Part 7

“Two men had drifted ashore near the settlement lashed to the thwarts of a half-sunken whale-boat. They were all but dead and unable to speak. Finally, after careful nursing, one began to show some life, and he raved about a lost ship and the Cooper’s Hole.

“You see, over there in the South Orkneys there is a hole through the cliffs about a hundred feet wide, with the rocks rising straight up hundreds of feet on both sides. Inside this narrow passage, which is like an open door, is the great hole, miles around inside, with water enough for all the vessels afloat to lie in without fouling.

“This fellow raved about driving a ship through the hole during a storm. He talked of revenge, and would laugh when he raved about the captain of the ship.

“When these men were well again they told a straight story about the loss of the ship Indian. As near as they could make out, they had been fifteen days in that open boat, which they clung to when the vessel foundered off the Horn. They had nothing saved but the rags they came ashore in, so they were glad enough to take Jackson’s offer of two hundred pounds a year to tend the Le Maire light.

“We arrived off the light the next afternoon. There was no place to land except on the rocks, where the heave of the swell made it dangerous. It was dead calm this evening, so we got ashore all right. As we climbed the rocks towards the light the fellows there came out of the small house to meet us.

“The head keeper walked in front, and he was the queerest-looking critter that ever wore breeches. His hair was half a fathom long and the color of rope yarn, and his eye was as green and watery as a cuttlefish’s. The other fellow was somewhat younger, but he seemed taken up with the idea that his feet were the only things in nature worth looking at, so I paid little attention to him.

“The older fellow with long hair grunted something to Jackson and held out his hand, which the skipper shook heartily.

“‘Well,’ he roared, ‘how’s things on the rocks? Damme if I don’t wish I was a light-keeper myself, so’s I could sit around and admire the sun rise and set.’

“‘I wish to blazes you was,’ grunted the long-haired heathen; ‘as for me, I’m about tired of this here job, and you might as well tell the governor that if he gives me the whole East Falkland I wouldn’t stay here through another winter.’

“‘That’s just the way with a man soon as he gets a soft job. Never satisfied. Now, here’s my friend Green just waiting to step into your shoes the minute you think two hundred pounds a year is too infernal much for a gent like you to live on.’

“The old fellow looked hard at me with his fishy eyes, but said nothing.

“‘No,’ went on Jackson, ‘you wouldn’t be satisfied with ten thousand. What’s the matter, anyhow? Have you seen the bird lately?’

“At this the fellow glanced around quickly and took in every point of the compass, but he didn’t answer.

“Finally he mumbled, ‘To-night’s the night.’ Then he turned to me and asked, ‘Be you going to stay ashore to-night?’

“‘No,’ I answered, ‘not if we can get back on board.’

“Then the fellow turned and led the way to the light and Jackson and I followed after him.

“The light-house was built of heavy timber, brought ashore from a vessel, and the lantern was one of those small lenses like what you see in the rivers of the States. It had a small platform around it, guarded by an iron hand-rail, which, I should judge, was about fifty feet above the rocks. Outside the lens was the ordinary glass covering, making a small room about the lantern, and outside of all was a heavy wire netting to keep birds from driving through the light during a storm.

“There were some repairs needed, and the lampist had to go back on board the steamer for some tools. He had hardly started before the dull haze settled over the dark water, and in half an hour you couldn’t see ten fathoms in any direction.

“‘By thunder! Green, we are in for a night of it, sure,’ said Jackson to me. ‘There’ll be no chance of that boat coming back while this lasts.’

“‘Let her go,’ I replied; ‘I’d just as soon spend a night in the lantern as in that infernal hooker soaked in sour oil and jammed full of bedbugs. I don’t know but what I’d rather like the change.’

“‘Like it or not, here we are, so we might as well take a look around before dark.’

“We hadn’t gone more than half a mile through the gigantic tussac-grass when I felt a peculiar sensation at my heart. The next moment I was lying flat on my back and Jackson was doing all he could to bring me to. I had the falling sickness, and I realized what the governor meant by the order that no person should be allowed to travel alone on the Falklands.

“In a little while I grew better, and with Jackson’s help managed to get back to the light, faint and weak.

