With a twinge of apprehension, Adams saw the black speck of a ship coming from the remains of night on the western horizon in his wake. Looking at it with his binoculars, the speck became magnified into the silhouette of a familiar steamer, coming down fast on him.
In the brightening sky he was able to discern more features of the iron vessel than possible during the hours of the recent night. Her hull was, as he suspected, painted black; her sails were furled on two black pole masts, between which stood short black funnels that vented no smoke. But the flickering of the sky just over them attested to super-heated air pouring from the funnels—she was burning anthracite coal.
At the davits were more boats than steamships normally carry, two of them being steam launches. Uneasily, he noted no name on her bow.
Mixed with his fear was perplexity. She was unquestionably the same steamer he had spoken to the previous night. But how could she so unerringly find him, considering that he had changed course after leaving her; plus the fact that his was a sailing ship, not a steamer whose smoke would have betrayed her position; and lastly the sea had gotten light only in the last hour, so that he was only just becoming visible?
The steamer signaled with her whistle which Adams interpreted as a command to come out of the wind. As he complied, the other came within a bare hundred yards of him.
From the steamer’s deck an officer raised a speaking trumpet. “Where’re you bound?”
“For Cork.”
“We’ve taken aboard the crew of that wreck. Be sure you say nothing of what you saw. If you don’t, you’d better look out on your next voyage out.”
* * * *
Two men sat opposite one another in the board room of the Atlantic Maritime Underwriters Company. Outside in Baltimore harbor came occasional steamboat whistles mingled with the clatter of horse and wagons over the cobblestones of Pratt Street along the wharf fronts.
Sims, the executive vice president of the insurance company, was fastidiously dressed, his mustache waxed in the latest vain fashion; his posture stiff, as if sitting for his photograph.
Sean Helmuth, the other man, was an operator of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His sun-tanned face contrasted with his short-cut, graying hair, lending him an air of dignity; his erect bearing indicated military service in the past.
“Let me paraphrase the reason you are hiring me—your company suspects piracy in the North Atlantic shipping lanes because of unusual ship losses insured by you?” asked Helmuth.
“Not by itself. We’ve reports of a mysterious black steamer involved in several peculiar incidents the last couple years. Let me mention a couple. One of our captains was about 25 miles out from Lockport, Nova Scotia, when an ocean going steamer signaled with its whistle for him to stop. Then it approached, looked his ship over with a searchlight, then steamed off without explanation or thank you.
“Another case was a passenger steamship that saw a ship that was a mass of flames; no crew or survivors about. This steamship reported she had passed a steamer that had to have been in the vicinity of the burning ship…”
“All the ship losses you said were your clients—and in one of the busiest shipping lanes of the world,” interrupted Helmuth, “certainly someone would have picked up some survivors if due to natural causes.”
“That’s one of the questions that caused us to take Captain Adams’ story seriously—even though we didn’t insure him.”
“If piracy is behind the disappearances,” continued Helmuth, “what’ve they done with the captured crews? Murdered them? Impressed them in the pirate crew?” Helmuth shivered. “The conclusion I feel is unpleasant. What’s the policy of the British Admiralty towards this? Will they cooperate in patrols?”
“They’re indifferent—Adams wrote them a letter. What could you expect?” Sims said bitterly, “when the owners of Captain Adams’ vessel themselves told the London Times the whole thing’s either a hoax or a delusion. Which is a handicap because I think the pirate’s an Englishman.”
“How’d you come to that conclusion?”
“Adams said the steamer’s crew appeared to be English. And of course his encounter was off southern Ireland. Several other incidents—like the one off Nova Scotia—were mid-way between the British Isles and New England.
Helmuth shook his head. “I think our pirate’s an ex-Confederate blockade-runner.”
“Based on what?”
