# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 31/Number 5/The Resurrection of Slack-Lime Jones

Extracted from Red Book magazine, 1918 Sept, pp. 39–46, 108, 110. Dean Cornwell.
THE sea and fire and woman are three evils, according to a Greek saying. Here's the strange story of a man who suffered from all three, and yet remained captain of his soul.
The RESURRECTION of Slack-Lime Jones
By JOHN FLEMING WILSON
Illustrated by DEAN CORNWELL
I AM getting used to having my flat in New York City invaded at odd hours by young sailor-men I knew on the Pacific. The war has brought them around, a debonair and care-free crew, who accept with a patronizing air the chances of being submarined or mined. They were bred on a coast where perils are so thick that nothing man can do strikes them as extraordinary, and I fear that many of them look down on their worried superiors, men who have used the Atlantic for a generation and miss the old lights and patrols and safeguards.
“Our old man is so reminiscent!” quoth my friend Tommy Edwards one night as he sat at my table and humorously recited the events of his first voyage to the English coast. Now, Tommy rose from deck-boy via the usual route of quartermaster, third mate and second officer, to mate of the big Alaskan tripper Glacier Bay. When I last saw him before the war, he was capably berthing his ship in Seattle while the captain groaned below with a broken hip. Pain had dulled his commander's ears, and Tommy had navigated the swift liner for eight hundred miles without a sight of land or sun, avoided a score of invisible reefs, shot through narrow passes where a touch on either hand would have ended the voyage in disaster—and all this with never a growl or complaint.
“The Atlantic,” he stated, reaching for more bacon, “is a snap.”
“You say the skipper of the Cerulean is reminiscent?” I suggested.
My guest nodded vigorously. “Like an old farmer showing you over the place,” he answered. “One would suppose that in five hundred voyages he'd ha' picked up some information besides lights, lanes, ice and the high cost of living. But he hasn't.” Tommy winked at me gravely and raised his voice two tones in imitation of the absent commander of the Cerulean:
“'Mr. Edwards, it was right here—and a bit to the south'ard—that we picked up the disabled tanker Morovia on the second of March, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine. We sent off a boat with beef and butter for the crew.'” Tommy threw back his head and laughed. “Beef and butter! And that was blame near twenty years ago!”
“Captain Ames has a splendid name,” I remarked with severity.
“So he has,” Tommy admitted. “But he's never been off the route, and just because we had to skip north a few hundred miles off the usual course, he didn't sleep three nights, and filled the chart-house with figures.”
“Submarines?” I suggested.
“Nary one,” answered Tommy. “Scares? Yes.”
“One will get you yet.”
Edwards' blue eyes grew chilly. “You think so? I wish 'em luck. To be sure, the crew is a collection of weak sisters. I doubt whether ten of 'em ever lowered a boat or saw one lowered, except at drill. However, we sha'n't lower any boats.”
I was curious indeed. “You mean to tell me that if a torpedo gets you—”
“No torpedo'll get us,” he replied with confidence.
“You'll get over this cocksureness,” I told him. “Better men than you—”
“Be kind to a poor second off'cer,” he pleaded. “But a secret in your ear: nobody knows it—but, Slack-Lime Jones is with us.”
I sought through my memories of many men and ships to place a man with this absurd cognomen. Tommy laughed and swallowed the last of the coffee.
“Old Slack-Lime,” he chuckled, “the man who took the Mayhew out of San Francisco with a cargo of lime for Portland and ended the voyage twelve days later on the flats at Seattle. Said he got lost in his own fog, ship being on fire and the lime smoking horrid.”
“I remember,” I told him. “Was broke by the inspectors and went to southeastern Alaska and fished.”
“And found the Bertha abandoned on Enderman's Reef two years later and salvaged her single-handed and brought her into the Sound, defying the Government to blame him for having no license.”
“Then shipped carpenter on the cannery-bark Star of Bengal and was lost with her below Karluk,” I went on.
“The same,” Tommy responded. “Lost with the rest of the crew of the Star of Bengal! That was the story they told. And Slack-Lime Jones stood for it and didn't turn up. You know people said there was a dame—”
“Dear me!” I said. “I'd forgotten the scandal. Wasn't she the girl in Oakland who gave him the mitten after he lost the Mayhew?”
