CHAPTER I
IN WHICH DAVID HALLARD HEARS THE CALL OF THE SEA
"IDARE say you've seen a lot of strange things in the South Seas," said Dave Hallard, a bit wistfully.
"Aye, there's queer sights in them latitudes," agreed the old sailor, pausing in his task of slapping paint on the side of the ship and gazing thoughtfully across the sunlit harbor. "Lots an' lots of 'em," he added after a moment as, lighting his pipe again, he went on with his work. "I suppose you've never been to sea, have you?" he asked, casting a sidelong glance at the boy who for the last half-hour had been perched on the string-piece of the wharf, his legs dangling above the oily water.
"Not yet," answered Dave regretfully.
"An' I guess you're seventeen, eh! Or maybe a bit more."
"Sixteen," the boy replied. He was, however, tall for sixteen, and there was the promise of much strength in his broad shoulders. A keen enthusiasm for outdoor sports had developed his body and, without doubt, fostered the determination apparent in the firm mouth, the square chin, and the steady grey eyes.
"Well, when I was your age," said the mariner, "I was cabin-boy under old Captain Zebalon Pratt He was one of your old-fashioned Yankee skippers, and no mistake, and many's the dose of rope's-end I got, my hearty. Barrin' the rope's-end, though, I liked it all well enough. It's a hard life, but it's the only life for me. It gets a hold over you, but it ain't a bed of roses at any time. We've just finished a rough enough time this last voyage, after we left Honolulu for home, and I won't say there was n't a while when I'd have given a month's pay to feel solid land under my feet. But it's forgotten now."
"Were you ever shipwrecked?" the boy asked.
"Three times. Once off the coast of China, once in the Mediterranean, and once hard by New Guinea."
He paused for a moment, while allowing his memory to dwell upon those vivid moments.
"I don't know, though," he went on, "that any of them shipwrecks ever proved quite so excitin' as the last shakin' up we had in this steamer. When you get an easterly gale blowin' in that part of the Pacific, it suttinly comes good and hard. We were making a course 'most due sou'-east when the wind hit us. It came sudden, cuttin' slices clean off the surface, and the old ship listed over till I thought she was a goner. Her port rail was right under water, and the big waves that broke over us sometimes reached half-way up the funnel. One man must have gone overboard at once, and the mate was knocked senseless against a stanchion. He'd have gone too, but he got entangled in some gear, and after a while we dragged him under shelter.
"It sure was blowin' for about an hour, and then it eased off quick like, but we knew what to expect when it started again. Everything loose had been shot over the side, and one of the boats had been stove in. We just had time to get ready for the next snorter before it arrived, and then the old ship was nearly lifted clean out of water. You've heard of seas runnin' mountains high, p'raps. Well, them seas was like mountains, and we were slidin' down the sides same as the coasters at Coney, only it didn't cost ten cents a time, and we didn't know exactly what was going to happen when we got to the bottom."
The sailor put down the paint-brush and 
"Were you ever shipwrecked?" the boy asked
"Give me an old wind-jammer for weatherin' a gale. You never know what's going to happen to these new-fangled steam contraptions. The ship's engines was 'most shook to pieces after two days of it, and we all made up our minds we'd seen the last of New York or anywhere else on dry land. The ship was leakin' enough to scare any one, and it was too rough to use the hand-pumps. We'd drifted some distance out of our course between Fanning and Christmas Islands when the current and wind took us under the lee of another island, and that saved us. Before you could say 'knife' we had the anchor down and were ridin' as comfortable and snug as any man could want.
"We sheltered for three days under that bit of a place. As a rule, you don't get much besides low coral islands in them waters, but there was a hill on this one. I remember that, from where we were lyin', part of the island looked a good deal like a camel's back.
"We were anchored off a little lagoon, and one day the captain sees something that might have been a wreck half buried in the sand. When the gale had spent itself he went ashore in a boat, thinkin' p'raps there might be a chance of a bit of salvage. But there wasn't. It was an old bark that must have been lost some years ago. We reckoned she'd struck a reef of rocks outside the lagoon, drifted over them afterwards, and landed inside the cove where we found her. Only the stumps of her masts were left. I remember her name. We could just make it out on a copper plate where the bell had hung. She was the Hatteras."
"Had the crew been saved!" Dave asked.
"Bless you, I dunno," replied the mariner. "There's hundreds and hundreds of ships breakin' to pieces off the track of regular traffic, and only the sea knows what became of the men on 'em; and she don't tell. No, siree! she holds her secrets fast."
"But didn't the people on the island know?" the boy queried.
There was a comical look in the old man's eyes as he regarded his questioner.
"Say, sonny," he said, "you don't think there's trolley-cars runnin' and department stores on every little two-by-four dump in the South Seas!"
"I thought there might be a few natives," Dave suggested.
"Well, sometimes you find a bunch of them stoppin' on an island, but we didn't see anything livin' there except a few turtles and sea-birds that knew nothing and cared less about how the Hatteras got there. You never know what luck is comin' your way when you're a sailor. It might be our turn to get piled up on a rock after we leave here to-night at high water."
Somebody on deck called to the mariner. Dave, with a curious feeling, watched him clamber over the side and disappear. At high water the old salt was to begin a new series of adventures, all with the smack of the sea in them. In his imagination the boy depicted the mariner undergoing hairbreadth escapes and encountering perils of every description, all of which he would overcome so that when the ship reached port he could sit contentedly in a swinging cradle, painting the hull, and applying innumerable matches to a most obstinate pipe.
Dave came of sea-going stock, the Hallards having followed the sea for generations. Dave's father created a record in his early manhood by driving a clipper from Hong Kong to San Francisco in thirty-three days; and old Phineas Hallard, David's grandfather, had been a pioneer in the copra trade with the West Indies.
From one window of his home in Brooklyn the boy could obtain a panoramic view of the ceaseless traffic in the harbor to and from New York—big, stately mail-boats with tugs puffing fussily at their side; mysterious, bird-like sailing-ships with crowded canvas; strings of barges in tow; rusty and lazy tramp steamers homeward bound after wonderful voyages to foreign lands. The sight of these messengers of the deep stirred something in the blood of Dave Hallard. He liked to go down to the wharf on his way home from school and drift into conversation, just as he had done to-day, with men who had sailed to distant ports. On this occasion he had been lucky. The old mariner with the paint-brush had been full of reminiscences; and for the first time, Dave, as he walked home, felt that the glamour of the sea was something real to him—something that was bound to have a vital influence over him. Hitherto his life had been wrapped up in school, sports, and his home; but now it was dawning on him that there was a great world outside that in which he had moved so far, a world in which he would, sooner or later, take his place. Some day he, too, might stand on a ship scudding before the breeze, under the wonderful Southern Cross where flying-fish skimmed the water and turtles lived on desert islands. He threw out his chest a little and sniffed the crisp air of early spring straight from the broad Atlantic. It seemed good. He felt a vague regret that he was not with the old mariner on the tramp steamer, learning the mysteries of sails and halyards and hovering on the brink of great unknown adventures. Dave was quiet when he entered the house.
His Aunt Martha, who had been a mother to him ever since he could remember, glanced at him curiously several times, thinking something was worrying the boy, for he was usually bubbling over with good spirits.
"What's amiss, Dave?" she asked at last, while preparing supper. "You're not sick, are you?"
"I'm all right," he said, coming out of a reverie with a start. "I was only thinking, Aunt Martha, what do people do when—when they want to be sailors?"
"For the land's sake, this boy has got it too!" she exclaimed, with a touch of pathos in her voice. "All the Hallards go the same way, and there's no stopping them as soon as they get out of short pants."
Dave's thoughts were far away. The sting of salt air on his cheeks that afternoon, and the sailor's reminiscences, had stirred him strangely. Hitherto he had not been directly thrown into association much with sailors. True, there were in his home a dozen distinctive signs that his father had spent many years at sea—a full-rigged four-master careening over on a painted ocean, under a glass case, in the parlor; two assagais and a knobkerrie picked up at some South African port; a compass and an old brass sextant kept in a sacred place; a pair of powerful binoculars; strangely carved figures which might at one time have been idols in some heathenish land. But these relics had been collected years before. Andrew Hallard gave np the sea soon after Dave was born.
"Supper is ready," said Aunt Martha, resignedly. "Go and tell your dad."
Dave obeyed mechanically.
"The sea is calling this boy already," Miss Hallard said a little later as she served their frugal meal. "He's puzzling how to get afloat now."
Captain Hallard cast an uneasy glance at his son. He had always expected this eventually, but somehow the possibility of the wrench had seemed a long way off.
"There's time enough to think about that, lad," he declared; but even as he said it he knew the boy's days ashore must be numbered now. Once, long ago, he, and generations of his menfolk, had passed through the same phase.
Dave was Captain Hallard's only son, and there was a strong affinity between them. The man dreaded the moment when his boy must go, only to return occasionally between long voyages, but he knew the power with which the sea must be calling Dave.
There had been a time when a business career had seemed probable for Dave. That was when Andrew Hallard first gave up the sea. He had made a considerable fortune by sea trading and wise investment. Everything appeared rosy in those days, and if Captain Hallard had rested on his laurels, all would have been well. He was a true sailor and knew his work thoroughly, but success had made him ambitious for greater things. The business of underwriting ships is one which needs not only a close knowledge of shipping, but also considerable skill in the world of finance. It appeared, however, to Andrew Hallard to offer excellent opportunities, and he launched forth into it. For a while luck went with him, but one or two of his speculations came to grief. In order to recoup himself of these losses he plunged a shade deeper, taking risks about which more experienced men would have hesitated. At this critical moment two vessels were lost, and in order to pay the insurance he had to raise a mortgage on his own property which left him financially crippled. It did not take him long to discover that without the power of money behind him his position in business amounted to nothing, and he had to hunt for the command of another ship. On his first voyage, however, rheumatism, brought on by long exposure in bad weather, left him unfit for the one profession he had at his finger-tips. Then he was compelled to settle down ashore and share his home with his sister Martha.
Aunt Martha had a very small income and few relatives. She was a prim, elderly lady with a profound distrust of anything in the way of speculation. Several times before Andrew Hallard's crash arrived she warned him that a bird in the hand was safer than ten in a bush, but when he came back, almost a physical wreck, to his motherless boy, her heart softened, and she threw in her lot with his. It was sometimes a struggle for them to make ends meet, but her brother Andrew had been good to her in his successful days, so it gave her additional pleasure to help him now.
The bitterest blow was when his little estate on Long Island went—the home he had worked for during so many years. It was just the sort of place a sea-captain might picture, during his travels, as that in which he could spend the autumn of his life contentedly. When it was built, and he went to live there, he called the house "Journey's End." It was perched high on a cliff, facing the sea he loved, and while he lived there he spent many hours watching the distant ships through a telescope. Once or twice in recent years he had taken Dave with him to look at the old place, drawn to it by happy memories, but the visit always made him unhappy.
"Journey's End" was now occupied by Stephen Strong, an old friend of Captain Hallard, who had come to the rescue when the mortgage was foreclosed. Mr. Strong was a New Englander, and when the time came for him to take possession he did so regretfully, declaring that at any time the fortunes of the Hallards changed once more he would be willing to leave the house.
"I'm a wanderer, anyway," he said, "so I guess this won't be the end of my journey. Besides, I was bred and born in Gloucester, and when I drop my anchor the last time it ought to be there. Cheer up, Hallard, you'll be heaving me out of this place yet."
Mr. Strong often made some similar remark when Captain Hallard revisited the house on the cliff, and Captain Hallard laughed at such cheery optimism, for he knew his days of fortune-hunting were over. Dave, however, was imbued with a youthful notion of retrieving the family fortunes, and he realized that as it must be many years before he could obtain command of a ship himself, the sooner be got to work the better. A few days after his encounter with the ancient mariner he spoke to his father on the subject.
"Tush, lad, what's put such notions into your head?" Andrew Hallard asked, anxious to draw from the boy his real feelings.
"I don't think I should like to be anything but a sailor, Dad," the boy said. Then he told his father of his talk with the old salt. Captain Hallard listened, and nodded. It came to him as an echo of his own boyhood. Thus encouraged, Dave warmed up, and repeated some of the sailor's stories. When he came to the discovery of the Hatteras on a desert island his father turned quickly in his chair.
"Hatteras, Hatteras," he repeated, wrinkling his brows. "I seem to remember something about a ship called the Hatteras, years ago, but I don't recall exactly what for the moment."
He drummed his finger-tips on the edge of the chair and looked up at the ceiling.
"Why!" he exclaimed after a pause; "wasn't there a ship called the Hatteras disappeared once? I think I've got something about it in my book of newspaper cuttings. Let me see."
He foraged in a drawer, fished out an old collection of clippings, and turned over the leaves.
CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERY OF THE BARK HATTERAS
"HERE she is," he said at last. "This can't be the same Hatteras that you 're talking about though, because they searched everywhere for her at the time."
Adjusting his glasses, Captain Hallard read:
"A curious feature of the story is that no man knows, or ever will know, exactly where this valuable consignment came from originally. Possibly it was mined in New Guinea, where platinum is known to exist, or possibly in some part of Australia, but that must always remain a matter of conjecture.
"About a year ago Messrs. Jacobs & Krantz of San Francisco, dealers in precious metals, received a letter from one Vance Peters, written at Sydney, New South Wales. Peters stated that he had discovered a rich deposit of platinum, and had worked on it for two years until the supply was exhausted. He said he had melted it down into bars, had deposited it in a Sydney bank, and now wanted Jacobs & Krantz to market it for him, as facilities for disposing of it in Sydney were not good.
"The San Francisco firm consented to handle the transaction, and in due course received a letter from Peters announcing that he was sailing from Sydney on the Hatteras, bringing the platinum with him. There the known history of the platinum almost ends. After the Hatteras put to sea she was spoken twice between Sydney and Honolulu. Then there swept over that part of the Pacific the succession of devastating northeasterly gales which wreaked havoc among shipping there six months ago. Vessels of all kinds were blown far out of their course, and many of them were lost. The last heard of the Hatteras was a report from the ship Minerva that she had passed within a mile of her in the neighbourhood of Fanning Island. The bark was then partly dismasted and flying signals of distress. The Minerva herself was in great difficulties, and was unable to go to her assistance. From that moment the Hatteras became a thing of mystery. It is probable that she foundered with all hands in water a mile deep. There are many islands, mostly low-lying coral reefs, in that part of the Pacific. In the faint hope that the treasure-ship might have gone on one of these, Messrs. Jacobs & Krantz arranged with a vessel that was due to pass there to explore the region thoroughly, and the captains of other ships were offered a reward for definite news. But nothing has ever been heard of the ill-fated vessel or those who were on her."While his father was reading the old newspaper cutting Dave Hallard sat motionless, his hands gripping the arms of the chair tightly.
"That sailor told me the Hatteras they saw was near Fanning Island, Dad," he said eagerly.
Captain Hallard looked up quickly.
"That's queer," he said. "I wonder if she could have been the same ship."
"Well, if she was, Dad, and nobody's got that platinum out of her—"
"If," Captain Hallard interrupted, laughing. "I guess there are lots of ifs. To begin with, your sailor probably was spinning a yarn, and even if he did see the old wreck of the Hatteras, she must have been nearly smashed to pieces long ago. Everything in her would be washed away by now. Besides, where was this island he saw her on?"
"I remember he mentioned Fanning Island when you read it just now," said Dave, "and besides that he said they were sailing between there and an island called Christmas when they came across the wreck of the Hatteras."
"That's a pretty wide field," commented Captain Hallard."Those two places are hundreds of miles apart, and you might spend a lifetime hunting about there for what you were after."
"He also said there was a hill," declared Dave, as the ancient mariner's story came back to his memory, "that looked like the back of a camel."
"You're sure he didn't say a cow, or a rabbit?" Captain Hallard asked jocularly. "I'm afraid, Dave, he was having fun with you."
"I don't think so," Dave replied quietly. He had the greatest faith in his father's judgment, but on the other hand he had a vivid memory of the old sailor's simple directness.
Aunt Martha, who had been sitting knitting industriously, as usual, throughout the conversation, made no comment, and registered a mental note of the fact that Dave was growing more like his father every day. The Hallards did not have those steady grey eyes for nothing. It had been inflexible devotion to one purpose which enabled the retired sea-captain to amass his original fortune, and Dave was already exhibiting the same capacity for sticking to his guns, whatever object he wished to achieve. And she knew that the boy's determination to go to sea would never leave him until the salt water was rolling under him. This new notion that had entered his head, of treasure-ships lying waiting to disgorge their precious stores, would most likely add a romantic tinge to his desire, making certain that still another of the Hallards was to take to the roving life.
A day or two later, after supper, Dave produced a school atlas, and pored over it with a pencil and paper, measuring off distances.
"Dad, how long would it take for a bark to sail a hundred and fifty miles?" he asked.
"About a thousand years if there wasn't any wind."
"Yes, but with a fair wind?"
"Oh, maybe a day or two. Why?"
"Then it only takes a day or two to go from Fanning Island to Christmas Island in a bark in a fair wind?" said Dave.
