF THE DRAG-ROPE

There were five men all told in the fishing schooner _Flying Star_. I had known them all well, and had been shipmate with four of them. Captain Johnny Sparks was a Dutchman, a "squarehead," but a good seaman, and he had fished on the Hatteras Banks during three bluefish seasons. His vessel was a Provincetown specimen--what used to be termed the "Gloucester fisherman" type, before the decadence of that port in the industry which once made it famous had ended its shipbuilding.

She was a small vessel, much smaller than the modern Provincetown fisherman, which has a short foremast, a mainmast planted almost amidships, and sweeping canoe bows with overhang. No, she was of the old type--two sticks stuck upright in her at almost equal distances, marking her into three almost equal parts; a main-topmast sprung well forward and stayed well aft to steady the "whip" of long and continuous plunging into a lifting head sea. She was "chunky" in model, bows rather bluff, almost like a coaster, and her stern was of the old-time sawed-off pattern, sunk low in the water, an ugly stern for running in a heavy sea when the lift is quick and fast.

She was not worth over two thousand dollars, but Captain Johnny owned half of her, and he had no criticisms to make of her behavior in heavy weather. With a long, straight keel and full under-body, she was an excellent sea craft, provided she was properly handled.

I was mate of the passenger ship _Prince Alfred_ with Bill Boldwin, running from New York to the West Indies, and as we ran on schedule we often fell in with the Hatteras fishermen twice during a voyage.

Johnny was fishing three miles north of the Diamond Shoal Lightship as we passed him on our voyage out. He stood upon his quarterdeck and waved to me. I was on the bridge, and bawled out I would have some fruit for him on the return trip. He nodded and waved his hand in appreciation, and his cook poked his head out of the galley and grinned. His boats were scattered along the shoal, all hauling up bluefish as fast as they could.

Four other vessels from New York were on the grounds, but I recognized none of them. Our passengers gazed at the small boats tossing as only light-built dories can toss in a lively sea; and they commented on the fishing.

As a rule, the average landsman thinks all fishing is done on the Grand or George's Banks. They get the idea from writers who know these waters well, and it never enters their heads that the northern banks are but a very small part of the great Atlantic fishing grounds, where the professional fisherman must toil to wrest his living from the salt sea.

It was due to a Gloucester Yankee, though, that the great fishing of Campeche Bank became known. Hove-to in a vicious norther a few score miles off Galveston, the "cod-hauler" was driven gradually off shore until he was far away from the land. Suddenly from a fathomless gulf--he had had the perseverance to keep his lead going at intervals--he fetched the ground in thirty fathoms, and gradually shoaled his water.

With a hook just above the lead, he soon began to haul up snappers, and he came running into port a few days later with his schooner loaded to her bearings with as prime fish as ever came out of the sea.

Captain Johnny had fished there a year, but owing to the slowness of the _Flying Star_ he had given it up until the steam patrol boat had been put on to make the rounds and buy the fish on the grounds. It was Johnny who had gone into Sabine once for water when Dick Hollister was marshal.

Hollister was a saturnine chap, who wore a heavy Colt with seven notches in the handle, each notch meant for some beggar he had been forced to perforate in the course of his strenuous career. He was accounted one of the most fearless and able marshals in Texas. One morning he visited the _Flying Star_, apparently looking for a man he wanted for a certain episode in horses. He swaggered about the decks with his Colt in full view, and caused so much interest that he impeded the work.

Johnny spoke softly to him--he always had a soft way of speaking--and told him he must get ashore. The marshal turned and gazed at the little "squarehead" in disdain; but Captain Johnny, who was sitting on his hatch-combing, looked up with gentle gray eyes and pointed to the jetty.

"You get avay--get oudt wid you, my friend. I don't got no time fer wastin' wid circus-actor mens wid funny fringes and artillery dragging mid dere waist belts--git!"

And as the marshal didn't move, Johnny shied a coiled line at him, hitting him somewhat violently in the body.

Instantly Hollister drew his Colt.

"You blamed little shrimp! if you do that again I'll plug you," he said quietly, wiping the fish scales and salt water from his clothes. "Don't make any mistake; I'm not your friend."

Captain Johnny was especially blue and sad that morning, so he gazed at the marshal, while his hand reached for a heavy sinker.

"If you ain't my friend, fire away not; if you are mine friend, you shoot me, for I'm tired enough wid dis business, an' I don't vant do be livin' always, forever, yet. Shoot, mein dear friend, shoot--or if not mine friend, den take dis!"

And he tossed the pound lead with such precision that it stretched Hollister flat upon the deck before he could take good aim to do more than rip the collar off Johnny's coat with his fire. When he came to, Johnny was bathing his head where the sinker had cut him, and pouring good whisky down his throat.

"You are mine friend--but a poor shot--take another drink with me, and den go. Here's your blunderbust--you interrupts de vork on de deck--git oudt!"

And yet there was a lot of energy in that sturdy form standing there upon the deck of his undermanned schooner waving his acknowledgments to me upon the bridge of the liner. Yes, Captain Johnny Sparks was a good seaman. May the deep ocean hold him gently in its eternal embrace, for he loved it--loved it as only a true seaman does!

We made the run south, and were coming up with a full complement of passengers from Jamaica, when we began to notice a definite change in the weather. It was the hurricane season, September, and the heat was oppressive. The passengers lay about the decks in chairs all day and half the night, getting what air the ship made with her rush of fifteen knots an hour through the quiet sea. We ran along through the Passage, leaving Cape Maysi out of sight before dark, and rapidly hauling up under the lee of the Great Inagua Bank. Here in the smooth sea night fell upon the ocean, and I went on the bridge for the first watch.

As I came into the pilot house to sign the order-book for my course, Captain Boldwin called my attention to the glass. It had fallen rapidly during the last few hours, and was now dangerously low.

"Keep a good lookout," he said, "and call me at the first signs of a change." I signed the order-book, and he went below.

How many times has an officer signed that order-book before even going on the bridge? And how many times has the said officer made an entirely different course from that signed for? But then steamship companies do not supply ships and coal for their officers to study navigation. It would not look well on paper. Every officer of a passenger ship is a licensed master, a captain; and no first-class company will ship any other kind of man to go on the bridge to take charge for the watch of four hours, for during that time the ship is absolutely under his command, and it is necessary that he shall be a skilled navigator, capable of taking the ship along just as safely should accident befall her commander. For this responsibility he receives from seventy-five to a hundred dollars per month; and half of the passengers whose lives he holds in the hollow of his hand for half the night look upon him as little better than a ship's cook!

We appeared to follow the low barometer, or it to follow us, for when daylight came we were still running smoothly across the Atlantic with nothing but an oppressive heat and mugginess to warn the landsman of the low pressure.

"There's something coming along behind us; something there astern that will probably make things howl," said Boldwin, as he came on deck in the morning.

The sun was brassy in a coppery haze, but it was clear enough to get a good sight for longitude. I called off three good sights, took the note, and went below to work the longitude before breakfast. On ships running across the Gulf or Florida Stream from the southward, bound for New York or some port south of it, there is every necessity for getting the westing accurate. We always found that, running diagonally across for the Diamond Shoal Light vessel, we were set about twelve miles to the northeast while running at from twelve to fifteen knots. This was almost a regular fixed factor, but in heavy weather it was not always safe to run full speed inside of it.

To make to the eastward of the lightship was well enough, but to fetch to the westward was the one thing that has always made Boldwin nervous, and rightly so. If he missed it going to the eastward, he would pick up some other landfall to the northward, if he was too far off; but if he missed it going to the westward in a driving gale, when it was too thick to see half a mile--well, we had never done so yet, and had no reason to pray for the experience.

