Rajah of Hell Island/Chapter 1

HE Penang crawled wearily and noisily up the sea; the day blazed crimson and then ended in purpled twilight, and the wine-dark waves were etched in faint phosphor. Stone, standing beside the quartermaster at the wheel, swore softly.

“That damned load of rails has shifted—feel her list to port?”

“Yes, tuan,” replied the Malay quartermaster simply.

“Steel rails for the Sultan’s railroad—well, I didn’t stow ’em. Half point off!”

“Yes, tuan.” The Malay shifted the wheel slightly.

Some time in the blackness of that night, they entered and left a port—a tangle of trees and platforms and concealed godowns on the bank, with flaring torches and shouting Malays, a stink of blended evils, vague shadows along the river-mouth. Not until they were standing out again did Stone learn that a passenger had come aboard.

“Skipper’s happy now.” Mickelson, second mate, was a burly brute and affected a coarseness which was working into his soul. His face looked like the face of the carven monsters on the Janpore joss-house. “Got a woman and arrack. White woman.”

“Eh?” Stone stared at him. “That one of your lies?”

“Go see!” Mickelson chuckled evilly. “He’s got the arrack now, and will have the woman later. Before she gets to the Sultan, at least. She’s going up to join his harem. Dancer, she is! Out of a troupe stranded at Singapore last month. Go see.”

“Beast,” muttered Stone, and stumbled off the bridge, his watch over.

He reflected, however, that Mickelson, although in general a filthy liar, might in this instance be telling the truth. No white woman could have any business, except of an Oriental nature, with the crafty Sultan of Kuala Gajah—crafty Sultan Lumpur, who had been initiated by Montmartre and the hoydens of Bucharest into European vice, and who knew the vice of Asia by natural heritage.

No white woman, except under dire necessity, would have taken passage on the Penang—the dirty old coasting-wallah which was Sultan Lumpur’s navy, supply barge, and pet pride. Certainly she was no one else’s pride, unless that of Captain Benbow, who would never again hold a ticket from any civilized board of trade.

Stone picked his way aft, cursing the necessity which had forced him to sign on at the Straits. The Penang was a floating horror of smells, right enough. The rank stench of opium pointed to her Chinese passengers; then she boasted some holy pilgrims returning home after two years on the Mecca pilgrimage; her cargo was a fearful mess of odds and ends, from petrol for Sultan Lumpur’s automobile to steel rails and a consignment of rotten, wormy copra which was being returned to the Sultan by an impolite agent who could not be bribed to accept it.

“It’s no ship for a white woman,” growled Stone. “Not even for a busted dancer selling her soul to Lumpur! And it’s no ship for me once I can get out of her.”

He coughed and cursed through a group of natives squatting in a circle and smoking vile Chinese tobacco. Then, at the companion, he heard the skipper’s voice and halted.

“Take this to Mr. Mickelson with—with my compliments.” Captain Benbow stood somewhere in the darkness farther aft, and was talking to Tan Tock, the steward. “Give this other bottle to that—hic!—that fool, Stone.”

“Yes, tuan,” murmured the soft voice of Tan Tock. Stone realized that Benbow was sending arrack to the bridge. In disgust he was turning down the ladder when the captain’s voice once more caused him to pause.

“And—and—listen, Tan Tock! Where’s that woman passenger? Speak up, ye yellow imp! I told ye to place—hic!—to place her in my cabin—and—and she’s not there—”

“Tuan, she said there had been some mistake,” explained Tan Tock. “So I left her in the Sultan’s cabin, tuan.”

A volley of amazed oaths broke from the skipper. Stone, frowning in black anger, slid swiftly down the companion. There was something very strange in this passenger business, he reflected. Mickelson had probably lied out of sheer deviltry, about the woman; not about Captain Benbow, however. Even now Benbow was well upon the drunken road, for arrack is swift and deadly.

“Something queer about it,” muttered Stone, “if Tan Tock flinched at obeying the brute’s order! The woman was wise, too. H-m! Let’s see her.”

He paused and knocked at the door of the Sultan’s private and reserved cabin. A quiet, womanly voice answered him.

“Well? Who is it?”

“Mr. Stone, ma’am. Mate of this packet. I’d like to see you a moment, please.”

Stone had expected argument and expostulation. To his surprise, a bolt was shot back at once, and the door swung open. He caught off his cap, staring silently. He was shocked by the greatness of Mickelson’s lie.

