# Contraband (Packard)

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Extracted from Sea Stories Magazine, 1922 June, pp. 130–140. Title illustration may be omitted.
CONTRABAND
By
FRANK L. PACKARD
Here is a story in which luck perches upon the shoulder of a man, and refuses to be shaken off. It is a story of blockade running by a particularly resourceful sea captain, during the Boer War. That conflict is sufficiently far away to enable us to enjoy a good story about it, especially if that story is laid upon the sea.
ASTERN, far astern on the horizon line, there showed a tiny smudge of black—apart, an empty sea, smooth, with an oily swell. Creamlike ribbons of white from the bow wave of the Castle Prince curled and trailed along her sides with bubbling, hissing sounds—and lost their identity in the swirling wake.
Forward, across the lower deck, an awning drooped from its lashings, listless, motionless—mute tribute to the torrid, airless heat. Beneath it men moaned and tossed, turning flushed faces restlessly from side to side, their eyes staring with that strange, drunklike aspect peculiar to the disease—the yellow jack, that, like some dread phantom, strikes pitilessly, suddenly, in the night or early dawn.
In the chart house, just forward of, and below, the bridge, that served him, too, as cabin, Captain Parks bent, with scowling face, over the chart spread out before him on the table. A grim-featured man he was, with great, lantern jaws, and black eyes sunk deep beneath bushy brows—a man of squat, thickset body, of face that, even in repose, was bulldoglike in its expression.
“We'll be needing a port doctor, Mr. Miller,” he said, looking up and addressing his chief officer, who stood at the end of the table.
“I was thinkin' the same,” replied Miller. “I was thinkin' the same, sir.”
“With a weather eye out for quarantine,” added the captain.
“Aye, sir; I know it's a risk,” agreed the mate.
Captain Parks smiled grimly. “Ye may well say so, Mr. Miller. It's a toss up 'twixt the Jack and the inside of a crawling hole of a prison. Were ye ever detained in one of 'em on this benighted coast, Mr. Miller?”
“I was in a bit of a row at Zanzibar one night, sir.”
“I said west coast, Mr. Miller. Man, the other is luxurious! Look ye, we're hereabouts”—Captain Parks jabbed his forefinger on the chart at a point due south of the Gold Coast and some nine degrees in latitude south of the equator.
“Aye, sir; thereabouts,” said Miller, nodding his head.
“The mainland would be flying in the face of Providence, Mr. Miller——” Captain Parks' first and second fingers spread out like a pair of dividers, one finger tip resting on the spot where Ascension Island was charted, the other on the Island of Annobon.
“The Britisher'll be the nearer by a bit, sir,” said Miller, following the captain's movements with his eyes; “but I'm thinkin' I'd rather take my chances with the Spaniards—they're not so much interested, so to speak. I'm thinkin', too, a bit of cash would go a long way with them in fumigatin' the Prince after quarantine, an' no questions asked about the cargo—the papers standin' good an' sufficient, sir.”
“I've a mind to stand on as we are,” muttered Captain Parks doubtfully.
“We'd be a ghastly, driftin' derelict by the time we was halfway to Angra, sir,” objected Miller earnestly. “The Jack's sharp work, sir, cruel sharp an' sudden. Look what's happened to us since last night. God knows if there'll be one of us knowin' our own name this time to-morrow. The day's broke hot, pasty hot, an' there's a feel in the air I don't like. Anything's better than dyin' like rats in a trap.”
“Would ye say the same,” demanded Captain Parks aggressively, “if ye were half owner of the Prince, and every penny to sink or swim with her, Mr. Miller?”
“Aye,” said Miller shortly; “for what's a ship, if you're dead?”
Captain Parks' fist came down with a crashing blow on the table. “After this voyage, I'd have owned her all—all, d'ye hear, Mr. Miller; and there'd have been a fat slice of picking for yourself and the rest of the crew.”
“I'm a bit of a fatalist,” said Miller resignedly. “What'll come'll come; there's no gettin' away from that, Captain Parks.”
“I'll risk the Spaniards, and Annobon it is,” decided Captain Parks suddenly, after a moment's pause. “We'll swing round for it. The course'll be northeast by east, Mr. Miller, and ye'll change according. That'll be by dead reckoning, but we'll get our position at noon.”
