“ ‘i, ‘i, Sir,” I said, and turned forrard. But there was no need to pass on the Mate’s orders; for the men had heard, and there was a rush for the capstan-bars, which are a pretty hefty kind of cudgel, as any sailorman knows. We lined the rail again, and stared away to port.
“Look out, you sea-divvils,” shouted Timothy Galt, a huge Irishman, waving his bar excitedly, and peering over the rail into the mist, which was steadily thinning, as the day grew.
Abruptly there was a simultaneous cry:— “Rocks!” shouted everyone.
I never saw such a sight. As at last the mist thinned, we could see them. All the sea to port was literally cut about with far-reaching reefs of rock. In places the reefs lay just submerged; but in others they rose into extraordinary and fantastic rock-spires, and arches, and islands of jagged rock.
“Jehoshaphat!” I heard the Third Mate shout. “Look at that, Mister! Look at that! Lord! how did we take the boat through that, without stoving her!”
Everything was so still for the moment, with all the men just staring and amazed, that I could hear every word come along the decks.
“There’s sure been a submarine earthquake somewhere,” I heard the First Mate say. “The bottom of the sea’s just riz up here, quiet and gentle, during the night; and. God’s mercy we aren’t now a-top of one of those ornaments out there.”
And then, you know, I saw it all. Everything that had looked mad and impossible, began to be natural; though it was, none the less, all amazing and wonderful.
There had been during the night, a slow lifting of the sea-bottom, owing to some action of the Internal Pressures. The rocks had risen so gently that they had made never a sound; and the stone ship had risen with them out of the deep sea. She had evidently lain on one of the submerged reefs, and so had seemed to us to be just afloat in the sea. And she accounted for the water we heard running. She was naturally bung-full, as you might say, and took longer to shed the water than she did to rise. She had probably some biggish holes in her bottom. I began to get my “soundings” a bit, as I might call it in sailor talk. The natural wonders of the sea, beat all made-up yarns that ever were!
The Mate sung out to us to man the boat again, and told the Third Mate to take her out to where we lost the Skipper, and have a final look round, in case there might be any chance to find the Old Man’s body anywhere about.
“Keep a man in the bows to look out for sunk rocks, Mister,” the Mate told the Third, as we pulled off. “Go slow. There’ll be no wind yet a while. See if you can fix up what made those noises, while you’re looking round.”
We pulled right across about thirty fathoms of clear water, and in a minute we were between two great arches of rock. It was then I realised that the re-duplicating of our oar-roll was the echo from these on each side of us. Even in the sunlight, it was queer to hear again that same strange cathedral echoey sound that we had heard in the dark.
We passed under the huge arches, all hung with deep sea slime. And presently we were heading straight for a gap, where two low reefs swept in to the apex of a huge horseshoe. We pulled for about three minutes, and then the Third gave the word to vast pulling.
“Take the boat-hook, Duprey,” he said, “and go forrard, and see we don’t hit anything.”
“ ‘i, ‘i, Sir,” I said, and drew in my oar.
“Give way again gently!” said the Third; and the boat moved forward for another thirty or forty yards.
“We’re right onto a reef, Sir,” I said, presently, as I stared down over the bows. I sounded with the boat-hook. “There’s about three feet of water, Sir,” I told him.
“Vast pulling,” ordered the Third. “I reckon we are right over the rock, where we found that rum packet last night.” He leant over the side, and stared down.
“There’s a stone cannon on the rock, right under the bows of the boat,” I said. Immediately afterwards I shouted: —
“There’s the hair, Sir! There’s the hair! It’s on the reef. There’s two! There’s three! There’s one on the cannon!”
“All right! All right, Duprey! Keep cool,” said the Third Mate. “I can see them. You’ve enough intelligence not to be superstitious now the whole thing’s explained. They’re some kind of big-hairy sea-caterpillar. Prod one with your boat-hook.”
