The patrol boats had been buffeting their way all night against wind and weather, and before daybreak the long line had lost its order. It was broken up now into little wandering loops and sections, busily comparing notes by Morse flashes and wireless. Last evening theMorning Glory, a converted yacht of American ownership, had been working with forty British trawlers; and her owner, Matthew Hudson, who had obtained permission to go out with her on this trip, had watched with admiration the way in which they strung themselves over twenty miles of confused sea, keeping their exact distances till nightfall. This morning, as he lurched in gleaming oilskins up and down the monkey house—irreverent name for his canvas-screened bridge—he could see only three of his companions—theDusty Miller, theChristmas Dayand theBetsey Barton.
They were all having a lively time. They swooped like herring gulls into the broad troughs of the swell, where the black water looked like liquid marble with white veins of foam in it. Morning-colored rainbows dripped from their bows as they rose again through the green sunlit crests. But theMorning Glorywas the brightest and the liveliest of them all. The seas had been washing her decks all night. Little pools of color shone in the wet, crumpled oilskins of the crew, and the tarpaulin that covered the gun in her bow gleamed like a cloak dropped there by the Angel of the Dawn.
When like the morning mist in early dayRose from the foam the daughter of the sea——
When like the morning mist in early dayRose from the foam the daughter of the sea——
Matthew Hudson quoted to himself. He was full of poetry this morning while he waited for his breakfast; and the radiant aspect of the weapon in the bow reminded him of something else—if the smell of the frying bacon would not blow his way and distract his mind—something about "celestial armories." Was it Tennyson or Milton who had written it? There was a passage about guns in "Paradise Lost." He must look it up.
Like many Americans, Matthew Hudson was quicker to perceive the true romance of the Old Country than many of its own inhabitants. He had been particularly interested in the names of the British trawlers. "It's like seeing Shakespeare's Sonnets or Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry going out to fight," he had written to his son, who had just left Princeton to join the Mosquito Fleet; and the youngster had replied with a sonnet of his own.
Matthew Hudson had carried it about with him and read it to English statesmen, greatly to their embarrassment—most of them looked as if they were receiving a proposal of marriage—and he had found a huge secret joy in their embarrassment, which, as he said, "tickled him to death." But he murmured the verses to himself now, with paternal pride, thinking that the boy had really gone to the heart of the matter:
Out of Old England's inmost heart they go,A little fleet of ships, whose every name—Daffodil, Sea Lark, Rose, and Surf, and Snow—Burns in this blackness like an altar flame.Out of her past they sail, three thousand strong—The people's fleet, that never knew its worth;And every name is a broken phrase of songTo some remembered loveliness on earth.There's Barbara Cowie, Comely Bank and May,Christened at home, in worlds of dawn and dew.There's Ruth, and Kindly Light, and Robin Gray,With Mizpah. May that simple prayer come true!Out of Old England's inmost heart they sail,A fleet of memories that can never fail.
Out of Old England's inmost heart they go,A little fleet of ships, whose every name—Daffodil, Sea Lark, Rose, and Surf, and Snow—Burns in this blackness like an altar flame.
Out of her past they sail, three thousand strong—The people's fleet, that never knew its worth;And every name is a broken phrase of songTo some remembered loveliness on earth.
There's Barbara Cowie, Comely Bank and May,Christened at home, in worlds of dawn and dew.There's Ruth, and Kindly Light, and Robin Gray,With Mizpah. May that simple prayer come true!
Out of Old England's inmost heart they sail,A fleet of memories that can never fail.
At this moment theMorning Gloryran into a bank of white mist, which left him nothing to see from the bridge. The engines were slowed down and he decided that it was time for breakfast.
The cabin where he breakfasted with the skipper was very little changed, except that it seemed by contrast a little more palatial than in peace time. There had been many changes on the exterior of the ship. Her white and gold had been washed over with service gray, and many beautiful fittings had been removed to make way for grimmer work. But within there were still some corners of the yacht that shone like gems in a setting of lead.
TheMorning Gloryhad been a very beautiful boat. She had been built for summer cruising among the pine-clad islands off the coast of Maine, or to carry her master down to the palms of his own little island off the coast of Florida, where he basked for a month or so among the ripening oranges, the semitropical blossoms and the cardinal birds, while Buffalo cleared the worst of the snow from her streets. For Matthew Hudson was a man of many millions, which he had made in almost the only country where millions can be made honestly and directly out of its enormous natural resources.
His own method had been a very simple one, though it required great organizing ability and a keen eye and brain at the outset. All he had done was to harness a river at the right place and make it drive a light-and-power plant. But he had done it on a scale that enabled him, from this one central station, to drive all the electric trolleys and light all the lamps in more than a hundred cities. He could supply all the light and all the power they wanted to cities a hundred miles away from his plant, and he talked of sending it three hundred miles farther.
Now that the system was established, it worked as easily as the river flowed; and his power house was a compact little miracle of efficiency. All that the casual visitor could see was a long, quiet room, in which it seemed that a dozen clocks were slumbrously ticking. These were the indicators, from the dials of which the amount of power distributed over a district as big as England could be read by the two leisurely men on duty. In the meantime, night and day, the river poured power of another kind into the treasury of Matthew Hudson.
But his life was as unlike that of the millionaires of fiction as could be imagined. It reminded one of the room with the slumbrous clocks.
He was, indeed, as his own men described it, preeminently the "man behind the gun." When theMorning Gloryhad been accepted by the naval authorities he had obtained permission to equip her for her own work in European waters at his own cost, and to make certain experiments in the equipment.
The Admiralty had not looked with favor on some of his ideas, which were by no means suitable for general use in the patrol fleet. But Matthew Hudson had too many weapons at work against Germany for them to deny him a sentimental pleasure in his own yacht. He seemed to have some particular purpose of his own in carrying out his ideas; and so it came about that theMorning Glorywas regarded among her companions as a mystery-ship.
The two men breakfasted in silence. They were both drowsy, for there had been a U-boat alarm during the night, which had kept them very much awake; but Hudson was roused from his reverie over the second rasher by a loud report, followed by a confused shouting above and the stoppage of the engines.
"That's not a submarine!" said the skipper. "What the devil is it?" And the two men rushed on deck.
The mist had lifted a little; and, looming out of it, a few hundred yards away, there was something that looked, at first glance, like a great gray reef. For a fraction of a moment Hudson thought they had run into Heligoland in the mist. At the second glance he knew that the gray, mist-wreathed monster before him was an armored ship, and the skipper enlightened him further by saying, in a matter-of-fact voice:
"That settles it—enemy cruiser! We're stopped, broadside on. They've got a couple of guns trained on us and they're sending a boat. What's the next move?"
