OUTSIDE THE LAW

and other adventures

at sea 1922-1948

Albert Richard Wetjen

1900-1948

2021

These stories range from action in the South Seas in the later half of the19th century to the merchant marine in World War II. The first publication source is given.

The stories are in order of first publication date, as were the stories in the first volume of Wetjen tales, "Pearl Hunger".

Contents

1: Under The Skin

2: The War of the Captains

3: A Loyal Man

4: The Education of Captain Sutherland

5: The Third Officer

6: Yellow Bowden

7: Women Are Queer

8: Sweet Music

9: Old Iron Face

10: The Pleasure Is All Yours

11: Hell's Helmsman

12: Carry on, Mr. Barnes

13: The Extra Hand

14: A Shift of Cargo

15: Outside The Law

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1: Under The Skin

Adventure, Nov 1922

SETH ORVILLE, little, sun-dried, and slightly drunk as usual, clambered up the warped gang-plank of the Lizzie R and dropped hiccoughing to the deck. He turned and waited for the immaculate young man following him, and then set off at a sort of jog-trot toward the poop and its awnings that made the hot Samoan day bearable.

Reaching his objective, he dropped into one of the cane chairs that stood empty near the skylight of the saloon, and, drawing a limp handkerchief from his pocket, he fussily mopped his wrinkled brow. The immaculate young man dropped languidly into a similar chair near the rail and looked about him with a total lack of interest and a bored expression on his face.

One would never have thought, to observe Seth Orville, that he owned half the trading-schooners in the south, or that he had long since given up counting his yearly income. And shamelessly dressed for a millionaire was the yellow-skinned little man. His ducks were in need of a wash, he was unshaven, and so yellow was his skin that it was impossible to tell whether or not he needed a wash himself. His rope-soled canvas shoes were sound, but they had never been cleaned since the day they had been made, and in place of the white sun-helmet the immaculate young man sported, a stained brown affair adorned the older man’s head and seemed to rest on his very ears. Even his tie was stained and rumpled, and gray with cigar-ash.

Yet he was the Seth Orville, famed for his judgment of men, as well as for other things, and reputed to have the finest schooner captains of the seas in his employ.

It was hard for the immaculate young man to believe this, and whenever he looked at the drunken and seemingly doddering wreck opposite him his nose lifted superciliously. And all this Orville noticed, for his gray eyes, that not even drink could dim, took in more of what went on about them than men dreamed.

“Sam!”

The old man’s dry voice rang out querulously. For a moment there was silence, and then the sound of a bunk-spring creaking came from the open skylight of the saloon, located under the poop-deck. A sleepy voice, full-throated and deep, called back—

“Hello?”

“Huh! Sleeping again! Get on deck!”

Puffing, slowly Orville seemed to collapse in his chair and doze. But under the rim of his sun-helmet his keen eyes watched the face of the man opposite him. The immaculate one took a cigaret case from his inside pocket and daintily lighted one of the white cylinders, flicking the burned match over the rail behind him. He crossed his legs with care, so as not to spoil the beautiful crease in his ducks, and swung his pipe-clayed shoes back and forth.

During his two weeks’ stay in Apia every woman in the city had admired his curly brown hair and his clean-cut lips, sagging slightly with dissipation, and had told him what a fine-looking fellow he was. He had reason to be languid and indifferent, and to appear above his surroundings.

There came a slow clatter of shoes on the steps of the saloon-companion and a man appeared, a man enormously fat and short, like a barrel from which the middle hoop has broken away. He was dressed in a pair of great-waisted dungaree pants, patched about the knees, a white cotton singlet, and a frayed straw hat perched far back on the top of his shining, sunburnt bald head.

He, too, was unshaven, but against the healthy bronze of his cheeks the! short, stiff golden beard hardly showed at all. His arms were plump and very large, his hands rather small, and his blue eyes twinkled with good humor and a contented frame of mind, barely peeping from the rolls of fat that composed his face and well-nigh obscured his nose. He stretched his arms above his head and yawned, a monster yawn that exposed a magnificent set of white teeth. Then, catching sight of the perfectly dressed stranger, he shut his mouth suddenly and, lowering his arms, came forward, at the same time shooting a glance of curiosity at the huddled form of Orville.

The newcomer sat heavily on the taffrail near the stranger and waited, his hands half in the side pockets of his dungarees. Orville seemed to come to life with a start.

“Sleep, sleep, that’s all you do,” he grumbled.

Then sitting upright with a jerk:

“Meet m’ frien’ Rodney Hyde. Hyde, this is Cap’n Boggs.”

The two men nodded to each other, Hyde patronizingly, the captain good- naturedly. The latter half-extended his right hand, but as Hyde turned his head away, apparently not seeing the action, the captain grimaced and looked inquiringly at Orville. The old man lifted his head just long enough to show the fat one that his left eye was closed in the shadow of his sun-helmet. Then he dropped his head again.

“Mishter Hyde is the son of a very old frien’ of mine, cap—cap’n.” Orville hiccoughed slightly and then cleared his throat. “He will be coming with you as supercargo. I want you t’ show him the ropes gen-generally, and inform him on any sub-subject he may be unfamiliar with. Undershtand?”

The fat man grunted and stood up. For all his shortness and fatness he looked imposing. It was remarkable, the change that had come over him. The fat rolls of his face seemed to have tensed into muscles. His eyes suddenly leaped to view. The sunburn of his bald dome grew darker. He shot a look of. scorn at the immaculate figure by his side and snorted. His stumpy forefinger shot out toward Orville.

“Am I ‘blackbirding’ this trip?”

“Hic—you are!”

“Then—” the fat one allowed his gaze to drift significantly to the after end of the saloon skylight, where several tomahawk marks sliced the woodwork—“then I shall want men!”

Orville leaped to his feet like a rubber ball on the rebound, and his cold gray eyes glared from under his bushy brows and his sun-helmet. He smote the palm of his left hand with this right fist and jog-trotted across to the captain, above whom he towered by at least an inch. His face was hidden from Hyde, who had turned round indignantly at the implied insult, and his left eye was closed again.

“—you, Boggs! How dare you insult— insult my friends. Another word, b-by Losh, and you’re fired. Come below. I want to talk to you,” he cried shrilly, and with a satisfied grin Hyde sank back in his chair and went on smoking. He approved of employees being kept in their place.

His head sunk like a man crushed, Captain Sam Boggs followed his superior down the companion and into the saloon, and out of sight of the man on deck. Speaking in whispers so that the sound of their voices should not carry through the open skylight, the men discussed matters with many chuckles..

“What d’you think of the pup, Sam?”

“Clean built. Swelled head. Where’d you pick it up?”

“Can you make anything out of him?”

“Might. He’s too soft for much now. I could kill him with a smack on the belt.” The fat man chuckled and patted his own considerable paunch.

“Huh! He comes of good stock and oughta have something under his skin besides jelly. His dad was my partner in the Klondike in ’97. He owns a dozen or so oil-wells now in the States, and this pup’s been spending the income from ’em since he come outa college two years ago. Read this.”

The old man pulled a crumpled letter from the inside of his coat and thrust it into the captain’s hands. He read it aloud in a husky whisper.

“Dear Seth: The carrier of this is, I am sorry to say, my only son. The trouble with him is too much money, and perhaps I am to blame for attending too much to business instead of to him. I’ve threatened to disown him if he doesn’t pull himself together, and have managed to get him to agree to start work. I wish you’d send him on a trip with one of your hard-case skippers and see if something can’t be made out of him. I believe the boy is sound on the foundation, and knowing your hobby is making men I send him to you in the hope you’ll enjoy the job. Shall be in Apia next Fall to see you and talk over old times, and to find out whether the boy’s making good.

“Regards as ever, Bill.”

“That explains matters, S-Sam,” hiccoughed Orville, nodding his head.

“What’s my job? Am I the hard-case skipper?” inquired Captain Boggs as he folded up the letter and handed it back.

Orville chuckled mirthlessly.

“You are, my son. That’s why you’re blackbirding for me. Give the boy some dirt and see how he eats it. Make him or break him, I don’t care which, and his dad’d rather see him dead than a lounge lizard for life. A hundred pounds if you make him, Sam, and I’ll fire you if you don’t!”

“Anything goes?”

“Anything short of murder.”

The captain grinned expansively and gazed up at the skylight. He thought for a while, and his grin broadened.

“I’ll take the job,” he said at last, and Orville thumped his fat shoulders enthusiastically and hiccoughed.

The captain salvaged a bottle of gin from the locker and, procuring two glasses, poured out a stiff jolt.

“Don’t know what I’d do without you, Sam,” grunted the millionaire as he drained his glass.

The captain grunted in return and led the way on deck again.

“Easy till you get him to sea,” whispered Orville as they emerged from the saloon- hatch. The captain nodded and addressed the languid youth.

“If you’d get your dunnage aboard some time this evening I’d be obliged, Mr. Hyde,” he said in silky tones. “I can sign you on then, and we sail at dawn.”

“Very well, captain, I’ll do my best,” the young man replied.

He rose to his feet, shook out the creases in his ducks, and tossed a burned-out cigaret overboard.

“May I ask where we are bound for?”

“Solomon Islands,” said the captain shortly.

“Is it possible for me to get mail there? I have—”

“I’ll arrange about that,” put in Orville irritably as the captain’s face began to redden and his eyes gleam. “Let’s go ashore and get a drink now. This climate never did agree with me.”

Mopping his forehead with his handkerchief again, the old man jog-trotted down the gangway and made for the saloon, while the son of his oldest friend trailed along in his wake. Captain Boggs bit off a chew of tobacco and spat thoughtfully overside as he watched the pair go. First he snorted disgustedly, but later his genial smile came back.

“One hundred pounds,” he murmured, “is not to be sneezed at. I think, Mr. Rodney Hyde, that we shall become quite well-acquainted in the near future.”

THE Lizzie R put to sea with the first touch of dawn in the east and the turn of the tide, and beat out from the harbor and the coast to commence the long run northwest to the Solomons.

Still in his immaculate whites, Rodney Hyde smoked endless cigarets as he walked the poop, and shivered slightly in the chill air that had descended with the approach of morning. He was somewhat sleepy and tired, and irritated that he had ever consented to come on such an outlandish venture just to please his father, who had a total lack of understanding of the higher things. It was the first time since he had left college that Hyde had been up before nine o’clock, and he didn’t like it.

Aft, near the wheel, where a Samoan seaman was steering, stood Captain Boggs and another white man, a lean, brown-mustached individual, dressed in a worn-out pair of pajama pants, a blue cotton shirt, open all the way down the chest, and a straw hat similar to the captain’s. He was barefooted, and carried a large sheath-knife on the strap he wore as a belt. He was about five feet eight inches in height, the same as Hyde, and which was exactly eight inches taller than the captain, but he looked as if he were composed of tree roots, so knotty were his thin arms and legs, and so corded his scrawny throat.

Hyde had been introduced to him some time before, learning his name was Trelawney, the mate of the Lizzie R, and for all his languid indifference Hyde had felt a cold shiver as he clasped the mate’s hand and met the hard blue eyes boring into his own.

It was some relief, thought Hyde, as he paced up and down and lifted his eyebrows at the two men aft, that he was a supercargo on board, with little physical labor to do, and not a great deal of mental. One voyage to prove to Bill Hyde back in the States that he could work if he wanted to, and then no doubt the regular monthly allowance would start again. The present voyage was an affair to be tolerated because of its necessity.

Boggs and his mate, came slowly along the poop to the forward taffrail, where the captain beckoned to his supercargo. The fat face of the man now looked as it had looked when he had made the insulting remark on the previous day, thought Hyde as he approached his superior and caressed the fantom moustache he was trying to raise with his finger tips.

Boggs pointed to the heap of trunks and leather grips piled against the saloon skylight. The pile represented Hyde’s dunnage. Boggs personally went to sea, for a voyage of an indefinite period, with a spare suit of dungarees and half a dozen cotton singlets, and such an amount of clothes as his supercargo seemed to possess seemed to him a matter for jest. The mate was grinning expectantly, and Hyde knew a moment of uneasiness as he approached the pair.

“Take your dunnage off the poop and get for’ard,” snarled the captain, glaring up into the face of his surprized supercargo.

Hyde stiffened and drew back.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Don’t answer me back! Take your dunnage and get for’ard. You live in the fo’c’s’le on this packet. And call me sir when you speak to me.”

“Why—” commenced the astounded young man.

He licked his suddenly dry lips and looked from the captain to the mate and back. The mate’s jaw was gaping with anticipation, and his somewhat cruel eyes were twinkling.

“Why, I thought my position, supercargo, was an officer’s berth. I was told—”

“Shut yer trap! On this ship supercargoes get for’ard and work with the crew. Jump now!”

“But—”

“Are you going!”

Hyde’s temper got the better of him. He went white to the lips, and his languid air of indifference fell away. He was as tense as a bundle of whipcord.

“I’m —— if I—”

He would never have believed that a man of such gross fatness could move so quickly. A flash of light seemed to sear his brain, and darkness began to fall. He was aware that his left jaw had gone numb, and he collapsed limply.

Assisted by the mate, Boggs lifted the inert figure and dropped it carefully over the forward taffrail on to the main deck. Then he pitched all the trunks and grips down without so much care, after which each resumed his pacing along the weather deck as if nothing had happened.

Hyde came to, aware of a blinding light and of a fierce heat that beat upon his face. He tried to open his eyes, but they watered so he could not. He groped to a sitting posture with a groan and then realized he had been trying to outstare the rising sun. He was no longer under the cool shade of the awnings. He felt sore and bruised all over, and looked about in bewilderment at the clutter of grips and trunks about him. His beautifully modeled sun-helmet caught his eye. It lay in the scuppers and had spots of tar on it .where it had rolled over the deck seams. The sound of Captain Boggs’ throaty chuckle at something the lean mate was saying came to the young man’s ears. Then he remembered, and with remembrance came rage and indignation.

He scrambled to his feet and staggered across the heaving deck to the poop-companion. Dizzily he went up, gripping tight to the canvas-covered rails, until he reached the poop. Boggs and the mate were walking toward him in their promenade, looking cool and collected in the grateful shade. Boggs stopped short, apparently surprized, as the bloody-faced, disheveled Hyde advanced upon him.

“No man can hit me,” sobbed the bewildered young man. “I’ll tell Mr. Orville about this, you vicious—”

“Get off my poop!” roared the captain.

He bounced forward,, his whole body aquiver with rage. His fist took Hyde in the stomach and doubled him up. Hyde’s own feeble blow barely tapped the captain’s cheek.

“What! Mutiny! Strike me? Get my revolver, Mr. Trelawney.”

Then the captain’s other fist caught Hyde’s patrician nose, and the blood flew wide. Boggs literally lifted the young man off his feet, ran him to the head of the companion and pitched him down. Then he called to two grinning Samoan seamen, who stood by the mainmast and watched this rather unusual display by their generally good-tempered master.

“You take him for’ard and give him a bunk. Take these for’ard, too, and help yourself.” He pointed to the cluttered baggage, and with a joyful yelp the natives ran to gather it in.

Hyde groped about, blind with the blood in his eyes, and he felt sure the world had come to an end. His world certainly had. He sobbed, uncontrolled, like a child, and nursed his swimming head. Nor did he know what was happening when he was carried forward by the curious Samoans and pitched into a bunk that crawled with fat cockroaches and smelled of bilge and mildewed copra.

For Rodney Hyde a cataclysm had certainly occurred. As the son of Willian Hyde, the millionaire oil man, he had received respect, attention to his wishes, and extreme civility. As the supercargo of the blackbirder Lizzie R he received none of the above. Rather he received their antithesis.

He lived, ate, slept and worked with the eight Samoan seamen housed down forward in the stuffy little forecastle, right in the bows of the schooner. He learned— it was rather painful for him at first— to steer, to splice and to haul. Boggs was his teacher mostly, though the mate was a good helper. And in the course of learning the above three very necessary subjects, Hyde learned other things.

He learned, for instance, that it was far less painful to call the captain and the mate “sir,” when speaking to them, than not to. He learned that he must always be on deck the moment eight bells rang, and to come on deck between eight bells, were he called, without mentioning that it was his watch below. In short, he learned, and he grew wise in the ethics of discipline.

When on deck he was sullen and moody, always in rebellion, rebellion expressed in his every movement. He could not fathom the astonishing thing that had happened to bring him where he was. His brain seemed to have gone numb, and was dominated by only one thought. He grew like a caged panther temporarily tamed, but waiting for its master to make just one false move. Only the four Samoans in his watch knew how he lay in his stinking bunk and sobbed quietly for hours at a time, his former supercilious pride in ruins, his illusions, on the sanctity of his caste from common happenings, in ashes.

Other changes came to him. The soft white hands that had been his mother’s pride and his own grew coarse with the work they were put to. His carefully kept nails broke repeatedly and grew hard. Also, and incidentally, the flabbiness of his muscles sweated itself out with many aches, and firm tissue took its place. Though he was not aware of it, he felt better than he had ever felt in his life, and the hatred he had come to bear toward Captain Boggs gave him a reason for living, which he had not had before.

He came to look on the captain as the very essence of brutal evil, and the mate as his able satellite. He knew no fear of the captain, but he did know, from painful experience, that he was no match for the gross mountain of fat in a hand-tohand combat. The mate was different. Hyde thought that one day, under different conditions, he could stand up to the mate shoulder to shoulder, and batter him down.

He tried it one morning when the captain was not on deck, when the mate cuffed him for coiling the brace slack left-handed, and after ten gory minutes subsided to the scuppers, breathing heavily with the pain of battered ribs, and glaring malevolently up at the grinning mate, whom he had not even marked. But perhaps the fact that the mate used a belaying-pin may have had something to do with the victory. He decided next time he would take care the mate was near no such weapons.

His trunks and grips of perfectly tailored clothes the Samoan seamen, encouraged by the captain, confiscated and wore impartially. Nor did Hyde attempt to fight for his belongings. For one reason the weakest of the Samoans was strong enough to kill him with a blow, was strong enough to kill even the captain. But in Boggs’ case the authority he possessed, the weight of the law behind him, and the fact that he carried a gun made him secure.

But Hyde had none of the above to shelter behind, and knowing that they would not be reprimanded by the captain, sensing that the young white man was out of favor for some unknown reason, the seamen would not have hesitated to strike him. And Hyde, aware of all this, lay in his bunk and sullenly watched the natives dress up in his clothes, and put the score down against Captain Boggs, to be paid in full some day.

He did not stop to reason why the captain should treat him worse than the meanest native aboard. If he did ever think of the matter he decided it was an, innate love of cruelty in the fat man’s makeup. But most of his waking hours were spent devising some means by which he could get himself out of the chaos into which he had by some misunderstanding fallen.

He was of a different race and of a different class of intellect from the four broad-faced Samoans he lived with, and he kept away from them as much as possible, his erstwhile fastidious taste shocked at every action they made. He took his food apart and ate it in solitude. He never spoke. And when the seamen demanded he should take his turn with them keeping the little forecastle clean he treated their demands with silent contempt. He was acquiring pride, and a deeper, better pride than he had ever had before.

It wasn’t clothes, superficial culture or money that distinguished one man from another, one race from another. It was something internal, something deeper than the exterior, something unnamable that stiffened the backbone and gave to the mind the consciousness that it was the superior. And because-of this new philosophy Hyde was beginning to evolve, he refused to wash dishes for the Samoans, to scrub the forecastle floor for them, to wait on them at all.

Had they been white sailors he would hardly have refused.

In the old days his refusal would have been based on the fact that the work would have spoiled his hands, was beneath him. But now his- refusal was based on more solid stuff.

The Samoans complained to the captain, and he called Hyde aft one dog-watch and ordered him to take his turn as “peggy.” Perfectly aware of what he was delivering himself to, Hyde shook his head, but spoke no word. And when the captain knocked him down he still shook his head. For the first time he took his beating without an outburst of rage. And not until the captain drew back his foot, as if to kick his prostrate supercargo, did he speak, tensely, almost viciously.

“You can kill me, but I’ll never wait on kanakas!”

Captain Boggs lowered his foot and started intently at the defiant young man, who ran a shaking hand across his mouth to wipe the blood from his lips. The captain’s glance was curious and critical. He noticed the fire in the eyes, the set of the jaw. He had made a man out of Hyde perhaps, but at the expense of the man’s hatred. He frowned for a moment.

“You needn’t ‘peggy’ for the crew,” he said at last. “Get for’ard.”

Hyde dragged to his feet and glared haggardly down at the man who had well-nigh broken his spirit. It seemed so easy to defeat such a fat, awkward-looking man. And the wide, creased face was but a few inches from his clenched fist. But he knew of old what would happen should he strike. He shook with the effort to control himself, and snarled like a wild beast.

“Some day I’m going to tear the face off of you,” he spat out; and, turning, he shambled forward, still wiping his cut lip.

The captain stood with his thumbs in his belt and watched his supercargo go down the companion to the main deck. A thought seemed to come to him.

“Hyde!” he called, softly, so that the watch working near the main hatch did not hear.

The unshaven, tousle-haired figure turned. His singlet was greasy and torn, his arms sun-blistered and rope-scarred, his feet bare and spotted with tar. He had become utterly indifferent to his appearance.

“Don’t forget, Hyde—” the captain stopped and ran an insolent eye up and down his supercargo—“don’t forget, ever, that you’re a white man.”

With a muttered oath of impatience Hyde swung round and continued forward. The captain turned to the mate, who had come up behind him.

“By the time we dock in Apia, Trelawney, he’ll be good enough to beat up the pair of us,” he said.

But the mate only sneered and hitched his belt higher. He had been drinking and was feeling in a vicious mood.

Below in the forecastle, sitting on the edge of his bunk, his head sunk in his hands, Hyde gave himself over to the first clear thinking he had done since the morning he had been pitched off the Lizzie R’s poop. The captain’s words burned in his brain—

“Don’t forget, ever, that you’re a white man.”

Scene by scene he reviewed his life. His boyhood in Oakland, his youth in schools where only the sons of wealthy men were admitted, his young manhood at Harvard and in travel. And all through he remembered there had never been any lack of money, never need to worry or to work, always servants and fine clothes and warm houses. He remembered his father; he had always more or less despised his father, rough, rugged, uncouth of speech and manners, his hands distorted with past toil. But he now remembered other things in connection with his father.

Men had treated him with respect, real respect. His father was a power in the land, had done something worth doing. He had put sheep where before there were no sheep, cattle where there had been no cattle, water and .trees where before had been only desert, towns and cities where there had been no living man. When Hyde came to think of it he had a father to be proud of.

As for himself, he had been given respect, certainly, but it had been for his father’s sake, a tolerant respect. He blushed as he thought of it. Tolerated for his father’s sake! No wonder the old man had called him a waster. He had done nothing to entitle him to a place in the order of things. Here, on the blackbirder, Lizzie R, he was ranked according to his worth and achievements, and where was he? The lowest thing aboard. He would transvalue his values and would prove to men that he was his father’s son, of the same hardness and solid stock. He would show the Samoans, the Trelawneys and the Boggses of the world that he was a better man than they Tolerated for his father’s sake! In the future he would be respected for his own!

THERE occurred that afternoon something that added greatly to Hyde’s confidence in himself, and to his determination to prove that he was as good as other men in things for which they were respected.

It was just after eight bells, in the afternoon watch. Hyde was steering, half-asleep, enjoying the warm, soothing wind that caressed his sun-blistered flesh and rippled his tousled hair. There was hardly the need of a man at the wheel. A grommet slipped over the spokes would have held the Lizzie R to her course. But whoever else was allowed to spend his. watch on deck sleeping under the scanty awnings forward, Captain Boggs had made it a rule that Hyde should not. He had to keep his watch, every watch, and every minute of every watch. Never was a man schooled more harshly on the toughest of tough clipper-ships.

The mate came up from the saloon and grinned evilly at Hyde as he stepped from the companion to the poop-deck. The hatch of the skylight opened aft, and it was but a pace from die storm-step to the binnacle and the wheel. The captain was dozing below in his cane chair with a glass of luke-warm beer at his elbow, and a burned-out cigar between his lips. Though the mate stood so close to him, Hyde was not aware of his presence until he spoke.

“Wake up and get on yer course,” he snarled, his bony fist catching Hyde under the heart with a viciousness that temporarily winded the younger man.

Hyde gasped as his head came up with a jerk, and he blinked awake. He did not know what had happened until his eyes fell on the mate, and then he scowled as he labored to get back his breath. He knew the mate had disturbed him only from wantonness, from love of cruelty, and the knowledge made him furious. The mate had been drinking heavily again, and he failed to see the danger singals flaming in the other’s eyes. Besides, why should he worry? Had he not a dozen times before battered Hyde to unconsciousness?

The viciousness of the man welled up; and, lurching forward, he swung his fist again. He had come to regard Hyde as an object on which any spite could be vented, the captain not allowing any one but himself to touch the Samoan seamen. But this time the mate had no belaying-pin, and

Hyde was throbbing with a new-found pride. He did not wait for the mate’s next blow to land. He let go the wheel and, dodging the mate’s fist, stepped clear to one side. The mate swore, surprized that he should miss, and stumbled round the binnacle, across the deck to where Hyde stood waiting white to the lips, erect and watching, his scarred hands on his hips and every muscle in his iron-hard body taut and coiled like a spring.

“Run from me, would yer?” spat out the mate, taking a stumbling swing at Hyde’s head.

The younger man swayed ever so slightly, and as the mate overbalanced with the force of his own blow he hit him between the eyes with a driving power he had not thought his arms possessed. The mate went backward and brought up 'against the side of the saloon skylight with a crash that jarred the whole poop and sobered him immediately. The captain, below in his chair, woke with a start and, guessing what was taking place by the thud and scrambling shuffle of feet on the deck overhead, rose and padded silently up the saloon companion.

The mate, over his first surprize at being hit, came back with a rush. Hyde was forced to the rail, hitting hard and straight, where the mate hammered him savagely about the face and throat. But the younger man was in the better trim. He had not smoked nor drunk in weeks. And he was possessed of the fire that is half the battle. He did not flinch, but stood and gave as good as he received. A smashing drive of his took the mate on the solar plexus, and he faltered and doubled about his middle. Nor did Hyde spare him.

All the burning sense of injustice that had boiled ceaselessly within him from the first day aboard the Lizzie R he vented on the groggy mate. He pounded the lean, stringy body to a red surface; he split the flesh over the bony cheeks, heedless of his own bleeding knuckles. And then, when at the last his fist connected with the mate’s protruding jaw, and the man went out like a candle Snuffed, Hyde knew the greatest thrill of his life, the greatest thrill that comes to a man but once in a lifetime—the thrill of the first conquest. He had fought and beaten his man. He had proved himself to himself, and shown that there was something in him that deserved recognition. He stood back and breathed heavily, elated and triumphant.

There was a faint padding on the deck at his side; and, turning, he saw the captain regarding him intently, his fat face set sternly. The elation went out of him. He could hardly hope to beat the captain when fresh, and after his exhausting fray the fat man would find him easy to handle. But outwardly he gave no sign. His eye was steady as he returned look for look, and his jaw was set firm.

Arid to his surprize Captain Boggs did not fly into one of his spontaneous rages; he made no attempt to hit him. The captain’s voice was even genial as he looked down at his wreck of a mate. The hardness went from the fat face, a tinge of respect showed in the eyes.

“He had it coming to him. You saved me a job, Hyde. Pack your dunnage and move aft tonight. The supercargo’s cabin is next to mine.”

“Move aft, sir!” Hyde could hardly believe his ears.

The captain nodded, and his broad face widened in a grin.

“We reach Ysabel tomorrow, and'there your supercargo work starts. Better watch out for Trelawney; he’ll get you for this.”

Abruptly the captain turned and padded back to his chair and his beer, his thin pajamas tight-fitting round his monstrous form, his bald dome shining mahogany in the awning shadow. He might have been chuckling from the way his shoulders shook. There was something under the skin of William Hyde’s boy after all. It took a good man to beat up on “Buck” Trelawney, whose very reputation and sinister form won him half of his combats.

Somewhat puzzled, but with a still newer and greater pride thrffling through him, Hyde went back to the wheel to finish his watch, his last one as a seaman. Five minutes later, the mate staggered to his feet and went below without so much as a glance at the man who had defeated him, so dazed were his faculties. He knew only a great desire to lie down somewhere dark, and rest. He could think of revenge later on.

WITH the first flush of the next dawn the Lizzie R drew near to her destination, a jungle-fringed river-mouth on the southern coast of the savage island of Ysabel in the terrible Solomon group.

Strange changes took place on board the schooner. In place of the happy-go-lucky, care-free spirit that had prevailed on board since her sailing from Apia, a spirit of alert watchfulness, of tense expectation, seemed to step in. Heavy iron stanchions were brought from the shelterdeck of the main hold and dropped through the dead-eyes on the rail and into the sockets in the scuppers, so that they stood rigidly upright, each about seven feet high, completely encircling the ship.

To make them doubly secure they were lashed to the rail with fine wire, and then stayed to each other. Between the stanchions strong barbed wire was then laced and interlaced, forming a network utterly impassable to naked bodies. Only one gap was left, a narrow opening opposite the whale-boat lashed at the foot of the mainmast.

After these preliminary preparations were gone through, the Samoans filed up on to the poop and received each a repeating rifle and a bandoleer of cartridges from the hand of Captain Boggs. The mate and the captain each buckled on two heavy cartridge belts and revolvers, and Hyde was similarly equipped.

“Whatever happens stay on the poop and keep close to me,” warned the fat captain as he handed his supercargo his weapons. “Remember you’re green. We’re going into one of the most dangerous places in the world, where the natives look on white men as an edible luxury. All personal grievances must be dropped. White men have to stand together in tight corners, same?”

Hyde nodded assent as he strapped on his belts. There was a new note he detected in the captain’s voice— a note, was it of respect? Was the fat man getting afraid of him because he had beaten Trelawney? Most brutal men were cowards at the core. But somehow he did not think Captain Boggs was a coward. One thing— he thrilled as he thought of it—the respect in the captain’s voice was in some measure deserved. He had gained it by doing something. It was not given for his father’s sake. And so Hyde listened eagerly every time the captain spoke to him, while he hated him none the less.

Happening to pass the skylight of the saloon, he noticed tire tomahawk marks on the woodwork and shuddered.

“Cap’n Davies—he was master of the Lizzie ’fore Cap’n Boggs took her—fought with ten kanakas by that there skylight,” he remembered the mate had said one day. “Tough ’un was Davies. They ripped him open, chopped off his arm, but he fought with the other. ’Course they got him in the end, but he sure put up a fight.’ A man usually passes out that way if he stays too long at blackbirding. The kanakas get him. They’ll get Boggs if he makes too many trips. They’ll get me. There’s none too old or too wise to get caught.”

Fear swept through Ronald Hyde. The vivid imagination he possessed completed what the mate’s remembered words had started. For the first time in his life the young man was in a position, was going into a place, where he took that same life in his hands. He remembered many things besides the old tomahawk marks on the saloon skylight; the captain’s own words, the guns served out, the barbed-wire fence. He glanced down at his revolvers with a new understanding. There would be killings, perhaps. His guns represented his right to live in a hostile environment. And what a right! He had never shot a revolver in his life before. The most he had ever handled was a .22 rifle, and that on a warm, covered range, where there was no imperative need to hit the target.

He wiped the beaded sweat from his forehead and groaned with the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He felt as he had felt when a child and his nurse had left him alone in the dark. He wanted to hide his head. He looked at the dense green of the sullen jungle they were approaching. A few gaudy birds squawked and fluttered in the foliage, and from the deeper jungle came the dull hum of a myriad insects. That was all. But Hyde knew, from conversations he had heard between the mate and the captain, that such a vacant-looking shore might be teeming with life. Perhaps even now a thousand savage eyes were watching the schooner draw near.

He stumbled to the rail and put out a shaking hand to steady himself. The touch of the wood comforted him. He looked along the deck to where the Samoan seamen were gathered, talking in low tones among themselves and resting carelessly on the muzzles of their rifles. They were not afraid; they gave no sign of fear.

Hyde stiffened. Was he afraid when kanakas were not? He gritted his teeth and drew away from the rail.

When Captain Boggs came round the side of the skylight on a tour of the poop to see that all was as it should be, Hyde had fought out his battle and was standing, somewhat weak, but calm, near the helmsman. He felt vastly relieved that he had controlled himself and decided on his course of action.

“Feel nervy?” the captain asked, not unkindly.

“A little,” Hyde said with truth.

The captain chuckled throatily and patted his paunch with his fat hands.

“Soon pass off, son, soon pass off. I was so scared my first trip to these parts I shook all over. I’m scared right now, though you mayn’t think it. It’s bluff that wins battles in the Islands, son. The kanakas bluff that they’re not afraid of you, which they are, and you bluff you’re not afraid of them, which you really are. And as both sides know exactly how matters stand, it’s merely a case of who can bluff the hardest. Of course, sometimes the bluff’s called, and then it’s a case of shoot quick. But that’s not often. These guns are bluff, in a way. We probably shan’t fire a shot at all.”

He continued his waddling stroll, and Hyde watched him go with mingled feelings.

There was something likable about the captain. He seemed nothing more than a vast mountain of good humor, except when he was crossed badly, or when he had a deliberate spite on some one, as he had evidently had with Hyde. And he must be a man in every sense of the word to run the Lizzie R, as he had run other ships, into far and unknown harbors in the most savage parts of the world, miles from law and order. And from each trip he brought back, and doubtless would continue to bring back, not only his head safe on his shoulders, but his ship intact and a hundred or more kinky-haired, tooth-filed cannibals to work on his master’s plantations.

His master, Seth Orville, too, was likable in some subtle way. It came to Hyde as a sudden revelation that it was, after all, not so much the way men dressed or talked, not so much what they drank or how they conducted themselves in their play. It was what they did when face to face with a great crisis. It was their actions at times when actions were needed that counted. Some of the world’s greatest generals, admirals, geniuses, had been the world’s greatest fools in many things.

The vital spark of worth hid under the most unlikely exteriors, and was not to be found under exteriors where it would be expected. But the world had to judge a man by the result of that vital spark, and until a man proved that he had it he could not complain were he misjudged by all.

Now Hyde came to think of it, Seth Orville was of the type in which there seemed to be something hidden. His exterior now belied the tales men told of his earlier days. But there was something about the man, something under the drunken, sun-shriveled exterior that hinted of iron. His own father, Hyde remembered, had the same iron in him, though his exterior betrayed it plainly. Captain Boggs had the iron in him; Hyde had seen it himself on occasion, had felt the consequences of its awakening.

Even the' drunken Trelawney was possessed of something besides meanness and a desire for liquor. Hyde wondered whether he had anything in himself that would show forth at the time of need. He did not know. He had never had the opportunity to tell. He had never been up against any crisis until the previous half-hour, when he fought back his fear; the fear imagination had conjured. He was not satisfied. Perhaps in a great crisis he would fail. It remained to be seen.

He knew that should he fail, the respect would go from the captain’s voice, from the voice of all men. But should he succeed, should the vital spark, the iron, peep forth and lead to great triumphs, he knew that he could walk the world and look all men in the eyes, knowing he was as good as they, had been tried and not found wanting, was entitled to respect for what he had himself done, and not for what his father had done before him. He would be lord of lesser men and bodies, but, more important than all, he would be lord of himself.

The schooner did not creep a very great way into the bottle-shaped river-mouth before she came to and dropped anchor, the sound of the cable starting up flocks of terns. The cable was not let-out too much, so that it would be easy to knock clear the shackle and make a quick getaway in case of necessity. With a short cable the shackle-pin would come out more easily, and there would not be so much chain lost.

For perhaps sixty yards on either beam there was the water, clear sea-water shot with sudden streams and rufflings of dark, muddy river-water. Then came the jungle, without a beach to fringe it, the fifty-foot sago and mangroves leaning over the water’s edge. Still there was no sign of human life.

It was a dangerous place for recruiting, and the majority of blackbirding ships avoided it, which was principally the reason why Captain Boggs chose it as his stamping-ground. He had been there three or four times before, and on each occasion had secured a shelter-deck full of stalwart savages, each man signed on for three or four years to work on the copra plantations of Seth Orville.

The less frequently ships went to a spot the more cheaply it was possible to get laborers for, and the more eiasily it was to coax an obstinate chief into letting them come. And so it was that Captain Boggs ran his ship into the river-mouth on the coast of Ysabel, and risked his head by his daring.

TWO Samoans went forward to the bows of the schooner, and, squatting on the deck, their rifles between nees, watched each one side of the ship. The Samoan at the wheel, as soon as the anchor was dropped and he could relinquish his charge, squatted down likewise, where he stood, and fondled his weapon, while his eyes watched the shores for any suspicious sign. Two other seamen, the best shots, went up aloft and took their places in the large vinegar barrel that had been lashed to the maintop only that

morning. From their commanding eminence they could cover the whole ship and the water alongside as well.

Captain Boggs, after one last keen glance around, sat himself heavily in his cane chair near the port rail, and, twisting his holster to the front so as to be handy in case of surprize, he lighted a cigar and proceeded to enjoy it. The mate—he had continued his heavy drinking despite the threats of the captain—sat hunched on top of the low saloon skylight, his swollen and battered face in his hands, glaring moodily at the white deck planking, lined evenly with the pitch seams that bubbled here and there with the fierce heat that smashed even through the heavy awnings.

Hyde sat on the top of a case of plug trade-tobacco, piled with other assorted case; of trade-goods on the poop near the forward taffrail, where they had been brought from the main hold. The other three seamen lounged about in the sparse shadow of the mainmast, opposite the gap in the wire fence. The stage seemed to be laid and waiting for something, for what Hyde did not know, though he had an uneasy time guessing. He concluded that he was the only person ignorant on board.

The jungle glared and brooded on, seemingly indifferent to the cares and anxieties of man; the insects never ceased their monotonous humming, the croaking terns wheeled and settled at last from view, and the gaudy birds still fluttered indifferently among the foliage. Time passed.

Captain Boggs tossed the burned-out stump of his cigar overboard and lighted another. He seemed quite at his ease. The mate drowsed and mumbled to himself on the skylight. Even the half-fearful Hyde was feeling sleepy. He wondered what had come over the ship. Everybody, everything seemed drowsy. Then it occurred to him that perhaps this was part of the game of bluff the captain had spoke -about. He sat up and began to take notice, his eyes slowly roving over the jungle edge. Here and there he noted the gaudy birds would flutter up with a more than usually loud squawk, as if something disturbed them. Hyde began to feel mildly excited.

Then something happened suddenly, as it always does in the Islands. From some hidden creek a canoe shot out, a clumsy-looking affair, devoid of outriggers and unlike the graceful canoes of the southern islands. It was propelled by four maSsive-chested, naked savages, their ear-lobes swinging as they paddled with an assortment of junk thrust through distended holes, their nose cartilages split with skewers and rings of pearl-shell, necklaces of teeth and coral round their throats. One had a sort of tawny-looking skin for a girdle.

In the rear end of the canoe sat an old man. Round his shriveled and scrawny neck he wore a string of what might have been monkey-skulls, or perhaps the skulls of babies. Otherwise he was naked. His chest was shrunken and withered and thick with dirt and old scars, his arms skeleton-like in their thinness. His head was bald and wrinkled all over, as if he had his brows perpetually raised; from the chin up, over the skull, to the nape of the neck, like a walnut-shell, wrinkled and furrowed. His eyes— of a hollow, xbinning black, by no means faded—seemed to be lidless, for he never closed them or winked the drifting dust from them. Also they seemed devoid of lashes. No weapons were visible in the canoe.

The Samoan watching by the Lizzie R’s wheel called out in a low voice, and the captain, getting up from his chair, with no sign of haste strolled easily round the skylight to the starboard side of the poop, toward which the canoe was heading. The mate lifted his head with an ugly yawn and shambled to his feet. Hyde nervously fumbled with his revolver butts and wondered what he was expected to do.

The canoe shot alongside and the paddlers backed water, their fierce eyes glaring up at the fat face of the captain, wreathed in smiles as he bent over the rail and looked down.

“I hope you are well, Tiaga. I hope your wives are well. I hope your children are well. And I hope your foes will rot where they stand. Also I hope your ancestors are sleeping easily with the dead and not troubling your sleep at nights,” said the captain cheerfully, in the quaint language of the South Sea traders, bêche-de-mer English.

Tiaga, chief of the coast tribes of Ysabel, looked up lazily, insolently, and cracked a cynical smile. Boggs and he were old friends. There was the mark of the captain’s bullet still showing along the old cannibal’s arm. And a scar of frightful dimensions still graced the right thigh of the captain where the chief’s spear had caught him in a well-nigh forgotten fight, years before. Dearly would Tiaga have loved to see such a wondrously fat man adorning the stones of the “long-pig” ovens, and the wonderfully fat face turning gracefully in the head-smoke of the devil-devil house. And the captain, who knew very well what was passing in the old cannibal’s mind, smiled sweetly, while he kept his hand near the butt of his revolver. A spear could be snatched from concealment and thrust upward with astonishing swiftness.

“It is well with me, except that I am bothered with the night mists and the ships that come unasked into my river. Also I am short of tobacco,” grunted Tiaga uncivilly, disappointed that the captain showed no signs of becoming careless with years.

“It seems that we both need something,” chuckled the captain throatily. “I need strong men, for whom I shall pay, and you need tobacco, which I shall give you without. payment. Am I not indeed a king of generosity?”

“I did not say I needed tobacco,” responded the chief surlily. “I think I shall not smoke any more. It is a pig’s habit, and my nose is losing its taste.”

And so the talk went on, back and forth, for at least hah an hour, the old cannibal speculating whether he could spear the captain before the latter could draw his revolver, the captain watching every move and giving an exhibition of his supreme contempt for anything the chief might attempt to do. And the talk ended as such talks had ended in the past. The old chief condescended to totter grumblingly aboard and accept half a case of trade-tobacco, while the four men who had come with him squatted indifferently by the main hatchcoamings and chewed betel-nut and looked with glittering eyes on the wealth and richness that lay about them.

Another half-hour of skilful talk back and forth, a few drinks and a few more presents, and Tiaga was in a more mellow and melting mood. He whistled shrilly from where he sat on the poop, and with narrowed eyes watched a hundred or more canoes shoot from many hidden creeks and backwaters and come skimming across the alternately muddy and then clear streaks of water.

There were no weapons in view even yet, but the captain well knew that much can be concealed under the matting of banana-leaves which the floor of every canoe possessed. Much had been hidden under the matting before', the captain remembered, and his old spear-scar seemed to twinge in recollection too.

The utter silence with which the canoes came shook Hyde’s nerves more than he cared to admit. He could see the whites of the natives’ eyes shining; he could see the paddles dip, surge and come soundlessly forth. The sweating bodies fascinated him, as did the slithering muscles across the brawny chests. He rose uneasily to his feet and moved away from the pile of trade-goods, watching the captain.

The fat man’s face was still wreathed in smiles as he jested with the old cannibal. It seemed he had nothing but friendliness for the chief and was totally unaware of the savage horde pouring on his ship. Hyde admired his coolness and was steadied himself by the example. The mate, he noticed, lurched drunkenly away amidships and joined the three awaiting Samoan seamen by the gap opposite the mainmast.

The canoes, still in dead silence, surged alongside, and their occupants came aboard. Twenty men the mate counted off, and then he refused to allow any more on deck. The Samoans’ rifles came down to their hips; their fingers twitched round the trigger. They forced the disappointed and sullen savages back into the canoes. They scowled as they dropped from the rail and took to muttering amongst themselves.

Tiaga noticed all these things from the corner of his eye as he hunched up uncomfortably in the cane chair opposite from the captain. The twenty men allowed aboard came slowly aft, herded by the mate and one of the seamen. Hyde uneasily watched the fine-muscled savages pour up the poop-companion, shining with oil and sweat, and group behind their sitting chief.

With a forefinger cut off at the first joint in some long-forgotten affray, Tiaga pointed out first one man and then another, and those he pointed out stepped sullenly to one side, apart from their comrades.

Hyde, under the captain’s instructions, set up a little baize-covered table and a camp-stool, and, getting out the books used in such matters as blackbirding, he seated himself with his fountain pen and blotter and commenced work signing on Seth Orville’s plantation-hands.

As each evil-smelling savage approached him and set down his mark against his name and received sue plugs of tobacco as a little present, Hyde knew a sudden impulse to snatch out his guns and start firing hysterically. There was a horrible presentiment in his mind that something was going to happen. It seemed to him sheer madness to bring-a ship with only three white aboard into the heart of a savage king’s domain. Here was the little Lizzie R lying at anchor, hundreds of miles from help, and surrounded by three to four hundred cannibals.

Then, too, the vision of the tomahawk marks on the saloon skylight kept involuntarily recurring to the young man’s mind, though he strove time and again to banish the vision. He knew that he was getting afraid again, afraid of the hot eyes that bent so fiercely upon him, of the filed teeth that had bitten into crisp, toasted human flesh, of the sinewy hands that could pluck him limb from limb. He set his teeth and tried to speak in a steady voice, beating down the panic within. He was learning control, and knew that there was a braver, greater courage than physical daring. He was learning the. game of bluff the captain had talked about.

The captain was exhibiting it now, as he sat and idly talked with Tiaga, backed by his men, and slouched in a cane chair with apparent contempt for the bronze-skinned, wrinkled old man before him, apparently unaware that under the light banter there ran a vein of deadly seriousness, of vital meaning. Hyde decided then and there that he could never hate the captain again. In place of the deadly, cold anger the fat man had inspired in him there crept in honest respect. He knew, in that moment, that Captain Boggs was a better man than he. Hyde writhed internally to think of what the captain must have thought of him that first day on the Lizzie R’s poop. No wonder he had said to Seth Orville, “I shall want men,” with such contempt in his tone. And while these things were running through the mind of Rodney Hyde, the signing went steadily forward.

IT WAS the drunken mate who was the cause of it all. He turned what would have been an ordinary recruiting venture into something graver. Because he was drunk he made a mistake, and one must pay for mistakes in the Islands. He was herding the savages, seven of them, whom Tiaga had not assigned to be laborers, back to the gap in the wire fence and so to their canoes. The remaining thirteen men he had previously herded down into the shelter-deck of the main hold, where they were to live until the plantations were reached. A seaman stood by the hatch-coaming, to see that the sullen thirteen stayed where they had been put.

One of the party being herded back into the canoes was a slim young man of rather hot temper. He accidentally was pushed against the barbed wire as his compatriots were crowding overside into the canoes and new arrivals crowded up the rail to get aboard, causing some confusion. It may all have been intentional, for there was no effort made on the part of the savages to sort themselves out. A cool-headed man would have straightened the affair. But the mate was drunk.

The youth who had been pushed against the barbed wire rebounded with a frightened yell and stumbled against the mate, who promptly knocked him down and proceeded to kick him viciously. A short, burly native in the thick of the confusion by the rail, catching sight of an opportunity, reached out a great hand and caught the mate a backhand blow across the mouth, knocking him over. The two seamen near by raised their guns but hesitated to fire without orders, as the mate attempted to struggle to his feet, swearing the while and tugging at his holster. The confusion by the rail increased. More canoes surged alongside.

Captain Boggs, not taking his eyes from Tiaga, who was watching him like a cat, rose slowly from his chair and backed a little. He shot a quick glance along the deck, saw what was taking place and, inwardly cursing the mate, called casually— “What’s the matter, Trelawney?”

There was no answer. The mate had risen to his feet, and, swaying dizzily from side to side, he raised his revolver. There was a yelp; it might have been of pleasure. The captain, watching with short swift glances, turned a little gray under his bronze and half-drew his own gun. A spear snickered from nowhere in particular and went into the mate’s shoulder. He snapped it off with an oath and commenced to fire at the packed mass before him. Then the mass swayed inboard. No longer did the seven natives attempt to get into their canoes. They turned and led the rush. It swept round the mate and blotted him from view, as it blotted the two seamen standing hesitatingly by.

Captain Boggs sprang to life with an oath and whipped out his gun, and at the same instant, as if he were some young warrior on his first war-path, Tiaga leaped and fastened on him.

The two men went in a staggering, sprawling clinch across the poop, and Tiaga whistled shrilly and long. The captain’s shot went wide and plowed a furrow in the deck.

There was a tremendous shouting. Paddles beat the water into foam as the canoes drove in. Weapons were snatched from under their covers and tossed up to those already on deck. Heavy war-clubs battered down the wire barricade in a dozen places, making holes through which men could crawl. The deck grew black with natives, and one minute from the time of the mate’s first indiscretion the ship was a battleground and the scuppers were commencing to trickle blood.

From the main-top the two seamen in the vinegar barrel opened fire with the coolness and precision of old veterans. The two men in the bows did the same. The man guarding the savages in the shelter-deck pitched down the hold with a spear in his throat and an. arrow in his eye, and the thirteen captives swarmed on to the deck to join in the fight. A flung stone knocked the seaman near the wheel into the water, where a spear thrust from one of the canoes finished him. The captain and Tiaga were still in a pommeling clinch all over the poop.

The mate, by some miracle still alive, fought a way to his feet, sobered and snarling, and having emptied his revolvers was using the butts. Besides the broken spear in his shoulder he had a knife thrust to the hilt in his thigh and two arrows just barely stuck in his ribs. His face was slashed to ribbons and he was drenched with blood. But around him he had a circle of dead. Making a sudden run, he broke clear and reached the poop.

And all through this Hyde sat like a frozen man at his little table, the fountain pen clenched in his right hand, his left fingers spread on the page of the book before him . The naked fear he thought he had conquered swept fold on fold about him. He could not swallow, he could not breathe. His muscles were frozen into inaction, and his brain refused to think. It had all been so sudden. He had been ready for something to happen, or he thought he had. The visions of those two awful minutes while he sat motionless were burned in his brain forever.

The mate, splattering blood everywhere, lurched against the little table and sent it flying with a crash, the open book skidding across the deck to the scuppers. A fleck of blood fell on Hyde’s lips, another on the left breast of his singlet. As if given an electric shock he came to life. With a cry of horror he dropped the fountain pen, and pulling forth a handkerchief wiped the crimson splashes from him. He was still on his stool, his eyes wide and staring. He was going to die, he knew. His imagination swept back full force. He felt the tickle of the tomahawk blade that would cleave his skull, the sear of the knife that would carve his heart. He found the use of his throat and gulped.

The mate stood unswaying with an effort. With shaking fingers he fumbled at his cartridge-belts, and breaking his revolvers loaded them. His eyes were blind with blood, and he did most of the loading by touch, before it occurred to him to brush his eyes with his hand. He was half-snarling, half-sobbing deep in his throat, standing at bay like a lean vulture, torn and mangled but game to the last, because he was cornered.

Having cleared the main deck—the seamen in the bows had been killed by clubs— the savages poured up on the poop to the aid of their chief. The mate lurched forward, kicked at one man’s shins as he avoided his spear-thrust and shot him in the face. His wild eyes chanced to rest on the dazed Hyde, not two feet behind and to one side of him, and he spared the time from his few remaining moments of life to sneer. There was no time for more. The next instant he was shooting, and had disappeared under a writhing mass of spear-hafts, arms and sweating bodies. The sound of hot voices was deafening.

It was the sneer that did it. Hyde laughed hysterically as he rose to his feet, knocking over the camp-stool. He suddenly knew that he was not afraid after all. It had been his cursed imagination! What he did now was directed by some instinct, by some courage that welled from within. Perhaps the iron peering from under his skin. A brawny hand swept out and grabbed at his shoulder, drawing him toward another hand that was flung back bearing a shark’s-tooth sword. Hyde never knew how his revolvers came to be in his hand, but the feel of them seemed quite familiar. The savage holding him crumpled suddenly backward and let go. Then the blood-hunger swept Hyde like a draft of fiery liquor.

He remembered seeing the mate’s body hacked to pieces as the m€l£e opened for a moment. He remembered seeing the captain fling the beaten, unconscious Tiaga at his own men, and then, picking up a discarded war-club, his revolvers having been evidently shot empty, back against the side of the saloon skylight and fight like a demon. The short, fat body was tense with effort and drenched with blood. The captain forgot he was fat and remembered only that he was a white man and that he must fight until he dropped. And Hyde, seeing, knew all this and was glad that he was going to die in good company.

Coolness came to him after the savageness of the blood-hunger had passed. He was aware that his hammers were clicking on empty cases and that the snarling mob that had confronted him had broken and fled, except for the ominously still heap of bodies on the deck at his feet. He turned swiftly and ran, bursting through the throng around the captain and getting under the shelter of the great club, where he reloaded his guns.

“Good,” grunted the captain, lowering the club as Hyde opened fire and gave him respite.

The savages crumpled and fell back. One or two pitched forward. The others looked round uneasily to see their companions fleeing for the side. With a scared yell they broke and ran, four of them carrying the moaning Tiaga.

It was the two men in the vinegar barrel aloft who turned the trick. Well-nigh beyond the reach of spears, in a position difficult to aim at, they had the advantage over the savages. Their deadly fire told—every shot at such short range; and their supply of cartridges was ample. The slaughter was terrible. And still, with deadly aim and precision, the two seamen picked off the savages as they paddled in desperate haste for the jungle and shelter from the wandering, seeking leaden wasps. The crashing of the undergrowth as the natives scattered in headlong flight could be heard for several minutes.