“Aye, sir,” replied the mate, “northeast by east it is, sir. I hope to the Lord we make it, though it's a fairish distance. I'll see to the course at once, sir.”
He turned to leave the cabin, but Captain Parks halted him in the doorway. “What's yon astern, Mr. Miller, have ye made her out?”
Miller shook his head. “She's been ridin' us the last hour, sir,” he answered.
Captain Parks scowled. Company at sea was neither to his liking, nor conducive to a composed state of mind. The Prince was on very private business, and there were some things worse than Yellow Jack; also, British cruisers had been known to be impertinent. Captain Parks had a very wholesome regard for British cruisers, and for one in particular.
When an American tramp makes four voyages over the same waters, she picks up acquaintances, casual and otherwise. Likewise, her outward freight must be very valuable, if the return voyage is made with her load line showing as high as the day she was launched, barring the weight of a few tons of coal.
A certain lieutenant of his majesty's ship Orthon had explained this with patience and significance to Captain Parks on the last return voyage, when the Prince, at the pressing invitation of the man-of-war, had laid to for the brief and interesting period of an hour or so.
It would have been extremely indiscreet of Captain Parks to have explained that the port of Angra Pequeña, in Southwest Africa, afforded very little opportunity for picking up a cargo, or that his character looked to the question of speed with which he should reach the Weser, and load again at the Bremen docks.
Captain Parks merely said that trade was bad—rotten bad. He was empty, that was all there was to it—trade was bad.
Lieutenant Cleaver had replied in polite sea language to the effect that, in his estimation, Captain Parks was an egregious liar, and the reputation he gave the Prince—she was then the Arunia—was one of pungent unholiness.
Captain Parks had a very vivid recollection of both the words and the occasion. He was still scowling at his chief officer.
“The change in course, sir, 'll tell the tale,” volunteered Miller.
“Aye,” agreed Captain Parks; then: “I'll thank you, Mr. Miller, to request Mr. MacKnight to shake up his crawling machinery. It's speed we want now—to the last revolution.”
“Very good, sir,” said Miller.
Captain Parks grunted in dismissal, and watched the mate disappear through the cabin doorway. Early as it was in the forenoon, the heat was intense, and the perspiration was standing out in great drops on his forehead. He cursed softly as he glanced at the barometer. It had an ugly look.
He went to the door, that Miller had closed behind him, and kicked it open viciously, then returned to his chair to stare out over the rail to the range of waters beyond. His hand sidled into a box of thick, squat-cut smokes, and his back teeth closed over the end of one, but he did not light it.
Captain Parks, being a prudent man, was rehearsing the story he was preparing for the delectation of the port officers at Annobon. This did not take him long—he had had experience before—but he still sat there, listening to the accelerated thump of the engines, and chewing on the cigar, now fast being reduced to a stump.
“Quinine! A blamed quinine ship—that's us!” he snarled bitterly, and dashed the clinging drops from his forehead with a back sweep of his hand.
Fear was a sensation that in all his dare-devil life he had never experienced; but he knew what the presence of Yellow Jack meant. By night, every last man aboard, himself included, might be down with it—or they might not. As Miller had said, the Jack made sharp work, cruel sharp. The minutes passed—half an hour. Suddenly, a form filled the doorway.
“Bridge, sir,” announced a seaman briefly, and, touching his cap, vanished.
Captain Parks came to his feet with a jump. He had forgotten that smudge of smoke astern. The next minute he was out of his cabin, and tumbling up the bridge ladder to join Miller.
“I haven't had the glass off her, sir,” was the chief officer's greeting. “I marked her position when we changed course. She'll be followin' us, sir; there's no doubt of that.”
With glowering face, Captain Parks stared astern. The speck of an hour ago now loomed big and ominous.
“She's comin' up fast, sir,” went on Miller. “We're makin' a matter of twelve knots ourselves, but I reckon she's doin' almost as much as that again.” The mate paused significantly; then added: “These parts ain't overcrowded with boats better'n twenty knots.”
“The Orthon's rated at twenty-two decimal something,” growled Captain Parks, with savage bluntness. “Don't croak, Miller, like an old woman. Say what you mean.”
