# Argosy All-Story Weekly/Volume 123/Number 4/McMasters' Folly

Argosy all-Story, 31 July 1920, pp. 532–541. Title illustration may be omitted.
McMasters' Folly
by Henry Leverage
IN these days of concrete hulks, fabricated freighters and gingerbread liners, the Borneo seemed an antique from out of a misty past.
She was a ship, full-sparred, graceful, and clean-lined from her tarnished figurehead to her taffrail. She put in at such ports as Sydney, Longtown, New Caledonia, Pitcairn and Valparaiso.
Her owners were a Scotch firm of South Sea traders who, despite the lure of northern ocean rates, maintained a regular line of sailing vessels between the island stations.
They picked their skippers with the same care as they used in choosing wives or selecting tutors for their sons. Donald & Donald, located at Valparaiso, cabled, at three shillings a word, to hand Micky McMasters the Borneo's “ticket.” Their orders to him, also by cable, were to drive the Borneo to Longtown and there take on cargo.
McMasters. dropped anchor at Longtown, and took a turn about the quarterdeck before going ashore to see the ship's agents.
The mate had left the poop and was standing below the seamen who sprawled along the foot-ropes on the Borneo's spars and gathered in the sails. The mate's name was Landyard. He was a tall Yankee.
“See that they're snug!” snapped Micky McMasters when he paused at the quarterdeck rail and looked sharply. aloft. “We 'ave a fortnight to spend in this 'arbor.”
Red Landyard spat to leeward and roared an order to a green hand who lay over the crossjack yard.
“A little louder,” suggested McMasters dryly. “Some o' th' scum we signed on at Torres Strait are a bit 'ard o' earing!”
The mate went aloft and the skipper turned and looked at the corrugated iron sheds and pearl-thatched roofs of Longtown. He square-set an unshaven jaw. He thrust a pair of broken fists into the side pockets of his tattered pea-jacket.
“The one bright spot on the beach was the Union Jack fluttering from a palm-stem flag-pole. Back of the flag lay a brooding jungle and a misty coast range.
“Spooky-looking place,” suggested the Yankee mate when he rowed the little cockney skipper ashore in the ship's dingey.
Micky McMasters had sailed or steamed ships into half the ports of the world. His one ambition was to gather enough English pounds to maintain his wife and children in comfort at Great Grimsby—which is on the River Humber.
“She's a bit spooky,” he admitted. “These beach towns look all right from th' deck o' a ship, but they're only fit for th' 'eathen, arfter all.”
Micky sprang from the dinghy when it touched the shingled beach, bade Red Landyard seek his own pleasures, and started in search of sleeping agents and the British Consul.
The agents were Scotch. They passed a square-face of gin, squeezed limes, and promised Mickey to begin loading the cargo at sundown. The consul was mildly interested in Micky's papers.
“First trip out, eh?” he said passing the papers back. “Well, er, look around. There's nothing much to do here in Longtown. Why not try a jaunt in th' jungle? I'm going inland to-morrow. Bring your mate along.”
Micky and Red Landyard accepted the consul's invitation. They straddled island ponies and made a rough passage to a plantation owned by a French settler. Coming back, through no fault of the consul, the two after guards of the Borneo got lost, without a compass to show their bearings.
Red Landyard straightened his long legs, allowed the pony to walk from under him, and squinted first at the sky and then at a misty mountain. He turned and pointed a steady finger through jungle trees. “Th' beach is over there, Micky,” he said.
Micky McMasters brushed a fly from his cheek, urged his pony, and started in the direction indicated by the Yankee. He came charging into an open place—a grass-clustered clearing where loomed the thatched roof of a decaying shed.
Red Landyard drew up by the cockney's side. They stared at the shed. “A bloomin' temple,” whispered the captain.
Inspection revealed that Micky was partly right. The interior of the shed was given over to a row of weather-beaten idols before which lay wreaths of week-old flowers placed there by native girls.
Micky inspected the idols. He tried to decipher the names carved om the base of each. One resembled a Billiken, another an island ape. All were hideous, and rudely constructed.
“Blym good place to keep away from,” commented Micky when he remounted his pony. “I said th' bloomin' island was spooky!”
“Th' South Seas are full of such things, skipper. I guess no one knows who carved them idols.”
