For a long while I stared, then went across to the port side. Here I found that a similar bank stretched away on our port beam. It was as though we were sailing up an immense river, the low banks of which were formed of seaweed instead of land.
And so that day passed hour by hour, the weed-banks growing more definite and seeming to be nearer. Towards evening something came into sight - a far, dim hulk, the masts gone, the whole hull covered with growth, an unwholesome green, blotched with brown in the light from the dying sun.
I saw this lonesome craft from a port on the starboard side, and the sight roused a multitude of questions and thoughts .
Evidently we had penetrated into the unknown central portion of the enormous Sargasso, the Great Eddy of the Atlantic, and this was some lonely derelict, lost ages ago perhaps to the outside world.
Just at the going down of the sun, I saw another; she was nearer, and still possessed two of her masts, which stuck up bare and desolate into the darkening sky. She could not have been more than a quarter of a mile in from the edge of the weed. As we passed her I craned out my head through the port to stare at her. As I stared the dusk grew out of the abyss of the air, and she faded presently from sight into the surrounding loneliness.
Through all that night I sat at the port and watched, listening and peering; for the tremendous mystery of that inhuman weed-world was upon me.
In the air there rose no sound; even the wind was scarcely more than a low hum aloft among the sails and gear, and under me the oily water gave no rippling noise. All was silence, supreme and unearthly.
About midnight the moon rose away on our starboard beam, and from then until the dawn I stared out upon a ghostly world of noiseless weed, fantastic, silent, and unbelievable, under the moonlight.
On four separate occasions my gaze lit on black hulks that rose above the surrounding weeds - the hulks of long-lost vessels. And once, just when the strangeness of dawn was in the sky, a faint, long-drawn wailing seemed to come floating to me across the immeasurable waste of weed.
It startled my strung nerves, and I assured myself that it was the cry of some lone sea bird. Yet, my imagination reached out for some stranger explanation.
The eastward sky began to flush with the dawn, and the morning light grew subtly over the breadth of the enormous ocean of weed until it seemed to me to reach away unbroken on each beam into the grey horizons. Only astern of us, like a broad road of oil, ran the strange river-like gulf up which we had sailed.
Now I noticed that the banks of weed were nearer, very much nearer, and a disagreeable thought came to me. This vast rift that had allowed us to penetrate into the very nucleus of the Sargasso Sea - suppose it should close!
It would mean inevitably that there would be one more among the missing - another unanswered mystery of the inscrutable ocean. I resisted the thought, and came back more directly into the present.
Evidently the wind was still dropping, for we were moving slowly, as a glance at the ever-nearing weed-banks told me. The hours passed on, and my breakfast, when the steward brought it, I took to one of die ports, and there ate; for I would lose nothing of the strange surroundings into which we were so steadily plunging.
And so the morning passed.
V
It was about an hour after dinner that I observed the open channel between the weed-banks to be narrowing almost minute by minute with uncomfortable speed. I could do nothing except watch and surmise.
At times I felt convinced that the immense masses of weed were closing in upon us, but I fought off the thought with the more hopeful one that we were surely approaching some narrowing outlet of the gulf that yawned so far across the seaweed.
By the time the afternoon was half-through, the weed-banks had approached so close that occasional out-jutting masses scraped the yacht’s sides in passing. It was now with the stuff below my face, within a few feet of my eyes, that I discovered the immense amount of life that stirred among all the hideous waste.
Innumerable crabs crawled among the seaweed, and once, indistinctly, something stirred among the depths of a large outlying tuft of weed. What it was I could not tell, though afterwards I had an idea; but all I saw was something dark and glistening. We were past it before I could see more.
The steward was in the act of bringing in my tea, when from above there came a noise of shouting, and almost immediately a slight jolt. The man put down the tray he was carrying, and glanced at me, with startled expression.
‘What is it, Jones?’ I questioned.
‘I don’t know sir. I expect it’s the weed,’ he replied.