“Aye, then,” rejoined Miller sullenly, “it's her station, an' yon's she, or her likes—little matter which! Sweet luck we've got, rotten fore an' aft, an' worse astern!”
“I'll thank ye to hold your tongue, Mr. Miller, and cry when ye're hurt, and that'll be when ye're one of those”—Captain Parks jerked his thumb in the direction of the awning rigged over the forward deck—“or”—pointing astern—“dancing a jig, with a ball and chain, to the tune of 'Rule, Britannia'—and not till then, understand?”
Miller made no reply.
Captain Parks snatched at the handle of the engine telegraph—the indicator already stood at “full speed ahead”—and swinging it violently over its full arc and back again, shouted down the engine-room tube for MacKnight, the chief engineer, and more speed.
Answering the demand in person, from the engine room there appeared a little, wizen, red-haired man, in shocking dishabille—a pair of greasy white trousers, and an officer's cap cocked over one ear. The engine room, with the stifling heat of the day added, could have been little better than torment. The engineer, as he planted himself at the foot of the bridge ladder, was in a lather, and the sweat poured down his bare chest and shoulders in little, trickling courses.
“I'll have ye ken, Captain Parks, as I've told Miller, there,” he shouted, “that I canna do more. Twelve knots for a benighted scrouger like the Prince, wi' her engines rockin' like a cradle on the bedplates, is treemenjous goin.”
“I'll have ye know, Mr. MacKnight,” snapped Captain Parks, “that 'the 'benighted scrouger' is my ship, and be damned to ye!”
“She's a dissolute thing,” declared MacKnight, “an' a benighted scrouger; but I'll no' argue the matter. Twelve knots is the leemit.”
“Ye're indecent in both words and dress, Mr. MacKnight. Limit, is it? We'll have more speed, Mr. MacKnight, if ye blow her up—and less lip!”
For a moment, the fiery little Scotchman glared, unable to find words adequate to express his feelings; then, finally: “Come down in the hell of an engine room,” he choked, “wi' the life oozing out by the pores, an' larn when a mon's doin' all his all, ye slave-drivin' Yankee!”
Captain Parks laughed shortly. “A civil tongue in your head's not to be expected. Come up here, Mr. MacKnight.”
“I will,” replied MacKnight belligerently, and sprang up the ladder.
Captain Parks caught him by the bare shoulder, and pointed astern. “I'm thinking, Mr. MacKnight,” said he, “that ye'll be wishing ye were a Yankee yourself, if yon ever overhauls us. She'll be the Orthon, ye mind, that passed the time of day with us last trip up. Being a British subject, 'twill fare harder with you than with me, Mr. MacKnight. Treason's an ugly word, and ugly is the punishment.”
“'T w'u'd be vara harrd to prove,” said MacKnight cautiously. “I'm consarned wi' the machinery, an' naught else, Captain Parks. A berth's a berth, an' what's an engineer to ken o' what's in the hold, so it's no' bilge water?”
“That's as it may be,” replied Captain Parks. “But I'm thinking ye'd be easier in your mind if we managed to give her the slip.”
“I w'u'd,” admitted MacKnight, blinking; “but I canna do more. Twelve knots! Did ye ever hear of the Prince doin' the like before? What w'u'd yon be makin'?”
“Twenty-two, and better,” acknowledged Captain Parks savagely.
MacKnight wagged his head. “'Tis nae credit to your mathematics, Captain Parks, the way ye talk. If 'twere late in the afternoon, I'd no' say but we'd have a chance to hold out an' gi'e her the slip in the dark; but, as it is—ye ken, Captain Parks?”
Captain Parks scowled. By every chance, the pursuer would be up with them in the early afternoon. He knew it as well as the other. “Well, then, Mr. MacKnight,” he rapped out, swinging on his heel, “get back to your junk shop, and, if ye can do no better, put in the time praying—ye'll stand in need of it!”
“I'm a Presbyterian,” retorted the engineer hotly. “Ye're a blasphemous mon, Captain Parks! Ye'll get your deserts for it ane o' these days.”
“I'm getting them now,” said the skipper gruffly, facing around again.