“Facts. Only a former blockade runner would know all the tricks this pirate uses. Which is what Adams saw: a steamer with a low profile, non-reflecting black paint on her superstructure, smokeless fuel, and her piratical deeds committed at night. And if he’s an ex-blockade runner then he hides between raids somewhere along the Atlantic coastline of the old Confederacy where there are a multitude of isolated, secret coves (most probably in the Georgia-Carolinas region) that likewise were used and known only to wartime blockade runners.”
Helmuth thought a moment, then continued. “The best way to catch this pirate is to find his base. The only way at present I can think of is to become one of his crew—if it can safely be done. Then I’ll get word out. If by no other means, then by a note in a bottle.”
CHAPTER 2.
Pawn En Prise
A sense of impending danger afflicted Helmuth with insomnia, causing him to stroll the deck of the Argus, the little frigate whose course was eastward. Very faintly across the starlit waters came a regular beat like a mechanical heart and off their stern loomed the shape of a large steamer. A searchlight came on from the steamer, played on the trailboard on the bow, then moved along the ship, examining her. A voice boomed across the water through a speaking trumpet: “Heave to!”
“Who are you?” shouted back the captain of the Argus “what do you want?”
The only sort of answer was the lighting of another searchlight which played along the water ahead of a steam launch which the unknown steamer had just lowered into the water. There was no doubt in his mind that the suspicious behavior of the steamer meant hostility, that she might even be the pirate. So over the far side he went, slipping into the midnight waters with scarcely a sound. Cautiously, he swam around the stern. Both searchlights now played together where the crew of the steam launch made fast to his ship; all attention therefore was focused there, so he quickly crossed the distance between the ships, crawled up the steamer’s anchor chain.
Carefully, he stole up into the superstructure, looking for a door with “Captain” on it. He found it, his eyes taking in quickly a chart on the table and the ship’s safe. The top chart was of the Cape Hatteras archipelago. Penciled on it, northeast of the Diamond Shoals, off Buxton, were a number of crosses, each having a date, in a pattern; and near them the penciled figures of a navigational fix.
He fiddled with the safe, trying to crack its combination. A sharp crackling sound, ominously like the volley of a firing squad, sounded remotely. Uneasy, he peered out the porthole at the shadowy deck of the Argus but saw only dim figures loading cargo into a second steam launch. Shortly afterwards came the creak of a cargo boom and the squeak of boat davits; the boarding party was coming back. He quickly forgot the safe.
On a blank page torn from the ship’s log he copied the penciled fix from the Cape Hatteras chart, then signed his code name beneath. A near empty liquor bottle, the contents of which he poured out the port hole, supplied him with a seaworthy message container. It followed the liquor out the port hole and into the sea.
Helmuth was hurrying down the companionway when he both heard and felt the explosion. Out on the water his former ship was aflame, casting such an intense orange light even at this distance that he could see every rivet in the deck plates underfoot, and also the fact that every square foot of the deck, superstructure, funnels and masts was painted black; and to further decrease her silhouette on the horizon even the boats on the davits were lowered
to the ship’s rail, and the superstructure with the same thing in mind had been made smaller than normal. There was nothing left to do now but hide in the nearest lifeboat.
* * * *
“Come out of there!”
Helmuth awoke to see the daylight sky from the canvas that had been pulled back. The speaker’s eyes were gray, and cold, and expressionless, the sort of eyes he had always associated with a born killer. The man who addressed him was attired in a deck officer’s uniform with a first mate’s insignia; he also he held a pistol near the detective’s head.
Helmuth clambered out. Holding the gun on him, the man went through Helmuth’s pockets and found his wallet. “Take that to Captain Thatcher,” he ordered one of several seamen crowding around.
“You came off that ship last night, didn’t you.” It was not a question but a statement, so needed no reply by Helmuth.