“They say so,” answered Tommy. “Jones testified that he put the fire in the lime cargo out with the pumps. His mate swore that Jones started the fire by trying to slack enough lime to whitewash the fo'c'stle. Nobody believed this but the inspectors and that girl. Both turned a good man down. Anyway, Jones never came around to deny going down with the rest of the cannery-man's outfit, and most people forgot him. I always remembered him, for I was a kid with him in the old Utopia.”
Again memory did its office, and I laughed. “Was it the same Jones? I never connected the two.”
“The same,” said Edwards, puffing at his pipe. “You remember? The old packet took fire off Tillamook Head on a voyage south and darned near burnt up before Jones fetched us inside the Golden Gate. Kept the passengers locked up in their rooms for four days and four nights. Some skipper! But of course the passengers claimed his scalp when they got ashore, and they got it, though anyone acquainted with the facts knew that Jones saved their bally lives for 'em. Well, Slack-Lime has turned up again. He's third officer on the Cerulean.”
“Name of Jones?”
Tommy scorned me. “Naturally.”
“Ticket?”
“Tf you'd think a minute,” he remarked, “you'd know that there are between nine hundred and a thousand Welshmen by the name of Jones with Board of Trade tickets. Slack-Lime had only to pick and choose out of the effects of any Jones he fancied would suit.”
“Well, well!” I answered.
“So it is,” acquiesced Tommy. “Very well! But I wonder sometimes what Captain Ames would think if he knew his nice, quiet, obliging third officer was that stormy petrel Slack-Lime Jones. Eh?”
“I still don't gather why you think this man Jones is a sure cure for submarines.”
“That is another matter,” was the answer I got. I pressed my caller for further information. He cocked one eye at the ceiling, then grinned.
“Why'n't you ask him yourself?”
“Would he come?”
“Sure, he would. Sha'n't I tell him how I spent my twenty-four hours' leave and be careful of your eyes?”
I recognized this last as the careful Captain Ames' usual warning to his careless young officers, and I duly invited Mr. Jones by word of mouth.
He turned up the next morning, a quiet shadow of a man who most evidently knew me for merely a kindly chap whom Tommy Edwards had known of old. I made him welcome, and he responded vaguely, ate his breakfast slowly and thoughtfully, with occasional efforts to be entertaining, and steadfastly refused all my suggestions for a busy day.
“If you don't mind, sir,” he told me, “New York is probably an old story to you. Of course, if you have anything in mind—”
“Nothing,” I answered cheerfully. “You chaps get little enough recreation, I thought. I know Edwards always likes to visit the busy part of the city and drop into a movie and attend a play in the evening.”
“Young,” said Mr. Jones dryly.
“Still the same boy he always was.”
“Is he?” Jones inquired politely.
I gazed surreptitiously at my visitor. An odd figure of a man to have been master of his own ship in bright days, to have suffered greatly at sea and then survived his own finale! Something made me say indifferently: “I reckon you didn't remember him from the Utopia?”
The man's hand trembled slightly as he accepted the cigar I offered him. His rather sallow face and dull eyes changed into an expression of—of regret. He made no response, but I felt that he wished to give me the impression that I had been uncivil. I hastened to continue:
“I've known Tommy for years. He mentioned the fact that his old commander was on the Cerulean.”
“I confess I didn't recall him,” Mr. Jones remarked slowly.
“He has a great admiration for you, sir.”
My visitor considered this. “How could he?” he inquired presently.
“I don't know exactly why,” I told him, “But he seemed relieved to think you were shipmates.”
The man sat silently and smoked. After a great while he glanced around at me and said in a steady voice: “Do you know me?”
“Not personally,” I responded politely. “But I fancy few people from the Coast haven't heard of Captain Jones—Slack-Lime Jones.”
“It was reported that he was lost with the Star of Bengal,” he remarked.
“But you are alive!”
“Worse luck!” he said bitterly. “Can't a man quit without people digging him up and insisting he's So-and-so?”
“Tommy hasn't said a word to anybody but me, I'm sure.”
“No matter,” he replied. “I'm only the unknown third officer of the Cerulean. And that won't last long.”
“Submarine?”
“To be sure,” he replied testily. “One man against a thousand! One ship against a hundred. What do you expect?”
“Edwards seemed very confident that your vessel would escape—in fact, said he was glad you were on her—told me I needn't worry.”
“I'm not the commander of the Cerulean,” he snapped.
