“So that’s Swenson and his schooner. Gaining any?”
“I think not,” said Jim. “He wouldn’t want to pass up. He’s doing his best, I fancy. Want to speak to me, Newton?”
“Yes.” Young Foster threw his cigarette into the wake, turned and faced Jim Lyman squarely. In that moment Jim liked him better than he had done at any time. Yet he guessed that Foster had a confession to make, and that it was tied up with Swenson.
“I made a damned fool of myself last night,” said Newton. “I have hit the hooch once in a while, Lyman—but that native stuff got me. They had plenty of it, and at first it don’t seem to affect you. There was a crowd there. Seemed as if everyone in Honolulu was invited. Lots there who didn’t know each other or even the host, a fine old chap. Open house, like the old days. Must have cost a mint. Well, there was singing and dancing—poker going on—flowers for everyone, all sorts of weird things to eat. Heaps of regular grub, too. Everything informal. Everybody laughing and talking like old friends. Partly hooch, of course.
“I told ’em, some of ’em—I didn’t meet everyone, of course—that we were on a South Sea cruise. That seemed to put me in solid. I didn’t say anything about what we were after—at least I don’t think I did. But I talked too much; I realized that, and pulled up. I was with a bunch of chaps who seemed interested. The fellows I went with, the yachtsmen, you know, wandered off. They knew a lot of people and they saw I was having a good time. This bunch seemed to know a lot about the islands, told me a lot of yarns. There was one chap who was a bit nosey. Said he’d noticed the Seamew. Wanted to know about Kitty and Lynda. Just nosey, I thought. But I didn’t enlighten him about them, I think it was that made me shut up. I went off hunting the chaps I’d come with. But I remember telling them we were going to Suva and then on down south to an island we knew about. Some blithering idiot, I know.”
“What did the man look like?”
“Oh, it wasn’t Swenson. You said he was big and red-headed where he wasn’t bald. Swenson wasn’t there at all, that I saw. This chap was lanky with a sharp face like a fox. Black eyes. Clipped moustache and a black beard trimmed Vandyke.”
The face that he had dimly seen in the dark, turning toward him from the park bench, flashed before Jim’s mind.
“Asked you where the island was, did he?”
“Yes. But of course I couldn’t tell him that. But he knows we’re going to Suva. Do you suppose—? You said you saw Swenson last night.”
“Do I suppose this man was a pal of Swenson’s? I do. If I am not very much mistaken I saw them together, long before you first came off. They probably went out to the affair later. Swenson may have stayed away. Meeting you there was a bit of luck for them.”
“I’m mighty sorry, Lyman.”
“It’s all right. No use in saying anything about it. I don’t know that there’s much harm done. They’ll try to trail us from Suva, that’s all, and they’ll make a race of it from here. They’ll try and keep us in sight in case we take a notion to change our course. I’m glad you told me, Newton.”
They shook hands, and with the grip Jim’s suspicions of Newton Foster disappeared. His confession had been too ingenuous, too unnecessary for any attempt at acting. And no actor could have emulated Newton’s expression of regret and self-contempt.
As the day passed it became evident that the two schooners were evenly matched. It was tested out before and on the wind. There was not a cable’s length of difference per hour in the speed. They shared the same wind, they might have been built from the same design. Their footage of canvas seemed equal. With the brilliant tropic moonlight nights ahead it wasn’t going to be such a simple matter for them to part company as it might seem to a layman. Of course there was always luck at sea. Jim realized that. He had seen wind in the equatorial doldrums fail for weeks at a time; or a squall thrash the sea in one area while a ship a mile away might lie becalmed. But in the present case both had engines. One must be faster than the other. Dark nights would help and they could count on them with the waning moon. Or a storm. But there was no use bothering about such matters until after Suva.
Newton, by his indiscretions, had accomplished one thing. Without doubt the chap with the pointed beard, Swenson’s mate possibly, had pumped him dry, and such information would take in the personnel of the Seamew and the principal fact that they had plenty of arms aboard. Swenson would weigh the chances of forcible boarding and seizure, Jim was certain. The man was an unprincipled pirate. Without doubt he had already weighed them and decided that it was not worth while. So, for the time being, it resolved itself into a race to Suva.