We were a fast liner, full of fruit and passengers, and we could not stop for anything on the run up. With fifty thousand bunches of bananas below, we must drive the ship to her destination as fast as she could go, and neither hurricane nor calm must stop her. The company seldom kept a seaman long who brought in fifty thousand bunches of ruined fruit, some of it twelve hands, and most of it more than eight, selling at retail at nearly a dollar a bunch.

Two years before, Boldwin, after being hove-to for thirty-six hours in a gale, had brought in his ship laden with fruit he had taken under protest, the "yellow" being plainly in sight at the ends of more than half the bunches. He had docked, and a score of men had waded about for several days up to their hips in a mess which, once seen, causes all lovers of bananas to eschew that fruit forever afterward. Banana juice will cut the steel plates of a ship's side almost like diluted sulphuric acid--but they gave him another chance.

It was late in the afternoon of the day we had run clear of the land, when the first signs of the hurricane of September 19, 1903, made its appearance. The swell began to roll heavily from the southeast with a curious cross-roll from the westward, making a peculiarly uncomfortable sea for a steamer running northward. It dropped away from under our counter, and the _Prince Alfred_ dipped her taffrail almost to the unruffled surface. Then she would rise upon it, and, as it lifted well under her underbody, she would roll to port and throw her stern so high that the starboard screw would race in a storm of foam at the surface, shaking her tremendously, and annoying the passengers who happened to occupy after-staterooms.

When the second officer, Smith, came on duty, I made my way aft to take a look over things--to see that the small boats were securely lashed; that gratings and gear were in place, for it was evident that we were to have a piece of dirty weather. A large, fat, pale-faced woman poked her head out of window and demanded that I have the starboard engine stopped at once, as it was too racking on her nerves. She declared she had stood it as long as she could, and would lodge a complaint with the president of the company immediately she got ashore, if her demand were not complied with instantly. I started to argue the case, but she cut me short, exclaiming that "they never did such things on the French boats."

All the gear was in order aft, and I had just made my way to the bridge, when the Captain called my attention to a haze gathering to the southward.

"The glass is starting down again--dropped two more tenths," he said. "We'll run foul of something before eight bells. Looks like it was following the Stream along to the northward; it usually does."

A heavy, blue-black bank of cloud, smooth, and swept into an immense semicircle over the southern horizon, but rising fast, told of the beginning of trouble. Half an hour later we began to feel the squalls, which came suddenly and with vicious spurts of fine rain.

"According to old Captain Valdes," said Boldwin, "if you place your back to the wind, the center of the blow is to the left, or port side, and a bit behind you. This breeze is coming in from the east'ard good and quick, and it looks like we'll fetch the center straight and fair the way we're heading."

"Would you stop her and heave her up?" I asked.

"Stop her? Not as long as she'll swim. What do you think we are--a sand-barge? Stop a liner running on schedule with a fortune of bananas lying below? Get those ventilators trimmed, and put three covers on the after hatch and lash them fast. We'll run her. Who do you think would take this packet out the next voyage if he hove her to?"

As it was only too evident that it would be my chance, I said nothing.

The light grew dim as the gray pall of the storm quickly overspread the sky. The dull gray light made the sea appear queer and dark, with the great heave now running quickly, as though a mighty power were working close behind it. The tops of the breaking combers had a peculiar lift to them as they met the cross-swell, and the racing of the starboard engine became more and more violent. A terrific squall bore upon the ship, seemed to almost lift her bodily before it. The roar of the wind whirling through the heavy standing rigging told of its velocity, and then we waded right into the thick of it, with the _Prince Alfred_ lurching along eighteen knots an hour over a sea which was torn into a white and gray world that ended, so far as our vision was concerned, a few fathoms from the ship's side.

Boldwin was standing on the bridge, holding to the rail, and leaning to the blasts as though it took his whole weight to bear up against them. I came close to him.

"Get every one ... below! Lock in ... passengers!" I caught his words with my ear ten inches from his mouth. "Cover ... hatches ... all fast."

I knew what he meant. When the _Prince Alfred_ closed down her cargo there was something unusual happening. Making my way down the bridge steps, I got the men of the watch together. It was tough work, for the sea was now ugly, and we were running our weather-rail down at each roll, and scooping up plenty of water which she sent across her decks to leeward. To stand up without holding on meant to be blown bodily against the lee rail at the risk of going over.

It was an hour before I got back to the bridge, and when I did so, the squalls were becoming more frequent, and more and more violent, but there was no shift yet. It soon grew dark--a black dark--and we tore along into the blackness, unable to see two fathoms ahead. As yet we were outside the Stream, and consequently not in the usual line of the coasters, which are the dread of the liner's officers, for nothing is so uncomfortable as the sudden raising of the dim and sometimes half-extinguished lights of a schooner on a thick night while tearing along before a gale. Having the right of way, the sailing vessel has nothing to do but keep her course, while the steamship, with but a few seconds to spare, swings quickly to pass, sometimes missing a catastrophe by a few feet. A poor red light on such a night cannot be seen twenty fathoms.

Before midnight the shift began. It came from the southward--a bad sign, for it told plainly that we were nearing the center of the disturbance; and as we were heading diagonally across the path of the storm, we were almost certain to bring up in its dread vortex. As chief officer, it would have been a bit out of place for me to suggest the thing the ordinary seaman would do--that is, heave to and work out of it. Boldwin stood on his bridge and kept her going.

And yet it had to come. Before daylight the sea was terrific--the squalls coming with furious rushes, shifting, and hurling a frightful sea. A huge, lifting hill of water broke high above the taffrail, and roared a full fathom deep over the quarter-deck. The crash shook the steamer through her whole frame. It was as though she had struck a solid rock. The white glint of the foam showed through the blackness, but the dull, thunderous roar drowned all other sounds.

Boldwin went to the speaking tube in the pilot house, called to the chief engineer to stand by to heave her to and watch the engines as she came into the trough.

"We'll have to stop her," he said; and I nodded assent.

In the pilot house the clanking of the steam steering gear sounded dully in the deep, sonorous undertone of the gale outside.

Boldwin waited but a moment, and then gave the order:

"Hard over, sir!" cried the quartermaster; and the rattling clank of the engine sounded the signal for me to take advantage of the opportunity to get outside by the lee door.

If it had been blowing before while we were running, it was now a blast.

The _Prince Alfred_ laid down her whole five hundred feet of steel side into that sea, and the crash of the mighty hill that swept her shook her as though she had been struck amidships by the ram of a battleship. The forward funnel guys parted, and I had a momentary glimpse of a great pillar of iron going over the side to leeward. Then she began to head the sea, and no human could face the storm of flying water which swept the bridge.

With heads down, gasping for breath, Boldwin and myself gripped the bridge rail. The flying atmosphere tore past us. We dared not loose our grasp for an instant, and to get back to the shelter of the pilot house was impossible without following the iron rail aft.

After a thunderous rush of quick and vicious squalls, there was a sudden lull. A giant comber showed ahead, and its white and foaming crest lifted clear into the night. She buried her whole forward deck, and, as the water cleared, we could see about us. The dull snore of a giant sea sounded close aboard. It was uncanny, this sudden stillness, full of a palpitating murmur and pregnant with an ominous power.

"Right in it!" gasped Boldwin. "How does she head now?"

"Southeast by south," I answered. "The next squall will probably come from the northwest."

"Well, I guess we'll swing her while it's still--Lord, what an awful sea!"

