# Somewhere in the Pacific

Extracted from All-Story magazine (N.Y. & London), Vol 70, 28 April 1917, pp. 391-404.
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Somewhere in the Pacific.
by H. A. Lamb

### CHAPTER I. whither bound?

IT all began when we first sighted the Dunstan.
She was a big passenger ship of the Blue Belt line, and the first ship of the kind we had seen at the jumping-off place. All hands lined the rail of the gunboat and watched the Dunstan until she faded to a trail of smoke on the horizon. We thought it was curious that we didn't see any passengers on her decks, but it was none of our business. Later, we found out why it was.
Now about what happened there in the jumping-off place—
You can't find an account of it in the reports of three navies, and the Blue Belt line skippers aren't volunteering information. The papers never printed a line about it. So I guess if anybody's going to get busy and tell what really happened, it might as well be me.
Anyway, I want to see Kempton, who is just out of Annapolis, get the credit that's coming to him. Kempton is one of those stiff, uniformed ducks with a mind as exact as the crease in his pants; but he stuck by me in a tight place, and I'm grateful.
It was patriotism that first got me going. Yes, I had a bad case of the “boys-in-khaki” feeling when General Pershing started on a hike over the border. Things were stirring around pretty lively then, and I wanted to be in the show and sing “Good by girls, we're going to Mexico,” too.
I enlisted in the navy and admitted that I knew a few things about a wireless. I had visions of being the trusted wireless operator on the flagship of the battle fleet and chumming up with the admiral himself; but they don't do things that way in the navy—only in the movies.
At the Charleston Navy Yard they as signed me to a ship which proved to be a gunboat, rather old, and named the Badger. At that, the Badger was a leftover from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American war, and in the derelict destroying service.
When we left Charleston, President Wilson had just called out the militia, and things looked promising for the big scrap. I polished up the wireless apparatus and experimented with the spark, trying to get more kick out of it.
My job was pretty soft, because we never picked up anything in the way of a message for the Badger and my range was too limited to do much listening in. The apparatus was in my cabin, and I had a bed shoved in a box which they called a bunk. I thought it was a pretty good bed—no bunk about it at all. The other fellows slept in the cellar in hammocks.
It was a couple of days later that they broke the news to me. I was on deck, chinning with a gunner's mate, Terence Borden, who used to come to my cabin and kid me along—me being a landlubber.
“Terry,” said I, “do you think we'll bombard Vera Cruz or just blockade it?”
Terence stopped chewing his plug-cut long enough to look at me out of the corners of his blue eyes.
“Nayther,” he said, “it's a long ways from Very Cruz we're going. Phwat put th' idee av fightin' into yer head?”
“That's the idea that made me enlist,” I said. “There's a war, isn't there?”
“Sure,” Terry smiled on me widely, “there ain't any war, lad. There's complications, but no fightin' for th' likes av us. It's through th' canal we be goin'.”
No war! It took me a minute to realize that he meant it. But Borden always had good dope as to what our orders were. I asked him where we were going after we got through the canal.
“We're bound,” he informed me, “four thousand miles from here, an' a thousand from annywhere else. 'Tis the ind av th' world, an' no mistake. A spot it is that God loves less than anny av th' sivin seas, to my mind. You'll hear it called th' jumpin'-off place by the men that's been there, and whin they have they turn their backs on it with thanksgivin's and praise.
“There's the island inhabited wance by Mr. Robinson Crusoe in th' midst av it, an' stiddy winds from th' nor'west day in an' day out. Th' coast is mostly rocks, with grand mountains for scenery, an' nothin' much else. There's wan town in th' strait, Puntas Arenas.”
Puntas Arenas! That was in Magellan Strait, at the southern tip of South America. I felt pretty sad as I understood this, when I had enlisted to fight Mexicans.
“What are they sending us to a place like that for?”
“'Tis along av th' merchant skippers,” explained Terence, “who, Lord help thim, ought to go to sea with a nursin' bottle. Two av thim have sighted derelicts off th' Evangelistas, an' asked a warship to rid th' sea av th' scourge. We are th' warship.”
“How long do you figure we'll be there?”
“There's no tellin', Dick. Maybe a week, maybe a year. We must search th' waters with th' care av a jutiful patrol ship like we are. Th' currents drift derelicts about till it's harrd to find thim. Wance before I was there for six months, an' there's a matter av a difference av opinion I left unsettled in Puntas.”
At the time this last bit of information didn't interest me. Later I had cause to remember it. All in all, Borden's size-up of the situation agreed with that of the other men I interviewed. They were not eager to visit that part of the Pacific for some reason—those who had been there. They didn't explain it, just swore a bit and shrugged their shoulders.
“I get you,” I told Terence, “we're bound for 'somewhere in the Pacific.'”