"It depends how long you waste on the way picking up that treasure," replied Captain Hallard, with a twinkle in his eye. "Don't you worry, my lad. Hard dollars don't come like that. You're just as likely to bump up in Broadway against a solid chunk of gold so big that it holds up the traffic as anybody is to rescue a fortune that's been lost in the sea for years."
"I know that, Dad," Dave agreed. "But it does seem an awful shame that the man who spent two years mining the stuff should never have got here with it safely. I asked Billy Tench yesterday to find out from his father what platinum is worth. Billy's father works in a jewelry store. I wrote down what he said to show you. How much do you guess Mr. Peters would have got for the stuff if he had reached America with it?"
Captain Hallard puffed at his pipe and wrinkled his brows in an effort of mental arithmetic.
"I suppose somewhere between ten and twenty dollars an ounce," he guessed.
"Wrong," corrected Dave. "At that time it was worth over thirty dollars an ounce."
"Rough luck on Peters," commented Captain Hallard. He knew by bitter experience what it felt like to lose a fortune.
"But that isn't all," Dave went on. "The price of platinum has gone up to three times its old value since then. That means if any one were lucky enough to find the treasure now, it would be worth about a hundred dollars an ounce."
Captain Hallard raised his eyebrows.
"I vote we start an expedition to find treasure-ships, Dave," he said, wincing as his rheumatism gave an extra twinge. "Then we'll be able to come back and buy Aunt Martha that new coffee-percolator she's set her heart on. Then we might go over to Europe and hunt up some of those Spanish galleons. There were lots of 'em sunk, half full of gold coins. I'm badly in need of a new pipe."
"Yes, and we'd buy 'Journey's End' back, eh, Dad?" Dave suggested.
"Aye, lad," his father agreed, with a sigh. The loss of his home on the cliff was still a very sore point to Captain Hallard. "But don't ever get such notions of easy money into your head. You have a lot of hard work to put in at school yet before you earn your first cent."
"How soon can I go to sea?" Dave asked abruptly.
"Not until this time next year," said his father. "I don't suppose you'll ever rest contentedly until you have tried it out and found that a sailor's life isn't a bit as they say it is in story-books. I went through it. I thought I was going to have a wonderful time when I joined my first ship. She was a square-rigger, of the old-fashioned type. I remember I had a coat with some brass buttons on it, and I had an idea that I should spend most of my time on the poop, or the fo'c'sle-head, looking through a long telescope. But they set me on to peeling potatoes, and kept me at it though I was so seasick I didn't care whether I lived or died. Then the mate told me to dress up, as I had to do something special for the captain. I put on my best duds, including the coat with the brass buttons, and they started me on the job of tarring the rigging. By the time I'd got through with that, and after I'd upset the tar-bucket when the ship gave an extra hard roll, I was so messed up from head to foot I hardly knew my own name, though I'd learnt that sailoring didn't consist chiefly of looking smart in brass buttons and navigating the ship."
"But you didn't give up the sea for years and years after that, did you?" the boy persisted.
"No, I'll admit that, though there was many a time I'd have done 'most anything to get back home and put on some dry clothes. The grub wasn't too good, either, in those days, and the older hands got the pick of what was going. Ship-owners don't believe in overfeeding their crews. The men might get too fat to shin up the rigging if they had three square meals a day, so they're given ship's biscuits to keep 'em in condition and cut expenses down."
Dave plied his father with questions about life afloat, and Captain Hallard gave him as accurate a picture as he could of routine on board ship. To the boy it all seemed fascinating, including the hard, dirty work and the "salt horse" which, he gathered, together with the extremely hard biscuits, formed the staple diet on many craft.
The only thing worrying him was that he had to start at high school and wait a whole year before he would be allowed to eat "salt horse" and feel the motion of the boat under him as she nosed her way out of the harbor, past that flashing light in the distance at Sandy Hook, and carried him to those entrancing distant lands of which he had heard so much.
School seemed a dull affair during the next two months when such radiant possibilities lay in store. Dave went on with his studies, but his heart was not in them. Every day, after dark, he spent hours at the window from which he could see the lights of passing vessels, and in the afternoons he haunted the wharves, where screaming winches were hauling bales and cases from the mysterious depths of different vessels. The smell of tarred ropes became a thing of joy to him, and when, on occasions, the mate or "bo'sun" of some ship invited him on board to look around after they had had a long chat, Dave thrilled with a new delight. The snug cabins and berths, not always as clean or tidy as they might have been, were a source of infinite wonder.
Though he did not realize it, Dave was fanning the flame within him. At home he came out with nautical terms which he had picked up, to the great distress of Aunt Martha, for, to her, it was clearly the beginning of the end. Secretly she had always treasured the hope that her brother would put his foot down firmly and prevent Dave from risking his life on the sea, and occasionally, even now, she would have a passage of arms with Captain Hallard on the subject.
"Let the boy have a taste of it," he always declared. "You wouldn't bring ducks up without water, and the Hallards are worse than any ducks I ever knew, only they want salt water. He'll go whether I let him or not, so I might just as well let him, when he's old enough."
Aunt Martha bent over her knitting on these occasions, making the needles fly and missing stitches, because you can't see to knit, even with spectacles, when your eyes are full of tears.
"Don't worry, Martha dear," Andrew Hallard said once, when this happened. "He won't come to any harm, and if I had my time over again, I'd be a sailor just the same, so we can't blame him. Now, stop crying. It's a healthy life at sea, after all; and to listen to you, one would think every mariner who left the wharf went straight to Davy Jones's locker as soon as he got into deep water."
Soon after the summer vacation began, Dave stood on one of the wharves within a mile of his home and watched a trim-looking steamer sidle to her berth. She was low in the water with a heavy cargo. Some time after the gangway was let down and traffic on it had started, an undersized youth, whose pockets bulged strangely, strolled casually ashore. He was about Dave's age, had red hair, and an extremely dirty face. Something about the boy attracted Dave's attention. He noticed that the red-headed youth looked quickly to the right and left, and then, dodging behind a truck, began to walk hurriedly away from the ship.
Dave stepped across the wharf so that the owner of the red hair would have to pass close to him. The boy was glancing over his shoulder and nearly bumped into Dave.
"Hello, kid, which is the way to New York?" he asked jerkily.
"It's miles from here. This is Brooklyn," Dave said.
"Do you know the way around here?" the boy asked. "I want to get out of this quick."
"Come with me," said Dave, growing more interested. He had learned every turn and corner of the docks. Three minutes later they were in a busy street, and the boy seemed to breathe more freely. His face began to wear a triumphant smile.
"That's fine!" he said. "I'll be safe now."
"Safe from what?"
"I've skipped the ship. I was scared to death somebody would spot me. I've got all my things in my pockets."
"What did you skip the ship for?" Dave asked, hugely pleased at being concerned, even in a small way, with a nautical adventure.
"Wanted to see America," responded the youth. "Don't you let on that you 've seen me. So long."
A moment later the owner of the red hair and dirty face was swallowed up in Brooklyn, and Dave went back to the steamer with new interest. An idea had occurred to him. It was only a vague idea, but it concerned the fact that he felt perfectly capable of doing anything that red-headed, undersized chap had done on the ship; and moreover, the ship was now short of a boy.
A curious tight feeling gripped him at the throat. For the space of perhaps five minutes he stood still, thinking hard, and then he boldly walked down the gangway.
"Can I see the captain, please?" he said to a tall man who was standing on deck talking to a companion.
"What do you want the captain for?"
"I want to see him on—on business," said Dave.
The man looked down into the boy's grey eyes which showed neither fear nor disrespect.
"Well, sonny, I'm the captain," he said. "What is it?"
"I guess you want a boy, sir," said Dave. "The other one's gone. I'd like his job."
CHAPTER III
OFF TO SEA
"GONE! Gone where?" asked the captain, with a frown of annoyance.
"I met him on the wharf and he said he'd left the ship, sir," Dave replied.
Suddenly the captain's face wore a smile. The situation appeared to amuse him.
"What d' you know about that!" he said, with a deep laugh. "You 'll get on, son, if you 're always as smart as this. Come back and talk to me in a week. From what I can see of you, I reckon you 'll fill the billet, but I'm too busy to waste time on you now. Come along next Thursday, and then I'll run the rule over you."
Dave's heart beat a little faster than usual as he walked home. Nothing had been farther from his mind earlier in the day than definitely to ask for a job on a vessel. Now he was as good as booked to sail in a week! In the excitement of the moment he had quite forgotten to ask where the ship was bound for. All he knew was her name—the Pacific Queen. As a matter of fact, he was not deeply concerned as to her destination. Any point of the compass was equally satisfactory to him. Perhaps he rather favored China or Japan, but any other old place would do nearly as well. He felt supremely happy and much more important than he ever remembered. Although he had not officially "signed on," the big captain with the deep laugh had said he would fill the billet, and Dave was prepared to take the captain's word for it. The only thing that made him thoughtful was the fact that he would have to go without telling his father or Aunt Martha. There did not seem to be any way out of that difficulty. If he told Aunt Martha, she would make a fuss and his father would hear of it, and Dave knew what that would lead to. Captain Hallard had definitely said his son was not to go to sea until the following year, and when Captain Hallard said a thing he meant it. Dave weighed the whole situation up carefully on his way home and decided the best thing was to disappear quietly to prevent a scene. He would just leave a note for his dad, explaining matters, and promising to return home immediately he got back to America.
That programme was all right in theory until he reached the house. As soon as he entered the door he felt that Aunt Martha's eyes were on him, and that she somehow knew. As a matter of fact Aunt Martha did glance at him, but not more closely than she always did. He was as dear to her as her own son would have been. David tried to act in a perfectly natural manner, but when a boy has just arranged to go to sea on the impulse of the moment, he would be more than human if he failed to show that something unusual was in the wind.
"What's come over the lad?" Aunt Martha exclaimed after a while. "You 're dancing around like a pea in a hot frying pan."
This surprised Dave. He was under the impression that he was exceptionally quiet.
"You 're all excited and worked up," declared Aunt Martha. "I expect you 've been to one of these ball games or watching red Indians at the movies, have n't you?"
"No," replied Dave, subsiding into a chair and making an iron resolution not to move a muscle for five minutes at least.
"Then I guess you 're feverish. Why, I never saw your cheeks so flushed."
Dave stood the ordeal well. He buried himself in a book, pretending to read, but the words danced under his eyes. He, David Hallard, was a sailor at last, or at least as good as a sailor. In seven short days school and Brooklyn would be things of the past. He would be "outward bound." The words had a fine ring to them. There was to be no waiting for twelve dreary months.
Dave lay awake many hours that night, and, with the first streaks of dawn, crept quietly down the stairs, for he wanted to set his eyes on the Pacific Queen again. He felt an air of proprietorship in regard to the vessel. Also, he half dreaded to find she had disappeared in the night, and it was with positive relief that he saw her lying snugly tied up at her berth.
He had learned in recent months to judge the cut of a vessel, and the Pacific Queen looked a trim craft to him. She was a single-screw steel freighter that had not been launched more than three years. No mail-boat that ever tore her way out of New York seemed half so magnificent in Dave's eyes as the Pacific Queen lying at her moorings that early summer morning. There was no sign of life on board except a thin stream of smoke from the galley stack, and the boy stood feasting his eyes on his future home for a full hour before a healthy appetite sent him hurrying home to see what Aunt Martha had for breakfast.
The problem of what to take on the voyage puzzled him somewhat. There were not many things he could take, as the money-box into which he had been dropping dimes and five-cent pieces for a couple of years contained only a few dollars. A large clasp-knife, of course, must be included. Of that there was no question. Whoever heard of a sailor without a clasp-knife? Dave was not absolutely certain what it was for, but he knew it was indispensable, so he boldly laid out a dollar and a half on a fearsome weapon with a bone handle. Fortunately, he had a new pair of heavy shoes. One problem gave him many uneasy hours. His father had once told him that when the time came for him to go to sea he could have the binoculars that formed one of Captain Hallard's souvenirs of the sea. The clasp-knife was a treasure already, but those binoculars were the crowning point of Dave's desires. They had cost an awful lot of money at one time and were not a necessary part of a boy's outfit, but Dave felt it would be a great thing to have them with him.
Choosing a suitable opportunity, he asked:
"Dad, do you remember saying I could have your glasses when the time came?"
"Surely," his father agreed, "and I hope you will remember always to treat 'em as carefully as I have done. They 've got fine lenses in them, and I don't know that I ever handled a better pair of binoculars in my life. There's many a sea-captain tramping round the ocean who'd give a whole lot to own a pair of glasses like them, so you 'll have to be careful or they will get stolen. Not that stealing is common on board ship. It's the unforgivable sin at sea. I have seen a man thrown overboard and near drowned for taking what was n't his. All the same you 'll have to keep your eyes open, but if you 've still got them when the time comes for you to be pacing the bridge they 'll be worth a sight more to you than the junk you can pick up for good money at most stores. When there's a thick haze and you 're driving down on a vessel that's blowing her buzzer fit to wake the dead, you can't tell which direction the sound is coming from. The lives of everybody on board may depend on your being able to spot the other boat. That's when you want a good pair of binoculars to see through."
"Can I use them now just as if they were mine?" Dave put in anxiously. He had a nice sense of honor. Nothing would have induced him to take them on the Pacific Queen without a favorable reply to this question.
"Why, I don't see any objection," Captain Hallard replied good-naturedly, puffing away at his pipe. "Only, as I say, take care of them, and mind you don't scratch the lenses. They were given to me nigh on thirty years ago by an old deep-sea pilot once when we were in the North Sea, making Flushing on the Dutch coast. I was second mate at the time. It had been blowing a regular gale, and we'd got to the lightship where the pilot cutter was generally hanging around. Dark! You could n't see your hand before you, away from a lamp; and there was a heavy ground swell running. All of a sudden we saw the flare off the cutter, signalling that a pilot was coming to us. It means fifty dollars at least for a few hours' work, so they 'll board you in a mighty bad sea if their small boat can stand it. Our skipper did n't reckon they could make it, but he sent up a flare in answer, and pretty soon the dory bumped alongside with two men at the oars besides the pilot. I'd slung a rope ladder over and was standing by. The pilot got ready to catch hold of the ladder when the ship was n 't rolling extra hard. The dory was bobbing up and down and I felt kind of nervous for the old man. He had boarded hundreds of ships in the dark, but the sea is a queer thing, my lad. She's always waiting. You never know when she's going to get you. Just as the pilot was reaching out for the ladder a big wave caught us on the starboard quarter and rolled us right over on top of the dory. It crumpled up like an egg, and I made sure all three men in her must have been killed.
"I gave a yell up to the bridge, bent a line on to a stanchion, took hold of one end of it, and slipped over the side. I could swim quite a bit in those days, but I did n't fancy paddling around in the North Sea under such conditions without something to hang on to the old ship by. I could n't see a thing, but presently I touched a man's head. I got one arm round him and when we were heaved on board we found it was the pilot. He'd got a nasty bump on the forehead, and was dazed for a while, but he came round after the skipper had given him a stiff glass of grog. We never saw anything of the other men. Before we dropped the pilot he gave me these binoculars that he had in his overcoat pocket, saying he'd made up his mind to retire anyhow, and reckoned he could take a hint from the sea as well as any man."
At times Dave felt almost bursting with the desire to tell one of his school friends the wonderful thing that was to happen on the following Thursday, but he kept his own counsel and waited as patiently as he could. On his last night at home he wrote two letters, one to his father and one to Aunt Martha. The first ran:
Dear Dad:
I couldn't wait, and I'm going to sea. Please forgive me. I 'll take good care of the binoculars and write to you often.
Your loving son,
David.
He propped the two letters up against the dock on the mantelpiece and then went to bed in his own room for the last time, after packing his few possessions in an old suitcase. Dave hardly dared close his eyes lest he should sleep too long. Before it was light he slipped on his clothes. The stairs creaked as he walked down them in his stocking-feet, with his shoes in one hand and the suitcase in the other. He dreaded waking either his father or Aunt Martha, and yet had to fight with a desire to say good-by to them. He had to bite his lips hard and a lump came into his throat when he passed his father's door.
The lock and bolt on the front door took an eternity to manipulate in the dark. His fingers seemed to be all thumbs. He had never noticed before how much noise the key made in that lock. He wondered vaguely how long it would be before he turned it again. Quite a lot had to happen before then. The lump in his throat grew bigger. Not until he had closed the door ever so softly, and stood on the path, did he realize exactly how dear home was to him, or what a lot Aunt Martha had done for him in her prim fashion. The great adventure was starting. No, it had actually started! From that moment onwards he was to be a wage-earner and a sailor.
For three hours Dave waited on the wharf, until there were signs of life on the Pacific Queen. When Captain Chisholm turned out of his berth he was told there was a boy waiting to see him.
"A boy!" he said. "What does he want?"
"Says you told him to come, sir. He's been on deck since four o'clock."
"Oh, I know," said the captain. "Send him here."
The master mariner was having breakfast when Dave was ushered in. He had already ascertained that the boat was bound for Auckland, New Zealand, and other Australasian ports.
"So you want to go to sea, eh?" the big man asked, attacking a pile of bacon and eggs.
"Yes, sir," Dave replied.
"Ever been afloat?"
"Not yet, sir."
"What's your name?"
"David Hallard."
"How old?"
"Sixteen, sir."
"Got a father!"
"Yes, sir."
