Part 5

“It’s no choice she had. There were twenty odd men here and only two women besides her. It’s not much about men in the rough you’ll be knowing, I think. Prudence had to make her choice and make it quick. She _had_ to, or--well, she did the best she could, and she married two days after she got here. Six months later the poor creature was a widow--her husband killed by a block fallin’ from aloft and knocking his brains out. The morning after she married again. She had to, you’ll understand. Six or eight months afterward her second husband disappeared, and Cap’n Forbes declared it’s dead he must be, and that she must many once more. So marry she did. Three months ago Mr. Gallegher’s wife died--Mr. Gallegher is the mate--and within a week Prudence was a widow once more. It was a big snake that Captain Forbes keeps as a pet that did the worruk that time; it got loose and crushed poor Strother to death. The very next day Prudence was forced to marry Gallegher--and her with a two-months’-old baby. Captain Forbes, you’ll understand, had a wife of his own all this time, but she died a week ago, and it’s myself that’s looking for somethin’ to happen to Gallegher any day.”

Dorothy gasped. “You mean----” she cried.

“I mane that Cap’n Forbes wants a wife mighty bad, and that Gallegher wants even worse to find one for him. I mane that you’d better be considerin’ whether you’d rather marry your young man--or Cap’n Forbes.”

Dorothy listened with strained attention. This thing was too horrible to be true. That she, Dorothy Fairfax, ran the slightest danger of being forced to marry anybody was simply unthinkable. Mother Joyce was exaggerating. This Prudence Gallegher must be a weak sort of a woman--not one by whom to measure herself.

She turned to Mrs. Joyce. “Have--have _you_ been married more than once?” she asked.

A grim look banished the kindly lines from Mother Joyce’s face. “Only once, mavourneen,” she answered. “I gave them all to understand long ago that if they did away with Tim, it’s follow him I would--after I had killed all of them I could. And they belaved me. Besides, it’s an old woman I am--not a pretty young colleen like you. You’d better be after takin’ my advice; marry your young man quick if you want him and stay on your own ship till he can get you away from here.”

“But they all say we can’t get away.”

“Arrah! Go way wid you! Tell me twinty men can’t get away from anywhere if it’s any sinse they’ve got. Cap’n Forbes could have got us ashore long ago if he’d been wantin’ to. It’s talk he does about gittin’ stuck in the weed! What’s a lot of weed? You can cut through it, can’t you? Faith, the rale trouble is Cap’n Forbes ain’t wantin’ to go, an’ he’s the only wan here with any seafarin’ since and any git up and git about him--unless your young man is after havin’ some.”

“Mr. Howard said we could get away if we could get a boat and compass and----”

“Oh! Sure, you’ll have to be havin’ a boat and some instruments to guide her, an’ it’s none so aisy to foind boats here. It’s me own opinion that the cap’n has destroyed all he found, so it is. As for compasses and such like, sure the cap’n has thim right enough locked away in his storehouse, even though he kapes them mighty secret. He don’t want to go himself and, be the same token, he don’t want any wan else to go. He moightn’t be such a big man if he was ashore, so he moightn’t! But you and your friends can get away--if Cap’n Forbes don’t prevent.”

Freed from the restraint of Dorothy’s presence, the conversation on deck had grown even more animated than before. Howard and Jackson could scarcely answer one question before half a dozen more were plumped at them. Evidently, thirst for news of the world had not died out in the members of the colony.

Howard noticed, however, that Forbes himself soon drew aside from the rest and engaged in earnest talk with Joe and Bill, evidently questioning them in regard to the Queen and her passengers, and that later he devoted himself particularly to drawing out Jackson. Finally he came toward Howard.

“I guess your throat’s pretty dry, Mr. Howard,” he said, “and if you’ll come down to my cabin, I’ll see if I can’t find something to irrigate it with.”

Howard willingly accepted the invitation. From all he had heard it was obvious to him that this puppet king had resolutely set his face against any member of his colony leaving the wreck-pack, and it was highly necessary to discover whether he would go so far as to oppose any attempts of the newcomers in that direction. If a contest was to come, the sooner Howard knew it, the better.

Forbes led the way to his cabin and pushed forward a chair.

