by Anthology
“Aye, aye. sir.”
“Manson!”
The chief quartermaster jumped before the captain.
“Take the wheel. Come about.”
The old man stepped back from under the overhead of the bridge.
“Fire control.”
The executive officer’s round face showed over the rail above. “Sir?”
“Get that searchlight on the ship we missed. No. 3 four-inch still out of commission?”
“Both telescopes smashed, and the sight bar bent, sir. Can use the port batten best. Three guns there, captain.” The exec’s voice was hoarsely plaintive. “You Roin’ to get that last ship?”
The captain shook his head.
“It depends,” he replied enigmatically. “Port side, eh? Get it ready.”
The exec’s voice still held the same note. “Been ready for two hours, captain.”
The captain’s face softened with a flickering smile as he noted the protest in his mate’s tones. And I could sense the exec’s disappointment that only torpedoes had come into the game so far.
“On the job!” cried the old man. “Cut down all crews to the limit, and prepare a boarding party.”
“A boarding party! Aye, aye, sir!” Lieutenant Wilson’s voice trembled with eagerness.
He could hear his snapped orders to the man at the voice tubes leading to the guns. Then the repeats at the tubes themselves. A man was sent down to the gunnery officer. Sounds of cheering. A clanking of the steel door of the rifle locker on deck. I saw three men sitting a Lewis gun on its mount between the bridge and the galley deck-house, ready to sweep the decks of a closing ship.
Boarding party!
No wonder the old man had called the chief quartermaster to the wheel. Always did when a ticklish landing was to be made. Had him there when we came through the canal the last time. Three weeks—or was it four hundred years yet to come? By Heaven, the mystery of it. Four hundred years! How? Why?
A hail came from overhead.
“Right on, sir. Shall we fire when we get the range, captain?”
The exec was itching to use his guns. His voice again betrayed him.
The captain shook his head.
“Break out the after-searchlight. Steady both on. Let go a half dozen illumination shells. Give ’em a real scare. If they don’t fire, Mr. Wilson, stand by to board.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The sharp crack of the stubby antiaircraft just forward of the bridge rang out. Shortly came a dull report from the distance, and a dazzling white glow filled the sky just above the last galleon.
Boom!
The ancient guns replied.
“Good range with the AA!” cried the captain. “Keep it up. I don’t want to send this one to the bottom of the sea. Scare ’em, put the fear of hell into ’em. It’s what I want and they need, if they only knew it. We’ll get ’em that way. That’s the dope. That’s the dope! Keep it up. Now both searchlights out. On again. Out again. That’s it. Blink our eyes, hang ’em. Blinkin’ the sea devil’s eyes. The hair’s pricklin’ on ’em now. More star shells. Light from heaven failin’ on them. Light from heaven.
“Why in the name of decency didn’t I think of that in the first place? Keep it up. Good. Good. Stopped firing—they’ve quit it. All up with ’em now. Devil of the sea’s got ’em, and heaven’s with the devil for once. Ha! Avaunt! Avaunt! Won’t do any good. Heaven and the devil of the sea—by Heaven, if young Rowland goes under he’s been avenged. Hard right, there, chief! Ease her—ease her. Steady. Good. Hold her so.”
The captain leaped to the engine room telegraphs, and brought the engines to one-third. The roar of the forced draft blowers sank to a sullen drone. Silence. “Searchlights on, fore and aft!”
The galleon, not three ship lengths on the port bow, stood out in the ensuing glare.
“Ronleigh!”
“Sir?”
“Take the annunciators.”
The officer of the deck, alert, his head cocked toward the old man, seized the levers of the telegraphs.
“Wilson!”
The round face appeared over the rail again.
“Secure fire control temporarily. Come down. Ready boarding party. Ten degrees left, chief.”