“Mister Wragge!” The man who shouted was the captain, wearing with his ship’s uniform, grandiosely enough, a scabbard and sword. He was a big man, over six feet and 225 pounds. He had a close clipped black beard; the parts of his arms extending below the coat cuffs were extremely hairy. Helmuth suddenly had a strange feeling of having met the captain before. Mate Wragge instructed another officer to keep the stowaway covered while he conversed with Captain Thatcher. The discussion on the bridge seemed to center around something found in his wallet. The captain, Helmuth made note of, spoke with a curious sort of archaic accent.
The mate returned. “I’ll give you a choice—join up or go over the side.”
“I prefer to go on living.”
“Then down to the black gang with you for now,” and the mate jostled him towards the engine room companionway.
Helmuth pondered what in his wallet had interested Thatcher enough not to kill him. Beyond some money, there was only a letter (fictitious) offering him employment as a mechanic (real, since he had some job experience in that line); the letter was a cover identity while he investigated the present case.
* * * *
As he shoveled coal into the steamer’s furnace, Helmuth noted it was Welsh anthracite, which gave much heat but little smoke, adding, along with her other tricks, to the steamer’s near invisibility; the only trick left she could try if she did not already have it would be a provision for blowing steam off under water.
Helmuth and the other man finished their turn at stoking and went on deck to wash off the perspiration and grimy coal dust with bucketfuls of sea water. Across his companion’s chest was tattooed a row of blue birds.
“I got that in the navy,” he said, seeing Helmuth’s critical appraisal. “The name’s Patrick Carrick,” he added. “Carrick means rock in the Gaelic.”
“Mine’s Sean Helmuth.”
“What kinda name’s that?”
“I’m a Dutch-Irishman.”
Carrick grinned twistedly with one corner of his mouth.
As they talked and rested in the cool summer breeze, Helmuth had half-consciously watched a man on the bridge, wearing an officer’s uniform but minus any rank insignia. The man stared intently for long periods of time at one spot on the empty, featureless horizon, and would make a 360 degree sweep scrutiny, returning his attention to that same invisible point. Once in the while he called out something to the helmsman who would make a small course adjustment.
After an hour of this Helmuth realized that the course changes had been seemingly zig-zags, almost as if they were evading someone, but nothing showed on the horizon! Sky and sea merged in an indistinct haze, so it was impossible to see where one stopped and the other began. Other than a normal atmospheric phenomenon—a near-imperceptible vaporous condensation—nothing was there.
“That man’s not a deck officer—what does he do?”
“Peter Greene?” Carrick’s face was quizzical. “Oh, he watches for ships.”
Helmuth tried to get Carrick to explain more fully, but the unlettered Irishman merely shook his head.
As they turned in to sleep that evening in the forecastle, Helmuth found the other seamen ignored him, speaking in answer to him only in monosyllabic, almost brusque, fashion. Their attitude was not actually hostile so much as it was the amorality of a clan towards a stranger. He listened with interest to the variety of accents among the crew: Irish, British, Yankee twang, southern drawl. And—he realized—there had been Captain Thatcher’s accent; it was strange—it was pure 16th century Elizabethan English.
At daybreak they were off a shore where an ancient looking lighthouse stood. From snatches of terse conversation between the watching seamen (who had arisen unusually early from their bunks and come on deck) he understood they were just north of the treacherous Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras—the dreaded, almost legendary “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” While he watched, the cook came to the rail, took a glimpse, then emptied garbage over the side.
What he had glanced at was a small side-wheel steamer engaged there in some salvage operation. She now was bringing up a diver while numerous, massive air lines hung over the side and descended into the depths. The area where they hung was whitened by foaming air bubbles—almost as if the water were boiling from heat. Captain Thatcher and the side-wheeler captain conversed across the water in cryptic words of some important matter. Then Thatcher’s ship resumed her way south.
* * * *
As the morning sun arose they approached an inlet breaking the barrier beach, on either side of which tremendous, frothy breakers roared and pounded. Here they waited until midmorning, till the tide rose, deepening the shallow channel; then they resumed steaming, minus a pilot, Helmuth observed, which was proof that the helmsman was familiar with the passage.