Micky lashed his pony and galloped through the jungle until he reached the beach. Longtown lay a mile or more to the north. The Borneo floated in the still water with her towering masts reaching into the blue-vaulted sky.
Around her, like cockroaches, darted flat boats and canoes. The cargo was going aboard.
There followed a period of getting the ship ready for sea. Micky and Red Landyard took off their coats, donned wide-brimmed straw hats, and hazed the crew back and forth upon the deck. They gave their orders in sultry tunes, torid oaths and blazing commands.
The standing-gear and running rigging was inspected for faulty splices. A leak was calked in the seams. Dunnage boards and litter went overside. The sails were unfurled and allowed to drape from the spar-varnished yards. Neat patches were sewn. Then came paint.
Red Landyard littered the cook's galley with a mixture taken from the stores. He boiled turpentine and added white lead, sent out by the Scotch traders. He obtained a color never before seen on land or sea—a rich cream inclined to a yellow base.
“Just th' thing to preserve th' planks,” he told Micky. “We'll wake 'em up when we reach Valparaiso.”
Micky tapped the upper pocket in his shirt. “Liverpool, you mean. “ Th' papers call for Liverpool.”
“So,” said Red Landyard, and went on directing the painting.
He reached, that afternoon, the bow of the Borneo, where the tarnished figurehead, representing Aphrodite rising from the sea, was bolted on the stern beneath the bowsprit. One arm, a leg and half the lady's side was missing. A careless native had smashed the figure with the cap of a lugger's mast.
McMasters went forward when the mate called to him. Red Landyard sat swinging in a boatswain's chair which was lashed to a pin-rail on the fore-peak.
“She's a mighty scrawny mermaid for a first-class windjammer,” commented the Yankee when he pointed a brush at the figurehead. “Any way we can fix her up, skipper?”
“We'll 'ave Chips make a new one!”
Red Landyard chewed reflectively. “Chips,” he said, “is a deep-sea fraud! He couldn't make a work of art. This gadget comes under the head of art, skipper.”
“Blym hif it don't!” admitted Micky, leaning over the rail. “She's our mascot!”
“She looks like a half-breed girl I saw in Singapore when a wild Lascar got done carvin' her up, skipper.”
Micky rubbed the bristle on his jaw. He swung a baleful eye toward the grinning crew. His glance took in the cool green of the palms back of the pearl-thatched roofs of Longtown.
“Red?”
“Yes, skipper.”
“Mr. Landyard, take a boat, two men, go ashore to-night, an' visit that shed we saw in th' interior.”
“Th' heathen temple?”
“Th' same!”
“What for?”
“Bring out that Billiken! Fetch aboard th' luckiest idol you can capture. Don't let th' natives see you. We'll rig a figure'ead that 'll be th' talk o' Birken'ead when we get to th' Mersey an' Liverpool.”
The Yankee mate lifted himself, laid his brush on the rail, and sprang to the little skipper's side.
“There's bad luck in them things, some time,” said he.
“I don't believe in bad luck!”
The Yankee shifted a chew from one leatherlike cheek to the other. He ranged a calculating eye over the half-garbed crew.
“To-night, then, skipper. I'll fetch a new figurehead.”
Micky went ashore at sundown, checked his papers with the agents, gave a receipt for the cargo, visited the consul, and came to the ship slightly hilarious from many drinks of trade gin and limes.
He found Red Lanyard perched upon the bowsprit. The Yankee swung a ship's mallet, drew back his long arms, and swung again. He drove home wooden pegs that were fitted with expanding wedges on their ends.
The little skipper staggered over the deck, climbed to the forepeak, and looked overside. Aphrodite rising from the waves, had been cast loose where she sank in seven fathoms of water. In her place leered the ugliest of the temple idols—a gargoyle with a perpetual grin.
“A touch of paint,” said Red Landyard. “A bit of gold leaf on th' cheeks, an' we've got a figurehead.”
Micky steadied his rocking legs. He whispered to the mate:
“There's a name on th' bottom of that idol. Don't I see some lettering?”
“Yes, skipper. It's in an unknown language—nobody knows anything about. Let it go!”
Micky rolled aft, turned in his bunk, and slept for half a watch. He came on deck at dawn. A southerly trade-wind was slowing.
“Cat th' anchor, Mr. Landyard,” he said to the mate. “Set everything but th' royals an' flyin' jib. We're going hout before th' 'eathen see their bloomin' idol!”