"What does he say about it?"
"He says I can be a sailor, sir," he answered, after a moment's hesitation. "He was a ship's master, but he's got rheumatism now."
"Well, you seem a smart enough lad. You 'll have to jump around a bit at sea. We 've no use for lazy folk here. Go and report to Mr. Quick, the first mate. He will tell you what to do. He's rough and ready, but he knows his business. Don't let him have to tell you twice and you 'll be all right. We sail at noon. Run along now."
Dave found that Mr. Quick was a very different type of man from the captain. He seemed to bark instead of talking, nor did he appear to be in a particularly pleasant frame of mind that morning. He had fiery red hair and piercing eyes. Mr. Quick devoted precisely sixty seconds to the new hand, during which he gave Dave some terse and emphatic advice, after which he hustled him off to the galley, where he was placed under the wing of Barnes, the ship's cook.
"Well, and what have they sent to plague the life out of me now?" Barnes asked in a high, squeaky voice. If Dave had not been trying hard to make a good impression on every one he might have laughed, for Barnes had the most comical face he had ever seen. In reality he was good-natured enough, but for some reason he always tried to give the impression that he was cranky and unapproachable, perhaps because people had been taking advantage of his amiability for forty years at sea. His fat cheeks were red, and his eyebrows stood out like two white bushes. In spite of the greeting, Dave liked Barnes instinctively on sight, and grew to like him still more in the course of time; and he is a lucky person who makes a friend of the cook afloat.
"I 've come to help you," the boy said. "So far, I only know how to peel potatoes, though."
"Well, I sha'n't be askin' you to bake doughnuts or fry chickens for the passengers yet a while," the cook growled, "'cause there ain't no passengers this trip, and again there ain't no chickens to fry. Ship's biscuits, cold, with plenty o' weevils in 'em, is all the hands get on this ship week-days. Sundays it's different. We has to warm the biscuits up into a puddin' for a change."
"Then what do we want a cook for?" asked Dave, with a grin.
"Look here, youngster, I 'll not stand for any impidence," Barnes declared, puffing out his cheeks and doing wonderful things with his bushy eyebrows. "You 'll have a frying-pan about your ears in a brace of shakes. Don't stand there like a dummy! Why don't you get to work? Do you expect me to wash all them dishes?"
Dave whipped off his coat and started on the task with a celerity which brought a grunt of satisfaction from the cook—a sound which Barnes hastily strove to hide with a cough.
It occurred to the new hand that he might be able to extract some information from the cook.
"Can you tell me what other duties I 'll have on board this boat, Mr. Barnes, besides washing dishes?"
The cook glared at him.
"Not a thing, my son," he said. "It's one of the rules on this ship that the boy is n't allowed to do anything but wash dishes. When he's got through he has to part his hair in the middle and dine with the skipper—if there isn't some more dishes to wash, which there allus is. What are you pesterin' me with fool questions for, anyhow? Do you take me for the navigatin' officer or only the owner? Reach me that frying-pan down and I 'll belay your ears with it."
Dave promptly obeyed, and got a thump on the shoulders with it for "more impidence." After that, he was kept busy with various duties in the galley until, for the first time in his life, he felt the peculiar vibration of a ship's engines. The propeller had began its endless song of "chug-chug-a-chug."
Another Hallard had started on his first voyage.
"Can I go on deck a few minutes, Mr. Barnes, please?" he asked. The idea of cutting up cabbages while the lights of his home town dropped astern did not appeal to him.
"Why, yes, son," the cook replied, working his eyebrows so ridiculously that the boy had to laugh in spite of the curious feeling it gave him to know that Aunt Martha was probably in tears at the moment and that his dad was possibly watching that very ship from the window upstairs. "Go right along. Don't forget to ask Mr. Quick for a deck-chair and plenty of cushions. You 'll need the cushions if Mr. Quick catches you admirin' the scenery."
Dave slipped up the companion-way. Already they were steaming along at seven or eight miles an hour, a thick trail of smoke hanging astern. All was hustle and hurry on deck. The boy dodged out of the way of the sailors, and, standing on a coil of rope, watched familiar scenes disappear. It seemed difficult to realize that he was not dreaming. The lump was there in his throat bigger than ever when he went back to the galley, and something in his expression caught the watchful eye of the cook.
"Never mind, laddie," said Barnes. "This is your first trip, is n't it? Left the old folks behind, eh? We 've all been through it. It's a dog's life at sea, but you 'll be back eatin' corn-beef an' cabbage at home afore you know it."
CHAPTER IV
THE DERELICT
THEnew hand's sleeping quarters were in the "fo'c'sle," but he did not sleep much the first night, for everything was strange. So far, the ship was very steady, only giving a roll occasionally. When the boy turned out next morning they were far out to sea and running to the south, the coast-line of New Jersey looming up in the distance on the starboard beam.
Dave soon discovered that he was to lead a strenuous existence on board. With only one pair of hands, he was to do all sorts of odd jobs for the cook, help the steward to wait on the captain, who had his meals alone, obey orders from any one who took it into his head to issue commands, and make himself generally useful. He got a good many hints from Barnes when that queer individual was in the mood to be communicative, though Dave had to sort out the hints from a maze of contradictory statements.
"It's a reglar dog's life at sea," said the cook, while Dave was stirring a mysterious compound in a large basin. Barnes seemed to have a fondness for that expression. "I dunno why kids like you want to come on a ship. An' yet it's all right at times, such as when you get ashore. The best part of bein' at sea is goin' ashore, I allus says. Did n't I see you runnin' your legs off for Oleson this morning?" he demanded ferociously, without the slightest warning.
"Who's Oleson?" Dave asked. He had been performing a variety of duties for so many people.
"Oleson is that great, lumbering, Swedish seaman who looks like a one-eyed mule." Dave recognized the vague description by the fact that one man wore a patch over his left eye.
"Yes, he asked me to—"
"Never mind what he asked you to do," the cook snapped. "You 've got to learn to look after yourself, kid, or nobody on this ship won't be doin' nothing soon. You 'll be doing it all. Oleson wants a couple of valets to run about after him, and somebody to carry his breakfast to him in the morning so that he can have it in bed nice and comfortable. Don't tell him so or he might screw your neck round five times, but I'm just puttin' you wise, see! Hi, there!" he added quickly, Dave having stopped stirring to listen. "I 'll break every bone in your body if you spoil that puddin'."
Mr. Quick, who was reputed to have eyes in the back of his head, took no notice of the new hand except to give him an occasional sharp order. Dave, being new to ship's discipline, disliked the chief mate's manner, but made a mental resolve not to incur that officer's wrath. The third day out, however, an incident occurred which made a permanent enemy of Mr. Quick.
A steady wind had began to blow, whittling throagb the rigging and giving the steamer a most unpleasant motion known as the "cork-screw." That is to say, she neither pitched all the time nor rolled all the time, but kept up an aggravating combination of both. Dave was getting rather white in consequence, and did not by any means feel sure of his legs. He had a strong desire to lie down and wait until he got used to the motion, but there were many things for him to do. In the middle of this the steward popped his head into the galley.
"Shake up the skipper's dinner in a hurry," he said. "The old man says he wants it right now. I'm going to fix up the table, so send the kid on with the soup soon as you can."
"Tell the captain to go to Jerusalem," spluttered Barnes, who hated to be hurried. "Regular dog's life, this is. Here, Dave, take this soup along to the steward, and get a move on."
David, anxious to do his best, but feeling more shaky than ever, took the plate and hurried, according to instructions. Even without the soup he would have found it most difficult to retain his balance; as it was, he only kept upright by a miracle. His mind was concentrated solely on his task, and there was no reason for him to suppose that Mr. Quick would come around the comer suddenly.
Before the boy had the slightest warning, the apparition of Mr. Quick towered in front of him. Both the mate and the boy were apparently in a hurry. Dave realized what was inevitable a fiftieth part of a second before it happened, but he was utterly powerless to prevent the disaster.
The plate struck Mr. Quick just about on the lowest button of his waistcoat, and Dave, being unable to check himself, followed the plate.
Mr. Quick gave a yell of pain, for the soup, which trickled its greasy course down his trousers, was scalding hot. Dave remembered that fact while he was scrambling to his feet with one eye on the maters red hair, which appeared to bristle and stand erect.
"I'm very sorry, sir," the boy stammered. "The boat swayed just then."
Mr. Quick's arm was raised and an angry light shone in his eyes.
"You lubberly pup!" he bellowed. "I 'll teach you better manners than to throw soup over an officer of the ship. She swayed, did she! Then this is where you sway!" and he struck at the boy with a huge fist.
Had the blow landed where Mr. Quick intended it to, Dave would probably have been knocked unconscious, but he dodged just in time, and the mate, still hurling abuse at Dave, and mopping himself down with a handkerchief, turned on his heel and disappeared along the alleyway; while Dave, very crestfallen, went back to the galley for more soup. There more trouble was awaiting him, for Barnes seemed to be in the worst of
"I'm very sorry, sir," the boy stammered
tempers until he learned of the calamity. Then, however, his anger vanished and his fat sides shook with laughter. He did not love the chief mate and rejoiced exceedingly at the latter's discomfiture.
"But take my tip, Dave," he said severely, "and keep out of that man's way after this, or he 'll make things hot for you."
Dave, unfortunately, could not altogether keep out of Mr. Quick's way, though he would have been glad to follow the advice. The mate was of an unforgiving nature and nursed his grievance. He set Dave to all manner of disagreeable tasks, and more than once cuffed him on slight provocation, thereby arousing the intense indignation of Barnes.
"If only I could depend on the steward," the cook said explosively, "I'd give Mr. Bloomin' Quick something in his dinner that would do his heart good. It's the likes of him that makes it a dog's life at sea. Say, kid," he went on in fiery tones, "I 'll make you eat them potato peelin's raw if you don't hurry up."
The weather continued rough, and the Pacific Queen was nearly a week out of port before Dave began to lose the topsyturvy feeling in his stomach. What with seasickness and Mr. Quick's studied unkindness, he felt exceedingly miserable sometimes, but he kept a stiff upper lip, thereby earning the secret admiration of Barnes, who was a good deal more human than even he suspected himself of being.
When Dave was gaining his sea legs he noticed a ship, hull down, on the port bow and remembered the binoculars, which he usually kept fastened up in his suitcase. Slipping down for them, he returned, and was standing in the well-deck, peering out at the distant vessel, when the skipper passed near.
"Well, sonny, what d' you make of her? Is she a pirate, or what? Those look like good glasses. Let me have a peek through them."
The captain took the binoculars, and after studying the ship on the horizon a moment, said:
"These are uncommonly fine glasses. I believe they 're as good as my own, if not better. Whose are they?"
"Mine, sir," replied Dave, with a touch of pride.
"Yours!" said the captain incredulously, glancing down with an air of suspicion at Dave's clothes—an old suit that had grown much the worse for wear with rough work afloat. "Where did you get them?" the big man went on sharply.
Dave flushed, stung by the suggestion conveyed in the captain's words. He was not used to having his honesty questioned.
"They were my father's, sir," he said, unconsciously drawing himself up. "Dad said I might use them. They were given to him by a pilot after Dad had saved his life."
"All right, lad; don't ever get cross with the captain," the big man said, in kindly fashion, patting the boy's shoulder. "But take my advice and look after those binoculars in your travels, because they 're worth as much as you 'll earn in a month of Sundays."
Still feeling a little wounded, Dave was returning the glasses to the suitcase, when one of the deck hands informed him that Mr. Quick wanted him immediately and was "raging something 'orrible."
The boy hurried away without locking the case up, and found Mr. Quick had upset a bottle of some evil-smelling liquid over the floor of his cabin. He was wiping it up, fuming, and calling for a bucket of hot water, all at the same time. Dave was fully occupied for ten minutes and then, remembering the glasses, returned to lock the case.
To his dismay they had disappeared. That they had been stolen was obvious. There could be no other explanation. And he had promised his father to take such care of them!
In consternation he sought the cook. Barnes grew red with indignation.
"It's dollars to doughnuts one of them engine-room scum has done it," he declared. "I 'll see into this."
The second engineer was on friendly terms with the cook, and Barnes readily enlisted his sympathy.
"I 'll speak to the chief," he said, "and we 'll make a search."
Making a search, however, was not as easy as it sounded. The only hope was that the thief had not had time to secrete the glasses in one of the many inaccessible nooks with which every ship abounds. Barnes and the second engineer together went through the men's quarters, but without success. Those deck-hands who were off duty—as a class, deck-hands hate a thief on board like poison—offered to join in the search, and soon half a dozen men were rummaging in every hole and corner. Dave's hopes were sinking lower and lower. He was beginning to regard the glasses as gone forever, when Barnes started to ferret about in the after wheel-house; and there he came upon them hidden away on the top of a beam.
"You 're not fit to have a ten-cent spy-glass," he snorted, glaring at Dave from under his fearsome eyebrows. "In my locker they 'll stay now till we finish the trip, except when I take 'em out to look for your brains. If I could find the scum that swiped 'em I'd make chop suey of him, to feed Mr. Quick with. Just about the sort of diet to suit him."
"Hello, what's the cap'n up to?" he went on suddenly. "If he is n't turning off his course, I'm a Dutchman."
Going to the side of the boat he saw they were heading directly for a steamer which lay with a heavy list, perhaps five miles away. No smoke emerged from her funnel. Adjusting the glasses, the cook examined the craft for a while.
"By jiminy!" he exclaimed. "If she ain't a derelict, I 'll eat my hat."
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH THE PACIFIC QUEEN LOSES A PRIZE
"ADERELICT," Dave said, not quite sure what a derelict was. "Does n't that mean a—"
"A derelict, my son," said Barnes, "is the sort of thing a cap'n spends all his life lookin' for, but most generally he does n't find it; and even when he finds it, it might be lucky and it might be powerful unlucky. If the old man has a hoodoo, he 'll either find the derelict in the dark by punching bow on into it, or the derelict won't be worth the trouble of takin' to port. But if the skipper who runs across it is one of them people that can't go wrong, he 'll be able to tow the thing into port and live happy ever after on what he gets out of the salvage."
Dave, consumed with curiosity, held out his hand for the glasses.
"Away, child, away," commanded the cook with his eyes still glued to them. "Here is work for men, not infants. A two-thousand-ton steamer, as I live. We 'll all have rings on our fingers and bells on our toes after this, for the cap'n doesn't get all the salvage money. I dunno what share the cook gets, eggsactly, but it ought to be about half, I reckon. You 'll pick up a few hundred dollars too, kid, maybe, though I'm sure you don't deserve it. Here, take a squint through these binoculars; though you don't deserve that, either."
Dave, rapidly growing more excited as they ran nearer the vessel, tried to discern some sign of life on board her, but could not. He did not understand quite what the cook meant about salvage, though it sounded good.
The engine-room telegraph rang, and the Pacific Queen slowed down. The order came from the bridge for a boat to be swung out. Mr. Quick, hustling a crew into her, took charge and put off to the other vessel. Everybody waited impatiently for their return. The ship bobbing up and down, a hundred yards away, had evidently encountered trouble of some sort. Her bows were dangerously low in the water, as if the forward compartments were flooded, and there was a list which made one think she was going to topple over any minute. A number of plates were stove in, showing she had hit something with tremendous force.
The boarding party remained away half an hour, and on his return the chief mate reported that the vessel was the Miriam, of Boston, apparently laden with a general cargo. She was deserted and sinking. The forward hold and engine-room were full of water, and he thought that only the bulkheads holding out were saving her. Once the pressure of water broke those down, she would sink.
"She's been worth a power of money, Mr, Quick," commented Captain Chisholm, "to say nothing of the cargo in her. I guess I 'll just slip over myself and see what sort of a chance there is of doing anything with her. She's been in collision during a gale, and the boat that hit her probably took the men off. We 're within twenty-four hours' run of Charleston. A salvage job like this would just tickle me to death. If it can possibly be done, Mr. Mate, I 'm going to try it."
The captain's inspection of the derelict was not so lengthy.
"There's a sporting chance of getting her into dock," he announced as he climbed back onto the Pacific Queen, "but there is n't a minute to lose. We must get the pumps to work immediately. It will be tricky work, because she may sink like a stone when she does go. Now, Mr. Quick, get that new manila hawser bent on to her, and look alive there. You 'll want a dozen men on her. Better take only volunteers, as it's risky."
Volunteers were ready enough. Dave moved forward to join them, but Barnes pulled him back by the ear.
"That's work for men, not babies, did n't I tell you?" he said. "Besides, who d'you s'pose is going to wash the dishes on this packet if you go and get drownded? It's no use me askin' the cap'n to do it, and I'm sure I won't. Yon is a death-trap, lad. It's a desperate chance to make big money, and, mark my words, they 'll hang on to the last minute. We 'll get our share of the salvage money just the same, so stop where you are. Blow you, anyway; you 're more trouble than you 're worth!"
In the next few minutes Dave learnt what real hustling at sea was.
