“Oh, my God, help me! Help me! Help me!” he heard her whispering desperately, and it shook him badly in that supreme moment. But, for the love he bore her, he meant that there should be no faltering in his stroke. Abruptly, the girl felt him start violently, and he began to quiver from head to feet. He cried out something in a strange voice.
“Oh, my God!” he said in a sort of whispering, husky shout. “I can see! I can see! Oh, my God, I can see! We’re going to win! Mary, Mary! we’re going to win! I can see! I can see! I can see! I tell you, I can see!”
He loosed her and put both his hands up to his bandages, which had slid down on to his nose, and tore them away in a mad kind of fashion, while the girl stood limp and sick against him, still half-fainting.
“I can see! I can see!” he began to reiterate again.
He seemed to have gone momentarily insane with the enormous revulsion from utter despair to hope. Suddenly he caught the girl madly into his arms, staring down at her through the darkness. He hugged her savagely to him, whispering hoarsely his refrain of:
“I can see! I can see! I tell you I can see!”
He held her a single instant or two like this; then he literally tossed her into one of the upper bunks.
“Don’t move!” he whispered, his voice full of the most intense purpose. “I’m going to get square with that brute now. There’s a chance for both of us. Here, take the knife in case I don’t manage. Just lie still, whatever happens. You must be out of the way. I could tackle a hundred of them now.”
He was silent, listening. By the sound of the men’s voices, the second mate knew that they had halted some little distance from the doorway. There they hung for a few moments, no man anxious to be the first to face the big officer. For they had no knowledge of his blindness.
Then he caught Pathan’s voice urging them on. “Go on, lads! Go on! There won’t be much fight left in him!”
At that, a feeling of dismay filled him. It was evident that Pathan was not going to head the attack, and he might die without ever getting his hands on to him.
From the irresolute men came a shuffle of feet. Then a man’s voice rose:
“Trow de flare into ze hoose.”
To the second mate the remark suggested a course of action. He threw himself upon a sea-chest, so that his face could be seen from the doorway. He kept perfectly still. If the man threw the flare into the house they would see his damaged face and think him dead. It might be that the coward Pathan would venture to come into the place—then!
Thud! Something struck the floor near him.
He kept his eyes shut. He could see no light; but the smell of burning paraffin was plain in his nostrils. He listened intently and seemed to catch the sound of stealthy footsteps. Abruptly, a voice just without the doorway shouted:
“They’re both dead! Both of ’em!”
“What?”
It was Pathan’s voice. He heard the noise of booted feet approaching at a run. They hesitated one instant on the threshold, then came within, and a surge of barefoot pads followed. The booted feet came to a stand not two yards away.
For an instant there was silence, a bewildered, awestruck silence. Pathan’s voice broke it.
“My God!” he said. “My God!”
Immediately afterward he screamed, as the huge, bloodstained form of the big officer hurled itself upon him. There were cries from the men, and a pell-mell rush to escape. Someone fell upon the flare and extinguished it.
There was a shivering silence. It was filled abruptly by the beginning of a sobbing entreaty from Pathan. This shrilled suddenly into a horrid screaming. The men were no longer trying for the doorway, for the second mate had got between it and them. They could see him indistinctly against the moonlight beyond. He was flogging the steel side of the house with something. Beyond the hideous thudding of the blows, the house was silent.
One of the crouched men, tortured to madness, threw a belaying-pin. The next instant the second mate hurled himself among them. He had the battered steel door for a weapon, and the edge of it was as a plowshare amidst soil.
Amid the cries of the men, the side of the house rang out a dull thunder beneath the weight of some blind, misdirected blow.
Most of the men escaped upon their hands and knees, creeping out behind the man who smote and smote. They got to the forecastle upon all fours, too terrified and bewildered even to get to their feet. There, in the darkness, behind closed and barred doors, they sat and sweated, in company of those who had hesitated to enter the house.
Presently the ship was quiet.
