The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-10-14

went out from Atlantic and Gulf
ports onto the highways of the sea
disappeared. Cargo-laden, manned and
captained, seven ships, little integers
in the great, ordered sum of the
worlds work went on their courses Of
commerce, drew away from the last
touch with the world-vanished
Allegheny, Avon, Port Melbourne
names of dingy tramps common labor
ers of the sea, out of memory ere this
of everybody save the men who owned
them and, perchance, some marine IN
surance-writer who recalls the risks
he had to pay. Seven ships sail with
in ten days out upon the mapped high
ways of the sea; the sea opens under
them and down they drop into the
subcellars Of ocean. Not a whisper Of
these little tragedies from the placid
sea; not word spelled in drifting
Iwreckage or wallowing derelict co mes
back to the world behind shore lines
to hint at the manner of the oblitera-
ton. 1t is as if seven ships had ven
tured beyond the Pillars of Hercules
of fiat world and had dropped of
the edge in a llunge to the neither
stars.
A bark scudding up through the
trade tracks Of the Pacific, away ont
in the water wilderness between Vel
Iparaiso and Honolulu, sighted hull
down the masts of steamer. The
captain of the bark altered his course
by few points for the sole reason Of
the lonesomeness of the mid-Pacific
that was on him; besides, the trade
tracks are not place for steamers,
and he was curious. The bark drew
NEARER the steamer. AS the latter
lifted out of the horizon, the shape of
mystery rode its smokeless funnel
and the masts that waved from side to
side in the rocking of the seas
trough. At half-mile's distance the
bark lay to and boat went out from
her to the side of the steamer.
The men from the bark clambered
up sea ladder to a deck deserted.
Not living soul aboard Scarcely
human were the shapes of eleven dead
men, Japanese, that were found hud-
died in hunks or sprawled where death
Z took them. Two of the steamers
boats were gone; there were signs Of
desperate haste in departure where
water-butts and tackle lay by the base
of the outswung davits. The ship was
sound, engines and hull. From the few
papers written in English which were
found scattered in the captains cabin
the ships name appeared to be the
Yaye Maru, out of Hakodate, destina-
ton in undecipherable ideographs.
The captain of the bank had no
mind to salye this ship of death. The
eleven corpses he did not even at.
tempt to bury, for there was the
aspect of a plague about them. He
took the reckonings of the dereict
and pursued his voyage to Honolulu
with not even so much as the identi-
flying papers, plague-bearing per-
chance, in his possession. At Homo
lulu verifcation of the clearance of
the Yaye Maru, out of Hakodate for
| lquique, was had. A ship went out to
salve her; other ships bound south
and east kept sharp lookout for the
ship of the dead men. Not from that
time six years ago to the present has
the Yaye Maru been sighted The
tides and the winds of ocean made
sport of those of her pest-ridden crew
that put off under the goad of terror
in the two boats, as they made sport
of the floating death-house boarded by
men of the Honolulu-bound bark.
Again the careless sea, which the
worlds workers believe they have
harnessed, bestirs itself to blot out a
paltry ship and to seal with mystery
the fate of the puny men who rode
her
When the Prayer for Those at
Sea- was written into the liturgy of
the church, people had more use for it
than they have today. The devout
who repeated that fresh prayer feared
the sea and shrank before its mystery.
They believed they rode the sea
through sufferance, not as masters.
Then no sure pathways plotted to the
very mile spanned the oceans, pre-.
scribed and circumscribed by weekly
bulletins of photographic offices,
charts of iceberg limits, forecasts OF
fog areas. No tremendous ships, tuned
$ to the veriest fraction of resistance to
disaster, made thousand-mile iumus
from channel to channel so surely
that variations of minutes in theh
schedules were matters of comment