HYDE leaned wearily against the low skylight and allowed his hot revolvers to slip to the deck. He was breathing hard and was aware that he was fearfully tired. A spear had nipped his thigh, tearing his duck pants and drawing blood. Another spear had grazed his neck, another his temple. A stone had thudded with fearful force against his ribs, leaving a bruise as large as a saucer and winding him for some time. An arrow had scored his arm, and the red blood coated his hand and had made the revolver butt sticky to grasp. But he suffered no vital hurt.

With the captain it was different. His cotton singlet had been well-nigh tom from his body, and about his bare shoulder could be seen, through the drying blood, the marks made by Tiaga’s old yellow fangs. There was a fearful gash, perhaps a hole, in the left side of the captain’s head from which the blood welled continuously. It had been given by a blow from a stone club, and but for the fact the blow was a glancing one it would have killed him.

As it was, only the man’s will power and fierce determination had enabled him to still his shocked brain and remain on his feet. He was wounded in a dozen places besides, wounded from his ankles to his throat. And now that the excitement of the fight was over he collapsed limply, while the crimson blood slowly gathered in a pool on the deck under him.

The startled terns were wheeling in scattered flocks overhead and croaking with fright; the gaudy birds of the foliage were squawking hideously. And the cries of the horribly moaning wounded drowned even the hum of the surf to seaward. The deck was dotted with bodies; the poop was squirming with them. Thirty-eight bullets can do fearful damage at short range. It said much for the savage bravery of the natives that they had stood up so long.

The thing that had been the mate huddled and sprawled half over the open book that Hyde had been writing in. The white pages were now crimson. The little table and the stool were splinters, seen here and there between dark bodies. Astern from the sky¬light the poop was clean and clear. There had been no fighting thereabouts, except for the clinch between Tiaga and the captain.

Hyde breathed deeply and painfully, every breath meaning a savage twinge from the great bruise in his side. He bent after a while, and, picking up his revolvers, loaded them and slipped them back into his holsters. He had no time now to reason out the philosophy of his actions. He could very clearly see what would have to be done. And as he was die only white man on board who stood on his feet, he would have to do it.

The Lizzie R would have to be taken from Ysabel before night, or with the darkness the savages might return. And the schooner would be easy to capture with only three men on board to hold her. But could three men manage to take her to sea? The only white man on board who was capable of working knew nothing of navigation, little of seamanship. Could he do it? Hyde squared his shoulders. It was up to him. He had been passed the buck. He was left entirely to his own resources and he had to make good, not only to satisfy his own soul, but to save his life, and to keep faith with Seth Orville who was, when all was said and done, paying him wages to serve faithfully. The Lizzie R was Orville’s ship, and he expected everything done to save her.

Hyde walked to the break of the poop, gritting his teeth to keep from giving way to the weakness that assailed him, and called to the two Samoans aloft in the vinegar barrel at the main top. They came down slowly, and, dropping from the sheer-pole, made their way to the poop.

Under Hyde’s directions they lifted the captain and carried him to the cane chair in which Tiaga had sat, still by the rail. Hyde brought up the medicine-chest from below and gingerly fingered the rows of phials and the bottles of disinfectant. He knew nothing of surgery whatever, and he was half-afraid. But he did his best, washing the captain’s wounds in a thin solution of iodin and bandaging them well. He then fixed the fat man up with many cushions and pillows, took a stiff drink of whisky, and set to work to patch himself up as best he could.

He now faced the difficulty of removing the schooner from her dangerous location, and right at the start he ran against what threatened to prove an insurmountable obstacle. Had he understood the Islands better it would never have occurred. But he was green.

He ordered the Samoans to get the decks clear of the dead and to knock out the shackle in the cable. They had gone down on the main deck from sheer force of habit once they had carried the captain to the chair, and now they looked up at the man who was giving them orders and shook their heads. Ignoring him, they commenced to talk together in a low tone, shooting frightened glances at the jungle and at the scene of slaughter round their feet.

Hyde came down from the poop and confronted them. Nothing of the immaculate youth who had come aboard in Apia was apparent now. He was white-faced with loss of blood and spent effort, grim-lipped with determination, as rigid and as implacable in his purpose as all white men who do the right thing at the right moment and write history across the pages of time. The iron was showing stark and clear from under his skin. His hands, resting on his revolver butts, were perfectly steady.

“What’s the great idea?” inquired Hyde curtly.

The Samoans grew insolent.

“No good take schooner out. Take whale-boat, we and you. Make ship at sea, or maybe other island. Schooner too big for three men. Fight again byme-by we stop here. You stop here if you like. We go.”

So that was it. The men were afraid that they could not handle the schooner. They wanted to take the whale-boat and make a run for safety. No wonder their kind served instead of ruling. It was the easier way out, of course. Hyde had always been taking the easy way all his life. How he had changed! He did not even stop to consider it now. The idea had never even occurred to him.

“Never mind about that,” he said, and his voice was hard. “I’m skipper here now. Start pitching those dead bodies overboard.”

The Samoans looked at each other. Should they risk their lives with this white fool— the fool they had seen crying in his bunk because the fat captain had struck him? The idea was ridiculous. They would take the whale-boat and go away, away to safety and beautiful Samoa. As if actuated by a single impulse their rifles dropped level with their waists, the lean muzzles covering the white man’s heart. They never even gave him a chance to draw his revolvers, and he was yet too green with men to read the warning signs of the eye. There was no mistaking the Samoans’ meaning. Hyde cursed them savagely, even as his hands went slowly above his head. He had never thought of the crew breaking out in mutiny. He wondered whether the captain would have guessed it. What would he have done?

The Samoans bound their captive, the teachings of generations preventing them from killing him, and took him up on the poop where they placed him alongside the captain’s chair. What their reasons were for this kindness Hyde could never guess, though he had an inkling it was their conscience bidding them give their captive at least the comfort of the poop awnings.

The only obstacle in their way disposed of, the two natives unlashed the whale-boat amidships and by dint of much exertion and many changes of tackle they succeeded in getting it launched through the gap left in the wire fence, though they had to widen it considerably. They hastily provisioned their vessel and confiscated the two water-breakers from the other small boat the schooner carried to supplement the two already in the whale-boat; after which they dropped overboard, hoisted the sail and beat away to seaward against a moderate wind, aided by the tide.

They left the Lizzie R still riding at anchor, with two helpless white men on board, in the midst of a savage environment, thronged with savage people, who were sure, sooner or later, to return and wreak vengeance for the fearful toll of their dead. And the decks were dotted with dead. The carrion birds began to drop from the diamond sky, and soon the blood-stained planks walked with loathesomeness.

ABOUT an hour later Captain Sam Boggs woke to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared for a long while, dazed, up at the poop awning, slashed and ripped here and there by wide-flung spears and wandering shots, letting in hot shafts of light from the burning sun.

The captain was aware that his head ached terribly and that something, probably a broken rib, tickled his lungs when he tried to breathe. The insect hum of the jungle came to him faintly, as did the hum of the far-away surf and the occasional squawks of the gaudy-colored birds fluttering about the foliage ashore. But these lesser noises were blotted out by a nearer, louder sound, a puzzling sound. There were deep-throated croaks, the rustling of dry, harsh feathers, horrible tearing sounds, and the click of talons on woodwork. Then recollection came to the captain.

The mate’s indiscretion— the fight with Tiaga— the battle before the saloon skylight with the war-club. He sat up slowly and with effort, noticing that he was well-nigh covered with bandages. He looked along the deck and was very nearly made physically sick by what he saw. The deck was alive with birds feeding off the dead, and in some cases off the not quite dead. A muffled grunt brought the captain’s horrified eyes to the deck at the side of his chair, and he swore feebly and with unbounded astonishment. The first thought he had was that Tiaga had taken the ship. Hyde’s face looked up, and he spoke.

“Feel well enough to let go these lashings, sir?”

Captain Boggs swore again to relieve his feelings. He struggled off the chair and sat precariously on the edge, lifting his hands to his fevered and bandaged head. He waited a moment, fearing he was going to faint; and then, recovering, he slipped to his knees beside his helpless supercargo and fumbled with the knots that held him. In a few minutes Hyde was free and massaging his wrists, while the great bruise in his side made him aware that it had not disappeared.

He aided the captain back into his chair, and then looked seaward through the glasses for the whale-boat. It was not in sight. Perhaps some canoes from the shore had caught it as it cleared the river-mouth; perhaps it had turned to run along the coast. At all events it could not be seen from the poop of the Lizzie R, nor was it ever heard of or seen again.

“What happened?” asked the captain faintly, sinking back on the cushions with a sigh.

Hyde swore. He was learning fast, for his oath was of the deep sea.

“There were only two of the crew left, sir, after the scrap. The kanakas ran just before you went out. I ordered the crew left to clear the decks and get the anchor clear. I was going to try and run her out to sea. But the men refused. They said it was time to take to the whale-boat and leave the schooner. They held me up, tied me and dropped me here. I see they’re out of sight now.”

“Oh.”

The captain closed his eyes wearily. He opened them again as a thought came to him. He even managed a faint smile.

“By the way, Hyde, this is a fine chance for you to tear the face off of me.”

The young man started and shot a quick look at the captain. Then he laughed, and, catching the other’s right hand, shook it with genuine feeling.

“I was a pup in those days, sir,” he said quite frankly. “I don’t know that I’m much more now, but I’m trying to be. Now I’ve got the chance to dig you, as you say, I don’t want to. It’s funny, but it’s true.”

The captain essayed a grin, though it was painful for his head.

“I knew you had the makings of a good man in you. Seth said there ought to be something under your skin. There is, Hyde. Your father could see where you were headed for and he sent you out to Seth to save you from yourself. You don’t know what was in that letter you brought out? No? I thought not. Well, your dad wanted you licked into shape and Seth turned the job over to me. Don’t think too bad of what I did to you. I’m glad I did it now anyway.”

“Let’s forget it, sir,” pleaded Hyde seriously. “I want you to set me right whenever I make a fool of myself in future. I’ve finished standing on my father’s legs. Besides, this is much more exciting.”

The captain thought for a moment. He looked along the decks at the beastly sight there, and then at the sullen, silent jungle-walls. Finally he looked back at his supercargo, running his eye over him from head to foot. Hyde waited.

“Do you think you can handle the Lizzie R single-handed back to Apia, or until she picks up a ship at sea?”

Hyde laughed easily, caught his breath as his bruise twinged, and a light crept into his eyes that had never been there before. He dropped a reassuring hand on his captain’s shoulder.

“Do I think I can? Sir, I will!”

“Go to it then,” chuckled the captain, a little proud of what he had made. “Go to it, son.”

And then, worn out with talking and thinking, he fell into a sleep. Hyde left him for an hour or more while he drove away the carrion birds, pitched the dead overboard and put three not fatally wounded savages into one of the few empty canoes still floating alongside and riding lightly at their heavy anchors of stone. He then drew a few buckets of water and swilled the deck down perfunctorily, keeping an eye lifting the while for any signs of attack. When he had finished he went back to the sleeping captain and regretfully awoke him to ask whether he should get sail up first or knock the shackle from the cable.

Neither man remembered afterward just what happened the following few hours. It was like a nightmare, a strangely distorted vision of the sleep. They grew numb to pain and fatigue. They were mere living machines driven on by something above and beyond them. Hyde kept himself going on whisky; but the captain, because he had no physical labor to do, held himself together by force of will. Luckily there was no further sign of Tiaga and his warriors. In a dim-lighted hut far away, though Boggs never knew it, the chief of the coast tribes of Ysabel was lying still unconscious from the terrible mauling he had received at the hands of the fat man.

Of all rigs of craft the schooner is perhaps the easiest to handle, requiring less men than any other vessel of a like size. But even so, a large three-masted ship like the Lizzie R could not be properly managed by only two men. It must have taken Hyde hours to hoist the sails. He did it an inch at a time. He only remembered afterward that when he started the sun was hot, and when he finished the dusk was creeping near. But finally the shackle of the anchor cable was knocked loose and the chain splashed into the river, lost forever, and the Lizzie R beat awkwardly out of the river-mouth and clear of the jungle-fringed shore, one madman at the wheel, and another madman in a cane chair near him. They must have been mad, because they were both laughing hysterically.

IT WAS two weeks later in Apia. Seth Orville, little, sun-dried and slightly drunk as usual, put down his glass with a bang and took the thin envelope from the native messenger, dismissing him with a wave of his hand.

“Wireless,” he grunted in explanation to the gray-haired, burly man with hard, flint eyes who sat opposite him across the marble-topped table in the cool saloon.

Orville opened the envelope, and, straightening the folded paper inside, read with some energy. And then he sat up and snorted.

“Lord bless my soul— waiter, another! Jump, my man! H’m, Billy, this concerns you, about your boy. Listen— the young scamp! Knew there was guts in him—

Listen, I say:

“S. S. Canton. At sea—

“H’m; she’s the Frisco mail boat—

“Captain Sam Boggs requests you be informed that I picked up his ship, the schooner Lizzie R— 400 miles east Santa Cruz Islands. No one on board but captain and supercargo. Captain severely wounded. Supercargo was working ship. Lent him four men at his request, as he refused salvage. States he was cut off by natives on Ysabel Island. Shall report matter to naval station and proper authorities.— James S. Roberts, master.”

William Hyde sat up stiffly in his chair and puffed hard at his cigar. His financial opponents said he was shockless, but they had never seen him with his son. Orville tilted back his atrocity of a sun-helmet, and, thrusting the message he had received into his pocket, rubbed his thin hands together and cackled with unholy laughter.

“That young pup of yours is making good, Billy. Hear that? Supercargo was working ship!”

William Hyde removed his dgar from his lips and slowly smiled. It looked as if two deep clefts had been cut into the rigid flesh of his face. The flint eyes twinkled.

“I knew the boy had a good foundation,” he remarked a little proudly. “I hope he’s not hurt. I’ll start his allowance again as soon as he gets ashore.”

“You’re about the biggest dam fool I ever knew,” snarled Orville as he lifted his refilled glass. “Let him work his own way, you had to. Let him spend your cash when you kick through. Allowance! Huh!”

He tilted the glass.

“Four hundred miles east of Santa Cruz Islands,” Orville resumed breathlessly. “Wireless sent this morning; My yacht’s in port. Can get position of Lizzie R from the Canton by wireless. Like to go and meet the pup?”

The other man’s voice shook slightly. His eyes were soft. There was little of the magnate about him now. Even Rodney Hyde did not know how much his father thought of him.

“I— I think I’d like to, Seth. He’s all I’ve got, and I’m getting old. I sometimes think I was wrong in—”

“Wrong, bosh! Lis— Listen! Made a man out of him. I know. Qui— Quite right to send him away. Hope Sam licked him well. Bet you S-Sam did anyway. I promised him hundred quid. Well, le’s go.”

IT WAS well on in a lazy tropic afternoon when the lookouts at the mast-head of the steam yacht Tiger sighted a schooner under full sail bellowing along before a brisk wind. Orville clambered aloft like an inquisitive monkey and peered intently through his favorite telescope.

“That’s her,” he chirped to William Hyde on the poop below. “That’s her—four points starboard the hellum!” he finished with a querulous roar to the bridge.

In an hour the two ships were abreast, and the Tiger swung round to lay the same course as the sailing-craft. She surged alongside to within hailing distance and lessened speed. Three white sailors were gathered on the fo’c’s’le-head, curiously watching the white-painted yacht that had steamed up from the south to meet them. On the schooner’s poop a slim, bronzed figure waved a tattered straw hat excitedly.

The Lizzie R came into the wind and hove to, while the yacht dropped a smart gig, and Orville and William Hyde were rapidly transported across the blue waters. They clambered over the low rail.

The oil millionaire was met by the slim young man who had waved from the poop and found himself engulfed in a pair of strong arms. Orville stood by and fussily mopped his brow with his handkerchief. Then he spoke snappily:

“Is this the way you treat your owner when he comes aboard? Call the steward and serve something to drink. Bless my soul, what a mess the deck is in! Where’s Sam?”

Hyde the younger looked with a smile, and some affection, at the wrinkled, yellow-skinned man he began to understand at last. He caught Orville’s hand and shook it.

“Glad to see you, sir. Captain Boggs is aft, delirious. Went off his head with fever three days back. Will you come on the poop?”

And on the poop they all went, where they saw Sam Boggs lashed to a mattress on a heavy hatch-cover, swathed in bandages and babbling of green fields and old swimming-pools, and of girls he had loved when he had been young and strong and clean. Vastly altered was he. His skin hung in pouches and folds, and the paunch had quite disappeared. Orville snorted as he saw the condition his captain was in, and ordered him sent aboard the yacht. The men who had brought the gig over came aft and lifted the raving man overside and carried him back to the Tiger. The yacht then headed away for the south with all the speed of her powerful engines, racing for Apia and the best doctors in the Islands.

On the schooner the young Hyde was proudly showing his father his scars, including the great bruise on his ribs, while Orville looked on and cackled cynically, and grew wistful within as he remembered his own youth. Later there was a description of the fight in the river-mouth as Hyde remembered it, and a briefer description of the long, hard sailing days from Ysabel, before the Canton was sighted. Finally, in a subdued voice, a confession that the experience had done him good, made him a better man.

“You must come back to the States with me, son,” said the millionaire huskily. “I have a job for a big man on some mining property of mine.”

But Rodney Hyde shook his head and turned to Orville, who sat hunched in a cane chair, watching him keenly.

“I’d like to make a few more trips With Captain Boggs, sir, when he’s on his feet again. Can I stay as supercargo, Mr. Orville?”

“Can you? I should say you owe me a few months’ work. This trip’s been a dead loss to me, but you’ve drawn pay for the whole time! Don’t forget that, sir. I’ll say you’ll stay as supercargo,” fumed the little man, but Hyde laughed, for he detected the note of respect under the querulous tone, the note he was hearing for the first time also in his father’s voice.

“I’ll try the mining properties later, dad,” he said, and the older man nodded.

With an apology Hyde left the two and strolled aft to see that the helmsman was keeping to his course, and to bring something from below. William Hyde looked at his old partner and friend and gulped a little! He looked rather foolish for one with such a reputation for hardness.

“I suppose it would be best to let the boy have his own way. But I want him bad. I’d like to thank you, Seth,” he concluded softly, but the other waved him away.

“Don’t thank me. Thank Sam Boggs and the kanakas of Ysabel, but most the sea and the sky and the old Lizzie R.” His voice grew almost tender as he eyed the other. “And I haven’t forgotten what you did for me in the Klondike, Billy. It’ll take a lot to square that.” His voice rose querulously, as if he was ashamed of his lapse from his grumbling and ill-humor. “H’m!... H’m. When in —— is that pup of yours going to bring on something to drink? This climate never did agree with me—Hyde!”

__________________

2: The War Of The Captains

MacLean's Magazine, 1 Jan 1923

THE charts called it Heaven Island, and its appearance and climate in no way belied its name. The books on Pacific sailing directions gave it as one of the finest places at which to water, and in the old days many ships made it a point to call there. But that was before “Black” John came. Since then it had been taboo to all “windjammer” skippers who commanded small ships, and none of them made a stop there if it could possibly be avoided. For there were rumors afloat, ugly rumors, whispered in the Pacific saloons, muttered on the poop decks of trading schooners, echoed again even in the fo’c’s’les of flash steam-packets that raced the mail from northeast to southwest and back again through all the Islands.

Heaven Island lay exactly on the equator, in an area of sea and a small archipelago over which a third-rate power exercised jurisdiction, and kept order by means of a drunken official five hundred miles away and an old, broken-down wooden cruiser that spent most of her time getting off sand-bars and mud-flats. It was this fact that made “Black” John’s position so secure. The only law that could touch him was not in working order.

Rumor had it that the big Frenchman himself was an escaped convict from Noumea, Devil’s Island, and that he dared not venture off Heaven Island for fear of capture. Certain it is that in time he drew to him the renegades of all the Pacific. Men who had to flee the greater law of the British, Japanese, or French Mandate Islands came eventually to “Black” John and his kingdom, where extradition laws did not run and the welcome they received was friendly in the extreme. The Frenchman rapidly grew rich, only the bank in Sydney knew just how rich. The island was well-wooded and fertile. Copra plantations sprang up. There was some shell in the narrow lagoon on the north shore. Sago grew in parts, and all in all Heaven Island was well worth having.

The men who came for shelter from the wrath of more civilized parts worked the plantations, superintending the black laborers who were forcibly imported from the mainland of the greater island away to the east, and were never allowed to return to their homes. Others of the white men superintended the sago trees, and others sailed the Nauru, a big three-masted square-rigger in which “Black” John sent his wares to the markets. But the latter were men who were not very badly wanted by the authorities, and they were men well paid and trusted, so that they would not talk of things that happened.

But Heaven Island had an uglier name than that of being a shelter for criminals. Ships passed the island on their way to Samoa from the north, especially sailing ships, and occasionally one would be becalmed. It was whispered that no ship becalmed off Heaven Island ever continued her voyage. But if “Black” John and his powerful launch and his gang of renegades had anything to do with the disappearance of such ships that never came home to port, there was no definite evidence. There was no trace. Never was a timber or a spar of the ships ever afterwards found. And so, when it came right down to bedrock, everything was rumor. How the rumors started was never known. Perhaps the dusky frigate birds whispered them to the natives who pretended they could understand bird language, but more likely the crew of the Nauru dropped hints of night burnings when deep in liquor in the Apia saloon.

Be that as it may, for seven years ships continued to disappear, until the schooner captains took the passage past Heaven Island no more: when it was noticed that more ships came home to port.

The authorities in Samoa had been stirred to life, when a prominent group of Island planters and traders had demanded that investigations be made. But the authorities could do little without evidence. They could not act on rumors. It was true they sent a British cruiser with sealed orders to Heaven Island. She had dropped anchor there and sent a party ashore with the ostensible idea of securing some fresh water, while the officers of the party had strolled around and chatted with "Black John", taking in every detail of the island. But they had found nothing that could definitle be called suspicious. They had made some pointed remarks about the massive pointed-stake stockade that surrounded the white men's houses, obviously for defence, but the Frenchman had politely reminded them that his laborors were cannibals and that he was a nervous man. And inside the stockade there was nothing in view suspicious.

Had the commander of the cruiser in his survey sighted a single timber, a log-book, anything that might have come from a looted ship, he would have landed an armed party and annexed the island to his country. But there was not the least excuse given him, not the slightest sign of anything to support the ugly rumors, except the giant stockade and the gathering of ruffians. The cruiser returned to Samoa and nothing more was done. And “Black” John continued to grow richer and ships continued to disappear, though less and less frequently as they took other routes. Not even a fragment of cargo was afterwards identified as it came from the Nauru's hold in Apia, but then copra is all much of the same, and so are shark’s fins and whale bones.

THE very fact that Dag deliberately hove-to off Heaven Island showed that he was green in the Islands. He went solely by his sailing directions, and they said, without a manner of doubt, that the island was possessed of one of the best fresh water springs in the north-west Pacific.

So Malone checked his little schooner. The Ghost,  morning off Heaven Island, dropped anchor some two hundred yards from a wonderful, white, broad beach, in ten fathoms and on one of the most beautiful sand floors he had ever seen, and sent ashore a watering party in the whaleboat, consisting of his white mate and five of the kanaka crew. This left a party aboard of five, including Dag himself and his young wife, Teressa.

From the ship, lifting very slowly and falling just as slowly to the deep-running swell, that broke in white foam on the beach, little could be seen of signs of occupation of the island. The broad beach was fringed with tall palms and jack-fruit trees, completely hiding the famous high stockade, and the plantations were farther inland yet, invisible from the sea. except for those planted on the pea e hill that rose in the island’s centre.

The beach opposite where The Ghost lay ran for about a quarter of a mile on each side and then narrowed, while the palms curved out to the very water’s edge and gave way to mangroves and sago. The coast continued on from there each way as a sort of swamp, till it joined the lagoon edge the other side of the island and the beach grew broad and white again.

The whaleboat had hardly reached the shore when two men came from the palm fringe to meet it, and  Malone, watching through his glasses, noticed that they caried revolvers strapped round their waists. That gave the stocky square-built captain food for thought, for there was no mention in his sailing directions that the island harbored any savage natives. Why were the white men armed then?

He received another shock two minutes later when a magnificent white-painted launch shot out of some hidden creek among the mangroves and sago away to the right, and came skimming with powerful "chugs" of the engine across the intervening blue.

In the stern sat "Black John," though the wondering Malone never knew his name, and for’ard sat two white men, one with a boat hook, the other with a coiled painter in his hand. Midships another white man tended the engine. Great was Malone’s uneasiness to note that all four of these men were armed as had been the two to meet the whaleboat at the beach.

For a moment Malone contemplated going for his own revolver, but then the ridiculousness of the thing burst upon him. and he laughed a little harshly to himself. What else could it mean but a friendly call? There must be some big project going through on the island for so many white men to he hanging about, and for such a magnificent launch to be kept up; perhaps guano or gold or rubies. Still, it was funny that all should be carrying guns.

There was no time for further speculation. The launch swept alongside the dangling pilot ladder midships, though it was hardly necessary with the schooner’s low freeboard, and the engine “chugging" died away. Dag Malone, with the true hospitality of the sea, was the first to shake the giant Frenchman’s hand as he clambered over the low rail, inquiring after his health and in the same breath shouting to the kanaka steward to serve drinks.

"BLACK” JOHN was a fine-looking man. He stood perhaps six feet five inches in his stockings, and his massive chest and shoulders were as deep as they were broad. He was dressed in immaculate whites, and on his head perched a spotless sun-helmet from the very best Nothing firm in Sydney. His face was broad, but not unhandsome, and was half covered by the broad fuzzy black beard that reached half way to his waist, just touching the broad red silk sash he wore and over which his guns were strapped. His fingers were flat and short and his hands hairy; his voice gruff and deep, capable of ringing with deceptive heartiness or sheer cold cruelty. His eyes were black, jet black, without a twinkle or gleam to lighten them and give a clue to the thoughts weaving in and out through the skull in which they were set. Such was the man who shook Dag Malone’s hand by the midship taffrail of The Ghost and rumbled out a greeting, while his eye took in the visible wealth the ship carried in the form of a deck cargo of Oregon pine.

Following him over the rail came the three other men the launch had carried. All of them werd big and bearded, all of them were shifty of eye and nervous in their movements. Also they all appeared to step in mortal dread of the big Frenchman. Malone’s uneasiness increased.

But being something of a gentleman the captain made no remarks that might be construed wrongly. Instead he led his guests to the poop and the shady awnings and motioned the steward to serve the drinks.

“What is the cargo you have under hatches?" asked Black” John smoothly, his voice ringing with heartiness, and no accent apparent, leaving the captain still in doubt.

“Mostly trade goods," said Malone wtth a smile. The other three men smiled too, but not the sort of smile one likes to see. Then Teressa come on deck.

She had been below fixing her hair, and was attired in a loose silk kimono such as she always wore in hot weather. Her hair was hidden under a flimsy cap decorated with ribbons and she looked very pretty as she stepped from the saloon scuttle and murmured greetings at the men.

The Frenchman jumped to his, feet, offered his chair with a wave of his sun-helmet, and ignoring everyone else engaged the woman in conversation. She shuddered as she looked smiling into the Frenchman’s impassive black eyes, and Malone experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was no coward, but there was something in the air, something intangible that seemed to be threatening, that shook him with fear. He licked his lips and looked at the other three men, noting that they were grinning at each other in a cynical way.

As luck would have it the whaleboat returned just then with the first kegs of water, and Malone excused himself and went midships to see the mate.

“We’ll get up sail and beat it.” he said tersely. “I don’t like the atmosphere round here. How did you get along ashore?”

“I feel about scared stiff, sir,” said the mate, lifting his straw hat and wiping his streaming forehead with a sunburnt bare forearm. “I’m telling you those two guys... did you see ’em? just followed me round wherever I went. And they kept their hands on their guns. It was dirty, the whole show. I asked them what they were doing here and they told me to keep my mouth shut and get back aboard as soon as possible."

“Something darned queer about this all right. I....”

A sharp scream brought Malone up short and he swung round with an oath. His wife was struggling with the Frenchman, who was trying to kiss her, and the other three men were laughing as though their sides would split. Malone ripped out another oath and commenced to run aft, while the mate, jerking a belaying pin out of the rail, swiftly followed him. Then murder broke loose.

ONE hot night in December, fifteen men gathered in the stuffy saloon of the steam yacht Tiger  anchored in Apia Harbor, in the Islands of Samoa. They had not come in a day, nor very easily. It had taken several thousand pounds in money, and nearly six months in time to get those fifteen together, but the fact had been at last accomplished.

Several curious things would have been noted by any onlooker who chanced to know the Islands at all well. In the first place, every man present was a shipmaster, was a man who commanded his own ship, had commanded his own ship, or held, at the least, his extra-master’s license. The youngest man present was not under fofty. the oldest man was perhaps over sixty. All were alert and able, all were experienced and tried. All were famous in their way, and each one had been the talk of the Pacific some time or another. The saloon of the Tiger held the best known captains of all the Islands that night.

The majority of them were spare, lean men of middle height, with faded, sun-washed eyes and bleached fair hair. Four or five were big rawboned men. gray-eyed and and massive-muscled. Some few were fat, some extremely thin. All were dressed in whites, and their helmets lay on the long baize-covered table before them. Nearly all were smoking cigars, and a half-filled glass rested at each man’s elbow. The air was heavy with tobacco fumes, dimming the light from the electric bulbs screwed into the deckhead above. There was a low murmur of voices continually present as each man conversed with his neighbour, or joined in a conversation across the table. There seemed however an undercurrent of seriousness present, hard to define.

And this assemblage of famous men. all of them, big or little, spare or bulky, was dominated by the smallest man of them all, sun-dried, wrinkled, yellow-skinned Seth Orville, slightly drunk as usual.

He sat at the head of the table, hunched up in his swivel chair, a long cigar drooping carelessly from the corners of his mouth, his black tie gray with ash, and his ragged sandy moustache dewed with sweat. His thin sandy hair drooped carelessly across his forehead and over his right eye, and he breathed heavily as though exhausted. After a while he thumped on the table with a bony fist and glared around on hi s guests. The hum of voices ceased and a respectful silence ensued.

“TWO of you take a look around,” Orville snapped.

Two men rose from the long table without a word and stepped quietly out on to the deck. They returned after a few minutes and one of them proceeded to screw down the storm shutters of the ports, in spite of the already oppressive atmosphere of the saloon. The other man nodded to Orville.

“All quiet, sir,” he said. He then dropped to his chair and waited. The man screwing the ports down carefully closed and locked the saloon doors and then resumed his seat also. Orville’s voice dropped to almost a whisper, yet so penetrating was it’s dry quality that it reached every listening man.

“Most... most of you know why you’re here. Those who don’t soon will. I want you all... to swear that whatever is said in here must be a secret for as long as each of you lives. You will understand presently.” He looked around and glared and breathed hard on his wisp of moustache. The assembled captains looked at each other and nodded. They understood a little already.

“Gentlemen,” Orville rose to his feet, hiccoughed slightly, and pounded the table. “Gentlemen, there are in....insects in the best of homes, and the only way to handle ’em is to exterminate ’em. But to start from the beginning....The schooner, The Ghost, bound from Yokohama to Apia, was cut off and destroyed off Heaven Island.”

There was a rising murmur of surprise, checked as Orville went on speaking.

“The Ghost was chartered by my own agents in Singapore to run a cargo here for me. Dag Malone.... Some of you knew him.... was a stranger to these seas. He carried his wife with him as well as a helluva trust in human nature. Most of you know the sailing course from the west makes Heaven Island, most of you know why “windjammer” men never take the course now. But Captain Malone did not know. He stopped at Heaven Island for water and ‘Black’ John came. The Ghost was fired and all hands killed except Mrs. Malone and the mate. Gent-gentlemen, Mrs. Malone was my sister’s child. You can guess what happened to her.”

The little man’s face was streaming with sweat and twisted with fierce anger. He positively danced.

"LONG” CHARLEY spoke slowly. He was an enormously thin individual, knows as the luckiest man in the Islands and the greatest toper in the Pacific. He had recently acquired a new guano island in the north and for a while was passing wealthy. His large Adam’s apple ran up and down his throat as he spoke.

“How do you know this? From what I heard, John don’t leave many tracks on his trail.”

Orville snorted, glared at “Long” Charley, and then swept the intent faces of the captains. His yellow-skinned forefinger shot out and rested unswervingly on Boggs, Captain Sam Boggs, one of Orville’s own schooner men, enormously fat and short and brave-hearted, badly scarred from a fairly recent fight with the cannibals of Ysabel, where he had gone “recruiting” labor for the plantations of the Island millionaire.

“Captain Boggs, who commands my vessel, the Lizzie R, was homeward bound from the Solomons. He picked up a half-dead, insane man. Gentlemen, that man was the mate of The Ghost! He had escaped in the whaleboat by some means, how will never be explained. For once ‘Black’ John left a trace. Captain Boggs gathered the story of the cutting-off while the mate was calling out in delirium. The man was badly wounded and he died two days after being rescued. That's how I know!”

“Long” Charley nodded and folded his arms across his narrow chest. “Good enough,” he said dryly. The rest of the grave-eyed captains nodded. They knew Boggs as they knew Orville. Their words were better than signed statements.

"THIS thing.... hic.... this thing’s gone on long enough. Hawke, you had a brother on the Waylay that was lost, and how no one ever knew. But she was bound past Heaven Island. We are entitled to surmise that ‘Black’ John met her.”

Wallace Hawke of the brig Flying Fish, newly returned from a secret venture into the China Seas, nodded shortly and the man next him heard him swear under his breath. “It has gone far enough,” he said aloud and quietly.

Orville’s finger shot out again. “You, Matthews. Men called you Tom Hawke’s best friend. What do you say?”

“It’s gone far enough,” muttered the lean little man addressed. He gazed at the table moodily before him and his thoughts were black to judge from the frown on his face.

Again and again Orville’s finger shot out, until every captain present had muttered the same words, or signified his assent with a nod. The thing had gone on long enough. There was not a man present who had not at some time or another lost someone near and dear to him, brother, partner, or friend, through the suspected agency of “Black” John. And under the lash of Orville’s snapped out words, interspersed though they were by hiccoughs,the captains grew angrier and angrier. They had never before been gathered together at once to discuss the matter in its entirety, and never before had they realised the enormity of ‘Black’ John’s suspected operations.

THEIRS was not the hot anger of youth or sudden passion, but the cold determined anger, and far more deadly anger, of tried and experienced men in whom the pangs of grief and sorrow had abated, men with memories, men able to think clearly and weigh matters in their generalities. Their own losses no amount of vengeance would restore to them, but they were representative of all the Pacific shipping, and they could perhaps dosomething to prevent their fellows from suffering what they had suffered. And this assemblage was dominated by the unbelievably fierce little man who sat at the head of the table, or jumped excitedly to his feet, who spoke through hiccoughs and drunken stammers and was physically not capable of killing a dog. But no man smiled at him, and no man felt any contempt for his drunken condition.

Orville had a reputation behind him that caused men to forgive his eccentricities, and to remember that the doctors had said that it was only whiskey which kept the life-flame flickering in the shrivelled little body.

Having reached some sort of a decision, Orville came down to brass tacks with the captains. “The question is, how are we going to eradicate the trouble?”

“It’s going to be difficult,” Wallace Hawke said curtly. “ ‘Black’ John has the law on his side if we attack him. And supposing we did succeed in wiping him out, if it ever became known we should be tried and convicted for murder.”

Orville snorted. “That’s why I warned you all not to spe...speak of what is said here to-night once you get ashore. We must leave no trace, not a single trace, and there must never be anything said outside of ourselves on what we agree to do. Understand? The Administration is unofficially with us. They won’t make any more inquiries than can be helped. And if we wipe Heaven Island from the sea as a blacklisted spot, making it once again a safe watering place for seamen, I believe we shall earn the gratitude of every shipmaster from here to Sydney and back. The native laborers of ‘Black’ John we can ship back to their homes. They won’t talk. And if they do who’d believe them in a court prejudiced in our favor? But, of course, we must make a clean sweep. Not only ‘Black’ John himself, but every man of his must be destroyed. Without trace was ‘Black’ John’s method. It must be ours.”

ORVILLE chewed savagely at his ragged cigar. A fragment of the dark leaf flapped loose and rested on his bony chin. He brushed it impatiently aside and waited for some one to speak.

The captains were surprised. They had expected perhaps a proposal to demand from the foreign power that ‘Black’ John be removed from the Archipelago, perhaps a demand to the Administration that some steps be taken to allow a cruiser to patrol the waters of Heaven Island very frequently. It was obvious, of course, that the authorities would not convict a man on evidence based on the delirious mutterings of the mate of The Ghost, and it was also evident that not a trace of the schooner would be found if a search party visited Heaven Island. But a party of extermination! That was unique, something reminiscent of days in the old west perhaps, reminiscent even of old days in the Islands when cannibal villages had been wiped out to teach other cannibal villages a lesson. But now the Law had come. European governments jealously watched each other in the South Seas. A man could not even shoot a native now. unless first attacked, without being imprisoned for it. For a while there was silence. The captains refrained from looking at each other. On first thought the thing seemed like murder, on second thought like justice. The blood of the younger men began to take fire with the adventure of the thing. Also memories of old shipmates and lost relations began to flicker clear. Bruce Sanchi was the first to speak.

SANCHI was a slight, rather handsome man, wearing a crimson tie in the collar of his white linen shirt. No one would have particularly noticed him in a garden party in England or America. His eyes were a mild blue color, and his hands were white and well-kept. He never seemed out of place in any environment. Rather of a colorless, insignificant type. Yet once, when the Russians had caught him sealing in the Pribiloffs. he had captured the armoured cruiser sent to capture him, and had sailed her to a certain port where he had handed her over with an apology to an astounded Russian consul who had found, on inspection, her gorgeously uniformed commander bound and gagged alongside his sailors in the noisome shelter deck amidship. Also Sanchi had held the position as president of a South American republic before circumstances had persuaded him to return to the sea and the ships. He never spoke of his exploits, other men did that for him.

Once he was aksed where he was born. He had smiled gently, as was his wont. "Auckland, sir… Education? Ah, Trinity College, you know."

"Blood and iron, Orville. Good idea, what?" he said now. "Count me in."

That broke the tension. Someone laughed softly. Wallace Hawke grunted, and his white moustache swelled.  "Me too, Orville. What's the plan?"

“Seems you’re all kinda hasty,” “Long" Charley drawled. "John’s got a hell of a big stockade up on his island. If we land there with a promise of trouble, all he’s gotta do ls to shut himself up and tell us to get to the devil. Liable to get killed too, if we try t’ rush that stockade. An’ if we fail in an attack there’s sure to be a row.  These third-rate powers are always on the lookout for a  chance to kick up a fuss. Gives them international publicity.”

There were a few grunts of approval. Orville jumped to his feet, thumped on the table for silence, noticed his glass still half-full, drained it. and wiped his lips before speaking.

"I understand then gent-gentlemen, that you are all agreed about the ‘no trace’ stuff?”

Every head nodded.

“It’s obvious then,” resumed Orville, "that we must figure on some plan to overcome the stockade question. We dare not risk a failure, for there would be no second chance. The Haro"—she was the wooden cruiser of the power that ruled the little Archipelago— "would take us over as soon as she heard. Probably hold us for ransom or some such rot.”

Bruce Sanchi grunted. “That’s reasonable." “Long" Charley caressed his large Adam’s apple with a thin, bony hand and nodded agreement.

Orville took the ragged cigar from his mouth, jammed it back again. and then sat down with some force.

One would have supposed from his manner that every man in the saloon was opposing instead of agreeing with him. "I’ve got a plan,"he said at last, "but I'd like to hear any suggestions."

For nearly three hours discussions ran high and men's voices were low and tense.

THE meeting of the captains was a fairly well-kept secret. Rumors flew, of course, No one ever speaks of a new pearl-bed he may have discovered, but everyone seems to know just the same. So it was with the meeting, but not even the very high officials of the Administration who unofficially approved Orville’s actions, knew just who was present in the saloon of the white-painted yacht.

At dawn the Tiger put to sea, and never before had he, or any other ship for that matter, sailed with such a crew. From Lon Matthews, who polished brass among oil-burning engines below, to Wallace Hawke who paced the narrow bridge as captain, there was not a man who was not a certified master-mariner. There was not a common seaman or fireman aboard. Every possible means to insure that there would be no talking was being taken. The precautions had to be taken, not only to insure the captains themselves immunity, but also to preserve the Administration itself from embarrassment. The yacht was to cruise outside Apia harbor, well out of sight of land, until certain things were said over the powerful wireless she carried. Orville and Bruce Sanchi stayed ashore to carry out the plans approved by the meeting  the previous night.

Matters commenced to develop when Orville approached  Ronald Hyde, supercargo  of the blackbirder Lizzie R, then laying alongside in Apia, with a strange request. Hyde could hardly refuse, for Orville had been the means of making him a man, through the medium of Captain Sam Boggs, who was master of the Lizzie R. And besides, Orville was the best friend of William Hyde, the millionaire oil man of the States, who called Ronald Hyde "son". Then, too, Orville had the wonderful art of making his employees enthusiastic over himself, such an art as Napoleon and Garibaldi had. He was reputed to have the finest men in the Pacific in his employ, and they loved him as they might have loved their fathers. But the favour Orville asked of his young supercargo tried his affection to the utmost.

"Hyde, I want you shot," he said. Hyde who  had long given up wondering about his employer's motivation and aims, only nodded and waited for his explanation. But there was none forthcoming. He looked at the two men facing him on the poop deck of the Lizzie R.  Besides Orville there was Bruce Sanchi. Captain Boogs was away on the trim white-painted Tiger womewhere to seaward, and at that precise moment was carrying dishes from the galley, where "Long" Charley cooked, perspiring in every pore. The Lizzie R. was temporarily without a mate, so that on Hyde fell the responsibility of looking after the schooner until such time as he was relieved.

ORVILLE introduced Sanchi and Hyde to each other with a wave of his hand and a few muttered words, and then dropped puffing into one of the cane chairs that seldom left the poop deck of the schooner, unless it was in time of storm.

“I want you shot, Hyde,” he repeated in a rather low voice, glancing round carefully for signs of eavesdroppers. “Captain Sanchi will pick a quarrel with you at some time when you are in a crowded place. You will strike at him and he will shoot you through the arm. Just a flesh wound. You will act as though you are fatally hurt and leave the rest to me.”

“But—” objected the astounded young man.

Sanchi smiled gently.

"But me no buts. Seems bally unreasonable, eh? But trust me. You’ll fall in a worthy cause. Don’t be afraid I shall miss my aim. Dead shot, what?”

"That’s true enough,” Orville supplemented. Hyde hesitated and moved uncomfortably. “Yes, that part’s all right. But what’s it all for?”

“That we cannot tell you... You may hear later. It’s a question of your trusting me. Yes or no, now. I can get another man,” finished the little millionaire testily.

"I suppose it’s yes,” admitted Hyde darkly, ramming his hands in his pockets and striding to the rail. He gazed moodily down at the dark water, his brows wrinkled with thought and bewilderment. Sanchi grinned and straightened his wonderful tie. He walked across to Hyde and squeezed his arm gently.

“The guv’nor know what he’s about,” he said. “We’re working out a plan to catch some dirty rogues, and you’re being used as the bait. Just act up and keep your own counsel. Things will come out all right.”

Hyde turned slowly and then grinned. He could not help liking Sanchi. He looked so mildly inoffensive. And he betrayed in flashes the iron that Hyde had come to look for in men who had done things. They shook hands.

Orville rose to his feet and lit a cigar. “Let’s drink,” he suggested, and set off toward the warped gangplank amidships followed by Sanchi.  Hyde watched them go with his frown of bewilderment settling again. Here he was pledged to let another man shoot him. What for? San chi’s explanation had been very sketchy. Well, it was another of those mysterious intrigues that wove and interwove through and beneath the seemingly placid Island life. He shrugged.

“Stroll down town about dusk,” shouted Orville from the wharf. Hyde nodded curtly and turned away.

The Kanaka, who had been dozing comfortably, hidden by a pile of hatch canvases beneath the break of the poop, until the sound of voices awoke him, scrambled to his feet and shuffled for’ard. He had some curious information that would cause untold comment among the water front population. It was only by the greatest ill-fortune, from Orville’s point of view, that three weeks later Rene Declare, master of the big three-masted boat Nauru, “Black” John’s own ship should happen to overhear the kanaka telling, IplBfek some companions about the curious conversation he had heard on the poop deck of the Lizzie R.  It did not take Rene Declare very long to connect up the fragment with many mysterious rumors he had heard, and he put to sea immediately, with only half his cargo discharged and for no visible reason. But before all this, other things happened.

APIA was visibly shocked. The gossip of the verandahs at night time was about one thing. The press mentioned it hectically and repeatedly. Several well-known officials seemed to be fostering the indignation in a sort of surreptitious manner. Orville certainly controlled a great deal of power. He had wanted a huge fuss raised, a fuss, the echoes of which should reach to the very last corner of the Pacific. He apparently had succeeded.

Bruce Sanchi, the good-humored, the well-beloved schooner captain and adventurer, the Sanchi of Pribiloff and South American fame, was wanted for attempted murder. He had insulted and shot young Hyde, son of the Hyde, outside of Robert's saloon. A dozen men had seen the thing. Orville himself had sworn to it. The attack had been quite unwarranted, brutal in fact. A few words in the beginning, and then blows. That Sanchi should do such a thing was unbelievable. He was normally such a quite, good-tempered man, even somewhat indolent. But the thing had undoubtedly occurred. Orville had offered a reward of one hundred pounds for the apprehension of Sanchi. According to rumors the affair might turn out to be one of murder, for the wounded man was said to be in a serious condition. He was at Orville’s own house, and a special physician was in attendance. No one was allowed to see him, which was perhaps as well, for lie would have been found sitting up in a comfortable cane chair smoking endless cigarettes, and not at all bothered by a slight flesh wound in his right arm. But according to rumor his very life was despaired of.

Those who had known and liked Sanchi, while wondering what on earth had possessed him to pull such a raw trick in a public place, were rather glad he had managed to get away. The authorities were searching, but the search was practically hopeless. The man had many influential friends about Apia and his escape was practic practically assured. Notice was sent to all assistant-commissioners in outlying places to watch for the well-known schooner captain, and the shipmasters who called at Samoa as the days crept by, carried with them, when they left, the whole story, much garnished by details, and pread it all over the Pacific. And all the while Orville rubbed his hands and chuckled with glee and drank many cocktails.

FOUR days after the shooting had occurred, the Tiger steamed close inshore in response to a wireless message, and Orville went out to her in his private harbor launch. Then the yacht steamed west and north and for a while was seen no more by the shipping of the Islands.

“Heard about it?” grinned “Black” John. “I should say we have. Hell of a stink for a little man to kick up.”

Bruce Sanchi, travel-stained and weary looking, faced the giant Frenchman across the plain deal table and grinned. He fingered his half-filled glass abstractedly with a steady hand and wondered if “Black” John suspected anything.

The two men sat alone in a somewhat bare room, opening out on to a broad stone verandah that faced a cluster of palm-huts and low sheds wherein dwelt the white colony of Heaven Island. Beyond could beseen the high pointed-stake-stockade and beyond that the sheltering rows and clusters of palms and breadfruit trees. The majority of the white men were out on the plantations, though one or two, unshaven, short-browed fellows, still lingered about the compound of trodden earth between “Black” John’s house and the others, well-armed, apparently as a sort of reserve guard in case anything should happen.

Only two hours before a swift, brig-rigged ship had hove to off Heaven Island, coming from the south, hastily dropped a boat and landed Bruce Sanchi, and then scuttled away toward the north again.

“Black” John had received the newcomer with open arms. The news of the Apia crime had traveled before him, and the Frenchman regarded the schooner captain as being of the same kidney as himself. Besides, it would greatly enhance his reputation to have such a well-known man join his colors. The majority of the island’s white men were common seamen and beachcombers,drunken criminalswith little brain for delicate work. There were few who could be trusted to carry out any sort of important work. But Sanchi could, and he would. He would have to.

It was obvious that if he ventured outside the Archipelago he would be captured and sent to Suva for trial. He had come to about the only place in the Pacific where he was absolutely safe. And the price of his safety was that ho should serve “Black” John body and soul and heart.

IN THE bare room off the verandah of the stone house, Sanchi told in detail the story of his escape from Apia with the whole force of the authorities netting around him. Days of hiding in the bush, midnight conferences with friends and well-wishers, finally the boarding of a north-bound brig early one dawn and paying in good gold for a swift passage to Heaven Island. And the story was convincing, nor did the keen, jet black eyes of the Frenchman, fixed unwinking on Sanchi’s mild blue ones, shake the story.

But perhaps that was because Sanchi had actually done what he said he had done. The escape had been an actual fact. And “Black” John knew that the man before him spoke the truth, because he had heard many tales the past few weeks in many roundabout ways; from traders talking, from schooner captains who happened to have called for water at Heaven Island, and whose ships were too big to be attacked with any hope of sucess. Wherefor he had no reason to doubt the story of the man who had come to him for shelter from the groping fingers of the Law.

It had been nearly six weeks since the shooting had taken place. Somewhere out of sight beyond the sea rim the Tiger was waiting for the signal. And Sanchi only waited the arrival of the Nauru to give the signal. For all the rats had to be killed in the same trap. In the meantime he devoted himself to wriggling into the good graces of the island’s master.

By the time they had had a couple of riproaring drunks together, they were firm friends. To the sullen anger of the other white men, Sanchi was made a sort of lieutenant and companion to “Black” John, and shared in all his pleasures.

The position gave him opportunity to look about without rousing suspicions. About the houses he found not the least thing suggestive, nothing that could be definitely said to point to any looted ship, or the killing of any missing man. Behind a taro patch outside the stockade, and on the landward side of the village, Sanchi came across a fragment of colored silk, torn and caught on the rough knot of a koa tree. And by the tree was a long patch of earth that looked as though it had been somewhat recently disturbed, for the coarse grass growing over it was rather tender and new. The silk suggested a woman’s garment, the long patch a grave, perhaps of some native woman, perhaps of Mrs. Malone, Orville’s niece. But most probably, thought Sanchi, some paramour of “Black” John’s.

THERE were women in nearly all the houses, sad-faced things, unlike the usual merry women of the Islands. One of two of the younger, the favorites of the white men, had a fairly good time, but all were more or less abused, and possessed of that fatal home-sickness that affects so strongly all the natives of the Pacific, whether of Polynesia or Melanesia. Sanchi soon found that there were no white women on the island.

Only one thing of all things did Sanchi find really suspicious. Two of the white men, they were both of Portuguese extraction he afterward learned, had a daily duty of strolling along the beach and burning driftwood. Some of it that came ashore with the tide looked suspiciously like ship’s timbers, and some of it was distinctly charred. But whatever it was it was not long allowed to lay before the eyes of men. Sanchi remembered that a burnt ship, sunk, will gradually break up beneath the sea and pieces of it float to the surface and come ashore. And “Black” John could not afford to leave a trace.

ON THE third day of his sojourn on the island, Sanchi met Kasiva; and in after years he was apt to thank his stars he did. He had come up from the lagoon, where he had been bathing, and had just entered the great stockade gate on his way to the house that he shared with a man by the name of Simons, an Austrian wanted by three governments for the “wanton slaughter of natives,” when “Black” John appeared on the verandah of his house, his beard bristling and a continuous stream of oaths rippling from his lips. He was dragging a woman by the hair with his right hand, hardly a woman, a girl perhaps of some seventeen years, delicate-featured and sweet-faced. She was trembling with terror and her naked body was angry red with weals and grazed flesh. The Frenchman flung her down the one verandah step and stepping after her kicked her savagely. She moaned and raised a hand toward him, while her big dark eyes streamed with tears.

“Don’t want to stay with me, eh?” “Black” John grated, his mighty voice rumbling and thick with passion. “Then go out and die. If I catch anyone feeding or sheltering you, I’ll kill them. Then, when you’re sick of it, come back here and I’ll kick you out again.”

After one more savage kick he turned to go, tugging angrily at his beard with one shaking hand.

Bruce Sanchi smiled very gently. He had smiled that way when he had looked into the eyes of the commander of the Russian cruiser in the long ago. and when he had received the news from his generals that his republic had fallen in the old South American days. He swung the light drill coat he had been carrying over his shoulder under his left arm pit, and thrust his right hand into the pocket of his white drill pants. His gait was easy and unhurried.

“What’s the matter, little one,” he asked gently, stepping to the side of the sobbing half-crippled girl. “Black” John swung round viciously at the sound of his follower’s voice. “Keep out of this, Sanchi,” he said harshly.

WITHOUT troubling to reply, the other assisted, the girl to her feet. The Frenchman with an oath made one step forward as though to spring from the verandah on to the back of the indifferent man.

