Three Germans were lying, taking cover, behind the big main-deck capstan. They each had a capstan bar, and I could see that the bo’sun must have opened his artillery on them just as they were getting the bars, which stood in a rack near the capstan.
The men behind the capstan were not firing back; but staring round the barrel of it at the forrard end of the half-deck, as if they were expecting something. The next instant I saw what it was they were waiting for. All the Germans who had left the chart-house were standing away to port of the half-deck, out of the bo’sun’s range; and round the forrard end of the half-deck two of the passengers were cat-walking, keeping flat in close to the house, so that the bo’sun could not see them. When they got close enough, one would grab the bo’sun’s outreached revolver, and the other would shoot him through the open port. And then bye-bye bo’sun! Silly owl for disobeying me!
However, I was there, as I’ve said, and I just let go a one-two, aiming low but carefully.
How those two Germans did run! I merely skinned them; for I was not setting out to do more than punish and frighten the life out of them.
“Keller!” I roared, “shut the port, you fool! They’re creeping round the house, flat up against it. Close that port and put that gun away.”
Slam! went Keller’s port; and the same moment the whole air all round me fairly buzzed with the Mauser bullets those disappointed Germans loosed off at me. I whanged off six shots at them, just to liven them up, and then bolted; for I remembered the four limping Germans in my rear. As it was, I reached the port chart-house door, just as they came up the after ladders; and if the Second Mate hadn’t been watching and thrown the door open for me just in the instant, I’d have been perforated; for I heard their bullets whack on the steel door just as it flipped open between their guns and me.
Then I was into the chart-house safe, with the door locked, wondering what the night had for us. I felt sure we could count on a “certain liveline.”
Darkness came on without anything fresh happening. Once or twice we caught the sounds of footsteps passing preciously quietly along the bridge-decks to the port of the chart-house. It struck me they were mighty anxious lest we should hear ’em, and try a shot or two from the ports.
By the time it was quite dark, I thought it as well to get going with certain plans I had made; for, I can tell you, I was not aching to stay a minute longer in the chart house than need be. I was anxious about that other Mark X canister I’d heard them talking about. They might decide to use it on us after all; and once a day is quite as much blowing up as my constitution will stand.
I thought it as well to have a look out before opening the port door. I guessed it would be more than likely that a guard would have been placed on us, after my little sortie; and I started in to prove my notion by opening one of the after port-covers.
But this proved a deuce of a job to manage quietly; for the screw of the hold-fast squealed like a pig disgorging its soul. Then I remembered there was a hand-load in one of the lockers; and this I rooted out. There was still some tallow left in the lead-hole, as I’d hoped, and with this, I tallowed the infernal screw until it hadn’t a squeal left in it. Half a minute later, I had the steel cover back, without a sound.
It was easy to spot our guard by the glow of burning cigars; for there were, in fact, two of them; and when I had treated the glass-cover screw, and got the glass-cover open, I recognized the smell of my own cigars! Confound their gargantuan gip! I guess a German’s just a natural-born pirate! I got a notion that if I was going to have a cigar left, it was time I got busy.
First of all, I tackled the hinges of the port door with the tallow, so as to quiet them; and after that I opened one of the port-covers on the starboard side, having first introduced it also to my tallow-treatment. Then I explained to my two Mates just what we were going to do. Mr. Alty, the First Mate, was to stand at the opened porthole on the starboard side of the house, and Mr. Truss was to attend to the port door. When I gave the word, Mr. Alty was to do revolver stunts through the open port, and that would send the German guard over to that side of the deck in a hurry. Meanwhile, Mr. Truss was to have the port door open, and we were all to get out on deck, as quiet as you like, shut the door again, and vamoose to the roof of the wheel-house, where we could lie flat and watch events. The Germans would imagine we were still in the chart-house, and I trusted it would give them much pleasure to keep on guarding it. Whilst, if that second Mark X canister were brought forward to blow the place open, we should be able to do a whole lot of damage before they realised where it was coming from. And, to be frank, if they tried the blowing up dodge again, I felt that I should shoot to hurt.
Well, we carried it out finely. The Mate took his station at the open port, and at the first bang of his revolver, I saw the lights of the burning cigars hustle across to investigate the whereforeness of the gun-fire. Then we all slipped out quietly through the port doorway; we shut the door again, and thirty seconds afterwards, we were all three flat on top of the wheel-house, and no one but ourselves aware of the fact.
Fifteen minutes later, I saw that I had guessed right once more; for those confounded brutes actually tried to place that second Mark X canister on the house. We spotted them doing it, just in time, and the volley we let loose among their legs, must have hurt a whole lot. Anyway, inside of five seconds or a bit less, every one of them had done the grand “bunk;” for they simply didn’t know who was hurting them, or how it was done, or anything else, except that it was painful. They ran and crept and rolled away through the darkness, yelling! And before they were more than properly gone, I had jumped off the wheel-house roof, and sent the darned canister of high explosive sailing overboard; for I felt I might want to use the chart-house again.
“Now,” I said, “we’ll go back to our little home again. They can’t trouble us much, now we’ve got shut of that busting-up stuff. I want to get some sleep.”