“That old long-haired fellow was there waiting for us, and he expressed about as much surprise and feeling at my mishap as if I had been an old penguin come ashore to die. However, after I had a glass of spirits and eaten some of the truck he had cooked for supper, I felt better. Then the old fellow went into the lantern and lit up for the night. He then came back and joined us in the house, where we sat talking.

“‘It’s the first quarter o’ the moon an’ third day,’ said he, coming in and sitting down at the table and lighting his pipe from the sperm-oil lamp.

“‘I never made any remarks to the contrary,’ said Jackson.

“‘It’s this night, sure, and the Strait will be crowded before morning; then he’ll be here.’

“‘Who?’ I asked.

“Old man Jackson laughed. ‘That’s his friend the bird,’ he said, looking towards me. ‘He has a visitor every now and then, you see, so it isn’t so blooming lonesome here after all.’

“The keeper looked hard at me with his fishy eyes, and then continued.

“‘He has been here twice before,’ he said.

“‘Well, suppose he has,’ snapped Jackson.

“‘If you can get another man, get him. I don’t want to be here when he comes again.’

“I looked at Jackson and saw his face contracted into a frown. ‘It’s some sailor’s joke,’ said he. ‘Nobody but a fool would send a message tied to the leg of an albatross.’

“‘It’s a joke I don’t like, an’ I’d like you to take us away.’

“‘Well, joke or no joke, you’ll have to stay until I get some one to take your place,’ and Jackson filled his pipe and smoked vigorously.

“I must have been dozing in my chair, for it was quite late and the fire in the stove almost out, when I was aroused by a peculiar sound.

“I noticed Jackson start up from the table and then stand rigid in the centre of the room.

“There was a deep moaning coming from the water that sounded like wind rushing through the rigging of a ship. Then I heard cries of men and the tumbling rush of water, as if a vessel were tearing through it like mad. Jackson sprang to the door and was outside in an instant. I followed, but the old keeper sat quietly smoking.

“Outside, the light from the tower shone like a huge eye through the gloom, and as the fog was thick, it lit up the calm sea only a few fathoms beyond the ledge. This made the blackness beyond all the more intense.

“‘That vessel will be on the rocks if they don’t look sharp,’ said Jackson. ‘Ship ahoy!’ he bawled in his deep base voice, but the sound died away in the vast stillness about us.

“‘There’s no wind,’ said I; ‘but I distinctly heard the rattle of blocks and snaps of slatting canvas as she came about.’

“We stood there staring into the night, and were aware of the presence of the old keeper, who had joined us. Suddenly we heard the rushing sound again, and it seemed as if a mighty wind was blowing through the Strait. There were faint cries as if at a great distance. Then the noise of waring braces coupled with the sharp snapping of slatting canvas.

“Jackson looked at me, and there was a strange look in his eyes.

“‘They’ll pass through all night,’ said the old keeper, ‘and in the morning there won’t be a sail in sight, calm or storm.’

“We stood in the fog for half an hour listening to the noises in the Strait, while the glare from the light made the mist-drifts form into gigantic shapes which came and melted again into the darkness. Once again Jackson went to the water’s edge and bawled into the blackness. The long-haired keeper smiled at his attempts, and his eyes had a strange glow in them like the phosphor flares in water of the tropics.

“‘The devil take this infernal place!’ said Jackson. ‘I never heard of so many vessels passing through here in a whole season. The whole Cape Horn fleet are standing to the s’uth’ard to-night.’

“I felt a little creepy up the back as we went into the house. Jackson made up the fire, while I lay in a bunk.

“‘It’s been so since the light went out last winter; but it was the fault of the oil, not me,’ said the old keeper.

“‘Why didn’t you stay awake and look to it?’ asked Jackson.

“‘It was a terrible night, and I got wet. I sat by the stove and fell asleep, and when I woke up it was daylight, and the light was out. That bird was there on the platform.’

“Jackson talked to the old fellow sharply, but I finally fell asleep. He aroused me at daylight, and I went outside.