The Borneo left the open harbor of Longtown and took the trade-wind over her starboard quarter. It was her best point of sailing. She logged eight knots. Micky mildly suggested to his mate certain things which occurred to him.
“Unbatten th' fore hatch, Red. Get th' watch at work an' lighten 'er a little more aft. See, she yaws a bit. She's too far hout in the bow. An', Red,” added Micky when the mate turned to leave the quarter-deck, “Red, you might set th' royals on fore an' main.”
Micky was never a bucko skipper. He allowed his crew to come aft whenever they wanted to. He visited the forecastle, and would, at times, sit on a bunk and chin with a seaman. He held that the way of the sea was changing and that many a good man might be before the mast.
Red Landyard, the Yankee, was Micky's mouthpiece. The mate nursed few illusions. He personally picked the additions to the crew who came aboard at Torres Strait. Among them were a few shellbacks—world wanderers—who believed that the ocean held its mysteries.
One of these men drew the mate out of ear-shot of the others.
“Speakin' in general, Mr. Landyard,” he said, “wouldn't it be just as well for all hands if you heaved that figgerhead overboard? I've sailed on ships, man an' boy, going now thirty years. I never saw no luck in an idol. We're bound to run foul of somethin'.”
The mate laughed and clapped the old salt on the back.
“Skipper's orders,” said he. “I'm not superstitious—I rather have thirteen dollars any day than twelve. McMasters don't believe in those things. This is a good ship, well-found, fast as a witch, and we're heading for th' Horn as if all th' girls in Liverpool were pullin' th' strings.”
The old salt's name was Dipford. He shook his gray head and went among the crew.
Red Landyard inspected the fore-hold, ordered the fore-hatch battened, saw that a tarpaulin was lashed to the deck-bolts, and hurried aft.
“Some of th' crew are worried about that idol,” he told Micky. “Old Dipford says it'll bring no good luck!”
Micky rubbed the bristles on his chin and shot a quick glance foreward.
“What th' bleedin' more luck do we want than this?” he exclaimed. “A sou'west trade-wind, a clean ship, an' an ocean of sea room.”
Red Landyard looked at the bulging sails with a certain pride. He strode to the wheel-house and stared into the binnacle. “Hold her steady,” he said, and went back to the skipper's side.
The Borneo surged on. A sparkle ran across the domelike sea. The trade-wind was laden with soft spices and fragrant odors. Each strand of rigging hummed its own note.
The balm of clean living came to the two seamen on the ship's quarter-deck. They lifted their chins and gulped the breeze.
“She's carryin' th' mail!” exclaimed Micky. “Who talks of bad luck?”
“Some of them would find fault with Heaven. I'll tell th' cook to double th' ration of plum-duff. We got raisins enough. Feed a crew an' they forget their superstitions. An empty stomach brings up a lot of queer thoughts.”
Micky nodded. He went below and made some entries in his log. He got out his sextant-box and climbed back to the deck. Bracing his feet, he started taking an observation. A slight haze lay over the northern horizon. He lowered the sextant and squinted his gray-thatched eyes.
“Take a look at the barometer,” he told the mate. “That fog wasn't there a bell ago.”
Red Landyard glided to the starboard steps leading alongside the wheel-house. He stared at the barometer on the wall of the after-house.
“Glass going down!” he called to the skipper. “She was goin' up an' now she's down to twenty-five, fifty.”
“What?” screamed Micky.
“Twenty-nine, fifty!” corrected the mate.
The little skipper leaped for the quarter-deck rail. He leaned over and shouted his own orders:
“Both watches on deck! Quick now! Take th' sail off er! Clew up everything!
“Get forward!” he added to the mate. “There's a hurricane coming!”
Red Landyard went forward. Micky slid for the wheel-house window. “Put 'er down! All the way down! You've got too much lee!”
The wheelman twirled the spokes until the wheel-rope strained. Shuffling feet sounded on the Borneo's planks. The watch on deck began taking the sail off of the ship, as Micky had ordered. It was no small task.
The balmy southern trade died to a calm. The ship's bow swung toward the north. “Steady!” cried Micky. “Old 'er there, till we see wot's coming!”