“I'm sure I don't know what he meant,” I retorted. “All I know is he believes in some special virtue in you. So don't disillusion him.”
“Too many folks have expected too much of me,” said Slack-Lime said gloomily. “That's why I'm where I am. They expected me to go down with the Star of Bengal. I did my best to satisfy 'em.”
“Oh, I'll never tell!” I protested. “None of my business!”
“No,” he assented grimly. “And now I'm in a position where I can't consider myself as I used to do.” He glowered across the room at me. “Can you imagine why I tried to be lost and when I wasn't, made out I was?”
Now there are a great many reasons why a man should wish himself dead. None of them stuck me as a civil suggestion to this middle-aged guest of mine. So I shook my head.
“Seeing you know who I am, and young Edwards knows too, I'll tell you. Then you'll keep my secret.”
“Certainly.”
“It's very simple. I could never explain satisfactorily why I got in wrong about the ships I commanded. The Utopia cost me my chance to stay with that line. I brought her in without a soul the worse for the experience—and the passengers went up in a body and demanded that I be punished for keeping them at sea! Could I explain? No. I'd taken my decision and stuck to it and saved my packet. Then the cargo of the Mayhew took fire. My fault? The old tub leaked. Naturally, the lime heated. My mate, who hated me for keeping him at his work, swore I used poor judgment in pumping water on on the fire. Could I explain? I passed the Columbia River, where I was bound, because the old vessel's decks were half burned through and the mainmast tottering—and three breakers on the bar would have ended the Mayhew. That's the way it went. I lost out all around, and folks began to call me nicknames. So when the Star of Bengal foundered and I discovered that I was the sole survivor, was I going up all alone before the inspectors to explain how and why the bark was lost? Not I! I reckoned I'd better stay dead—dead to the inspectors, dead to the men I'd known, dead to—”
He stopped. Should I finish the sentence for him? Silently I did so: “—dead to the woman I loved.”
Aloud I remarked: “I understand! You're tired of trying to explain pure hard luck. But why this position on the Cerulean?”
“I'm needed—all of us are needed,” he said simply. “Besides, I figured that maybe I'd have a chance to prove to myself I wasn't always in the wrong. I may be able to justify myself.”
And show the men who—”
“Show myself,” he interrupted. “What do I care about men over there on the Coast, those passengers who swore I didn't know my business, the gossipers in Seattle, the tattlers alongshore? No. I merely wish to assure myself that I am equal to an emergency.”
“And there's nobody you—er—hope to persuade that you're a misjudged man?” I demanded.
“Not a soul,” he returned.
“But Tommy Edwards seems to have implicit confidence in you now.”
“Don't tell him a word,” Jones insisted. “A young chap with all before him. A proper sailor-man, too. He wouldn't understand.”
I gave my word and kept Slack-Lime Jones' confidence. Tommy was up to see me a moment before sailing.
“The skipper got a letter telling him the submarines would get us this time,” he told me amiably. “Consequently, my boy, I expect we'll get mighty little sleep this trip. See you later!”
“A word, Tommy,” I said. “Tell me why you seem to trust Slack-Lime Jones so fully.”
“Simple,” was the answer. “Old Jones always pulled his ships and his people out of pickle, but he never could explain how he did it—or if he did try, nobody would believe him. Now, if we escape the submarines, it'll be by a scheme that nobody ever thought of,—the Germans think of everything before you do,—and ten to one it'll be by a maneuver that nobody can justify. Ames—good old Soul!—will do exactly what a real, true-blue experienced skipper is expected to do. But Jones—I'll bank om him! So long!”
Unheralded, the Cerulean put to sea and vanished from my ken. But during the next two weeks I often pondered Tommy Edwards' final, jovial explanation of his faith in the luckless star of Slack-Lime Jones. Back of his youthful confidence there must be, I argued, a profound basis, something at once convincing and simple. Modern seamen of the type don't pin their faith to fantasies or trust to other than scientific methods.
A month later Tommy invaded my flat once more, inextinguishably hungry. He gave me to understand that for four weeks he had eaten little or nothing and slept a scant hour.
“Submarines?” I asked.
“Plenty of 'em,” he replied. “Drove old Ames into a frenzy. When we docked on the other side, he couldn't even make his report. So they put a new skipper on the bridge, and we romped home in eight days.”
“Who's the new commander?”