Mr. Quick knew the art of driving men in an emergency, and in an incredibly short time the derelict was pulling heavily behind the Pacific Queen at the end of the long hawser, and looking strangely awkward with her heavy list. Mr. Quick's task was a formidable one, but he set about it with grim determination, for the prize was one well worth having. There was a ground swell running, but no water was coming inboard; so after having hand pumps rigged up and setting four men to work at top speed on these, he had the hatches ripped off. As he had surmised, the cargo had shifted badly, and that was what made her lean over so perilously. Bales, boxes, and merchandise of all kinds were lying in indescribable confusion, and it was a Herculean task to get the hold anything like ship-shape without the aid of steam-winches. Mr. Quick, however, threw off his coat and worked as hard as any of the men. The derelict was not in imminent danger of turning turtle so long as the sea did not grow worse, but there was always the danger of a strong wind getting up suddenly.
With aching backs, fingers lacerated by frenzied tugging at the jumbled cargo, and perspiration pouring off them, the men toiled at their task without a break all day, and Mr. Quick did not call them off until there was an appreciable difference in the way the boat was riding in the water. The men at the pumps, however, worked in vain. Thousands of gallons of water gushed out of the hold forward without raising the bow an inch in the sea. It was evident that a hole of considerable size must have been torn in the side of the vessel, through which the water rushed as fast as the overtaxed muscles of the seamen pumped it out.
Everybody on the Pacific Queen was agog with excitement, casting many an anxious glance back at the precious prize.
"Quick ain't giving them men a picnic; no, sir!" Barnes said to Dave. "They 'll be 'most dead by the time we get to port. That mate hasn't had a proper chance to let off steam in months, and my name is n't Bill Barnes if he does n't enjoy it more 'n a big-league baseball game. That man ain't got no heart. He's just made up of vinegar and guncotton."
It was true that Mr. Quick was getting the last ounce out of the men, and the pumping went on incessantly. There was always the bare chance that they were lightening the derelict a trifle, and the mate did not like to think of the tremendous strain those bulkheads were standing. Every hour, though, brought them miles nearer Charleston.
When night had fallen Barnes stood at the stern of the Pacific Queen, surveying the lurching light which alone showed that the stricken craft was still above water.
"This is where I quit cookin' pudding's for a bunch of sailors," he said to Dave. "It's more 'n I ever hoped for to come my way, is pickin' up two hundred feet or so of a steamer without even a canary on board. D' you know what I'm going to do with my share, kid? I'm going to found a home for tired sea-cooks. Yes, sir. That's what I'm going to do. There's going to be free grub and things, and no man in there will do a stroke of work. Maybe there 'll be a steward engaged. Yes, sir, I 've got his duties figgered out right now. When a tired sea-cook is reclinin' at his ease, with a good cargo of roast beef stowed aboard, running his mind over the days when he had the life plagued out of him afloat, that steward 'll knock at the door soft-like and say it's time the crowds dinner was ready. Yes, sir. There 'll only be one man in that home for tired sea-cooks, and that's me. And do you know what I 'll say to the steward? I 'll tell him to tell the crew to go to Jericho.
"Laugh, you little lubber," he added, glaring at Dave, "or I 'll drop you overboard. What are you going to do with your share, Dave?"
The boy thought for a moment.
"I 'll pay some one to write a book teaching manners to sea-cooks," he said, side-stepping just in time to avoid Barnes's hand.
The coming of darkness had not improved the position. There was an atmosphere of grave anxiety on the Pacific Queen, for it needed no very experienced eye to judge that the Miriam's chances were, to say the least, slim; and none knew better than Mr. Quick how insecure was the position of the men under him.
Dave slept fitfully, dreaming he was the skipper of a steamer that encountered a whole fleet of derelicts. He had them all tied astern, like a string of barges, reaching for miles. Then his chief engineer came up to report that there was no more coal left on board, and Captain David Hallard was struggling desperately with the problem of what to do, when he awoke.
Through a porthole he saw that the first signs of dawn were visible in the eastern sky. Dressing hastily, he went on deck.
Oleson and one or two other sailors were hovering round the stern, discussing the Miriam's chances of keeping afloat.
"She 'll just about make Charleston," one man said, "but she would n't get much farther."
"I never expected to find her above water this morning," commented another, gloomily.
"Leave that to Quick," said the first sailor. "He knows what he's doing. There 'll be a scramble for that dory they 're trailing astern, though, if she does sink!"
The light was growing rapidly, and Dave could now make out the form of the chief mate. The creak and thud of the pumps came faintly across the heaving water.
Mr. Quick, as a matter of fact, was ill at ease. He had been standing for some time over the flooded hold, listening, and fearing to hear a repetition of an ominous sound—a dull groaning that seemed to come from somewhere underneath him. Using his arms as a semaphore, he sent a signal to Captain Chisholm, who had been restlessly pacing the bridge.
"Afraid bulkheads giving way," he signaled. "No lower yet, but stand by ready to let go hawser if necessary!"
The captain frowned as he read the message. It was maddening to have such valuable salvage snatched away when they were getting so near to port. But he was responsible for the lives of the men.
"Don't take chances," he signaled back. "Have dory ready."
Mr. Quick smiled grimly, but no one on the Pacific Queen saw that smile. It was not a pleasant sight. He was willing to run the same risk of being drowned as the men, but as chief mate he would draw a large proportion of the salvage money, and for the present he had no intention of giving the order which would send the men into the dory.
Every now and again he went to the side of the ship to see if she had settled farther. He was perfectly aware that the noise he had heard indicated something sinister was happening down in the flooded interior of the ship and that the derelict's chances now hung on a single thread. But while that thread held there was a hope of big salvage money.
An hour passed—two hours. Mr. Quick, with every nerve strained to breaking point, felt a peculiar motion of the derelict, and the deck vibrated slightly. Though hard and cruel, he was brave. Very quietly, and still puffing at the stump of a cigar which he had nearly bitten through, he peered again over the side.
For three minutes he remained in that position, staring intently at the water.
Oleson, on the Pacific Queen, took the glasses from Dave's hand.
"She's a full foot lower," he said jerkily. "I 'll be veree surprised if she keeps up another hour."
Suddenly the cries of alarmed men on the Miriam were heard. A crashing, rumbling noise from under the decks had told them the end had come.
Like a tired thing, the derelict lurched heavily, and before the men on board had time to get half way to the dory, the doomed steamer's bows were in the sea. She canted over, making progress along the deck difficult. Only eight of the crew, besides the mate, had dropped into the small boat, when the stern of the derelict began to rise as her bows went farther downward. To have delayed another second would have meant death for all. With his own hands Mr. Quick cast the painter when the dory was tilted at a perilous angle, and even as the piteous cries of the four men left on board were ringing in their ears, the sailors in the dory bent desperately to their oars in order to avoid the whirlpool which the sinking ship would create on her plunge to the bottom.
Though the muscles in their backs and arms cracked under the strain, the men did not succeed in getting far enough away to avoid the eddy.
The instant he noticed what was happening, Captain Chisholm stopped the engines of the Pacific Queen.
"Let go that hawser," came the order from the bridge. "Get another boat out quick. Be smart there."
Like lightning the men obeyed. The loss of their prize was forgotten for the moment, for human lives were in peril. There was no time to pick and choose who was to man the second dory. Those near at hand jumped in, Dave among them. Just as they pushed off from the side of the Pacific Queen the little craft containing Mr. Quick and eight men was caught by the outside of the whirlpool and began to spin round.
"Easy with your oars, lads," said the bo'sun in charge of the second dory. "We must keep out of that."
The irresistible suction drew the mate's boat nearer and nearer that swirling centre of the whirlpool in rapidly narrowing circles. The men in her were now struggling frantically against overwhelming odds. It seemed as though nothing could possibly save them from being drawn under, to be shot far down in the track of the Miriam.
Dave gripped the gunwale of the boat tightly. He wanted to close his eyes to shut out the impending tragedy. He forgot the mate's brutality. It was agonizing to have to sit still and do nothing while his shipmates were on the verge of death.
CHAPTER VI
BARNES ADVISES AND DAVE RESOLVES
JUSTas the spinning dory reached the ortex, a change came over the turbulent water. The fiercest suction seemed to have spent itself. The whirlpool became a dozen smaller eddies, each with its rapidly revolving current, and though the dory danced from one point of danger to another it remained afloat. Loose spars and gear from the derelict began to shoot up to the surface.
"Let her have it now, lads," shouted the bo'sun. "This 'll be our only chance of getting any one who went down."
A minute later both dorys were over the place where the Miriam had sunk, and two unconscious forms were soon lifted out of the water.
"There's two more somewhere," Mr. Quick shouted across, as a number of men in each boat began to apply artificial respiration to the half-drowned victims.
Dave, happening to look a little way from the scene of the tragedy, noticed something awash on the surface for a moment.
"There's a man over there, Mr. Grimes," he yelled to the bo'sun, and the dory was urged across the intervening space.
"Sure enough there is," said Grimes, as they drew near. "You 've got quick eyes, lad. If this chap has any kick left in him he 'll owe his life to you."
The man's form was just sinking again when they got hold of it with a boat hook. He was a deck hand named Hawke, who had gone out of his way on more than one occasion to do an act of kindness to the boy.
For nearly half an hour the dorys cruised about the scene of the disaster, in the hope of picking up the remaining member of the crew, but the sea had claimed her toll; and for some days afterward there brooded over the ship an air of gloom, the missing man having been not only a good sailor but a popular comrade.
The rest of the voyage, until they made their first stop, at New Orleans, was uneventful Dave was bitterly disappointed to find that, as they were only to remain in port a few hours, nobody was allowed ashore, and he left the gate of Louisiana with only a confused memory of docks. The weather remained favourable in the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea; and the boy settled down to ship's routine during the long run to Cape Horn, where the Pacific Queen ran into a furious gale, which battered her for four days. It was Dave's first experience of really bad weather, and with it came more seasickness, for the ship sometimes lay over at an angle of forty-five degrees, or seemed to be trying to stand on her nose as she slid down the mountainous seas. Green waves were shipped, but little damage was done, everything movable having been securely lashed.
The cook had a miraculous faculty of keeping on his feet and manipulating dishes and pans when by all known laws of gravitation he should have been sprawling. The first time Dave was jerked off his legs by a violent roll of the ship Barnes hurled a stream of invective at him, performing wondrous gymnastics with his bushy eyebrows and balancing a stew-pan on the galley stove the while.
"Do you want me to hold you up," he fumed, "as well as do all the work in this galley? This comes of goin' to sea with babies! It's a cradle you ought to have. Me and the mate will take turns rockin' you to sleep. I'd never have come aboard this packet if I'd known you'd be— Come here," he added, softening suddenly, noticing a red stain on Dave's shirt-sleeve. "You 're an idiot, that's what you are. Why did n't you tell me you'd hurt yourself?"
He rolled up the boy's sleeve and found a cut which, while not serious, was causing considerable pain. With a tenderness that even Dave had not suspected Barnes capable of, the cook bathed and bandaged it, leaving the dinner to take care of itself until he had finished.
"Allus keep the dirt out of a cut, kid," he said, "if you have n't got brains enough to keep out of cutting yourself, which you have n't."
As that day wore on the sea grew worse, and Barnes quietly took on to his own shoulders a good many of the boy's duties, for in spite of his incessant, vitriolic grumbling, he knew well enough that Dave was a willing worker, and an exceptionally useful one considering that he was a "first tripper." Moreover it was only with difficulty now, in spite of his many years of experience, that Barnes could move about while the ship was playing such antics.
"You'd better turn in, youngster," he said during the evening. "There's nothing much for you to do."
"Thanks, Mr. Barnes, "Dave said simply, profoundly grateful for the chance of getting to his bunk. He was making his way forward and feeling extremely sick, when he encountered Mr. Quick. The wild sea had aroused all the man-driving quality in the mate, who promptly put the lad to cleaning the chain-locker, which happened to be the most disagreeable task he could think of at the moment.
David Hallard came of stubborn stock, and the situation had to be pretty desperate for him to admit to himself that he was beaten, but by the time he was able to crawl into his berth he had a craving to be home, in his own bed, in the house that did not sway and try to turn somersaults, and where there were no chain-lockers. It was the worst hour of the gale, and Dave, though not actually frightened, was more than a little awed. Added to that, his arm hurt a good deal. And besides the seasickness, which alone was enough to make him intensely miserable, he had the recent memory of Mr. Quick's deliberate unkindness.
The rolling of the steamer kept him awake for hours, during which he made a grim resolution. After that his mind became easier and he dropped off to sleep.
Next morning, to his great joy, the boy found the gale had almost abated, and though a heavy sea was still running, the ship was riding much more easily. His resolution involved one point which puzzled him, and after a while he decided to consult the cook.
"I want to ask your advice, Mr. Barnes," he said. "I 've made up my mind to do something."
"What d' you take me for?" snapped Barnes, bustling about the galley. "Do I look like a walkin' encyclopedia? I'm too busy to fiddle about with kids, anyway."
The boy did not answer but went on steadily with his work.
Barnes continued to bustle, making perhaps a trifle more noise than was absolutely necessary with his pans, and glancing occasionally in the direction of his youthful assistant. At last he coughed awkwardly.
"What's worryin' you, Dave?" he asked, puffing out his red cheeks. He liked the boy more than he was aware of, and took a fatherly pride in giving him advice.
"Oh, only this, I 've decided to leave the ship when we get to Auckland."
Barnes stared and blinked his queer-looking eyes.
"Pity to do that," he said. "By rights you ought to take the ship with you. Is n't the steam heat to your satisfaction, or is it 'cos you have n't got a private bath-room?"
Dave knew Barnes well enough by now to ignore his sarcasm.
"I 'll be real sorry to go and leave you, Mr. Barnes," the lad went on, "but Mr. Quick has never forgotten me upsetting that soup over his legs, and he's got it in for me."
"I know," the cook said. "That's one of his playful little habits. It's the vinegar in him. But don't forget, sonny, you might go further an' fare worse."
"Maybe," Dave agreed ruefully, "but if I have my way, I 'll try to be under a mate whose legs I have n't upset hot soup over. Here is what I want to know, though. This boat goes on to Australian ports and the crew are paid off at Brisbane, are n't they?"
"If we ever get there."
"Well, how can I get my pay at Auckland?"
"You want some new clothes, don't you?" Barnes said. "There's nothing in the slop-chest for kids. I 'll put in a word for you, and they 'll advance you as much money as you 've earned up to the time we hit New Zealand."
This relieved Dave's mind considerably, because all the cash he possessed was one dime, one nickel and four cents; and though he had sufficient confidence to leave the ship at Auckland and find another berth, he very naturally disliked the notion of finding himself in a strange land, many thousands of miles from Aunt Martha's flapjacks, with a large appetite and only nineteen cents in his pocket.
Realizing that the more he knew about his new profession the more easily he would be, likely to obtain another ship in New Zealand, Dave learnt all he could during the next few weeks, and here he found a valuable tutor in Hawke. The sailor spent many hours of his watch below teaching the boy some of the simpler arts of his craft, including splicing and the tying of those baffling knots which form such an important part of a nautical education. Hawke would also have pressed some of his possessions on Dave as a mark of gratitude for what the boy had done when he was in the water, but these Dave firmly refused, accepting only Hawke's clasp knife as a souvenir.
Very little occurred to relieve the monotony of the voyage through the Southern Pacific. Dave, however, had not been at sea long enough to get over the novelty of it all. They had left Cape Horn about four thousand miles astern when the look-out one day reported a sail on the port bow. An hour later Captain Chisholm altered his course, observing that the ship was flying a signal for assistance. As the Pacific Queen drew near it was seen that the distressed vessel was a bark named the Polly E. Perkins, with every stitch of canvas set. There was very little wind and the sails flapped lazily. The Polly E. Perkins reported that she had been nearly two months beating her way from New Zealand against adverse winds, and was now running out of water. The crew was already on short rations. Captain Chisholm sent a supply of the precious liquid and then, on learning that he could render no further assistance, steamed once more westward, leaving the bark to resume her trying trip.
"Take my tip and never sign on an old wind-jammer," Barnes said to Dave as the other vessel dropped astern. "It's a dog's life on a steamer, anyway, but I'd hate to tell you what it 's like on them floatin' coffins."
Dave smiled, remembering that the old mariner with the paint brush at Brooklyn had spoken disparagingly of the "new-fangled steam contraptions."
"Hang you for a lubber," spluttered the cook, "laughin' at me that's old enough to be teaching your grandfather. If you don't hop off this ship when we touch Auckland I 'll report you to the cap'n and have you fired for impidence."
"I was only thinking of another sea-going man, older than you, who said he preferred sailing craft," said Dave, whereupon the cook proceeded to tell some horrifying stories of wind-jammers that had drifted into that strange region known as the Sargasso Sea and remained there helpless for years until the starving crew fought among one another, even for the rats in the hold, before they perished miserably.
"But if they all died how do you know they fought for the rats?" Dave asked.
"The cap'n has to enter such things in the log," replied Barnes acidly, determined not to be beaten. "I remember the time, when I was a youngster at sea, when people who asked half as many silly questions as you do would have been put in irons and fed on salt water."
As the Pacific Queen neared Auckland, Dave wound up a long letter which he had been writing to his father, bit by bit, ever since he left Brooklyn. It was characteristic of the lad that he said very little of such hardships as he had encountered. He explained that he was going to join another ship, and added hopefully that he would find one homeward bound if possible, little dreaming of the strange adventures that were before him ere he could cross the threshold of his home again.
