THE MYSTERY SHIP
Waves from the exhausted swimmers sent bright streaks of watershine
wavering up the green hull over Madden's head. Utter silence pervaded
the vessel. There was no creaking of spar or block. Hot tar stood in her
seams in the beating sunshine.
The boys kicked wearily through the tepid water to the schooner's prow,
where Greer succeeded in catching the bobstays and climbing aboard. A
little later he lowered a rope to Madden with a double bight in it. The
Yankee made the Englishman fast in the loops, climbed on deck himself
and helped haul the unconscious fellow aboard.
The two boys lugged the senseless man wearily across deck into the shade
of the superstructure, then in default of any better restorative,
Leonard began slapping the bottom of the Englishman's feet to revive
him. Presently Caradoc groaned, drew up his legs.
"He's coming around all right," said Greer, then he looked about him.
"What do you make out of this anyway, Mr. Madden?"
Leonard glanced around and did see a remarkable derelict. The schooner
was as newly painted and trig as if fresh from the ways. Her deck was
holystoned to man-o'-war cleanliness; every sheet, hawser, stay, tackle,
pin, spike, was in place. Three small boats, her full complement, hung
in davits. On the bow of these boats, on their oars and buoys, was
painted the name of the schooner, "Minnie B."
From the port side of the vessel there stretched a long cable patently
leading to a sea anchor. All sails were brailed except mains'l and
tops'l, which were reefed and set against each other to hold her steady
in case of a blow. The funnel was freshly painted black with a red band
at the top. Judging from her appearance, the desertion of the _Minnie
B_ had been carefully planned. Yet why desert a new vessel? By what
means did the crew leave the schooner, since all her small boats
remained?
What was their motive in anchoring the _Minnie B_ in the middle of
the Sargasso?
There appeared to be no easy answer to these questions.
"I don't understand this," said Greer, in answer to Madden's unspoken
perplexity. "Where did the crew go, sir, and how did they go?"
"They might have deserted her for her insurance," suggested Madden
tentatively.
"Then why didn't they scuttle her--besides, a new vessel like this is
worth more than her insurance."
"Maybe it was her cargo. Perhaps they faked it, rated it away above its
value."
"Why she has no cargo, sir. She's riding light as a skiff; I noticed
that as I climbed up."
"Then what is your idea?" inquired the American.
Greer glanced around with a trace of uneasiness. "The crew went by the
board, sir, I'm thinking."
"Overboard--all washed overboard! Why there isn't one chance in a
million of such a thing hap--"
"I didn't say 'washed overboard,' sir," corrected Greer heavily. "I
think they got throwed overboard, one by one, sir."
"One by one!" Madden stared at the solemn faced fellow.
Farnol nodded stolidly. "Just so, sir."
"You mean--?"
"The plague, sir."
"O-oh!" The American stared around the deck with new eyes. Greer's
explanation struck home with a certain convincingness. The mere thought
of disease-laden surroundings filled him with alarm. Could they have
unwittingly wandered into a deserted pest-ship? A focus of death in
these rotting seas? The very air he breathed, the wood he touched, might
inoculate him with malignant germs. Then he began reasoning on it.
"Even if it were the plague, there ought to be someone left aboard,
Greer, a last corpse." The American sniffed the hot, breathless,
tar-scented air.
"He could well have gone crazy, sir, in this heat and followed his mates
overboard--but we can look and see."
At this moment, Caradoc stirred and pulled himself to a sitting posture
on the burning deck.
"You--you pulled me aboard?" he murmured weakly, looking about with the
face of a corpse.
"How do you feel--anything I can do?"
"If I had a dr--" he broke off, drew a long breath. "Nobody aboard?"
"If you're all right, Greer and I will take a turn below and see what we
can find," suggested Madden.
Caradoc nodded apathetically and stared seaward toward the cable sagging
into the dead ocean.
The two boys moved gingerly up to the hatchway that led down to the
forecastle. If disease had smitten the _Minnie B_ they hoped to get
some clew from the taint of the sailors' quarters. Greer stuck a nose
down the ladder first. Beyond the usual close ship smells there seemed
to be nothing wrong. Then they climbed down.