And they raced every foot of the way, with both crews on the jump to make the constant changes called for, swaying up, hauling in, changing headsails. Jim took only catnaps. Baker was a good man but slow, content to move after he saw that he was being overhauled, lacking initiative, lacking the instinct that Lyman owned for getting the best out of the Seamew. For three days and three nights the schooners were never more than a sea mile apart. Both sailed wing-and-wing with booms stayed out. Jim rigged a squaresail on his foremast to offset a big ballooner spread by Swenson. For the seventy-two hours they never split tacks. Five times during the night the Seamew swung off on a new course, showing no lights, the Shark, only a dark shadow flitting over the seas, sometimes to windward, sometimes to leeward, never ahead, hanging on like a hound on scent. Five times the lookout on the Shark saw the maneuver and the Shark followed suit with gleam of the waning moon turning her sails to glints of mother-of-pearl.
The log of the Seamew registered seven hundred and twenty-four miles of sailing. Over a fourth of their distance between Honolulu and Suva. Then the wind grew fitful, the weather, hazy. There were gaps when the breeze seemed to have died altogether, leaving bald spots on the sea. The schooner would come slashing along at ten knots, eleven perhaps, and slide into the becalmed area like a skater suddenly striking soft slush, all speed snatched away instantly. Or a rain squall swept down enveloping her in a downpour that vanished as suddenly as it had come, leaving her with canvas taut, stays and halyards tight as fiddle strings. Meeting with these was purely a question of chance, and luck seemed with the Seamew. On the evening of the fourth day she had gained a full sea league on the Shark and the sun sank in a mist that veiled the already risen moon.
“If we get wind,” said Jim, “we’ll dodge her before this clears. If there’s no wind we’ll start the engine. Sanders has been bothering me to do it all day, but it hasn’t seemed worth while. I look for uncertain weather from now on. The closer we get to the line at this time of year, when the southeast trade fights the northeast, the less likelihood there is of any wind to speak of. Ships have knocked about for weeks trying to cross the equatorial belt. We’ll plug along at eight knots and trust in the engine. What wind we do strike is likely to come from any quarter. It’s a toss-up for both of us.”
The sun went down crimson; the moon appeared like a fire-balloon without reflecting power; the Shark was swallowed up in the dusk. Sanders, with his engine oiled up and overhauled, turned it over and the screw revoked steadily, the schooner pulsing to the drive of the shaft. Jim changed his course to five points more easting. Sanders’ confidence in his “power” proved to be well founded. With Walker spelling him, the pistons never missed a stroke. Dawn came clear with an empty horizon. Jim went to his main spreaders with a glass to make certain, and came down exultant. They might meet the Shark at Suva but it had been demonstrated once that they could lose Swenson and it could be done again.
It was almost unbearably hot, with the glassy sea and the sky like a bowl of metal reflecting the heat of the fiery, intolerable sphere of the sun. The Seamew reeked of hot oil. The slightest movement brought on a flood of perspiration. Conversation languished; effort died. The sailors had little to do and kept the decks wetted down. This prevented the putty crumbling in the seams and cooled the cabin a trifle. All unnecessary raiment was discarded. Kitty and Lynda kept to their stateroom
s most of the time. There was a slight general revival at nightfall. Plans for practicing with the weapons faltered, were put off. No fish broke the surface; no far-wandering seabird showed against the fleckless sky. It was a painted ocean that they crossed, but the schooner, thanks to gasoline, was not an idle, painted ship. The engine seemed to pant and labor, but the screw kept turning, every revolution lessening the period of discomfort through which they must pass.
They crossed the line at the hundred-and-seventy-first meridian. Jim Lyman announced the fact without provoking any especial interest or enthusiasm. There was no suggestion of any initiation of crossing the line. All animal spirits were at a low ebb. Even Cheng’s monkey was content to hunt the shade. The sea divided at the bows in oily ripples. Some sharks made their appearance, their dorsals streaking the surface and their bodies visible as they sculled themselves along keeping pace with the schooner. Just before sunset a filmy speck showed on the eastern horizon. The Shark had picked them up again. But it had vanished by morning.
