The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  “Why are there no islanders here?” asked Kitty. “It is a beautiful place and fertile.”

  “They may have all been killed off in an epidemic,” Jim answered. “The place may be tabu after some such disaster. There are islands like this that seem never to have been inhabited for many centuries. Out of the currents, you see. The big migration never reached them.”

  “An Eden of the Seas,” suggested Lynda.

  “Minus snakes,” said Jim. “Mighty few snakes in the South Seas proper.”

  The keel grated on the bottom; the kanakas sprang out and ran her up the slight slope with strong arms. Jim trusted to their sizing up of the situation more than to his own.

  “No kanaka walk along this island,” one of them pronounced. “Too much already they raise plenty hell an’ bobbery suppose they here this time.”

  They landed, and the covering boat came up.

  “Everything to ourselves,” said Newton. “Now then, Lyman, where’s the Golden Dolphin?”

  Jim took his bearings and led the way into the bush. It was much thicker than when he had last penetrated it. The almost level sunrays stabbed its green mantle with long lances. They climbed through, over and about dense masses of creepers and palmetto, saw-leaved pandanus, with tree trunks grown close together as the stakes of a palisade. Here the Fijians first proved themselves, hacking a way through the tangle. Soon there were no longer any shafts of sunlight, they walked in a green twilight, as they might at the bottom of a sea with weird water-growths twining all about them. The sight of the ship vaguely showing amid a mass of verdure heightened the resemblance. It was hard to see at first even when the grinning kanakas pointed it out, but then their eyes traced it and they hurried forward as fast as they could, with their hearts pounding with excitement. To Kitty Whiting it was the visible confirmation of her hopes, the sight of it reinforced her belief that, having found her father’s ship, she would find her father. Lynda Warner naturally shared her cousin’s feelings. To Newton the ship represented a fortune of which he had been somewhat skeptical, though not so much so as he was at heart concerning the fate of Captain Avery Whiting. Jim was not unthrilled by the thought of the pearls hidden in the hulk. He found some triumph in showing what he had promised, in proving up. He wished Stephen Foster were there beside his son. Kitty Whiting’s joy was his.

  There was an open space above the ship where its weight had crushed the growth and prohibited any revival. So thick was the jungle that the Golden Dolphin seemed to lie at the bottom of a green shaft. Away up the topmost branches of the trees had caught the rising sun but it was not high enough yet to send full light to the bottom of the well. It would not be long before it did so, Jim noticed. Looking at his watch he saw that they had been four hours struggling through the bush from the beach, four hours to make half a mile of progress. It had originally taken him a quarter of the time. Another year and this ship would be utterly lost, swallowed by the jungle.

  The native boys attacked the barricade with fresh vigor, their bodies, naked save for loincloths, glistening with sweat that ran off them in streams. Now they could make out the mast that lay over the side, festooned with green vines. Vines had climbed the mast-stumps and the tangle of ropes, smothering the vessel with a cloak that seemed to hide it from the shame of its disaster.

  Suddenly the sun peeped over the edge of the rift in the trees. A ray came down and touched the half-hidden figurehead. Kitty gasped. Jim saw her eyes fill with tears that she winked away.

  “The Golden Dolphin.” She flashed one look at Jim, a reward that amply satisfied him. Then her eyes closed for a moment and her lips moved. She was praying.

  They clambered aboard breathlessly, leaving the native boys below. They peered down through the broken skylight through the tarnished bars into the dim interior where more green things writhed. The sun, as if directed for their search, sent one beam, almost vertical, probing through the gloom, disclosing a mast, outlines of a table, chairs, a cushioned transom, a stateroom door.

  “I got down through there,” said Jim. “The companion doors were jammed. Maybe we can move them.”

  They were closed, but united effort shifted them more easily than they expected. The companion ladder was in place and unbroken.

  “I’ll test it,” said Jim. It was sound and he called up the news. The sun, almost directly overhead now, beginning to flood the shaft with golden light, illuminated the main cabin with beams in which golden motes danced, and rendered the darkness still blacker by contrast. They had brought along electric torches and Jim turned his on the stairs as Kitty descended. She held out her hand to him naturally for assistance though she did not need any, he knew. Lynda followed, then Newton. Baker tactfully kept the rest back, telling them this was “the lady’s party.”

