For a moment Barry blazed with a desire to turn the ship inside out, and
if necessary search every man clear down to his bedclothes. But the
thought of that flying knife came back to him, and the combination of
mystery gave him pause; there must surely be some connection between the
two occurrences, and the train of thought led directly to the notion
that somewhere in the dark recesses of the brigantine lurked the person
responsible.
The voices of the two mates, one relieving the other, sounded softly
through the open skylight, and Barry decided to curb his impatience. He
mounted to the poop again and gave orders to both officers to keep close
watch as the land was approached and to see that nobody left the ship.
Once more he felt that vague suggestion of a cloaked trap in the second
mate's smiling acceptance of the instructions, but now, strangely, the
feeling did not bother him. The hint remained nebulous; he shook it off
and went to sleep on the more important mystery.
He was called at daybreak and went on deck to find the brigantine
stemming the yellow current of a river estuary. A mile ahead the turbid
waters churned and slopped over the sand bar, forming a sluggish but
powerful eddy across half the river's breadth. Pieces of rotten wood and
heaped masses of forest grasses swirled into a floating tangle in the
lee of the bar.
Preparations were going forward for bringing up, and the skipper's
intention to apprise Little of the events of the past night was perforce
laid aside. It was not until the ship was docked that Little heard the
story. Rolfe was busy on the forecastle getting ready the anchors, while
Vandersee, the bulky Hollander, had stretched out a new lead line along
the poop and was carefully marking it off, after well wetting it. For a
moment Barry failed to see Little. Even the cheery voice was not in
evidence. Then the clattering of iron links, as the cables were ranged
for letting go, was followed by a whoop of interest, and the ex-salesman
popped into sight in the bows, deep in an examination of the tumbler
gear that released the big anchors.
Barry scanned the river mouth closely, dubiously. The available channel
was barely wide enough to pass, even with good luck. The breeze blew
straight into the river and across the current, causing a confused
welter of water that made the picking out of a passage doubly difficult.
If the wind had weight enough to overcome the stream, and remained fair,
the passage might be accomplished, given shrewd pilotage; but a very
slight swerve from the straight and narrow course would place the ship
in the grip of that big eddy and inevitably on the bar. That was
unthinkable. It could scarcely be hoped that Leyden's navigator would
repeat such an error when he arrived, and such a mishap would at once
wipe out the advantage gained through Barry's attentions to the schooner
in the dry dock.
Vandersee finished his task and coiled up the new lead line. He stepped
over to Barry and with respectful confidence said:
"If you know the channel, sir, I'll get into the chains with the lead
myself. There's a bad shoal patch this side of the bar, and with the
water slicking over it to the out-draw of that eddy, it looks like deep
water."
"All right, Mr. Vandersee--Oh, thunder!" Barry flung out the expression
in petulance. "Why, you were sent aboard because you know this river,
weren't you? I forgot."
"Yes, sir," smiled Vandersee. "I'm fairly well acquainted here. Shall I
take her in?"
"Yes. Take the wheel and sing out your directions. Where had we better
anchor? Can't go right up, I suppose?"
"Tide's right, sir, and with this breeze, if we manage to avoid swinging
across stream in making past the bar, we can carry our draft two miles
up, anyway. If we have to bring up before that, there's a snug
creek--there, see?--fifty fathom to the eastward of those trees--where
we can lie moored fore and aft to the shore."
Barry took up a position at the fore end of the poop, scanning the
narrow entrance a trifle anxiously. He had no desire to cast his new
command away in making her first port. But Vandersee undoubtedly knew
his business. The _Barang_, for all her slowness, answered to the master
touch on her helm and edged surely up for the deep water until the slop
of the bar bore well abeam.
For a moment the skipper held his breath as she lurched heavily to the
suck of the current. He saw that smooth, flowing patch of oily water,
which the second mate had said was in reality a real shoal, draw
steadily astern; and he brightened at thought of the danger overcome.
Then out of a clear sky came the unforeseen.
From the forecastle head sounded the crash and rattle of chain and a
resounding splash. The roar of cable followed, amid a volley of thumping
deep-sea oaths from Rolfe directed at the devoted head of Little; and
the _Barang_ snubbed up with a jerk, her stern swinging swiftly around
towards the bar.
Little stood aghast, replying nothing to the mate's harsh epithets.
Barry bawled a demand as to the trouble and turned to the wheel. Again
that subtle suggestion of padded steel struck him as he surprised a
fleeting but unmistakable smile on Vandersee's calm face.
"I think Mr. Little has unwittingly slipped the tumblers, sir," smiled
the big Hollander, stepping away from the useless wheel.
"To hell with Little!" shouted Barry. "Get a boat out, before we plow
up that sand!"