Still under power, the gasoline getting low in the tank, they passed to the eastward of the Phoenix Group, barely sighting Phoenix and Sydney Islands. The south equatorial current gave them westing and a clear run lay ahead past Samoa down to the Goro Sea and Fiji. Two hundred and fifty miles south of the line they ran into the southeast trades, a steady river of wind flowing just aft the beam and speeding them along mile after mile at top speed. Every one revived. Sanders and Walker turned idlers for a well earned lest. The rifles were got out and the automatic pistols; targets were rigged at the rail or floating alongside as their marksmanship improved. Sanders proved easily the best marksman among them, excepting Cheng, who only shot once but displayed an accuracy with an automatic that was uncanny. Three shots running pierced the bull of a stationary target, four others hit and smashed three floating bottles as they rushed past the swiftly moving boat, bobbing in the run. Kitty Whiting made good progress; Lyman showed himself a fair shot with a rifle, and a better with the pistol. Newton about equaled his performances. Lynda Warner predeclared her inability to fire without closing both eyes at once or to hit anything smaller than a barn door—and lived up to it. Moore shot well but erratically; the others gained familiarity with their weapons, if nothing more. It was not an ideal shooting gallery, a slanting deck on a plunging ship where even the fixed targets pitched unexpectedly and the floaters raced away at a baffling rate. Finally they devised a can painted white and towed.
Li Cheng appeared as a treasure of the first magnitude. Through the intensest heat he suffered least, despite his handicap of working in the galley, and he managed to devise meals that coaxed the most languid of appetites. He was a prime favorite with the men, always jovial, taking their fun in good part, coming back with quaint quips in his pidgin English, winning, not merely their respect, but their confidence. The only two who did not get along with Cheng were Walker and Wiltz. Sanders had little to do with him.
“’E’s a Chink,” said Walker. “I’m palling with no bloody heathen Chinee.” Wiltz’s complaint was also largely racial.
“He’s a yellow man and he’s treacherous. They are a nation of pirates. He’s a good cook and that lets him out.” There was no open hostility between steward and cook, which was just as well. Cheng smiled on Wiltz as on the rest and showed no offense at the steward’s attitude of tolerance. But he undoubtedly was responsible for the attitude of the crew. The three Norsemen had been apt to hang aloof, stolid if efficient. Now all hands went about as if they shared a perpetual joke that never lost its zest and they worked with a will.
“They’re too good to be true,” said Baker, the mate. “But Cheng is a wonder.”
Three days out of Suva, Wiltz sent for Lyman, who found him groaning in his bunk with complaint of dysentery.
“It’s that yellow cook,” he said, his face shining with sweat on a pallid skin. “He’s poisoned me. I know it. Oh, my God!” He writhed with sudden cramps. “I got a cup of coffee out of the pot, as I always do. He knows my custom, sir. The pot’s on the galley stove and I help myself to a cup at six bells every morning, regular. At seven bells it took me. I’ll be a dead man before night. Skipper, I want to have you write down some things for me. I—” He writhed again. Lyman had seen sick men before. He had a medicine chest aboard and he had prescribed for many sailors. He knew the propensity of a sick sailorman to believe himself fatally ill; he added to that Wiltz’s prejudice against Cheng. He took the steward’s temperature—not very serious—felt his pulse, consulted his Captain’s Handibook. Then he interviewed Cheng.
“Wha’ malla that steward?” demanded Cheng, smiling, “All time he come along my galley, take coffee. That all lightee. All same evelly steward I sabe. That coffee topside coffee. I dlink myself light after he go. His trubble he eat too much, all day long he pick-pick this an’ that. He too fat that steward. Now he got trubble in his belly.”
“He’s too sick to wait on the table, Cheng. Or to clean up. Got to stay in his bunk. Why don’t you tell him to keep out of your galley. I’ll suggest it to him myself as soon as he is better.” Jim had noticed the steward’s growing tendency toward a rounding port and his habit of eating almost continuously between meals—if he had regular meals at all. He was inclined to accept Cheng’s diagnosis of the cause.
