THE MYSTERY OF THE BARK HATTERAS
“Here she is,” he said at last. “This can’t be the same _Hatteras_ that
you’re talking about though, because they searched everywhere for her
at the time.”
Adjusting his glasses, Captain Hallard read:
“A strange mystery of the sea is recalled now that the bark
_Hatteras_ is definitely given up for lost. Six months have
elapsed since she was last heard of in the Pacific Ocean, and
the owners have no alternative but to regard her as sunk. The
vessel herself was fully insured, but not the cargo, and it now
appears that the latter included one small shipment which was
of considerable value, consisting of a quantity of platinum. A
good deal of money has been spent, since she was first reported
missing, in searching for any trace of the _Hatteras_, but no
sign of her has been discovered.
“A curious feature of the story is that no man knows, or ever
will know, exactly where this valuable consignment came from
originally. Possibly it was mined in New Guinea, where platinum
is known to exist, or possibly in some part of Australia, but
that must always remain a matter of conjecture.
“About a year ago Messrs. Jacobs & Krantz of San Francisco,
dealers in precious metals, received a letter from one Vance
Peters, written at Sydney, New South Wales. Peters stated that
he had discovered a rich deposit of platinum, and had worked
on it for two years until the supply was exhausted. He said
he had melted it down into bars, had deposited it in a Sydney
bank, and now wanted Jacobs & Krantz to market it for him, as
facilities for disposing of it in Sydney were not good.
“The San Francisco firm consented to handle the transaction,
and in due course received a letter from Peters announcing
that he was sailing from Sydney on the _Hatteras_, bringing
the platinum with him. There the known history of the platinum
almost ends. After the _Hatteras_ put to sea she was spoken
twice between Sydney and Honolulu. Then there swept over that
part of the Pacific the succession of devastating northeasterly
gales which wreaked havoc among shipping there six months ago.
Vessels of all kinds were blown far out of their course, and
many of them were lost. The last heard of the _Hatteras_ was
a report from the ship _Minerva_ that she had passed within a
mile of her in the neighbourhood of Fanning Island. The bark
was then partly dismasted and flying signals of distress. The
_Minerva_ herself was in great difficulties, and was unable
to go to her assistance. From that moment the _Hatteras_
became a thing of mystery. It is probable that she foundered
with all hands in water a mile deep. There are many islands,
mostly low-lying coral reefs, in that part of the Pacific. In
the faint hope that the treasure-ship might have gone on one
of these, Messrs. Jacobs & Krantz arranged with a vessel that
was due to pass there to explore the region thoroughly, and
the captains of other ships were offered a reward for definite
news. But nothing has ever been heard of the ill-fated vessel
or those who were on her.”
While his father was reading the old newspaper cutting Dave Hallard sat
motionless, his hands gripping the arms of the chair tightly.
“That sailor told me the _Hatteras_ they saw was near Fanning Island,
Dad,” he said eagerly.
Captain Hallard looked up quickly.
“That’s queer,” he said. “I wonder if she could have been the same
ship.”
“Well, if she was, Dad, and nobody’s got that platinum out of her――”
“_If_,” Captain Hallard interrupted, laughing. “I guess there are lots
of ifs. To begin with, your sailor probably was spinning a yarn, and
even if he did see the old wreck of the _Hatteras_, she must have been
nearly smashed to pieces long ago. Everything in her would be washed
away by now. Besides, where was this island he saw her on?”
“I remember he mentioned Fanning Island when you read it just now,”
said Dave, “and besides that he said they were sailing between there
and an island called Christmas when they came across the wreck of the
_Hatteras_.”
“That’s a pretty wide field,” commented Captain Hallard. “Those two
places are hundreds of miles apart, and you might spend a lifetime
hunting about there for what you were after.”
“He also said there was a hill,” declared Dave, as the ancient
mariner’s story came back to his memory, “that looked like the back of
a camel.”
“You’re sure he didn’t say a cow, or a rabbit?” Captain Hallard asked
jocularly. “I’m afraid, Dave, he was having fun with you.”
“I don’t think so,” Dave replied quietly. He had the greatest faith in
his father’s judgment, but on the other hand he had a vivid memory of
the old sailor’s simple directness.
