“Them’s been pirate ships, I’ll bet my davy!” said one of the men. “Old timers as was killin’ an’ murderin’ before you or me was fishin’! But that’s a tidy little hooker, and good enough to go to sea in, if she was overhauled.”
He pointed to the westward where there lay moored head and stern a beautiful little cutter-rigged vessel, not more than some ten or twelve tons register. Her boom and gaff were unshipped, and it was obvious that she had lain there for many years—maybe a dozen or more. But she was evidently capable of being made seaworthy; and her presence showed the men that the island must have been visited during the past generation.
“There’s big guns mounted among them rocks to the southwest,” remarked Captain Gaskelt, pointing. “That way must be the entrance. The blessed island’s like a fortress. Lord, but I wish I had a good musket in my fist! I’d—”
He broke off, as a great flicker of lightning ran across the dead greyness that now covered all the sky overhead.
“God help us!” he said, “if the weather don’t hold till we make the brig.” he crossed himself unconsciously, having been brought up a good enough Catholic, though it was long since he had thought of religious things.
For maybe a couple of hours the Captain and the men stood out there on the ledge, looking about for some way of escape, but without finding any, for the cliff, both below and above, went away too steep. They had forgotten the possibility of Maulk finding them there; and suddenly they heard his voice above them:
“Get back there! Get back there!” And immediately the thud of his musket far above. The bullet struck the rock near to the old Captain, and sent a splash of hot lead on to the back of his hand; whilst the echoes of the shot rang back and forth, strangely hollow-sounding across the curious, silent harbour, with its long forgotten craft. “Get back there. I’ve got you!” came Maulk’s roar again; but already they were all in the passage, and Captain Gaskelt was striking a match to show the way.
When they reached the other entrance, the Captain had a look at Tauless, whose wound he had previously bandaged tightly with strips torn off his own shirt. He found the man exhausted, but not suffering much pain; and after a few words with him, turned to the others. “Now, lads,” he said, “it’ll be dark in less than half an hour. A couple of you off with your jackets and pass me over all your belts. We’ll rig up a sling to carry this sick lad. Get your boots off, so you’ll make no noise when we go.
VII
The night had come, heavy and black, with an intense stillness upon the island, through which came only the vague, far roar of the southward surf. Every few minutes an immense quiver of violet flame would flit across the dark arch of the night, showing every rock and tree about the entrance of the cave. But there was no thunder.
Old Captain Gaskelt was lying on his stomach at the mouth of the cave, trying to take advantage of the lightning flashes to learn whether Maulk was about.
“Now, lads!” he said at last, over his shoulder, speaking in a whisper. “Lift him easy and don’t make a sound. The Lord help us, and we’ll do that devil yet. Wait! Now, out you come!”
They came out in their bare feet, carrying their boots. Two of the biggest men had the helpless Tauless on the sling of coats and belts; whilst old Captain Gaskelt led the way, cursing silently as someone stumbled and rattled a loose boulder.
They had just reached the edge of the trees when one of those huge flashes swept over the sky, and they showed, like a lot of stumbling, black puppets, plain for anyone to see.
“I’ve got you!” roared Maulk’s voice; and almost on the instant, as if it were thunder to the lightning, came the immense thud of a cannon high up the slope, and a screaming, whistling shower passed far over their heads.
“Run!” shouted the old Captain. The men obeyed and crashed down through the trees, bumping themselves and the unfortunate man they carried. Yet, so frantic a speed they made that in less than a minute they were down on to the sandspit, and running for the place where the two boats showed plain in two rapidly succeeding flashes of lightning. Behind them, as they ran, the silence of the island was broken by a musket shot; but no one heard the bullet. Then they were come to the boat; and set the wounded Tauless on the sand, whilst they strained to the launching. They heard a far shouting from Maulk, coming strangely clear across the immense silence, and then, just after the lightning had flashed once more, there showed a great red burst of fire, far up on the side of the island; and immediately afterward there came again that screaming, whistling shower of metal through the night. Some of the shot struck the boat; and one man shouted loudly, for he had been hit in the hand. Yet, before the madman on the hill could again fire the cannon, which he must have trained on the boats during the daylight, they had the bigger boat afloat. They lifted Tauless in, and someone hit the man who had been shot in the hand a mighty clout on the head, and bade him stop his yelling.
“Out oars, lads! Smartly now!” shouted old Captain Gaskelt. “Get her off! Get her off! Move handy now! Dear Lord! we’ll do it yet before the wind hits us! There’s the brig’s lights away to the nor’-west. Put your backs into it, men! Put some beef into it, or you’ll never smell salt horse again. Pull!”
They reached the brig half an hour later; and ten minutes afterward the “southerly buster” broke down on them, in a roar of wind out of the south that was like the roll of an invisible world against them, a stunning pressure of wind, full of froth like blown snow, and a sea behind it that followed black and living and furious.
And somewhere, far in the wake of this grim storm, they lost that mysterious island; for when the dawn broke there was nowhere anything from horizon to horizon save the mad flurrying of the seas, heaving crests of foam forty feet high; and everywhere the bowl of the universe seeming filled with a drunken, raging wind that made all mere human power but a vain thing.
