There was the report of a weapon up in the darkness, and a bullet struck the bars of the opening just above Swanscott’s head. He replied with his revolver, and three of those black descending figures toppled headlong. Then there was a sound of distant firing, and Hay knew that the riflemen in the yacht had opened on the strange men who were coming to wipe them out. He saw a dozen black figures sag and fall away—some went into the sea, but more on to the decks. Then the shelter was ringing with the noise of rifle fire, and he found his own pistol spitting viciously in his hand, and saw more than one figure at which he had aimed come downward.
In five minutes all was over, and the Captain of the yacht was alongside with a fully armed boat’s crew, whilst the men in the house came forth and joined them. Swanscott gave an order, and led the way aloft, followed helter-skelter by his men. He went up over the mizzen-top, and saw a man sagging forward out of the top of the hollow steel mizzen-mast. They removed the man and entered the mast, where they found rungs fitted down the inside. This led them downward right to the keelson, in the bottom of the ship, where one side of the mast had been cut away and hinged on to form a door. Through this strange doorway they stepped, and found themselves in a huge hall, which was plainly the hold of the vessel. It was lit with electric light, and there were electric fans spinning.
Swanscott was utterly amazed. The hold of the derelict was full of water. He had seen for himself. Then, suddenly, he understood. It was only the upper part of the vessel that was full of water. Whoever had arranged that strange and mysterious craft had put an iron deck across the ’tween-deck beams about midway down the broad part of the hold, and extending from end to end of the vessel. By this simple expedient they had made the whole lower part of the vessel a huge water-tight tank of iron, about two hundred feet long and about fifteen feet deep, by about thirty-seven wide at the widest part. Ventilation had been arranged up and down the hollow steel masts; as also the methods of ingress and egress; though, as Swanscott discovered afterwards, they had other methods which they used for passing in and out of bulky objects, and this was by means of a concealed hatch under the galley, which led an iron shaft right down through the water with which they had filled the ’tween-decks, even as the hollow steel masts went down.
The missing men were all found ironed “head and tail”, but safe and well, save for the rough handling which they had experienced. They each told the same story—how they were seized before they had any idea that anyone was near them, and those who struggled were stunned or drugged and so removed from sight; the idea obviously being to frighten the yacht away from attempting to tow them.
The object of all this planning and mystery was revealed when they came to examine the contents of the underwater hold. Here they found an immense amount of bullion, which had evidently been removed from the missing steamship Lavinia, of which previous mention has been made. Questioning one of the wounded, it was made finally plain that the derelict had been planned for an elaborate piratical cruise on a gigantic scale. There was, as Swanscott knew from the papers, an immense amount of gold being shifted that week from east to west, contrary to the usual conception of the “gold-current”, and this old iron ship had been fitted up like this with the sole idea of transferring the gold from the transatlantic liners to the secret hold of the apparent derelict. That she had succeeded with the Lavinia the bullion bore silent witness. But where was the Lavinia? No questioning could elicit this; so that it was plain there could be only one answer—at the bottom of the sea, where, but for the interposition of the yacht, it is likely enough each of the succeeding gold ships would have followed her with all hands, minus only their gold. It was certainly a somewhat ghastly discovery.
The method of procedure was simple: the apparent derelict, on seeing its victim approach, would put up a distress signal; the liner would stop to pick them up; then the succoured would turn upon the saviours, and the rest can be easily imagined. Perhaps, also, there were a certain number of confederates aboard; but of this there can be no surety.
The strange sound which so disturbed the watchers in the shelter was the creeping of one of the pirates’ spies up the hollow mizzenmast, which passed through the centre of the shelter. The timber baulks were to explain why a ship apparently full of water did not sink. One final little mystery was also cleared up. The reason why the derelict appeared to drift so fast was that she was aided by an electrically-driven screw deep down under the counter, by means of which she was able to keep her position on the track of the liners, or to retire discreetly, as suited best the purposes of her masters—the gold thieves.
