From under the two sharp ends of the boat rose a couple of planks at an angle of 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 manila 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 onto 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 followed 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 sleepwalker.
“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.
“Haul in on that rope!” I shouted. “Move! Are you going to stand there like a lot of owls and see them drown!”
The men only wanted a leader to show them what to do, and, without showing any thought of insubordination, they tacked on to the rope that was fastened to the stern of the boat and hauled her back across the weed—cuttle-fish and all.
The strain on the rope had thrown her on an even keel again, so that she took the water safely, though that foul thing was straddled all across her.
“Fast hauling!” I shouted. “Get the doc’s cleavers, some of you—anything that’ll cut!”
“This is the sort, sir!” cried the bo’sun; from somewhere he had got hold of a formidable double-bladed whale lance.
The boat, still under the impetus given by our pull, struck the side of the yacht immediately beneath where I was waiting with the gun. Astern of it towed the body of the monster, its two eyes— monstrous orbs of the Profound—staring out vilely from behind its arms.
I leant my elbows on the rail, and aimed full at the right eye. As I pulled on the trigger, one of the great arms detached itself from the boat, and swirled up towards me. There was a thunderous bang as the heavy charge drove its way through that vast eye, and at the same instant something swept over my head.
There came a cry from behind: “Look out, sir!”
A flame of steel before my eyes, and a truncated something fell upon my shoulder, and thence to the deck.
Down below, the water was being churned to a froth, and three more arms sprang into the air, and then down among us.
One grasped the bo’sun, lifting him like a child. Two cleavers gleamed, and he fell to the deck from a height of some twelve feet, along with the severed portion of the limb.
I had my weapons reloaded again by now and ran forward along the deck somewhat, to be clear of the flying arms that flailed on the rails and deck.
I fired again into the hulk of the brute, and then again. At the second shot, the murderous din of the creature ceased, and, with an ineffectual flicker of its remaining tentacles, it sank out of sight beneath the water.
A minute later we had the hatch in the roof of the superstructure open, and the men out, my chum coming last. They had been mightily shaken, but otherwise were none the worse.
As Barlow came over the gangway, I stepped up to him and gripped his
shoulder. I was strangely muddled in my feelings. I felt that I had no sure position aboard my own yacht. Yet all I said was:
“Thank God, you’re safe, old man!” And I meant it from my heart.
He looked at me in a doubtful, puzzled sort of manner, and passed his hand across his forehead.
“Yes,” he replied; but his voice was strangely toneless, save that some puzzledness seemed to have crept into it. For a couple of moments he stared at me in an unseeing way, and once more I was struck by the immobile, tensed-up expression of his features.
Immediately afterwards he turned away—having shown neither friendliness nor enmity—and commenced to clamber back over the side into the boat.
“Come up, Ned!” I cried. “It’s no good. You’ll never manage it that way. Look!” and I stretched out my arm, pointing. Instead of looking, he passed his hand once more across his forehead, with that gesture of puzzled doubt. Then, to my relief, he caught at the rope ladder and commenced to make his way slowly up the side.
Reaching the deck, he stood for nearly a minute without saying a word, his back turned to the derelict. Then, still wordless, he walked slowly across to the opposite side and leant his elbows upon the rail, as though looking back along the way the yacht had come.
For my part, I said nothing, dividing my attention between him and the men, with occasional glances at the quaking weed and the—apparently—hopelessly surrounded Graiken.
The men were quiet, occasionally turning towards Barlow, as though for some further order. Of me they appeared to take little notice. In this wise, perhaps a quarter of an hour went by; then abruptly Barlow stood upright, waving his arms and shouting:
“It comes! It comes!” He turned towards us, and his face seemed transfigured, his eyes gleaming almost maniacally.
I ran across the deck to his side and looked away to port, and now I saw what it was that had excited him. The weed-barrier through which we had come on our inward journey was divided, a slowly broadening river of oil water showing clean across it.
Even as I watched, it grew broader, the immense masses of weed being moved by some unseen impulsion.
I was still staring, amazed, when a sudden cry went up from some of the men to starboard. Turning quickly, I saw that the yawning movement was being continued to the mass of weed that lay between us and the Graiken.
Slowly, the weed was divided, as though an invisible wedge were being driven through it. The gulf of weed-clear water reached the derelict and passed beyond. And now there was no longer anything to stop our rescue of the crew of the derelict.
VII
It was Barlow’s voice that gave the order for the mooring ropes to be cast off, and then, as the light wind was right against us, a boat was out ahead, and the yacht was towed towards the ship, whilst a dozen of the men stood ready with their rifles on the fo’c’s’le head.
As we drew nearer, I began to distinguish the features of the crew, the men strangely grizzled and old looking. And among them, white-faced with emotion, was my chum’s lost sweetheart. I never expect to know a more extraordinary moment.
I looked at Barlow; he was staring at the white-faced girl with an extraordinary fixidity of expression that was scarcely the look of a sane man.
The next minute we were alongside, crushing to a pulp between our steel sides one of those remaining monsters of the deep that had continued to cling steadfastly to the Graiken.
Yet of that I was scarcely aware, for I had turned again to look at Ned Barlow. He was swaying slowly to his feet, and just as the two vessels closed, he reached up both his hands to his head and fell like a log. Brandy was brought, and later Barlow carried to his cabin; yet we had won clear of that hideous weed-world before he recovered consciousness.
* * * *
During his illness I learned from his sweetheart how, on a terrible night a long year previously, the Graiken had been caught in a tremendous storm and dismasted, and how, helpless and driven by the gale, they at last found themselves surrounded by the great banks of floating weed, and finally held fast in the remorseless grip of the dread Sargasso.