“Choose your own poison, Mr. Howard,” he offered hospitably, indicating a sideboard loaded with bottles. “We have pretty nearly everything there is. A single steamer last month brought us more than we could drink in a lifetime. What I have here doesn’t represent half her selection. There is beer in the ice-box over in that corner, if you prefer it.”

Upon Howard’s accepting the beer, his host set half a dozen bottles on the table, adding one of whiskey for himself.

“Bourbon is good enough for me,” he observed. “I sample the fancy drinks once in a while, but always come back to the straight stuff. I’m surprised that you don’t also. You are a naval officer, aren’t you? I hope you are better up in other details of your profession.”

Howard laughed. “Hard drinking isn’t exactly compulsory in the service,” he observed, lightly.

“Oh, no offense! I was only joking, of course. I suppose you have specialists in that line as well as in others. From what I read in the papers that drift in to us here, I take it that everything is being specialized nowadays. What’s your particular line--navigating, engineering, submarining?”

Howard laughed again. “This is an age of specialization, all right, captain,” he returned, “but it hasn’t struck the navy yet. Quite the contrary! Only a year or two ago, Congress wiped out all special lines and insisted that all officers should know everything. Perhaps it was right, but----”

“But you don’t think so. Well, it’s a good thing to know all about your own job if you can. I suppose, however, you can’t help specializing more or less. For instance, you must have special men who manage your submarines.”

“Not exactly. Still, only a few men have had any experience in that line yet. The boats are too new and too few to give everybody a chance yet. Personally, I have been lucky enough to have had a good deal of experience with them, but comparatively few others have as yet.”

Forbes threw himself back in his chair with a look of intense satisfaction on his face. “That’s good,” he said heartily. “Humph! By the way, Howard, this party of yours is a curiously mixed one.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, it’s evident on the face of it!-- Have a cigarette?-- A navy officer, a New York policeman, and a girl; that’s odd enough, isn’t it? Not that sailors and girls are antipathetic--quite the contrary--but where does the policeman come in? I don’t quite place him in the picture.”

Howard lighted his cigarette with a steady hand. “I believe he had been to Porto Rico to bring a convict back to New York,” he returned.

“A convict. Humph! Too bad he didn’t bring him here. ‘There’s never a law of God or man runs in the Sargasso Sea.’ I’m up in the modern poets, you’ll observe, Howard. We have no extradition here. Well, as I was saying, Neptune makes some queer bed-fellows, especially here. Who is the lady, by the way?”

“Miss Dorothy Fairfax, daughter of Colonel John Fairfax, a millionaire railroad man who has been building lines in Porto Rico of late. His daughter was on her way home after visiting him on the island.”

Forbes’s eyes glittered. “Colonel John Fairfax’s daughter, eh! I was reading an article in the paper about him the other day that said he owned about half the railroads in the United States. His daughter will be quite a catch for a poor man. Eh, Howard!”

Howard made a slight movement. “I would rather not discuss Miss Fairfax, captain,” he returned, quietly. “When and how can we get away from here?”

Forbes held his glass to the light and squinted at it. “Well, Howard,” he remarked reflectively. “I’ve been kind of expecting you to ask me that. In fact, I brought you down here to give you a chance to ask me. The truth is, you can’t get away at all unless you come to terms with me.”

“What are your terms?”

“Well--I’ll come to that after a while. Look here, Howard, I’ve been here ten years and I never was so comfortable in my life before. I’ve lived easy and slept soft, and never had a minute’s worry about grocery bills or taxes, or any of the other plagues of civilization. And my men have been in the same case. They’ve had just work enough to keep them healthy, and just drink enough to keep them happy. If they were out of this, they’d either be working like dogs or drunk--also like dogs. Why in thunder should either they or I want to go back to that old damnable life?”

“No reason at all, captain, if you’re content here.”

“That’s the devil of it. I’m not content. I’m just fool enough to ache to get back. But I don’t want to go back empty-handed. I don’t want to go back poor. I want to go back rich, with influential connections, social relations, and all the rest of it.”

Howard smiled. “You’re not the only one who wants all that, captain,” he observed. “There are others.”