The Ghosts of the Glen Doon
The Glen Doon was reputed to be haunted—whatever that somewhat vague and much abused term may mean. But it was not until Larry Chaucer went aboard of her to stay the whole of one dark night in the company of her silt-laden, stark hold, that this reputation became something more than a suggestion of peculiarness that hung always around the hulk’s name.
The Glen Doon was a dismasted old iron vessel, lying anchored head and stern off one of the old ramshackle wooden wharves a couple of miles above San Francisco. She had turned turtle in the bay some five years before the period now mentioned, and drowned ten of her men, who were down in the hold chipping the beams. For twenty-four hours after she upended her bottom to the sky the crowds of would-be rescuers who came around her in boats could hear the tap, tapping of the imprisoned men in the hold as they tapped with their hammers against the iron bottom of the ship for help that was never to come; at least, not in a practicable form. It is true that an attempt was made to cut through the iron skin of the ship, and so get the men out that way; but, unfortunately, as soon as a hole was drilled the inevitable occurred—the imprisoned air in the hold, which had buoyed up the capsized vessel, began to whistle out shrilly.
The blacksmith-mechanic, who was attempting to rescue the men in this impossible fashion, had no conception of what this escape of air must ultimately mean. He continued to drill holes, and as each hole was drilled a new note was lent to the shrill whistling of the pent air. Finally, someone cried out that the vessel was foundering. At that, the blacksmith took up a heavy, forty-pound sled and hit the iron inside of the circle of holes which he had made. At the second blow, the tough iron bent a little to one side, making a gap from hole to hole. Instantly, the shrill piping of the outrushing air changed to a deep mellow tone as the air gushed out through this fresh aperture.
There came a loud shouting from the boats around, that the vessel was going. The water was almost level with her bilge keels, and the blacksmith took a jump for the nearest boat. As he did so, a hand came through the hole which he had made and waved a moment, desperately, yet aimlessly. Then the Glen Doon went under. This is the true history of the vessel which was now attracting the attention of the public.
Seven months later she was raised, half-filled with silt, and towed to her present position, some hundred yards off one of the lone old wharves above the city. She had been put up for auction, and bought by a small syndicate of men who, however, had found no use for their purchase up to the time with which I am dealing, and had, therefore, allowed her to remain where she was for five long years, their only attentions being a little repair to insure that the stopped leak was safe.
In the course of the years there had grown up, as was natural enough, rumours that the old iron hulk of the Glen Doon was haunted.
Reports were plentiful enough on the water-front that the sounds of ghostly chipping hammers might be heard aboard of her in the dead of night. A grimmer tale there was also going the round, that some youth had spent a night aboard of her with the intention of discovering the ghosts. He had been missing in the morning. Yet too much credence could not be given to this vague account, for no one knew either the name of the youth or the night on which he was supposed to have made his experiment. So that, as likely as not, it was but a manufactured tale. At least, this was the opinion of those who were disinclined to be credulous. Unauth
enticated, it proves nothing; yet is a definite part of the halo of peculiar mystery with which the hulk became presently surrounded.
It was at this point that Larry Chaucer—son of a rich man and somewhat of a young “sport”—put his finger into the pie, as one might say, and discovered something genuinely disagreeable something, if we may judge from after events, that must have proved very dreadful in every sense of the word.
His action arose out of a bet made in his father’s billiard-room, that he would stay the night aboard the hulk, alone. He had been ridiculing the flying stories of ghostly happenings aboard the Glen Doon, and one of his friends, who held that there might be “something in it all”, had grown warm in argument—finally nailing his opinion with a bet of a thousand dollars that Larry Chaucer would not venture a night aboard of her alone, without a boat to let him ashore.