I did so; a little ashamed of my sudden bewilderment. The thing whipped round like a tiger, at the boat-hook. It lapped itself round and round the boat-hook, while the hind portions of it kept gripped to the rock, and I could no more pull the boat-hook from its grip, than fly; though I pulled till I sweated.
“Take the point of your cutlass to it, Varley,” said the Third Mate. “Jab it through.”
The bow-oar did so, and the brute loosed the boat-hook, and curled up round a chunk of rock, looking like a great ball of red hair.
I drew the boat-hook up, and examined it.
“Goodness!” I said. “That’s what killed the Old Man — one of those things! Look at all those marks in the wood, where it’s gripped it with about a hundred legs.”
I passed the boat-hook aft to the Third Mate to look at.
“They’re about as dangerous as they can be, Sir, I reckon,” I told him. “Makes you think of African centipedes, only these are big and strong enough to kill an elephant, I should think.”
“Don’t lean all on one side of the boat!” shouted the Third Mate, as the men stared over. “Get back to your places. Give way, there!… Keep a good lookout for any signs of the ship or the Captain, Duprey.”
For nearly an hour, we pulled to and fro over the reef; but we never saw either the stone ship or the Old Man again. The queer craft must have rolled off into the profound depths that lay on each side of the reef.
As I leant over the bows, staring down all that long while at the submerged rocks, I was able to understand almost everything, except the various extraordinary noises.
The cannon made it unmistakably clear that the ship which had been hove up from the sea-bottom, with the rising of the reef, had been originally a normal enough wooden vessel of a time far removed from our own. At the sea-bottom, she had evidently undergone some natural mineralising process, and this explained her stony appearance. The stone men had been evidently humans who had been drowned in her cabin, and their swollen tissues had been subjected to the same natural process, which, however, had also deposited heavy encrustations upon them, so that their size, when compared with the normal, was prodigious.
The mystery of the hair, I had already discovered; but there remained, among other things, the tremendous bangs we had heard. These were, possibly, explained later, while we were making a final examination of the rocks to the Westward, prior to returning to our ship. Here we discovered the burst and swollen bodies of several extraordinary deep-sea creatures, of the eel variety. They must have had a girth, in life, of many feet, and the one that we measured roughly with an oar, must have been quite forty feet long. They had, apparently, burst on being lifted from the tremendous pressure of the deep sea, into the light air pressure above water, and hence might account for the loud reports we had eoard; though, personally, I incline to think these loud bangs were more probably caused by the splitting of the rocks under new stresses.
As for the roaring sounds, I can only conclude that they were caused by a peculiar species of grampus-like fish, of enormous size, which we found dead and hugely distended on one of the rocky masses. This fish must have weighed at least four or five tons, and when prodded with a heavy oar, there came from its peculiar snout-shaped mouth, a low, hoarse sound, like a weak imitation of the tremendous sounds we had heard during the past night.
Regarding the apparently carved handrail, like a rope up the side of the cabin stairs, I realise that this had undoubtedly been actual rope at one time.
Recalling the heavy, trundling sounds aboard, just after I climbed down into the boat, I can only suppose that these were made by some stone object, possibly a fossilised gun-carriage, rolling down the decks, as the ship began
to slip off the rocks, and her bows sank lower in the water.
The varying lights must have been the strongly phosphorescent bodies of some of the deep-sea creatures, moving about on the upheaved reefs. As for the giant splash that occurred in the darkness ahead of the boat, this must have been due to some large portion of heaved-up rock, overbalancing and rolling back into the sea.
No one aboard ever learnt about the jewels. I took care of that! I sold the ruby badly, so I’ve heard since; but I do not grumble even now. Twenty-three thousand pounds I had for it alone, from a merchant in London. I learned afterwards he made double that on it; but I don’t spoil my pleasure by grumbling. I wonder often how the stones and things came where I found them; but she carried guns, as I’ve told, I think; and there’s rum doings happen at sea; yes, by George!
The smell — oh that I guess was due to heaving all that deep-sea slime up for human noses to smell at.