“The sun was shining brightly, and the light air had drifted the fog back across the Strait to the ragged shore of Tierra del Fuego, where it hung like a huge gray pall, darkening underneath. To the northward lay the steamer, but besides her there was not a floating thing visible.

“The younger keeper, with the hang-dog look, started up the tower to put out the light, and I followed, taking the telescope to have a look around. We had just reached the platform when there waddled out from behind the lantern the most gigantic albatross I ever saw. The creature gave a hoarse squawk and stretched its wings slowly outward as if about to rise. But instead of going it stood motionless, while the keeper gave a gasp and nearly fell over the rail, his face showing the wildest terror.

“‘That’s him,’ he whispered.

“And I must say I felt startled at seeing a bird four fathoms across the wings. I stood looking at the creature a moment, and was aware of something dangling from its leg. Then I went slowly towards it. It stood still while I bent down and unfastened the piece of canvas hanging to its leg, but it kept its great black eye fixed on me; then it snapped its heavy hooked beak savagely, and I started backward.

“The creature dropped gracefully over the edge of the platform, and, falling in a great circular sweep, rose again and held its way down the Strait. I watched it with the telescope until it disappeared in the distance, and then swept the horizon for signs of a sail. There was nothing in sight, and the sea was like oil as far as the eye could reach. I put down the glass and examined the piece of rag. It was nothing but a bit of tarred canvas, with nothing on it to tell where it came from. The keeper asked to see it, and he could make no more of it than I could. Then we went down, and as we approached the house the old keeper came out of the door and looked around in the air above him. I held out the piece of canvas and he gave a start.

“‘He was there, then?’ he asked.

“‘If you mean that all-fired big albatross, yes,’ I answered. ‘But why the devil are you so scared of him?’

“The old fellow didn’t answer, but stood looking at the piece of canvas, saying, ‘Only one left. This is the third time.’

“‘Only one fool!’ I cried. ‘How, by Davy, can you read anything on that bit of canvas when it’s as blank as a fog-bank?’

“‘And you are that fool,’ he replied, in a low tone, so smoothly that I damned him fore and aft for every kind of idiot I could think of.

“‘Let him alone,’ said Jackson, hearing the rumpus. ‘All these outlying keepers are as crazy as mollyhawks. It’s some joke, or some fellow’s trying to get the place.’

“In a little while we went aboard the steamer and started for the Falklands.

“I was still there three weeks later, when two small sealing schooners came in and unloaded their pelts. The men aboard them told a strange tale of a wreck in the great hole of the Orkneys. They had gone into the crater after seals and had found a large ship driven into a cleft in the rocky wall. Her bow was clear of the water, but her stern was fathoms deep in it, so they couldn’t tell her name. On their way up they had gone to the westward and come through the Le Maire. They had hunted for two days off the rocks and reported the light out both nights.

“Jackson started off in a day or so to see what was the matter, and he took a goose-gun for that albatross. When he reached the light there wasn’t a sign of those keepers. Everything was in its place and the house was open, but there was nothing to tell how the fellows left.

“In a little while he noticed the head of an albatross peering over the platform of the light, and he tried to get a sight at it. But the critter seemed to know better than to show itself.

“He finally started up the ladder and gained the platform. There were the two keepers, stark and stiff, one of them holding an oil-can in his dead grip. The sight gave him such a turn that when the giant bird gave a squawk and started off he missed it clean, although it wasn’t three fathoms from the muzzle of his gun. He yelled to the men below to come up, but by the time they got there the whole top was afire from the spilled oil catching at the flash, or burning wad, from his gun.

“There was no way to put the fire out, so they had the satisfaction of climbing down and watching the tower burn before their eyes.

“It’s hard to say just how those keepers died. It may have been the falling sickness, or it may have been natives that killed them. As for me, I’ve believed there was something unnatural about the whole affair, for I’ve never heard of an albatross landing on a light before. There was some talk about fear of mutiny aboard the Indian by her owners, but there was no ground for it. Those fellows probably told a straight story. There was a boat picked up to the northward of the Strait some time afterwards, but there was no name on it, and the only man in it was dead. He had several ugly knife wounds, but it proved nothing.

