[Illustration: “The camel, Tempest! The camel!” Dave shouted]
LOST ISLAND
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AND
H. P. HOLT
ILLUSTRATED BY
C. M. RELYEA
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918
Copyright, 1917, 1918
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, September, 1918_
DEDICATED TO
H. P. H. BY R. H. B.
TO
R. H. B. BY H. P. H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN WHICH DAVE HALLARD HEARS THE CALL OF THE SEA 3
II THE MYSTERY OF THE BARK _Hatteras_ 21
III OFF TO SEA 38
IV THE DERELICT 57
V IN WHICH THE _Pacific Queen_ LOSES A PRIZE 69
VI BARNES ADVISES AND DAVE RESOLVES 85
VII THE WRECKING OF THE _Kingfisher_ 98
VIII IN WHICH DAVE FINDS A FRIEND 117
IX UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS 131
X CAPTAIN GRUMMITT GETS WET 149
XI “IF EVER YOU GET THE CHANCE――” 164
XII A BROKEN HAWSER 178
XIII WHEREIN TEMPEST STAYS BEHIND 195
XIV MAROONED! 209
XV LAUNCHING THE _Mud Turtle_ 231
XVI ADVENTURES AHEAD 249
XVII INTRODUCING MR. JOE FLAGG 262
XVIII IN WHICH THE _Firefly_ DISAPPEARS 280
XIX LOST ISLAND! 294
XX SHOTS FROM THE BEACH 308
XXI THE PARLEY 326
XXII A MIDNIGHT VENTURE 344
XXIII THE SKELETON IN THE SAND 357
XXIV THE PRIZE IS WON 372
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“The camel, Tempest! The camel!” Dave shouted _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
“Were you ever shipwrecked?” the boy asked 6
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the boy stammered 62
“Here it is――Fanning Island,” Dave announced 172
Dave, Tempest, and the Kanaka stood watching the boat
glide away 206
“Who told you I’d lend it?” he asked acidly 282
Three forms emerged and moved in the direction of the
_Nautilus_ 332
Tempest laughed at the Kanaka’s comical expression of
disappointment 382
LOST ISLAND
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH DAVID HALLARD HEARS THE CALL OF THE SEA
“I dare say you’ve seen a lot of strange things in the South Seas,”
said Dave Hallard, a bit wistfully.
“Aye, there’s queer sights in them latitudes,” agreed the old sailor,
pausing in his task of slapping paint on the side of the ship and
gazing thoughtfully across the sunlit harbor. “Lots an’ lots of ’em,”
he added after a moment as, lighting his pipe again, he went on with
his work. “I suppose you’ve never been to sea, have you?” he asked,
casting a sidelong glance at the boy who for the last half-hour had
been perched on the string-piece of the wharf, his legs dangling above
the oily water.
“Not yet,” answered Dave regretfully.
“An’ I guess you’re seventeen, eh? Or maybe a bit more.”
“Sixteen,” the boy replied. He was, however, tall for sixteen, and
there was the promise of much strength in his broad shoulders. A keen
enthusiasm for outdoor sports had developed his body and, without
doubt, fostered the determination apparent in the firm mouth, the
square chin, and the steady grey eyes.
“Well, when I was your age,” said the mariner, “I was cabin-boy under
old Captain Zebalon Pratt. He was one of your old-fashioned Yankee
skippers, and no mistake, and many’s the dose of rope’s-end I got, my
hearty. Barrin’ the rope’s-end, though, I liked it all well enough.
It’s a hard life, but it’s the only life for me. It gets a hold over
you, but it ain’t a bed of roses at any time. We’ve just finished a
rough enough time this last voyage, after we left Honolulu for home,
and I won’t say there wasn’t a while when I’d have given a month’s pay
to feel solid land under my feet. But it’s forgotten now.”
“Were you ever shipwrecked?” the boy asked.
[Illustration: “Were you ever shipwrecked?” the boy asked]
“Three times. Once off the coast of China, once in the Mediterranean,
and once hard by New Guinea.”
