Suddenly I heard my First Mate let out a yell behind me.
“They’ve another gun aft there, Sir! Look!”
I saw what he meant now, and realised why the submarine’s crew had been racing towards the after end, for the leaves of a big gun-hatch in the whale-back had risen up on end (hydraulic, I suppose), and up from beneath them was rising silently a long gun, and a big one, too! By the look of it, I guessed it was one of the four-point-one, German high-velocity guns, with which they arm their light cruisers. And a very big and powerful gun for a submarine. She could blow us into minced iron in just the time it would take to load and fire her. It was like German notions of shipbuilding to put their biggest stuff aft, so they could use it in fighting a running stern action. Cute beggars!
But you can guess I didn’t stop just then to admire German methods and cute ways. I turned my little fire-spitter and loosed off three of my small shells as fast as ever I could work the trip and the firing levers. The first missed clean, and went skipping across half a mile of sea, chucking up hefty little gouts of water. The second went through one of the crowd of Germans around the gun, and “dived” without exploding. The third struck the gun-pedestal bang, and splashed red fire and death every way in the middle of the gun’s crew. When the smoke cleared, the after whale-back was literally a shambles.
As I looked I saw that the long muzzle of the four-point-one was swinging round, and I realised that some of the gun crew were training her from the hatch, which made a fine protection for them. In another moment they would have the gun trained, and I worked the trip-lever furiously, only to discover that the Second Mate had let me run out of “fodder.” Lord! how I swore; and then in the middle of my swearing the long four-point-one roared out, almost in my face it seemed. But, by Jove! I shall always have a high respect for galvanised iron roofing in future. It’ll keep anything out, rain or shells—provided you’ve got enough! We had enough—about six feet of it, stacked on edge round the chart-house, and the four-point-one ate about a solid yard of ’em, then burst, and I thought the chart-house had gone—what with the jar of the concussion and the crashing of falling sheets of disorganised and badly mutilated iron-roofing.
I discovered I was still quite alive, and much the same as before; but I realised I shouldn’t be long if I let another of those brutes arrive! I turned on to the Second Mate, to swear some more, and then found that he’d managed to fill the gun-hopper with ammunition in the middle of the excitement, and held a further supply in the crook of his left arm—ready.
“Good man!” I roared, and drove the trip-lever back and forwards. Then snatched at the firing-lever, took a smart aim, and let drive. Yes, I’ll admit I had strong religious promptings as I fired, for if the shell did nothing I couldn’t see anything nearer at hand for all of us than a mighty sudden death inside the next five-seconds; for though the shell from the four-point-one had failed to reach us, it had stripped away almost all of my patent armour-plating at the after end of the house.
The shell from my squat little quick-shooting cannon hit the long German gun on the left-hand side, just above the top of the pedestal, right among the training gear. BANG! she went, and the air was full of disassociated gun machinery. I jammed the trip-lever back and forth, and shoved four shells, one after the other, slam down into the hatch out of which the gun pedestal rose. I sent them so quickly that the concussion of the bursting shells followed each other in a regular Crash! Crash! Crash! Fire and smoke and vague wreckage of men and iron vomiting up out of that death-pit. And then, at the fourth shell, I must have got onto the magazine, for—B-O-O-M—a monster great column of fire roared up out of the gun-hatch, and the after whale-back of the submarine was driven clean under water by the shock. The after part continued to go down, and the queer-looking bow of the submarine came up into the air for quite a hundred feet, rising steadily and slowly—a strange, “aluminum-bright” shape of metal, like a monstrous fish built of steel. The long, sharp bows rose up, and seemed to veer in towards us, hanging a moment almost over our heads, as it seemed high as our mast-heads. Then, CRASH! There came a second roar of sound, muffled, because it was under water. And immediately, in one swift, terrible movement, the great thing went sliding down and was gone.
I stared, half stunned. I could hardly realise it had happened. I kept staring at the sea, with the shoulder–pad of the quick-firer still to my shoulder. It seemed incredible. One moment the bows of that underwater monster standing like a vast steel cigar, far up out of the sea, and now—absolutely nothing except, here and there, far over the water, odd splashes, as blown-up wreckage came down from enormous heights.