The berserker rage eased out of the second mate and he perceived that the house was empty, and the mutiny truly ended. He cast the heavy steel door clanging through the open doorway, out on to the main deck, a dripping testimony of a man’s prowess against enormous odds.
He stood a moment, breathing heavily. Then, remembering, he wheeled round in the darkness to where, in the gloom of the upper bunk, the girl lay shivering, with her hands pressed tightly over her ears.
He caught her up in his great arms, with the one word, “Come!” and stepped through the open doorway into the moonlight, the fallen door ringing under his tread. Then, master of his ship, he carried her aft to the cabin.
THE STONE SHIP
Rum Things!—Of course there are rum things happen at sea—as rum as ever there were. I remember when I was in the Alfred Jessop, a small barque, whose owner was her skipper, we came across a most extraordinary thing.
We were twenty days out from London, and well down into the tropics. It was before I took my ticket, and I was in the fo’cas’le. The day had passed without a breath of wind, and the night found us with all the lower sails up in the buntlines.
Now, I want you to take good note of what I am going to say:—
When it was dark in the second dog watch, there was not a sail in sight; not even the far off smoke of a steamer, and no land nearer than Africa, about a thousand miles to the eastward of us.
It was our watch on deck from eight to twelve, midnight, and my look-out from eight to ten. For the first hour, I walked to and fro across the break of the fo’cas’le head, smoking my pipe and just listening to the quiet.… Ever hear the kind of silence you can get away out at sea? You need to be in one of the old-time windjammers, with all the lights dowsed, and the sea as calm and quiet as some queer plain of death. And then you want a pipe and the lonesomeness of the fo’cas’le head, with the caps’n to lean against while you listen and think. And all about you, stretching out into the miles, only and always the enormous silence of the sea, spreading out a thousand miles every way into the everlasting, brooding night. And not a light anywhere, out on all the waste of waters; nor ever a sound, as I have told, except the faint moaning of the masts and gear, as they chafe and whine a little to the occasional invisible roll of the ship.
And suddenly, across all this silence, I heard Jensen’s voice from the head of the starboard steps, say:—
“Did you hear that, Duprey?”
“What?” I asked, cocking my head up. But as I questioned, I heard what he heard—the constant sound of running water, for all the world like the noise of a brook running down a hill-side. And the queer sound was surely not a hundred fathoms off our port bow!
“By gum!” said Jensen’s voice, out of the darkness. “That’s damned sort of funny!”
“Shut up!” I whispered, and went across, in my bare feet, to the port rail, where I leaned out into the darkness, and stared towards the curious sound.
The noise of a brook running down a hill-side continued, where there was no brook for a thousand sea-miles in any direction.
“What is it?” said Jensen’s voice again, scarcely above a whisper now. From below him on the main-deck, there came several voices questioning:—“Hark!” “Stow the talk!” “…there!” “Listen!” “Lord love us, what is it?”… And then Jensen muttering to them to be quiet.
There followed a full minute, during which we all h
eard the brook, where no brook could ever run; and then, out of the night there came a sudden hoarse incredible sound:—oooaze, oooaze, arrrr, arrrr, oooaze—a stupendous sort of croak, deep and somehow abominable, out of the blackness. In the same instant, I found myself sniffing the air. There was a queer rank smell, stealing through the night.
“Forrard there on the look-out!” I heard the mate singing out, away aft. “Forrard there! What the blazes are you doing!”
I heard him come clattering down the port ladder from the poop, and then the sound of his feet at a run along the maindeck. Simultaneously, there was a thudding of bare feet, as the watch below came racing out of the fo’cas’le beneath me.
“Now then! Now then! Now then!” shouted the Mate, as he charged up on to the fo’cas’le head.
“What’s up?”
“It’s something off the port bow, Sir,” I said. “Running water! And then that sort of howl.… Your night-glasses,” I suggested.
“Can’t see a thing,” he growled, as he stared away through the dark. “There’s a sort of mist. Phoo! what a devil of a stink!”