She told me of their attempts to free the ship from the weed, and of the attacks of the cuttlefish. And later of various other matters; for all of which I have no room in this story.
In return, I told her of our voyage and her lover’s strange behavior. How he had wanted to undertake the navigation of the yacht, and had talked of a great world of weed. How I had—believing him unhinged—refused to listen to him.
How he had taken matters into his own hands, without which she would most certainly have ended her days surrounded by the quaking weed and those great beasts of the deep waters.
She listened with an evergrowing seriousness, so that I had, time and again, to assure her that I bore my old chum no ill will, but rather held myself to be in the wrong. At which she shook her head, but seemed mightily relieved.
It was during Barlow’s recovery that I made the astonishing discovery that he remembered no detail of his imprisoning of me.
I am convinced now that for days and weeks he must have lived in a sort of dream, in a hyper-state, in which I can only imagine that he had possibly been sensitive to more subtle understandings than normal bodily and mental health allows.
One other thing there is in closing. I found that the captain and the two mates had been confined to their cabins by Barlow. The captain was suffering from a pistol-shot in the arm, due to his having attempted to resist Barlow’s assumption of authority.
When I released him, he vowed vengeance. Yet Ned Barlow being my chum, I found means to slake both the captain’s and the two mates’ thirst for vengeance, and the slaking thereof is—well, another story.
ELOI ELOI LAMA SABACHTHANI
Dally, Whitlaw, and I were discussing the recent stupendous explosion which had occurred in the vicinity of Berlin. We were marvelling concerning the extraordinary period of darkness that had followed and which had aroused so much newspaper comment, with theories galore.
The papers had got hold of the fact that the War Authorities had been experimenting with a new explosive, invented by a certain chemist, named Baumoff, and they referred to it constantly as “The New Baumoff Explosive.”
We were in the Club, and the fourth man at our table was John Stafford, who was professionally a medical man, but privately in the Intelligence Department. Once or twice, as we talked, I had glanced at Stafford, wishing to fire a question at him; for he had been acquainted with Baumoff. But I managed to hold my tongue, for I knew that if I asked out pointblank, Stafford (who’s a good sort, but a bit of an ass as regards his almost ponderous code-of-silence) would be just as like as not to say that it was a subject upon which he felt he was not entitled to speak.
Oh, I know the old donkey’s way; and when he had once said that, we might just make up our minds never to get another word out of him on the matter as long as we lived. Yet, I was satisfied to notice that he seemed a bit restless, as if he were on the itch to shove in his oar; by which I guessed that the papers we were quoting had got things very badly muddled indeed, in some way or other, at least as regarded his friend Baumoff.
Suddenly, he spoke.
“What unmitigated, wicked piffle!” said Stafford, quite warm. “I tell you it is wicked, this associating of Baumoff’s name with war inventions and such horrors. He was the most intensely poetical and earnest follower of the Christ that I have ever met; and it is just the brutal Irony of Circumstance that has attempted to use one of the products of his genius for a purpose of destruction. But you’ll find they won’t be able to use it, in spite of their having got hold of Baumoff’s formula. As an explosive, it is not practicable. It is, shall I say, too impartial; there is no way of controlling it.
“I know more about it, perhaps, than any man alive; for I was Baumoff’s greatest friend, and when he died, I lost the best comrade a man ever had. I need make no secret about it to you chaps. I was ‘on duty’ in Berlin, and I was deputed to get in touc
h with Baumoff. The government had long had an eye on him; he was an Experimental Chemist, you know, and altogether too jolly clever to ignore. But there was no need to worry about him. I got to know him, and we became enormous friends; for I soon found that he would never turn his abilities towards any new war-contrivance; and so, you see, I was able to enjoy my friendship with him, with a comfy conscience—a thing our chaps are not always able to do in their friendships. Oh, I tell you, it’s a mean, sneaking, treacherous sort of business, ours; though it’s necessary; just as some odd man or other has to be a hangsman. There’s a number of unclean jobs to be done to keep the Social Machine running!
“I think Baumoff was the most enthusiastic intelligent believer in Christ that it will be ever possible to produce. I learned that he was compiling and evolving a treatise of most extraordinary and convincing proofs in support of the more inexplicable things concerning the life and death of Christ. He was, when I became acquainted with him, concentrating his attention particularly upon endeavouring to show that the Darkness of the Cross, between the sixth and the ninth hours, was a very real thing, possessing a tremendous significance. He intended at one sweep to smash utterly all talk of a timely thunderstorm or any of the other more or less inefficient theories which have been brought forward from time to time to explain the occurrence away as being a thing of no particular significance.
“Baumoff had a pet aversion, an atheistic Professor of Physics, named Hautch, who—using the ‘marvellous’ element of the life and death of Christ, as a fulcrum from which to attack Baumoff’s theories—smashed at him constantly, both in his lectures and in print. Particularly did he pour bitter unbelief upon Baumoff’s upholding that the Darkness of the Cross was anything more than a gloomy hour or two, magnified into blackness by the emotional inaccuracy of the Eastern mind and tongue.
“One evening, some time after our friendship had become very real, I called on Baumoff and found him in a state of tremendous indignation over some article of the professor’s which attacked him brutally; using his theory of the Significance of the ‘Darkness,’ as a target. Poor Baumoff! It was certainly a marvellously clever attack; the attack of a thoroughly trained, well-balanced logician. But Baumoff was something more; he was Genius. It is a title few have any rights to; but it was his!
The William Hope Hodgson Megapack Page 7