His Unknown Wife - Louis Tracy (large ebook reader .TXT) 📗

in oilskins and sea boots, but positively dangerous for one unable to interpret the vagaries of a ship plunging through a heavy sea. A broken limb or ugly bruise was the certain penalty of an incautious movement, if, indeed, one was not swept overboard.

For a passenger-a non-combatant, so to speak-the only certain way to insure physical safety was to lie prone in a bunk, with a hand ever ready to seize the nearest rail when an unusually violent lurch tilted the vessel to an angle of forty-five degrees and simultaneously drove her nose into a veritable mountain of water.

Maseden contrived to sleep fitfully until a thin gray light, trickling through a tiny port when momentarily free of wave-wash, told him that another day had dawned. The din was incessant. Inanimate things may be inarticulate to human ears, but they speak a language of their own on such occasions-an inchoate tongue made up of banging and clattering, of stunning vibrations, of wind-shrieks, of the groaning of steel framework, riveted plates, and seasoned timber.

The Southern Cross was tackling her work with stubborn energy, but she complained of its severity in every fibre. Ships, like men, prefer easy conditions, and growl in their own peculiar manner when compelled to wage a fierce and continuous fight for mere existence.

Of course a sailor never permits himself to think of his own craft in such wise. “Dirty weather” is simply an unpleasant episode in the routine of a voyage. He regards it much as the average city man views wind and rain -displeasing additions to life’s minor worries, but not to be considered as affecting the daily task.

In a modern, well-found steamship such negative faith is fully justified, and the ship’s company of the Southern Cross went about their several duties as methodically as though the vessel were roped securely alongside a pier in the North River.

The center of the forecastle held a roomy compartment in which meals were served for the crew, and Maseden took refuge there as soon as he was dressed. He obtained an early cup of coffee, and derived some comfort from the fact, communicated by the half-caste sailor he had saved from the falling pulley, that about the same time next day they would sight the Evangelistas -light, and soon thereafter be in the landlocked water of the Straits of Magellan.

He realized, of course, that sight or sound of either Madge Gray or her sister was hardly to be expected during the next twenty-four hours. In fact, he might not see them again before Buenos Ayres was reached.

On the whole, it would be better so, he decided. A thrilling and most dramatic incident in a life not otherwise noteworthy for its vicissitudes would close when he was safe on board a homeward-bound mail steamer. After that would come some small experience of a court of law.

For the rest, if he contrived to cheat the newspapers of the full details, he would actually risk his repute as a veracious citizen if he told the plain truth about one day’s history in the Republic of San Juan.

Once, in his teens, when in London during a never-to-be-forgotten European tour, a friend of his father’s pointed out a small, alert man,dressed in gray tweeds, who was hailing a cab in Pall Mall, and said:

“Look, Alec! That is Evans of the Guides. I met him five years ago in Lucknow, and even at that date he had killed his sixty-first tiger on foot and alone. He never shoots stripes any other way. He says it isn’t quite sporting to tackle the brute from the comparative safety of a howdah or a machan—a platform rigged in a tree, you know.”

Philip Alexander Maseden, aged sixteen, neither knew nor cared what a machan was. His faculties were absorbed in the difficult task of reconciling a dapper little man in a gray suit, skipping nimbly into a cab in Pall Mall, with a redoubtable Nimrod who had bagged sixty-one tigers after tracking them into their jungles.

And that was the record of five years earlier. Perhaps in the meantime the bold shikari had added dozens to the total. A mighty hunter, Evans, but hard to reconcile with his environment.

Seated in the wet, creaking cabin, and watching through a window which opened aft the turmoil of seas leaping venomously at and over the stout bulk of the Southern Cross, Maseden thought of Evans of the Guides, and his cohort of tiger-ghosts. Yet not one tiger among the lot had brought Evans so near death as he, Maseden, was when Steinbaum entered his cellon that fateful morning, and, in the closest shave Evans was ever favored with, a violent end had not been averted by stranger means.

How would the story of “Madeleine,” Suarez, and Captain Gomez’s boots sound if told in a cosy corner of a Fifth Avenue club?

By reason of his position in the fore part of the vessel, Maseden could survey the bridge, chart-house and some part of the promenade deck. The head of the officer on watch was visible above the canvas screen which those who go down to the sea in ships have christened the “devil-dodger.” The officer’s sou’wester was tied on firmly, and the placid expression of the strong, weather-stained face was clearly discernible. For the most part, he looked straight ahead, with an occasional glance back, or over the side into the spume and froth churned up by the ship’s passage. Once in a while he would draw away from the screen and compare the course shown by the compass with that steered by the quartermaster at the wheel.

For lack of something better to occupy his mind, Maseden followed each movement of the man on the bridge. Thus, singularly enough, next to the officer himself, and possibly a lookout in the bows, he was the first person on board to become aware of a peril which suddenly beset the Southern Cross.

