The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-08-20

Wnat do you make or her, MT. Mat son?
 steadying the glass on the main shrouds. l looked long and earnestly.
 She was a small, white painted yacht of about three tons, smack-rigged. Her sails, loosed by the run, trailed in the water alongside The gaff lay where 1t had fallen across the tiny cockpit, and the break of the half-deck forward was half hidden under the folds of the main sail. A raffle of cordage lay about her deck or sagged In the water as she rolled to the heave of the sea.
 The white wheeling flock of gannets and moly-hawks that, circling around her. every now and again, darting almost under the half-deck to flutter back, spoke plain to the sailor of something of the tragic hidden within the dark.
 Taking the wheel from the steersman. the skipper laid the schooner close on the wind, and we forged slowly nearer. The crew, lining the rail- gazed over the lessening distance in pained expect ancy. All felt that here hidden in that little white-painted hull, would be found all of explanations vouchsafed to mortals of the mystery of the lost island
 Stepping into the fore-chains, 1 pointed directions
 "Luff-luff all you can!' I cried. and as we drew alongside, threw a graphnel i'CO' VI he bowsprit and the little craft. swing ing gently to our beam, rode with us as we went
 By the help of a stay dropped aboard and cleared the raffle of sails and cord age from her deck A three-inch layer of white ash, hardened by sun and salt wa ter, cracked under foot as I stepped. In places the deck timbers were charred, burnt as with the dropping of hot coals. Tho the cock nit showed signes of a desperate struggle The paint was clipped from the coam- ings in many places and the floor grat- ing filtered with scraps of torn cloth ing and splashed with blood. The broken tiller of the boat, it's socket end caked with hair and dried blood, lay on the grating.
 In the locker under the counter astern was no scrap of provisions, no vestige of any recently contained there. The water though empty for week.
 It was dark under the half deck, and for half minute 1 failed to make out the details of the huddled heap that lay there.
 AS my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw sight that brought a cry to my lips and a great lump in my throat Half lying on the deck, half reclining against the beams, was the body of a white woman. The corpse of little child lay on the dead breast. One arm was flung around it.' The other en- circled the neck of a man, dead also, whose head lay across the womans lap the fingers of her hand were entwined in his hair In the mans shoulder was the deep gash of a knife wound, and a red stain ran from the group across the white deck planklng.
 At my cry the captain joined me, and together we made further examination. Both the man and the woman were young, the latter showing signs of con- siderable beauty. The child may have been a year old. The woman's feet were bare cut and bruised as though with running over rocks and sharp shells The child's body was in Its nightrobe; those of the man and woman in torn night-clothing-mu evidence of terror and desperate haste in getting aboard the boat The man had apparently died some 24 hours earlier than the others, from his wound-the woman and child later, of thirst, hunger and sheer mis- cry. There was not note, not a scrap of paper to tell aught of the horror that had gone before.
 Reverently we closed the poor staring eyes, dead eyes that met our own with sort of dumb questioning, and reclimb- ing the schooner's rail, regained our own craft. It only to hide the faces of the dead as quickly as possible
 The matches were battened down over the cockpit of the little craft, and, stow ing a plank in her side below the water line, we watched her sink, while Captain Warner read the service for the burial of the dead at sea.
 When the water tipped the hatch-coam- ings the yacht heeled over. and disap- peared in a little swirl. carried with her the dead and their secret.
 That night as I stood al the wheel the captain came to me
 ''I've been figuring this thing out he said, and I think I've got the hang of it. In the thick O the trouble, when the crumbled under their feet. they made for the yacht; though how they managed to get aboa rd in the boil of sea that must ha bin running on the coast beats me quite. Reach her they did; and Jap or maybe two, along with 'em'
 There was pause. whilst the gray eyes looked hard into mine
 Thirst an hunger an the salt Of lonely sea are cruel paymasters, MT. Watson Men go mad He fought with the slant-eyed devils for the woman an the child Afterwards, with that stab in the shoulder he crawled under the half-deck to die with his wife and baby.
 Reaching Honolulu, we found that with the disappearance of Laysan and It's sugar plantations our charter ended. Accordingly, Captain Warner headed the Olsen south a bout, and we ran for Pago- Pago.