CHAPTER VIII
THE MYSTERY SHIP
Waves from the exhausted swimmers sent bright streaks of watershine wavering up the green hull over Madden's head. Utter silence pervaded the vessel. There was no creaking of spar or block. Hot tar stood in her seams in the beating sunshine.
The boys kicked wearily through the tepid water to the schooner's prow, where Greer succeeded in catching the bobstays and climbing aboard. A little later he lowered a rope to Madden with a double bight in it. The Yankee made the Englishman fast in the loops, climbed on deck himself and helped haul the unconscious fellow aboard.
The two boys lugged the senseless man wearily across deck into the shade of the superstructure, then in default of any better restorative, Leonard began slapping the bottom of the Englishman's feet to revive him. Presently Caradoc groaned, drew up his legs.
“He's coming around all right,” said Greer, then he looked about him. “What do you make out of this anyway, Mr. Madden?”
Leonard glanced around and did see a remarkable derelict. The schooner was as newly painted and trig as if fresh from the ways. Her deck was holystoned to man-o'-war cleanliness; every sheet, hawser, stay, tackle, pin, spike, was in place. Three small boats, her full complement, hung in davits. On the bow of these boats, on their oars and buoys, was painted the name of the schooner, “Minnie B.”
From the port side of the vessel there stretched a long cable patently leading to a sea anchor. All sails were brailed except mains'l and tops'l, which were reefed and set against each other to hold her steady in case of a blow. The funnel was freshly painted black with a red band at the top. Judging from her appearance, the desertion of the Minnie B had been carefully planned. Yet why desert a new vessel? By what means did the crew leave the schooner, since all her small boats remained? What was their motive in anchoring the Minnie B in the middle of the Sargasso?
There appeared to be no easy answer to these questions.
“I don't understand this,” said Greer, in answer to Madden's unspoken perplexity. “Where did the crew go, sir, and how did they go?”
“They might have deserted her for her insurance,” suggested Madden tentatively.
“Then why didn't they scuttle her—besides, a new vessel like this is worth more than her insurance.”
“Maybe it was her cargo. Perhaps they faked it, rated it away above its value.”
“Why she has no cargo, sir. She's riding light as a skiff; I noticed that as I climbed up.”
“Then what is your idea?” inquired the American.
Greer glanced around with a trace of uneasiness. “The crew went by the board, sir, I'm thinking.”
“Overboard—all washed overboard! Why there isn't one chance in a million of such a thing hap—”
“I didn't say 'washed overboard,' sir,” corrected Greer heavily. “I think they got throwed overboard, one by one, sir.”
“One by one!” Madden stared at the solemn faced fellow.
Farnol nodded stolidly. “Just so, sir.”
“You mean—?”
“The plague, sir.”
“O-oh!” The American stared around the deck with new eyes. Greer's explanation struck home with a certain convincingness. The mere thought of disease-laden surroundings filled him with alarm. Could they have unwittingly wandered into a deserted pest-ship? A focus of death in these rotting seas? The very air he breathed, the wood he touched, might inoculate him with malignant germs. Then he began reasoning on it.
“Even if it were the plague, there ought to be someone left aboard, Greer, a last corpse.” The American sniffed the hot, breathless, tar-scented air.
“He could well have gone crazy, sir, in this heat and followed his mates overboard—but we can look and see.”
At this moment, Caradoc stirred and pulled himself to a sitting posture on the burning deck.
“You—you pulled me aboard?” he murmured weakly, looking about with the face of a corpse.
“How do you feel—anything I can do?”
“If I had a dr—” he broke off, drew a long breath. “Nobody aboard?”
“If you're all right, Greer and I will take a turn below and see what we can find,” suggested Madden.
Caradoc nodded apathetically and stared seaward toward the cable sagging into the dead ocean.
The two boys moved gingerly up to the hatchway that led down to the forecastle. If disease had smitten the Minnie B they hoped to get some clew from the taint of the sailors' quarters. Greer stuck a nose down the ladder first. Beyond the usual close ship smells there seemed to be nothing wrong. Then they climbed down.
