AN INTERRUPTED MEETING
Convinced that there was nothing else to be done on the big dock, Madden
went to his cabin, threw himself on the bunk, and there tumbled and
tossed through the stormy night, sleeping brokenly and dreaming of the
missing _Vulcan_.
Finally a bleary dawn whitened his cabin ports and the lad scrambled
into damp clothes, picked up the mate's battered telescope and went on
deck.
He fully expected to see the _Vulcan_ lying close by, but as he
glanced around in the dull light, an extraordinary scene shunted all
thoughts of the tug from his mind. The wind had lulled, but there still
rolled high a most unusual ocean. As far as he could see moved a long
solemn procession of hills covered with splotches and serpentine lines
of grays, olives, yellows--an ocean in motley. The great waves wove
these sinuous markings up and down, in and out, confusing the eye with
changing mazes.
Madden went forward and studied the nearer formations under the dock's
prow. This astonishing effect was caused by seaweed. It was the seaweed
spray of this seaweed ocean that had whipped him during the night.
A glance toward the stern of the dock solved the mystery of the balky
steering gear. The temporary sheathing was choked with the slimy stuff.
Tons of it had beaten over into the dock so that there was a week's work
of cleaning ahead. The whole interior of the pontoons looked gutted;
empty kegs, barrels had gone overboard, boats had been washed away, the
big coal pile was scattered like pebbles and some half of it lost. And
one odd trifle gripped Madden's heart--the fresh paint over which the
crew had toiled so patiently looked old and dingy.
As he studied the scene, two seasick navvies tottered out on deck to
sniff the clean air. They dismally surveyed the traces of the storm.
Then they moved weakly toward the boy, who was now scrutinizing the
horizon with his glass.
"See any sign of 'er, sir?" asked Galton saluting.
Madden took down the binoculars. "Not a trace--feel better?"
"Some better, sir, but my stomach is still like th' hocean, sir, a bit
unsettled. May I arsk where we are, sir? I never saw such streaky water
before."
"Sargasso Sea," replied Leonard.
Galton grunted and stared at the spangled waves. Under its load of
seaweed, the sea was falling rapidly, and presently other seasick
navvies came on deck. A dismal lot they made, pasty and sick and
draggled.
"You fellows that are able," Madden addressed the group, "get buckets
and shovels and pile up that scattered coal. The exercise will make you
feel better. When the sea is smoother, we'll rig a jury mast on the
forward bridge for a signal."
A few of the men were still too sick, but most of the crowd shuffled off
to work. Some of the laborers drew off their pea jackets as they went,
for the murky day was filled with a rising humid warmth.
Coal piling was just getting under way in the heaving dock, when the
door to Caradoc's cabin swung open and the Englishman stepped out.
A glance at the tall fellow told Madden how he fared. The narrow-set
eyes were inflamed, the long bronze face had lost firmness and seemed
inclined to sag in lines.
"Smith," called Madden friendlily, "you may help pile coal if you feel
like it."
"I--that demijohn that you took last night," began the Briton nervously.
"Yes," Madden became serious.
"I want it, if you please."
Madden looked at the unstrung fellow. "Can't get it, Smith; you've had
too much already."
"Can't get my own property?" demanded Caradoc, raising his voice so all
the men could hear.
"No," snapped Madden, "you know sailors are not allowed to keep liquor
in their dunnage."
"That's my demijohn and I'll----"
"I smashed it, and the pieces washed overboard long ago."
"Overboard!" cried the big fellow. He turned hot eyes seaward as if
searching the waters, then for the first time noticed the fantastic
ocean around him. He stared at it with a strange expression.
"What--what is that--where are we, Madden?" he asked with a catch in
his breath.
The fellow's tremulous condition touched the American. "Tug broke away
last night--we're adrift in the Sargasso."
A look of relief came over the long face, but he still gazed at the
serpentine patternings. "I--I thought I was seeing--ugh, isn't it
horrible!"
"You're unstrung, Caradoc; better go lie down," suggested Madden in
considerate tones.
