and look.
"Do you mind giving me that little shoe at your feet there?"
The officer turned a shade whiter than the shoe.
Then, stooping, he picked it up and handed it to Hudson, who thrust it
into his breast pocket.
"Thank you!" he said. "Now if you will all leave your guns on this bed
we'll go on deck and see the traces."
When they reached the deck there was something that looked like an
enormous drowning cockroach trying to crawl out of the water four
hundred yards away. Round it there seemed to be a mass of drowning
flies.
"It's not a pleasant sight, is it?" said Hudson. "But it's good to know
they were all fighting men, ready to kill or be killed. No women and
children among them! The _Lusitania_ must have looked much worse."
"My brother is on board! Are you not trying to save them?" gasped the
officer.
Hudson took out the little shoe again and looked at it. Then he turned
to the German boat's crew, where they huddled, sick with fear,
amidships.
"Take your boat and pick up as many as you can," he said.
"It is not safe--not till she sinks," a guttural voice replied.
Almost on the word the cruiser went down with a rush. The sleek waters
and the white mists closed above her, while the _Morning Glory_ rocked
again like a child's cradle.
"That is true," said Matthew Hudson to the shivering figure beside him.
"And we've got as many as we can handle on the ship. If we took more of
you aboard, according to the laws laid down in your text-books, you'd
cut our throats and call us idiotic Yankees for trusting you.
"Please don't weep. We sent out a call a minute ago for the _Betsey
Barton_ and the _Dusty Miller_ and the _Christmas Day_. I'm not an
effete humanitarian myself; but the men on these trawlers aren't bad
sorts. I hope they'll pick up your brother."
V
THE _LUSITANIA_ WAITS
On a stormy winter's night three skippers--averaging three score years
and five--were discussing the news, around a roaring fire, in the parlor
of the White Horse Inn. Five years ago they had retired, each on a snug
nest-egg. They were looking forward to a mellow old age in port and a
long succession of evenings at the White Horse, where they gathered to
debate the politics of their district. The war had given them new
topics; but Captain John Kendrick--who had become a parish councilor and
sometimes carried bulky blue documents in his breast-pocket, displaying
the edges with careful pride--still kept the local pot a-boiling. He was
mainly successful on Saturday nights, when the _Gazette_, their weekly
newspaper, appeared. It was edited by a Scot named Macpherson, who had
learned his job on the _Arbroath Free Press_.
"Macpherson will never be on the council now," said Captain Kendrick.
"There's a rumor that he's a freethinker. He says that Christianity has
been proved a failure by the war."
"Well, these chaps of ours now," said Captain Davidson, "out at sea on a
night like this, trying to kill Germans. It's necessary, I know, because
the Germans would kill our own folks if we gave 'em a chance. But don't
it prove that there's no use for Christianity? In modern civilization, I
mean."
"Macpherson's no freethinker," said Captain Morgan, who was a friend of
the editor, and inclined on the strength of it to occupy the
intellectual chair at the White Horse. "Macpherson says we'll have to
try again after the war, or it will be blood and iron all round."
"He's upset by the war," said Captain Davidson, "and he's taken to
writing poytry in his paper. He'd best be careful or he'll lose his
circulation."
"Ah!" said Kendrick. "That's what 'ull finish him for the council. What
we want is practical men. Poytry would destroy any man's reputation.
There was a great deal of talk caused by his last one, about our
trawler chaps. 'Fishers of Men,' he called it; and I'm not sure that it
wouldn't be considered blasphemious by a good many."
Captain Morgan shook his head. "Every Sunday evening," he said, "my
missus asks me to read her Macpherson's pome in the _Gazette_, and I've
come to enjoy them myself. Now, what does he say in 'Fishers of Men'?"
"Read it," said Kendrick, picking the _Gazette_ from the litter of
newspapers on the table and handing it to Morgan. "If you know how to
read poytry, read it aloud, the way you do to your missus. I can't make
head or tail of poytry myself; but it looks blasphemious to me."