I ran to the port, craned out my head, and looked forward. Our bow seemed to be embedded in a mass of weeds, and as I watched it came further aft.
Within the next five minutes we had driven through it into a circle of sea that was free from the weed. Across this we seemed to drift, rather than sail, so slow was our speed.
Upon its opposite margin we brought up the vessel swinging broadside on to the weed, being secured thus with a couple of kedges cast from the bows and stern, though of this I was not aware until later. As we swung, and at last I was able from my port to see ahead, I saw a thing that amazed me.
There, not three hundred feet distant across the quaking weed, a vessel lay embedded. She had been a three-master; but of these only the mizzen was standing. For perhaps a minute I stared, scarcely breathing in my exceeding interest.
All around above her bulwarks to the height of apparently some ten feet, ran a son of fencing formed, so far as I could make out, from canvas, rope, and spars. Even as I wondered at the use of such a thing, I heard my chum’s voice overhead. He was hailing her:
‘Graiken, ahoy!’ he shouted. ‘Graiken, ahoy!’
At that I fairly jumped. Graiken! What could he mean! I stared out of the port. The blaze of the sinking sun flashed redly upon her stern, and showed the lettering of her name and port; yet the distance was too great for me to read.
I ran across to my table to see if there were a pair of binoculars in the drawers. I found one in the first I opened; then I ran back to the port, racking them out as I went. I reached it, and clapped them to my eyes. Yes; I saw it plainly, her name Graiken and her port London.
From her name my gaze moved to that strange fencing about her. There was a movement in the aft part. As I watched a portion of it slid to one side, and a man’s head and shoulders appeared.
I nearly yelled with the excitement of that moment. I could scarcely believe the thing I saw. The man waved an arm, and a vague hail reached us across the weed, then he disappeared. A moment later a score of people crowded the opening, and among them I made out distinctly the face and figure of a girl.
‘He was right, after all!’ I heard myself saying out loud in a voice that was toneless through very amazement.
In a minute, I was at the door, beating it with my fists. ‘Let me out, Ned! Let me out!’ I shouted.
I felt that I could forgive him all the indignity that I had suffered. Nay, more; in a queer way way I had a feeling that it was I who needed to ask him for forgiveness. All my bitterness had gone, and I wanted only to be out and give a hand in the rescue.
Yet though I shouted, no one came, so that at last I returned quickly to the port, to see what further developments there were.
Across the weed I now saw that one man had his hands up to his mouth shouting. His voice reached me only as a faint, hoarse cry; the distance was too great for anyone aboard the yacht to distinguish its import.
From the derelict my attention was drawn abruptly to a scene alongside. A plank was thrown down on to the weed, and the next moment I saw my chum swing himself down the side and leap upon it.
I had opened my mouth to call out to him that I would forgive all were I but freed to lend a hand in this unbelievable rescue.
But even as the words formed they died, for though the weed appeared so dense, it was evidently incapable of bearing any considerable weight, and the plank, with Barlow u
pon it, sank down into the weed almost to his waist.
He turned and grabbed at the rope with both hands, and in the same moment he gave a loud cry of sheer terror, and commenced to scramble up the yacht’s side.
As his feet drew clear of the weed I gave a short cry. Something was curled about his left ankle - something oily, supple and tapered. As I stared another rose up out from the weed and swayed through the air, made a grab at his leg, missed and appeared to wave aimlessly. Others came towards him as he struggled upwards.
Then I saw hands reach down from above and seize Barlow beneath the arms. They lifted him by main force, and with a mass of weed that enfolded something leathery, from which numbers of curling arms writhed.
A hand slashed down with a sheath-knife, and the next instant the hideous thing had fallen back among the weed.
For a couple of seconds longer I remained, my head twisted upwards; then faces appeared once more over our rail, and I saw the men extending arms and fingers, pointing. From above me there rose a hoarse chorus of fear and wonder, and I turned my head swiftly to glance down and across that treacherous extraordinary weed world.