“Asking for trouble?” he demanded, his flat fingers opening and closing in the palm of his hands. “What I say here goes! Any man who feeds that— I’ll finish myself.”

“I don’t think you’re talking to me,” Sanchi said softly, turning round very slowly.

The Frenchman went crimson and held the other man’s eyes for a long time. They strove to outgaze each other, and finally “Black” John turned away.

“Remember what I said,” he muttered savagely, and then strode into the house. The sound of a chair being flung across the room came to the ears of the listening man outside. He laughed a little and then grew grave. He had not come to Heaven Island to quarrel with “Black” John, to antagonise him. He bit his lip with vexation and with a curt few words to the girl made his way into the house to see the Frenchman,

“Well, what d’you want now?” snarled the bearded giant, glaring.

“Aw, don’t let’s quarrel over a girl,” pleaded Sanchi with a grin. “Kinda forgot myself for a while. Sorry, old man.”

“Black” John laughed triumphantly. He secretly thought the other was afraid of him, afraid that perhaps he would kill the man who assisted the girl. He grinned and sank in a chair, clapping his hands for an attendant.

“Stay out of my affairs, Sanchi,” he rumbled. “Have a drink now and forget it.”

And the two men drank, while Sanchi sympathised with the Frenchman as he recounted the tale of the obstinate girl refusing to stay with him. And the newly arrived schooner captain, who had always been scrupulously chivalrous to women, agreed on the right of a man to beat up a woman who in any way displeased him. And so peace was made.

But later, when he got away, Sanchi sought out the girl and rubbed ointment in her hurts and told her to stay in the palm groves, where he would bring her food and water and later build her a I shelter. The girl was resentful of his attentions at first. White men so seldom did anything for a native unless there was a motive. But as time passed and Sanchi said no word, the girl’s confidence in him grew, and she came to look on him as a friend and to trust him with all the sincerity she was capable of.

TWO weeks after Sanchi’s reception into the stronghold of the pirate of Heaven Island, the Nauru beat up to the anchorage and came to. Without waiting to see her gear stowed or for the shore launch to come off for him, Captain Rene Declare came ashore in haste by way of the whaleboat. “Black” John was on the sand to meet him, Sanchi by his side.

The Frenchman was both pleased and puzzled. He had not expected his ship back so soon. She must have had an exceptionally fine voyage with good winds and favorable. But it was no tale of wonderful sailing days that Rene Declare brought.

He stepped from the whaleboat on to the white sand, took a few paces toward his employer and the small group surrounding him, and then stopped. He twisted his fierce little black moustaches rapidly, his dark eyes running over the men before him, until they rested at last on Sanchi, who knew a sudden sinking sensation.

“Ha!” The little French captain put worlds of meaning into the exclamation. He stepped toward Sanchi and bowed a little, his hand on his heart. He looked ridiculously fat and greasy to command such a fine craft as the Nauru.

“Ha! So. tr-raitor, you are here.” Sanchi expelled his breath in one harsh gasp. He sensed something had gone wrong with the plans.

Captain Rene Declare turned to the puzzled “Black” John with a dramatic flourish.

“That, man,” he pointed to Sanchi, and his voice rose with each word, “is a spy! There is a plot afoot to destroy us all, destroy us all. I, Rene Declare, say that this is so. The shooting of that man in Samoa was but a trick. You have heard?”

“Black” John nodded even as he turned his savage gaze on Sanchi and loosened his revolver in his pouch. The rest of the white men gathered closer.

“Ha! Then this shooting was a trick. It was plotted that this man might come here as one of us.... I heard from a native who heard Orville and this man, and the man who was shot, talking together on the schooner, Lizzie R., laying in harbor. It is so! Destroy him, befure he carries out his plans to destroy us.... It is known in Samoa that there are plans pjanned to kill us all. Orville’s yacht has disappeared, and half of the captains on the Island trade have disappeared!”

Rene Declare ended with almost a scream and then stopped short for want of breath. With a bound “Black” John was at Sanchi’s side and had gripped him by the shoulder, thrusting the muzzle of an automatic in his side.

“Is this true?” he said harshly, and there came a frightened muttering from the surrounding men.

Sanchi shrugged indifferently.

“Seems you take a lot for granted. Do you think I should tell a man I was going to shoot him? Do you think I should take the trouble to come here if I was in no danger? I think the captain is slightly affected by the heat, what?”

“Black” John slowly dropped his gun hand and looked searchingly from one man to the other. If there was the slightest chance of Rene Declare’s story proving true, Sanchi would have to be destroyed. But on the other hand Sanchi was a valuable man to have around. “Black” John rather liked him. He was so cold and iron-nerved, just the man for the Frenchman’s assistant. It was a matter for thought.

IF YOU are a spy you’ll die quickly,” the Frenchman said grimly, “and if you’re not then you can smash in the captain’s face... Simons, you take him to your place and watch him. Better tie him up.”

The Austrian who shared a hut with Sanchi stepped forward and jammed his gun into the suspected man’s neck. He never had liked Sanchi and he was only too glad of a chance to work out some spite on him.

“March!” he growled, and followed by one or two of the other men the prisoner and jailer moved up the beach. “Black” John turned brusquely toward his own house and motioned to Rene Declare to follow.

With him the captain brought a frightened kanaka, the same who had heard the conversation on the poop deck of the Lizzie R. There was small doubt of Sanchi getting clear. But because of his desire to keep Sanchi with him if possible, to make use of him as an able second in command, “Black” John would be very fair. He would question and ponder and probe until he arrived at the truth. And Sanchi himself knew what that would be, and mean. In spite of all efforts at secrecy it was apparent that something of the meeting of the captains had leaked out. Perhaps some man had talked a bit when in liquor, perhaps some official of the Administration had ventured a guess in public as to what was about to take place. At all events, it was evident that many rumors had served to arouse Captain Declare’s suspicions and that the unfortunate circumstance of the kanaka overhearing Orville, Hyde, and Sanchi talking together on the poop of the Lizzie R. had given the captain very good grounds to base his suspicions on. He was vitally interested in the whole affair, for he stood or fell with “Black” John.

FOR two days Sanchi had lain bound and helpless in the hut of Simons the Austrian. He had been tortured by the biting insects, by the terrific heat of the indoors, and by the many kicks and blows bestowed by his jailer. Thrice had he been smartly hurried before "Black” John, questioned and requestioned. There was no doubt now in the Frenchman’s mind but what Captain Declare had found out was true. But the only man on Heaven Island who knew of the plans laid for the extermination of the gang of wreckers and pirates, was Sanchi. And it was only in the hope of sometime forcing from him the full story of what the plans were, and thus enabling them to be checkmated, that "Black” John allowed his captive to live at all.

The last interview, on the afternoon of the second day, had been the longest. Captain Declare. Simons. “Black "John and Sanchi alone had been present. Never was any criminal put through a stiffer “third degree.” For three hours, without cessation, each man took it in turn to pummel and question the bound captive. But Sanchi had preserved his silence. He pnly declared that the rumors must be ill founded. He declared that he had shot Hyde in a fit of passion, and denied any plot afoot to exterminate “Black’' John.

Sanchi tried everything he knew to restore the Frenchman’s confidence, but the evidence was too strong, and a fear that had lurked for years, hidden and ignored, in the escaped convict’s breast, gnawed at him and filled him with restless anxiety. Attempts had been made before to oust him, but his agents had always had word of them and he had been able to block them before they matured. He had even been warned before when the British cruiser had paid him a visit. But this half-confirmed, half-denied knowledge he had of some move in progress had him baffled and puzzled. What was it? Was Sanchi just to find clues of missing ships and men? Was there another cruiser coming? Was a raid to be made on him? Were all the captains of the Pacific, as Captain Declare insisted, banding together to wipe him out privately? Was Sanchi the sole active mover in the plot or was he but the vanguard, a promise of what was to come? “Black” John neither ate nor slept while he pondered the questions. But he drank hugely and grew more haggard with every passing hour. Were he driven from Heaven Island there was no place he could go to. Had the plot been rumored to be anything else but what Captain Declare said it was, a direct private war, “Black” John would have laughed and shot Sanchi and thought no more about it. The Law he could afford to ignore. He never left evidence of any crime for any nation to seize on. Then he remembered that the mate of the schooner, The Ghost, had escaped, fatally wounded it was believed, it was true, but what if he had not died? What if his testimony had been given to someone in authority and accepted as final proof? Even so, the Frenchman knew he could not be extradited. It was the idea of a private war that worried him. His enemies could bring an army against him. And so, in his terrible anxiety, grasping at an opportunity to satisfy himself as to what moves were being made, he allowed Sanchi to live, for dead he would not be able to tell what he knew.

AT THE close of the last interview, Sanchi, a battered hulk, the other three men exhausted, “Black” John had lost patience.

“Till nightfall to think it over, Sanchi,” he had snarled wearily. “If you don’t talk then I’ll let the kanakas try their bush ways on you. Hot wood splinters, cracked joints. Savve? Think it over carefully.” And Sanchi had managed a grin and a “Beastly crude, what?” before Simons took him away to the hut again.

Aching in every limb, his head whirling and singing dizzily. Bruce Sanchi breathed heavily as he gazed up at the dim-lit roof and considered his position. It was more desperate than it had ever been before. Not even the Russians had had him in such an awkward corner. And not twenty miles away the Tiger lay waiting the signal, the signal he would never give. Of course, his death would not save “Black” John. Nothing could save the Frenchman now that Orville had personally undertaken to wipe him out. But that was of small comfort to a man who is yet rather young, has much of his life to live, and has a reputation as a clever and able adventurer to keep up.

Simons went out to his supper with the fall of dusk, after making sure his captive was secure. All the white men ate on the verandah of the Frenchman’s house, and there was an extra large crowd, as well as a noisy one. The two white mates and the supercargo from the Nauru were present, besides “Black” John, Captain Rene Declare, and twelve other white men. Soft-footed, white-clothed kanakas waited on them, serving endless drinks in long, thin glasses. Heaven Island had every material need for such men as “Black” John had gathered to him.

Later, girls danced and sang and played weird native instruments, and then, as usual, the respectably started supper developed into an orgy. In a few hours, when the moon came up over the lagoon perhaps, the prisoners would be remembered again and the promised torture would commence. But in the meantime there was pleasure, women, wine, and song, and because of his gnawing anxiety the Frenchman flung himself into the revelries with more zest than usual.

BRUCE SANCHI did not hear a thing, nor did he see her until she knelt beside him. Her coming was something of a shock, for he had forgotten her. Then he thanked God, not as an expletive, but earnestly, as he had not done in years. He smelt the flowers in her hair as she bent over him, the soft touch of her fingers as they stroked his bruised shoulders and face, and then untied the ropes that bound him.

“I wondered why you did not come. I grew hungry for food and for sight of you. So I walked about the plantations and I heard that you were crushed by the anger of the Dark One. And so I came,” said Kasiva simply, her big eyes glowing softly in the panting hot gloom of the hut. Sanchi remembered the day he had lifted this girl from the feet of “Black” John and thereby braved his anger, and he knew he was being repaid.

It was a long time before he could sit up and gently massage his long-bound arms. He had not thought such exquisite agony could possibly result from being tied up for two days. And he had to hasten. At any moment Simons might come staggering drunkenly toward the hut for something or the other. Sanchi sat up on the low frame bed, covered with native mats, on which he had been flung, and felt the floor with his feet. Assisted by Kasiva he lifted hirnself upright, stood for a moment leaning on the smooth young shoulder of the girl, and then tottered wearily toward the open door, through which the verandah of the stone house, lit by many hurricane lamps, was visible in the near distance across the pounded compound-like stretch of ground between “Black” John’s quarters and the rest of the village.

Sanchi could see the Frenchman moodily drinking at one end of a great table, and the rest of the white men lining the sides and drinking too. Some were laughing, some singing, one or two joking with women or watching the girls dance.

THE hut lay in the dimness of the starlight and could not be seen from the verandah. Once outside Sanchi recovered himself somewhat and allowed the cool night wind to fan his fevered forehead and soothingly ripple over his bruised flesh. He had not much time and he had to hurry. Still leaning on the girl he tottered across the compound and making a wide detour, hugging close to the inside of the high stockade, arrived at last behind the house of “Black” John, the opposite side to the broad verandah.

Dimly to be seen was the long, low storeshed where most of the gear and tools necessary for the plantations were kept. Sanchi had had a key to the sliding doors when he had been in the Frenchman’s favor, and it had not been taken from his pocket, though Simons had removed most everything else. He unlocked the doors and followed by the unquestioning girl went inside the dark shed.

He emerged some five minutes later carrying two large, square, and apparently heavy cans, one in each hand. The girl followed him similarly loaded and the two of them moved off toward the inside of the stockade again. With what seemed unnecessary care to the bewildered Kasiva, who thought her white man was mad anyway, Sanchi removed the metal stopper from the cans and sprinkled the colorless contents over the stockade for a distance of perhaps forty feet. The wood was dry and would burn well. And the gas had been originally intended for the use of the Frenchman's launch. One can remaining, Sanchi sprinkled those huts on the windward side of the village and then discarding the useless receptacles he made off toward Simons’ hut with the intention of getting a box of matches and also the automatic pistol and belt that had belonged to him and was now hanging from a nail in the lintel of the door. He swore dully to himself for not having remembered to bring both articles when leaving the place.

He reached the hut in safety, the girl by his side, and groped about for the matches. He found them after a while and slipped them inside his ragged shirt. The automatic was easier to find and he strapped the belt round his waist with a feeling of renewed strength. The cold touch of the butt was comforting. His head was not swimming quite so much now and he felt ready for what lay before him.

“Exit ‘Black’ John,” he grinned feebly to himself in the darkness. “Bally awful job, this. Lord, I could stand a stiff Scotch-and-soda now.” Then aloud to the girl. “Keep to me, Kasiva. There will be fire and much shooting and you must not get hurt.” The girl grunted to show she understood and slipped outside the doorway. There was a thud as she collided with someone, a scuffle, a snarl, and then a bitter drunken oath.

“What you doing here?” Sanchi recognized the voice. It was Simons. Quietly the former captive stepped outside the hut and brought his pistol butt smartly across the temple of the dim figure viciously shaking the whimpering Kasiva. Simon dropped without a groan and Sanchi rolled him out of the way with his foot. Then catching the girl by the wrist, he led her away.

WALLACE HAWKE pointed quietly away to starboard and without a word stepped to the telegraph. He rang for full speed. “Hard a port!” he said to the helmsman, who happened to be the owner of a ship twice as big as the Tiger.

“Hard a port, sir,” repeated the man, and the helm swung around until the yacht’s head pointed dead on the dull crimson glare that flickered and died on the very edge of the sea.

Then Wallace Hawke strode to the bridge wing where Orville was peering through the night glasses. The little millionaire turned round and snorted as the captain approached. “Better call all hands to get armed. There’ll be something doing before dawn. I expected Bruce to get to work sooner than this. That man’s too damned fond of playing with fire. Get burnt one day!”

The captain’s whistle cut short Orville’s grumbling, and one by one the captains who manned the yacht came on the bridge to arm themselves and talk in low voices one with the other on the war they were about to commence.

The Tiger's powerful engines literally ate up the sea distance to the beach from whence glowed the crimson light of something burning. The water was calm, as it usually was in those latitudes, and the tide with the yacht in her race landward. As she came closer inshore the glare increased revealing itself at last as a great fire against which the palms and breadfruit trees lining the beach were silhouetted in clear-cut black. The light beat back the glittering stars and paled the silver of the just rising moon. A fierce crackling of wilting wood came to the ears of the listening and watching captains as the Tiger dropped anchor right alongside the almost deserted Nauru. From the rail of the yacht a party of men led by Captain Sam Boggs, his steward’s duties forgotten for the moment, leapt aboard the big full-rigger and proceeded to destroy her, flinging the few Kanakas who were aboard into the sea to swim ashore as best they could.

Two powerful launches, they had been hanging in side davits, came down to the water with a run, and into them piled the captains with set faces and tightened lips. Orville stood in the stern sheets of the first as she shot toward the shore. He waved a Winchester repeater in his right hand and glared behind at the other launch.

“Remember, without trace!” he shouted harshly. “Every man. whether he fights or not!” A dull murmur of approval came from the launches.

A minute later and both craft grounded on the sand, and the splutter of their engines died away unheard in the dull roar of the flames behind the palms. The beach was dyed red and brilliantly lit. the flames leaping so high that the palm shadows were short and hard and right alongside the trees themselves.

Orville looked at the knot of men who had landed with him, and nodded his head For the first time during the whole proceedings, he smiled, a grim little smile. He waved to Wallace Hawke who stood moodily twisting his bristling white moustache and leaning on the muzzle of his rifle. “You lead way to the right, Hawke.”

The captain nodded and moved away immediately down the beach and up toward the fire. He was followed by five men. Orville set straight up the beach for the palm-belt, lined so nakedly black against the glare.

IN THE dense groves on the landward side of the stockade, Bruce Sanchi and his little charge, Kasiva. watched the gasoline catch and lick in flame about the high-pointed-stakes and the beehive-like huts. In less than five minutes the stockade was a raging inferno,and with startled shouts the diners from the verandah of “Black” John’s house were running across the compound toward the fire.

“Black” John himself led them, his dark eyes blazing with fury and his beard blowing back over his shoulders. He could smell the gasoline and to his brain, tortured with the anxiety of the past few days, came the thought, “This is a part of the plot.” He made straight for the hut of Simons, stopped short as he stumbled over the Austrian’s prostrate body, and dropped to his knees with a curse. He dragged the figure into the glare of the flames and shook it savagely.

The Austrian sat up and gurgled and then drew his ruffled wits together. “The girl, Kasiva,” he croaked after a while. “She must have let Sanchi go. Some one knocked me cold and...” But the Frenchman had let him fall to the ground again and had dashed off towards his men, running frantically about on the very edge of the devouring flames, one or two vainly throwing handfuls of hastily snatched up sand.

“Fools!” The Frenchman’s anger was terrible to behold. He towered bareheaded above his satellites, his teeth gritting and gleaming between the black hair of his face, his mighty hands opening and closing his jet black eyes alight with the flames and his own rage. “Fools! The fire cannot be checked. Smell the oil burning? Scatter and search for that —— Sanchi and the —— girl! Search, I tell you!”

With frightened glances toward their chief the white men surged irresolutely toward the stockade gate and passed beyond into the dancing hard shadows among the palms. There they met the mob of native laborers and women who had come up from their own village some quarter of a mile down the beach to see what the fire was. Confusion ensued

for some time.

LEFT to himself the Frenchman glared savagely at the devouring flames, cursed as he realised his stockade, or a great portion of it, was doomed, and then walked moodily back to the house, where he procured an extra belt of cartridges for his pistol and also his favorite rifle. Then he went toward the stockade gate, and ignoring the glances of the watching natives passed into the palms and commenced to completely encircle the stockade from the outside.

After seeing that the fire had taken good hold and was not to be checked, and after hearing “Black” John give his orders to search, Sanchi led the way to the beach followed by the girl, stopping in cover now and then to let an excitedly chattering group of natives hurry by toward the white men’s village.

Among the last few palms, those immediately on the edge of the sand, Sanchi sat down and waited. He saw the Tiger appear like a white ghost ship out of the starlight to seaward, saw her reflect from her slim sides the glare of the flames, saw the party board the Nauru and then the two launches put off for the beach. He rose to meet his old comrades and smiled with satisfaction that he had carried out his share of the plans to the letter. The stockade would soon be destroyed, useless as a means of defense, and. “Black John would have no place in which to retreat and defy his destroyers. Sanchi was about to step out of the palm shadow when the crunch of shoes caught his ear. He turned swiftly to catch sight of a white drill suit through the gloom.

“So, Rene Declare was right, eh!” snarled the Frenchman, as he stepped forward and raised his rifle. “You ——,  you won’t live to see the day…”

Sanchi’s hand snapped down to his automatic, but Kasiva was even quicker. She flung herself between the rifle muzzle and the man who had treated her kindly, the kindest of any man she had ever known. The soft-nosed shot entered her softer breast and drew the life from her in its passage. Sanchi fired almost simultaneously and missed. He felt the girl go limp in his arms and knew instinctively she had given her life for his. He let her fall as another shot whined viciously past his throat. He snapped again at the Frenchman and saw him reel slightly, but not fall. “Black” John was sheltering now behind a palm trunk, while Sanchi stood only in the shadow, the open beach behind him. He turned suddenly and commenced to run toward Orville’s party, coming directly towards him, attracted by the shots. He zig-zagged as much as possible to destroy the Frenchman’s aim.

The captains commenced to run They only heard one rifle shooting and the hot blood of excitement was beginning to grip them. Scarce ten yards from the palm shadow a slight, gaunt figure in torn shirt and grimy white pants, bare-footed and disheveled of hair burst upon them. The figure waved an automatic and was shouting something. So disfigured with bruises and weals was the face, that for a moment none of the captains recognized it. Then came the words very clearly, though breathlessly. “Just in time, what?”

“SANCHI!” yelled Orville, running forward and firing at the same time into the shadow from whence came a dull tongue of flame and the report of a rifle. Sanchi just had time to grin in the face of the little millionaire when “Black” John’s last shot took him in the shoulder and knocked him off his feet. Orville stopped. “Go on,” he screamed to his followers, and they poured past him, while he dropped to his knees beside the wounded man.

“Black” John held his ground until the captains were within six feet of him. Two he wounded. Had he been clear-headed and steady-nerved he would have killed several, for he was an excellent marksman. But he was wounded himself from Sanchi’s last shot, and his hand was shaking with the fear that clutched him and tore madly at his brain. He turned and fled through the palms at the last, away from the captains who ran gropingly through the shadows on unfamiliar ground. “Black” John sobbed deep in his throat. The dawn found him master and king in his own land, with several hundred men, brown and white, who awaited on his orders; with wealth beyond the dreams of average men. The night saw him wounded and broken, his boasted stockade fort in ashes, his followers scattered over the island unaware as yet that they were attacked. The plan of a private war, as Rene Declare had insisted, was right. “Black” John had recognized several of the faces of the captains. He knew Orville, he knew “Long” Charley. It was true. The captains of all the Pacific had risen at last to wipe him from the memory of the Islands. For seven long years he had preyed on the little helpless shipping, a schooner here, a lugger there, once or twice bigger ships, barques or brigantines. He had taken his toll of the white women and the brown. And this was the end. The Law had been, even at the last, unable to touch him. But there were things greater than the Law. Here was a combination greater. The Captains of the Pacific were a Law to themselves, and it was the end of the Heaven Island days, of “Black” John, and of the long career of piracy and rapine, Another age of Pacific history was written.

THROUGH the starlight and the shadow the Frenchman ran. He heard the firing behind him growing. He guessed that his followers must be facing the surprise of attack now. What was that to him? He knew that he was facing more than attack. He was facing death. It was only too evident that the captains would never let a man escape to carry the news of the massacre. And of all men it was certain “Black” John would not escape. He had wild thoughts of heading back for his launch and making for the open sea, but rejected the idea as soon as he thought it over. The powerful steam yacht he had caught a glimpse of off-shore could run even his launch down. He was trapped. He must fight it out. He bared his teeth and turned in the dark as a horde of brown men swept through the trees towards him. He shouted, but they took no heed. Fear swept him. His own native laborers! He remembered wildly the times he had had them flogged, their women he had maltreated. Hysterically he screamed and swung his rifle by the barrel, his mighty strength shattering skulls with the swinging butt. But they were too many for him. With eager yelps they closed. He broke clear by virtue of his great muscles and the dead that clogged the way to him. One idea was his now. He must square the accounts with Sanchi, the man who had destroyed the stockade and thus “Black” John. Still sobbing deep in his throat, the Frenchman crashed through the brush toward the beach again and toward the grim-lipped captains.

FOR nearly an hour the intermittent sound of firing was heard. Once or twice white-clothed figures burst on to the beach, to double back as Orville took a snap at them. Three times bodies of native laborers, the fierce cannibals from the island to the east, swept along the sand, hunting the men who had oppressed them and whipped them for so long. The cannibals had gleefully seized the chance of the man-hunt. Some new white men had come from the sea to fight their white men. They would help the new white men. It was a night to be remembered, a night of desperate fights, of crashing through obstinate brush, of men dying with curses on their lips, under the bullets of the captains or beneath the strangling thumbs of the glistening-eyed natives. And as each white man was destroyed the captains had him brought, (they had to fight the cannibals in some cases) to the beach where he was laid alongside other still figures. Sanchi had given the number of white men with “Black” John and there must be no chance of one being overlooked.

The sound of firing had died away for some minutes, and a sort of tense silence had descended over the island. The fire of the stockade had died down until only a dull glow came from the white-hot ash, and was nearly dimmed by the bright moon that flooded the beach and the palm tops with light. “Black” John came hurriedly, intent on only one purpose, to destroy the man who had destroyed him.

He was limping on one crimson-stained leg, and his erstwhile immaculate whites were tprn and bloody all over. His beard was singed and powder-stained, and he shook like a man with the ague as he stepped into vtew, not twenty yards from Orville and Sanchi, and ran forward firing wildly with his pistol, having lost his rifle during the wild ten minutes with some of his native laborers.

A couple of shots nicked Orville’s arm before the millionaire was aware what was happening. Sanchi strove to raise himself up and fire with his automatic, but Orville was before him, firing swiftly at the onrushing man. The Frenchman halted, swayed for a moment, tried to fire at his foes again, and then crumpled slowly from the knees to the sand. Even as he lay there, Orville shot him through the head again.

“That’s for my niece,” he whispered dryly, and then dropping back beside the wounded Sanchi, he laughed for a long time. He fished a pocket flask out when his laughing was over and giving Sanchi a drink took a long drink himself. It steadied him, and putting a whistle to his lips he blew upon it shrilly three times. The captains came straggling to his side, by two and threes, more rarely alone.

WHEN they had all gathered, a silent group, most of them lightly wounded, all of them sweating and sick with the work they had accomplished, Orville stood up and carefully counted the bodies laid out on the beach nearby. All were there now, two white mates and the supercargo from the Nauru, Captain Rene Declare, and twelve other white men, and lastly “Black” John himself. There was not a living white man of all the Frenchman’s gang to tell of the end that had befallen them. The stockade was a thing of the past, the stone house gutted and fire-blackened, the rest of the huts in ashes. Remained only the natives. The extermination had been complete and carried out with the minimum of risk.

The man-hunt at an end, the curious natives were gathering in great crowds about the silent throng, ready at the slightest chance to fall on them as they had fallen on the other white men. The sight of the efficient rifles and the determined bearing of the group had a restraining effect however. These were not white men being hunted by their own kind, fleeing in the darkness practically unarmed and without courage.

Orville stepped toward the natives and spoke to them in their own dialect. “It is the Law that every man shall be off this island before dawn. You have come from the island that lies toward the rising sun, and to that island you shall return. Any man who stays here after the sun rises shall die. And this is the Law."

There was at first silence, and then much excited chattering, later calls to friends and relatives to hurry down to the beach and fulfil the white man’s law. Orville turned away to give orders.

The Nauru was afloat. She was being saved for a purpose. Her papers had been destroyed by the boarding party, and every piece of woodwork where her name occurred had been hacked and slashed beyond recognition. Aboard her, launch-load by launch-load, the natives were taken and piled into the spacious half-empty holds.

The Tiger put a line aboard and towed the Nauru's head round to seaward while this was being accomplished, and when every last native was aboard the sailing vessel, and the dead bodies of the white men were safe aboard the yacht, the two vessels started in the direction of the rising sun.

EXCEPT for wondering seabirds that swept above the lagoon surface, and the croaking parrots that swept through the palm groves, Heaven Island lay astern uninhabited and safe for the mariner to water at once more. In a few months the jungle would be where the stockade had been, the young palms growing through the very walls of the stone house of “Black” John. The war was over.

The Nauru was towed to the large island to the east, and there beached. The natives swarmed over the sides to the sand of their native shore and with many cries disappeared into the sullen walls of the jungle, back to their villages and families to tell of the wondrous things they had seen and the wonderful way they had been delivered from bondage.

The Nauru burned well, and the Tiger stood by until the last timber of the old full-rigger was white ash that sizzled in the water of the shallows. The captains lined the yacht’s rail and watched grimly, with that satisfying feeling of work well done and of a benefit rendered to the world.

As mysteriously as she had disappeared the Tiger appeared once more among the shipping of the Islands, and many ships that had been making voyages under the temporary command of mates appeared in charge of their rightful owners and masters again. Bruce Sanchi was smuggled ashore in Apia and went to keep young Hyde company in Orville’s own house and to explain to him, under oath of secrecy, all that had happened. Orville himself went about cheerfully with a narrow band of crepe on his left arm, though whether as a sort of secret irony for “Black” John, or whether as a sign of mourning for his niece, no one ever knew.

Apia had another terrific shock some time later, a shock that was never satisfactorily explained even in the most knowing and exclusive circles. Orville, young Hyde, and Bruce Sanchi, appeared one night in Roberts’ saloon arm-in-arm and apparently on the best of terms, while the authorities seemed to have completely forgotten that Sanchi was ever a hunted and a wanted man. One other thing took place which no one would have thought of connecting with Orville and the two young men with him. The insurance rates for ships making a run to Yokohama dropped very satisfactorily to a reasonable figure. Perhaps “Black” John and his satellites, floating somewhere about a hundred fathoms down, could have guessed why.

______________________

3: A Loyal Man

Collier’s, January 15, 1927

GENERAL DEDYUKHIN KOTROMA was very tired, too tired even to be greatly astonished. There were pouches under his bleak eyes, lines of weariness round his mouth. He was old and white-haired, and death was very close to him. He knew.

He had heard before of this league of exiles who dwelt in Paris and rendered justice, as opportunity came, to those who had betrayed the Tsar.

He had hardly even been surprised when the laughing, blue-eyed stranger had approached him on the lonely Montmartre street and forced an automatic against his side through the thickness of a heavy overcoat. He had gone with the man, of course, aware that, in spite of his disguise, his lack of beard and mustache, his generally aged appearance, no man who had known him could fail to recognize him. There was the stiffness of the old Imperial Army in his back, the saber cut still over his left brow.

He had been taken in a taxi to a gaunt stone house on the outskirts of Paris, ushered within to meet there members of this league of exiles. They had explained to him briefly, clearly, that they were the avengers of the old regime, and that sooner or later all traitors came to Paris and into their hands. They would dispose of him, but they would not humiliate him or shame him.

They had a way of arranging such matters, to each man a way that fitted him. He had been a soldier, a great soldier, and he would understand, later. It was useless to try to escape.

He did understand. The league was composed mostly of members of the old aristocracy, and they were gentlemen. He stood now in the center of the richly furnished room they had given him, leaning heavily on his ebony cane and surveying the garments arranged on the bed out of weary and life-tired eyes. They were all there, including even underclothes of silk, the full regalia of a general of the Imperial Army.

He hardly stirred when the door opened and a slender middle-aged man came in, clicking his heels and bowing. He was attired as an officer of staff— Cossack, the general saw. He explained carefully that he had been sent to valet the general. The general bowed. Would he care for vodka, wine, or a little brandy? They had some wonderful twenty-year-old cognac.... Ah, yes, a small brandy.

The valet disappeared and returned with a silver tray on which were glasses and a slender-necked bottle. The general laid aside his cane, straightened and sipped the amber liquid. The valet assured him that his bath was ready.

HE WAS changed at last. He felt vastly better, a little more interested in life. This league of exiles had even supplied him with his decorations, with the jeweled orders he had received at the steps of the throne. It was as if the years fell away, as if he were back in the headquarters at Lemberg, on the eve of the great attack. Ah, the Tsar had lived then and Holy Russia had been well and strong. The valet murmured smooth words in his ear, and he nodded assent and strode from the room. Outside the door another man, in the uniform of a famous regiment, clicked his heels and saluted. Men were stationed all down the dim hallway: men in uniform, saluting. It was certainly like the headquarters at Lemberg, just as if the general walked to dinner with his

brilliant staff behind him.

The dining-room was brilliantly lighted and sparkling with silver and cut glass. The general recognized some of the plate, fragments from the messes of famous regiments. Officers stood stiffly waiting his seating, and he strode calmly to the table head, dropped to his chair. There was a scraping of boot heels, a tinkling of medals, and the rest sat also. The dinner was served.

The general conversed politely with the men near him. There was soft laughter, the tinkling of glasses. There was no mention of the reason for all this mummery. Everyone understood. It had been explained to the general when he first arrived. He was not greatly worried or bothered about the end. Life had not been too kind to him recently, and all men had misunderstood his actions. He looked quietly up and down the table. Some of the exiles he recognized.

There was Cheramis, whose father was a count and who had been colonel... now what was the regiment?...

And that tall, pale man... surely Berexoff, who had been on the staff at Lemberg. One or two others he thought he knew but could not be sure. His eyesight was not so good as it had been.

They nearly all wore different uniforms. The Little Father save him, was this the remains of the Imperial Army, all who were loyal and alive?

An officer at the table end rapped sharply at last. He talked quietly in thick Russian and lifted a grass to the picture of the Tsar that hung on the side wall. Men lifted up, spurs and medals tinkling, raising glasses. Automatically the general raised himself also and drank. He knew the rest were watching him closely, sneering a little, thinking him a hypocrite. But he drank because he was loyal to the toast.

THEY wouldn’t understand that. They had accused him of delivering the Second Army Corps to the Bolsheviki. They had accused him of accepting the post of commissar at the city of Brobruisk. That latter was true. But he had not delivered the Second Army Corps. It had been ready to transfer its loyalty, and the Tsar himself, warned of the trend of events, had sent a secret message to go over to the communist party and endeavor to trap them. Young Ivan had brought the message. And he had died somewhere during the Revolution. And General Kostroma had schemed and plotted with them, made believe he was with them, which was all the easier because he was peasant born and his wife was a thick-limbed, coarse-faced woman from the banks of Father Dnieper, by no stretch of imagination an artistocrat.

He fingered his glass and came to himself with a start. The officers were standing, looking at him. Berexoff, old Berexoff who had been on his staff, was approaching him, white-faced and stern. Berexoff clicked his heels and saluted.

“General, we have been at pains to adjust this matter. You will appreciate that. We have no more to say. We have shown you these last courtesies because some of us have fought under you, followed you, know that for all you have done you were once a soldier. And as gentlemen we have tried to honor the soldier that was. Now we will leave you for half an hour, and when we return we will bring men to carry you away. We may not give you a farewell, a military burial, because that is reserved for those who have died loyal men. We are sorry it has come to this.”

The general bent his head, and his old eyes were misty.

“I would like a flag, an old Imperial flag, to cover me.... I have served the Tsar...” he said hesitatingly. Berexoff shook his head with real regret.

“The Imperial flag is for soldiers who—”

The general gestured, interrupting him, understanding what he was about to say. The Imperial flag was not to cover traitors. They had rendered him all the honor they felt called on to render. They had treated him like gentlemen, with tact and courtesy. He had to remain content. Still, it was hard. Denied even the flag at the last.

The general smiled thinly. So they were sorry it had come to this. Yes, the general was sorry too. It would do no good to explain to them. They wouldn’t understand. They would only regard him with contempt, thinking he was trying to escape. He was a brave man. They were right there. He had not received all his medals because he was the Tsar’s favorite soldier, as so many had done. He raised himself to his feet and bowed, first to Berexoff, then to the remaining officers. He smiled again, wearily. He had always tried to do his best.

He said clearly, “I thank you,” and they wondered at his dignity and his courage.

Berexoff reached into a pocket and laid an automatic on the table. Then, with another salute, he withdrew. They all withdrew, leaving the general alone at the head of the table, alone with the picture of the Tsar smiling down on him. He laughed aloud then, but without mirth. He who had been faithful all his life was about to die as a traitor at the end.

IN THE hallway outside the diningroom the officers were gathered in little silent knots, faces tense, bodies rigid. No man met his companion’s eyes, and the mind of each was fixed far away on past splendors, trying to remember as soldiers and gentlemen should all the best and none of the worst of the man they had left alone. The minutes ticked away, and presently there was a muffled hammering on the front door of the house. The officers stirred, looked at each other questioningly. Someone went to the door, and the sound of an excited voice drifted to the listening ears.

“It’s Ivan, young Ivan,” muttered Berexoff, relaxing. Then young Ivan was among them, his scarred face alight and eager, his hands twitching.

“Kostroma!” he panted, breathless, for he had run fast. “You have General Kostroma here!” They gathered round him, frowning, a little jarred by the loud interruption of a solemn moment.

“What of that, Ivan?” Berexoff snapped harshly.

Then Ivan laughed.

“I had word only a short time ago that you were feasting him here... preparing him as we have prepared the others. I hope I am in time. He must be honored and not shamed, the greatest loyalist of us all.”

“Are you mad?” Berexoff snapped again. But young Ivan shook his head.

“All of General Kostroma’s actions were in accordance with secret orders that he received from the Tsar... before the Tsar died. This I swear. My word upon it.... Am I too late?”

They regarded him with growing astonishment, dumfounded, amazed. Berexoff put out a suddenly trembling hand and touched him on the shoulder.

“Secret orders from the Tsar... to play the traitor?”

“Aye, and to check the Bolsheviki at the proper time. But the Revolution came too fast for that.”

“Ivan! You talk of hidden things. How do you know?”

Young Ivan drew himself to his full height and his face, terribly scarred because of what the Bolsheviki had done to him, was set and grim.

“The orders were secret, and I swore to keep them so. I swore to the Little Father himself.... Nor have I spoken until to-night. But when I heard that you had General Kostroma here I came in haste, knowing that I must speak at last.... I carried the secret orders to the general before Lemberg. He is a loyal man.”

They all stood then, rigid and unmoving again for perhaps a minute, while the passionate, earnest voice of young Ivan rang in the hallway, young Ivan whom the general had thought of as dead. “He is a loyal man.”

Then with an oath Berexoff turned and started toward the doorway of the dining-room. He stopped short in his tracks, and the others stopped short behind him as they all caught the muffled hammering sound of a shot. Young Ivan, hardly understanding yet that he was too late, repeated stupidly, “He is a  loyal man.”

Bexeroff straightened and breathed deeply. He grated out harsh orders and an officer started, gaped a little and then disappeared back down the hallway. When he returned there shimmered over his arm the silken folds of the Imperial flag. Berexoff nodded. They all nodded. It was all they could do now. The Imperial flag to cover a loyal man.

___________________

4: The Education of Captain Sutherland

Adventure  March 1929

THE STORY seems very unreasonable, but its truth is beyond question. I had part of it from Bouverie, the then American consul at Bahia, and part from Captain Smithers of the Tonquin, who was then third mate on Sutherland’s ship. The whole affair is principally interesting in showing that different men must be handled in different ways, and that qualities required for command in one branch of a profession may be totally useless in another. Which some men never learn.

You must understand first of all that between the merchant service and the Navy there exists a deep and undying feud. Naval men regard merchant men with something of the same lofty scorn that a soldier regards a civilian; while merchant men regard Naval men with a contempt that goes beyond speech. It is the firm belief of every merchant seaman that the Navy contains no sailors, and it was this fixed belief that almost caused every master mariner afloat to perish with apoplexy when, during the late war, he discovered the Government had placed each port under a Naval officer to whom he must go for orders, advices and permissions. This was an insult the merchant service has never forgotten, equivalent to making a man a public laughing stock.

That was the way Timmins felt about it when he heard that Sutherland was going as master of the Camden Hall, and when he further learned that Sutherland had been a Naval man. Timmins was five feet seven inches tall, built like a barrel, gray eyed, iron jawed and sandy haired. He was also forty years old and had been at sea twenty-five years. He was a perfect mate, as perfect a mate as he would have been a failure as master. He knew this and was generally content to accept the fact that he would end as a mate, but he liked to have captains over him whom he could respect and with whom he could feel comfortable. If such were not forthcoming, Timmins allowed the world to know his feelings and, as his feelings were, so he acted. One or two masters of whom he did not approve had already had themselves transferred to other vessels. They would have transferred Timmins himself but for the fact that the line’s general manager and the big mate had sailed together years before, and Timmins had served the company so long it was accepted that he was a fixture.

“Think of it,” he said to the second mate, one Barton. “A damned Naval man! Annapolis first, then nose wiper on a cruiser. Had charge of a gunboat once, I hear. His daddy’s bought into the line, so sonny has t’ quit the Navy and get a service ticket. One voyage as mate he’s made and now it’s a command for him. I’ve broken in cubs before for the line, but I’m damned if I’ll hold up a Navy man. Annapolis! We’ll show him what a ship is.”

Sutherland came aboard just before the Camden Hall sailed for South America, and according to Smithers, then the young third mate, the new skipper was a nice looking guy.

“About five foot ten, I’d say. Wasn’t much older’n me, twenty-eight or nine, I guess, and he had a voice like a girl’s almost, soft and drawling. Didn’t look as if he could stand much. Pink faced and all dressed up. Gloves, lavender tie and handkerchief, tan button shoes. We had half the shipping in port giving us the laugh. Fine thing, wasn’t it? Naval man trying t’ run a freighter! You ought to have heard Timmins carry on.”

TIMMINS met the new arrival at the head of the gangway. The mate was in a gray flannel shirt, all sweat stained, with the sleeves rolled up. He had a dirty, white topped cap stuck over one ear and his old serge pants looked fit for the junk heap. He put his great hands on his hips so that his hairy, tattooed arms bulged out, squinted up at the younger man and chewed steadily on his quid, the tobacco juice running down his chin.

“Well?” he said. “An’ where in hell did you spring from?”

“I’m Captain Sutherland,” remarked the other pleasantly. “I suppose the office informed you I was coming aboard today?”

“So you’re Captain Sutherland?” was all Timmins said. He ran a cold eye up and down the new master. “Well, well!”

And then he did something for which any experienced man would have called him down for then and there. He spat calmly into the scuppers, turned away and went forward, leaving the Camden Hall’s new master standing there at the head of the gangway, a little flushed and with slightly nslrrowed eyes. The steward came forward with a trace of a grin, introduced himself and showed the captain to his room before going down on the dock to gather the baggage. Thus that incident passed.

The first meal in the saloon together was a funny affair. The new master sat at the head of the table and ate in silence. Timmins ignored him entirely, talking to the second mate or the chief engineer and eating noisily as always. The others were in a quandary for a while, waiting to see how the skipper took it, but as he showed no signs of attempting to check the mate it was not long before every one else ignored him too. The second mate in particular, an admirer, even a toady of the mate, took special pains to show that as far as he was concerned the real master of the Camden Hall was Mr. Timmins, who was not a Navy sailor either. The skipper’s cheeks went a bit red when this subtle remark was made, but still he said nothing.

“Ain’t even got th’ guts t’ squawk,” announced Timmins disgustedly some time later. “Where he comes from if a man gets hardboiled all he has t’ do is t’ trot out the guard or something and clap him in irons. He’s got all sorts of help behind him, the whole United States! He can sit in a chair and send a man up for a few months ’ard labor, easy as winking. Well, freighters ain’t run that way, an’ you don’t learn how by going to Annapolis. We’ll have him trotting back to his gunboat once this trip’s over.”

There can be no doubt that Mr. Timmins put his whole heart and soul into being disagreeable during the run down to the Canal. He never spoke to the captain unless he was absolutely compelled, and when he did it was merely a growl that slipped from one corner of his mouth. He handled the ship as he pleased, and when it came to deciding upon courses and such he acted as if the new master were entirely ignorant of navigation. The rest of the officers quite naturally began to regard the skipper as a joke. They might have stood off as neutrals and watched with some enjoyment while the mate and Sutherland battled it out, but firm set in their craw was that objectionable and insulting fact that they were commanded by a Naval man, and they took no pains to hide their resentment.

It got so bad that even the steward was heard to speak sharply when the captain asked him something, and this elicited a protest from the chief engineer, who was callous enough normally to suit even Timmins.

“What of it?” said Timmins. “Am I supposed t’ trot around with diapers for every midshipman I runs across? If he can’t handle a steward he deserves all he gets and it’s a cinch he’ll never handle a freighter. Don’t get it in your head th’ steward’s a-going t’ get fresh with any one else. If he opens his gap round me I’ll bust him!”

In the meantime Sutherland was keeping quiet. After the first day or so he ceased to redden whenever he was offended. He seemed to settle into a sort of shell, to withdraw himself mentally from all the ship. He spoke seldom unless first addressed. He gave no orders. He made no suggestions, no protests at first. Each morning he appeared on the bridge during the mate’s watch, neatly dressed in a new uniform. He would walk up and down, smoke his pipe and ignore the cold eye of Mr. Timmins.

He seemed to make it a point to eat in the saloon at exactly the same time as the mate, a fact which irritated Mr. Timmins more than he would admit, as he had expected the new master to order his meals sent to his room after one or two of the saloon sessions. As it was, Sutherland sat through everything.

“He knows he’s ballast aboard here,” Timmins declared one day. “He knows if it wasn’t for his daddy he’d be fourth mate of a coast boat, slinging a suji swab. He’s got enough sense t’ keep quiet anyway. I’ll give ten t’ one he quits at Para and catches the first boat home.”

It became quite the thing after that to make bets as to how long the new skipper would stick it out. And then, the day the Camden Hall passed through the Canal, the ship was electrified by the news that Sutherland had sent for Timmins, had actually told the steward to please ask Mr. Timmins to step up to his room.

Timmins himself was grim and scornful.

“Wants t’ drop off at Colon maybe. Or maybe he’s sick. I’ve a notion t’ send th’ steward back with castor oil.”

TIMMINS did not do that. In the first place he was curious to hear what Sutherland had to say. And, although he would never in the world have admitted it, he had enough innate respect for any man who wore the four gold bands, no matter what he was, to accede to a request that apparently would not make it appear that he was softening. So he went up to the bridge, chewing his quid. He lounged in the doorway of the captain’s room, his thumbs in his belt, his eyes somber and slightly amused. He said nothing.

Sutherland was reading a book, according to Smithers, who was on watch at the time and craning his head over the upper bridge rail to see and hear what was toward. The captain had his legs cocked up on his desk, his swivel chair tilted back, the book in his hands and his pipe between his teeth. He was, as always, fully dressed, a fact upon which Timmins had often commented with considerable force as being an attempt on the part of a Naval man to show up real sailors who had to work, and therefore had to wear dungarees.

When Timmins appeared Sutherland removed his feet from the desk, sat upright in his chair and laid down his book.

“Won’t you come in, Mr. Timmins?” he said, very quietly. Timmins turned his head and spat far and accurately over the rail.

“I’m chewing,” he said, just as if he had all his life made it a point never to enter a cabin when so engaged.

Sutherland nodded, and taking his pipe from his mouth began to tap the edge of his desk very gently with the stem.

“I realize you don’t like me, Mr. Timmins,” he began. “I understand you don’t care for Naval men at all, as I understand you resent my being made master of this vessel, possibly because it checked your own promotion. I don’t know. I wish to say, however, that I realize a cargo vessel is a vastly different craft to handle from, say, a gunboat; and bearing this in mind I have tried to keep my eyes and ears open in an attempt to learn. I do not expect to be an efficient master for some time yet, and I had anticipated when I first was given this ship that I would have to leave matters very much in charge of my first officer. This I have done and I am perfectly willing to continue doing so. I know you are a very capable man— but this nonsense must stop!”

“Nonsense?” Timmins spat overside again and looked grimly severe.

“This deliberate insulting of myself. You must know it is ruining discipline, even if you don’t care personally how I feel about it. The ship is becoming a bear garden. If I had you in the Navy I’d know how to deal with you, but I admit my helplessness and ignorance in this profession. I want to be decent about things. I’m willing to meet you more than half way. Now can’t we forget what’s gone and done and start off on a different footing? I can tell you I’ll be extremely grateful for your help and I promise you that when we get back to San Francisco I’ll do my best to get you a command, if it’s that which is upsetting you, apart from this Navy stuff.”

Smithers says he thought Timmins was going to burst. His neck swelled. He shook like a leaf, and when he spoke his voice was so hoarse it sounded like sandpaper on wood.

“Me? You’d know how t’ deal with me if you ’ad me in the Navy? Me? I was running ships afore you got out th’ nursery! You ain’t even a good able seaman yet! So you’ll get me a command will ye? Me?”

He choked. He turned and walked slowly to the rail, spat prodigiously and returned to the cabin door.

“If you want t’ be a sailor I’ll make you one. Get them duds off an’ climb inter some dungarees. We allus starts off deck boys shining brass!”

Sutherland jumped to his feet then and his voice grew slightly hysterical.

“Damn you, don’t you talk to me like that! I’ll log you! I’ll pay you off! As long as I’m master of this ship you’ll treat me as such or take the consequences!”

Timmins laughed and grew abruptly easy and insolent. He had caused the skipper to lose his temper and for the moment at least he dominated him.

“Consequences?” he jeered. “You log me an’ I’ll make you th’ laughing stock of th’ coast. Pay me off? Where’ll you do that? You couldn’t get another mate in any o’ them dago ports, chances are, even if th’ consul’d let you ditch me. You can’t go home without me. The second’d be a flop as mate. You’d likely lose the ship or ’ave the finest scramble of a cargo stowing you ever saw. Don’t talk foolish, son. Be a man! If you take my tip you’ll trot off back t’ that gunboat. Another thing, don’t keep sending for me. I’m busy!”

It was Sutherland who choked this time, but before he could think of a reply Timmins stalked away, mad as a wet hen. Below in the saloon he let go, stamping up and down and swearing.

“Me? Wishes ’e ’ad me in th’ Navy! Th’ pup! Comes aboard an’ don’t scarce know port from starboard, an’ I’m supposed t’ say ‘yes, sir’ an’ treat it like it was human. Pay me off, will he? Well, maybe he can but he’ll know he’s been on a ’ard case packet before I’m through. I been gentle with ’im so far, jest been saying things but keeping the work going. We’ll see how he can handle it. Me? Wishes ’e ’ad me in th’ Navy so he could handle me? Yah! Needs th’whole bloomin’ United States behind him before he can command anything. What sort of tripe is that?”

The ship agreed. And each man felt he had been personally insulted. To hell with the Navy!

AN OMINOUS calmness brooded over the Camden Hall as she ploughed her way through the blue wa ters of the Caribbean, steamed along the South American coast, rounded Trinidad Island and the tip of the continent and entered the South Atlantic. The mate appeared on the bridge exactly at four o’clock, when his watch commenced, and disappeared below again when it ended. Report had it he spent his off time lying in his bunk, reading and chewing, and for at least two days he busied himself in the officer’s bathroom doing his washing.

“I been mate fifteen years,” he told the chief engineer, “an’ I needs a rest. I been holding down me watches and running th’ ship besides. Now we’ll let Mister Sutherland ’ave a crack.”

But Mister Sutherland did nothing. He appeared each morning for breakfast, each noon for dinner, each evening for supper, and they were funereal meals. The mate ate as stolidly and as silently as the master and no one else who was present cared to say a word. Between meals the skipper paced the lower bridge, an empty pipe gripped rigidly between his teeth, his uniform immaculate as always and his hands clasped determinedly behind him. More than ever now he seemed to withdraw into a shell, to hold himself mentally aloof from the rest of the vessel, though now there was a hint of unbending defiance in his stiff legged walk and in the somber smoldering of his blue eyes. If he realized he had made a bad blunder there was nothing about him that could be taken as a sign of admission or regret, though several of the officers thought he was getting thinner, almost strained about the mouth and the jaw.

The ship was what suffered. It is a first mate’s duty not only to serve his two daily watches on the bridge, but also to parcel out work to the crew, make continual tours of inspection, see to it that running and standing gear is kept sound, decks clean, holds ventilated, wells sounded, and in port personally to oversee the proper stowing of the cargo.

There are other things a mate must do as well. Sometimes he is expected to keep the ship’s papers in order and, when serving under an efficient master, must often act as a soothing agent and arrange to be around to be sworn at when anything goes wrong. In short, a first mate is the ship’s husband, and when he decides he has lost interest in his job there is bound to be a serious mixup in the domestic circle.

The bosun, coming to the mate for the day’s orders, was met with a cold eye and a distinct—

“What th’ hell d’ you want?”

The second mate told him to go see the Old Man. And Smithers, the Third, who was very young and cheeky then, advised him to follow the example of his betters and turn in. This, the bosun eventually decided, was the sensible course, so after scrupulously washing down each morning he left the crew to its own devices and retired to his bunk to read and smoke and contemplate the strangeness of life. The crew brought their mattresses on to the forecastle head and by ten o’clock each morning the Camden Hall had a Sunday-like appearance. The infection spread through the vessel. No man did any more than he absolutely had to do for his own comfort and well being.

The cooks worked solely because they would have heard from a hungry crew if they had not. The engine room and fire room crowds kept at it somewhat languidly and there were watches when the number of revolutions per minute dropped to a level that made even the calloused and indifferent engineers ashamed to look the piston rods in the face. There was one slogan, forward and aft, aloft and below. To hell with the Navy! The more the men thought about it the more magnificent a feud it seemed. To hell with the Navy!

And still Captain Sutherland did nothing. He acted in fact as if everything was quite normal, or as if he was merely waiting his time. He did once call the second mate to him and suggest it might be well if the paintwork of the lower bridge bulkheads were washed.