Then he hailed forward:
"Mr. Rolfe! Get lines. Carry them to those trees. Hurry!" and to Little
he barked: "You, Little, get aft here, and for God's own sake, keep your
meddling hooks off things as you come!"
Little started aft, abashed at last. The careful manner in which he
avoided contact with crew or gear would have made Barry grin under any
other circumstances; but now near disaster impended, simply on account
of the irrepressible salesman's voracious appetite for knowledge.
As he approached the poop ladder, Little grimaced up at the skipper and
shrugged his shoulders resignedly in anticipation of the storm. Barry's
face was flushed and angry, and his strong teeth shone white over his
compressed nether lip. The brigantine's stern was awfully close to the
edge of the bar, in spite of the swift action of Vandersee, who, in
leaving the wheel and before going down to his boat, let go the big
mainsail and took the after pressure off the vessel. Now the big second
mate hailed from the top of the midship house.
"This boat's all open, sir. She won't float a minute!"
"Oh, blazes!" howled the skipper, flinging his cap on the deck. "Send a
man to swim with the line. Any of them. They're all water rats."
"Can't make a man swim here, sir," returned the Hollander, and even now
his voice was velvety soft. "Alligators are too thick."
Little paused on the bottom step of the ladder. He measured with his eye
the distance to the nearest point ashore. Fifty yards it was; and on the
water's edge grew a tangled mass of slimy roots, rising to gnarled,
moss-covered trunks, monstrosities rather than trees. Even at that
distance suspicious logs could be seen lying half in, half out of the
water; but a space ten yards wide, including some of the biggest and
ugliest of the trees, seemed bare of those logs.
Barry sent a hail along to the forecastle to avast heaving on the cable;
for some of the watch had remained on deck, when the rest went below to
pass up lines, and were now taking spasmodic, aimless jerks at the
windlass. The mate drove his brown-skinned men to marvellous feats with
coiling lines, determined to be ready with his part when the boat was
ready. He had not heard Vandersee's report on the boat.
Now on the port side, that farthest from the bar, heaps of cleverly
faked-down small lines were ranged along the waterways, in preparation
for any emergency of drifting boat. The big Manila hawser lay coiled on
the fore hatch, all ready to bend on when a small line was safely
ashore. All these things Barry took in with quick professional
perception. But now he was stumped. He was the last man on earth to send
a man where he himself dare not go; and those filthy, suspicious logs
had only too well corroborated the second mate's hint of alligators.
He was aroused from his contemplation of them by a shout from Rolfe,
echoed by Vandersee, and followed immediately by a tremendous splash and
the whiz of small line running over a teakwood rail. A soft-eyed
Javanese seaman worked feverishly near the fore rigging, flinging coil
after coil of line overboard until the end was at hand. Then he stooped
swiftly, seized the end of a fresh coil, and stood ready to repeat.
Barry looked for Little now and missed him. He ran to the side. An
excited chattering among the crew forward, and gesticulating arms,
directed his gaze, and he gasped with amazed admiration. Surging through
the muddy tide with a powerful trudgeon stroke, making a wake of
swirling bubbles across which snaked the black coils of a heaving line,
Little headed for the shore. Once he disappeared, as a freak of churning
waters gripped several coils of line and jerked him back and under. But
the innocent cause of all the trouble made no false estimate of his
ability to rectify his error. He forged straight for his mark--that mass
of slimy roots and mossy trunks--and soon he was seen to rise waist high
from the water, stumble heavily as his feet sank deep in the sticky
ooze, and, recovering, plunge headlong up the bank with his line.
A cry of helpless apprehension burst from the brigantine's company as
one of those suspicious logs stirred into reptilian life. A great,
warty snout jutted upwards, with a swift half-turn towards the intruder,
and the yellow water was swept into a furious whirlpool as the saurian
secured leverage to turn by a convulsion of his powerful tail.
The cry rose to a shout of warning, and with the shout Barry sprang
below to his cabin. He returned on the run with a big-game rifle in time
to hear a ripple of relief run from end to end of the ship; and his eyes
opened wide with astonishment when he saw the cause.
Other muddy logs had come to life on the foreshore and Little's attitude
would have been ludicrous but for the terrible risk he ran. He stared at
the suddenly awakened monsters as the sexton of a church might stare if
one of his gargoyles suddenly spoke to him. But there was no fear in his
bearing; simply the natural wonder of a man faced by a situation which,
more than likely, he had disbelieved the possibility of until that
moment.
He had kept tight hold of his line, and as Barry watched, he gathered up
the slack and with a whoop jumped nimbly over the back of the nearest
alligator, charging now with open jaws. As he landed on his feet, he
dodged behind a root, and his clear cry rang over the water.
