I. DESERT SEAS
II. THE "LAUGHING LASS"
III. THE DEATH SHIP
IV. THE SECOND PRIZE CREW
V. THE DISAPPEARANCE
VI. THE CASTAWAYS
VII. THE FREE LANCE
Being the story told by Ralph Slade, Free Lance, to the officers of the United States Cruiser "Wolverine"
I. THE BARBARY COAST
II. THE GRAVEN IMAGE
III. THE TWELVE REPEATING RIFLES
IV. THE STEEL CLAW
V. THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
VI. THE ISLAND
VII. CAPTAIN SELOVER LOSES HIS NERVE
VIII. WRECKING OF THE "GOLDEN HORN"
IX. THE EMPTY BRANDY BOTTLE
X. CHANGE OF MASTERS
XI. THE CORROSIVE
XII. "OLD SCRUBS" COMES ASHORE
XIII. I MAKE MY ESCAPE
XIV. AN ADVENTURE IN THE NIGHT
XV. FIVE HUNDRED YARDS' RANGE
XVI. THE MURDER
XVII. THE OPEN SEA
XVIII. THE CATASTROPHE
I. IN THE WARDROOM
II. THE JOLLY ROGER
III. THE CACHE
IV. THE TWIN SLABS
V. THE PINWHEEL VOLCANO
VI. MR. DARROW RECEIVES
VII. THE SURVIVORS
VIII. THE MAKER OF MARVELS
IX. THE ACHIEVEMENT
X. THE DOOM
"And you know a heap too much"
A schooner comporting herself in a manner uncommon on the Pacific
A man who was a bit of a mechanic was set to work to open the chest
Slowly the man defined himself as a shape takes form in a fog
"These sheep had become as wild as deer"
The firing now became miscellaneous. No one paid any attention to any one else
With a strangled cry the sailor cast the shirt from him
"Sorry not to have met you at the door," he said courteously
The late afternoon sky flaunted its splendour of blue and gold like a banner over the Pacific, across whose depths the trade wind droned in measured cadence. On the ocean's wide expanse a hulk wallowed sluggishly, the forgotten relict of a once brave and sightly ship, possibly the Sphinx of some untold ocean tragedy, she lay black and forbidding in the ordered procession of waves. Half a mile to the east of the derelict hovered a ship's cutter, the turn of her crew's heads speaking expectancy. As far again beyond, the United States cruiser Wolverine outlined her severe and trim silhouette against the horizon. In all the spread of wave and sky no other thing was visible. For this was one of the desert parts of the Pacific, three hundred miles north of the steamship route from Yokohama to Honolulu, five hundred miles from the nearest land, Gardner Island, and more than seven hundred northwest of the Hawaiian group.
On the cruiser's quarter-deck the officers lined the starboard rail. Their interest was focussed on the derelict.
"Looks like a heavy job," said Ives, one of the junior lieutenants. "These floaters that lie with deck almost awash will stand more hammering than a mud fort."
"Wish they'd let us put some six-inch shells into her," said Billy Edwards, the ensign, a wistful expression on his big round cheerful face. "I'd like to see what they would do."
"Nothing but waste a few hundred dollars of your Uncle Sam's money," observed Carter, the officer of the deck. "It takes placed charges inside and out for that kind of work."
"Barnett's the man for her then," said Ives. "He's no economist when it comes to getting results. There she goes!"
Without any particular haste, as it seemed to the watchers, the hulk was shouldered out of the water, as by some hidden leviathan. Its outlines melted into a black, outshowering mist, and from that mist leaped a giant. Up, up, he towered, tossed whirling arms a hundred feet abranch, shivered, and dissolved into a widespread cataract. The water below was lashed into fury, in the midst of which a mighty death agony beat back the troubled waves of the trade wind. Only then did the muffled double boom of the explosion reach the ears of the spectators, presently to be followed by a whispering, swift-skimming wavelet that swept irresistibly across the bigger surges and lapped the ship's side, as for a message that the work was done.
Here and there in the sea a glint of silver, a patch of purple, or dull red, or a glistening apparition of black showed where the unintended victims of the explosion, the gay-hued open-sea fish of the warm waters, had succumbed to the force of the shock. Of the intended victim there was no sign save a few fragments of wood bobbing in a swirl of water.