The captain was leaning over the port wing of the bridge staring over at the galleon. Members of her crew could be seen upon their knees. The sound of a solemn chant drifted to us. Once a long, high-pitched scream, that most terrifying sound, the scream of a man when in the torment of a paralyzing fear. A black figure arose on the galleon’s high poop, in his outstretched hand a glowing crucifix. His deep-throated voice boomed across to us. He made the sign of the cross.
Some one muttered on our own bridge, and repeated the sign.
The captain tore out his handkerchief and waved it at the priest. The latter shifted slightly beside the carven rail, and raised his symbol on high.
“Megaphone!”
The captain snatched it from my hand. “Amigo!” he cried as he held it to his lips. Then in his academy Spanish, a sentence or two.”
An amazed look came into the priest’s face. Slowly his arm descended.
The chanting arose closer in the great deep-bellied ship.
Again the old man cried that he would be their friend. Then: “Stop both engines!”
Ronleigh, at the telegraphs, arched his levers,, and brought both at “Stop.” The engine’s throb ceased. The blowers died away. We slid upon the galleon in silence.
Amigo!” the captain cried again.
A man in resplendent trappings sprang beside the priest. The captain waved his handkerchief again. The Spaniard raised his arms, the palms of his hands toward us. The captain nodded and waved a hand, palm out.
Then swung to the chief at the wheel. “Twenty-five left!”
Then to Ronleigh: “Back full, both!” The slim Shoshone shuddered throughout her entire length. The churning of the great wheels as they beat with the power of thirty thousand horses to bring the destroyer to a dead stop echoed from the galleon’s bulging flanks. The old man’s seamanship had ever been of the best. Our nose was against the galleon’s side, our stern swung in as the propellers flung the sea against the hard left rudder.
“Stop both. Away the boarding party!” the captain shouted.
And in a moment more, armed to the teeth, our men were scrambling up the great vessel’s rounded sides.
Chapter VI
TREASURE
I’ll admit I was not far behind the exec when he finally leaped, panting and with his automatic ready in hand, upon the decks of that ancient ship.
And the first man to confront us was the priest again.
“Amigo! Amigo!” I cried.
The man stared. Then his glance swept about the decks. They were bare—not a man in sight. The crew had evidently fled in terror.
Our own men scattered, in accordance with the prearranged design.
I approached the priest, my automatic dangling from my left hand, my right extended in what I meant to be friendly greeting. He made again the sign of the cross, and muttered some words which I thought to be Latin. Following him, and though not of the Catholic faith myself, I, too, made the sign. The man stared dumbly. I repeated it, and recalling a Spanish exclamation I had often heard in Colon, cried:
“Salvagame Dios!” And I half knelt before him as I uttered the words.
With a sudden cry the.priest stepped to me. I seized his hand and wrung it heartily. Poor fellow—the fear that shone in his eyes in the wide-focused glare of the two searchlights that was upon us! Crossing myself once more, I cried again the same words:
“Salvagame Dios—God save me!”
“Dondes es el capitan?”
Startled, I swung about.
It was our own skipper.
The priest nodded toward the poop. “Gracias” thanked the captain softly, and bowed. “Come with me, Medico.”
I obeyed with alacrity. This was something to see. A Spanish galleon o
f the sixteenth century—ancient, and yet—of the day in which we now lived—seemed to live—four hundred years. I shook my head. We were here, that was all I could think. On a full-equipped Spanish galleon on the Caribbean Sea, one hundred and sixty miles from the Isthmus of Panama—from the canal. From the canal? This—we must be in the sixteenth century! And the canal—four centuries before it was even dreamed. Good heavens! Would we get back? Would some similar cataclysmic convulsion of the god Time send us back to our own day as it had precipitated us into this?
The priest led the way.
Beneath the poop we followed him.
And I snatched down the hand of a gorgeously clad officer who was in the act of blowing out his brains.
“No, no. Amigos!” I pointed to the captain and myself. “Amigos.”
