Chapter 8

"I spoke at random, yet none too soon. A pistol exploded in the mate's window, and a man went down, shot through the heart--the last one to join the rush over to starboard. But the rush continued to the capstan bar rack amidships, and, armed with these handy clubs, they came back to batter in the companion. Macklin did not fire again, and I was on the point of asking him out, to surrender on terms of amnesty and deposition, when a crashing, grinding jar shook the ship from bow to stern, and all three topgallant masts went out of her, snapping at the caps and falling forward. We had struck a rock in midocean.

"There was no more thought of Macklin. As we jumped to the main deck and ran forward like sheep, the jars and jolts were resumed, working aft, while the ship reeled far over to leeward. Chips was on deck, and I got him to sound the well. 'Four feet, and coming in fast!' he called, and the men rushed for the boats on the forward house, while I went aft to the wheel. I had never heard of a rock in this part of the Atlantic, and thought for a moment that we might have hit a submerged derelict; but soon put that thought away; nothing but solid and jagged rock could so tear into a ship's bottom.

"'No steerage way, sir,' said the man at the wheel. 'She's fallen off due south.'

"'Drop your wheel,' I said, 'and lend a hand with the boats.'

"I waited a few moments before following him, looking around at the prospect. Since I had gone aloft the wind had hauled to the north and died down to a gentle breeze, which barely ruffled the very slight ground swell. It was not the pressure of this wind that had driven the ship over the rock until she hung, pivoted, at a point near the stern; it was the ship's momentum. The wind, however, had swung her head to the south, and it was bringing down on us a cold, damp fog out of the north, which already had shut out the moon and rendered indistinct the forms of the men at work on the boats. I could see, however, that the bow had settled nearly under, and knew that it was only a question of moments when the ship would slide, head first, down the declivity. I ran forward, and just as I started a report rang out from the after companion and a bullet furrowed my hair. I had forgotten Macklin, but had moved just in time.

"Furious with anger and hatred, I halted in the alley and reached for my revolver; but it was gone from my pocket--jolted out, perhaps, as we jumped off the poop. So, I left Macklin to his own problem, and joined the men.

"There were two whaleboats, which we had carried upside down on the forward house, and when I got there I found that the men, sailors all from head to foot, had turned them over, fitted in the bottom plugs, and bent long painters that led forward outside the rigging. There was no time to rig hoisting tackles aloft, nor was there need, as a gang to each could launch them bodily over, one on either side.

"Sailors all, from head to feet, but wild 'packet rats' whose necks were already in their halters! I considered my chance in an open boat with that crowd, and thought of my gun, lying somewhere aft on the main deck. Resolved to risk another shot from Macklin rather than my chance unarmed among the men, I turned back, watching the cabin windows with one eye and searching the deck with the other; but I saw no gun, and perhaps Macklin did not see me, for there was no more shooting.

"Giving it up at last, I ran forward as both boats went over the side and the men were tumbling into them. As I ran I noticed the steeper incline to the deck, and that the forecastle was submerged; but I was not prepared for the sudden launch of the ship into the sea, nor the sickening crash of riven timbers as her after body was torn away, and which drowned my shouts to the men.

"In a roaring, yeasty froth of tumultuous water, I went under, and when I at last came to the surface, half drowned, I was alone on the sea, hidden from the boats by the thick envelope of fog. I shouted, and was answered faintly; but not able to determine the direction the sound came from, I could only shout again and tread water, hoping to make sure.

"But I could not make sure; sound is twisted around amazingly in fog, and little by little the calls grew fainter. I was tired out already, and my useless right arm ached with the hard usage it had lately received. In the next few minutes, while my chin sank lower and lower in the water, I thought of about every incident of my life; but just as the first mouthful went down my throat my right foot hit something, and the next moment I was standing on it--a hard, firm substance which could be nothing but the rock.