The _Prince Alfred_ came slowly around with her engines turning at half speed. The high, leaping hills of water seemed to come from all directions at once. They fell upon her decks and shook her up a bit, but did no damage. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. A distant murmuring sounded over the torn sea.

"Which way?" asked Boldwin nervously.

A puff of cool air blew straight in our faces; we had not noted how sultry it was, for we were soaking wet and exhausted. The puff blew to a breeze. Then came a spurt of rain and a faint flash of lightning. In a minute we were facing furious squalls, and the _Prince Alfred_, with a full head of steam, had all she could do to keep steering way with her nose pointed straight into the blast from nor'-nor'-west.

It was in the gray of the early morning, while Boldwin and I were still on the bridge, and the second and third officers were in charge of the saloons quelling the panic, that we sighted something dead ahead. The squalls were still whirling over us with longer intervals between, but with still undiminished vigor. The great sea began to show in front now through the dim light, and it was all the full-powered liner could do to hold her own head to it. To swerve to either side meant falling off into the dangerous trough, with the hazard of not being able to regain her course. Even as it was, we had to more than once slow the port or starboard engine to enable her to point her nose straight into the hurricane.

Upon the crest of a giant hill of water something showed black. It was a momentary glimpse, but Boldwin and I saw it instantly. It was close aboard and, as we yelled to each other and strained our eyes ahead, we made out the thin line of a mast. Boldwin dropped on his hands and knees and was blown to the pilot-house door. I waved my hand to ease her to starboard a little. Just then a sea struck us heavily upon the starboard bow, and held her with its rush. The next moment the shape ahead was high upon the crest of a mighty sea, and I recognized the stern of a vessel outlined against the gray pall.

I looked over the side. The foam was lying dead with us, showing we were not going ahead more than a knot or two. Boldwin saw it also, and knew that to slew his ship now would mean to get struck a blow in the side which in that sea would probably prove fatal. He thought of his passengers. They must be considered first. Whatever was ahead was going to hit us, and it was due to those we had aboard that it must strike us as fairly upon the stem as we could land it. God help them, we must save our own!

We plunged headlong into the trough, and right above us upon the following crest rose the stern of that sailing vessel. She was plainly in view now; so close that I recognized the sawed-off shape of an old-time fishing schooner. Upon her main a bit of rag like a trysail showed white. She was heading the sea at the end of her sea anchor, a long drag-rope, and as her deck showed, I saw she had been badly swept.

There was no one in sight. She was going astern fast, much faster than we thought, for even while Boldwin tried to edge to starboard, and did all he could to swing his ship without getting his head thrown off with the sea, the stern sank just ahead of us in the hollow of a sea, and our stem rose above. I leaned forward and held my breath. The _Prince Alfred_ fell headlong into the hollow, and just as we struck I read the name _Flying Star_ painted large and white right across the transom.

A dull grinding thud, which shook the _Prince Alfred_ but slightly, was all that came to us. A sea swung the wreck to port, and as she heeled and settled, I saw Johnny Sparks spring from the companionway, followed by several men. The next instant a great comber roared over them and the schooner disappeared, leaving nothing above the foam to show where she had floated a moment before. Something caught in my throat. I shut my eyes, and held my head down for I don't know how long.

We came into port four days later with Boldwin on the bridge, his face lined and haggard. Below, thirty thousand dollars' worth of bananas slushed about in a ghastly mess, in spite of the pens and shorings. But the passengers were happy. Women in gay dresses came on deck and smiled and chatted, and children romped and played. The captain did not look at me--he had not since the collision--but he spoke to me for the first time.

"See that everything is shipshape when we dock," said he, "and then meet me at the company's office at four o'clock. I'll probably not take her out next voyage--take a lay-off for a while--understand?"

PIRATES TWAIN

At last I was back in the regular liners of the Prince ships. My work on the _Heraldine_ had been appreciated by Lord Hawkes, the manager, and his lordship was no piker.

He refused Boldwin my company when that worthy but thirsty skipper asked to have me back in the old _Prince Alfred_, where a certain lady whom I admired greatly was stewardess.

The new _Prince George_, twenty-five thousand tons and a twenty-two-knot vessel, was wanting a first officer, and old man Hall was somewhat disposed to give me "a chance," as the saying is at sea when an officer applies for a berth.

"You may report to the captain to-morrow at the dock," said his lordship, and our interview was at an end. Boldwin looked sour, for I had been a good mate to him, and he wanted me badly, but the manager's word was law.

I found the giant liner all that modern improvements could make her. From her six-hundred-foot keel to her four immense funnel tops, she was a beauty.

It would take a week to describe her many qualities, and I must admit it gave me a feeling of responsibility when I stepped upon her flying bridge and looked her over.

There I would be in command every four hours, and when I gazed over her immense length and breadth it seemed indeed that I must be a person of some small ability to hold the job.

No flippant remarks here, no joking about the passengers or the company. It was silence and dignity.

How I stood it at first is more of a wonder to me, when I look back at the time, than the actual work, for really a ship's officer is not considered a mighty position, even though he does hold the lives of a couple of thousand folks in his keeping during his watch on deck.

But I was not too old, and had ambition, for some day I wanted to have a little farm of my own and raise chickens and hogs--the true ambition of every seaman I ever met--and I wanted to ask a certain lady to run the said farm for me, or rather do the cooking, which is probably the same thing.

Our crew was shipped by the agents. Old man Hall had nothing whatever to do but act as overseer of the navigators, which same were myself and a second officer named MacFarland.

Mac was a good seaman, although he had never been in sail, but had risen from the apprentice school of officers established by the company to train men for its ships--and they were of course all steam.

I must admit he knew more of express ships than I, but I had ten years more sea duty done, and I was something of a windjammer in my time. This gave me the rating with the older men who had served the same way in the old sailing vessels.

We knew each other, and could depend always upon certain things in each other that no school could develop the same way. I sat at the head of the chief officers' table, and I bought a book of table etiquette to get the lay of the whack just right.

It taught me many things I hadn't learned in a ship's forecastle, and soon I was able to speak to the prosperous-looking passengers without feeling that my tongue was in the way of my teeth.

We carried three hundred first-class--that was some when you think of it--and we often herded fifteen hundred to two thousand in the steerage. Four hundred seconds added sometimes put our total complement over three thousand souls, counting, of course, our crew, stokers, and waiters.

You will realize at once the inability of a chief mate getting even the slightest acquaintance with hundreds of the people who used the _Prince George_ for transportation across the ocean, and, if I could not get a line on them, it was equally impossible for the pursers, pursers' clerks, and stewards to do so.

Mr. Samuels, the head purser, had a memory that was said to be infallible. He said he never forgot a face. Of the million or two people he came in contact with during his runs, he boasted that he could always tell if he had ever seen one of them before.

I didn't believe it, of course; but, then, pursers have a way that many seamen can't understand, anyhow.

Being an express ship, and carrying the first-class mail, we also had an express safe. This was built into the body of the vessel, and was like the new bank safes, with solid steel doors and time locks.

Two watchmen took charge, alternating night and day, and the massive doors were not to be opened by any one alone. In that safe we often carried three or four million dollars in solid gold bars or gold coin.

Sometimes the banking houses of the United States shipped as much as two million at a time in coin. Precautions were of the modern banking sort, and the giant safe caused no comment.

The other safes of the purser and captain were just plain, every-day affairs, and seldom held more than a few thousand dollars. These were very different from the "through" safe.

* * * * *

I had been in the ship four months before I noticed a man who sat at my table. He had made a voyage with us the first run I made, and I remembered him as a clergyman who had relatives abroad in Europe, but who was himself an American.

