“There’s water for your soup, sir,” said the quartermaster they called Cain. “Begging your pardon for the liberty, there’s more than a capful of wind coming.”
We scarcely heard him. Captain Larry, more prudent, went down to his cabin to read the glass, and returned with a grave face.
“We shall have wind, sir, without a doubt,” he said to me.
“And what if we do, Larry?”
“Oh, the ship must tell us that.”
“I have no doubt of her. If it were only daylight, Larry——”
“Ah, sir, if our wishes were sovereigns what fairy godmothers we should make.”
“They’ve doused their lights, Larry,” I went on. “The night is their luck. We may lose them yet, but we shall find them again if we cross the Atlantic to do it.”
“May I go with you, if it’s twice round the world and back!”
Loud voices cried “Ay!” to that. The excitement of the night worked strangely upon the nerves of men who, like all sailors, were awestruck in the presence of mystery. Yonder in the trough of a black ocean was the unknown ship we had set out to seek. The darkness hid her from us, the sea rose rapidly, the wind had begun to blow half a gale. No longer could there be any thought of firing a gun or declaring an open attack upon us. Each ran for the open and for safety. Our searchlight showed us an empty waste of trembling waters and a black hull breasting the swell in cataracts of foam and spindrift. We doubted if the others would weather the night. Anxiety for our own safety became the dominant factor of our thoughts.
Looking back to that unforgotten night, I have often wondered at the folly of calculations which had taken so little thought of Nature and allowed the temper of winds so small a place in all our reckonings. I confess that such an arbiter as storm and tempest never once was in my mind when I planned to search the northern parts of Cape Colony for an unknown ship and to follow that ship to her haven in the open Atlantic. When the gale broke upon us, a swift cyclonic tempest characteristic of the southern ocean and her humour, I perceived my folly and could but laugh sardonically. So near had we been to that day of discovery of which I had dreamed! And now we were but a shell of steel tossed impotently amidst a raging cataract of sounds, swept by a hail of spray, or carried blindly at the beck of winds. The ship we pursued appeared to have been lost altogether in the darkness. It became, for any but a trained sailor, almost a dangerous thing to remain upon the deck of the White Wings. The crash of the seas upon our plates was as the tremor of thunder about a house.
So for the hour we had failed. And who would dare to speak with confidence of the morrow?
CHAPTER X.
THE VISION OF THE SHIP.
Dr. Fabos Proposes to Visit the Azores.
I slept a little about midnight, being convinced that the night had written the last word of its story. The storm had not abated. A wild wind blew tempestuously from the south-east, and drove us before it as a leaf before a winter’s blast. Good ship as my yacht proved to be, she was like many turbined steamers, a wet boat in a gale and no friend to the landsman. We shipped heavy seas persistently, and drove our bull’s nose wildly into mountains of seething foam. Even the hardy crew complained of her; while my poor friend Timothy McShanus implored me, for the love of God, to throw him overboard.
“Was it for this I left the home of me fathers?” he asked me pitifully when I entered the cabin where he lay. “Is this the land of milk and honey to which ye would take me? Stop the ship, I tell ye, and put me ashore. Let me die among the naygroes. Kill me with laudanum. Man, I’ll thank ye to have done it. I’ll call ye the best friend that Timothy McShanus ever had.”
Poor fellow! His groans were in my ears when I fell to sleep. His was the voice which reproached me when I awoke. That would have been about three o’clock of the morning, I suppose. Dawn was breaking furtively in an ink-black sky. The swaying of a lamp in the gimbals, the swish of water against the cabin walls told me that the gale had somewhat abated. I asked McShanus if he had waked me, and he answered that the captain had been down to call me to the deck.
“Put Timothy McShanus ashore and let the naygroes devour him,” he said; and then, almost with tears in his eyes, “Man, the last of me has been given up. I’m no more than a hollow drum for sport to bate upon. Bury me where the shamrock grows. Say ’twas the ups and downs that did for this same McShanus.”
I spoke what cheer I could, and went on deck as the captain had asked me. Abel, the quartermaster, stood at the wheel, and all our officers were with Larry upon the bridge. The sea still ran high, but the wind had moderated. I perceived a sky that was black and thunderous to leeward, but clearing in the sun’s path. There were wonderful lights upon the raging waters—beams of gold and grey and green interweaved and superb in their weirdness. The waves ran high, but with less power in their assault; and though a fine rain was falling, the measure of it became less with every minute that passed. These things I observed almost as I stepped from the companion hatch. But it was not until I stood side by side with Captain Larry upon the bridge that I knew why he had summoned me.
He turned as I mounted the ladder, and helped me up with an icy cold hand. The little group there, I thought, seemed awed and afraid to speak. Larry himself merely pointed with his hand to a sailing ship sagging heavily in the swell, perhaps half a mile from our port quarter. The glass which he put into my hand helped me but little, so dense was the spray upon its lens. I could, at the first glance, make little of the spectacle save that the ship had four masts, was of unusual size, and seemed to be standing well up to the gale, although her masts were bare. For the rest, she might have been any ship you like bound from Europe to “down under,” and thence returning by Cape Horn. I told Larry as much, and then looked at the stranger again. Undoubtedly there was something queer about her. Yet what it was a landsman might well have been unable to say.
“Well, Larry, and what do you make of it now?” I asked the captain presently. Had I not known him too well, his answer would have made me doubt his sanity.
“I think she is the ship you are seeking, sir.”
I took up the glass without a word, and focussed it upon the deck of the sailing ship. Not a living soul could be discerned there. It might have been a derelict buffeted at hazard about the great Atlantic waste. And yet the vessel appeared to hold a steady course. Behind it my quick eye detected a wake of water such as is left by the propeller of a steamer. There were black objects at the bows which, in sober reason, might have been given the shape of machine guns. These things I was almost afraid to admit aloud. The idea that came to me had been purchased at a heavy price. I felt that I could share it with none.
“She is a sailing ship, Larry,” I said, “and yet not a sailing ship.”
“Far from it, sir. Yon’s no sailing ship.”
“You are thinking that she is fitted with auxiliary steam?”
“I am thinking that she has enough arms on board to serve a cruiser of the line. Machine guns fore and aft and big stuff amidships. The masts are all blarney, sir, or I’m a Dutchman. That vessel’s heavily engined, and we may thank God we’re the fastest yacht afloat. If there were less sea running they would have fired at us already.”
“You mean it, Larry?”
“As true as there’s blue sky above, sir, yonder ship will sink us if we stand by. I’m telling you what I see with an old sailor’s eyes. Ten minutes ago, we came on her suddenly out of the mists. She had fifty men on her poop then, and one dead man she put overboard. The sound of a gun they were firing called my attention to her. I saw a group of hands on the quarter-deck, and one shot down in cold blood.