Tommy leaned back luxuriously and reached for his pipe. “Jones,” he said briefly. “Slack-Lime Jones.”
I was astonished and said so, referring to the fact that he, Thomas Edwards, ranked Mr. Jones, and that it was an extraordinary matter, to say the least, to find a third officer of unknown antecedents put in command of a big steamship. Tommy waved this aside.
“It was nip and tuck between the chief officer and a chap who'd just got in after losing his ship in the Mediterranean,” he told me. “But a couple of the big guns came down and ate their chow in the main cabin and stared at us all and picked out Jones. Quite simple! Ames recommended him.”
“What astounding luck!” I ejaculated. Then I said: “You told me you had a great deal of confidence in Jones. Why? You know his history.”
“Part of it,” replied Tommy. “Just enough to be pretty sure. Ames was sure. And those toplofties who put him in command of the Cerulean must have been hanged near absolutely certain.”
“Of what?” I cried.
Tommy glanced at me with provoking coolness. “That Jones would get the Cerulean home again.”
“But he's going to take her across again!”
“Then,” said Thomas, “they're pretty sure he'll get her across safely.”
“But why are they sure?” I demanded.
“I told you once that Slack-Lime Jones never could explain—at least didn't—how he saved his sundry ships but lost his ticket. That's the answer to the enigma. The Germans have thought out everything human beings can think of beforehand. When a submarine turns up and halts you, you're absolutely certain there's no luck about it. Now, Captain Jones has always succeeded by doing the thing that looked foolish in the chilly air of a courtroom. The result was that he lost out the minute he set foot ashore. Now he'll win out because the only way to beat the submarines is to do what no seaman in his senses would dream of doing.” He puffed at his nearly extinct pipe. “It makes it interesting to be with Captain Jones.”
That individual himself paid me a call the next day. He was the same shadowy kind of creature as before, accepted my congratulations modestly and seemed to have other business on his mind. At last it came out: he hoped I would make the voyage with him.
Easily enough I advanced the difficulty of getting a passport, of gaining permission from the line, and capped it all by saying that I was aware I wouldn't be allowed ashore on the other side.
“I can fix all that,” he told me with a vague air of distress. “I can fix everything but the danger. But I take it you hardly count that.”
What could I do? I accepted the invitation and three days later found myself installed in Captain Jones' own cabin.
“I sha'n't have much use for it,” he told me. “Make yourself at home.””
The following morning at breakfast my host seemed quite at ease. He loafed around the cabin, dipped into a novel, received various reports with a preoccupied air and finally suggested a game of cards. We played for an hour, and then Captain Jones rose and stared out of the air-port at the sea through which we were steaming at a fair speed.
“Are we sticking to the usual course or going out of the way to avoid trouble?” I inquired.
Jones turned his sallow face to me. His rather dull eyes held a flickering amusement in their depths.
“I was trying to decide that question,” he answered. “It's a rather complicated one. Of course, I've my instructions.”
“Orders?” I suggested.
“Are they orders?” he mused. “I might consider them as such and trust to luck. If a torpedo sank us, I could refer to 'em and go clear. On the other hand, I'm in command of this steamship, and my instructions, presumably, are to fetch her into British waters, where a pilot will take over the responsibility. Under ordinary circumstances I'd strictly follow the owners' suggestions. But the circumstances aren't ordinary.”
“Have you no orders to meet certain patrol-vessels?”
Jones smiled faintly. “I don't doubt but that certain patrol vessels have orders to meet us,” he answered. “On the other hand, it strikes me that our German friends very likely have their orders—probably based on mine. If I'm to avoid being sunk, it is my place to escape being caught by a submarine. Now, the commander of the submarine gets his orders from a certain man. That man may very well have a hint of what my instructions are—may even know what orders the British Admiralty has given for guarding us. But he can't possibly know what I'm going to do.”
“He'll suppose you'll obey your instructions.”
“It will be incomprehensible to him that I shouldn't obey,” Captain Jones returned. “So there's my chance, isn't it?”
“But if you go your own course and—and are sunk, what then?”
My host looked vaguely troubled. “It would never be satisfactorily explained,” he responded. “They'd come down on me for disobedience and blame the whole thing on me. And yet—my only chance is to fool the commander of the submarine fleet. See?”