When Barnett, the ordnance officer in charge of the destruction, returned to the ship, Carter complimented him.
"Good clean job, Barnett. She was a tough customer, too."
"What was she?" asked Ives.
"The Caroline Lemp, three-masted schooner. Anyone know about her?"
Ives turned to the ship's surgeon, Trendon, a grizzled and brief-spoken veteran, who had at his finger's tips all the lore of all the waters under the reign of the moon.
"What does the information bureau of the Seven Seas know about it?"
"Lost three years ago--spring of 1901--got into ice field off the tip of the Aleutians. Some of the crew froze. Others got ashore. Part of survivors accounted for. Others not. Say they've turned native. Don't know myself."
"The Aleutians!" exclaimed Billy Edwards. "Great Cats! What a drift! How many thousand miles would that be?"
"Not as far as many another derelict has wandered in her time, son," said Barnett.
The talk washed back and forth across the hulks of classic sea mysteries, new and old; of the City of Boston, which went down with all hands, leaving for record only a melancholy scrawl on a bit of board to meet the wondering eyes of a fisherman on the far Cornish coast; of the Great Queensland, which set out with five hundred and sixty-nine souls aboard, bound by a route unknown to a tragic end; of the Naronic, with her silent and empty lifeboats alone left, drifting about the open sea, to hint at the story of her fate; of the Huronian, which, ten years later, on the same day and date, and hailing from the same port as the Naronic, went out into the void, leaving no trace; of Newfoundland captains who sailed, roaring with drink, under the arches of cathedral bergs, only to be prisoned, buried, and embalmed in the one icy embrace; of craft assailed by the terrible one-stroke lightning clouds of the Indian Ocean, found days after, stone blind, with their crews madly hauling at useless sheets, while the officers clawed the compass and shrieked; of burnings and piracies; of pest ships and slave ships, and ships mad for want of water; of whelming earthquake waves, and mysterious suctions, drawing irresistibly against wind and steam power upon unknown currents; of stout hulks deserted in panic although sound and seaworthy; and of others so swiftly dragged down that there was no time for any to save himself; and of a hundred other strange, stirring and pitiful ventures such as make up the inevitable peril and incorrigible romance of the ocean. In a pause Billy Edwards said musingly:
"Well, there was the Laughing Lass."
"How did you happen to hit on her?" asked Barnett quickly.
"Why not, sir? It naturally came into my head. She was last seen somewhere about this part of the world, wasn't she?" After a moment's hesitation he added: "From something I heard ashore I judge we've a commission to keep a watch out for her as well as to destroy derelicts."
"What about the Laughing Lass?" asked McGuire, the paymaster, a New Englander, who had been in the service but a short time.
"Good Lord! don't you remember the Laughing Lass mystery and the disappearance of Doctor Schermerhorn?"
"Karl Augustus Schermerhorn, the man whose experiments to identify telepathy with the Marconi wireless waves made such a furore in the papers?"
"Oh, that was only a by-product of his mind. He was an original investigator in every line of physics and chemistry, besides most of the natural sciences," said Barnett. "The government is particularly interested in him because of his contributions to aërial photography."
"And he was lost with the Laughing Lass?"
"Nobody knows," said Edwards. "He left San Francisco two years ago on a hundred-foot schooner, with an assistant, a big brass-bound chest, and a ragamuffin crew. A newspaper man named Slade, who dropped out of the world about the same time, is supposed to have gone along, too. Their schooner was last sighted about 450 miles northeast of Oahu, in good shape, and bound westward. That's all the record of her that there is."
"Was that Ralph Slade?" asked Barnett.
"Yes. He was a free-lance writer and artist."
"I knew him well," said Barnett. "He was in our mess in the Philippine campaign, on the North Dakota. War correspondent then. It's strange that I never identified him before with the Slade of the Laughing Lass."
"What was the object of the voyage?" asked Ives.
"They were supposed to be after buried treasure," said Barnett.
"I've always thought it more likely that Doctor Schermerhorn was on a scientific expedition," said Edwards. "I knew the old boy, and he wasn't the sort to care a hoot in Sheol for treasure, buried or unburied."