MacKnight stared for a moment into the captain's troubled face. “Mon,” said he remorsefully, “ye're sore harassed. I'll do my best, I'll do my best—but 'twill do nae good.”
II.
As the hours crept on, the heat, intense before, became unbearable. The day was a yellow haze, torrid, still. Above, the sun was like a molten disk, its color like a tongue of flame from a furnace blast. Astern, there was no longer any speck; instead, a great smudge of black smoke that, having no breeze to disperse it, settled down, a blotch on the water line, as it poured forth from the three funnels of the cruiser, now coming up hand over hand with the Castle Prince.
Grim, with jaws set like a vise, stripped down to duck trousers and an undershirt, that, open at the neck and with sleeves rolled up, displayed the great chest, the gnarled and knotty forearms, Captain Parks paced savagely up and down his bridge.
A ball of white smoke puffed out from the cruiser's side, hung, lifted. The muffled roar of the discharge floated across the water. Overhead, a shell sang, and hurtled by. It was good gunnery; just far enough away to do no harm, just close enough to be imperative.
Mechanically, Captain Parks' hand reached out for the engine telegraph lever; then he hesitated, the hand dropped to his side, and he met Miller's eyes across the bridge. Miller turned away, and began to whistle under his breath. Below, along the deck, the crew clustered at the rail, their glances alternating between the bridge and the ship astern.
Another fluffy puff of white, again the boom of the discharge, the angry scream of the flying shell—the gunnery was too good to be ignored.
With a laugh that was more a curse, Captain Parks rang his engines to the “stop.” The shake and vibration of the ship ceased, a silence fell upon the cough and hiccup, the clatter of the machinery, and, like some sullen brute hushed against its will, the Prince, gradually losing way, lay still, rolling moodily with the swell.
No man aboard moved or spoke. Swiftly, the black hull of the British cruiser drew up abreast. A white boat swung from her davits, dropped to the water, and came toward them. When within hailing distance, Captain Parks bellowed through his hands.
“What d'ye mean by this?” he bawled. “I'll have ye know that I'm an American ship, and ye'll answer for it, by the etarnal! I'm the Castle Prince, Hamburg to Cape Town.”
An officer stood up in the stern sheets, and shaded his eyes with his hands. “I'm Cleaver—Lieutenant Cleaver, of the Orthon, captain. Commander's compliments and apologies, but we mistook you for Captain Parks and the Arunia. Way enough! Make fast there in the bow!”—quick, sharp orders, as the boat's nose grated on the iron plates of the Prince's sides.
Captain Parks cursed heartily and with abandon. “Prince or Arunia, it's all the same,” he yelled. “Ye'll come aboard at your peril. What d'ye want?”
“Contraband, Captain Parks,” replied Lieutenant Cleaver, from the boat. “Contraband arms for the Transvaal, via German Southwest Africa. Is business better this voyage, captain? I see you're well loaded.”
“Aye, we're well loaded,” repeated Captain Parks bitterly. “We're full o' Yellow Jack! I warn ye again, though I'm a fool to do it, ye'll board us at your peril. We're a pestilence ship.”
Lieutenant Cleaver laughed softly, as he came clambering up the side. “You've some humor, Captain Parks,” he said. “You've well named yourself. A pestilence ship you are—the worst pest in these waters; but——” He stopped suddenly, as he swung on to the deck, and a queer look came into his face as his eyes strayed ahead of him to the awning on the forward deck. Then he turned, and motioned to his men, who were swarming up behind him.
“Get back to the boat, men! Every one of you! Look sharp!” he cried hoarsely.
Captain Parks, hanging over the weather cloth of the bridge, chuckled as he experienced the first real pleasure he had known for many hours. The Yellow Jack was a blessing in disguise! He left the bridge and went to the deck to join his unwelcome visitor. As he came up to Lieutenant Cleaver, the Orthon's cutter fended from the Prince, and began to pull back to the cruiser,
“I warned ye, lieutenant, didn't I?” demanded Captain Parks. “Ye'll take a man's word after this, likely enough.”
“You did,” Lieutenant Cleaver answered coolly; “but it's hard to tell when some men are speaking the truth. I've asked the commander to send us the doctor. I suppose it's hardly necessary to inform you that you are under arrest, Captain Parks, you and your crew.”