### CHAPTER II. what happened to the dunstan?

TWO days after we passed the Dunstan we arrived at Puntas Arenas. The Badger needed coal, and Captain Godfrey wanted to pick up information that might be circulating in that port concerning derelicts. We had not been able to sight any up to now.
You know Puntas Arenas, don't you? A little, corregated iron town snuggled in the foot of the usual mountains, half-way through the strait. There are no customs dues, and this makes it a clearing house for smuggling on a large scale. The town itself is a sort of hang-out for the political driftwood of South America. I saw a specimen of the smugglers when we went to shore.
Our stay in the place was to be brief, and only a boatload of the first-class men were allowed ashore. Borden was in the cutter, and when we cleared the gunboat he pointed out a sloppy-looking schooner that was coming lazily up the bay. A broad, squat man of powerful build was at the wheel. On the stern of the craft the name Bella Clara was painted.
“D'ye see that fellow,” whispered Terry, “at th' wheel? Well, that's Tom Roth—a good man to steer clear av. He bears a bad name along th' coast here, an' not without cause. There's many a wreck near here that Tom Roth's seen th' inside av, an' taken away more than he took in. Bechune you an' me, it's well to keep your mouth shut in Puntas an' your eyes open. Along th' water front you'll find deserters from most av th' navies av South America—some av thim are on th' Belly Clary.”
When we reached a wharf Borden steered me toward one of the saloons, a one-story, sheet-iron joint with a bar of pine boards. We hoisted aboard our first drink in a month and sat down at one of the tables with our next. There were half a dozen other men in the place, of all nationalities. Terry cast his eye over them curiously.
“Have anny av you men sighted a derelict on th' west coast? It's thim that we're after in these waters, though the job is little to our linkin'.”
“There was one of the hulks reported off the Evangelistas about a week ago,” answered the bar-keep, an Englishman.
“Was it schooner or shteamer?” asked Terry.
“No telling,” the Englishman answered shortly. “You ought to run athwart it without any trouble, if you keep your eye peeled.”
“Thanks,” returned Terry, finishing off his glass, “that's good news. It wad be a pity, now, if th' fine shteamer we sighted awhile ago should pile up on a hulk like that.”
“What ship was that?”
“The Dunstan, av th' Blue Belt line—though it's th' first av th' like we've iver sighted in these waters.”
Several of the men in the place looked up at this, and one of them addressed Terry gruffly.
“The Blue Belt line runs west from Australia—not east. There ain't never been one of them ships around here—not within a few thousand miles. You can't tell me you saw the Dunstan near here.”
“Sure, the Dunstan it wuz, fifty miles out from th' strait, shteamin' along swately, about fifteen knots. I made out th' name av th' ship, plain as I see you now. It's yourself that's blind, considerin' that th' ship has touched at Puntas two days ago.”
“It 'asn't been 'ere,” broke in the Englishman, from the bar.
Several others spoke up in agreement, and Terry was puzzled. We couldn't figure out how the ship could have missed the port coming through the strait. You see they don't navigate at night in Magellan Strait, on account of the tide rips and williwaws, especially craft that don't know the passage well. It wasn't possible that the Dunstan had gone by in the night. It was plain that our news stirred up quite a little interest among the men at the bar. They got to talking among themselves pretty earnest.
By and by Borden said he'd take a turn through the town and look it over, and come back for me when he was through. He went out, but he hadn't been gone ten minutes when a big chap in a linen suit and Panama hat breezed in. Some of the other men in the place greeted him politely but he didn't pay much attention to them. After glancing about the tables he sat down opposite me, although there were two or three tables vacant.
He had good manners all right—asked me what I'd have, and said the town was happy to have American visitors again. He said it was months since an American warship had touched there, and there wasn't much for our consular agent, Mr. Braun, to do, so he had gone on a visit to Buenos Aires.
My companion introduced himself as Joseph Moritz, and from his manner I guessed that he was quite a somebody in the place. He finally got around to quizzing me about the Dunstan. I told him all I knew, and asked if it was straight that the ship never reached Puntas. He said it was.
Moritz and I were on good terms by the time our second drink was gone and I asked him if he knew of any derelicts along the west coast. He seemed kind of surprised and said he hadn't heard of any. I explained that the Badger was sent here to sink a derelict, and that one had been reported as being off the Evangelistas.
“I don't think there's any truth in that report, Mr. Henderson,” said Moritz—he was Spanish or Portuguese, but spoke excellent English—“because I own several schooners around here and no derelict has been reported for the last year. If there was one where you say I would be certain to know it. My schooners pass the Evangelistas two or three times a week.”
The Evangelistas? They are three big rocks with some smaller ones, lying just out of the entrance to the strait, a little north, and with a light on one. You have to watch out for them when you are making the entrance in a fog.
“What kind of a ship is this derelict?” went on Moritz. “Do you know if it's a dismasted schooner, or a bark?”
“You've got me there,” I admitted. “Our information doesn't go as far as that; but we'll find out for ourselves within two or three days.”
“Then you are going to leave Puntas to-morrow?”
I told him we were, as soon as we had coaled, and we dropped the subject. Then he gave me a bit of news. An English cruiser had come into the bay, and was anchored near us. Moritz looked at me pretty keenly when he said it, as if he expected the news would stir me up some. It didn't though, and after-a few more pleasantries he got up and left. He was as polite as they make 'em, but he acted as if he was cross examining me to find out what I was and what I wanted in the town.
When Borden didn't show up at the time he said he would, I hiked out and wandered around looking for him. It was growing dark then, and I expected to hear our bosun's whistle any minute. So I worked along the streets by the wharves, to where our boats were waiting.
I didn't see Terry, but I did see Señor Moritz again. He was standing with his back to me in front of one of the harbor saloons. With him was a young looking officer from the English cruiser. I could just make out his cap and blue coat in the gloom.
I hung back, not wishing to be lugged into any more conversation by Moritz in front of the officer, where I might have to stay at attention and miss the boat. While I was looking around for a way to get by them without being spotted I heard what Moritz was saying. As soon as I caught the drift of it, I hung back and listened.
“The man I saw,” the Portuguese was saying, “was not a seaman. He was in uniform, and claimed to be from the gunboat. But he talked like a landsman. He said the gunboat was searching for a derelict at the west entrance. What do you make of it?”
“There's something queer about it all, Moritz,” replied the officer. “I never saw a United States gunboat with a build like that. Look at that sloping funnel and curved bow. The deck is flush. Another thing, the beggars have finished coaling, and the dock hands say they are going to take up anchor early in the morning. Does Braun know them?”
“Braun is away at Buenos,” returned Moritz, “he can tell us nothing. It looks suspicious, their clearing out as soon as you come in. What are you going to do about it?”
“Watch the gunboat as closely as we can. We have been calling the Dunstan by wireless for two days, without an answer. Captain Pemberton is awfully cut up over it. You know the liner was to meet us at Puntas. We received a wireless from her when she was about a hundred miles out of the strait. After that the Dunstan seems to have been wiped out, wireless and all. Even if there had been a fire in the hold she could have let us know. The thing seems incredible.”
There was a pause while they seemed to be turning it over in their minds. The news hit me all of a sudden. The liner's non-appearance at Puntas was strange, but now the officer from the cruiser declared that she had dropped out of sight, as it were, in the middle of the strait. No wonder they were curious about us, because the gunboat had been near the spot where the liner was last heard from.
They were talking in lower voices now, and I thought I caught the word Tasmania once or twice. Then Moritz raised his voice until I could hear what he said.
“We can get that johnnie in the saloon doped. I'll take him on one of my schooners and find out what he knows.”
The officer said something about the American uniform. Moritz laughed.
“What can he prove?” he said. “He sits in there swilling booze and finds himself stowed away in a nice quiet place. Do you think he's going to ask an investigation? Well, he won't.”
It was about time for me to be leaving. I was looking around for a way to the docks when, sure enough, our bosun's whistle cut through the dark. That settled it. I wasn't going to run the chance of being left on shore all night. It was pretty dark by then, and I stepped around the corner, past them, at a lively gait.
Moritz peered at me as I went by.
“Here you,” he called, “wait a minute.”
Instead of waiting, I slipped to one side in the shadows of an alley, dodged around a couple of corners and came out on the street leading to the wharf where our cutter was waiting. If the Portuguese chap followed me he lost his way. Anyway, I got clear of him. And I met up with Borden, who was trotting along double time, headed for the cutter.
“Why the hell didn't you come back?” I asked him, remembering how he'd quit me.
“Dick, do not be harrd on me,” he panted—we were both running. “'Tis innocent I am av such an act. Maybe 'tis th' drink in me, but I've seen an' heard quare things th' night. They do be sayin' th' Dunstan was lost at sea.”
“It's true,” I told him. “I heard an English officer say it.”
“Well then, Dick, it's sure as I'm Terence Borden that th' Belly Clary had a hand in it. Th' schooner was lyin' off th' Evangelistas whin th' liner come by.”
On our return trip to the gunboat Terry relapsed into slumber, his head on my shoulder, but my own head was occupied with what I had learned in town that night.
Green as I was to the sea, the fact that a liner had disappeared in broad daylight struck me as incredible. That the Badger should come under suspicion was natural enough, considering the circumstances. I wondered if I ought to report what I had heard to Captain Godfrey or Lieutenant Kempton. I decided not to do so. It was none of my business.