“So I suppose. But the difference between them and me is that since you got here I’ve got all this right in my fist. This morning it was far away; now it is close at hand. As I said, I’ve been here for ten years. In that time I have been over about five thousand wrecks, old and new. Nearly every one of them has had money on her. Some have had very large sums. Large or small, I have collected them all. It makes a great fortune for one; it is enough for two; but it isn’t a hill of beans among a score.”

“I am beginning to see.”

“I couldn’t take this money away secretly by boat--it’s too bulky. I couldn’t take it openly without sharing it with a dozen others--and it would need about a dozen to cut a way through this damnable weed. I’ve been ready to go for six months, but I didn’t see my way. Now I do.”

“Well.”

“Recently I found a safe, quick, and easy way for a man with the right technical knowledge to get away from here with two or three people--and my money. But I didn’t have the technical knowledge. Of all the ships that have floated in with libraries on them, not one has had a book that told me what to do. Now you have come especially trained in the very line I want. Can you guess what my terms are now?”

“Humph! Perhaps. What is your way?”

“Don’t worry about that now. It’s all right, and that’s enough. I’m telling you a good deal, because I want your help, but I’m not giving myself away altogether. But about those terms. If you’ll help me get ashore with my money, I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars.”

Howard lay back in his chair and stared at his host thoughtfully. The conversation had proceeded far otherwise from what he had expected. The man whose opposition to his leaving he had feared, was actually asking his aid. Yet this assistance was asked not slavishly, but as if the asker could compel it if he liked, but preferred to request. Howard felt that he must choose his words warily.

“Such a question is hardly worth asking, captain,” he returned. “Of course, I shall be glad to accept. I take it for granted that my friends are included in your invitation!”

“Your friends!” Forbes burst into a roar of laughter. “Your friends! That’s good! That’s very good! One of your friends--Mr. Jackson--I intend to leave behind as a special favor to you.”

For an instant Howard saw red. Then the fit passed, and he answered quietly, “You astonish me, captain.”

“Oh, no, I don’t! Look here, I’m on to you, Howard. You are the convict that Jackson went to Porto Rico for. You are now supposed to be dead. Leave Jackson here, and you can change your name and live anywhere in the world you like in perfect safety.”

“And Miss Fairfax?” Howard almost choked as he uttered the words, but the necessity of dissembling was strong upon him.

“Miss Fairfax will go with us--as my wife!”

“What!”

“Sit down, Howard, and keep your shirt on. What’s the use of getting worked up. I know I’m not exactly in Miss Fairfax’s line, but she won’t be the only woman who has married out of her class. I’ll make good with her father, all right.”

“You think you can get Miss Fairfax to marry you?”

In spite of himself the scorn that Howard tried to hide showed in his voice. Forbes did not notice it.

“She can’t help herself,” he declared. “I’ve got her dead to rights. Besides, I’ve got the law--our law--on my side. You don’t suppose ordinary rules govern here, do you? Not much! The sexes are too frightfully disproportionate. Counting your party, there are just twenty-four men and only three women here. The coming of a new woman has always been the signal for trouble. Bad blood, quarrels, and murders have followed inevitably. So we made a law some years ago that every woman must marry within twenty-four hours after her arrival. Under that law I intend to marry Miss Fairfax. What have you to say about it?”

With the last word Captain Forbes put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, staring into Howard’s face. Huge, shaggy, and evidently immensely powerful, he towered menacingly above the smaller naval officer.

Howard wanted to say a good deal, but forbore. Clearly Forbes took him for an ordinary scoundrel who had his price like other scoundrels. If he was to help Dorothy, the obvious thing was to appear to fall in with the plan until opportunity offered to defeat it, or until action could no longer be deferred. That is, he must gain time, and the only way to gain time was to dissimulate.

“I don’t believe I have anything to say about it just now, captain,” he returned, mildly, “except that I think you could make a better bargain with Colonel Fairfax if you merely returned his daughter to him safely. She’ll hate you forever, you know.”

Forbes’s brows relaxed. “Not much she won’t,” he returned. “She’ll come to time, all right, and mighty soon, too. I know how to handle the sex. She’ll be too proud to confess the truth, and she’ll praise me up to the skies. You’ll see! Besides, I don’t want the old man’s money; I’ll have enough of my own. I want his social help. Well! is it a bargain?”