He was a very dignified man, about fifty-five years of age, and he knew a great deal. I enjoyed talking to him, for he told me of many places and events that were most interesting. But he never at any time discussed religion, or even spoke of subjects relating to it.

Once on his second trip over, he came to my room, and presented me with a box of fine Havana cigars and, although it was against custom, I asked him in, and he came.

We smoked while I should have been sleeping, but I was not by any means overworked, and I rather enjoyed his society, flattered of course that a man of such vast experience and learning should single out the chief officer for a companion.

But then I knew many folks looked upon a master navigator as a likely person to know, and was not very much surprised, setting it down to his good taste and discernment--for I had gone a mile or two myself in my day, and had seen a few things both ashore and afloat.

Once I remember he talked of finance and the great gold shipments that were disturbing the country. He had followed the administration in its effort to curb a panic that was threatened, and spoke of the money we carried in gold coin that was for the purpose of staying a run at that time upon a banking house that had many foreign affiliations.

"The express safe is generally full, is it not, during times like these?" he asked.

"Yes, we carry millions every voyage now," I answered, and noticed that the Reverend Mr. Jackson made a peculiar grimace as if amused at the news.

The conversation immediately drifted off to Cape Town, where the minister had lately spent much time, and he soon left me to my slumber and cigars.

I noticed that he had remarkable hands, immensely strong, as though he had done much hard work, and afterward I wondered at a small tattoo mark on his wrist just beneath the edge of his cuff. He had powerful, hairy wrists, and the blue mark showed very indistinctly through the black hair, but it caused me to think of him as a strange man.

I asked him about it the next day when at the table, but he made an evasive answer, smiling at my compliment to his strong physique.

"I was something of an athlete in my younger days," he finally admitted, "and you must not think that because of my profession I live a sedentary life. I work very hard among my parishioners, and play golf a great deal. Of course, you, as a seaman, would hardly appreciate the mysteries of this manly game."

"I confess that it seems rather tame," I admitted; "seems like a poor sort of 'shinny' we used to play in America when I was a lad."

"My wife plays it also, and she is very strong and agile from the exercise," said Mr. Jackson; "I hope you will meet her next month when I return, as she will probably go to London with me."

I expressed pleasure at the thought, and noticed that Doctor Jackson was really quite a good-looking man, and there was no reason in the world why he should not possess a very pretty wife.

His clean-shaven face, lined, it is true, as though he had spent much time at physical exertion of the heavier sort, was handsome enough. A large, high nose, not badly shaped, set in between two steel-blue eyes, wide apart, and his mouth, although thin-lipped and hard-looking, was not ugly, and his teeth were large, even, and snow-white.

Altogether he was a man of strength and character from his appearance, and I remembered him for his kindness--and cigars.

Three weeks later, upon the return voyage, he came aboard and told me he would bring his wife aboard the next morning, and was just then seeing to his room, which was amidships, and upon the lower or main deck, just above the express room and over the steel safe.

He asked me if I thought the noise from below would disturb them, his wife being a nervous woman and irritable. I knew no sounds of any consequence would penetrate the deck, which was steel, and assured him that the voyage would be most pleasant, as the time of year was fine upon the western ocean.

The next day I was too busy to notice the couple, but when we were at sea and had made our departure, allowing me to go below to dinner, I found that Doctor Jackson and his wife were seated at my table about midway down the row of seats.

The minister nodded to me, and his wife smiled pleasantly. Her back was to the ports, and the light was bad, but I saw that she was about thirty, and very masculine in her appearance.

She had a very good complexion, rosy and healthy, but her face had a peculiar hardness, a settling about the corners of the mouth that boded ill for any one who crossed her temper. I made up my mind to feel sorry for the doctor. Her voice I could hear very indistinctly, but it had a sort of hardness, a suppressed tone of assumed smoothness which I did not like.

At eight bells that night when the day's work allowed me to get my time below, I met them as I left the bridge. The doctor introduced me to the lady, who stood tall and commanding in the darkness. She murmured something indefinite, but acknowledged me without offering her hand.

I believed this coldness was more cultivated than natural, but, as I had learned since being in express ships that ladies did, or did not shake hands, according to their training, I passed it up for what it was worth.

Doctor Jackson seemed a bit annoyed at the strained feeling, but I saw no reason why a woman, a wife of a minister, should find much in common with a seaman, even if he did happen to be the chief mate of the liner.

Our ways would naturally be different. Her topics of conversation would not fit in with mine, and I was mortally afraid of offending her by some sailor's slip in my tongue.

I really was glad when they left me to go to my room, and I hoped that I would not have to entertain them any more than the rules of the liner's etiquette called for.

* * * * *

The next day the doctor informed me that his wife had succumbed to the rigors of the sea and the motion had made her deathly ill. I saw her no more, and it was the fifth day out when the steward came to my room at night and asked to speak to me privately.

"The couple in Room Sixty-two will not allow their bed to be made up nor any one to enter. Doctor Jackson said to see you and it would be all right; but you know, sir, it's against the rules not to allow inspection. If you will attend to the matter, it will take the weight off the old man--he tried to enter, but he was told he could not, owing to the lady's indisposition."

"Aw, they're all right," I said. "Tell the captain I know the old sky-pilot well, and that he's a minister who has been across twice before with us. I'll go down there myself to-morrow and inspect. Give the doctor my compliments and tell him I'm sorry the rules make the inspection necessary."

"There's a strong smell of whisky, alcohol, sir, all the time, coming from the room--don't know what it can be, but I'm afraid of fire. It's probably some of those patent traveling stoves they use for heating certain medicines or something."

"Well, cut it out--I'll go down in the morning--that's all," I said, and then I turned in and forgot all about the incident.

The next day when I went below, I found the doctor and his wife waiting for me. The lady had her face wrapped up in towels, and the doctor was reading, sitting near the bed, which was a brass one, bolted to the deck.

I excused myself, and was just on the point of leaving when I noticed the smell of alcohol. It was mixed with one similar to the heated odor of a red-hot stovepipe, burning metal.

"Have any trouble with the lights?" I asked.

"Oh, no, everything is all right--one of the electrics broke and made a little smell--no, all is as comfortable as one could wish, thank you," said the doctor.

"I suppose you'll go the route all the way up?" I asked.

"No, we'll transship at Queenstown--there's a yacht waiting for me there, and we'll take her for the rest of the way to the African coast, by way of Gibraltar. You might help us with our luggage to-morrow--our little trunk is very heavy, you see." And he tried to raise one end of a small steamer trunk that was allowed in the room.

"Oh, that will be all right--the steward will fix you up--I'll see you before you go," I said, turning away.

"I hope so," returned the doctor, with a most peculiar intonation in his voice that made me look at him. But he was now turning the leaves of the book again, and a moan from the bed made me hesitate no longer.

I left them, and sent word to the head steward to see to my friends getting ashore in the morning.

As we entered the Channel, the passengers who were to go ashore came on deck. Doctor Jackson and his wife appeared at the gangway, and waited quietly for the boat.

The lady was now wrapped up in shawls, and her face was heavily veiled. The clergyman himself seemed a bit nervous, but they finally went over the side with their luggage all right.

What he had told about that steamer trunk was no joke. Two assistant stewards could hardly lift it.

Bound with iron and stoutly strapped, it seemed as though it would burst of its own weight before it was placed in the lugger that would take it ashore or rather to the small schooner that lay a few miles distant and which the doctor had pointed out as the vessel he had chartered as a yacht to take them on their summer cruise to the beautiful Mediterranean.