"At first I found difficulty in holding my footing until I realized that I must breast a current of about half a knot; but when I had mastered the knack I found no trouble. Feeling carefully with my feet, I explored the ground under foot, and following a rise to where it ended found myself waist high out of water. This was better than nothing, and I resumed my shouts to the men in the boats. At times they answered; but very faintly, and after a while they grew silent. And then, from somewhere out of the fog came the faint stroke of a small bell. I shouted again; but was not answered.

"There was very little wind, and but a perceptible heave of the ground swell; so I was bothered at first only by the dense fog and the current. But after a time I had other troubles, of a mental nature. The water was unquestionably rising, and whether or not it would rise above my chin was an unsolvable problem. I did not know the time of low tide in that part of the world on that night. Then, too, that bell sounded again. And again and again I shouted into the silence. It struck twice this time; but it was not until another half-hour had gone by, and it struck three times with an interval between the second and third strokes, that I realized that somewhere at hand was a ship's bell clock. I yelled for help, calling 'Ship ahoy! Give me a hand here! I'm standing on bottom--on a reef! Lower a boat!'

"Nothing answered me, and I suppose I went more or less crazy as the night went on and that infernal ghostly bell struck off the half-hours. It seemed to have the correct time; but it was hard to realize that a ship had gone through a successful mutiny and shipwreck in the half-hour between eight bells and one bell.

"But it ended at last, when, from the cold and the wet and the strain on my voice, I found myself unable to call out any more. And it struck me as rather hard, too; for at daylight the fog lifted a bit, and there, about a mile and a half to the nor'ard, showed the lug sail of one of the boats. The current must have drifted it to the north during the night, and when the fog lifted I suppose they set the lug and sailed 'fore the wind as the easiest and fastest way to sail.

"But another sight met my eyes! Over to the east about fifty yards was the stern of the ship, taffrail and cabin out, and the mizzentop and topmast. She was just hung there, canted to an angle of forty-five, and ready to slide down with the first shift of a sea. And there was where that clock was, high and dry in the cabin! The tide had reached my shoulders by now, and perhaps this was what did the job; for I suppose there was some air in that wreck, and when an extra heavy pulse of the ground swell came along, there was a slight wrenching sound, as though the sternpost had carried away; then, with a very little flurry, the stern and mizzen sank out of sight.

"But up into the froth and the bubbles caused by the plunge came the red head, anxious face, and big shoulders of Macklin. He sighted me, and came on, breasting the water with all the vigor of a strong man in good form, and with a new look in his face that meant trouble for me. I looked for the boat; but the fog had thickened again, blotting her out.

"'What you got there?' he demanded, as he puffed up close to me.

"'Rock bottom,' I answered. 'Keep off! There's room for only one.'

"'And that one is me!'

"I squared myself as I could, with my bad right hand tucked into my shirt out of the way, and my legs as far apart as I could get them. I struck at him, and pushed him under; but the reacting force of the blow sent me backward, and then it was a mad scramble under water to get my foothold again. Macklin came up, saw me, and swam under water until he had reached my legs; then he hove me off and took my place.

"But he wasn't used to the push of the current, and the next moment he was off and swimming again, while I was on, breasting the current, and waiting for him. He came back under water again; but this time I met him with a kick that sent him so far down as to give me hope he would stay there; but he didn't. He came up, swam around to the south, came down with the current, and brushed me off. I did the same; but he met me with his feet, and I drifted by. However, I had him by the leg with my one good hand, and he came with me. We swam, side by side; but he beat me, and scrambled to his feet on the small spur of rock that meant life to each of us, but not to both. I swam weakly around to the south, and then down on him; realizing that my strength was giving out. But the fight went on, and I soon realized that his gun was soaked, or left behind; otherwise he would have used it before this.

"I have often wondered if God and the angels watched that fight in mid-ocean, or only hell and the devils. The nearest land to the west must have been Cape Race, the nearest to the east the Azores, each about five hundred miles away. I did not know the longitude; but I did know that we had sailed due east since I was disrated, and that then we were on the forty-seventh parallel.