The whole of the hitherto silent surface was all of a move in one stupendous undulation - as though life had come to all that desolation.
The undulatory movement continued, and abruptly, in a hundred places, the seaweed was tossed up into sudden billowy hillocks. From these burst mighty arms, and in an instant the evening air was full of them, hundreds and hundreds, coming toward the yacht.
‘Devil-fishes!’ shouted a man’s voice from the deck. ‘Octopuses! My Gord!’
Then I caught my chum shouting.
‘Cut the mooring ropes!’ he yelled.
This must have been done almost on the instant, for immediately there showed between us and the nearest weed a broadening gap of scummy water.
‘Haul away, lads!’ I heard Barlow shouting; and the same instant I caught the splash, splash of something in the water on our port side. I rushed across and looked out. I found that a rope had been carried across to the opposite seaweed, and that the men were now warping us rapidly from those invading horrors.
I raced back to the starboard port, and, lo! as though by magic, there stretched between us and the Graiken only the silent stretch of demure weed and some fifty feet of water. It seemed inconceivable that it was a covering to so much terror.
And then speedily the night was upon us, hiding all; but from the decks above there commenced a sound of hammering that continued long throughout the night - long after I, weary with my previous night’s vigil, had passed into a fitful slumber, broken anon by that hammering above.
VI
‘Your breakfast, sir,’ came respectfully enough in the steward’s voice; and I woke with a start. Overhead, there still sounded that persistent hammering, and I turned to the steward for an explanation.
.‘I don’t exactly know, sir,’ was his reply. ‘It’s something the carpenter’s doing to one of the lifeboats. ’ And then he left me.
I ate my breakfast standing at the port, staring at the distant Graiken. The weed was perfectly quiet, and we were lying about the centre of the little lake.
As I watched the derelict, it seemed to me that I saw a movement about her side, and I reached for the glasses. Adjusting them, I made out that there were several of the
cuttlefish attached to her in different parts, their arms spread out almost starwise across the lower portions of her hull.
Occasionally a feeler would detached itself and wave aimlessly. This it was that had drawn my attention. The sight of these creatures, in conjunction with that extraordinary scene the previous evening, enabled me to guess the use of the great screen running about the Graiken. It had obviously been erected as a protection against the vile inhabitants of that strange weed-world.1
From that my thoughts passed to the problem of reaching and rescuing the crew of the derelict. I could by no means conceive how this was to be effected.
As I stood pondering, whilst I ate, I caught the voices of men chaunteying on deck. For a while this continued; then came Barlow’s voice shouting orders, and almost immediately a splash in the water on the starboard side.
I poked my head out through the port, and stared. They had got one of the lifeboats into the water. To the gunnel of the boat they had added a superstructure ending in a roof, the whole somewhat resembling a gigantic dog-kennel.
From under the two sharp ends of the boat rose a couple of planks at an angle or thirty degrees. These appeared to be firmly bolted to the boat and the superstructure. I guessed that their purpose was to enable the boat to over-ride the seaweed, instead of ploughing into it and getting fast.
In the stern of the boat was fixed a strong ringbolt, into which was spliced the end of a coil of one-inch manilla rope. Along the sides of the boat, and high above the gunnel, the superstructure was pierced with holes for oars. In one side of the roof was placed a trapdoor. The idea struck me as wonderfully ingenious, and a very probable solution of the difficulty of rescuing the crew of the Graiken.
A few minutes later one of the men threw over a rope on to the roof of the boat. He opened the trap, and lowered himself into the interior. I noticed that he was armed with one of the yacht’s cutlasses and a revolver.
It was evident that my chum fully appreciated the difficulties that were to be overcome. In a few seconds the man was fqllowed
by four others of the crew, similarly armed; and then Barlow.
Seeing him, I craned my head as far as possible, and sang out to him.