Red Landyard, on the foredeck, saw the first menacing claw of the wind. A curdy line dragged across the placid sea. Back of the line was a darker commotion. The sun, almost at zenith, grew pale. A haze dropped from nowhere and blotted out the northern heavens.
Shrieking like a thing that had gone wild with pain, there fell upon the Borneo a monstrous deluge of wind and wave and foam. One second the ship was towering and stately. The next a hand seemed to reach, grasp her keel, and firmly press her over.
Canvas, dangling a moment before from the yards, was whipped against the masts, rent, torn and carried to leeward. Rigging—rope ends, blocks and the cross-jack yard—came tumbling around Micky's head.
He sprang for the weather shrouds, hooked his right leg over a ratline, and held on for his life. There was no chance to shout orders. The ship staggered, righted sullenly, and reeled with her sails being plucked from her like feathers from a white chicken.
Fortunately, the crew had started descending to the deck before the worst of the blow reached the Borneo. No man was lost. They climbed the weather rail, and, like Micky, grasped the stanchest of the standing-rigging.
The maintopmast whipped, snapped the backstays like packthread, and fell to leeward. Yards snarled with cross-trees and crashed downward to the deck. A yellowish hue swirled about the stricken ship. The yellow changed to green and the green to an unearthly purple.
Wind roared, lifted the sea, scooped waves and hammered the staunch weather side of the Borneo. The bow ran off from the gale. Micky cupped his hands and shrieked:
“Belay that foretopmast staysail sheet! Hei, you forrard! D'ye 'ear me?”
Red Landyard and two of the crew climbed over the wreckage on the forecastle deck and managed to sheet partly home the flapping staysail. Micky ducked a lipping comber and turned to the wheelman.
“Another man aft!” he shouted above the roar of the hurricane. “We've got to keep 'er in th' wind!”
This course of sailing, when the Borneo righted, became difficult enough. Red Landyard and the crew managed to set two headsails and spread a jury rig from the wreck of the foresail. They cleared the forecastle deck and threw some of the spars overside.
Limping like a wounded bird with a dragging pinion, the ship headed into the northeaster which gradually swung from the east. Gust followed gust. The night brought other troubles to Micky and the weary crew. A leak sprang in the seams. The mate sounded the forward pump and set three hands clanking the handles.
He came aft and climbed to the quarter-deck. The ship's list to leeward was all of fifteen degrees. Micky still held his position in the mizzen weather shrouds. The little skipper's eyes were baleful.
“It couldn't be helped!” said Red Landyard. “She came on us very unexpected, skipper.”
Micky had worn his anxious soul out estimating the damage done by the storm. “Vast with that talk!” he snapped. “What d'ye make of th' sky to windward?”
“Looks like more wind,” said the mate unfeelingly.
“There cawn't be more!”
“Oh, yes, there can, skipper! This hurricane can become a simoon an' th' simoon change into a tornado. We're lucky to have any spars left.”
Micky gulped and thought of the thrifty Scotch owners.
“I was trusted,” he said, “and now look at th' ship!”
Red Landyard had a Yankee's buoyancy. “She'll weather it!” he declared. “All that's really gone is th' maintopmast an' a few spars. We can put in Sandy Point for refitting.”
“Hif we ever get to Sandy Point! We ain't makin' any 'eadway.”
An observation taken the next day at noon, when the sun appeared for a few seconds, attested to Micky's statement. The Borneo was being driven back toward Longtown.
Red Landyard, taking advantage of a lessening gale, had the deck cleared and the broken rigging spliced. He got out old canvas and set the crew to work. The pump was unshipped when the well sounded dry.
A day passed with the Borneo making slight headway toward the south. A second day allowed Micky to run down some of his latitude. Storm sails were set on the main and mizzen. The ship, close-hauled, ran across the gale, dipped her lee rails and righted sullenly.
A week of head-wind sailing brought the clipper within the zone of Cape Horn storms. The easterly gale died and was succeeded by a southern hurricane that carried teeth of ice. Micky stared southeasterly, where he wanted to go, and shook his broken fist.
“She's perverse!” admitted Red Landyard. “I never saw wind with so much meanness.”
The little skipper's pea-jacket was sheathed with sleet. His chin bristled through a glazed coating. The ship took the long slushy rollers, ran off the wind, and came back to her course sluggishly. There was no life in her.
“Cawn't you suggest something?” Micky asked the mate.