He paused for a moment, while allowing his memory to dwell upon those
vivid moments.
“I don’t know, though,” he went on, “that any of them shipwrecks ever
proved quite so excitin’ as the last shakin’ up we had in this steamer.
When you get an easterly gale blowin’ in that part of the Pacific,
it suttinly comes good and hard. We were making a course ’most due
sou’east when the wind hit us. It came sudden, cuttin’ slices clean
off the surface, and the old ship listed over till I thought she was
a goner. Her port rail was right under water, and the big waves that
broke over us sometimes reached half-way up the funnel. One man must
have gone overboard at once, and the mate was knocked senseless against
a stanchion. He’d have gone too, but he got entangled in some gear, and
after a while we dragged him under shelter.
“It sure was blowin’ for about an hour, and then it eased off quick
like, but we knew what to expect when it started again. Everything
loose had been shot over the side, and one of the boats had been stove
in. We just had time to get ready for the next snorter before it
arrived, and then the old ship was nearly lifted clean out of water.
You’ve heard of seas runnin’ mountains high, p’raps. Well, them seas
was like mountains, and we were slidin’ down the sides same as the
coasters at Coney, only it didn’t cost ten cents a time, and we didn’t
know exactly what was going to happen when we got to the bottom.”
The sailor put down the paint-brush and recharged his pipe with
great care before continuing:
“Give me an old wind-jammer for weatherin’ a gale. You never know
what’s going to happen to these new-fangled steam contraptions. The
ship’s engines was ’most shook to pieces after two days of it, and we
all made up our minds we’d seen the last of New York or anywhere else
on dry land. The ship was leakin’ enough to scare any one, and it was
too rough to use the hand-pumps. We’d drifted some distance out of our
course between Fanning and Christmas Islands when the current and wind
took us under the lee of another island, and that saved us. Before you
could say ‘knife’ we had the anchor down and were ridin’ as comfortable
and snug as any man could want.
“We sheltered for three days under that bit of a place. As a rule, you
don’t get much besides low coral islands in them waters, but there was
a hill on this one. I remember that, from where we were lyin’, part of
the island looked a good deal like a camel’s back.
“We were anchored off a little lagoon, and one day the captain sees
something that might have been a wreck half buried in the sand. When
the gale had spent itself he went ashore in a boat, thinkin’ p’raps
there might be a chance of a bit of salvage. But there wasn’t. It
was an old bark that must have been lost some years ago. We reckoned
she’d struck a reef of rocks outside the lagoon, drifted over them
afterwards, and landed inside the cove where we found her. Only the
stumps of her masts were left. I remember her name. We could just
make it out on a copper plate where the bell had hung. She was the
_Hatteras_.”
“Had the crew been saved?” Dave asked.
“Bless you, I dunno,” replied the mariner. “There’s hundreds and
hundreds of ships breakin’ to pieces off the track of regular traffic,
and only the sea knows what became of the men on ’em; and she don’t
tell. No, siree! she holds her secrets fast.”
“But didn’t the people on the island know?” the boy queried.
There was a comical look in the old man’s eyes as he regarded his
questioner.
“Say, sonny,” he said, “you don’t think there’s trolley-cars runnin’
and department stores on every little two-by-four dump in the South
Seas?”
“I thought there might be a few natives,” Dave suggested.
“Well, sometimes you find a bunch of them stoppin’ on an island, but
we didn’t see anything livin’ there except a few turtles and sea-birds
that knew nothing and cared less about how the _Hatteras_ got there.
You never know what luck is comin’ your way when you’re a sailor.
It might be our turn to get piled up on a rock after we leave here
to-night at high water.”
Somebody on deck called to the mariner. Dave, with a curious feeling,
watched him clamber over the side and disappear. At high water the old
salt was to begin a new series of adventures, all with the smack of the
sea in them. In his imagination the boy depicted the mariner undergoing
hairbreadth escapes and encountering perils of every description, all
of which he would overcome so that when the ship reached port he could
sit contentedly in a swinging cradle, painting the hull, and applying
innumerable matches to a most obstinate pipe.