CHAPTER VII
THE WRECKING OF THE KINGFISHER
AS soon as the Pacific Queen was moored at Auckland, Barnes saw that Dave got most of the money due to him as wages, urging that he had not enough clothes to keep him warm. Barnes did not like to lose the lad, but he had youngsters of his own, and he knew Dave had been submitted to more unkindness than necessary at the hands of the mate.
"Good-bye, kid," he said, wiping his greasy hand to shake that of the boy. "Heaven knows it 'll be a stroke of bad luck for any ship's cook that gets you to help him. I'm glad to be rid of you. But remember what I 've told you. Don't jump aboard any old tub. You 're a smart enough youngster except for your lack of brains and your impidence, and you know how to take care of yourself a bit better now, but ships is n't all as comfortable as the Pacific Queen. I expect I 'll be bumping up against you again somewhere or other. Don't sign on to any craft where the crew speak an un-Christian lingo, or they might flay you alive. I learnt my lesson that way on a Portugee boat, afore you were thought of."
Carrying his suitcase, Dave went up the gangway, thrilled at the idea of putting his feet on foreign soil. He spent some hours walking along the wharves, where vessels of all nationalities, rigs, and sizes were lying, each one busily loading or unloading. He did not feel in any hurry. There was more money in his pocket than he had ever possessed at any one time, and it was money of which he was proud, for he had earned it.
Dave felt no compunction about having left the Pacific Queen. Mr. Quick did not want him, and he did not want Mr. Quick. Now both parties were satisfied. Barnes was the only person who really might be inconvenienced, and he had said he could easily get some one else "more useful and less impident."
After amusing himself by watching the shipping for a while, Dave decided to keep out of the way until the following evening, by which time his old ship would have sailed. Boarding a street car, he travelled at random to another part of the town, where he began to search for a room. Seeing an elderly man digging in a cottage garden, he spoke to him over the fence.
"Can you tell me where I could get a room for a few nights?" the boy asked.
The man straightened his back.
"I don't jest know," he said, surveying Dave, who was wearing his only respectable suit of clothes. "I 'll speak to my missis."
The "missis," a portly soul with a jovial face, came out.
"I 've got an empty room that my son had afore he went up-country," she said. "You can have that if you don't mind roughing it."
"I'm used to roughing it, being a sailor," replied Dave, feeling just a little bit important.
"For the land's sake!" the, woman exclaimed, scanning him more closely. "I'd never have thought it. You 're only a boy although you are so tanned."
Mrs. Higgins made Dave very comfortable, he having fallen into her good graces at once; and the old people listened with great interest to his story of the voyage, punctuating it with many questions, for they had always been a stay-at-home couple. The boy spent several days with them, being glad of the chance to stretch his legs ashore, and never tired of seeing the strange sights.
Once Mrs. Higgins managed to extract his Brooklyn address from him without arousing his suspicion. In the course of time Aunt Martha received a motherly letter in which she learnt that her Dave was "all well," that he had fallen into good hands during his stay in New Zealand, and that all his shirt buttons were put on and his socks mended before he went to sea again.
Dave encountered some disappointment in the matter of ships. Naturally, he hoped to get a vessel bound for either New York or Boston, but as luck would have it the ships seemed to be clearing for nearly every part of the world except those he wanted to reach. The only two steamers bound for New York had full crews, and in his inmost heart the boy was glad, as neither of them looked equal to the Pacific Queen. His task involved tramping along miles of wharves and docks, and his reception was not always as pleasant as that accorded to him by Captain Chisholm. He was always civil, though, and consequently got a direct answer to his questions, even though it was sometimes given a little brusquely.
On the fifth day he received a definite offer of a berth on a large English boat bound to Cape-town and London, and it was a sore temptation, the vessel being one of the most up-to-date freighters, of between five and six thousand tons. Dave, however, was strongly opposed to the idea of going so far from home. As it was, he had made a very long trip, and he had a great desire to double back on his tracks if possible, so he declined the job. But after several more days had passed he began to grow anxious for he had spent a good deal of his money on various articles which experience had taught him were necessary. With considerable misgiving he went on board a small tramp, at last, determined to accept any berth that was going, and in a few minutes found himself engaged on the ancient steamer Kingfisher, bound for Adelaide and Fremantle, Australia, in the capacity of cook's help and cabin-boy.
Dave bitterly regretted his choice before he had been at sea twenty-four hours. The ship was one of the oldest afloat in those waters, and proportionately dirty. Rats scuttled among the cargo, and even found their way to the crew's quarters. Either because the owners were mean about paint, or because the skipper was indifferent, the old Kingfisher had a dilapidated appearance, and in anything but the calmest weather she was known pleasantly by the crew as "the submarine," by reason of her trick of digging her nose into the waves instead of riding on top of them.
But bad as her appearance and sailing qualities were, it was her machinery which was worst, and Dave found that MacTavish, her Scottish engineer, never tired of bemoaning his fate in having to drive such "scrap iron." The Kingfisher was a much smaller vessel than the one which had carried Dave to New Zealand, and he found that the various officers had a proportionately smaller idea of their own dignity. MacTavish had many chats with the boy, taking a certain amount of interest in him because his own wife was a New York woman. But most of his conversation was about that "rattle-box doon below,"
"I only shipped in her for this voyage," he said, "and if ever we get back to New Zealand, aboot which I have me doubts, I mean to have a word with them owners for sendin' such a bunch of trouble to sea."
"She seems to be working all right," Dave suggested mildly.
"Seems to!" the Scot said in scornful accents. "I s'pose you 're deaf on one side so you canna hear that clackety-clack. It fair gives me toothache to listen to it. Dinna say I told you, but I have my suspicions them engines was once used by Noah in the Ark. They 're worn out, and it passes my wit to know how they hold together. Every bearing is as loose as old age can make it, there is n't a steam pipe that does n't leak, and at night when I turn in I expect to find the whole lot of junk has punched a hole in the bottom of the ship and fallen through by mornin'."
Although Dave guessed much of this was exaggerated, it did not tend to make him feel any happier about his choice of ships.
"She's got through all right before," he said. "Let's hope she will last out this time."
"Aye, she may," observed the melancholy Scot, "and then again she might n't. You know what happens to the pitcher that goes oftenest to the well. One day this tub is going to attend a funeral, and it 'll be her own. It gives me a pain in the spine to think what may happen if we strike rough weather and she starts kicking up her heels. If that old propeller gets out of the water, with a full head of steam driving it at racing speed, I 'll be wishing myself back in bonnie Scotland."
Dave found that a similar state of dissatisfaction reigned everywhere on board, and the mates accordingly had to employ harsh measures in dealing with the men. The food, too, was far from satisfactory, and Dave had to work incessantly, if not for the cook for one of the mates, if not for one of the mates then for the captain. He was kept running all day and soon began to wish he had heeded Barneses warning that he might go farther and fare worse. He consoled himself with the reflection, however, that he was gaining more experience, continually adding to his stock of learning in nautical matters. Hard work and the life in the pure salt air were keeping him in the pink of condition. His muscles were setting, and he already possessed more strength than the average boy of his age. Being naturally ambitious, he began to study the rudiments of navigation in his few spare moments, and in this the second mate gave him some slight assistance, lending him one or two books to read on the subject. One of his greatest hopes was to be allowed to take a trick at the wheel, but this, of course, was out of the question at present.
In spite of MacTavish's misgivings, the Kingfisher chugged her weary way more than a thousand miles to the west, passed through Bass Strait (where Dave got his first glimpse of the coastline of Australia) and finally brought up with a wheeze and a cough of her engines at Adelaide. There the ship was tied up for three days, unloading and loading; and on several occasions the boy found time for a run ashore. Before sailing from there he wrote again to his father, stating that he was well and happy, and relating various incidents which he knew would be of interest. He covered a whole sheet in telling of MacTavish and his "bunch of trouble" down below, never dreaming what an important part those old engines were to play in his career.
After casting off at Adelaide, the Kingfisher passed Kangaroo Island on her port beam, and entered the vast and stormy bay known as the Great Australian Bight, where great currents meet and where the elements rarely seem to be at rest. For full six hundred miles the Kingfisher had to plough her way through a wild sea, and MacTavish's life became a nightmare. Even when he went to his bunk he could not sleep for fear of the man with his hand on the throttle allowing the propeller to "race" as the vessel kicked her heels up; and as luck would have it the leaky steam pipes began to bother him more than ever. Twice they had to lay to in the trough of the sea while all hands in the engine room struggled to repair some defect. The captain, who had been in command of the ship for a number of years, apparently took it as a matter of course. A voyage in the Kingfisher without some serious engine trouble would have seemed almost unnatural to him.
"My hair 'll be snow white," the chief engineer complained to Dave during a breathing spell on deck. "There's something uncanny aboot yon machinery. It's foolin' us all the time. The thing is possessed. It waits patiently until we get one part patched up, before breaking out in a fresh place, but no sooner we 've got her running than she gets up to her old games. I'm only waitin' for one of the cylinder heads to blow off or the boilers to bust, and then I 'll be able to light my pipe in peace and watch the rest of her lie doon and die."
But the boilers held and the cylinders never faltered. Worse trouble was waiting around the corner for the unhappy Scot. Right in the middle of the Bight, when the wind was blowing big guns and giant waves were careering along, the Kingfisher gave a plunge which left her propeller in mid air for the space of several seconds before there was time to shut off steam. MacTavish, feeling the vibration, knew what was happening, and burst into a cold perspiration. If it had occurred on any other ship, he would not have been so concerned; but his "rattle-box" was in no condition to stand treatment of that kind. A few hours later his worst fears were realized. An oiler reported that a crack had developed in the main shaft, near the propeller.
The ship was promptly stopped, and MacTavish made a careful inspection of the damage. For once, the captain was deeply concerned. He, too, went down into the bottom of the ship, to see how bad the trouble was.
"She's cracked at a flaw in the steel," MacTavish declared, "and it's only a question of how much strain is put on her before she rips right off as clean as a carrot. You 'll have to run at half speed, anyway, Cap'n. If you make Fremantle, you 'll be lucky."
For days after that the Kingfisher crawled westwards, with the engineers nursing her "scrap iron" jealously. She managed to scrape out of the Bight and was already within a few hundred miles of Fremantle when a southerly gale struck her in all its fury.
Suddenly, while the ship was pitching, she shuddered convulsively. There was a grating noise in the engine-room, and then silence.
The propeller-shaft had parted, and they were at the mercy of the sea. The only thing that was of the slightest assistance was a fore-and-aft sail which had been rigged, but the canvas was rotten, and it split from top to bottom in a violent gust.
For the first time in his life Dave was facing real danger.
Helpless as a log, the Kingfisher ran before the storm hour after hour. The crew could now do nothing but wait for a possible shifting of the wind. It kept steadily in one quarter, however, and, when darkness fell, the hopes of every one on board fell to zero. Rockets were sent up, but there was no answering signal. All through the night Dave, with the rest of the crew, stood on deck, anxiously looking for something in the nature of a miracle to happen.
Dawn broke after an apparent eternity, only to accentuate the misery of their position. Everywhere the sea was a mass of foam and seething, white-crested waves. Soon the loom of low-lying land ahead became apparent, and toward this they were carried remorselessly. At the end of their cables dangled the two anchors, which, now that the Kingfisher was in shallower water, dragged and retarded her progress somewhat, hut did not hold.
"Stand by the boats," the captain bellowed at last through a megaphone. There were breakers about three cable lengths ahead.
Every man was already wearing a life-belt. The chance of getting ashore, even in the boats, seemed a forlorn one, with such a sea raging.
All waited tensely for the moment when the vessel should strike the ground. Just outside the grasp of the hungry breakers she hit the bottom with a mighty thud which jarred her from stem to stern. The next wave lifted her. Then she struck for the last time, and the days of the old Kingfisher were over.
Waves were breaking right over her when the men were struggling to lower the boats. One boat, containing as many of the crew as could scramble into her, capsized instantly, and Dave shuddered as he heard the cries of the doomed men. He was standing at the side of the ship, waiting with others for a favorable instant to jump into a boat that danced crazily alongside. For a second the small craft was lifted almost up to the rail, and he made a leap, landing, more by good fortune than anything else, in the middle of the boat just as the men in her began to pull away.
The next ten minutes were thrilling. Dave could not think of them for months afterward without a vivid picture of it all flashing into his brain.
There were more than a dozen sailors huddled together in the dancing craft. Dave never knew the exact number. Far too heavily laden, she stood no chance of reaching shore. Straight at the breakers she went. It was neck or nothing. At the worst, the men in her could only die, but they could die fighting for their lives.
The first wave toyed with the crafty, lifting it like a cork before passing on. Twenty feet behind it towered a silent, green wall of water, the crest of which was just beginning to topple over with a hissing, ominous sound. Relentlessly it rushed on, and Dave's heart sank, for he believed that his last moment had come.
The boat shot upward and spun round dizzily, half full of water. The boy clutched one of the seats with nerveless fingers. Every second he expected to feel the wave closing over him. Rowing was out of the question. They were at the mercy of the sea. The boat met the next wave broadside on. It came like some devouring monster, eager for its prey. One of the crew, his nerves strung to breaking point, uttered a hoarse cry as the mass of water struck them. The boat turned completely over, and its occupants sank in a smother of foam, many of them to their doom.
Aided by the life-belt he was wearing, the boy struck out, gasping. At one instant he came to the surface and took a choking breath. The next moment another swirling breaker had caught and overwhelmed him again. His mouth, ears, and nose were full of water. He was rolling over and over and the last of his strength was fast ebbing away. When his head emerged from the foam the thunder of the surf sounded fainter, as though it were drifting away into the distance. Vaguely he wondered what his dad and Aunt Martha were doing, far away at home; but his thoughts were disconnected. He felt an inclination to sleep, although he was being smothered all the time. If only he could get one more breath!
For a flash he returned fully to consciousness, when a sharp pain shot through his knee as it struck a rock. Then came forgetfulness.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH DAVE FINDS A FRIEND
WHEN the boy opened his eyes again he was lying full length on the sand, some distance above the water's edge. A man was bending over him.
"Where am I?" Dave asked, still dazed.
"Here," the man replied, with a curious smile.
"Where's here?"
"Where you 've no right to be, judging by the way you and your friends chose to come ashore. Really, you ought all to be drowned."
"I remember now," said Dave. "Are the others all right?"
"Four of them are fit to return to their jolly old families," the man replied. "Don't worry about the others till you feel a bit better. Can you stand up?"
Dave tried to get on his legs, but his knee hurt him considerably. He looked at his companion attentively for the first time. The man was shabbily clothed and did not appear to have shaved for days. His hair was crying aloud for the attention of a pair of scissors, and his shoes consisted chiefly of holes and cracks. There was something about his face, however, which was not in keeping with his odd attire, in spite of its unshaven condition. His eyes were clear and intelligent, but they had a lazy look, as though care sat with difficulty on his shoulders. Humorous lines were drawn about the comers of his mouth, which was good-tempered but too easy-going. His tattered clothes were flapping in the wind, wet through.
"You fetched me out of the water?" Dave asked wearily.
"I took that liberty," was the reply. "I was n't doing anything else just then, and I kind of guessed you might prefer it that way."
"I'm ever so grateful," the boy said. "Where are the others?"
"Gone up to the farm," the man replied, waving his arm airily in the direction of some trees. "You had better come along too. You ought to have something hot to drink."
"Was MacTavish saved?" Dave asked.
"If you mean a Scottish gentleman with a fiery light in his eyes, an accent you can cut with a knife, and an infinite flow of language on the subject of some mysterious engines, yes."
"I guess that's MacTavish," Dave said, unable to resist a smile. "I'm glad the Kingfisher did n't drown him. My name is Hallard—David Hallard, of Brooklyn, New York."
"Glad to know you. I am pleased you called, though the method you adopted of coming ashore has its disadvantages. My name is Bruce Tempest."
Dave thought his companion's slight accent was familiar.
"Are you an American?" he asked.
"Well, I am in a way. I started out under the Stars and Stripes, but I have been a bit of a wanderer. Since we 've got to know one another so well, may I offer you such hospitality as I can in my shack? It's nearer than the farm. Come along, or you 'll get cold."
A little way above the rim of the trees Tempest led Dave to a log hut.
"It's my home for the present," he said, thrusting open the door and showing its bare interior. "I'm sorry the piano has been taken away to be tuned, and both the cook and the parlor-maid are having the day off, but I 'll have a cup of hot coffee ready for you inside of two shakes. In the meanwhile, slip off those wet things until they 're dry and I 'll allow you to wear my best trousers. There's only one hole in them and I mean to mend that some day."
While he continued to talk in a careless, half-bantering tone, he was busying himself with an oil-stove and "Billie" kettle; and soon a rough-and-ready meal had been prepared. Dave, now rapidly recovering from the effects of his immersion, was beginning to feel ravenous, for nobody on the Kingfisher had eaten anything since the previous day. Canned salmon, thick slices of bread and butter, and coffee, set out on an upturned box innocent of a table-cover, formed the repast, and Bruce Tempest played host politely.
"Do you live here all the time?" Dave asked, looking around at the shack. Besides the box which served as a table, it contained two chairs, one of which had a leg missing. Tempest was sitting on that by the simple process of tilting it backward and putting his feet on a ledge in the wall of the shack. In one corner were a couple of shelves on which stood a frying-pan, cups and saucers, and a few plates, most of them badly chipped. A mattress and bedding in another corner virtually completed the inventory in that room. Through an open door the boy saw a second room, as scantily furnished.
"Been here a month, resting," replied Tempest. "I don't think that game knee of yours will carry you very far just now, will it?"
"I must have bumped it pretty hard,*" said the boy. "It's swelling."
"Well, this is n't exactly a first-class hotel," Tempest went on, "but I shall be glad to have you stay here till you get on your pins again. Your four companions will probably go on to Albany, and be fed like fighting-cocks by the Mariners' Aid Society, or whatever it's called. I'm afraid there is n't much chance of rescuing your kit from the wreck. She 'll break up mighty soon with a sea like this running."
Dave arose and took the binoculars from a capacious pocket which he had torn while jamming them in.
"Glad I saved those," he said, handing them over for inspection. "Dad specially told me to take care of them."
"They certainly are too good to lose. Have you been at sea long?"
"Only a few months," the boy explained. "I wanted to get back to America, but this doesn't look much like it, does it?"
"It's quite a step, so to speak, from here to New York," agreed Tempest, filling his pipe with strong black tobacco and balancing himself precariously on the two back legs of the chair again. "Did you come all the way on that little steamer?"
Dave recounted his adventures, which seemed to interest his companion, who asked several questions which showed that he had an intimate knowledge of ships.
"Have you been a sailor?" the boy asked.
"Sometimes," Tempest replied. "I 've knocked about the world a bit before the mast, though I'm willing to admit it is more comfortable in the passengers' passengers' quarters. But funds don't always run to taking a passenger's ticket, and a spell of sailoring keeps one in good trim, besides providing the necessary cash for such things as tobacco and having one's trousers pressed. By the way, we ought to do something for your knee. Let's have a squint at it."
Tempest made a careful examination of the damaged limb. The skin was scarcely broken, but the joint was puffed up and beginning to turn blue.
"I'm no doctor," said Tempest, "but I reckon you 'll be fairly all right in a day or two if you rest it as much as possible. If not, there's a doctor lives about ten miles away."
"Doctor!" cried Dave. "If he's ten miles away, that 'll be twenty for the round trip, and I have n't got a red cent."
"That's all right. He is a particular friend of mine," replied Tempest, "and he just loves to admire the scenery in this neighborhood."
He caught a questioning look in the boy's eyes.
"Well, he won't take us for a couple of bloated millionaires, anyway, if he has two eyes in his head," Tempest went on. "For the present you 've got to lie on a mattress outside in the sun and be as comfortable as possible. The weather is beautiful now. It's so long since I entertained a guest that I'm enjoying the novelty of it."
In spite of the sudden change in his circumstances and the exciting incidents which he had just passed through, Dave felt very peaceful lying there and listening to the easy chatter of his new friend, who had a wonderful fund of tales to tell about many lands. He had drifted almost all over the surface of the globe, picking up a living in various casual ways, from diamond-mining in Kimberley to salmon-fishing for the canneries. He spoke very modestly of what he had done, as though nothing was more natural than to wander off a few thousand miles and take up the threads of life there just as though he had always lived in that particular spot.
"But have n't you got a home?" David asked, thinking of the cottage at Brooklyn.
"Yes," said Tempest, grinning; "It's under my hat. The beauty of having a home like that is that you don't have a lot of fuss when the time comes for moving on. My baggage has consisted of a toothbrush and a banjo for years. Now I only have the toothbrush. I had to part with the banjo some time ago, owing to the fact that the landlady of a boarding-house considered it necessary for me to pay my bill. That was in England. It was a wrench, parting from the old banjo, because we'd had some good times together, especially when we had n't got the price of a ham sandwich for supper. It's wonderful what power a little music has to soothe the hungry beast in you. I often wonder whether somebody else with a healthy appetite takes that banjo for supper these days."
That night Dave slept for ten solid hours in Tempest's "guest chamber," awakening with a delightful sense of freedom. It was a sort of vacation for him, and he was not allowed to do any of the cooking or dish-washing. His knee, however, troubled him a good deal, and after breakfast Tempest went to summon the doctor. He walked all the way there, riding back with the man of medicine in his buggy.
"Nothing broken," was the doctor's verdict, "and if you keep it in a cold compress for a few days, you 'll have it all right again. How did it happen?"
Dave told him.
"Tush, lad, you 're evidently not born to be drowned," said the doctor cheerily as he departed. Tempest followed him outside.
"What do I owe you, Doc?" he asked. "It's no use your sending the bill on afterward, as this is only our summer residence."
He produced a purse from a pocket, containing a sadly depleted store of coins. The doctor glanced at them.
"When I take money for patching up a shipwrecked kid," he said pleasantly, "I 'll change my profession. Good-by. Don't hesitate to call me again if it does n't go on all right."
Under the new treatment, however, Dave's knee rapidly began to grow well, and by the time he could walk comfortably he and Tempest had cemented a warm friendship. Altogether, they spent ten days in the log-cabin. At the end of a week the boy, although he was thoroughly happy, began to realize that it was about time for him to make for the nearest port and find a ship.
"Why hurry?" Tempest protested. "We shall have to get a move on when funds are finished. Besides, we have n't made any plans. Leave it for a day or two."
Toward the end of their stay they lived largely on rabbits, which were plentiful, caught in snares, supplementing these with bread and potatoes bought at the farm.
"Where are you bound for when you leave here?" Dave asked when necessity demanded that something must be done.
"Albany, I guess, the same as you," replied Tempest. "One can nearly always get a job on a ship there. I vote we make a start in the morning and take to the road. My automobile is n't running satisfactorily at the moment."
Dave felt real regret in breaking camp, for the simple life they had been leading there appealed to him greatly after many weeks of hard work at sea.
"Some day I'd like to come back and spend another holiday here," he said.
"Rubbish," replied Tempest. "The world's full of places like this if you only take the trouble to find 'em. Don't worry. That's my motto. Take things as they come, and you can't help enjoying yourself. If I had a million dollars for every little camp like that that I 've had a good time in, I should be quite rich, but I should n't be nearly as happy, because I'd have to spend most of my time wondering how to spend the millions. There's nothing like having an easy conscience and nothing to bother about."
After breakfast they packed up a huge parcel of sandwiches, for it was extremely doubtful where their next meal was to come from, and then set off in quest of further adventure.
CHAPTER IX
UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS
"THEY can't call us sundowners, with this grub on board," Tempest said, shouldering the parcel. "I don't mind having a lazy time now and again when I 've earned it, but no man breathing shall call me a sundowner."
"What's that," asked Dave, trudging along.
"A sundowner, my son, is a peculiar breed of creature that would as soon fondle a rattlesnake as do a day's work. He is born tired and never gets over it. He faints right away at the sight of a pick or shovel; and if he should happen to do an honest day's labor, he talks about it for years afterward. He has reduced the art of dodging work to a science. Most all farms in Australia will give a man a square meal and some sort of place to sleep in in return for a few hours' help, but the sundowner is foxy. When he sees a farm on the horizon he lies down and basks till evening. Then, just when it's getting dark and too late for him to be put to anything useful in the fields, he rolls up for free board and lodging."
"Talking of somewhere to sleep," Dave said, "can you tell me where we are likely to spend the night?"
Tempest laughed.
"It's about ten hours too early even to think of that," he said; "and anyway we don't need to worry, or else we sha'n't sleep so well. What's wrong with a hay-stack for a bed! Once you 're fast asleep you might be there just as well as in the best bed money can buy."
The two amateur tramps had a total of thirty miles to walk to reach Albany, and more than half that distance had been covered by the time they decided to halt for the night. A barn containing plenty of dry hay stood temptingly near.
"What could one want better than that?" Tempest asked, after a brief inspection of the place, "There's no electric light, but one must n't expect too much at the price, and there's a full moon. Neither of us will need rocking to sleep to-night, and we shall want a good rest, because we have a big walk in front of us to-morrow."
Dave, having grown accustomed to strange sleeping-places, was in a sound slumber five minutes after his head touched the pillow of hay. When Bruce Tempest heard his deep, regular breathing he took his old pipe from a pocket, sat on a fence near, and smoked placidly for half an hour. He always made a point of not smoking in a barn when he was appropriating it for a night's lodging, partly because there was always the danger of losing his lodgings by burning the barn down, and partly because he felt the farmer might appreciate the little act of courtesy if only he knew. As one who had not a care in the world he knocked the ashes from his pipe at last, hummed a sailors' ditty, and then strolled to his primitive couch. He, too, was soon in the land of dreams.
The sun was just peeping over the horizon when the two wanderers awoke; and before having breakfast they went down to the adjacent beach for a refreshing plunge into the sea. Afterward they pushed on, covering ten miles before the sun "was over the yard-arm," as Tempest put it, when they fell in with a party of road-menders taking their midday rest. With typical Australian hospitality, the road-menders invited Dave and his companion to join them in their noon meal.
It was evening when the two arrived in Albany, tired, hungry, and with the price of one scant meal in their possession.
"It would be fun if we could both get fixed up on the same boat," Dave suggested. "You 're not particular which way you go, are you?"
"North, south, east, or west, will do the same," Tempest replied.
"Well, I'd rather go east," Dave said, "if luck will let me. It is n't as though my dad had seen me off and all that sort of thing. I told him when I wrote that I should be back by now, and I guess he's kind of expecting me. Goodness only knows when I shall get home again if I have to sign on some ship bound westward from here."
"Don't worry, sonny. Things nearly always pan out right by themselves, as I 've said before. So long as you live clean, pay your way, and can look every man straight in the eyes, there's hardly a thing in the world that is worth a wrinkle. Besides, if you fuss over every blessed thing that comes along, you 've got no steam left in you when the time comes for you to make a big effort."
"Such as what?" asked Dave, wondering what manner of thing could give Bruce Tempest a wrinkle.
"Oh, I don't know for the minute," the man said. "Just once or twice in everybody's life there comes a time that he thinks it worth while to forge ahead, whatever it costs. It does n't need to be something selfish. Some people keep themselves tuned up all the time. I don't. Perhaps I 've got too slack," he added ruefully, glancing down at his tattered coat. He was wearing his "best" trousers, having left the other disreputable-looking garments behind when he sallied forth from the log-cabin. "I wonder whether I should have enough pep left in me to make a real effort now if I wanted to. Anyway, there's a chance to get a move on to-night if we want a berth to sleep in."
There were several coastal boats tied up at the various wharves, and Dave and his companion began a systematic search for work. The third vessel they tried wanted hands, but she was bound up the west coast, farther away from America than ever; so they left her, undecided, pending a further search. At last fortune favored them. The Neptune, a rusty old tramp, was leaving the following day on a leisurely trip eastward, picking up cargo where she could for any port on the way to Sydney; and she could do with a couple more deck-hands. Dave's experience hardly justified him in signing on as a deck hand, but no question was raised as to his age, his build being equal to that of many a boy two years older.
The mate who engaged him asked Dave several questions, which were answered satisfactorily.
"You 're a bit young," the mate said, "but I guess you 'll do." And Dave flushed with pride when he found himself enrolled as an ordinary member of the crew.
It was fortunate that he had spent as much of his time at sea as possible learning the ins and outs of his trade, for this knowledge became of great value to him now. Bruce Tempest, too, gave him some quiet coaching, and after a week as an able-bodied seaman Dave found little difficulty in carrying out the routine duties of a tramp's deck-hand. He was in the watch of Mr. Slazenger, the mate who had engaged him, and when that officer found the boy a hard worker and willing to learn, he made allowance for his inexperience.
The Neptune made slow headway, but she was a fairly good sea-boat, and Dave enjoyed this ambling trip more than he had being on either of the other vessels. So long as the crew did their work the captain did not interfere with them unduly, though, as one of the older hands explained: "When he do want to put up a kick he wears his heaviest boots."
On more than one occasion the captain, a Queenslander named Phelps, gave Dave a kindly word of encouragement and chatted pleasantly. The boy was coiling a rope when Captain Phelps showed how it could be done more expeditiously.
"Do you come of a sea-going family?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," Dave replied. "My father was a ship's master, and so were his brothers."
"Your dad at sea now?"
"No, sir. He's been retired for a good many years. He used to run clippers, chiefly in the North Pacific trade."
"Hallard, Hallard," said the captain, rubbing his chin reflectively. "I seem to remember the name somehow. It's a long time since I traded out of America to China, but the name seems familiar. What is his given name?"
"Andrew."
Suddenly the captain glanced at the boy with a gleam of amusement in his eyes.
"Did you ever hear him speak of a clipper called the Bessie M. Dobbs?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," said Dave. "That was the boat that he made a record run in."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Captain Phelps. "Why, I was in 'Frisco when the Bessie M. Dobbs shot through the Golden Gate on her thirty-fifth day out of Hong Kong."
"Thirty-third day, sir," said Dave, never likely to be inaccurate about that little bit of family history.
"Thirty-third, was it? Well, I know it just beat the record of the schooner Sierra Nevada by a day, and there was a lot of talk about it at the time, because it was reckoned that the Sierra Nevada's record could never be beaten by a sailing ship. The Bessie M. Dobbs nearly had her sticks torn out of her on the way. Captain Hallard only shortened sail once during the whole run across, and that was when she was poking her nose under water. Bless my soul, and here's his slip of a kid learning sailoring on the old Neptune! Well, Captain Hallard would n't remember me, though I was one of those who shook hands with him after he landed, but when you get back home tell him I say he's got a son who 'll make a sailor."
"Thank you, sir, I will," said Dave, immensely pleased.
During their watch below, Tempest and Dave often had time for a yarn, and sometimes during the hot, moonlight nights they would spend hours on deck, chatting, under the wondrous spell of the Southern Cross.
"It is a mystery to me," Tempest said one evening while they were leaning over the rail and watching the antics of a shoal of flying-fish, "how people can spend their lives cooped up in cities and factories, working like slaves to pay big rents and getting mighty little pleasure out of it all, when a life like this is possible. I suppose, really, we can't all go to sea, and lots of folk would think this was rotten compared with an evenings in a movie palace, but I know which I like best, yes, siree. Why did n't you wait till your father said you could come, Dave? What was it about the old sea that got you?"
"Don't know," replied Dave reflectively. "It seemed to be growing on me gradually without my knowing it, though of course I always knew I should be a sailor sooner or later. I think what really set me off was talking to an old man who was painting the side of a ship. He yarned for about an hour, and after that I did n't feel like waiting much longer.'
"Well, was it anything like what the old man said?" Tempest queried.
"I don't remember much of what he did say. One queer thing he told me, though. It was about a derelict they'd found half buried in the sand on some island in the South Seas. I did n't forget the vessel's name, because it had been called after Cape Hatteras. When I got home I told Dad about it, and he said there was a boat called the Hatteras that had been lost years and years ago with a lot of platinum on board."
"Was it the same boat?" Tempest asked, lazily.
"Don't know," said Dave. "It sounded to me as though it might have been, but Dad did n't seem to think so."
"Then your old friend the sailor did n't get the treasure, eh?"
"He did n't know anything about it. You see, his ship was only sheltering off there, and they rowed ashore just to have a look at the derelict. Perhaps they would have been a bit keener if only somebody had remembered that there was a lost treasure-ship called the Hatteras."
"Did the old man say exactly where it was?"
"No. He just mentioned that they were running between Christmas Island and some other island, when they had to take shelter."
"Well, there's many a syndicate taken a sporting chance on a thing like that and made a little fortune," Tempest commented. "Now, after your father told you there was a treasure-ship called the Hatteras, why did n't you go back and pump the old man to find out the exact bearings of the island!"
"In the first place, as I say, Dad did n't think it was any good after all that time; and in the second place the old man's ship had put to sea again."
"Where to?"
"Don't know. I did n't ask him."
"Heigh-o," Tempest laughed "They say opportunity knocks at every man's door once in his life, and it seems to me, David Hallard, that you were n't listening when your turn came. You 've kind of lost that island, eh?"
"But you don't think the stuff would be there, do you?"
"Me? How do I know, laddie! Maybe—and maybe not. Anyway, it is n't any use shedding tears over it now, is it?"
"I never did shed any tears over it," Dave said. "I got excited about it at the time, naturally, not because I wanted the money for myself exactly, but—"
"But what?"
"Well, perhaps it was silly, but it struck me it would be great to find the treasure and fix up my dad again as he was before he lost all he had in New York."
"The spirit is all right," commented Tempest, grinning, "If only you had n't gone and lost your island as soon as you'd found it! Old Man Opportunity does n't usually knock twice at the same man's door, but if ever he does come again, mind you listen with both ears, Dave."
Port after port they called at, once they got through the Bight, and Dave was filled with interest by the busy scenes of dock life. At some places the Neptune was only tied up for a few hours while the chattering winches hauled several tons of cargo from her capacious hold: at others they spent several days. Tempest was familiar with most of these ports, and Dave found in him a most entertaining guide when they got the opportunity of stretching their legs ashore.
While off Cape Otway, running towards Melbourne, the Neptune encountered one of the great mail boats, with her engines stopped for some trifling repair. The Neptune's course took her close to the side of the big ship which towered like a mountain over the wallowing little tramp.
Dave, having taken a message to the captain, happened to be on the bridge as they ran alongside. Hundreds of passengers leaned over the rail looking at the small steamer, which dipped her flag and received the same polite salutation.
Captain Phelps, recognizing the grey-whiskered skipper of the liner, waved his hand.
"Want a tow?" he called out laughingly.
"Not to-day, thanks," replied the skipper of the liner. "You 're a bit too fast for us. Where 're you bound?"
"China to Japan with hot water," replied Captain Phelps, as the little Neptune waddled out of earshot.
Dave and Tempest had only signed on the tramp for the trip as far as Sydney, and the boy was sorry when the run was drawing to a finish, for the Neptune was a comfortable ship, as tramps go, and the weather had been almost perfect.
"I suppose you 'll join a vessel bound from Sydney to New York," Tempest said as they sat on the hatches, watching the coast of New South Wales slide past.
"I was thinking of it," Dave replied.
"What about a run in one of those trading vessels through the South Sea Islands?" Tempest suggested. "There's nothing like it in the wide world. They poke about buying that dried cocoanut stuff they call copra, and other things, from the natives, going from one island to the other till they get a full cargo. I know the skippers of two or three of the ships, and we could be almost certain of getting a berth. Like to come?"
"I'd like to, of course," Dave said. The romance of the South Sea Islands had always appealed to him greatly. "About how long should we be away?"
"Between two and three months, I guess. It depends on what sort of luck the captain has in picking up a cargo."
"I might not get a chance again in years," Dave said thoughtfully. "Perhaps Dad would n't mind so much. I could be back in Brooklyn before Christmas, anyhow."
"Just as you say, sonny," Tempest observed. "I don't want to upset your plans, but there's the chance staring you in the face, and there's thousands of youngsters would give their ears for one like it."
"I 'll go," Dave agreed, unconsciously taking yet another step in the direction Fate was drawing him.
CHAPTER X
CAPTAIN GRUMMITT GETS WET
THE gateway to Sydney, by water, is said to be the most beautiful natural harbor in the world, and Dave leaned over the taffrail spellbound as the dawn dyed the sea a deep red. The rusty old tramp was only one of a hundred vessels that were threading their way into or out from Australia's chief port. Birdlike sailing craft, crowded with canvas to catch the least puff of wind, drifted along in leisurely fashion; weather-beaten steamers from all parts of the world chugged towards their goal, sometimes ten thousand miles away; and a cloud of sea-birds, among them great fellows whose wing-tips seemed to stretch full five feet apart, crowded round the stem of the Neptune.
"Well, my boy, what do you think of Sydney harbor?" said a voice at Dave's shoulder. It was Captain Phelps who spoke.
"It's great, sir," the Junior deck-hand replied.
"It is," said the skipper; "but don't you say that to a Melbourne man. They have no harbor to speak of at Melbourne, and the two places are powerfully jealous of one another. Sydney folk always start a conversation with a stranger by saying 'Have you seen our harbor?' and if it happens to be a Melbourne man they 're talking to, he says, 'Nature made your harbor—why don't you build a decent town on it?' All the same, there's many a time I 've been thankful enough, when running before a snorter, to creep into this refuge, and I dare say the time will come when you 'll do the same after you get command. How are you getting on with your studies, eh? You 've a lot to learn before you can hold a master's certificate, you know."
Dave had kept up his reading until his books were lost on the Kingfisher, and he received a congratulatory word when he explained to Captain Phelps how far he had progressed.
"That's the style. Stick to it, youngster," said the skipper, "and you 'll be pacing the bridge before long."
Tempest and Dave had renewed their wardrobe from the slop-chest, and still had enough money to draw in wages to give them time to look about when they got ashore. The first thing they did was to make inquiries about the boat they expected to find running to the South Sea Islands, and here they faced a disappointment. The company had only three vessels engaged in the trade, and they usually left at intervals of about six weeks. Two days before the Neptune arrived at Sydney one of the three had sailed, and so Dave and his companion found they would have to spend forty or fifty days ashore waiting for the next one, called the Manihiki, to depart. Long before then they would be reduced to their last penny.
"Well, what do you suggests Dave asked.
"It seems to me," Tempest replied, "that we shall be under the painful necessity of working, not being millionaires, but the problem is, at what? Some of the things I have seen men do ashore for a living would certainly not suit my constitution, and I wouldn't recommend them for you."
"We might sign on a coastal boat for a few weeks," Dave suggested.
"Yes, and just when we want to be in Sydney find ourselves in some out-of-the-way hole. You don't know these Australian trading coasters as I do, my son. They go when they want to and get back when they get back if they don't happen to pick up a chance cargo for somewhere else. I know what would be good sport, as I did it myself once, about five years ago."
"What is that?"
"A kangaroo shooting trip. I went into the bush with an old hand at the game, and we had a perfectly gorgeous time barring when a snake crept over me while I was sleeping. Nice little fellow he was, all the colors of the rainbow. I could see the colors perfectly, as the moon was shining, and I took particular notice of him because only the previous day I'd had his tribe described to me. The old kangaroo hunter had been saying there was n't a snake in the bush that he really minded except that sort, as once he had a partner who trod on one and tied himself into seventeen different kinds of knots before he died, all in the course of ten minutes."
"Did you get any kangaroos?"
"Lots of 'em, and wallabys and things. We skinned the beasts and hung the pelts on trees in a straight line so that we could find them all again. We were in the bush about two months, and came back with all the skins our pack horses could carry. I'd signed on as a sort of super-cargo for that trip, not being an expert shot, but I got a third of the proceeds, which amounted to seventy pounds, or about three hundred and fifty dollars in American money."
"Let's go kangaroo hunting," Dave urged, hugely delighted at the prospect of life in the bush. "I can't shoot, but I can cook finely."
Tempest grinned.
"Sorry to disappoint you," he said. "You tell me where we can put our hands on the price of horses and guns, and enough grub to last a couple of months, and then find a kangaroo hunter who is willing to take us along, and I 'll fix the trip up, sure enough."
"Is that all!" Dave said resignedly. "It does look as though we shall have to work. But, I say, why did n't you go with your old partner again?"
"Two reasons," Tempest replied. "First, I know that somewhere in the vast Australian bush that nice, colored little snake is still prowling around if he has n't had a cold or measles or something that stopped him from prowling evermore; and moreover, he has a few million cousins and sisters and aunts, and I would n't have one of them crawl over me in the moonlight again for all the kangaroo pelts in the country. I fancied I could feel the knots coming on—all the seventeen different kinds— while he was peeking at me through his nasty little eyes. No, siree, I like snakes—to keep away from me. The other reason why I didn't go back was because my old partner got it into his crazy head to go gold mining, as there was a 'rush' in Western Australia just then, and as he'd had some luck at it once he thought he would have another try. I never heard how he came out, though, because when I drew what I had coming I sold my horse and took a trip to Ceylon and back on an Orient boat as a passenger, just to see what it felt like to be really respectable again, Heigh-o, I landed back in this very port with exactly one enormous appetite, two white flannel suits, and three Australian pennies; and I had to take to cleaning trolley cars the same afternoon or sleep on a seat in the park."
"That's a good idea," Dave put in. "Could n't we do that for the next six weeks?"
"What? Sleep in the park?" Tempest said, aghast.
"No. Clean trolley cars."
"Not on your life," replied Tempest, pulling a wry face. "It's good, honest work, but I'd rather spend the day cleaning out the bilges of ships than cleaning cars. There does n't seem to be any romance about those things. Let's find accommodation for the present, and something will turn up."
They soon found a clean boarding house, not far from the harbor, and most of the next two days was spent in sight-seeing. In the city itself they found more than one opportunity of getting work, but they were not desperately hard up, and Tempest scorned the idea of cleaning out stables, while he positively refused to agree to Dave tackling the job of elevator boy in a hotel.
"How do you think you 'll learn sailoring by shooting up and down an elevator shaft all day?" he asked. "No, my son. Our business is the sea. From now on we 'll haunt the docks till our chance comes. I would rather be tarring the sides of a coal hulk than cleaning out stables."
Work that would meet their requirements, however, was not easy to get. Tempest, rather than go on loafing, started as a "lumper," as the men are called who load and unload ships. The vessel was laden with heavy planks of wood, each of which had to be carried off on the shoulder and deposited on a cart. The work was too hard for Dave to tackle. Tempest was in perfect physical trim, but only an experienced "lumper" can stand heavy beams of timber on his shoulder from morning till night. The pad he wore soon cut through into the flesh, and by noon he had to throw up the job.
"I 'll go back to that when I'm forced to, and not before," he told Dave, filling his pipe contentedly. "Sailoring is sailoring, and I don't mind anything that comes along to be done, even if the ship is trying to stand on its head in a gale, but I do bar turning myself into a perambulating steam winch."
It was not merely the sheer hard work that Bruce Tempest objected to. There is a traditional feeling among sailors that dock laboring is not their job. Tempest disappeared several evenings in succession, saying he was looking for work. In reality he was earning good money with strenuous labor on those occasions, for funds to keep them going, but it was his whim not to mention that fact to Dave. Although a good many years the lad's senior, he found Dave a congenial companion in many ways, and was looking forward to the trip with him in the South Seas.
They had been in Sydney a week, and Dave and Tempest were walking along the wharves when the boy happened to notice an extremely fat man attempting the somewhat perilous feat of walking across a very narrow gangway to a steam tug. The gangway consisted merely of a plank, which had never been intended for traffic. The wind was blowing in violent gusts, and the plank wobbled in alarming fashion when the fat man reached the middle of it. Suddenly either his foot slipped, the wobbling of the plank was too much for him, or a puff of wind upset his balance.
Waving his arms like a windmill, and emitting a hoarse cry of alarm, he toppled over, disappearing into the water.
The whole thing occurred in a few seconds, while Tempest was looking in another direction. With a shout, Dave leaped forward, and arrived at the side of the. dock just as the fat man bobbed up to the surface like a very animated cork. He splashed furiously and bellowed, but Dave could see at a glance that the man was not able to swim a stroke.
Without pausing a second, he jumped off the pier, landing within a few feet of the drowning man.
"Heave a line," he shouted to Tempest; "then I can manage him all right!"
Dave knew better than to let the heavy man in the water clutch him. He took a couple of strokes forward and grabbed the back of the fat man's coat with one hand, keeping himself afloat with the other, while Tempest bounded across the plank on to a tug. In less than half a minute the boy heard a shout from his friend and saw a rope shoot out. He grasped the end of it, and then, taking a firm hold of the fat man's arm, was drawn to the side of a dory.
"Jumping Cæsar!" spluttered the rescued man, when his paw had closed on the "gun'le." "Me, at my time of life, too! Now, young man, I 'll trouble you and your friend to heave on me a bit. I'm not so thin as I was. That's better. Phew!"
He sat on a seat in the dory and regarded his saturated figure with a quaint expression.
"Man and boy, I 've followed the sea all my life," he went on, "and that's the very first time I 've been overboard. Wait till I climb on board the "Mary Ellen", and I 'll fire every soul there is on her!"
Two or three faces had appeared over the rail of the tug, but the threat did not seem to create any dismay.
"You lubbers!" exclaimed the fat man, shaking his fist at the faces. "Are ye all fast asleep, or is it that ye don't care if your old skipper goes to Davy Jones's locker? I 'll have ye remember that besides being skipper I'm part owner of this packet, and I 'll fire every man Jack of ye for leaving it to a baby in long clothes to pull me out."
"We didn't hear nothing, Cap'n. We was all down below," said a voice.
"Well, youngster," said the corpulent skipper amiably, having apparently forgotten his wrath, "I 've got an account to settle with you and your friend. Cap'n Grummitt isn't hauled out of a dock every day of his life. What can I do for ye, eh? Come on boards me hearties, and wait till I change, else my wife will be nursing a pneumonia patient. Ye'd better slip them wet things off, too. There will be something on board for ye to wear till yours dry in the engine-room."
Tempest lit his pipe and smoked placidly while the two were changing.
"Now," said Captain Grummitt, emerging a few moments later in dry garments, "ye can't put thanks in the bank. What d 'ye mean by hanging around my ship, anyway?"
Good humor was now shining in his rubicund countenance.
"Looking for work," Dave said quietly.
"And I don't know that ye deserve it," commented the skipper, "having just done my wife out of her insurance money. Are ye both sailors?"
"Yes."
"Well, if ye fancy the notion of knocking about on an old tug where there's nothing to do, as far as I can make out, but eat and draw your pay, along with the laziest crew that ever drew breath, why don't ye come with me?"
YOU GET THE CHANCE—"
"THANK you very much," said Dave, by no means inclined to jest at the opportunity in spite of Captain Grummitt's tone.
In another two minutes the question of wages had been disposed of, and the two wanderers found themselves installed as members of the Mary Ellen's crew, much to their own satisfaction.
The tug was one of a host of craft that spent most of their time prowling about the waters off Sydney, looking for a ship that needed towing to a berth in the vast harbor, seldom being away more than four or five days at a time. There was little or no formality on board. The skipper was as amiable as he was fat, and he did not expect the crew to exert themselves unduly when they were afloat, waiting about. Notwithstanding his bulky however, he became like a live wire when there was a chance of a tow. He was known familiarly as Lightning Grummitt, and had earned the nickname. Not a tug captain in Sydney harbor could hold a candle to him at his business. He seemed to have an uncanny sixth sense which told him a ship in the distance wanted a tug. He had spent the best part of a lifetime running trading-boats in the Pacific, but for the last twenty years had done nothing but towing work where he was now, and it was becoming second nature for him to know the requirements of different vessels. It would often happen that two or more rival tugs would "spot" a ship at the same time, and then an exciting race would start, for one tug is as good as another to the incoming vessel. On those occasions Captain Grummitt would ring down on the engine-room telegraph "Full speed ahead" three times in succession, and the men below were aware then that the time had come for them to wake up. Every ounce of steam possible was got up, and the skipper knew by experience that it was unnecessary for him to urge that department on. He knew, too, that he could rely on his deck-hands to do their utmost in an emergency.
The second day out the Mary Ellen picked up a schooner that had been beating her way down the coast, and Dave had an opportunity of listening to the brief battle of wits which often takes place between a tug captain and a skipper before the latter definitely agrees to pay a certain price for a tow. During the war of words Captain Grummitt waxed sarcastic and poured out biting comments before a final bargain was struck. Once the hawser was fixed, however, his ruddy face became wreathed in a smile.
"It's all fish that comes to the net," he said a few moments later to Dave, "but we don't care about getting a haul of this kind"—with a contemptuous bend of the head in the direction of the schooner—"too often. Greeks! They would n't let you have the peelings from their finger nails if they could help it. Some of 'em seem to think they 're doing us an honor to tie up behind."
The tug's next engagement was to tow barges heavily laden with coal, from one wharf to another, many miles away, after which the captain proceeded to his favorite hunting ground, outside the entrance to the harbor.
The days passed pleasantly enough for Dave, and he found very little to do, as compared with life on tramps. Sometimes, after satisfying himself that the lookout was wide-awake, the skipper would join the rest of the crew in the cozy cabin, and join in telling yarns while smoking fearsome black cigars that seemed to Dave to have an odor of tarred rope.
One evening, when the tug was rolling gently in the ground-swell and various reminiscences had been exchanged, the conversation drifted towards pirates of other days and treasure-trove,
"That reminds me," Tempest said, "of a queer bit of news Dave here picked up some time ago in America. Do any of you remember hearing of a treasure-ship called the Hatteras being lost in the South Seas years ago?"
"The Hatteras," Captain Grummitt repeated slowly, taking the cigar from his mouth and squinting at the swaying lamp overhead. "No, I don't seem to recall it for the minute. What did she have on board?"
"There was nothing special on board," replied Tempest, "except a consignment of platinum belonging to a passenger who had spent a couple of years or so mining it. He was taking the stuff to San Francisco from Sydney."
"Wait a minute," the skipper interrupted, unscrewing the cigar again, pensively. "I seem to have a hazy recollection of something of the sort, but it's a good long while ago. What happened to the ship! Was n't she set on fire, or something!"
"Nobody knows. She just disappeared."
"Oh, yes, that was it! I was confusing her with another craft. The Hatteras—let me see now—"
Captain Grummitt scratched his head vigorously, an action which always seemed to assist his memory.
"Blow me if that was n't the boat there was a reward offered for," he said at length, his mind leaping back over the years. "But I don't just recall if ever she was found."
"Never," said Tempest. "There is n't a man living to-day can say for a fact what happened to her or to any one on board, except perhaps Dave, and what he knows does n't amount to much, but it's curious."
Several pairs of eyes were turned on the boy in surprise.
"Shiver my timbers!" said Captain Grummitt "Have you found her, lad?"
Dave shook his head regretfully, with a smile.
"No such luck," he said, "though Tempest keeps joking with me about it."
"It's no joke, laddie," said Tempest. "It seems to me you got nearer to it than any one else ever did, only you did n't realize it at the time."
"Well, out with it," urged Grummitt. "What happened?"
"As far as we know at present," Tempest explained, "There has only been one bark of that name lost in the South Seas. Dave happened to be talking to an old sailor on the quay at Brooklyn this year, and got wind of a bark called the Hatteras that was lying half buried in sand on some island."