### CHAPTER III. showing hand-and heels.

IT was two days after that, if I remember right, that we sighted the derelict we were after.
It was early in the afternoon, and Borden dropped into my cabin after a session of small arms drill on deck. I was listening on the wireless. I had been doing that, off and on, for two days now.
One ship, the British cruiser Wiltshire, I guessed, was sending out calls every hour or so in code. These calls did not vary, until an answer came for the first time early this morning. Then the cruiser tuned down her spark a bit and started a long conversation with the other craft—all Greek to me.
After a while I gave it up, and turned to Borden who was watching me curiously, sitting on the bunk and filling his pipe. As usual we began to discuss the Dunstan, with Terry in the rôle of oracle.
“There's something quare about it, either way you take it, Dick,” he observed puffing at his pipe. “It doesn't shtand to rason that whin a new passenger ship passes us fifty knots out from th' strait, reelin' off her fifteen knots as swate as can be, with only a mild sea runnin' and her in th' very track of th' Australian boats, she'd go down with all hands without a worrd av warming from th' wireless.”
This was old ground, but Terry seemed to have something up his sleeve.
“What do you mean by 'either way you take it'?” I asked him.
“I mane, Dick,” he explained heavily, “that th' Blue Belt line has no business in these waters. An' why were there no passingers by th' decks av her whin she passed? An' why is th' king's ship Wiltshire running about as if her rudder was bewitched?”
“If the liner's skipper was new to these waters he might have struck a reef along the Milky Way here,” I hazarded. The Milky Way is a stretch of shore where the surf combs over the rocks miles from land and churns the sea white in heavy weather.
“An' he might not. Sure, th' man had his charts, an' he was dead in th' shteamer track, wasn't he? A drunken shtoker could av brought her into th' strait safely an' gone to shlape over it, at that.” Borden shook his head gloomily. He is a religious man, and has odds and ends of scripture at his tongue's end. “'For as th' wind goeth over it, it is gone, an' th' place thereof shall know it no more,'” he quoted. “It is a sad thing, lad, if that fine ship is lost with all hands.”
“The sea takes its toll of ships, Terry.”
“It is not th' sea that takes ship's like th' Dunstan. Sure th' fishing craft go down, an' souls with thim. But th' men who die have taken their toll av livin' from th' sea for wife an' family. They pay th' price, Dick. Whin a grrand boat like th' liner we passed goes down it is th' handiwork av men. Men like Tom Roth, an' his kind, that taint th' waters. 'Tis th' scum av th' sea they are. There's more than we know, in th' loss av th' Dunstan!”
“What's your idea then?” I asked him.
“Th' liner was carryin' cargo from Melbourne through th' strait. An' where wad she go, after passin' th' strait? Why, to London. There's little space for cargo on a ship like that, an' it was not beef or wool she was carryin'.”
I began to get the drift of what Terry meant.
“You mean—”
“Th' Dunstan was a gold ship.”
Borden's words enlightened me. They explained the presence of the British cruiser and the lack of passengers on the liner. The Wiltshire had come to escort the ship on her way. And the Blue Belt liner was taking gold sovereigns from Sydney or Melbourne to the London banks. There remained the riddle of her fate, and Terry had no answer for that.
I had taken up my record sheets of the wireless gibberish I had been listening to, before going to the bridge to make my daily report to the old man—Captain Godfrey—when some one poked his head in at the cabin door.
It was one of the boys, a youngster about eighteen and he had news.
“Derelict ahoy!” he hailed. “We've found it at last—over there on the starboard side. You can see it out there, about four miles away.”
Both of us jumped up and peered out of the port. Sure enough, quite a distance away on our port bow—we were headed due east toward the shore, some sixty miles south of the entrance to the strait—was a gray hulk, with a single funnel standing, and a list to one side.
It looked like a large ship to me, larger than the gunboat. It was low in the water and the decks, as we could make out at that distance, were in a state of wreckage. The outline of the vessel puzzled me. It wasn't a tramp steamer, nor an ordinary passenger craft. I asked Borden what he made of it but he shook his head.
“Are we goin' to heave to, an' blow it to kingdom come?” he inquired of the boy.
“Not now, Terry,” grinned the youngster. “It 'll be quite a little while yet before you point that bow gun of yours at it. The old man says we're going on after the liner, to try to pick up some of her boats, if we can.
“I heard him tell Kempton that it was more important to save life if we could than to send the old hulk to the bottom. The men of the watch think that the old man believes some of the liner's boats were washed ashore south of Cape Pilar.”
It seemed foolish to me to leave the derelict that we'd come four thousand miles to destroy. There it lay not five miles away, a menace to any ships passing that way, yet we turned our backs on it. When I mentioned this to Terry, he grinned.
“Sure, d'you ixpict th' boat to take wings an' fly th' sea, Dick? Or maybe you wad like to tie it to th' spot so it wad not run away. Do not you know that th' craft will shtay there until we come back? Some currents might drift it a few miles, but we'll find it.”
When I came on the bridge late that afternoon to make my report, the old man was busy in the chart-house, and I leaned against the rail and took things easy for a while. The derelict was 'way out of sight in back of us, and there was a stiff breeze coming from the same direction that was boosting the old ship along.
When I first came aboard I used to call the mess-deck the lunch-room, and the engine-room the power-plant, but things were different now. I got tired of being the ship's goat the second day out, and got Terry to name over everything to me. I made some slips after that, only not bad ones. Once Terry caught me saluting the bosun, and suggested that it would be better not to do it.
So, you see, I wasn't exactly a landlubber now. I got to watching the commissioned officers off and on. The old man—Captain Godfrey—was a veteran who had seen better days. He was a stickler for discipline, and Lieutenant Kempton took after him.
The “lieut” bawled me out several times in formation because I had dirt on my pants, or had left a shirt around the deck. I didn't waste any love on him, not then. Later, when we had to stick by each other in trouble, we sized each other up differently. It was right that afternoon that we started off on our expedition. This is how it happened.