"And so, in latitude forty-seven north, longitude unknown, two weakened human brutes unable to strike a heavy and telling blow, yet animated by a fear of death and love of life that twisted their features into frenzied contortions (I judged mine by Macklin's), struggled feebly for the possession of a mountaintop rising from the sea bed, on the diminishing chance that some ship would come along to the rescue before hunger, thirst, or a rising sea overcame them.

"I hardly know how it ended; I only knew that I found myself too weak to breast the current, and then I gave up, and drifted. I went under twice, I remember, and waited calmly for the end; but before the last sinking I heard voices; then I was clutched by the hair, and as I was dragged bodily into a boat I lost my senses. When I came to, the men lifted me up, and I saw big Finnegan at the tiller, standing erect and declaiming to something astern:

"'Stay there an' think it over, ye man-killin' shlave driver! Stay there, ye devil out o' hell, an' may the min ye've killed come back to kape ye company till yer master comes fur ye!'

"I took one look at Macklin. He was standing erect, breasting the current with his arms folded, secure in the possession of the foothold he had won from me. But he sent no call for help, and soon went out of sight in the thinning fog as the boat sailed away.

"There is little more to this yarn. We never saw the other boat again, and did not know the story they told if rescued. But among ourselves we agreed to say nothing about the mutiny or the shooting or the rock--only that we had struck something submerged, that the ship had sunk, and that the captain, first mate, and three sailors had been drowned. We were picked up in a few days, told this lie, and were not questioned closely. Then I realized why the men had stood by me; they wanted a shipped officer to justify the story.

"But I knew the long arm of the law, and I did not know the fate of the other boat, or the tale they might tell. So, I shipped for the East, found and learned this strait, and have been here since, afraid to go home."

* * * * *

This is the yarn I listened to on anchor watch thirty years ago. It pertains to events forty years farther back in the past. If that white-haired, mild-mannered old pilot is still alive, he is over ninety-five years old, and immune from earthly punishment.

But, before deciding to give this story to the world, I visited the United States Hydrographic Office for some corroborative data, and on a pilot chart of 1896 read that one Captain Lloyd, of the British ship _Crompton_, had lately reported seeing in latitude forty-seven north and longitude thirty-seven degrees twenty minutes west, a rock sixty feet long and eight or ten feet high in the middle. It was at a time of low spring tides, and such a menace to navigation could easily elude observation under ordinary conditions. Captain Lloyd averred that he saw it at twenty minutes to eight on a fine, sunshiny morning, so close and clear to him that he forbore lowering a boat.

Yet, as I learned from further inquiry, he was the subject of much ridicule, and his story was generally disbelieved.

Should it be disbelieved?

THE ARGONAUTS

A few months ago I attended a banquet and left it as I always leave such functions, hungry. Entering an all-night lunch room I took a seat, and gave my order to a waiter, who, when he had filled it, sat down at the table with me. It was very late, and his duties were light.

"You're looking well," he remarked, as his glance traveled over my evening clothes. "You're dead swell, but the last time I saw you, you were covered with mud, carrying a stern line ashore in the Welland Canal."

I took stock of him. He was white-haired, but had the keen, intelligent face of a man of forty-five who had not yet given up the fight; a lively, hopeful face, one that comes to those who win oftener than lose. His skin was brown, as though the sun and wind of all the zones had smitten it. His eyes, gray, steadfast and humorous, had in them when half closed the twinkle of self-confidence, but also, in their wide-open stare, the intensity of a man of initiative and sudden action. In his voice were character, individuality, and the habit of command; yet he wore the short jacket of a waiter, and might have accepted a tip. I could not recall having met him.

"You seem to have the advantage of me," I said. "I know the Welland Canal, however, though I am trying to forget that ditch."