I waved my hand, and then went below to turn in, for the last night is always a bad one for the chief mate when making the land.

"Bang, bang, bang," came blows upon my door, followed by a yell from without. I expected to find the ship in collision, and leaped from my bunk half asleep. The express messenger stood without, accompanied by four assistants and the steward, the purser, and the second officer.

"Safe blown, sir!" yelled the messenger. "It's bloomin' well half empty, sir! Nearly a quarter of a million gone. Party from above--you knew them, the steward says!"

I ran with them to Room Sixty-two, and burst in where the captain stood gazing at a hole in the deck. He turned to me, but said nothing. The rug which had been placed over the opening was thrown aside, and there lay a hole eighteen inches wide right in the floor.

Upon the sides the charred wood told of some fierce heat to which it had been exposed. The heavy steel plate beneath had been melted and burned as if the blast of a volcano had seared it.

Ragged-edged, melted, and bent lay the plate, and beneath it again lay the hole in the express safe right in the treasure room beneath. Down and through all led the seared hole. Some mighty heat had melted, burned, and blown away the plates of hard steel.

I leaned over, and gazed down into the room where the gold had been packed in the short, stout boxes of the bank. It was scattered about, thrown all around in confusion as though the robbers had at last given up all hope of getting more out.

They had taken all that two men could lift or carry for a few rods, stopping only at the limit of their endurance; and, though the amount was not so large as the express messenger had at first stated, it ran well over one hundred thousand dollars.

* * * * *

For a moment I stood staring from the hole to Captain Hall and back, too amazed to speak, while the old man looked at me keenly.

"Nice little job," he commented dryly.

"The doctor and his wife--do you think?" I asked. I was beginning to see light.

"Wife, thunder! That was a young man of tremendous strength," snarled the express messenger. "Look how he used that electric burner--look how he bent and tore at the plate--he was a giant--had the current on his hot chisel all day--that's the smell you noticed. Probably the two most expert safe-crackers alive, and our outfit gave them the chance to work the hot knife, burn their way in where they never could have blown. They connected with the light--got current enough to work with, and covered up with the rug----"

"Well, we won't waste time seeing how it was done; we'll get a move after them", said the old man. "Jump on deck, and blow the siren--blow the alarm for fire, police--set the signals----"

I was gone before he had finished, and by the time the uproar was well under way I had time to gaze toward the little schooner the doctor had marked out as his yacht.

She was still lying at anchor, but beyond her and about five miles distant lay a fishing schooner with very tall spars and a very able look. She was hoisting her foresail, and I could just make out that she was getting under way at once.

I waited no longer. Jumping to the upper deck, I yelled for the crew of the first cutter, boat number one, and gave the signal for her men. They came scrambling as to the drill, and as they came I yelled to young Smith, the third officer, to get arms and join me.

He dashed into his room, and came back with a heavy revolver. The express messenger came up while we were lowering away, and handed me another.

"We'll go with you," he said.

"No! No use loading her down with men," I replied; "we want to get some speed on her--row six oars double banked, and that'll fill her up--you can come, you, Smith, and myself--it won't take a ship's crew to get them--lower away," I called, and the boat dropped.

We followed, and in less time than it takes to tell it we were going through the sea at seven knots an hour with the best-drilled boat in the ship. Three men aft armed, and that was all.

It was a bright summer morning, with almost no wind, and I was certain that we would soon overhaul the runaways. The schooner lifted her anchor, and stood out to the westward and southward, and soon appeared to be making good headway.

"By Jupiter, she's got a motor in her!" said Smith.

She was going ahead, almost straight in the eye of the wind, just close enough to keep her sails full, and she was moving a good five knots. She was a good four miles distant, and we would have to do some fine rowing to catch her.

I looked my men over, and wondered if they could stand it. They pulled steadily, and the boat went along swiftly, but even a heavy ship with an engine has a distinct advantage over oars.

The schooner's motor was but an auxiliary, to be sure, but five or six knots under motor was something desperate to catch by rowing when we were so far astern.

At the end of another mile I was getting anxious. Our bearings were not changed to any extent, and the third officer looked askance at me.

"Give it to her, bullies--there's a hundred apiece if we get them," I said, and swung my body with the stroke of the oars. This had an effect upon the men. A hundred dollars was more than three months' pay.

They put their weight upon the ash, and the boat fairly lifted under the strain. The sweat began to pour down their faces, and the wind died away, until the swell ran oily and smooth.

"Give it to her," I cried again, as we gained a little.

The two men at the bow oar swung mightily upon it. There was a sharp crack. The bow oar snapped off at the rowlock, and the boat eased up her speed, leaving two good men idle.

"Great snakes!" howled Smith, and the express messenger looked at me in despair.

"We can't catch her now," he muttered.

I knew it was true. We were now dropping back, and I kept on only because I felt that it would not do to give up. I scanned the sea for signs of a boat.

There were some fishing to the northward, and it was our only chance. I swung her around toward them.

"We've got to try for one--maybe there's one with a good motor in her," I said. In a quarter of an hour we were up to one boat, and saw she was not fit. We swept past without slowing up.

"Any boat about here with a strong motor?" I asked, as we came close.

A fisherman waved his hand to the northward.

"Boat up there--_Seawave_--she's fast; what's the matter?" he replied.

But we were gone without further words, and soon came to the boat. She was long and narrow, built like a seiner, only not so heavy. Two men sat in her with lines out I hailed them as we came up.

"Want to catch that schooner out there," I yelled, pointing to the vessel. "Give you a hundred dollars if you land us alongside--quick."

"Got the money?" asked the man who appeared to own her.

We came alongside without delay, and I felt rather foolish for a moment. But the express messenger had the cash with him. He handed it over without a word, and the fisherman turned quickly to his engine.

The other man pulled up the anchor at once, and in half a minute we were under way, with the motor roaring out its glad sound in a series of rapid shots that were like the discharges of a rapid-fire gun.

"Take the boat and follow," I called to the men, and then Smith, the messenger, and myself were away in the wake of the schooner that was now a good five miles off and going steadily seaward. It would be a chase for fair.

"Can you make it?" I asked the owner, who sat in his oilskins at the engine.

"Sure t'ing we make 'em--'bout two, three hours, if the gas holds out."

We were now going along at eight knots and running steadily. After all, there's nothing like machinery to get things done.

"This is something like," said Smith. "There'll be some shooting inside of an hour if the signs hold."

The messenger said nothing. The men of the boat had not asked a question. They had taken us at our word, and were doing what they could to put us alongside.

Perhaps it would be different when we came to close quarters. We had better tell them what our errand was before they stopped the motor at the beginning of hostilities. They might take us for what we were after--burglars, and spoil our chance to make a catch.

We drew near the schooner after two hours' chase. The land was lost astern, and we had run fully fifteen miles off shore.

The breeze began to freshen, but not enough to give the schooner her full, or even half, speed. She plugged along steadily at about five knots, and we drew up close enough to see a man at the wheel and no one else on deck.

Smith and the messenger told our skipper how matters stood, and the fisherman seemed to hardly relish the game after he knew it. There was certain to be trouble.

"Schooner ahoy!" I yelled, as we drew near enough to hail.

The man at the wheel paid no attention until I had repeated it several times. Then he turned and asked us what we wished in no pleasant tone.

"You stop your engine and let us board," I yelled. "You have two robbers aboard, and we want them in the name of the law."

"Who are you?" asked the man, spitting over the rail. "Go away--I don't know you."