Matthew Hudson's face was a curious study at this moment. It suggested a leopard endowed with a sense of humor. His mouth twitched at the corners and his amazingly clear eyes were lit with an almost boyish jubilation. It was a somewhat fierce jubilation; but it undoubtedly twinkled with the humor of the New World. Then he asked the skipper a mysterious question:
"Is it impossible?"
"Impossible! We're in the wrong position; and if we try to get right they'll blow us to bits. Besides, they'll be aboard in half a minute. We're drifting a little in the right direction; but it will be too late. They'll search the ship."
"How long will it take us to drift into the right position?"
"If we go on like this, about four minutes. But it will be all over by then."
"Look here, Davis; I'll try and detain them on deck. You know Americans have a reputation for oratory. You'd better go through my room. And—look here—I'll be the skipper for the time being. I'm afraid they'll want to take Matthew Hudson prisoner; so I'll be the kind of American they'll recognize—Commander Jefferson B. Thrash, out of the best British fiction. You don't happen to have a lasso in your pocket, do you? I lent mine to ex-President Eliot of Harvard, and he hasn't returned it. Tell the men there. That's right! I don't want to be playing the fool in Ruhleben for the next three years."
A few moments later, a step at a time, Davis disappeared into Hudson's cabin, which lay in the fore part of the ship. Two other men prepared to slip after him by lounging casually in the companionway, while the men in front moved a little closer to screen them.
They seized their chance as the German boat stopped, twenty yards away from theMorning Glory, and the officer in command announced through a megaphone, in very good English, that he was in a great hurry. They were friends, he said; and there was no need for alarm, so long as theMorning Glorycarried out all instructions. All they wanted was the confidential chart of the British mine fields, which theMorning Glory, of course, possessed, and all other confidential papers of a similar kind. If theMorning Glorydid not carry out his instructions in every detail the guns of the cruiser would sink her. He was now coming aboard to secure the papers.
"I guess that's all right, captain!" bawled Matthew Hudson in an entirely new voice and the accent that Europe accepts as American, with about as much reason as America would have for accepting the Lancashire, Yorkshire and Glasgow dialects, all rolled into one, as English.
The quiet member of the Century Club had disappeared, and the golden, remote Wild Westerner, almost unknown in America itself, had risen. In half a minute more the German officer and half a dozen armed sailors were standing on the deck of theMorning Glory.
"So you see England does not completely rule the waves," was the opening remark of the officer, who had not yet received the full benefit of Hudson's adopted accent.
"Been finding it stormy in the canal, cap?" drawled Hudson. "Don't blame it on me, anyway. I'm a good Amurrican—Jefferson B. Thrash, of Buffalo."
"Is this an American ship? I much regret to find an American ship fighting her best friends."
"Well, cap, I confess I haven't much use for the British, myself; not since their press talked about my picture-postcard smile—an ill-considered phrase, by which they unconsciously meant that, among the effete aristocracies of Europe, they were not used to seeing good teeth. They lack humor, sir. To regard good teeth as abnormal shows a lack of humor on the part of the British press.
"However, as George Bernard Shaw says, President Wilson has put it up to the German people in this way: 'Become a republic and we'll let up on you. Go on Kaisering and we'll smash you!'"
"I am in a great hurry," the German officer replied. "I must ask you at once for your confidential papers."
"That's all right, admiral!" said Hudson. "I've sent a man down below to get them out of my steamer trunk. They'll be here right away."
He looked reflectively at the guns of the destroyer and added ingratiatingly:
"Of course I disapprove of George Bernard Shaw's vulgarizing the language of diplomacy in that way. I would rather interpret President Wilson's message as saying to the German people, in courteous phrase: 'Emerge from twelfth-century despotism into twentieth-century democracy. Send the imperial liar who misrules you to join Nick Romanoff on his ranch. Give the furniture-stealing Crown Prince a long term in any Sing Sing you like to choose; and we will again buy dyestuffs and toys of you, and sell you our beans and bacon.'"
"Are you aware that you endanger your life by this language? Do you see those guns?"
Matthew Hudson looked at the guns and spat over the side of the ship meditatively. Then he looked the questioner squarely in the eye. He had taken the measure of his man and he only needed three and a half minutes more. Any question that could be raised was clear gain; and the cruiser would probably not use her guns while members of the German crew were aboard theMorning Glory.
"Yes," he said; "and you'd better not use your guns till you get those confidential papers, for there's not a chance that you'll find them without my help. They're worth having, and I've no objection to handing them over, though I don't lay much store by your promise not to shoot afterward. When you've got them, how am I to know that you won't shoot, anyway, and—what's the latest language of your diplomacy?—'leave no traces'? By cripes, there's no mushy sentiment about your officials! No, sir! Leave no traces!—and they said it about neutrals, remember! Leave no traces! That's virile! That's red-blooded stuff! The effete humanitarianism of our democracy, sir, would call that murder. In England they would call it bloody murder! I don't agree. I think that war is war. Of course it's awkward for non-combatants—"
"With regard to the crews, it has been announced in Germany that they would be saved and kept prisoners in the submarines. Your man is taking too long to find your papers. I can allow you only one minute more."
"He'll be right back, captain, with all the confidential goods you want. But, say, between one sailorman and another, that story about planning to hide crews and passengers aboard the submarines must have been meant for our Middle West. Last time I was on a submarine I had to sleep behind the cookstove; and then the commander had to sit up all night. It's the right stuff for the prairies, though. Ever hear of our senator, cap, who wanted to know why the women and kids on theLusitaniaweren't put into the water-tight compartments? They cussed the Cunard Company from hell to breakfast out Kalamazoo way for that scandalous oversight. Wonder what's keeping that son of a gun!"
At this moment the son of a gun announced from the companionway that he was unable to find the confidential papers.
"I can wait no longer. The ship must be searched by my own men," said the German peremptorily. "Are the papers in your cabin?"
"Sure! But I can save you a lot of time, captain. I'll lead you right to them."
TheMorning Gloryhad drifted round till her nose was now pointing towards that of the cruiser. In a minute or two more she would be pointing directly amidships if the drifting continued. Matthew Hudson took a long, affectionate look at the guns and the guns' crews that kept watch over his behavior from the gray monster ahead; then he led the way below to his cabin.
The Hamburg-Amerika Line had many a less imposing room than this, the only part of the yacht that retained all its old aspect. It ran the whole breadth of the ship and had two portholes on each side. There was a brass bedstead, with a telephone beside it and an electric reading lamp. There were half a dozen other electric bulbs overhead.
"I don't sleep very well, cap; so I decided to keep this bit of sinful splendor for my own use. Bathroom, you see." He opened a tiny door near the bed and showed the compact room, with its white bath-tub let into the floor. This was too much for the German officer.
"Where do you keep your confidential papers?" he bellowed, leveling a revolver at the maddeningly complacent American, while three of his men closed up behind him, ready for action.
