out of his face, his eyes fixed themselves in a recognition charged
with vague fear. “It’s----!”
“Yes!” cried Jensen, “by all that’s wonderful----!”
“The Morse code!” Lyngstrand completed the sentence.
Once perceived, there was no doubt of it. That succession of irregular
taps and pauses coming from the table as from a sounding-board was
a plain language to all three of them, unmistakable, not more to be
banished from cognition than the reiteration of spoken words.
“But,” cried Lyngstrand, “where does it come from?--We have no
wireless--and even wireless could not produce that!”
“Listen!” Jensen reproved him. “It’s a message of some kind!” He
glanced across to Horst who sat speechless, his face gray, his eyes
terrified. “Not Swedish!--Take it down, Lyngstrand, while I spell it
out!”
The young man feverishly produced pencil and paper from his pocket.
“Listen!” he cried. “Good God! Do you catch it?”
Three sharp taps--three more widely spaced--three sharp taps again--the
series was reiterated insistently--_S--O--S!--S--O--S!--S--O--S!_
“Ready, Lyngstrand?” queried Jensen in the sharp tone of a man
concentrating himself for action. His comrade nodded.
Jensen rapped sharply upon the table the wireless operator’s signal
of reception. In immediate answer the raps from the invisible source
renewed themselves, continued evidently in a message. Lyngstrand jotted
down the letters as Jensen spelled them out.
“‘_s-t-e-a-m-s-h-i-p_’--it’s English!” he interjected. “Got it?----”
The raps had continued, noted by his brain and coalesced by it into
definite words. “‘_Gloucester City_’----”
“_What----?_” ejaculated Lyngstrand, in incredulous amazement, as he
rapidly wrote the words.
Jensen continued, his attention fixed upon the unceasing raps.
“--_torpedoed 50-55 north 9-14 west--sinking fast--come quickly--done
in_----”
He glanced up to see Horst springing at them like a maddened animal.
“Stop that!” cried the captain. “It’s a trick!--it’s a trick!” In
another second he had snatched paper and pencil from Lyngstrand’s hand.
A formidable series of violent crashes, emanating from walls, roof,
and table, was the instant response to his action. He shrank back,
appalled, crouching with eyes that searched the surrounding walls in
agonized apprehension. “It’s a trick!--it’s a diabolical trick!” he
muttered. “_It must be!_”
“Captain Horst!” said Jensen, with sternly level authority. “Be good
enough to sit down and remain quiet. All matters relating to the
_Gloucester City_ come within my province.”
Horst, his arms up as though to guard himself, went slowly backward to
his seat but did not sit. There was madness in his eyes. “How could
they know?” he said to himself in a sharp-breathed whisper, “--_the
exact words!_----”
“What do you mean?” queried Lyngstrand, curiously. Horst replied
without thinking, more to himself than to his questioner.
“The exact words of her call for help--a year ago! My wireless picked
it up after we had left her----” He stopped suddenly, realized that he
had betrayed himself.
“Then----!” cried Lyngstrand, jumping up from his seat and taking
a step forward. His eyes, full of menace, searched the ex-U-boat
commander’s face.
“Be quiet--both of you!” commanded Jensen, holding up his hand. The
regular succession of raps had commenced again. Jensen listened to
them, nodded. Then he himself rapped a message in English on the
table--“_who are you?_”
Horst and Lyngstrand listened in dead silence as the answer spelled
itself out upon the table.
“_h-e-n-r-y s-m-i-t-h w-i-r-e-l-e-s-s o-p-e-r-a-t-o-r
g-l-o-u-c-e-s-t-e-r c-i-t-y._”
Jensen turned a glance of wonderment to his comrade. Horst, reading the
message as currently as the others, looked as though about to faint.
“Stop it!” he said, hoarsely. “Stop it!”
Jensen ignored him, rapped again upon the table--“_where are you now?_”
The answer came immediately.