Howard hesitated. “I must think about it for a while, captain,” he returned.

“What do you want to think about? Oh! I guess I see! You’ve got an idea of marrying the girl yourself, I reckon. Humph! Son-in-law saves girl, and rich daddy saves son-in-law. I don’t blame you, but I guess I’ll just have to queer that game once for all. Gallegher!”

The last word came like a pistol-shot. Howard leaped to his feet, only to find three armed men standing behind him.

Forbes threw himself back in his chair and laughed.

“Stung!” he remarked lightly. “You might as well go quietly, Howard. There’s no use of committing suicide, you know. We won’t hurt you--you’re too valuable. And we’ll turn you loose--after the ceremony.”

X

FOR one moment, as the men closed in on him, Howard struggled with a furious desire to wrest a cutlass from one of them, and with it exact terms from the others. The odds, though great, were not necessarily overwhelming, and victory would mean much. Had he stood on equal terms before the law, he would have risked everything in an immediate fight.

But he did not stand even. Against him as a convict fighting for freedom, Forbes could throw the entire population of his colony; even Jackson might join in the unequal odds. The result of a struggle on that basis must be inevitable; Dorothy would lose her only defender. Later, when the time came, if it did come, to shift the fight to the defense of womanhood, he would have a better cause and might win allies. So he surrendered.

“Take him to the Chester,” ordered Forbes, “and lock him up. Give him anything he wants to make him comfortable, and see after his meals. If he makes any trouble, put him in irons. Off with you.”

Sick at heart, Howard marched away between his captors. The way led to the edge of the wide platform that constituted the village, down a gang-plank, and away for some distance across the wrecks. Finally it led through a rent in the side of a big iron steamer, and up to what had evidently once been the captain’s cabin. Into this he was thrust.

Gallegher paused, with his hand on the lock. “You heard what the cap’n said,” he growled. “You behave yourself and nobody’ll hurt you. And, remember, there ain’t a mite of use tryin’ to escape, because there ain’t nowhere to escape to.”

The door slammed and Howard was left to his own reflections.

His first act was, of course, to inspect his prison. It was not uncomfortable. Large, airy, and well furnished, it had evidently been selected because all its sides were of iron, three of them being formed by the sides of the vessel, and the fourth by one of her bulkheads. Numerous port-holes admitted air and light, but were too small for a man’s body to pass through them. A skylight overhead had been closed with heavy timbers. Altogether it was a strong place.

Before he had had much more than time enough to familiarize himself with his surroundings, the key grated in the lock, and one of his captors entered with a tray, which he placed on a table built around the mizzenmast of the ship.

“Here’s your dinner, sor,” he announced.

Howard came over and sat down. As he did so, his eyes fell on some curious-looking mechanism which the man had pushed aside in making room for the tray. A question sprang to his lips, but he choked it back as the other bent suddenly forward.

“I heard of what you said to Bill and Joe, sor,” he breathed. “Is it true that you could get away from here if you had the chance, sor?”

“True? Of course it’s true. Give me a boat, two or three men, and a compass, and I’d start away at an hour’s notice. I wonder that you men don’t see that.”

“And will you take me and Kathleen with you when you go, sor? Kathleen’s my wife--Joyce they call her, sor, though its nather chick nor child we’re after having, sor.”

“I’ll take anybody. But I’ve got to be free in order to prepare----”

“Whist! That’ll be all right, sor. Kape a stiff upper lip and everything will come right. The young lady and you have friends here, sor. I don’t dare to stop now, but it’s back again I’ll be later on.”

Howard made no effort to detain the man. He was in a fever of impatience to examine the instruments on the table, and the moment he heard the key turn in the lock, he pushed aside his dinner and began to finger them.

“It isn’t possible,” he muttered. “It isn’t possible! Forbes would know better. But, by George, he doesn’t. It’s true! It’s true! _He’s locked me up with a wireless outfit._ If it’s only in working order.” He pressed the key and a rumble and a crash gave answer. “It is! It is!” he exulted. “By Heaven! It is!”

“Now to raise somebody before Forbes finds me out,” he continued. “If the wireless only sent as silently as it received, it would be all right. But--well! maybe no one will notice. It’s pretty noisy here! Anyhow, there’s nothing to do but try.”