“May I come in, please? There are—reasons—”

“Certainly, Mr. Stone.”

Once inside, he shut the door behind him, shot the bolt, and also snapped home the Yale lock used by the cautious Sultan. Benbow would soon be along, he reflected. He turned and looked again at the woman, trying to find words. She was pale and slender; frail, but with stout-hearted courage in her eyes. Gray eyes they were, like his own. And she was not at all beautiful. Stone found himself wondering how, without beauty, her features could hold so much character, so much compellant friendliness—

“I beg your pardon,” he said awkwardly. “Do not be afraid.”

“I am not afraid.” When she smiled, it seemed as, though a warm, desperate beauty flitted over her face. Her gaze dwelt upon Stone’s yellow curls, crept down across his brown features, lingered an instant upon his rather harsh mouth and chin, and seemed to be forced away from sight of his wide shoulders. Stone remembered only now that the heat had stripped him to his undershirt. His cheeks reddened darkly.

“I am not afraid, thanks. Did you want to see my ticket? They told me—”

“Do you know where you’re going?” he snapped.

“Of course! To Kuala Gajah.”

“For Heaven’s sake—Why?”

“You have named it. The Sultan wrote us that he would help if we opened a mission station there. He said this boat, the Penang, would pick me up—”

Stone nodded, afraid to speak. This woman had come down on a coaster, to be picked up by Benbow and taken on to Kuala Gajah—to open a mission station at the hell-hole of the east coast of the Malay States! And Sultan Lumpur, the crafty spider, had started it!

“You’re a missionary, then?”

“This is to be my first effort. There are white men there, of course?”

“Yes,” responded Stone absently.

“Some on this boat, too.” Inwardly he was assuring himself that all mission managers were fools. What fool had sent this woman to Kuala Gajah?

“See here,” he broke out, “it’s none of my business, I suppose, but you’re in a—a bad mess. This Sultan isn’t going to help you or any one else. He’s a fox! He wrote that letter in order to get you or some other white woman up to Kuala Gajah. You may as well face facts, miss. The captain of this boat is a rotter—there, I expect that’s his gentle touch now. Keep quiet, please!”

The woman kept quiet, as he ordered. Her eyes fastened upon him.

A hand rattled the door, a foot shoved against it, a sullen curse followed. Then a fist banged against the panels, with more curses. The door was made of teak, and the drunken Benbow might as well have assaulted the pearly gates.

“All right. He’s ambled off for another drink,” said Stone, when the pounding had ceased. “You’d better keep the door locked, in case he comes back. You’re determined to go on, of course; it stands out in your eyes. Who are you? Why are you here?”

He was forceful, not far short of brutal. She, who had not flinched from the oaths and blows at the door, colored faintly beneath his frowning gaze until her face was the delicate pink of Red Sea corals.

“There’s very little to tell, Mr. Stone. I was sent out here to do this work, and of course I intend to do it. It’s very good of you to warn me. My name is Agnes Bretton.”

“And you’re an American. Well, I’ll not deny it’s good to see an American girl again, Miss Bretton; you see, I’m from Maine State myself. Came out here sailoring, went into trading, went back to sailoring again after going broke. So I know the coast, and I know you’re up against it. We reach Kuala Gajah tomorrow noon. If you need help, call on me. Good night! Keep your door locked.”

“Good night, Mr. Stone. And—and—thank you so much!”

The Penang grunted into an oily sea before dawn, and two hours after dawn she was staggering into a sweet blow from the north. Then the wind hauled around to the east, and before noon promised to put a heavy crimp in the navy and finances of Sultan Lumpur.

The skipper was snoring with an empty arrack bottle in his fist. Mickelson had battened the passengers below and was striving desperately to retrieve his worthless job of cargo-stowing, for with each roll of the ship two hundred rusty, steel rails went banging and slamming into her rusty, steel plates.

Stone had the bridge. It was not his fault that the old engines were half impotent, and that the ancient tramp missed connections and went rolling up a gulf where she had no earthly or waterly business to be transacting. In fact, when the port bow plates began to loosen and drop from their rusty rivets, he thanked fortune that she was driving up into the Godung river-mouth instead of being flung on a lee shore.

In the midst of all this Agnes Bretton, ulstered against the spray, came up to the bridge. There was none to stay her, except Stone; he sent the quartermaster for hot coffee and took the wheel himself until the brown man returned.

