The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

  There was little need of gun fire now; but the forward-turret guns belched once during the charge, and the more quickly handled eight-and six-inch rifles stormed away while there was time to reload. Smoking, rolling, and barking—ten thousand tons of inertia behind a solid steel knife—she pounced on her now silent enemy. There was a crunching sound, muffled and continuous. The speed of the Argyll seemed hardly checked. In went the ram farther and farther, until the slanting edge began cutting above the water. Then the Warsaw, heeled far over by the impact, rolled back, and the knife cut upward. The smooth plates at the Argyll’s water-line wrinkled like paper, and the pile of shattered steel which had once been her forward deck and bulkheads was shaken up and adjusted to new positions; but not until her nose was actually buried in the wound—until the Warsaw was cut half in two—did the reversed engines begin to work. The Argyll backed out, exposing for a moment a hole like a cavern’s mouth; then the stricken ship rolled heavily toward her, burying the sore, and, humming and buzzing with exhausting steam and rushing air, settled rapidly and sank, while out from ports, doors, and nearly vertical hatches came her crew, as many as could. They sprang overboard and swam, and those that reached the now stationary Argyll were rescued; for a cry had gone through the latter from the central station in her depths: “All hands on deck to save life! Bring ladders, lifebuoys, and ropes’ ends!”

  The battle was ended; for, with the ramming of the Warsaw, the Obdorsk struck to the three ships circling around her. They had suffered, but the battleship Argyll was reduced to a monitor. Her superstructure and the bow and stern above the water-line were shattered to a shapeless tangle of steel. What was left of her funnels and ventilators resembled nutmeg-graters, and she was perceptibly down by the head; for her bow leaked through its wrinkled plates, and the forward compartment below the protective deck was filled. Yet she could still fight in smooth water. Her box-like citadel was intact, and standing naked out of the wreck, scarred and dented, but uninjured, were the turrets, ammunition-hoists, and conning-tower. In the latter was the brain of the ship, that had fought her to victory and then sent the call to her crew to save the lives of their enemies.

  Two men met on a level spot amidships and clasped hands. Both were bare-waisted and grimy, and one showed red as a lobster under the stains. He was the chief engineer.

  “We’ve won, Clarkson,” he said. “We’ve won the hottest fight that history can tell of—won it ourselves; but he’ll get the credit.”

  “And he’s drunk as a lord—drunk through it all. What did he ram for? Why did he send two millions of prize-money to the bottom? O Lord! O Lord! It’s enough to make a man swear at his mother. We had her licked. Why did he ram?”

  “Because he was drunk, that’s why. He rang seven bells to me along at the first of the muss, and then sent word through young Felton that he wanted full speed. Dammit, he already had it, every pound of it. And he gave me no signal to reverse when we struck; if it wasn’t for luck and a kind Providence we’d have followed the Warsaw. I barely got her over. Here, Mr. Felton; you were in the central, were you not? How’d the old man appear to be making it? Were his orders intelligible?”

  A young man had joined them, hot, breathing hard, and unclothed.

  “Not always, sir; I had to ask him often to repeat, and then I sometimes got another order. He kept me busy from the first, when he sent the torpedoes overboard.”

  “The torpedoes!” exclaimed Mr. Clarkson. “Did we use them? I didn’t know it.”

  “He was afraid they’d explode on board, sir,” he said. “That was just after we took full speed.”

  “And just before he got too full to be afraid of anything,” muttered the lieutenant. “Why don’t he come out of that?” He glanced toward the conning-tower. Other officers had joined them.

  “We’ll investigate,” said Mr. Clarkson.

  The door on the level of the main-deck leading into the mast was found to be wedged fast by the blow of a projectile. Men, naked and black, sprawled about the wreckage breathing fresh air, were ordered to get up and to rig a ladder outside. They did so, and Mr. Clarkson ascended to the ragged end of the hollow stump and looked down. Standing at the wheel, steering the drifting ship with one hand and holding an empty bottle in the other, was a man with torn clothing and bloody face. In spite of the disfigurement Mr. Clarkson knew him. Jammed into the narrow staircase leading below was the body of a man partly hidden by a Gatling gun, the lever of which had pierced the forehead.

  “Finnegan,” yelled the officer, “how’d you get there?”

  The man at the wheel lifted a bleary eye and blinked; then, unsteadily touching his forehead, answered: “Fe’ dow’-shtairs, shir.”