“Oh, you’ll have to see the mate about that,” smirked the second. “I ain’t got nothing t’ do with th’ men.”

The captain clamped his teeth upon his pipe stem once more and resumed his steady pacing. The helmsman was reported to have laughed outright.

NOW ACCORDING to Smithers the skipper was not the only man aboard who suffered.

Timmins, for all his reading and chewing and apparent resignation to his chosen part, was boiling over most of the time. Fifteen years now he had run ships— ten years on the Camden Hall—and he had been a good mate, a first class mate. All the coast knew it as well as he knew it himself and it was more even than a matter of pride with him to have his vessel constantly in tip-top condition.

It was a religion. Crews to him were just machines to do ship’s work; individual men were to be ranked according to their ability to wield a chipping hammer, paint brush or oil rag with speed and precision. Even the great line was merely something that sent aboard rope, canvas, holystones and other deck stores, all for the well being of the Camden Hall.

And now here was his beloved vessel going all to pieces beneath his eyes. Spots of rust appeared on rails and houses after the heavy tropical rains. Stains, that only holystoning could take out, were left in the beautifully white planking, untouched by the perfunctory morning wash down. Scarcely half the winch and derrick gear had been greased and looked over. The forepeak needed cleaning out; dunnage lay in No. 2; the boats should be painted. There were a hundred and one things crying for immediate attention, and here was Mr. Timmins, the best mate on the coast, lying idle in his bunk, chewing and reading good time away because of a Naval man.

He might have rested more or less easy with the last thought to help him, but for the continual sight of the crew, his crew, lolling around on their mattresses on the forecastle head. Every time he came on deck to go to the bridge, he fumed and swore beneath his breath. Wait till all this nonsense was over! He’d show ’em! What did they think this was, a tourist party? It must have been all he could do not to capitulate at such moments.

“Soon as I figure on takin’ a rest th’ damned ship goes t’ hell,” he said to Smithers, rubbing his great hands up and down his thighs as if they itched to get hold of something. “Don’t let me find you nor that second tryin’ t’ be funny,” he added darkly. “I want that chart room kep’ decent and everythin’ else up there lookin’ right. Otherwise you’ll ’ear about it.” He ended with a gloomy, “We’ll go inter Para looking like an outhouse. I only ’opes there’s no packets there what knows me.”

“Well, you can always tell ’em we’re being run by the Navy,” suggested Smithers. That seemed to brighten Mr. Timmins up. To hell with the Navy!

THE CAMDEN HALL reached Para in course of time with her internal affairs unchanged. And it was in Para that the defection of Mr. Timmins grew actually serious— even threatening to Sutherland— for Mr. Timmins’ first move when the ship was properly tied alongside was to dress up and go ashore. It is true he sent the steward up to the captain first with what ship’s papers he had, and a complete plan of the cargo; but as young Sutherland’s knowledge of cargo stowage and cargo unloading was mostly theoretical, this did not help much.

“And tell ’im,” said Mr. Timmins grimly, “I’ll be back at four in time for my watch. That is if I’m sober.”

The agents came aboard; the customs officers came aboard; the boss stevedore came aboard. And there was no mate to meet them with a rough handclasp, a package of cigarets and a drink or two to smooth away official questions and difficulties. Instead there was a very young, very red faced and very bewildered man in a captain’s uniform, gazing helplessly at a pile of papers and muttering to himself. There were a couple of distressing hours before the agents took charge and started things to working. But by this time the second mate had dressed up and

gone ashore also, as had most of the engineers. Young Smithers was the only officer outside of the man in charge of the donkey boiler to remain aboard. By ones and twos what few of the crew had money drifted uptown.

“Some one’s got to watch the holds,” said the agents. “You’ll have half the cases busted open and a lot of stuff stolen if you don’t. And then when you load you’ll have to superintend the stowing, else it’s likely you’ll have cargo shifting at sea, or maybe a lot of it spoiled by the time you get home.”

“Very well,” said Sutherland grimly, his face not at all red and embarrassed now but very white and set. He borrowed some dungarees from young Smithers and took over the forward holds, leaving Smithers the after ones. And so in a fashion, below in the heat and dust, with the sweat running down his back and stinging his eyes. Captain Sutherland began to learn how to handle a freighter.

“I can tell you,” said Smithers, “that was when I first began to like him. He was soft as a sponge and he had gold braid on the brain, but he stuck it out. We worked cargo thirty straight hours and the only time he took off was to eat and drink, and to go up to the consul’s and clear ship, which he did when the mate came back aboard and took over the holds just for the period of his usual watch. The skipper was about dead by the time we dropped down the river. Missed two meals in the saloon and when he did appear he looked like he’d been in a fight.”

“He won’t last,” stated Mr. Timmins scornfully. “If he don’t quit at th’ first decent port th’ line’ll fire ’im fer all of his daddy. Them forward holds is stowed something disgraceful. And he’s put cedar logs in th’ shelter decks what was reserved fer cargo at Montevideo-- thought he’d be smart. He tried t’ get th’ consul t’ find ’im a mate. Jest as if licensed men c’n be picked up like bananas down here. Yah! Wait till we get t’ Bahia.”

It was in Bahia that the crash came.

The Camden Hall stayed there over two weeks and to Captain Sutherland it must have seemed like an age. Mr. Timmins went ashore as usual. The second mate went ashore with him. The engineers went ashore. And almost to a man, ashore went the crew. In its deep wisdom the American Government some years ago passed a law, still extant, which made it compulsory for masters of American ships to pay to each man in each foreign port one half of the wages then due him. Seamen being what they are, things happen. The saloons and the girls do a roaring trade, and until the men are broke again vessels lie deserted, save for the stevedores.

All this and more was the lot of the Camden Hall. Men drifted back aboard by two and threes, drunk and singing and brawling. They ate, put on clean shirts perhaps, and went ashore again. The engineers staged a fight in the forward well deck. Mr. Timmins began to forget to return even to stand his regular watch. He usually appeared at early dawn with the second mate in tow, to bellow and roar around the saloon for the steward to make coffee.

Now, bad as are the American marine laws, and much as they limit the power and authority of a master, a strong man can still hold his crew in control and, if he is so fortunate as to have a strong mate too, can even subdue it. But Captain Sutherland was not a strong man, not yet at least, and Mr. Timmins was, to use his own expression, on his first good spree in years. It is true he sometimes lamented the condition of things, and Smithers avers there was one night when he almost wept to contemplate the broken cases and the shiftless stowage of the holds; to see the grimy, jumbled condition of the deck; to hear the men amusing themselves by throwing empty bottles against the once immaculate paintwork of the bridge house bulkhead. But he remained firm.

“Let ’im fix it. He’s master an’ drawing pay as such. If ’e had me in th’ Navy he’d know ’ow t’ handle me. Well, let ’im learn freight ship stuff. To hell with the Navy!”

“To hell with the Navy!” agreed the second mate.

“Well, he seems to be sticking it,” put in Smithers. “And he ain’t done any whining yet.”

“Yah!” said Mr. Timmins, but he was obviously growing more and more irritated.

THE FOURTH night they were in Bahia young Sutherland, worn out from a day in the holds, sleeping wearily in his room, was awakened by a terrific crash from below. He lay still for a while, tense, a little cold feeling possibly under his heart when he heard Mr. Timmins swearing with great gusto at something or some one. There was another crash, and another. Eventually something gave or broke, and comparative silence fell.

“Th’ mate’d lost his room key,” explained Smithers. “Came aboard four parts squiffed and tried to get into his cabin. I told him to go and wake the Old Man up and ask for a pass key but that only started him hopping. Said he didn’t need no Navy man to open a door for him. He got the big bench out of the pantry and started to use it like a battering ram. When the bench broke he grabbed one of the fire axes and split the door right. He seemed to think he might as well make a good job of things so he pretty well wrecked the saloon too. You ought to have seen the place. And then once he’d got the door busted he decided he didn’t want to go to bed, so him and the second mate and the fourth engineer sat up and guzzled the rest of the night and then went ashore again.”

This incident called forth a protest from Sutherland the next day. When Timmins drifted aboard about noon, in a half sober, genial condition, Sutherland met him at the gangway. The mate was dressed up, seeming on the verge of bursting out of his blue serge suit. His sleeves stretched tightly over his great muscles, his thick hairy wrists stuck out. His soft hat was a shapeless blob of felt rammed over his sandy hair, and the two days’ growth of sandy beard covering his rocky face did not improve his- appearance. Sutherland was lean and drawn looking in stained dungarees. The sweat had soaked through until it stood in great dark patches across his back and chest and down his thighs. His voice was raspy, seeming about to crack, but there was no sign of hysteria in his eyes which were cold blue flames.

“Next time you need your key, Mr. Timmins,” he said, “I’d be glad if you’d ask for it. There’s no need to wreck the ship. This isn’t a bear garden.”

“Is that so?” said the mate. He spat tobacco juice on the deck right at the captain’s feet. “I s’pose if you ’ad me in th’ Navy you’d know how t’ handle me, eh?”

“I’d certainly see to it you kept sober!” snapped Sutherland.

The second mate who was with Timmins laughed aloud and said a fellow ought to wear his gloves else he’d spoil his hands.

Sutherland turned on him with a furious gesture.

“You keep your mouth shut!”

Timmins ran the back of a hairy hand across his gash of a mouth and squinted up at Sutherland, who was white as a ghost and shaking badly.

“If you ’ad him ip th’ Navy you’d know how t’ handle ’im, wouldn’t yer?”

“You’re not fit to walk a ship’s deck, let alone hold a license,” said Sutherland icily.

“Maybe,” responded Timmins, still grinning. “But I never ’ad t’ have th’ United States behind me before I c’d run a tin can like this.”

“It’s very obvious that both of us can’t stay on this vessel,” cried Sutherland.

He had grown very rigid now and his fists were clenched tightly at his sides. Timmins nodded and grinned again.

“Well, I’m sure glad you’ve gotta hold of that fact,” he said. He spat again and moved off to his room. Sutherland took a step after him, as if to drag him back or protest, but apparently he thought better of it for he abruptly relaxed and strode forward to the nearest hold where the stevedores were working.

BOUVERIE, the then American consul at Bahia, was a man of very clear vision and infinite understanding, which is the reason perhaps, he afterward became ambassador to Rome. He was not greatly surprised, he said, when Captain Sutherland of the Camden HaU came to see him one hot afternoon looking as if he had just risen from a fever bed, or been through a long bout of insomnia.

Rumors had reached Bouverie that all was not well with the American ship, and he had, in fact, had some difficulty already with the local police over the unfortunate occurrence of several of the Camden Hall’s crew wrecking a beer joint near the marketplace and staging a free for all fight in one of the elevators that run from the waterfront up the hill to the town.

“I don’t know what to do,” Sutherland started miserably.

He was no longer tucked away inside a shell with a scornful contempt for what went on about him. He was a very young man in trouble and the doubt in his soul was shadowed in his eyes.

“Practically my entire crew’s been ashore and drunk since we arrived.

“That’s right,” said Bouverie comfortably. He picked up a slip of paper and tossed it across the desk. “I was coming down to see you today. Four more men were arrested last night. Fined a hundred milreis each. Want t’ pay it?”

“I had no idea there’d be all this trouble,” said Sutherland, quite distressed. He added bitterly, “I’m a damned fine captain!”

“Don’t choke,” said Bouverie. “You’ve only got six men in jail. The East Coast packets double that number. Been the same for all American ships since Congress passed that fool law about paying crews in every port. Forget it. If you don’t want ’em aboard until you said, let ’em stay in the jug. Have a cigar?”

Sutherland accepted a cigar, “which he proceeded to break up between his fingers,” said Bouverie later.

“It isn’t only the men,” muttered the captain. “My officers are as bad. The mate’s been against me from the first and the others are following his example. He insults me before the men, leaves all the ship work to me. He seems to be angry because I was a Naval man.”

“Oh!” said Bouverie, sudden light breaking upon him. “So that’s what the trouble is.”

“Have you heard?” Sutherland wanted to know.

“Heard? The whole damned waterfront’s heard. No wonder you’ve got things in a mess. Naval man, eh? Well, well!”

“Oh, I admit I knew very little about freighters when I began,” said Sutherland, reddening. “But I was willing to learn; I am learning. The trouble seems to be I can’t get in touch with the men. It’s ridiculous really, but every one acts as though because I’ve been in the Navy I’ve no business aboard.”

“Well, Navy men are rather helpless in the merchant service,” observed Bouverie brutally. “I’ve had cases here before. You see they come from ships manned by anything up to a thousand men and expect to run vessels of almost the same size and with crews of thirty or forty in exactly the way they’ve been accustomed. There’s a change in discipline too. In the Navy, if a man begins to perform you can slam him in the brig, but the merchant service’s different. You haven’t much authority there, at least not these days. You can log a man and give him a bad discharge, which he promptly tears up, and that’s about all. Command’s really more of a personal matter. You’ve got to stand alone. You’ve got to be a diplomat and a wet nurse. You’ve got to be able to keep men tamed down and working with nothing but bluff to help you. You’ve got to make them like you. Don’t ask me how it’s done. I don’t know. Each crew’s a different problem. All I know is there are captains who can do it.”

“I don’t see any way out,” confessed Sutherland, very troubled. “You see as far as officers are concerned, I’ve been used to dealing with gentlemen, and the sort I’ve got now—”

“Roughnecks! ” snapped Bouverie. “Treat ’em like roughnecks. Put your foot down. It’s likely enough you won’t get away with it but you can try. If you flop you can’t be any worse off than you are now.”

"I think I might manage the men,” said Sutherland, beginning to frown. “But what can I do with the mate? He and the second have been ashore drunk since we docked. They come aboard at all hours and raise cain. Wrecked the saloon one night. The engineers are starting the same thing. The men won’t behave with that sort of an example before them.”

“Timmins is mate with you, isn’t he?” asked Bouverie. “Yes, I know him. He’s been running down here these five years. This is the first time he’s ever performed though. What do you want to do, pay him off?”

“What would you advise, sir?”

“I advise you to please yourself. If you can’t get along with a man get rid of him, generally speaking. But this is a hell of a place to pay a man off. The docks are crowded with beachcombers. Timmins’d be weeks getting away and then he’d likely have to go as A. B. Besides that I doubt if I could pick you up another licensed man that was any good.”

“I see,” said Sutherland. He frowned a bit more. “No, it wouldn’t be white to pay him off here if conditions are as you say. Besides I think I’d feel he’d won out if I had to get rid of him. I want to stick things out until we reach the States again. It’s a matter of pride, if you like. I suppose I could log him.”

Bouverie looked queerly at Sutherland.

“I suppose you could. You might disrate him too but one doesn’t do that sort of thing— very often— with men who’ve been in the game as long as Timmins. Of course I don’t know about the Navy…"

“I see,” said Sutherland, a little red. “I won’t make that mistake then.”

Bouverie nodded, pleased a little.

“That’s the idea. You’ll win out in time if you stand on your own feet and not depend on the log book and such. Now, how about these men in jail? Do you want them out or want them kept there until you sail?”

Sutherland’s face set in lines of clear decision.

“Let them stay,” he said. “I wish they’d arrest the others and keep them until we sail too. It might teach them a lesson.”

“That’s easy arranged,” said Bouverie. “A lot of the East Coast captains fix it up as soon as they dock.”

“How’s that?”

“You just dish out money to the crew and then tip the police off you’d like the bunch run in as soon as they’re drunk. That keeps them out of the way and out of trouble. It’ll cost you just a hundred milreis a man to get ’em released, and that comes from their wages. The police are glad to oblige because the city needs the money.”

“It seems a dirty trick,” said Sutherland, hesitating.

“Roughnecks, my boy. You’re dealing with roughnecks. You’ve got to talk the language they can understand. Forget Annapolis. Freighters aren’t run by gentlemen.”

“All right,” said Sutherland.

He stood up and put out his hand.

Bouverie shook it and decided the other was not going to be a pleasant companion for a while from the look in his eyes. Sutherland went away and the next morning a polite, black mustached, swarthy policeman entered the consular office with the distressing information that nineteen men of the steamer Camden Hall lay in jail, having had assessed against them a fine of one hundred milreis each. The charges ran from drunk- eness and disturbing the peace to resisting arrest and destroying property. Did the consul wish to do anything about it?

“Let ’em stay,” said Bouverie heartily. “The captain’ll be down to get ’em out before the ship sails.”

When Mr. Timmins heard this news he was slightly staggered.

“Ten t’ one it was Bouverie put him up to it,” he swore. “He’d never’ve had th’ savvy t’ think of it ’imself. Next thing y’ know he’ll be paying me off an’ making Smithers mate. Well, let’s go ashore and ’oist a few. This’s the best spree I’ve had since I was a kid.”

The second mate put on his hat.

“Maybe he’s got something framed with the consul about us too,” he said uneasily as they went down the gangplank together. Timmins spat profusely into the water between the ship and the deck.

“Being as ’e’s a Naval man it’s likely,” he observed. “They’d do most anything.”

Sutherland, standing by No. 3 hatch, heard this but made no comment. The second mate chuckled. Smithers said it was about then he began not only to like the skipper but also to feel sorry for him. You could not help it. He was game all right, sticking it out, though it was queer he did not give Timmins his walking papers. The rest of the officers put it down to the fact that either the skipper was afraid of Timmins, of what Timmins might do to him, or else he knew the mate stood so strong with the line that to fire him would be equivalent to firing himself. No one thought, of course, that it might be a spiritual matter inside of Sutherland himself.

IT WAS very early next morning when Mr. Timmins came aboard. He was far from being sober, but he was certainly not drunk. He did not look much like a man who had been enjoying himself. He wore a morose frown and was swearing absently at the second mate whose feet were somewhat uncertain. The fact was that for Mr. Timmins life was beginning to look very dark.

He had been certain that Sutherland would quit before now, but it seemed the young man was determined to stick in spite of everything. There had been a certain zest and anticipation in looking forward each morning to annoying the skipper, but that was palling too. Of course it was always possible to work up a glow over the idea of a Naval man in charge of the Camden Hall —to hell with the Navy! — but this prolonging of everything, this uncertainty, this stalemate was doing disastrous things to the Camden Hall herself.

It was becoming increasingly difficult for Mr. Timmins to force himself ashore each day when everywhere he looked along his beloved decks he saw chaos and dirt; when it made his professional soul writhe to see the way the cargo was being stowed; when he looked forward and saw what few men were left aboard, drunk and singing, or snoring soundly on their mattresses. It even hurt him to think of those nineteen men in jail, nineteen pairs of hands that should be busy getting the Camden Hall in trim. If anything, to contemplate these matters and to think they were all due to the fact there was a Naval man aboard, made Timmins’ feeling against Sutherland more intense than ever. To hell with the Navy!

Coming aboard this morning, wrath rose and stirred in Mr. Timmins and, dragging the second mate into the saloon, he shook him savagely.

“Go and turn in, ye drunken lout!” he said.

With an incoherent and indignant protest, the second tottered away. It was then that Timmins discovered he had once again lost his key. He was starting to lift a fire ax from the bulkhead when an idea struck him. Here it was four or five o’clock in the morning with every one asleep. “Next time you need your key, Mr. Timmins, I’d be glad if you’d ask for it,” the skipper had said. “There’s no need to wreck the ship. This isn’t a bear garden.”

Fine! The skipper had the pass keys and the skipper was asleep. He would undoubtedly be annoyed if awakened. Mr. Timmins chuckled to himself and climbed up to the lower bridge. It was the first blow of his great fists on the captain’s door that awoke Smithers, who dressed and prowled around to see what was going on.

Timmins was making a great deal of noise, using his boots, fists and voice. His language could be heard the length of the ship and it was not long before the captain’s door opened and Sutherland stood framed in the opening, buckling his belt and dressed just in his pants and white cotton singlet, his eyes dazed with sleep.

“What’s all this disturbance for, Mr. Timmins?” he said.

“Keys,” replied the mate. “I’ve lost mine again. You made a squawk last time I opened the door meself, so I thought I’d come an’ see you.”

“I should think it’s about time you’d stop this drinking,” said Sutherland hotly. “You’ll be seeing things before long.”

“Of course,” said the mate, leaning against the door jamb and beginning to enjoy himself, “if you ’ad me in th’ Navy you’d know how t’ handle me.”

“That’s enough,” said the captain, his voice shaking a bit. “That’s more than enough.”

He went back into his room for a moment and got his big ring upon which hung duplicate keys for all the doors in the ship. Then he stepped past Timmins and walked steadily to the companion and so down to the saloon. The mate spat tobacco juice casually on the once white deck and followed him, his grim lips twitching a bit. Smithers trailed the pair of them to see what would happen.

Sutherland went into the saloon, crossed to the opposite door, shut it and locked it. Then he turned on all the lights. The mate came in and Sutherland brushing by him shut the remaining door and locked that too. Then he tossed the keys into a corner. Smithers had dived round outside the saloon and was gaping in through an open port, the only witness to all that transpired.

“You’re a rotten dog!” said Sutherland tensely. “You’ve done your best to drive me from this ship and now you’re swilling liquor until you’re not fit to be near. I may not be the sort of sailor you can approve of but at least I’ve enough self-respect to keep myself clean and to take what care I can of my ship. I ought to pay you off and leave you here to rot in the heat and the smells, but I wouldn’t leave even you to become a beachcomber like those poor devils we see every day. Is that clear? I’m keeping you because I’m sorry for you! You’re nothing but a damned ignorant fool and I’ve stood for it long enough!”

Timmins was standing rigid with astonishment by this time, his eyes wide. He gave a start when Sutherland finished speaking, almost as if he had been abruptly douched in cold water.

“Well,” he said in a strange, uncertain sort of voice. “Well, you’re coming to life. If you’d started t’ talk like a man in th’ beginning...

Very deliberately, his face the color of ashes, Sutherland walked across to him and knocked him down!

There was a brief silence after the thud of the fall, broken only by Sutherland’s breathing, short and hard so that his nostrils opened and shut and were edged with livid white. Timmins very slowly sat up, got to his knees, one hand on the carpet and the other to his mouth. Still slowly he climbed to his feet, wiped his lips and spat blood. He was quite sober now and his eyes were cold points of ice.

“Is that what they do in th’ Navy?” he said softly, so softly the words were almost a whisper. “Hit a man without warning?”

“Are you going to fight?” shouted Sutherland. “Damn you! Now show me if there’s anything behind that mouth! Do you have to be knocked down again?”

“Fight?” said Timmins. He laughed a little. “I’m a-going t’ take you apart so yer own mother wouldn’t know you. An’ I didn’t learn ’ow at Annapolis either!”

Sutherland let out a bitter oath, the first any man on the Camden Hall had heard him use, and then ran in. Timmins stood square and met him and for a few seconds they slugged at each other. Then Sutherland backed, gasping, shaken to the core with each of the stocky, solid mate’s blows. He ducked a vicious jab at the jaw and made Timmins grunt with two swift hooks below the left ribs. For a while then he had things his own way, propping the mate up with his long left and occasionally whipping a righ to the heart. Timmins spat blood and neither backed nor advanced, absorbing everything, his eyes still steady and cold as ice. His method was the infighting of the expert manhandler and this long distance sparring was not at all to his liking.

He began to advance with the remorselessness of a steamroller, not in a series of quick rushes, but methodically, step by step, his arms content to ward off blows, his head slightly lowered. And then abruptly he slipped beneath Sutherland’s pumping fists, had his head on Sutherland’s chest, and proceeded to take the younger and less experienced fighter apart.

He sank his fists into Sutherland’s stomach; he hammered at his kidneys. In vain Sutherland tried to step aside, back, to get clear. The sandy head never left his chest and his own desperate fists could find no target. At the last, with a terrific upward hook Timmins literally lifted the captain from his feet and hurled him against the saloon bulkhead. It was, logically, the end of the fight.

Timmins wiped his wet forehead with a hot forearm, spat more blood on the carpet and began to feel at his jaw. He was quite astonished when Sutherland abruptly loomed before him again, choking, wheezing, swaying but trying to fight.

“Damn you!” the captain was coughing. “Damn you! Come on and fight!”

“Fight?” grated Timmins with a sudden gust of fury. “If you want more it’s coming.”

They closed with a thud. The mate had so far been quite cool about the whole affair, had even taken some delight in it. To think that this slender, long limbed

youngster should try to put him out, put out Timmins who was fighting tough men before Sutherland was out of the nursery, was amusing. Now Timmins was angry. Once he had put a man down he expected him to stay down, and urprisingly, this man had got up again.

Timmins’ eyes were mere slits now. His sandy hair seemed to stand on end. His thick growth of sandy beard seemed to bristle. The muscles stood out in angry knots and ropes over his chest and along his arms. His neck swelled. Hard and true as pistons, disregarding any defense, his arms shot in and out. Sutherland went down again and again, and, after brief seconds, he got up. He always got up.

ONE OF his eyes was closed, his lower lip split and streaming blood. He had a cut under the right ear and dull bruises were growing down his left cheek. His singlet was in shreds, his pants torn, his knuckles raw. He was breathing in great, sick sobs and the beating of his heart was plain against his reddening ribs. When he was risen for the fourth time, very wearily and slowly, he was almost unconscious on his feet, punch drunk, gagging, weaving, blind, swinging his arms wildly. Timmins stepped back and surveyed him, cool again now and very grim, also a little curious and disturbed.

“You’re licked and ye might as well take it that way,” he observed, breathing hard. “Can’t you stay down when you’re hit! Falling around like a damned drunk. Did they teach you that at Annapolis?”

“Fight, damn you!” Sutherland was croaking, swaying like a tree in the wind and peering out of his one good eye. “Fight! You’re all damned mouth!”

Timmins laughed short and hard and wiped the blood from his chin. He took Sutherland by the throat, shook him as one might shake a dog, then forced him back until he fell into one of the swivel hairs bolted to the deck around the saloon table. Sutherland struggled, choked out oaths, but the great hairy hand upon his windpipe had him helpless. He collapsed at last, went limp, and dropping his arms on the table, buried his face in them and wept tears of impotent rage and shame.

Timmins stood still for a long time, according to Smithers, who was still gaping through the open port. He stood still for a long time, did the mate of the Camden Hall, and then very thoughtfully, while he watched the shaking battered figure in the chair, reached round to his hip pocket, produced a plug and gnawed off a large chew.

“Well!” he said, once he had his jaws working properly, and apparently speaking to himself. “Well! You ain’t much of a sailor an’ you ain’t nothin’ t’ talk about as a fighter. But I s’pose you’ll learn in time.”

He was silent for a spell, his thumbs in his belt. Then he scratched his head and spat tobacco juice and blood absently on the carpet.

“An’ you wouldn’t pay me off because you’d ’ate t’ see me down among them beachcombers, hey? Well, if you ain’t a bloody fool! An’ they thought you c’d ’andle a freighter!”

He crossed to the shaking figure, heaved it roughly to its feet and propelled it toward the door. He retrieved the keys from the comer, unlocked the door and, after a cautious look outside, supported the captain to the bridge companion, helped him up and led him into his room where Sutherland collapsed on his settee and buried his face in his hands again. The mate spat into the cuspidor and scratched his head. He was apparently at a loss what to say.

“You’d better get cleaned up an’ climb inter bed,”he ventured at last. “You can’t sit around an’ bawl like that, ’cause you ain’t in th’ Navy now. Gotta be a man!”

Mr. Timmins left the captain’s room in a state of great disgust and, going down to the main deck, he met the second engineer who was in an evil mood after a night’s debauch. Up on the bridge young Sutherland straightened himself with a weary sigh and was staring bleakly at his raw and aching hands. He supposed it was the end. Smithers, who went up to see if he could do anything, heard him muttering to himself. The whole crew would know he had been licked and if the mate had been intolerable before, he would be doubly so now. The ship needed a good man to look after her and if he paid off Timmins there would be no one to take his place. For the good of the line it would be best for him, Sutherland, to get out himself. Timmins had been sound and conscientious before he had come, the best mate on the coast it was said. They might have got along fine together but for this ridiculous feud between the merchant service and the Navy. Well, it had to be faced. He had tried to follow Bouverie’s advice and treat roughnecks like roughnecks but he had not the ability, not the physical power. He had been licked, badly. It was the absolute end.

He rose to his feet, groaning as he straightened, and then he was electrified to hear the mate’s voice bellowing up from the main deck below where he was arguing with the second engineer.

“Is that so, you dirt caked spanner hound! Give me any lip and I’ll bust you open! I want steam at six an’ I want th’ pumps full blast. This packet needs a wash, ’arbor rules or not— an’ don’t let me catch you spitting on th’ deck again. What th’ hell do you think this is, a blasted bear garden?”

SUTHERLAND is still the master of the Camden Hall and Timmins is still recognized as the best mate on the coast. A good many have commented on the cordial relations that appear to exist between them, which are demonstrated by the fact that Sutherland always refers to his mate as “that Irish blackguard”, while Timmins has been heard to remark that his skipper’s “nothing but a damned Naval man”.

The most astonishing thing is that they are both perfectly sincere about it.

______________________

5: The Third Officer

Blue Book, Oct 1932

CAPTAIN TODD was dying. It was, in fact, little less than a miracle he had survived so long— six blistering days in an open boat since the Seramis had caught fire, blown up and gone down. He had been in a bad way when he had first been hauled into the stern-sheets from where the explosion had flung him in the water, with his left side caved in, his gray mustache singed, his bald head smeared with blood and burns. Yet he had clung to consciousness and command, driven by some inner force, by some hard instinct that had made the fourteen other survivors regard him with awe, for all that the most of them were hard men too.

Mr. Evans, the young third mate, knelt beside the Captain in the glow of a tropical dusk and was badly afraid.

“You’d like a drink, sir ?”

Captain Todd shook his head and managed a faint smile.

“Water’s about done. ... No sense wasting it on me.”

He breathed heavily for a moment and the boat rocked as the men moved aft to watch the end. The bosun stood up, a squat sturdy figure with a harsh lined face, towering over the two officers in the stern-sheets.

“About gone, aint he?” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of a hairy hand. The third mate did not answer, but Captain Todd smiled again.

“About gone, bosun,” he admitted. He stared at his third mate. “You’ll be in charge, Mr. Evans—the only officer left. Your best chance is to make the coast of Africa. Steer dead east and you can’t miss. You’ve got a chart and sextant and such.”

“I’ll manage, sir,” said Mr. Evans hoarsely. He was not much over nineteen and was not sure of himself. A first command for him—an open boat and thirteen menl He tried to lick his parched lips and shuddered.

“There’s a tin box in my pocket,” said the Captain wearily. “And the ship’s papers and money. Box holds jewelry consigned to owners. I promised to deliver it to Mr. Welsh, the junior partner. It’s something special. If—if you get through you’ll see to it.”

“I’ll see to it, sir.”

“That’s right.” Captain Todd essayed to pat his third mate’s shoulder. “Take over and carry on.”

“I’ll carry on, sir.”

The bosun wiped his mouth again and shot a glance at the intent men crowded behind him. He said nothing.

Captain Todd gestured for the third mate to empty his pockets, and then sighed as if with relief. “That’s all, Evans. Good luck! ”

He died soon after dark, coughing once or twice and then growing still. Mr. Evans stared down at the black tin box he held in his lap, at the canvas-wrapped bundle of the ship’s papers and money, at the heavy revolver that had been the Captain’s. He was motionless so long, was so quiet, the bosun finally bent and shook him.

“Better get rid of him, eh?” he suggested, jerking a thumb at the sternsheets. The third mate nodded, his face ashen and horror in his eyes. The bosun stepped by him, bent, gave a slight grunt and a heave that was followed by a splash. The third mate shivered and closed his eyes.

The bosun noisily brushed his hands and sat down, close to the third mate.

“Let’s have a look at the stuff,” he suggested. “Something to pass the time.”

He took the box from beneath the other’s unresisting hands, found a key attached to it by a thin chain and impatiently called to one of the men to light the hurricane-lamp.

“I never knew the old man was packing bullion,” he ventured. “Bring that lamp aft!”

They crowded closer, as many as could before the bosun swore at them and warned them to keep the boat on an even keel. One man held up the lamp and the bosun opened the box. The contents were done up in neat tissue-paper-wrapped packages and he unfastened one or two, letting the dim light fall on ropes of pearls, diamond bars, emerald stickpins and such. There was a murmur from the men, and it was that which finally roused the third mate.

He looked up, suddenly aware that they were crowding him, suddenly aware they had the box open and were putting out horny fingers to poke curiously at the contents.

“Here, that’s enough of that! ” he said shrilly. “Get ’midships!”

The bosun stared at him curiously, in a manner almost speculative.

“There’s a lot of jack here, sir.”

“What’s that got to do with you ? It’s ship’s property.”

There was a small silence and the men’s eyes glistened in the lamplight. The bosun hesitated a moment and then reluctantly replaced the contents of the box, locked it and handed it back.

“A breaker full of water’d be worth more’n that to us,” he ventured with heavy humor. A man bent and whispered in his ear, and he reached up to grip the whisperer’s arm, silencing him. “Not now,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth.

“Did you speak, bosun ?” inquired Mr. Evans, hitching himself into the stern-sheets with a visible shudder.

“About water, sir,” said the bosun.

“Just said water’d be better than them jewels right now.”

“Yes, we could do with that,” agreed the third mate. He slipped the box into his pocket and took hold of the tiller. “Better trim that sail, bosun. The night wind’s coming up.”

He felt exhausted as well as afraid. His voice was strained, and it sounded unnatural even to himself. The men moved away from him, talking in low tones, but he did not catch what it was they were saying. He had so much to think about. He had to collect his thoughts, strive for calmness. It was a hard time for him. Always before he had had older men over him, to order and advise, to take up the slack if things went wrong; but now he stood alone— and he had only been an officer for one short year. Always before he had thought himself a pretty clever sort of fellow, but now that he was face to face with stark reality, he realized how pitifully inexperienced he was, how uncertain. He was not even fully grown to manhood and he had only tradition to support him.

He gripped the tiller with shaking fingers and headed the boat to the east. It was not likely they would ever reach the coast; it was a clear four-days’ run, even if the wind held fair, which in that latitude it almost certainly would not. And tomorrow would see the last of the drinking-water. He felt crushed by the sense of responsibility. He had never realized what it meant, not even when he had taken over his first bridge watch and the Captain had left him alone to handle the vessel. He had little petulant twinges of anger when he thought of it: It wasn’t fair— wasn’t fair of Captain Todd to die— or the mate and the second mate to perish in the fire! He was the least fitted of them all to be faced with what he was faced with now. And there was no way out— he was the last officer, and in charge. He had taken over. Carry on!

It was a hushed dawn. The eastern sky grew opal white, yawned to the zenith, and then flickers of pink and gold sat along the edge of the world. The sea turned from the gloomy purple of night to the brighter purple of day, and golden lights played in the long hollows of the quiet swells. The horizon blazed abruptly and the rim of the sun showed angry red. The sea was like blood where it ran to meet the sky, and the last of the night wind whispered out to nothingness.

THE men awoke slowly— yawning, scratching themselves, and muttering from dried lips. They began to sit up, and look about, at first with eager faces that quickly settled into sullen, bitter lines as the memory of their predicament returned to them. The bosun got up, stretched himself and tried to spit. He stared about, taking in all the horizon.

“Not a damned sail,” he said. “An’ the wind’s gone.”

Mr. Evans said nothing, but stared at him, wondering at the subtle menace of the other’s hoarse voice.

“We aint got a chance,” some one muttered. The bosun scratched his unshaven chin.

“Not a chance,” he agreed. “An’ I’m choking. Might as well have the last swig now instead of waitin’ fer noon.”

He heard the men getting up behind him and his eyes, fastened upon Mr. Evans, grew hard. “Come on, fellers!”

He bent over the water-breaker and had the bung half out when Mr. Evans lurched to his feet. A foot kicked his hand aside and he looked up with an oath.

“Get out!” the third mate choked. “Get out, damn you! And leave that alone. I’ll tell you when we drink! ”

He held Captain Todd’s big revolver in in his hand and the bosun stared fascinatedly at the barrel. The other men had grown motionless, watching the scene. Mr. Evans’ face was drained white and his eyes were burning. There was even a suspicion of trembling in his lips, but he held the gun with a steady hand. The bosun recovered his confidence -after a moment and rose, sneering, his thumbs in his belt.

“Gettin’ funny, eh? All right, kid. It’s a long way to the coast.”

“I’m in command here,” said Mr. Evans tensely. “We’ll keep to the same schedule that Captain Todd laid down.”

The bosun stared at him for a while, then shrugged and rejoined his companions ’midships, talking to them in a low mutter. The third mate relaxed at last and sat down, putting his gun away. He was shaking all over, and deep down he was terribly frightened. Yet he had a feeling that he had done what was right, had asserted that authority passed on to him. He looked at the thin band of gold that adorned his cuffs and nodded to himself. Just one little band, but it made all the difference.

They drank the last of the water at noon, one man at a time coming aft on the word and receiving his ration from the third mate’s hands. There was only a drop or two left for himself and when he had drunk he carefully replaced the bung in the empty breaker. The men watched him with burning, savage eyes in which the beginnings of strange deliriums were to be seen. The beat of the hot sun seemed to addle the brain. They were tortured and going mad...

Time passed. The wind died and they sat motionless on an oily sea.

It was just after a red dawn, two terrible days later, when Mr. Evans was suddenly jarred to a semblance of consciousness. The tiller was kicking in his hand and a cool wind was fanning at his back. He forced his eyes to open; peering round, he saw the sky was sullen with clouds and there was a slight chop on the water, disrupting the smoothness of the sea. The sail filled with a report, and water began to ripple along the boat’s hull. The men stirred and came to life; then out of the growing wind there swept a series of sharp squalls, black and furious. They were like mad men in the boat, as hissing sheets of rain fell to port of them, to starboard, astern of them. It seemed as if the gods were playing, delighted to watch their sufferings. One man leaped overside with a hoarse cry and started to swim toward a wall of water that churned the sea not a hundred yards away, so close they could feel the gusts of cold air that emanated from it. He did not swim far; a lean fin slid into view from nowhere and the swimmer disappeared.

And then as if that had appeased the gods, a squall came right upon the boat, heeling her until her starboard gunwale was all but buried, and flooding her with water. The men stood up, staggering; they tried to dance; they ripped off their clothes to let the cool wetness drench their parched skins. They held their mouths open and up toward the sky. They croaked and laughed; and only the third mate thought to fill the breaker, constructing a rude funnel out of the canvas sea-anchor, and holding the baling-bucket upright between his feet so that it would fill too.

But nature had not done with fortune, for right upon the heels of the squall, as it whipped away to leeward, the boat abruptly found herself in the very midst of a shoal of fish, like mullet. The surface of the sea literally boiled with these creatures. Obviously pursued by some foe, they leaped and floundered in desperate attempts to escape. Dozens flopped over and into the boat itself. The men used their shirts and caps to scoop up others. In less than half an hour, when the shoal had gone in the wake of the squall, the bottom boards were thick with gasping food.

They ate it raw, with the few hard ship’s biscuits that yet remained. And then they were sick, and after that they ate again. Later, when the sun came out, they split some of the fish and dried them. They made a rather unsuccessful attempt to cook some over the flame of the hurricane-lamp. And then they relaxed and slept, the brackish water washing about them as they lay on the bottom boards, with the boat, now heeled steadily, running before the fair strong wind that would take them to the African coast. Mr. Evans was filled with relief as he held the kicking tiller and stared at the dancing sea ahead.

“We’re all right,” he kept saying to himself. “Lots of food and water now. A few more days and we’ll make it! We’re all right.”

He, felt strong again. His face was bright, though those two terrible days of being becalmed had left their mark on it. He had been very lucky, he had to admit, to run into a squall and a shoal like that, but that was the way at sea. He steered all through the morning and presently the men began to awake and stir again, to talk among themselves.

“We’re all right now,” called Mr. Evans cheerfully. “And you might relieve me at the tiller, bosun.”

The faces of the men turned to stare at him as they absorbed his words. The bosun got up and came aft, hitching at his belt; he was wild-looking and menacing with his heavy growth of whiskers, and his burly body.

“Going to make the coast, eh?” he said carefully, looking down at the third mate. Mr. Evans nodded, smiling.

“I don’t guarantee where, bosun, but according to my reckoning we ought to reach Sierra Leone.”

“Going to head into Freetown, eh?”

“We ought to strike the coast a little to the north of it, and we can easily run down.... But why—” He was suddenly aware that all the men were regarding him intently, with strange eyes, speculative again. And he stopped.

THE bosun turned his head to regard the men and then faced Mr. Evans again, grinning a little.

“Coast’s pretty wild south of Freetown, aint it?”

Mr. Evans shot him a startled look of surprise. “I don’t know. I’ye never been there. Why?”

The bosun shrugged.

“Well, I have. And supposin’ we miss Freetown and go on south a ways—”

It came to Mr. Evans that there was something behind all this. The men were acting now just as they had acted immediately after Captain Todd’s death. They had been subdued when thirst and hunger racked them, but now they were fed again— what was on their minds?

“Have you gone crazy?” Mr. Evans demanded. “Why shouldn’t we put into Freetown? I should think you’d be glad to get ashore.”

One or two of the men laughed.

“Aw, don’t act innocent, kid!” some one drawled.

IT was not until the third mate saw the bosun’s gaze fastened on the black tin box that protruded slightly from his pocket that he really comprehended. And then a dull red flooded his face.

“None of that!” he said sharply. “We’re going to Freetown!”

The bosun shrugged.

“Now what the hell! There’s a lot of jack tied up in that box. We can split it, and no one’ll be any the wiser. Land on the coast and work up to Freetown later. Tell ’em we wrecked the boat an’ everything went down with it.”

“You’d better not talk that way, bosun,” said Mr. Evans stiffly.

Some of the men swore. Exclamations arose:

“Don’t waste time arguing with him!”

“Do it up right, bos’n!”

“You can’t talk to a damned kid!”

But the bosun took no notice and continued, half-wheedling, half-explaining.

“Why not? What the hell! We been wrecked, aint we? Lost all we ’ad! We oughta get something for it.... And there aint no one but us knows about the stuff anyway.”

Mr. Evans’ face was white and tense now, his eyes steady and hard. He had toughened since that night when Captain Todd had died. He had tightened up; he had gathered ballast and a new firmness. He was not afraid now, only a trifle shocked and astonished.

“Forget it!” he snapped. “You must have gone insane! That jewelry has no value. It’s sample stuff!”

The bosun spat deliberately, balancing himself with the boat’s lift across the bright sea. The wind tugged at his shirt and ruffled his tangled hair. He laughed.

“That’s why the old man kept it in the safe, hey? Why you’re making a fuss about it? Sample stuff, me eye! Now listen, kid—”

“I’m in charge of this boat, bosun. And don’t talk to me like that!”

The other shrugged placatingly.

“All right, then. Listen, sir.... Suppose we do go straight to Freetown. We can split the stuff before we get there and we can keep our mouths shut afterward. If there’s any inqumes jest say there wasn’t time to get anything off the ship. They aint going to search distressed seamen. It’s a cinch!”

“You’ll get your pay,” said Mr. Evans firmly. He met the concentrated battery of eyes without a tremor. “You’ll get your pay and a passage home, and I suppose the Line will give you something for new outfits, as well as other jobs. As regards ship’s property— you don’t know what you’re talking about! Besides, I tell you that jewelry has no value. It’s nothing—”

“Our pay?” sneered the bosun, shutting him off. He spat aside and laughed. “Don’t be a fool! What’s a bit of pay beside what you got there? Your whack’ll be the same as ours.”

The utter hopelessness of making the man believe him became evident to Mr. Evans, and he grew angrily obstinate.

The bosun hitched at his belt and took another step forward. Mr. Evans put his free hand inside his pocket where rested Captain Todd’s gun.

“You stay where you are! ” he snapped. “You stay ’midships. This box and the ship’s money goes to Freetown, untouched.”

The bosun hesitated and licked his lips, watching the bulge of the gun.

“Didn’t you say you wanted me to relieve you at the tiller?” he said mildly. “You’ll be wantin’ to sleep.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Mr. Evans. “You can go ’midships and stay there.”

There was a short silence and then the bosun shrugged.

“All right, kid!” He spat insolently. “It’s your own damned funeral! ”

HE went back to his companions and they held a conference, the mutter of their voices drifting ominously aft. Mr. Evans tightened his mouth and surreptitiously wiped a trickle of cold sweat from his forehead. He wished for the hundredth time that Captain Todd hadn’t died, or that the mate had lived to take charge. They would know what to do. Should he avoid trouble by letting the men have the box and the ship’s money and then report the matter when they had all reached civilization? But no— if he did that they would guess his purpose and would see to it he did not talk. He had an instinctive feeling about that: They wouldn’t trust him. He was an officer.

He braced himself and forced his attention to the compass beside him— to the coast ahead. There was nothing to do really, but carry on. So the day waned and night fell and Mr. Evans had a hard job to keep awake....

It was toward dawn when they rushed him, slipping quietly over the stretchers and almost reaching him before the uneven rocking of the boat jerked him out of a doze. They closed in then, cursing, and Mr. Evans stood up shouting with sudden hysteria and fright. He shot one man, and with the unshipped tiller he stunned another. He fought like a wildcat, with a desperate sort of madness, shouting all the time. They drew off at last, cursing and sullen. It was hard to get at him, backed against the stern-sheets as he was.

“All right,” the bosun grated through the darkness. “All right, kid. You gotta sleep sometime!”

MR. EVANS never had any clear recollection of the hours that followed. He did remember he could hardly sit upright, even with the tiller to brace him. He weaved with each motion of the boat, sometimes almost toppling forward or sideways, as if the muscles of his waist had lost all resiliency. His eyes were like balls of fire—heavy as lead, aching, the lids falling, ever falling, so that he had to set his teeth to keep them up. His body had become one vast weariness and his brain seemed to burn, throbbing with the one thought, that he must not sleep. He remembered the men watching him; visions of waiting faces, sneering faces, laughing faces swimming before him as in a haze. He was not even aware of the passage of time, not aware that another day had passed and another night had come while the boat slid forward over the sea. He only knew that suddenly there were stars again, and a colder wind, and that the boat was rocking uncertainly as the men came aft again.

“Get out!” he shouted, standing up and waving his gun. The boat slid sideways and wallowed in a trough as he let go the tiller, but none of them cared.

Mr. Evans was later inclined to think that he was asleep even while he was fighting, for he could remember only the strangest things about the affair, such as a man’s jagged teeth bared at him— such as a fist looming enormously before his eyes— such as one of the men stopping to blow his nose. He was firmly impelled, however, by the savage thought that he must stay awake and defend that ship’s property which Captain Todd had rendered to him; and it made him savage to feel that he could not stay awake. He was even savage in his dreams, for he did dream horribly— and he fought and twitched after the men had at last overcome him and laid him on the bottom boards with argument and cursing....

He came to, did the third mate, to discover himself on his back, the shadow of the sail moving across his face and the clear blue sky edging about the billowed canvas. He stared blankly upward at first; then he grew aware he was thirsty and tried to sit upright.

“Woke up, eh?” said the bosun, not in a bad humor. He was steering. “Might as well as saved us all that trouble, an’ then you’d ’a’ been more comfortable.”

Mr. Evans tried to lick his dry lips.

“How long—” he started, and the bosun grinned, almost friendly now.

“You been under more’n a day, what with that crack on yer head and you needin’ sleep. Larry there got you with an oar-blade.”

One of the men laughed and nodded.

“I see,” said Mr. Evans hoarsely. He was aware now of a splitting headache and of dried blood in his hair and down his face. The bosun leaned forward and gripping his shoulder aided him to a sitting position.

“Thirsty, eh?” He filled a pannikin from the breaker and held it out. One of the men sitting aft of the sail scowled.

“No sense coddlin’ him, bos’. Drop ’im overside, says I!”

“You shut yer trap!” snarled the bosun, suddenly ugly. “I’m running this gang now. We aint aimin’ to bump anyone off ’less we has to—an’ maybe we c’n bring him round.”

“Yeah, can it! ” growled another man. “We need the kid to navigate, don’t we?”

“I’ll see you damned first! ” choked Mr. Evans indignantly. “You’re mutineers! ”

“Now, kid,” soothed the bosun. “You be good an’ you’ll see Mamma again!”

They all laughed then. Mr. Evans flushed red, bit his lip and subsided. He felt he had miserably failed in his duty. He could not imagine Captain Todd letting the men take charge like this.

They made him take a sight at noon, which he did more to satisfy his own curiosity as to their position than to please them. The coast was now a low purple line ahead and he scanned the chart with care, surprised to find they were a great deal farther north than he had suspected. There would be a better chance to make Dakar, French Senegal, than Freetown, Sierra Leone. He said nothing of that, however.

“We’re north of Freetown,” he told the bosun sullenly when they asked him.

That worthy grunted.

“That’s all right. We’re going to land and see if we can get something to eat, an’ rest up; then we’ll coast down, or maybe figure out something else.”

“What are you going to do with me?” the third mate demanded.

The bosun shrugged.

“Aint much we can do, ’less you wants to be sensible and come in with us. We’ll give you an equal whack an’ I promises there won’t be any double-crossing neither.”

Mr. Evans stared at him and stared at the other men. Some of them were hard-bitten, he knew, and would stop at little or nothing. But some were reasonably honest mariners, carried away by the unusual circumstances, by the fake prospect of sudden wealth, by that madness which comes to the majority when all recognized authority is removed. And Mr. Evans hesitated. After all, why should he be concerned? The jewelry wasn’t his, nor was the ship’s money. He believed the bosun would see him through if he agreed to the man’s proposals. And no one would know; he had only to say that everything had gone down with the Seramis. He could go home, get another ship and forget the whole incident. There was nothing—

His thoughts suddenly checked as he lifted an arm to wipe sweat from his forehead and the dull glint of the thin gold band on the cuff caught his eye. No, nothing, except he was the only officer left and Captain Todd had said— There was, after all, tradition— the game to be played. He was only nineteen and very serious.

“I’m not a thief!” he said bitterly. “You can go to hell! ”

“You’re a damned young fool!” exploded the bosun. “I been stoppin’ some of this gang ’ere from bumping you off ’cause I thought you’d come around. What the hell! You’ve only got a third mate’s pay, an’ that won’t make you rich! ”

“It’s ship’s property you’re stealing,” said Mr. Evans doggedly. “And I was left in charge of it. You can’t get away with anything like that.”

THE blood congested in the bosun’s face and his eyes grew ugly.

“All right. You leave that to us. The point is, you aint comin’ in?”

“No! ” muttered Mr. Evans. “I can’t! Don’t you see I can’t?”

But they could not understand him. There was a small, tight silence; then some one said:

“Wasting time, that’s all! If you’d’ve listened to me—”

“Shut up! ” snarled the bosun furiously. “We aint bumping ’im— not the way you want it. Give ’im a break. ’E’s only a fool kid, and there’s no sense us takin’ the chance of swinging.”

MR. EVANS stared up at him, holding his throbbing head.

“Then what are you going to do with me?”

The bosun spat with deliberation. “Nothing else for it, kid. We’ll leave you ashore.”

The third mate was appalled. Ashore on the African coast, miles from civilization, even from a native village— with neither food or weapons, and with no knowledge of the jungle! He did know the coast was sparsely settled; there were savage beasts and more savage men.

He set his jaw, his face ashen. “That’s murder,” he said shakily. “You might as well kill me now.”

“You got a chance, anyway,” the bosun reminded him. “You can ’ead for Freetown.”

Inwardly the bosun was troubled, but he was also obstinate. Now that he had actually accomplished what he wished, brought off his coup and obtained the jewels, twinges of fear were his. It had all seemed simple and obvious out on deep water, with death likely to come any moment; but now, with the coast ahead, with safety not far off, with policemen and gunboats somewhere around, he began to sense complications. Supposing one of the men got drunk in Freetown and talked too much— or flashed some of the loot? It looked as if they’d have to chance that, but he couldn’t chance letting the third mate come with them, the way he was feeling. Obstinate young fool! Choked up with a lot of officer ideas! On the other hand the bosun did not feel able to kill the youngster, at least not in cold blood. He began to understand the perplexities of leadership, but he also understood his companions well enough not to let them sense this. His outward demeanor was carelessly confident.

“You got a chance that way,” he repeated to Mr. Evans. “If we puts you ashore.” He looked at the other men, all staring at him, some of them uneasy, a few scowling and plainly angry. “By the time ’e gets through the jungle we’ll be clear,” he explained.

“If ’e gets through,” said some one dryly and some one else laughed, breaking the tension. The matter was tacitly accepted. After a while, when unobserved, the bosun leaned forward and tapped the third mate’s shoulder.

“If we don’t get clear ’fore you show up, you remember it was me who gave you the chance, eh?” The bosun wanted to keep a sheet-anchor to windward, and his eyes were uneasy. “This aint all my doin’s. That’s a tough crowd there, and them jewels—”

Mr. Evans stared at him.

“I’ll see you to the devil first!” he cried passionately. “You’ll turn that over to me now or take the consequences. Don’t be such a fool, man! That jewelry isn’t worth—”

“Shut up! ” snarled the bosun, hardening. “You can’t kid me! Ashore you’ll go. An’ I hopes you do croak!”