"Every time a ship sets out from San Francisco without publishing to all the world just what her business is, all the world thinks it's one of those wild-goose hunts," observed Ives.
"Yes," agreed Barnett. "Flora and fauna of some unknown island would be much more in the Schermerhorn line of traffic. Not unlikely that some of the festive natives collected the unfortunate professor."
Various theories were advanced, withdrawn, refuted, defended, and the discussion carried them through the swift twilight into the darkness which had been hastened by a high-spreading canopy of storm-clouds. Abruptly from the crow's-nest came startling news for those desolate seas: "Light--ho! Two points on the port bow."
The lookout had given extra voice to it. It was plainly heard throughout the ship.
The group of officers stared in the direction indicated, but could see nothing. Presently Ives and Edwards, who were the keenest-sighted, made out a faint, suffused radiance. At the same time came a second hail from the crow's-nest.
"On deck, sir."
"Hello," responded Carter, the officer of the deck.
"There's a light here I can't make anything out of, sir."
"What's it like?"
"Sort of a queer general glow."
"General glow, indeed!" muttered Forsythe, among the group aft. "That fellow's got an imagination."
"Can't you describe it better than that?" called Carter.
"Don't make it out at all, sir. 'Tain't any regular and proper light. Looks like a lamp in a fog."
Among themselves the officers discussed it interestedly, as it grew plainer.
"Not unlike the electric glow above a city, seen from a distance," said Barnett, as it grew plainer.
"Yes: but the nearest electric-lighted city is some eight hundred miles away," objected Ives.
"Mirage, maybe," suggested Edwards.
"Pretty hard-working mirage, to cover that distance" said Ives. "Though I've seen 'em----"
"Great heavens! Look at that!" shouted Edwards.
A great shaft of pale brilliance shot up toward the zenith. Under it whirled a maelstrom of varied radiance, pale with distance, but marvellously beautiful. Forsythe passed them with a troubled face, on his way below to report, as his relief went up.
"The quartermaster reports the compass behaving queerly," he said.
Three minutes later the captain was on the bridge. The great ship had swung, and they were speeding direct for the phenomenon. But within a few minutes the light had died out.
"Another sea mystery to add to our list," said Billy Edwards. "Did anyone ever see a show like that before? What do you think, Doc?"
"Humph!" grunted the veteran. "New to me. Volcanic, maybe."
The falling of dusk on June the 3d found tired eyes aboard the Wolverine. Every officer in her complement had kept a private and personal lookout all day for some explanation of the previous night's phenomenon. All that rewarded them were a sky filmed with lofty clouds, and the holiday parade of the epauletted waves.
Nor did evening bring a repetition of that strange glow. Midnight found the late stayers still deep in the discussion.
"One thing is certain," said Ives. "It wasn't volcanic."
"Why so?" asked the paymaster.
"Because volcanoes are mostly stationary, and we headed due for that light."
"Yes; but did we keep headed?" said Barnett, who was navigating officer as well as ordnance officer, in a queer voice.
"What do you mean, sir?" asked Edwards eagerly.
"After the light disappeared the compass kept on varying. The stars were hidden. There is no telling just where we were headed for some time."
"Then we might be fifty miles from the spot we aimed at."
"Hardly that," said the navigator. "We could guide her to some extent by the direction of wind and waves. If it was volcanic we ought certainly to have sighted it by now."
"Always some electricity in volcanic eruptions," said Trendon. "Makes compass cut didoes. Seen it before."
"Where?" queried Carter.
"Off Martinique. Pelée eruption. Needle chased its tail like a kitten."
"Are there many volcanoes hereabouts?" somebody asked.
"We're in 162 west, 31 north, about," said Barnett. "No telling whether there are or not. There weren't at last accounts, but that's no evidence that there aren't some since. They come up in the night, these volcanic islands."
"Just cast an eye on the charts," said Billy Edwards. "Full of E. D.'s and P. D.'s all over the shop. Every one of 'em volcanic."
"E. D.'s and P. D.'s?" queried the paymaster.
"Existence doubtful, and position doubtful," explained the ensign. "Every time the skipper of one of these wandering trade ships gets a speck in his eye, he reports an island. If he really does bump into a rock he cuts in an arithmetic book for his latitude and longitude and lets it go at that. That's how the chart makers make a living, getting out new editions every few months."