Larry, as might be supposed from a young, high-spirited man, jumped at the bet, and set two thousand against his friend’s one, that he would stay that very night aboard. He stipulated, however, three things. First, that they—his friends—should accompany him aboard the old iron hulk, and there aim him to make a thorough search of her; for, as Larry said, he was not going to run his head into a nest of hoboes who were “working the haunting game” just to keep strangers away. Second, that the whole business should be kept a secret, as he did not want a crowd of practical jokers “playing the fool”, as he termed it. Third, that his friends should keep a watch upon the hulk through the night, both from the wharf and from a boat. This would enable them to vouch that he kept the conditions of his bet faithfully.
Larry’s stipulations were accepted by his friends, who determined as they said, “to see through with the business”, and make a night of it.
As it turned out, it was the very stringency of these preliminaries and stipulations generally, that made the results so extraordinary; for they eliminated almost all chance of a normal explanation being sufficient to explain away the very peculiar and disagreeable happenings which followed.
When the night came, Larry Chaucer and his friends, armed with innumerable dark lanterns, which had exhausted ’Frisco’s supply, went down in a big crowd to the old wharf, which was utterly deserted. They cast loose several of the boats that were hitched to the piles, and pulled off to the old iron hulk.
The night was very dark, for the moon was not yet up. It was also exceedingly quiet, and the crowd of young fellows preserved admirable order and silence; for it had been agreed that nothing in the way of “playing the fool” should be done. Also, as is quite possible, the darkness and the quiet and the curious reputation that the hulk had already earned, tended to subdue them.
It was when the leading boat was within some thirty or forty yards of the hulk that Larry, who was steering, whispered, “Hist!” And the men at once ceased rowing, those in the boats behind followed their example, questioning in low voices as to what was wrong. Then they heard it, all of them—a distinct, faint noise of hammers at work in the old wreck. They were listening to the dull ring and clatter of chipping-hammers at work, somewhere far down in the old iron vessel.
“Pull on, you chaps,” whispered Larry, after listening for a little while. “It’s some darned asses playing the goat! We’ll catch them at the game, and scruff them.”
Larry’s idea was whispered from boat to boat, and a move ahead was made; but, for all that Larry was so sure there was nothing abnormal in the sounds, very many of the young men would have preferred to make their investigations in daylight. As they drew close to the ship, and the tall iron side of her loomed up dull and vague in the darkness, the strange sounds of the tapping and clanging hammers were extraordinarily plain, yet queerly thin and remote, and difficult to locate. At one moment it was as if the unseen hammers were tapping, tapping, and beating against the other side of the iron wall of the ship’s side, which rose up before their faces—as if, merely on the other side of that half-inch skin of iron, incredible nothings wielded ghostly hammers. This is how it effected the nerves of the more imaginative and sensitive, but on Larry the sounds produced merely a growing excitement.
“For goodness’ sake, be smart, you chaps!” he kept whispering. “We’ve got ’em properly on toast. They’re all down in the hold. We’ll ghost ’em!” He leaned an oar up against the ship’s side as he spoke, and swarmed up it. He climbed aboard, took a quick look round, and then stooped and steadied the top of the oar whilst others followed, the men in the other boats also beginning to shin up their oars.
“For the Lord’s sake, be quiet, you ijuts!” he whispered fiercely to two of his friends who had bungled their climb and fallen back, with a crash, into the boat. He leant inboard, looking over his shoulder, and listening; but still, somewhere below his feet in the darkness of the hold, beat the faint, impossible refrain of the unseen hammers. As he listened, for that one moment, he got a sudden quick, new, little realization that it was down in that same hold, just under his feet, that the men had died when the last of the air went out.
“Blessed rats in a cage!” he muttered unconsciously; and leant outboard once more to encourage speed.
As soon as all were aboard, between forty and fifty young men in number, there was a whispered consultation after which some were sent to guard at every hatchway and opening from the hold below. There was a tense, silent excitement growing among them all; for they were about to have an adventure—make a capture, perhaps. Bound to, if there happened to be human hands attached to those hammers down in the dark hold. Of course, there were others who thought otherwise, and shivered a little, rejoicing in the number of their companions; but, in the main, the youths were prepared to meet good flesh-and-blood haunters, and to deal with them accordingly.