Aunt Martha, who had been sitting knitting industriously, as usual,
throughout the conversation, made no comment, and registered a mental
note of the fact that Dave was growing more like his father every
day. The Hallards did not have those steady grey eyes for nothing. It
had been inflexible devotion to one purpose which enabled the retired
sea-captain to amass his original fortune, and Dave was already
exhibiting the same capacity for sticking to his guns, whatever object
he wished to achieve. And she knew that the boy’s determination to go
to sea would never leave him until the salt water was rolling under
him. This new notion that had entered his head, of treasure-ships lying
waiting to disgorge their precious stores, would most likely add a
romantic tinge to his desire, making certain that still another of the
Hallards was to take to the roving life.
A day or two later, after supper, Dave produced a school atlas, and
pored over it with a pencil and paper, measuring off distances.
“Dad, how long would it take for a bark to sail a hundred and fifty
miles?” he asked.
“About a thousand years if there wasn’t any wind.”
“Yes, but with a fair wind?”
“Oh, maybe a day or two. Why?”
“Then it only takes a day or two to go from Fanning Island to Christmas
Island in a bark in a fair wind?” said Dave.
“It depends how long you waste on the way picking up that treasure,”
replied Captain Hallard, with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t you worry,
my lad. Hard dollars don’t come like that. You’re just as likely to
bump up in Broadway against a solid chunk of gold so big that it holds
up the traffic as anybody is to rescue a fortune that’s been lost in
the sea for years.”
“I know that, Dad,” Dave agreed. “But it does seem an awful shame that
the man who spent two years mining the stuff should never have got here
with it safely. I asked Billy Tench yesterday to find out from his
father what platinum is worth. Billy’s father works in a jewelry store.
I wrote down what he said to show you. How much do you guess Mr. Peters
would have got for the stuff if he had reached America with it?”
Captain Hallard puffed at his pipe and wrinkled his brows in an effort
of mental arithmetic.
“I suppose somewhere between ten and twenty dollars an ounce,” he
guessed.
“Wrong,” corrected Dave. “At that time it was worth over thirty dollars
an ounce.”
“Rough luck on Peters,” commented Captain Hallard. He knew by bitter
experience what it felt like to lose a fortune.
“But that isn’t all,” Dave went on. “The price of platinum has gone
up to three times its old value since then. That means if any one
were lucky enough to find the treasure now, it would be worth about a
hundred dollars an ounce.”
Captain Hallard raised his eyebrows.
“I vote we start an expedition to find treasure-ships, Dave,” he said,
wincing as his rheumatism gave an extra twinge. “Then we’ll be able to
come back and buy Aunt Martha that new coffee-percolator she’s set her
heart on. Then we might go over to Europe and hunt up some of those
Spanish galleons. There were lots of ’em sunk, half full of gold coins.
I’m badly in need of a new pipe.”
“Yes, and we’d buy ‘Journey’s End’ back, eh, Dad?” Dave suggested.
“Aye, lad,” his father agreed, with a sigh. The loss of his home on the
cliff was still a very sore point to Captain Hallard. “But don’t ever
get such notions of easy money into your head. You have a lot of hard
work to put in at school yet before you earn your first cent.”
“How soon can I go to sea?” Dave asked abruptly.
“Not until this time next year,” said his father. “I don’t suppose
you’ll ever rest contentedly until you have tried it out and found
that a sailor’s life isn’t a bit as they say it is in story-books. I
went through it. I thought I was going to have a wonderful time when
I joined my first ship. She was a square-rigger, of the old-fashioned
type. I remember I had a coat with some brass buttons on it, and I
had an idea that I should spend most of my time on the poop, or the
fo’c’sle-head, looking through a long telescope. But they set me on to
peeling potatoes, and kept me at it though I was so seasick I didn’t
care whether I lived or died. Then the mate told me to dress up, as I
had to do something special for the captain. I put on my best duds,
including the coat with the brass buttons, and they started me on the
job of tarring the rigging. By the time I’d got through with that, and
after I’d upset the tar-bucket when the ship gave an extra hard roll,
I was so messed up from head to foot I hardly knew my own name, though
I’d learnt that sailoring didn’t consist chiefly of looking smart in
brass buttons and navigating the ship.”
“But you didn’t give up the sea for years and years after that, did
you?” the boy persisted.
“No, I’ll admit that, though there was many a time I’d have done ’most
anything to get back home and put on some dry clothes. The grub wasn’t
too good, either, in those days, and the older hands got the pick of
what was going. Ship-owners don’t believe in overfeeding their crews.
The men might get too fat to shin up the rigging if they had three
square meals a day, so they’re given ship’s biscuits to keep ’em in
condition and cut expenses down.”
Dave plied his father with questions about life afloat, and Captain
Hallard gave him as accurate a picture as he could of routine on
board ship. To the boy it all seemed fascinating, including the hard,
dirty work and the “salt horse” which, he gathered, together with the
extremely hard biscuits, formed the staple diet on many craft.