"Better not shoot, admiral, for you won't find them without my help; and I'm going to hand you the goods in half a minute. I can't quite remember where I put them. There's some confidential stuff in here, I think."
He unlocked a drawer and pulled out a bundle of papers. A small white object dropped from the bundle and lay on the floor between him and the German. It was a baby's shoe. Hudson nodded at it as he looked through the papers.
"Got any kids, cap? That came from Queenstown. Ah, this looks like your chart. No. Came from Queenstown, I say. It was a little girl belonging to a friend of mine in the City of Brotherly Love. Lots of 'em on theLusitania, you know. We collect souvenirs in America, and I asked him for this as a keepsake when I came on this gunning expedition. He kept the other for himself. She was a pretty little thing. Only six! Used to call me Uncle Jack."
He stole a look through the porthole and drew another document from the drawer.
"Ah! Now I remember. Here's the stuff you want—some of it, anyhow. Tied round with yaller ribbon. Take it, cap. I wish I hadn't seen that little shoe; but you've got the drop on me this time and I suppose it's my duty to save the lives of the men. There's a good bit of information there about the mine fields."
The German hurriedly examined the papers, while Hudson hummed to himself as he stared through the porthole:
Around her little neck she wore a yaller ribbon;She wore it in December and the merry month of May.And when, oh, when they asked her why in hell she wore it,She said she loved a sailor, a sailor, a sailor;But he was wrecked and drownded in Mississippi Bay.
Around her little neck she wore a yaller ribbon;She wore it in December and the merry month of May.And when, oh, when they asked her why in hell she wore it,She said she loved a sailor, a sailor, a sailor;But he was wrecked and drownded in Mississippi Bay.
"This is very good," said the German, "and very useful. I think we shall not require more of you; though it will be necessary to destroy your ship and make you prisoners."
"Why, certainly! I didn't suppose you could keep your contract in war-time. You can't leave traces of a deal like this. But while you're about it, you may as well have all the confidential stuff."
"Good! Good!" said the German, strutting toward him. "So there's more to come! I am glad you see the advantage in being too proud to fight, my friend, eh?"
Matthew Hudson's eye twinkled. His slouch began to slip away from him like a loose coat, leaving once more the quiet upstanding member of the Century Club.
"Of course," he said, "you would make that mistake. The British made it. They forgot that it was said about Mexico, at a time when you wanted us to be kept busy down there. There are times, also, when for diplomatic reasons it is necessary to talk." He had resumed his natural voice. "When you are getting ready, for instance. This is where we keep the real stuff."
He crossed the cabin; and the German watched him closely with a puzzled expression, covering him with his revolver.
"No treachery!" he said. "What does this mean? You are not the man you were pretending to be."
Hudson laughed, and tossed him a little scrap of bunting, which he had been holding crumpled up in his hand.
"Ever seen that flag before?" he said.
The German stared at it, his eyes growing round with amazement.
"The Kaiser's flag has flown on this yacht at the Kiel Regatta many a time," said Hudson. "His Majesty used to come and lunch with me. I don't advise you to shoot me. He might remember some of my cigars. He gave me that flag himself. Of course I shan't use it again—not till it's been sprinkled with holy water. But I thought you might like a brief exhibition of shirt-sleeve navalism, as I suppose you'd call it.
"Most Europeans like us to live up to their ideas of us. The British do. Ever hear of Senator Martin? Whenever he's in London and goes to see his friends in the House of Commons, he wears a sombrero and a red cowboy shirt. He says they expect it and like it. He wouldn't care to do it in New York. As a fact, you know, we invented the electric telegraph and the submarine, and a lot of little things that you fellows have been stealing from us. Do you hear that?"
There were two sharp clicks in the bows, followed by a faint sound like the whirring of an electric fan under water; and Hudson pulled open the door that led into the fore part of the ship.
"Gott! Gott!" cried the German, and his men echoed it inarticulately; for there, in the semidarkness of the bows of theMorning Glory, they saw the dim shapes of seamen crouching beside two gleaming torpedo tubes. The torpedoes had just been discharged.
"You're too late to save your ship," said Matthew Hudson. "If you want to save your own skins you'd better keep still and listen for a moment."
Then came a concussion that rocked theMorning Glorylike a child's cradle and sent her German visitors lurching and sprawling round the brass bedstead. When they recovered they found a dozen revolvers gleaming in front of their noses.
"Before we say anything more about this," said Hudson, "let's go on deck and look.
"Do you mind giving me that little shoe at your feet there?"
The officer turned a shade whiter than the shoe.
Then, stooping, he picked it up and handed it to Hudson, who thrust it into his breast pocket.
"Thank you!" he said. "Now if you will all leave your guns on this bed we'll go on deck and see the traces."
When they reached the deck there was something that looked like an enormous drowning cockroach trying to crawl out of the water four hundred yards away. Round it there seemed to be a mass of drowning flies.
"It's not a pleasant sight, is it?" said Hudson. "But it's good to know they were all fighting men, ready to kill or be killed. No women and children among them! TheLusitaniamust have looked much worse."
"My brother is on board! Are you not trying to save them?" gasped the officer.
Hudson took out the little shoe again and looked at it. Then he turned to the German boat's crew, where they huddled, sick with fear, amidships.
"Take your boat and pick up as many as you can," he said.
"It is not safe—not till she sinks," a guttural voice replied.
Almost on the word the cruiser went down with a rush. The sleek waters and the white mists closed above her, while theMorning Gloryrocked again like a child's cradle.
"That is true," said Matthew Hudson to the shivering figure beside him. "And we've got as many as we can handle on the ship. If we took more of you aboard, according to the laws laid down in your text-books, you'd cut our throats and call us idiotic Yankees for trusting you.
"Please don't weep. We sent out a call a minute ago for theBetsey Bartonand theDusty Millerand theChristmas Day. I'm not an effete humanitarian myself; but the men on these trawlers aren't bad sorts. I hope they'll pick up your brother."
On a stormy winter's night three skippers—averaging three score years and five—were discussing the news, around a roaring fire, in the parlor of the White Horse Inn. Five years ago they had retired, each on a snug nest-egg. They were looking forward to a mellow old age in port and a long succession of evenings at the White Horse, where they gathered to debate the politics of their district. The war had given them new topics; but Captain John Kendrick—who had become a parish councilor and sometimes carried bulky blue documents in his breast-pocket, displaying the edges with careful pride—still kept the local pot a-boiling. He was mainly successful on Saturday nights, when theGazette, their weekly newspaper, appeared. It was edited by a Scot named Macpherson, who had learned his job on theArbroath Free Press.
"Macpherson will never be on the council now," said Captain Kendrick. "There's a rumor that he's a freethinker. He says that Christianity has been proved a failure by the war."
"Well, these chaps of ours now," said Captain Davidson, "out at sea on a night like this, trying to kill Germans. It's necessary, I know, because the Germans would kill our own folks if we gave 'em a chance. But don't it prove that there's no use for Christianity? In modern civilization, I mean."