SLOWLY the afternoon waned; just before dusk they ran the boat into a convenient sandy cove, backed by palms and jungle and sheltered by low headlands. They beached the craft after a sharp tussle with the surf and a narrow escape from a half-hidden reef.

The men tumbled ashore, laughing excitedly, running up and down and stumbling on unfamiliar legs. They stretched themselves. They were safe at last after the terrible days on open water! Even the bosun went so far as to run like a boy to the edge of the trees and pluck handfuls of leaves and coarse grass, rubbing them hungrily between his hands. Mr. Evans, left to himself, climbed stiffly out of the boat.

It was in his mind to launch it and get away alone, but he knew the effort was far beyond his strength, and even if he did succeed in pushing the boat out of the shallows he would never be able to get past the reefs and through the surf without aid. Besides, the bosun had the ship’s papers and money, and the box of jewelry. Reluctantly, filled with sullen anger and mortification because he was beaten, he slowly went up the beach to where the bosun was directing the lighting of a fire.

They cooked the last of the stinking, dried fish, cooked some land-crabs they knocked over, and ate them, together with a faintly bitter orange fruit they discovered in a small grove fringing the cove. They made clumsy cigarettes of dried leaves and toasted sea-weed, with the craving for tobacco strong upon them, and they sat around the fire coughing in the salty, acrid smoke, but moderately content. The night fell like a dark curtain and a chill came to the wind.

“We aint had a look at the stuff yet! Open ’er up, boss! ” they began to urge.

“No sense bein’ fools about it,” the bosun grumbled. “We aint going to split right now. If we do, you’ll start to fight an’ gamble, an’ that’ll mess everything proper. We’ll wait till we sight Freetown and then divvy it.”

There was some grumbling at this, but in general the bosun had the men with him. They demanded, however, that he let them at least see the contents of the black tin box, and count what ship’s money had been brought along. The bosun swore, but finally agreed, drawing the box and the canvas-wrapped package of papers and money from inside his shirt. There was a general shuffling as the men gathered around.

Mr. Evans was entirely forgotten. He sat cross-legged outside the circle, staring nervously around at the dark walls of the jungle from which came rustlings of the night wind and faint cries of birds and small rodents. It was terrifying—all Africa looming at his back, mysterious and secret. Once a low, ominous drumming reached his ears; once some larger animal gave a high-pitched scream. Mr. Evans shivered and was very afraid. He stared at the moving shadows of the men hunched round the fire and his anger at them abruptly dispersed his fears. He would never, never live this down. He had been trusted and had failed. If he could not command a small boat, how could he expect to be given command, sometime, of a big ship? He got up— shaking, feverish, quite white and very tense. He had to do something!

The bosun was having trouble fitting the key to the box, for it had gotten bent during the various scuffles it had been through. No one heard Mr. Evans come up and stare over the bent shoulders of the small circle. Each man was intent and partially hypnotized by the dancing flames. Then it happened, and why it should have happened, Mr. Evans had never any clear idea. He only knew he was suddenly and furiously angry at them all, filled with a petulant childish rage that they should have so calmly thrust him aside and ignored him— forgotten his rank, laughed at his youth.

He made a convulsive jump, scooped up the tin box and the canvas bundle right out of the bosun’s lap; then he was gone, running down the beach and into the thick darkness.

There was a period of utter astonishment that held the men still. They hardly realized at first what had happened.

Blinded by the fire, they were only aware that something or some one had leaned out of the night and taken their treasure. The bosun was the first to recover, lunging to his feet with a bull-like roar and a furious oath.

“That damned mate!” he choked and

S :d Captain Todd’s revolver from his et. He could see nothing to fire at and a man near him jostled him roughly.

“That’s wot you get bringing him ashore with us,” the man snarled.

WITH a curse the bosun knocked him down, and there was a brief melee that lost precious moments before the other men could stop it. They scattered then, each one swearing and raging, to search the beach and the jungle fringe; but once out of range of the firelight they were baffled and impotent. As the first of their rage wore off they grew uneasily aware of the brooding jungle wall, of the mysterious calls and rustlings. At last they drifted back to the fire and gathered about the bosun, who was uneasily glancing from one to the other.

“We’ll get him,” he promised darkly. “We’ll get him in the morning. Foller him to Freetown if we has to.”

They sneered at him, and one man called an ugly name across the fire, and that precipitated another fight....

Mr. Evans had no idea where he was going when he ran off into the night. He was filled with sudden panic, possessed of a tingling between his shoulder-blades as he expected a thrown knife or a shot from the bosun’s gun. Stumbling and weaving across the sand he went; then, as the first roar of pursuit broke out behind him, his head cleared and he grew calmer. He turned up the beach toward the jungle, crashed heavily into an unsuspected tree, circled it, and slowing down, worked his way deeper and deeper into the brush, his heart pounding so hard he was certain they could hear it.

He did not stop until he was entirely out of breath and exhausted; then he discovered himself to be in the midst of all but impenetrable darkness. He could not see so much as a star above; it seemed that even the air was thick and heavy. Whichever way he groped he encountered underbrush or the scaly barks of trees. Once he gulped convulsively as a pair of luminous eyes flashed into his for a moment and then vanished. Some animal raised a hair-lifting snarl on his right that set him running and blundering in a panic again. But at last he dropped half-unconscious to earth, holding the tin box and the canvas bundle to him, and sank into a coma-like sleep.

He snapped alert hours later when a faint grayness began to penetrate to him and the jungle took on a ghostly visualness. He heard men shouting to one another, and far-off the crashings and cracklings as they worked their way toward him. He got up, shaking from weakness and hunger, and keeping as quiet as he could he worked forward again.

Once he heard a shot, evidently the bosun firing at some shadow or animal, and after that there was only the noise of the jungle. The sounds of pursuit died.

Mr. Evans sat down and thought a long time; then he made a rough but efficient sling of what remained of his jacket, fastening the tin box and the canvas bundle to his shoulders. He could not go back the way he had come, he knew. The bosun and the others might hang around for days looking for him. They would be fearful lest he escape to inform on them, and furiously angry at having lost all they had gained, or thought they had gained. Knowing the coast not at all, utterly unfamiliar with wood-lore, the third mate of the Seramis squared his shoulders, got a bearing from the sun, and heading first toward the sea he turned, after sighting it, to walk north along the coast.

THE consul at Dakar, French Senegal, had known many strange things to occur along the savage coast, but none stranger than the one just recently brought to his attention. First had come a French official with word of a mad young man brought into town by some natives who had found him with other natives miles and miles to the south. A mad young man, the consul would agree, to be wandering about without food or weapons— with a black tin box fastened on his back and with a lot of wild talk of mutineers and a sinking ship. At present the mad young man was in the hospital, unable to see anyone, but later on, since his nationality was obvious, no doubt the consul would be interested....

The consul quite understood, sent a few wires and forgot the matter for some three weeks. Then he hastily re-read a brief report the authorities had handed him, and stared perplexedly at the gaunt youth his clerk had ushered in.

“So you are the third officer of the Seramis, wrecked by fire in mid-atlantic? Let me have the story, Mr. Evans.”

THE gaunt young man sat down. He was dressed in a rumpled suit of borrowed whites; he fumbled awkwardly with a borrowed solar topee he held between his scarred hands. His eyes were sea-blue, the consul noted—very wide eyes and very intent as if they had seen many things. His cheeks were sunken. He possessed countless small scars which the jungle had given him. His hair, cropped short, held a touch of gray at the temples, and about his mourn there were etched fine lines. The consul felt vaguely uneasy— but he sent the masters of three ships away while he listened to the story of the Seramis. He heard it through and absently played with a rusty, battered tin box that lay on the desk before him, and with a filthy canvas-wrapped bundle, now opened.

“I don’t remember much,” said Mr. Evans simply when he had done. “Not after I got away. And then some natives looked after me.” He was vague.

The consul stared at him and brushed a fly impatiently from the back of one hand. ... A boy of nineteen! Third officer of a cargo boat— winning through all that terrible stretch of country! He was appalled.

“I have wired Freetown,” he said slowly. “If the men reach there they will be held until we investigate further.” He smiled a little and then opened the battered tin box. “So you stuck to this all through, eh?”

“Captain Todd told me to see it was delivered, sir. Ship’s property.”

The consul nodded.

“I suppose you’d have made the same effort if it had been a coil of rope— or a hurricane-lamp. Ship’s property.”

Mr. Evans did not quite understand.

“Captain Todd left me in charge,” he said simply. “There was nothing else I could do.”

The consul laughed and dipped his fingers into the jewelry in the box, allowing it to drip from his hand to the desk.

“I cabled Sydney about this,” he said, “as soon as the French handed things over. It isn’t worth ten dollars, the lot Your owners were contemplating importing artificial jewelry and this was a box of samples.”

Mr. Evans nodded.

“I knew that, sir,” he said gravely.

“Eh?” said the consul. He grew rigid.

Several times he started to say something, but he could not get the words out.

Mr. Evans frowned. “I tried to explain to the men once or twice— but they wouldn’t believe me. It was natural, I suppose, for them to think I was lying.”

“I— see,” choked the consul. “But— but it was ship’s property, so you had to—”

“See it through, sir,” Mr. Evans

“You damned young fool!” said the consul, and then sitting back, he began to laugh.

Mr. Evans slowly grew red.

“I don’t understand, sir,” he said stiffly. “I may be a fool— Oh, I see! Because it was artificial.... Well, what else could I do?”

ABRUPTLY the consul stopped laughing, and stared, smiling slightly but with a little pain round his heart. Nineteen years old— gray at the temples already— lines in the face before its time. Steady and serious blue eyes. Youth was so in earnest. ... To suffer and all but die. For some vision and some ideal. ...Lord, what had they to do with life and facts?

Mr. Evans compressed his lips. “I’m sorry if you think me—”

The consul made a gesture silencing him.... Wasn’t it, after all, the principle that counted— the sense of duty? Where would the world be if there weren’t some fools to think of duty? He glanced aside and caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the sheen of a framed photograph— a little tired, a little white, very lined and a little bent. Twenty years on the coast had done that. And then he stared back at Mr. Evans, only nineteen and already with the stamp of life upon him. For a box of cheap junk jewelry, a few ship’s papers and a few pounds in gold!

Then there came to the consul a foolishly sentimental thing. He could see the figure of that centurion they had dug up from the ash-covered ruins of Pompeii— that soldier still in his harness, holding his spear, who had obviously remained at his post of guard while the city went under the earth— not stirring, because he had had no orders to stir. The discipline of the Legions! Nothing but duty.

The consul laughed oddly.

“Do you know what I think of you?” he said at last. “Do you know what I really think, Mr. Evans? I think that you will make a very fine Captain!”

__________________

6: Yellow Bowden

Adventure   May 1934

THE Marathon was going down; there was no doubt. An hour before, plunging through the chaos of a dying hurricane, she had dropped her propeller, taken a broken tailshaft through her hull, swung into the trough and been all but submerged in a welter of angry water. No. 1 and No. 2 hatches caved in, and the sea poured below. She was listing a little, and down by the head, while the wind whipped the spray about her and a pale moon showed her at intervals through the drive of the storm wrack.

Captain Bowden— Yellow Bowden— clung to the forward rail of the navigation bridge, his stomach turning over inside him and the icy sweat heavy on his face.

“She ought to last a bit longer,” the mate was saying in his ear. “And the sea’s going down. We’ll get the boats away.”

“Yes,” said the captain. “That’s right. That’s right.”

“Tough luck,” said the mate. “Right after losing the Manlua too.”

“Yes,” said the captain. “Tough luck.”

The mate went away, bent to the wind and spray. He found the second mate in the chartroom making up bundles of instruments, signal flares and the chronometers.

“He’s cracking again,” he said. “Hanging on the rail and shaking all over.”

The second mate spat out a fragment of smoldering cigaret.

“What else did you expect? He hasn’t the guts of a louse. If he’d had any decency he’d have quit the sea after the Manlua affair. And if his brother didn’t own half the stock in the line he’d have been fired anyway.”

“Sure. Still, it’s tough, losing two ships, one right after the other.”

Captain Bowden was thinking the same. Yellow Bowden! He knew what they called him all through the line. He clung to the rail and stared ahead at the shadows of the swells under the wan moon. The iron spray stung his face. One hundred and forty passengers and ninety crew. Half the boats gone already; six feet of gaining water below; and the Marathon in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean.

“We’re drawing fires,” the fourth engineer was reporting. “The dynamos’ll soon stop.”

“All right. I’ll have the mate rig lanterns.”

“I’ve told the mate.”

The captain made no answer to that, and the engineer went away, passing the wireless operator at the head of the companion.

“I’ve got the Seramis,” reported the operator. “And the Tonkin, sir. They figure they both ought to be here about dawn.”

The captain nodded. He went to the chartroom. The mate was still talking with the second.

“Two ships coming,” the captain informed him. “The Seramis and the Tonkin

The mate nodded.

“I know,” he said, and bluntly turned his back.

Captain Bowden hesitated bleakly for a moment, and went out on the bridge again and to his place at the rail.

THE first time Bowden met fear was when he was apprentice on the fullrigger Marsdale, just two days at sea. A man fell from the main top-gallant yard and screamed as he fell. Young Bowden was turned to an icy, quaking thing, his stomach sick and sweat on his face. He fainted when he viewed the reddening huddle on the deck. He never ascended the ratlines again without shaking in every limb; and the terror of death watered his very marrow.

After that first voyage he would have quit the sea, but he had no choice. His father had been a shipmaster; so had his uncle. His elder brother had followed deep-water and had founded his own line. All the traditions of generations of seafarers stood against him. One point only he won. He was transferred to steam.

Then one day off the coast of China in the roaring typhoon a wall of water came over the rail and caught him, smashing him on a hatch, half-drowning him and leaving him all but unconscious. His mates swore and took it, plunging back to the work of securing a deck cargo of case oil. But Bowden staggered to his room, and nothing could move him. He stayed there until it was over. And his shipmates called him yellow, and Yellow Bowden he became.

The agony of that came back as he held to the Marathon's rail. He wiped the iron spray from his face. Time had brought him a certain cunning. Pride had aided him. But nothing could check his mad, blind panic in a crisis.

There was that time fighting fire in the main hold, off the coast of Malabar. He dropped his hose and ran after a small explosion knocked him off his feet. He was not injured, but he scrambled back on deck, leaving an officer unconscious and two scorched seamen to fight back the flames.

And then there was that time, when he had become a mate, and it was a question of taking the survivors off the Miltiades, going down fast in the Indian Ocean in a mad gale. He gave one look at the giant, smoking seas and refused. He was afraid. The second mate went off with seven volunteers, and the crew looked at Yellow Bowden, quietly, without a word.

Yet he prospered. That was certain, with his brother’s position in the line. He had gone up; second mate; mate; master at last— and a by-word.

Bowden thought, it was true, that once he became master trouble would fade. A master does not have to plunge into dangers. He could always cover the small, slow fears. But it was the great crisis that betrayed him. As on the Manlua. Everything might in time have been forgiven him; but not the Manlua.

It was just such a night as this in which the Marathon was going down. Wind and sea. Darkness, and without even a moon. The Manlua had gone down fast, so fast there was hardly time to get the boats away. Only one, in fact, got away. In that one boat was Captain Bowden. Eight men of the Manlua’s crew died upon the deck.

Bowden remembered going utterly, stark mad with terror; fighting at the rail; clawing men aside. Only the conflicting evidence, due to the pitch darkness, saved him at the inquiry.

Sane again and safe, Bowden could not tell the truth even to his elder brother, and so he had been given the Marathon and sent to sea again. And why he had taken her remained as much a mystery to him as why he had remained at sea. He was like a drunken man who insists upon staggering to his own doom.

BOWDEN steadied himself as the Marathon rolled sickeningly. A spasm of fear seized him, and then contempt and then self-pity. He was yellow.

He had no respect for himself. But the Fates hounded him. He had lost the Manlua and whatever vestige of pride or honor that might have remained. And now the Marathon. One chance in a thousand, and the Fates picked him.

“We’ll have to get the boats away soon,” the mate was saying.

The mate only addressed him perfunctorily, as a matter of routine. Whatever Bowden thought or said did not matter to any one.

“The passengers are acting well,” said the mate. “No panic. I’ve got them all properly assigned. Do you want to check things?”

“No. No, it’s all right. You can direct.”

“You’re staying here?”

“Yes, I’m staying here.”

The mate went away. The second mate was already gone, and the captain was left alone on the listing bridge. He flinched as a sea foamed across the foredeck. It wouldn’t be long now. Half an hour perhaps. Then she would slip under, or maybe roll over.

It cost Bowden a tremendous effort to remain where he was, but he could manage it for awhile. Until the last lurch came, and then he knew he would go utterly mad.

It would not be as it had been on the Manlua, though. They would get away all the boats they needed on the Marathon. There was time, and the sea was going down. The rescue ships would come up with the dawn. No man could blame Bowden for saving himself now.

No; that was clear. And why should a master die with his ship? There was a tradition, of course. A captain always remained. Where was the master of the Titanic, of the Vestris, of the Alaska?

But in those wrecks there had been too few boats, not enough room. There were others. Collins of the Maravale who stood on the bridge and cried with his ship a flaming hell beneath him. Brockley of the Asia City, grinding on the reefs, refusing to climb into the breeches-buoys though every soul was safe and ashore. Ashland of the Pekin Lady, foundered in mid-ocean and in a calm, who locked himself in his cabin when the last boat cleared. It was the tradition. You brought your ship home or you went down with her. Men he knew had done this, men, who in their time, had refused to drink with him.

Yet they could say nothing now if he saved himself. Not every captain was expected to seek the honor of being a martyr. And there was no blame in the losing of the Marathon. It was just one of those chances of the sea. But his record... He laughed. Yes, his record. They would say, and justly, that it was only Yellow Bowden making sure of life again.

He took his hands from the rail and moved uncertainly toward the companion to the lower bridge. He went down the companion, stopped a moment to view the nightmare of the wet decks, lighted by many hurricane lamps and some flares, the boats dropping into the sea, the passengers quiet and remarkably orderly. The mate was a good man. He had handled things well.

“Don’t worry,” the mate was saying to some one on the main deck. “He’ll come fast enough when it’s the last boat.”

“So long as he waits until then it’ll be all right,” said another voice. “But if he acts like he did on the Manlua before this mob’s overside we’ll have a panic on our hands.”

Captain Bowden groped into his room and sat down. He had to make several attempts at lighting a match because his hands were shaking. The match flamed. Opening a drawer in his desk, Bowden secured what he wanted.

Then Bowden went back on the bridge.

THE mate came on the bridge for the last time.

“You’d better acome along, sir,” he said evenly. “We’re ready to push off.”

“Every one get away?” asked the captain.

“Every one, sir. The last boat’s waiting.”

“I,” stammered the captain, “I will stay here.”

The mate was silent. He could see that the other man was sagging at the rail, literally sagging, his legs flaccid beneath him, and there was no mistaking the stark fear in his voice.

“But there’s no need of that, sir,” the mate said. “There’s plenty of room. No use staying with her any longer. She’ll go down any minute.”

He looked sharply at the captain. This wasn’t Yellow Bowden at all. Yellow Bowden should have been in that last boat almost before she touched the water. And Bowden was saying—

“You might take this and throw it away.”

“Take this?”

The mate mechanically took a small object from the captain’s hand. He was struck. He was nonplused.

“Come on, sir,” he said. “Let me give you a hand. Are you sick?”

“Will you get out!” the captain shouted suddenly. “Get to hell out of here! I’m going down with her. Get out!”

“Listen to me, sir!”

“Get out!”

A flicker of moonlight danced over the deck as the Marathon gave an ominous lurch. Captain Bowden staggered a little, and there was a clinking sound of metal. And then the mate saw— saw even as he turned to run, knowing it was too late to do anything more. He dropped down to the maindeck, over the rail and into the waiting boat.

Slowly and steadily the Marathon slid forward and down. The sea climbed over the foredeck, covered it; rose steadily up the saloon house to the lower bridge, then to the navigation bridge. And above the wind and the sea no! 2 sounded the mad screaming of Captain Bowden, the screaming of a man utterly lost in raw fear.

In the moonlight the watchers could see one wildly uptossed arm, a struggling, straining torso. Scream followed scream until the water slid over and with a final roll the Marathon went utterly from view. There was a long quiet, with only the whine of the wind, the slap of spray against the boat’s side. And then the mate released his long held breath.

“He knew he was going to crack!”

The fourth mate leaned forward.

“What is it? What’s that you got there, sir?”

The mate opened his hand and showed the small object the captain had given him as they parted.

“This?” he said. “This? Look at it, man! He ironed himself to the rail and gave me the key!”

__________________

7: Women Are Queer

The Passing Show Mar 2 1935

Australian Women's Weekly  9 Nov 1935

THEY were introduced in Monte Video by the top shackle of the port derrick guy swung over number two hold. The Cardiff City was loading against time; the winchman jerked the cargo-sling too impatiently; the derrick swung and jarred, and the aforementioned shackle snapped clean. Miss Esther Madrone, very pretty, very spoiled, and just twenty-two, was standing for'ard of the bridge alley when the released guy came whipping down. She heard someone shout to her. She looked up, unaware of what was happening. And then a heavy hand struck her shoulder and knocked her a full dozen feet to crash against the rail and collapse. The guy-block thudded into the planking of the deck where she had been standing and left a vicious dent in the iron-hard teak.

"What on earth?" gasped the aston-ished girl. "How dare you?"

"I'm sorry," explained the tall young man who helped her to her feet. "But there wasn't time for anything else. You'd have been a pretty mess if that block had hit you."

MISS ESTHER MADRONE shook herself free and went crimson with embarrassment. Her hat had been knocked askew; her white skirt had come in contact with a nasty mess of oil; her hair had come down and she had bruised her arm against the rail.

"There certainly wasn't any need for you to knock me down!" she blazed.

He stared at her, his blue eyes narrowing a little in his heavilytanned face, and his firm lips tightening.

"You ought to keep out of the way when we're loading," he snapped. "The fore deck's no place for a woman."

"Are you telling me what to do and where to go? My father—"

"We all know that," he said shortly. "He's general manager of the Line and making the round trip of inspection. But you can be just as dead on your own deck as on anyone else's."

He pushed his uniform cap without an emblem further back on his head and turned away before she could answer. And then her father was on one side of her, a red-faced, thin little man, snorting into his grey moustache and genuinely shaken. Captain Stewart appeared on her other side, sallow-faced but handsome in his tropic whites, solicitous and angry.

"Good heavens! That was a narrow squeak," choked Mr. Madrone. "Are you sure you're not hurt, my dear?"

"I am hurt," she snapped viciously. "That idiot—" She stopped then. For the first time she saw the long dent in the teak deck and the heavy block beside it. And she whitened. "Oh," she said weakly. "I—I didn't understand."

"I saw the whole thing!" snapped Captain Stewart. "I'll look into it, you can be sure, sir." Mr. Madrone mopped his brow and nodded.

"What— what was that man's name?" his daughter demanded. "If that thing had hit me—" She shuddered.

"Owens," said Captain Stewart shortly. "Jerry Owens. It's his first trip as bos'n with us and it's likely to be his last."

He strode for'ard as Mr. Madrone led a very chastened and now frightened young lady into her stateroom, and he found Jerry Owens talking pointedly to the winchman.

"Bos'n," said Captain Stewart grimly, "you're responsible for the gear. Every-thing was supposed to be overhauled when we left 'Frisco."

"Everything was overhauled, sir," said the bos'n. "But I can't look inside half an inch of metal. This shackle was new."

HE held out fragments of the thing in his hand and the captain saw the snapped bolt was badly flawed. There was obviously no blame there, but he felt that some rebuke was necessary. He liked his authority and he was very anxious to please Mr. Madrone and Esther, especially Esther.

"You certainly weren't very careful with your language to Miss Madrone," he said. The other tightened his belt and considered.

"She wasn't very careful with her language to me," he observed without humor. "I save her from being smeared all over the deck and she acts as if she was annoyed about it."

Captain Stewart bit his lip. He had a natural antagonism for the bos'n that he could not hide.

"A few more affairs like that, bos'n, and you'll find yourself in trouble." He paused a moment and considered. "You're a bit too smart, Owens. Going up for your ticket next time home, aren't you?"

"I expect to, sir."

"Well, watch your step. If I had to disrate you that wouldn't look well with the examiners, would it? And I expect you'll be asking me for a letter of recommendation. I don't have to give you one, you know."

The other tightened visibly, torn between a sense of injustice and the knowledge that this man before him could check his career at the outset.

"Very good, sir," he said at last, with an effort. Captain Stewart nodded and noticed with satisfaction that several of the crew were listening. After all, he was captain. It made him feel better.

"You'd better apologise to Miss Madrone when you see her," he ended. "That'll be all."

Jerry Owens stood looking after him for a moment and his jaw stuck out.

"Apologise? Like hell I will," he muttered. And then seeing the men standing around and grinning: "Get back to work, you slobs. What is this, a vaudeville show?"

"Owens," said Mr. Tremont, the mate, looking into the door of the bos'n's room that evening. "You're wanted in the old man's room."

"What's he want to do? Give me a medal?" asked Jerry sourly. "Or log me for scarring the deck?"

The mate shook his head.

"I suppose it's about that Miss Madrone business. You'd better watch your step. For some reason the old man's taken a dislike to you. I fancy he wishes he'd been on hand himself when that block came down. You know the talk."

"That he's sweet on her? Hell, I don't want his girl, even if I had a chance. What she thinks of me is nobody's business."

The mate smiled a little.

"Women are queer. She's been saying a lot of good things about you all afternoon. She even went so far as to look in the ship's articles for information."

"Age, birthplace, married or single. Maybe she wanted to find out how much I make," said Jerry cynically. He pulled on his shoregoing jacket and adjusted his tie.

"Watch your step, anyway," warned the mate. "I've put in a lot of time helping you get ready for your ticket. I don't want to see it wasted. The old man can be pretty dirty when he feels that way. And he's got influence."

Captain Stewart was in his cabin walking sourly back and forth, his hands clasped behind him, a cigar jutting from his mouth, and a frown on his face. Mr. Madrone sat in the swivel chair before the captain's desk, smoking a cigar also and inspecting the cargo list. They both looked up when Jerry knocked, and the captain snapped, "Come in, Owens! Mr. Madrone wants to talk to you."

"Ah, yes." agreed Mr. Madrone. looked keenly at the young bos'n, noting with unconscious approval the broad shoulders, the weather tan, the air of sureness that not even a general manager's presence could lessen. "Ah, yes. You're the young man who saved my daughter's life this morning. I wish to thank you."

He got up and offered his hand.

"Naturally I can't express everything I feel," he went on. "But if there's anything I can do for you I trust you will let me know."

Jerry shot a look at Captain Stewart, who was glaring vindictively. And he scowled.

"There's nothing just now, sir," he said. "Later, perhaps. I expect to get my ticket this time home, and if you think there's a chance of a berth for me afterwards—?" He paused, his meaning plain.

"I'll be glad to speak to our port captain," beamed Mr. Madrone. "Very glad. Come and see me as soon as you've passed." He coughed and inspected the tip of his cigar. "In the meantime, I wonder if you would like to dine with my daughter and myself Ashore. To-night?"

THERE was nothing Jerry Owens wanted to do less than go ashore with the general manager and his daughter. It wasn't only that it simply wasn't done, but he was certain he'd have a better time with the third mate of the Gannet. And then, too, he had a sense that he was being patronised and he was apt to be a very independent young man, which, since he was an orphan and had fought his own way up, he had a right to be.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said firmly. "But you see—"

"Owens!" choked or rather snarled Captain Stewart. "Mr. Madrone has done you the great honor of asking you to dine with him. I hope you understand?"

If Captain Stewart had kept his mouth shut his bos'n would have kept his date with the third mate of the Gannet in spite of hell and high water. But it was the captain's tone, and the struggling anger in his voice, that altered matters. Jerry Owens understood that to dine with the Madrones would annoy the captain enormously. And he smiled. He owed the old man something for those veiled threats after the shackle episode.

"Very well, sir. I'll see you ashore," he said to the general manager, and with a half-salute he left the cabin. Captain Stewart waited a moment and when Mr. Madrone's back was turned he hurled his cigar viciously into the cuspidor.

"Don't you think it's bad policy to entertain a deckhand ashore?" he demanded heatedly. "After all, sir, he's liable to become familiar with Miss Esther."

"I don't think so," disagreed Mr. Madrone. "He's not that kind."

"How do you know?"

"I know men. That's why I'm running the Line," said Mr. Madrone shortly.

There seemed no point in going on with that conversa-tion so Captain Stewart lighted a fresh cigar.

"I suppose you know how I feel about Miss Esther, sir," he said diffidently. The general manager stared out of an open port.

"You've mentioned it," he observed with a touch of dryness. "I believe I told you it was up to her."

"She seems to take it as a joke," said Captain Stewart bitterly. "I asked her again if she'd marry me, when we were in Rosario. I've been in love with her a long time, sir."

"Well, women are queer," observed Mr. Madrone, unconsciously repeating the mate's remark of a little earlier. "Give her time. She's still young."

"Yes," agreed the captain bitterly "She's still young."

WHEN he left the captain's cabin Jerry Owens found the head of the companion leading to the main deck blocked by a vision in white. He was aware of the fragrance of violets and other indefinite but very disturbing things. His annoyance immediately returned.

"Mr. Owens," said Miss Esther Madrone (and she had, when she wished, a voice that would move a stone image). "Mr. Owens. You must forgive me. I want to apologise for being so rude this morning. You see, I was so astonished, and I hadn't the faintest idea of what was happening."

Jerry frowned.

"That's all right, miss," he said stiffly. "It's all in the day's work."

"That's very charming of you to put it that way," she murmured. "But I still thank you. You're going ashore with us to-night, aren't you? Father thought it would be the least we could do to have you as our guest."

A dark suspicion shot through Jerry's mind.

"Did you," he demanded, "put that idea in your father's head?"

"I?"

"Well, it's a funny idea," he said scowling.

"Well, then, I did," she laughed. "I wanted to make up for my treating you so. You're not angry, are you? I'm really interested. Mr. Tremont was telling me the way you've been studying and I thought perhaps I could help."

He stared at her, hard-eyed and resentful, all his independence stirring within him.

"You always get what you want, don't you?" he said bitterly. "Just like that!" He snapped his fingers.

She was silent for a moment, her lower lip caught between white teeth and her eyes speculative. And then very suddenly she softened.

"That wasn't very nice," she said, and all unbidden the blood crawled in his cheeks. No, it wasn't very nice. And the dusk was softly flooding over the lights of Monte Video; and it was spring; and the scent of violets was very close; and her eyes were starry; and out in the harbor on some liner a band was playing. No, it wasn't very nice. And then abruptly, when she laid a small white hand on his arm, something turned completely over inside him.

"I— I didn't mean that," he choked lamely, and quite unaware of what he was saying. "I'm really sorry."

She nodded gravely and moved aside to let him pass.

"On the dock then, in half an hour." He was already one step down the companion when she stopped him again. "Father always comes back on board early. He gets sleepy. You won't mind, will you?"

"Mind?" he echoed.

"I mean if we go to a dance afterwards."

"No," he said. "Oh, no." And he fell rather than walked down the com-panion to the main deck. She watched him go with the trace of a smile and her eyes were deep and speculative again. Yes, he was very good-looking. And it seemed he didn't like women. Well, well, well! We shall see. Anything, anyway, was preferable to Captain Stewart. She detested him. But Mr. Owens...

"I've been on this ship three months now," she told herself. "And never even noticed him before. I must be losing my grip."

Jerry Owens found himself talking too when he reached his room.

"She's not going to make a fool out of me," he said savagely. "Stepping out of her class for a thrill. I'll bet I have a rotten time!"

He took a final look in his mirror to adjust his tie, and he had already reached up to put out the light when something in his own eyes stopped him. He stared at himself for a long minute and then he spoke just four words, slowly and with a queer emphasis.

"Well, I'll be hanged!" he said.

"OWENS," snapped Captain Stewart many days later. It was early afternoon on the deserted boat deck, with a keen wind blowing and the purple sea covered with white caps beneath a cloud-spotted sky. Jerry was looking at a splice one of the A.B.'s had just finished and it was not until the light dazzled back from the captain's whites that he was aware he was being spoken to.

"Owens!" barked the captain. "You're a clever boy, a very clever boy. Too damned clever. And you're getting out of your depth."

Jerry straightened from the splice and stared at the captain

"I don't get it, sir."

"You don't get it?" echoed Captain Stewart, his face white with passion. "I'm talking about Miss Madrone. I saw you ashore with her in Rio after she'd told her father she felt too tired to go with him. I saw you ashore in Santos. That's a presumption on the kindness of decent people who came down to your level for one evening in Monte Video."

Jerry went a little white himself.

"I don't see it's any of your business what I do when I'm off duty, sir," he said, an edge to his voice.

Captain Stewart half-raised a hard fist, and, thinking better of it, dropped it again.

"It's my business when fo'c'sle hands start fooling with the passengers, especially when the passenger in question happens to be the daughter of the line's general manager. I wonder you don't invite yourself in the saloon for dinner!"

"I still don't get it," Jerry insisted. "Miss Madrone is old enough to know what she's doing, and she certainly isn't answerable to you. Nor am I off duty and ashore."

"I'm talking to you, and about you, not her," shouted the captain, madness in his eyes. "As a matter of fact Miss Madrone and myself are practically engaged. And your presuming to make appointments with her, knowing her father has no knowledge of them, is certainly my business. You stay away from her or there'll be trouble, mighty big trouble. I know you've been meeting her aft after dark, and you've been at sea long enough to know fo'c'sle rats like you aren't allowed abaft the foremast without orders. How would you like me to tell Mr. Madrone you'd been pawing and kissing his daughter?"

Even as he hit the captain Jerry knew he had made a ghastly mistake. A master mariner, on his own vessel, on the high seas, lying on his boatdeck holding his jaw, and with his bos'n standing over him was something to make the gods shudder. Jerry nursed his bruised knuckles and had wild visions of standing trial. This was serious. But he'd gone far enough now to go further.

"You talk to me like that again and you'll get some more," he said, thin-lipped. "Now go and tell Mr. Mad-rone. I don't give a damn! I'm in love with Esther, and you're a liar when you say you're as good as en-gaged. She hates the sight of you!"

Captain Stewart got up ominously calm.

"That finishes you, Owens. I'm putting you in irons for striking a superior officer."

"Prove it," said Jerry shortly. "You haven't a witness. You took care of that yourself when you figured on talking to me. Made sure no one was around. Prove it! And remember if you put me in irons that Miss Madrone's name will come out at the trial. If you think anything of her you won't want that."

Captain Stewart looked up and down the boat deck and checked a vicious oath.

"There are other ways," he said thickly. "I'll disrate you before we get home. I'll give you such a rotten discharge you'll never get a ticket. And I'll have you blacklisted in every port on the coast."

"If going to sea means serving with tripe like you I'll be glad to quit," said Jerry disgustedly, and he turned and walked away before the captain could say anything further. But he knew, just the same, that he would never now wear the gold bands of rank.

"I GUESS I'm through, all right," he told Esther that night when they met in the darkness near the after-house. "He'll never forgive me and he can do everything he says."

"Darling," she cried, and kissed him.

"I'll tell father everything. He'll—"

"No!" He put a hand over her lips and she kissed that, too. She was very different from the spoiled and selfish young girl who had almost been killed by the breaking shackle. She was terribly in love. She had never dreamed she could be so much in love.

"Yes!" she stormed, freeing her lips. "Father is much more important than that horrible man. I will tell him."

"No!" he snapped, so savagely she was startled. "This is my fight and I'll see it through myself. I don't want any help like that."

She recognised the old fierce and stubborn independence in him again, and she loved him the more for it, but she would straighten the matter out somehow. After all, what use was there in having a father general manager if one couldn't straighten out things? She nodded to herself. And then both of them forgot all trouble for a long time.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," said Mr. Madrone's dry voice about half-an-hour later. A flashlight blazed briefly upon them and went out again. "I understood I'd probably find you here."

There was a small, tight silence.

"Captain Stewart told you," accused Esther. She added with bitterness, "And he's supposed to be in love with me." Jerry said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

"I think you'd better go for'ard," observed Mr. Madrone. "You'll hear more of this in the morning, Owens."

"Very well, sir," Jerry agreed. He felt Esther's cool fingers press his hand reassuringly but he knew there was no hope. Bo'suns do not marry the daughters of general managers. It was unthinkable. Mr. Madrone pointed out that very same fact in the privacy of his stateroom.

"Esther," he said seriously. "I never dreamed when you asked me to invite him to dinner in Monte Video you had anything like this in your head."

"I hadn't," she wailed in her handkerchief. "I only meant— meant it to be one of those things. Just a bit of fun. But it's— it's all real now."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mr. Madrone, puffing through his moustache. "Tell me it's just a silly and very unwise flirtation and I'll let the whole matter rest. I'll even do what I can to help young Owens. I haven't forgotten he saved your life."

"But it isn't just a flirtation," she protested. "Not now! I love him. I'm going to marry him."

"What!" shouted Mr. Madrone, and stared at her with a baffled look in his eyes. He had always given her her own way. He had never tried to keep a rein on her. Never. And now this.

"This is just the result of a long voyage," he said at last, dolefully. "Monotony, that's all. When you get home you'll see how impossible it is. Don't you realise he's only a common sailor?"

"He'll be an officer soon."

"I doubt it now. But supposing he is. You can't get married on a third mate's pay. And he'll be a third mate for a long time."

"I've thought of all that."

"And you'll still marry him?"

"I'll never marry anyone else I tell you I love him! Oh, why are you so stupid?"

"Stupid?" Mr. Madrone was astonished. "I'm not the stupid one. What about you? There's Captain Stewart crazy about you. He's not an old man."

"He's nearly forty!"

"Forty's not old," Mr. Madrone protested, with all the emphasis of a man in his fifties who still feels good for twenty years. "Ridiculous. Captain Stewart has a private income. He has a command. He'll get the new ship the Line's launching next year. Don't be a fool, Esther. You've got to think of the future."

"I am thinking of the future. If I had to live with that— that beast of a captain I'd die."

"Stewart? A beast?" Mr. Madrone blew through his moustache again and vaguely groped for a cigar. "Look here," he said decisively. "This is all rot. I'll break Owens myself unless you give him up. The whole thing's impossible."

"I don't care!" She faced him, red-eyed but all aflame. "I'll marry him just the same. I hate Captain Stewart! I hate you! I hate everyone!"

"Let's put things off until we're home," he begged. "We can look at them with a different perspective then. The whole business has got Stewart so crazy with jealousy he'll ruin Owens' sea career, that's certain. Maybe the young man can find something ashore. I don't know. But let that wait. If you still want him when we've been home for a time— well, we'll talk it over again." He paused a moment, smoking nervously. He wanted to be fair. "Owens is a promising boy. I think he's got the real stuff. And I'm sure he'll listen to reason."

"I don't want him to listen to reason!"

"There, there," he soothed. "I won't say a word to him then. And maybe I can calm Stewart down, though it's against my policy to interfere between the captains and their men. But maybe something will turn up to solve the whole problem."

MR. TREMONT knocked on the door of Jerry's room two days later.

"The usual thing, bos'n," he said. "Boat drill. The siren goes in ten minutes."

Jerry slid from his bunk and reached for his jacket. He looked thinner, grimmer even, and there was an unaccustomed sombreness about his blue eyes. He would have felt better if something drastic had happened after the events of two days previously, but nothing had. Captain Stewart had not spoken to him; Mr, Madrone had given him only the usual good morning. Of Esther he had seen nothing at all. It gave him a sense of impending doom, and not even the fact he was in love helped him.

"I don't see the sense of this boat drill," he observed sourly.

"No more do I," assented the mate, lighting his pipe and leaning against the wash-basin. "The old man just likes to show off. Leading a parade of boats around the harbor. If he wants real practice he ought to try it at sea."

The Cardiff City had just come to port, her last port of call before home, and it was Captain Stewart's practice each voyage to have a more thorough boat drill than was usually possible at sea. The boats on the side away from the dock were filled, lowered to the water, and pulled around for half-an-hour or so. It gave the men practice at the falls and the oars, Captain Stewart would explain, and it brought out any weaknesses that might have developed in the boats themselves. Everyone took part in this last drill, from the captain to the smallest deck boy, but it was optional with the pas-sengers, though they invariably went along for the fun of the thing.

"The boat gear's all right?" asked the mate casually. Jerry stared at him, for there was something in the mate's tone that implied things.

"I LOOKED them all over last week, sir," he said. "And we had the boats out in Rio if you remember. Everything's O.K."

The mate nodded.

"It would be awkward if we had another accident like that shackle affair, Owens. The old man's just waiting to hang something on you."

"Meaning what?"

The mate shrugged.

"Oh, nothing. I'm not sure. But I'd take a quick look around at the gear before the drill. Especially the poop boats."

Jerry looked at him for a long time, but the mate stared at the white-scrubbed cabin deck and seemed plunged in thought. It was obvious he had nothing further to say on that particular subject. Jerry frowned and jammed his peaked cap on his head.

"Well, we'd better be going then, sir." The mate inspected the bowl of his pipe and nodded. They went on deck together to prepare for the boat drill.

The drill itself was all a matter of routine and there was little or no danger connected with it. The third mate's boat got away, and then the mate's. The captain's boat, on the bridge deck, was swung out and waiting for the second mate's, which was on the poop. Jerry was with Captain Stewart, the chief steward. Mr. Madrone, and four able seamen, while Esther stood close to her father. She was a little pale, but otherwise seemed perfectly collected and even cheerful.

In the confusion she managed to squeeze Jerry's arm and whisper a few words. Everything was going to be all right. She hadn't given her father a minute's rest, and she was sure he would help them. Jerry nodded but said nothing, staring gloomily aft. Women certainly were optimists.

"Well!" snapped Captain Stewart. "What's the idiot waiting for?"

He seemed nervous, walking up and down jerkily and occasionally stop-ping to glare at the poop. Once the second mate's boat was in the water his own would be lowered and the solemn procession round the harbor commence.

"He's all ready, sir," said Jerry shortly as he saw the second mate lift his hand. The captain halted and watched, little muscles twitching at the corner of his lips. Five of the second mate's men were clambering into the boat, and then abruptly there came a strained cracking sound and the for'ard fall stretched, unravelled, and snapped. One end of the heavy lifeboat dropped, pitching the five men into the water, while the boat's wooden hull slammed and splintered against the Cardiff City's steel side.

"Good heavens !" choked Mr. Madrone. "Those men will be drowned." But the mate's boat was already pulling for the swimmers. Captain Stewart drew a deep breath.

"Well, bos'n?" he said thinly. "That's the second little accident this voyage. Someone might have been killed."

Jerry stared at him, his face white.

"I don't understand it, sir. We rove all new falls only two voyages back, and I inspected them myself just before drill."

"So it seems," said the captain dryly. "What sort of an officer you'd make, God knows. But you're finished as bos'n on my ship I'll attend to you later."

There was a gathering in the captain's cabin after the drill. The general manager and his daughter sat on the settee. Esther having insisted on being present despite the opposition of both her father and Captain Stewart. Cap-tain Stewart himself was at his desk, grim-faced and with a barely hidden look of triumph on his face. Jerry stood to one side of the desk, frowning a little and thoughtful. There was something funny about the whole business. He would have suspected it even if the mate hadn't dropped those hints.

"Where the devil's Tremont?" the captain wanted to know. "Well, it doesn't matter. The mate's responsible for the ship's gear, but in practice the bos'n attends to it. It's very obvious you're either unlucky or careless, Owens. I think the latter. So I'm disrating you to ordinary seaman."

"It wasn't my fault that fall gave way, sir," said Jerry doggedly. "I tell you the rope was sound. It looked good for several more voyages."

"Well, it broke, didn't it? You're supposed to see falls don't break when they're needed. What's going to break next?"

"Is it necessary to do anything drastic?" put in Mr. Madrone uncertainly. He did not like to interfere in such a matter. "After all, no one was hurt and you know Owens expects to go up for his ticket."

"He's not fit to hold one," the captain snapped. "And I might say this little affair is only a culmination of several, including a matter of striking me."

"You know what that was over?" cried Esther. She jumped up, her eyes blazing. "You're just a jealous beast!"

"Now, now," said Mr. Madrone.

"I'm sorry, Miss Esther," the captain soothed her, reddening. "You know I'd do anything for you. But this is a matter of discipline. The crew would take charge of the whole ship if I let one man ride over me."

The cabin door opened and Mr. Tre-mont came in. He looked around for a moment then took off his peaked cap.

"I'm disrating Owens, Mr. Tremont," the captain snapped. "I know he's a pet of yours, but that can't be helped."

Mr. Tremont nodded and cleared his throat.

"I take it that broken fall is the reason, sir?"

"Just one of them. And we'll make a note of inefficiency on the young man's discharge."

Mr. Tremont cleared his throat again.

"I dislike having to say what I must," he began. "An officer's duty is to uphold the captain, but I can't stand by and see Owens' future wiped out."

Captain Stewart stared at him im-patiently.

"What the devil are you talking about?"

"Well, last night, or rather this morning about three o'clock, while we were still at sea, it so happened I couldn't sleep and came on deck for a breath of air I saw you going aft, sir."

Captain Stewart grew a little pale.

"Is there anything to prevent a master going aft on his own ship?"

"But at three in the morning, sir, I thought it a little odd."

"So you followed me?" inquired the captain in a strained voice.

"Not exactly, sir. I thought I'd meet you coming back, and have a talk about one thing and another. But you didn't come back for such a long time, I finally went aft. You were on the poop deck then doing something near the boats. I couldn't make out what."

There was a complete silence with every eye on the captain. He held him-self in control though, and laughed.

"Nonsense!" he said. "I never touched anything about the boats. What are you trying to imply?"

Mr. Tremont looked at Jerry, and then at Mr. Madrone.

"The for'ard fall of the port boat, the fall that broke, was very carefully cut more than half through. Someone had opened the strands and cut the insides so that when they were twisted together again the rope would look sound. The fall could stand the strain of the boat, but not when the men got into it."

Captain Stewart jumped to his feet. "You're romancing!" he blazed. "I never touched the falls. That's a serious charge, Tremont, and you'll have to prove it."

"A very serious charge." Mr. Madrone agreed, and he looked keenly at the captain. Mr. Tremont nodded.

"I know I'm risking my berth. But the fact remains. I suspected something was wrong, but everything looked right. I've just finished a more careful examination. Whoever cut the fall that broke also cut the fall of the boat opposite. You see, he couldn't know which side of the ship would be against the dock when we got here, so he had to make sure of both boats, since we could only use the one on the clear side of the ship. It was a clever piece of work."

Captain Stewart went ashen and looked around.

"Supposing what he says is true there's nothing to connect me with such a thing. Why should I wreck gear on my own ship?"

"I saw you on the poop at three in the morning,'' said Mr. Tremont calmly.

"And," added Mr. Madrone, "you don't like the bos'n. I notice you're using the incident to break him."

"You believe I'd go to such a length, the master of a ship doing a thing like that to discredit a damned bos'un?"

Mr. Madrone stood up and carefully lighted a cigar.

"It's a messy business," he observed. "Probably we could never prove who did it. And any sort of trouble would be bad publicity for the Line. I think," he looked absently at Captain Stewart, "I think maybe you'd better write the office and ask for a vacation." Captain Stewart stood rigid for a moment and madness blazed in his eyes. He cracked then.

"I get it," he shouted. "You want to get rid of me! Damn you! Well, you can have my resignation whenever you wish it. And go to hell!"

He went into his inner cabin and slammed the door with a vicious bang, laughing hysterically. Mr. Madrone looked at his daughter and then at an open-mouthed Jerry.

"You'd better carry on, Owens," he said. "And let all this go no further. Come and see me when you're ready for a third mate's berth." He took Mr. Tremont by the arm and guided him out on deck.

"Jerry, dear!" cried Esther. "Oh, Jerry!"

"It's all beyond me," grumbled Jerry. "The old man must be crazy. Can you imagine? Do you love me still?"

"Silly. We're going to be married when we get home."

"But your father—"

"Father has nothing whatever to say about it. I told him so. And I don't care. Aren't you going to kiss me?"

"I don't like this business of you and your father settling things," he said stormily. "I can stand on my own feet and when I want to get married—"

"Hush! You've got nothing to say about that, either. Now kiss me!"

"I don't like," started Jerry obstinately, but his mouth was stopped then and he forgot what it was he didn't like.

Mr. Madrone looked very unhappy out on deck, and he sighed as frag-ments of conversation and other strange sounds drifted from the open cabin ports. Well, he'd have to put up with it, he supposed.

"Unless I miss a guess," he told the mate, "Captain Stewart will leave the ship at this port. He's not only a little unhinged, I think, but he's badly scared. Knows now he went too far. Men might have been killed when that boat fell. I'm a bit sorry for him, though. Good man in many ways. But when he's in love— you understand— a man does a lot of queer things. Never mind. You'll take the Cardiff City."

"And Owens for third mate if he passes, sir," suggested Mr. Tremont. "I've put a lot of time in over that boy."

"Yes, you'd better keep an eye on him," Mr. Madrone agreed resignedly. "I fancy I'll be seeing a lot of him on and off. At least, so my daughter tells me. Women are the devil!"

__________________

8: Sweet Music

Collier’s Oct 29 1938

Sun (Sydney) 18 Feb 1940

THE rusty old tramp ship Selwick, out of San Francisco for Adelaide and coming up to the Australian coast, was pitching before a quartering green sea, taking spray all along her weather rail and shuddering to the keel as the giant combers nuzzled against her, and then subsided with regretful moans.  Her rigging shuddered in the wind, and each bulkhead and door, long since out of alignment, shuddered also to the labored pulse of her engine. She was a shuddery ship, and Captain Twigg disliked being reminded of the fact, though at this moment, he was shuddering also.

He ripped open the chartroom door and stamped inside. "Do you hear that blasted racket, Mister?" he roared at the tirst mate. "I say, do you hear it?"

Mr. Wilkins did not seem to. He was intently studying a chart and biting on his pipe-stem, his battered uniform cap pushed far back on his head.

Captain Twigg swore hard, and his red face grew redder as he shook the mate's shoulder. "I say, do you hear it?" he shouted. "Damn it man; are you deaf?"

Mr. Wilkins drew his lean, bony bulk from the chart table, stared round with some surprise, saw that the captain was talking to him, and then carefully removed large plugs front his cars.

"I beg pardon, sir. This cotton wool, you know. I always plug up on Saturdays."

Captain Twigg's ball-like five feet five seemed about to explode, and emotion alone subdued his voice when next he spoke.

"Listen," he managed. He shook the mate's arm. "The chief's at it again."

Faintly but persistentIy, wailing and weirdly, but plain even across the wind, there cattte from somewhere amidships the sound of souls in torment. Mr. Dibble, the chief engineer, was playing his bagpipes again.

The mate inspected the bowl of his pipe and managed a faint smile.

"Saturday afternoon, you know, sir. Mr. Dibble always tries out scales or something."

Captain Twigg took hold of the chart table as the Selwick took a vicious dip and corkscrewed up. He was new to the ship. He had considered a bagpipe-playing chief engineer as being somewhat of a novelty, and, for the first week, somewhat humorous. But this was the third week, and he had discovered that the banshee wail of bagpipes, breaking out at almost any unexpected time, did things to his inside. Especially on Saturdays, when the chief invariably gave himself a concert at length.

"Mr. Wilkins." said Captain Twigg carefully, "I always believed I had an ear for music. I discover I have not. I am unable to distinguish between Mr. Dibble's scales and whatever else it is he tries to play. So would you kmdly ask him to step up here? Present him, of course, with my compliments first. I presume he is not yet too drunk."

"Very good, sir," said the mate, resigned, and clawed down to the main deck.

He returned some minutes later, his leathery face impassive. Captain Twigg glared at him and demanded, "Well?"

"I think you'd better wait till tomorrow to see him, sir," the mate suggested. "He's a little under the weather."

Captain Twigg seemed to stand on his toes for a moment and his eyes bulged.

"What?" he roared. "I send you to, get the chief engineer and you tell me I ought to wait till to-morrow! What the hell do you mean? And what did he say? Out with it, man!"

Mr. Wilkins bit on his pipe-stem and shrugged.

"Well, if you'll have it, sir. he said his compliments to Captain Twigg and he; can go to hell."

Captain Twigg blew through his walrus moustache, steadied himself against the chart table again, and finally came under control. "May I inquire," he said in a husky voice, "just what he meant by that?"

Mr. Wilkins thoughtfully took the dividers out of Bass Strait and scratched his chin with them.

"If you'll take my advice-- now, look here, sir. Mr. Dibble has been on the ship for years, and you have to understand his peculiarities. He's the only chief we've been able to keep aboard after one voyage, and he's the only man who . understands that temperamental engine of ours."

"I don't care what he is or how long he's been on the Selwick!" choked the captain. "What does he mean?"