Dave came of sea-going stock, the Hallards having followed the sea for
generations. Dave’s father created a record in his early manhood by
driving a clipper from Hong Kong to San Francisco in thirty-three days;
and old Phineas Hallard, David’s grandfather, had been a pioneer in the
copra trade with the West Indies.
From one window of his home in Brooklyn the boy could obtain a
panoramic view of the ceaseless traffic in the harbor to and from New
York――big, stately mail-boats with tugs puffing fussily at their
side; mysterious, bird-like sailing-ships with crowded canvas; strings
of barges in tow; rusty and lazy tramp steamers homeward bound after
wonderful voyages to foreign lands. The sight of these messengers of
the deep stirred something in the blood of Dave Hallard. He liked
to go down to the wharf on his way home from school and drift into
conversation, just as he had done to-day, with men who had sailed to
distant ports. On this occasion he had been lucky. The old mariner with
the paint-brush had been full of reminiscences; and for the first time,
Dave, as he walked home, felt that the glamour of the sea was something
real to him――something that was bound to have a vital influence over
him. Hitherto his life had been wrapped up in school, sports, and
his home; but now it was dawning on him that there was a great world
outside that in which he had moved so far, a world in which he would,
sooner or later, take his place. Some day he, too, might stand on a
ship scudding before the breeze, under the wonderful Southern Cross
where flying-fish skimmed the water and turtles lived on desert
islands. He threw out his chest a little and sniffed the crisp air
of early spring straight from the broad Atlantic. It seemed good. He
felt a vague regret that he was not with the old mariner on the tramp
steamer, learning the mysteries of sails and halyards and hovering on
the brink of great unknown adventures.
Dave was quiet when he entered the house. His Aunt Martha, who had been
a mother to him ever since he could remember, glanced at him curiously
several times, thinking something was worrying the boy, for he was
usually bubbling over with good spirits.
“What’s amiss, Dave?” she asked at last, while preparing supper.
“You’re not sick, are you?”
“I’m all right,” he said, coming out of a reverie with a start. “I was
only thinking, Aunt Martha, what do people do when――when they want to
be sailors?”
“For the land’s sake, this boy has got it too!” she exclaimed, with a
touch of pathos in her voice. “All the Hallards go the same way, and
there’s no stopping them as soon as they get out of short pants.”
Dave’s thoughts were far away. The sting of salt air on his cheeks that
afternoon, and the sailor’s reminiscences, had stirred him strangely.
Hitherto he had not been directly thrown into association much with
sailors. True, there were in his home a dozen distinctive signs that
his father had spent many years at sea――a full-rigged four-master
careening over on a painted ocean, under a glass case, in the parlor;
two assagais and a knobkerrie picked up at some South African port;
a compass and an old brass sextant kept in a sacred place; a pair of
powerful binoculars; strangely carved figures which might at one time
have been idols in some heathenish land. But these relics had been
collected years before. Andrew Hallard gave up the sea soon after Dave
was born.
“Supper is ready,” said Aunt Martha, resignedly. “Go and tell your dad.”
Dave obeyed mechanically.
“The sea is calling this boy already,” Miss Hallard said a little later
as she served their frugal meal. “He’s puzzling how to get afloat now.”
Captain Hallard cast an uneasy glance at his son. He had always
expected this eventually, but somehow the possibility of the wrench had
seemed a long way off.
“There’s time enough to think about that, lad,” he declared; but even
as he said it he knew the boy’s days ashore must be numbered now. Once,
long ago, he, and generations of his menfolk, had passed through the
same phase.
Dave was Captain Hallard’s only son, and there was a strong affinity
between them. The man dreaded the moment when his boy must go, only to
return occasionally between long voyages, but he knew the power with
which the sea must be calling Dave.