"Where?" Captain Grummitt asked, his interest aroused.
"Goodness knows! But wait a minute. The old sailor does n't appear to have known, or remembered, that there was anything of value on the Hatteras, but as soon as Dave told his father about it Captain Hallard remembered the story, though he did n't think there would be anything of value left on the wreck after all this time. Whether that is so or not, however, nobody can say, really, as nothing has ever been heard of any one finding the platinum."
"But did n't the sailor give Dave any idea where he saw the wreck!" Captain Grummitt asked.
"Somewhere near Christmas Island," Dave put in.
"Now we 're getting on," said the skipper. "How near?"
"Some distance away, I guess," replied Dave. "They were running toward Christmas Island from another place when they came across it."
"Did he mention the name of the other place?"
"Yes, but I don't remember what it was now."
"Well, let's see," observed the skipper, diving into a deep locker. "I 've got an old chart of the Pacific somewhere here. P'raps that will help you to remember. Ah, here it is!"
Captain Grummitt carefully spread the sheet on the cabin table, and with a pudgy forefinger indicated the position of Christmas Island.
"Now, you run your eye over that section," he said. "There's precious few places around there big enough to have a name, so it should n't be a difficult job."
"Here it is—Fanning Island," Dave announced.
"Umph!" said the skipper, re-scratching his pate. "That gives you your bearings, in a manner of speaking, but you know them two islands are n't quite as near to one another as they look on that chart. The next question is, how long had they passed Fanning before they hit the wreck?"
"I don't think he mentioned any definite time,
"Here it is—Fanning Island," Dave announced
but he said something about being a day's steaming off their course," said Dave, struggling to recall more of the ancient mariner's yarn.
"That helps in a way," the skipper commented. "But which direction had she drifted in—east or west!"
"I have no idea."
"Umph!" The captain was silent, lost in thought for a moment or two.
"Did he say anything particular about the island?" he asked at length.
"The wreck was in a lagoon," Dave said, "and there was a reef of rocks outside the lagoon, because they thought the ship must have struck those rocks and drifted over them afterward on a very high tide."
"We 're getting on," commented the skipper. "What else?"
"I only remember one other thing. There was a sort of hill on the island, and in the distance it seemed to be shaped rather like a camel's back."
"That's definite enough. Of course there are lots of islands around those waters with lagoons, and a lagoon most generally has a bunch of rocks round it, but it's long odds you would n't find two islands there with a lagoon and a hill like a camel on it. There's another thing. If you see a hill like a cow or a donkey, you 'll know it is n't that one."
"On the other hand," said Tempest, who had been listening with curious interest, "if you see the camel, it is worth making a mighty careful search in that neighborhood for the treasure-ship."
"You bet your sweet life it is!" said Captain Grummitt. "If I was twenty years younger and did n't have to spend my time dodging around Sydney Harbor looking for the price of the family's victuals and rent, hang me if I would n't put in a spell hunting for that old treasure-ship."
"Do you really think it might be worth while?" Tempest asked, his habitual manner of carelessness cast aside for the moment.
"Well, if you put it up to me that way," said the skipper, blowing rings of smoke between each few words, "it's a hard question. You see, you can't get away from the fact that there is, or there was, a bark called the Hatteras there not very long ago, unless this old sailor invented it, and there's no sensible reason for supposing he did that. Then again, if any one had ever found that treasure, the papers would have had a long yarn about it, and none of us ever heard of that happening. I could tell you a whole lot more of what I think about it if only I could get one peek at the wreck. Such a lot depends on what state she is in. Mebbe there's nothing but her ribs left by now, in which case, good-by treasure. But if she's pretty deep in the sand, and if she has n't broken in half, I don't see why there should n't be a fair chance of this stuff still being on board. You see, there's a powerful difference between leaving it all these years in the main street of Sydney and leaving it stranded on a little island where nobody in their sane senses would think of poking their noses. There's islands there that don't have a human being on them once in a hundred years or more, and then, as likely as not, they might not happen to spot a half-buried wreck."
As he listened to Captain Grummitt, Dave began to see new interest in the lost Hatteras, and he would have liked to kick himself for not pumping his ancient mariner more.
"I think some fine day we shall have to go treasure-hunting, Dave," Tempest said with a quiet smile.
"If ever we get the chance," agreed Dave, cheerfully, as though a little trip to the neighborhood of Christmas Island was as simple as a jaunt on a trolley-car.
"If ever you get the chance," said Captain Grummitt, nodding his head with each word, "don't you miss it! But how in thunder you 're to get the chance is more than I know, because there ain't no ferry-boats running to Christmas Island this summer, nor any other summer, and you can take it from me the walking from here to there is pretty bad. Yes, sir. Pretty bad!"
CHAPTER XIII
A BROKEN HAWSER
IT was during his stay on the Mary Ellen that Dave first learned, under the personal supervision of Captain Grummitt, who spent most of his time on the bridge, the art of taking a trick at the wheel. And during those watches in the little, boxlike wheel-house the boy also learned many other things appertaining to the ways of ships, for Captain Grummitt took a great interest in the lad. The time was not far distant, moreover, when Dave was to be thankful for such lore as he gathered from the portly old sea-dog.
Life on the tug was by no means devoid of its adventurous side. There were days and nights when the water was as calm as the proverbial mill-pond, and when the work of the Mary Ellen could be carried on without excitement; but there were also times when nerves of iron were needed. Picking up casual sailing craft which needed a tow was child's play compared with the Mary Ellen's task of taking a ship under its sheltering wing on a dirty night. The worse the weather was, the more likely the tug was to be needed outside the entrance to the harbor, and the skipper took a grim pleasure in riding out a gale when other craft found it prudent to take shelter.
One wild night, when Dave had been on the tug bout a month, even the skipper was thinking of getting under the shelter of the Bluff, for the Mary Ellen was tossing about so heavily that her crew could barely keep their feet, and more than one hissing comber had deluged the deck. Rain was falling in sheets, and it was the darkest hour of the night. Dave was on duty with Grummitt in the little wheel-house. The tug was right in the track of all incoming vessels, but few passed, except one or two dark forms of steamers laboring along like gray ghosts of the ocean.
"It's a rare night for trouble," Captain Grummitt said, "but I think this is where we get under the lee of the land for a spell."
Still he kept his hand off the engine-room telegraph. Once or twice during the last quarter of an hour he had been peering through his night glasses away to the southeast.
"Blow me if I did n't see a light down that way," he muttered. "Mebbe I'm beginning to fancy things in my old age. If only this rain would ease up for a minute— Gosh! There it is again. Now what in thunder is up?" he said, suddenly moving the lever over to the signal "Full speed ahead."
The Mary Ellen plunged forward, rolling over at a terrific angle as the heavy seas struck her port beam.
"What do you make of it, Cap'n?" Dave asked.
"Dunno." Captain Grummitt was scratching his pate in perplexity, "She does n't seem to have shifted for a long while, so I guess we 'll just find out."
Ten minutes' run brought them near enough to see what was happening. A large Swedish sailing ship, with poles bared, was riding uneasily at the stern of a tug. Apparently they were making no progress.
"Great mackerel, if that is n't the Dolphin, bitten more off than she can chew!" Grummitt said, scrutinizing the tug carefully. "I 'll hate to butt in here, because Jim Cross is a pal of mine, but I allus told him them hawsers he bought would go back on him when the pinch came."
"Is Jim Cross the skipper of the tug?"
"Yes, and he's part owner, same as I am. He bought three new hawsers this year, thinking he was getting a bargain just because they only cost him half as much as they ought to have done, but I warned him. Now I bet he's wishing he'd paid double," the skipper went on grimly, manœuvring his tug around all the time. "There is n't a tug in these waters with more powerful engines than the Dolphin, and now Jim Cross dare n't set 'em going at full speed, because he knows he'd bust the cable. A ship that size is a tough proposition to haul along in calm weather, but when you 've got both sea and wind running against you it takes a proper cable to stand the strain. He's playing foxy now, going easy till the wind shifts."
By this time the Mary Ellen was within hailing distance of the Dolphin.
"Want any help!" Grummitt bawled through a megaphone.
"No, thanks." The words came back faintly, almost drowned in the gale. At the same time the Dolphin began to forge ahead.
"We 'll see," commented Grummitt. For five minutes he kept going, a trifle astern of the tug, until a savage swirl of wind caught the sailing ship simultaneously with a hungry wave. The Dolphin shot forward perceptibly, and Grummitt edged in nearer the Swedish ship.
The cable had parted.
"Slip down on deck," Grummitt said sharply to Dave. "This ain't going to be no picnic."
Steering with consummate skill, Grummitt brought the tug close alongside the Swede, and the boy heard fragments of a conversation between the two captains, from which he gathered that that was the second cable that had broken. A young giant stood by the rail of the Mary Ellen, poised ready to hurl a coiled lanyard across. It was a hazardous moment, for the slightest error in steering would have brought about a collision. At exactly the right second the rope flew out. The wind carried it aside, but some one on the sailing ship managed to grab the end. Eager hands drew the end of the Mary Ellen's finest hawser across, and a moment later the tug was moving ahead. While this operation was in progress the Mary Ellen was plunging wildly, and Dave was almost knocked into the scuppers by a sea while giving a hand.
He found Captain Grummitt singing a sailors' chanty merrily when he returned to the wheel-house. The skipper had a habit of doing that when he had fought a hard battle and won.
"I'm sorry for Jimmie Cross," he said to the boy, "but he should n't try to use rotten gear in a howling gale. It might have cost a pile of lives to-night!"
An hour or two later they had rounded the Bluff, chugging along in comparatively smooth water, and the Swedish ship was berthed without further mishap.
The tug remained at her own berth in Sydney until the following day, and during that time Tempest again made inquiries about the boat he and Dave were waiting for to take them into the South Seas. He discovered that the Manihiki was due to leave in fifteen days.
"Well, I don't blame ye," said Captain Grummitt, when he heard their plans. I don't know a trip that I'd enjoy much better myself. There's something about the South Seas that gets you—a sort of mystery. By the way, Dave, I don't want you to think I 've forgotten that little thing you did for me when I toppled over into the dock." His hand went towards his pocketbook, where he always kept a roll of bills, but a look of dismay came into the boy's face.
"That was nothing. Anybody would have done it," Dave said.
"It may have meant nothing to you, my boy," Captain Grummitt replied with a grin, "but I still feel powerfully obliged, if it's all the same to you, and I'd like you to keep something of mine as a souvenir." Acting on a happy impulse, he drew from his pocket a plain silver watch and handed it to the boy. "It is n't the value of the thing I want you to remember, lad, so much as the idea of the thing. It's a mark of an old sailor's gratitude."
The delicate spirit in which the gift was made pleased Dave even more than the watch.
"Thanks, Cap'n," he said. "I 'll always be proud of that watch."
"An' if ever you come back to Sydney and want a job," said the skipper, "don't forget to look up Lightning Grummitt. If I have n't got room on board for you, I 'll make room, see?"
The captain of the Manihiki was a middle-aged man named Peters, whom Tempest had met before, and neither Dave nor his friend had any difficulty in joining the ship. The Manihiki was no flyer. She had been built for her own particular trade, and did not draw too much water, so that she could be navigated in places where the captain had to rely more on common sense and experience than charts, for those who engage in trading with the islands must pick their way gingerly between treacherous reefs, often gaging the depth of the water by its color only. Usually, the Manihiki jogged along at a comfortable ten or eleven miles an hour, with a slight reserve of speed in hand in case of an emergency.
From Sydney she had a run of nearly two thousand miles before reaching the neighborhood of Fiji, and then began the part of the journey which interested Dave most. From one wondrous beauty-spot to another they went, sometimes lying at anchor off an island and sending a dory ashore to do the trading, and sometimes poking their nose so close to the land that it was possible to tie up against a tree. In some places a white man had established himself and did a thriving, if lonely, business by accumulating copra and other native products and driving a hard bargain with Captain Peters. One man in particular Dave remembered. He had built a wooden bungalow facing the sea, and the chief article of furniture it contained was a wheezy old harmonium on which its owner played comic songs, ten years old, extremely badly. In response to a pressing invitation Captain Peters and some of the men, including Tempest and Dave, paid a visit to the bungalow and took coffee there. One of the crew fetched an accordion from the ship, and for the first time in history a concert was held on the island, before a rapturous audience of fifty or sixty niggers who crowded around the bungalow.
"It's the accordion they 're listening to," the trader explained. "The beggars thought the harmonium was a sort of magic when I first got it, and I had no end of a game with 'em, but familiarity breeds contempt. I remember the time when they used to bring any one who was sick, an' let 'em listen to the strains of a vaudeville ditty that Sydney and New York had forgotten, and 'pon my word the patient used to get well again straight away. They 're funny creatures, natives. They 've only got to make up their minds that they 're going to die and even 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay' on the old wheeze bag won't save 'em."
In some places the natives displayed a keenness for bargaining which would not have disgraced a dealer in second-hand clothes. The Manihiki had passed beyond the Fiji Islands and was working among the Tonga group when an incident occurred which might have led to serious consequences but for the prompt action of Captain Peters.
No boat had called at this particular island for nearly a year, and the natives had an exaggerated notion of the value of their accumulated wares. After a good deal of haggling between Captain Peters and the dusky traders, conducted in fragments of English and disjointed words in the native lingo, a bargain was struck, and all hands set to work on the task of stowing the copra away. While this was being done, however, the natives set up a noisy chattering among themselves, a disagreement having arisen, apparently as to what they were to get in exchange.
Two members of the crew stood guarding the knives, brightly colored cloth and ornaments which had been selected as the "price" of the copra, the last of which had just been put into the hold, when the chattering developed into a howl, and there were signs of an ugly rush.
Scenting danger, Captain Peters gave a quick signal for the anchor to be heaved.
"Push off those canoes there," he ordered quietly, at the same time producing a small revolver from his hip pocket. "Hi, you, Johnson," he added to one of the men who had seized a marline spike and assumed a threatening attitude, "if you hit one of those chaps I 'll put you under arrest. Remember some other boat is coming here some day, and if we have a rumpus now they 'll get ready for regular trouble next time." The propeller was revolving, and the Manihiki was slowly sliding away from her anchorage. "A bargain is a bargain, you squint-eyed lump of mahogany," the captain went on, leaning over the side and hurling his words at the chief, who was brandishing his arms, "even if it is between a gentleman in command of a first-class trading steamer and a low-down, sneak-thief Kanaka."
Then, as the canoes dropped behind, he waved his hand to their occupants, afterwards taking his place on the bridge to conduct the delicate operation of navigating his way through a mass of jagged rocks and cross currents.
This was almost the only occasion, however, on which the Manihiki encountered trouble with the natives. As a rule they had learned by experience that it paid best to come to some understanding and stick to it. There was probably a good deal of squabbling among themselves, after the steamer had left, on the question of a fair division of the spoil, but that was not Captain Peters's affair.
On the whole, the cruise promised to be a very satisfactory one, and the Manihiki was favored with ideal weather week after week, running under azure skies on an ocean that looked as though it must have been painted.
"A penny for your thoughts," Tempest said early one morning when he came upon Dave leaning over the taffrail, staring out at the beautiful picture. The gray sky in the east was just becoming tinged with red, stained with the promise of the sun, and little wisps of mist floated in vague shapes, like scenes from Fairyland.
"It looks like—like a dream," Dave said.
"Does n't it?" Tempest agreed. "One of the queer things about these waters is that mist, which looks so dreamy, can become a regular nightmare before you know where you are. One has to navigate with brains instead of charts hereabouts, and the skipper does n't take quite the same view of fog as you do. He's been grumbling for two days about it. It was pretty bad while we were down below in our bunks last night, and he had the engines running at half speed for some hours."
"But there's plenty of water where we are, is n't there?" Dave asked.
"Cap'n thinks so, evidently, because he's pounding away at top speed, but it's mighty tricky work, because the current will carry you a mile off your course in no time."
Usually the mist melted and disappeared soon after the sun peeked over the horizon, but this morning it hung obstinately and grew thicker, looking like a vast curtain of down spread over the water. Before midday the captain slowed the engines again, and crept forward for several hours. As near as he could reckon, they were within a mile or two of an island marked on the chart, which he wished to see so that he could make doubly sure of his bearings.
Dave was below, in his bunk, fast asleep, when a peculiar, grating noise startled him.
"What's that?" he said, rubbing his eyes.
Again the grating, accompanied this time by a distinct bump.
"The old man's done it now!" a sailor exclaimed, jumping out of his berth and hastening into some clothes. "Bless my soul if he ain't tryin' to scrape seaweed off'n the rocks with the keel!"
Dave was on deck in less than sixty seconds. The engines were stationary, and the captain was barking out sharp orders. Instead of rising and falling gently, the Manihiki was firm as a rock at the bow and canting over slightly, while her stern hung a foot too low in the water.
"Some plates are stove in for'ard, sir," Dave heard a voice shout, "and the sea's coming in through a big hole!"
Four or five gulls hung gracefully overhead, as though waiting for the pickings.
Dave saw Tempest coming toward him.
"Shall we be able to back off, do you think?" the boy asked.
"I hope not," said Tempest. "If she slips off that rock, she 'll sink in about three minutes."
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