"Well, sir, he said, to be specific, that this was Saturday and he was in his own quarters, and that so long as he was not endangering the safety of the ship or refusing duty, it was none of your business what noise he made."

"I didn't tell you to tell him I object to his noise!" shouted the captain. "I told you to ask him to step up here."

"I mentioned that, agreed the mate, "and he said you could go to hell. I told you that."

"Very well, Mr. Wilkins," he said in a strangled voice. "I'll condescend to go down and see Mr. Dibble in person."

"If you'll take my advice--" the mate began a little wearily. But Captain Twigg snorted and slammed out of the chartroom.

The mate chewed on his pipe for a moment or two and then shrugged. Carefully he closed the chartroom door to shut out the tortured sound of the bagpipes, and to make doubly sure he replaced the cotton plugs in his ears. "My money," he said absently, "is on the chief. Though I do wish he'd find another hobby."

Mr. Dibble, chief engineer of the Selwick, was a wiry little man with a bristle of red hair, a bristle of red moustache, watery blue eyes, and innumerable freckles. He was also very obstinate. He was, as he used to declare sometimes, a mystic combination of one-third Dutch, one-third Scotch, and one-third Welsh. He had on occasion the phlegmatic obstinacy of the first, the granite-like persistence of the second, and the soul of the third. He liked music, or what he considered music.

Now it is an unfortunate fact, in some respects, that bagpipe play requires movement. There is something rather futile in a bagpipe player standing still: while to contemplate one seated in a chair and confined to a ship's cabin is incredible.

When Captain Twigg arrived amidships, therefore. Mr. Dibble, in the tradition, was marching up and down the lee side of the deck, his eyes inspired and the tartan ribbons of his instrument fluttering in the breeze as he droned out "Bentrauchan's Lament."

The third and fourth engineers, who were off watch, sat resignedly on the storm steps of their cabins, having given up all hope of sleep for that afternoon. As a matter of policy, they were trying to seem pleased with the performance.

"Mr. Dibble!" said Captain Twigg.

Dibble marched past him and turned and marched back.

"Dibble!" the captain roared. "Am I talking to myself? Stop that racket!"

The pipes wailed on. Mr. Dibble turned, marched back again, let the pipes subside for a moment, and then burst into "The Road to the Isles."

The veins in Captain Twigg's neck swelled. He stuck out a foot and tripped the inspired chief.

"Now, Mister," said Captain Twigg grimly when the noise had subsided and in the strange, unearthly silence that then settled on the Selwick, "maybe we can figure who's master of this ship. I sent word I wanted to see you, and you told me to go to hell."

Mr. Dibble brushed himself off, anxiously examined his pipes to make sure they were not damaged, and then became indignant.

"I did not, sir," he insisted.. "I used lots worse language."

Captain Twigg breathed hard. "I ordered you to stop playing that damn thing!" he said between his teeth. "You've got everybody crazy. The watches below can't get any sleep, and even the men on deck have to stuff their ears."

Mr. Dibble wagged an oil-stained forefinger under Captain Twigg's nose. "I've been five years on the Selwick, and never a master's objected to my playing yet. At least not for long. If you can't appreciate a musical instrument, don't go insulting it."

Speech almost failed Captain Twigg.

"A musical instrument," he whispered. "We won't argue about that." His voice grew stronger. "You just stop, that's all. I'm not fooling. If there's any more of this infernal racket I'll put you in irons. And, anyway, you're drunk."

Mr. Dibble nodded gravely.

"Ay, sir," he argued. "I wouldn't be surprised. On Saturdays I get drunk, and I play. It's a tolerable solace and fortifies me for the week to come. So kindly go to hell. Or did I already say that?"

Then, with a few preliminary squeaks and puffs he resumed his marching up and down to the tune of "Blue Bonnets Over the Border."

Captain Twigg caught the chief's arm and shook him in pure rage, so perforce the bagpipes wailed in silence again.

"You're fired!" he choked. "You understand. Dibble! You're fired at the end of the voyage. And any more from you and in irons you'll go!" He swore and went back to the bridge.

Mr. Dibble snorted contemptuously, wiped his moustache, borrowed the third engineer's bottle, and took a long drink.

"The man's mad," he declared to the world at large, and, filling his pipes again, resumed "Bentrauchan's Lament."

"TAKE TWO MEN," said Captain Twigg grimly, "and put the chief engineer in  irons. He's playing again, and I warned him."

Mr. Wilkins, the mate, took the plugs from his ears, heard the order repeated, and removed his pipe and sort of beat time with it.

"NOW take my advice, sir," he soothed. "Mr, Dibble's the only man that can handle the engine-room, both machinery and men. He's been drinking, sir."

Captain Twigg exploded. "I don't care what he's been doing!" he screamed. "Put him in irons and shut him up in his room where that blasted noise can stay, too. And that's an order!"

"Very well, sir," said the mate, resigned, and went down to the main deck.. With the aid of the third and fourth engineers, he coaxed Mr. Dibble to his room and finally extracted a promise from him that he would keep all his ports screwed fast and his door shut while he played.

"It's a new skipper," he explained, "and you've got to give him time."

"Time?" snapped Mr. Dibble. "I'll give him more than that. You can't get the swing of the pipes in a confined space." He found a bottle and took a drink. "But very well, Mr. Wilkins," he added with dignity. "I'll not embarrass you nor my other friends. Yet this is a sorry day for Captain Twigg."

The following night Captain Twigg was comfortably settled in his cabin in his shirt sleeves, and with his stockinged feet propped on his desk, while he read an exciting mystery novel the mate had confiscated from the lookout, who should have been looking but wasn't. Suddenly the cabin lights flared up and then as suddenly died.

Captain Twigg swore, waited a while to see if it was only a temporary  matter, and then slammed the book on his desk and got out of his chair, all but fell over a mat inside his door, and stumbled out of the lower bridge.

"Wilkins! Mr. Wilkins!" he demanded. Shoes sounded on the navigation bridge and the second mate answered. "It's the mate's watch below, sir. Shall I send for him?"

"Never mind! Send for the chief. There's something wrong with my lights."

"Ay, sir," and the second whistled for the watchman and repeated the order.

After a while a flashlight beam danced up from the main deck and played on the fuming Captain Twigg.

"I understand your light fused, sir," said Mr. Dibble's voice very kindiv. "Or maybe the globe's burned out. I thought I'd come and look myself."

"Well, look here," snapped, the captain, "I don't want to grope around all night."

Mr. Dibble grunted and prowled round the cabin with his flashlight. He tested the fuses and then flashed his light along the deckhead. "Just as I suspected, sir," he said, regretfully. "It's the wiring, and I doubt if there's a spare bit aboard. She's an old ship, you know, and not well supplied. I suspect you'd better use your oil lamp until we get to Adelaide."

"My oil lamp...!" choked Captain Twigg. "Rip some wiring out of somewhere else and fix me up."

"That wouldn't be practical, sir, I'm afraid," said Mr. Dibble. He was still regretful. "In fact, it might throw the whole ship's lighting system out. You'd better use the oil lamp."

Captain Twigg breathed hard.

"All right," he said. "Thanks, Mr. Dibble."

The chief faded into the darkness, and Captain Twigg called to the second mate to have the lamp-trimmer along.

The next morning it was qum chilly. Captain Twigg climbed out of his bunk, started for his electric heater before remembering he hat: no current in his rooms, and then bent over the valve to the steam radiator. That at least could be depended on, and he'd get back in bed while the cabin warmed up. But no warm gurgle reached his ears when he had the valve wide open. Only stony silence, as stony as had been the eye of Mr. Dibble at the past few meals. Captain

Twigg rang four times for his steward before it occurred to him his bell was out of order, and then he stuck his head out of his cabin door and bellowed to the bridge He wanted to know why in hell there was no heat. The bridge sent a man to find out.

"Mr. Dibble's compliments, sir," reported the messenger at last. "But your heat's been blanked off, the pipes being in a poor state of repair and no remedy being available aboard."

Breakfast was a strained affair.

"It would seem to me," said Captain Twigg acidly, picking up his porridge spoon, "that you should have indented for sufficient supplies and for any reasonable repairs before we sailed, Mr. Dibble, if the ship's, in the condition you say she is."

"I always indent, sir," said Mr. Dibble, shaking his head. "But I seldom get what I need. The owners reckon this is an old ship and hardly worth wasting money on. I've been trying to get my engine overhauled..."

"Never mind," said Capiam Twigg hastily. "We'll go into that later. But I distinctly thought I saw a lot of supplies come aboard for your department."

"It was mostly bales of waste and some packing washers and bolts and such, sir. Absolute essentials."

Captain Twigg took a drink of tea, paused, swallowed, and then choked, spraying the table. "What in . Steward!" he roared. "What in hell's wrong with the tea?"

The saloon steward gulped and looked at the chief steward, who shook his head. "I'm blessed if I know, sir. Bui it seems something's wrong with the water. I meant to tell you."

"Good heavens. I didn't know that oil tank had leaked that badly," said Mr. Dibble. He sniffed at his tea, tasted it, and then nodded. "Well, I might have known. One of our oil tanks leaked into the domestic tank, sir. That's what'd be making the porridge taste a bit off, too."

Captain Twigg was quiet for. a long time, while his round face swelled, grew purple, and then faded back to a robust red.

"I had no idea," he managed, "the Selwick was in such a bad shape. I would appreciate it, Mr. Dibble, if you could do something about the oil leak."

"I doubt it, sir, I doubt it," said Mr. Dibble, shaking his head. "But I'll do my best."

"Of that I'm sure," agreed the captain. He gingerly attacked the curry, found it reasonable, ate it, and managed a rasher and an egg.

Then he carefully folded his napkin, put it into its worn metal ring, and, producing a cigar, bit off the end with vigor.

"I haven't heard your pipes lately," he observed.

Mr. Dibble looked up from a dish of soggy tapioca and blinked. "I doubt if you could, sir. Since your... er... order, I confine, myself to my cabin." "That must be nice for junior engineers, I imagine, trying to sleep off watch."

Mr. Dibble wiped his bristle of moustache. "I am not concerned with what is nice for junior engineers. sir. So far as I understand, they are not disturbed."

"Cotton wool! That's why!" exploded Captain Twigg. "Confound it, man! How long does this persecution have to go on?"

"Persecution, sir?" demanded the chief. He raised his brows.

"Never mind," said Captain Twigg hastily. "I was just thinking. That was all."

Mr. Dibble coughed again. "And now about Saturdays, sir; you wouldn't object if I practised a little on deck?"

"You try it and I'll damn' well see you in irons!" roared Captain Twigg and stepped up on the bridge. The insolence! Thinking he was weakening!

Mr. Dibble sighed and ambled slowly to his room amidships. He summoned the second assistant and said regretfully: "I think you'd better fix the shower."

"Yes, sir," agreed the second, and hesitated. "But don't you think, sir, that's going a little too far?"

The chief looked at him, and the second said "Yes, sir. Yes sir," and hastily departed, while the chief took his bagpipes from his locker, faithfully made sure that all ports were screwed fast and the door closed, and after preliminary wailings played softly "The Road to the Isles"

Captain Twigg took a turn or so round the bridge towards noon, and as the chili left the air decided he might as well shave and take a shower. But he found that his bathroom taps only gave out discolored water and strange noises and foul odors, and so perforce sent his steward to the galley for some hot water, since he understood a fresh domestic tank had been tapped. That was not so annoying, but when he stepped under his shower and turned it on to be deluged with a mixture of water, oil and more odors, which needed a bath in kerosene to be rid of, he was saved from apoplexy oniy by three heavy drinks of whisky, taken neat.

He got dressed finally, and, rather raw-Skinned, went on the bridge, where Mr. Wilkins was leaning on the for'ard rail, chewing on his pipe, and exchanging stories with the bos'n on the main deck where to watch was supposed to be at work.

"Is this sort of thing normal on the Selwick?" demanded Captain Twigg with restraint.

Mr. Wilkins, it not being Saturday, did not have to unplug his ears, so he heaved up from the rail and removed his pipe with promptness.

"You mean my talking with the bos'n, sir?"

"I mean all this stuff going wrong." said Captain Twigg. "And, anyway, what the hell's the watch standing round for?"

"Well," Mr. Wilkins explained, "we've been trying to wash down since six this morning, but it" seems we can't get any pressure on the hoses. Mr. Dibble says…"

"Mr. Dibble says the pipes are so worn out they won't carry water, eh?" the captain exploded.

"All right. Then wash down with hand pumps. I'll show you!"

"We haven't used the hand pumps since I've been on the Selwick," ventured the mate. "And I doubt—"

"Well, let the engine-room clean them if they're that rusty," snarled Captain Twigg.

"Yes, sir," agreed Mr. Wilkins, and went down to the main deck. He spent the rest of the day with the bos'n and the watches taking  apart and putting together old hand pumps that had not been used since the Selwick had been launched, and when he finally got them in operation, squirting rusty and ineffectual streams over the deck, he explained to Captain. Twigg that they, had needed gaskets badly, but the engine-room had simply been out of them, so they had to make shift with . canvas and a couple of old hides they had dug up out of the forepeak.

"You know, sir," ventured the, mate. "If you'll take my advice… Mr. Dibble

"I don't need any advice on how to run a ship," snapped Captain Twigg. "But, by all the hinges of hell, there'll be a cleaning when we get to port."

At that moment, the ship stopped,  or, rather, the engine-beat stopped, and the Selwick drifted across placid green swells and rolled to her heart's content.

"What's that?" demaded Captain Twigg.

The mate struck a match for his pipe and shook his head. "Probably a gasket blown, or a tube or something; the chief engineer would know," he observed. "The old engine..."

Captain Twigg snorted and went amidships to see Mr. Dibble.

"Look here, Dibble. I want to make a showing and get in a decent run. I reckoned to dock day after to-morrow. When can you get her going?"

"That's a question," said Mr. Dibble dreamily. "I think I've a cracked main shaft and some gaskets blown, and at least one bearing is running hot. The thrust  blocks..."

"Well, give me an estimate," choked Captain Twigg. "This is my first run as skipper and I'd like..."

"There are many things we'd all like to do," agreed Mr. Dibble. "But with an engine like ours..." he shook his head.

"Say a day." Captain Twigg went back on the bridge and almost wept in the confines of his chilly cabin. Mr. Dibble returned to his room after giving his second assistant certain instructions, and then, getting out the pipes, softly occupied himself with "Blue Bonnets Over the Border."

Mr. Wilkins leaned on the chartroom table, bit on his pipe, and swore.

"Well, why don't you go and talk to the old man again?" protested the second mate. "I got a date in Adelaide."

"You can't talk to him." explained the mate patiently. "It's his first command and he's as touchy as a new bridesmaid. He's just got to learn, that's all."

"The way things are going we'll never get in," the second grumbled. The mate agreed, but decided to Jet things rest a while.

"Look," said Mr. Wilkins finally, taking a bottle of his own private stock midships. "Look, chief. The boys want to get in. You can't make this tough on them."

"That's as may be," agreed Mr. Dibble; letting the pipes die for a moment as he watched the mate bang the cork from the bottle. "But that...up there... needs a lesson. If I can't play... Saturdays... when all's done for the week save the watches... then—"

"It's not bad whisky," said the mate, poring half a tumbler. "I sneaked it aboard at Panama last' trip. All duty free, so dont be afraid."

He had to sacrifice another bottle from his private supply before he ; could persuade Mr. Dibble to put the pipes away. And in the end the chief sighed resignedly.

"All right," he said., "I'll do it for the boys. And mind you, only for the boys.. That up there…"  he shook his head with drunken gravity, lurched to his feet, and dis appeared down into the engine-room. Mr. Wilkins breathed a prayer and returned to the bridge.

"All right," he toldi the second mate. "Stand by."

THEY WERE under way again in less than an hour. Next morning, a Saturday, as the Selwick entered the traffic that plies about the Bass Strait, between Australia and Tasmania, there was a light mist upon the blue waters which slowly developed, and by noon was merging to a fog.

"You'd better start the siren," said Captain Twigg nervously, and Mr. Wilkins pulled on the lanyard. Little or nothing happened. There was a feeble squawk, some spittings and gtirghngs, and then complete silence: Mr. Wilkins pulled again and said, "I guess it's out of order, sir."

"Out of order!" blazed Captain Twigg, "At a time like this! Let me try!"

He jerked the lanyard from the mate's hand, pulled on it viciously with, all his weight, and the line carried away.

"It's that damned Dibble!" the captain roared. "Another of his tricks."

Mr. Wilkins stared into the fog, bit on his pipe-stem, and shook his head. "I don't think I'd say that," sir," he admonished seriously. "Whatever the chiefs personal feelings might be, he wouldn't go so far as to endanger the ship."

But Captain Twigg was. enraged beyond reasoning.

"That maniac!" he choked. "That maniac would do anything to get even with me over the bagpipe business. Find him; and tell him--I want the siren repaired... And don't come back and say he said go to hell."

"He's sending his best man up to look at it, sir," Mr. Wilkins reported, returning to the bridge. "But they may have to take it apart to find out what's wrong, and even then it might be something in the steam pipe."

"Was he sober?" demanded Captain Twigg acidly.

Mr. Wilkins, discreetly inspected the bowl of his pipe and murmured. "Well, you'll remember it's Saturday, sir. But he knows what he's doing."

"Wait!" quivered Captain Twigg. "Just wait till I make a report on this."

He was about to say more, but suddenly checked, his ball-like figure stiffening as the muffled roar of a siren came through the fog ahead. He jumped for the rail, his eyes bulging as they strained into the whiteness. Mr. Wilkins jammed the telegraph to "STOP" and the ominous muffled roar came again, nearer.

"For'ard there!" yelled Mr. Wilkins through cupped hands. "Sound the bell! Damn you! Someone! Sound the bell!" Now it so happened that by one of those curious mischances the great ship's bell on the fo'c'slehead had been taken down only that morning to be cleaned, to have its worn shackle replaced, and, more important than all, to have its tongue which was cracked nearly clean through sent down to the engine-room for repair. So nothing " happened. And the mate suddenly remembered.

"We've got no bell," he reported grimly. "Maybe we can yell?"

"Or pray," added Captain Twigg. He wiped the cold sweat from his ."forehead, and his red face was grey as the hidden siren blared out again, still nearer, straight for them.

"We'd better put her full ahead," said Mr. Wilkins quietly. "We'll have steering-way then anyway, and maybe a chance to dodge. "All right," croaked Captain Twigg. "It's a chance, at least. She's coming right at us."

The siren boomed again, sank to a muffled blubbering, and died.

Then abruptly, from the Selwick's main deck, arose the shrill wailing , of souls in torment.

Where other and greater noises were hurled back by the choking, mist, the strains of "Bentrauchans Lament" pierced it like a series of rusty knives. Mr. Dibble, beautifully organised, the obstinacy of his ancestors to the fore, had decided once again to defy Captain Twigg, and was bravely marching-up and down the midship deck, the tartan ribbons fluttering behind him, the fog swirling about, him, and an ecstatic light in his slightly glazed eyes as though he trod on. heather."

"That man!" Captain Twigg managed. "And those damned pipes..."

The siren blared again, almost alongside. It seemed, then died out and a huge black shape loomed to the starboard. "Bentrauchan's Lament" tormented the air,  and there was a sudden jangling of bells, a muffled bark of orders, and the distinct thrash of screws going astern as the other ship checked and swung.

Dimly a man appeared on the stranger's bridge wing and  bellowed through a mega-phone:

"What the hell's the matter with you? We might ; have run you down. Haven't you got a siren?"

"Out of order!" roared Mr. Wilkins, hanging over his own bridge wing. "But what more do you want? We're making noise enough."

"You must be torturing cats," barked the other man. "Maybe it's an idea, all the same. If we hadn't heard them yelling we'd have hit you for sure. Never mind: This is the North Star. Captain Holmes. Adelaide to Sydney with general cargo."

"This is the Selwick, Captain Twigg. San Francisco for Adelaide."

"Are you all right?"' demanded the North Star. "Okay, then. And do something about those cats."

"Cats," said Captain Twigg weakly. He clung to the for'ard rail and wiped sweat from his face, his color returning now the crisis was past. And he added, with an effort.

"Would you kindly go below, Mr. Wilkins? Take a bottle of my own whisky, present it," he breathed hard, "with my compliments to Mr. Dibble, and tell him I'd take it as a favor if he would keep on playing. At least until the fog lifts."

Mr. Dibble by this time had swung into "The Road to the Isles." and as Mr. Wilkins turned to go Captain Twigg checked him. "One more thing." he said huskily. "Where do you keep your cotton wool?"

"Top drawer in the chartroom, sir," said the mate with understanding. "Help yourself."

___________________________

9: Old Iron Face

Collier’s Jun 17 1939

Sun (Sydney) 9 Feb 1941

"WILLIAMS," said the port Captain, "I want you to pack and get over to Pier 37. You're going senior second officer of the Prince Harry!"

I had to swallow for a moment before I could answer him. The Prince Harry was the Line's newest and biggest, due out on her maiden voyage, and every officer who thought he had a chance had been pulling strings to get on her. I hadn't. I didn't like liners, and anyway I knew I hadn't a chance. So I was surprised.

"I appreciate it," I said, a bit dazed. "But how did I manage to get the berth?"

"You wouldn't have," he said kindly. "You're not what we consider liner material, and you've been doing very well as mate of the Bradwin."

The Bradwin was one of the Line's lousiest freighters, where they usually dumped fellows like me.

"But," added the port captain, "Captain Guthrie always insists on his senior officers having had sail training. One of his peculiarities. You happen to be the only available man around at the moment."

"But I thought Captain Maloney was taking the Prince Harry," I said curiously. 'Old Ironface'— Captain Guthrie, that is— was supposed to retire."

"He has — he had. rather. But he's talked the Line into letting him make this first run with the new ship. She's a cinch for the Blue Ribbon, barring accidents, and Guthrie's been trying lor it long enough.

"Besides, the publicity department thought it would be a good stunt. Guthrie commanded the Euripides, the Line's first ship. And now he commands the last. Neat, eh? Maloney 's going as executive officer. You be aboard by noon."

And he bent over some papers.

"Is the berth permanent?" I wanted to know, and he answered without looking up:

"No. Maloney'll throw you out as soon as he's top man. But you'll probably get command of the Bradwin when you come back. I told you you weren't liner material."

"Maybe it's as well." I said, and left.

I didn't like liners. I'd rather be mate of a free-and-easy ship like the Bradwin than hold down a brass-bound watch on a glorified ferry, even if it did pay more and the grub was better You have to be respectable and talk polite on crack passenger packets. But what was worst this time was I didn't want to serve under Guthrie, or Old Ironface as he was called. He wasn't a human being. He was a monument. And he was hell on officers. But I had my orders and went down to Pier 37. The Bradwin was only a few piers away, so I didn't bother to change my uniform.

Maloney looked me up and down when I reported.

"Are you the best the office could do?" he asked unpleasantly. "Well, it's only for the run. But you'd better get that uniform cleaned and pressed. You've got tramp ship sticking out all over you. And rip off one of those gold bands. You're only second mate here. Come on!"

He was one of those big, pink-faced men who was always smiling and jovial, but at the moment he was pretty sour. I don't suppose you could blame him.

He'd been master of the Prince Albert, another of the Line's cracks, and had been groomed for the Prince Harry. And here at the last minute the Line's senior skipper, who was supposed to retire, had stepped over him. He took me up on the bridge and introduced me.

Old Ironface was pacing up and down, his hands clasped behind him and a cigar going, while in an easy chair sat a little bony man with a squeaky voice and a bald head whom I recognised as Mr. Norman, the President of the Line. He was making the maiden voyage with us. together with half the board of directors and he looked unhappy and a little afraid. Almost everyone was round Old Ironface, who stopped and stared at me. He was a big, square-built man with a clean-shaven red face and hair ol a silvery white, and he impressed you much as you might Ire impressed by Gibraltar, or the Great Pyramid. You simply couldn't imagine anything really disturbing him. He had a mouth like a shark's and his eyes were a very pale, cold blue that bored right through you, freezing up any stray thoughts that might be wandering around in your head.

"I had a note from the office about you, Williams," he rasped. "You've been in sail?"

"Five years, sir," I told him, and he nodded and looked for a moment at the framed picture of a full-rigged ship hanging, over his desk, it was the Euripides, the first packet the Line had owned and the first he'd commanded.

"Nothing like sail to train a man," he said. "Your face seems familiar."

I'd made one voyage as junior fourth mate with him. when he'd had the Prince Consort, but he didn't remember and I didn't remind him. He'd had me fired for fighting with a drunken stevedore.

"Well, that'll do," he said, and then as we moved to go Maloney remembered something and turned back.

"Mr. Tremlett, sir, the senior first mate. He wants permission to go ashore for an hour before we sail, to see his wife."

"Hasn't he any work to do?" inquired Old Ironl'ace, biting on his cigar. Maloney shrugged. "Naturally. I told him he couldn't be spared. But she— his wife's having her first baby, and he thought he'd drop over to the hospital.. I told him the thing was out of the question."

"Then why bother me with it?" snapped Old Ironface, and resumed his walking up and down.

Maloney said something unpleasant under his breath and we went out, and I heard Mr. Norman's squeaky voice saying hesitantly, "That's a bit rough on the first mate isn't it? Having a baby. We don't sail for six hours yet."

"Any man who goes to sea is a fool to marry," rasped the skipper. "If he starts having children he's a double fool. There's no place for sentiment on board ship, sir!"

The same Old Ironface. .He was an icy old man, and he had no nerves, nor much of any sort of feeling that anyone had been able to discover, except his craving to hook the Blue Ribbon; and I think that, at the bottom, was more because he hated to fail in anything. He'd always dominated, always won, always come through, grim and hard and unmoved.

But I suppose in a way it was understandable. He'd had a tough life, and two or three personal tragedies hadn't helped it. Picked up as a boy at sea, and from an open boat (sole survivor of the wreck of the Harridan), he'd been battered about from ship to ship and port to port until he suddenly emerged with the full-rigger Euripides (the same I've mentioned before), bringing her into Fuchow after an ungodly long run from London.

That doesn't sound impressive, I know, until you remember he was not yet twenty at the time, had been only acting third mate of the ship until the plague had carried off the rest of the officers and some of the crew, and he'd been left very abruptly in mid-ocean with a mutiny on his hands and only two little apprentice boys to help him handle it. They say his hair was already turning white when he got the ship in.

After that he pretty nearly became a legend. His saving of the barque Sherwood is still a classic in the books of seamanship, and I remember, when I was an apprentice myself, his rescue of the Fortuna's passengers was a sensation along the water-fronts.

There were a lot of other such incidents scattered through the years. He carried them all off, some by sheer courage, some by sheer skill, some by incredible luck.

All, in fact, save the one where he'd lost his wife and eldest son in the fire that destroyed the Canton Lady, when he'd been standing by on another ship, powerless to aid because of the hurricane that was blowing. After that, whatever softness might have remained in him simply dried up, I suppose. He never referred to the incident, and they told me his only comment when it was over was, "We all have to take our chance at sea. Get back on the course!"

Well, we got away at last, with flags flying and sirens opened up. Twenty thousand people on the Piers to see us on, guns nring, nanus prayinig and a whole fleet of tugs to shuffle us around and out into the channel. It was practically a national event. The biggest and best going out to smash the record, and every cabin on board choked with big names.

"It ought to mean something to Old Ironface," one of the cadets remarked to me as we stood aft while she cleared. "But it probably doesn't."

"No, it probably doesn't," I agreed. "He's got no feelings."

But it struck me just the same that even a stone wall might be moved a little. Going out on the last run after a lifetime at sea, after fifty years of command. Fifty years from the full-rigger Euripides to the giant Prince Harry.

He was standing in the port wing, steady as a rock, when I got on the bridge again. He didn't seem to notice the escort of destroyers that was to stay with us until dawn, nor did he pay any attention to the ships we passed when they opened their sirens and dipped their ensigns. It was just another voyage to him, and to hell with everyone! and he had the Blue Ribbon safely tucked away. We could hardly miss it at thirty knots, and the weather reported all clear ahead.

I went over to where Maloney was standing with one of the pilots, and he looked an airy man. if didn't blame Maloney much at lit Old Ironface had had the Slices all right. He might have let Sloney land the mythical honor of the Blue Ribbon as a decent gesture.

the thing seemed to have become Bobsession of Old Ironface's. Maybe I'd heard the new jeering name 1 him that was running along the Sea-fronts, Blue-Ribbon Guthrie, Si it had got under his skin. If athing ever could get under his ail raised merry hell about it," Mahony was going on. "But the damn-line talked about him being an old man and all washed up and that I should be kind. It makes me C :!"

Now it so happened that as Mahoney spoke there was a brief lull of quiet on the bridge, and the words "an old man and all washed up and that we should be kind" came clear, before the roar of the siren blotted things out again.

Maloney looked quickly around and bit his lip.

I stared at Old Iron-face's uncompromising back, and it never twitched, though he must have caught the words and known they were meant for him. He turned slowly after a while, and his pale, cold eyes swept the bridge without expression, taking in all the curious faces of assorted cadets, quarter-masters and officers standing about and staring at him, sort of strained.

He said never a word, but everyone instantly became occupied with something close at hand. Old ironface walked over to look at the compass and get a log reading, and I ducked into the chart-room out of the way.

WELL, things drifted along into routine, as they always do, except that we had the usual tension that always hangs over a maiden voyage, more intense this time because of the record we were going to lift.

Mr. Norman, the President of the Line, gave a dinner for Old Ironface where a lot of speeches were made. We all knew that a set of massive silver plate and a gold watch were to be presented the night before we docked and we all knew Maloney already had plans drawn up for redecorating the skipper's suite to his own taste later. Probably Old Iron-face knew it, too.

"It doesn't make sense somehow," said the navigating officer. "Him easing out so peaceful with a set of silver plate tucked under his arm. Not after what he's done and been."

And we all felt a little that way about it. There was something curiously wrong to think of a man like him just stepping ashore, putting away his uniform and settling down in an armchair. Something ought to happen. We ought to get an urgent S.O.S., or have something spectacular occur to make the wind-up complete. With all the sea had done to him, and for him. it seemed only common justice it might make just one last effort a parting salute to a sailor

And, incredibly, it did.

It happened early in the alternoon about a day and a half from port, and in my watch. The Prince Harry was smashing along through a greasy swell and under a cloud-shredded sky, with the wind rising a

little and the smell of rain in the air; and we had the Blue Ribbon as good as snapping at the masthead. The ship was asleep, as ships usually are at that time, the passengers lolling round or taking a nap before tea and the watch on deck barely going through the motions of working. And then the crow's-nest phoned down a report, and soon after I picked up the derelict through the glasses and sent a quarter-master down to get Old Ironface on the bridge. She wasn't much of a ship, this derelict when we came up to her.

Just a battered-looking old windjammer, a barquentine from what was left of her spars. She was rolling low in the water, gear trailing alongside and the falls of her two boats were overhauled and dragging empty. She'd apparently had some tough going, for part of her bulwarks were missing, and her midship house was badly smashed and listing a little. A few rags of canvas still whipped here and there, and there was no sign of life. Her name, in white letters round her stern, was Pride of Haarlem.

"Abandoned, eh?" said Maloney, coming up with Old Ironface. I tried the siren once more, but the derelict's decks remained blank. The skipper took the glasses from me without comment and stared through them. We were already under slow engine. and easing abeam, and the passengers were noisily milling about on the promenades and excitedly lining the rails.

"Well, she's in the main steamer lane," said Maloney. "We better just report her and let the coastguard take over."

OLD Ironface said nothing for a long time, the glasses still at his eyes, and then he rasped, "Stop her, Mr. Williams, take a boat and investigate."

I stopped the Prince Harry automatically, and we drifted about two cable-lengths abeam of the derelict, but I didn't quite believe what I'd heard about investigating. The wreck was obviously abandoned, and we were in a hurry, and anyway the coastguard would look after her.

"You want me to look over her, sir?" I said, surprised, and then he nodded, the glasses still at his eyes, I looked at Maloney, who shrugged and then nodded too.

So I dug up the bos'n and a lew men and we dropped one of our power launches. It wasn't any trouble to got aboard the wreck with all that gear trailing overside, and I got on deck and together with the bos'n made a quick inspection. She hadn't been abandoned long, for there was food in the galley still unspoiled. Apparently she'd had a bad battering in some gale, then caught fire. There was considerable water in her, but her hull seemed sound, I guess they hadn't been able to put the lire out, and got scared and left her in a hurry; and then probably the lire just died of its own accord or the rain squalls blotted it.

SHE was carrying cased goods and lumber; her lazaret was dry and was well stocked; and when I tried her freshwater pump the stuff came up sweet, so evidently her tank wasn't damaged. I couldn't find her log of papers, and her chronometers were gone. I semaphored the gist of this back and wanted to know if I should open her sea cocks. And to my surprise the answer was "No."

When I got back on the Prince Harry everyone seemed petrified. Maloney looked at me. and his face was quite pale.

"Captain Guthrie wants you to report in his room. Mr. Williams," he said. And he added in a whisper, "He's gone mad. He's going to take her in."

He stared across the greasy swells to where the Pride of Haarlem lay. Old Ironface was throwing some things into a bag when I found him. He wasn't moving fast, but Mr. Norman, the president of the Line, was hopping from one foot to another and all but screaming:

"You can't do this to us. Captain! The record! You've always wanted the record. And we've got all the publicity planned. A big reception for you. The Line will be ruined!"

Old Ironface did not answer him, but looked at me, and I was wide-eyed.

"She's in good condition?" he rasped. I answered him mechanically, and he nodded. "I'll need about ten men. You might see who you can find that will volunteer," he said.

"But you're not serious, sir," I managed. "You can't leave the Prince Harry. It— it ..."

I had to stop. What was there to be said? Master mariners don't quit their ships on the high seas, save in the most extraordinary circumstances. If Old Ironface wanted the wreck taken in for some reason. then why didn't he order someone else away?

"I'll need a good officer," said Old Ironface. He looked at me hard, and I heard myself saying, "Yes. sir. I'll be glad to go," without quite knowing just what was happening.

Maloney came in, a very worried man.

"Look here, sir, this is a lot of nonsense," he started heatedly. "You're making a spectacle of yourself."

"I've served the Line fifty-odd years," said Old Ironface, going on with his packing. "I've never made a spectacle of myself before. Perhaps it's time I did."

He straightened and looked at Maloney. "I'm an old man and all washed up. Does it matter so much?"

"You're holding up the ship, sir," was all Maloney could say.

"You'd better take over!" Mr. Norman shouted squeakily. "Maloney, I order you to take over and stop this nonsense. Captain Guthrie is discharged."

I had to laugh at that. You don't discharge a master on the high seas. Maloney bit his lip. He was in a spot and I felt sorry for him.

"There's nothing I can do, sir," he told the president. "Unless the surgeon declares Captain Guthrie is insane. And I doubt..."

He did not finish. Old Ironface saw me still standing around and gaping, and he snapped: "Ten men. I said! What are you waiting for?"

I left very quietly. And as I did I heard him add, "You'll get your command the sooner, Maloney. What do you care?"

I ran into the navigating officer on my way to the main deck. And he was as shaken as the rest of us.

"What do you suppose has got into him?" he said. "Or is he really mad?"

"I don't know," I told him. "How should I? From what I gather, that crack of Maloney's about him being an old man got under his skin, and he's going to show us I never knew he gave a damn about things before. Anyway I've got to find ten men."

I won't detail the rest of it. There was a lot of bad language, a lot of excitement, and it was all like a dream. Old Ironface stared them all down and went ahead. He very obviously just didn't give a damn! And he said so. We took him over to the Pride of Haarlem with his volunteers in the power launch. One of our lifeboats, which we were to hoist aboard the barquentine since her own boats were, all gone, followed. Then Old Ironface kept the Prince Harry waiting, the mails and record and all; kept that giant white hull swinging to the greasy sea obedient upon him while he checked the Pride of Haarlem, made a list of the things he needed, and sent the power launch back to bring them.

That done, he signalled he was finished.

The Prince Harry sounded her siren three times, began to move, picked up speed, and then raced off and into the horizon. She would still have the record if her luck held. And I looked at the bos'n. who had come with us, and I sat down on a bitt.

"This didn't happen," I croaked. "It couldn't. You don't do things like this."'

THE bos'n shook his head, dazed himself. It had all occurred so fast that there hadn't been time to think much. I looked at Old Ironface, standing straight and square by the for'ard taffrail. his great veined hands resting on the teak, and his hard face turned as he looked first aloft at the shattered spars, and then along the worn decks. I don't know what he was thinking. What could he be thinking?

He'd thrown away the Blue Ribbon he'd been set on; shattered every precedent; left his own ship on the high seas; deliberately stepped down from command of the newest and biggest to be master of a sea-swept, fire-gutted wreck in the middle of a desolate sea.

He turned and looked at us after a while. We were all grouped on the poop, talking in low voices.

And then he walked to the main cabin skylight and unbuttoned his uniform jacket. He took it off, folded it carefully, and laid it down by the skylight— that jacket with the four gold bands on the sleeves and the twin rows of medal ribbons across the left breast. He laid it down, and he laid his uniform cap on top of it, so the golden oak leaves of rank gleamed dully in the afternoon sun. And then he rolled up his sleeves, while the wind tossed his silvery hair, and the knotty muscles of his old arms twisted and writhed beneath the heavy blue of his tattooing. He looked at me.

"I'm glad you came, Williams," he said quietly, very quietly for him. "You seem a good man, even if you're not, as the port Captain insisted, liner material."

A ghost of a smile twitched his shark's mouth. "Maybe I'm not, either."

Then he looked over the men, and his face hardened. And when he spoke again his voice was lifted.

"We'll get to work," he said. And then, as the men just stood staring stupidly at him for a moment, his voice rose and blasted, shook with a timbre none of us had heard.

"I said we'll get to work! Now, jump, damn you!"

And they jumped.

If everything that had already happened had been insane, then what followed was completely and doubly mad. We got out a sea-anchor of sorts, so she lifted to the swells instead of wallowing in the trough. We cut her trailing gear adrift, shifted the midship house back into alignment, patched up the bulwarks for the time being. There was a donkey boiler amidships, and we cleaned it out and got steam up, and set a portable pump to work. We got the hatches on, and spiked planks over the openings, once we were certain the hull was sound.

"It looks like we're going to have a little weather," I observed to Old Ironface, as we sat in the main cabin eating biscuits and canned beef by ' the light of a hurricane lamp. "But I guess we can ride it, all right. They'll have reported us to the coastguard, and there should be a cutter out to pick us up. We've only to stick around."

He looked at me for a long moment, his pale blue eyes very frosty and narrowed a little. "We're not going to stick around," he said. "I don't care to be picked up in this condition."

"This condition?" I managed. "But surely—"

"We'll get some canvas on her. and run south a little," he said. "Out of the way. We don't want to be found just yet. The ship..."

He didn't finish. I started to say something, to argue, but he looked at me again, and I shut up.

"Don't ask me what's got into him now," I told the bos'n irritably when he inquired.

We were rigging jury masts by moonlight and lamplight, and we were overhauling the spare suit of sails we'd dug out of the sail-locker.

"Only one thing I know. Everyone thought he was an Iceberg. Never had any feelings. Well, everyone was wrong."

"There ain't no question there," bos'n agreed. "He's crazy."

"I didn't mean that," I said. "I meant something finally got under his skin. They talked about him being an old man and through. Well, he's going to show 'em. He's got his pride. Who'd ever thought of Old Ironface doing anything just for pride?"

So we both marvelled even as we worked, and before morning the Pride of Haarlem was running south, taking sprays all along her lee side ana thrilling to the sea lift along her keel. We were hove-to for thirty-six hours in the teeth of a full gale soon after we got under way, and then later we boxed the compass for a week or more with light airs and baffling calms.

And do you know what we did then? We cleaned up the ship. I don't mean we washed her down and straightened out little matters. We gave her the works. We replaced the temporary patching of the bulwarks with permanent work. We cut and trimmed topmasts and a couple of yards from spare spars we found, and from the lumber below decks.

We caulked, pitched, scraped and holystoned the decks. We scraped, sanded, and re-varnished the bright work. We scraped and oiled the masts and spars. We re-rigged her almost from stem to stern, and, lastly, when it was calm enough, we slung stages overside and painted her.

DON'T tell me it was all mad. Of course, it was. But we made the Pride of Haarlem into a beauty and a joy. You could almost feel her take on new life as we groomed her. And Old Ironface was in the middle of things, working with us, his shirt sleeves up and his shirt spotted with tar and paint and the clean dirt of seamanship. The thing that made me wonder was how he regained so quickly all his wind-ship lore. He couldn't have trod a sailing ship's decks for nearly forty years, but he took over as if it had been only yesterday.

I'll never forget one wild, moonlight night, when we were all shipshape and shining, running before a stiff wind and under a bright yellow moon. We were carrying far too much canvas, in my judgment, and I said so, but Old Ironface only gripped the teak of the for'ard taffrail and let the wind lift his silvery hair.

"I never shortened," he rasped. "Never, until the royals went!"

"We're not a clipper with special driving gear," I pointed out. "And I'm not sure..."

"I'll take care of that," he snapped. "Get below!"

I didn't go below. No one went below that night. Every man jack of us was scared stiff. We logged a cool fourteen knots until dawn, and every backstay and brace was shivering like a tortured thing. More than once I thought he'd drive her under, but he seemed to know. And after dawn, when he raced by a plodding, smoke-hung tramp, and left her far astern, for the first and last time in my life I heard Old Ironface laugh.

"By gad," he said, "we're still good!"

The pride of the man. The pride in the man. He hadn't any sentiment. That was probably true. But he had something. That iron pride. It was like the last thundering battle shout of a dying Viking; the last salute of an era.

And so, in the end, we came to port. Even that we did spectacularly. I don't suppose there'd been seen a ship such as ours for a generation. Windjammers, yes. Tired, worn, grimy things hesitantly fluttering in. But we came in like a queen, in glamor and in glory! We came in with our bright work shining and our canvas white as snow. We came in with the hull trim with new paint and our rigging tarred down, even our anchors polished and varnished (hot painted), so they shone like silver.

We didn't take a tug; the wind was right, and we came to the harbor buoys smart as a man-o'-war, and we snugged canvas down and stowed it, eased to the buoy-ring and made fast, the way on her judged to a fraction.

It was Old Ironface's moment. To stand there on his poop deck, near the wheel, dressed again in his full uniform with the golden oak leaves of rank gleaming in the sun while all the shipping stared wide-eyed. He'd thrown away the Prince Harry and the Blue Ribbon, but he had gained that; to bring his ship home in the ancient way. And the waterfronts were the best judges as to which was the better job. Well, there isn't very much more. Save, perhaps, a little revelation that came, I think, to me alone.

There were perfunctory wires of congratulation from the Line and from Moloney; perfunctory until the Press began to use its imagination and the story began to widen. Then Mr. Norman, president of the Line, showed up, bald head and squeaky voice and all, and he was very effusive.

"A remarkable achievement. Captain," he said. "We are all proud of you."

"So I gather," said Old Ironface dryly.

We were in the main cabin of the Pride of Haarlem at the time, and Old Ironface was once again packing. He'd arranged with some society to have the ship bought and preserved as a marine museum, a permanent relic of the brave old times. For himself, he had mentioned settling on a farm near the coast, and even possibly buying a small schooner and trading up and down. He wasn't sure. And quite obviously he didn't care. For him the game had run out and the finish had been good.

"We— er— the Line has been considering making an exception as to the retirement age, Captain," said Mr. Norman. He was still a little uneasy and afraid of Old Ironface. "And we thought you might like to continue for a while as master of the Prince Harry.

"You know she took the Blue Ribbon, and you can— er— always look forward to bettering the time. We all understand your motives in bringing in the Pride of Haarlem. Yes, Captain. Pride. A man hates to think he's too old to do anything any more."

Old Ironface looked at him, and he wilted.

"Pride," he said grimly. "Do they think I was disturbed with their talk of my being old and finished? Pride!" He swore and bit the end from a cigar. "I think you'd better get out!"

He said that to Mr. Norman, who could make or break any officer afloat. And Mr. Norman swallowed and groped for his hat. The younger and the ambitious men might defer to him, but Captain Andrew Guthrie, Old Ironface, strong still with his last triumph, didn't give a damn.

"All right," squeaked Mr. Norman. "If that's the way you feel about it. All right, Captain."

And he left. Old Ironface sat down and looked at me.

"Does everyone think I took this ship in from pride?" he asked quietly. There was no escape. His cold, pale blue eyes held me as a pin holds a captured beetle.

"What else, sir?" I managed. "You're a hard man. We all know that. But we suppose the thing got you. If you understand."

"So I took this ship home," he said, half to himself. He stretched his great veined hands on the main cabin table and clenched them. And his face grew tight. "Not for pride, Williams," he said gently. "Not for pride. To hell with them all. But there was something else."

I stared at him and felt a little queer. It is not good to see an iron man crack. And I was seeing it then.

"She looked so lonely, Williams," he said through his tight mouth, half whispering. "So lonely, you see. Just as I felt. They'd butchered her lines and her rigging, but I knew her. I'd have known her anywhere, and however she looked. All the way across the years." He stared at me for a long time, and his hard face softened.

"All the way across the years, Williams. So lonely. And I couldn't let men see her a wreck like that. So I had to stiffen her up. All that work on her spars and deck and rigging. Don't you see? I wanted to bring her in as was proper."

He paused again and looked at his veined hands, and the sweat was standing high on his weathered face. And, remember, there was no sentiment in him.

"Not for pride, Williams," he whispered. "But she was my old ship. Look her up in the record. She used to be called the Euripides... my first command.... She was my youth, Williams. I had to bring her home!"

__________________

10: The Pleasure Is All Yours

Liberty 19 Jul 1941

Guinea Gold (Papua New Guinea) 27 Dec 1942

THEY sighted her first a little after dawn, lying dead ahead and rolling slowly on the greenish tropic cairn. She was a big ship— a passenger vessel from her tiered decks— and she was riding so light and high in the water that a generous span of her red boot topping showed each time she lifted. The name on her prow was Alcazar, painted in heavy white letters, and on her stern the port of registry was given as Lisbon. She was flying the Portuguese flag, while from halyards above her bridge there were flapping several code flags that informed the world she was disabled and would they please stand by.

Curiously enough, neither Captain Murray nor Mr. Gorton, the chief officer of the Fairfax, was interested in the distress signal of the flags. They had their glasses focussed on her stern, a rounded cruiser stern that hinted speed. And after a while they saw what they wanted.

"From, the size of the patch she must have had nearly her whole quarter shot away," said Captain Murray. He was a compact, square-built man, with a face of impressive leather. "It's our only sure clue to her identity. They've dabbed it over pretty well with that faked cruiser stern, but it sticks out a mile if you know where to look."

"Ay, there's little doubt of it," said Mr. Gorton. "It's the Krandorff all right." He lowered his glasses. "So what do we do, sir? She's flagging us to stand by and she'll send a boat."

"That's what we're here for," said Captain

Murray quietly. His grey eyes were hard. "Ring her down, Mr. Gorton."

He walked to the bridge wing while his chief officer stopped the Fairfax, and he inspected again the big vessel lying ahead. He felt he had to compliment her skipper. He'd done a good job, tricking out his ship. Except for her size, you'd never guess she was the Krandorff; never guess she could crack 24 knots, had a dozen guns hidden.

"The boat's coming over, sir," said Mr. Gorton beside him.

TWO officers came over the rail, followed by their men, and the leading officer saluted. A tall lithe lean man with a humourless smile, hard blue eyes, and the tell-tale sabre-marks on his face. His English was perfect, and the stiff attitude of hand to cap, heels clicked together, the body bent a little, was ominously uncompromising.

"It is regrettable to trouble you, captain, but we need help," he said. "Please remain still!"

He had an automatic in one hand now, and it was pointed at captain Murrary's stomach. The captain's lips tightened and he carefully touched his moustache.

"I see how it is," he agreed stiffly, and the other man barked a sharp command. The remaining officer saluted, beckoned four men, and went amidships to the radio room. The noise they made as they wrecked it was quite plain. Captain Murray considered it quite admirable how they knew exactly where to go and what to do. They probably had a complete plan of the Fairfax. Efficiency— a remarkable thing. The leading officer was speaking again.

"Yes, I'm afraid you're taken, captain. I'm Lieutenant von Forte, acting on Captain Langdin's instructions."

Lieutenant Forte faced briskly outboard and blew a whistle—a pre-arranged plan. Immediately the Krandorff woke to activity as if a signal had released coiled springs. Men swarmed on her decks. False bulkheads and boat nests went down or were slid aside, and a bristle of guns appeared. Theatrical and quite unnecessary, Captain

Murray thought; but he supposed it was to impress him. "We'll transfer your freight," the lieutenant was saying. "Using your crew in the holds... under supervision, of course. Our own boats will handle transhipping."

The Krandorff worked on information that was uncannily acute. She seemed to know what convoys were too heavily escorted for her to tackle; she had astonishing luck in picking up lone ships; she had cleverly evaded all patrols and only once had peen deceived by a camflouged vessel sent to trap her. That was the time she had had her stern almost blown away, and but for the fact that a lucky shell of hers had smashed the attack-ship's steering gear she would have ended her career rather ingloriously. As it was, she persisted, and her information sources seemed to persist too.

Well, he'd expected them to be accurate about the cargo. Intelligence had been at pains to see the news drifted around—as they'd arranged for details of the course and such to leak away.

The ticklish part was whether the carefully-guarded fact the crew was hand-picked had trickled out, and, more important, if the Fairfax's exact purpose were known.

Apparently that secret had not leaked, at least. Only four men had known it, anyway, including himself and Mr. Gorton. The rest of the crew had not been informed until the ship was well at sea. Well, the luck so fax had run as re-quired. He couldn't complain. The night wore away, and just before dawn, with the swell subsiding and much of the freight out of her, the Fairfax was eased full alongside the Krandorff and made fast. She pumped out the Fairfax's oil and fresh water, then transferred some few remaining tons of cargo, including the emergency stores, so when the smaller vessel cast off she was literally an empty hulk.

"A clean job," said Captain Murray dryly. "I doubt if we could outfit a dinghy now."

Sitting low in the water, the Krandorff sheered away, leaving only Lieutenant Forte and a dozen men still on board. The lieutenant came up on the lower bridge, and he was impatient. "You've fifteen minutes to get clear," he said shortly.

"After that we open fire."

Captain Murray compressed his lips at the tone, collected his officers with his eyes, and led them to the spar deck. He found the crew already assembled there, uneasily wait-ing for him, and they gave him a subdued cheer when he appeared. "We'll swing out numbers three and four," he ordered, quite as if that had not been settled days before. "And we've 15 minutes... Get to work, boys!" It was the bosun who gave the bad news. He was a burly, walrus-moustached man, and he was indignant.

"There ain't no gear in the boats, sir." He hitched up his belt and spat. "The swines have stripped 'em—masts, oars, and sails."

"Not that?" asked Captain Murray quietly. "Get the boats in the water, anyway. I'll see what can be done."

He went carefully down on the main deck then a steady man with his instincts outraged. Lieutenant Forte was standing by the rail.

"I gave you fifteen minutes," he grated. "What is it?"

"Oars and sails— oars at least," the captain explained. "Good God, man! We might drift for days. With only one water beaker to a boat we'll stand a good chance of going under. But give us oars and we've a chance to make port."

Lieutenant Forte shrugged. "That is regrettable," he snapped. "But I only promised boats. I might say it would not be convenient to have you make port soon, in any case. You understand!"

"We will do our best," said Captain Murray, "to oblige you by dying before we can report." The lieutenant hesitated a moment as if struggling with himself. "I have to follow my orders," he said gruffly. "You have the boats. Now get out!"

The captain drew a deep breath and nodded and turned to go. "Many thanks for the supplies," the lieutenant called after him. "You have done us a great service."

"The pleasure," said Captain Murray, "is all yours. And I sincerely hope you enjoy it."

"Fortunes of war captain," said the lieutenant cynically. "And so good-bye."

He motioned his men and they dropped into his waiting boat. They tore up part of the bottom boards to serve as rough paddles, and worked frantically to get clear enough so that they would not be in danger when the ship went under.

Once clear of her they saw Lieutenant Forte's boat sliding alongside the Krandorff. It was hoisted smartly, and the raider swung to the east and slid away. She checked about two miles distant— and then came the first flash, followed by the hard spang of the explosion. The shell sheared through the Fairfax's upper bridge, sending splinters of wood and steel into the air.

The second shell was lower, and Captain Murray winced as the rending impact reached him. When you command there is something of every ship that grows into you. He winced again and again as the shells ripped home, and after a while he did not care to look. His second mate touched his arm as the firing ceased.

"She's going, sir" he said quietly, and Captain Murray lifted his head.

Yes, she was going. The Fairfax was sliding into the sea stern first.

"Shall we break out the instruments, sir?" asked the second mate. Mr. Gorton hailed across the sea to ask the same question, and the captain said,

"Break them out!"

In his own boat then (as in Mr. Gorton's) they pried loose the false sides of two of the air tanks and drew out the parts of a compact radio. In the captain's boat the operator assembled his swiftly, laughing to himself.