This yarn is, of course, known in nautical circles, and was briefly mentioned in the old Nautical Mercury of 1879. The series of volcanic reefs (which disappeared in 1883) were charted under the name of the “Alfred Jessop Shoals and Reefs”; being named after our Captain who discovered them and lost his life on them.
CAPTAIN GAULT, BEING THE EXCEEDINGLY PRIVATE LOG OF A SEA-CAPTAIN
The Captain Gault stories were first published in the London Magazine from 1914 to 1916. These were collected in 1917 as Captain Gault, Being the Exceedingly Private Log of a Sea Captain. A further story was discovered later and published posthumously in 1996.
Gault is a sea captain for hire, operating on various ships in many locations across the globe over the course of the stories. Gault himself is a morally ambiguous character that follows the pattern of many famous fictional criminals: although a law-breaker and primarily interested in making money, he also has a strict moral code. As the series progresses, we learn tantalising bits of information about Captain Gault: he seems to be highly placed in a secret society; he has occult knowledge about arcane religious artefacts; he seems to be very knowledgeable about gemstones; he is a skilled amateur painter. Where exactly Gault has accumulated his knowledge and skills is not revealed, with only very vague hints being given of the character’s past.
The Captain Gault stories tend to follow several patterns. Most of the stories involve ingenious smuggling rackets and the plot often relies on information that is known to Captain Gault, but not to the reader. There is usually some kind of misinformation or even play-acting performed for the misdirection of customs officials. Sometimes the deception is in sleight-of-hand; sometimes it is in the Captain’s choice of hiding place (which may be in plain sight). The stories usually end with a smug Captain Gault explaining the plot, sometimes over dinner, and sometimes by letter.
Cover of the first US edition
CONTENTS
MY LADY’S JEWELS
THE DIAMOND SPY
THE CASE OF THE CHINESE CURIO DEALER
THE RED HERRING
THE DRUM OF SACCHARINE
THE PROBLEM OF THE PEARLS
FROM INFORMATION RECEIVED
CONTRABAND OF WAR
THE GERMAN SPY
THE ADVENTURE OF THE GARTER
Please note: the Captain Gault story The Plans of the Reefing Bi-Plane was first published in Terrors of the Sea in 1996 and cannot appear in this collection due to copyright restrictions.
Title page of the first U.S. edition
MY LADY’S JEWELS
London City,
March 4.
Women have a great trick of asking me to help them through the Customs with their jewellery.
I’ve said “Yes” once or twice, and not always had occasion to regret it. You see, there are women who are more honest than you’d think a woman could be, considering just what a woman is.
I make it a general rule, though, to say “No” to these requests, for it’s bad policy to mix up business and pleasure; and I’ve no use for a woman when it comes to sharing a secret with her. She’s so apt to be a bit mixed in her ideas of fair-play.
It’s all rot to say a woman can’t keep a secret. She can! She could keep a secret till Old Nick gurned grey, begging for it, if it suited her. But that’s just the trouble! You never know when it’s going to stop suiting her to keep mum. If she gets the notion there’s more cash for her to talk, than in keeping quiet, she’ll pull the lid off and let the secret pop out, regardless of the hole you may get shoved into as a result.
Anyway, I can’t help making friends occasionally on the trip across. And there’s a Mrs. Ernley, a pretty young widow, American, with heaps of dollars, who’s shown a friendly side to me since the first day out.
I spotted her the moment she came aboard, and I gave the Chief Steward word to put her at my table. There are always little compensations, like that, to make up for the long hours, short pay, and big responsibilities of a sea-Captain’s life!
We got on splendidly; and as she had no one to look after her, I have done my best ever since.
She was up with me on the lower bridge today, helping me “keep the watch,” she called it; though it’s not much watch I can keep when she’s looking up at me, and saying things, of an “Americanness” beyond belief, and of an artlessness that ought to be beyond propriety, but somehow isn’t.
“I’ve bought a heap of stuff in London and Paris,” she told me; “and I’m afraid the New York Customs will sure have it in savage for me, Captain Gault.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
I was truly afraid; for that’s the way a lot of them lead up to asking me to help them hide the stuff somewhere in the ship, so as to get it safely past the Customs searchers.