The Badger was heading pretty close inshore, with the usual vista of bare rocks and stunted shrubbery in view, when the old man and Kempton stepped out of the chart-house. I stood at attention, ready to make my report, but the old man was watching a schooner that was anchored inshore.
“By Jove, Kempton,” said the old man, pointing her out, “I'll send a boat off to find out if the schooner has any news for us. She might have seen some wreckage alongshore, or sighted a boat. Take one of the cutters and a boat's crew, and see what you can find out. We'll stand by for you where we are. It's too shallow to work in by the schooner—I wonder what in damnation she's doing anchored there with a gale coming up.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kempton.
There was a jingle of bells as engines were stopped, a slow heave to the deck as the ship took the long roll of the swell, and the bosun's whistle mustered the watch aft to the boat's falls.
Kempton never turned a hair, although he must have known that dirty weather was coming up. I thought that it was sheer old-fashioned idiocy for Captain Godfrey to take all that trouble to question a beggarly schooner's crew for details of wreckage that might have be longed to the Dunstan. He certainly bore all the earmarks of a tyrant to me then.
“Take an extra man with you, Kempton,” he snapped out. Then he saw me. “Here, Henderson—have you anything for me?”
“No, sir,” I confessed. There were only those code scrawls, and they weren't for us. I wished the next minute I had mentioned them.
“Well, get into the cutter—you may need an extra man, Kempton.”
That was how I came to be in the stern with Lieutenant Kempton, who loved me about as much I loved him, when the cutter put off to the schooner. The waves had grown bigger as soon as we were in the boat, so we couldn't see the schooner except when we were on top of one. Pretty soon we were near enough to make out the name painted on the bow, and I whistled to myself.
It was the Bella Clara.
“They must have good reasons for staying here,” muttered Kempton as the cutter swung up near the other's rail. “There's a storm coming up, and they'll have to get out in a few minutes.”
Only one man was on deck when we jumped to the rail and climbed over. He was at the wheel, and scowled at us blackly when we came up to him. I took up the rôle of spokesman, knowing Spanish.
“Where's Tom Roth?” I asked him. “We have business with him.”
The fellow jabbered out something to the effect that Roth was not on the schooner, and that we'd better clear out.
“We'll go where we damn please,” was Kempton's comment. “Ask him if he knows anything about the Dunstan.”
I did so, but the Spaniard repeated his warning, saying that a storm was coming up. This was my cue to tell the lieutenant what Borden had told me about the bad name of the schooner and what sort of a customer Roth was. Kempton heard me through without saying anything, and then declared that he was going down into the cabin to look things ever, and for me to stay on deck.
Well, he had nerve all right. My own nerves were beginning to get into action, with the deserted deck of the schooner before me and the big swells curling along the sides. And things livened up right away.
In the first place the Spaniard at the wheel seemed to get a signal of some sort, for he gave a yell. A minute later a dozen men climbed out of the forecastle and began to swarm aft. I thought for a second that they were coming for me, but they jumped for the sails, taking out the reefs. At the same time some more of them got the anchor up.
“They're getting ready to clear out, Henderson!” called one of our men from the cutter.
I realized that myself, and felt that it was time to put Kempton wise to what was going on. There was a flapping of canvas and a snapping of reef-points as the wind began to puff into the sails. Out in the west, a bank of black clouds was scurrying toward us, with a white line of foam beneath where the waves were curling over. I didn't know much about navigation, but it was plain that it wouldn't do for the schooner to stay where it was. Kempton's situation made me anxious.
“Lieutenant Kempton!” I hailed down the companion. “The schooner is getting under way!”
There was no response. It might have been that he didn't hear me in the general racket, but I doubted that. It looked like foul play to me. I cast a hurried glance at our cutter. The men were rowing now, to keep up as the schooner heeled over and began to move. About a dozen feet separated the laboring cutter from the fast-moving ship, the cutter being inshore and both ships moving north.
“You at the wheel,” I yelled, forgetting my Spanish, “come around into the wind!”
If he heard me, he gave no sign. Instead, his teeth bared in a grin, and he let the wheel slip a few spokes. It was deliberate murder. The bow of the schooner fell off from the wind, and the whole side of the ship crashed against the cutter.
There was a shout of warning and a curse from our men. The side of the cutter was stove in under the impact, and I caught a glimpse of our men struggling in the water as they were swept astern.
The man at the wheel had deliberately wrecked the other craft, and perhaps sent half a dozen of my shipmates to their death. It was my first taste of the kind of thing that was to come.
There was no chance to try to reach the swamped cutter as it was swept astern of us. A big wave caught the Bella Clara full on the side and climbed over the rail, sweeping the deck up to the poop where we were standing. The man at the wheel bent every ounce of his strength to getting the ship around on its course and out of the trough of the waves.
Two or three more waves side-swiped us before our bow came around more into the wind, and we headed offshore just in time. When we did so, there were breakers a hundred yards away. Looking back to where our men were struggling, I saw that they all had found support on the upturned keel of the boat.
They rested there, powerless to move, and I swore involuntarily as I saw behind them the white surface of the Milky Way, where they were drifting. At the same time I saw that another cutter was putting out from the gunboat to their aid.
I turned on the man at the wheel, ready to knock him into the scuppers for what he had done. Instead of facing me, he cowered over the wheel, afraid to release his grasp. As he did so I saw another come up from the companion, out of the corner of my eye. It was not one of the crew—they were up forward.
Then the man rushed me, bending low, and his fist caught me before I could dodge. The rush of a few steps from the companion gave him added weight, and six-footer that I am, I went over backward under the feet of the Spaniard. The outline of the other rose before me, and I felt a hand crush my windpipe. There was a numbing pain in the back of my neck. Then the curtain came down, and there wasn't any applause.