Quite a bit happened the next day. We got our sleep all right, as I’d thought we should; for they’d had quite as much too much of us, as I’d imagined they would, and their damages were quite extensive, as I saw when I woke up in the morning and had a look at them knocking round the decks.
Then I got what I guess they felt was a surprise; for on looking at the tell-tale compass, I found that they’d put the vessel about, sometime during the night, and she was heading back for America at a good steady half-speed. I guessed it was time to start making hay, now or never, and I got Mr. Vinner on the engine-room telephone.
“Stop her right now, Mr. Vinner,” I said, “and whatever happens, don’t start up your engines again till you hear from me. See? The beggars are heading her for the old U.S.A. again; but if they think they’re going to get a free trip back after all this mess and bother, well I guess they don’t know me, Mr. Vinner.”
I heard him laugh over the phone.
“I’ve a notion they’ve learnt a bit, Captain,” he said; “and they, no doubt, they’ll learn the rest between here and the U.S.A. I’ll stop her right now, till I hear from you again.”
“That’s right,” I said; “and look out for squalls. By the way, if you’re pressed and have to use steam on ’em, don’t do any real damage—see? Just give them a deuce of a shake-up, and let them go. They’ll not face you again. I never met the man who’d face steam twice!”
“Nor me, Captain,” said Vinner. “I’ll get busy right now.”
“Right!” I said, and rang off.
A minute later the screw stopped turning. Ten minutes after this, there was a German delegation to the engine-room skylight, and much talk; followed, in a bit by threats and, finally, quite a noticable liveliness around Mr. Vinner’s skylight.
The gun-firing began at last to sound serious, and I was thinking I’d better get out and take a hand when I caught the roar of the steam jet.
“Vinner’s steaming ’em,” said Mr. Truss, grinning cheerfully. “That’ll fix ’em. They’ll not want much of that!”
They didn’t. They simply quit; and for a few hours they were slow enough for a funeral.
Then, about four o’clock in the afternoon, they evidently got desperate. I fancy some of them were getting pretty anxious to see a doctor, and they sent a white flag man to talk business with me.
He knocked at the port door and explained his errand through half-an-inch of good steel.
After surveying the decks all round, through the various ports, we opened the door and invited him in; and then the business talk began. He wanted me to order the engines started. I told him the ship’s head was pointed just a wee matter of a hundred and eighty degrees off her course. Followed then some more talk; and at last, after I’d explained to him just what I thought of them all, I told him that I was prepared to stay out here till they were all dead of gangrene, unless they paid their passage back; also five thousand dollars to cover damage to the vessel, and finally, ten thousand to be divided between the Engineers, my two Mates and myself, for moral injuries.
To tell the truth, the way he took the news at first was so violent that I felt a little anxious lest they’d not got the cash with them; but I determined to stick out for my price. You see, I was pretty sure they’d brought more than the five thousand dollars they’d offered me, so as to be able to raise their bids for my sinful old soul, if they’d found I was inclined to put a higher price on it. Honestly, I don’t believe the poor innocents had ever conceived that the whole world’s morality wasn’t “made in Germany.” Well, I sent him away to his friends, and told him not to bother to come back unless he brought the cash with him.
He returned in an hour with the whole sum in quite a comfortable wad of notes; and as soon as I’d examined them, I phoned down word to Mr. Vinner to start her up again at full lick.
I sent the German away then and told Mr. Truss to take the bridge; but Mr. Alty and I sat guard over that pile of dollars in the chart-house, for I’d not have trusted my precious passengers as far as I could throw each one separately.
Every four hours that night, the two Mates relieved each other, and I made the one off-duty sleep with me in the chart-house. Further, I both shored up the broken starboard door and kept the port one locked. There were altogether too many armed strangers aboard to suit me. However, the night went away all right; though both officers told me they had a feeling there was “gunpowder in the air,” as the saying is; and I felt a bit the same way myself.
At midday we sighted land, and two hours later I had the engines stopped; for we were in half a mile of the shore, about ten miles north of Baltimore.
I sent word now to tell the German passengers that I was as close in as I cared to go, and if they wanted to get ashore, they’d have to buy one of the boats; for I wasn’t going to trust any of my men or either of my officers alone with that lot away from the ship on a lonely bit of coast. I told this frankly, and I explained through the Second Mate that these details being just so, there would be no one to bring the boat back to the ship again, and therefore I should be forced to charge for her.
Maybe the figure I put on the boat was a little high, for after all, a ship’s lifeboat doesn’t cost a thousand dollars. I suppose I ought to admit that you could buy one for less than two-hundred-and-fifty; but that does not excuse the attempt they made to steal one of my boats and get her launched and away.
There is, however, a certain technical skill required to hoist a boat out of her chocks and over the side, when a vessel is rolling in a seaway! And when men who are not sailormen attempt to do this sort of thing under the fire of two Colts and four revolvers, the thing becomes ridiculous, as they seemed at last to realise. For the two Mates and I had retired once more to the fortress of the charthouse, from which one can command the ship, fore and aft. And really, I did some very pretty shooting.
