The Mystery by Samuel Hopkins Adams (read e books online free txt) 📕

these, during which things were accomplished, but in which was no space for anything but the tasks imposed upon us. The men for the most part had little to say.

"Por Dios, eet is too mooch work!" sighed Perdosa once.

"Why don't you kick to the Old Man, then?" sneered Thrackles.

The silence that followed, and the sullenness with which Perdosa readdressed himself to his work, was significant enough of Captain Selover's past relations with the men. And how we did clean her! We stripped her of every stitch and sliver until she floated high, an empty hull, even her spars and running rigging ashore. I understood now the crew's grumbling. We literally went at her with a nail brush.

Captain Selover took charge of us when we had reached this period. He and the Nigger and Perdosa had long since finished the installation of the permanent camp. They had built us huts from the wreck, collecting stateroom doors for the sides, and hatches for the roofs, huge and solid, with iron rings in them. The bronze and iron ventilation gratings to the doors gave us glimpses of the coast through fretwork; the rich inlaying of woods surrounded us. We set up on a solid rock the galley stove--with its rails to hold the cooking pots from upsetting, in a sea way. In it we burned the débris of the wreck, all sorts of wood, some sweet and aromatic and spicy as an incensed cathedral. I have seen the Nigger boiling beans over a blaze of sandal wood fragrant as an Eastern shop.

First we scrubbed the Laughing Lass, then we painted her, and resized and tarred her standing rigging, resized and rove her running gear, slushed her masts, finally careened her and scraped and painted her below.

When we had quite finished, we had the anchor chain dealt out to us in fathoms, and scraped, pounded and polished that. These were indeed days full of labour.

Being busy from morning until night we knew but little of what was about us. We saw the open sea and the waves tumbling over the reef outside. We saw the headlands, and the bow of the bay and the surf with its watching seals and the curve of yellow sands. We saw the sweep of coast and the downs and the strange huts we had built out of departed magnificence. And that was all; that constituted our world.

In the evening sometimes we lit a big bonfire, sailor fashion, just at the edge of the beach. There we sat at ease and smoked our pipes in silence, too tired to talk. Even Handy Solomon's song was still. Outside the circle of light were mysterious things--strange wavings of white hands, bendings of figures, callings of voices, rustling of feet. We knew them for the surf and the wind in the grasses: but they were not the less mysterious for that.

Logically Captain Selover and I should have passed most of our evenings together. As a matter of fact we so spent very few. Early in the dusk the captain invariably rowed himself out to his beloved schooner. What he did there I do not know. We could see his light now in one part of her, now in the other. The men claimed he was scrubbing her teeth. "Old Scrubs" they called him to his back: never Captain Selover.

"He has to clean up after his own feet, he's so dirty," sagely proffered Handy Solomon. And this was true.

The seaman's prophecy held good. Seven weeks held us at that infernal job--seven weeks of solid, grinding work. The worst of it was, that we were kept at it so breathlessly, as though our very existence were to depend on the headlong rush of our labour. And then we had fully half the stores to put away again, and the other half to transport painfully over the neck of land from the cove to the beach.

So accustomed had I become to the routine in which we were involved, so habituated to anticipating the coming day as exactly like the day that had gone, that the completion of our job caught me quite by surprise. I had thrown myself down by the fire prepared for the some old half hour of drowsy nicotine, to be followed by the accustomed heavy sleep, and the usual early rising to toil. The evening was warm; I half closed my eyes.

Handy Solomon was coming in last. Instead of dropping to his place, he straddled the fire, stretching his arms over his head. He let them fall with a sharp exhalation.

"'Lay aloft, lay aloft,' the jolly bos'n cried.      Blow high, blow low, what care we! 'Look ahead, look astern, look a-windward, look a-lee.'      Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e."

The effect was electrical. We all sprang to our feet and fell to talking at once.

"By God, we're through!" cried Pulz. "I'd clean forgot it!"

The Nigger piled on more wood. We drew closer about the fire. All the interests in life, so long held in the background, leaped forward, eager for recognition. We spoke of trivialities almost for the first time since our landing, fused into a temporary but complete good fellowship by the relief.

"Wonder how the old doctor is getting on?" ventured Thrackles, after a while.

"The devil's a preacher! I wonder?" cried Handy Solomon.

"Let's make 'em a call," suggested Pulz.

"Don't believe they'd appreciate the compliment," I laughed. "Better let them make first call: they're the longer established." This was lost on them, of course. But we all felt kindly to one another that evening.

I carried the glow of it with me over until next morning, and was therefore somewhat dashed to meet Captain Selover, with clouded brows and an uncertain manner. He quite ignored my greeting.

"By God, Eagen," he squeaked, "can you think of anything more to be done?"

I straightened my back and laughed.

"Haven't you worked us hard enough?" I inquired. "Unless you gild the cabins, I don't see what else there can be to do."

Captain Selover stared me over.