"Run alongside--we'll jump her," I said to the skipper. The messenger, Smith, and myself drew our revolvers, and stood ready as the small craft came up to the main channels. The schooner kept right along. We sprang aboard without meeting resistance, and gained the deck.

"Where're your passengers? Don't fool with us," I snapped. "There's an old man and a young one dressed as a woman."

"Oh, Doctor Jackson and the young feller--they're down below--asleep. What do you want with them?"

* * * * *

We wasted no time talking. All three jumped down the companionway and into the little cabin. Doctor Jackson was in a bunk, apparently fast asleep, and a young man, whom I instantly recognized as the "wife," lay reclining upon a transom.

"Well, what's the row--what's up?" asked the young fellow, rising at the sight of three armed men.

"We want you--you know what for," said the messenger quietly. "Don't make any trouble--we won't stand it--come right along back with us, you and the other fellow there."

The doctor awoke, and sat up, seemingly amazed. He expostulated, was dumfounded at the charge, couldn't understand it--we must all be crazy. Two men came from forward and joined our group. It was all hands, just three men and two passengers--five in all to work the ship.

"Stop the engine," I ordered, "and either come with us or turn the schooner back, and we'll go with you."

They turned her around, and stood back toward the shore. On the way, while one of us stood guard over the two, the rest searched the schooner for the treasure, for the trunk. There was not a sign of gold anywhere aboard her.

We took turns, but found nothing, leaving not a bolt hole unsearched. It was disheartening, and looked like we had lost, after all.

"Well, what do you make of it?" I asked the messenger.

"Looks like they got us right, after all," he said; "we haven't the slightest clew to the money, and won't get it after they once get in to the police. They'll buy their way out, for there's not the slightest evidence they did the job, although I know it was them as well as they themselves."

"Plant it, you think?"

"Sure as death, they dropped it somewhere, and they only know just where. They'll take a chance at going up for a spell, doing their bit, and then getting the cache. It's on the course out somewhere, but just where who knows? We're out of sight of land now, and it'll take a wizard to locate it on the schooner's course."

"That's right enough," I asserted, "but how about trying them for a confession?"

"Go ahead," he replied gloomily.

I put it right up to the doctor. I promised him complete immunity if he would just tell where they had dropped that four hundred and odd pounds of gold.

The pair simply grinned in amusement. It seemed to tickle them immensely.

"And so you'd be a party to a felony?" asked the doctor, with great regret in his tone. "I didn't think that of you, captain--you surely disappoint me greatly. Now, if I knew where the gold lay, I should tell you at once, but warn you not to touch it, for I don't believe in mixing up with things of this sort. The men you are after must surely have taken the stuff on the previous voyage--or some other time----"

"All right," I interrupted, "if you want it that way, you'll get it. We have enough evidence to send you up for twenty years at least--direct evidence."

"I hate to hear you take on in this terrible manner, my dear captain, but I don't see what I can do about it. What makes you think I had anything to do with that gold?"

It was of no use. They would not talk about it. I began to study the schooner's course and try to figure out where in that vast area of sea they could have let the stuff go overboard with the certainty of getting hold of it again.

In a short time we met our own boat being rowed rapidly after us, and then we took her in tow and dismissed our motor boat, which had been dragging along at the main channels. The men had earned their hundred, and they departed, highly pleased at their luck, which represented more than a month's profits fishing.

As our boat came alongside, we were hailed joyfully by Jim Sanders, the coxswain, during my absence, and he held up a long line, at the end of which was fastened a small buoy. The other we saw was fast to the small trunk.

"We found it all right", said Jim. "We was rowing along fast after you, an' suddenly my eye catches sight o' this here float. I grabs it, and up comes that trunk fast to the other end in about ten fathoms of water. That trunk is sure some heavy, and I reckon it's got the stuff in it."

"Very good, very good indeed," cried the messenger. "Now things look better."

"Yes," said the third officer, "this is what we are looking for--no mistake."

"Hoist it right on deck," I said, and a line was passed to it. It was all two men could do to get it aboard. When it was safe on the deck, I went below and saw the doctor.

"We have the trunk with the gold all safe--now, what have you to say?" I said.

"Indeed?" asked the doctor, in surprise.

"Not really, say not so," remarked the younger man, in mock alarm. "Why, then you seem to have what you've been after, what you are looking for. If that is all, you better let us turn the ship about and continue our journey. Why didn't you say you were looking for that trunk?"

A yell from the deck told me something was not right. I came up the companion, and looked out, holding my pistol ready for trouble. The messenger was standing at the side of the trunk. So also was Smith.

Two men had just opened it, and had dumped a lot of old iron and bolts onto the deck, where they lay in a pile of rusty, wet junk.

* * * * *

For a moment I gazed in amazement at the littered deck. Then I smiled.

"Do you suppose we could have made a mistake by any possible means?" I asked the express messenger.

"Not by any chance, not a chance. This is a plant--why should they sink this trunk with a line and buoy to it? It proves beyond all doubt they have got the stuff somewhere. They dropped it, hoping we would stop and haul it up, and they'd gain just so much time by the device."

"Then where in Davy Jones is the swag? Where could they have hidden it?"

"That's for us to find out--I don't know."

As we came in, a dozen boats came to meet us. The police took charge, and the two prisoners were ironed and taken ashore. The schooner was put in charge of detectives, and no one allowed aboard her.

We went back to the ship in our boat, and reported the capture of the men, but the loss of the money. Whereat Captain Hall was so angry that he would not speak to me that day. I felt that I had done what I could and that I was not at fault.

I could do no less--nor no more, for that matter. I went below, and the ship went on to her dock, the passengers were sent ashore, and the dull routine of the lay-up began.

I had some time now to myself, and studied the situation carefully. It would be a month before the trial, and we would have made another voyage before then. I was served, however, with a subpoena to appear as a principal witness, and I put the paper away and took up the study of the case with vigor.

The three men aboard the schooner who had acted as crew were not in the game. That was evident, for they proved to be just plain fishermen who had chartered their craft to the doctor upon an agreement made on his former voyage. He had planned the coup, and made the vessel ready for the getaway. That was certain. The men were discharged.

Every portion of the schooner capable of hiding a gold piece was thoroughly probed. Even her masts were bored at intervals, and she was hauled out and her keel searched for a hollow that might contain the treasure. Everything that men could do was apparently done. But not a sign of gold.

The two men, the doctor and his accomplice, were sent to trial, and had the best lawyer in England to defend them, a man who did not work for small amounts. I noted that fact and waited.

They were sent up for two years each solely on the circumstantial evidence that they had occupied the room above the safe on that voyage and that if any one had committed the theft upon a former voyage it must necessarily have been discovered, as the safe was thoroughly cleaned and refilled with a new cargo of gold for that single trip.

The schooner was sold at auction by the fishermen who owned her, as they were afraid to run her under the continual scrutiny which the company put upon her. She was broken up and her gear sold for junk. That was the end of her.

It was thoroughly believed that the treasure was planted somewhere on the course we had taken during the chase, and many fishermen dragged the sea on that line in the hope of reward. But nothing came of it, and a year passed.

The time came for the doctor and his pal to get out, for the law which cut the prison term to one-half for good behavior was now in force. I watched the papers, and tried to keep posted, but nothing was printed about the convicts.

One day the doctor and his partner came aboard just as we were leaving, and spoke pleasantly to me. They had taken second class and return to New York. It was pure nerve, I thought, but the regulations allowed them the privilege, as they might not, under the "undesirable-citizen" act, be allowed to land in the States.