  “Come out of that! On deck there! Take the wheel, one hand, and stand by it!” Mr. Clarkson descended to the others with a serious look on his grimy face, and a sailor climbed the ladder and went down the mast.

  “Gentlemen,” said the first lieutenant, impressively, “we were mistaken, and we wronged Captain Blake. He is dead. He died at the beginning. He lies under a Gatling gun in the bottom of the tower. I saw Finnegan hanging to that gun, whirling around it, when the mast blew up. It is all plain now. Finnegan and the gun fell into the tower. Finnegan may have struck the stairs and rolled down, but the gun went down the hollow within and killed the captain. We have been steered and commanded by a drunken man—but it was Finnegan.”

  Finnegan scrambled painfully down the ladder. He staggered, stumbled, and fell in a heap.

  “Rise up,” said Mr. Clarkson, as they surrounded him; “rise up, Daniel Drake Nelson Farragut Finnegan. You are small potatoes and few in the hill; you are shamefully drunk, and your nose bleeds; you are stricken with Spanish mildew, and you smell vilely—but you are immortal. You have been a disgrace to the service, but Fate in her gentle irony has redeemed you, permitting you, in one brief moment of your misspent life, to save to your country the command of the seas—to guide, with your subconscious intelligence, the finest battleship the science of the world has constructed to glorious victory, through the fiercest sea-fight the world has known. Rise up, Daniel, and see the surgeon.”

  But Finnegan only snored.

  THE WIGWAG MESSAGE, by Morgan Robertson

  As eight bells sounded, Captain Bacon and Mr. Knapp came up from breakfast, and Mr. Hansen, the squat and square-built second mate, immediately went down. The deck was still wet from the morning washing down, and forward the watch below were emerging from the forecastle to relieve the other half, who were coiling loosely over the top of the forward house a heavy, wet hawser used in towing out the evening before. They were doing it properly, and as no present supervision was necessary, the first mate remained on the poop for a few moments’ further conversation with the captain.

  “Poor crew, cap’n,” he said, as, picking his teeth with the end of a match, he scanned the men forward. “It’ll take me a month to lick ’em into shape.”

  To judge by his physique, a month was a generous limit for such an operation. He was a giant, with a giant’s fist and foot; red-haired and bearded, and of sinister countenance. But he was no more formidable in appearance than his captain, who was equally big, but smooth-shaven, and showing the square jaw and beetling brows of a born fighter.

  “Are the two drunks awake yet?” asked the latter.

  “Not at four o’clock, sir,” answered the mate. “Mr. Hansen couldn’t get ’em out. I’ll soon turn ’em to.”

  As he spoke, two men appeared from around the corner of the forward house, and came aft. They were young men, between twenty-five and thirty, with intelligent, sunburnt faces. One was slight of figure, with the refinement of thought and study in his features; the other, heavier of mold and muscular, though equally quick in his movements, had that in his dark eyes which said plainly that he was wont to supplement the work of his hands with the work of his brain. Both were dressed in the tar-stained and grimy rags of the merchant sailor at sea; and they walked the wet and unsteady deck with
no absence of “sea-legs,” climbed the poop steps to leeward, as was proper, and approached the captain and first mate at the weather rail. The heavier man touched his cap, but the other merely inclined his head, and smiling frankly and fearlessly from one face to the other, said, in a pleasant, evenly modulated voice:

  “Good morning. I presume that one of you is the captain.”

  “I’m the captain. What do you want?” was the gruff response.

  “Captain, I believe that the etiquette of the merchant service requires that when a man is shanghaied on board an outward-bound ship he remains silent, does what is told him cheerfully, and submits to fate until the passage ends; but we cannot bring ourselves to do so. We were struck down in a dark spot last night—sandbagged, I should say—and we do not know what happened afterward, though we must have been kept unconscious with chloroform or some such drug. We wakened this morning in your forecastle, dressed in these clothes, and robbed of everything we had with us.”

  “Where were you slugged?”

  “In Cherry Street. The bridge cars were not running, so we crossed from Brooklyn by the Catherine Ferry, and foolishly took a short cut to the elevated station.”

  “Well, what of it?”

  “What—why—why, captain, that you will kindly put us aboard the first inbound craft we meet.”

  “Not much I won’t,” answered the captain, decidedly. “You belong to my crew. I paid for twenty men; and you two and two others skipped at the dock. I had to wait all day in the Horseshoe. You two were caught dead drunk last night, and came down with the tug. That’s what the runners said, and that’s all I know about it. Go forrard.”