“What for?” blustered Captain Parks.
“I've told you once,” said the lieutenant sternly. “Contraband arms for the Boers. The game's up, Captain Parks, and you might as well take your medicine like a man. Do you think you can change a ship with a coat of paint and a new name? I've seen her before, Captain Parks, you'll remember.”
“Aye,” growled the captain, “I remember. And ye'll have cause to remember it more than ye do now, sonny, I promise ye that! I ain't forgotten what ye said that day, and I've a sneaking suspicion it's yourself I've to thank for what's happened now.”
“You're more than half right about that,” admitted the lieutenant easily.
With a snarl, Captain Parks thrust his great, savage face close to the other's, and his fists clenched into knotty lumps; then he laughed shortly, turned on his heel, and began to stamp up and down the deck until, at the expiration of some fifteen minutes, he saw the cutter coming back. He joined MacKnight and Miller, who were standing by the engine-room scuttle.
“D'ye take note of the glass, captain?” asked Miller uneasily. “It's been hangin' low all mornin', but I've never seen the like of the drop it's taken in the last half hour. I'm thinkin', sir, we're in for something out of the ordinary.”
“It's little matter,” responded Captain Parks gruffly, and slued around to watch the doctor, as he came over the side, and handed a letter to the lieutenant. His eyes followed the doctor until he disappeared forward, then they came back to the lieutenant.
Cleaver had torn open the envelope, and was reading the contents. After a minute, he folded the paper, put it in his pocket, and leaned over the rail to the boat's crew below.
Captain Parks could not catch the words, but the splash of oars, and then the sight of the cutter appearing from under the stern, needed no interpretation. Lieutenant Cleaver was to remain aboard—just Lieutenant Cleaver and the doctor!
Something within Captain Parks stirred with unholy glee. Cleaver was coming toward him now.
“We'll get under way, Captain Parks,” announced the lieutenant briskly. “You'll shape your course by the Orthon's—four hundred yards astern. She'll slow to your best speed.”
“Ye're pretty free with your orders, sonny,” sneered Captain Parks.
“I am,” returned Cleaver. “I'm in command.”
“We're to follow the Orthon, eh?” murmured Parks slowly, softly. “For why, and for where, I'd like to ask?”
“Commander's orders,” replied the other shortly. “Ascension for quarantine, and inspection later.”
“Then take her there!” shouted Captain Parks. “Take her there, Mr. Cleaver! If your ratty, crawling crowd are afraid to come aboard, take her there yourself. D'ye think we're languishing for a taste of prison, that we're going to work our way to the front door? Take her there, Mr. Cleaver—I'll not!”
“I think you will,” was the quiet reply. “There was no need to risk spreading contagion. I am aboard, and you're under the Orthon's guns. I needn't tell you they could blow you to kingdom come in a jiffy. We'll get under way, Captain Parks, if you please.”
For a brief instant, dominating the rage and fury that was in his heart, there flashed through the captain's mind the thought that this slight, trim young man before him had done a rather decent thing when he had kept his men from coming aboard, and that there was pluck and nerve behind the action that had forced his present position upon him—even with the Orthon's guns to back him up. Then anger again assumed the supremacy.
“Work her, I'll not!” he roared. “That's flat!”
“Mon,” whispered MacKnight, plucking at his sleeve. “Mon, ye'll be surely daft. D'ye recollect what Miller was sayin' o' the weather a minute gone? Ye'll want no prize crew aboard the night. Let well enough alone, Captain Parks.”
The boom of a gun came across the water. “She's getting impatient, Captain Parks,” said Lieutenant Cleaver significantly.
“Have your way, then,” rapped out Captain Parks ungraciously in assumed defeat, as he caught the craftiness of his engineer. “I reckon I've little choice. Ye'll stand by, Mr. MacKnight, to go ahead. Take the bridge, Mr. Cleaver, and be damned to ye!”
III.
Hour by hour, the Prince plowed sullenly in the Orthon's wake, and hour by hour the yellow, murky, pasty haze grew more yellow, thicker, more forbidding, gradually shading darker toward the skyline, where the horizon rim was like a jet-black band of ink.
Aboard, men gasped for breath in the sticky atmosphere, the sweltering heat, and over all brooded the dread of the prison doors to come, the horror of the pestilence already theirs.
On the bridge, Captain Parks touched Lieutenant Cleaver on the shoulder, and jerked his thumb forward, “God knows what's coming, I don't,” he said; “but I'd feel better with the sick below, as I've said before.”
“The doc says no,” Lieutenant Cleaver answered. “The only chance they've got is air, what little there is of it. Below, they'd snuff out like candles.”
“Aye, and—look yonder there!”—he pointed his finger before him. The low, black fringe of the horizon was lifting, mounting like a pall to the heavens, and, at the lower edge, coming toward them with incredible speed, was a thin, churning, threadlike line of white.
Captain Parks' hands went to his mouth, trumpetwise, and his great voice bellowed through the ship:
“Fo'ard, there! Hold fast, every man——”
The swirl, the swoop, the onrush of a mighty wind caught up his words, played with them like whirling bits of chaff, and flung them back upon him into space. With a clap of thunder, the awning tore from its lashings like rotten silk. The churning line of white was upon them. The Prince faltered, staggered, then buried her nose deep in the foaming waters, rose trembling, shaking herself like a thing of life. From the scupper ports, the green water poured in hissing streams.
Like a broken man, Captain Parks, white to the lips, turned and looked into Lieutenant Cleaver's eyes, and his lips moved dumbly.
Cleaver's only response was to avert his face.
The deck was bare! Fore and aft swept clean, with awful thoroughness. Surgeon and sick alike dashed to eternity; the services of the one ended, the sufferings of the others past. And then, as though nature herself was stunned and appalled at the ghastly tragedy she had enacted, there fell a hush, and the silence was as a solemn requiem for the dead.
It was but the prelude of what was to come. Another moment, and the tempest broke with all its pent-up fury. Great, forked tongues of lightning played through a sky now black as ink, and with a moan like a stricken thing the Prince gathered herself together, and swung slowly around head into the teeth of the hurricane, to begin her long battle with the boiling waters, that tossed her on their seething crests like a cockleshell.
Once, as the lightning for a brief instant lit up the heavens, they caught a glimpse of the black hull of the Orthon, far to windward, the storm sweeping them farther and farther apart, and then the blackness closed down upon them again.
Miller came clawing his way to the bridge, and shouted in the captain's ear. It was the tale of the disaster, the count of those that had gone. Eight men and the doctor!
As the night grew on, the storm increased. Two men were at the wheel now, and beside them towered the giant form of Captain Parks, and the slighter, trimmer figure of the lieutenant, their oilskins streaming, their eyes blinded by the spray flung in stinging sheets over the bridge, as great waves reared high over the bows of the Prince, hovered an instant in menace, and then their tumbling tons of water crashed upon her decks, shaking her as a terrier shakes a rat.
Twice already, the chart house below the bridge had threatened to go by the board, making the bridge itself perilous and unsafe: and now, at last, it went with a grinding, crunching noise, sweeping into the port stanchions of the bridge, crumpling them like bits of picture wire.
The shock threw Captain Parks bodily back against the after railing of the bridge. As he recovered himself, the quartermaster roared in his ear:
“Wheel's out, sir!”
“Tell Miller to man the stern gear. Quick, man, jump!” shouted Captain Parks. “Where's Cleaver?”
The bridge had snapped like a stick, nearly in the center; and, the port stanchions gone, that end had dropped almost to the deck. It hung, swaying crazily with the tumbling of the ship, sagging like a broken leg from the portion that still remained intact. Caught in the lower corner, where the canvas of the weather cloth made a little pocket, was a huddled heap. As Captain Parks looked, a sea broke over it. Only the quartermaster now remained with him on what was left of the bridge; the other seaman had already gone to carry the captain's order to the mate.
Captain Parks pointed, gripping the quartermaster's arm fiercely, and a black thought took shape and form. Free—if ever they weathered the storm—free! He would make his port, unload his cargo—there would be enough in that to refit—and the Prince would still be his—his! True, the Orthon lost in the storm, Cleaver, as a force, had become powerless; but, as a witness, he would, sooner or later, have to be reckoned with. Now there would be no witness! He laughed aloud as his fingers closed tighter on the quartermaster's arm.
“It's him, God help him!” cried the seaman. “We can't get to him. He'll be pounded to death in a minute—if he ain't already.”
Captain Parks' grip on the other's arm loosened, again he laughed, hard and short—and began to work his way along the bridge.
“For God's sake, sir, don't try it! 'Tain't any use, you——”
The quartermaster's words were lost in the singing roar of the wind. Captain Parks, clinging to the shattered wreckage, was lowering himself down to the still, motionless thing below him. Gasping, panting from the fierce body blows that had battered him at almost every foot of the descent, as, swinging like a pendulum, he had been dashed, with the pitch of the ship, from side to side, he reached Cleaver, raised him in his arms, and began to struggle back. Inch by inch, he won his way upward; then the broken end of the bridge swung with a mighty jerk under the lift of the sea, as the Prince, without her helm, paid off into the trough of the waves, and he was hurled from his hold and flung back to the bottom. For a moment, he lay, helpless, held only from being swept overboard by the merciful protection of the canvas pocket that had already stood Cleaver in such good stead.
A pain shot through his arm and left shoulder, like the searing of hot iron. Again he picked up the lieutenant, and began to struggle upward. His breath came in short moans, his lips were bleeding where his teeth bit into them; the agony from his injured arm, that he was forced to use, was intolerable. At the end, he remembered only that the quartermaster had gripped and held them both. Then he had fainted.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in his bunk—but it was the morning of the third day before he was able to reach the bridge again. Miller gave him a helping hand as he came up the starboard ladder. Battered almost beyond recognition, the Prince was a woebegone, pitiful, broken thing to see. Captain Parks gazed upon the scene with a grim smile. To windward, banks of clouds, low, scudding, with here and there between them a rift of sunlight, heralded the breaking of the storm. There was nothing else in sight.
“Only the upper works. Only the upper works, eh, Miller?” he said softly, to his chief officer. “Below, she's sound, eh? Sound as a bell?”
“Aye, sir; thank God!” replied Miller fervently.
“What's our position, would ye say, Mr. Miller?”
“Well, sir, we've blown a goodish bit down the coast.”
“We have, Mr. Miller,” agreed Captain Parks, and he laughed as he clapped his hand on the mate's back. “We have, and it'll be Angra, after all, Mr. Miller. There's a bit of luck left us yet.”
“We'll need it,” muttered Miller. “That wave didn't wash out all the Jack. Martin an' one or two of the men that are left are touched with it. Though not bad, I reckon. We're pretty short-handed for nice maneuverin', sir. I take it, you mean to work things at Angra same as before?”
“Aye, Mr. Miller, the same as before. We'll manage right enough as far as the men go; but I'd not like to arouse Cleaver's suspicions—not for what he could do now, but for what he'd know afterward.”
“Lord, sir,” grinned Miller, “no fear of him. He's too battered to leave his bunk for a week, if he does then. He's off his head now, ramblin' about some girl, an' him promoted an admiral.”
“I'm a firm believer in luck, Mr. Miller. It's like the tide. When it turns, it's all your way.”
“I shouldn't think he'd say anything, anyway,” submitted the mate, “when he finds out you risked your life for him, sir.”
Captain Parks swung suddenly, savagely, on his chief officer, and shoved his fist under Mr. Miller's nose. “If ye, or any one of the lot aboard, open your face to Cleaver about that, I'll bash it to pulp!” he cried fiercely.
“Aye, sir,” mumbled Miller, astounded and surprised, stepping hastily back. “Aye, sir; very good.”
IV.
For the next few days, the Prince wallowed and thrashed her way far down the coast, and then, one afternoon, MacKnight slowed his revolutions, and she lay, lazily rocking with the swell. Far off on the port beam, the land was just discernible, no more than a faint streak.
The night fell black, black as the Prince herself, creeping stealthily shoreward, with lights out and the engine-room hatch carefully covered. Inside the harbor, the one boat left, and that looking like a crazy quilt, from its manifold patches in an endeavor to make it serviceable, dropped over the side, and Captain Parks went ashore.
When morning came again, the Prince lay, lazily rocking with the swell; and, again, far off on the port beam, the land was just discernible, no more than a faint streak.
Aboard, all. through that day, and for other days thereafter, there was much commotion, the cough. and sputter of the donkey engine, the grunting of men, the creaking of block and tackle—and the Prince's decks lay cumbered with that which the hatches until now had hidden from the vulgar gaze. And each night she crept stealthily shoreward, and the litter of the day's toil went over the side into barges, far up at the northern end of the bay in the harbor of Angra Pequeña.
Then came a day when the Prince did not wait for night, but steamed boldly in from sea, reeking with innocence and the smell of burning sulphur—steamed in for quarantine! And the port of Angra Pequeña received her at her face value, treating her with that compassion and tenderness that one in her sore plight and pitiful condition impelled; or, perhaps, the rather striking similarity between the port captain and one heavy-paunched, thickset German, who had superintended the loading of the barges in the dead of night, may have had something to do with it. That, however, is no more than speculation, for one cannot be sure of either face or figure by a dim and flickering lantern light, cautiously exposed and carefully shaded!
In due time, the Prince got a clean bill of health, and the authorities gave her her clearance papers, and on the day this took place Lieutenant Cleaver appeared on deck for the first time—a matter of coincidence!
Captain Parks watched silently as the lieutenant, still very weak and shaky, walked from one end of the Prince to the other, peering reflectively down the open hatches into a bare and empty hold. Then he invited Lieutenant. Cleaver to his cabin.
Cleaver accepted the invitation, and likewise accepted the tendered glass. Both men drank in silence, and then sat eying each other across the table.
“Where's your cargo?” demanded the lieutenant bluntly.
Captain Parks smiled softly, and shook his head. “The delirium will still be affecting ye, Lieutenant Cleaver?” he suggested politely.
“Oh, chuck all that!” retorted Cleaver. “What's the use of beating about the bush?”
“None,” returned Captain Parks promptly; “though what gets me is how ye should get it into your head we ever had any cargo. I put it to ye like this: If we'd had any, ye know we couldn't have got rid of it neither before nor during that blow, eh? As for afterward, we made this port, where we've lain in quarantine, and any one of the port. officials'll give ye an affidavit that we came in as empty as we are this blessed minute. How could we have had any cargo?”
“You can't squeal out of it like that,” snapped Cleaver. “I, and, for that matter, every one aboard the Orthon, can prove the difference in your water line. You were infernally deep, Captain. Parks.”
Captain Parks grinned through the smoke of his black cigar. “'Twas a miragelike effect, maybe.”
Cleaver scowled. “Where's your papers? You said you were bound for Cape Town. Perhaps that's a mirage, too!”
“Papers!” repeated Captain Parks, removing his cigar, and staring at the other in well-simulated surprise. “Papers! Lord, man, if any one knows where they are, it's yourself ought to. The last thing ye saw before ye went and smashed yourself to sleep was the chart house going by the board. I always kept ship's papers in the chart house, from habit, like. Papers, my eye!”
“I'd give a year's pay and my chances of promotion to know how, when, and where you landed that cargo,” said Lieutenant Cleaver.
Captain Parks closed one eye slowly, and squinted with the other at the lieutenant. “'Tain't enough, sonny,” he chuckled. “Ye'll have to raise the ante.”
Cleaver drummed on the table with his fingers, and stared with puckered brows at the floor.
“I'm getting under way in half an hour or so,” remarked Captain Parks nonchalantly. “Going to put in at Cape Town to refit, and pick up a cargo—if trade ain't too bad. Ye can go ashore here, Mr. Cleaver, or ye're heartily welcome to keep on down the coast with us.”
Then Lieutenant Cleaver looked up—and then he laughed. “I'll go ashore, Captain Parks. I suppose we can count ourselves lucky if you don't lodge a complaint against us with the American consul at Cape Town for piracy, or something like that, on the high seas, eh?”
“'Twould be in reason,” said Captain Parks solemnly.
A quarter of an hour later, Captain Parks, from his partially rehabilitated bridge, waved his hand to a figure in naval uniform standing up in the stern sheets of a small boat that was being rapidly rowed shoreward; then he turned, and, calling down the engine-room tube, politely requested Mr. MacKnight to set his unmentionable species of a junk shop in motion.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 82 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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