I heard a huge crash on the main-deck, and the Mate ran out to see what had happened.
“It’s part of their gun, Sir,” I heard him shout. “It’s fallen aboard and smashed right through the main-deck into number two hold. Part of it’s sticking out. I—”
He quit talking suddenly and dived back into the chart-house, yelling something fresh. In the same instant I heard the loud reports of several rifles.
“It’s the men that were in the Berthon, Sir!” he shouted, holding his left arm near the shoulder. “They got me, damn them! They’ve got aboard! What are we going to do now, Sir—?”
I pushed him to one side and jumped to the door, pulling out my revolver. As I shoved my head out there came a regular volley of bullets all around me, bursting like the crack of a whip on the steel of the port side of the chart-house. I got a sight of the officer who had been in charge of the Berthon. He was dodging behind a ventilator, about ten yards away. I took a snap at him, right through the thin arm of the ventilator, and got him too! Five or six rifles crashed out from different parts of the bridge-deck, and I sampled a bullet through the “thick” of my neck. I saw it was time to act pretty quickly, unless I was going to have all hands massacred by the brutes. I grabbed my whistle and blew twice—two good shrill blasts. And the second blast was lost in a fierce roar of steam, and a pressure, I should judge, of a couple of hundred pounds to the square inch. I had arranged this with Mac, in case we were boarded, and he had turned the main-steam through some flexible metal feed-piping he’d got; and with this invention of hell he was searching out every crevice of the bridge-deck with something a little more terrible than the fingers of Death himself.
I will say nothing of that last scene. It was necessary, but it is horrible; and afterwards all the ship lay very quiet under a deadly steamy silence. Mac had done his part of the beastly work that had been shoved on us.
Old Golly
The Skipper’s a tough, you bet!” said Johnstone, one of the few men who had stayed in the El Dorado for the trip home. “He stiffened out Old Golly on the passage out, and he’d have got his bloomin’ neck jolly well stretched, I’m thinkin’, if it had been a British port. I s’pose they thought one nigger more or less didn’t matter all that much. Anyway, he got off.”
“Say, you might just tell what did happen,” remarked Grant, an ordinary seaman who had signed on for the trip home. “Was it with a gun?”
“No,” replied Johnstone. “Got him in the back of the neck with an iron pin. Hove it at him, you know. I didn’t see it, but the chap at the wheel said Old Golly just went at the knees all in a heap, and never said a word ’cept ‘Golly!’ That’s what the old fool was always sayin’; so we used to call him Old Golly.”
“What had he done, Mate?” asked one of the other watch who was standing by, listening.
“None of us knew,” said Johnstone. “Except the Old Man ’d been drinkin’ some, or he’d never have let fly just goin’ into harbour.”
“No, it was a darned shame, anyway,” said one of the men. “I liked Old Golly. So did everyone for that matter.”
This was in the fo’cas’le the second day out from ’Frisco, in the second dog-watch. That same night something peculiar happened.
It had breezed up a bit during the first half of the eight-to-twelve watch (midnight), and at four bells the Second Mat
e had the three royals clewed up. Johnstone went up to the main, one of the AB’s to the fore, and a ’prentice to the mizzen. The rest of the men forrard went into the fo’cas’le to stand by in case they should be wanted.
Presently, Johnstone walked in through the starboard doorway and dropped onto one of the chests where he sat panting.
“What’s up lad?” asked Scottie, one of the older men. “Ye’re bleedin’ like a pig.”
“Where?” said Johnstone in a curious voice. “Where—I mean who’s bleedin’?”
“Look, your face!” cried several of the men together, having glanced up at Scottie’s remark. “You’re cut bad and as white as a sheet. What’s happened?”
Johnstone put his hand up to his face and drew it away quickly to look at it. “My oath!” he muttered, and he reached for his towel.
“What’s happened, anyway?” asked Tupmint, the oldest sailorman on their side. “Has the Old Man been gettin’ onto you?”