  “Do you mean, captain—”

  “Go forrard where you belong. Mr. Knapp, set these men to work.”

  Captain Bacon turned his back on them, and walked away.

  “Get off the poop,” snarled the mate. “Forrard wi’ you both!”

  “Captain, I advise you to reconsider—”

  The words were stopped by a blow of the mate’s fist, and the speaker fell to the deck. Then a hoarse growl of horror and rage came from his companion; and Captain Bacon turned, to see him dancing around the first officer with the skill and agility of a professional boxer, planting vicious blows on his hairy face and neck.

  “Stop this,” roared the captain, as his right hand sought the pocket of his coat. “Stop it, I say. Mr. Hansen,” he called down the skylight, “on deck, here.”

  The huge mate was getting the worst of the unexpected battle, and Captain Bacon approached cautiously. His right hand had come out of his pocket, armed with large brass knuckles; but before he could use them his dazed and astonished first officer went down under the rain of blows. It was then, while the victor waited for him to rise, that the brass knuckles impacted on his head, and he, too, went down, to lie quiet where he fell. The other young man had arisen by this time, somewhat shocked and unsteady in movement, and was coming bravely toward the captain; but before he could reach him his arms were pinioned from behind by Mr. Hansen, who had run up the poop steps.

  “What is dis, onnyway?” he asked. “Mudiny, I dink?”

  “Let go,” said the other, furiously. “You shall suffer for this, you scoundrels. Let go of my arms.” He struggled wildly; but Mr. Hansen was strong.

  Mr. Knapp had regained his feet and a few of his faculties. His conqueror was senseless on the deck, but this other mutineer was still active in rebellion. So, while the approving captain looked on in brass-knuckled dignity, he sprang forward and struck, with strength born of his rage and humiliation, again and again at the man helpless in the arms of Mr. Hansen, until his battered head sank supinely backward, and he struggled no more. Then Mr. Hansen dropped him.

  “Lay aft, here, a couple o’ hands,” thundered the captain from the break of the poop, and two awe-struck men obeyed him. The whole crew had watched the fracas from forward, and the man at the wheel had looked unspeakable things; but no hand or voice had been raised in protest. One at a time they carried the unconscious men to the forecastle; then the crew mustered aft at another thundering summons, and listened to a forceful speech by Captain Bacon, delivered in quick, incisive epigrams, to the effect that if a man aboard his ship—whether he believed himself shipped or shanghaied, a sailor, a priest, a policeman, or a dry-nurse—showed the slightest hesitation at obeying orders, or the slightest resentment at what was said to him, he would be punished with fists, brass knuckles, belaying-pins, or handspikes—the officers were here for that purpose—and if he persisted, he would be shot like a mad dog. They could go forward.

  They went, and while the watch on deck, under the supervision of the second mate, finished coiling down the towline, the watch below finished their breakfast, and when the stricken ones had recovered consciousness, advised them, unsympathetically, to submit and make the best of it until the ship reached Hong-Kong, where they could all “jump her” and get better berths.

  “For if ye don’t,” concluded an Irishman, “I take it ye’ll die, an’ take sam wan of us wid ye; fur this is an American ship, where the mates are hired fur the bigness o’ their fists an’ the hardness o’ their hearts. Look pleasant, now, the pair o’ ye; an’ wan o’ ye take this hash-kid back to the galley.”

  The larger of the two victims sprang to his feet. He was stained and disfigured from the effects of the brass knuckles, and he looked anything but “pleasant.”

  “Say, Irish,” he said angrily, “do you know who you’re talkin’ to? Looks as though you don’t. I’m used to all sorts of guff from all sorts of men, but Mr. Breen here—”

  “Johnson,” interrupted the other, “wait—it’s of no account now. This man’s advice is sound. No one would believe us, and we can prove nothing. We are thoroughly helpless, and must submit until we reach a consular port, or something happens. Now, men,” he said to the others, “my name is Breen. Call me by it. You, too, Johnson. I yield to the inevitable, and will do my share of the work as well as I can. If I make mistakes, don’t hesitate to criticize, and post me, if you will. I’ll be grateful.”