Here again they found order. The bunks against the bulkheads and the
curve of the prow were clean with neatly rolled blankets. The lockers
were open and empty. The two searchers climbed out and walked aft to the
lazaret. They were rapidly getting over their fright of the plague.
Again Greer entered first, and this time Madden heard a loud snort of
disgust.
Half expecting some sinister sight, Madden ran down the three steps and
entered the storeroom. But what had roused the sailor's dislike was that
the lazaret contained no provisions. It was as empty as the forecastle;
not a chest, not a canister, not even a spice box remained. Here again
the lockers were open and empty. From one of the keyholes hung a bunch
of keys. The steward had deserted his ring, knowing it could never be of
service to him again.
The little metal bunch hung straight down without the slightest
oscillation. Such lack of motion and life amid the close stewing heat of
the lazaret threw a glamor of unreality over the whole affair. The
schooner might well have been warped to a dock in some port of the dead.
The very newness of everything accentuated its amazing loneliness.
"Doesn't seem real, does it?" said Greer in a low tone, drawing a long
breath in the heat. "I keep listening."
Madden shook himself. "It seems as if someone ought to be aboard." He
broke away from the spell: "I wish they had left us some provisions--we
need 'em."
The hot heavy silence fell immediately after the remark, like a curtain
that was heavy to lift.
"Let's look through the hold and see if there _isn't_ someone
here!" suggested Greer uneasily.
With a feeling that they were likely to encounter some being, human or
spectral, at every turn, they went below. The farther they went the more
inexplicable became the _Minnie B's_ desertion. Her engines were in
perfect order, her furnace so new that the grate bars were still
unsealed from heat; the maker's name-plate was still bright on the
boilers; her hull was quite dry, with less than six inches of water in
her bilge. She had no cargo, except four or five tons of raw metal
ingots used as ballast. The coal in her bunkers was nearly exhausted.
Indeed she was riding so light that heavy weather would upset her like a
chip. It seemed as if the crew had looted the _Minnie B_ in a
thorough and extraordinary manner, and then had simply vanished. Every
now and then in their search the two would find themselves standing
motionless, open-mouthed, listening intently to the brooding silence.
More puzzled than ever by these explorations, the two adventurers
climbed into the chart room. Here, also, everything was intact, and in
order. In a desk they found the ship's log and clearance papers. The
captain's and the mate's licenses hung in frames against the wall. Near
these was tacked the picture of a sunny-haired little girl and
underneath it was written the name "Minnie." So the schooner was the
little smiling-faced girl's namesake, this tragedy-haunted abandoned
vessel. A Mercator's projection lay thumb-tacked on a table, and the
last position of the schooner was indicated by a pin sticking in the
map.
Madden moved over to it eagerly, hoping this pin would give him some
inkling as to where the disaster, if there had been one, occurred. He
noted the latitude and longitude indicated by the marker, then turned
excitedly to Greer.
"Look here!" he cried, "this pin marks our position at this moment. We
are right here!" he touched the point on the map.
"How do you know it does?"
"I calculated the dock's position this morning."
"Well, what of that? She will probably lie here till she rots in this
stagnant sea."
"That's the point: This is not a stagnant sea. There is a current of
about six miles a day in the Sargasso, very slow, but it will change a
ship's reckoning."
Greer remained unimpressed. "What do you make of that?"
"Make of that! Why, man, the person who took this reckoning, took it
_this morning_! That's the only way he could have got it. There was
somebody on this schooner this morning when we sighted her."
"This morning! This _morning_! Where in Davy Jones' locker----"
Madden was leaning over the chart scrutinizing it with careful eyes. At
last he raised up in complete bewilderment.
"Farnol," he said in a queer tone, "the crew meant to come here! Meant
to sail through the Sargasso--clear away from all trade
routes--incomprehensible but--just look!"