“It was up in the main,” said Johnstone. “I’m blimed if I don’t half think there’s somethin’ up there. I could have sworn I heard someone say somethin’ up in the main-mast, and then I got a hit in the eye, but I didn’t know I was cut. I came down pretty smart, I can tell you. I may have done it then. Lord! I don’t mind sayin’ I had a fright!”
“That all?” said Tupmint contemptuously. “We thought the Old Man had been gettin’ outer your track. Guess you’ve just been fancyin’ things!”
“Come ’ere, lad, an’ I’ll fix your face for ye,” said old Scottie.
Johnstone crossed over to Scottie’s sea-chest, and the older man, turning up an old pillowcase which he tore into strips, used it for bandages.
“What was it ye heard, son?” he inquired, as he adjusted the strips of cotton. “I’m askin’ ’cause I ken last night I heard somethin’ when I was up there.” He looked keenly at Johnstone.
“What was it you heard?” asked Johnstone, staring back at him.
“I’m askin’ you, lad,” replied the old sailor.
“Well,” said Johnstone, “I thought it was with the talk we’ve had lately about the old nigger. I—” he hesitated.
Scottie nodded.
“Ye needn’t fear, son, that I’m goin’ to laugh at ye,” he said. “Seems we both heard the same thing.” He stopped bandaging to fill and light his pipe.
“What would Old Golly want to do it for?” queried Johnstone, simply. “We treated him fair and square in the fo’cas’le. I guess he’d want to get even with the Old Man, not us sailormen forrard.”
There was questioning in the man’s tone; but old Scottie shook his head.
“We tret him pretty fair, lad, ’cause we had to, and part ’cause he wasn’t a bad sort. But he could lick any man in here, an’ I guess that was what made us pretty civil. All the same, I don’t see why we should get it. No, I don’t. Glad I’m not the Old Man, son!”
Three nights later the port watch had a taste of something curious. It was in the middle watch from midnight to four a.m., and an ordinary seaman had been sent up to loose the main-royal. He went up over the main-top, and climbed into the top-mast rigging; then suddenly he let out a yell, and jumping into the backstays, came down to the decks like lightning, burning all the skin from his hands in his rapid descent.
“What the blazes is wrong with you?” cried the Second Mate. “I’ll teach you to kick up a shindy and play the fool. Get up! And smart, or it’ll be the worse for you!”
“There’s a nigger in the top, Sir! I daren’t. I daren’t,” gasped the youth.
“A nigger in your pants!” yelled the Second Mate. “Up! And smart with that royal, or I’ll half kill you!” And the lad—truly between the devil and the deep blue sea—went. He reached the top again, caught at the grab-line, raised his head to a level and peered over. Down on deck the men watched him curiously; for there had already gone a whisper round the forecastle that there was something queer up the main, though Scottie and Johnstone were the only men who had actually experienced anything; the others having merely got the atmosphere of the thing from the vague talk that Johnstone’s condition and remarks had created forward.
“Get a move on!” roared the Second, as the youth paused; and the A.B., apparently seeing nothing to frighten him, went up over the top and climbed into the top-mast rigging. They could see him only vaguely here because of the shadow of the top-sail; but he appeared to have paused again about level with the lower masthead.
“Get a move on!” again shouted the Second. That same instant the lad screamed out:
“Don’t touch me, Golly! I never did nothin’ to you!” And directly after he began to yell something at the top of his voice, evidently frightened out of his wits. And then in the midst of his shouting, he fell headlong out of the darkness, struck the shrouds once and bounded off into the sea.
Simultaneous, frightened cries came from all the men about the decks; then the Second began to sing out orders and to take steps to save the youth. But the lad must have sunk at once, for no one ever caught sight of him again, though a couple of life buoys were flung and the boat got out and kept rowing round and round for several hours.
Both watches had been roused out, and the Skipper and the First Mate were on deck. When at last the boat was once more hoisted aboard, a tremendous and excited discussion took place on the poop.
“Golly be darned!” roared the Skipper. “He’s dead meat these three months, and I’ll have no ghosts in my ship!”