On their left was a low tongue of sandy beach and within it a tidal marsh. Soon on his left he saw another land mass on which appeared a cupola topped house, a church, and other scattered houses with weedy yards, all silent and devoid of life. The water passage to this deserted village was choked with reeds of the salt marsh.
They soon passed it, following a winding channel.
“There’s Shell Castle,” one seaman named Brannigan pointed.
Helmuth gave a start. Was this the shadowy Shell Castle he had heard rumors of in dockside taverns?
CHAPTER 3.
Shell Castle
Helmuth’s fanciful visualization of Shell Castle as a settlement in grandiose Victorian Gothic was short-lived and shattered by the grim reality. The steamer now moved dead slow towards a mediocre spectacle. This was a series of ancient, unpainted, weathered-looking frame buildings on high, barnacle-encrusted, slimy pilings interconnected by elevated wharves and boardwalks, all situated on a shoal roughly half a mile in length and about 60 feet wide; a shoal formed by huge piles of bleached oyster shells. A depressing atmosphere of impoverishment hung over the entire vista.
He identified the usage of a number of the structures: there were two residences, a store, ship chandlery, tavern, grist mill, warehouses of the type called “fish houses,” and several rain cisterns. The biggest buildings were the fish houses, some 300 feet long.
To his question, Carrick answered the place was “dry at low water.” As the steamer docked he watched some local fishermen delivering their catch from their little fishing boats at one of the fish houses. And he decided such commercial activity must be in part a “cover” for the pirate who owned all of the buildings on Shell Castle. At one place beneath the dismal installation was an empty dry dock.
The second mate stood almost at Helmuth’s elbow. “Where,” Helmuth addressed Garrick, “do they get calling this sad collection of rotting country barns and fishing shanties a ‘castle?’ All I see is the moat,” here indicating the surrounding water.
“Mister,” the second mate unperturbedly looked at him, “have you ever been to Charlestown harbor? There they have only a tidal shoal they call Castle
Pinckney; here we do have a whole island.”
Mate Wragge barked an order at the second mate, seemingly irritated at the latter’s brief fraternization with Helmuth. The second mate in turn shouted orders for several seamen to cast mooring lines to men waiting on the wharf. As the steamer bumped gently against the pilings, Helmuth discerned a wheeled howitzer covered by sailcloth on another wharf jutting out from the main boardwalk; and at a little distance another such canvas-covered object showed.
Once the gangplank was run in, Helmuth found himself ordered along with the others to unload the steamer’s cargo. As he stevedored a sack of coffee ashore, he saw a lone sailor remove one, then another, of the black plates hinged on either side of the bow, and what they had concealed was the ship’s name: Rook. Helmuth was faintly amused by the symbolism, for in chess a rook was also called a castle.
At sundown Helmuth followed the steamer’s crew to one of the old fish houses, now partially converted into a bunkhouse and mess hall, though it still did duty also as a warehouse (containing some hogsheads of sugar, cotton bales and bags of cocoa). There they consumed a supper of fish chowder, corn bread and coffee. Carrick mildly grumbled to his immediate neighbors about the meal.
The Irishman stopped his grievances upon hearing a steam whistle, got up from the table and went out the door, followed by the others. Helmuth went after them, and saw docking the side wheeler they had spoken to off Cape Hatteras. Towed behind her in the foaming wake, the astonished detective saw a ghost resurrected from the past; an oval metal deck whose green algae shroud stirred with every sea that washed over her low deck, the vessel being topped with an aged and battered turret similarly festooned with seaweed. She was the original Monitor sunk over two decades ago off Cape Hatteras!
As a puffing donkey engine pulled her up the rails into dry dock, the sailors grumbled that she meant hard work tomorrow. Mate Wragge grabbed Helmuth by the arm: “Captain Thatcher wants to see you!”
The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK® Page 36