Both boys bent above the chart, and Madden silently pointed out a row of
pin holes that marked the daily reckonings of the _Minnie B_. She
had sailed from Portland, Maine, had swung up the northern route past
Newfoundland Banks as if going to England. On this portion of her voyage
her average run was a little less than two hundred knots a day. On the
fifth day out, the _Minnie B_ inexplicably deserted the normal
trade course, turned from "E. NE." and sailed directly "S. SW." At the
same time her speed was accelerated to a trifle over three hundred knots
a day. Her last reckoning left the pin sticking in the exact longitude
and latitude which Leonard had worked out for the dock that morning.
"They got in a hurry when they did turn south," said Greer vacuously.
"They certainly burned coal from there to here."
"But what could have put her in such a rush, sir?"
"She must have sailed somewhere after a cargo, and later received a
cancellation of the order. With that cancellation there must have come a
new commission with a time limit, from some of the South American ports,
I should judge by her course, say Caracas, or Paramaribo."
"But she has no wireless, sir. She couldn't have changed her
destination."
"That would be fairly easy to explain. There are so many fast liners
with wireless between New York and Liverpool, it would be a simple
matter to get a message signaled to a sailing vessel in the trade
route."
"But I can't see why she sailed through the Sargasso?"
"If the time factor had been urgent enough, she might have tried to
shorten her journey by coming this way instead of following the usual
course by Cuba and through the Caribbean."
"That doesn't tell what happened to the men."
Madden shook his head and wiped the sweat from his face on his
undershirt sleeve. "Let's read the log. That ought to clear up things a
bit."
Both lads hurried over to the desk, drew out the greasy, well-thumbed
book. In their excitement, they forgot rank and tried to read together.
"Let me read it aloud," compromised Madden.
Dripping with sweat, they leaned on the hot desk and went carefully over
the log of the _Minnie B_.
The record was simple. The _Minnie B_, of Leeds, England, sailed
from Portland, Maine, for Liverpool on July thirtieth with a cargo of
lake copper in bulk bound for Liverpool. For the first five days, her
log was written in two heavy unscholarly hands, which alternated with
each other, and were evidently those of the mate and the captain. These
two handwritings were quite distinct from each other and contained the
usual notes of prevailing winds, state of weather, speed, distance
indicated by patent log, dead reckonings, vessels sighted and such like.
From the sixth to the twentieth day, the log of the _Minnie B_ was
written in a sharp, pointed, scholarly hand, and this record was
confined to the mere relation of distances and reckonings. Then on
the twenty-first day of August there appeared the following entry:
"46 degrees 57' W. Long. 27 degrees 24' 11" N. Lat. No wind. Sargasso
Sea. Current 9.463 kilometers per 24 hrs. W. SW. Cast sea anchor. Five
hundred tons ingots reshipped."
At this statement, Leonard turned and stared at Greer.
"Reshipped! Reshipped! Holy cats, Farnol! Reshipped from here--right
here!" He jabbed a finger downward to indicate the spot in the dead
Sargasso Sea occupied by the _Minnie B_.
Greer shook his head dully. "But this is all the wildest--" he made a
helpless motion. "You oughtn't to think about it, sir, or you'll be
going overboard, too. Reshipped!... This heat will get anybody in
time.... The man who wrote that went and jumped overboard the next
minute no doubt. Reshipped..... It ain't good for us to read it, sir."
"But something's gone with her cargo, Greer!" declared Madden
vehemently. "Something's gone with it. I don't care how crazy the crew
became they surely wouldn't have dumped a hold full of copper into the
sea. This log says 'reshipped' and blessed if I don't believe--"
At this moment the boys seemed to hear the sound in the deathly silent
vessel for which their ears had been all the time straining. Madden
broke off abruptly and both stood listening with palpitating hearts. It
was repeated. A repressed half groan, inarticulate, as if some human
being were in distress. It was in the main cabin below them.
Hardly daring to guess at what they would see, the adventurers crept
silently out of the chart room, down a short hot passageway to a door.
Leonard caught a breath, then opened it without noise.
In the brilliant westering light that flooded the main cabin through the
port holes, Madden saw a dining table, disordered as from a recent
feast. On the floor around it were fragments of smashed glasses and
bloody stains. A cut glass decanter, half full of wine, sat on the
table, and in a corner of the cabin shrank the figure of a man.