### CHAPTER IV. the capture.

WELL, what happened to me that night in the forepeak doesn't need to be told in detail. It was unpleasant, and it hadn't much bearing on the story. No; when I came to, as they say in the novels, I wasn't bound hand and foot, or gagged.
When the pain in the back of my neck had eased up a bit, and my head had stopped going around in circles with the pain as the center of the orbit, I sat up in the bunk where I was fixed and took an inventory of the forepeak.
About one-half the bunks along the sides were occupied by a varied assortment of unhealthy looking specimens. The stink of the place was a mixture of sweat, whisky, and filth. The only light came from a lantern standing on a cracker-box. By it I could make out that the men were asleep, and from the atmosphere of the place I guessed they had been having a time of it before they turned in.
I had been moving about uneasily in the blankets, and when I stopped the blankets went right on moving. That was enough for me, and I climbed down from the bunk, in spite of a splitting headache, and sat down on the box, taking the lantern between my knees. The stench of the cramped place and the motion of the ship made me feel faint again, and before I knew it I was sick—sick at the stomach.
This didn't help matters any, and I made up my mind that I would have a change of scenery at all costs. I was about as down-spirited and miserable as possible. No, I didn't wonder about the gunboat and where the schooner was—not then.
After putting out the lantern there wasn't a peep from any of the men, and I groped for the ladder in the dark. A minute later I crawled out on deck. The cold, salty night wind did me a lot of good, and the spray, dashing over the bow, cleared some of the nausea out of my head.
I began to wonder what had happened to Kempton. If there had been a man in the cabin, the same one that did for me, he might have put the lieutenant out of action. It had been one of those Charlie Chaplin stunts, with me and Kempton in the rôle of victims. Later, I found out that they got him more easily than me. We were both green at this slapstick stuff then, but we learned rapidly.
When my eyes got used to the dark I could make out that there were only two men on deck, one in the bow and the other at the wheel. I could see them against the foam when a wave churned alongside. The wind seemed to have died down a bit. From its direction, I judged that we were still heading north west.
Well, I was too sick and low-spirited to do much planning, but it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to get into the after deck. Kempton was probably in there, dead or alive, and I wanted to find out what had happened to him. It was easy to get to the after companion. I crouched down along the rail and worked aft, where neither of the men on deck could see me. Every now and then part of a wave would slosh over the bulwark on me, but that did me more good than harm.
It was a curious sensation going down the steps into that cabin. The place was as quiet as the grave, and as dark as a pit. I waited by the foot of the companion for a few minutes, and then I began to suspect that I was alone there.
A few rats were scurrying around, and a door banged with the roll of the ship; still, there were no human noises—no snoring. I had about decided that I was the only one present when I heard a movement in one of the cabins a dozen feet away. It was a dull rustling, as though some one was turning over in bed or moving about. It was up to me to find out if it was Kempton.
“Kempton,” I whispered.
The noise stopped, and there was silence for a space. I groped around until I located a door. It was locked, but the key was on my side. I turned it as carefully as I could and swung open the door. The first thing that struck me was a heavy odor of tobacco smoke, and then, a few feet away, a red spark glimmered out.
It began to look as if I had visited the wrong man, and I was going back out without leaving my card, when the lieutenant's voice came out of the dark. Lord, I was glad to hear it!
“Who the hell is that?” he asked.
I told him, and in another minute we had the door shut, and I was sitting on the bunk, having a heart-to-heart talk with him. He told me how they got him. It seemed that when he first came down into the cabin he thought it was empty, same as I did. Then, after poking around a bit and finding a couple of things that looked suspicious to him, he heard my warning shout, and made a break for the deck.
Just as he reached the companion, he was tripped up, and about half a dozen men smothered him under them. He was knocked up a bit in the struggle, and they chucked him in the cabin and locked him in, believing he would be safe there. He had a good look at the man who seemed to be the leader of the bunch, and he described him as thick-set with very wide shoulders and a black beard.
“Did he have a bad cayuse eye?” I asked him.
“Yes, that's the man,” Kempton admitted.
“That was Tom Roth,” I told him, “the owner of this schooner. The helmsman lied when he said Roth wasn't on board. Roth must have been the man that rushed me on the poop. I can feel his fists on me yet.” And I told Kempton how they got me, and about my sally from the forepeak. “What do you figure the gunboat's doing now?”
“Captain Godfrey would stay to pick up the men in the water, Henderson. It might take him an hour in this sea, and by that time the Bella Clara would be out of sight to the north'ards in the gloom. Then he would follow her course as nearly as possible during the night and try to pick us up at daybreak.
“You see, he would learn about our being on the schooner from the men who were swamped in the cutter. What I don't understand is why the schooner doesn't double on her course while she can. Roth—if that's his name—must know that he will be followed. If he keeps on this course, the Badger will get to us sometime during the day.”
“That's true,” I admitted; “but it's a bigger puzzle to me why they jumped us in the first place and swamped the cutter. They took a big chance then, without any good reason.”
“The answer to that, Henderson, is in this cabin, stowed away behind locked doors. The Bella Clara has a lot of spoil from other ships on her.”
That was news, but it didn't help our chances any. Here we were, two unarmed men in the cabin with half a dozen other rascals who were armed, not to speak of the crew, and we knew some thing that might hang a rope around them—especially with the Badger after them. I knew that, with all his faults, Captain Godfrey would not give up the search for us until he had found us. I asked the lieutenant what he planned to do. His reply surprised me.
“Search the cabin,” he said promptly.
When I thought of Tom Roth's hands on my windpipe and the guns those fellows were probably packing, I didn't like the idea. But Kempton had a reason for what he wanted to do.
“It's peculiar,” he whispered, “but I believe there's no one in the cabin. Up to about midnight they were moving around and talking. Then they went on deck. After that the place was quiet, except for some rats. If Tom Roth is on the schooner, he's not in this part of it.”
“Well, he's not in the forecastle with the crew,” I told him. He shrugged his shoulders and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. There was nothing to do but follow him, as he was an officer.
At that, Kempton was right. We didn't dare light a match, but we felt our way around the place, and every compartment was empty—empty of men, that is. The whole place was chock full of swag. Trunks and boxes were piled up on each other, and on one pile we ran across a whole silver service. At least, it was a punch-bowl and glasses of silver. Kempton puzzled over this for some time. He said that it felt like a war-ship's silver to him.
His guess seemed to hit the mark, because in the next compartment we discovered what seemed to be a lot of scrap-iron until Kempton identified them as machine-guns with their mounts, apparently torn from their fastenings on deck. He heaved one out of the pile, and spent what seemed like an hour examining it in the dark.
“A three-pounder quick-fire,” he whispered to me, “and I'm damned if it hasn't seen service. This came from a war-ship, but it isn't an American type. Now, how in thunder did it come here?”
It was getting gray in the cabin then, and I left Kempton to muddle over his quick-firers. They were useless to us. But I found half a dozen revolvers and automatics in the pile, and fished them out. Three of them still had cartridges in them, although they were badly rusted. It was an even bet that if they did go off, they would split the barrels. But the lieutenant fixed that.
As soon as we could see, he crept back into the cabin and unscrewed one of the lamps. The kerosene from this he poured over his handkerchief and swabbed out the barrels of the three pistols.
When he was satisfied with his job, he gave me the most shipshape-looking piece—a heavy automatic of a kind I'd never seen before, and kept two revolvers for himself. Then he explained our plan of action.
Now, Lieutenant Kempton wasn't long on brains. He was pig-headed, and couldn't see around a corner the way I could. But you had to give him credit for absolute courage. He never worried about the consequences as I did. He began to have a better opinion of me, too, and that helped our teamwork a lot. Of course, up to now, we had been the goats; but you can fool the best of them once.
This is the place for me to make a little speech of apology. I had classed Kempton and Godfrey as tyrants and stiff-necked brutes up to now. After the day on the schooner, I had to admit that the lieutenant was a man in all specifications, and later I revised my opinion of the old man. The next time I'm in a pinch, I want nothing better than an officer of the U.S.N. to back me up.
As soon as it was light enough to see things distinctly, Kempton and I took up our position at the foot of the companion, ready for our drive. What worried me most was the absence of Tom Roth and his bunch. You know, the living part of a schooner is at the bow and the stern—forecastle and cabin—with the hold between, and no means of communication except by the deck. We couldn't figure where Roth and the others would be, which was bad.
“Look here, sir,” I whispered; “you'd better let me tackle the forepeak. I've been in there before and I know the lay of it. The men are mostly soused, anyway.”
“No, Henderson,” he came back gruffly. “What you will do is to follow my directions. Take care of the man at the wheel and cover the deck. Leave the rest to me.”
“Suppose they shoot you up,” I objected; “I'll be helpless on deck.”
“Stow that!” he growled, “and come on.”
Well, my heart was doing double time as we crawled up that companion and made our drive for the deck. I know now how the boys in the trenches feel when they hop the enemy. The deck was clear except for the two men I mentioned.
Kempton was out of the companion and down into the waist of the vessel before I reached the poop. In a couple of seconds I had the man at the wheel covered. The fellow in the bow started to make a break for the fore-companion, saw Kempton coming his way with a gun in each hand, and let out a howl.
By that time Kempton had vanished into the forecastle. As he did so a couple of shots barked out from there, and I thought he was done for sure, down among those chaps in his white uniform, as conspicuous as hell, with them hidden in the bunks along the sides. But I was wrong. He got away with it, after all.
Pretty soon the crew began to climb out of the fore-companion, acting as if they were happy to leave it. After the last one of them came on deck, Kempton appeared, looking about as usual.
Then he lined them up by the galley and frisked them for weapons, throwing several knives overboard. I learned later that the fellow who had the gun stayed in the forecastle, badly hurt. Oh, they were a choice lot, worse than any hangover squad I ever saw. But Roth was not there.
When it was broad daylight and we had the deck well policed, I made a thorough search of the after-cabin without finding any one concealed there. We had made our drive—as the European battle reports have it—and captured several machine-guns and small arms, with a dozen prisoners; we had blasted the enemy out of their dugouts, but I wasn't satisfied.
If Tom Roth was on the ship, where was he? If he wasn't on the schooner, why had he left all that plunder in the cabin to the crew, and vanished at sea in the middle of the night?