"Macpherson's no freethinker," said Captain Morgan, who was a friend of the editor, and inclined on the strength of it to occupy the intellectual chair at the White Horse. "Macpherson says we'll have to try again after the war, or it will be blood and iron all round."
"He's upset by the war," said Captain Davidson, "and he's taken to writing poytry in his paper. He'd best be careful or he'll lose his circulation."
"Ah!" said Kendrick. "That's what 'ull finish him for the council. What we want is practical men. Poytry would destroy any man's reputation. There was a great deal of talk caused by his last one, about our trawler chaps. 'Fishers of Men,' he called it; and I'm not sure that it wouldn't be considered blasphemious by a good many."
Captain Morgan shook his head. "Every Sunday evening," he said, "my missus asks me to read her Macpherson's pome in theGazette, and I've come to enjoy them myself. Now, what does he say in 'Fishers of Men'?"
"Read it," said Kendrick, picking theGazettefrom the litter of newspapers on the table and handing it to Morgan. "If you know how to read poytry, read it aloud, the way you do to your missus. I can't make head or tail of poytry myself; but it looks blasphemious to me."
Captain Morgan wiped his big spectacles while the other two settled themselves to listen critically. Then he began in his best Sunday voice, very slowly, but by no means unimpressively:
Long, long ago He said,He who could wake the dead,And walk upon the sea—"Come, follow Me."Leave your brown nets and bringOnly your hearts to sing,Only your souls to pray,Rise, come away."Shake out your spirit-sails,And brave those wilder gales,And I will make you thenFishers of men."Was this, then, what He meant?Was this His high intent,After two thousand yearsOf blood and tears?God help us, if we fightFor right and not for might.God help us if we seekTo shield the weak.Then, though His heaven be farFrom this blind welter of war,He'll bless us on the seaFrom Calvary.
Long, long ago He said,He who could wake the dead,And walk upon the sea—"Come, follow Me.
"Leave your brown nets and bringOnly your hearts to sing,Only your souls to pray,Rise, come away.
"Shake out your spirit-sails,And brave those wilder gales,And I will make you thenFishers of men."
Was this, then, what He meant?Was this His high intent,After two thousand yearsOf blood and tears?
God help us, if we fightFor right and not for might.God help us if we seekTo shield the weak.
Then, though His heaven be farFrom this blind welter of war,He'll bless us on the seaFrom Calvary.
"It seems to rhyme all right," said Kendrick. "It's not so bad for Macpherson."
"Have you heard," said Davidson reflectively, "they're wanting more trawler skippers down at the base?"
"I've been fifty years, man and boy, at sea," said Captain Morgan; "that's half a century, mind you."
"Ah, it's hard on the women, too," said Davidson. "We're never sure what boats have been lost till we see the women crying. I don't know how they get the men to do it."
Captain John Kendrick stabbed viciously with his forefinger at a picture in an illustrated paper.
"Here's a wicked thing now," he said. "Here's a medal they've struck in Germany to commemorate the sinking of theLusitania. Here's a photograph of both sides of it. On one side, you see the great ship sinking, loaded up with munitions which wasn't there; but not a sign of the women and children that was there. On the other side you see the passengers taking their tickets from Death in the New York booking office. Now that's a fearful thing. I can understand 'em making a mistake, but I can't understand 'em wanting to strike a medal for it."
"Not much mistake about theLusitania," growled Captain Davidson.
"No, indeed. That was only my argyment," replied the councilor. "They're a treacherous lot. It was a fearful thing to do a deed like that. My son's in the Cunard; and, man alive, he tells me it's like sinking a big London hotel. There was ladies in evening dress, and dancing in the big saloons every night; and lifts to take you from one deck to another; and shops with plate-glass windows, and smoking-rooms; and glass around the promenade deck, so that the little children could play there in bad weather, and the ladies lay in their deck-chairs and sun themselves like peaches. There wasn't a soldier aboard, and some of the women was bringing their babies to see their Canadian daddies in England for the first time. Why, man, it was like sinking a nursing home!"
"Do you suppose, Captain Kendrick, that they ever caught that submarine?" asked Captain Morgan. They were old friends, but always punctilious about their titles.
"Ah, now I'll tell you something! Hear that?"
The three old men listened. Through the gusts of wind that battered the White Horse they heard the sound of heavy floundering footsteps passing down the cobbled street, and a hoarse broken voice bellowing, with uncanny abandonment, a fragment of a hymn:
"While shepherds watched their flocks by night,All seated on the ground."
"While shepherds watched their flocks by night,All seated on the ground."
"That's poor old Jim Hunt," said Captain Morgan. He rose and drew the thick red curtains from the window to peer out into the blackness.
"Turn the lamp down," said the councilor, "or we'll be arrested under the anti-aircraft laws."
Davidson turned the lamp down and they all looked out of the window. They saw the figure of a man, black against the glimmering water of the harbor below. He walked with a curious floundering gait that might be mistaken for the effects of drink. He waved his arms over his head like a windmill and bellowed his hymn as he went, though the words were now indistinguishable from the tumult of wind and sea.
Captain Morgan drew the curtains, and the three sat down again by the fire without turning up the lamp. The firelight played on the furrowed and bronzed old faces and revealed them as worthy models for a Rembrandt.
"Poor old Jimmy Hunt!" said Captain Kendrick. "You never know how craziness is going to take people. Jimmy was a terror for women and the drink, till he was taken off theAlbatrossby that German submarine. They cracked him over the head with an iron bolt, down at the bottom of the sea, because he wouldn't answer no questions. He hasn't touched a drop since. All he does is to walk about in bad weather, singing hymns against the wind. But there's more in it than that."
Captain Kendrick lighted his pipe thoughtfully. The wind rattled the windows. Outside, the sign-board creaked and whined as it swung.
"A man like Jim Hunt doesn't go crazy," he continued, "through spending a night in a 'U' boat, and then floating about for a bit. Jimmy won't talk about it now; won't do nothing but sing that blasted hymn; but this is what he said to me when they first brought him ashore. They said he was raving mad, on account of his experiences. But that don't explain what his experienceswere. Follow me? And this is what he said. 'I been down,' he says, half singing like. 'I been down, down, in the bloody submarine that sank the Lusitania. And what's more,' he says,'I seen 'em!'
"'Seen what?' I says, humoring him like, and I gave him a cigarette. We were sitting close together in his mother's kitchen. 'Ah!' he says, calming down a little, and speaking right into my ear, as if it was a secret. 'It was Christmas Eve the time they took me down. We could hear 'em singing carols on shore; and the captain didn't like it, so he blew a whistle, and the Germans jumped to close the hatchways; and we went down, down, down, to the bottom of the sea.