"But it's a fact that these seas are constantly changing," said Barnett. "They're so little travelled that no one happens to be around to see an island born. I don't suppose there's a part on the earth's surface more liable to seismic disturbances than this region."
"Seismic!" cried Billy Edwards, "I should say it was seismic! Why, when a native of one of these island groups sets his heart on a particular loaf of bread up his bread-fruit tree, he doesn't bother to climb after it. Just waits for some earthquake to happen along and shake it down to him."
"Good boy, Billy," said Dr. Trendon, approvingly. "Do another."
"It's a fact," said the ensign, heatedly. "Why, a couple of years back there was a trader here stocked up with a lot of belly-mixture in bottles. Thought he was going to make his pile because there'd been a colic epidemic in the islands the season before. Bottles were labelled 'Do not shake.' That settled his business. Might as well have marked 'em 'Keep frozen' in this part of the world. Fellow went broke."
"In any case," said Barnett, "such a glow as that we sighted last night I've never seen from any volcano."
"Nor I," said Trendon. "Don't prove it mightn't have been."
"I'll just bet the best dinner in San Francisco that it isn't," said Edwards.
"You're on," said Carter.
"Let me in," suggested Ives.
"And I'll take one of it," said McGuire.
"Come one, come all," said Edwards cheerily. "I'll live high on the collective bad judgment of this outfit."
"To-night isn't likely to settle it, anyhow," said Ives. "I move we turn in."
Expectant minds do not lend themselves to sound slumber. All night the officers of the Wolverine slept on the verge of waking, but it was not until dawn that the cry of "Sail-ho!" sent them all hurrying to their clothes. Ordinarily officers of the U.S. Navy do not scuttle on deck like a crowd of curious schoolgirls, but all hands had been keyed to a high pitch over the elusive light, and the bet with Edwards now served as an excuse for the betrayal of unusual eagerness. Hence the quarter-deck was soon alive with men who were wont to be deep in dreams at that hour.
They found Carter, whose watch on deck it was, reprimanding the lookout.
"No, sir," the man was insisting, "she didn't show no light, sir. I'd 'a' sighted her an hour ago, sir, if she had."
"We shall see," said Carter grimly. "Who's your relief?"
"Sennett."
"Let him take your place. Go aloft, Sennett."
As the lookout, crestfallen and surly, went below, Barnett said in subdued tones:
"Upon my word, I shouldn't be surprised if the man were right. Certainly there's something queer about that hooker. Look how she handles herself."
The vessel was some three miles to windward. She was a schooner of the common two-masted Pacific type, but she was comporting herself in a manner uncommon on the Pacific, or any other ocean. Even as Barnett spoke, she heeled well over, and came rushing up into the wind, where she stood with all sails shaking. Slowly she paid off again, bearing away from them. Now she gathered full headway, yet edged little by little to windward again.
"Mighty queer tactics," muttered Edwards. "I think she's steering herself."
"Good thing she carries a weather helm," commented Ives, who was an expert on sailing rigs. "Most of that type do. Otherwise she'd have jibed her masts out, running loose that way."
Captain Parkinson appeared on deck and turned his glasses for a full minute on the strange schooner.
"Aloft there," he hailed the crow's-nest. "Do you make out anyone aboard?"
"No, sir," came the answer.
"Mr. Carter, have the chief quartermaster report on deck with the signal flags."
"Yes, sir."
"Aren't we going to run up to her?" asked McGuire, turning in surprise to Edwards.
"And take the risk of getting a hole punched in our pretty paint, with her running amuck that way? Not much!"
Up came the signal quartermaster to get his orders, and there ensued a one-sided conversation in the pregnant language of the sea.
"What ship is that?"
No answer.
"Are you in trouble?" asked the cruiser, and waited. The schooner showed a bare and silent main-peak.
"Heave to." Now Uncle Sam was giving orders.
But the other paid no heed.
"We'll make that a little more emphatic," said Captain Parkinson. A moment later there was the sharp crash of a gun and a shot went across the bows of the sailing vessel. Hastened by a flaw of wind that veered from the normal direction of the breeze the stranger made sharply to windward, as if to obey.
"Ah, there she comes," ran the comment along the cruiser's quarter-deck.