“You’re a good sailor, Miss Bretton,” he observed smilingly. “All well below?”

“Yes, thank you. Are we nearly at Kuala Gajah?”

“No. We’re not going there—not at all. That is, the Penang isn’t. If we get to the head of this bight without foundering, we’ll lay up the ship for repairs.”

“Oh, there’s a town there?”

“A city. One of the biggest in this part of the world. I figure on laying the hooker up against a wharf of solid stone two hundred yards long.”

“Oh! What city is it?”

“I don’t know.” Stone smiled grimly. “No one knows. It’s on an island, and it’s been deserted for hundreds of years—perhaps thousands. It’s one of the immense ancient cities you’ll find in this part of the world, ruins of a forgotten civilization.”

“And no one lives there at all?”

“No one lives within a hundred miles of it, except Malays and Dyak fishermen.”

The quartermaster clambered up with a canister of coffee and two pannikins. Stone retired to the cushioned pilot seat with Miss Bretton and devoted himself to breakfast, while the Penang pounded and slashed and rolled along, with a decided list to port.

“You’re not a common sailor, Mr. Stone.” The girl looked suddenly at him, a glow creeping into her cheeks under the sting of the coffee. “Am I not right?”

“You are always right, Miss Bretton; I am not a common sailor, because I have a mate’s ticket.”

Her lips came firmly together, but she did not press the subject. Stone was just lighting his pipe when Mickelson came up the ladder. Even beneath his bristly stubble of beard, the second officer’s face showed fright. Nor did Mickelson pay heed to the figure that sat beside Stone.

“We’re gone, Stone!” he cried out, slamming the lee door and standing there with fear in his eyes. “Half her damned plates have cut loose—”

“Steam pumps going?”

“Sure. But we’re takin’ three for every two feet they pump out. Can’t get a man into the hold to secure those cursed rails. The chinks an’ pilgrims are raisin’ hell down below. Like the old Huzur when she took that reef up beyond Jeddah. Reg’lar hell!”

“How long will she last?”

“An hour, at most.”

Stone puffed at his pipe, and squinted ahead.

“All right,” he nodded quietly. “Go lock the skipper in his cabin—we can’t have that drunken swine giving fool orders out here. Then get the boats ready.”

Mickelson stared at him, and grunted an oath. The burly second was no coward.

“Boats won’t hold the half of ’em.”

“I don’t expect ’em to. You know that island city—the ruins? They’re four miles from shore, up the lagoon; and they’re also ten miles from here. We can’t make the island in an hour, Mickelson, but we can make the bar, two miles from the island. I’ll run her nose into the bar, and you take a load of pilgrims to the island; then come back here and get the rest of us.”

“Lord! You’re a cool ’un!” ejaculated Mickelson admiringly. “You know damned well this sea will break her back in ten minutes—”

“Don’t swear. There’s a lady present,” snapped Stone. “Get the boats ready.”

Mickelson looked at Miss Bretton, and grinned suddenly. His little pig-eyes lighted up with a most unholy gleam.

“Oh, beg pardon!” he exclaimed with an oily smirk. “I’ll take you in my own boat, miss. It ’ll be a pleasure—”

Stone laid aside his pipe.

“Mickelson, it looks to me as though Providence had taken the cleansing of this packet into its own hands. I’m going to give Providence a bit of assistance if you don’t watch out! Go get the boats ready and let out enough pilgrims for your first load. Send me up another quartermaster, too.”

The two men looked steadily at each other for a moment, while the old ship groaned and bucked like a crazy thing. Mickelson’s hand hovered close to a bulging coat-pocket, but his canny Scot’s brain was clear enough to sense infinite danger from this commanding American. The second officer turned and departed, stifling a curse.

“Have you a revolver?” Stone turned to the girl beside him.

“I? Of course not.” A smile etched her lips as she met his eyes. “Why?”

“Because there’s going to be rough water ahead. Have you any imagination? Then picture an island, that is one solid mass of ruinous stone-work, mostly covered by jungle, and upon this island a hundred-odd castaways, three of them white men and one a white woman—yourself. There will be ructions.”

“I fail to see why,” she returned, a faint frown rippling her brow.

Stone merely smiled grimly, and rose as the quartermaster sent up by Mickelson came into view. He was a lean, brown, salty Malay, and faced Stone with a steady eye.

“I am here, tuan.”

“Good. Are you armed?”