“Sure,” said Red Landyard. “Do what the crew suggest, if you want to get around the Horn. Chop away that idol!”
“Bly me hif I will!” snapped Micky. “I ain't superstitious.”
“Old Dipford has th' crew all worked up about that figurehead I brought from th' jungle temple.”
“It's a billiken! It's good luck!”
The Yankee understood the little Cockney skipper. He knew there was no changing Micky's mind. “All right,” he drawled. “I just mentioned it, you know.”
Micky leaped a foot or more from the icy deck. He brought his clenched fists down on the quarter-deck rail. He faced the biting head wind and snapped defiantly.
“I hordered that idol! I'm responsible! Th' hidea of a-wooden image 'avin' anything to do with th' weather! Th' hidea!”
“It is a queer idea, skipper. I'll tell th' crew that th' first man who lays hands on that image, goes overboard.”
Micky was satisfied. He did not believe in any of the superstitions common to seamen. He had found bolts in hollow spars, iron near the binnacle, sick dogs that were taken for ghosts, and the other things that might set a ship's crew talking among themselves.
“We'll make th' Horn!” he promised. “Ain't I been around ten times!”
Red Landyard came aft two days later and rubbed a frosted finger along his blue nose. “What was th' longitude,” he asked Micky, who had taken a fleeting, and somewhat unsatisfactory observation when the sun showed a cold eye through the wind-driven clouds.
Micky balanced himself and glared at the icy rigging.
“We're where we were,” was all he said.
Red Landyard was forced to shorten storm sails that same watch. He ordered the crew aloft with kettles of hot water to thaw the blocks. He personally cleared reef-points with a belaying-pin.
Coming down to the quarter-deck he saw Micky braced against a deluge of ice particles and the tops of waves which the steady gale whipped from the sea.
“Still blowin',” he said. “It's freshening some. It's been nineteen days now an' we haven't made a knot to th' east.”
Micky acted like a Mother Cary chicken wheeling to attack a herring. “I'll 'ammer you—you red bloater, you!” The little skipper slipped on the deck and would have fallen if the mate had not reached out a steady arm.
“Easy,” suggested the tall Yankee. “I don't blame you, skipper. You're anxious to get home to your wife and kids.”
“I'll do it on this course!”
Red Landyard suggested something concerning the Flying Dutchman. The big mate looked the sea over with a shrewd eye. All he saw was slate-gray clouds, mountainous waves, and the tossing jib-boom of the clipper ship describing a slow circle—like a drunkard's finger.
“We're not even off the Horn,” he left as a parting shot to the fuming skipper. “Better unship that idol.”
Micky hung on the same course over the night. He took a most careful observation of a fleecy moon. He checked and rechecked his figures. He came on deck at daybreak, gave the order to put the wheel down and stand by lee and weather braces.
“I'll try th' other tack,” he told the mate. “It'll put us up th' Coast of Chili.”
“Where we don't want to go.”
“Get forrard!” shouted Micky. “Slacken sheets. I'm comin' around!”
The Borneo ran into the gale, hung in irons a minute, then came about with her braces and yards clattering and her storm sails fluttering.
The new course was in the general direction of Easter Island. Red Landyard studied the compass and shifted a chew before he spoke to the skipper.
“Looks as if th' wind was veering an' heading us each time. There's something queer about this ocean!”
Micky took a short turn around the icy quarter-deck. He drew his head into the collar of his ancient pea-jacket and snapped for all the world like a turtle:
“It'll be queerer if you don't get forrard an' roust out all th' watch on deck. Some of them are slackin', sir!”
Red Landyard waited, dodged a fierce stab from the little skipper's eyes, avoided a cold blue comber, and went off the poop. He got all of the watch out of the warm forecastle. Old Dipford grasped the mate by the arm and led him to the fore-peak.
“Look over,” said the salt. “Look at that figgerhead—a grinnin' there. D'ye wonder at our luck?”
“Skipper says that's a good luck idol. A billiken!”
“Where's been th' luck?”
Red was forced to admit that he had not seen any. “What do the rest of the crew think?” he queried.
“They think a plenty!”
Angry growls assented to this statement. The mate quieted the crew by promising that he would speak to the old man concerning the figurehead. He took his time and waited until Micky had dined heavily on salt beef and plum-duff.
“I was speakin' to Dipford, skipper. He says that the crew are going to do something desperate. They are afraid of short rations and scurvy.”
