at work until everything on the ship which could hold water was full.
Then all dropped to sleep in their tracks.
II
AND THE POLITE CANNON OF WEISS NICHT
Now it happened that, by reason of the admiral’s recent insomnia, he
_did_ wake first—having slept but four hundred years and some odd months
and weeks and days. And as he woke (the next morning, as he supposed) he
swore with ecstasy—so fine did he feel.
“Wake up, you lazy lunkers!” he cried gayly to his men, making a
prodigious yawn himself. “I feel like a fighting cock—” or words to that
effect. I am not a nautical person. At all events he went on addressing
them: “Unless all signs fail, something will happen this good day. By my
bay mare’s currycomb, I pity the craft that the Tonans falls in with
to-day. For, having drunken, we now need to eat, and there is not a rat
aboard the Tonans that might serve us for food. Up with you!”
A few of the men who, like Ruhet, did not sleep well, struggled to
wakefulness at his voice. But, as to the most of them, it required his
heavy boot, and his nearly as heavy hand, to kick and cuff them to their
senses. However, at last, all were awake, and so good had been the
admiral’s rest that his temper still kept. And this was saying much for
Ruhet.
Weiss Nicht, the second officer, came for orders, scarcely able to
conceal his yawn, for he was one of the crew who was never troubled with
insomnia, notwithstanding the fact that Ruhet had made it fashionable.
“Up anchor and away, Weiss Nicht. Some ship must furnish us meat to-day,
and we will give them water in exchange.”
Each took a final drink from the spring, which now flowed full and free
once more, and then went to their stations with as good a will as Ruhet
himself. And it required this to get the sleepy ship under way.
For, having once drunk of the Spring of The Thousand Years, one is
immune; its waters have no more power to cause sleep, but, on the
contrary, produce such a delightful state of exhilaration as to approach
mild intoxication. It was in this blissful state that they finally set
sail.
Now, they were scarce an hour under way when this Weiss Nicht, who was
the gunner’s mate on board, and many other things at other times and
places, sighted, hull down, on the port quarter a small, strange craft
painted green and scarcely to be distinguished from the water itself.
This he reported, as was his duty, to his superior, Nicht Wahr.
“Hah!” cried the proud and apparently learned Nicht Wahr, “it is a
rowing barge upon which some one has built a small cabin to float about
in. It is good for the sun and the rain—is a cabin like that.”
“And the night dews are bad,” agreed the gibing Weiss Nicht.
“Go on,” commanded Nicht Wahr, who hated the servile but critical second
officer and gunner’s mate aboard. “They have no food. They can be of no
use to us. To your station, Nicht!”
“But it moves, you fools!” thundered Ruhet, who had come on deck in time
to hear the contention. “And it has neither sails like the Egyptian
craft nor oars like the Roman. I wish I had it!”
“If your excellency will pardon Nicht Wahr,” said the apparently learned
one, with a great bow, “he begs leave to doubt that it moves—much.”
“Hang you! Haven’t I got a couple of eyes?”
Now Nicht Wahr only bowed, but as he did so he turned and smiled
pityingly to Weiss Nicht, as who should say: “Let him have his way. But,
oh! Moves! Like this ship, for instance!”
And perhaps that is the reason he only answered (when Ruhet had said
imperiously), “Well, then?”
“Excellency, perhaps they have in the hold little wheels turned by the
rowers. There was talk of such a thing in Byzantium last year. Perhaps a
knot a day.”
Now there had been no such talk at Byzantium. It was the reductio ad
absurdum of the haughty and apparently learned Wahr. He winked at Nicht.
But Ruhet insisted all the more because of that saying of Wahr’s: “Ha-a!
Is that so? It must be a pretty kind of toy, then. I want it.”
“So you shall,” said the second officer. “For does not the great admiral
get everything he wants?”
“I have had no breakfast!”
“But you shall! Ay, before the day is done!” supplemented Wahr.
“Well, stop talking like a dictionary and get the toy for me. Then we’ll
chase for food. Grace before meat, you know, aha, aha, ha!”