Here again they found order. The bunks against the bulkheads and the curve of the prow were clean with neatly rolled blankets. The lockers were open and empty. The two searchers climbed out and walked aft to the lazaret. They were rapidly getting over their fright of the plague. Again Greer entered first, and this time Madden heard a loud snort of disgust.
Half expecting some sinister sight, Madden ran down the three steps and entered the storeroom. But what had roused the sailor's dislike was that the lazaret contained no provisions. It was as empty as the forecastle; not a chest, not a canister, not even a spice box remained. Here again the lockers were open and empty. From one of the keyholes hung a bunch of keys. The steward had deserted his ring, knowing it could never be of service to him again.
The little metal bunch hung straight down without the slightest oscillation. Such lack of motion and life amid the close stewing heat of the lazaret threw a glamor of unreality over the whole affair. The schooner might well have been warped to a dock in some port of the dead. The very newness of everything accentuated its amazing loneliness.
“Doesn't seem real, does it?” said Greer in a low tone, drawing a long breath in the heat. “I keep listening.”
Madden shook himself. “It seems as if someone ought to be aboard.” He broke away from the spell: “I wish they had left us some provisions—we need 'em.”
The hot heavy silence fell immediately after the remark, like a curtain that was heavy to lift.
“Let's look through the hold and see if there isn't someone here!” suggested Greer uneasily.
With a feeling that they were likely to encounter some being, human or spectral, at every turn, they went below. The farther they went the more inexplicable became the Minnie B'sdesertion. Her engines were in perfect order, her furnace so new that the grate bars were still unsealed from heat; the maker's name-plate was still bright on the boilers; her hull was quite dry, with less than six inches of water in her bilge. She had no cargo, except four or five tons of raw metal ingots used as ballast. The coal in her bunkers was nearly exhausted. Indeed she was riding so light that heavy weather would upset her like a chip. It seemed as if the crew had looted the Minnie B in a thorough and extraordinary manner, and then had simply vanished. Every now and then in their search the two would find themselves standing motionless, open-mouthed, listening intently to the brooding silence.
More puzzled than ever by these explorations, the two adventurers climbed into the chart room. Here, also, everything was intact, and in order. In a desk they found the ship's log and clearance papers. The captain's and the mate's licenses hung in frames against the wall. Near these was tacked the picture of a sunny-haired little girl and underneath it was written the name “Minnie.” So the schooner was the little smiling-faced girl's namesake, this tragedy-haunted abandoned vessel. A Mercator's projection lay thumb-tacked on a table, and the last position of the schooner was indicated by a pin sticking in the map.
Madden moved over to it eagerly, hoping this pin would give him some inkling as to where the disaster, if there had been one, occurred. He noted the latitude and longitude indicated by the marker, then turned excitedly to Greer.
“Look here!” he cried, “this pin marks our position at this moment. We are right here!” he touched the point on the map.
“How do you know it does?”
“I calculated the dock's position this morning.”
“Well, what of that? She will probably lie here till she rots in this stagnant sea.”
“That's the point: This is not a stagnant sea. There is a current of about six miles a day in the Sargasso, very slow, but it will change a ship's reckoning.”
Greer remained unimpressed. “What do you make of that?”
“Make of that! Why, man, the person who took this reckoning, took it this morning! That's the only way he could have got it. There was somebody on this schooner this morning when we sighted her.”
“This morning! This morning! Where in Davy Jones' locker——”
Madden was leaning over the chart scrutinizing it with careful eyes. At last he raised up in complete bewilderment.
“Farnol,” he said in a queer tone, “the crew meant to come here! Meant to sail through the Sargasso—clear away from all trade routes—incomprehensible but—just look!”
