WITH A STORY TO TELL
AT daybreak next morning I was called up to the Mysterious Man, whom I
found standing in a corner of the forecastle holding a loaded revolver
in his hand and pointing it threateningly at anyone who approached him.
He had awoke, I was told, made a tour of the ship, and, gaining
possession of the weapon belonging to the second engineer, proceeded to
fire one chamber point-blank at Thorpe, who was on duty on the bridge.
Then, when pursued, he took refuge in the forecastle, where I found him.
On my approach he calmed down immediately, and handed me the revolver as
obediently as a child. Somehow I seemed to possess an influence over him
which no one else could exercise, and very quickly induced him to return
to his bunk, greatly to the satisfaction of the man who had been told
off to be his keeper, and who had no doubt slept on duty.
The storm showed no sign of abatement, and laying to as we were we
received the full force of the sweeping gale. The skipper was asleep,
snoring loudly, as was his wont, therefore I returned to my berth, and
for a couple of hours watched the capers of the rats, until the motion
of the boat rising and rolling lulled me again to unconsciousness.
Through the whole of the following day we lay off the seaweed-covered
relic of the past until, in the red sundown, the wind dropped, and after
several attempts the men secured a wire hawser to the battered prow, and
when Seal rang, “Full steam ahead,” the _Seahorse_ began slowly to
follow in our wake, amid the loud cheering of those on board.
The Mysterious Man stood on the bridge at my side and watched the
operation with an expression of complete satisfaction, although more
than once, when he believed I was not looking, he would turn and shake
his skinny fist at the curious old craft at our stern.
Our progress was slow, for the _Thrush_ was never at any time a fast
boat. And with such a dead weight behind her the engineer had to be
careful at what pressure he worked our unsafe boilers.
The skipper, after consultation with Thorpe and myself, decided not to
make for Valencia but to tow his prize straight to Gibraltar and on to
London. As the great black hull with its shroud of marine plants rose
and fell behind us it certainly presented more the appearance of Noah’s
Ark, as pictorially represented, than of a sea-going vessel. One fact I
now discovered that I had not before noticed was that on the bows above
the broken figure-head representing a seahorse was a wooden crucifix
perhaps two feet high; broken it was true, but still bearing an effigy
of the crucifixion, while upon the breast of the seahorse was carved a
Maltese cross of similar design to that upon the old silken banner.
The mystery of it all was the sole topic of conversation both on the
bridge and in the forecastle. Every man on board tried to obtain some
word from the castaway, but in vain. He became tractable, ate well,
would not touch grog, but remained always silent. He would stand erect
by the capstan in the stern for hours, and with folded arms watch the
rolling hulk ploughing her way slowly in the long streak of foam left by
our propeller. He still wore his faded velvet breeches, but his bare
legs were now covered by a pair of woollen stockings, while in place of
his ragged doublet he wore an old pea-jacket, and sometimes an oilskin
coat and peaked cap. He still, however, clung to the rusty sword which
he had chosen, a blunt but finely-tempered weapon, and often it would be
seen poking from beneath his oilskin as he walked the deck.
Once an attempt had been made to trim his long white hair and flowing
beard, but this he had resented so vigorously, threatening to spit the
man who held the scissors, that the effort had to be abandoned. He thus
gave them to understand that although he might accept their modern dress
as a loan he would brook no interference with his personal appearance.
Who was he? That was the question which all of us, from Job Seal down to
the apprentices, were anxious to solve.
The mystery of the _Seahorse_ was great enough, but that surrounding the
unknown man was greater. My own theory regarding the vessel was that in
the early seventeenth century she had gone down or aground in shallow
water, perhaps in one of the many coves on the Moroccan or Algerian
coast, but the high prow and stern being closed down so tight both air
and water were excluded. Those on board—fighting men, it seemed—had
perished, but the buoyancy of the ship had been preserved, and by some
submarine disturbance—volcanic, most probably—it had become released
and risen to the surface.
The growth of barnacles, mussels, and weeds over the whole of the vessel
from the stumps of her masts caused Seal to believe that she could only
have been covered at high tide, and that she must have lain hidden in
some well-sheltered spot where the force of the waves had been broken,
otherwise she must have been beaten to pieces. He pointed out to me how
some of the weed on her was only to be found on rocks covered at high
water, yet if the theory were a correct one then she could not have been
hidden in the Mediterranean, as it is an almost tideless sea.
Seal suggested that she might have been aground on the coast of Western
Morocco, a country but little known to the civilized world although so
near one of the greatest trade routes, and that she might have drifted
from the Atlantic to the spot where we had discovered her.
This theory seemed the most likely one, although the presence of the
Mysterious Man was utterly unaccountable.
