Read Ebook: The isle of dead ships by Marriott Crittenden McKernan Frank Illustrator

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Ebook has 871 lines and 42612 words, and 18 pages

"Ah! Good evening, Miss Fairfax!" he ventured. "We missed you at tea. Feeling the motion a bit? It is a little rough, ain't it?"

Miss Fairfax did not like the purser, but she found it difficult to snub any one. Therefore she answered the man pleasantly, though not with any especial enthusiasm.

"Why! no, Mr. Sprigg. I don't consider this rough; I'm rather a good sailor, you know. I simply wasn't hungry at tea-time."

Mr. Sprigg came closer.

The look the girl gave him drove the smirk in haste from his face.

"The notice in the paper was entirely without foundation, Mr. Sprigg," she declared, coldly. "As for seeing Mr. Howard, I'm afraid my tastes do not run in that direction. Besides, he probably would not like to be stared at. He was a gentleman once, you know."

She turned impatiently away and looked eastward. Then she uttered an exclamation.

"Why! Whatever's happened to the water?" she cried.

The question was not surprising. In the last hour the sea had changed. From a smiling playfellow, lightly buffeting the ship, it had grown cold and sullen. The sparkles had died from the waves, giving place to a metallic lustre. Long, slow undulations swelled out of the southeast, chasing each other sluggishly up in the wake of the ship.

It did not need a sailor's eye to tell that something was brewing. Miss Fairfax shivered slightly and drew her light wrap closer around her.

"Makes you feel cold, don't it?" asked Mr. Sprigg cheerfully. "Lord bless you, that's nothing to the way you'll feel before it's over. Funny the weather bureau didn't give us any storm warnings before we sailed."

The weather bureau had, but the warnings had been thrown away, unposted, by a sapient native official of San Juan, who considered the efforts of the Americans to foretell the weather to be immoral.

"Will there be any danger?"

"Danger? Naw! Not a bit of it. If you stay below, you won't even know that there's been anything doing. Even if we run into a hurricane, which ain't likely, we'll be just as safe as if we were ashore. The Queen don't need to worry about anything short of an island or a derelict."

"A derelict?"

"Sure. A ship that has been abandoned at sea for some reason or other, but that ain't been broken up or sunk. Derelicts are real terrors, all right."

"Some of 'em float high; they ain't so bad, because you can usually see 'em in time to dodge, and because they ain't likely to be solid enough to do you much damage even if you do run into them. But some of 'em float low--just awash--and they're just-- Well, they're mighty bad. They ain't really ships any more; they're solid bulks of wood."

"I suppose they are all destroyed sooner or later?"

The little purser unconsciously struck an attitude. "A good deal later, sometimes," he qualified. "Derelicts have been known to float for three years in the Atlantic, and to travel for thousands of miles. Generally, however, in the North Atlantic, they either break up in a storm within a few months, or else they drift into the Sargasso Sea and stay there till they sink."

"The Sargasso Sea? Where is that? I suppose I used to know when I went to school, but I've forgotten."

Mr. Sprigg waved his hand toward the east and north. "Yonder," he generalized vaguely. "We are on the western edge of it now. See the weed floating in the water there? Farther north and east it gets thicker until it collects into a solid mass that stretches five hundred miles in every direction.

"Nobody knows just what it looks like in the middle, for nobody has ever been there; or, rather, nobody has ever been there and come back to tell about it. Old sailors say that there's thousands of derelicts collected there."

"The Gulf Stream encircles the whole ocean in a mighty whirlpool, you know, and sooner or later everything floating in the North Atlantic is caught in it. They may be carried away up to the North Pole, but they're bound to come south again with the icebergs and back into the main stream, and some day they get into the west-wind drift and are carried down the Canary current, until the north equatorial current catches them, and sweeps them into the sea over yonder."

"For four hundred years and more--ever since Columbus--derelicts must have been gathering there. Millions of them must have sunk, but thousands must have been washed into the center. Once there, they must float for a long time. There are storms there, of course, but they're only wind-storms--there can't be any waves; the weed is too thick."

"I guess there are ships still afloat there that were built hundreds of years ago. Maybe Columbus's lost caravels are there; maybe people are imprisoned there! Gee! but it's fascinating."

Miss Fairfax stared at the little man in amazement. He was the last person she would ever have suspected of imagination or romance; and here he was, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, declaiming away like one inspired. Most men can talk well on some one subject, and this subject was Mr. Sprigg's own. For years he had been reading and talking and thinking about it.