The curious fashioned pistol dropped to the floor. The proud Castillian features of the officer clouded with grief. He fell upon a bench by the brocaded table and buried his face in his arms. In pity for him I touched his shoulder. He jerked up, his face aflame.
“Amigo,” I repeated, indicating the captain. “Es mi’ capitan. Amigo. Friend.”
The man stood erect and bowed his head. The old man started a flood of his Spanish. Another silken officer entered the cabin. Three more. They stared at us with wide eyes, listening to the captain’s attempts to make them understand, and glancing at each other as in utter mystification.
Then suddenly the priest spoke. Those priests! They had the courage in those days.
The captain motioned him to go slower. Then answered.
The priest nodded quickly, his alert black eyes snapping.
The captain turned to me, wrinkling his brows.
“They want to know what we did to the other ships. They could see the flash in the darkness, he says, and the collapse of each galleon under the play of our searchlight, and thought that the glaring beam did the thing. What in the devil will I tell ’em? Got to make it as easy as we can, for the priest says they’re bent on suicide—could never return to Spain in such disgrace. What’ll I say, Medico?”
“Why, tell ’em the truth, captain. That we’re men from the future, come back to give them a glimpse of what is to be, and—”
“Good, good!”
And turning to the Spaniards he broke into his modern version of their language again. I watched their faces in the strong light that entered through the great window-like ports facing our own ship. The sorrow gradually fell away, the deep lines of disgrace smoothed from their, foreheads. Took their place a look of bewilderment, of mystification again. They glanced at each other as though they could not believe their ears, and I could not in my heart blame them. Then the priest interrupted with one soft question. The old man thought a moment, then turned to me once more.
The one whom you prevented from blowing out his brains is the vice admiral of this fleet. The others are the ship’s officers, and one or two of his staff. They are all. firm in that they cannot return to Spain. And they ask if we will take them with us.”
That was a poser.
Take them with us!
Into the future? That was their only escape.
Or—a new idea came. This was some time in the sixteenth century. Now—to make sure. A good chance.
“Ask them what year this really is, captain.”
The answer came quickly.
“Fifteen hundred and sixty-four. Holy Moses! And we’re in it!” The captain’s own face showed plainly his wonder, set at last.
He seized the arm of the priest.
“Es verdad? The truth? Verdad?”
The black-robed man stared. One of the officers went to a sort of cupboard built against the bulkhead and fetched back a crudely bound book that would have given ecstasy to a collector of our own day. He opened this before the priest, and spoke a sentence or two. Rapidly the priest slipped over the pages, and held out the thing to us.
The captain took it from his hand. “The ship’s log,” he exclaimed. “By Jove!”
The priest pointed with a lean white finger.
And in Arabic numerals I read the date of the last entry:
3 de anero de 1564.
The captain’s eye met mine. In silence he returned the book with a nod, then quite suddenly sat him down on the bench.
The priest stepped quickly beside him, dropping a hand upon his shoulder. And the captain, with all of us looking on in astonishment, reached up and seized it in his own.
Voices from outside.
The exec entered, glancing at us strangely. I indicated the man whom first I had seen.
“The vice admiral,” I said.
Wilson looked at me, startled, then bowed gravely. Suddenly I must have recollected that a vice admiral is a great naval officer in any age, stiffened erect, and saluted. The Spaniard’s face tightened. Then the vice admiral returned the bow.
“Captain,” I went on, breaking the awkward silence that followed, “bad as it seems, we really are bumped back into 1564. In that case something will probably knock us back into our own time again. These fellows say they can’t go home, and want us to take them somewhere. Why not put a line on ’em, and get ’em back to Colon? Think what it would mean for our own year, and for the historians, to have them—”
The executive officer broke in:
“Wait a minute, doc! Captain, I came to tell you that there are English prisoners on board this ship.”
“What?” Wilson nodded.
“Yes, sir. Our men found ’em rotting in chains down in a black hole in the fore part of the galleon. English.”
