The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  If the ship is stripped and ready for the blow, she heels over till the water spurts in through the lee scupper holes and half the deck is awash. If there is a rag of sail on stay or yard, there is a bang like the report of a duck-gun, and, if yon have quick eyes, you may see it flying away to leeward like a bit of tissue paper before the gale, and if it has not yielded with sufficient readiness to the shock of the storm, a sprung topmast or a snapped yard will pay the penalty of resistance.

  Meanwhile, what was a few minutes ago a smoothly-shining sea, scarcely ruffled by a ripple, is now a white, boiling mass of swiftly rising billows, amidst which the straining, struggling vessel fights for her life like some stricken animal.

  It had been thus with the Calypso. A stout new forestaysail that had been hoisted in the hope of getting her head before the squall had been struck square, and had resisted just a moment too long, at the cost of a sprung foretopmast. Then, an effort to bring her round with the screw had resulted in the disaster that practically crippled her.

  A big sea came rolling up astern, her nose went down and her stern went up, her propeller whirling in the air, and, before the engine could be stopped, there came a grinding, thrashing noise in the engine-room, and, a moment later, the yacht was drifting helplessly away before the storm with a broken crankshaft.

  When this happened, the Calypso was on a voyage from New Zealand to the Marquesas Islands, between four and five hundred miles to the north-east of Auckland. The screw had been hoisted out of the water and a spare foretopmast fitted; but only five days after this had been done she was caught in a heavy gale from the south-westward, and got so badly knocked about that when every spare spar on board had been used in refitting her, she could only carry sail enough to take her at four or five knots an hour before a good topsail breeze.

  The result of this double misfortune was, that a month later she was still on the southern verge of the tropics, beating about in light, baffling winds, unable to make her way into the region of the south-east trades.

  The Calypso was owned and sailed by Sir Harry Milton, Of Seaton Abbey, Northumberland, landowner and ironmaster, who rather less than three years before had come of age and entered upon his inheritance of broad acres, mines, and ironworks, which yielded him an income not far short of thirty thousand a year, and in addition to these a comfortable nest-egg of nearly half a million in hard cash and good securities.

  For the last year and a half, he had been seeing the world in the pleasantest of all fashions - cruising about from port to port, and ocean to ocean, in his yacht, in company with his sister Violet, a pretty, healthy, high-bred brunette between eighteen and nineteen.

  Sir Harry himself was a good specimen of the typical English gentleman, standing about five feet ten in his deck shoes, well built, broad-shouldered, ruddy-skinned, and clear-eyed, with features that were frank and pleasing in their open manliness, rather than strictly handsome, and yet saved from mediocrity by that undefinable, yet unmistakable, stamp of good breeding which distinguishes, as was once wittily if somewhat cynically said, the man who has a grandfather from the man who only had progenitors.

  Apart from the officers and crew of the Calypso, there was only one member of the yacht's company who needs introduction in special terms. This was Herbert Wyndham, second lieutenant of Her Majesty's gunboat Sandfly, an old schoolfellow and bosom friend of Sir Harry's, and just now on a year's invalid leave in consequence of a nasty bullet wound received in storming a stronghold of a West African slaver chieftain, at the head of his blue-jackets. Sir Harry had picked him up at Cape Town, when he was beginning to get about again after the fever that had followed on his wound, and, with his sister's assistance, he succeeded without much difficulty in persuading him to spend the rest of his leave on a cruise to the South Seas in the Calypso.

  In person, Lieutenant Wyndham was a well set-up, clean-limbed young fellow of twenty-six, with a good-humoured face and bright hazel eyes, which looked alertly out from under a square, strong forehead that matched the firm chin, which, according to the modern fashion of naval officers, was clothed with a close-clipped, neatly-trimmed beard a shade or so lighter than the close, curly chestnut hair that formed not the least of his personal attractions.

  k As week after week passed, and neither land nor sail appeared in sight from the decks of the half-crippled yacht, Sir Harry began to feel a little natural anxiety for the ultimate safety of his beautiful craft and of those near and dear to him on board her. Another such a squall or a gale as she had already suffered from would almost infallibly wreck her in her present state, and both he and his sailing-master would have been glad to reach even the shelter of a coral lagoon, within which she could take refuge until she could be thoroughly overhauled in a fashion that was not possible out in the open sea.

  But most things have an end,- even calms in the South Pacific,- and by Christmas Eve the Calypso had at last crept out of the zone of calms and had begun to feel the first fitful puffs of the trade winds. Then, about an hour before sunrise on Christmas morning, the unexpected, but none the less welcome, cry of "Land, ho!" brought everyone, from Sir Harry himself to his sister's maid, or the "Lady-in-Waiting," as Lieutenant Wyndham was wont to call her, tumbling out of their berths and up on deck.

  No one who has not seen the sun rise over an island in the South Pacific can form any adequate idea of the scene that greeted the eyes of the crew of the Calypso, as the light broadened and brightened to the eastward in front of them. The island paradises of the South Sea are like no other part of the earth. Their beauty is entirely their own. No word-painting can ever do full justice to it, and the reader must therefore fain be content with the purely geographical description, which will follow in its proper place, of the island that was seen rising out of the smooth sapphire sea to the poop-deck of the Calypso on Christmas morning, 1898

  In less than half an hour after the welcome hail had run along the deck, Sir Harry and the sailing-master were eagerly scanning the land, now about ten miles distant, through their glasses.