Miss Fairfax rose from her steamer-chair and looked around her, then paused, awestruck. Down in the southeast a mass of black clouds darkened the day as they spread. Puffs of wind ran before them, each carrying sheets of spray torn from the tops of the waves; one stronger than the rest dashed its burden into Miss Fairfax's face with little stinging cuts. The cry of the stewards, "All passengers below!" was not needed to tell her that the deck was rapidly becoming no place for women.

AN hour later the deck had grown dangerous, even for men. The Queen drove diagonally through the waves, rolling far to right and to left; and at each roll a miniature torrent swept aboard her, hammered on her tightly-fastened doors, and passed, cataract-wise, back into the deep. Scarcely could the officers, high on the bridge, clinging to stanchions and shielded by strong sheets of canvas, keep their footing. Overhead hooted the gale.

It grew dark. To the gloom of the storm had been added the blackness of the night. Literally, no man could see his hand before his face; even the white foam that broke upon the decks or against the sides passed invisibly.

Still, the ship drove on, held relentlessly to her course. For it was necessary to pass the western line of the weed-bound sea before turning to the north; and, until this was done, the Queen could not turn tail to the storm.

Toward morning Captain Bostwick struggled to the chart-house and, for the twentieth time, bent over the sheet, figuring and measuring. Then, with careful precision, he punched a dot in the surface and drew a long breath.

He opened the last chart of the Hydrographic Office and noted some lines drawn in red. His brow grew anxious again and he drew his breath.

The sentence was never finished. With a shivering shock like that of a railroad train in a head-on collision, the Queen stopped dead, hurling the captain violently over the rail to the deck below.

The first officer was clutching the rope of the siren when the crash came. The slight support it afforded before it gave way saved him from following his commander, and at the same time sent a raucous warning through the ship to close the collision bulkheads.

As he clung desperately to the rail, the Queen rose in the air and came down with another crash; then went forward over something that grated and tore at her hull as she passed. But her bows were buried in the waves, while her screw lashed the air madly.

Had not the involuntary warning of the siren sounded, and had it not been obeyed instantly, the Queen would have plunged in that heart-breaking moment to the bottom. As it was, her shrift seemed short.

The force of her impact on the lumber-laden, water-logged derelict had shattered her bows, and only the forward bulkhead, strained, split, gaping in a hundred seams where the rivets had been wrenched loose, kept out the sea. A hurried inspection showed that even that frail protection would probably not long suffice.

She lasted, but dawn showed a desperate state of affairs. The Queen had swung round, until her submerged bow pointed to windward and her high stern, catching the gale, plunged dully northward. The seas, rushing up from the southeast, broke on the shelving deck like rollers on a beach, and sent the salt spume writhing up the planks and into the deck state-rooms.

The engine and all the forward part of the ship were drowned, but the great dining-saloon and the staircase leading to the social hall above were still comparatively dry. In the latter and on the deck just outside of it the passengers were huddled. The captain had disappeared, licked away by the first tongue of sea that had followed the collision.

With the earliest streak of light the first officer decided to take to the boats. Only three remained, and these had already been fitted out with provisions.

As the crew and passengers filed into the first, Officer Jackson, who had several times come on deck, only to wander restlessly below again, once more plunged down into the darkness.

Rapidly yet cautiously he lowered himself down the sloping passageway, clutching at the jambs of empty state-rooms to keep himself from sliding down against the bulkhead, on the other side of which the sea muttered angrily. At last he gained the door he sought, and clung to it while he fitted a key into the lock.

The electric lights had gone out when the engine stopped, and not a thing could be seen in the blackness, but a stir within told that the room was tenanted. Some one was there, staring toward the door.

Jackson lost no time.

"Here you!" he blustered, in a voice into which there crept a quiver in spite of him. "Last call! The ship's sinking and they're taking to the boats. You gotter decide mighty quick if you're going to come. Just gimme your parole and I'll turn you loose to fight for your life."

A voice answered promptly:

"I'll give no parole. I'd a deal sooner drown here than hang on shore. You can do just as you please about releasing me. It's a matter of indifference to me."

The officer tried to protest.

"I don't want your death on my shoulders, Mr. Howard," he muttered. "Don't put me to it."

Howard laughed sardonically.

"What the devil do I care about your shoulders?" he demanded. "Turn me loose, quick, or get out. Your company isn't exhilarating, my good Jackson."

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