But the schooner, after standing for a moment, all flapping, answered another flaw, and went wide about on the opposite tack.
"Derelict," remarked Captain Parkinson. "She seems to be in good shape, too, Dr. Trendon!"
"Yes, sir." The surgeon went to the captain, and the others could hear his deep, abrupt utterance in reply to some question too low for their ears.
"Might be, sir. Beri-beri, maybe. More likely smallpox if anything of that kind. But some of 'em would be on deck."
"Whew! A plague ship!" said Billy Edwards. "Just my luck to be ordered to board her." He shivered slightly.
"Scared, Billy?" said Ives. Edwards had a record for daring which made this joke obvious enough to be safe.
"I wouldn't want to have my peculiar style of beauty spoiled by smallpox marks," said the ensign, with a smile on his homely, winning face. "And I've a hunch that that ship is not a lucky find for this ship."
"Then I've a hunch that your hunch is a wrong one," said Ives. "How long would you guess that craft to be?"
They were now within a mile of the schooner. Edwards scrutinised her calculatingly.
"Eighty to ninety feet."
"Say 150 tons. And she's a two-masted schooner, isn't she?" continued Ives, insinuatingly.
"She certainly is."
"Well, I've a hunch that that ship is a lucky find for any ship, but particularly for this ship."
"Great Caesar!" cried the ensign excitedly. "Do you think it's her?"
A buzz of electric interest went around the group. Every glass was raised; every eye strained toward her stern to read the name as she veered into the wind again. About she came. A sharp sigh of excited disappointment exhaled from the spectators. The name had been painted out.
"No go," breathed Edwards. "But I'll bet another dinner----"
"Mr. Edwards," called the captain. "You will take the second cutter, board that schooner, and make a full investigation."
"Yes, sir."
"Take your time. Don't come alongside until she is in the wind. Leave enough men aboard to handle her."
"Yes, sir."
The cruiser steamed to within half a mile of the aimless traveller, and the small boat put out. Not one of his fellows but envied the young ensign as he left the ship, steered by Timmins, a veteran bo's'n's mate, wise in all the ins and outs of sea ways. They saw him board, neatly running the small boat under the schooner's counter; they saw the foresheet eased off and the ship run up into the wind; then the foresail dropped and the wheel lashed so that she would stand so. They awaited the reappearance of Edwards and the bo's'n's mate when they had vanished below decks, and with an intensity of eagerness they followed the return of the small boat.
Billy Edwards's face as he came on deck was a study. It was alight with excitement; yet between the eyes two deep wrinkles of puzzlement quivered. Such a face the mathematician bends above his paper when some obstructive factor arises between him and his solution.
"Well, sir?" There was a hint of effort at restraint in the captain's voice.
"She's the Laughing Lass, sir. Everything ship-shape, but not a soul aboard."
"Come below, Mr. Edwards," said the captain. And they went, leaving behind them a boiling cauldron of theory and conjecture.
Billy Edwards came on deck with a line of irritation right-angling the furrows between his eyes.
"Go ahead," the quarter-deck bade him, seeing him aflush with information.
"The captain won't believe me," blurted out Edwards.
"Is it as bad as that?" asked Barnett, smiling.
"It certainly is," replied the younger man seriously. "I don't know that I blame him. I'd hardly believe it myself if I hadn't----"
"Oh, go on. Out with it. Give us the facts. Never mind your credibility."
"The facts are that there lies the Laughing Lass, a little weather-worn, but sound as a dollar, and not a living being aboard of her. Her boats are all there. Everything's in good condition, though none too orderly. Pitcher half full of fresh water in the rack. Sails all O. K. Ashes of the galley fire still warm. I tell you, gentlemen, that ship hasn't been deserted more than a couple of days at the outside."
"Are you sure all the boats are there?" asked Ives.
"Dory, dingy, and two surf boats. Isn't that enough?"
"Plenty."
"Been over her, inside and out. No sign of collision. No leak. No anything, except that the starboard side is blistered a bit. No evidence of fire anywhere else. I tell you," said Billy Edwards pathetically, "it's given me a headache."
"Perhaps it's one of those cases of panic that Forsythe spoke of the other night," said Ives. "The crew got frightened at something and ran away, with the devil after them."