“It's a frightful risk,” I murmured. “Like as not they'd hang you if you survived. I'm sure they'd allege you were a traitor. And besides that, the Admiralty has made its plans with reference to the Cerulean being in a particular part of the Atlantic at certain times. Probably the loss or the salvation of this ship would be very little compared to throwing their plans adrift.”
“Dear me!” said Captain Jones, fidgeting with the heavy curtain at the air-port. “Nobody even intimated they gave a hang about us; you've no idea how matter-of-fact they were in handing me my instructions—as much as to say: 'Here you are, Cap'n. Don't worry about anything.'”
“Well?”
“That's all,” he told me. “But when you come right down to it, I'm master of this ship, and it's up to me to get her safely across. We've six millions aboard, and four hundred mechanics who're badly needed at the front.”
Here he abandoned the discussion and, I supposed, his rash scheme to deceive the submarines. He did not refer to the subject again, and nothing that I gleaned from the conversation of Tommy Edwards or his brother officers gave me any hint that the Cerulean wasn't trundling along through the heaving Atlantic as per instructions.
There may have been some apprehension and excitement among the involuntary passengers on the steamer; they were drilled often enough in abandoning ship, Heaven knows. But I can say with assurance that the officers and crew took each day as it came. The chief officer allowed no slacking in keeping his vessel clean; Tommy worked up his reckonings and plotted his courses as if he were bound in an ordinary voyage; and the chief steward, like all stewards the world over, planned his meals and harried his cooks and castigated his boys without thought of the morrow when our voyage might come to an abrupt close. Yet there was an imperceptible gathering of clouds, so to speak. It became noticeable one afternoon when the third officer, a solemn and ponderous young man without humor, asked Tommy whether we should dock by Wednesday noon next.
It was a fair question. Tommy flushed, scowled and replied curtly that he didn't know. The third stared at him, shook his head and opined that it was the first time he'd known such an answer to be given an honest question.
To me Tommy confided that he was grievously in the dark himself. “I suppose the old man has said something to you?” he suggested.
I shook my head, thereby stopping further confidences. But I made occasion to speak to Jones later.
“The fact of the matter is,” that shadowy person said, “I've managed to lock up the chronometers. I believe I'm safe in saying that nobody on board this vessel knows any time but sea-time. Mr. Edwards takes his sights by the clock in the chart-house, and I work my own reckonings. Naturally the officers have a good notion of our daily run and can figure out what course we've made within a narrow margin. But as to exactly where the Cerulean is, I'm the only man who knows.”
“But if—if anything happened to you?”
“It wouldn't take the man who took my place half an hour to know everything he needed to know,” Jones replied. “But I can trust Mr. Edwards not to inquire too closely till there is necessity.” He stared at me as though his eyes were dim. “I can take risks another man would hesitate to take, you see. Then I'm absolutely at liberty to use my own judgment. As a matter of fact, there isn't a soul I can consult, for nobody but I knows the exact situation.”
Thus far enlightened, I was, of course, free to talk with Tommy. He glowered and checked himself.
“You still trust him?” I demanded.
The youth threw off his ugly mood. “Of course I do,” he said generously. “Look at the risks the man takes! His only justification will be to fetch into port unharmed. And if we don't—not one of us subordinates can be blamed.”
“And what do you think of our chances?” I inquired.
Tommy laughed. “Mighty poor! We've picked up the calls of three steamers sinking and one being chased. Of course we didn't answer them or change our course. That's flat orders. But if I'm any judge, one of them wasn't twenty miles south of us last night. Only twenty miles—and we didn't dare drop down and pick up the survivors!”
“Then you think we are on the course laid down for us before we sailed?”
“How do I know?” he responded. “I didn't see the orders, and I've only a vague notion where we are now. I hope the submarines are as much in the dark as I am!”
The next morning at dawn Captain Jones sent a man to rouse me. I rolled out and went upon the bridge. A glance at the engine-room signal-dials showed me we were going full speed ahead. The sea was a heavy one, and the steamer shook as she plunged onward to the thrust of her twin screws. I saw that the chief officer, Tommy and the third were present, while junior officers stood to leeward and searched the misty expanse with their glasses. Captain Jones nodded to me and pointed overside, with a short, decisive gesture. I looked down and saw a raffle of wreckage floating on the big, spumy rollers. It floated out of the haze in an endless stream, the débris of a big steamer and its cargo. Deck-chairs lolloped lazily along, accompanied by empty fruit-crates. Here and there a larger bulk would topple into view, circle about its own axis in a solemn manner, be recognizable as a roll of bedding and so vanish down the vague vista. Once or twice I thought I saw a human form riding amid the stream. I could not be sure.