Micky stared forward. “What did they say about our idol, Red?”
“They can see no luck in it.”
“It's a bloomin' block o' wood carved in th' image of some forgotten god. I've seen 'em in th' Carolines an' in Samatra.”
“All the more reason, then, for heavin' it overboard. I'll cut it away if you give th' word. It worries th' crew.”
Micky had the stubbornness of his own conviction. He rubbed his bristling jaw and flecked away a piece of ice. He looked at the heaving sea and the straining canvas.
The gale, which had lasted for over three weeks, had increased in force, if anything. The Borneo was laboring in a cross current and making scant progress on the new tack.
“We'll go about,” said Mickey. “I don't like th' looks of these clouds to windward.”
The old course proved no safer sailing. A mountain of bitter-tasting brine came over the forepeak, dashed against the break of the quarter-deck, and cascaded upon the little skipper who ducked too late. He emerged and was blown against the wheel-house.
A storm sail, made from No. 1 flax canvas, carried away like a puff from a three-inch gun.
Through a bitter week Micky attempted to round the Horn. He went as far south as the ice. A southeasterly gale hurled him westward. He attempted to reach the coast of Chili in the vicinity of Chiloe Island. A norther blew the Borneo south.
There was no denying the insistent perverseness of the gale. It whimpered upon the clipper ship like a pack of enraged wolves. It snarled and snapped. It tore away more canvas and started the seams leaking. Reluctantly Micky gave an unexpected order.
“Put th' wheel up! If we cawn't go 'round Cape 'Orn we'll go 'round Cape o' Good 'Ope!”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Red Landyard through chattering teeth. “Th' Cape of Good Hope is seven thousand miles away!”
“More than that, but we're goin' there!”
The Borneo, dripping ice water from her grotesque figurehead to her broken taffrail, wore around, took the seas over the poop and staggered before the wind. The storm canvas was unreefed. The crew braced the frozen yards. The staysail sheets were loosened.
Dipping beneath the long snow-covered waves of the Horn region, the clipper regained some of her former elasticity. She rode higher, and as Red Landyard remarked, “a bit dryer and warmer.”
“'Ow about th' bloomin' figger'ead now?” Micky shouted on the second week after wearing around and taking the gale over the stern.
“It's still there,” said Red Landyard.
“But th' gale is with hus! We're makin' grand time.”
“Nowhere!”
Micky breathed on his frosted fingers. It charmed his heart to feel the surge and carry of the Borneo. She was moving through the heavy seas at seven or eight knots every hour. It would take a month or more to reach Cape of Good Hope, but the progress seemed far more certain than bucking the head winds of the Horn.
The little skipper clicked his frosted eyelashes and blinked at the mate. “Seems th' gale is easin' off a bit,” he remarked. “Wouldn't wonder we 'ad grand weather all th' way to Table Bay.”
“You better ditch that idol! It's brought no good luck to this ship.”
“I'll 'ang hon to th' wooden image to th' end. I'll show that scum forrard there is no such thing as superstition.”
“There is such a thing as superstition!”
“Well, it don't work with me! See, th' gale is subsidin', jus' as I expected.”
The easterly hurricane died to a steady breeze. Red Landyard set the royals and the flying-jib. He had the cook and an old navy boatswain stitch new canvas, taken from the ship's stores.
A day came when Micky pointed north over the starboard rail.
“Longitude of Longtown,” he told the Yankee. “We're going sou' o' where we started.”
A few watches passed with steady winds from the east. Then came a great and brooding calm. The ship rolled, turned, and lay in a heaving sea without a breeze to hold her headway. The idle sails flapped against the masts.
The sun hung at the end of a yard-arm like a bronze shield of hate. The pitch started running in the deck seams.
The crew walked the deck and shook their fists at McMasters. A week passed in idleness. Then, and like a clap of tropical thunder, the Borneo was struck by the grandfather of all the gales in the world.
It was a green typhoon that hurtled down on the becalmed and simmering ship. No man of all the crew marked its coming. They remained to witness what wild winds can do.
Stripped of her main and mizzen masts, and with the foremast sprung, the Borneo was lifted, driven and tossed northward before the teeth of a hot gale that became increasingly hostile.