"But crews don't just step out and run around the corner and hide, when they're scared," objected Barnett.
"That's true, too," assented Ives. "Well, perhaps that volcanic eruption jarred them so that they jumped for it."
"Pretty wild theory, that," said Edwards.
"No wilder than the facts, as you give them," was the retort.
"That's so," admitted the ensign gloomily.
"But how about pestilence?" suggested Barnett.
"Maybe they died fast and the last survivor, after the bodies of the rest were overboard, got delirious and jumped after them."
"Not if the galley fire was hot," said Dr. Trendon, briefly. "No; pestilence doesn't work that way."
"Did you look at the wheel, Billy?" asked Ives.
"Did I! There's another thing. Wheel's all right, but compass is no good at all. It's regularly bewitched."
"What about the log, then?"
"Couldn't find it anywhere. Hunted high, low, jack, and the game; everywhere except in the big, brass-bound chest I found in the captain's cabin. Couldn't break into that."
"Dr. Schermerhorn's chest!" exclaimed Barnett. "Then he was aboard."
"Well, he isn't aboard now," said the ensign grimly. "Not in the flesh. And that's all," he added suddenly.
"No; it isn't all," said Barnett gently. "There's something else. Captain's orders?"
"Oh, no. Captain Parkinson doesn't take enough stock in my report to tell me to withhold anything," said Edwards, with a trace of bitterness in his voice. "It's nothing that I believe myself, anyhow."
"Give us a chance to believe it," said Ives.
"Well," said the ensign hesitantly, "there's a sort of atmosphere about that schooner that's almost uncanny."
"Oh, you had the shudders before you were ordered to board," bantered Ives.
"I know it. I'd have thought it was one of those fool presentiments if I were the only one to feel it. But the men were affected, too. They kept together like frightened sheep. And I heard one say to another: 'Hey, Boney, d'you feel like someone was a-buzzin' your nerves like a fiddle-string?' Now," demanded Edwards plaintively, "what right has a jackie to have nerves?"
"That's strange enough about the compass," said Barnett slowly. "Ours is all right again. The schooner must have been so near the electric disturbance that her instruments were permanently deranged."
"That would lend weight to the volcanic theory," said Carter.
"So the captain didn't take kindly to your go-look-see?" questioned Ives of Edwards.
"As good as told me I'd missed the point of the thing," said the ensign, flushing. "Perhaps he can make more of it himself. At any rate, he's going to try. Here he is now."
"Dr. Trendon," said the captain, appearing. "You will please to go with me to the schooner."
"Yes, sir," said the surgeon, rising from his chair with such alacrity as to draw from Ives the sardonic comment:
"Why, I actually believe old Trendon is excited."
For two hours after the departure of the captain and Trendon there were dull times on the quarter-deck of the Wolverine. Then the surgeon came back to them.
"Billy was right," he said.
"But he didn't tell us anything," cried Ives. "He didn't clear up the mystery."
"That's what," said Trendon. "One thing Billy said," he added, waxing unusually prolix for him, "was truer than maybe he knew."
"Thanks," murmured the ensign. "What was that?"
"You said 'Not a living being aboard.' Exact words, hey?"
"Well, what of it?" exclaimed the ensign excitedly. "You don't mean you found dead----?"
"Keep your temperature down, my boy. No. You were exactly right. Not a living being aboard."
"Thanks for nothing," retorted the ensign.
"Neither human nor other," pursued Trendon.
"What!"
"Food scattered around the galley. Crumbs on the mess table. Ever see a wooden ship without cockroaches?"
"Never particularly investigated the matter."
"Don't believe such a thing exists," said Ives.
"Not a cockroach on the Laughing Lass. Ever know of an old hooker that wasn't overrun with rats?"
"No; nor anyone else. Not above water."
"Found a dozen dead rats. No sound or sign of a live one on the Laughing Lass. No rats, no mice. No bugs. Gentlemen, the Laughing Lass is a charnel ship."
"No wonder Billy's tender nerves went wrong." said Ives, with irrepressible flippancy. "She's probably haunted by cockroach wraiths."
"He'll have a chance to see," said Trendon. "Captain's going to put him in charge."