“_a-t y-o-u-r s-i-d-e_”
The three of them sprang back simultaneously, as from the presence of a
ghost. Their eyes probed empty air.
Jensen spoke aloud, still in English.
“Can you see us--hear us?”
The raps of the invisible hand upon the table replied at once.
“_y-e-s_”
“_Mein Gott!_” muttered Horst. “I shall go mad!” Jensen continued his
colloquy.
“Where is the _Gloucester City_?” He smiled to himself as though
setting a trap for this unseen intelligence. “Is she still afloat?”
The raps recommenced without hesitation.
“_y-o-u-r a-n-c-h-o-r f-i-x-e-d- i-n u-p-p-e-r w-o-r-k-s_”
Lyngstrand uttered an ejaculation of awed astonishment. He looked to
see the sweat pearling on Captain Horst’s forehead.
The raps spelled out, spontaneously, an explanatory afterward.
“_w-e l-e-d y-o-u t-o i-t_”
“_We?_” queried Jensen. “Who are ‘_we_’?”
“_t-h-e d-r-o-w-n-e-d_” The raps were decisive.
“Why?” Lyngstrand admired his comrade’s steely self-control. “Why did
you lead us to it?”
“_h-e c-a-n g-u-e-s-s_”
“Who?”
“_t-h-e m-u-r-d-e-r-e-r_”
Both glanced swiftly at Horst. He was speechless, his face a study in
blanched terror.
“_h-e k-n-o-w-s_” added the raps. There was something indefinably
malicious about their sound.
“Stop it!” Horst’s voice was strangled, scarcely audible. “Stop it!”
Jensen was unmoved.
“How many of you?” he asked.
Lyngstrand, fascinated by this conversation with the unseen, was
grateful for the question.
“_t-h-r-e-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d a-n-d e-i-g-h-t g-l-o-u-c-e-s-t-e-r c-i-t-y
h-u-n-d-r-e-d a-n-d f-i-v-e r-e-s-c-u-e-d o-t-h-e-r s-h-i-p-s f-o-u-r
h-u-n-d-r-e-d a-n-d t-h-i-r-t-e-e-n i-n a-l-l_”
“All men?” queried Jensen.
“_t-w-e-n-t-y-f-i-v-e w-o-m-e-n_”
“My God!” muttered Lyngstrand, in a sudden vivid remembrance that
stabbed him like a pain. He glanced at Horst.
Jensen glanced also, and was merciless.
“Are you all here?” he asked.
“_y-e-s_” There was a little pause, “_h-u-n-d-r-e-d-s m-o-r-e I d-o-n-t
k-n-o-w d-r-o-w-n-e-d o-t-h-e-r s-u-n-k s-h-i-p-s a-l-l h-e-r-e_”
Lyngstrand shivered, looked around him uneasily. Jensen’s voice
scarcely betrayed a tremor as he pursued.
“What have you come for?”
“_w-e h-a-v-e c-o-m-e f-o-r h-i-m_”
“No!--no!” screamed Horst, suddenly. “No!--_Ach, Gott, schütze mich!_”
Both Lyngstrand and Jensen had a sense of inaudible mocking laughter in
the air about them. There was an awful silence.
The raps recommenced spontaneously.
“_t-e-l-l h-i-m t-h-e-y a-r-e f-i-l-i-n-g p-a-s-t h-i-m
i-d-e-n-t-i-f-y-i-n-g h-i-m_”
Jensen turned to Horst.
“You hear?” he asked, grimly.
But Horst, with a blood-curdling scream of terror, had flung himself
at the charthouse door, thrown it open. They heard the hiss and sough
of the dark seas. He plunged out, blindly, head-foremost. Then, just
beyond the threshold, he stopped, recoiled, staggered back into the
charthouse.
“No!” he gasped, hoarsely. “No!--_I can’t face them! I can’t face
them!_--I can’t die!--I dare not!”