  “But I’ll tell you one thing to start with,” said Johnson, glaring around the forecastle: “we’ll take turns at bringin’ grub and cleanin’ up the forecastle. Another thing: I’ve sailed in these windjammers enough to know my work; and that’s more than you fellows know, by the looks of you. I don’t want your instructions; but Mr. Breen, here—Breen, I mean” (a gesture from the other had interrupted him)—“Breen’s forgotten what you and I will never learn, though he might not be used to pullin’ ropes and swabbing paint-work. If I find one o’ you pesterin’ him, or puttin’ up any jobs, I’ll break that man’s head; understand me? Any one want to put this thing to the test, now?” He scanned each man’s face in turn; but none showed an inclination to respond. They had seen him fight the big first mate. “There’s not the makin’ of a whole man among you,” he resumed. “You stand still while three men do up two, when, if you had any nerve, Mr. —— Breen, here, might be aft, ’stead o’ eatin’ cracker-hash with a lot o’ dock-rats and beach-combers. He’s had better playmates; so ’ve I, for that matter, o’ late years.”

  “Johnson, keep still,” said the other. “It doesn’t matter what we have had, who we were or might be. We’re before the mast, bound for Hong-Kong. We may find a consul at Anjer; I’m not sure. Meanwhile, I’m Breen, and you are Johnson, and it is no one’s business what we have been. I’m not anxious for this matter to become public. I can explain to the department, and no one else need know.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “No; not ‘sir.’ Keep that for our superiors.”

  Johnson grumbled a little; then Mr. Hansen’s round Swedish face appeared at the door.

  “Hi, you in dere—you big feller—you come out. You belong in der utter watch. You hear? You come out on deck,” he called.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Johnson, rising sullenly.

  “All the better, Johnson,” whispered Breen. “One can keep a l
ookout all the time. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.”

  So for these two men the work of the voyage began. The hard-headed, aggressive Johnson, placed in the mate’s watch, had no trouble in finding his place, and keeping it, at the top of the class. He ruled the assorted types of all nations, who worked and slept with him, with sound logic backed by a strong arm and hard fist, never trying to conceal his contempt for them.

  “You mixed nest o’ mongrels,” he would say, at the end of some petty squabble which he had settled for them, “why don’t you stay in your own country ships? Or, if you must sign in American craft, try to feel and act like Americans. It’s just this same yawping at one another in the forecastles that makes it easy for the buckoes aft to hunt you. And that’s why you get your berths. No skipper’ll ship an American sailor while there’s a Dutchman left in the shippin’-office. He wouldn’t think it safe to go to sea with too many American sailors forward to call him down and make him treat ’em decent. He picks a Dago here, and a Dutchman there, and all the Sou’wegians he sees, and fills in with the rakin’s and scrapin’s o’ Hell, Bedlam, and Newgate, knowin’ they’ll hate one another worse than they hate him, and never stand together.”

  To which they would respond in kind, though of lesser degree, always yielding him the last word when he spoke it loud enough.

  But Breen, in the second mate’s watch, had trouble with his fellows at first. They could not understand his quiet, gentlemanly demeanor, mistaking it for fear of them; so, unknown to Johnson, for he would not complain, they subjected him to all the petty annoyances which ignorance may inflict upon intelligence. Though he showed a theoretical knowledge of ships and the sea superior to any they had met with, he was not their equal in the practical work of a sailor. He was awkward at pulling ropes with others, placing his hands in the wrong place and mixing them up in what must be a concerted pull to be effective. His hands, unused to labor, became blistered and sore, and he often, unconsciously perhaps, held back from a task, to save himself from pain. He was an indifferent helmsman, and off Hatteras, in a blow, was sent from the wheel in disgrace. He did not know the ropes, and made sad mistakes until he had mastered the lesson. He could box the compass, in his own way; for instance, the quarter-points between north-northeast and northeast by north he persisted in naming from the first of these points instead of from the other, as was seamanlike and proper; and the same with the corresponding sectors in the other quadrants. Once, at the wheel, when the ship was heading southeast by south half-south, he had been asked the course, and answered: “South-southeast half-east, sir.” For this he was profanely admonished by the captain and ridiculed by the men. Johnson had made the same mistake, but corrected himself in time, and nothing was said about it; but Breen was bullied and badgered in the watch below—the lubberly nomenclature becoming a byword of derision and contempt—until, patience leaving him, he doubled his sore fingers into fists one dogwatch, and thrashed the Irishman—his most unforgiving critic—so quickly, thoroughly, and scientifically that persecution ceased; for the Irishman had been the master spirit of the port forecastle.