WHEREIN THE CAPTAIN KEEPS TO HIS OWN QUARTERS
Doctor Christobal brought some additional details to the dinner-table.
He was not the ship’s doctor. The _Kansas_, built for freight rather
than passengers, did not carry a surgeon on her roll; Dr. Christobal’s
presence was due to Mr. Baring’s solicitude in his daughter’s behalf.
It chanced that the courtly and gray-haired Spanish physician had
relinquished his practise in Chile, and was about to pay a
long-promised visit to a married daughter in Barcelona. Friendship, not
unaided by a good fee, induced him to travel by the _Kansas_.
He had been called on to attend Mr. Boyle and the wounded Chilean, and
he reported now that the chief officer’s injury was trifling, but the
Chilean’s wound might incapacitate him during the remainder of the
voyage.
“So far as I can gather,” he said, “Mr. Boyle had a narrow escape.
These half-breeds have a nice anatomical knowledge of the situation of
the lung; they also know the easiest way to reach it with a sharp
instrument. Captain Courtenay fired as the knife fell, otherwise our
first mate would have attended his own funeral this evening.”
“What was the cause of the affair?” Isobel asked.
“The man is not one of the ship’s crew, I understand. His name is
Frascuelo, and it appears that he was engaged to place some bunker coal
aboard early this morning. He says that he was drugged, and his clothes
stolen; that he came off to the ship at a late hour, and that some one
flung him headlong into a hold which, luckily for him, was nearly full
of cotton bales. He was stunned by the fall, and were it not for
Captain Courtenay’s custom of having all hatches taken off and a
thorough examination of the cargo made before the holds are finally
battened down for the voyage, Frascuelo might now be in a tight place
in more than one sense.”
Dr. Christobal was proud of his idiomatic English. He spoke the
language with the careless freedom of a Londoner.
“Frascuelo seems to have passed an eventful day,” said the little
French Comte, who had been waiting anxiously for a chance to join in
the conversation.
“But why should he want to kill poor Mr. Boyle?” inquired Isobel, after
giving the Frenchman an encouraging glance. Incidentally, she smiled at
Elsie. “Why puzzle one’s brains over foreign tongues when all the world
speaks English?” she telegraphed.
“Mr. Boyle is a peculiar person,” said the doctor dryly. “I happen to
have known him during some years. You and I might regard him as a man
of few words, but he has acquired a wonderful vocabulary for the
benefit of sailor-men. I believe he can swear in every known lingo. His
accomplishment in that direction no doubt annoyed Frascuelo, who became
frantic when he heard that the ship would not call at any South
American port. I imagine, too, that the unfortunate fellow is still
suffering from the drug which, he says, was administered to him.
Anyhow, you know how the affair terminated.”
“I, for one, think some consideration might have been shown him,” said
Elsie.
“There is no time for argument when a Chilean draws a knife, Miss
Maxwell.”
“But, if his story is true—”
“There never yet was a stowaway who did not invent a plausible yarn.
Nevertheless, I believe, and Mr. Boyle agrees with me, that the man is
not lying.”
They felt the ship swing round on a new course, and the rays of the
setting sun lit up the saloon table through the open starboard ports.
“Due south now, ladies!” cried Dr. Christobal cheerily. “We have
rounded Cape Cardones. We practically follow the seventy-sixth degree
until we approach Evangelistas Island. Thus far we are in the open sea.
Then we pick our way through the Straits discovered by that daring
Portuguese, Fernando de Magallanes, to whose memory I always drink
heartily once we are clear of the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.
I never pass through that gloomy defile without marveling at his
courage, and thinking that he deserved a better fate than murder at the
hands of some painted savage in the Philippines. Peace be to his
ashes!”
And the doctor lifted his glass of red wine with a quasi-masonic ritual
which lent solemnity to his discourse.
“You are a long way ahead of your toast,” said Isobel.
“Just as Magellan was ahead of his times,” was the rejoinder.
“Yet he was a man of leisurely habit,” put in Elsie, who found Dr.
Christobal’s old-world manners full of charm and repose.
“How so?” said he, puzzled, for the worthy Portuguese navigator was
notoriously a swashbuckler.
“Otherwise he never could have christened any unhappy promontory by
such a long-winded name,” she explained.
“Perhaps he met a contrary wind in that region,” said Christobal,
laughing. “Monsieur de Poincilit here, were he in a very bad temper,
might exclaim, ‘Mille diables!’ Why should not our excellent Fernando
rail against the almost inconceivable fickleness which could be
displayed by eleven times as many young ladies?”
“I came out last time on the _Orellana_, and I don’t even remember
passing such a place,” said Isobel. She was a Chilean born and bred,
but she always affected European vagueness as to the topography of
South America. Dr. Christobal knew this weakness of hers; he also
remembered her beautiful half-caste mother, from whom Isobel inherited
her flashing eyes, her purple-red lips, and a skin in which the
exquisite flush of terra-cotta on her checks merged into the delicate
pallor of forehead and neck.