“They got her,” I remarked with a shudder.
The Council Bluffs,” Jones said quietly. “We heard her call for assistance at midnight.”
“Then—”
Jones nodded. “I altered the course and ran down the position she gave.”
“And the submarine?”
He shook his head. “Naturally she's not here, wherever she may be. I fancy we shall see a destroyer' presently: The Council Bluffs called some time.”
“Now, if I were the German commander of the submarine,” I remarked, “right here or hereabouts is where I'd stay. If he has imagination—”
I didn't finish. Jones' eyes had focused on something in the barely seen foreground, and he jerked up the speaking-tube.
“Every turn you can get out of your engines, chief!” he cried into the brass trumpet.
A murmur went up, and I saw every man on the bridge stirring. From forward came a low, distinct voice:
“Small-boat on the starb'd bow, sir!”
“One of the Council Bluffs', sir,” said the chief officer with finality. But Captain Jones did not answer. Instead he peered over at the rocking craft, listened to the torrent of cries that poured up from it and straightened up with a faint smile on his face.
“Well,” he said slowly, “so much to the good. One submarine behind us.”
Tommy came over and squeezed my arm. “By gad, did you ever see a boatload of decoys get left? Those Germans didn't count on the old man going them one better. They figured out that he or some one else would drop down to pick up a few of the Council Bluffs' crew, but he never counted on our old man's sizing up the situation and merely making sure that the submarine was behind us. And as we're making a good nineteen knots and can keep up the gait, she'll stay behind us, rest assured.”
This incident, of course, made clear the exact position of the Cerulean. But it made it no plainer than before whether Jones was keeping to the course laid down for him or taking his own.
“Anyway, we're exactly six hundred and ninety miles from our port,” said Tommy. “And the Germans know where we are! Now comes the fun!”
“Thomas,” I said sternly, “this is no time for joking. Bigger than any question of submarines looms the query in my mind: why am I in this ship?”
He laughed. “Didn't the skipper tell you? No? Well, the Captain asked me quite a bit about you, and I told him you used to be a sailor and that you still were interested, though you lived ashore. It gave him an idea. 'Some day he'll go back to the Coast,' he said, 'and he can give them the news about us.' So you're aboard the Cerulean as a kind of next friend—to do the epitaph, you know, explain the Hic jacet's of this special cruise.”
Tommy was making comedy of the matter, but I thought I perceived a faint light on the character of Slack-Lime Jones. He could willingly be thought dead, but he hoped that his second career might not wholly lack an applauding chronicler. I put it up to him himself, and he acknowledged that I “might be valuable in the way of making matters clear”—what matters, he left to surmise and the future. I wonder if he knew.
At nine o'clock the next morning we on the Cerulean realized that we were in a trap. Ahead of us some forty miles the Edinboro Castle breathed her dying warning into the air. Some eighty miles northeast a Swedish tramp was also vainly calling for help, and not twenty miles away and to the south'ard we saw a vast pillar of smoke, signal that still another ship was perishing. Whichever way we turned we should infallibly run into the enemy. “If there was only a fog or a mist,” sighed Tommy. “And it's a perfect August day. They can see us for miles around.”
“They can't catch us,” I said bravely.
“Oh, no! Certainly not!” he replied sarcastically. “No chance of that!”
The only undisturbed person—by this time the passengers had heard a little of the news—was Captain Jones. He gathered what information he could from the wireless-room, made his calculations and spoke briefly with the commander of the gun-crew. That businesslike personage, wearily dapper, grinned and departed. Then the chief engineer ascended from the depths to hold confab, brief and plain. We were going to run for it.
“Of course,” Jones remarked to me quietly, “there is a flotilla of those sharks around. One may break the surface any time. On the other hand, we're within the patrol-lines, and a destroyer's just as likely to turn up and escort us in.”
“If it's not impertinent,” said I, “I'd like to know whether we're on the course your instructions ordered.”
“No,” he answered, “we're on the course the Council Bluffs was to have taken. I figured it out long ago. She's gone, and if the German spies did their work well, the submarines will never dream of a second vessel's traversing the exact course she was told to take. Also they'll have news that she was caught, and so they wont be looking for us. The decoys in that small-boat recognized us and undoubtedly followed us when they got back to their submarine just long enough to observe that we apparently returned to our old course. I may be wrong, and luck may hold against me.”
Jones' vaguely elderly face was lighted by a faint smile. “It's so much better to keep on at full speed and leave the final decision to the event,” he added and he dropped into an easier attitude against the rail. “Captain Ames wore himself and all the others to a bone by slowing up and having to look all around the horizon. We've got nothing to fear except what's directly ahead of us. No submarine can catch us; I doubt very much whether a torpedo could be aimed to strike us except from a very short distance, and then—we have our chance!”
“What chance?” I idly inquired.
“This,” said Jones, stepping past me to the wheel and giving it a twirl to port.
The Cerulean lifted on a big roller, swung swiftly in an arc and buried her bows deep in foam. Just ahead of us I saw a long, dusky bulk lift out of the sea and develop into the familiar form we dreaded. And almost at the same instant something opened up and a shot shrilled across the interval and thumped into us near the stem.
“The Council Bluffs was an eleven-knot packet,” Jones said over his shoulder. “We're making twenty-one. Watch the fellow!”
That single shot was all the submarine fired, I fancy her commander miscalculated our distance and speed,—a very easy matter from his position dead ahead,—and now he saw he must submerge or be run down. The great bulk settled swiftly in foam and vanished. We thundered over the spot thirty seconds afterward. And while we slashed that field of foam, I confess my heart stopped beating. What if we struck the submarine and exploded her cargo of torpedoes? But nothing happened, and Captain Jones relinquished the wheel to the quartermaster and asked in a matter-of-fact voice what damage the shot had done. It appeared that it had struck into a cable-locker and done little hurt. But it shortly appeared that a damage far deeper than any that shot or shell could inflict had been done. What our commander and we justly looked upon as a feat did not appear in that light to our passengers. Some of them had witnessed the whole affair, and it was public property that the Cerulean, when she was quite safe, had been again imperiled by her captain in an effort to ram and destroy the submarine.
“Right is right,” announced the spokesman for the cabin and luck may people. “This steamship is neither a cruiser nor a cargo-boat. She carries both passengers and mails. Your gun is only for defense, and when you try to use this vessel as a mere instrument of destruction, you're making it needful for us to take measures.”
“What measures?” demanded Jones languidly. He had perfectly the air of being intensely bored.
“We'll take this steamship over and send by wireless for a cruiser or destroyer to help us in,” said the spokesman a little angrily. “You don't seem to realize—”
“I realize one thing,” said Slack-Lime Jones, lifting his dull eyes to the speaker, “that is, your costly mistake.” He let his glance run around on the many faces turned toward him, and, I think, caught the general murmur of those deluded passengers. I was on the upper bridge, looking down, and it struck me that this assemblage meant business; they had been scared to death, and like all human beings, they bitterly resented it. Moreover I felt that Captain Jones was taking the affair too easily. Didn't he understand the seriousness of the moment—that this was mutiny? I pricked up my ears when he said those few words: “your costly mistake.” What did he mean? I leaned over, filled with curiosity, just in time to see the Cerulean's commander take a revolver from his pocket, level it at the man's head and fire.
I was still staring down when Tommy's big fingers squeezed my arm, and his oddly tense voice said in my ear: “By gad, they've got us!”
Quick as winking I followed his slight movement and saw overside a gleam in the water like the feather of a pen. Ha! I thought, and turned once more to look down on the lower bridge-deck. To this hour I can call up the picture as it stood before me—Jones facing the swaying crowd across the huddle of a dead body, the bobbing heads of those in the rear ranks trying to see exactly what had happened; beyond them, at a distance, were the straight figures of the gun-crew.
THE torpedo got home right abreast the bridge, and when the racket subsided and I found myself still alive, it took but a glance to show me that the Cerulean was mortally injured. She was already careening to starboard as the sea poured into the huge gap in her steel side. But quick as my glances had been, and swift as my decision, Captain Jones' had anticipated me. To this day I'm unable to guess how he escaped the first force of the explosion, for the deck where he had stood was gone. But the first words I heard were his, giving his orders coolly; and I am certain that within a minute of actual time, the steamer's boats were being filled without disorder.
A single boat on the port side got away before the tilt of the sinking vessel prevented all effort there. The starboard boats were plenty to hold our complement, and I instinctively stayed with Tommy Edwards on the bridge while the other officers and the crew did their best to keep order and hasten matters. So interested was I in the scene that I was startled to hear Slack-Lime Jones' voice in my ears:
“Nobody will be lost, I think,” he said quietly, “except those killed by the explosion. It was too bad that fellow insisted on making his speech just at that time. It was more costly than I thought.—Mr. Edwards, you and your friend here had better get in that boat. Plenty of room!”
The deck was now at an angle of about forty degrees sideways, and the stern was steadily rising as the forepart of the ship was flooded. It was plain that we had but a moment more.
“Come along, sir!” cried Tommy.
Jones smiled on us paternally. “I've done all the explaining I'm ever going to do,” he remarked loudly and clearly. “Off with you, boys!”
Tommy and I scrambled up the deck as best we could, only to find that it was slipping down into the sea faster than we could climb. The last boat had been ticklishly lowered and was now riding a dozen fathoms off. We halted breathlessly.
THE Cerulean was a big ship, and she lifted her stern into the air, I was seized with awe. It was just as though one should cling to a corner grille on the Woolworth Building and look and see its topmost pinnacle swaying downward, and the whole profound depths, brushing you murmuringly as it flowed downward.
Actually, I fancy, I experienced this prodigious sensation for only a couple seconds. Then Tommy swung himself into the netting of the boat-deck rail and began to climb up it toward a davit that now poked straight out like a tiny finger. He gained it, and with a gesture at once hurried and comic, whipped the idle falls to me. I caught on and instantly swum outboard. I glanced up and saw Tommy staring down at me, and beyond his white face the tremendous and inexorable mass of the steamship's after-body turning over with a movement slow and irresistible. Within the laden cavern of the Cerulean's hull I heard a tremendous sighing, a long, tremulous exhalation. Without warning, instantaneously, the ropes I held to came slack, and a tossing surge picked me up and drew me away,
As I cleared my eyes, I saw Tommy still clinging to his perch but approaching me with miraculous swiftness as the ship sank headlong and drew the towering stern after it. Before I could even cry out, Tommy passed me, vanished into the gray, misty gulf. The terrific bulk of a propeller stood above me like an asterisk in my sky, turned dizzily as it was drawn past me and entered the same abyss with a sullen drumlike sound.
Tommy told me afterward that it was forty minutes before I was picked up by a boat from the destroyer that rushed to our aid. The body of Slack-Lime Jones had been found floating near by,
“I saw you go down,” I replied.
“I was thinking about Slack-Lime Jones and forgot to let go,” he explained sheepishly, and carefully changed the position of his broken leg. Then he defied the surgeon's orders and swung himself upright on the deck and leaned against the rail of the bunk.
“You fool!” I expostulated painfully,
Tommy didn't hear me. He balanced himself and stared upward with luminous eyes. Overhead was the tramp of heavy feet, the thud of something set down, a low-toned order. Then rang out the crisp voice of an officer, imperious and plangent:
“I am the Resurrection and the Life—”
They were recommitting the body of Slack-Lime Jones to the deep.
BACK here in my flat in New York I have tried to piece together the history of Captain Jones, to clear up the mystery of his ill-successful life and bear my part, as he had put it, of “giving the news about us to the folks on the Coast.” But I can fix on no climax. To the very end he seems to have been the mere sport of fortune and misfortune. He didn't even save the Cerulean. It seems to me that those who knew him—particularly that woman whom he never mentioned—will find little in this narrative to alter their opinion of him. I can't see Tommy Edwards' point at all. Tommy comes up once in a while and stares at me over the breakfast-table and shakes his head at my dullness.
“Hang it all, man,” he protests sulkily, “he had his resurrection. Didn't you hear the commander of that overworked destroyer take ten minutes off and read the Service over him? He wasn't Slack-Lime Jones any longer. He was Captain Jones, who saved his passengers and went down with his ship.”
Though I still hear in dreams at midnight the tramp of mysterious feet overhead, an inarticulate order, and wait sweating for the clear imperious voice that never sounds the words which Tommy thinks made all clear, I am unable to forget that the last thing Jones told me was: “I've done all the explaining I'm ever going to do.”
Consequently I am unable to say that he justified himself against the aspersions of those who knew him most intimately.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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