Captain Morgan wiped his big spectacles while the other two settled
themselves to listen critically. Then he began in his best Sunday voice,
very slowly, but by no means unimpressively:
_Long, long ago He said,
He who could wake the dead,
And walk upon the sea--
"Come, follow Me._
"_Leave your brown nets and bring
Only your hearts to sing,
Only your souls to pray,
Rise, come away._
"_Shake out your spirit-sails,
And brave those wilder gales,
And I will make you then
Fishers of men._"
_Was this, then, what He meant?
Was this His high intent,
After two thousand years
Of blood and tears?_
_God help us, if we fight
For right and not for might.
God help us if we seek
To shield the weak._
_Then, though His heaven be far
From this blind welter of war,
He'll bless us on the sea
From Calvary._
"It seems to rhyme all right," said Kendrick. "It's not so bad for
Macpherson."
"Have you heard," said Davidson reflectively, "they're wanting more
trawler skippers down at the base?"
"I've been fifty years, man and boy, at sea," said Captain Morgan;
"that's half a century, mind you."
"Ah, it's hard on the women, too," said Davidson. "We're never sure what
boats have been lost till we see the women crying. I don't know how they
get the men to do it."
Captain John Kendrick stabbed viciously with his forefinger at a picture
in an illustrated paper.
"Here's a wicked thing now," he said. "Here's a medal they've struck in
Germany to commemorate the sinking of the _Lusitania_. Here's a
photograph of both sides of it. On one side, you see the great ship
sinking, loaded up with munitions which wasn't there; but not a sign of
the women and children that was there. On the other side you see the
passengers taking their tickets from Death in the New York booking
office. Now that's a fearful thing. I can understand 'em making a
mistake, but I can't understand 'em wanting to strike a medal for it."
"Not much mistake about the _Lusitania_," growled Captain Davidson.
"No, indeed. That was only my argyment," replied the councilor. "They're
a treacherous lot. It was a fearful thing to do a deed like that. My
son's in the Cunard; and, man alive, he tells me it's like sinking a
big London hotel. There was ladies in evening dress, and dancing in the
big saloons every night; and lifts to take you from one deck to another;
and shops with plate-glass windows, and smoking-rooms; and glass around
the promenade deck, so that the little children could play there in bad
weather, and the ladies lay in their deck-chairs and sun themselves like
peaches. There wasn't a soldier aboard, and some of the women was
bringing their babies to see their Canadian daddies in England for the
first time. Why, man, it was like sinking a nursing home!"
"Do you suppose, Captain Kendrick, that they ever caught that
submarine?" asked Captain Morgan. They were old friends, but always
punctilious about their titles.
"Ah, now I'll tell you something! Hear that?"
The three old men listened. Through the gusts of wind that battered the
White Horse they heard the sound of heavy floundering footsteps passing
down the cobbled street, and a hoarse broken voice bellowing, with
uncanny abandonment, a fragment of a hymn:
"_While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground._"
"That's poor old Jim Hunt," said Captain Morgan. He rose and drew the
thick red curtains from the window to peer out into the blackness.
"Turn the lamp down," said the councilor, "or we'll be arrested under
the anti-aircraft laws."
Davidson turned the lamp down and they all looked out of the window.
They saw the figure of a man, black against the glimmering water of the
harbor below. He walked with a curious floundering gait that might be
mistaken for the effects of drink. He waved his arms over his head like
a windmill and bellowed his hymn as he went, though the words were now
indistinguishable from the tumult of wind and sea.
Captain Morgan drew the curtains, and the three sat down again by the
fire without turning up the lamp. The firelight played on the furrowed
and bronzed old faces and revealed them as worthy models for a
Rembrandt.
"Poor old Jimmy Hunt!" said Captain Kendrick. "You never know how
craziness is going to take people. Jimmy was a terror for women and the
drink, till he was taken off the _Albatross_ by that German submarine.
They cracked him over the head with an iron bolt, down at the bottom of
the sea, because he wouldn't answer no questions. He hasn't touched a
drop since. All he does is to walk about in bad weather, singing hymns
against the wind. But there's more in it than that."
Captain Kendrick lighted his pipe thoughtfully. The wind rattled the
windows. Outside, the sign-board creaked and whined as it swung.