The main point which puzzled Seal, I think, was what he should do with
the gold. He regarded the poor old fellow as a gibbering idiot, and had
but little to do with him. Customs officers and lunatics were the bluff
old seaman’s pet abominations. He would probably have liked to claim the
hoard of gold himself if it were not for the existence of one with a
prior claim to it, and once or twice he expressed to me an anxiety as to
what his owners would say to it all. They were skinflints of the worst
type, and would, I expected, probably lay claim to it themselves.
Steaming slowly we passed the Gib. and made a straight course for Cape
St. Vincent, which we sighted at dawn one rainy morning, then hugging
the Portuguese coast we safely passed the mouth of the Tagus, being
hailed more than once by other craft, the skippers all asking us with
humorous banter what we had in tow.
Fortunately the weather had improved greatly, and even as we traversed
the Bay of Biscay we had no reason to complain, for the old _Seahorse_
rode proudly in our wake, rocking a good deal on account of its
house-like shape, but nevertheless giving Seal the greatest
satisfaction.
“It’ll make ’em open their eyes, doctor, when we tow ’er up the Thames,”
he often said, as he paced his bridge and looked at her straining on the
hawser.
Never a day passed but I occupied myself diligently with the documents
and manuscripts that had fallen into my hands, but I am fain to confess
that beyond what I have already explained to the reader I discovered
absolutely nothing. Although I had passed my final examination and could
write M.D. after my name, my book-learning was not sufficiently deep
that I could decipher and understand those crabbed old screeds.
I showed them to the Mysterious Man, hoping that they would attract his
attention and give me some clue to their meaning, but he remained quite
passive when he saw them, and turning upon his heel looked out through
the round port-hole.
I certainly was very anxious to get back to London to obtain some
opinion upon the big vellum book in which Bartholomew da Schorno
declared there was a secret that would be discovered hereafter. My
voyage, besides being a pleasant one, had been full of excitement, for
we had found an object the like of which no living eye had seen,
together with an individual who was a complete and profound mystery.
The weather was all that could be desired when we entered the Channel,
keeping close in to the coast of Normandy as far as Dieppe, and then
taking a direct course across to Beachy Head, where we were signalled as
homeward bound. When, however, we were off Folkestone, about nine
o’clock one night, a squall struck us so suddenly that even Job Seal was
unprepared for it. The glass had fallen rapidly, he had noticed, but
such a heavy squall as it proved to be was not to be expected at that
season of the year. Within a quarter of an hour a terrific sea was
running, and the _Thrush_ seemed ever and anon thrown almost on her
beam-ends. I noticed that Seal’s face for the first time during our trip
betrayed some anxiety, and not without cause, for he suddenly
exclaimed:—
“Ah! just as I expected. Blister my kidneys, doctor, but we’ve no
bloomin’ luck. That hawser’s parted!”
I turned quickly to look astern, and there, sure enough, the _Seahorse_
was adrift and out of our wake. Until that moment the strain on the
hawser had kept her comparatively steady, but the instant the steel
cable had broken she pitched upon her beam-ends, burying her nose deep
into the angry waves.
We both stood gripping a rail and watching, neither of us uttering a
word.
For perhaps five minutes the antique vessel strove again and again to
right herself, until one wave greater than the others crashed over her
high stern. From where we stood we could hear the breaking of glass and
the shivering of the heavy timbers that, half rotten, now broke up like
matchwood.
Then almost immediately the saloon which we had explored began to fill,
and slowly before our eyes she went down stern first.
The men, watching like ourselves, set up a howl of disappointment, and
Seal gave vent to a volley of nautical expressions which need not here
be repeated; but the Mysterious Man, who had also noticed the disaster,
began dancing joyously and cutting capers on the deck, heedless of the
storm raging about him. It was evident that the final disappearance of
the _Seahorse_ gave him the utmost satisfaction.
As for ourselves, we gazed with regret upon the mass of floating timbers
that were swept around us. It was to our bitter chagrin that, after
towing that relic of a bygone age all those miles at a cost of fuel and
time, we had lost her almost at the mouth of the Thames.
But regret was useless. The _Seahorse_, with its freight of crumbling
skeletons, had gone down again, and would certainly never reappear. So
Job Seal drew his oilskin closer around him, lamented his infernal luck,
and, recollecting the thousand odd pieces of gold in his cabin, turned
and gave an order to the helmsman which caused the bows of the _Thrush_
to run nearer towards the dark line of England’s cliffs between
Folkestone and Dover.
Lights white and green were beginning to show in the distance, those of
other ships passing up and down Channel, and as I stood by his side in
my dripping oilskins I congratulated myself that if we weathered the
squall I should be safely back in London in a very few hours, with as
strange a story to tell as any man had related.