Page:Weird Tales v01n04 (1923-06).djvu/99

98 noises in the racked boiler-room, Richter's bullying manner, put fear in the hearts of the deck crew. Oil-pipes clogged, pumps refused to work, valves stuck and could searcely be moved.

"I've noo doot," Fergerson told his Chief, "there's a ghost taken up its abode wi' us."

Richter drank quart after quart of trade-gin.

HE BAROMETER became unsteady, the sky hazy, the air melting hot, and a low, rugged cloud bank appeared over the Seriphus' port bow.

Down fell the barometer, a half-inch, almost, and the avalanche of rain and wind that struck the freighter was as if Thor was hammering her iron plates.

Ezra Morgan, unable to escape from the typhoon's center, prepared to ride out the storm by bringing the Seriphus up until she had the sea on the bow, and he had held her there by going half speed ahead. A night of terror ruled the tanker; the decks were awash, stays snapped, spume rose and dashed over the squat funnel aft the bridge.

Morning, red-hued, with greenish patches, revealed a harrowed ocean, waves of tidal height, and astern lay a battered hulk—a freighter, dismasted, smashed, going down slowly by the bow.

"A Japanese tramp," said Ezra Morgan. "Some Marau or other, out of the Carolines bound for Yokohama."

Richter, stupid from trade-gin was on the bridge with the Yankee skipper.

"We can't help her," the engineer said heavily. "I think we got all we can do to save ourselves."

Ezra Morgan entertained another opinion. The storm had somewhat subsided, and the wind was lighter, but the waves were higher than ever he had known them. They broke over the doomed freighter like surf on a reef.

"Yon's a distress signal flying," said Ezra Morgan, "There's a few seamen aft that look like drowned rats. We'll go before th' sea—I'll put th' sea abart th' beam, an we'll outboard oil enough to lower a small-boat an' take those men off that freighter."

The maneuver was executed, the screw turned slowly, oil was poured through the waste-pipes and spread magically down the wind until the freighter's deck, from aft the forehouse, could be seen above the waves.

Over the patch of comparative calm oars dipped, and a mate, in charge of the small boat lowered from the Seriphus, succeeded in getting off the survivors who were clinging to the freighter's taffrail.

The small boat lived in a sea that had foundered big ships. It returned to the tanker's bow; and the four men, bruised, broken, all half-dead from immersion, were hoisted to the forepeak and taken aft. Two were Japanese sailors and two were Americans—a wireless operator and an engineer. The engineer had a broken leg which required setting, and the wireless operator was in a bad fix; wreckage had stove in his features, and twisted his limbs.

Ezra Morgan was a rough and ready surgeon-doctor; he turned the Seriphus over to the first-mate and made a sick room out of Richter's cabin. The chief protested.

"Get below to your damn steam!" roared Ezra Morgan. "You hated to see me bring aboard these poor seamen; you said I wasted fuel oil; your breath smells like a gin-mill. Below with you, sir!"

The engine-room and boiler-room of the tanker, she being in water ballast, was not unlike an inferno; the first-mate, acting on Ezra Morgan's instructions, drove the Seriphus at three-quarter speed into a series of head-on waves; the ship rolled and yawed, tossed, settled down astern, then her screw raced in mingled foam and brine.

Richter's stomach belched gas; he became sea-sick, climbed into a foul-smelling "ditty-box" of a cabin, aft the engine-room, and attempted to sleep off the effect of the gin. Picture-post-cards, mostly of actresses, a glaring electric over the bunk, oil and water swishing the metal deck below, and the irritating clank of irregular-running engines drove sleep away from him.

Fergerson, the silent second-engineer, came into the "ditty-box" at eight bells, or four o'clock, Fergerson's thumb jerked forward.

"I'll have t' use that spare boiler," said he.

"What's th' matter, now?"

"Feed-pipes clogged in starb'ard one, sir."

"Use it," said Richter.

Steam was gotten up on the spare, double-end Scotch boiler; the starboard boiler was allowed to cool; Fergerson, despite the tanker’s rolling motion, succeeded in satisfying Ezra Morgan by keeping up the three-quarter speed set by the skipper.

Richter sobered when the last of the trade-gin was gone; the Seriphus was between Guam and 'Frisco; the heavy seas encountered were the afterkick of the simoon.

Rolling drunkenly, from habit, the chief went on the bridge and asked about getting back his comfortable cabin aft. Ezra Morgan gave him no satisfaction.

"Better stay near your boilers," advised the captain. "Everything's gone to hell, sir, since you changed from kummel to gin."

"Are not th' injured seamen well yet?"

"Th' wireless chap’s doing all right—but th' engineer of that Japanese freighter is hurt internally. You can't have that cabin, this side of San Francisco."

"What were two Americans doing in that cheap service?"

Ezra Morgan glanced sharply at Richter.

"Everybody isn't money mad—like you. There's many a good engineer, and mate, too, in th' Japanese Merchant Marine. Nippon can teach us a thing or two—particularly about keeping Scotch boilers up to th' steaming point."

This cut direct sent Richter off the bridge; he encountered a bandaged and goggled survivor of the freighter's wreck at the head of the engine-room ladder. The wireless operator, leaning on a crutch whittled by a bo'sain, avoided Richter, who pushed him roughly aside and descended the ladder, backward.

White steam, lurid oaths, Scotch anathema from the direction of the boiler-room, indicated more trouble. Fergerson came from forward and bumped into Richter, so thick was the escaping vapor.

"Out o' my way, mon," the second engineer started to say, then clamped his teeth on his tongue.

"What's happened, now!" queried Richter.

"It's that wicked spare boiler—she's aleak an' foamin,'', [sic] an' there's water in th' fire-boxes."

Richter inclined his bullet shaped head; he heard steam hissing and oilers cursing the day they had signed on the Seriphus. A blast when a gasket gave way, hurtled scorched men between Richter and Fergerson; a whine sounded from the direction of the boiler-room, the whine rose to an unearthly roar: Richter saw a blanket of white vapor floating about the engine's cylinders. This vapor, to his muddled fancy, seemed to contain the figure of a man wrapped in a winding shroud.

He clapped both hands over his eyes, hearing above the noise of escaping steam a call so distinct it chilled his blood.

"Hylda!"