"A man like Jim Hunt doesn't go crazy," he continued, "through spending
a night in a 'U' boat, and then floating about for a bit. Jimmy won't
talk about it now; won't do nothing but sing that blasted hymn; but this
is what he said to me when they first brought him ashore. They said he
was raving mad, on account of his experiences. But that don't explain
what his experiences _were_. Follow me? And this is what he said. '_I
been down_,' he says, half singing like. '_I been down, down, in the
bloody submarine that sank the Lusitania. And what's more_,' he says,'_I
seen 'em!_'
"'Seen what?' I says, humoring him like, and I gave him a cigarette. We
were sitting close together in his mother's kitchen. 'Ah!' he says,
calming down a little, and speaking right into my ear, as if it was a
secret. 'It was Christmas Eve the time they took me down. We could hear
'em singing carols on shore; and the captain didn't like it, so he blew
a whistle, and the Germans jumped to close the hatchways; and we went
down, down, down, to the bottom of the sea.
"'I saw the whole ship,' he says; and he described it to me, so that I
knew he wasn't raving then. 'There was only just room to stand upright,'
he says, 'and overhead there was a track for the torpedo carrier. The
crew slept in hammocks and berths along the wall; but there wasn't room
for more than half to sleep at the same time. They took me through a
little foot-hole, with an air-tight door, into a cabin.
"'The captain seemed kind of excited and showed me the medal he got for
sinking the _Lusitania_; and I asked him if the Kaiser gave it to him
for a Christmas present. That was when he and another officer seemed to
go mad; and the officer gave me a blow on the head with a piece of iron.
"'They say I'm crazy,' he says, 'but it was the men on the "U" boat that
went crazy. I was lying where I fell, with the blood running down my
face, but I was watching them,' he says, 'and I saw them start and
listen like trapped weasels. At first I thought the trawlers had got 'em
in a net. Then I heard a funny little tapping sound all round the hull
of the submarine, like little soft hands it was, tapping, tapping,
tapping.
"'The captain went white as a ghost, and shouted out something in
German, like as if he was calling "Who's there?" and the mate clapped
his hand over his mouth, and they both stood staring at one another.
"'Then there was a sound like a thin little voice, outside the ship,
mark you, and sixty fathom deep, saying, "_Christmas Eve, the Waits,
sir!_" The captain tore the mate's hand away and shouted again, like he
was asking "_Who's there!_" and wild to get an answer, too. Then, very
thin and clear, the little voice came a second time, "_The Waits, sir.
The Lusitania, ladies!_" And at that the captain struck the mate in the
face with his clenched fist. He had the medal in it still between his
fingers, using it like a knuckle-duster. Then he called to the men like
a madman, all in German, but I knew he was telling 'em to rise to the
surface, by the way they were trying to obey him.
"'The submarine never budged for all that they could do; and while they
were running up and down and squealing out to one another, there was a
kind of low sweet sound all round the hull, like a thousand voices all
singing together in the sea:
"_Fear not, said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind.
Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind._"
"'Then the tapping began again, but it was much louder now; and it
seemed as if hundreds of drowned hands were feeling the hull and
loosening bolts and pulling at hatchways; and--all at once--a trickle of
water came splashing down into the cabin. The captain dropped his medal.
It rolled up to my hand and I saw there was blood on it. He screamed at
the men, and they pulled out their life-saving apparatus, a kind of
air-tank which they strapped on their backs, with tubes to rubber masks
for clapping over their mouths and noses. I watched 'em doing it, and
managed to do the same. They were too busy to take any notice of me.
Then they pulled a lever and tumbled out through a hole, and I followed
'em blindly. Something grabbed me when I got outside and held me for a
minute. Then I saw 'em, Captain Kendrick, I saw 'em, hundreds and
hundreds of 'em, in a shiny light, and sixty fathom down under the dark
sea--they were all waiting there, men and women and poor little babies
with hair like sunshine....
"'And the men were smiling at the Germans in a friendly way, and
unstrapping the air-tanks from their backs, and saying, "Won't you come
and join us? It's Christmas Eve, you know."
"'Then whatever it was that held me let me go, and I shot up and knew
nothing till I found myself in Jack Simmonds's drifter, and they told me
I was crazy.'"
Captain Kendrick filled his pipe. A great gust struck the old inn again
and again till all the timbers trembled. The floundering step passed
once more, and the hoarse voice bellowed away in the darkness against
the bellowing sea:
_A Savior which is Christ the Lord,
And this shall be the sign._
Captain Davidson was the first to speak.