"What'd the Krandorff give if she knew about this, eh?"

Captain Murray frowned. "She'd be back to blow us under," he warned. "Not a whisper, mind, until I say so." He looked at his wrist-watch. "Thirty-six hours was the bomb time. You men did a good job."

The bo'sun looked at him and spat.

"Well, you made everything pretty plain, sir. There wasn't a chance of a slip. We did as you ordered when we were loading the slings for Jerry. Every marked case, we pulled the protruding wire, down and back."

They stared after the ghost-grey Krandorff, fading to a sullen blue on the afternoon horizon. And after her hull had gone from sight they stared at her smoke... and then suddenly from below the smoke there vomited up a rolling pillar of blackness. They did not hear the hammer of the explosion, faint and muffled, until long after; but what they had seen was enough.

"It must have touched off her powder magazine," said Captain Murray in a strained voice. "Probably blown to pieces." He adjusted his tie, touched his moustache, and added, "I hope the men got it quickly!"

"Shall I report, sir?" demanded the operator, crouched at the little radio.

The captain nodded. "The patrol will be listening for us and they'll pick us up sooner or later. Report we're adrift… but safe... and give our position." He shook his head. "I'd never have believed that time bombs in cased goods would have done the trick so neatly."

_________________

11: Hell's Helmsman

Action Stories  October 1942

THREE white men stood on the white an up-thrust jag of coral. But beyond beach looking out over the sea. Here the last reef, the sea stretched smooth and and there the sheer blue was dotted deep to the far eath-rim. Birds wheeled with white as a long swell broke about over the clean blue sea, and the warm trade winds made the palms of Kia Island bend and nod in the soft rhythm. And it scarcely stirred the sea surface to a ripple.

Down on the beach, natives were running canoes out into the water, for the white wings of the trader brig had been sighted far out on the horizon. Behind the three white traders natives grouped and chattered. The arrival of the supply ship was always an event for celebration on small Kia Island.

Jackson, one of the Australian traders, took his pipe out of his mouth and spat on the sand. Then he said: “Only four days overdue.... Not bad.” He was a burly bearded man in creased and grubby whites. And in place of a belt he wore a wide sash of deep blue silk. His was the trading house in the grove of pandanus near the native village on the edge of the shallow lagoon.

The other man, Lieber, nodded. Lieber was a sturdy, fair haired individual with a little waxed mustache. Somewhat of a dandy. His whites were immaculate. His trading house stood across the lagoon from Jackson’s, and the firm he represented was one of the greatest in all the south.

The last man, Alsee, was of hidden origin. He was clean shaven and talked at least four languages. He always had money. He traded on his own account and whenever a strange ship came to Kia Island he remained indoors and would not come out at all or greet anyone. He might have been a renegade Frenchman, or a Russian. He had a native wife and two children, and every night, drunk or sober, he dressed for dinner.

He did not hide when the brig’s sails were sighted. He knew she was only the supply ship from Australia and that she would bring canned foods and new liquor and week-old Sydney papers and some from Europe a great deal older than that.

There would be gossip and much laughter and, more important than all, a little mail. She would only stay for one day, long enough to pick up what cargo had been accumulated during the past four months. Then she would leave and be seen no more until four more months had passed.

The groups of natives eddied and parted and another white man appeared. You would have had to look closely to be sure he was a white man. His beard was shot with gray and matted and tangled together. His skin, arms and bare legs and throat and breast were sullen bronze with the sun. His hat was rudely made of tappa cloth and for a belt to hold up his ragged, dirty pants he wore a fragment of twisted rope-yarn.

He ran one shaking hand over his lips and croaked, “She’s four days late, heh?” The other white men looked round abruptly and as abruptly looked away again. No one answered. No one ever answered Taggart Not that he cared. He shaded his eyes with shaking hands and looked at the brig coming up to the anchorage.

She meant little to him, perhaps a drink cadged from the supercargo or captain, perhaps a few cans of food from the galley if Ah Moy, the Chinese cook, was still holding cook’s berth. No mail, no papers. At least no papers until the other traders had worn them to rags. Taggart, as all the Louisade Archipelago knew, was down and out, working the beaches, and a thing for laughter even among the natives.

The three white white men never bothered with Taggart.

A whaling ship, stopping for water, had dropped him on Kia Island. The whaling captain said he was a stowaway out of Brisbane. Taggart himself said he had been very drunk or he would never have gone to sleep on a whaling ship. The captain, who was very proud, struck him across the mouth for that. And Taggart took it and never whimpered. Only he wiped the blood from his lips and shambled off along the sand and went to sleep under the palms.

In time the traders regarded him as they might have regarded a dog, and sometimes, when the utter loneliness palled, and when they were sick of each other’s company, they would open a bottle of cheap trade gin and get him drunk.

HE had been in command of a ship-of-the-line once. He had led the review before the Royal yacht one memorable year. He had piled the same ship on the reefs off Motu-Iti Passage and they broke him and took away his honor. The girl he’d been going to marry, and whose father was an admiral, gave him up after that. He did not blame her. After half a bottle he would explain he did not blame her. He fiacl always drunk and done foolish things, but nothing serious, they must understand, until the Motu-Iti affair. After that, chaos. He went into the freighters and lost them steadily. The Royal Anne off Torres Strait, the Molucca in the Middle Passage, the Bruno Karl Grosser on the coast of Malabar. Always drunk. Schooners claimed him and after that Chinese junks, which is as low as a master-mariner can drop. Then even Chinamen spat on him and refused him command.

He drifted. He always drifted. He went from port to port, beach to beach. He lost everything save a tinge of his queer, haughty accent and his'capacity for liquor. Kia Island was the last place, but he didn’t care, didn’t care at all. He was utterly damned. He didn’t care who knew it. There was not a chance he could  come back, not a single chance. And he thanked the traders for their gin and went over the past again and brought in women and wild nights in wilder cities and dark things whispered and sometimes accomplished.

The traders for a while would be amused and finally disgusted. And when Taggart was completely drunk they would, throw him from the veranda where they would be sitting and call the house-boys to roll him among the hogs that he might sleep and sober up. Then— back to beachcombing.

On the beach now, standing behind the traders, he said again, “She’s four days late, heh?” and chuckled. He knew how eagerly the others waited for the brig and how they fretted when she was overdue.

He moved off down the sand to where the canoes were pushing off. He approached three or four and was thrust aside, but at last he found a place and went dancing over the swells toward the incoming vessel.

She came to and her anchor chain roared into the water, gradually straightening and finally remaining still. A whaleboat dropped down the hull. Blocks creaked and ropes whined angrily through rusty sheaves. Four oars lifted and fell in steady rhythm and the whaleboat went toward the beach with the supercargo and the brig’s captain in the stern sheets. On the brig’s deck, natives were breaking cargo out of the hatches and Taggart, coming up the rope pilot ladder, slouched midships to the galley.

Ah Moy shuffled across the greasy floor and stirred thin soup with a wooden ladle. His slant-eyes twinkled and his thin lips puckered soundlessly when he saw who his guest was.

“ ’Lo,” muttered Taggart. He glanced up and down the deck and then slipped into the galley. “Got any chow, Ah Moy ?”

The Chinaman allowed the wooden ladle to rest against the side of the big iron kettle while he re-coiled his pigtail.

He said, “Huh!” shortly, and pulled open a drawer to disclose some canned goods, scraps of bread and biscuits and some boiled mutton in a tin canister. There were cockroaches crawling over everything, but Taggart tapped them from the meat and the bread and started to eat.

Ah Moy dished him out some soup and gave him a spoon. He was the only man who came in contact with Taggart who did not betray contempt or scorn. Perhaps he understood. Perhaps he could see something inside the other’s tortured soul that made him sympathize. If so he gave no outward sign, made no comment. He seldom spoke at all for that matter.

It was whispered by some that Ah Moy himself was high-born, had once worn a button of rank. But that was only gossip and may or may not have been true.

AFTER eating and grunting thanks, Taggart pulled a small fiber sack from somewhere inside his ragged cotton shirt and unfastening it brought forth a small nugget of almost pure gold. He rolled it on the bench, picked up a few tins of canned meats and vegetables and fruits and looked at Ah Moy. The Chinaman patted his pigtails and pursed his lips. He shook his head. Taggart nodded, picked up the nugget, replacing the sack and left the galley carrying the tins.

Going aft, his shirt bulging with new-gained possessions, Taggart ran into a scowling mate.

“Hey!” said that harassed man, keeping one eye on the working natives. “Hey! You here again?... Ain’t the booze an’ climate got you yet?”

“Not yet,” responded the beach-comber with a trace of irritation. “Can’t you all wait ?”

“Wait? Hey! What you got in yer shirt ?”

“Grub.” Taggart cringed from him.

“Canned stuff ag’in ? Hey! What d’yer think this is? Free lunch? Take them tins back.”

The slouching, tattered figure whined, “Only a few cans, mister. Only a few cans. An’ I haven’t tasted white man's grub since you were here last.”

The mate scowled and snapped an oath at a native who dropped a case of small hand-mirrors. “Hey!” He turned to Taggart. “Get out of my sight.... Damn loafer. South Sea’s filled with your sort. Hey! Move along now, I’m busy.”

Taggart went on aft. On the poop he found the half-caste steward and fumbled again with the little sack from his shirt. Whispers. The mate was intent on the unloading. Both men descended to the saloon. A small nugget changed hands and the steward found a half-empty bottle in a locker. A glass half-filled. Another drink. Then the nervous steward ushered Taggart on deck again. He leaned on the taffrail and waited for the supercargo to come aboard.

The supercargo was busy figuring with a notebook and pencil when the beachcomber cornered him by the break of the poop.

“Go away,” he said. “Taggart, you’re a damned nuisance. I haven’t anything for you.”

“I’ve some gold here.” Taggart pulled out the little sack and emptied some more little nuggets in his palm. “I want a case of gin. They’re worth that.”

THE supercargo poked among the nuggets with a bony finger. “Where did you get that?” He was suspicious.

“Got it from a native.”

“Liar! Stole it from one, I suppose.... You’ve sunk pretty low.... I’ll have a case sent ashore for you. Put it back in the bag.”

The bag changed hands. Taggart’s eyes gleamed. Perhaps it was the liquor he had already consumed. “I’ll take the case with me.... Canoe waiting alongside.”

“All right.”

The supercargo turned to go up the companion. Taggart touched his arm. The other waited, surprised.

“What is it now?”

“In the papers…. last time you were in... I saw them on Jackson's veranda.... Something about the Alice B cruising through the Solomons and along the New Guinea coast.”

The supercargo stared.

“Gone crazy? What about the Alice B? That’s old man Barlowe’s yacht, same guy who owns this brig and a dozen like her.”

“I know.” Taggart seemed to be having trouble with his breathing. His grimy, s un-drenched face was pale above the ragged beard. He leaned hard on the taffrail. “She was to cruise through the Solomons.... Honeymoon trip the paper said.... Did she leave Sydney?”

“Left on the tenth of last month,” the supercargo snapped.

“Have.... Have you got any papers about that time?... I’d like to see them.”

“Oh, I haven’t time to waste. Ask Jackson to let you look through his bunch.”

The supercargo was gone, grumbling irritably. Taggart seemed to droop. He stood still for a long time gazing at the deck. Then he roused himself and went midships and spoke to the mate. Five minutes later he was bound for the shore with his case of gin and his canned goods. He disappeared into the palms, carrying his liquor on his shoulder and was not seen again until nightfall.

The three traders were entertaining the brig’s officers on the veranda of Jackson’s house when Taggart appeared. He was very drunk. His bare itpt s luffe d in the packed earth of the little compound surrounding the house. The black and white dog by the veranda steps rose and growled warning ly and Taggart swayed and stopped until Jackson looked up from his whiskey and frowned and said, “Who’s there?”

“Thought I’d call,” said Taggart. He came forward and the dog’s neck hair bristled until Jackson muttered a low command. Whereat the dog subsided and appeared to steep?" Taggart put one foot on the veranda steps and looked up at the men in clean whites gathered round the long table under the oil lamps. He swayed again and his eyes were puffed and bloodshot. Jackson debated with imself whether he shoul d call the dog on him.

He compromised at last by saying, “What do you want? I've no liquor for you.”

“May I see the papers?” The beachcomber was trying to steady himself and keep his voice dignified.

The brig captain said, “There’s nothing so disgusting as a white man gone under.” Then in a louder tone, “I’d take him and pitch him ashore in Townsville, Jackson, but they’d never stand for it there.”

“The man’s a pest at times,” grumbled Jackson. “Makes the natives laugh to see a white man down with them.... Oh, well. What papers do you want?”

“I’d like the Sydney papers round the tenth of last month. I’ll take care of them.”

Jackson tugged at his neat beard and frowned. He finished his whiskey and said, “Well, ask the house-boy to give them to you. And get out.”

“Thank you. I’ll return them in the morning.”

TAGGART stumbled away round the corner of the house, making for the rear where he could- find the house-boy. The brig’s supercargo said, thoughtfully, “Wonder if all that stuff he tells when he’s drunk is true?”

Jackson cut the end from a long cheroot.

“Maybe,” he said. “Shouldn’t be surprised. There’s queer characters down south here.”

The supercargo nodded. “He was on board this morning asking me about the Alice B and I told him she left Sydney on the tenth. The old man’s daughter was married a while ago and they’re honeymooning through these parts. Going to call at their trading posts, I fancy.”

Alsee, the trader who spoke four languages and was of unknown nationality, rubbed his smooth-shaven face and traced patterns on the table with the lees of siphoned soda water.

“Old Barlowe was an admiral of the fleet,” he murmured.

Lieber, the other trader, laughed harshly. “So was the father of old Taggart’s girl, the one he was going to marry and who threw him over.”

Alsee smiled and went on tracing patterns in the soda water lees. In the palms a night-bird called abruptly and somewhere under the house a rat gnawed coarsely on hard wood.

“That’s what I meant.”

Jackson looked startled. “Good heavens! You mean that Taggart’s sudden interest in the Alice B is because Barlowe’s daughter—?”

Alsee nodded slowly. After a moment or two Lieber nodded, with narrowed eyes. The brig captain stifled an exclamation and the supercargo yawned and grunted unbelief.

“Come to think of it,” went on Jackson slowly, “it might be. Old Barlowe was in command of the China station once, wasn’t he? And Taggart claims he lost that first ship of his off Motu-Iti while under orders from the China station. I always thought he was half-romancing... but still...”

Alsee’s soft voice murmured, “There are stranger things. I knew a eachcomber on Nuki Huvi who had married two native women and had a dozen children. When he died we found papers that proved he had a title.”

“And say,” put in the supercargo’s now somewhat excited voice, “I always wondered why Ah Moh treated this Taggart with such generosity when he always chases every other man out of his galley. Maybe Ah Moy knew him once.”

“Too far fetched.... Oh, well. Poor devil. I’ll have him up to dinner some time this week and give him an old suit to wear in place of the rags he’s got. Show my sympathy some way.... But he gets tiresome.” Jackson called for more whiskey and the house-boy brought an unopened bottle.

By the light of the only stump of candle he possessed Taggart was then scattering over the thick pile of Sydney papers with feverish excitement. He started from the earliest paper and went through, scanning only the marine news until he found what he sought. It was a somewhat long item, stating that the steam yacht Alice B had left that day for a protracted cruise in the south seas bearing on board the owner’s daughter and her newly married husband.

Taggart read that over four times and then went back through the papers, the news pages, until he came to a tall photograph and a column about a certain wedding. Thereafter he sat alone and still and silent under the stars while the candle flickered and died. Once he groaned. Then at last he gathered the papers into a neat bundle and hid them away. In the morning he woul d return them.

Dawn found him in a stupor by the roots of a huge koa tree with empty bottles around him. He was utterly damned and he knew it.

THE night of the day the Alice B anchored off Kia Island, Alsee the trader sent for Taggart. The beachcomber found the other man in immaculate evening dress sitting at his table with the house-boys already laying out the dishes.

“Sit down,” said Alsee, waving to a chair. “Hilo, a whiskey and soda for Mr. Taggart.”

Taggart grinned so that blackened teeth showed through his beard and he flopped to a chair. He wasn’t curious about his being asked to dinner by Alsee. It was the trader’s custom when strange ships came to the island and he needed company. He disliked eating alone and he would not go either to Jackson’s or Lieber’s because they always entertained whatever newcomers happened to wander ashore. Or else they were entertained on board the ship. And because it was unthinkable a native should dine with him, Alsee always sent for Taggart. And just as the beachcomber was, unshaven, dirty, ragged, he would sit with the trader and drink good whiskey and eat good food and talk in a pleasing, cultivated voice of far cities and things of which outcasts should know nothing.

Tonight Alsee was strangely nervous. He fumbled with his bread and forgot to eat his fish. Once he cursed the house-boy in a tongue that was strange to Taggart and was strange also to the frightened native.

The trader muttered once: “I don’t see why these confounded tourists should come poking into these out-of-the-way places... Have you seen them, Taggart?”

“Yes.” The beach-comber was abruptly silent. He drank two straight whiskies before continuing. Then he added: "I saw them come ashore, three men and two women. Jackson met them.”

“Great entertainer, Jackson,” Alsee half sneered. He fingered his glass with fingers that were tense. “A good fellow but somewhat vulgar.”

“Yes.” Taggart agreed with an effort. Then he managed a smile. “He has an abominable taste in ties.” Fine of him to be talking of taste. He whom the native women kept.

“I should think so. Hideous reds and yellow. Brought up in the Bowery, probably.”

“Or Limehouse.”

“Hasn’t the accent. Well, drink up. Who were the three men?”

Taggart shrugged. He set his teeth. Why the devil should he be so nervous himself?

“One of the women was a maid, I thought. The other, I presume, was old man Barlowe’s daughter.”

“Yes, you knew her,” said Alsee unguardedly. Then hurriedly, “But the men!”

“Yes, the men.... One must have been... her... her husband.” Taggard seized the decanter with savage energy and poured a stiff drink. “Yes, her husband.” He finished the liquor and coughed and felt better. “One was the yacht captain, I judge by his uniform. The other was an army man, dressed in light khaki... high rank, I imagine.”

Alsee leaned forward and fumbled with his white tie. His other hand was gripping the table corner hard.

“Tall with a brown mustache... no, gray now. Long scar down his cheek. Walks with a limp.”

“You know him?” Taggart’s voice was thickening.

Alsee evaded his eyes. “No, Jackson was tilling me about him when he came here to borrow some decent silverware this morning. His name?”

“I didn’t hear. I was watching them from behind the palms.”

“Of course, I forgot.... You wouldn’t want to see them... on the beach.”

Alsee drained his glass and laughed harshly. “Damned hot, isn’t it? Boy, fill the decanter again. Drink up, Taggart. I feel rather low tonight.” They were both fuddled by the time the moon came up.

Taggart rocked away into the shadows and slumped to the ground on a low mound from where he could watch with swim? ming eyes the brightly lighted scene on Jackson’s veranda where the trader was entertaining his employer’s daughter and her husband. Taggart guessed that Alsee watched also, from his own veranda, and in that surmise Taggart had guessed unvarnished truth.

Alsee was watching, and as he watched he was cursing thickly under his breath and dreading the morrow and the light. The visitors might tour the island, might inquire about the third trading post.

WHEN dawn came the yacht had gone.

But to the dismay of at least two men the daughter of old Barlowe, her husband and her soldier guest remained on Kia Island. Jackson explained when he dropped over to Alsee’s place to ask the continued loan of the silverware:

“Yacht’s got to take some supplies over to Rossel Island and th’ newlyweds want to spend a while ashore. Coming back in a day or so. Better come and meet ’em.”

“Thanks. ... I rather not. You know how I hate company.” Alsee was profuse with explanations. Jackson did not urge. He had been on Kia Island five years with the other man and was used to his strange craze for not meeting strangers. That evening Taggart dined again with the trader and again they drank to excess. But neither mentioned the visitors this time.

Then, half way through the next morning, a strange schooner lifted her sails over the rim of the sea. She sailed as though weary, despite the fact that the Trade wind blew fresh and strong. Only half her canvas was set. She yawed widely from side to side. When she anchored at last it was in a queer fashion, without coming to, the cable tautening with a jerk and nearly snapping as the vessel checked and the canvas shivered. The native canoes, launched and half-way out to the stranger, turned suddenly and sped for the beach. Jackson and his visitors on the sand shouted to know what was the matter.

But the trader had his answer without waiting for the natives to return. He knew thirty seconds after he had called. Lieber, hurrying down to the beach knew. Alsee knew. Even Taggart, thick-headed and blear-gyed in the grooves, knew.

Barlowe’s daughter, who did not understand, being city bred, cried out, “What is it?” when Jackson ripped out an oath and started to back up the beach. And her husband echoed the cry. But no one would tell them until they were all back in Jackson’s house when the army man explained in crisp, harsh words. He had seen villages depopulated and once had commanded a division where the plague was rife. Understanding and nausea was his.

The woman sobbed with new-found terror. The man whimpered with little twinges of fear. The army officer poured liberal drinks and lighted up a black cigar. Jackson had gone down to the beach again with Lieber. They launched a boat, no native would go with them, and went out to the anchored schooner.

AN hour and a half later they all gathered in Alsee’s house, all except the visitors from the yacht, all except Taggart. There were the three traders and the native chiefs who were very much afraid.

“It’s the schooner Yoshiwari out of Brisbane. She’s been recruiting blacks in the Solomons and New Guinea,” Jackson was explaining. “Plague broke out as they started back for Queensland. Skipper gone, mate gone. Supercargo brought her here and he’s got it bad. Kept going with gin I imagine. He said there were one hundred and twenty recruits, not counting the crew, and now there’s eighty all told.”

Alsee put in, jerkily , “Can’t some of the blacks sail her to Australia?”

Jackson shook his head and rubbed his beard. “The supercargo said none of them could navigate.... We’re up against it. The schooner can’t stay here. We ain’t got a doctor nor medicine and once the thing started it’d sweep the island like a fire.”

“It’ll start all right with the wind blowing the stink down. Besides,” commented Lieber dryly, “the first swell’ll break out the anchor and she’ll drift ashore.”

“That’s it,” said Jackson. “Someone’s got to take her to Queensland and quarantine. She can’t stay here.”

“The yacht could tow her back,” suggested Alsee.

Jackson eyed him with some contempt. “You never were a sailor, Alsee. Any ship towing that pest house would likely get swept herself. And d’you think old Barlowe’d stand for it for one minute when his daughter’s hanging around ? Besides, when will the yacht get back? Every hour means a better chance for the plague to take hold here.”

“No doubt of it,” muttered Lieber, “we’ve got to get her away.”

Jackson hesitated a moment. Then he turned to one of the anxiously listening native chiefs and said, “Get Taggart.”

The native padded away. Jackson faced the other traders and his eyes dropped.

He muttered, “Taggart,” meaningly.

Lieber looked shocked and caressed his fair mustache. “We couldn’t... couldn’t ask him! We’ve treated him like a dog.... We couldn’t ask him to save us.”

Alsee rocked back and forth on his heels as though drunk. He said thickly, “I'd go myself ... go myself.” The whiskey bottle went around, natives and all drinking in this crisis.

Taggart came in and was given a glass. He looked at the amber fluid queerly and then sent blood-shot eyes round the room.

“Good whiskey for a bum! I always thought trade gin was good enough.”

Alsee laughed grimly. “The plague, Taggart.... We’ve all got the wind up.”

Jackson added, “Drink up, man, and have another.... Someone’s got to take the Yoshiwari to Queensland, to Townsville, and get her in quarantine.”

“I’m good enough for that, eh?” Taggart laughed and drained his glass. He refilled it and drained it again. “Any beachcomber can be a hero now.”

Jackson shifted uncomfortably and kept his eyes on his hands.

“I’ve a wife and children in Sydney and Lieber’s married.... It’s a chance for you to come back, Taggart.... You’d get reinstated in the navy if you got the ship through. We’ll write a report....”

Taggart snarled, suddenly bitter. “Who said I was in the navy?... You keep your damned mouth shut, Jackson.”

The bottle went around again.

Alsee croaked hoarsely, “I’d go myself... damned glad to finish... but, you see... I can’t navigate.” They all watched him wonderingly, watched his working face and his twisting manicured hands. “You see . . .” There was pain in his eyes... I’m an army man!”

TAGGART laughed uproariously and slopped whiskey down his shirt front.

“Meeting of the damned,” he gasped. “Drink, you swine. All cashiered and chucked out. And I suppose it was cards and liquor, Alsee?”

The other two traders drank in silence and puffed awkwardly at their cigars. Several minutes later, during a lull in the argument. Alsee muttered, “Not cards, Taggart.” He leaned heavily on the beachcomber’s shoulder. “Conduct unbecoming to an officer....”

“Shut up!” Taggart was snarling. “Shut up, all of you. I’ll take the Yoshiwari to Townsville....”

Jackson and Lieber involuntarily sighed with relief. In spite of the drinking, cold fear had kept them sober. They came round the table and reached for Taggart’s hands, though they still avoided his eyes. He waved them drunkenly away. He was going to his death and he knew it, and he knew that they knew it.

Jackson said, huskily, “I’ll have a dozen cases sent aboard... to keep you company.”

Lieber broke in, “Your guests are coming, Jackson.” They all turned to gaze from the veranda and saw three white-clad figures coming toward Alsee’s house. The visitors were impatient to know what was being done. Alsee uttered a choked cry and staggered a little.

“Go out and stop them, Jackson,” he said. “Go out!” But steps were already on the plank walk that led to the veranda steps. Taggart shrank back against the house wall and Alsee stood as though transfixe d. The visitors came to the veranda steps and looked up.

The woman cried, nervously, “What are we going to do? Have you decidetf anything yet?” Her hands clasped and unclasped over a fragment of handkerchief. Her hot eyes searched the faces of the men above. Beside her the army man uttered a sharp exclamation. He had caught a glimpse of Alsee’s face.

Lieber, who was more sensitive than Jackson, put in hurriedly, “Come over to my place and I’ll tell you.” He led the way and obediently, Jackson and the woman and her husband followed. The army man remained, abruptly oblivious to his surroundings. He went up the steps, one by one, until he confronted Alsee. The trader backed slowly through the door near him, the other man following. The door closed. Taggart wiped sweat from his brow and straightened. He reached for the half-empty bottle on the veranda table and disdaining glasses tilted the neck. He heard vague voices from behind the closed door. Then he went down through the groves to get ready a canoe. As he went he laughed and rocked in drunken abandon. She had looked at him and hadn’t even known him. Hadn’t even known him!

HE was launching a canoe, and directing natives in the stowage of the cases of liquor Jackson had sent down, when Alsee came along the sand. The trader’s face was drained white. His eyes were feverish orbs in which, strangely, all light seemed gone. His arms were rigid at his side and he walked as though keeping time to some distant music.

He said, “There are many ways for a man to die.... Might as well go out decently.... I’ll come with you, Taggart.”

Taggart looked up and nodded and laughed. It was all but over. What little flicker of care he had ever had went out and died. He reached down to an open case and drew forth two bottles. He knocked off the necks with a rock and handed one to Alsee.

“Here’s how,” he chuckled and started drinking. They were both utterly damned. Alsee laughed queerly and drank, too. Then they went on board the Yoshiwari.

The dying were screaming out and calling on strange gods. The plague reek was thick in the hot air. The decks were chaos and broody with death. By the wheel was the supercargo, dead as mutton. They pitched him overboard and took another drink.

It was killing work lifting anchor with frantic blacks who didn’t know the cable from the fluke. It was worse getting canvas set. But somehow Taggart managed it all, swaying along the deck with a bottle in one hand and a piece of a gin case in the other. At times he stopped to roll a body overside. Once he looked back at Kia Island where he had spent the empty years and he chuckled obscenely.

He was saving a few mad niggers and saving Kia Island, not because he was a hero but because he had loved her once. And she had looked at him. And she hadn’t even known him. He said to Alsee, when he got back to the poop, “If she’d only stuck by me....” But Alsee cursed the heat and the plague and his own soul and took no heed. He was damned himself.

On the Louisade beaches to this day you can hear the tale. They tell it along the Townsville waterfront and in many a schooner saloon and fo’c’s’le. How Taggart of Kia took the Yoshiwari in seven days from the Archipelago to Queensland and quarantine, through the Greater Barrier Reef and safely into harbor. When the doctor came alongside Taggart was at the wheel, kept there because he was lashed to a triangle made of oars. He was far gone with the plague. There were many empty bottles in the scuppers near him. Of Alsee there was no sign. He had died three days back. There were sixty live natives below decks and seven dead on the hatches.

As Taggart let go the schooner’s wheel and the few remaining native seamen let go the anchor, a lean, slender destroyer came down the bay. She was dark painted and her awnings glistened white in the sun. Uniformed officers paced her little bridge. Alert white men moved on her main deck. She flew a flag of many colors and she was beautiful on the smoothness of the water.

Taggart raised his head and smiled and there was no sign of the drink or of madness in his eyes. He raised one hand in a sort of half-salute as the destroyer went by. He was quite dead by the time a heroic young doctor boarded the reeking ship. And there are so many ways to die.

___________________

12: Carry on, Mr. Barnes

Esquire Aug 1943

Sun (Sydney), 22 Oct 1944

THERE were fifteen of them in the boat. Watson, the little steward, was unconscious with a shell splinter some where inside him and half his face in shreds. Mr. Chalmers, the first mate, was already dying, his flannel shirt wet with blood. Saunders, the bosun, was standing up amidships, swearing thickly, and shaking his great fists at the submarine submerging in the moonlit sea, while young Mr, Barnes, the third mate, had taken over the tiller aft.

Everyone was dazed. It had all been so sudden. The first torpedo at eight bells, midnight. The second a minute later. And then the little freighter Chloris, San Francisco to Callao, was sliding under with a broken back.  One lifeboat cleared away, and the sub surfacing to shell that.

Mr. Chalmers, the mate, plucked at the third mate's sleeve.

"Never mind trying to fix me," he whispered "This is 'It' for me... You'll take over, Barnes. Keep her heading east for the coast if you can. You'll maybe have trouble. Some of the men... aren't too sound. The bosun's good, but an old-timer. He won't like... you... being a first-trip officer and trying to handle things.... Got to show 'em, son. Remember to ration everything... Be firm... Especially ration the water... And keep her heading east.... You'll strike the coast...."

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Barnes and swallowed hard.

The mate had collapsed on the bottom boards and it was scarcely necessary to fumble under his shirt to feel his heart. Mr. Barnes swallowed again and looked over his first, command, tossing there on the oily sea and with the debris of the Chloris all round.

"All right," he said, hardly recognising his own voice. "We'll get the mast stepped and make sail. But we'd better fish about a bit first. There's stuff floating we can maybe use."

Saunders, the bosun, stopped swearing abruptly and looked at him. He looked at him for a long time.

"Aye," he said slowly. "Ayel We can maybe use some of the stuff."

Mr. Barnes shook his head, to clear the daze away. He saw the bosun take hold of the dead mate's shoulders and lift him to the gunwale. He closed his eyes so that he wouldn't see the splash...

Perhaps, he thought, I will get used to these things. When you're just twenty and the ink is hardly dry on your licence, It's hard. He licked his parched lips.

"There doesn't seem much more good stuff about," he told the bosun. "We'd better make sail."

"With this wind she'll be lucky to make half a knot."

The bosun was staring at him with narrowed eyes, his hands on his hips. He was a big, blocky man with Iron-grey hair and a square face seamed by the suns and sins of fifty years.

THE third mate was big, too. Big, broad and blond, and acutely aware of his youth. So they stared at each other in the moonlight and the fact that he was holding the tiller gave the third mate confidence. He remembered again the dead mate's words. Take over, son.

He said through dry lips:

"Bosun, even half a knot will help. Step the mast and make sail!"

The bosun hitched at his belt and spat overside.

He said shortly, "Yes, it'll help," and turned to get some of the men to action. He turned back when they had the sail hoisted and added, "Full up, sir?" and Mr. Barnes said "Full up," and he knew the "sir" was involuntary and not from any respect. How did you get an old-time bosun to say "sir" and mean it?

Mr. Barnes leaned again on the tiller as the hoisted sail filled, and he said, "That's full enough."

The bosun said, "She can take more," and let the sheet out a bit. Mr. Barnes felt there was nothing to say. He had to admit to himself he really didn't know enough about small boat sailing to be any authority. But he did know the bosun had corrected him on principle and not from necessity. The sheet had been full enough.

At dawn the boat slogged wearily before an indifferent wind. Mr. Barnes had lashed the tiller, so there was not much problem about steering anyway, as the sail and lashed rudder held the heavy boat steady.

The men began to wake, cramped and weary, from their hard beds on the bottom boards. They stretched, looked round, and started to get up to stretch their legs. Mr. Barnes said sharply:

"Only two of you at a time. The boat's not too steady."

He was himself red-eyed, not having slept all night. They looked at him and then looked at the bosun. The bosun nodded and Mr. Barnes bit his lip. He understood that every order he gave had to be approved. He wondered what a young officer had to do to correct that. He didn't know, and couldn't think. Command was something a man had to learn, like seamanship and navigation.

The sun rose and the heat began to beat down.

Mr. Barnes said: "Bosun, you'll help me with the water. One dipper for each man."

The bosun said nothing, but held out a tin cup.

Mr. Barnes plunged the tube-like dipper into the water breaker he had uncorked, and filled the cup. The bosun passed it to a man, who drank, and passed the empty cup back. The process went on, orderly, deliberate.

At the end Mr. Barnes filled the cup for the bosun, who said, "After you," and looked a little amused. Mr. Barnes said quietly: "I handle the boat. I come last, bosun."

At which the older man, after a moment's hesitation, nodded and drank. They opened the sea-biscuits and some of the tinned beef after that. And when that was done, one of the men suggested another drink of water.

Mr. Barnes shook his head, although his own mouth was dry again now. "No more water until noon," he stated, and the man cursed.

The bosun coughed and lighted a cigarette.

"It's a better idea to serve the water after the grub," he said dryly, and Mr. Barnes looked at him and bit his lip.

"I've learned that much already," he observed. "Haul in the main sheet a bit!"

They obeyed him, staring at him all the time now. Wondering. But the main thing was to keep heading east for the coast. Heading east, as the dead mate ordered him.

At noon, by his wrist-watch, Mr. Barnes served water again, but cannily, only half a dipper until the men had eaten, when he rationed out the other half. He was learning. Even the grim-visaged bosun grunted a sour approval.

He had had all the food and water brought to the sternsheets near his feet by now, where he could watch it, and since the bosun had made no comment on this order he thought the older man considered the measure was good.

By late afternoon Watson, the steward, had come from his unconscious condition and was moaning pitifully. Mr. Barnes had him cooled with sea water, which was warm at best, and placed a bandage about his splinter wound, and allowed him an extra half-pannikin of water.

The injured man had no wish to eat, but Mr. Barnes made something of a thin stew with powdered biscuit and flakes of corned beef and with one of the salvaged onions from the wreck. He made a man hold this concoction, mixed in the bailing-bucket, over a hurricane-lamp flame until it was reasonably cooked, and then fed the liquid to Watson.

There was no comment to all this. The men watched curiously. But the bosun said:

"Watson ain't going to live, anyhow." He spat overside. "What's the use?"

"We can try," said Mr. Barnes, dry-mouthed. "It's the least anyone can do."

He crawled the length of the boat and probed at the wound in the steward's chest, and saw it was inflamed.

"We've got to get that sliver out," he said, perplexed, and some of the men laughed.

"Dr. Barnes, eh?" The bosun said, "You might kill him," and the young mate said: "If I don't, the fester will. It'll turn to gangrene."

The men fell silent. The bosun fell silent. Mr. Barnes took out his pocket-knife and, ordering two men to hold the patient, he began to dig into the flesh. He was sweating when it was done, and not altogether from the heat, and the steward was a whimpering wreck again.

Mr. Barnes adjusted a sea-water compress and then, crawling back along the boat, all but collapsed in the sternsheets again. The men said nothing. The bosun said nothing. Mr. Barnes felt he had achieved something of a conquest and relaxed.

And the boat held on before the wind.

That night the wind fell away and the boat drifted. Dawn found them swinging uneasily in a greasy sea, and, looking at the sky, Mr. Barnes had some misgivings. The clouds were gathering.

Mr. Barnes ordered two oars raised and lashed to the bottom boards and gunwales, so that the sail could be turned into an awning. The men had scarcely finished when a torrential rain came down and they had to unship everything, holding the canvas at an angle until the salt was washed out of it, and then catching the fresh water into a small funnel that was held to one of the almost empty water breakers.

At last everything capable of holding water in the boat was filled. The sun broke through as the squall passed and the men's soaked clothing began to steam. A small wind came up after the rain-squall, but from the east— not the wind Mr. Barnes wished, it grew steadily, and by night the boat was pitching at her sea-anchor and hove-to.

The bosun spat and said roughly: "This ain't getting us anywhere. We'd better lay her close to the wind an' try and make the Galapagos."

Mr. Barnes looked at him and felt his own stomach tighten. This was his first real and personal decision. "We steer east," he said grimly. "Steady east. The Galapagos are too far."

The bosun spat again and hitched his belt. "I think I'd better take this boat over," he stated.

The men murmured agreement. One man said: "Hell, the ink ain't dry on his ticket yet. "What does 'e know?"

Mr. Barnes stood up, knocked the tiller free, so that he could use it as a club. He was pale. "You'll obey orders, bosun."

This was a crisis. The bosun laughed and some of the men laughed with him. He said: "What're you giving us, kid? I been in boats and I can handle 'em." Mr. Barnes said, "You'll take orders, bosun."

The bosun laughed and came aft. "You ain't got the guts, kid, even if you knew what you were doing. Quit, and let a man handle the job. We gotta make the Galapagos Islands."

"Sit down," said Mr. Barnes. His face was white and his body rigid. "We head east," he repeated. "Steady east. The Galapagos are too far."

The bosun spat again.

"Sit down," said Mr. Barnes. He braoed himself with spread feet and hefted the tiller. The bosun still came aft, his great hands outstretched. The young mate hit him and he went to his knees.

"Why, you…" he started, dazed, and came to his feet with a rush that made the boat rock. Mr. Barnes hit him again, and this time with full force, and the bosun went down with a crash.

"Pour some sea .water on him," ordered Mr. Barnes through tight lips. The silent men stared at him and then one complied, dipping the bucket over the gunwale.

The bosun sputtered and came to, dazed and holding a split scalp.

Mr. Barnes said: "We steer dead east, bosun." The bosun was silent. He licked his lips.

"Yes... sir," he said.

MR. BARNES slipped the tiller and sitting down, inspected the boat compass as if nothing had happened. He was shaking all over. But he had held command. The weather did not improve, and the boat was constantly drenched with spray. Small wave-tops lopped over and the men had to take turns bailing.

When the day's heat had begun to diminish, some of them complained of chill, and such as had no rubber life-suits huddled inside their kapok life-jackets and cursed all things.

Mr. Barnes lighted a hurricane lamp and ordered it to be lashed to tne mast. It gave only a feeble, flickering light, often threatening to go out when the boat gave a violent plunge, but it was soothing to the nerves, a friendly spark in the dark sea.

The night was incredibly long, the boat bucking to the stiffening swells, and when the sun came up it was not a relief but a promise of more smashing heat and torture. The swells ran huge, and a startling blue, and many of the men became seasick with the motion, so different rom that of a large vessel.

Mr. Barnes took stock of his position and his supplies. He was hove-to and therefore more or less stationary, with no lope of making headway east, nor lorth-east, for the Galapagos now. A trim-built schooner might claw to windward, but a clumsy lifeboat had no chance at all. On the other hand, there was nothing to the west for a thousand or more miles! Nor was there any hope of running and hoping to reach any well-used shipping lane, as well-used shipping lines no longer existed.

No, the dead mate was right. Keep her east, fella! And that meant remaining where they were as much is possible, until the sea subsided and the easterly wind changed to give them a break.

As for supplies, Mr. Barnes counted eight tins of corned beef efft, a dozen tins of tomatoes, a small box of sea-biscuits, supplementing a supply in a large tin box fastened beneath the midships thwart; a few potatoes and onions which had been salvaged from the wreck, and a small sack containing three tins of sardines and some loaves of soft bread which someone, it seemed, had had the presence of mind to secure before abandoning ship.

The water supply was contained a three fairly large breakers and in various bottles and flasks some men owned, but it was obvious, on the whole, that the rationing would have to be strict with their length of time adrift as uncertain as it was.

"We take a drink every noon, when we eat," Mr. Barnes an nounced, after some computing. "And a swallow or two in the afternoon. There's no use complaining. We're only a couple of hundred miles from the coast, but God knows how long we'll be getting there."

They stared at him and said nothing. Even the bosun said nothing. Mr. Barnes felt that that was the worst part of it. They made no attempt to debate or argue the matter, or to offer any advice. They just stared and said nothing. It was up to him.

The wind remained strong from the east and the swells showed no signs of decreasing. Mr. Barnes did not sleep again that night. There were many nights ne did not sleep. The persistent easterly wind continued and after eight days died away. The swell subsided, too, and the boat tossed to a swollen calm.

By this time the men were all bearded, filthy, exhausted from the drenching heat. By this time, too, the water was nearly finished, the only renewed supply being from a porcelain filter which, taking sea water into a top section, rendered about a quart of reasonably fresh water a day from the bottom section, a pittance among fifteen men.

The food was exhausted, save for the biscuits, and Mr. Barnes cut the water allowance and the biscuit allowance in half.

One seaman rose in protest and started aft.

"I ain't scared of dying," he choked, "but I might as well die on a full gut!"

Mr. Barnes unshipped his tiller and stood up. "Get back where you belong," he croaked. The half-crazed man shook both fists and roared: "Why do we have to listen to this damned kid? I say…"

The bosun caught at his ankle and jerked him flat. "Shut up," he said.

The man started to get up again, raving, and Mr. Barnes hit him with the tiller. He went down.

The bosun laughed. "It ain't always necessary to go that far, kid, but you're fast learning."

"Sure, I'm learning," said Mr. Barnes.

They suffered incredibly during the next days. Once they heard a plane drone overhead, and twice they saw steamship smoke on the horizon, but neither gave relief.

The calm persisted. The water ran out, save for the porcelain filter which scarcely sufficed for a mouthful a day per man. With the bare mouthful of water a day it was possible to issue, lips and tongues began to swell and crack, and some of the men became partially delirious. One man particularly so, suddenly getting up and screaming he could see a fountain, and, jumping into the sea, began to swallow.

Mr. Barnes had him hauled back with the boathook and ordered him bound. The man screamed imprecations and savage threats until someone thrust an oily rag in his mouth to stop the clamor.

At night the dews made beads of moisture on the woodwork and the men licked this off avidly. Mr. Barnes kept the porcelain filter between his knees and had occasionally to ward off dark figures that tried to steal aft in the night for the precious liquid.

He had almost forgotten what a sound sleep was like. He had become accustomed, like an animal, to waking instantly at the beginning of the slightest suspicious sound.

AFTER the second day without food, he vaguely recalled something he had once heard an old sailing-ship officer say, noticing the schools of flying-fish that played tantalisingly all round an open boat.

And that night he had the three hurricane lamps they had lighted and hung low on the shrouds. Sure enough, every so often a flying-fish or two, aiming for the light as a moth to the flame, would come whirling in over the gunwale, to crash into a man's chest or to drop gasping to the bottom boards.

All the fish would have been snatched and devoured by the strongest men, but Mr. Barnes went the boat's length with tiller in hand and ordered all the fish delivered aft, for equal distribution later.

After three nights, the schools of fish disappeared. The boat drifted two days more in the oily calm, and the men looked at each other and wondered. They were all sun-blackened and sun-blistered, and salt-water sores had appeared on some of them.

The sick steward seemed to be sinking, and Mr. Barnes fed him on a thin gruel of a piece of powdered biscuit he had saved, and a precious half-pannikin of water. One man cursed at that.

"Hell, Watson's done for!" he croaked. "Why waste stuff on him?"

"Shut up!" said Mr. Barnes, holding the sick man's head and feeding him a little at a time, and he was surprised to hear the bosun say, "Shut up!" in accord, and then call, "You dirty swine...!"

Mr. Barnes whipped round in time to see the man coming for his back with his sheath-knife and the bosun hitting him with his fist and knocking him over.

The rest of the men said nothing The objector sat up, and the bosun threw his knife overboard.

"Sharks!" shouted one of the men, pointing with a shaking finger over the side of the boat. Mr. Barnes looked at the triangular fin skimming round the baat and his heart turned over. Was that really the end of command, any sort of command? Shark meat?

His head felt light. Then the sight of the shark circling gave him an idea. He made the bosun lash a line to the boathook, and he poised it as a harpoon. All hands waited breathlessly, and when Mr. Barnes let the boathook go and it sank deep into that steel-grey back, they yelped like children.

There was half an hour of careful playing then, in case the shark tore the boathook out, and men who had been sullen for days enthusiastically hauled in the sea-anchor and, getting the oars out again, helped to manoeuvre the savage fish alongside. They killed it with blows from axes, and with sheath-knife stabs and with the looms of poised oars.

Mr. Barnes had only one trouble. When the ten-foot fish was hauled over the gunwale, the men started to carve into it ravenously, and the third mate waded in among them dealing the tiller impartially to right and left. Some of the men cringed away; some snarled back; one or two threatened with their knives. They hated Mr. Barnes with an undying hatred, even while they knew he was right.

He and the bosun divided the shark into the proper amounts for each man, making them draw lots for the choice parts. There was contentment for a while.

IT was two days later when they saw the next steamer smoke. They watched it come over the horizon, and some of them stood and waved and shouted as if they could be heard.

The bosun said, "What's the use? We've seen two ships before, but they can't see us this low in the water."

Mr. Barnes snapped upright.

"Why didn't I think of it before?" he demanded. "Bosun! Those corned beef tins we've been using for bailing. Cut me out one side."

"One side?" said the bosun, astonished.

"That's an order, bosun," said Mr Barnes.

The bosun shrugged, muttered something about all third mates being crazy, anyway, and with his sheath knife hacked a side from a tin. Mr. Barnes seized it, hammered the ragged edges flat, then washed it in the sea and polished it with the inside of his elbow. Mr. Barnes held the bright side of the tin toward the sun and catching the glare began to talk across the sea.

"They can't see a small boat this far away, bosun," he explained. "But they can catch a heliograph signal."

"A heli… heliograph," the bosun floundered. "I never heard..."

"Morse code, bosun. Shut up! That's something I did learn in navigation school, anyway... Let's see!... Ship ahoy!... Three dots... two dots... Got it. Now we'll see."

He adjusted the piece of tin and caught the sun again and spelled out their predicament. He knew it was all a matter of whether the watch officer was on the alert, but since all ships running these days kept several lookouts for a submarine and such, it was most likely someone would notice the sun-flashes...

Three dots... two dots.... Ship ahoy!...

The men in the boat watched breathlessly. Mr. Barnes was an officer now, full-fledged. Nothing seemed to happen. And then the steamer suddenly changed course and there came back across the bright calm sea dazzling flashes which only Mr. Barnes could read...

Dot dash dot... dot... dash dot dash dot.... Received and understood. Will pick you up....

Mr. Barnes did not collapse until after he was aided up the rail of the cruiser Astoria, and even then he managed to stand until he had given his report to the commander.

AND THAT'S all Mr. Barnes remembered for many days. Probably his first memory was of the bosun's face, looking down at him anxiously and then reddening under the third mate's smile. The bosun was twisting his cap in his hands. He coughed, and started, to speak, and almost tore the cap apart. He had apologies, and good wines, and messages from the men,

_____________________

13: A Shift of Cargo

Adventure Feb 1947

Australian Women's Weekly 14 August 1948

THE bulky, thick-necked man with a scrub of dark moustache dropped to a chair the other side of the iron-legged, marble-topped cafe table.

"You'll be Captain Larkin, of the Wyandot," he said, making it a statement rather than a question. "American registry," he added almost mechanically. "Sailing for Lisbon to-morrow in ballast. I understand you own the ship."

Captain Larkin's lean frame relaxed. He had expected the usual "touch" for a drink that one gets from a stranger in a sleepy foreign port, but this approach was new and the stranger didn't seem exactly like a beachcomber.

Larkin's weathered face almost cracked in a smile and his grey eyes twinkled.

"I own the Wyandot," he agreed. "You want to offer me a cargo or buy a passage?"

"That depends," said the stranger carefully. "The tramp ship Carroway's docked here too. Clearing for Greece in three days. Master's name's Daniels. You don't like Daniels. Had lots of run-ins, rows over trade, and such."

Captain Larkin made circles with his glass on the table top. "You seem to know a lot," he said dryly. "Where'd you hear the fairy tales?"

The stranger mopped his face. "It had to be fast work," he admitted. "I only got in with the mail boat this morning. But I get around, and the police were a help."

He pushed a card across the table. "My name's Saunders, and I'm down on a special job. Private investigator. I have to take a certain guy back and it's worth fifty grand."

A muscle in the captain's cheek twitched. "I'll check on you later, Saunders. But tell me first where I come in."

"It's just a chance I'm taking," Saunders admitted candidly. "This is a rush job and you might have ideas. 'Specially as you don t like Daniels of the Carroway."

Larkin swore a little. "No, I don't like Daniels. He's pulled too many fast ones and he nearly wrecked my kid brother. But get to the point."

The other nodded and hitched his chair closer. "O.K. It's Jedda Carroll. Sometimes called 'King' Carroll. It's been in all the papers, even down here I guess."

Larkin nodded. "Skipped out with a few millions, didn't he?"

"That's it. Engineered all sorts of phony deals, then when things crashed he grabbed the loot and ducked. Well, the police had no luck tracing him, so the losers formed a syndicate and put up a fifty grand reward.

"They hired my outfit finally to make a separate search. The boss put me to work. I've got a warrant for Carroll's arrest, and I hit the jackpot. Carroll was smart. Changed his name--he already had a phony passport--and eased his way down here. But now I'm stymied, and if he gets away he'll just vanish completely."

"But why," Captain Larkin inquired, "if you've got a warrant and know where he is, why don't you grab him? You say the local cops are helpful."

Saunders shrugged.

"That's where Carroll's been so smart. Right now, he's on foreign territory. Going by the name of Anderson, he's holed up on the Carroway. If she was an American packet I'd just go aboard and grab him along with the consul. But the Carroway's under the Siamese flag, and no one wants any international incidents. Daniels is doing pretty well out of it, too. Carroll's paying him a hundred grand to land him in Greece."

"I often wondered why Daniels rode under a queer flag," the captain stated. "But I still say where do I come in?"

"Like I said before, you might have ideas. Get Carroll somehow on American territory and I've got him. Your ship's American territory. I got a pretty good expense account, and I can charter you until the job's done."

Larkin gave a twisted smile. "Well," he said, "this may be the break I've been waiting for. But it might mean some dirty work. I can't just kidnap Carroll off the Carroway."

"No," Saunders agreed. "So it might all be done better as a sea job. Outside the three mile limit to save any squawks. And I wouldn't be too sorry about any dirty work you pull. Some good men shot themselves when Carroll folded, and I guess a lot of women and kids are in the poorhouse for the same reason."

Captain Larkin laughed without mirth and finished his drink as he got up.

"O.K. Let's go. We'll see the consul first and get your papers checked and have a charter drawn up. I might be getting ideas already."

"That's what I was hoping," said Saunders heartily. I might--er--add there's a couple of grand extra for you if you can pull it off."

The captain shrugged. "I'll soak you enough for the charter," he promised, "seeing it's a special job. And I don't need anything extra for doing Daniels out of his rake-off."

The investigator looked at him curiously. "You hate that guy," he observed.

The captain gave his twisted smile again. "I can take whatever he tries to hand me," he said shortly. "I know the game. But my kid brother didn't. Daniels never met him, but he needed a straight guy to help him pull off a smuggling job, and he had one of his men talk the kid into it.

"The kid figured it was all on the level. He had a neat little schooner on the coast down here and stuck his neck right out. Lost his ship and got two years in the calaboose. You've maybe seen some of the gaols down here. Nigh drove the kid nuts. He's O.K. now, but he'd like to get a harpoon into Daniels too."

"Well, what was the pay-off for Daniels?" Saunders wanted to know.

"He played it all safe. Tipped off the officials and collected the fifty per cent, cut informers get on smuggling jobs... Never mind. The kid and me'll even it up, and maybe this is the break." He stopped outside the consulate and hitched at his belt. "You go on up. Saunders. Ill join you soon. Got a guy to talk to first."

ROLLING slowly along through a leaden swell, the Wyandot had hardly dropped the coast astern when Captain Larkin inclined his head towards the chart-room and led Saunders inside.

"You'll be wanting to know what I'm figuring," he said. "Well, the best way to get Carroll off the Carroway and keep out of trouble is to have him ask for a transfer to this ship, or have Daniels ask."

"You mean wrecking her?"

"Something like that."

He took out a chart and spread it on the table.

"What I aim to try is an old one, and the old ones often work." He ran a pencil over the chart. "I left port a day ahead of the Carroway so I'd have time to fix things. I know the course Daniels will take, and about what time he'll hit the Bascombe Channel."