Finally, my adventurous passengers gave it up, paid the money, and begged for peace.
Half an hour later the ship was well rid of them, and they and their boat were following the promptings of a certain, popular hymn writer, and pulling for the shore; not cleverly, perhaps, but certainly with determination.
And an hour and a half after they had gone, I discovered another reason why they were so anxious to say good-bye to us and get ashore quickly at any price. For the box containing both the plans and the model had gone! They had found it after all!
We reached old England on March 20th, and docked at noon, without having been torpedoed. The first thing I did, after finishing my duties aboard, was to write the following letter to that infernal Herr Deberswynch:
S.S.Bandaga.
London Docks.
Dear Herr Deberswynch:
You will not be in a hurry, I daresay, to stop crowing over me. Certainly you got the plans and the model. You paid for them, and you got them. At the same time, I feel that the following details will interest you:
Mr. Harpentwater, the inventor, paid me one thousand dollars to fulfill a certain duty. It was to drag a red herring across your track. I did so, and you apparently liked the smell to the tune of fifteen thousand dollars and the price of the boat (mind you, it was not at all a bad boat, though perhaps the market was inclined to be bullish—eh?). And then, of course, there was the passage money and, finally, quite a healthy number of what I might call Colt-marks—a fine little weapon, properly used.
After all, the figure was rather high to pay for a red herring. You see, as you will presently hear from your aerial experts, the plans and the model you took ashore so feloniously, were not the plans and model of Mr. Harpentwater’s Reefing Bi-plane. They were merely a set of fake plans and an experimental model specially boxed up for red herring purposes.
And while you and your superiors were intent upon the chase of the red herring I was carting across the Atlantic, the real plans and the real model of the Reefing Bi-plane were traveling safely to England in a simple looking package consigned to the U.S. Mail, beautifully free from the suspicions of your superiors and the multitude of their spies who use their official position not to further American interests, but German interests.
Rather a neat little plan, don’t you think so, my dear Herr?
Yours truly,
G. Gault
Master
The Adventures of Captain Jat
The Island of the Ud
Pibby Tawles, Cabin-boy and deck-hand stood to lee-ward of the half-poop, and stared silently at the island, incredibly lonely against the translucence of the early dawn—a place of lonesome and mysterious silence, with strange birds of the sea wheeling and crying over it, and making the silence but the more apparent.
A way to wind’ard, Captin Jat, his Master, stood stiff and erect against the growing light, all his leathery length of six feet, five inches, set into a kind of grim attention as he stared at the black shadow upon the sea, that lay off his weather bow.
The minutes passed slowly, and the dawn seemed to dream, stirred to reality only be the far and chill sound of the birds crying so dreely. The small barque crept on, gathering the slight morning airs to her aid, whilst the dawn-shine grew subtly and strengthened up, so that the island darkened the more against it for a little while, and grew stealthily more real. And all the time, above it, the sea birds swung about in noiseless circling against the gold-of-light that hung now in all the lower sky.
Presently, there came the hoarse hail of the lookout man, who must have waked suddenly:—
“Land on the weather bow, Sir!”
But the lean, grim-looking figure to the wind’ard vouchsafed no reply, beyond a low growled “grrrrr!” of contempt.
And all the time, Pibby Tawles, the boy, stared, overwhelmed with strange imaginings—treasure, monsters, lovely women, weirdness unutterable, terror brooding beyond all powers of his imagination to comprehend! He had listened to some marvelously strange things, when Captain Jat had been in drink: for it was often then the Captain’s whim to make the boy sit at the table with him, and dip his cup likewise in the toddy-bowl.
And presently
, when Captain Jat had drunk his toddy steadily out of the big pewter mug, he would begin to talk; rambling on in garrulous fashion from tale to tale; and, at last, as like as not, mixing them quite inextricably. And as he talked, the long, lean man would throw his glance back over his shoulder suspiciously every minute or so, and perhaps bid the boy go up to the little half-poop, and discover the wherabouts of the officer of the watch, and then into the cabin of the officer whose watch it might chance to be below, and so to make sure that neither of his Mates were attending listening ears on the sly.
“Don’t never tell the Mates, boy!” he would say to Pibby Tawles, “Or I’ll sure maul you! They’d be wantin’ profits.”
For that was, in the main, the substance of all his talks—treasure, that is to say. To be exact, treasure and women.
“Never a word boy. I trusts you; but no one else in this packet!”
And truly, Captain Jat did seem to have a trust in the boy; for in his cups, he told him everything that came up in his muddled mind; and always the boy would listen with a vast interest, putting in an odd question this time and that to keep the talk running. And indeed it suited him very well; for though he could never tell how much to believe, or how little, he was very well pleased to be sitting drinking his one cup of toddy slowly in the cabin, instead of being out on the deck, doing ship work.
It is true that the Captain appeared both to like the boy, in his own queer fashion, and to trust him; but for all that, he had with perfect calmness and remorseless intent, shown him the knife with which he would cut his throat, if ever he told a word of anything that his master might say to him during his drinking bouts.
Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 50