"Poor old Jim Hunt!" he said. "There's not much Christ about any of this
war."
"I'm not so sure of that neither," said Captain Morgan. "Macpherson said
a striking thing to me the other day. 'Seems to me,' he says, 'there's a
good many nowadays that are touching the iron nails.'"
He rose and drew the curtains from the window again.
"The sea's rattling hollow," he said; "there'll be rain before morning."
"Well, I must be going," said Captain Davidson. "I want to see the naval
secretary down at the base."
"About what?"
"Why, I'm not too old for a trawler, am I?"
"My missus won't like it, but I'll come with you," said Captain Morgan;
and they went through the door together, lowering their heads against
the wind.
"Hold on! I'm coming, too," said Captain Kendrick; and he followed them,
buttoning up his coat.
VI
THE LOG OF THE _EVENING STAR_
We were sitting in the porch of a low white bungalow with masses of
purple bougainvillea embowering its eaves. A ruby-throated humming-bird,
with green wings, flickered around it. The tall palms and the sea were
whispering together. Over the water, the West was beginning to fill with
that Californian sunset which is the most mysterious in the world, for
one is conscious that it is the fringe of what Europeans call the East,
and that, looking westward across the Pacific, our faces are turned
towards the dusky myriads of Asia. All along the Californian coast there
is a tang of incense in the air, as befits that silent orchard of the
gods where dawn and sunset meet and intermingle; and, though it is
probably caused by some gardener, burning the dead leaves of the
eucalyptus trees, one might well believe that one breathed the scent of
the joss-sticks, wafted across the Pacific, from the land of paper
lanterns.
A Japanese servant, in a white duck suit, marched like a ghostly little
soldier across the lawn. The great hills behind us quietly turned to
amethysts. The lights of Los Angeles ten miles away to the north began
to spring out like stars in that amazing air beloved of the astronomer;
and the evening star itself, over the huge slow breakers crumbling into
lilac-colored foam, looked bright enough to be a companion of the city
lights.
"I should like to show you the log of the _Evening Star_," said my
visitor, who was none other than Moreton Fitch, president of the
insurance company of San Francisco. "I think it may interest you as
evidence that our business is not without its touches of romance. I
don't mean what you mean," he added cheerfully, as I looked up smiling.
"The _Evening Star_ was a schooner running between San Francisco and
Tahiti and various other places in the South Seas. She was insured in
our company. One April, she was reported overdue. After a search had
been made, she was posted as lost in the maritime exchanges. There was
no clue to what had happened, and we paid the insurance money,
believing that she had foundered with all hands.
"Two months later, we got word from Tahiti that the _Evening Star_ had
been found drifting about in a dead calm, with all sails set, but not a
soul aboard. Everything was in perfect order, except that the ship's cat
was lying dead in the bows, baked to a bit of sea-weed by the sun.
Otherwise, there wasn't the slightest trace of any trouble. The tables
below were laid for a meal and there was plenty of water aboard."
"Were any of the boats missing?"
"No. She carried only three boats and all were there. When she was
discovered, two of the boats were on deck as usual; and the third was
towing astern. None of the men has been heard of from that day to this.
The amazing part of it was not only the absence of anything that would
account for the disappearance of the crew, but the clear evidence that
they had been intending to stay, in the fact that the tables were laid
for a meal, and then abandoned. Besides, where had they gone, and how?
There are no magic carpets, even in the South Seas.
"The best brains of our Company puzzled over the mystery for a year and
more; but at the end of the time nothing had turned up and we had to
come out by the same door wherein we went. No theory, even, seemed to
fit the case at all; and, in most mysteries, there is room for a hundred
theories. There were twelve persons aboard, and we investigated the
history of them all. There were three American seamen, all of the
domesticated kind, with respectable old mothers in gold-rimmed
spectacles at home. There were five Kanakas of the mildest type, as easy
to handle as an infant school. There was a Japanese cook, who was
something of an artist. He used to spend his spare time in painting
things to palm off on the unsuspecting connoisseur as the work of an
obscure pupil of Hokusai, which I suppose he might have been in a way. I
am told he was scrupulously careful never to tell a direct lie about it.