He placed his finger on the key. “Let’s see!” he soliloquized. “The naval station at Guantanamo is nearest, but I don’t know its call. I’ll have to try C Q D--the emergency signal.”

Again and again he pressed the key, and again and again the apparatus roared, sending the cry for help broadcast over the sea. No interruption came. The village was some distance away, and the noise passed unheard or unheeded. “C Q D! C Q D!” he called.

At last the answer came, faint but distinct, whispering in through the microphone on his head. “Hello! Hello! Hello!” it sounded. “Who’s this?”

“Survivor of the wrecked steamer Queen, now on board an unknown steamer in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Is this Guantanamo?”

Sharply the answer came: “Yes. What did you say? Survivors of the Queen? Good Heavens, you were given up for lost. How many are you?”

“Three! Miss Fairfax--”

“Great Scott! Colonel Fairfax has been wild. Who else?”

“Police Officer Jackson!”

“Yes.”

“And Frank Howard.”

“What! The murderer?”

“No. The convict. This is he talking.”

“Oh! Beg pardon! Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Where did you say you were?”

“We drifted into the Sargasso Sea on the Queen, and brought up finally against the wreck-pack in the middle. Then we changed to another ship. It’s a long story. You’d better note it down carefully. I may be cut off any minute.”

“Oh! I’ll note it down all right. Go ahead. But first about the others on the Queen. Two boats got to port all right. How about the third?”

“Capsized! All lost except Miss Fairfax, who was washed back to the Queen, and pulled aboard by Jackson and Howard, who had been left there by accident. Now listen. This is urgent. We are in great danger here, and need aid at the first possible moment----”

“In danger? What’s the matter?”

“Listen, and I’ll tell you.”

Hurriedly, but concisely, Howard narrated their adventures, describing the wreck-pack and its queer colony, and pointing out the danger to which Miss Fairfax was subjected. Toward the end of the story, Guantanamo evidently became restless, for he broke in.

“Say!” he clicked, disgustedly. “Do you expect me to believe all that?”

“Surely. Why not?”

“Because it’s nonsense. Say, friend, you are wasted at sea. You ought to be a New York yellow-journal reporter. Now, who the devil are you, really?”

“I’ve told you.”

“You’ve told me a pack of lies--begging your pardon. I’d got into a pretty fix if I reported this nonsense; now, wouldn’t I?”

“You’ll get into a worse one if you don’t. For God’s sake, man, don’t be a skeptical fool. As I’ve told you, I’m a prisoner, and am only able to talk to you because this man Forbes apparently knows nothing of the wireless. My jail may be changed any minute, and I may never get another chance. This thing is very serious. There are about twenty-five people hopelessly confined here on these wrecks, and aid should be sent them at once.”

“Bah! You mean to tell me that people have been living there for years and years, and nobody has ever found it out?”

“Lots of people have found it out, but nobody has ever gone back to tell. If you never heard of the wreck-pack, ask any old sailor, and he’ll tell you of it--though he’s never seen it or known any one who has. Why shouldn’t there be people on it?”

“Well, suppose there are. How can we help you?”

“A ship can get to us if it tries hard enough. The weed can be cut through, though with difficulty. A sort of steam-saw projecting over the bow will do the work. The propeller will have to be screened to prevent fouling. Perhaps a paddle-wheel steamer would get along best. When it is once in, it should skirt the edge of the wreckage till it finds us. The latitude and longitude I have given you are only approximate. I have no proper instruments.”

“Who shall I notify?”

“Notify Colonel Fairfax, first of all. This Forbes may keep his threat and marry Miss Fairfax by force, or he may not. He shall not if I can help it. But I’m a prisoner and helpless just at present, though I have made at least one friend and hope for some others. Anyway, Colonel Fairfax will want to rescue his daughter. Then notify the government; there must be ships at Guantanamo now that could start for here very soon. Then notify the newspapers; if no one else will help us, they will. Notify anybody and everybody you like. Stop! Somebody’s coming. Keep out till I call you again.”

It was only the Irishman who came to take away the tray. He must have heard the rumbling of the wireless, for only a deaf man could have failed to do so, but he asked no questions about it, though he looked sharply at the instruments that Howard had thrust aside.