“Look!” said someone down on the main-deck. “What’s that?”
I saw it in the same instant, and caught the Mate’s elbow.
“Look, Sir,” I said. “There’s a light there, about three points off the bow. It’s moving.”
The Mate was staring through his night-glasses, and suddenly he thrust them into my hands:—
“See if you can make it out,” he said, and forthwith put his hands round his mouth, and bellowed into the night:—“Ahoy there! Ahoy there! Ahoy there!” his voice going out lost into the silence and darkness all around. But there came never a comprehensible answer, only all the time the infernal noise of a brook running out there on the sea, a thousand miles from any brook of earth; and away on the port bow, a vague shapeless shining.
I put the glasses to my eyes, and stared. The light was bigger and brighter, seen through the binoculars; but I could make nothing of it, only a dull, elongated shining, that moved vaguely in the darkness, apparently a hundred fathoms or so, away on the sea.
“Ahoy there! Ahoy there!” sung out the Mate again. Then, to the men below:—“Quiet there on the main-deck!”
There followed about a minute of intense stillness, during which we all listened; but there was no sound, except the constant noise of water running steadily.
I was watching the curious shining, and I saw it flick out suddenly at the Mate’s shout. Then in a moment I saw three dull lights, one under the other, that flicked in and out intermittently.
“Here, give me the glasses!” said the Mate, and grabbed them from me.
He stared intensely for a moment; then swore, and turned to me:—
“What do you make of them?” he asked, abruptly.
“I don’t know, Sir,” I said. “I’m just puzzled. Perhaps it’s electricity, or something of that sort.”
“Oh hell!” he replied, and leant far out over the rail, staring, “Lord!” he said, for the second time, “what a stink!”
As he spoke, there came a most extraordinary thing; for there sounded a series of heavy reports out of the darkness, seeming in the silence, almost as loud as the sound of small cannon.
“They’re shooting!” shouted a man on the main-deck, suddenly.
The Mate said nothing; only he sniffed violently at the night air. “By Gum!” he muttered, “what is it?”
I put my hand over my nose; for there was a terrible, charnel-like stench filling all the night about us.
“Take my glasses, Duprey,” said the Mate, after a few minutes further watching. “Keep an eye over yonder. I’m going to call the Captain.”
He pushed his way down the ladder, and hurried aft. About five minutes later, he returned forrard with the Captain and the Second and Third Mates, all in their shirts and trousers.
“Anything fresh, Duprey?” asked the Mate.
“No, Sir,” I said, and handed him back his glasses. “The lights have gone again, and I think the mist is thicker. There’s still the sound of running water out there.”
The Captain and the three Mates stood some time along the port rail of the fo’cas’le head, watching through their night-glasses, and listening. Twice the Mate hailed; but there came no reply.
There was some talk, among the officers; and I gathered that the Captain was thinking of investigating.
“Clear one of the life-boats, Mr. Gelt,” he said, at last. “The glass is steady; there’ll be no wind for hours yet. Pick out a half a dozen men. Take ’em out of either watch, if they want to come. I’ll be back when I’ve got my coat.”
“Away aft with you, Duprey, and some of you others,” said the Mate. “Get the cover off the port life-boat, and bail her out.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” I answered, and went away aft with the others.
We had the boat into the water within twenty minutes, which is good time for a wind-jammer, where boats are generally used as storage receptacles for odd gear.
I was one of the men told off to the boat, with two others from our watch, and one from the starboard.
The Captain came down the end of the main tops’l halyards into the boat, and the Third after him. The Third took the tiller, and gave orders to cast off.
We pulled out clear of our vessel, and the Skipper told us to lie on our oars for a moment while he took his bearings. He leant forward to listen, and we all did the same. The sound of the running water was quite distinct across the quietness; but it struck me as seeming not so loud as earlier.
I remember now, that I noticed how plain the mist had become—a sort of warm, wet mist; not a bit thick; but just enough to make the night very dark, and to be visible, eddying slowly in a thin vapour round the port side-light, looking like a red cloudiness swirling lazily through the red glow of the big lamp.