"Then there was Harper, the mate, rather an interesting young fellow,
with the wanderlust. He had been pretty well educated. I believe he had
spent a year or two at one of the Californian colleges. Altogether,
about the most harmless kind of a ship's family that you could pick up
anywhere between the Golden Gate and the Baltic. Then there was Captain
Burgess, who was the most domesticated of them all, for he had his wife
with him on this voyage. They had been married only about three months.
She was the widow of the former captain of the _Evening Star_, a fellow
named Dayrell; and she had often been on the ship before. In fact, they
were all old friends of the ship. Except one or two of the Kanakas, all
the men had sailed on the _Evening Star_ for something like two years
under Captain Dayrell. Burgess himself had been his mate. Dayrell had
been dead only about six months; and the only criticism we ever heard
against anybody aboard was made by some of Dayrell's relatives, who
thought the widow might have waited more than three months before
marrying the newly promoted Burgess. They suggested, of course, that
there must have been something between them before Dayrell was out of
the way. But I hardly believed it. In any case, it threw no light on the
mystery."
"What sort of a man was Burgess?"
"Big burly fellow with a fat white face and curious little eyes, like
huckleberries in a lump of dough. He was very silent and inclined to be
religious. He used to read Emerson and Carlyle, quite an unusual sort of
sea-captain. There was a _Sartor Resartus_ in the cabin with a lot of
the queerest passages marked in pencil. What can you make of it?"
"Nothing at all, except that there was a woman aboard. What was she
like?"
"She was one of our special Californian mixtures, touch of Italian,
touch of Irish, touch of American, but Italian predominated, I think.
She was a good deal younger than Burgess; and one of the clerks in our
office who had seen her described her as a 'peach,' which, as you know,
means a pretty woman, or if you prefer the description of her own lady
friends, 'vurry attractive.'"
"She had the dusky Italian beauty, black hair and eyes like black
diamonds, but her face was very pale, the kind of pallor that makes you
think of magnolia blossoms at dusk. She was obviously fond of bright
colors, tawny reds and yellows, but they suited her. If I had to give
you my impression of her in a single word, I should say that she looked
like a gipsy. You know the song, 'Down the World with Marna,' don't you?
Well, I could imagine a romantic vagabond singing it about her. By the
by, she had rather a fine voice herself. Used to sing sentimental songs
to Dayrell and his friends in 'Frisco, 'Love's Old Sweet Song' and that
sort of stuff. Apparently, they took it very seriously. Several of them
told me that if she had been trained--well, you know the old
story--every prima donna would have had to retire from business. I fancy
they were all a little in love with her. The curious thing was that
after Dayrell's death she gave up her singing altogether. Now, I think I
have told you all the facts about the ship's company."
"Didn't you say there was a log you wanted to show me?"
"There were no ship's papers of any kind, and no log was found on the
derelict; but, a week or two ago, we had a visit from the brother of the
Japanese cook, who made us all feel like fifteen cents before the wisdom
of the East. I have to go over and see him to-morrow afternoon. He is a
fisherman, lives on the coast, not far from here. I'd like you to see
what I call the log of the _Evening Star_. I won't say any more about it
now. It isn't quite worked out yet; but it looks as if it's going to be
interesting. Will you come--to-morrow afternoon? I'll call for you at a
quarter after two. It won't take us long in the automobile. This is
where he lives, see?"
I switched on the electric light in the porch while Fitch spread out a
road map, and pointed to our destination of the morrow. The Californian
night comes quickly, and the tree-toads that make it musical were
chirruping and purring all around us as we walked through the palms and
the red-tasseled pepper trees to his car. Somewhere among the funereal
clouds and poplarlike spires of the eucalyptus, a mocking-bird began to
whistle one of his many parts, and a delicious whiff of orange blossom
blew on the cool night wind across a ranch of a thousand acres, mostly
in fruit, but with a few trees yet in blossom, on the road to the Sunset
Inn.
I watched his red rear lamp dwindling down that well-oiled road, and let
the _Evening Star_ go with it until the morrow, for I could make little
of his yarn, except that Fitch was not a man to get excited over
trifles.
II