  "What do you make it, Mr. Topline?" asked Sir Harry, after a good long stare at the mysterious land, taking his binoculars from his eyes and looking at the old salt with a puzzled expression.

  "I can't say, Sir Harry. I've never seen the island before, and I don't believe it's down in the chart. You see, we've got clean out of the track of the trading vessels and mail steamers, and this part of the South Sea is even now very little known. I'd no idea there was land within three hundred miles of us," replied the sailing-master.

  "No, it's not on the chart, for I was following Mr. Martin yesterday when he was pricking off the course, and there was nothing near us. Confound the wind! There it goes to a dead calm again. Hullo, what the deuce is that?"

  As he spoke, Sir Harry jumped, glass in hand, on to the rail that ran round the flush deck of the yacht, climbed half a dozen rounds into the main shrouds, and again levelled his glasses in the direction of the island. A moment later he sang out to the sailing-master-

  "Topline, what do you say to a steam launch coming off from your unknown island?"

  "A steam launch! Well, I'll be kicked if it isn't!" said the other, mounting the opposite rail and focusing the approaching craft. It must be the steam tender of some man-o'-war surveying the island or getting fruit and water, only she's got no funnel, and I don't- Why, she's going twenty knots an hour through the water if she's going a yard! She's no man-o'-war tender, not she!"

  All eyes on board the Calypso were now turned on the strange craft, which, by this time, had cleared the reef and was coming speeding towards them over the smooth, windless sea, at a pace which proved that, whatever her motive power was, it lacked nothing on the score of efficiency. In less than half an hour, she was describing a wide curve round the stern of the yacht, preparatory to running up alongside.

  It was at once evident that the sailing-master had been quite wrong in his first guess that she was the steam tender of a man-of-war. She was a ten or twelve t
onner, long, narrow, and low-lying, white painted, with a bright gold stripe from stem to stern, and covered, fore and aft, with a snowy-white curtained awning, bordered with a fringe of brilliant colours. In fact, as far as appearances went, she might have been spirited from the Upper Thames on a Henley Regatta day to the distant and lonely region of the South Sea, out of which were now rising the high bluffs and green slopes of the unknown island whence she had come.

  As she came up alongside the Calypso, a youth of about eighteen, who was standing at the wheel amidships, hailed the yacht in English, and wished the new-comers "A Merry Christmas!" in a tone which left not the slightest doubt as to his nationality. Sir Harry returned the greeting as heartily as it was given, wondering not a little, like the rest of his shipmates, not only at the presence of such a dainty little craft in such out-of-the-way waters, but also at the strange contrast between the manner and language of the youth who had hailed him, and his entirely uncivilised appearance - uncivilised, that is to say, from the standpoint of modern fashion.

  His bearing and speech were those of a well-educated and cultured young gentleman at the latter end of the nineteenth century, but his dress was more like that of a Phoenician mariner of a thousand years ago. His long brown hair fell in curls on his broad shoulders and clustered thickly about his smooth forehead, held back from his bronzed, handsome face by a narrow fillet of metal that looked like polished aluminium.

  His dress consisted of a long over-tunic of soft grey woollen cloth, bordered with cunningly-worked embroidery blue silk, open at the neck, where it showed a white linen close-fitting under vest, and confined at the waist by a red silk sash, wound two or three times round, and hanging in heavily fringed ends over his left hip. A pair of soft yellow leather moccasins, beautifully worked in many-coloured beads and bead embroidery, covered his feet, and came half way up the calves of his bare, muscular legs.

  "What craft is that, and where do you hail from?" asked Sir Harry, some dim notion of pirates associating itself in his mind with the somewhat fantastic attire of the youth at the helm.

  "This is the electric launch Mermaid, and yonder island is Utopia," he replied. "We came out to see if we could be of any assistance to you. You seem to have had rather a bad time of it somewhere, by the look of your spars."

  On hearing this queer, though kindly expressed reply, Sir Harry began to think that the Calypso must have drifted out of the realms of reality and into the regions of romance, for the only Utopia he had ever heard of had been Sir Thomas More's Nowhere. But good manners forbade any expression of surprise or incredulity, and so he answered laughingly-

  "I had no idea that a Utopia existed on earth in these degenerate days, but I am delighted to learn that I am wrong, and I'm also much obliged to you for coming out to us. We've disabled our engines and got our spars badly knocked about. But won't you come on board and let us introduce ourselves?"

  "Thank you, if you'll throw me a rope, I will. Never mind the gangway ladder. Here, Tom, take the wheel, and don't let those girls run away with you."

  "That's just what he'd like us to do," came in the laughing tones of a girl's voice from under the forward awning as the young fellow caught the rope and swung himself lightly over the Calypso's rail.

  "I didn't know you bad ladies on board," said Sir Harry, meeting him at the gangway and holding out his hand; "if I had known, I would not have hailed you so unceremoniously."

