CHAPTER IX
“WHAT!” exclaimed the captain. “Ssh!”
The voice rose, wailed, ceased abruptly as if stoppered, and shot up into a pronounced giggle.
“It must be Selwyn drunk!” exclaimed the captain. “But where on earth is he?”
He walked toward the rear of the bridge, toward the direction from which the voice had appeared to come, peered in the darkness and shouted:
“Selwyn! Hey, there! Mr. Selwyn! Is that you?”
But although he shouted several times no response of any kind was made.
“Queer,” he muttered. “Take the wheel, Vi, and I'll go and look around.”
“But, uncle,” began Vi, “hadn't you better wait till daylight? That face— I”
“What face, Vi?”
“The hairy face I saw at the port-hole.”
“Nonsense, dear; you were dreaming; or mebbe it was this drunken fool. He'd have a few days' beard by now. I'll look around.”
Vi obeyed and and listened uneasily to the footsteps of her uncle walking slowly around the bridge. Twice she heard him call softly. Nothing save the lame thump of the engines and the sough of the wind and sea answered.
“Can't make it out, Vi,” he commented on his return. “Haven't heard the voice again, have you?”
“Not a note. I suppose it must have been Mr. Selwyn. Anyway let us leave it till daylight, uncle.”
“I suppose so. Can't spare any men to hunt a drunken fool anyway. Go and turn in again, dear.”
“All right,” answered Vi after a moment's hesitation. “Good night, uncle.”
“Good night, dear.”
She entered the chartroom again and, lighting the candle, peered around a little nervously. She did lie down and eventually fell asleep. Chi Loo awoke her with a cup of tea in his hand.
“Did you hear that voice last night?” she asked him.
Chi Loo stared bland interrogation.
“Well, did you hear anybody singing?”
“Sing? No hear um sing. Who make sing?”
“I don't know. I wish I did,” returned Vi.
After a hurried sluice in the chartroom basin by way of toilet Vi mounted the bridge to relieve her uncle.
“No news, uncle?”
“None, dear. We must be well out of the ordinary lane by now. Anyway I'll take the sun at noon.”
Save for the pageant of the dawn before the sun burned the colors out of the sky the sea was just the same foam-flecked mass as ever. Soon from beneath her she heard the steady snore of the captain, who was enjoying the first sleep he really had had since the Hesperus catastrophe. The monsoon weather is always warm and sticky. Standing watching the compass-needle and twiddling the little brass wheel becomes a monotonous job, particularly to those unused to the work. However, Vi—with the aid of the excellent cigarets bequeathed to her by the tragedy, which afforded her plenty to ponder upon—settled down to her watch with something of professional resignation. Just after Chi Loo, the ever thoughtful, had brought her some tea and biscuits a familiar voice startled her.
“Oh. You, Mr. Carnell! Why, you quite scared me. I am getting so used to being alone.”
She looked at his unshaven face, still streaked with coal-grime, and smiled.
“Heavens,” she added, “you didn't look into the chartroom port late last night, did you?”
“I look?” queried Carnell, staring at her. “Why, no. But why?”
As Vi related what had happened he gazed at her keenly.
“And uncle heard the voice singing too. It must have been Mr. Selwyn. Who else could it have been? The carpenter went over the ship, didn't he?”
“Yes, yes,” replied Carnell reassuringly. “Probably Selwyn on a drunken spree and hiding himself somewhere—easy enough on a big ship such as she is.”
“Perhaps; but the face?” she persisted. “It—it didn't look human. What are you looking at me like that for? D'you think I'm going crazy?”
“No, of course not,” he answered gravely; “but I do think that you're run down and tired out. God knows you've had enough to kill any ordinary woman.”
“Oh, Heavens, there's the woman again!” scoffed Vi. “Why on earth will you always persist in treating a woman as if she were Dresden china? Haven't you men learned anything at all in the past few years?”
“Yes, but still—I wish you'd let me take the wheel for a while and rest a bit, Miss Kelvett.”
“Don't be absurd, I can do my part. You need a rest after stoking far more than I do, Here, have a cigaret and don't look so gloomy.”
He lighted one and leaned against the adjacent rail staring out to sea.
“HOW much is this ship worth?” demanded Vi after a while.
“Worth?”
He turned with a startled air.
“Oh, I don't know. She must be about ten or twelve thousand ton. Somewhere around half a million pounds, I suppose.”
“And the cargo more, I suppose.”
“If it's general eastern I suppose so.”
“Well, you get a salvage share with uncle, don't you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, you'll be able to buy two or three commands if you want 'em, won't you?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so.”
