Century Magazine/Volume 41/Issue 5/A Mystery of the Sea

the summer of 1884 I was coming across the Indian Ocean in the steamship Glenearn, homeward-bound from Shanghai with a cargo of tea. We had passed Ceylon, catching a glimpse of the distant island and a whiff of the spicy breeze offshore, and were nearing the treacherous chain of coral reefs known as the Maldive Islands, when I came up from the cabin after dinner for a stroll on deck. The evening sky glowed with the beauty of a rich sunset such as is rarely seen outside the tropics. The good ship rocked easily upon a long, smooth swell, and plowed her way into a sea of molten gold, turning it, as by the touch of a magician's rod, into blue depths of water beneath her keel. The vessel's wake, churned into foam and shot through with countless flashes of phosphorescence, stretched far astern like a silvery path leading to the very edge of the full moon which hung just above the horizon.

I found the chief engineer leaning against the rail and enjoying the glorious beauty of the evening. For some time neither of us spoke. At length he remarked in a meditative way:

"It was just here that we met the Portuguese brig when we were coming out."

Now Nesbitt was a clear-headed Scot who had studied in one of the English universities and taken his degree; then, giving way to his passion for a roving life, he had gone to sea and spent twenty years afloat. He had doubled more than once the Horn and the Cape, made a dozen voyages to China and Japan, and, as an engineer in the Portuguese navy, had visited the whole coast of Africa, and once crossed the Dark Continent on foot just below the equator. In short, he had seen much of the world, and taken good note of what he saw.

The chief engineer, therefore, was a man who had in his head much material for a good story; and it was in the hope of getting a story now that I asked:

"Well, what about the Portuguese brig?"

He looked up in surprise.

"What! Haven't you heard of the adventure we had on the last trip out? No? 'Bout as curious a thing as I ever came within hail of. But it's a long yarn; so let's find some seats first, and then I'11 spin it for you."

We took possession of a couple of steamer chairs on the after-deck, and forthwith the chief spun his yarn as follows:

"We came out in February loaded mostly with iron; had a rough time of it in the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean, but when we had gotten past those cussed Frenchmen on the Suez Canal our troubles for that voyage were over. Those canal pilots make an engineer swear more than a storm at sea.

"Well, just in this place, one day about noon, we passed a brig about four miles north of us. The sun was hot, there was not a breath of wind, and the brig lay rocking on the swell with all sail set and flapping. She showed no colors, and failed to answer the signals which we made to her. The captain swore a little at her want of manners and we went on; but when we had passed her some distance, perhaps a couple of miles, I went on the bridge and found him still leveling his glass at her. As I came up he said, 'I don't like the looks of that craft at all. She isn't ship-shape, and I am going to run over to her and find out what's wrong.'

"He put the steamer's head for the brig, and soon we were as close as the swell would allow. We hailed her, but got no reply. Then the old man began to get excited, and ordered the mate to call away the crew of the cutter and investigate. When the mate came close alongside he hailed again. Still no reply. She lay with her starboard beam towards us. He pulled around her stern and found the port gangway open. A man in a red shirt and a pair of trousers sat there on the deck, his legs hanging over the side. He was leaning back upon a box under his left arm, and a red handkerchief trailed from his right hand across his lap. A loud hail at close quarters brought no movement or response, and a sudden awe fell upon the boat's crew. The man was dead!

"The mate pulled forward to the bow and climbed up the chains to the deck. He said afterward that nothing would have hired him to climb into the gangway beside that silent figure. Four men lay on the deck around the forward hatch. They had been dead a longtime, and the burning sun poured down upon ghastly bodies which were almost skeletons, they were so thin.

"The crew of the cutter were ordered up, and they searched the ship from stem to stern. They found no one in the forecastle or the hold, and no one in the cabin; but in the galley they found the Malay cook and the cabin-boy, both dead, the cook lying upon his face with his fingers twisted in his long black hair. All the men except the captain seemed to have died in agony, for their bodies were writhed and twisted.

"There was plenty of food aboard—a cask of salt beef; several hundred-weight of rice, and some flour. There were plenty of coals for the galley fire. The ship was perfectly sound, not a sail was split, not a halyard started; the masts and spars were all secure, and the wheel and rudder in good order. But there was not a drop of water aboard. Here was the secret of the tragedy. Every water-cask was dry, every butt had been upset and drained to the last drop. The little cabin-boy lay with his head and shoulders inside one of the overturned casks, and his stiff fingers grasped a tin cup into which he had been trying to drain a few drops of water.

"The ship's papers and two or three hundred Mexican dollars were in the despatch-box under the captain's elbow. I translated the papers—which were in Portuguese—when they were brought aboard the steamer. They showed that the brig was Portuguese, registered at Goa. Her name was the Santa Maria, and she had cleared from Goa three months before for a trading voyage along the west coast of India. Her master was also her owner; his name was signed to the papers with a cross. There was not, as it seemed, a single man on board who could write, for no log was found. There was a compass and a crude chart of the Indian coast in the cabin, but no sextant or chronometer and no signal-flags.

"So these poor wretches had probably been blown off the coast by a storm, and once out of sight of land they lost their bearings and could not find the way back again. Their supply of water gave out, and they died. But judging from the size of the brig, she required a crew of about fifteen men to handle her, and there were only seven bodies on board. What became of the others no one can tell. They may have drunk salt water, gone mad, and jumped into the sea to end their misery. There were lots of sharks swimming about the brig when we found her.

"I said there was no log on board. Perhaps that is true and perhaps it is not. On the deck by the captain's side was a little heap of pebbles which had evidently been brought up from the ballast, and carefully piled in one corner of the despatch-box beside the ship's papers were seventeen of these same pebbles. It is not unlikely that each pebble represented a day of thirst and watching. It makes me shudder, even now—the picture of that red-shirted captain sitting in the waist of the ship watching for a sail, and seeing his crew, maddened by thirst or by salt water, jump down one by one into the jaws of the sharks waiting below. I always think of that captain as catching sight of some steamer on the horizon and raising himself to wave his red handkerchief; his only signal of distress, then, as the steamer keeps on her course, falling back in despair—to die!"

We sat for a long time in silence, while the steady throb of the steamer's iron heart drove her forward into the night. At length I asked: "What did you do with her?"

"We could not take her into port, and it is against the law to leave a vessel adrift upon the high seas. So when the mate had come back with a white face and told his story the captain sent the crew over to the brig and dismantled her. We took out her stores, cordage, sails, and everything we could move. Then the carpenter went down and bored a lot of holes in her bottom. We put all the bodies in the cabin and laid the ship's flag over them. The captain read the prayer from the burial service. Then we locked the cabin-door and left her; and as we steamed away we could see her slowly settling down.

"We turned over everything belonging to her to the Portuguese consul at Singapore; and if you will ask the captain he will show you the letter of thanks he got from Portugal, with King Luis's own signature. The consul wrote to Goa and advertised in all the eastern papers three months for some one who could claim the things, but without success. At length they were sold and converted to the crown, for no living soul could be found who knew anything about the Santa Maria or her crew."