They took no pains at all to hide their identity, and greeted me most cordially when I met them on deck the first day out. I asked them about their sojourn in Dartmoor, and they talked freely, telling of the rigors of prison life.

"But it is all over now," said the doctor. "We will live our lives as we always have, clean, honest, without fear and without reproach. We were innocent, as you know."

"Perhaps so--but what became of the gold?" I asked cynically.

"Ah, yes, the gold," murmured the doctor. "To be sure there was some doubt about the--what shall I call it?--the disposition of the treasure that the robbers worked so hard for. That will always be a mystery."

I thought differently. I had by the process of elimination long ago come to the conclusion that the gold never left the ship in Europe.

The strange way they had taken their baggage ashore, their ostentatious manner of taking out the heavy trunk and lowering it over the side in full view of all was evidently meant for a purpose.

Why had they taken so much trouble to let all see its weight? Why had they dragged it with them when, after all, it contained apparently nothing but old iron? That it was to cover up the real effort of disposition was growing more and more plain to me, but, then, where could they have planted the heavy weight of gold?

They could not have dropped it in mid-ocean--that was absurd. It did not occur to me for a long time that the hour down the bay from New York out to the lightship might suffice to enable them to cut into the through safe, which, of course, would not be opened until the other side was reached.

It was upon a return voyage that an incident occurred that started my line of research upon the American channel.

I noticed that in going down the bay we were forced--owing to the great length of the ship--close to the Southwest Spit Buoy. The turn here is abrupt, and, while the tide runs swiftly, there is a certainty of position always for a large ship.

A smaller vessel might swing well out, but a vessel of the _Prince's_ size could not. Then the idea of the buoys marking the line at close intervals came to me. It was just what they would desire for marking their cache.

They could make a note of position, and drop their swag so closely to an established position that there would be no trouble at all in picking it up, even after a year's submersion.

The trunk must have carried the hot-chisel outfit, the electrical tools for cutting, and these the burglars had tossed into the sea at the first opportunity, afterward filling the trunk with junk for a blind, feeling sure we would think it held the treasure.

I had studied the process of cutting with an electrical jimmy, the melting of the plates, and I soon came to the conclusion that the job was done, finished before the ship left soundings off Sandy Hook.

The pair were seemingly not well supplied with money, and I determined to watch them after they got ashore. By some strange freak the inspectors passed them, and they disappeared in the city, leaving no trace.

"I want a two-weeks' leave of absence," I said to the old man that night, "and I want it right away--I'll get the gold we lost or lose my job. I'll take the third mate with me. Smith knows them."

There was some trouble getting officers to fill our berths on such short notice, but the old man had some faith in me, and let us go. I drew a hundred dollars in pay, and we went right to Brooklyn and chartered a fast and powerful launch.

Then we ran over the course the ship always steered on her run out the main ship channel, going close to the Southwest Spit Buoy.

We did not come back to town again, but remained in the boat for two days and nights, coming in only to get gasoline and supplies, and then keeping right on the run in and out to sea.

It was lonesome work, and we passed many small boats daily, but none had the men we hoped for in them.

The third evening, just about dark, we noticed a launch running for the red buoy at the turn of the channel near Sandy Hook. We both were much disguised, being rigged with false beards and uncouth clothes.

In daylight no one would have recognized us thirty feet distant, and at night we might have talked to our best friends without detection.

As we came in, running very slow, we noticed a boat with two men in her near the Southwest Spit Buoy. The boat had stopped, and the men were doing nothing. They seemed to be waiting for something.

We came past, sitting well below the gunwales of our craft, but watching the other boat. When we came within fifty feet Smith sank below the coamings.

"That's them all right," he whispered.

I watched the pair from the corner of my eye, and headed away from the vicinity, keeping well down in our boat, and showing nothing but the back of an old battered hat.

It was the doctor and his pal, and they were at work. They stood back and forth across the channel a few times, and one of them held a line towing astern. It was evident that they were dragging a grapnel over a certain part of the channel marked by the buoy and bearings upon Sandy Hook.

Before we were half a mile away, they were hauling in the drag, both at it with all their strength, and we knew they had struck something.

It was necessary to decide at once what to do. If they had the cache, we would find it; if they had hold of something else or were simply playing to throw any one off the scent, they would keep their secret. We decided to take the chance.

I swung the launch around, and opened her up to the limit. In an instant we were flying toward them at fifteen miles an hour, and within two minutes were in hailing distance. They saw us coming, and hesitated. That hesitation made me sure of our game. They would not let go the cache unless something dangerous was about to happen, the danger of losing it altogether being too great. Smith jumped up, revolver in hand, as the launch came tearing up.

"Hands up--stop that drag," he yelled. "We've got you, Doctor Jackson."

A flash flicked the gloom, and a sharp "pop" sounded, followed by another and another. Smith dropped his gun, and fell into the bottom of the boat.

"They got me," he gasped.

Then he raised himself upon his knees and, while I headed the flying craft straight for them and opened fire, Smith rested his revolver upon the coamings, and shot the doctor through the head.

Then the launch crashed into their craft, going at full speed, and her sharp nose cut straight in a full foot and a half before she stopped.

The young man who had shot my third mate was snapping an empty gun at me as he went over the side into the sea. I stopped the engine, and jumped for him.

He dived, but as he came up I hit him over the head with a boat hook that lay handy, and before he sank I had caught the hook into his collar and dragged him alongside.

Then I lifted him into our boat, and as his face came close to mine I recognized him as the former "wife" of the doctor, the robber who had masqueraded as a woman and who was evidently the electrical expert of the pair.

I passed a lashing upon him quickly, and then went to Smith. My poor friend and shipmate was gasping in pain, lying upon the boat's bottom. I examined him, and found two wounds, one through his arm and another through his chest, both bullets being from a high-powered automatic and having passed cleanly through.

In a few minutes I had anchored the wreck of the launch which had swamped to the gunwales, and was running for the fort at the Hook, where I arrived fifteen minutes later, with Smith unconscious.

Here I turned him over to the surgeon and, getting help from the officer in charge, I ran quickly back to the buoy. The dead body of the doctor was still lying in the swamped boat, and the men removed it.

Then I got a pull upon the drag line, and was not surprised to find it caught to something very heavy. Three men helped me haul it in, and it came slowly.

A bight of chain appeared upon the surface. We caught hold of this, and hove it in also. At each end were iron boxes weighing at least two hundred and fifty pounds each. In spite of our misfortunes I gave a yell. It was the gold at last.

Young Simpson told how it was done after he had been turned over to the authorities. He had already been sentenced for the crime, and would therefore not have to suffer again, having served his term.

He told glibly how they had done the job during the two hours they had after the treasure room was closed and the ship warping out and down the channel. The time had been ample, and the rest of the voyage was just to cover up, to throw us off the track. They had the cutting outfit in the trunk that had weighed so heavy, and had taken it away to throw overboard, which they did long before we came near them in the schooner.

They had kept the trunk, but when they saw we were after them they had sunk it with a buoy, knowing that we would probably see it in the smooth sea and were aware of the old smuggler trick of sinking treasure down at the end of a fine line and small mark.

Then they had decided to make no resistance, believing rightly that the easiest way was the best. They had taken their sentence based upon the circumstantial evidence in the case, and they were just about to get their treasure when we nabbed them. They had originally intended to get it in their schooner at their leisure, but we had stopped that. The location of the buoy at the turn of the channel marking the run to sea was a safe place to drop anything. It would hardly be disturbed for some time.

The heavy, small iron boxes had been made purposely for the work, and the chains connecting them had been long enough to cover fifty feet, or cross enough space to insure picking it up without delay when dragged for.