### CHAPTER V. light in darkness.

BY and by the wind died down some more, and the Bella Clara barely moved through the water. We took advantage of this to get some ship's biscuits and beef from the galley, along with a pail of fresh water. Neither of us had tasted food for nearly twenty-four hours, and the stuff put new heart in us. We let the crew rustle their own breakfast, and quiet settled down on the schooner.
Kempton took the wheel and sent the fellow forward. We tried to get him to say where Tom Roth was, but without success. Even when we shoved a gun in to his beltline he shook his head, although he was gray with fear. He was more afraid of what might happen to him if he told us what we wanted to know.
All the time that Kempton was watching the sails and the horizon, or squinting at the men forward, I was thinking. Something was gnawing at my brain, and I couldn't get rid of it. It was about the events of the last few days.
In the first place, there was the mysterious disappearance of the Dunstan; then there was the British cruiser hanging around, and the conversation I had overheard in Puntas between Moritz and one of her officers. Then came Tom Roth's attack on us on the schooner, and with it the puzzle of the loot in the cabin. Last of all, where was Roth?
During my search of the cabin, I had examined the silver carefully, only to find that the inscriptions on each piece had been scratched out until nothing could be read. The brass plate on a costly phonograph had likewise been defaced.
This plate I had pried off and taken to the deck. If we could make it out, it would afford a clue as to the ship the Bella Clara had robbed. I got out the plate and tried to decipher the inscription without success. By chance I turned it over and cursed myself for a fool.
The inscription had been stamped into the metal, with the outlines of the letters showing on the reverse side. I made out
H. M. S. PHAETON.
I called Kempton's attention to it, and he informed me that H. M. S. stood for “His Majesty's Ship,” meaning his Britannic majesty, the King of England.
“Do you know of any such ship, sir?” I asked him,
“No, I don't. Hold on, though. The Phaeton was one of the light cruisers in the naval battle off the coast of Chile, when Von Spee won his victory. The cruiser was driven ashore on the rocks and abandoned by its crew, who boarded an English merchantman in the Gulf of Penas.”
This information told me two things. First, the schooner had visited the wreck of the cruiser, and that accounted for the machine-guns we found. Second, the pickings from the cruiser had been in the schooner probably for months without an attempt being made to dispose of them. Roth had been occupied with other concerns.
Try as I would, I couldn't get the thing shaped in my mind. Sometimes I half saw the explanation, then everything blurred up again. If Roth and his men had left the Bella Clara, they must have had good reasons. Were those reasons connected with the gold on the Dunstan?
It didn't seem possible. How could a schooner waylay a liner, take off a shipment of specie, and whip the steamer away into thin air? The idea wouldn't work. About this stage of the puzzle, Kempton broke in with a comment that put the whole matter in a new light.
“In the cabin where they put me at first, I found a coat hanging up. I scratched a match and searched the coat, finding a piece of paper in one of the pockets. Here it is, Henderson—see what you make of it.”
I took it eagerly. It was a typewritten missive of only two lines, without address or signature:
* Dunstan Friday between Evangelistas and strait.
* Tasman Thursday night, same place.
Good Lord! That little paper changed the situation. It meant that, in all probability, the sister ship of the Dunstan was due to arrive at the spot where the unfortunate liner was lost. It was plain that the man who owned the coat knew the time of the ship's arrival. Had the coat belonged to Tom Roth? If so, the message must have come from elsewhere, for Roth was not one to understand the use of a typewriter.
“Get it, Henderson?” queried the lieutenant. “The time and place the Dunstan disappeared, all down in black and white, with the same data for the Tasman. Probably the latter is one of the Blue Belt liners.”
“Yes,” I groaned, “and to-day is Thursday.”
Some memory-spot got into action in my brain, and I knew that I'd heard that name before. Tasman! I couldn't place it at first; then it came to me all at once. Moritz and the English officer had spoken about the Tasman that afternoon when I listened to them in Puntas. Only I had heard it as Tasmania. They were evidently expecting the ship.
“Look here, sir!” I exclaimed. “Just before we left the gunboat, I had been picking up messages in response to the code messages of the cruiser. That must have been the Tasman coming into range.”
“What about her convoy, the Wiltshire?”
“The cruiser is watching the Badger. An English spy in Puntas, Moritz, has sicked them on to us. They suspect the gunboat, and while they are watching for us, the liner is headed for the place where the Dunstan disappeared.”
Kempton's eyes flashed curiously.
“Do you think a spook ship is lying in wait for the liner, Henderson? What are you trying to dope out with those clues of yours—the paper and the brass plate? If you think a submarine caused the loss of the Dunstan, you are mistaken. No European submarine has been reported within five hundred miles-of here—the trip is impossible.”
“I know that, sir,” I replied. “But we must try to save the Tasman from her sister's fate. The lives of hundreds of men, and the safety of a fine ship, are in danger.”
“Well, we're hardly in the game, are we, Henderson? Two men marooned on a smuggler's schooner with a rebellious crew, and only four or five rounds of ammunition.”
“The secret of what is going on is with us on this schooner, sir,” I told him. “If we can only piece it out—”
But he cut me short with an oath. It was late in the afternoon then, and we were slipping along at about five knots. Another two hours, I calculated, would get us into the track of the Australian ships heading for the strait. We were within sight of the mountains that stand as rocky sentinels on either side of the strait. The northwest breeze had blown us inshore.
It was then that we sighted the gunboat. Far off on our port beam a column of smoke was curling up from a gray speck on the horizon. Kempton saw it first.
“There's the Badger, Henderson!” he shouted. “Stand by to come about. We'll go off to meet it. Get that crew to bend over the jib and pass that fore-boom tackle across.”
It was no easy matter, but with a good lot of cursing and our revolvers, we got the men to do what we wanted, and the schooner came about. The sails pounded until they filled with the steady wind, and we felt the lift of the boat as it gained headway. Sure enough, the gray speck was the gunboat, heading our way now. She had come after us, just as Kempton had said she would.
Such things happen queerly. No sooner had I taken my mind for a minute off the mystery of the danger threatening the Tasman than I saw it all as clearly as if it was written in a book.
Yes, I saw how the Dunstan met her end, and what would happen to her sister if we did not prevent it.
It was so plain and simple, I knew it was the truth.