“A knife, tuan."

“Here’s a gun.” Stone passed him the weapon. “Allow no one to enter this house—no one! You understand?”

“Tuan, Tan Tock the steward is on his way here now.”

“If any one sets foot inside that door until I return, shoot.”

“Very well, tuan."

Stone glanced at Miss Bretton. She said nothing, but her eyes followed him as if in puzzled wondering. He passed out to the ladder, thinking within himself that she seemed more girl than woman—a frail girl in a strange world.

Tan Tock was at the foot of the ladder, and stood aside as Stone went sliding down. He was a small man, this steward, bred between Chinese and Malay; because he had given Agnes Bretton the Sultan’s cabin on the previous night. Stone liked him.

“You were seeking me, Tan Tock?”

“No, tuan. The lady, the white lady, is gone!”

“She is up in the bridge-house. Go and get your things together and meet me here, for we must take to the boats. The ship’s sinking.”

The steward’s interest in the passenger did not seem odd to Stone at the moment.

As he made his way aft the American saw that Mickelson was not doing badly. The boats were being slung out and provisioned. A given number of pilgrims were being brought on deck, not without bloodshed, as the battened-down hatches were charged by those who remained; long howls of anguished fear pealed through the whole ship.

It was plain now to all on board that the Penang was doomed. She was listed to port, and she was also down by the head. Fortunately for Stone’s plan, however, the fires would not be drowned yet a while, and she had a chance to reach the bar.

Getting aft, Stone found that Mickelson had not locked the skipper’s door. He entered, found Benbow still stretched out in his bunk, and went through the captain’s desk thoroughly. He emerged with the ship’s papers and two revolvers, and visited his own cabin, also that of Mickelson. When at last he clawed his way forward to the bridge again he had four revolvers, plenty of cartridges, and a small but comprehensive supply of medicines. He found Tan Tock waiting outside the bridge-house with a crammed duffel-bag.

“Good boy, Tan Tock! I’ll take your bag inside. You go down to my cabin, get my bag, and fill it with stores from the Sultan’s private locker. No liquor—tinned goods. Savvy? Get out a case of his mineral water, too.”

The steward nodded and made off. Stone turned into the bridge-house, and found Miss Bretton talking with the two quartermasters, trying vainly to understand their lingo.

“Now, Miss Bretton,” said Stone as he went to the wheel, “you may do your share. If we pull through alive it will be a miracle, so pray for the miracle. Catch on, boys!”

The two Malays tailed on beside Stone, swung the bucking, frantic wheel around, and with it the head of the ship. Shrieking in every rivet, the old Penang began to quarter the seas and slowly drove toward the bar; she rolled less, for she was low in the water and impassive as a dead thing to the blows of the seas that battered her plates.

As Stone pointed out to Miss Bretton, once he had the ship on her new course, the only hope was the one he had chosen. Ahead was the opening into the lagoon which held the island-city—a wide lagoon, but well sheltered from the storm—and it was choked by the bar silted down by the Godung River, whose mouth lay miles away across the lagoon. To right and left were keys of low ground, no more than mangrove marshes, which would afford no landing places were he to beach the ship elsewhere.

“The island affords the one place of refuge,” he concluded. “Especially as our boats will only take on half our crowd. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard of it.”

There seemed little of promise in that dark, low, storm-lashed mangrove coast. But Stone held the Penang steadily in, and when the lagoon entrance loomed close, Mickelson appeared with word that all was ready.

“All right—take charge!” cried Stone, driving his voice to the second officer. “Tell your engineer to shut ’em off when we strike. Break out the skipper and take him ashore with you.” Mickelson nodded and departed. Stone turned to his two quartermasters.

“I’ll handle her now, boys. You go down and watch the hatches when we strike. When Tuan Mickelson gets all the boats away, open up the hatches, but keep the crowd aft. Go!”

Stone rang for half-speed. The Penang lumbered on, threatening to founder at each burst of water over her bows; from the decks below came a storm of voices as Mickelson and the Malay crew got the boats and loads in readiness. There was a moment of tense silence—then a sodden shock that flung Miss Bretton headlong forward. Stone caught her and for an instant held her tightly, clinging with one hand to the helm.

“All right,” he said quietly, releasing her. “We’re on the bar. If we’re not pounded to pieces before the boats get back we’re safe enough. Better see about getting your things together—wait, I’ll go with you.”