What that peril was he could not guess, but he saw that the officer was shouting instructions to the quartermaster, and in the same instant the clang of a bell showed that the engine-room telegraph was in use.

Almost immediately the ship’s speed slackened, and as she yielded to the pressure of wind and wave the clamor of her struggle sank to comparative silence.

A few seconds later the captain appeared on the bridge. He, like the officer, gave particular heed to something which lay straight ahead. Evidently he approved of the action taken by his subordinate, because, as well as Maseden could judge, he stood beside the telegraph, with a hand on the lever, but made no further alteration in the ship’s speed.

Naturally Maseden wondered what had happened and watched closely for developments. In better weather he would have gone outside, but it was positively dangerous now to stand close to the ship’s rail, or, indeed, remain on any part of the open deck, while the shadow of an attempt on his part to climb the forecastle ladder would have evoked a gruff order to return.

Within a minute or less, however, he made out that the Southern Cross was passing through a quantity of wreckage, mostly roughhewn timber. Here and there a spar would unexpectedly thrust its tapering point high above the tawny vortex of the waves; at odd times a portion of a bulkhead and fragments of white-painted panels would be revealed for an instant. Some unfortunate sailing ship had been torn to shreds by the gale, and the steamer was just passing through that section of the sea-plain still cumbered by her fragments, though the tragedy itself had probably occurred many a mile away from that particular point on the map.

By this time the stopping of the engines had aroused every member of the crew not on watch. Some of the men, bleary-eyed with sleep, gathered in the cabin, and their comments were illuminating.

“Wind-jammer gone with all hands,” said one man, after a critical glance at the flotsam on both sides of the ship.

“What for have we slowed up?” inquired another. “The old man ain’t thinkin’ of lowerin’ a boat, is he?”

“Lower a boat, saphead, in a sea like this!” scoffed the first speaker.

“Wouldn’t he try to rescue any poor sailormen who may be clingin’ to the wreck?” came the retort.

“As though any sort of blisterin’ wreck could live in this weather! Try again, Jimmy. We’re dodgin’ planks an’ ropes; that’s our special stunt just now. One o’ them hefty chunks o’ lumber would knock a hole in us below the water-line before you could say ‘knife’. An’ how about a sail an’ cordage wrappin’ themselves lovin’ly around the screw? Where ‘ud we be then?… There you are. What did I tell you?”

A heavy thud, altogether different from the blow delivered by a wave, shook the Southern Cross from stem to stern. The captain looked over the port side, and followed the movement of some unseen object until it was swept well clear of the ship. The engines, which had been stopped completely, were rung on to “Slow ahead” again. They remained at that speed for half a minute, not longer. Then they were stopped once more, and the officer of the watch quitted the bridge hurriedly.

“What the devil’s the matter now?” growled the more experienced critic anxiously. “That punch we got can’t of started a plate, or all hands would ‘a’ bin piped on deck!”

Singularly enough, he either forgot or was afraid to voice his own prediction as to a possible alternative. The big foremast which had struck the ship’s quarter was stout enough, most unluckily, to support a thin wire rope, and this unseen assailant had fouled the propeller. In all likelihood, had the captain given the order “Full speed ahead,” the evil thing might have been thrown clear before mischief was done.

As it was, the very care with which the Southern Cross was navigated led to her undoing. With each slow turn of the screw the snakelike rope which was destined to choke the life out of a gallant ship had coiled itself into a death grip.

Soon some of the strands were forced between propeller and shaft-casing. The solid steel cylinder of the shaft became fixed as in a vise. The engines were powerless. To apply their force was only to increase the resistance. They could not be driven either ahead or astern.

The Southern Cross promptly fell away to the southeast under the stress of wind and tide. After her, forming a sort of sea-anchor, lolloped the derelict foremast which, by its buoyancy, was the first cause of all the mischief.

Mostly it was towed astern. Sometimes a giant wave would snatch it up and drive it like a battering ram against the ship’s counter.

These blows were generally harmless, the rounded butt of the spar glancing off from the acute angle presented by the molded stern plates. Once or twice, however, the rudder was struck squarely, so the chief officer, aided by some of the men, quickly put an end to the capacity of this novel battering-ram for inflating further damage by lassoing and hauling aboard the whole mass of wreckage-mast, yards and tattered sails alike.

Then a gruesome discovery was made. Tied to the mast was the corpse of a man, but so bruised and battered as to be wholly unrecognizable. The poor body, nearly naked, and maimed and torn almost out of human semblance, was stitched in a strip of wet canvas, weighted with a few furnace bars, and committed to the deep again without a moment’s loss of time.

But its brief presence had not been helpful. Singularly enough, sailors are not only fatalists, which they may well be, but superstitious. No man voiced his sentiments; nevertheless, each felt in his heart