Nicht Wahr cast upon the unhappy Weiss Nicht a look of superior hatred;
that he had by his impertinence rushed in where he had feared to tread,
and had brought forth that bitter humor of Hier Ruhet’s.
“I desire, sir, that hereafter you will remain at your station to await
my orders, or those of his excellency,” he said, “_I_ will get the toy
for him.”
“Oh, Wahr, tut, tut!” laughed the admiral, in high glee, because of the
success of his humor. “Oh, Nicht, tut, tut! You must live as brothers
aboard.”
“Sir,” said the haughty next in command, “the discipline must be
maintained!”
“Well, since I think of it, that is so,” admitted Hier Ruhet. “Get
along, Nicht!”
Whereupon Nicht Wahr haughtily commanded Weiss Nicht in addition, that a
gun be fired as politely as possible across the bows of the little
craft, by the way of invitation for her to heave to—since the admiral
desired her—
“In case she should be moving,” he said, with a great bow to the
admiral.
“Politely, hah?” cried Ruhet. “I think that is a mistake. It is always
better to skeer ’em. Hang politeness in a cannon!”
“It is not for that purpose, sir,” answered that wise mate, “that I do
it—to be polite. But in order that we commit no act of piracy on the
high seas.”
Then Wahr struck an attitude in which his back was very concave and his
feet far apart. For he was a sea lawyer, he said.
III
THE SOUP-SPRING
“Thunder and blazes!” cried Ruhet, looking about, “who will know it?
There is not a soul in sight.”
“The law of nations first, sir. Second, our conscience. Both are
everywhere.”
“Well, where are they?” and Ruhet looked about again as if they could
somewhere be seen. “Hang bridle,” he cried to the gunner, “you just fire
and don’t bother about being polite with your gun. If conscience and law
are anywhere about here, they’ll let us know.”
The gunner did so at once, for he hated the first officer as much as the
first officer hated him, when he bothered about hating anybody, and he
loved his bluff and straight-forward admiral.
At once there broke out from the small craft a multitude of flags.
“I told you so, excellency,” said Nicht Wahr.
“Well, tell me again,” said Ruhet. “Hanged if I know what it was. I have
a short memory.”
But the first officer held a haughty silence.
Now the first flags were exchanged for others, nearly all of redder hue.
“By the currycomb of Red Joshua, I think they are poking fun at us.
Regular sport! If I were sure of that—”
“Pardon me, they are not, excellency,” said Nicht Wahr.
“They are so,” cried the savage admiral. “And by the roof of my father’s
mouth, no one ever poked fun at Hier Ruhet and lived to poke more!”
“Let us have mercy upon them, master,” said the hypocritical Nicht Wahr,
devoutly crossing his breast. “They are but children. This is but a
child’s toy, as I told you. We must not kill children.” His tenderness
appealed strongly to the admiral.
“No, nor cats,” answered Ruhet, at once convinced, “for both are
unlucky. Especially for the children and cats—ha, ha! And, anyhow, I am
getting hungrier every minute. That water is saline, I suppose. It makes
one thirst. Go ahead. Hang the toy—I’m done wanting it.”
Now the cunning Nicht Wahr noticed that the little craft had broken out
several flags of extremely sanguinary red, and he knew that he would be
asked what it meant.
To beguile the admiral while he thought of some explanation he said:
“Master, I have heard that near this spring of water there is another
from which runs soup. Beautiful—thick—soup!”
Ruhet at once turned from the little craft—forgetting all about it—and
shouted, “Where?”
But meanwhile the cunning Wahr had whispered to the much less cunning
Nicht, “What do you suppose all that red means?”
Now, Nicht was one of those persons who are wiser than they seem. More
there be who seem wiser than they are—including the apparently learned
Wahr. But not of that sort was Nicht. Nicht was simple, yet learned.
“Sir,” he said, saluting, “that is a declaration of war. All savage
nations use red to declare war.”
“What is all that red?” asked Ruhet, at this very moment. At once Wahr
turned to Ruhet, as if he had got it all out of himself, and said,
“Sire, that means war!”