He turned to the Second Mate. “Take a couple of men up the main right away and just find out what’s up there. If any of the hands is playin’ the goat, I guess they’ll wish they was dead twice over when I’ve done with ’em!”
The Second Mate, for all his bullying ways, had plenty of pluck; but he plainly disliked the job before him and suggested that a couple of lanterns would assist the search. With these, and two of the men who found courage to go when they knew that he would lead the way, he went up the main-rigging. He climbed over the main-top, first passing his lantern up to see what was there; but he saw nothing. Then he went right on up to the cross-trees, and finally searched all the yards. But no sign was there of any living man up among the lofty spars and gear.
Coming down, he made his report, and the Skipper ordered a thorough search of the ship; but this also produced nothing, so that the sturdy unbelief of the Old Man was faced with the necessity of inventing some more normal explanation of the mystery than obtained credence in the forecastle. But what he achieved in this direction no one ever learned, for he not only kept his mouth shut on the subject in the future but showed a strong dislike to having it discussed by the Mates in his presence. From all of which it may be imagined that he believed more than he knew, as is the way with most of us.
During the rest of the night which followed this incident, there was no more sleep in the forecastle; for both watches sat up to talk about what had happened, and to listen to and comment upon Johnstone’s earlier experiences, and his views and opinions thereon, which were now regarded as gospel.
“I’ll never go up that stick again alone as long as I’m in this blimy packet!” concluded Johnstone. “Not if they was to put me in irons, I won’t! I tell you, Old Golly’s up there, an’ he’ll not rest till he’s coaxed the Old Man up, an’ finished him, same as he finished Grant (meaning the A.B.). You see if I ain’t right! The Old Man don’t know what fear is, an’ he’ll go, sure as nuts.”
A fortnight passed after this, and the Mates arranged matters as far as possible so that none of the men need go aloft after dark. One night, however, the Skipper came up rather later than usual, and after taking a turn or two of the poop, he turned to the First Mate.
“How is it, Mister,” he asked, “that you’ve got that main r’yal fast?”
“Well, Sir,” replied the Mate, and then he hesitated, not knowing just how to put the thing.
“I’m listening, Mister!”
“Well, Sir,” began the Mate again, “after wh
at’s happened, I thought it best to go easy with sending the men aloft at night.”
“Just what I thought, Mister! Send a lad up to loose that sail right away. You’re nigh as soft as the men!”
“There’s something very queer, Sir—” began the Mate in answer.
“You don’t say, Mister!” interrupted the Skipper, snorting. “Meanwhile, as I’m not interested, s’pose you just toot that whistle of yours and send the boy up.”
The Mate made no reply but blew his whistle and gave the order, which was received by the watch in an incredulous silence; for it had by now become an accepted supposition among the men that no one should leave the deck after nightfall, except the safety of the ship depended on it. And now this order!
The Mate repeated it, but was still greeted by a silence. Then before the Mate could take any further steps, the Skipper was down off the poop and among the watch. He caught two of the men by their throats and banged their heads savagely together; then, going for the biggest man there, he took him by the shoulders and booted him with a half a dozen heavy kicks to the main rigging.
“Up with you, my lad!” he shouted, giving him a final kick to help him on to the rail. Dazed with the handling he had received, the man halted, still so afraid of what might be up there that he was uncertain whether the Captain’s kicks were not the lesser of two evils.
“Up, you fathom of pump water!” yelled the Captain, jumping after him. The man, a Dutchman, ran all the way up the main lower-rigging squealing, the Captain after him, giving him the weight of his fist at every third ratline. The man raced over the top and scuttled clumsily up the top-mast rigging. Then the Skipper came down again, feeling “good,” as he described it.
Having loosed the royal in doublequick time and lighted up the gear, the Dutchman came down, hand-over-fist, in a frightened hurry. At the main-top, just as he was reaching his foot down for the futtock-rigging, he shouted something in a loud voice and made a jump into the main rigging. He landed about halfway down, carried away three ratlines, and came through bodily on to the main-deck with a crash.
The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea Page 56