Saunders bent over the chart and stared, uncomprehending. "So what?" he wanted to know.

"We'll reach the Channel first and change the range marks in the first 'reach' a little. The Carroway should be coming in about dusk. Just in case, we'll change the marks in the second 'reach' too."

"So they take the wrong turning and get wrecked, eh?"

"More or less. Either 'reach' they pile up on a nice soft sandbank and no one is going to get hurt."

"But isn't it pretty risky? I mean suppose someone spots you monkey-ing with navigation aids--or whatever they call 'em."

Captain Larkin grunted. "The Bascombe Channel runs through a chain of sandbanks and rocky islands where no one lives except the sea gulls. A government cutter looks things over once a month, but she's not due for two weeks. We'll change the bearings back, anyway, when we've finished. So the Carroway should be stuck in the sand and maybe she won't be able to get out... and maybe she'll go down."

"That's a lot of maybes," Saunders commented and the captain gave his twisted smile.

"It's a gamble. But we'll play it that way for a showdown. And one thing," he added dryly. "Daniels will be expecting nothing, and probably will have other things on his mind anyhow..."

CAPTAIN DANIELS did have other things on his mind as the Carroway came up to the Bascombe Channel in the flush of a late afternoon. He was on the bridge, his arms resting on the for'ard rail and his dirty white-topped cap was slanted over his shrewd dark eyes.

The man who stood beside him was thick-set also, but paunchy and pallid-faced. He was wearing dark glasses and a neat Van Dyke beard, and trimly tailored whites that made the captain's rumpled old ducks look even more disreputable than usual.

The paunchy, bearded man was disturbed.

"What do you mean, you've been considering?" he was saying impatiently. "We had a perfect understanding and I consider the thing settled."

Captain Daniels looked at the horizon ahead. "Well," he said dreamily, "I been thinking it oughta be worth more'n a hundred thousand to land you in a launch off a bay in Greece what ain't on the charts and what no one's ever heard of."

"That's beside the point," said the other irritably. "I told you everything was settled at the other end and I gave you the exact position of the cove you were to land me at. Your pay is certainly high enough."

"Sure," the captain agreed, "I can find the private cove all right. But it ought to be worth a bit more than a hundred thousand, Carroll--pardon me, Mr. Anderson--seeing what it was you're getting away with. How about sweetening the pot with another hundred grand?"

Mr. Anderson swallowed hard. "Look here, that's sheer piracy! You're already going to get enough to set you up for life. A hundred thousand isn't exactly ordinary passage money."

"And you ain't just an ordinary passenger," said the captain softly. "So it s going to cost you another hundrsd grand before you get a look at that fancy cove you want to see."

"That's sheer robbery," the other exploded. He started to swear, then saw he was trapped. "Very well," he agreed quietly. "Another hundred thousand when I'm delivered as per schedule."

"That's better," said Captain Daniels, stretching his arms and yawning. "But remember, you don't get off this packet until I get the cash in hand, and I'm staying outside the three mile limit until the job's settled. Glad we understand each other."

Mr. Anderson bit his lip, but only nodded. Captain Daniels turned his head as the look-out for'ard yelled, "Land on the starboard bow, sir!"

"That'll be the Bascombe Channel opening," said the captain easily. "Very handy short-cut, mister." He called to the mate across the bridge. "Get a bearing soon as you can, Tomkins. Me and Mr. Anderson's going below for a drink."

He led the outwardly calm but inwardly seething Mr. Anderson below, chuckling to himself.

It was something to have outsmarted the cleverest swindler of the century. Once you got a man at sea you sure had him. He wondered idly if he shouldn't have asked for a million instead of the extra hundred grand. Might be an idea that'd develop before they reached Greece.

On the bridge the mate had taken a bearing and checked the course.

"Well, we'll be through the Channel before morning," he observed to the helmsman. "Just keep her steady as she goes." He yawned and went into the chartroom to take a nip from his bottle and to put some desultory notes in the log-book, and he waved idly at the young third mate as he came in.

"Not your watch, Chalmers," he said, yawning again. "Three hours yet. Couldn't sleep, eh?"

"Who could sleep on this crate?" the third swore. "Rolling like a barge and the old man beefing around every time you bat an eye."

"Well, you've only been with us a year," said the mate tolerantly. "I've had three years of it, and it's got me a bit sour too, but it pays off. Daniels is a swine, between you and me and the chart table, but his deals generally mean a bonus. I gotta hunch this is going to be a big one, too."

The third shrugged. "Who cares right now? I just wanted to see if we'd hit Bascombe Channel yet."

"Right on the dot, Chalmers," said the mate, jerking a thumb. "There's the South Headland to starboard. I'll be bringing her on the range in an hour."

The third mate stared intently out of the chartroom port and then looked at the chart and gave a satisfied grunt.

"Glad you're taking her through the first 'reaches,' " he observed. "They're tricky. Well. I gotta get to the engine-room and argue with the chief about that after winch needing fixing."

IT WAS just an hour later when the Carroway, dead on for the bearings, slammed at nine knots on to a sandbar. The mate had the engine reversed as soon as he could get away from his bottle and out on the bridge, and Captain Daniels came up swearing blue murder.

"Oh, she'll pull off," said the mate shakily, jamming the telegraph up and down again. "I don't know what's wrong. I held the range marks in line all the way Anyhow, it's only sand and she ought to drag out.''

"She ought to drag out!" roared Daniels. "Is that all you can say?' He swore violently "Sure, it's only a submerged sandbank, and no stickier than glue. And if our for'ard plates are buckled..."

He stopped suddenly as the heavy engine-room thump growled and shuddered to a halt and he felt the Carroway start to settle. The engine-room speaking tube whistled and he jumped for it, his face livid.

"Someone's been monkeying down here." came the chief's sour voice "Shaft bearing's running hot. Maybe sand or emery powder."

"Never mind, get her going," Daniels ordered. "We can't stick here for the high tide rip to work on. I tell you--"

"Ain't no use," said the chief dryly. "We're coming up. Water's coming over the plates already. She's opened up like a sardine can."

"Water?" said the astonished Daniels. "Coming in aft? But we struck for'ard. She never even touched aft."

"I been telling you we needed a good dry-dock job for the past two years," stated the chief with a touch of exasperation. "How much d'you think rotten plates'll stand? Be seeing you."

He plugged the tube and Daniels swung cursing back to his first mate, who was gaping foolishly and still moving the useless telegraph up and down. Chalmers, the third mate, came on the bridge with a dripping sounding line in his hands.

"Took a drop soon's I felt her strike," he explained shortly. "There's six inches for'ard already and fourteen aft and the way it's coming in we'll all be down to bottom in an hour."

The captain swallowed and took hold of himself. "Try a cast over-side," he managed huskily. "It's pretty shallow and she'll maybe settle safe while we fix her and get off.'

Chalmers shook his head and looked worried. "She'll sit solid all right, sir, with about a fathom of freeboard. But this is low tide. The rise--"

"All right!" snapped Daniels. "It's twelve feet or more. Get the boats swung out and provisioned until we can see." He turned as Mr. Anderson came up.

"Is--is it serious?" Mr. Anderson wanted to know. "Where can we go?"

"Back to the coast, if we can make it," snarled Daniels. "I've got to round up a salvage ship and some gear--I--wait a minute." The mate was plucking at his arm and pointing.

Round the point that hid the second "reach" of the channel was coming a trim steamer glistening and clean-looking and riding high in ballast.

"That's a bit of luck," Daniels chuckled. "Bound back to the coast at that. We'll get a ride--and you," he glared at the ashen-faced mate, "can stay and live on the bridge here till I get back, so the ship's not legally abandoned."

The mate swallowed and said nothing, but Mr. Anderson went almost into a frenzy. "Are you mad?" he demanded. "I can't go back. I'd better stay here with the mate. That ship might be... anything."

"I wouldn't leave you here, Anderson," he said shortly. "You're safe back on the coast and you're sticking with me until we pay off. Savvy? So get your gear ready. That ship's flying the Portuguese flag. Hoist a distress signal, mister."

The mate shakily hoisted the sig-nal and the strange ship drew cautiously in. Her name, in bold white letters on her bow, was the Juanita, and on her bridge a bulky, thick-necked man with a scrub moustache and wearing a white-topped master's cap leaned over the rail.

"You'll be in trouble there," he roared. "Wanting to come aboard? Be in port to-morrow, though, and I c'n report you then, but you look in bad shape for the tides."

Daniels cupped his hand and"roared back. "We'll take a lift. Stand by! Thought you was Portuguese." The American twang had puzzled him.

"Just registry. Got a mixed crew. Why?"

"Just asking. Let your gangway down, mister."

He piled the crew In the boats, urged the fearful Anderson into one, along with his heavy suitcase, and turned for a last word at his mate.

"All right! You're in charge. And stay sober until I get back, you rat! I'll take it up with you later about piling us so handy!"

Most of the Carroway's crew were already scrambling up the Juanita's gangway when Captain Daniels pulled alongside. He pushed Mr. Anderson and his suitcase ahead of him, and they came up to the Juanita's maindeck, with Chalmers just behind.

The bulky, thick-necked captain stepped forward to greet them. "Captain Saunders," he announced heartily. "Glad to see you, sir."

"Name's Daniels of the Carroway, bound for Greece," said Daniels, shaking hands. He felt a little uneasy for some reason. His own men were already being ushered for'ard by members of the Juanita's crew, and there was something vaguely familiar about the ship and the officers who stood behind Captain Saunders. Daniels bit his lip. He must be getting jumpy.

"This is my passenger, Mr. Anderson," he said, waving at the pudgy, dark-glassed man beside him, and Mr. Anderson coughed, transferred his suitcase securely to his other hand and put his right out to shake.

What happened then was rather startling. Captain Saunders had not yet fully relinquished Captain Daniels' hand, and now by some magic he also drew Mr. Anderson's into his fold. There was a glint of steel and a sharp click-click and Mr Anderson screamed.

"You fool! I knew there was something funny! I should have stayed on the wreck!"

Captain Daniels looked unbeliev-ingly down at his one wrist hand-cuffed to Mr. Anderson's. "What is this?" he demanded. "Piracy on the high seas? Captain Saunders, I demand--"

The other man said flatly, "Shut up!'' He took off his cap and handed it to another man who had just come out of the nearby saloon door, smiling twistedly.

"I was just captain long enough to get you aboard," said Saunders blandly. "Nice to have found you, too, 'King' Carroll. You're under arrest, and if you want to know what for it'll take me an hour to list the charges."

"Nice work, Saunders," said Captain Larkin, putting the master's cap on his head where it helonged. "You'd have made a good actor. Surprised at you,  Daniels! I figured I'd have to try a couple of other dodges before I pulled this one."

"So it's you, Larkin. I might have guessed something was in the wind when you docked in port back there a day behind me. Tracking me around, eh? Can't your kid brother handle his own beefs?"

"I did," said Mr. Chalmers, stepping forward and giving a smile almost as twisted as his brother's. "I've been third mate with you for a year, using some forged papers, and just been waiting for this chance. You know it was funny, you never caught on I was Jim Larkin."

"O.K., Chalmers fooled me and I'll remember that. But what's the idea of taking me in? And taking in Anderson? This ain't an American ship."

"Your error," said Larkin, amused "If you look aft you'll see the American ensign flying now. The Portuguese flag was just a mistake on the part of a dumb second mate I've got. I gave the old crate a new coat of paint and new name because I felt she'd like it."

Daniels shrugged. "O.K. You got Anderson, but I figure I got all I can out of him. Now just get this cuff off me, because I'm not stuck on any job outside American law."

"That's a very bad mistake,'' put in Mr. Saunders seriously, taking two papers from his pocket. "I have here a warrant for Mr. Anderson, or rather Mr. Carroll, and also one cabled me specially to take you for aiding and abetting a wanted criminal to escape and for one or two other things Washington feels it would like to question you about. So I'm afraid well all be together until we get to New York."

Captain Larkin told his men to take the pair below and lock them in.

MR. SAUNDERS gave a sigh of relief. "Well, you put it over, skipper," he conceded. "But I still don't quite get it. You said yourself the Carroway would only run on a sandbank and might easily pull clear."

The captain nodded and put a hand on his younger brother's shoulder. "We had Jim working for us too. He was the man I had to see before we went to the consul's to get your papers checked. Jim tied up the engine when they needed it most--though that was just an added precaution, as he'd already opened the sea-cocks. The only way the Carroway had to go was down!"

"Nice co-operation," the investigator conceded. "Now all we need is to catch the mailboat north so I can unload my own cargo."

"Just one other thing," said Captain Larkin blandly. "I said once I didn't need that extra two grand for pulling this deal. My error. Just hand it to Jim here. He'll have to find himself another vessel and make a fresh start."

Saunders grinned. "Sure enough, skipper. I know now how it feels to be a skipper myself. Held your bridge down for two solid hours. Wait'll I tell the boys... But what happens to the Carroway?"

"Why. she'll be refloated, of course. I'm sending a boat over to inform her first mate his captain's under arrest so he might as well quit and I've lots of good whisky on board, so he probably won't think twice. That'll make the Carroway officially abandoned and fair game.

"Then I'm lying off the coast long enough to get Jim ashore so he can find a crew and charter a salvage vessel. After all, Daniels won't be needing a ship himself for a long time!"

______________________

14: The Extra Hand

The Saturday Evening Post Dec 9 1944

Sun (Sydney) 28 Oct 1945

THEY were signing on board in the saloon of the old freighter Montreal, and the shipping master's voice was monotonous.

"Alfred Jenkins, able seaman. Sign here!... James. Olson, able seaman, sigh here... Thomas Farring. steward.... Sign here!..."

He came to the end of the list at last and started to set it aside, but a sudden thought struck him and with a twisted smile he made a double X mark below the last mans name. Mr. Barrow, the first mate, looked puzzled.

"And what's that for, sir?"

The shipping master pushed back his chair and stretched.

"That, mister," he said tolerantly, "is for the hand that always sails, but never signs."

Mr. Barrow punched the Inside of his uniform cap and frowned. "I don't think I understand, sir," he said stiffly.

The shipping master patted his arm. "You will, my boy, you will." He reached for his overcoat and looked curiously at the mate. "You're pretty young to be signing first, aren't you?"

"Twenty-four, sir," the other admitted, reddening a little. He was tall and lean and blond, and the weather had not yet drained the pink from his cheeks— a matter which annoyed him at times.

The shipping master pushed out, and Mr. Barrow jammed on his uniform cap and swore. Calling him "my boy!"

Hell, he'd been eight years at sea, hadn't he? He was qualified.

The gunnery officer came over to introduce himself and ask about something, and Mr. Barrow's mood grew darker.

"OK. I'll see to it," he said resentfully, and took the crew list up to the chartroom so he could pick the watches. You had to balance them as best you could; at least one experienced man to each. There were so many green kids these days. He checked that thought hurriedly, and scowled as the third mate came in. He was all of twenty,  but his swearing denoted considerable practice.

"We've enough high explosive below to knock out the whole convoy!" he said, mopping his face.

"We're not going in convoy," said Mr. Barrow sourly. "We're running alone. And don't ask me where, because I don't know yet."

"What I was going to say was, those petrol drums on deck don't look so good," said the third reasonably. "The first sea we ship'll carry 'em away."

Mr. Barrow shrugged. "I had orders to stick 'em on deck, so there they are. Go and complain to the Navy."

A thought irked him. "Say, you ever hear of a hand that sails, but never signs?" he demanded.

The third looked blank. "Is it a gag?"

"I guess so. The shipping master handed it out."

"Oh, well. Those old guys are always coming up with something that happened fifty years ago. Whyn't you ask the old man? He sailed on the Ark, they tell me."

"I wouldn't be surprised," the mate agreed. "Maybe he'll come aboard in a coffin. He's been retired for years, they say. But we'll—"

Someone coughed, and a dry voice said, "Not quite a coffin, mister. And where did you ever hear about the extra hand that never signs?"

"I— the shipping master—" Mr. Barrow said involuntarily, as he turned, and then swallowed hard.

A little wisp of a man stood in the doorway, his frail body covered by a greatcoat and his skinny hands deep in the pockets. He added, quite unnecessarily now, "I'm Captain Barkley. A little too early, I see." His eyes flickered to the mate's uniform cuff.

"You'll be Mr. Barrow, first officer. And you"— he stared at the red-faced third— "will be Mr. Grant. So you expected me to come aboard in a coffin. I presume the two of you came in a cradle."

"Sir," said the mate desperately, "we were just talking."

"I'll need a little more than talk here," said the captain acidly. He looked at the mate's cigarette. "I don't allow smoking on the bridge, Mister. You should know better anyway, with the cargo we're carrying. If you must smoke, do it in your room and off duty."

He turned and left, The captain limped a little, Mr. Barrow noticed, and, pushing back his cap, he leaned on the chartroom table and let out his breath.

"My stars!" he managed. "My saintly stars! So that's what we draw for a skipper. I guess my coffin crack wasn't so far off either. He's got a gammy leg and he's a T.B. or something. Probably got got dyspepsia, too, from the way he acts. Looks like a hundred years old."

THE MONTREAL was well off the coast by morning, a chill wind dusting the whitecaps across a hard blue sea and flicking an occasional spray over the freighter's rails. She was deep-laden and, the weather being abeam, was rolling slowly and heavily as she pounded the miles away.

Captain Barkley stood wide-eyed at the bridge rail, in uniform now, but still huddled in his greatcoat and with a red woollen muffler about his throat. His face was expressionless. Every so often he would lift a hand to check a cough or wipe a fleck of spray from his face.

It irritated Mr. Barrow. Any other skipper, he thought resentfully, would have asked the watch officer to do such routine checkings for the most part. He turned as eight bells went and the third mate came up to take the watch, wiping the last breakfast crumbs from his chin.

"How's tricks?" he demanded cheerfully. "Say, I was talking to Gus, the second engineer " He checked himself and lowered his voice as he caught sight of the captain. "Tell you later," he muttered.

"Has he been here since I came off at midnight?"

"He has," said the mate sourly. "And looks like he's good for another couple of days."

They went into the chartroom together as the wheel and lookouts changed.

"What was it about Gus?"

"Well, he's sort of an old-timer, you know," the third explained, looking over the log. "Says he sailed with the old man before, years ago. Said he was a windjammer skipper until they ran those crates out of business, and when Gus was with him he was handling the Sylvanian."

The mate whistled. "That big, eh? No wonder he's sour, coming from a four-stack liner to a junk heap like this."

"That's what I said, but Gus says no, he always was a tough nut. Got that gammy leg in the last war. Torpedoed in the Channel. And Gus says he's got a couple of silver plates in his head from a bad wreck found India way."

THE NEXT few days were somewhat trying on the deck crowd. Captain Barkley seemed to need no sleep, and his frail figure was apt to appear almost anywhere and at any odd time.

And then, crowning irritation of all, came one afternoon while Mr. Barrow was busy trying to get a lifeboat back into position. Captain Barkley inspected it and stroked his rag of white moustache.

"A couple of patches will fix her," he stated. "Get her back into the chocks, seeing one davit's broken. It'd be too much to ask the engine-room to make a repair on that, I suppose."

"Things being as they are, sir," agreed Mr. Barrow elaborately, "I think it would."

The mate inspected the situation as the captain went away. Inwardly, he simmered. He had the lifts and purchases about figured out— no easy matter, the way the Montreal was taking the water— and had just started to put things into operation when Captain Barkley appeared again. He stood critically by for a moment and then cleared his throat.

"I wouldn't try it that way, mister. Put a snatch block aft of the skylight and run a line—"

That was as far as he got. Mr. Barrow, sweating and immersed, turned with a suppressed oath and full of suppressed fury. He put his fists on his hips and looked the little skipper up and down as he might have looked at a green deck boy.

"If the captain wishes to take charge," he said precisely, "I will be very pleased to carry out the captain's orders."

Captain Barkley was icy still for a long moment, and it came to the mate, with a sudden tremor, that he had gone too far. Then the captain's lips tightened and he gave an indifferent little shrug as he turned. "Carry on, Mr. Barrow," he said evenly. "I only made a suggestion."

He limped out, and they all watched him, silent until he had disappeared. Mr. Barrow swallowed hard and went, on with his job. He did it neatly, even if he did say so himself. A very neat job, considering the way the ship was swinging. And he went on the lower bridge to report to Captain Barkley. And he stopped dead outside of the captain's cabin.

"No, Bill," he heard. That as the skipper's voice, sort of tired. "I take some of it back now." The ports were all shut because of the spray and wind, but the door was hooked open a little.

"They all mean well," said someone else, and Mr. Barrow loosened his tie. The chief engineer's cockney accent was unmistakeable. The two old coots had got together. "I tell you they can take a sight and work a course while I'm still thinking about it," said Captain Barkley. "But I'm sure of mine and I'm never quite sure of theirs."

"Don't you think I've the same trouble below?" said the chief. "Every time I have a job done I don't rest until I've taken quite a look at it myself. And if you stay awake worrying about the course, what d'you think I do when I figure young Mackensen or Billiard's at the throttle? I've only Gus. I only get to sleep when Gus, my second, is down here. They're fair trained and they try. And the lads are good.Give 'em a voyage or so under their belts, and they'll be all right. But just what's made you change your mind on your collection, Sam?"

"Something up topside," said the skipper wearily, 'I told young Barrow to set back that shifted boat, and half-way through I butted in with advice. He practically told me to go to hell or else take charge myself."

There was a short silence, and then the chief engineer laughed. "So that's it, eh? I suppose you'll disrate him for insubordination."

There was another silence. Two old men thinking together. "No," said the captain at last, verv slowly. "No. I just got out. He said just about what I'd have said at his age. I think I rather liked it. In fact, I do. I'll feel better now when he's on watch. You know what I mean. He's on his own feet."

He started to cough, and checked himself with an effort.

"I'd sort of like to be a mate again myself, not giving a damn for hell or high water, especially where we're going. The Normandy coast can only mean one thing "

IT WAS a day or so later when the Montreal caught fire. It started somewhere in the forehold. and the smoke began to ooze from the old fashioned vents on deck and between the cracks in the hatches.

"If it really gets going, we're cooked," said the third unnecessarily. "All that TNT below and the petrol drums on deck."

"We'll not talk of that yet," said Captain Barkley. "See what a hose will do."

The men ripped the hatches off No. 1, choked in the fumes that eddied out, and hopefully played a hose on the top layers of cargo. Captain Barkley kept the bridge and came down occasionally to see how they were progressing, easing his , frail body between the nervous men and asking questions.

"I don't see we're doing any good, sir," said Barrow almost tearfully. "There's no blaze we've even seen yet. I think it's something just smouldering in the 'tween decks. We'll have to get down to it before it reaches the TNT."

Captain Barkley brushed his rag of white moustache and gave a curious half smile.

"I don't like to throw cargo overboard," he stated, "but if it has to be it has to be. Jettison!"

Mr. Barrow had a moment of irrational pride then. "But look, sir. Tossing stuff in the drink—"

"We'll let an inquiry board settle that," said the captain dryly. "Get the booms rigged and start. Jettison what you can't stow on deck."

Mr. Barrow said, "Yes, sir," and yelled at the crew.

Ages later, as it seemed. Barrow reported to the bridge. "I've got the shelter deck about cleared, sir, but the trouble's somewhere down in the 'tween decks, like I thought. The crew's getting jumpy. We've had no luck with the hose, save she's got a foot of water in her. And it'll take four or five hours to jettison the 'tween decks stuff. I don't see—"

"She's an old ship," said Captain Barkley, thinking. "There's probably bulkhead doors between the forepeak and Number One hold. If we can get in that way, it might help "

"Getting the doors open'll be a blow-torch job," said the mate, sweating and grimy. "Last I saw of them, they hadn't been shifted for 20 years. And, anyway, the cargo's probably jammed up flush—"

"You can always try," said the captain gently. "You never know."

HE stood beside the mate in the forepeak later and turned his flashlight on the cargo beyond the rusty door they had pried open with crowbars.

There was, by luck, an opening of sorts through the ponderous stacked crates, shored up by crossed scantlings and two-by-fours. The smoke trickled out somewhere at the end, round the corner, so to speak, and Mr. Barrow groaned.

"You couldn't ease a shrimp through that space," he said; "let alone a man with a hose."

Captain Barkley nodded. "That's possible, Mr. Barrow. But maybe we can dispense with the hose. I seem to recall we've some bottles of patent stuff in the chartroom locker. It's supposed to extinguish small fires."

Mr. Barrow lived in a daze after that. He sent the third mate for the bottles and somehow held his flashlight steady as Captain Barkley, stripped to his shirt and shoes and trousers, started inching down the narrow smoky opening through the cargo, pushing the bottles and a flashlight before him.

"The old man," Mr. Barrow muttered. fascinated. "The old man himself. The old coot."

He watched that trail figure disappear somewhere round a huge crate, and heard, very faintly, the sound of coughing and the sound also of thrown bottles smashing against something, An acrid odor of chemicals began to drift out with the smoke, and the smoke itself thinned away. The third loosened his collar as the minutes ticked by.

"He's stopped it," he croaked. "The fire or whatever it was. The patent stuff worked, but it must've put him out, too. We'll have to jerk the 'tween decks clean to get him free."

"No, he's coming," said the mate tightly. "Listen. He's coming."

They heard a paroxysm of coughing then, as if the captain's very body were being torn apart, and then he came into the beam of the mate's flashlight, inching out, coughing still, and clawing at each crevice, his crippled leg dragging behind.

There was nothing that could be done. Mr. Barrow bit his lip until it bled, and his free hand was clenched so tightly that the nails hurt him. When it was possible, he reached in and hauled the captain clear, and kneeling down, nestled him in his arms as one would a child.

"We'd better get him midships," he said huskily. "He's all torn apart."

Captain Barkley opened his eyes and gave a half smile. "Not quite," he whispered. "But enough—"

The tightness of the passage had ripped most of his clothing away and his body was streaked with raw spots. There was more than a smear of blood under his white moustache this time. a froth of red bubbled out and his heart was pounding so much that the mate though it would shake the very ship.

"Now, look, sir," he managed. "It's not that bad. We'll get you stowed away and fix you up."

"In canvas," the captain agreed. "With some scrap iron to hold me down. I know. But I guess I was some use after all."

He seemed pleased with that idea. He checked the mate's protests with a weary hand.

"I think that stuff smothered the blaze. But you'd better dig around the cargo and make sure. You'll—" He started to cough again, and Mr. Barrow wiped his mouth.

"You'll carry on, Barrow. Instructions all in my desk. You might tell the shipping master I met his friend, finally." He tried to laugh. "The hand that always sails— McGuire's a nice sense of humor— very nice."

Not even then did Mr. Barrow get it. Not until after they had sewn Captain Barkley in canvas and put inside the scrap iron to weigh him down. Not until after the service had been read and Mr. Barrow was back in the captain's room, seated at the desk to make the burial entry in the log. He picked up the pen and started to write, and when he came to the words, "buried Captain Barkley, who met his death," he stopped cold as the understanding came. Death!

"So that's it," he whispered. "That's what the old coot meant. The hand that always sails, but never signs. And the old man met him in the 'tween decks of Number One. I— I guess I'll have to buy McGuire a drink on that." He finished the log entry and carefully blotted it, and looked around as the third mate knocked on the cabin door.

"We're due to change course, sir," he said awkwardly. "I thought if you wanted to check—"

Mr. Barrow almost said, "Oh, sure," very carelessly, and then it struck him the third looked pretty young. He wasn't too exact with his sights, either, the mate recalled, and a couple of times he'd set a course a bit off.  Mr. Barrow had a quick vision of Captain Barkley at the for'ard bridge rail, peering ahead: of Captain Barkley restless and prowling, and never seeming, to sleep. Mr. Barrow had a feeling he would not be sleeping very much himself now. Things were different.

"I'll be up, Mr. Grant," he said quietly. He almost added, "With the extra hand," but he didn't. Mr. Grant wouldn't understand. That was why you had to check the course, too.

Mr. Barrow put on his uniform cap and straightened his tie, and went up to the navigation bridge, acutely conscious, as he always would be now, of the extra hand walking beside him, the one who'd never signed.

___________________

15: Outside The Law

The Saturday Evening Post Aug 21 1948

Australian Women's Weekly 25 February 1950

SERGEANT RAINSE of the Oodnadatta patrol of the Australian Mounted Police was in his small office, tilted back in his chair, his feet hoisted on his desk, while he sleepily surveyed a racing form-guide and tried to pick a winner for the Melbourne Cup. Constable Burks was padding about, swatting flies and languidly pausing now and then to reread the posters concerning wanted men that adorned the office wall. All was peace, and Sergeant Rainse was bored.

"I think I'll stick a fiver on Woolloomooloo," he yawned. "Any horse with a name like that deserves to win."

"Help yourself," conceded Burks. "It's your money."

The sergeant grunted, and then jerked a little as the wall phone rang and Burks answered it.

He said, "Are you there?" Then raising his voice irritably, "Say, are you-"

His voice dried and he said, "Yes sir." And from then on his conversation was strictly limited.

"Yes, sir," he said again. "Very good, sir... Yes, I understand, sir. Perfectly, sir... Yes, he's here, sir... at once sir... Details from (unstable York... Yes, sir."

"You can drop that paper," he said to Rainse. "We're in for trouble."

"All right," the sergeant observed. "What's on the Inspector's mind?"

Burks scratched his jaw and looked unhappy. "Well, it's a patrol all right. And in this heat. Whyn't blokes wait till it cools off before getting murdered?"

Murdered?" said Rainse, look-ing puzzled. "There's no murder been reported in my district."

This isn't in your district," said Burks. "The old man was calling from Alice Springs, up north. Seems a Doctor Lowdon's been shot near Deep Well Station. Scientific bloke sent up from Canberra to poke around native customs. The old man says we must clear up the mess or the superintendent will be running up with a lot of smart city detectives."

Rainse scowled. "As if I haven't enough to do running my own show. What's wrong with Sloan at Alice Springs?"

"He's ill," said Burks, consulting his notes. "Only constable left there is a new chum named York, serving his probationary year. The old man left him to stand by until you get there. Says he's got to go down to Port Augusta himself to testify in that Murdock case and you're to take over."

Rainse went to the office door and roared across the sun-scorched dusty paddock, "Baldy!"

There was a scramble in the shade by the camel shed and Baldy Bill, the head blacktracker, appeared, hitching up his tattered khaki pants and jamming on his battered hat.

"We catchum patrol," said Rainse shortly. "Catchum big fella train for Alice Springs. Pickum up riding stock there. White fella doctor killed near Deep Well."

Baldy pulled his clay pipe from his mop of frizzy hair and shrugged.

"I savvy that before sun him go down last night."

"Then why didn't you tell me?" the sergeant roared.

Baldy scowled. "That fella killing  not in this fella district. What name we worry?"

Rainse calmed a bit. "Well, I suppose you're right, though you should have mentioned it anyway. But why the killing?"

Baldy puffed on his pipe for a while and deliberated. "White doctor get white-black fella very angry. Put 'um in jail. White-black fella run away, findum white doctor and shoot."

Rainse grunted. "All right. And what's the name of the half-caste?"

Baldy grinned. "That fella called Brisbane Charlie. Very bad."

Rainse dismissed him with a nod and spoke to Burks, "Look up the files. We've probably got something on him."

"Wait a bit. There's some other things the old man mentioned," said Burks, checking his notes. "Seems there's one witness to the killing. A black who was the doctor's personal boy, and he seems to be dying of poison or something and won't talk. At least that's what I understood the old man to say."

Rainse swore and buckled on his gun belt. "That's great. He hands us a cold trail to clear up while he chases off to Port Augusta, and we're supposed to settle things before the smart boys get here. Well, get dressed and let's go!"

IT WAS A horse patrol from Alice Springs, for which Rainse was grateful, as he detested camels, which he was often compelled to use in the really arid areas.

Deep Well Station, however, was near the railway and main road, and sprawled over a few million acres that contained not only Deep Well itself, but also and surprisingly, for that part of the Never-Never fringe, two or three creeks and small rivers that were fed from underground springs and never did run completely.

Rainse found the killing had been committed beside the banks of one of the streams, a shallow, rocky affair with water scarcely calf-high, and which started suddenly out of barren ground, ran for some ten miles and then vanished into the ground again. Its banks during its course were lined with overhanging trees under which a mob of the station's stock was resting and fighting the interminable flies.

The beefy, red-faced station owner had ridden out with Rainse and complained most of the way.

"Got no use for these scientific blokes who go barging all over a man's property," he announced. "Still, he came with introductions from Canberra, so I let him alone. He was camped out about two weeks before it happened. That's the place."

He pointed to where a canvas shelter had been rigged, and waving Baldy Bill to take a general look around, the sergeant rode up to discover an unshaven, pale-faced, and visibly disturbed Constable York beneath it, keeping out of the morning sun.

"Glad you're here, sergeant," he said. "Inspector Waters said you were to take charge. The--er--body has been taken to Alice Springs, but the position is all marked out and protected."

Rainse nodded and swung from the saddle. The inspector had sur-rounded the actual killing spot with a fence of posts with sacking stretched between to prevent the wind from obliterating tracks.

Rainse took only a cursory look inside the fence, and called to Baldy Bill to go to work on the area. Baldy grunted and to all intents and pur-poses was lost to the world, going on hands and knees and snuffing around like an intent dog. The sergeant went back to York.

"What's the matter with your own trackers?" he demanded.

York jerked a thumb backwards. "They started on the job all right until they saw that. Then they went walkabout."

Rainse noticed then that under the shelter and behind York a black was crouched, his face almost ash-grey, his eyes staring dully, his hands drooping over his knees and quivering a little.

"Hasn't moved since we first came," said York. "Won't talk. He was the doctor's personal boy and must have seen the killing. Acts as if he's been poisoned. I don't know why he wasn't killed, too."

"I've an idea," said Rainse dryly, and, bending down, thumbed back the black's eyelids.

A moment later he straightened. "By all the signs, this man's had the bone pointed," he said. "This can make it awkward. Brisbane Charlie's smart and tough, according to the files. Worked as the doctor's boy on some Queensland expedition and stole a lot of stuff. The doctor turned him over and he got three years. Swore he'd settle that score, and he certainly did. That is, if it was Brisbane Charlie."

"The inspector thought so," York ventured. "Said it had all the marks of the half-caste's other murders two, I think. The doctor was shot in the back of the head while asleep. Only his money belt missing. And a native left behind like that to scare everyone off. Anyway, it scared off my trackers."

Rainse's lean face twisted in a grimace. "That's the funniest thing about this case. All the bush seems agreed it's Brisbane Charlie's work. He probably wanted the tribes to know that when he swore he'd kill the doctor he meant it. Must be pretty sure of himself to let the word leak around... Did your trackers find anything before they ran off?"

York shook his head. "Not much. Some tracks they didn't recognise. Someone with a hammer toe or a missing toe. Led straight to the water's edge and disappeared."

"Easy enough," said Burks. "He probably waded some distance, climbed out on a rocky bank to cover trail, got on a waiting horse and skipped."

"That's the funny part," said York earnestly. "They searched the length of the stream and couldn't find any spot where the killer could have left thc water without telltale sign. Lots of horse sign, but the owner here runs a big mob along with his cattle and they trample all up and down the banks."

The station owner nodded. "You couldn't tell if he had a horse waiting or not. And anyhow, how did he leave the water? That's what helped scare off York's trackers, apart from this bone-pointing stuff."

"Queer, all right," the sergeant admitted. "Well, you're relieved, York. Get on back to Alice Springs and take charge until Sloan gets better. I'll carry on here."

York, visibly grateful, swung on his horse and departed.

Rainse looked at Burks. "You stand in front of that half-dead black for a while. I don't want Baldy to see him until he has to."

"You think Baldy'll buckle and run like the others?"

Rainse shrugged. "Never can tell."

He went back to the sheltered area where Baldy was still sniffing around. He lighted a cigarette and waited patiently. A blacktracker cannot be hurried, and no experienced policeman tries it.

At last the tracker came and squatted at the sergeant's feet and calmly smoked his clay pipe until he decided to deliver his information.

"Very clever fella been around here," he started at last. "White boss sleep. Killer fella come along crawling and shoot. Then killer fella get up and walk to white boss' black boy. Squat and talk. Black boy very frightened. Not move any njore. Killer fella get up then and go away."

"That's a lot of help," Rainse muttered. "We already know that. You savvy what name that killer fella's tracks?"

Baldy looked annoyed. "That killer fella try to foolum us. His trail on right foot show one toe missing or maybe bad toe that not track. Maybe foolum some trackers. That silly longa Baldy Bill."

"Oh, of course," agreed Rainse. "Baldy Bill him best fella tracker in all 'Stralia. But what name you savvy he try foolum?"

Baldy looked a trifle disgusted al having to explain such a simple matter "You watchum," he said. "I lose one fella toe."

METHODICALLY, Baldy pawed around and found a small stick, which he pushed under one toe while the stick's ends rested on top of the others. "Now I walk," he said, and got up and made a few tracks in the ground. "Very blind fella or maybe bad tracker think no toe. See?"

"All right," agreed Rainse patiently. "But how you savvy that killer fella didn't really have a missing toe or a bad toe?"

"Any fella really got no toe or bad toe, him walk on foot side... like this... not walk flat. This clever fella him forget and walk flat. Baldy Bill thinkum, that track made by white fella or white-black fella."

The sergeant whistled. "Brisbane Charlie, eh?"

Baldy shrugged. "How I savvy? Baldy never see Brisbane Charlie's sign. But fella makum that track not wild black. Him wearum boots long time, so feet not spread too much. Maybe long time station boy or mission-school black."

"It adds up enough," said Rainse quietly. "You savvy where that half-caste went?"

Baldy nodded. "That fella track walk into the water. Findum out why very soon."

"You findum now," Rainse in-sisted and Baldy padded away towards the stream. Rainse drew a deep breath and went back to Burks. He'd kept Baldy from the bewitched black a while longer anyhow.

"Looks bad," he confessed to Burks, with the dying black still crouched in the background. "It's pretty sure Brisbane Charlie, but actually we've no proof. We could maybe put up a fair circumstantial case, but it's full of holes. If this Charlie's as smart as he seems he'll have fifty wild black half-brothers willing to swear he was at a corroboree a hundred miles away."

Burks scowled. "So what do we do, sarge? And what do we do with this poor devil?"

"He's probably our only real chance," Rainse said, "if we can get him unpointed and back to life. That means we've got to catch Brisbane Charlie first or catch us a witch doctor, and Brisbane Charlie seems to have done a fine job of covering trail."

Baldy did not return until after dark, and one look at his face caused Rainse to ask no questions at first. Ile handed over a slab of damper and cold mutton, taking care to keep the tracker on the other side of the camp fire, so he could not see into the shelter, and talked idly with Burks for some time.

Eventually he turned to Baldy. "Well, what did you find?"

Baldy shook his head and scowled. "That killer fella devil-devil," he croaked sourly. "That fella walk into water for sure. That fella walkum out of water no place."

The sergeant was baffled. But there had to be an answer somewhere. He mentally checked over all the known facts and possibilities, and then came to a decision.

"All right, Burks. Stand aside and let Baldy take a look at the lone witness."

He added, "He's got to see him now. We've got to know what mob that black belongs to. Chances are it's the same as Brisbane Charlie's or he wouldn't have been able to put him under so badly. If we can't trail thc half-caste, we'll just have to find out where his tribal grounds are and see what we can pick up from that end."

Baldy Bill was looking sharply from one to the other and stirring suspiciously.

"What name you fellas talk?" he demanded, and then Rainse took his arm and led him around the fire, while Burks stepped aside so the light fell on the stricken black in the shelter. Baldy went slowly for-ward, understanding dawning on his face.

Rainse said thinly, "That was the boss doctor's boy. Takum very sick after killer fella come. Maybe you ask, eh?"

Baldy was already shooting jerky questions in the dialect, to which the doomed black could only say, "Ahah-ah-ah," in a weird moaning that made even the sergeant shiver.

"This devil-devil stuff altogether," Baldy muttered. "That killer go into water and never come out. This black fella him sick altogether. Someone pointum bone. I think this patrol better finished."

"Not yet," said Rainse grimly. "What's the man's totem? His tribe?"

Baldy pointed a shaky finger at the initiation scars on the other's arms and chest. "That fella frog totem."

Rainse nodded. "And you're goanna totem. Goanna magic stronger than frog magic, so what for you're afraid?... Baldy!" He shook his panic-stricken tracker until his chattering teeth chattered still more. "Ask him where his tribe is now! Ask him!"

Baldy Bill only rolled his eyes and staggered back to the campfire to crouch down and hide his head in his hands. "That devil magic," he whimpered. "Baldy Bill thinkum he go walkabout for bush."

"Like fun you will!" choked Rainse. "You saw this stuff through once before with me and it didn't kill you!... Burks! Get that bottle of whisky out of my saddle pack!"

Burks hesitated. "Now look, sarge! You know--"

"I know all about the regulations!" roared the sergeant. "You don't give liquor to a black! There's a lot of things against the regulations you don't have to put in the report! Get that bottle!''

Burks swallowed hard and went for the bottle. The sergeant pulled his handcuffs from his hip pocket, snapped one ring on Baldy's right wrist, and the other about his own left wrist.

"Now," he said grimly, "we won't have to worry about you going walkabout. I'm going to need you... Burks, get that bottle open and pour a jolt into him. I'll hold his nose, so he'll swallow. Half an hour and maybe he'll remember he's a head tracker again."

They got the terrified Baldy to swallow two stiff drinks.

To Burks Rainse ordered, "Take that paralysed black back to the sta-tion house. Just sling him over my horse and get going and get back. Tell 'em to keep him locked up and away from the station blacks or they'll all be running off. He's going to be my star witness if I can get Baldy working again!"

The sergeant was all but exhausted by dawn, when Burks returned with the horses and some spare provisions, but he had Baldy Bill half intoxicated.

"I brought another bottle along, in case you might need it," said Burks awkwardly. "I guess we'll both get fired if the old man ever finds out."

Rainse grinned. "I wouldn't worry too much about the inspector. Ask him sometime how he managed to trap Iron Kelly when he was just a sergeant himself. He won't tell you, but it always shuts him up."

Burks nodded. "Well, how's Baldy, anyway?"

"Doing well. It's always the first shock of coming up against this bone pointing business that knocks a tracker out. I don't think he wants to go walkabout now. He says the frog totem hunting grounds are way over in the Musgrave Ranges, which is too far for us at the moment, so we'll try things again from this end."

RAINSE got out his handcuff keys and unfastened the irons. "We'll have something to eat and tea--slip a dram into Baldy's--then get going."

"Get going where?" asked the mystified Burks. "We've got no trail."

"There's got to be a trail!" Rainse said grimly. "If a killer goes into the water to cover track, he's got to come out somewhere and somehow. What we've got to find is how and where. We get that worked out and half of Baldy's confidence returns without any help from whisky."

They ate, then as Rainse led the way to the stream's bank he went over the whole situation, concluding, "Now, a killer goes into the water. He can get out or disappear three ways. He can burrow under like a frog and hide, which, obviously, he didn't. He can crawl out like a lizard, which Baldy says he didn't, confirming the Alice Springs trackers before they ran off. So the only other way is to fly out."

Burks shook his head. "No go, sarge. I know the trees hang over the water and I've thought of that angle, too, but they're too high up for any bloke to grab a branch and climb."

Baldy's already-glistening eyes glistened still more as he listened, and he chuckled happily.

"What name this fella tracker never think of that?" he demanded, and forthwith trotted off, to return after a few paces and look pleadingly at Rainse. The sergeant eyed him closely for a moment and then laughed. He had taken the tracker's rifle away during his uncertain spell, and that was a head tracker's pride and a sign of whatever authority he had.

"I think he's all right now," he explained to Burks, and tossed the rifle over.

They went a slow five miles along the stream's bank before Burks called Rainse and pointed. "There's a branch a bloke might jump and grab, if he were the world's champion jumper. Or maybe he could pile some of those river stones up to stand on and then kick 'em over when he caught hold."

"So it begins to make sense, eh?" Rainse observed. "The branches on this side hang out quite a way, too, and there's a lot of horse and stock track all along the bank that'd cover most signs."

He started to say more when he heard a muffled clucking from the branches of the big tree by which they were both standing, and peering up more closely he saw Baldy Bill, sprawled out on the largest limb, grinning and nodding vigorously.

Baldy slid down after a while, and for once delivered a verdict without pausing to smoke or deliberate.

"That killer fella never fool this tracker too much," he announced boldly. "That fella climb tree, crawl out on branch over the water, tie rope fast and then slide down to that big fella rock. Tie rope to rock. Then fella go kill big boss doctor and come back here. Climb up rope, get back on branch and jerk rope clear from rock.

"Then him climb back to other branch this fella side where him have horse tied, so was very easy to pull horse close and drop into saddle. Then jerk second rope loose and ride away. Him tie rope, you savvy, with special knot. Holdum fast for big steady weight, but come loose for two, three big jerks."

He opened his hand to show wisps of hemp he had found on both branches, and he beamed, waiting for approval, for hadn't he person-ally solved the mystery? Sergeant Rainse knew better than to debate the point.

"All very clear so far," he said mildly. "But where did the killer ride to?" He stared at the churncd-tip ground about them. "This is where the station's horse mob waters twice a day. How can you pick a special track out of all that mess?'*

"Wah!" said Baldy. "One horse in mob have rider and that horse shod. Boundary rider for station to see mob water right. No other horse in mob shod, but one other horse go this way carry weight, man weight. Ver) silly try to fool this tracker. He go that way"--he waved positively--"back to home paddock."

"Which means--" started Rainse deliberately, and Burks finished for him, "Brisbane Charlie's at the Deep Well Station. That's the last place we'd look for him."

Rainse nodded. "Baldy, you trackum this weight horse to home paddock for us to make sure. Maybe he turned off somewhere."

Baldy laughed. "Trackum easy now. I savvy that one horse's own sign." He hesitated and scratched his ankle with a bare toe. "But this fella tracker... That killer fella... maybe pointum bone--"

"You won't run into him right away," Rainse soothed. "Burks, go ahead and see the station owner. Ask Iii m if he's taken on any new black help lately, especially since the doc-tor located here. Have him order any new men into the shearing shed or somewhere aside where you can look them over. You've a pretty good description of Brisbane Charlie from the files, and, as I recall it, he has several scars that tab him. If you do spot him slam him under arrest."

"And what do you do?" asked Burks, puzzled. "Why not make the arrest yourself?"

"I've got to nurse Baldy along," Rainse explained. "He's getting the bone pointing shakes again."

BRISBANE CHARLIE was tough, and Rainse could see it as soon as he faced the man.

"So you admit nothing eh? The circumstantial evidence is pretty thick.''

Brisbane Charlie shrugged. He was sitting in a chair, handcuffed, in a disused shed lighted by two oil lamps. The station owner stood to one side, gnawing his lip and frowning.

On the floor beside Brisbane Charlie's chair crouched the dying black, stony-eyed, unmoving save for his quivering hands hung over his knees.

Brisbane Charlie was perfectly at ease, a big man, even handsome in a brutal sort of way.

He was dressed in khaki pants and a flannel shirt, wore boots like any white stockman, and he spoke as good English as the sergeant himself, if not better.

"You can't convict a man on circumstantial evidence alone," he said, smiling. "Anyway, it wouldn't be easy. Certainly I had no reason to love Dr. Lowden, but that's no reason I should kill him. It's just accidental I happened to get a job here while he was working on the station."

Rainse said flatly, "You're wanted on two counts of murder already."

The big half-caste laughed.

"I was," he agreed frankly. "Tribal killings. The Federal Protector of Aborigines ruled on that, so I served a year and I was discharged. And I'm getting tired of this. I'm charged with murder. So let's go in and see how the courts feel about it. Might cost you your job, copper."

Rainse nodded. "We'll see what the courts think later. Right now I'm going to give someone else a try. That black you put under the bone pointing belongs to the frog totem--same tribe as your mother, I believe, and which you're linked with."

"Is that a crime, too?" demanded Brisbane Charlie.

"After a while," Rainse assured him. "Right now you'll face another member of the frog totem who badly wants to see you."

BRISBANE CHARLIE sobered and his face hardened. "Meaning just what, copper?"

"That thing's"--Rainse nodded at the stupefied black--"that thing's brother is a witch doctor of the frog totem, and he wants his brother saved. He wants the bone unpointed. He'll try it himself as a last resort, but he explained to my tracker it sometimes won't work, and only the man who put the curse on can take it off. That's you, and he's here to see you."

Brisbane Charlie went rigid and his eyes rolled, but he finally forced a laugh.

"You're sillier than I thought," he managed. "None of the frog totem has any quarrel with me. The tribe hunts in the Musgrave Ranges anyway, so how would a witch doctor get here?"

Rainse shrugged. "Have it your way."

The station owner pushed forward. "Look, sergeant. This seems all highly irregular. You can't try any hocus-pocus on my place!"

Rainse groped in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. "Burks," he drawled, "no one leaves this shed until I say so. If our friend protests too much put the irons on him on the charge of obstructing justice."

"Yes, sarge," Burks mumbled unhappily, but he loyally drew his revolver and waved the irate station owner to subside.

Rainse turned abruptly and went out into the night, and when he re-turned he had with him an aboriginal, naked but fantastically decorated with white bird feathers stuck on in patterns and glued down with blood.

The eyes were circled with giant white rings, as was the mouth. Queer white patterns covered the legs and stomach and arms, and to crown all was a high head-dress of feathers surmounted by a huge, grotesque, feathered model of a frog.

Brisbane Charlie's mouth fell open, his eyes bulged and the cold sweat began to run down his face.

"No," he croaked. "No! I've no quarrel with the frog totem!"

"That black beside you is this man's brother," Rainse repeated. "Isn't that quarrel enough? He wants him free of the pointing bone."

"No!" shouted the half-caste, jerking at the handcuffs. "I had nothing to do with that!"

He relapsed into the dialect, pleading, arguing, protesting as the ceremonially dressed native advanced and then, slowly kneeling, raised his painted hands and held a bone towards Brisbane Charlie.

No one spoke. The silence grew tight until the grotesque, kneeling figure began to sway and break into a low chant.

"No, no!" the half-caste screamed, "lake it away! Don't point the bone!" He lapsed into the dialect once more but the bone pointer went on.

Rainse cleared his throat. "Unpoint his brother and he leaves you alone," he said, hard-faced with tension. "But what do you care? You're civilised. You don't believe in such things any more. Make up your mind, man. He's coming to the death words."

Brisbane Charlie collapsed, gibbering and praying to be unhandcuffed, so he could take the bone and kneel before the paralysed black beside his chair. Brokenly then he pointed the bone and chanted the reverse ritual, and as if a miracle had happened the stricken native stirred, shook his head and looked won-deringly around.

Brisbane Charlie fell in a dead faint, and Sergeant Rainse wiped his own wet forehead on his shirt sleeve.

"I think," he said shakingly, "that about winds up this patrol. The chief witness will talk." He looked slowly around, and his eyes were icy. "I don't think anyone else will. This is something I'd rather not put in my report, being not according to regulations."

Constable Burks came into Rainse's office at Oodnadatta a week later and was very irritated. "I've been looking for Baldy Bill," he stated. "Did you send him some-where?"

"Well, I told him to go take a walkabout longa bush country with his people," Rainse apologised. "You see, he had a bad hang-over to get rid of, and he felt rather insulted at having to impersonate a frog totem witch doctor."

"Oh, I suppose so," agreed Burks resignedly. "Now he has to get his soul cleaned out with some special ceremonies, I suppose."

"Something like that," Rainse agreed. "He did a very noble job and he's entitled to a holiday." He jerked away from his desk as the wall phone rang, and waved Burks back.

"I'd better take this one," he said.

After a while, he said, "I know, sir," and later, "Yes, sir. I agree that to list three bottles of whisky for medicinal purposes is pretty steep, but, sir--No, it was nothing like that.... You can probably best understand what the situation was, sir, if I remind you of the way you trapped Iron Kelly... Sir! Swearing is against regulations....

"Yes, sir, I'll go there if you insist, but it's hot enough here, as it is.... Ah, very good. I'm glad you understand. I hope my report, then, is satisfactory. Good-bye, sir, and the same to you."

As he hung up, Burks whispered, wide-eyed, "I knew that whisky stuff was dynamite. And you even sticking it down for expenses in the report. What did he say?"

Rainse seated himself and took up the racing form again. "Oh, blew off steam as usual, until I asked about that Iron Kelly case. Then he apologised and very nicely asked me if I wouldn't care for two weeks' leave in Adelaide as a reward for my good services. I think he understands."

End

Table of Contents

1: Under The Skin

2: The War of the Captains

3: A Loyal Man

4: The Education of Captain Sutherland

5: The Third Officer

6: Yellow Bowden

7: Women Are Queer

8: Sweet Music

9: Old Iron Face

10: The Pleasure Is All Yours

11: Hell's Helmsman

12: Carry on, Mr. Barnes

13: The Extra Hand

14: A Shift of Cargo

15: Outside The Law