But, being a tactful man, he only answered: “Your English sailors, my
dear, who gruffly dubbed the adjacent point ‘Cape Dungeness,’ have
shortened Magellan’s mouthful into ‘Cape Virgins.’—Yet, Ursula was a
British saint, and her memory ought to be revered, if only because it
keeps alive a classic pun.”
A born raconteur, he paused.
“Go right ahead, doctor,” came a voice from the lower end of the table.
“Well, the story runs that Princess Ursula fled from Britain to Rome to
escape marriage with a pagan—”
“How odd!” interrupted Isobel, and Elsie alone understood the drift of
her comment.
“Not at all odd if she didn’t happen to like him,” said Christobal.
“She reached Cologne, and was martyred there by the Huns. Long
afterwards a stone was found with the inscription _Ursula et
Undecimilla Virgines_, which was incorrectly translated into ‘Ursula
and her Eleven Thousand Virgins.’ Some later critic pointed out that a
missing comma after Undecimilla, the name of a handmaid, made all the
difference, assuming that two young ladies were a more reasonable and
probable number than eleven thousand. But what legend ever cared for a
comma, or reached a full stop? If you go to Cologne, the verger of the
Church of St. Ursula will show you the bones of the whole party in
glass cases, and, equally amazing, the town of Baoza in Spain claims to
be the birthplace of the lot. Clearly, Magellan had a man from Baoza on
board his ship.”
“All mail steamers ought to provide a lecturer on things in general and
interesting places passed in particular,” said Isobel.
Dr. Christobal bowed.
“I am sure that some of the officers of the _Orellana_ could have told
you the history of Cape Virgins, but they, not to mention the other
young gentlemen in the passenger list, would certainly find you better
sport than puzzling your pretty head about the ship’s landmarks.”
“I also came out on the _Orellana_, but there was no Miss Baring to be
seen,” murmured the Frenchman.
“You had a dull trip, I take it?” said the doctor, quietly.
“I was very ill,” was the response; but, after a stare of surprise, he
joined in the resultant laugh quite good-naturedly.
“It is a standing joke that my countrymen are poor sailors,” he
protested, “and that is strange, don’t you think, seeing that France
has the second largest navy in the world?”
“Console yourself, monsieur,” said Christobal. “Three great
sea-captains, Nelson, Cook, and, it is said, Columbus himself, always
paid tribute to Neptune. And, if I am not mistaken,” he added, glancing
through the port windows, “we shall all have our stamina tested before
twenty-four hours have passed.”
Heads were turned and necks craned to see what had induced this
unexpected prophecy. Behind the distant coast-line the inner giants of
the Andes threw heavenward their rugged outlines, with many a peak and
glacier glinting in vivid colors against a sky so clear and blue that
they seemed strangely near.
“Yes, this wonderful atmosphere of ours is enchanting,” said the
doctor, when assailed by a chorus of doubts. “But it carries its
deceptive smiles too far. The very beauty of the Cordillera is a sign
of storm. I am sorry to be a croaker; yet we are running into a gale.”
“I shall ask the captain,” pouted Isobel, rising.
The Count twisted his mustache. He knew that both ladies were in the
forbidden territory of the bridge when the fracas occurred.
“You, perhaps, are a good sailor?” said he, addressing Elsie.
“I am afraid to boast,” she answered. “I have been in what was called a
Number Eight gale, whatever that may mean, and weathered it splendidly,
but I am older now.”
“It cannot have been long ago, seeing that you recall it so exactly.”
“It was six years ago, and I was seventeen then,” said Elsie, her eyes
wandering to the purple and gold of the far-off mountains.
“But you are English. You are therefore at home on the rolling deep,”
murmured Monsieur de Poincilit, confidentially. She did not endeavor to
interpret his expressive glance, though he seemed to convey more than
he said.
“Not so much at home at sea as you are in my language,” she replied,
and she turned to Dr. Christobal, whom she had already known slightly
in Valparaiso.
“Are you coming on deck?” she inquired. “I am sure you are a mine of
information on Chile, and I want to extract some of the ore while the
land is still visible. It is already assuming the semblance of a
dream.”
“You are not saying a last farewell to Valparaiso, I hope?” said her
elderly companion, as they quitted the salon.
“I think so. I have no ties there, save those of sentiment. I shall not
return, unless, if a doubtful fortune permits, I am able some day to
revisit two graves which are dear to me.”
There was a little catch in her voice, and the doctor was far too
sympathetic to endeavor forthwith to divert her sad thoughts.