The mood of the Briton underwent a characteristic quick shift. "Me lie
down?" he rasped. "I'll have my property. You're grabbing authority fast
enough, but you'll learn Englishmen don't submit to impositions. Threw
it overboard!" he laughed with sour incredulity. "Bet you have it in
your cabin."
The men stopped work, gaping at the insubordination. Madden flushed
under the implication. He stepped forward to smash the long insolent
face and white mustache, but it was plain the Englishman was on the
verge of a nervous breakdown.
Madden caught himself, stood drawing short breaths through expanded
nostrils. "Go to your bunk, Caradoc, and wait till you're sane," he
ordered in fairly even tones, then turned abruptly, leaving the big
fellow scowling and biting his choppy mustache.
The navvies turned back to their work, distinctly disappointed; they had
expected a fight.
Within the next few days the crew dropped into the routine of derelict
life. When the sky cleared and the sea flattened, it left the big dock
amid breathless heat beneath a molten tropical sky.
As far as the eye could reach, the castaways saw no signs of life, not a
sail, not a smoke, not a gull, not even the ripple of a wave; nothing
but gaudy, motionless markings from one flat horizon to the other, dead
traceries that swiftly became uninteresting, then monotonous, then
disagreeable, then maddening in the aching eyes of the crew.
As much for the mental health of the men as anything else, Leonard
worked them steadily. The day's work was divided into morning and
evening watches, because during the midday the iron barge reached a
temperature where labor was impossible. During the cooler watches, the
men painted desperately to cover the black expanse of the dock with red
in order to reflect part of the palpitating heat rays.
Through the idle noon periods, the crew lay about on gunny sacks under
improvised awnings, with a man posted on the forward bridge as lookout.
The colorful mazes of the Sargasso were as irritating as flowered wall
paper in a sickroom. Even Hogan's and Deschaillon's spirits sagged under
the brilliant sweltering sameness. The navvies moved about half naked,
and burned brown as nuts. The men fought over trifles. Caradoc became a
raw mass of nerves. Once or twice Madden attempted to make things
pleasanter for his former friend, but was repulsed rabidly.
Near sunset one day, the American was in the mate's cabin trying to work
out his daily reckoning. According to the lad's inexpert calculations,
the dock was drifting southeast at the rate of some six or seven miles
each day. The dock was a prisoner in that vast central swirl between the
North and South Atlantic, that was swinging in stagnating circles when
Columbus sailed for the new world; it lay exactly the same when the
Norsemen beat down the coasts of Europe; it would continue as long as
Africa, Europe, and the Americas deflected ocean currents to produce its
motion. Its vast flaring dial was the clock of the world, marking the
passing ages. In all that stretch of time the Sargasso must have
received strange prey, triremes, caravels, galleons, schooners, men o'
war, derelicts ancient and modern, but certainly never before had the
art of man placed such a colossal and extraordinary fabric within its
swing.
Some such thoughts as these passed through Madden's mind as he pursued
his reckoning through trigonometric tables. The light fell redder and
dimmer through the ports and he hurried to finish his work before
darkness required a lamp in the steamy cabin. A furnace-like breath,
laden with malodorous ship smells, drifted in upon him. Madden's thin
undershirt clung sweatily to the muscular ridges down his back and
moulded the graceful deltoid at the shoulder.
Madden pushed back his figures as Gaskin entered with a tray. The cook's
face was scarlet and dripping.
"How much provisions have we on board, Gaskin?"
"Another month's supplies, sir--most of the stores was on the
_Vulcan_, sir." Gaskin was dignified even in the heat.
Leonard turned to his map showing the drift of the dock; she was
swinging farther and farther out of the trade routes every day. The
probability of a rescue steadily decreased.
"In the future, Gaskin, cut rations one third."
The cook covertly swabbed his fat jowl. "Yes, sir--are we about to--" he
checked his question. "Yes, sir," he agreed instead.
"Yes," said Leonard, answering the half question, "it's a very necessary
precaution, and I hope this small reduction will be sufficient."
"Thankee very much, sir." Gaskin made a little bob and withdrew
ceremoniously. Madden knew that Gaskin would continue to bob and thank
as long as he had strength to do either.