“War?” cried Ruhet. “A dare? Ho! ho! ho!”
And they fell laughing into each other’s arms.
When Ruhet could stop laughing, he went on: “Well, we’ll give ’em some
war! Ho! ho! Then we’ll look for that soup-spring. Who told you about
it, Wahr? Not to hurt, you know, but just to skeer ’em. I like to skeer
people. We’ll soon be on ’em. We are going a great gait, anyhow. What do
you suppose it is, Wahr?”
“About six knots, excellency,” said the great Wahr.
“Bah! By my mother’s wig, we must be doing at least thirty by the way we
are approaching the toy!”
“Sire, six is our limit.”
Nicht Wahr looked and was puzzled nevertheless. The distance between
them was certainly lessening rapidly. As he went to calculate their
speed upon the slate, Weiss Nicht stepped up to the admiral and said,
“She is approaching _us_ at that rate, excellency.”
“Impossible,” stormed the admiral. “No ship with sails can go as fast as
ours—let alone this little nin-comninny, with none at all. The Tonans is
the limit, sir. But, all the same, I’ve changed my mind again—I want it.
I will have it! Don’t go away from it. Port your helm an ell. Weiswasser
[to the steersman at the wheel], I really want the thing. For, by the
tail of the ship’s cat, it gets prettier and prettier as we come nearer
to it.”
“And so you shall,” said the cunning Nicht Wahr, returning, as a slap at
the assurance of the impotent Weiss Nicht, in his absence.
Now the craft was near enough to show a gilt name on her bow.
“Nicht Wahr,” said Ruhet, “your eyes are better than mine, and you have
swallowed the dictionary; what is she?”
“Can you spell?” whispered Nicht Wahr to Weiss Nicht.
Thereupon Weiss Nicht, who was so much wiser than he seemed, spelled
into the ear of Nicht Wahr, who was not, “New Amsterdam.”
“Why,” said Nicht Wahr, “it has the name of that Dutch place old
Columbus discovered some time ago, New Amsterdam. It must be near
here—pooh! I knew it!” He looked all about.
“And the children are adrift and are asking for succor—” cried Ruhet.
“That’s it. Poor things!”
IV
KNOCK WOOD
At that moment a deep and terrible bass voice boomed all about them,
asking, “Tonans ahoy?”
Ruhet nearly fell to the deck. Then he looked about at the men grouped
near, in displeasure.
“Who was that?” he demanded. “Let there be no more of it. You all know
the state of my nerves. Insomnia is awful on the nerv—”
Again came the voice: “You ignored our signals. Unless you give
assurance to the contrary, we will regard you as pirates and take you.”
By this time there was no doubt that the voice came from the little boat
a mile away.
“Well, what is it?” asked Ruhet, of his wise man. “It cannot be a human
voice.”
“It is a machine,” said Nicht Wahr. “I heard of it at Byzantium.”
(He always spoke of Byzantium when he didn’t know.)
“It is English,” said Weiss Nicht.
“And what is that?” asked Ruhet.
“A language,” answered Nicht Wahr, pompously. “Spoken by a machine.”
“What does it say?”
“It says ‘Good morning,’ excellency,” answered Nicht Wahr, “and ‘How do
you do?’”
“It says ‘Surrender or I’ll shoot,’” said Weiss Nicht, gruffly. “I
understand English.”
Wahr sulked magnificently.
Ruhet believed Nicht.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed. “That’s a good joke. Keep it up. Tell ’em to
surrender first and set the example. Give ’em the port broadside. By my
mother’s lost gold tooth, a good joke—give ’em the whole side.”
The broadside was fired and immediately something clipped away the
Tonans’s figurehead.
“Now, who did that?” roared Ruhet. “Nicht, bring the gunner here who was
so careless as that, and, by my father’s smoke-pipe, I’ll teach him a
lesson.”
But alarm now seized upon Ruhet, and he forgot the figurehead. The
little craft was seen to be sinking.