“I knew your father,” he said gently. “He was a most admirable man, but
quite unsuited to the environment of a new country, where the dollar is
god, and an unstable deity at that. He was swindled outrageously by men
who stand high in the community to-day. But you, Miss Maxwell, with
your knowledge of Spanish and your other acquirements, should do better
here than in Europe, provided, that is, you mean to earn your own
living.”
“I am proud to hear you speak well of my father,” she said. “And I am
well aware that he was badly treated in business. I fear, too, that his
advocacy of the rights of the Indians brought him into disfavor. Of all
his possessions the only remnant left to me is a barren mountain, with
a slice of fertile valley, in the Quillota district. It yields me the
magnificent revenue of two hundred dollars per annum.”
“How in the world did he come to own land there?”
“It was a gift from the Naquilla tribe. He defeated an attempt made to
oust them by a big land company. The company has since asked me to sell
the property, and offered me a fair price, too, as the cultivable land
is a very small strip, but it would be almost like betraying the cause
for which he fought, would it not?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed the doctor, though his heart and not his head
dictated the reply. “May I ask you to tell me your plans for the
future?” he went on.
“Well, when Mr. Baring heard I was going to England, he was good enough
to promise me employment in his London agency as Spanish correspondent.
That will fill in two days a week. The rest I can devote to art. I
paint a little, and draw with sufficient promise to warrant study, I am
told. Anyhow, I am weary of teaching; I prefer to be a pupil.”
“I cannot imagine what the young men of Valparaiso were thinking of to
allow a girl like you to slip off in this fashion,” said Christobal
with a smile.
“Most of them hold firmly to the belief that a wife’s wedding-dress
should be made of gilt-edged scrip.”
“Poor material—very poor material out of which to construct wedded
happiness. And as to my young friend, Isobel? She joins her aunt in
London, I hear?”
“That is the present arrangement. She means to have a good time,
especially in Paris. I should like to live in Paris myself. Dear old
smoke-laden London does not appeal so thoroughly to the artist. Yet, I
am content—yes, quite content.”
“Then you have gained the best thing in the world,” cried the doctor,
throwing out his arms expansively.
The two became good friends as the voyage progressed. Christobal was
exceedingly well informed, and delighted in a thoughtful listener like
Elsie. Isobel, tiring at times of the Count, would join in their
conversation, and display a spasmodic interest in the topics they
discussed. There were only six other passengers, a Baptist missionary
and his wife, three mining engineers, and an English globe-trotter, a
singular being who appeared to have roamed the entire earth, but whose
experiences were summed up in two words—every place he had seen was
either “Fair” or “Rotten.”
Even Isobel failed to draw him further, and she said one day, in a
temper, after a spirited attempt to extract some of his stored
impressions: “The man reminds me of one of those dummy books you see
occasionally, bound in calf and labeled ‘Gazetteer of the World.’ When
you try to open a volume you find that it is made of wood.”
So they nicknamed him “Mr. Wood,” and Elsie once inadvertently
addressed him by the name.
“What do you think of the weather, Mr. Wood?” she asked him at
breakfast.
He chanced to notice that she was speaking to him.
“Rotten,” he said.
Perhaps he wondered why Miss Maxwell flushed and the others laughed.
But, in actual fact, he was not far wrong in his curious choice of an
adjective that morning. Dr. Christobal’s dismal foreboding had been
justified on the second day out. Leaden clouds, a sullen sea, and
occasional puffs of a stinging breeze from the southwest, offered a
sorry exchange for the sunny skies of Chile.
Though the _Kansas_ was not a fast ship, she could have made the
entrance to the Straits on the evening of the fourth day were not
Captain Courtenay wishful to navigate the most dangerous part of the
narrows by daylight. His intent, therefore, was to pick up the
Evangelistas light about midnight, and then crack ahead at fourteen
knots, so as to be off Felix Point on Desolation Island by dawn.
This was not only a prudent and seamanlike course but it would conduce
to the comfort of the passengers. The ship was now running into a stiff
gale. Each hour the sea became heavier, and even the eight thousand
tons of the _Kansas_ felt the impact of the giant rollers on her
starboard bow. Dinner, therefore, promised to be a meal of much
discomfort, cheered only by the knowledge that as soon as the vessel
reached the lee of Desolation Island the giant waves of the Pacific
would lose their power, and all on board would enjoy a quiet night’s
rest.
There were no absentees at the table. Dr. Christobal strove to enliven
the others with the promise of peace ere many hours had passed.
“Pay no heed to those fellows!” he cried, as the ship quivered under
the blow of a heavy sea, and they heard the thud of many tons of water
breaking over the bows and fore hatch, while the defeated monster
washed the tightly screwed ports with a venomous swish. “They cannot
harm us now. Let us rather thank kindly Providence which provided
Magellan’s water-way; think what it would mean were we compelled to
weather the Cape.”
“I am beginning to catch on to the reasonableness of that toast of
yours, doctor,” said one of the mining engineers, a young American. “I
happen to be a tee-totaler, but I don’t mind opening a bottle of the
best for the general welfare when we shove our nose past the Cape of
the large number of young and unprotected females.”
Christobal raised his hand.
“All in good time,” he said. “Never halloo for the prairie until you
are clear of the forest. If the wind remains in its present quarter, we
are fortunate. Should it happen to veer round to the eastward, and you
see the rocks of Tierra del Fuego lashed by the choppy sea that can run
even through a land-locked channel, you will be ready to open two
bottles as a thanks-offering. Is this your first trip round by the
south?”
“Yes, I crossed by way of Panama. Guess a mule-track over the Sierras
is a heap better than the Pacific in a gale. Jee-whizz!”
A spiteful sea sprang at the _Kansas_ and shook her from stem to stern.
The ship groaned and creaked as though she were in pain; she staggered
an instant, and then swung irresistibly forward with a fierce plunge
that made the plates dance and cutlery rattle in the fiddles.
“I suppose we must endure five hours of this,” said Elsie, bravely.
“I don’t like it. Why does not Captain Courtenay, or even Mr. Boyle,
put in an appearance? I have hardly seen either of them since the day I
came aboard.”
Isobel was petulant, and perhaps a little frightened. She had not yet
reached that stage of confidence familiar to all who cross the open
seas. The first period of a gale is terrifying. Later there comes an
indifference born of supreme trust in the ship. The steady onward
thrust of the engines—the unwavering path across the raging vortex of
tumbling gray waters—the orderly way in which the members of the crew
follow their duties—these are quietly persistent factors in the gradual
soothing of the nerves. Many a timid passenger, after lying awake
through a night of terror, has gone to sleep when the watch began to
swab the deck overhead. Not even a Spartan sailor would begin to wash
woodwork if the ship were sinking.
“All ladies like to see an officer in the saloon during a storm,”
commented Christobal. “I plead guilty to a weakness in that direction
myself, though I know he is much better employed on the bridge.”
“The captain cannot be on the bridge always,” said Isobel.
“He is seldom far from it in bad weather, if he is faithful to his
trust. And I fancy we would all admit that Captain Courtenay—”
A curious shock, sharper and altogether more penetrating than the
Thor’s hammer blow of a huge wave, sounded loud and menacing in their
ears. The ship trembled violently, and then became strangely still. The
least experienced traveler on board knew that the engines had stopped.
They felt a long lurch to port when the next sea climbed over the bows;
at once the _Kansas_ righted herself and rode on even keel, while the
stress and turmoil of her fight against wind and wave passed away into
a sustained silence.
The half-caste stewards glanced at each other and drew together in
whispering groups, but the chief steward, an Englishman, who had turned
to leave the saloon, changed his mind and uttered a low growl of
command which sent his subordinates’ attention, if not their thoughts,
back to their work. In the strained hush, the running along the deck of
men in heavy sea-boots was painfully audible. Water could be heard
pouring through the scuppers. Steam was rushing forth somewhere with
vehement bluster. These sounds only accentuated the extraordinary truce
in the fight of ship against sea. The _Kansas_ was stricken dumb, if
not dead.
“Something has gone wrong,” said Elsie in a low voice.
Doctor Christobal nodded carelessly.
“A burst steam-pipe, probably. Such things will happen at times. We are
hove to for the moment.”
He traded on the ignorance of his hearers. The chief steward heard his
explanation and looked at him fixedly. Christobal caught the glance.
“I suppose we shall lose an hour or so now?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. It will be all right by the time you have finished dinner.”
The meal drew to its close without much further talk. The American
engineer was the first to rise, but the chief steward whispered in his
ear; he returned to the table.
“Say,” he said calmly, “we can’t quit yet. The companion-hatch is
closed. We must remain here a bit.”
“Do you mean that we are battened down?” demanded Isobel, shrilly, and
her face lost some of its beauty in an ashen pallor.
“Something of the sort, Miss Baring. Anyway, we can’t go on deck.”
“But—I insist on being told what is the matter.”
The American knew little of ships, but he knew a great deal about
mines, and, in a mine, if an accident happens, the man in charge cannot
desert his post to give information to those who are anxious for it. So
he replied laconically:
“Guess the captain will tell us all about it after a while, Miss
Baring.”
“Que diable! I feel like the rat in the trap,” said Count Edouard,
suppressed excitement rendering his English less fluent.
At another time the phrase would have sent a ripple of amusement
through that cheery company. Now, no one smiled. They knew too well
what he meant to pay heed to the mere form of his words. No matter how
large or sumptuously equipped the trap, the point of view of the rat
was new to them.