### CHAPTER VI. the tasman's danger.

AT first Captain Godfrey was all for making prisoners of the schooner's crew. He had learned the details of how we got on the vessel from the men he had picked up in the water, and he wanted to call them all to account for it.
Kempton pointed out to him that Roth and his henchmen were the men who had actually attacked us, and not the schooner's crew. As for the collision with the cutter, it would be difficult to prove that was not an accident. The old man was mad clear through, and said that he was going to put an end to the deviltries of the schooner, with her cabin full of plunder from other ships, and ordered the vessel to heave to near us.
Meanwhile one of the petty officers hurried up from my flivver wireless, which he had been trying to work, and reported that a ship was wanting to say something to us. Captain Godfrey ordered me to take over the wireless, and it was just as well that I did so.
The other fellow's sender was a whopper, and I recognized the bellow of the Wiltshire, which I had listened to before, although they had tuned down their spark to get in touch with us. I scribbled down the message, grinning to myself as I did so with thinking what the old man would say to it.
It was from Captain Pemberton of the Wiltshire, and it ordered us out of the steamer-track for that night. As it happened, we were dead in the path of a ship headed for the strait.
Captain Godfrey was in the chart-house with Lieutenant Kempton when I took him the message. He flushed and fairly choked with anger when he got the meaning of it. Then he cursed out Pemberton and the cruiser in a way that would have made Terry Borden happy for a day if he had heard it.
“It's on account of the Tasman, sir,” put in Kempton, who could see a hole in a wall if you pointed it out to him. “She's another of the Blue Belt gold-ships, due here to-night, probably with the cruiser as convoy. Pemberton wants a clear field. If he ran across a suspicious craft, he might take a shot first and investigate afterward.”
“Suspicious craft!” snapped the captain. “Why in the name of all that's asinine would that dog-eared Britisher suspect the Badger. I'll shape my course where I choose even if Pemberton is convoying all the gold in Australia.”
Kempton nodded at me. “Get Henderson to tell you why the cruiser suspects us—he knows.”
This was my chance. I did a little hasty figuring. We were now about fifteen miles southwest of the Evangelistas and about as far from Cape Pilar, at the entrance to the strait.
If the Tasman was on time with her schedule, as I suspected from the wireless, she would pass within a few miles of us, and heave to until daylight, when she could make the strait.
I outlined in a few words the interview between Moritz and the Britisher I had overheard in Puntas, with the news that our consular-agent was away at the time. I explained that the Badger hardly looked like an American warship, since the gunboat had been captured from Spain and was modeled on Spanish lines.
“The result of all this,” I concluded, “is that the cruiser is beating around for us somewhere to the south, while the liner is coming on alone. It may be hours before the Wiltshire can come up. Then it will be too late.”
They both looked up at these words.
“What do you mean by that, Henderson?” asked Kempton curiously.
Remember that I had it all figured out in the back of my brain by now—about the Dunstan and the things we had found on the schooner—but I had to get it all across to the two officers. I had to! Millions in gold and the lives of hundreds of men were at stake.
“Shortly after dark to-night, sir,” I began, “the Tasman will be anchored at the same spot where the Dunstan disappeared. Unless we prevent it, she will meet the same fate that was the lot of her sister ship a week ago. The trap is all set.”
The old man stared at me, chewing his mustache.
“What do you think this danger is?” he said after a minute. “The sea is empty except for us, and the cruiser. We have Roth's schooner alongside of us. There is not another ship within five hundred miles of the Tasman.”
“Yes there is, sir,” I told him. “There's one headed for the liner now, in the dusk—the same that did for the first ship. We can't see it, but it's there—”
“There's nothing afloat near us, except the schooner and the derelict,” snapped Kempton.
“That's just it, sir. There isn't any derelict—never was one.”
“By God, the man is crazy!” spluttered the old man. “We all saw that derelict when we passed it yesterday.”
“Yes, sir; and that hulk you saw sank the Dunstan—and now the liner's gold is on board. That's where Tom Roth and his men are. And it's no derelict, because its engines are working, and there's a gun or two on the deck that can shoot six-inch shells.”
They were too taken aback to answer, and I hurried on:
“That's the explanation of all this mystery, Captain Godfrey. We never suspected the derelict because it lay right under our eyes. Instead, the British cruiser has been chasing us, and we have been after the Bella Clara, which acted as a tender for the derelict, taking men and supplies off to it from shore. That's the craft that's laying for the Tasman to night.”
Even in the anxiety of getting the idea across, I felt a spasm of satisfaction with myself. It was my big time at last, and the spotlight was turned my way. I had been the landlubber, the ship's goat, for weeks.
But I was the only man on two warships that had got next to what was going on in these waters. I noticed that Captain Godfrey's eye was beginning to light up, and he nearly tugged off his mustache. The idea hadn't penetrated yet to Kempton's bomb-proof of a brain.
“Let's hear it all, Henderson,” urged the old man.
“It goes back to the naval battle off the Chile coast, sir,” I explained. “The British third-class cruiser Phaeton was run ashore after the battle. The crew abandoned her as worthless—as she was, for war purposes. Tom Roth's beach-combing schooner got wind of it, and looted the Phaeton.
“After they had chucked overboard some of the débris and scrap-iron, the vessel floated off the rocks. Roth must have had some idea then of what could be done with the cruiser, or else somebody other than Roth did, because some of the naval deserters in the gang got steam up and worked the craft down the coast, where she drifted around for months, in and out of the hidden bays. It was then that the merchant skippers reported the drifting derelict.
“It's not hard to figure out what happened after that, sir,” I went on. “Nobody paid any attention to the craft, which seemed to be a drifting derelict. Here Roth and his men had an armed ship in their hands. They got news of the Dunstan's coming, as the note we found on the schooner proves, and lay in wait for the ship off the entrance to the strait.
“A few shots disabled the liner. Then they forced the ship's officers to send off the gold to them, on threat of sending the liner to the bottom. Perhaps the Dunstan's people did it; or they may have made a run for it, and were sunk in that way. It was a devilish trap. We will never know what happened, unless from the scoundrels on the cruiser.”
“How do you know Roth is on board the derelict?” inquired Kempton.
“Last night, sir,” I told him, “you heard a dozen men in the cabin of the schooner and recognized Roth among them. When we got the vessel into our hands early this morning, they were gone. Now, we must have passed the derelict in our course, and Roth and his men put off in two of the small boats which were missing this morning.
“You see, when you went down into the cabin and took a look around, Roth had to keep you from getting back to the gunboat, hence the attack on us. Probably he figured that it would be a long time before the gunboat could catch the Bella Clara—not thinking we could get control of the schooner.”
“How could they get the information about the gold-ships' arrival?” asked the old man, puzzled.
“Somebody higher up, sir. The fact is, they got it. We know that from the note on the schooner.”
“How the devil can we know that the derelict really can steam?” demanded the captain, half to himself.
“It's pretty clear, sir. If you think of it, we searched all this part of the coast for a week without finding a trace of the craft. Then all at once it appears and lays right in the middle of things. How did it get there? No currents could drift it about like that. It came out of a hiding place in the coast, and it steamed out.”
You see, I had all the facts before me this morning on the schooner, but I couldn't quite make them match. The answer was so simple, it was hard to hit. The wreck, lying so openly in front of us, made it hard to suspect it. At that, there was a weak point in my reasoning. If the gang had cleaned up ten or twelve million in gold from the Dunstan, why should they want to risk their necks for another haul under the noses of two warships? Perhaps they doped it out that the cruiser would keep the gunboat away from the scene. Or they might have made the play in sheer recklessness, with no more to lose and a few thousand pounds of gold to gain.
Captain Godfrey strode to one of the portholes and peered out. It was a clear night, but nothing could be made out—no sign of other ships. Somewhere out there the liner was making its way to the strait, and the derelict was lying in wait for it.
As we looked, we saw a dart of flame some miles away, and heard the dull boom of a big gun.

### CHAPTER VII. a matter of guns.

THE gun-shot settled the matter. For a few minutes the Badger was the busiest ship I had ever seen. The old man was chewing his mustache and swearing in a pleased way to himself as he snapped out his orders to get the men to quarters and get up a full head of steam.
I had hoped they would keep me on the bridge as a sort of general adviser, but nothing of the kind happened. The first time Kempton caught sight of me, he yelled out for me to get to my station at the wireless along with some cuss words that made me jump.
I scrambled down the ladder from the bridge to the deck, and in the gloom I made out the forms of men grouped around the bow gun, and heard Terry Borden telling them where to put some shells that had come up from the ammunition-room.
The decks were dark except for the binnacle light, and I had to feel my way to the passageway, bumping into men who were running about trying to get to their stations. My heart was doing double-time by now. My fingers slipped as I tried to fit on my leather head-dress in my cabin. A moment's listening told me there was nothing doing at the wireless, and I went to the port and looked out.
The motion of the ship told me we were making speed. Every now and then—blam! blam!—the big gun would go off somewhere ahead of us, and after a while there was the rattle of a quick-firer. By craning my neck out of the open port, I could make out the flashes. There was a big flash and roar off on our port bow, and then a series of little darts of flame three or four miles away on the starboard bow. Two ships were firing at each other, and the one with the big gun seemed to be stationary, while the quick-firer was moving away steadily.
What were the ships? There were no lights showing that might have served as a clue. Was the big gun on the derelict, or was it the British cruiser? And where was the liner?
By and by the big gun scored a hit on the little fellow. I saw it—the red glare of an exploding shell and heard the dull crash. After that the quick-firer was silenced. One of the two was getting the worst of it, only which one?
By now I began to suspect that the cruiser was not among those present. If the Englishman had been engaged in a fight like this, he would have brought more guns into play. No, the two vessels were the liner and the ship that was lying in wait for her—the derelict. And it looked to me as if the quick-firers were mounted on the liner, which was now disabled.
In that case it was up to us to do something quickly, and I wondered what the old man was planning to do.
There was a lull now, while the Badger plowed ahead at her full twelve knots, shaking and snorting at the strain of it. On the fore-deck I knew that Terry was crouching over his five-inch gun, his hand on the elevating gear, as he had done a hundred times in practise, praying to his Irish saints that he might have a chance to get into the fight. Before the night was out, Terry was to have his hands full.
You know how the stage of a theater is darkened in an exciting moment, and then the spotlight is whisked on, showing somebody dead, or a pair of burglars robbing a safe. It was something like that when the searchlight on the bridge of the Badger flared out into the darkness. It groped around for a couple of seconds; then it lit on the ship that had been firing with the big gun. And I could hardly keep from whooping with delight.
There it was, plain as if in the spotlight at a show, my derelict, with the wrecked decks and rusty ironwork. The light traveled over it from bow to stern, and showed a dozen men grouped on the deck and bridge. There was smoke coming from the funnel, and the craft was moving slowly across our bow about two miles away. I had been right in my guess.
Then things began to happen. There was a blam! and flash from the derelict, and a shell went over us. It gave a weird sort of whee-ee as it did so, and I tingled from toes to the back of my neck. Then our bow gun roared out, and the fight was on.
In a minute we knew that there were two pieces on the derelict that were in working order. Our five-incher in Terry's hands worked quicker than either of them, however, and we had the advantage of the spotlight, which must have blinded them.
But not for long. One of their shells scored a hit on us somewhere up near the bridge. There was a sickening roar and crackle, and the search-light faded and died out. The two quick-firers on the bridge were still in commission, and they added their bark to the growl of the five-incher. All we could see to aim by was the flash of their guns.
Terry told me later that, one being in the bow and the other in the stern, they outlined the length of the vessel clearly for him. Anyway, he began to land on them. We could see the red flares of the explosions on the derelict. By and by flames broke out on it, and before long we could see what was happening on the derelict.
Two groups of men were standing about the guns, working them. In the superstructure the fire was gaining on them, and they must have known the game was up. A couple of small boats had been on the deck of the derelict, but these were shattered by Terry's shells. He had the range now to a yard, and every one of his shells burst on board. We had been hit about half a dozen times, but our engines were still going, and there was no confusion on board.
We saw something else when the flames mounted a bit higher. About three miles away was the Tasman standing by. Apparently the liner was not badly injured, but a lucky shot from the derelict must have crippled her engines. She made no move to get away.
My wireless was muttering in code, and I had to get back from the port while I listened in. There was nothing to be made out of it, but it wasn't hard to figure out that the cruiser had sighted the glow of flames and wanted to know what was doing.
I had to smile to myself as I thought of how worried Pemberton must be. Here he had been ordered to convoy the liner, and but for a little Yankee gunboat his charge would have been held up, stripped of her gold, and perhaps sent to the bottom to join the Dunstan.
There was a cessation of gunfire as the wireless message twinkled in, and when I could get to the port again I saw the reason for it. The derelict was in a bad way. A shell had put one of her guns out of action, and the vessel had tilted so far to one side that the other could not be trained on us. The battle was over.
Along the deck of the outlaw vessel about twenty men were grouped, and others were crawling to the rail. It looked as if they were doomed—the flames pressing at their backs, and the ship in a sinking condition.
It was then that Kempton showed me again the stuff he was made of. He had got two of our cutters and pulled off to the wreck. In the red glare I could see him collecting the men as they jumped from the rail. By this time the gunboat was standing by, a few ships' lengths away, and we could see everything that passed on deck.
Kempton scrambled up somehow and vanished into the superstructure, reappearing with a wounded man. And then I saw a figure beside him that I seemed to recognize. A suit that had once been white linen, and a curly black beard—yes, I placed it after a minute.
It was Señor Moritz, the man I had thought an English spy, the chief of the smugglers at Puntas. I knew then where the information as to the coming of the gold-ships had come from. And likewise who the man higher up was. It was Señor Moritz.
Kempton was just in time. When he and Moritz and the wounded man had pulled away in one of the cutters the derelict began to settle, a loud sizzling showing that the water had reached the part that had been on fire. I groaned as I realized that with the bulk all the gold from the Dunstan was going down.
I need not have worried if I had known the truth of the matter. We learned it from Pemberton the next day, when the old man turned over our prisoners to him, after the Wiltshire had come up at top speed. The Englishman explained that he had got a wireless from another cruiser in the Atlantic saying that the Dunstan was safely on her way to London.
The liner had been attacked by the derelict just as the Tasman was, only with better luck. She had sheered off and made a run for it, escaping with a busted wireless and several men wounded. Of course, with the pirate lying at the entrance to the strait, she could not return, and it was impossible to get in touch with Pemberton. So she made her way around Cape Horn.
Well, I wasn't the ship's goat any more, as Terry told me when we had a good chin over the whole affair. He was happy, all right, as he had settled his reckoning with Roth. Our work was over, and we headed back to the quiet, peaceful waters of Mexico.
(The end.)
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1962, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 61 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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