“Wahr,” he cried, “you are an infernal blunderer. You have let them hit
that little thing, and she is going down. Man a boat and get the
youngsters out of her, you land lunkers!”
Before this could be done the boat had entirely disappeared.
“It was Nicht,” said Wahr.
“Never mind now,” said Ruhet, “it’s too late. She’s gone and we’ve lost
a fine toy and some children through your thickheadedness. Stand by to
pick up the floaters.”
But, almost immediately, from the starboard quarter, came the voice they
had heard before.
“Tonans ahoy! Have you got enough?”
“Well, by the currycomb—” began Ruhet, “how did this ship turn clean
about without my noticing it? Look here, Wahr, do you see that hump on
her?”
Nicht Wahr said that he did.
“Well, by the crackle of the galley fire, I believe that’s a tin gun in
there! It’s a toy warship. Aha, ha, ha!”
“One gun,” laughed the happy Wahr, with his admiral. “What luck!”
“Knock wood!” cried Ruhet, who was superstitious. They did this.
“Have—you—got—enough?” cried the great voice.
“What’s he saying, Wahr?” asked Ruhet.
But Wahr hastened below to order the boat to pick up the children (so as
not to show the admiral how little he knew) and delayed his return, so
that no one—not even Nicht—could tell him.
“No matter,” said Ruhet, “give her the starboard broadside. And be sure
that you don’t hit her. I don’t want her spoiled. Give her fits! Skeer
her so terribly that she’ll come up like a little man and shake hands
with us. Then we’ll have her. And don’t be too dinked polite!” And the
great admiral poked his elbow into the ribs of his great gunner and
laughed. “My, but I am hungry!” he went on. “She may have a little
luncheon aboard. Enough for one.”
Wahr, just arrived on deck, haughtily gave Nicht the already given order
to fire. But the impertinent, though accurate, Nicht said, “Our guns are
not carrying that far, excellency,” ignoring Wahr for his superior.
“What?” cried Ruhet, “you rump of a sacred cow! There is not a gun on
this ship that will not shoot half a mile and kill at that, Wahr!”
“Precisely, sire,” said Wahr, odiously.
“Excellency, you must take my word or his,” cried the hot Nicht. “You
cannot take both. One of us don’t know.”
“Take your choice,” said Wahr to him.
“The little ship is precisely a mile away,” said Nicht. “I have a good
eye.”
“Then,” snarled the cunning Wahr, “if that be true, your majesty”—he
would call the admiral such things sometimes as if by mistake when he
was about to ask for something—or wanted to puff his superior up with
pride—“your majesty will be certain to accomplish what you wish—the
skeering and not the destruction of the plaything.”
“By the curry—Fire—we are leaving her behind!”
The thirty-six guns spoke at the same moment with a noise which seemed
to rend earth and sky—such was the practice of the gunners of the Tonans
under the accurate and admirable Weiss Nicht.
“Now, then,” cried the Wise One, leaping to the bulwarks, “we will see
whether I am right—or Nicht.”
V
AND SHOOT TO MAKE HOLES
The little boat had disappeared.
“Aha!” cried Wahr, “aha!” and again “aha!”
Weiss Nicht only turned to port and waited for the smoke to drift away.
“But your dinked being right has lost me my toy. Dink you, Wahr.”
From the port bow came the voice of Nicht.
“Here is your toy, all O.K., sir.”
True enough, there she was!
“Wahr,” thundered Ruhet, “you are sailing this ship. What _are_ you
doing to her? Have you got her on a pivot? How does she turn in a second
without me knowing anything about it?”
“Excellency, perhaps she has lost her rudder. I will have Weiswasser
look. She certainly turns, as you say, without us knowing it.”
But the truth is that Wahr was troubled in heart as he took the wheel
that Weiswasser might go aft. For, unless the wind had changed suddenly,
the ship could not have veered. He began to think of witchcraft.
“Excellency,” said Weiss Nicht, who always had a better chance when Wahr
was at the wheel or below, “our ship did not turn. That one dived under
us.”
“What!” roared Ruhet. “By the beard of a turnip, what do you take me
for? Wahr, did you _hear_ that? Aha, ha, ha!”
“I saw her sink on the starboard side, sir, and I saw her rise on the
port side, sir,” said Nicht, doggedly. “She is a magical ship.”
“Nicht, let me tell you a little secret,” said the admiral, with a
laugh, “when a ship sinks she sinks, and there’s an end to her—magic or
no magic. The devil himself could not raise her again—let alone herself.
But you would have me believe that you have seen this miracle. Well, go
forward and tell in the fo’castle, no one is there!”
“Well, sir, you’ll see, sir,” said Weiss Nicht. “If I were you, I would
fly from that craft. There is some magic there. Excellency, I believe it
was none of our own gunners who clipped off the figurehead—I don’t see
how they could—but that magic thing.”
“Aha, ha, ha!” laughed Ruhet. “How, Nicht? Did she fire herself at us?
That’s as easy as sinking herself and rising again. And let me tell you
another little secret, Nicht. No cannon can be fired without smoke. And
we have seen no smoke from her—even if she were big enough to carry a
gun that would reach us. Why, Nicht, look at that gun there. With that
on the deck with the toy she could not float a minute. Nicht—Nicht—poor
chap—you must report to the doctor at once, aha, ha, ha!”
Nicht, much hurt, left the deck, and Ruhet laughed until the tears ran
down his face.
But he stopped suddenly at last, for the ship trembled for an instant,
and then it was known that the rudder post had been clipped away. And
Weiswasser had gone with it.
Out on the water the little boat sat as placidly as a swan.
This was so serious that Ruhet would have stormed at the gunners. But he
remembered that none of his guns had been fired. Besides, he had no
time. Another piece was clipped from the bow. Then, as quickly, another
from the stern.
The ship now began to roll backward and forward, like a rocking-horse.
Out on the sea, apparently from the little craft, came the voice, so
much greater than she: “Aha, ha, ha! Aha, ha, ha! Tonans ahoy! When you
have had enough say so, and we’ll stop! Otherwise we’ll chop you into
kindling.”
“Well, by my mother’s carpet slipper!” cried Ruhet, “it can’t be any one
on this ship!”
He looked skyward, then over the side, then off at the innocent toy.
Nothing seemed to account for it.
Nicht Wahr left the useless wheel and came forward.
“Nicht Wahr,” whispered Ruhet, “Nicht thinks that toy has had something
to do with this magic.”
“Sire, I told you—”
“Wahr, you’re a liar,” said the bluff Ruhet, wrathfully. “You didn’t
know anything to tell me. You were never in Byzantium in your dinked
life! You said you would get it for me. Well, why don’t you do so
instead of letting it get us—a little at a time? Now let me see if you
are good for anything. I no longer want it. Destroy it. And quickly.
Don’t be too polite. Shoot to kill—or, at least, to make holes. Push the
Tonans right up on her—so that you won’t miss her!”
VI
WHO BROKE RUHET’S LEG?
This, as Wahr now began to suspect only too well, was an impossible
commission. But with his well-known sycophancy he said, “So you shall,
sire.”
All the admiral answered was: “And then we’ll try for the soup-spring
and have something to eat—where do you suppose it is?—and put new ends
on the ship—” forgetting that there was nothing more in sight now than
there had been for a long time.
However, while Wahr was manœuvring the ship, in her crippled condition,
to bring her broadside to the little craft, the clipping went on at
stern and bow until the water began to enter in a disquieting stream.
Ruhet ransacked for the fiftieth time a locker on deck about the
mizzen-mast for some cake which had once been there. The ship would not
come about. Wahr had nearly decided to become sufficiently humble, in
the absence of Nicht, to go on his knees and confess his first failure
to the admiral, and then his apparent wisdom but real ignorance, when,
to his surprise and delight, the little craft, seeming to apprehend his
intention, put herself exactly in the best position for the broadside.
“My luck never deserts me,” muttered Wahr, “even in such a dinked”—he
loved to do and say the things his master did—“distressful time as this.