Micky and Red Landyard hung over the spokes of the almost useless wheel, and attempted to hold the ship's bow before the wind. A patch of sail, not much larger than a handkerchief, was drawing them on.
Ahead lay purple waters. Astern showed towering seas and a livid sky.
Weary from three watches at the helm, Micky remarked to his silent mate:
“What's th' use. This ocean is too bloomin' much for me.”
“You've got no ship—above th' deck. Th' crew are snug in th' fo'c's'le. They refuse to come out.”
Micky's eyes flashed, then closed in pain. He squinted through the wheel-house windows. The long planks of the Borneo were wind and wave swept. A Niagara of foaming water escaped through a score of places in the shattered rails.
“We're 'eadin' for Longtown,” he said. “'Eadin' right back with a jury rig.”
“All th' winds blow that way. We might as well go.”
The misty mountains of the island, the surf-curdled beach, the whipping stems of the palm trees in the jungle, rose before the shattered jib-boom of the clipper. Micky intended trying for the harbor entrance.
He braced himself and lifted the wheel, a spoke or two. The stricken ship refused to answer her helm. She stubbornly headed for a lee shore where the surf was the wildest.
“Keep her off!” cried Red Landyard.
“It cawn't!” said Micky. “Th' bloody 'ooker's bewitched.”
The mate grasped the wheel-spokes. He let go and leaned over.
“Tiller rope's carried away!” he exclaimed. “She has no helm!”
A moment's pause was followed by a lifting of the derelict's bow. The stump of the jib-boom steadied. A rush of mountainous seas, wind-driven, pooped the Borneo.
She went forward, scraped her keel, staggered, swung, and crashed into a sandy cove where the waves pounded violently.
The drenched crew swarmed from the forecastle and went overside like gray rats. They looked back when they had drawn their legs from the sucking undertow. Micky and Red Landyard climbed to the pounding fore-peak, dived, and came paddling up the stream that led into the inlet.
They stood, almost naked, and surveyed the wreck. The Yankee shook his fist toward the grinning figurehead.
A sudden calm came upon the waters. The bending palms straightened. The sea began to go down as the southern gale died to a faint breeze laden with spicy odors and Eastern perfumes.
Micky drew Red Landyard through the jungle and toward the British Consul's residence at Longtown.
“Th' Scotch agents can go 'ang!” he declared. “They can 'ave th' ship an' my 'ticket.' I want a passage 'ome in a steamer. I'll wait till one comes—hiff hit's ten years. I'm done with windjammers an' clipper ships.”
The Yankee mate followed the little cockney. They left the jungle and went along the pounded sand of the beach. The Union Jack was flying from the flag-pole in front of the Consul's residence. The consul sat and watched the two seamen climb the steps and roll to his side.
“I saw you come ashore,” he said. “A beastly wind, wasn't it. Thought I'd lose my new roof.”
“Damn you an' your roof!” snapped Micky. “Hi want a passage to England. So does my mate.”
“I can fix you out—in a week or so. The Star of Asia will be due then.”
Micky sat down in a rattan chair and mopped his brow with a tattered sleeve. He eyed Red Landyard. “All right!” he said. “Fix us out! I'm done with th' sea.”
The consul clapped his hands. A native servant brought a square-face of gin and three glasses. Around the glasses were limes and powdered sugar. The consul mixed the drinks.
“Here's how!” he said, lifting a glass. “Sorry you lost the Borneo. You didn't get very far.”
Micky gulped his gin raw. He reached and half filled a second glass. He poured this drink down his throat, and said:
“We 'ad 'orrible weather!”
“It was calm here, except last night and to-day. I thought something was coming. The natives have been very restless. Somebody stole one of their idols.”
Micky looked at Red Landyard. The Yankee mate covered his mouth with a freckled hand.
“Stole an idol?” asked Micky, innocently.
“Yes, one of their favorite gods. It disappeared about the time you left.”
The consul waved his hand toward the jungle. “Beastly thing to do,” he said. “Some interior tribe must have carried it away. Our natives describe it as a wooden image with the name 'Opotikipe' carved in the base.”
“That's it,” thought Micky.
“They have a number of very powerful gods,” continued the consul. “They have a god to rain and a god to sickness and—”
“What does Opotikipe stand for?” queried the little skipper.
The consul reached for the gin bottle. He said:
“Opotikipe was their god of winds and storms.”
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 1931, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 93 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.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse