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- Herausgeber: Books on Demand
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
There is a floating island in the sea where no explorer has set foot, or, setting foot, has returned to tell of what he saw. Lying at our very doors, in the direct path of every steamer from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe, it is less known than is the frozen pole. Encyclopedias pass over it lightly; atlases dismiss it with but a slight mention; maps do not attempt to portray its ever-shifting outlines; even the Sunday newspapers, so keen to grasp everything of interest, ignore it. But on the decks of great ships in the long watches of the night, when the trade-wind snores through the rigging and the waves purr about the bows, the sailor tells strange tales of the spot where ruined ships, raked derelict from all the square miles of ocean, form a great island, ever changing, ever wasting, yet ever lasting; where, in the ballroom of the Atlantic, draped round with encircling weed, they drone away their lives, balancing slowly in a mighty tourbillion to the rhythm of the Gulf Stream. Fanciful? Sailors tales? Stories fit only for the marines? Perhaps! Yet be not too sure! Jack Tar, slow of speech, fearful of ridicule, knows more of the sea than he will tell to the newspapers. Perhaps more than one has drifted to The isle of dead ships, and escaped only to be disbelieved in the maelstroms that await him in all the seaports of the world. Facts are facts, none the less because passed on only by word of mouth, and this tale, based on matter gleaned beneath the tropic stars, may be truer than men are wont to think. Remember Longfellow's words: "Wouldst thou," thus the steersman answered, "Learn the secret of the sea? Only those that brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery."
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The isle of dead ships
The isle of dead shipsPROLOGUEIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXXIXIIXIIIXIVXVXVIXVIIXVIIIXIXEPILOGUECopyrightThe isle of dead ships
Crittenden Marriott
PROLOGUE
I
I
As the prisoner and Officer Jackson, handcuffed together, came up the gang-plank, Renfrew, the attorney, standing on the promenade deck above, turned from his contemplation of the city of San Juan as it lay green and white in the afternoon sun, and bent forward.
“ By George,” he cried, exultingly, “that’s Frank Howard! He’s caught! Caught here, of all places in the world!”
With hands tight gripped on the rail he watched the two men until they disappeared below; then, eager to share his discovery of the ending of a quest that had extended over two continents, he turned and hurried along the deck to where two ladies stood leaning against the taffrail.
“ Yes, my dear,” the elder was saying, “Porto Rico is pretty enough for any one. It looked pretty when I came, and it looks prettier as I go. But when you say it’s pretty, you exhaust its excellences. I, for one, shall be glad to see the last of it. And, considering the errand that takes you home, I imagine that you don’t regret leaving, either.”
“ The errand! I don’t understand, Mrs. Renfrew.”
“ Why! Your—but here comes Philip, evidently with something on his mind. Do listen to him patiently, if you can, my dear. He hasn’t had a jury at his mercy for a month. Unless somebody lets him talk, I’m afraid his bottled-up eloquence will strike in and prove fatal. Well, Philip!”
Mr. Renfrew was close at hand.
“ Miss Fairfax! Maria!” he cried. “Who do you think is on board, a prisoner? Frank Howard! I just saw him brought over the gang-plank. He escaped two months ago, and the police have been looking for him ever since. They must have just caught him, or I should have heard of it. Who in the world can I ask?”
He gazed around questioningly.
“ Now, Philip, wait a moment. Who is Frank Howard? and what has the poor man done?”
Mr. Renfrew snorted.
“ The poor man, Maria,” he retorted, “is one of the biggest scoundrels unhung. As state’s attorney it was my duty to prosecute him, and I may say that I have seldom taken more pleasure in any task. I have spoken to you of the case often enough, Maria, for you to know something about it. I should really be glad if you would take some interest in your husband’s affairs.”
Mrs. Renfrew clapped her hands.
“ Of course! I remember now,” she said, soothingly. “It was only his name I forgot. Mr. Howard is that swindler who robbed so many poor people, isn’t he, Philip?”
“ Nothing of the sort, madam,” thundered the lawyer. “Frank Howard was an officer of the United States Navy. While stationed at this very island of Porto Rico he secretly married an ignorant but very beautiful girl, and then deserted her. She followed him to New York, and wrote him a letter telling him where she was. He went to her address and murdered her—strangled her with his own hands. He was caught red-handed, convicted, and would have been put to death before now if he hadn’t escaped.
“ I am telling this for your benefit, Miss Fairfax. There is no use in talking to Mrs. Renfrew; details of my affairs go in one of her ears and out the other.”
“ That may not be as uncommon as you think, Mr. Renfrew,” consoled the girl, laughing. “But, as it happens, I am especially interested in the Howard case. I am very well acquainted with one of the officers who was on his ship when he met the girl.”
Mrs. Renfrew clapped her hands.
“ Oh! of course,” she bubbled. “Of course! I remember all about it now. It was Mr. Loving, of course! I had forgotten that he was on the same ship. Philip, you didn’t know that Miss Fairfax was going to marry Lieutenant Loving, did you?”
Mr. Renfrew turned his eye-glasses on the girl, who flushed with mingled anger and amusement.
“ Are you a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, Mrs. Renfrew,” she inquired, “that you can read the future? I assure you that I have had no advance information on the matter. Mr. Loving hasn’t even asked me yet. But, of course, if you know——”
“ Good gracious! Isn’t it true? Why, I got a paper from New York to-day that spoke of it as all settled. The paper is in my state-room now. If you’d like to see it, we’ll go down. Philip, find out all you can about Mr. Howard, and tell us just as soon as you can.”
Mr. Renfrew nodded.
“ I’ll go and ask the captain,” he promised, as the two ladies turned away.
The captain, however, proved not to be communicative. Not only was he too busy with the preparations for departure, but he was nettled because the presence of the convict on board had become known. Convicts are not welcome passengers on ships, like the Queen, whose chief office is to carry presumably timid pleasure passengers, and their presence is always carefully concealed.
“ I know nothing at all about it, Mr. Renfrew,” he asserted, gruffly. “You had better ask the purser.”
The purser was no more pleased at the inquiry than his chief had been, but he hid his vexation better.
“ Yes,” he admitted, with apparent readiness, “Mr. Howard is on board. He was caught here last week. He was up at a village called Lagonitas——”
“ That’s where his wife lived—the one he murdered.”
“ Is it? I didn’t know. Well, they caught him. He surrendered quietly—didn’t try to fight or run. He hadn’t anywhere to run to, you know.”
“ And where is he confined?”
“ Amidships—in one of the second-class cabins. We have plenty vacant this trip. Officer Jackson is with him, where he can keep close watch. You tell your ladies not to be uneasy. He can’t possibly get out. Jackson has got a hundred weight of iron, more or less, on him.”
“ Jackson, is it? I thought I recognized him. One of those bulldog fellows that never lets go. I’m interested in Howard because it was I who conducted the prosecution at his trial.”
“ Gee! Is that so? It must have been exciting. He confessed, didn’t he?”
“ Confessed? Not he! Took the stand as brazen as you please, and swore he had never seen the woman before he went to her room that day in response to a letter and found her dead. It was nothing less than barefaced impudence, you know. The proof against him was simply overwhelming.”
“ He denied having married her, then?”
“ He denied everything. Swore it was a case of mistaken identity. I demolished that quickly enough. Dozens of people had seen him up at Lagonitas with the girl. We even sent for the minister who performed the marriage ceremony, but he never arrived—lost at sea on the way to New York. But there was plenty of proof, anyway. The jury found him guilty without leaving their seats.”
II
II
When Dorothy Fairfax came on deck again the sun was dropping fast toward the horizon. A gusty breeze was blowing and the steamer was pitching slightly in the short, choppy seas that characterize West Indian waters. Movement had become unpleasant to those inclined to seasickness and this, combined with the comparative lightness of the passenger list, caused the deck of the Queen to be nearly deserted.
Dorothy was glad of it. She wanted solitude in order to think in peace, and there was seldom solitude for her when young men—or old men, for that matter—were near. They seemed to gravitate naturally to her side.
Mrs. Renfrew’s words, and especially the paragraph in the New York paper, were troubling her. She could see the words now, published under a San Juan date-line:
“ Miss Dorothy Fairfax, daughter of the multimillionaire railroader, John Fairfax, will sail next week for New York to order her trousseau for her coming marriage with Lieutenant Loving, U. S. N. Mr. Fairfax, who is financing the railroad here, will follow in about three weeks.”
That was all; the whole thing taken for granted! Evidently the writer had supposed that the engagement had been already announced, or he would either have made some inquiry or—supposing that he was determined to publish—would have “spread” himself on the subject. Miss Fairfax had been written up enough to know that her engagement would be worth at least a column to the society editors of the New York papers. Yes, she concluded, the item must have emanated from some chance correspondent who had picked up a stray bit of gossip.
She had known Mr. Loving for two years or more, and had liked him. Three months before, at the close of the Howard trial, she had become convinced that he intended to ask her to marry him, and she had slipped away to join her father in Porto Rico in order to gain time to think before deciding on her answer. And here she was, returning home, no more resolved than when she had left.
It was odd that her ship should also bear Lieutenant Howard, of whom Mr. Loving had been so fond, standing by him all through his trial when everybody else fell away. She had had a glimpse of Mr. Howard once, and vaguely recalled him, wondering what combination of desperate circumstances could have brought a man like him to the commission of such a crime.
The judge, she remembered, in sentencing him to death had declared that no mercy should be shown to one who, with everything to keep him in the straight path, had deliberately gone wrong.
The soft pad of footsteps on the deck roused her from her musings, and she turned to see the purser drawing near.
“ Ah! Good evening, Miss Fairfax!” he ventured. “We missed you at tea. Feeling the motion a bit? It is a little rough, ain’t it?”
Miss Fairfax did not like the purser, but she found it difficult to snub any one. Therefore she answered the man pleasantly, though not with any especial enthusiasm.
“ Why! no, Mr. Sprigg. I don’t consider this rough; I’m rather a good sailor, you know. I simply wasn’t hungry at tea-time.”
Mr. Sprigg came closer.
“ By the way, Miss Fairfax,” he insinuated. “You know Lieutenant Howard is on board. If you’d like to have a peep at him, just say the word and I’ll manage. Oh!” he added, hastily, as a slight frown marred Miss Fairfax’s pretty brows, “I know you must be interested in his case. He’s a friend of Lieutenant Loving, and I read the notice in the paper to-day, you know.”
The look the girl gave him drove the smirk in haste from his face.
“ The notice in the paper was entirely without foundation, Mr. Sprigg,” she declared, coldly. “As for seeing Mr. Howard, I’m afraid my tastes do not run in that direction. Besides, he probably would not like to be stared at. He was a gentleman once, you know.”
She turned impatiently away and looked eastward. Then she uttered an exclamation.
“ Why! Whatever’s happened to the water?” she cried.
The question was not surprising. In the last hour the sea had changed. From a smiling playfellow, lightly buffeting the ship, it had grown cold and sullen. The sparkles had died from the waves, giving place to a metallic lustre. Long, slow undulations swelled out of the southeast, chasing each other sluggishly up in the wake of the ship.
It did not need a sailor’s eye to tell that something was brewing. Miss Fairfax shivered slightly and drew her light wrap closer around her.
“ Makes you feel cold, don’t it?” asked Mr. Sprigg cheerfully. “Lord bless you, that’s nothing to the way you’ll feel before it’s over. Funny the weather bureau didn’t give us any storm warnings before we sailed.”
The weather bureau had, but the warnings had been thrown away, unposted, by a sapient native official of San Juan, who considered the efforts of the Americans to foretell the weather to be immoral.
“ Will there be any danger?”
“ Danger? Naw! Not a bit of it. If you stay below, you won’t even know that there’s been anything doing. Even if we run into a hurricane, which ain’t likely, we’ll be just as safe as if we were ashore. The Queen don’t need to worry about anything short of an island or a derelict.”
“ A derelict?”
“ Sure. A ship that has been abandoned at sea for some reason or other, but that ain’t been broken up or sunk. Derelicts are real terrors, all right.”
“ Some of ’em float high; they ain’t so bad, because you can usually see ’em in time to dodge, and because they ain’t likely to be solid enough to do you much damage even if you do run into them. But some of ’em float low—just awash—and they’re just— Well, they’re mighty bad. They ain’t really ships any more; they’re solid bulks of wood.”
“ I suppose they are all destroyed sooner or later?”
The little purser unconsciously struck an attitude. “A good deal later, sometimes,” he qualified. “Derelicts have been known to float for three years in the Atlantic, and to travel for thousands of miles. Generally, however, in the North Atlantic, they either break up in a storm within a few months, or else they drift into the Sargasso Sea and stay there till they sink.”
“ The Sargasso Sea? Where is that? I suppose I used to know when I went to school, but I’ve forgotten.”
Mr. Sprigg waved his hand toward the east and north. “Yonder,” he generalized vaguely. “We are on the western edge of it now. See the weed floating in the water there? Farther north and east it gets thicker until it collects into a solid mass that stretches five hundred miles in every direction.
“ Nobody knows just what it looks like in the middle, for nobody has ever been there; or, rather, nobody has ever been there and come back to tell about it. Old sailors say that there’s thousands of derelicts collected there.”
“ The Gulf Stream encircles the whole ocean in a mighty whirlpool, you know, and sooner or later everything floating in the North Atlantic is caught in it. They may be carried away up to the North Pole, but they’re bound to come south again with the icebergs and back into the main stream, and some day they get into the west-wind drift and are carried down the Canary current, until the north equatorial current catches them, and sweeps them into the sea over yonder.”
“ For four hundred years and more—ever since Columbus—derelicts must have been gathering there. Millions of them must have sunk, but thousands must have been washed into the center. Once there, they must float for a long time. There are storms there, of course, but they’re only wind-storms—there can’t be any waves; the weed is too thick.”
“ I guess there are ships still afloat there that were built hundreds of years ago. Maybe Columbus’s lost caravels are there; maybe people are imprisoned there! Gee! but it’s fascinating.”
Miss Fairfax stared at the little man in amazement. He was the last person she would ever have suspected of imagination or romance; and here he was, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, declaiming away like one inspired. Most men can talk well on some one subject, and this subject was Mr. Sprigg’s own. For years he had been reading and talking and thinking about it.
Miss Fairfax rose from her steamer-chair and looked around her, then paused, awestruck. Down in the southeast a mass of black clouds darkened the day as they spread. Puffs of wind ran before them, each carrying sheets of spray torn from the tops of the waves; one stronger than the rest dashed its burden into Miss Fairfax’s face with little stinging cuts. The cry of the stewards, “All passengers below!” was not needed to tell her that the deck was rapidly becoming no place for women.
III
An hour later the deck had grown dangerous, even for men. The Queen drove diagonally through the waves, rolling far to right and to left; and at each roll a miniature torrent swept aboard her, hammered on her tightly-fastened doors, and passed, cataract-wise, back into the deep. Scarcely could the officers, high on the bridge, clinging to stanchions and shielded by strong sheets of canvas, keep their footing. Overhead hooted the gale.
It grew dark. To the gloom of the storm had been added the blackness of the night. Literally, no man could see his hand before his face; even the white foam that broke upon the decks or against the sides passed invisibly.
Still, the ship drove on, held relentlessly to her course. For it was necessary to pass the western line of the weed-bound sea before turning to the north; and, until this was done, the Queen could not turn tail to the storm.
Toward morning Captain Bostwick struggled to the chart-house and, for the twentieth time, bent over the sheet, figuring and measuring. Then, with careful precision, he punched a dot in the surface and drew a long breath.
“ We are all right now,” he announced. “We can bear away north with safety. Nothing can harm us, unless——”
He opened the last chart of the Hydrographic Office and noted some lines drawn in red. His brow grew anxious again and he drew his breath.
“ Confound that derelict!” he muttered. “Allowing for drift, she should be close to this very spot. If we should strike her——”
The sentence was never finished. With a shivering shock like that of a railroad train in a head-on collision, the Queen stopped dead, hurling the captain violently over the rail to the deck below.
The first officer was clutching the rope of the siren when the crash came. The slight support it afforded before it gave way saved him from following his commander, and at the same time sent a raucous warning through the ship to close the collision bulkheads.
As he clung desperately to the rail, the Queen rose in the air and came down with another crash; then went forward over something that grated and tore at her hull as she passed. But her bows were buried in the waves, while her screw lashed the air madly.
Had not the involuntary warning of the siren sounded, and had it not been obeyed instantly, the Queen would have plunged in that heart-breaking moment to the bottom. As it was, her shrift seemed short.
The force of her impact on the lumber-laden, water-logged derelict had shattered her bows, and only the forward bulkhead, strained, split, gaping in a hundred seams where the rivets had been wrenched loose, kept out the sea. A hurried inspection showed that even that frail protection would probably not long suffice.
“ It’s only an hour to dawn,” gasped the first officer. “If she can last till then——”
She lasted, but dawn showed a desperate state of affairs. The Queen had swung round, until her submerged bow pointed to windward and her high stern, catching the gale, plunged dully northward. The seas, rushing up from the southeast, broke on the shelving deck like rollers on a beach, and sent the salt spume writhing up the planks and into the deck state-rooms.
The engine and all the forward part of the ship were drowned, but the great dining-saloon and the staircase leading to the social hall above were still comparatively dry. In the latter and on the deck just outside of it the passengers were huddled. The captain had disappeared, licked away by the first tongue of sea that had followed the collision.
With the earliest streak of light the first officer decided to take to the boats. Only three remained, and these had already been fitted out with provisions.
As the crew and passengers filed into the first, Officer Jackson, who had several times come on deck, only to wander restlessly below again, once more plunged down into the darkness.
Rapidly yet cautiously he lowered himself down the sloping passageway, clutching at the jambs of empty state-rooms to keep himself from sliding down against the bulkhead, on the other side of which the sea muttered angrily. At last he gained the door he sought, and clung to it while he fitted a key into the lock.
The electric lights had gone out when the engine stopped, and not a thing could be seen in the blackness, but a stir within told that the room was tenanted. Some one was there, staring toward the door.
Jackson lost no time.
“ Here you!” he blustered, in a voice into which there crept a quiver in spite of him. “Last call! The ship’s sinking and they’re taking to the boats. You gotter decide mighty quick if you’re going to come. Just gimme your parole and I’ll turn you loose to fight for your life.”
A voice answered promptly:
“ I’ll give no parole. I’d a deal sooner drown here than hang on shore. You can do just as you please about releasing me. It’s a matter of indifference to me.”
The officer tried to protest.
“ I don’t want your death on my shoulders, Mr. Howard,” he muttered. “Don’t put me to it.”
Howard laughed sardonically.
“ What the devil do I care about your shoulders?” he demanded. “Turn me loose, quick, or get out. Your company isn’t exhilarating, my good Jackson.”