"'I saw the whole ship,' he says; and he described it to me, so that I knew he wasn't raving then. 'There was only just room to stand upright,' he says, 'and overhead there was a track for the torpedo carrier. The crew slept in hammocks and berths along the wall; but there wasn't room for more than half to sleep at the same time. They took me through a little foot-hole, with an air-tight door, into a cabin.
"'The captain seemed kind of excited and showed me the medal he got for sinking theLusitania; and I asked him if the Kaiser gave it to him for a Christmas present. That was when he and another officer seemed to go mad; and the officer gave me a blow on the head with a piece of iron.
"'They say I'm crazy,' he says, 'but it was the men on the "U" boat that went crazy. I was lying where I fell, with the blood running down my face, but I was watching them,' he says, 'and I saw them start and listen like trapped weasels. At first I thought the trawlers had got 'em in a net. Then I heard a funny little tapping sound all round the hull of the submarine, like little soft hands it was, tapping, tapping, tapping.
"'The captain went white as a ghost, and shouted out something in German, like as if he was calling "Who's there?" and the mate clapped his hand over his mouth, and they both stood staring at one another.
"'Then there was a sound like a thin little voice, outside the ship, mark you, and sixty fathom deep, saying, "Christmas Eve, the Waits, sir!" The captain tore the mate's hand away and shouted again, like he was asking "Who's there!" and wild to get an answer, too. Then, very thin and clear, the little voice came a second time, "The Waits, sir. The Lusitania, ladies!" And at that the captain struck the mate in the face with his clenched fist. He had the medal in it still between his fingers, using it like a knuckle-duster. Then he called to the men like a madman, all in German, but I knew he was telling 'em to rise to the surface, by the way they were trying to obey him.
"'The submarine never budged for all that they could do; and while they were running up and down and squealing out to one another, there was a kind of low sweet sound all round the hull, like a thousand voices all singing together in the sea:
"Fear not, said he, for mighty dreadHad seized their troubled mind.Glad tidings of great joy I bringTo you and all mankind."
"Fear not, said he, for mighty dreadHad seized their troubled mind.Glad tidings of great joy I bringTo you and all mankind."
"'Then the tapping began again, but it was much louder now; and it seemed as if hundreds of drowned hands were feeling the hull and loosening bolts and pulling at hatchways; and—all at once—a trickle of water came splashing down into the cabin. The captain dropped his medal. It rolled up to my hand and I saw there was blood on it. He screamed at the men, and they pulled out their life-saving apparatus, a kind of air-tank which they strapped on their backs, with tubes to rubber masks for clapping over their mouths and noses. I watched 'em doing it, and managed to do the same. They were too busy to take any notice of me. Then they pulled a lever and tumbled out through a hole, and I followed 'em blindly. Something grabbed me when I got outside and held me for a minute. Then I saw 'em, Captain Kendrick, I saw 'em, hundreds and hundreds of 'em, in a shiny light, and sixty fathom down under the dark sea—they were all waiting there, men and women and poor little babies with hair like sunshine....
"'And the men were smiling at the Germans in a friendly way, and unstrapping the air-tanks from their backs, and saying, "Won't you come and join us? It's Christmas Eve, you know."
"'Then whatever it was that held me let me go, and I shot up and knew nothing till I found myself in Jack Simmonds's drifter, and they told me I was crazy.'"
Captain Kendrick filled his pipe. A great gust struck the old inn again and again till all the timbers trembled. The floundering step passed once more, and the hoarse voice bellowed away in the darkness against the bellowing sea:
A Savior which is Christ the Lord,And this shall be the sign.
A Savior which is Christ the Lord,And this shall be the sign.
Captain Davidson was the first to speak.
"Poor old Jim Hunt!" he said. "There's not much Christ about any of this war."
"I'm not so sure of that neither," said Captain Morgan. "Macpherson said a striking thing to me the other day. 'Seems to me,' he says, 'there's a good many nowadays that are touching the iron nails.'"
He rose and drew the curtains from the window again.
"The sea's rattling hollow," he said; "there'll be rain before morning."
"Well, I must be going," said Captain Davidson. "I want to see the naval secretary down at the base."
"About what?"
"Why, I'm not too old for a trawler, am I?"
"My missus won't like it, but I'll come with you," said Captain Morgan; and they went through the door together, lowering their heads against the wind.
"Hold on! I'm coming, too," said Captain Kendrick; and he followed them, buttoning up his coat.
We were sitting in the porch of a low white bungalow with masses of purple bougainvillea embowering its eaves. A ruby-throated humming-bird, with green wings, flickered around it. The tall palms and the sea were whispering together. Over the water, the West was beginning to fill with that Californian sunset which is the most mysterious in the world, for one is conscious that it is the fringe of what Europeans call the East, and that, looking westward across the Pacific, our faces are turned towards the dusky myriads of Asia. All along the Californian coast there is a tang of incense in the air, as befits that silent orchard of the gods where dawn and sunset meet and intermingle; and, though it is probably caused by some gardener, burning the dead leaves of the eucalyptus trees, one might well believe that one breathed the scent of the joss-sticks, wafted across the Pacific, from the land of paper lanterns.
A Japanese servant, in a white duck suit, marched like a ghostly little soldier across the lawn. The great hills behind us quietly turned to amethysts. The lights of Los Angeles ten miles away to the north began to spring out like stars in that amazing air beloved of the astronomer; and the evening star itself, over the huge slow breakers crumbling into lilac-colored foam, looked bright enough to be a companion of the city lights.
"I should like to show you the log of theEvening Star," said my visitor, who was none other than Moreton Fitch, president of the insurance company of San Francisco. "I think it may interest you as evidence that our business is not without its touches of romance. I don't mean what you mean," he added cheerfully, as I looked up smiling. "TheEvening Starwas a schooner running between San Francisco and Tahiti and various other places in the South Seas. She was insured in our company. One April, she was reported overdue. After a search had been made, she was posted as lost in the maritime exchanges. There was no clue to what had happened, and we paid the insurance money, believing that she had foundered with all hands.
"Two months later, we got word from Tahiti that theEvening Starhad been found drifting about in a dead calm, with all sails set, but not a soul aboard. Everything was in perfect order, except that the ship's cat was lying dead in the bows, baked to a bit of sea-weed by the sun. Otherwise, there wasn't the slightest trace of any trouble. The tables below were laid for a meal and there was plenty of water aboard."
"Were any of the boats missing?"
"No. She carried only three boats and all were there. When she was discovered, two of the boats were on deck as usual; and the third was towing astern. None of the men has been heard of from that day to this. The amazing part of it was not only the absence of anything that would account for the disappearance of the crew, but the clear evidence that they had been intending to stay, in the fact that the tables were laid for a meal, and then abandoned. Besides, where had they gone, and how? There are no magic carpets, even in the South Seas.