He shook in a palsy of the faculties. His eyes agonizedly sought their
unsympathetic faces. The German submarine commander is a pariah among
seafaring men, whatever their nationality. He realized it, hopelessly,
as he met their hard eyes. With a sob of self-pity, he stumbled across
to a corner of the charthouse, sank down upon the seat, covered his
face with his hands.
Lyngstrand’s young features were sternly set as he glanced at him. Then
he took a long breath, the preparatory oxygen-renewal of the man who
dares an experiment that will tax him. He rapped the wireless “call-up”
upon the table.
“Can the others communicate also?” he asked, loudly, in English. He,
also, was trembling.
The answer came at once.
“_o-n-l-y t-h-r-o-u-g-h m-e_” There was a slight pause, then the raps
recommenced again, “_l-a-d-y h-e-r-e h-a-s a m-e-s-s-a-g-e f-o-r
p-e-t-e-r_” the raps hesitated “_p-e-t-e-r f-u-n-n-y n-a-m-e c-a-n-t
c-a-t-c-h i-t_----”
Lyngstrand’s face went deathly white.
“Yes,” he gasped, just only able to speak, “--Peter--yes--go on!”
He looked at the table as though expecting to see the hand that was
rapping out the message. Tap-tap-tap, it came.
“_p-e-t-e-r l-i-n-g-s-t-r-a-n-d_”
“Yes--here!” he gasped. “Go on!--who is it?”
“_m-a-r-y t-i-l-l-o-t-s-o-n_”
He reeled against the table, clutched at it.
“My God!” he murmured to himself, his eyes closing, his teeth grinding
upon one another in an agony of emotion. Then, with a supreme effort of
self-control, he asked, loudly: “The message? Give it me!”
“_s-h-e s-a-y-s s-h-e s-u-r-e l-o-v-e-s y-o-u s-t-i-l-l a-n-d i-s
w-a-i-t-i-n-g f-o-r y-o-u_”
“Mary!” The cry burst from him, sobbingly, on a note of poignant
anguish. Jensen felt the tears start to his eyes. Horst cowered still,
face hidden, in his corner.
There was a long moment in which Lyngstrand failed to bring another
sound to utterance. He swayed as though about to faint. Then once more
he mastered himself.
“What--what happened?” he asked, unsteadily. “How did she die? Was she
torpedoed?”
“_s-h-e s-a-y-s s-t-e-a-m-e-r t-r-o-n-d-h-j-e-m s-u-n-k g-u-n-f-i-r-e
r-e-s-c-u-e-d s-m-a-l-l b-o-a-t b-y g-l-o-u-c-e-s-t-e-r c-i-t-y
a-f-t-e-r-w-a-r-d t-o-r-p-e-d-o-e-d_”
Lyngstrand reeled with closed eyes. He had a vivid vision of the torn
wreck in the depths beneath them, carnivorous fish darting where their
anchor grappled its untenanted bridge.
“Did--did they have a chance?” he asked.
“_n-i-g-h-t w-i-t-h-o-u-t w-a-r-n-i-n-g_” came the answer.
Lyngstrand drew another deep breath, glanced at the motionless Horst.
“And--and the man--the man who sank her?”
“_k-a-p-i-t-a-n-l-e-u-t-n-a-n-t h-o-r-s-t_” There was a terrible
precision in those raps.
They ceased. There was a deathly stillness. Through long moments, not
one of the three men in the charthouse moved. Then Lyngstrand turned
slowly. He took three steps toward Captain Horst, stood over him. The
only sounds were the creaking of gear as the _Upsal_ rose and subsided
on the swell, the swish and suck of the long waves that ran past her
in the darkness beyond the open charthouse door.
Lyngstrand’s mouth had set in a thin line. His lips, compressed, opened
but slightly as he spoke.
“Captain Horst,” he said, with grim distinctness, “you are certainly
going to die. I give you the privilege of the warning you did not
extend to your victims.”
Horst looked up suddenly. His eyes, blue still, but crazed with terror,
fixed themselves upon the gray eyes that met them pitilessly. His mouth
moved under the little red moustache, but no sound came from it.
Lyngstrand continued, an edge of fierce contempt upon his hard voice.
“I even give you a choice: You can, if you like, go out there”--he
pointed through the open door to the rayless night--“and throw yourself
overboard----”
Horst sprang to his feet, recoiled into the extreme corner of the
charthouse.
“No!” he screamed. “No!”
“--or I shall kill you myself,” pursued Lyngstrand, evenly.
Horst’s face contorted suddenly with demoniac passion. Jensen, who
had approached and was watching him closely, saw his hand dart to the
pocket of his jacket, and he flung himself forward just as the revolver
cracked.
With a red-hot thrust through his shoulder, a sickening faintness in
which the floor seemed to rise up to his knees, Jensen tottered back
to the charthouse wall. Fighting for consciousness, he dimly saw his
comrade hurl himself upon Horst--someone’s arm high in the air holding
a revolver, another arm high with it, clutching at the wrist below the
weapon.
Then commenced a terrible silent struggle where the only sound was the
short gasps and sobs for breath of the two men swaying with the motion
of the ship. They hugged close, face upon face, in a murderous wrestle
where neither dared shift his grip. Both were big-framed, powerful,
but Lyngstrand had the advantage of youth. They came, inch by inch,
slipping on the floor, past Jensen leaning dizzily against the wall.
He saw them through a red mist where the electric lamp glowed vaguely,
unmoved like a nebulous start above the tensely locked embrace where
life fought for human continuance.
Inch by inch, they moved onward. Jensen, his vision clearing, though
impotent to move, saw now that Lyngstrand had the inner berth, that
Horst was being gradually, slowly but surely, thrust toward the open
door. He saw one of Horst’s hands free itself, grip at the door-post,
cling to it. He saw the awful terror in the eyes that glared upon his
relentless adversary.
Minute after minute the tense and silent struggle at the door
continued. Still clutching at the door-post, Horst was gradually borne
backward. His feet still in the charthouse, his body, save for that one
gripping hand, was bent back out of sight into the darkness.
Suddenly his fingers relaxed their hold. Their feet tripped by the
raised threshold of the door, both disappeared headlong in a heavy thud
upon the deck outside.
Jensen heard a sharp exclamation, the gasp of bodies that are rolled
upon--then the quick scuffling of feet. Agonized for his comrade, he
dragged himself painfully toward the door. Just as he reached it one
ghastly piercing scream rang through the night.
He gazed out to see two closely locked bodies disappear over the
bulwark.
The dark seas lifted a foaming crest as the _Upsal_ rolled.
YELLOW MAGIC
The talk of the half-dozen men on the veranda of the Singapore
club--a couple of merchants, a planter in town on business, an
officer of an Indian regiment, a globe-trotting professor from an
American university, and a sea-captain--had drifted desultorily from
the specific instance of the famous Indian rope-trick, resuscitated
by a British magazine that lay upon the club-tables and contested
sceptically by the Anglo-Indian officer, to the general topic of
the alleged ability of the Asiatic to make people “see what isn’t
there.” The American professor, whose specialty, as he confessed, was
psychology, manifested a pertinacious interest in the subject. But
his direct questions to these habitual dwellers in the Middle and
Far East elicited only contemptuous negatives or vague second- and
third-hand stories without evidential value. Merchants, planter, and
officer alike had quite obviously none of them seen any tricks upon
which the professor could safely base his rather rashly enunciated
theory of special hypnotic powers possessed by the inscrutable races,
whose surface energies are so profitably exploited by the white man. He
turned at last to the sea-captain who had sat puffing at his cheroot in
silence.
“And you, Captain Williamson? You have voyaged about these seas for the
best part of a generation--have you never been confronted by one of
these inexplicable phenomena of which the travellers tell us?”
There was just a little of Oliver Wendell Holmes pedantry about the
professor--a touch of that Boston of the ’eighties in which he had been
educated.
Captain Williamson changed the duck-clad leg which crossed the other
and smiled a little with his keen gray eyes. Caressing the neat pointed
beard which accentuated the oval of his intelligent face, he replied
thoughtfully:
“Well, Professor--I have. Once. Personally, though I saw the affair
with my own eyes, I don’t even now know what to make of it. Perhaps
your hypnotic theory might explain it.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Will you not tell us the story?” entreated the professor. “It is so
rare to receive trustworthy first-hand evidence of anything abnormal.”
Captain Williamson glanced rather diffidently around upon his
companions.
“Fire away, cap’en!” exclaimed one of the merchants, slapping him
amicably on the knee. “You’ve always got a good yarn!”
“This happens to be a true one,” said the captain, with a smile of
tolerance, “but, of course, you are under no compulsion to believe it!”
“Drinks all round on the one who doesn’t!” decreed the planter. “Go
ahead! Don’t ask us to believe rubber is going to boom again, that’s
all. Short of that, we’ll believe anything.”
“Well,” began Captain Williamson, his eyes following reflectively the
long, deliberate puff of smoke he blew into the air, “perhaps some
of you may remember Captain Strong--‘lucky Jim Strong’? Twenty-five
years or so ago he was one of the best known skippers in the Pacific,
celebrated almost. Men talked of him with a certain awe as of a man
who had a good fortune that was nothing short of uncanny. He had been
engaged in all sorts of desperate enterprises, frequently illicit, such
as seal-poaching in the Russian preserves, gun-running under the nose
of British cruisers, gold or opium smuggling despite the patrol-boats
of the Chinese Customs Board, and always he emerged unharmed and gorged
with profits. Only all the San Francisco banks put together, for he
dealt with all of them, could tell you what he was worth, but it was
certainly a very large sum. However wealthy he was, he apparently
derived very little enjoyment from his money. He was always at sea in
his ship, the _Mary Gleeson_, of which he was both owner and skipper,
and stayed in port only just long enough to discharge one cargo and
pick up another. His personal habits were almost unknown, but of course
a legend of eccentricity grew up around them as a companion to the
legend of his supernatural luck.
“It happened, as the finale to sundry personal adventures with which
I will not weary you, that about a quarter of a century ago I found
myself sailing out of the port of San Francisco as first officer to
the _Mary Gleeson_. I was quite a young man and it was my first job
as mate. We were bound to Saigon, in Cochin China, with a cargo of
American arms and ammunition consigned to the French Government. At
that time the French were still fighting to preserve and extend their
conquests in that part of the world.
“The voyage across the Pacific was uneventful enough. We were a
contented ship. The men were cheerful. The old uncertificated
Scandinavian we had shipped as second mate was a conscientious officer.
I was rather proud of my new dignity and anxious to justify it.
“As for Captain Strong, I unaffectedly liked him. Decisive but
even-tempered, his quietly firm handling of the ship’s company won my
respect, and there was no doubt of his first-class seamanship. He was
utterly without that petty punctilious pride by which some masters
try to conceal their lack of native dignity, and he would talk to
me for hours during my watch. His conversation revealed a wide and
intimate knowledge of men and affairs, and in particular of those
intrigues by which the Great Powers were in those days--I speak of the
’nineties--pushing their fortunes at the expense of the Chinese races.
Upon his own personal adventures and career, however, he was completely
silent, and no stratagems of mine could lure him into speaking of
them. Reserved as he was upon this point, nevertheless, I felt that
he regarded me with a distinctly friendly sentiment, and I cordially
reciprocated it.