"You can't," he laughed. "No man can who ever went through it. That trip with you in the old _Samana_ was my first and last. I struck for salt water again when the old man paid me off at Port Colborne. Don't you remember going to school with me?" He mentioned his name, and with a little effort I recalled him--a schoolmate a little older than myself, who had gone to sea early in life, and returned a full-fledged salt-water navigator, to ship, on his record, as first mate in the schooner that carried me before the mast, and to meet his Waterloo in the Welland Canal, the navigation of which demands qualities never taught nor acquired in the curriculum of sea-faring. After grounding the schooner several times, parting every line on board, and driving us to open revolt by the extra work coming of his mistakes, he was discharged by the skipper. As I thought of all this the grumbling sailor rose within me, and there at the table, he a waiter, I a writer, we fought out a grudge of twenty years' standing. But it ended amicably; I called him a farmer, he called me a soldier, and we shook hands.

"I've learned," he said, as we settled back, "only in the last month or so, that you're the fellow that writes these rotten sea stories. Why don't you write real sea stories?"

"For the same reason that you don't serve a real Welsh rabbit," I answered, tapping the now cold concoction he had served me. "I couldn't sell a real story. Truth is too strange to pose as fiction."

"That's so," he answered, slowly. "Who'd think that you could have become a writer, and I a hash slinger? Making lots of money, I suppose."

"No, I'm not, or I wouldn't be in your society to-night."

"We're all bluffers, I guess. You are, here in this beanery with your glad rags on. I am, too--no, not now. I'm slinging hash, and glad of the chance. But I was a millionaire for a time. Not long. But while it lasted I had dreams--big dreams."

I asked him about this, and there followed his story. It was interrupted every few moments by calls for "ham and--," "corn beef and--," "mystery and white wings," and it kept me at the table until daylight. He preluded it by the advice to write it up as a real sea story, but asked that I suppress his name until he had saved enough to get him to Cuba, where he had new plans for advancement. And now, after months of thought, I am following his advice; for no effort of the creative mind, and no flight of conventional fancy, can equal the weird, grim yarn that he reeled off between orders.

"You must have read in the papers a few weeks back," he began, "about that bunch of college men that chartered the old racer _Mayflower_, filled her up with diving gear and dynamite, and went down after the treasure in the _Santa Margherita_."

I nodded assent. "Yes, and a hurricane hit them and they barely escaped."

"They're keeping mum," he said, "and mean to try again; but it's no use. That treasure is seven hundred miles to the nor-nor'east now, and I was about the last man to look at it. It's resting in the hold of a small schooner, sunk in four hundred fathoms. I never heard of that treasure ship until about three years ago, when I quit a brigantine at Cedar Keys and mixed in with the boarding-house crowd. There was a fellow out of a job named Gleason, and he had a chart in his pocket that he talked about, but never showed. He told us all about that old Spanish ship that went down with all hands in the sixteenth century, carrying with her about seven millions' worth of gold, silver, and jewels; and he knew the location. He had got it from a drunken diver who had seen her on the sea bottom, spelled her dingy old name on the stern, and saved the news to himself while he wormed out of the skipper the latitude and longitude of the place. And now he wanted to enlist capital, or make up a crew of men that would do the work. Dead easy, he said. Just to get there, drag the bottom with two boats and a length of chain until the wreck was located, then to go down in a diving suit, hook on to the chests and hoist them up.

"Well, in the crowd that he talked to there wasn't a dollar. We were all dead broke, but we were all ambitious. There was Pango Pete, a nigger six foot tall, who couldn't write his name, but he was a seaman from his feet up; and a Dago named Pedro Pasqualai. These two were the kind that will choke you before they ask the time of night. Then there was Sullivan, old man Sullivan, a decrepit old codger who had sailed second mate all his life, and never got a first mate's berth because he couldn't master navigation. And there was Peters, a young fellow filled up with the romance and the glory of the life at sea--rot, as you and I know, but he was enthusiastic, and that was enough. A trio of Dutchmen were taken in--Wagner, Weiss, and Myers, three good fellows down on their luck. A Portuguese named Christo, and two Sou'wegian brothers named Swanson completed the bunch. We talked it over down at the end of the fruit dock, where the oyster boats come in and make fast, and where the downs-and-outs congregate to smoke and boast of the prosperous past.