Yet, strange as it may seem to a landsman, old Captain Gaskelt was an extraordinarily contented man. He had perfect faith both in his little brig and in his own seamanship; and both were justified. For, when the storm left them some hundreds of miles to the northward, the brig had not lost a sail or a spar, nor any deck furniture of consequence.
Perhaps old Captain Gaskelt’s satisfaction with things in general may be more perfectly appreciated when I explain that down in his cabin, securely locked in his own desk, was a small, heavily tarred canvas bag, that was yet so heavy, despite its smallness, that the sturdy Captain needed both hands to heft it. He had found this bag deposited in the stern of the boat; and had said nothing to the men, being of the safe opinion that division lessens profits as well as labour.
He had no certain knowledge how it had come there; but had reasoned out that his one-time Mate had never shown him any ill-will, and had possibly put the bag there as a little present. In the light of this opinion, the Captain was forced to believe that Maulk had not been particularly anxious to kill any of them; but that his chief intention had been to frighten them away, knowing that the coming storm would blow them some hundreds of miles from the island before there could be any chance of taking a latitude to discover its position.
Possibly Captain Gaskelt’s opinion of the matter is correct. In any case, there is no doubting the fact of the bag of gold coin; nor that Captain Gaskelt, like the rest of us, is still anxious to find out where Crossbones Island lies.
One curious thing I must tell in conclusion. The man Maulk must certainly have been unbalanced in many ways; for, when they came to examine the ship’s boat, they found no less than twenty-two bent and broken gold coins imbedded in her, which can be explained only by supposing that he had literally loaded the cannon for that last shot with a fortune in gold. What became of the man himself we can only surmise. It is not impossible that he got away, after the storm, in the little craft which the men noticed lying in the western part of the harbour.
Yet, from that day to this, the latitude and longitude of Crossbones Island has remained a mystery. The island itself is a familiar
name in many an olden fo’c’s’le; and many are the sailors who swear they will yet find it and its enormous wealth of gold, leave the sea, and buy a farm.
But they never do.
The Stone Ship
Rum things!— Of course there are rum things happen at sea— As rum as ever there were. I remember when I was in the Alfred Jessop, a small barque, whose owner was her skipper, we came across a most extraordinary thing.
We were twenty days out from London, and well down into the tropics. It was before I took my ticket, and I was in the fo’cas’le. The day had passed without a breath of wind, and the night found us with all the lower sails up in the buntlines.
Now, I want you to take good note of what I am going to say:—
When it was dark in the second dog-watch, there was not a sail in sight; not even the far off smoke of a steamer, and no land nearer than Africa, about a thousand miles to the Eastward of us.
It was our watch on deck from eight to twelve midnight, and my lookout from eight to ten. For the first hour, I walked to and fore across the break of the fo’cas’le head, smoking my pipe and just listening to the quiet…. Ever heard the kind of silence you can get away out at sea? You need to be in one of the old-time wind-jammers, with all the lights dowsed, and the sea as calm and quiet as some queer plain of death. And then you want a pipe and the lonesomeness of the fo’cas’le head, with the caps’n to lean against while you listen and think. And all about you, stretching out into the miles, only and always the enormous silence of the sea, spreading out a thousand miles every way into the everlasting, brooding night. And not a light anywhere, out on all the waste of waters; nor ever a sound, as I have told, except the faint moaning of the masts and gear, as they chafe and whine a little to the occasional invisible roll of the ship.
And suddenly, across all this silence, I heard Jensen’s voice from the head of the starboard steps, say:—
“Did you hear that, Duprey?”
“What?” I asked, cocking my head up. But as I questioned, I heard what he heard—the constant sound of running water, for all the world like the noise of a brook running down a hill-side. And the queer sound was surely not a hundred fathoms off our port bow!
“By gum!” said Jensen’s voice, out of the darkness. “That’s damned sort of funny!”
“Shut up!” I whispered, and went across, in my bare feet, to the port rail, where I leaned out into the darkness, and stared towards the curious sound.
The noise of a brook running down a hill-side continued, where there was no brook for a thousand sea-miles in any direction.
“What is it?” said Jensen’s voice again, scarcely above a whisper now. From below him, on the main-deck, there came several voices questioning:— “Hark!” “Stow the talk!” “…there!” “Listen!” “Lord love us, what is it?” …And then Jensen muttering to them to be quiet.
There followed a full minute, during which we all heard the brook, where no brook could ever run; and then, out of the night there came a sudden hoarse incredible sound:—ooaaze, oooaze, arrrr, arrrr, oooaze—a stupendous sort of croak, deep and somehow abominable, out of the blackness. In the same instant, I found myself sniffing the air. There was a queer rank smell, stealing through the night.
“Forrard there on the lookout!” I heard the Mate singing out, away aft. “Forrard there! What the blazes are you doing!”
I heard him come clattering down the port ladder from the poop, and then the sound of his feet at a run along the main-deck. Simultaneously, there was a thudding of bare feet, as the watch below came racing out of the fo’cas’le beneath me.
“Now then! Now then! Now then!” shouted the Mate, as he charged up on to the fo’cas’le head. “What’s up?”