“At last we made the tall promontory of Cape St. Jacques, with its
lighthouse and cable-station, and took on board the half-caste pilot
who was to navigate us the sixty miles up the river to Saigon. I
remember the trip up-stream with that clearness of the memory for all
that immediately precedes a drama, no matter how long ago. It was
early morning when he crossed the bar and, relieved from the direct
responsibilities of navigation, Captain Strong and I sat in deck-chairs
under the awning of the bridge and all day watched the dense,
mist-hung, fever-infested forests of mangrove and pandanus slip past
us on both banks of the river. The damp, close heat was suffocating
and neither of us had much desire to talk, but I fancied that a more
than usually heavy moodiness lay over the skipper. He was certainly not
quite normal. He frowned to himself, bit his lip, and his eyes roved
in an uneasy sort of recognition from side to side of the stream as we
rounded reach after interminable reach. I felt that some secret anxiety
possessed him, but of course I could not ask him straight out what it
was. Rather diffidently, I did venture on one question.
“‘Ever been here before, sir?’ I asked.
“He shot a suspicious look at me, directly into my eyes, before he
answered.
“‘Once.’
“The tone of the reply effectually checked any further exhibition of
the curiosity it heightened.
“The worst heat of the day was over when we dropped anchor in the broad
stream opposite the European-looking city of Saigon. The usual swarm of
junks and sampans thronged around the quay, but the black Messageries
Maritimes packet moored in the river was the only other steamship.
“To my pleasure, Captain Strong invited me to go ashore with him,
and in a few minutes the gig was pulling us toward the rows of
fine-looking Government buildings which stretch back from the quays.
I don’t know whether any of you have ever been to Saigon and I don’t
know what it looks like now, but in those days it looked like the
disastrous enterprise of a bankrupt speculative builder when you got to
close quarters. The town of Saigon had been burnt by the French in the
fighting by which they had obtained possession of the place, and they
had rebuilt it on European lines, shops, cafés, Government buildings,
all complete. But a paralysis was on everything, the paralysis of the
excessive administration with which the French ruin their colonies. The
streets were nearly deserted, a majority of the shops empty. The only
Europeans were slovenly, haggard military and the white-faced, dreary
Government employees who sat at the cafés and longed for France. I was
more depressed and disappointed at every step.
“We went up to the Government House and filled up a few dozens of those
useless papers without which the French functionary dare do nothing,
and received vague assurances that in a few days we should be allowed
to unload the arms of which the French troops were in urgent need. Our
business completed as far as possible, Captain Strong hesitated for a
moment or two, biting his lip in that odd way I had noticed coming up
the river. Irresolution of any kind was a most common phenomenon in
him. Then suddenly, evidently giving way to a powerful impulse, I heard
him murmur to himself: ‘Give ’em a chance anyway!’
“Throwing a curt ‘Come along!’ to me, he set off at a tremendous pace
through the streets with the assurance of a man who can find his way
about any town where he has been once previously. I followed him,
puzzled by the words I had overheard, wondering whither he was going,
and noting the native population with curious eyes. The Annamite
men are a stunted, degenerate race, in abject terror of their white
masters, but the women are many of them surprisingly attractive. I had
plenty of opportunity for comparison, for very soon we found ourselves
among a swarm of both sexes at the station of the steam-tram which runs
to Cho-lon, the Chinese town a few miles up the river.
“During the ride on the tram, Captain Strong did not open his lips. He
stared steadily in front of him in a curious kind of way, like a man
inexorably pursuing some allotted line of action.
“Arrived at Cho-lon, he struck quickly through the squalid streets of
the Chinese town, looking neither to right nor left, and saying not a
word. We had passed right through the town before he gave me a hint of
our objective. Then he made a gesture upward as if to reassure me that
we were near our journey’s end.
“Beyond the last houses, on an eminence backed by the primeval jungle,
a Buddhist temple of pagoda fashion rose above us, the terminus of the
rough track up which we were stumbling. As we drew near I saw that it
was dilapidated, its courtyard overgrown, deserted evidently by both
priests and worshippers.
“Was this what Captain Strong had come to see? Somewhat puzzled, I
glanced at his face under the pith helmet. His lips were compressed,
his eyes stern as though defying some secret danger. At the entrance
gateway, festooned and almost smothered in parasitic vegetation, he
stopped and stared into the desolate courtyard. Then, after a moment
of the curious hesitation which I had already remarked that day, he
entered.