  The quartet did not notice that they were not followed. Kitty stood in a ray of sunlight, her hand over her heart, leaning forward, looking, listening; listening, it seemed to Jim, as if her love was conjuring from this stranded ocean habitation of her father’s some clew to his whereabouts. She spoke in a whisper that fitted the occasion. There seemed something uncanny about the place. Jim fancied he heard movements back of the passage that led from the cabin forward. He sent an exploring pencil of light down its dark tunnel, showing stateroom doors on either side, half open, a door closed at the far end.

  “There may be some message,” said Kitty. “We must look.” They moved forward through the vines that caught at them like seaweed or like detaining hands.

  Jim thought of the skeleton alongside, well covered now with verdure. Their searchlights flicked through the dense patches of shadow.

  “Spooky,” muttered Newton, close behind him. “She’ll find no message, Lyman. Wonder where the pearls are?”

  Jim, sympathetically possessed by the girl’s real quest, had temporarily forgotten the pearls. He half turned on Newton to bid him hush.

  Suddenly there was a rush and a scuffle on the deck, a stifled cry, a shout half strangled, in Moore’s voice:

  “Look out, belo-o-w!”

  A shot sounded, distant, as if from the lagoon. Another and another. As they grasped their weapons, turning for the companionway, at the top of which they saw to their amazement, Walker, fighting viciously with Vogt and Neilson, a deep voice came from the passage leading forward.

  “Up with your hands, all of you! Chuck your guns over to the port transom. Hurry, or I’ll bore the lot of you. Up!”

  The ray from Newton’s torch as he jerked his arms aloft lit up the great figure of a man that almost filled the entrance, fell on his sardonic face, squash nose, piggy eyes and bald head with a tonsure of red hair. Over Hellfire Swenson’s shoulder leered the features of a man with a close-clipped beard and moustache, mouth open, the tip of a tongue showing between white teeth, for all the world like a wolf gloating at the survey of a victim. This in a flash; they vanished as the torch dropped from Newton’s nerveless hand.

  Some one called through the skylight bars. It was Sanders.

  “They’ve got us, Skipper. They’ve got you covered.” Then there was a thud on the deck. Other faces looked down. The sun caught the glint of rifle barrels trained on them. Swenson spoke out of the dark.

  “No nonsense, now. I’ve come too far to monkey. Short work from now on. Lyman, throw that gun away or I’ll start with you. I don’t need you any longer.” The bleak purpose of his voice was appalling in its menace. Sullenly Jim tossed his automatic to the port transom. A man swung down through the skylight and secured the weapons.

  “You poor fool,” said Swenson. “There are other harbors in the Fijis besides Suva. I got there first and put in at Levuka on Ovalau. My good friend, Cheng, whom you were good enough to hire at Honolulu, sent me the position from Suva by wireless. I’ve been here forty hours waiting for you to show up. The Shark’s on the other side of the island, snug. Your schooner is in my hands. Cheng is a good persuader; I’ve got five of your men in with me. The rest are damaged and your kanakas have chu
cked the job. Now then, young woman, where are those pearls?”

  He switched on a torch that sought out Kitty’s face and held it, pale in the circle of light but with chin up, lips compressed and eyes that shone defiantly. Jim, his useless fists clenched, furious at the trickery he had not detected, the mutiny of the five, which were, he supposed, the three Norsemen, Wiltz and Cheng, saw the girl’s finely cut nostrils dilate.

  “I’ll not tell you,” she answered and there was a ring to her voice that told of true metal. “Not if you kill me.”

  “Mebbe you wouldn’t,” said Swenson, and there was a grudging acknowledgment in his voice, “but I don’t aim to kill you. You’re the goose that lays the golden eggs, you see. Get back into that sunshine, all four of you where I can get a good look at you. I don’t aim to kill you, miss, but there’s some things almost as bad, some worse. So you’ll please get back while I’m giving you the option of doin’ your own moving. Got those guns, Pete? Then you can get to hell out of here. This is a private conference.