“Suppose so!” echoed Vi, twiddling the wheel. “Good Heavens, what's the matter with you? You look as if you had won a death sentence instead of a competence for life!”
He turned away moodily and stared out to sea again. Presently he added as if he were talking to the tumbling expanse before him
“I suppose I ought not to grumble, but apparently when you get material desires you are bound to lose the other.”
“Other? What other?”
Vi could have bitten her lip as he turned and gazed at her.
“Oh it, man,” she exclaimed exasperatedly. “I'm not the only woman in the world!”
Without a word he turned and walked to the other end of the bridge and, leaning over the dodger, fell to gazing at the sea with his eyes averted.
“Oh, Heavens!” grumbled Vi to herself. “Why on earth are men so incorrigibly sentimental? I suppose next thing is that awful Selwyn creature will turn up and begin to bore me again! … Well, it's about eleven-thirty, so I suppose I'd better call uncle if he wants to take the sun.”
“Mr. Carnell!” she called. “Would you mind taking the wheel a moment while I call uncle? He wants to take the sun.”
“Certainly, Miss Kelvett.”
As he walked swiftly along the bridge he stopped abruptly.
“What's the matter?” Vi had begun when she realized that something unusual had happened.
The gentle sough of the wind and the swish of the sea seemed abnormally loud. Then she missed the limping thump of the engines.
With a smothered curse and an apology the sailor in the lovelorn second mate awoke. He sprang down the ladder and ran toward the engine-room, shouting to Vi, who, startled by the importance which he seemed to attribute to the stoppage of the engines, nearly deserted her post. The little speed the vessel had rapidly decreased with the result that she refused to answer to her helm and swerved off the course.
Seeing that it was useless to remain at wheel and wondering what had happened, Vi left the bridge. On reaching the deck she bethought herself that she might as well awaken her uncle as he had requested. Entering the chartroom, she went over to him where he lay stretched out on the locker-seat and shook him, saying—
“Nearly noon, uncle!”
As the captain appeared to be sleeping heavily she shook his shoulder the harder, repeating the summons. Still he did not stir.
“Uncle! Uncle! Wake up!” she cried, bending over him.
Then she grabbed him by the arm. His body rolled over, inert. For a second she stared at him bewilderedly. Then, noticing his eyes, she touched his face. Although not icy the flesh was cold.
“My God, I believe he's dead too!” she exclaimed; and, rapidly tearing open his light cotton shirt, she listened for the heartbeat which was not.
For a moment Vi stood back, feeling that shock which, no matter how used one had become to sudden death, never fails when the deceased is one of our own blood. As she stared at the dead face the expression and the position of the half-closed eyelids reminded her of the tragedy in the saloon, recalling too, despite the apparent inconsistence, the vision of the hairy face at the chart-house window. As, conscious of a pallid sensation about the cheeks, Vi turned to seek the second mate her foot crunched upon something upon the floor.
Mechanically she glanced down as she passed and noticed a broken egg-shell. Chi Loo must have brought eggs for his breakfast, she thought—yet somehow the sight stirred vague associations. But as she was wondering what significance they could have she heard the footsteps of Carnell returning:
“Oh, Mr. Carnell!” she exclaimed as soon as he appeared. “Uncle is dead!”
“Good God!”
He stopped abruptly and stared at her. She repeated the statement, adding:
“But I can't imagine what can have happened. He appeared rather tired but otherwise quite all right.” She stared at the peculiar expression on the Second's face.
“Why, do you think it has anything to do with—with those others?”
“Yes—I mean—” he blinked and frowned as if trying to command his features—“Miss Kelvett, I'm afraid something serious is—er—happening.”
“What d'you mean?”
“You remember the engines stopped suddenly?”
“Why, yes, of course,” said she with the air of one impatiently recalling an unimportant item.
“Well—you see I left the watch as usual, busy stoking, and found them—all dead.”
“What!”
“Yes, dead. Lying about there with the shovels and rakes in their hands as if they'd all gone to sleep suddenly. Just the same as the people we found in the saloon.”
Already made nervous by the double happening, Vi started at the swift patter of shoes on the companion stairs. A sharp cry was followed by the slap of feet on deck. They both turned in time to see Chi Loo dart out of the door, flit across the deck and up the bridge ladder.;
“What on earth!” began Carnell.
“Look! The face in the port!” ejaculated Vi, arresting the Second by clutching his arm and pointing with the other.
From the companion door projected a long, hairy arm surmounted by the head of an ape, which, grimacing, vanished.