“Too gleedy, that man,” summed up Cheng. “Suppose he stay sick I wait on table all lightee for day or two. I fixee cabin. Can do.”
This he did with speed and neatness while Wiltz groaned in his bunk, refusing to believe himself better. Cheng was almost over-zealous, it appeared. Kitty came to Jim, Lynda beside her.
“Cheng tells me Wiltz is sick and he is to do his work,” she said. “You didn’t tell me anything about it.”
“I really haven’t had the chance,” said Jim. “Why? Do you object?”
“No. Cheng’s splendid. Better than Wiltz. But you see Lynda and I have always taken care of our own cabins. Cheng wouldn’t know that. I found him in mine when I came back from Lynda’s room. I have been keeping your little log beneath my mattresses since we left Honolulu. Wiltz never has come into our rooms. In fact, I have always kept mine locked whenever I went out of it, even for a minute. But it seems there was a master key and Wiltz had it on his key ring. Cheng got his keys, and I found he had made up my bunk and straightened the room. He had done it in almost no time, and as well as any chambermaid. The log was on the stand beside the bunk. Cheng told me he had turned the mattresses with an air of just pride. ‘This I find, missy,’ he said. ‘Maybe you lose?’ Now what do you think? Did Cheng know what the log was? Did he look into it? What can we do about it? Lynda says, ‘Nothing’.”
“I don’t know what can be done,” said Lyman. “I have been plastering every incident with suspicion ever since I was knocked on the head. Sometimes I have had cause; sometimes I have been ashamed of myself.”
“It would be no use to question Cheng, I suppose.”
“It would make him sore if he was merely doing his best, as I am inclined to think. If there was anything underhanded about it you could never get it out of him. Besides, Wiltz, with his master key, has always had the same opportunity of search. We suspect Cheng because you found him there, and he had a perfectly legitimate excuse. Wouldn’t he have put the book back? None of the crew know anything about what we are after.”
“I am sure Wiltz was never in my room.” Baker came below at the moment and the matter ended. Jim thought once or twice of Wiltz’s charge against Cheng of poisoning, but the steward was so obviously better that he dismissed it and on the third morning Wiltz was up and about.
At Suva there was no sign of the Shark. No such vessel had entered, and Jim hurried to get his native addition to the crew. As he had told Newton, he wanted them for bush work. To find trace of Captain Whiting, to satisfy his daughter, they would have to search the island and one native was worth five white men at making trail. There might be landings to make where the reefs were dangerous, and for that work they were absolu
tely necessary. Back of all that Jim Lyman had another idea. He believed it possible, without an inordinate amount of effort, to get the Golden Dolphin back to deep water, first to the lagoon, then out through the reef. If the channel needed widening he had brought dynamite along, and there again the natives would be wanted for diving and placing the cartridges. He fancied his first observations were correct, now that he knew positively what a short time—comparatively—the vessel had been ashore; and that she was not materially injured by shock or later decay. He had a quick eye for the lay of the land and he thought that the Golden Dolphin now lay couched on a jungle bed at no great height above the flood level of the lagoon. If it could be done—and he had his plans for an inexpensive experiment—the salvage would cover all cost of the trip and over and over again. The model had not been included in the sale of the antique shop; it was now ensconced in the cabin of the Seamew and Jim had often visualized the original ship back in her element. There was enough spare canvas in the stores for effective jury rigging. He had included special sized hawsers for use in the outhaul, using them meanwhile for duty aboard the schooner.
It took three days of feverish work to stir up the British officials, to get the right natives, take them before the commissioner, secure the necessary permission and put up the requisite securities. But it was done at last, the Seamew revictualled, and still there was no sign of the Shark. It looked as if they had outwitted Swenson or some good chance for them—evil for him and his schemes—had delayed him. The crew had a run ashore, Cheng lost his monkey the first day and came back late and apologetic for having skipped a meal.
“That damn kekko he lun away,” he explained. “I have one hell of time find him. I speak him nex’ time he go, by golly, I cut off his tail an’ make him all same kanaka.” As almost everyone had lunched ashore, Cheng and his kekko were assured of pardon. All hands were glad to see the monkey aboard again with his mischievous but generally harmless capers.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 14