There was no other sound at this time, beyond the sound of the running water; and the Captain, after handing something to the Third Mate, gave the order to give-way.
I was rowing stroke, and close to the officers, and so was able to see dimly that the Captain had passed a heavy revolver over to the Third Mate.
“Ho!” I thought to myself, “so the Old Man’s a notion there’s really something dangerous over there.”
I slipped a hand quickly behind me, and felt that my sheath knife was clear.
We pulled easily for about three or four minutes, with the sound of the water growing plainer somewhere ahead in the darkness; and astern of us, a vague red glowing through the night and vapour, showed where our vessel was lying.
We were rowing easily, when suddenly the bow-oar muttered “G’lord!” Immediately afterwards, there was a loud splashing in the water on his side of the boat.
“What’s wrong in the bows, there?” asked the Skipper, sharply.
“There’s somethin’ in the water, Sir, messing round my oar,” said the man.
I stopped rowing, and looked round. All the men did the same. There was a further sound of splashing, and the water was driven right over the boat in showers. Then the bow-oar called out: “There’s somethin’ got a holt of my oar, Sir!”
I could tell the man was frightened; and I knew suddenly that a curious nervousness had come to me—a vague, uncomfortable dread, such as the memory of an ugly tale will bring, in a lonesome place. I believe every man in the boat had a similar feeling. It seemed to me in that moment, that a definite, muggy sort of silence was all round us, and this in spite of the sound of the splashing, and the strange noise of the running water somewhere ahead of us on the dark sea.
“It’s let go the oar, Sir!” said the man.
Abruptly, as he spoke, there came the Captain’s voice in a roar: “Back water all!” he shouted. “Put some beef into it now! Back all! Back all!… Why the devil was no lantern put in the boat! Back now! Back! Back!”
We backed fiercely, with a will; for it was plain that the Old Man had some good reason to get the boat away pretty quickly. H
e was right, too; though, whether it was guess-work, or some kind of instinct that made him shout out at that moment, I don’t know; only I am sure he could not have seen anything in that absolute darkness.
As I was saying, he was right in shouting to us to back; for we had not backed more than half a dozen fathoms, when there was a tremendous splash right ahead of us, as if a house had fallen into the sea; and a regular wave of sea-water came at us out of the darkness, throwing our bows up, and soaking us fore and aft.
“Good Lord!” I heard the Third Mate gasp out. “What the devil’s that?”
“Back all! Back! Back!” the Captain sung out again.
After some moments, he had the tiller put over, and told us to pull. We gave way with a will, as you may think, and in a few minutes were alongside our own ship again.
“Now then, men,” the Captain said, when we were safe aboard, “I’ll not order any of you to come; but after the steward’s served out a tot of grog each, those who are willing, can come with me, and we’ll have another go at finding out what devil’s work is going on over yonder.”
He turned to the Mate, who had been asking questions:
“Say, Mister,” he said, “it’s no sort of thing to let the boat go without a lamp aboard. Send a couple of the lads into the lamp locker, and pass out a couple of the anchor-lights, and that deck bull’s-eye, you use at nights for clearing up the ropes.”
He whipped round on the Third: “Tell the steward to buck up with that grog, Mr. Andrews,” he said, “and while you’re there, pass out the axes from the rack in my cabin.”
The grog came along a minute later; and then the Third Mate with three big axes from out the cabin rack.
“Now then, men,” said the Skipper, as we took our tots off, “those who are coming with me, had better take an axe each from the Third Mate. They’re mightly good weapons in any sort of trouble.”
We all stepped forward, and he burst out laughing, slapping his thigh.
“That’s the kind of thing I like!” he said. “Mr. Andrews, the axes won’t go round. Pass out that old cutlass from the steward’s pantry. It’s a pretty hefty piece of iron!”
The William Hope Hodgson Megapack Page 40