“There’s room to the eastward of the island for me. You had better watch those fore-and mizzen-t’gallant-sails,--it looks as if we may get a touch of the Cape before morning.”

I went forward and started some men aft to the mizzen. We were about to begin the struggle “around the corner.” The deepening gloom of the winter evening increased, and the distant flares and flashes from the Land of Fire gave ominous thoughts of the future in store for us.

_THE BACKSLIDERS_

“Wal, I swow!” exclaimed Captain Breeze, as he came to the break of the poop the morning after the Northern Light had dropped down the bay to await the tide before putting to sea. The object that had called forth this remark was the figure of a very pretty and strongly built woman, dressed in a close-fitting brown dress with a white apron, standing at the galley door waiting to receive the breakfast things from the “doctor,” who was busy with the morning meal inside.

It was quite early and the mates were forward getting the men to the windlass. The tug was alongside waiting to take the tow as soon as the anchor came to the cat-head. The passengers were still below in their bunks and the skipper had only just turned out. He was bound out on a long voyage to the West Coast, and both he and his mates had enjoyed a more than usually convivial time the evening before. This accounted for the skipper not having seen his stewardess until the next morning, for she had come aboard quietly and had gone unperceived to her state-room in the forward cabin. He had asked for a good stewardess this voyage, for he had several female passengers. The company had evidently tried to accommodate him, for this girl certainly looked everything that was good and nothing bad. He stood gazing at her in amazement. Stewardesses on deep-water ships were not of this breed. Forward, the men manned the brakes, and a lusty young fellow looking aft from the clew of his eye caught a glimpse of the vision at the galley door and broke forth, all hands joining in the chorus,--

“A Bully sailed from Bristol town, Singing yo, ho, ho, oh, blow a man down; A Bully sailed, and made a tack, Hooray for the Yankee Jack, Waiting with his yard aback, Soo-aye! Hooray! Oh, knock a man down.”

The rising sun shone upon the white topsails hanging in the buntlines and glittered upon the brass binnacle and companion-rail. In the bright light the hair of the young woman at the galley door looked like burnished copper or a deep red gold. The curve of her rosy cheek was perfect, and every now and then the skipper caught a glimpse of red lips and a gleam of white teeth.

“Wal, I swow!” he exclaimed again.

“Anchor’s short, sir!” came the hoarse cry of Mr. Enlis from the head of the top-gallant-forecastle.

“Sink me if that ain’t the all-aroundest, fore an’ aft, alow an’ aloft, three skysail-yard, close-sailin’ little clipper I----”

“Anchor’s short, sir!” came Garnett’s bawl from the capstan.

“----I ever see,” continued the skipper, completely deaf and lost to everything else.

“Stand by to take the line!” roared Mr. Enlis to the tow-boat.

He was a cool, collected, and extremely profane mate, and he saw in an instant that if the tug did not get the ship’s head she would swing around with the sea-breeze and be standing up the harbor with the tide.

As it was, she kept paying off so long that the natural sailorly instinct, alive in every true deep-water navigator as to a sudden change of bearings, asserted itself in the skipper and brought him out of his dream with a start. His vision faded, and in its place he saw his vessel swinging towards Staten Island, her topsails filling partly as they hung.

“What’s the matter for’ard?” he roared. “Wake up, you----,” and he let drive a volley of oaths which for descriptive power stood far and away above any of that extensive collection of words found in the English dictionary. Had Mr. Garnett been of a literary turn of mind he might have noted them down for future reference, but he apparently did not appreciate their depth and power, for he caught them up carelessly as they came and flung them into the faces of the crew with no concern whatever.

No one was affected much by this outburst, but after the skipper had taken pains to explain that his mates and crew were all sons of female dogs, and that they had inherited a hundred other bad things besides low descent from their ancestors, he subsided a little and another voice was heard from the main-deck.

“That’s right, old man; don’t mind me. Cuss them out, I shan’t pay any attention. I’ll get used to your tune, even if I don’t to your words,” cried the pretty girl from the galley door, smiling up at him.

Jimmy Breeze looked down upon the main-deck from the break of the poop. Then he scratched his head, first on one side and then on the other. Never before in the twenty years he had followed deep water had he ever heard of a stewardess addressing a captain like this. Had she been old and ugly a belaying-pin would have found itself flying through the air in the direction of her head. But this beautiful, gentle young girl!