‘Ned! Ned, old man!’ I shouted. ‘Let me come along with you!’
He appeared never to have heard me. I noticed his face, just before he shut down the trap above him. The expression was fixed and peculiar. It had the uncomfortable remoteness of a sleep-walker.
‘Confound it!’ I muttered, and after that I said nothing; for it hurt my dignity to supplicate before the men.
From the interior of the boat I heard Barlow’s voice, muffled. Immediately four oars were passed out through the holes in the sides, while from slots in the front and rear of the superstructure were thrust a couple of oars with wooden chocks nailed to the blades.
These, I guessed, were intended to assist in steering the boat, that in the bow being primarily for pressing down the weed before the boat, so as to allow her to surmount it the more easily.
Another muffled order came from the interior of the queer looking craft, and immediately the four oars dipped, and the boat shot towards the weed, the rope trailing out astern as it was paid out from the deck above me.
The board-assisted bow of the lifeboat took the weed with a sort of squashy surge, rose up, and the whole craft appeared to leap from the water down in among the quaking mass.
I saw now the reason why the oar-holes had been placed so high. For of the boat itself nothing could be seen, only the upper portion of the superstructure wallowing amid the weed. Had the holes been lower, there would have been no handling the oars.
I settled myself to watch. There was the probability of a prodigious spectacle, and as I could not help, I would, at least, use my eyes.
Five minutes passed, during which nothing happened, and the boat made slow progress towards the derelict. She had accomplished perhaps some twenty or thirty yards, when suddenly from the Graiken there reached my ears a hoarse shout.
My glance leapt from the boat to the derelict. I saw that the people aboard had the sliding part of the screen to one side, and were waving their arms frantically, as though motioning the boat back.
Amongst them I could see the girlish figure that had attracted my attention the previous evening. For a moment I stared, then my gaze travelled back to the boat. All was quiet.
The boat had now covered a quarter of the distance, and I began to persuade myself that she would get across without being attacked.
Then, as I gazed anxiously, from a point in the weed a little ahead of the boat there came a sudden quaking ripple
that shivered through the weed in a sort of queer tremor. The next instant, like a shot from a gun, a huge mass drove up clear through the tangled weed, hurling it in all directions, and almost capsizing the boat.
The creature had driven up rear foremost. It fell back with a mighty splash, and in the same moment its monstrous arms were reached out to the boat. They grasped it, enfolding themselves about it horribly. It was apparently attempting to drag the boat under.
From the boat came a regular volley of revolver shots. Yet, though the brute writhed, it did not relinquish its hold. The shots closed, and I saw the dull flash of cutlass blades. The men were attempting to hack at the thing through the oar holes, but evidently with little effect.
All at once the enormous creature seemed to make an effort to overturn the boat. I saw the half-submerged boat go over to one side, until it seemed to me that nothing could right it, and at the sight I went mad with excitement to help them.
I pulled my head in from the port, and glanced round the cabin. I wanted to break down the door, but there was nothing with which to do this.
Then my sight fell on my bunkboard, which fitted into a sliding groove. It was made of teak wood, and very solid and heavy. I lifted it out, and charged the door with the end of it.
The panels split from top to bottom, for I am a heavy man. Again I struck, and drove the two portions of the door apart. I hove down the bunk-board, and rushed through.
There was no one on guard; evidently they had gone on deck to view the rescue. The gunroom door was to my right, and I had the key in my pocket.
In an instant, I had it open, and was lifting down from its rack a heavy elephant gun. Seizing a box of cartridges, I tore off the lid, and emptied the lot into my pocket; then I leapt up the companionway on the deck.
The steward was standing near. He turned at my step; his face was white and he took a couple of paces towards me doubtfully.
They’re - they’re - ’ he began; but I never let him finish.
‘Get out of my way!’ I roared, and swept him to one side. I ran forward.
Mysterious Sea Stories Page 19