“It’s something off the port bow, Sir,” I said. “Running water! And then that sort of howl…. Your night-glasses,” I suggested.
“Can’t see a thing,” he growled, as he stared away through the dark. “There’s a sort of mist. Phoo! what a devil of a stink!”
“Look!” said someone down on the main-deck. “What’s that?”
I saw it in the same instant, and caught the Mate’s elbow.
“Look, Sir,” I said. “There’s a light there, about three points off the bow. It’s moving.”
The Mate was staring through his night-glasses, and suddenly he thrust them into my hands:—
“See if you can make it out,” he said, and forthwith put his hands round his mouth, and bellowed into the night:— “Ahoy there! Ahoy there! Ahoy there!” his voice going out lost into the silence and darkness all around. But there came never a comprehensible answer, only all the time the infernal noise of a brook running out there on the sea, a thousand miles from any brook of earth; and away on the port bow, a vague shapeless shining.
I put the glasses to my eyes, and stared. The light was bigger and brighter, seen through the binoculars; but I could make nothing of it, only a dull, elongated shining, that moved vaguely in the darkness, apparently a hundred fathoms or so, away on the sea.
“Ahoy there! Ahoy there!” sung out the Mate again. Then, to the men below:— “Quiet there on the main-deck!”
There followed about a minute of intense stillness, during which we all listened; but there was no sound, except the constant noise of water running steadily.
I was watching the curious shining, and I saw it flick out suddenly at the Mate’s shout. Then in a moment I saw three dull lights, one under the other, that flicked in and out intermittently.
“Here, give me the glasses!” said the Mate, and grabbed them from me.
He stared intensely for a moment; then swore, and turned to me:—
“What do you make of them?” he asked, abruptly.
“I don’t know, Sir,” I said. “I’m just puzzled. Perhaps it’s electricity, or something of that sort.”
“Oh hell!” he replied, and leant far out over the rail, staring. “Lord!” he said, for the second time, “what a stink!”
As he spoke, there came a most extraordinary thing; for there sounded a series of heavy reports out of the darkness, seeming in the silence, almost as loud as the sound of small cannon.
“They’re shooting!” shouted a man on the main-deck, suddenly.
The Mate said nothing; only he sniffed violently at the night air. “By Gum!” he muttered, “what is it?”
I put my hand over my nose; for there was a terrible, charnel-like stench filling all the night about us.
“Take my glasses, Duprey,” said the Mate, after a few minutes further watching. “Keep an eye over yonder. I’m going to call the Captain.”
He pushed his way down the ladder, and hurried aft. About five minutes later, he returned forrard with the Captain and the Second and Third Mates, all in their shirts and trousers.
“Anything fresh, Duprey?” asked the Mate.
“No, Sir,” I said, and handed him back his glasses. “The lights have gone again, and I think the mist is thicker. There’s still the sound of running water out there.”
The Captain and the three Mates stood some time along the port rail of the fo’cas’le head, watching through their night-glasses, and listening. Twice the Mate hailed; but there came no reply.
There was some talk, among the officers; and I gathered that the Captain was thinking of investigating.
“Clear one of the life-boats, Mr. Celt,” he said, at last. “The glass is steady; there’ll be no wind for hours yet. Pick out half a dozen men. Take, ’em out of either watch, if they want to come. I’ll be back when I’ve got my coat.”
“Away aft with you, Duprey, and some of you others,” said the Mate. “Get the cover off the port life-boat, and bail her out.”
“ ’i, ’i, Sir,” I answered, and went away aft with the others.
We had the boat into the water within twenty minutes, which is good time for a wind-jammer, where boats are generally used as storage receptacles for odd gear.
I was one of the men told off to the boat, with two othe
rs from our watch, and one from the starboard.
The Captain came down the end of the main tops’l halyards into the boat, and the Third after him. The Third took the tiller, and gave orders to cast off.
We pulled out clear of our vessel, and the Skipper told us to lie on our oars for a moment while he took his bearings. He leant forward to listen, and we all did the same. The sound of the running water was quite distinct across the quietness; but it struck me as seeming not so loud as earlier.
I remember now, that I noticed how plain the mist had become—a sort of warm, wet mist; not a bit thick; but just enough to make the night very dark, and to be visible, eddying slowly in a thin vapour round the port side-light, looking like a red cloudiness swirling lazily through the red glow of the big lamp.
There was no other sound at this time, beyond the sound of the running water; and the Captain, after handing something to the Third Mate, gave the order to give-way.
I was rowing stroke, and close to the officers, and so was able to see dimly that the Captain had passed a heavy revolver over to the Third Mate.
“Ho!” I thought to myself, “so the Old Man’s a notion there’s really something dangerous over there.”
I slipped a hand quickly behind me, and felt that my sheath knife was clear.
We pulled easily for about three or four minutes, with the sound of the water growing plainer somewhere ahead in the darkness; and astern of us, a vague red glowing through the night and vapour, showed where our vessel was lying.
We were rowing easily, when suddenly the bow-oar muttered “G’lord!” Immediately afterwards, there was a loud splashing in the water on his side of the boat.
The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea Page 33