The old man smiled when I reported for duty, but was sad at the thought of our young third officer, who would be an invalid for many days.

"They are going to give him the first mate's berth in the new ship to be out next season," said he, "and I'm mighty glad of it--he deserves something."

"That's correct--he sure does, he worked hard, and took risks--and Smith is a good man anywhere, a good navigator also. But did you hear anything about me?" I asked.

"Sure; you're to stay right on here--chief officer, but they're going to hand you one thousand dollars for taking one hundred and twenty-five from the bottom--don't that satisfy you?"

"Mighty well indeed--mighty well indeed," I replied. "Shake, captain."

THE JUDGMENT OF MEN[A]

I had rowed in for fresh beef. The weather was cold, the water rough and when Wilson asked permission to go up town to get tobacco, I let him go and made my own way to the ship-chandler's, where we men of the sea usually bought our supplies and sometimes spent an hour or two discussing primage freights and other things pertaining to shipping.

There were two big five-masters lying just outside of us in the channel and their masters were known to me. One of them had picked me up at sea from a derelict and the other was Bull Simpson, well known on the coast. Simpson was much given to gregariousness. Johnson was companionable, but quiet, and I knew they would be in Jackson's store that morning, for they would clear the next day.

The day was in midwinter. The gloomy sky whipped by the nor'wester showed signs of snow. How one hates snow at sea! The nasty white stuff making the decks like glass, hiding everything from view. The harbor was white with the scrape of the cold wind, and the salt water froze where it struck in spray. Yes, I would go to Jackson's store. The shipping looked too gloomy to contemplate any longer. I thought of the frozen fingers handling canvas stiff as tin.

The stove, a ship's bogie, was red hot in the back room. Simpson was there, long, lean and solemn. So was Johnson there, but he was smiling, smoking and so glad to be in harbor that it stuck out all over him. Captain Cone, master of a tramp steamer, sat near and warmed his fat toes, his pudgy hands red with frost.

"Go back, they're all there," grinned Jackson to me, as I passed the desk. "Thought you'd gone to sea--sech fine wedder--for gulls--what? Go back an' set in, Cap; I'll come back for your order presently."

"Hello, you look cool," said Johnson, smiling up at me from his chair.

"Glad to see you--set in," said Simpson, making room for a chair near the bogie. "Shake hands with Captain Cone of the _Prince Albert_--Cone has a good tea-kettle for this weather--don't you wish you ran a tramp? Please? No, I didn't hear that last----"

I bowed to the Captain. A captain of a tramp was something new to us. We seldom had any but sailormen in the group and British skippers were always looked upon as a rarity. Still they were always welcome. Cone stuck out his pudgy hand. I squeezed the fat fingers until he winced and withdrew them. I never cared for pudgy-handed seamen--just prejudice, a meanness, but it couldn't be helped. We can't help everything, we must be human, and Cone took it good-naturedly--was way above such things. He showed it by spitting voluminously at the bogie and remarking it was very cold to go to sea.

Simpson didn't like it at all. He showed it, grumbled something about Yankees and stiff-necked folks, then subsided while I lit up and gazed complacently at Johnson. We talked of various things until Cone rose, buttoned his coat and went into the office to fill his order. Simpson glared at me for a moment.

"What's the use of being so damned short with the Britisher? What's he done?" he asked.

"It's what he hasn't done I object to," I answered. "Stupid, heavy brute----"

Captain Cone came back and extended his hand. "Good-by, Simpson--good-by, gentlemen--hope you'll have better weather of it to-morrow."

I noticed that he held out his left hand; it was the left hand that was so pudgy, so fat and soft. His right hand was gloved and the fingers of the glove were stiff, straight.

"Good day," I said, rising, "and good luck to you." Johnson nodded also and the stranger withdrew, followed by Jackson who saw him to the door.

"Wake up," I said to Simpson. "Don't think I meant anything, but these Britisher tramp skippers are the limit. High ideals! lots of feeling! Human as a beef and twice as heavy--after dinner. Where did he blow in from?"

"He came in for coals to take him to Brunswick--he'll load for lumber there and go back home--hope he'll get a better reception than he got here--he's a member of the English Masters' Association; you might have been kind to him," said Simpson.

"Was he the man they fired from the Association last month? Seems to me I heard of a Cone--seems like he was accused of brutality or something, lacks humanity--looks like it, anyway," said Johnson.

"Yes, he was fired--yes--by God, he was," snapped Simpson, "and it was just such judgment that gets lots of good men into trouble. 'Lacked human sentiment'--lacked human sentiment--well, that's a charge for you! Hell! you fellows get narrower and narrower--I happen to know Cone, knew him years ago--he was fired for losing the _Champion_--'lacked human sentiment,' bah! Oh, now you remember him, heh?"

"Yes, we remember him--the man who lost a fine ship in collision in a clear night," said I, with something of a sneer. "But that wasn't the worst of it----"

"Yes, you read the damned papers--you got a fine idea of it all," snapped Simpson. The old seaman turned and spat viciously at the bogie as if the poor old stove, red-hot, had done him some grievous wrong. Then he turned scornfully to Johnson.

"You remember the _Champion_? You know something about her, you ain't so damned stuck about yourself. I happened to be aboard of her the day she sailed, talking to Redding, her chief mate--Redding, that was lost in the _Arctic_--yes, Redding was as straight as a string--and he told me the details of that accident after he came from the hospital--too late. He was nearly a year in the insane ward from a blow that smashed his head, but he told me about Cone.

"Yes, it was Cone who left his wife--so they said--left her, deserted her and the children. It was Cone who acted in every disgraceful way the old women tell about, Cone who raised hell and paid the devil wherever he went, Cone who only got command of the _Champion_ after pulling shares and playing the game for all it was worth--no, don't tell me--don't, I say--I don't want to hear about what he did. I'll tell you how he lost the ship, and you say you'll believe anything poor Redding said--so would I. If there was truth in any man it was in Dan Redding--poor devil."

"Yes," I assented, "Redding was all right."

Simpson scorned to notice me. He talked at Johnson, or rather talked at me through Johnson, over him, and--Simpson could talk, talk like an Admiralty lawyer with two noggins of rum under his ribs. Jackson came in and took Cone's vacated chair. He rubbed his hands. Cone had been a good buyer, had needed plenty of stuff--and he got it at the highest rates. Jackson approved of Redding also, approved of him for the sake of memory--Redding had always paid a full bill--never asked rake-off, _pourboire_, "graft," or other money from him.

"You heard all that stuff about Cone, too," said Simpson, sneeringly at Jackson; "and I dare say you believe it like a good old woman you are, but I'll tell you just how he lost the ship--if you believe Redding.

"They cleared at daylight, bound for St. John's--had twenty passengers first class and about seventy second--no steerage those days. Redding said the weather was hell and something worse from the time they dropped the land, and you men know how it is on the coast in the winter time. The old _Champion_ came across and poked her nose into the fog bank off Sable Island--bad place? Well, I reckon it is. Bad because you can't tell where the devil you are and can't keep any kind of reckoning in that current. That Sable Island bank is nearly as bad as Hatteras for us windjammers.

"Cone slowed his ship that last morning--according to Redding--slowed her down to a few knots, made the passengers keep off the decks in order to have peace and quiet aboard. One old lady didn't like it at all. She insisted she had a right to go where she pleased aboard--told the skipper so to his face and dared him to put her below. Some of the other women folks followed her example--did Cone do it? Well, he just called his quartermaster and told him to remove the objectionable old women, told him to carry them below if necessary--and that square-head