Both boys bent above the chart, and Madden silently pointed out a row of pin holes that marked the daily reckonings of theMinnie B. She had sailed from Portland, Maine, had swung up the northern route past Newfoundland Banks as if going to England. On this portion of her voyage her average run was a little less than two hundred knots a day. On the fifth day out, the Minnie B inexplicably deserted the normal trade course, turned from “E. NE.” and sailed directly “S. SW.” At the same time her speed was accelerated to a trifle over three hundred knots a day. Her last reckoning left the pin sticking in the exact longitude and latitude which Leonard had worked out for the dock that morning.
“They got in a hurry when they did turn south,” said Greer vacuously.
“They certainly burned coal from there to here.”
“But what could have put her in such a rush, sir?”
“She must have sailed somewhere after a cargo, and later received a cancellation of the order. With that cancellation there must have come a new commission with a time limit, from some of the South American ports, I should judge by her course, say Caracas, or Paramaribo.”
“But she has no wireless, sir. She couldn't have changed her destination.”
“That would be fairly easy to explain. There are so many fast liners with wireless between New York and Liverpool, it would be a simple matter to get a message signaled to a sailing vessel in the trade route.”
“But I can't see why she sailed through the Sargasso?”
“If the time factor had been urgent enough, she might have tried to shorten her journey by coming this way instead of following the usual course by Cuba and through the Caribbean.”
“That doesn't tell what happened to the men.”
Madden shook his head and wiped the sweat from his face on his undershirt sleeve. “Let's read the log. That ought to clear up things a bit.”
Both lads hurried over to the desk, drew out the greasy, well-thumbed book. In their excitement, they forgot rank and tried to read together.
“Let me read it aloud,” compromised Madden.
Dripping with sweat, they leaned on the hot desk and went carefully over the log of the Minnie B.
The record was simple. The Minnie B, of Leeds, England, sailed from Portland, Maine, for Liverpool on July thirtieth with a cargo of lake copper in bulk bound for Liverpool. For the first five days, her log was written in two heavy unscholarly hands, which alternated with each other, and were evidently those of the mate and the captain. These two handwritings were quite distinct from each other and contained the usual notes of prevailing winds, state of weather, speed, distance indicated by patent log, dead reckonings, vessels sighted and such like.
From the sixth to the twentieth day, the log of the Minnie Bwas written in a sharp, pointed, scholarly hand, and this record was confined to the mere relation of distances and reckonings. Then on the twenty-first day of August there appeared the following entry:
“46° 57' W. Long. 27° 24' 11" N. Lat. No wind. Sargasso Sea. Current 9.463 kilometers per 24 hrs. W.SW. Cast sea anchor. Five hundred tons ingots reshipped.”
At this statement, Leonard turned and stared at Greer.
“Reshipped! Reshipped! Holy cats, Farnol! Reshipped from here—right here!” He jabbed a finger downward to indicate the spot in the dead Sargasso Sea occupied by the Minnie B.
Greer shook his head dully. “But this is all the wildest—” he made a helpless motion. “You oughtn't to think about it, sir, or you'll be going overboard, too. Reshipped!… This heat will get anybody in time… The man who wrote that went and jumped overboard the next minute no doubt. Reshipped… It ain't good for us to read it, sir.”
“But something's gone with her cargo, Greer!” declared Madden vehemently. “Something's gone with it. I don't care how crazy the crew became they surely wouldn't have dumped a hold full of copper into the sea. This log says ‘reshipped’ and blessed if I don't believe—”
At this moment the boys seemed to hear the sound in the deathly silent vessel for which their ears had been all the time straining. Madden broke off abruptly and both stood listening with palpitating hearts. It was repeated. A repressed half groan, inarticulate, as if some human being were in distress. It was in the main cabin below them.
Hardly daring to guess at what they would see, the adventurers crept silently out of the chart room, down a short hot passageway to a door. Leonard caught a breath, then opened it without noise.
In the brilliant westering light that flooded the main cabin through the port holes, Madden saw a dining table, disordered as from a recent feast. On the floor around it were fragments of smashed glasses and bloody stains. A cut glass decanter, half full of wine, sat on the table, and in a corner of the cabin shrank the figure of a man.