"The big rope, Barry, quick! I can dodge these big lizards. It's a
cinch!"
The mate bent on the hawser, and men picked up great coils of it and
flung them overboard. Barry stood silent, dumbfounded, and watched
Little haul in his line, only pausing from time to time to pass from one
side of the tree to the other, as the alligators closed in on him. The
eye-end of the hawser splashed up the shoal water, was wrapped securely,
but in sorry landsman's fashion, about the big roots, and in response to
a howl of triumph from the shore, Barry sang out:
"After capstan here! Get a strain on the line, Mr. Rolfe!" And while the
dripping rope crawled in through the fair-lead, cracking and twanging to
the strain of the ship's arrested drift, he stood at the rail, rifle in
hand, and muttered:
"He's a comic-opera sailor, all right; but Lordy! what a man he'll make
with his feet on dry earth! Let go my anchor, hey? By Godfrey, he can
let go the forestay when we're going about, and I'll forgive him after
this."
The ship's stern answered to the steady pull of the line and dragged
away from the edge of the sand until she pointed fair into the channel
again. Forward, men hove in the cable until the anchor was underfoot;
aft, men tailed on to the main halliards and sent the great mainsail
aloft with a will. Barry waved the second mate back to the wheel and
sent Rolfe forward to finish picking up the anchor. Then he swung around
at a shout from the shore. He had momentarily forgotten Little.
"Damnation!" he breathed, and jerked his rifle to his shoulder. Then he
dropped his elbow to the rail, took snap-sights and fired.
The greatest alligator of them all, the patriarch of all saurians, had
attacked Little. That agile young man saw his foe in time to avoid the
rush by leaping over the straining hawser, knee-high, and the ugly jaws
closed with a crash on the rope. Barry's shot rang out simultaneously
with the singing snap of a Manila strand, and the heavy bullet chugged
home in the vulnerable skin on the alligator's throat.
The _Barang_ gathered way, and the hawser sagged into the water as the
strain was released. Whatever Little's limitations were as a seaman, he
lacked nothing of common sense; he saw that the ship was independent of
the line now, and Barry received another shock while trying to decide
how to get his friend safely on board again.
"That's the stuff, Barry!" Little shouted, capering madly as the
alligator rolled over towards the river. "Keep your blue eye on these
fellows and haul away on the rope!"
With the words he was sawing away busily at the Manila with a fearsome
knife he had invested in as part of a sailor's outfit.
"Stop! You're crazy!" bawled the skipper. Rolfe cursed luridly, and even
Vandersee's sleek face clouded.
If Little heard, he made no sign. Without a wasted second after the line
parted, he followed the running end down to the water, took a grip on
it, and plunged in with a shout:
"Pull away! Watch out for my toes, Barry!"
The little brown men of the crew needed no order to pull. The sheer
intrepidity of the man on the line had ensured their reverence and
loyalty, and the heavy hawser came inboard with a whiz. At the end of it
struggled Little, striking out frantically with his legs and free hand
to keep his head above the water at the pull of those eager arms. As he
took the water, from four separate points along the bank great reptiles
slithered; their snouts and protuberant eyes left behind them sinister
ripples as they converged on the swimmer.
Barry watched with set lips and glittering eyes. He well knew the
improbability of hitting a vulnerable spot in a swimming alligator; his
marksmanship was scarcely equal to the certainty of finding one of those
wicked, armor-lidded eyes. It was with a hard gulp of fear in his throat
that he pressed the trigger for a second shot.
The bullet took the foremost reptile on the point of the snout, checking
the beast and causing a flurry among its companions. Little gained a few
precious feet, and as a patch of dirty gray belly showed for an instant
in the over-roll of the smitten beast, Barry fired again, and his friend
gained a little more.
Another factor now entered into the contest, and the ex-salesman was
safe. The brigantine was steadily stemming the tide, and now fairly past
the bar had reached far beyond the point to which the hawser had been
made fast. As she forged slowly ahead, with gathering speed as she left
behind the influence of the big eddy, the rope trailed more and more
astern and the ship's speed was added to that of the incoming hawser.
Little was hauled up to the quarter, and Barry himself let down the
boarding ladder and went over the side to assist the half-drowned
swimmer on board.
When Little had coughed several pints of muddy river water from his
system, he looked up at Barry with a whimsical grin, as if prepared now
to take the calling down that his recent action had delayed. But the
skipper had nothing to say about the escapade with his anchors. He
gripped his friend's hand with a hard squeeze and took him below for a
warming shot of rum with a simply spoken:
"Thanks, Little. That's the greatest thing I ever saw. You're free of
the ship forever!"