“Mind,” whispered Larry Chaucer, “no shooting. We’ll be hitting each other. Use your hands and clubs, my children. There’s enough of us to eat ’em.”
The lanterns had been lit, and now a group of men to each open hatchway, all stood in readiness for the signal to jump below. And all the while, down in the darkness, sounded the faint tap, tapping of the hammers, seeming strangely far away and remote, so that sometimes it would be as if there were no sound at all down there; and then, the next moment, the noises would rise clear and distinct.
And then abruptly the hammers ceased, and an absolute stillness held all through the ship.
“Down, my sons, down!” shouted Larry. “They’ve heard us!”
And he dropped with a quick swing on to the hard puddled silt which half-filled the vessel. In a moment the others had followed, and the great iron cavern of the hold was full of light as the young men shone their lanterns everywhere. To the general amazement, there was nothing to be seen anywhere. The interior of the ship was empty, except for the silt, which had set like cement.
“Not a blessed soul!” called Larry breathlessly, and shone his light round unbelievingly. “Why, I heard them; so did all of you!”
No one answered, and each man found himself looking over his shoulder with a queer nervousness. The silence was brutal.
“Oh, they must be somewhere!” said Larry at last. “Scatter and search!”
This was done, and the whole of the hulk searched, in the forepeak, deck-houses, cabins, and finally in the silted-up lazarette; but nowhere in all the ship was there any sign of life. Finally, the search was concluded, and the youths gathered around Larry, asking him what he was going to do.
“Stop here, of course, and rook old jelly-bags of that thousand he owes me,” replied Larry, referring to his friend’s bet. There was a general outcry against this, for there was a feeling that until the mystery of the tapping was cleared up, the hulk was not exactly a healthy place in which to pass the night.
“I’ll bet those beastly bodies are still down there in all that mud in the hold,” declared one youngster, Thomas Barlow by name. “That’s what’s wrong with her!”
“Don’t be an ass!” said Larry. And refused to alter his intentions, even when Jellotson (alias “
Jellybags”) offered to withdraw the bet. Finally, after much persuading, they had to leave him; though he had great difficulty in preventing a dozen of the more determined from stopping aboard to keep him company through the night.
“And mind you, all,” he called out to them, as they pushed off in the boats, “no silly jokes. I’ve got my gun, an’ I’ll just lead anyone who shows up. In the nervous state I’m in, I’m likely to shoot first and inquire afterwards.”
There was a general roar of laughter from the men in the boats at the thought of Larry Chaucer being nervous. And with that, they gave way, shouting a final goodnight, not dreaming that they had heard the last words of the man who had been their leader in many a revel.
The boats reached the old wharf, where a council was held. It was finally arranged that six men in one of the boats should lie a few hundred feet outside of the hulk, whilst those who remained would keep a watch on the shore side from the end of the wharf, thus ensuring that no one could come from, or to, the Glen Doon without being seen. This arrangement proved the more practicable, as the moon was just rising, full and big, filling all the upper bay with vague light, and showing the old hulk plainly where she lay, a few hundred feet away.
Volunteers were called for the boat, and when this had been sent to take up its position, the rest of the young men made a back-to-back camp on the wharf—which consists of sitting in a row, back to back, each thus obtaining both warmth and support from the man behind, and presumably he deriving the same in turn. In this way they settled down to smoke and talk the long hours of the night, leaving, however, a couple of men in each of the boats, so that these could be brought instantly into use if anything happened on the wreck.
It was some time after midnight that the youngster, Thomas Barlow, insisted that he could hear something. You will remember that he was the one who had made the somewhat uncomfortable suggestion concerning the whereabouts of the bodies. His assertion made a sudden stir through the watchers, and everyone listened intently. Yet for more than a minute not a sound was audible to anyone except young Barlow, who insisted that he could hear the faint tap, tapping of the hammers.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 46