The old man’s eyes snapped dangerously.
I wondered if at that time, too, he did not think of young Rowland.
“English, by Heaven!” He paused a moment. “Taking ’em back for a little inquisition, eh?” His fist came down on the table with a crash. “That settles it! We did right. Get a tow line out and we’ll take the outfit back to the canal. Detail a party of fifteen men and one officer to take charge here. We’ll take the Englishmen aboard the Shoshone. That settles it. Anything else?”
For Lieutenant Wilson made no move to depart.
“The professor came aboard snoopin’ around, captain. He’s right outside, wants to speak to you, but I stopped him, not knowing what was going on in there.”
“Send him in.”
The exec left to carry out the captain’s orders, and Callieri appeared. He showed no trace of his recent indisposition, and his eyes sparkled with a new excitement.
He bowed to all in the room, and his glance lingered upon the silken draperies of the room, and the rich furnishings of plate and tapestry.
Then he slipped to the captain’s side.
“We are worth a meellion dollars, every mans, capitan,” he whispered softly, looking up into Commander Williams’s eyes with a crafty wink. “I haf talk Spanish to one of t’ee sailors of t’ees sheep, an’ eet ees wan sheep t’at carry mos’ treasure!”
Treasure!
The captain’s eyes met mine again.
Then glancing down at the professor he slowly shook his head and smiled.
“We are taking this ship back to Colon, Professor Callieri. The authorities shall decide about that treasure. And in my opinion the English prisoners aboard here are most entitled to what there may be. The stuff was mighty likely taken from them in the first place.”
We waved the little man aside, and swung back to the Spaniards, exploding into violent speech.
Shortly the priest replied. Then all bowed, and we left.
A detail of five men was sent to the cabin to guard the officers and prevent any possibility of the thing we feared most—suicide.
The crew of the galleon had all been brought topside and lined up in the waist, disarmed and disconsolate and most pathetic in their abject fear. Devils to them we must have been. The chief bosun’s mate was in charge of them, and he had sent over to the Shoshone for a Spanish dictionary, and with the help of the yeoman was rapidly turning its pages in sear
ch of illuminating words that would give him something to say. It is strange how even in the most grave circumstances a thing will strike a man as humorous.
The chief was so solemn in his efforts to bring about an understanding. His brow was wrinkled in perplexity. His great hand almost hid the stubby pencil with which he was attempting a full sentence on the envelope on the dictionary’s page, and his eye rolled so comically as he read his effort to the assembled sailors. Meaningless to them, of course—but he could not quite understand their dumb stare when he had finished.
He broke into the most atrocious denunciation of a type of misbegotten cavemen who could not even understand their own language. He raved—in glorious, futuristic English. The Spaniards crossed themselves, and one fell upon the deck and groveled.
While I, in hysterical reaction T suppose, found myself behind the great mainmast, undoubtedly purple, and cackling in a high-pitched soprano that I could not control.
Then I heard an exclamation in peculiar English, followed by a short chuckle, a weary attempt at laughter that somehow thrilled me. Turning, I beheld five tattered and unshaven individual’s sitting weakly against the port bulwarks.
The English prisoners we had miraculously delivered from the torture and death that had surely been their doom!
Sobering instantly, I stepped over to them and held out my hand.
“I am glad we came in time,” I said.
The tallest of them, a man who must have been of extraordinary physical powers before the emaciation of his imprisonment had withered his body, seized my hand and shook it English fashion.
“God or fiend,” he cried huskily, “to you are we grateful!”
“We are neither gods nor fiends,” I returned. “We are even as you—men. And why we are here, or how, is as much mystery to us as our presence here must be to you.”
His keen eyes watched me as I spoke. Slowly he shook his head.
“It is in the hands of God, fair sir, as are all things. I for one cannot believe that you come emissary of the evil one.
But—” His eyes roved over to the brightly lit destroyer. “But, in God’s name, whence do you come?”