I’ll sink her yet. Now,” he cried to Weiss Nicht, so that the admiral
might hear, “I have made everything ready for you. Get your broadside
off!”
“And, on your life, don’t miss her!” added Ruhet.
The impudent Weiss Nicht knew Wahr well enough to be ready, and, on the
instant, the broadside roared.
When the smoke cleared, the green craft had disappeared.
“By my uncle’s—”
No one will ever know what wisdom the admiral would have uttered; for,
at that moment, the little thing reappeared, as Weiss Nicht had
anticipated, on the other side of the ship, and he had made ready for
her in order to affront Nicht Wahr.
“The starboard broadside!” he cried impudently, without waiting for
Nicht Wahr’s order. “Fire!”
With the accuracy of all their practice this one went as the rest had
gone—harmlessly into the sea. The boat had dived once more. And Nicht
had seen her do it!
This was Weiss Nicht’s final test. It had been conceived and executed
magnificently and scientifically, and it had failed. He went on deck,
and with powder-blackened face made the following report: “Sire, it
cannot be done. And the sooner we get out of the vicinity of that
machine, the more of this ship will be left. I _saw_ it _dive_!”
But at that moment he noticed that he was speaking to Wahr and not
Ruhet.
“Where is the admiral, sir?” he asked.
“I thought _you_ were he,” said Wahr, with the evidence of guilt in his
face.
“And I thought you were he,” cried the gunner’s mate, bravely.
“Where can he be?” said both.
Both were answered immediately by a groan from the middle of the
ship—which sounded profane.
They found Ruhet there with a broken leg.
“Who broke my leg?” demanded Ruhet, savagely.
“Not I,” said Wahr.
“Nor me,” said Nicht.
At that moment Wahr picked up the tell-tale object of their unhappy
admiral’s undoing.
“It is one of our own balls,” he said, with an odious glance toward
Weiss Nicht. “Here is the name—Tonans.”
“Oh, you villain!” cried Ruhet, shaking his fist at the unhappy gunner’s
mate. “You shall be hanged at the yard-arm for this. You were always
mutinous, anyway.”
But at that moment, as is the custom of mankind, curiosity overcame pain
in Hier Ruhet, admiral, of the Iupiter Tonans.
“How did he get it here, Wahr?”
For a moment—just a moment—Wahr was stalled.
“Sire,” he temporized, “I have been thinking—”
“Well, stop it and tell me how he got it here. That is what I want of
you. Not reflections. Weren’t you looking?”
“Sire,” said Wahr, hastily, before he had time to form a real
hypothesis, “the poor man fired two broadsides in quick succession. An
unfortunate mistake of Weiss Nicht—due to his impudence in not awaiting
my order to fire. Undoubtedly one of the cannons was underloaded, and
its ball travelled so slowly that the ball from an overloaded cannon of
the second broadside overtook it—”
“By my mother’s nightcap!” cried Ruhet, in disdain. “Hah!”
“Then it must have collided with one of the balls from the
other—er—ship—”
Hier Ruhet actually laughed Wahr to scorn.
“_That_ may have happened,” said Nicht. “Our balls travel slowly.”
The clipping at bow and stern suddenly recommenced.
“She’s at work again!” cried a sailor, in panic.
Indeed, panic was now rife all through the ship.
“Lift me up,” said Ruhet; “I will study this magic at close quarters if
I die for it. Be calm, men! You still have Hier Ruhet!”
They lifted him up.
“Men, how did she get there?” asked the admiral now of the common,
ignorant sailors who came, terrified, and grouped themselves about him
as their protector.
One of them said that she had jumped over them.
Another said that she had dived under them.
Yet others contended that she had wings—that she had fins—that she was
not a ship, but an apparition.
Now, again, suddenly, the little boat began to sink.
“Now I shall see,” said the wounded commander, doubtingly. “Perhaps,
after all, we have punctured her below the water line, and she is a
goner. If they call for help, have the boats ready. Have them ready,
anyhow. The fact is, we need a bit of help ourselves.”