It was too much for the skipper, so he turned slowly upon his heel and walked aft with the air of a much disturbed man, muttering incoherently to himself.

At three bells in the morning the female passengers had their breakfast served in the saloon. The skipper happened to be in his room adjoining and could hear the praise bestowed upon his stewardess by Mrs. O’Hara, the Misses O’Hara, and Mrs. McCloud.

“A perfect jewel,” affirmed the latter, while “Carrie” was forward getting her tea. “I really don’t think we could make a voyage without her.”

“And so beautiful and good,” said the Misses O’Hara.

“Faith, tu be sure, she’s a rale saint av a gurl,” added Mrs. O’Hara, just as she appeared with the tea things. “An’, Carrie, me gurl, d’ye like th’ sea that ye follow it alone, so to spake?” she continued, addressing the stewardess.

“Yes, indeed, ma’am. But it’s not alone I am entirely, for surely the captain is the finest I ever saw, and they told me he was a father to his crew. He’s a man after my own heart.”

“Humph!” growled Jimmy Breeze in the solitude of his state-room. He thought his stewardess was not only very pretty, but an extremely discerning young woman. It was, however, this very perfection in appearance and deportment that caused trouble this morning, for when “Bill,” the cabin boy, passed the stewardess in the alley-way he was quite overcome by the vision of loveliness. He had some of the dinner things for the officers’ mess, and when he turned suddenly at the door, a heavy lurch of the vessel sent him against the coamings. This had the effect of throwing the things scattering to leeward about the feet of Mr. Enlis.

“You holy son of Belial!” roared the mate. And he continued to curse him loudly until Mr. Garnett came up.

“Whang him!” grunted the second officer, shortly. “Whang the lights out of him, the burgoo-eating, lazy,” etc.

Mr. Enlis had seized the unfortunate “Bill” by the slack of his coat and had yanked him to the mast to “whang” him, when the form of the stewardess appeared at the door of the forward cabin.

The mate laid on one good whang, when he was interrupted by the remark, “Soak it to him; don’t mind me, I’ll get used to hearing him pipe.” And the pretty girl smiled pleasantly.

“Ye had better go below, missie, for there’s a-going to be a little hee-hawing for’ards. Come back again soon,” said Garnett, with a leer.

“Not exactly, while the fun lasts,” answered Miss Carrie.

But, somehow, the mate could not curse loud enough to keep his temper up before the young girl, and he ended matters by giving Bill a kick that sent him to leeward, where he landed in the mess-kit. Then the mate touched his forelock to Miss Carrie and went forward muttering something about there being no discipline aboard a boat with wimmen folks around. Garnett balanced himself upon his short bow-legs to the heave of the ship, which was now well off shore, and took his cap in his hand while he mopped a deep, greasy dent in the top of his bald head. Then he took out a vial of peppermint salts and sniffed loudly at it, looking out of the clew of his eye at the stewardess. “Holy smoke an’ blazes, but she’s a craft to sail with! To think of a tender-hearted young gurl like that wanting to see a man whanged.” And he went forward like a man in a dream.

Each time during the following days when the oaths flew thick and fast from poop or forecastle, Miss Carrie appeared upon the scene and cheered on the contestants. It was simply uncanny to see the fresh young girl telling the skipper or mates to “go ahead and cuss them out,” or “don’t mind me, boys, I’ll get used to it.” They could not go on while the young girl stood by. Once Enlis continued to use foul language before her, but two or three groans and hisses made his face flush for the very shame of it. He threatened to kill every man who uttered a sound, and seized a belaying-pin to carry out his design, but a laugh from the galley door drove him into a frenzy, and he sent the pin flying at the girl’s head. He was instantly reported to the skipper for his brutal conduct and had the satisfaction of being knocked down by that truculent commander, barely escaping forward with his life.

“He’s a real captain,” said Miss Carrie to the O’Haras, whenever she thought the skipper was in his state-room and could hear. She was a very pretty girl, and what she said was seldom lost entirely.