"The best brains of our Company puzzled over the mystery for a year and more; but at the end of the time nothing had turned up and we had to come out by the same door wherein we went. No theory, even, seemed to fit the case at all; and, in most mysteries, there is room for a hundred theories. There were twelve persons aboard, and we investigated the history of them all. There were three American seamen, all of the domesticated kind, with respectable old mothers in gold-rimmed spectacles at home. There were five Kanakas of the mildest type, as easy to handle as an infant school. There was a Japanese cook, who was something of an artist. He used to spend his spare time in painting things to palm off on the unsuspecting connoisseur as the work of an obscure pupil of Hokusai, which I suppose he might have been in a way. I am told he was scrupulously careful never to tell a direct lie about it.
"Then there was Harper, the mate, rather an interesting young fellow, with the wanderlust. He had been pretty well educated. I believe he had spent a year or two at one of the Californian colleges. Altogether, about the most harmless kind of a ship's family that you could pick up anywhere between the Golden Gate and the Baltic. Then there was Captain Burgess, who was the most domesticated of them all, for he had his wife with him on this voyage. They had been married only about three months. She was the widow of the former captain of theEvening Star, a fellow named Dayrell; and she had often been on the ship before. In fact, they were all old friends of the ship. Except one or two of the Kanakas, all the men had sailed on theEvening Starfor something like two years under Captain Dayrell. Burgess himself had been his mate. Dayrell had been dead only about six months; and the only criticism we ever heard against anybody aboard was made by some of Dayrell's relatives, who thought the widow might have waited more than three months before marrying the newly promoted Burgess. They suggested, of course, that there must have been something between them before Dayrell was out of the way. But I hardly believed it. In any case, it threw no light on the mystery."
"What sort of a man was Burgess?"
"Big burly fellow with a fat white face and curious little eyes, like huckleberries in a lump of dough. He was very silent and inclined to be religious. He used to read Emerson and Carlyle, quite an unusual sort of sea-captain. There was aSartor Resartusin the cabin with a lot of the queerest passages marked in pencil. What can you make of it?"
"Nothing at all, except that there was a woman aboard. What was she like?"
"She was one of our special Californian mixtures, touch of Italian, touch of Irish, touch of American, but Italian predominated, I think. She was a good deal younger than Burgess; and one of the clerks in our office who had seen her described her as a 'peach,' which, as you know, means a pretty woman, or if you prefer the description of her own lady friends, 'vurry attractive.'"
"She had the dusky Italian beauty, black hair and eyes like black diamonds, but her face was very pale, the kind of pallor that makes you think of magnolia blossoms at dusk. She was obviously fond of bright colors, tawny reds and yellows, but they suited her. If I had to give you my impression of her in a single word, I should say that she looked like a gipsy. You know the song, 'Down the World with Marna,' don't you? Well, I could imagine a romantic vagabond singing it about her. By the by, she had rather a fine voice herself. Used to sing sentimental songs to Dayrell and his friends in 'Frisco, 'Love's Old Sweet Song' and that sort of stuff. Apparently, they took it very seriously. Several of them told me that if she had been trained—well, you know the old story—every prima donna would have had to retire from business. I fancy they were all a little in love with her. The curious thing was that after Dayrell's death she gave up her singing altogether. Now, I think I have told you all the facts about the ship's company."
"Didn't you say there was a log you wanted to show me?"
"There were no ship's papers of any kind, and no log was found on the derelict; but, a week or two ago, we had a visit from the brother of the Japanese cook, who made us all feel like fifteen cents before the wisdom of the East. I have to go over and see him to-morrow afternoon. He is a fisherman, lives on the coast, not far from here. I'd like you to see what I call the log of theEvening Star. I won't say any more about it now. It isn't quite worked out yet; but it looks as if it's going to be interesting. Will you come—to-morrow afternoon? I'll call for you at a quarter after two. It won't take us long in the automobile. This is where he lives, see?"
I switched on the electric light in the porch while Fitch spread out a road map, and pointed to our destination of the morrow. The Californian night comes quickly, and the tree-toads that make it musical were chirruping and purring all around us as we walked through the palms and the red-tasseled pepper trees to his car. Somewhere among the funereal clouds and poplarlike spires of the eucalyptus, a mocking-bird began to whistle one of his many parts, and a delicious whiff of orange blossom blew on the cool night wind across a ranch of a thousand acres, mostly in fruit, but with a few trees yet in blossom, on the road to the Sunset Inn.
I watched his red rear lamp dwindling down that well-oiled road, and let theEvening Stargo with it until the morrow, for I could make little of his yarn, except that Fitch was not a man to get excited over trifles.
Promptly at the time appointed on the following afternoon, Fitch called for me; and a minute later we were gliding through orange groves along one of those broad smooth roads that amaze the European whose impressions of California have been obtained from tales of the forty-niners. The keen scent of the orange blossom yielded to a tang of new incense, as we turned into the Sunset Boulevard and ran down the long vista of tall eucalyptus trees that stand out so darkly and distinctly against the lilac-colored ranges of the Sierra Madre in the distance, and remind one of the poplar-bordered roads of France. Once we passed a swarthy cluster of Mexicans under a wayside palm. Big fragments, gnawed half-moons, of the blood-red black-pipped watermelon they had been eating, gleamed on the dark oiled surface of the road, as a splash of the sunset is reflected in a dark river. Then we ran along the coast for a little way between the palms and the low white-pillared houses, all crimson poinsettias and marble, that looked as if they were meant for the gods and goddesses of Greece, but were only the homes of a few score lotus-eating millionaires. In another minute, we had turned off the good highway, and were running along a narrow sandy road. On one side, rising from the road, were great desert hills, covered with gray-green sage-brush, tinged at the tips with rusty brown; and, on the other, there was a strip of sandy beach where the big slow breakers crumbled, and the unmolested pelicans waddled and brooded like goblin sentries.
In three minutes more, we sighted a cluster of tiny wooden houses ahead of us, and pulled up on the outskirts of a Japanese fishing village, built along the fringe of the beach itself. It was a single miniature street, nestling under the hill on one side of the narrow road and built along the sand on the other. Japanese signs stood over quaint little stores, with here and there a curious tinge of Americanism.Rice Cakes and Candieswere advertised by one black-haired and boyish-looking gentleman who sat at the door of his hut, playing with three brown children, one of whom squinted at us gleefully with bright sloe-black eyes. Every tiny house, even when it stood on the beach, had its own festoon of flowers. Bare-legged, almond-eyed fishermen sat before them, mending their nets. Wistaria drooped from the jutting eaves; and—perhaps only the Japanese could explain the miracle—tall and well-nourished red geraniums rose, out of the salt sea-sand apparently, around their doors. A few had foregone their miracles and were content with window boxes, but all were in blossom. In the center of the village, on the seaward side, there was a miniature mission house. A beautifully shaped bell swung over the roof; and there was a miniature notice-board at the door. The announcements upon it were in Japanese, but it looked as if East and West had certainly met, and kissed each other there. Some of the huts had oblong letter boxes of gray tin, perched on stumps of bamboo fishing poles, in front of their doors. It is a common device to help the postman in country places where you sometimes see a letter-box on a broomstick standing half a mile from the owner's house. But here, they looked curiously Japanese, perhaps because of the names inscribed upon them, or through some trick of arrangement, for a Japanese hand no sooner touches a dead staff than it breaks into cherry blossom. We stopped before one that bore the name of Y. Kato. His unpainted wooden shack was the most Japanese of all in appearance; for the yellow placard underneath the window advertisingSweet Caporalwas balanced by a single tall pole, planted in the sand a few feet to the right, and lifting a beautiful little birdhouse high above the roof.