Reducing the rations was not a sudden impulse with Madden. Ever since
the first expectation of the _Vulcan's_ return had lost its
immediate edge, the American knew that the hope of final rescue depended
upon conserving their food supply.
The Sargasso Sea is a great oblong whorl in the Atlantic some four
hundred miles wide and fifteen hundred long. Trade routes cut along its
northern boundaries, and skirt its southwestern boundary. The dock might
very well traverse two thousand miles without seeing a sail. At a rate
of six miles a day, it would take eleven months to reach waters in which
a rescue might be hoped.
In the meantime, the men grew more and more intractable and
insubordinate. That day, when Madden had ordered Heck Mulcher to paint
in a certain place, the navvy had grumbled out a "That's all very well
for you, sir," and the rest was lost in a mutter.
The uncertain discipline of his men made Madden hesitate to cut the
rations more decidedly. He felt that his command was questioned by the
sailors.
As the boy gloomily dispatched his own supper, his ear caught a faint
persistent tapping on the iron wall which faced the mate's cabin. At
first he paid no attention to it, assuming it was the contraction of the
iron in the cooling temperature of the oncoming night that made the
popping. But as he ate it was at last borne in that these taps came in
the irregular but orderly sequence of a telegraphic code.
With this thought in mind, he listened attentively. In his work as
engineer he had had occasion to study up Morse in heliographing.
It proved one of the most senseless messages the boy had ever
translated:
"Tiny arm, men plan mu." Then it was repeated, "Tiny arm, men plan mu."
This odd sentence was retapped four or five times and at last ceased. It
was perhaps some beginner learning the code, but who in that crew could
be working out the telegraphic code? Leonard thought over the men, one
by one, but struck nobody who appealed to him as an incipient
telegrapher.
The American continued thinking over the incident idly, the odd time the
telegrapher had chosen to practice his art, the queer message he had
rapped out, when suddenly the message whirled around in his mind, and he
perceived he had begun listening in the middle of a very alarming
sentence, and had been reading from one middle to the next. The message
was: "Men plan mutiny--Arm!" "Men plan mutiny--Arm!"
Madden got to his feet with nervous quickness, and stood listening
intently. The question of who sent the message now became of sharp
importance. If the men planned mutiny, he could rely upon the
telegrapher--perhaps.
There was still enough light in the steamy cabin to discern objects. The
American began rummaging through table drawers, lockers and racks for
some effective weapon, preferably a revolver.
At that moment he heard footsteps approaching his cabin door. An instant
later the shutter swung open without the formality of a knock and two
dark figures entered.
"Well?" inquired the American sharply.
"It's us!" put in two voices at once.
"What do you want?"
"It's a bit of a disthurbance, Mister Madden, that's----"
"Zat Smeeth," put in a pinched French accent excitedly, "he says zare
ees no mate, zat you----"
"Be quiet, Dashalong; th' gintilman can't understhand yer brogue. Smith
siz ye have no authority by rights; that we should run things as we
plaze; that th' bhoys should have all they want to ate; that we should
have rum with aitch male, sor."
"And have you two fellows come to get these things?" inquired Leonard in
a hard voice.
"No, no, no," trilled out Deschaillon. "Eem-possible!"
"We sthrolled around to till ye, and bide wid ye a bit, and whiniver th'
romp starts, me and Dash here ar-re going to swing partners, eh, Dash?"
"Oh, beg pardon," apologized Leonard frankly, "but I had just been
warned and I was looking for trouble--"
"Thot's all r-right, Misther Madden. We ar-re wid ye. I am always for
law and ordher, Misther Madden, aven whin I am most disordherly,"
"That ees true, he ees," nodded Deschaillon.
"And I always fight on th' wakest side no matther whether it's roight or
wrong."
"Hogan ees a chevalier, no matter eef he does have to paint,"
corroborated the Frenchman.
"Are all the other boys in with Smith?"
"In with him, sor? Fr-rum th' way they stick around him ye'd think he
was a long-lost rilitive come back wid a million pounds."
"I'm glad you fellows are with me, Mike. I was just looking for a gun,
but if you'll stand by me--"
"Oh, don't pull a pistol, Misther Madden. A man who would pull a gun in
a free-for-all--why he would smash th' fiddles at a dance."
"As you deed not fight zee day Smeeth said you stole zee whiskey, zee
men--"
"Think ye'll be aisy," finished Hogan.
"I've just ordered a change in diet," observed Madden dryly.
"Oh, thin ye're goin' to give in to th' spalpeens?"
"No, I've cut rations one-third--and that goes!" There was a finality
about the dictum that reassured his allies.
"Uh-huh, Dashalong, I towld ye Misther Madden wasn't no----"
The sentence was interrupted by more feet approaching outside, then a
heavy knocking at the door. The two men automatically moved over to
Madden's side and faced the entrance.
"Light a lamp, Deschaillon," directed Madden crisply,
"Yis, two of 'em--I want to watch 'em fall out o' th' tail o' me eye."
The Frenchman struck a match for his task. Madden invited the men to
enter.
The whole crew came through the door in an orderly but somewhat
embarrassed manner. A few of the men had on shirts, some undershirts,
others were stripped to the waist, their torsos shining with moisture,
Deschaillon's hand trembled slightly as he lighted two bracket lamps,
Hogan's little eyes sparkled in anticipation.
"What is it, Galton?" Madden picked out the nearest man bruskly.
Gallon shuffled his bare feet on the hot boards. "We hev been thinkin',"
he began in a throaty cockney voice, "that since ye was not mate to
begin with----" he looked back over the crowd toward the real leader,
Caradoc, for moral support.
The men gave Smith an opening toward the American. In the oppressive
heat of the crowded, lamp-lit room everyone was crimson and dripping
except Caradoc, whose face was curiously bloodless beneath its sunburn.
"If you are spokesman, Smith, what do you want?" demanded Leonard with
rising inflection.
"We are all workmen together," began Caradoc with an obvious effort,
panting in the heat. "We're working together, living together, roasting
together in this awful furnace. Your authority was only meant for a few
days. Now the _Vulcan_ is gone. Nobody knows for how long. We think
all men should share and share alike."
"All this demonstration to tell me you want me to eat at the regular
mess?"
"No," quivered Caradoc, "it's not just eating. We are not pigs. We want
a hand in running things, and we want a portion of rum served at meals,
as every decent ship allows. We want--"
"Oh, so it's drink, not eating," satirized Madden.
"Rum's our right as sailormen," mumbled Galton.
"Rum in this climate?" Ridicule tinctured the American's tone. "Smith, I
believe you once proposed to write an article on Climate and
Alcoholism." He turned to the men. "Do you fellows want to build a fire
inside yourselves when your lungs and hearts are strained to breaking
already?"
"It cools you off in hot weather," answered a voice in the crowd.
"Cools nothing! It heats you up." He leaned forward and tapped the table
decisively at each word, "It won't be served, y'understand!" His last
tap was a thump. "I'm boss here--no rum! And I'll tell you right now,
I'm going to cut your rations one-third, too--hear? Now, get out, all
of you--move out o' my cabin!"
There was a shuffling among the navvies toward the arrowy lad who
confronted them. Deschaillon balanced himself on one leg, French boxing
fashion, ready to kick out with the deadly accuracy of an ostrich. Hogan
gave a brief happy laugh, broken by his jump, the crack of his fist
against some jaw and the stumbling of a man.
As the fight flamed down the sweating line, Farnol Greer suddenly rushed
through the door. "This is mutiny!" he shouted aloud. "Every man-jack
will hang for it by the ship's articles! I'm for you, Mr. Madden!" and
he made a surprising assault from the rear.
Madden and Caradoc squared away at each other. The Englishman headed his
men, his long face sinister in the lamplight. But he had hardly taken a
step when an absolute pallor whitened his countenance, he halted,
shaking, gasping, then flung back an arm to Galton.
"I--I'm fizzled out!" he stammered with twitching lips. "Go
ahead--fight!"
"You'll hang--you'll hang for it!" bawled Greer, mauling at the men
behind.
Caradoc crumpled down on the floor. The navvies, with an English dread
of legal authority, hesitated, thinking perhaps Caradoc had deserted
them purposely to clear his own skirts in the mutiny.
Madden instantly caught up the loose ends of his raveling authority.
"Lay him on the bunk, Galton!" he commanded.
Galton obeyed instinctively, half carrying the long sagging form to the
bunk.
"Hogan!" he thundered at the cyclone on his right, "you and Mulcher stop
that! Stop it, Mulcher!" he turned to some of the men. "Part 'em there!
Stop 'em!"
Six navvies, three to the man, jumped and grabbed the combatants.
"Just look, will you?" Madden pointed to Caradoc on the bunk. "You fools
have followed a man half mad with a sunstroke! He has blown his nerves
all to pieces with a rum bottle, and you bunch of mush-heads have
mutinied to give him more rum so he could finish the job!"
The leaderless insurgents stared at Caradoc's still form, then began
filing out of the cabin.
"Deschaillon, get that medicine chest out of my bag!"
The Frenchman moved toward the bag indicated, when Madden remembered.
"Here, come back, every one of you!" he cried.
The mutineers flowed in again, entirely subdued now.
Madden was loosening what few clothes Smith wore. He twisted about,
facing the crew.
"Some of you fellows stole my medicine chest," he accused boldly. "I
want it! The man who has it bring it here!"
The men stood very still, looking from one to the other uneasily.
"Listen, men," repeated Leonard intensely, "I've got to have
it--understand? I don't mind your stealing it. I won't say a word to you
about that, but I'll manhandle the scoundrel that's keeping it now!"
There was a growled chorus of protests. Madden quivered at his impotence
to put his hand on the thief in the crowd.
One of the navvies caught the expression on Madden's face, and blurted,
"If I 'ad it, I'd bring it back--'onest!"
Leonard suddenly recalled his suspicions. He looked at Farnol Greer,
whose timely shouting and attack had practically quelled the rising. For
a moment Madden's old friendship for Smith and his new gratitude for
this silent unknown youth struggled, then he said:
"Greer, do you know anything about that chest?"
A look of blank surprise, then indignation went over Greer's heavy
serious face, then he said bitingly:
"You sure stand by your pal, all right," and moved out of the cabin
without another word.
Caradoc lay dry and burning on the hot bunk, his big hands pressed to
his forehead, eyes clenched shut.
"I don't know what to do!" cried Madden miserably. "Hogan, Deschaillon,
for God's sake, if you know anything about that medicine chest, tell
me--I'm not accusing anybody!"
"Sure, sure," cried Hogan sympathetically, "Oi'm sorry Oi ain't got it.
If Oi only had me chance again I'd stole it long ago!"
"I'm sorree, but I never stole eet either, Meester Madden."
"If I only had bromide!" growled the American, watching Smith's broad
hairy chest lift and drop in short breaths.
The Englishman opened his hot red eyes. "What's that to you, Madden?" he
asked thickly. The choppy white mustache pulled down in a sneer. "I
might as well die now--I'm nothing but a remittance man. A remittance
man," he repeated the term with mingled self contempt and bravado. "My
people have shipped me--flung me away, broken, no use," he flung out a
long hot hand at Madden. "Why do you try to pick up the pieces?" He
laughed thickly, which sent wild pains through his head and stopped him
suddenly.
Madden stared penetratingly at this outbreak.
"Pour water over him, Deschaillon, Hogan," commanded the American
briefly.
As his two helpers hurried out after buckets, Leonard came close to the
sufferer.
"Where is it?" he asked shortly.
"Where--what?"
Madden stooped over him. "Where's that medicine chest? What did you do
with it? You wouldn't have started that tirade unless you had it."
"You Americans--very keen," panted Caradoc in the midst of his rackings.
"Think you're d-deuced smart--it's in my bag's lining--there was some
alcohol in it, so I took it--let it go--don't do anything--for--me."
Deschaillon entered with a bucket of seawater. They stretched the sick
man on the floor, and a moment later, the Englishman shuddered under the
deluge.
"This ought to be an ice pack," observed Madden, then: "I believe I
remember laying that medicine case in my old cabin; I'll see," and he
walked out of the mate's room into the darkness.