"By way of apology, then," said Barnett. "That's pretty square."
"Captain Parkinson wishes to see you in his cabin, Mr. Edwards," said an orderly, coming in.
"A pleasant voyage, Captain Billy," said Ives. "Sing out if the goblins git yer."
Fifteen minutes later Ensign Edwards, with a quartermaster, Timmins, the bo's'n's mate, and a crew, was heading a straight course toward his first command, with instructions to "keep company and watch for signals"; and intention to break into the brass-bound chest and ferret out what clue lay there, if it took dynamite. As he boarded, Barnett and Trendon, with both of whom the lad was a favourite, came to a sinister conclusion.
"It's poison, I suppose," said the first officer.
"And a mighty subtle sort," agreed Trendon. "Don't like the looks of it." He shook a solemn head. "Don't like it for a damn."
In semi-tropic Pacific weather the unexpected so seldom happens as to be a negligible quantity. The Wolverine met with it on June 5th. From some unaccountable source in that realm of the heaven-scouring trades came a heavy mist. Possibly volcanic action, deranging by its electric and gaseous outpourings the normal course of the winds, had given birth to it. Be that as it may, it swept down upon the cruiser, thickening as it approached, until presently it had spread a curtain between the warship and its charge. The wind died. Until after fall of night the Wolverine moved slowly, bellowing for the schooner, but got no reply. Once they thought they heard a distant shout of response, but there was no repetition.
"Probably doesn't carry any fog horn," said Carter bitterly, voicing a general uneasiness.
"No log; compass crazy; without fog signal; I don't like that craft. Barnett ought to have been ordered to blow the damned thing up, as a peril to the high seas."
"We'll pick her up in the morning, surely," said Forsythe. "This can't last for ever."
Nor did it last long. An hour before midnight a pounding shower fell, lashing the sea into phosphorescent whiteness. It ceased, and with the growl of a leaping animal a squall furiously beset the ship. Soon the great steel body was plunging and heaving in the billows. It was a gloomy company about the wardroom table. Upon each and all hung an oppression of spirit. Captain Parkinson came from his cabin and went on deck. Constitutionally he was a nervous and pessimistic man with a fixed belief in the conspiracy of events, banded for the undoing of him and his. Blind or dubious conditions racked his soul, but real danger found him not only prepared, but even eager. Now his face was a picture of foreboding.
"Parky looks as if Davy Jones was pulling on his string," observed the flippant Ives to his neighbour.
"Worrying about the schooner. Hope Billy Edwards saw or heard or felt that squall coming," replied Forsythe, giving expression to the anxiety that all felt.
"He's a good sailor man," said Ives, "and that's a staunch little schooner, by the way she handled herself."
"Oh, it will be all right," said Carter confidently. "The wind's moderating now."
"But there's no telling how far out of the course this may have blown him."
Barnett came down, dripping.
"Anything new?" asked Dr. Trendon.
The navigating officer shook his head.
"Nothing. But the captain's in a state of mind," he said.
"What's wrong with him?"
"The schooner. Seems possessed with the notion that there's something wrong with her."
"Aren't you feeling a little that way yourself?" said Forsythe. "I am. I'll take a look around before I turn in."
He left behind him a silent crowd. His return was prompt and swift.
"Come on deck," he said.
Every man leaped as to an order. There was that in Forsythe's voice which stung. The weather had cleared somewhat, though scudding wrack still blew across them to the westward. The ship rolled heavily. Of the sea naught was visible except the arching waves, but in the sky they beheld again, with a sickening sense of disaster, that pale and lovely glow which had so bewildered them two nights before.
"The aurora!" cried McGuire, the paymaster.
"Oh, certainly," replied Ives, with sarcasm. "Dead in the west. Common spot for the aurora. Particularly on the edge of the South Seas, where they are thick!"
"Then what is it?"
Nobody had an answer. Carter hastened forward and returned to report.
"It's electrical anyway," said Carter. "The compass is queer again."
"Edwards ought to be close to the solution of it," ventured Ives. "This gale should have blown him just about to the centre of interest."
"If only he isn't involved in it," said Carter anxiously.
"What could there be to involve him?" asked McGuire.
"I don't know," said Carter slowly. "Somehow I feel as if the desertion of the schooner was in some formidable manner connected with that light."