  “This is my partner, Ned Stevens, sometimes known as Slick Stevens. He was too slick for young Foster. Pumped him dry. Not that he held much. Now you’re introduced, let’s talk.

  “There’s young Foster here, miss. A good-looking lad. Mebbe you’ve taken a fancy to him. Or mebbe it’s the skipper there. Personally I’d recommend Lyman to you. He’s somewhat of a bearcat. I owe him one or two scores, though. But I’ll call it all off if you come through with the pearls. If you don’t, I understand you think your father’s on this island or mebbe the other one. You see I happen to know all about your affairs. Everything. Sometime, if we come to terms, I’ll tell you all about how I got my information. It’ll open your eyes. But I ain’t got time now. What I am after is a quick getaway. I want to turn those pearls into cash. Now, Miss Whiting, if you want to see your father again, and not be ashamed to meet him, you come through. That’s one threat, and I mean what I say.

  “First thing I’ll do, if you don’t, is to cut short the career of one of these two beaus of yours. I understand from Cheng, and he’s a good judge of human nature, that they’re both stuck on you. I think I’ll take Lyman first, seeing I’m not quite even with him. I’ll give you while I count ten. One—two—”

  Swenson was standing himself in full light now and Jim saw his pistol go up steadily, remorselessly.

  “You can put down your hands, Lyman, if you want to,” he said.

  “Three—four—five—”

  “Stop.” Swenson did not lower his gun. “Do you mean that you would kill him in cold blood?”

  “It’s you doin’ the killing, miss, not me. As for bumping a man off, I don’t make any account of that. Not when there’s a fortune in sight. When a man’s dead he’s dead. He won’t worry me any. Now, if you think he’s worth the price of the pearls to you? No? Six—seven!”

  “Stop. I’ll tell you.”

  “No. Let him shoot—if he dares.”

  “Oh, I dare, Lyman. You first and Foster afterward if I have to. But she’ll tell. You ought to thank me. You’re the one she wants, it seems. Now, where are they?”

  “In my father’s stateroom, aft.”

  “We’ll go there, all of us. Get on.”

  The captain’s room was a large one, to starboard of the companionway, connected with a similar room to port by a passage back of the ladder. It was well lighted ordinarily by two large ports, but after the jammed door had been forced back by Stevens, Swenson meanwhile keeping his gun trained on the four prisoners, the electric torches were necessary to break the gloom. The Golden Dolphin had been well fitted. There was a brass bedstead in place of a bunk; there were lounging chairs, a table and desk and a washstand with running-water plumbing, both hot and cold, to judge by the labels on the faucets. The place smelled musty as a grave but it was free from the encroaching vines. The bed was unmade, the sheets, spotted with discoloring, flung back above the blankets. But, though Jim had half feared it, there was no moldering body here. Kitty’s eyes roved to the desk, still hoping to find some written message. Lynda stood close to the door. Stevens, eyeing her slenderly rounded figure, suddenly put a grossly familiar arm about her. She struggled, tore his hand loose, and as he clawed viciously at her, struck him. With an oath Stevens struck her in the face. Jim sprang across the floor. Stevens lifted his gun, but Jim struck it aside and smashed Stevens in the jaw before the latter, reeling, closed with him. He got a hand on Stevens’ throat, throttling hard and swift in the darkness. A ray of light shot out and showed Stevens’ face, distorted, his eyes protruding, his tongue forced out of his mouth. There came a crash on Jim’s head and he collapsed, half-conscious, while he heard, as if far off, the bellow of Swenson.

  “Damn you, Stevens, keep your hands off! I’ll have no fooling with the women; I’ve told you that.”

  “It’s her own fault. Hell, she ought to think it a compliment with a face like that.”

  Jim got to his feet again, blood streaming down the back of his neck. The blow had been a glancing one, and the flow of blood relieved the pressure. Stevens had his gun trained on him, finger on trigger, a look of deviltry on his face that showed that firing would be a delight. Lynda spoke close to Jim’s ear.