“It’s a mighty wicked tax,” she said. “I wish we women had the vote, we’d alter things. I s’pose you don’t think a woman’s fit to vote, Captain. But let me tell you, she’s a heap fitter than half the men.”
“I’m not against the vote,” I said, “under conditions that are fair to the men.”
“What’s fair to one is fair to the other!” she said.
“That’s a bit vague,” I told her. “The suffrage is largely the modern equivalent of physical force. Women have less of it by nature, than men, and consequently there is a certain artificiality in the situation of a woman voting on equal terms with a man; for it implies that she is physically the equal of the man.”
“Might’s not right!” she said, warmly. “A clever woman has more brains than a labourer. Yet you give him the vote!”
“Exactly!” I said, smiling a little at her feminine method of meeting my distinctly masculine argument. “The labouring man has the vote, when you haven’t it, because the vote is the modern equivalent of physical strength. Nowadays, when a man wants a thing, he votes for it, instead of fighting for it. In the old days, he fought for it, and would today, if his vote were outvoted by a lot of people who were physically midgets. The vote is might as well as right. All the same, ethically, the very cows in the field have a right to vote. I wonder how they’d vote on a pure butter question, and the vealing of their calves!”
“I’m not interested one bit about cows having the vote,” she said; “but I tell you, Captain, when we women get the vote, we’ll wipe this wicked tax on women’s jewellery, and pretty things, clean off the slate! If things go on like this, only very rich women will be able to dress at all.”
“I hadn’t thought of it in that light,” I said. “How shocking! There’s still always the cheaper sorts of dress stuffs — plain cotton prints look quite pretty. No need really, you know, to allow this man-made tax to achieve its abominable end—”
“Captain,” she interrupted, suddenly, “will you do something for me?”
I knew then that I could not delay the fatal moment any longer. She was going to ask me to risk liberty and profession for the sake of her pocket. And being a man, what chance had I?
“Captain Gault,” she said, “I bought something enormously expensive when I was in Paris.”
“Yes,” I asked, rather hopelessly, “was it a necklace or a tiara?”
“Look!” she said, and opened her handbag.
“What did you pay for that?” I asked. “You ought to have it locked up in the strong room. For goodness’ sake, don’t let anyone aboard know that you’ve got a thing like that with you. A sea-Captain’s responsibilities are bad enough, without adding to them gratuitously. Do shut the bag, please, and take it to the strong room! It’ll be much safer there.”
“I paid nearly a million dollars for it,” she said, looking up at me, “and I guess that’s as much as I’m going to pay. I’m going to smuggle it through the Customs. I’m not going to pay a cent of their horrible wicked tax.”
“Mrs. Ernley,” I said, “it’s evident you don’t know much about the U.S.A. Customs people. Let me tell you, dear lady, they’re smart; and the chances are they know at the present moment that you’ve bought this neckace, and what you have paid for it.”
“No,” she said, “they don’t just know anything at all about it, Captain. I made up my mind that I wouldn’t pay the tax. Why, it would be about six hundred thousand dollars on this one necklace! It’s just robbery! And so I made arrangements secretly through a friend, with Monsieur Jervoyn, the jeweller, to meet me at her house, and I bought this lovely thing there, and paid for it in cash. So you see, they can’t know!”
“My dear Mrs. Ernley,” I remonstrated, “never be sure of anything where the U.S.A. Customs are concerned, except that they’re on the job all the time. Americans are like that, as you know. If they go in for graft, they do the thing properly; and if they go in for doing their duty, they do it properly likewise, in about forty different ways at one and the same time. That’s the way they’re built. They’ve got to be efficient per pound whatever else they are or are not. And you can bet on this, when the Customs come aboard in New York, they’ll know you’ve got this, and they’ll know the name of the man you got it from; and they’ll be able to make a shot at what you paid for it.”
Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson Page 163