For perhaps fifteen minutes the glow continued. It seemed to be nearer at hand than on the former sighting; but it took no comprehensible form. Then it died away and all was blackness again. But the officers of the Wolverine had long been in troubled slumber before the sensitive compass regained its exact balance, and with the shifting wind to mislead her, the cruiser had wandered, by morning, no man might know how far from her course.
All day long of June 6th the Wolverine, baffled by patches of mist and moving rain-squalls, patrolled the empty seas without sighting the lost schooner. The evening brought an envelope of fog again, and presently a light breeze came up from the north. An hour of it had failed to disperse the mist, when there was borne down to the warship a flapping sound as of great wings. The flapping grew louder--waned--ceased--and from the lookout came a hail.
"Ship's lights three points on the starboard quarter."
"What do you make it out to be?" came the query from below.
"Green light's all I can see, sir." There was a pause.
"There's her port light, now. Looks to be turning and bearing down on us, sir. Coming dead for us"--the man's voice rose--"close aboard; less'n two ship's lengths away!"
As for a prearranged scene, the fog-curtain parted. There loomed silently and swiftly the Laughing Lass. Down she bore upon the greater vessel until it seemed as if she must ram; but all the time she was veering to windward, and now she ran into the wind with a castanet rattle of sails. So close aboard was she that the eager eyes of Uncle Sam's men peered down upon her empty decks--for she was void of life.
Behind the cruiser's blanketing she paid off very slowly, but presently caught the breeze full and again whitened the water at her prow. Forgetting regulations, Ives hailed loudly:
"Ahoy, Laughing Lass! Ahoy, Billy Edwards!"
No sound, no animate motion came from aboard that apparition, as she fell astern. A shudder of horror ran across the Wolverine's quarter-deck. A wraith ship, peopled with skeletons, would have been less dreadful to their sight than the brisk and active desolation of the heeling schooner.
"Been deserted since early last night," said Trendon hoarsely.
"How can you tell that?" asked Barnett.
"Both sails reefed down. Ready for that squall. Been no weather since to call for reefs. Must have quit her during the squall."
"Then they jumped," cried Carter, "for I saw her boats. It isn't believable."
"Neither was the other," said Trendon grimly.
A hurried succession of orders stopped further discussion for the time. Ives was sent aboard the schooner to lower sail and report. He came back with a staggering dearth of information. The boats were all there; the ship was intact--as intact as when Billy Edwards had taken charge--but the cheery, lovable ensign and his men had vanished without trace or clue. As to the how or the wherefore they might rack their brains without guessing. There was the beginning of a log in the ensign's handwriting, which Ives had found with high excitement and read with bitter disappointment.
"Had squall from northeast," it ran. "Double reefed her and she took it nicely. Seems a seaworthy, quick ship. Further search for log. No result. Have ordered one of crew who is a bit of a mechanic to work at the brass-bound chest till he gets it open. He reports marks on the lock as if somebody had been trying to pick it before him."
There was no further entry.
"Dr. Trendon is right," said Barnett. "Whatever happened--and God only knows what it could have been--it happened just after the squall."
"Just about the time of the strange glow," cried Ives.
It was decided that two men and a petty officer should be sent aboard the Laughing Lass to make her fast with a cable, and remain on board over night. But when the order was given the men hung back. One of them protested brokenly that he was sick. Trendon, after examination, reported to the captain.
"Case of blue funk, sir. Might as well be sick. Good for nothing. Others aren't much better."
"Who was to be in charge?"
"Congdon," replied the doctor, naming one of the petty officers.
"He's my coxswain," said Captain Parkinson. "A first-class man. I can hardly believe that he is afraid. We'll see."
Congdon was sent for.
"You're ordered aboard the schooner for the night, Congdon," said the captain.
"Yes, sir."
"Is there any reason why you do not wish to go?"
The man hesitated, looking miserable. Finally he blurted out, not without a certain dignity:
"I obey orders, sir."
"Speak out, my man," urged the captain kindly.
"Well, sir: it's Mr. Edwards, then. You couldn't scare him off a ship, sir, unless it was something--something----"
He stopped, failing of the word.
"You know what Mr. Edwards was, sir, for pluck," he concluded.