  “Don’t, please. We need you. It was nothing.”

  “You heard me, Stevens,” roared Swenson. “You obey orders or, by God, you won’t be able to hear ’em! Now, about these pearls?”

  “They are back of the washstand,” said Kitty. “The panel moves. The hot-water pipes are not practical. One of them…”

  Swenson rapped on the mahogany panel while Stevens, subdued, held a gun in one hand, a torch in the other. Jim contemplated a rush, a grab for the gun, but he was weak with the blow Swenson had given him. If he failed it might be the finish for all of them, for there were Swenson’s men on deck, with his own traitors. Mist gathered in front of him from faintness that he fought off valiantly.

  Swenson impatiently smashed in the panel after his test had shown a hollow space back of it. The plumbing was disclosed, two pipes leading to the faucets, the one to the left connected with the impractical hot-water system.

  “Those joints screw up and down, then a section of the pipe comes loose,” said Kitty in a hard little voice. “The pipe is plugged. If father did not take the pearls with him they will be there.”

  Swenson manipulated the joints. As he shifted the lower one a section of the pipe came out in his hands, an ideal hiding place. Even in systematically wrecking the vessel it would never be suspected but torn away with the other fittings. The top of the pipe was closed by a tightly fitting cork. Swenson dug this out with his knife. Cotton packing followed. Precaution had been planned to prevent a rattle of any kind. The end of the section was closed by metal. Swenson tilted the pipe, shook it, examined it by the light of the torch and flung it down with a volley of imprecations.

  “Tricked, by God!” he wound up, glaring at Kitty.

  “I have not tricked you,” she said calmly and Jim could see conviction register on Hellfire’s inflamed face as he stared at her. “That is the hiding-place. I am sure father would never have disclosed it. I am sure he would have kept it secret. If the pearls are gone it is because he himself removed them.” And her voice proclaimed the joy she felt at this evidence of her belief that her father had mastered his situation and escaped from it with the gems.

  “If he’s on this island,” said Swenson, gritting his teeth, “I’ll find him, dead or alive, and I’ll get those pearls if I have to go to hell after them. One thing you can be sure of,” he went on, “none of you’ll leave this ship until I’ve combed this island and the other one. If I get the pearls I may leave you a boat. Your schooner’s at the bottom of the lagoon by now. Or I may not. You can stay here and play you’re married. Don’t try to leave this ship until I come back. I’m leaving guards. And I’ll see that you get some grub. Come on, Stevens.”

  “She may have lied to you about the hiding-place.”

  “You’re
nothing short of a damned idiot, Stevens, at this sort of thing. You boast you know women, an’ don’t know that she told the truth. You haven’t trailed with her kind. Would a man have two hideouts like that? You told me the truth—on your honor?”

  “On my honor,” said Kitty.

  “That’s something you may not understand, never havin’ had any of your own,” sneered Swenson at Stevens. “But it’s good enough for me. Whiting got clear somehow. You saw that skeleton alongside. I’m saying he got clear and we’ll find what’s left of him somewhere about. In a cave, likely. Where he is, the pearls are. Come on.”

  “I’m not going on such a fool’s errand.”

  “Then stay behind and be damned to you! Glad you brought some kanakas with you from Suva, Lyman. They are goin’ to come in mighty handy for me, choppin’ bush. You four have got the run below of this hulk. Hatches will be guarded and so will the skylight. If you try any funny stuff it’ll be boarded over.”

  “What about my men?” demanded Jim. “You said they were not all traitors.”

  “One of ’em’s got a busted head. Another one, a wild Irishman, had to be choked before he quit. Your mate’s thrown in with us. Your engineer was put out of business with a broken arm. The steward and the squareheads have been my men for two weeks or more. As to the other man you left aboard, Cheng was going to give him a chance, but I heard a shot or two fired; mebbe you did. I don’t much imagine you’ll see him again. I’ll send the cripples below for you to take care of.”

  He stamped out of the stateroom into the main cabin with Stevens, and up the companionway to the deck. Stevens lingered to give a look malicious and evil before he disappeared.