The only thing worrying him was that he had to start at high school and
wait a whole year before he would be allowed to eat “salt horse” and
feel the motion of the boat under him as she nosed her way out of the
harbor, past that flashing light in the distance at Sandy Hook, and
carried him to those entrancing distant lands of which he had heard so
much.
School seemed a dull affair during the next two months when such
radiant possibilities lay in store. Dave went on with his studies,
but his heart was not in them. Every day, after dark, he spent hours
at the window from which he could see the lights of passing vessels,
and in the afternoons he haunted the wharves, where screaming winches
were hauling bales and cases from the mysterious depths of different
vessels. The smell of tarred ropes became a thing of joy to him, and
when, on occasions, the mate or “bo’sun” of some ship invited him on
board to look around after they had had a long chat, Dave thrilled with
a new delight. The snug cabins and berths, not always as clean or tidy
as they might have been, were a source of infinite wonder.
Though he did not realize it, Dave was fanning the flame within him.
At home he came out with nautical terms which he had picked up, to
the great distress of Aunt Martha, for, to her, it was clearly the
beginning of the end. Secretly she had always treasured the hope
that her brother would put his foot down firmly and prevent Dave from
risking his life on the sea, and occasionally, even now, she would have
a passage of arms with Captain Hallard on the subject.
“Let the boy have a taste of it,” he always declared. “You wouldn’t
bring ducks up without water, and the Hallards are worse than any ducks
I ever knew, only they want salt water. He’ll go whether I let him or
not, so I might just as well let him, when he’s old enough.”
Aunt Martha bent over her knitting on these occasions, making the
needles fly and missing stitches, because you can’t see to knit, even
with spectacles, when your eyes are full of tears.
“Don’t worry, Martha dear,” Andrew Hallard said once, when this
happened. “He won’t come to any harm, and if I had my time over again,
I’d be a sailor just the same, so we can’t blame him. Now, stop crying.
It’s a healthy life at sea, after all; and to listen to you, one would
think every mariner who left the wharf went straight to Davy Jones’s
locker as soon as he got into deep water.”
Soon after the summer vacation began, Dave stood on one of the wharves
within a mile of his home and watched a trim-looking steamer sidle to
her berth. She was low in the water with a heavy cargo. Some time after
the gangway was let down and traffic on it had started, an undersized
youth, whose pockets bulged strangely, strolled casually ashore. He
was about Dave’s age, had red hair, and an extremely dirty face.
Something about the boy attracted Dave’s attention. He noticed that
the red-headed youth looked quickly to the right and left, and then,
dodging behind a truck, began to walk hurriedly away from the ship.
Dave stepped across the wharf so that the owner of the red hair would
have to pass close to him. The boy was glancing over his shoulder and
nearly bumped into Dave.
“Hello, kid, which is the way to New York?” he asked jerkily.
“It’s miles from here. This is Brooklyn,” Dave said.
“Do you know the way around here?” the boy asked. “I want to get out of
this quick.”
“Come with me,” said Dave, growing more interested. He had learned
every turn and corner of the docks. Three minutes later they were in a
busy street, and the boy seemed to breathe more freely. His face began
to wear a triumphant smile.
“That’s fine!” he said. “I’ll be safe now.”
“Safe from what?”
“I’ve skipped the ship. I was scared to death somebody would spot me.
I’ve got all my things in my pockets.”
“What did you skip the ship for?” Dave asked, hugely pleased at being
concerned, even in a small way, with a nautical adventure.
“Wanted to see America,” responded the youth. “Don’t you let on that
you’ve seen me. So long.”
A moment later the owner of the red hair and dirty face was swallowed
up in Brooklyn, and Dave went back to the steamer with new interest. An
idea had occurred to him. It was only a vague idea, but it concerned
the fact that he felt perfectly capable of doing anything that
red-headed, undersized chap had done on the ship; and moreover, the
ship was now short of a boy.
A curious tight feeling gripped him at the throat. For the space of
perhaps five minutes he stood still, thinking hard, and then he boldly
walked down the gangway.
“Can I see the captain, please?” he said to a tall man who was standing
on deck talking to a companion.
“What do you want the captain for?”
“I want to see him on――on business,” said Dave.
The man looked down into the boy’s grey eyes which showed neither fear
nor disrespect.
“Well, sonny, I’m the captain,” he said. “What is it?”
“I guess you want a boy, sir,” said Dave. “The other one’s gone. I’d
like his job.”