There had been a time when a business career had seemed probable for
Dave. That was when Andrew Hallard first gave up the sea. He had made
a considerable fortune by sea trading and wise investment. Everything
appeared rosy in those days, and if Captain Hallard had rested on
his laurels, all would have been well. He was a true sailor and knew
his work thoroughly, but success had made him ambitious for greater
things. The business of underwriting ships is one which needs not only
a close knowledge of shipping, but also considerable skill in the
world of finance. It appeared, however, to Andrew Hallard to offer
excellent opportunities, and he launched forth into it. For a while
luck went with him, but one or two of his speculations came to grief.
In order to recoup himself of these losses he plunged a shade deeper,
taking risks about which more experienced men would have hesitated. At
this critical moment two vessels were lost, and in order to pay the
insurance he had to raise a mortgage on his own property which left
him financially crippled. It did not take him long to discover that
without the power of money behind him his position in business amounted
to nothing, and he had to hunt for the command of another ship. On
his first voyage, however, rheumatism, brought on by long exposure
in bad weather, left him unfit for the one profession he had at his
finger-tips. Then he was compelled to settle down ashore and share his
home with his sister Martha.
Aunt Martha had a very small income and few relatives. She was a
prim, elderly lady with a profound distrust of anything in the way of
speculation. Several times before Andrew Hallard’s crash arrived she
warned him that a bird in the hand was safer than ten in a bush, but
when he came back, almost a physical wreck, to his motherless boy, her
heart softened, and she threw in her lot with his. It was sometimes a
struggle for them to make ends meet, but her brother Andrew had been
good to her in his successful days, so it gave her additional pleasure
to help him now.
The bitterest blow was when his little estate on Long Island went――the
home he had worked for during so many years. It was just the sort of
place a sea-captain might picture, during his travels, as that in
which he could spend the autumn of his life contentedly. When it was
built, and he went to live there, he called the house “Journey’s End.”
It was perched high on a cliff, facing the sea he loved, and while he
lived there he spent many hours watching the distant ships through a
telescope. Once or twice in recent years he had taken Dave with him to
look at the old place, drawn to it by happy memories, but the visit
always made him unhappy.
“Journey’s End” was now occupied by Stephen Strong, an old friend of
Captain Hallard, who had come to the rescue when the mortgage was
foreclosed. Mr. Strong was a New Englander, and when the time came for
him to take possession he did so regretfully, declaring that at any
time the fortunes of the Hallards changed once more he would be willing
to leave the house.
“I’m a wanderer, anyway,” he said, “so I guess this won’t be the end of
my journey. Besides, I was bred and born in Gloucester, and when I drop
my anchor the last time it ought to be there. Cheer up, Hallard, you’ll
be heaving me out of this place yet.”
Mr. Strong often made some similar remark when Captain Hallard
revisited the house on the cliff, and Captain Hallard laughed at such
cheery optimism, for he knew his days of fortune-hunting were over.
Dave, however, was imbued with a youthful notion of retrieving the
family fortunes, and he realized that as it must be many years before
he could obtain command of a ship himself, the sooner he got to work
the better. A few days after his encounter with the ancient mariner he
spoke to his father on the subject.
“Tush, lad, what’s put such notions into your head?” Andrew Hallard
asked, anxious to draw from the boy his real feelings.
“I don’t think I should like to be anything but a sailor, Dad,” the boy
said. Then he told his father of his talk with the old salt. Captain
Hallard listened, and nodded. It came to him as an echo of his own
boyhood. Thus encouraged, Dave warmed up, and repeated some of the
sailor’s stories. When he came to the discovery of the _Hatteras_ on a
desert island his father turned quickly in his chair.
“_Hatteras, Hatteras_,” he repeated, wrinkling his brows. “I seem to
remember something about a ship called the _Hatteras_, years ago, but I
don’t recall exactly what for the moment.”
He drummed his finger-tips on the edge of the chair and looked up at
the ceiling.
“Why!” he exclaimed after a pause; “wasn’t there a ship called the
_Hatteras_ disappeared once? I think I’ve got something about it in my
book of newspaper cuttings. Let me see.”
He foraged in a drawer, fished out an old collection of clippings, and
turned over the leaves.