  "There are no ladies in Utopia, and the Utopians dislike ceremony very much, so it's just as well you didn't," replied the youth, with a laugh, as he took Sir Harry's hand.

  "But surely that was a young lady's voice I heard just now, and a very sweet one too, if I heard aright."

  "Well, it was a girl's voice, certainly. There are three of them on board the Mermaid, but they wouldn't like to be called young ladies. There are only women and girls in Utopia. We left the ladies behind in England."

  He checked himself rather abruptly as his eyes met Violet's gazing in frankly undisguised astonishment at him. Then, with a slight flush on his cheeks, he went on-

  "But pardon me, I had better introduce myself instead of talking about our manners and customs, which I daresay you will learn before long. I am Frank Markham, skipper of the Mermaid, and her crew is at present composed of Tom Harris, Ralf Smith, Lucy Summers, Annie Hilton, and Dora Merton, the girl who made a very true remark about Master Tom as I came on board."

  As young Markham said this, he went to the side and sang out-

  "Come now, Mermaids, show yourselves! I want to introduce you to our visitors. By the way, you have not told me your names yet," he continued, turning to Sir Harry.

  "My name is Harry Milton; I am owner and skipper of the Calypso. This is my sister Violet, this is Lieutenant Wyndham, of Her Majesty's ship Sandfly, and this is Mr. Topline, my sailing-master."

  As Sir Harry made the introductions in turn, the curtains which ran round the fore-deck of the launch were drawn aside, disclosing three pretty long-haired girls, picturesquely, if somewhat lightly, attired in gay tunics and cloaks and long moccasins, profusely ornamented with many-coloured silken embroidery, fringes, and curiously worked clasps and armlets of lustrous white and yellow metal. Instinctively every man who was looking over the bulwarks of the Calypso raised his hat or his cap as the three girls, half gravely, half shyly, returned the salutes from the deck of the yacht.

  "And now, what can we do for you?" asked Markham when this little ceremony was over. "I suppose you want to get into port and refit as soon as possible?"

  "That's just what I do want to do very badly," replied Sir Harry. "But where am I to find a port and a dockyard in this part of the Pacific?"

  "Both are within less than half a dozen miles of us, and the Mermaid shall tow you in in an hour if you will first oblige me with five minutes' conversation in private."

  "Certainly; come into my cabin," said Sir Harry, leading the way to the companion.

  In less than ten minutes they returned, Sir Harry looking just a trifle mystified, and without loss of time a light hawser was got out and made fast to the Mermaid, and the two vessels began to move smoothly towards the white reef in the distance, fringing the hitherto unknown island of Utopia.

  CHAPTER II.

  GOING INTO PORT.

  IT took a little over an hour for the Mermaid to tow the Calypso from where she had lain becalmed, into the lagoon of Utopia. As the yacht approached the island, it rapidly became manifest that, whether chance or design had guided the Utopians in the selection of their far-away home, they had had the good fortune to choose a spot that well deserved to be called beautiful, even in that part of the world where land and sea and sky seem to conspire to wear their brightest and most beautiful aspects.

  They were approaching it from the west, and before they reached it, the sun had risen above the horizon, and against the flood of light that blazed along the eastern horizon they saw, standing out clear and sharp, the truncated cone of an extinct volcano, which raised itself in lonely grandeur between four and five thousand feet above the sea. From the middle slopes to north and south two curving ranges of hills, sparsely timbered at their summits, but with their sides clothed with ever denser and more luxuriant vegetation, ran out to the south-east and north-west, gradually decreasing in height until they terminated abruptly in cliff's of naked rock which rose eight or nine hundred feet sheer up from the water.

  Between these two headlands lay a wide, irregular bay, fronted by the broad expanse of brilliant emerald-green water and backed by verdant slopes which, clothed with all the wonderful vegetation of the southern tropics, rose and fell, valley behind valley and hill behind hill, until they merged in the distance with the heights of the volcano and its attendant chains.

  "That is Mount Plato," said Markham, who at Sir Harry's invitation had remained on board the yacht to act as cicerone to the visitors to Utopia. "We call it that because under its shadow we hope to found our New Republic."

  "But isn't the Republi
c founded yet?" asked Violet. "If you'll allow me to say so, I should have thought it was not only founded, but had reached a considerable height of prosperity."

  "Yes," chimed in Wyndham, with a movement of his hand towards the Mermaid. "If twenty-knot electric launches are not a sign of a fairly prosperous civilisation, I can hardly see what would be."

  "Twenty knots!" laughed Markham. "Why, the Mermaid can run thirty when we're in a hurry, and we've got a three-thousand tonner on the slips now in the dockyard that we are building on a new principle, and which we expect to make forty."

  "Whew!" whistled Wyndham, lifting his eyebrows in undisguised astonishment. "Forty knots? If you can build vessels like that, you Utopians ought to be millionaires to a man. Why, there isn't a European Government that wouldn't willingly give you half a million apiece for as many of them as you could turn out.

  "Our own Admiralty is perhaps the most thick-headed institution of its kind under the sun; but I believe even it would give me a good deal for the secret of a ship like that, if you would let me take it home with me."