"But this crowd talked of the prosperous future. Seven millions, said Gleason, lay down there off Turks Island in less than sixty fathoms, and all we needed was some kind of a craft to get us there, a diving suit, and a storage battery to light up a bulb to search for the treasure. These things seemed beyond our reach, until a schooner came in for supplies. We sized her up, and Gleason went wild as her different fittings and appliances showed up. There were the diving dresses we needed; there was the storage battery; there were the extra anchors for mooring a craft over a certain spot, and the air pumps and paraphernalia for diving operations, scattered about the deck. She was a small craft, and was manned by men who did not act and talk like sailors. There seemed to be no skipper, and they smoked on deck while working, and talked back and forth as though all were equal.

"'A company,' said Gleason, 'just like us, only they've got the money, and possibly the secret. Well, the company that gets the loot owns it and such matters as the ownership of the schooner and the outfit can be settled afterwards, possibly out of court. What do you say? Are you game?'

"We were. We laid low, but watched, and when that schooner was filled up with grub, we were ready to raid her and chuck the crew overboard; but it wasn't necessary to do the latter. They filled up too late for the tide and went ashore for the evening, leaving no one aboard but a Japanese cook. We remembered, as we climbed aboard after dark, that we hadn't a man among us who could cook, and so, instead of dropping that Jap over the rail, we simply locked him into a stateroom and made sail.

"Naturally, as Gleason originated the scheme, he was elected captain, but, as I was the only navigator in the crowd, I was made first mate, and the big nigger, Pango Pete, second mate. It looked good for discipline, for even pirates recognize the need of it, and the first man that growled or kicked had to deal with Pete. He whaled a few before we'd got around the Florida Cape, but he also whaled the Jap for bad cooking and insolence--which was a mistake. That Jap was an educated man, a college graduate and a member of the Japanese Samurai, a curious class in that country that never yield, never forgive, and kill themselves when defeated. We didn't know this; we only knew that he was a mighty poor cook.

"After we were around the Cape, Gleason gave me the latitude and longitude of the spot, and I made for it. It took me two or three days of careful observations and calculations before I announced that we were within six seconds of the spot, which is all that navigation will do. Then we dropped anchor and began to drag. We knotted together every line we had, and in the middle we had a length of mooring chain that would stick to the bottom. We kept two small boats, to which this was attached, a quarter of a mile apart and pulled on parallel lines, and at last felt a drag; then we pulled together, gathering in the slack, and when we met, the schooner, under charge of Gleason, came up and anchored, over the spot.

"I was the only man there who had any diving experience, so I went down. Say, have you ever been under water in a diving suit, trusting your life to the fellows above who pump the air into your helmet? No? Well, it's a curious experience. I had the feeling as I went down that I was number thirteen of that bunch, and that they only needed to shut off my air supply to make their number twelve instead of thirteen. But that didn't happen; they pumped, and I breathed and saw the old galleon, the _Santa Margherita_. She lay there, heeled over to starboard, covered with the ooze and the slime of the sea, with barnacles everywhere.

"I signaled for slack and walked around her, taking note of her rig. She had three masts, and three tops very much like the fighting tops of our modern battleships. There were no royal masts, but she had two sprit-sail yards under the bowsprit and jib boom, and a huge lateen yard on the mizzen that took the place of the cro'-jack. But her poop deck was a wonder; five tiers of windows one above the other, and on top three big lanterns much like the ordinary street lamp. Of course, all canvas and running gear had rotted away, but here and there was a leg of standing rigging, preserved by the tar. She was a big craft in her day, no doubt, but not so big compared with present-day ships; at any rate I could reach up to her channels, and by this means climbed aboard.