"And you a naval man!" he marvelled. "Don't you see that the only thing that keeps this crew from gettin' restless is keeping them busy? I've sweat a damn sight more with my brain than you have with your back thinking up things to do. I can't see anything ahead, and then we'll have hell to pay. Oh, they're a sweet lot!"

I whistled and my crest fell. Here was a new point of view; and also a new Captain Ezra. Where was the confidence in the might of his two hands?

He seemed to read my thoughts, and went on.

"I don't feel sure here on this cussed land. It ain't like a deck where a man has some show. They can scatter. They can hide. It ain't right to put a man ashore alone with such a crew. I'm doing my best, but it ain't goin' to be good enough. I wisht we were safe in 'Frisco harbour----"

He would have maundered on, but I seized his arm and led him out of possible hearing of the men.

"Here, buck up!" I said to him sternly. "There's nothing to be scared of. If it comes to a row, there's three of us and we've got guns. We could even sail the schooner at a pinch, and leave them here. You've stood them off before."

"Not ashore," protested Captain Selover weakly.

"Well, they don't know that. For God's sake don't let them see you've lost your nerve this way." He did not even wince at the accusation. "Put up a front."

He shook his head. The sand had completely run out of him. Yet I am convinced that if he could have felt the heave and roll of the deck beneath him, he would have faced three times the difficulties he now feared. However, I could see readily enough the wisdom of keeping the men at work.

"You can wreck the Golden Horn," I suggested. "I don't know whether there's anything left worth salvage; but it'll be something to do."

He clapped me on the shoulder.

"Good!" he cried, "I never thought of it."

"Another thing," said I, "you better give them a day off a week. That can't hurt them and it'll waste just that much more time."

"All right," agreed Captain Selover.

"Another thing yet. You know I'm not lazy, so it ain't that I'm trying to dodge work. But you'd better lay me off. It'll be so much more for the others."

"That's true," said he.

I could not recognise the man for what I knew him to be. He groped, as one in the dark, or as a sea animal taken out of its element and placed on the sands. Courage had given place to fear; decision to wavering; and singleness of purpose to a divided counsel. He who had so thoroughly dominated the entire ship, eagerly accepted advice of me--a man without experience.

That evening I sat apart considerably disturbed. I felt that the ground had dropped away beneath my feet. To be sure, everything was tranquil at present; but now I understood the source of that tranquillity and how soon it must fail. With opportunity would come more scheming, more speculation, more cupidity. How was I to meet it, with none to back me but a scared man, an absorbed man, and an indifferent man?

VIII WRECKING OF THE GOLDEN HORN

Percy Darrow, unexpected, made his first visit to us the very next evening. He sauntered in with a Mexican corn-husk cigarette between his lips, carrying a lantern; blew the light out, and sat down with a careless greeting, as though he had seen us only the day before.

"Hullo, boys," said he, "been busy?"

"How are ye, sir?" replied Handy Solomon. "Good Lord, mates, look at that!"

Our eyes followed the direction of his forefinger. Against the dark blue of the evening sky to northward glowed a faint phosphorescence, arch-shaped, from which shot, with pulsating regularity, long shafts of light. They beat almost to the zenith, and back again, a half dozen times, then the whole illumination disappeared with the suddenness of gas turned out.

"Now I wonder what that might be!" marvelled Thrackles.

"Northern lights," hazarded Pulz. "I've seen them almost like that in the Behring Seas."

"Northern lights your eye!" sneered Handy Solomon. "You may have seen them in the Behring Seas, but never this far south, and in August, and you can, kiss the Book on that."

"What do you think, sir?" Thrackles inquired of the assistant.

"Devil's fire," replied Percy Darrow briefly. "The island's a little queer. I've noticed it before."

"Debbil fire," repeated the Nigger.

Darrow turned directly to him.

"Yes, devil's fire; and devils, too, for all I know; and certainly vampires. Did you ever hear of vampires, Doctor?"

"No," growled the Nigger.

"Well, they are women, wonderful, beautiful women. A man on a long voyage would just smack his lips to see them. They have shiny grey eyes, and lips red as raspberries. When you meet them they will talk with you and go home with you. And then when you're asleep they tear a little hole in your neck with their sharp claws, and they suck the blood with their red lips. When they aren't women, they take the shape of big bats like birds." He turned to me with so beautifully casual an air that I wanted to clap him on the back with the joy of it.

"By the way, Eagen, have you noticed those big bats the last few evenings, over by the cliff? I can't make out in the dusk whether they are vampires or just plain bats." He directed his remarks again to the Nigger. "Next time you see any of those big bats, Doctor, just you notice close. If they have just plain, black eyes, they're all right; but if they have grey eyes, with red rims around 'em, they're vampires. I wish you'd let me know, if you do find out. It's interesting."

"Don' get me near no bats," growled the Nigger.

"Where's Selover?" inquired Darrow.

"He stays aboard," I hastened to say. "Wants to keep an