Moreton Fitch knocked at the door, which was opened at once by a dainty creature, a piece of animated porcelain four feet high, with a black-eyed baby on her back; and we were ushered with smiles into a very bare living-room to be greeted by the polished mahogany countenance of Kato himself and the shell-spectacled intellectual pallor of Howard Knight, professor in the University of California.
"Amazing, amazing, perfectly amazing," said Knight, who was wearing two elderly tea-roses in his cheeks now from excitement. "I have just finished it. Sit down and listen."
"Wait a moment," said Fitch. "I want our friend here to see the original log of theEvening Star."
"Of course," said Knight, "a human document of the utmost value." Then, to my surprise, he took me by the arm and led me in front of a kakemono, which was the only decoration on the walls of the room.
"This is what Mr. Fitch calls the log of theEvening Star," he said. "It was found among the effects of Mr. Kato's brother on the schooner; and, fortunately, it was claimed by Mr. Kato himself. Take it to the light and examine it."
I took it to the window and looked at it with curiosity, though I did not quite see its bearing on the mystery of theEvening Star. It was a fine piece of work, one of those weird night-pictures in which the Japanese are masters, for they know how to give you the single point of light that tells you of the unseen life around the lamp of the household or the temple. This was a picture of a little dark house, with jutting eaves, and a tiny rose light in one window, overlooking the sea. At the brink of the sea rose a ghostly figure that might only be a drift of mist, for the curve of the vague body suggested that the off-shore wind was blowing it out to sea, while the great gleaming eyes were fixed on the lamp, and the shadowy arms outstretched towards it in hopeless longing. Sea and ghost and house were suggested in a very few strokes of the brush. All the rest, the peace and the tragic desire and a thousand other suggestions, according to the mood of the beholder, were concentrated into that single pinpoint of warm light in the window.
"Turn it over," said Fitch.
I obeyed him, and saw that the whole back of the kakemono, which measured about four feet by two, was covered with a fine scrawl of Japanese characters in purple copying-pencil. I had overlooked it at first, or accepted it, with the eye of ignorance, as a mere piece of Oriental decoration.
"That is what we all did," said Fitch. "We all overlooked the simple fact that Japanese words have a meaning. We didn't trouble about it—you know how vaguely one's eye travels over a three-foot sign on a Japanese tea-house—we didn't even think about it till Mr. Kato turned up in our office a week or two ago. You can't read it. Nor can I. But we got Mr. Knight here to handle it for us."
"It turns out to be a message from Harper," said Knight. "Apparently, he was lying helpless in his berth, and told the Japanese to write it down. A few sentences here and there are unintelligible, owing to the refraction of the Oriental mind. Fortunately, it is Harper's own message. I have made two versions, one a perfectly literal one which requires a certain amount of re-translation. The other is an attempt to give as nearly as possible what Harper himself dictated. This is the version which I had better read to you now. The original has various repetitions, and shows that Harper's mind occasionally wandered, for he goes into trivial detail sometimes. He seems to have been possessed, however, with the idea of getting his account through to the owners; and, whenever he got an opportunity, he made the Japanese take up his pencil and write, so that we have a very full account."
Knight took out a note-book, adjusted his glasses, and began to read, while the ghostly original fluttered in my hand, as the night-wind blew from the sea.
"A terrible thing has happened, and I think it my duty to write this, in the hope that it may fall into the hands of friends at home. I am not likely to live another twenty-four hours. The first hint that I had of anything wrong was on the night of March the fifteenth, when Mrs. Burgess came up to me on deck, looking very worried, and said, 'Mr. Harper, I am in great trouble. I want to ask you a question, and I want you to give me an honest answer.' She looked round nervously, and her hands were fidgeting with her handkerchief, as if she were frightened to death. 'Whatever your answer may be,' she said, 'you'll not mention what I've said to you.' I promised her. She laid her hand on my arm and said with the most piteous look in her face I have ever seen, 'I have no other friends to go to, and I want you to tell me. Mr. Harper, is my husband sane?'
"I had never doubted the sanity of Burgess till that moment. But there was something in the dreadfulness of that question, from a woman who had only been married a few months, that seemed like a door opening into the bottomless pit.
"It seemed to explain many things that hadn't occurred to me before. I asked her what she meant and she told me that last night Burgess had come into the cabin and waked her up. His eyes were starting out of his head, and he told her that he had seen Captain Dayrell walking on deck. She told him it was nothing but imagination; and he laid his head on his arms and sobbed like a child. He said he thought it was one of the deckhands that had just come out of the foc'sle, but all the men were short and smallish, and this was a big burly figure. It went ahead of him like his own shadow, and disappeared in the bows. But he knew it was Dayrell, and there was a curse on him. To-night, she said, half an hour ago, Burgess had come down to her, taken her by the throat, and sworn he would kill her if she didn't confess that Dayrell was still alive. She told him he must be crazy. 'My mind may be going,' he said, 'but you sha'n't kill my soul.' And he called her a name which she didn't repeat, but began to cry when she remembered it. He said he had seen Dayrell standing in the bows with the light of the moon full on his face, and he looked so brave and upright that he knew he must have been bitterly wronged. He looked like a soldier facing the enemy, he said.
"While she was telling me this, she was looking around her in a very nervous kind of way, and we both heard some one coming up behind us very quietly. We turned round, and there—as God lives—stood the living image of Captain Dayrell looking at us, in the shadow of the mast. Mrs. Burgess gave a shriek that paralyzed me for the moment, then she ran like a wild thing into the bows, and before any one could stop her, she climbed up and threw herself overboard. Evans and Barron were only a few yards away from her when she did it, and they both went overboard after her immediately, one of them throwing a life-belt over ahead of him as he went. They were both good swimmers, and as the moon was bright, I thought we had only to launch a boat to pick them all up. I shouted to the Kanakas, and they all came up running. Two of the men and myself got into one of the starboard boats, and we were within three feet of the water when I heard the crack of a revolver from somewhere in the bows of theEvening Star. The men who were lowering away let us down with a rush that nearly capsized us. There were four more shots while we were getting our oars out. I called to the men on deck, asking them who was shooting, but got no reply. I believe they were panic-stricken and had bolted into cover. We pulled round the bows, and could see nothing. There was not a sign of the woman or the two men in the water.
"We could make nobody hear us on the ship, and all this while we had seen nothing of Captain Burgess. It must have been nearly an hour before we gave up our search, and tried to get aboard again. We were still unable to get any reply from the ship, and we were about to try to climb on board by the boat's falls. The men were backing her in, stern first, and we were about ten yards away from the ship when the figure of Captain Dayrell appeared leaning over the side of theEvening Star. He stood there against the moonlight, with his face in shadow; but we all of us recognized him, and I heard the teeth of the Kanakas chattering. They had stopped backing, and we all stared at one another. Then, as casually as if it were a joke, Dayrell stretched out his arm, and I saw the moonlight glint on his revolver. He fired at us, deliberately, as if he were shooting at clay pigeons. I felt the wind of the first shot going past my head, and the two men at once began to pull hard to get out of range. The second shot missed also. At the third shot, he got the man in the bows full in the face. He fell over backwards, and lay there in the bottom of the boat. He must have been killed instantaneously. At the fourth shot, I felt a stinging pain on the left side of my body, but hardly realized I had been wounded at the moment. A cloud passed over the moon just then, and the way we had got on the boat had carried us too far for Dayrell to aim very accurately, so that I was able to get to the oars and pull out of range. The other man must have been wounded also, for he was lying in the bottom of the boat groaning, but I do not remember seeing him hit. I managed to pull fifty yards or so, and then fainted, for I was bleeding very badly.
"When I recovered consciousness I found that the bleeding had stopped, and I was able to look at the two men. Both of them were dead and quite cold, so that I must have been unconscious for some time.
"TheEvening Starwas about a hundred yards away, in the full light of the moon, but I could see nobody on deck. I sat watching her till daybreak, wondering what I should do, for there was no water or food in the boat, and I was unarmed. Unless Captain Burgess and the other men aboard could disarm Dayrell, I was quite helpless. Perhaps my wound had dulled my wits; for I was unable to think out any plan, and I sat there aimlessly for more than an hour.
"It was broad daylight, and I had drifted within fifty yards of the ship, when, to my surprise, Captain Burgess appeared on deck and hailed me. 'All right, Harper,' he said, 'come aboard.'
"I was able to scull the boat alongside, and Captain Burgess got down into her without a word and helped me aboard. He took me down to my berth, with his arm around me, for I almost collapsed again with the effort, and he brought me some brandy. As soon as I could speak, I asked him what it all meant, and he said, 'The ship is his, Harper; we've got to give it up to him. That's what it means. I am not afraid of him by daylight, but what we shall do to-night, God only knows.' Then, just as Mrs. Burgess had told me, he put his head down on his arms, and began to sob like a child.
"'Where are the other men?' I asked him.
"'There's only you and I and Kato,' he said, 'to face it out aboard this ship.'
"With that, he got up and left me, saying that he would send Kato to me with some food, if I thought I could eat. But I knew by this time that I was a dying man.
"There was only one thing I had to do, and that was to try to get this account written, and hide it somehow in the hope of some one finding it later, for I felt sure that neither Burgess nor myself would live to tell it. There was no paper in my berth, and it was Kato that thought of writing it down in this way.
"About an hour later.Burgess has just been down to see me. He said that he had buried the two men who were shot in the boat. I wanted to ask him some questions, but he became so excited, it seemed useless. Neither he nor Kato seemed to have any idea where Dayrell was hiding. Kato believes, in fact, in ghosts, so that it is no use questioning him.
"I must have lost consciousness or slept very heavily since the above was written, for I remembered nothing more till nightfall, when I woke up in the pitch darkness. Kato was sitting by me. He lit the lamp, and gave me another drink of brandy. The ship was dead still, but I felt that something had gone wrong again.
"I do not know whether my own mind is going, but we have just heard the voice of Mrs. Burgess singing one of those sentimental songs that Captain Dayrell used to be so fond of. It seemed to be down in the cabin, and when she came to the end of it, I heard Captain Dayrell's voice calling out, 'Encore! Encore!' just as he used to do. Then I heard some one running down the deck like mad, and Captain Burgess came tumbling down to us with the whites of his eyes showing. 'Did you hear it?' he said. 'Harper, you'll admit you heard it. Don't tell me I'm mad. They're in the cabin together now. Come and look at them.' Then he looked at me with a curious, cunning look, and said, 'No, you'd better stay where you are, Harper. You're not strong enough.' And he crept on the deck like a cat.
"Something urged me to follow him, even if it took the last drop of my strength. Kato tried to dissuade me, but I drained the brandy flask, and managed to get out of my berth on to the deck by going very slowly, though the sweat broke out on me with every step. Burgess had disappeared, and there was nobody on deck. It was not so difficult to get to the sky-light of the cabin. I don't know what I had expected to see, but there I did see the figure of Captain Dayrell, dressed as I had seen him in life, with a big scarf round his throat, and the big peaked cap. There was an open chest in the corner, with a good many clothes scattered about, as if by some one who had been dressing in a hurry. It was an old chest belonging to Captain Dayrell in the old days, and I often wondered why Burgess had left it lying there. The revolver lay on the table, and as Dayrell picked it up to load it, the scarf unwound itself a little around his throat and the lower part of his face. Then, to my amazement, I recognized him."
"There," said Knight, "the log of theEvening Starends except for a brief sentence by Kato himself, which I will not read to you now."
"I wonder if the poor devil did really see," said Moreton Fitch. "And what do you suppose he did when he saw who it was?"
"Crept back to his own berth, barricaded himself in with Kato's help, finished his account, died in the night, with Dayrell tapping on the door, and was neatly buried by Burgess in the morning, I suppose."
"And, Burgess?"
"Tidied everything up, and then jumped overboard."
"Probably,—in his own clothes; for it's quite true that we did find a lot of Dayrell's old clothes in a sea-chest in the cabin. Funny idea, isn't it, a man ghosting himself like that?"
"Yes, but what did Harper mean by saying he heard Mrs. Burgess singing in the cabin that night?"
"Ah, that's another section of the log recorded in a different way."
Moreton Fitch made a sign to the little Japanese, and told him to get a package out of his car. He returned in a moment, and laid it at our feet on the floor.
"Dayrell was very proud of his wife's voice," said Fitch as he took the covers off the package. "Just before he was taken ill he conceived the idea of getting some records made of her songs to take with him on board ship. The gramophone was found amongst the old clothes. The usual sentimental stuff, you know. Like to hear it? She had rather a fine voice."
He turned a handle, and, floating out into the stillness of the California night, we heard the full rich voice of a dead woman: