Somewhere in the Caribbean/Chapter 5

When it came to making preparations for the night the wind had gone down some what and there was a curiously oppressive heat abroad. At first I was afraid that with the decrease of our chief motive power the Waikiki might walk away from us and be lost in the darkness but after a couple of hours had passed with her lights neither nearer nor farther away I knew she must still be proceeding at half speed, in which case there was a chance that with good luck we might possibly be able to keep her in sight during the night.

If at that time Israel Brill was setting me down as a lunatic ripe for lacing in a strait-jacket I couldn't have blamed him much. The bare idea of chasing a fast steam yacht to an unknown destination with no better pursuer than a coasting schooner with a loose-jointed gasoline motor for an auxiliary was doubtless a lunacy of the first water; it was like trying to chase an express train with a hand car. But I was in no frame of mind to listen to the calm logic of reason. There was room in my brain for only one obsessing and inextinguishable desire—to get aboard of the Waikiki and explain to Alison Carter just why it was that I had failed to keep the Miami appointment with her.

With the wind moderated and the reefs shaken out of our sails I directed José to take the wheel, told him to tell Pedro to turn in and gave Brill leave to go below. Curiously enough, as I thought, he was a bit dubious about taking the leave.

“I ain't trustin' this weather much,” he said, sniffing to windward as if he could smell a change coming. “You know anything about handlin' a windjammer?”

“Not enough to hurt,” I admitted.

“Well, if it comes on to blow, you yell for me. This old hooker ain't so hellish much to look at but I don't want to lose her in a gale o' wind.”

“To say nothing of the small fortune in contraband you've got under hatches in the hold,” I put in.

“You said it,” he returned. “I reckon that stuff's worth a heap more than what the schooner is, if you'd put it into money.” Then: “What you aimin' to do with us when we lay that yacht aboard—if ever we do?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “I'm no Revenue officer. I'm merely making you undo what you did to me in Biscayne Bay the other night. When you've done it you may go your ways.”

“Huh! That don't sound so damn' crazy, neither.” Then the craven nature of the man had to come to the front: “It ain't my fault that you was crimped t'other night. I was dead set agin' it—told Jim Dorgan it was a low-down trick to play on anybody.”

“Wait and say that to Dorgan's face when he gets up and can use his one good arm,” I jeered; and with that I drove him below.

My watch on deck, which was kept until midnight, was entirely uneventful. Notwithstanding Brill's tentative prophecy about the weather the wind held steady out of the northeast and the schooner rode easily. The motor thumped away with little attention from me and our rate of sailing was about the average we had maintained during the day. Out ahead the shimmering glow of the Waikiki's lights held the same relative position, as nearly as I could judge; and she, and we, were steering the same course as at sundown—a little to the south of west. By this time I knew we must be considerably west of the Havana meridian and I was led to wonder still more pointedly why the plans of the yacht party had been changed and what the change portended.

Though José's English was strictly limited I managed to hold a bit of talk with him now and then through the lonely hours and to learn a little of his history. Neither he nor Pedro, who was his cousin, were in any sort desperadoes. They had been fishermen in the Minorca Islands and had emigrated together to Cuba. Finding life harder there than it had been in the old country they had drifted to the United States where they had served as sailors on board a number of coasting vessels. They knew nothing about the liquor smuggling or its ethics. They had been offered a job on the Vesta and had taken it, asking no questions.

On my part I told the friendly little foreigner as much as I could make him understand of my own predicament, namely that I had a friend and an enemy on board of the vessel ahead of us and that I was anxious to help the friend and to do whatever was needful to the enemy. To help wear out the long watch I got him to show me a bit about steering a fore-and-aft-rigged sailing ship; and after I had the hang of it I took the wheel for a while and relieved him.

When the time came to call Brill and Pedro to take the deck I had José rout out his no-English-speaking cousin first and give him, as my interpreter, his instructions. He was to obey Brill's orders but only in matters strictly pertaining to the handling of the schooner. Apart from that he was to carry one of the pistols and keep a sharp eye upon his erstwhile skipper. If Brill should make any move toward trying to recapture his ship or to change the course I was to be summoned at once. These instructions went through all right if a series of “si's” and nods could be taken as evidence that they were understood, but Pedro balked at the pistol. When I offered him the weapon he shook his head and pulled out his sailor's knife.

“He say he not can hit nossing weth peestol,” José explained. “He say he cut heem weth knife.”

I thought I was quite safe to turn in and leave the schooner in Brill's hands, and Brill in Pedro's hands. Mutiny seemed to have no terrors for the Minorcans; but as to that I doubted if either Brill or Dorgan would ever go within gunshot of a court of law to prefer charges against my allies. The bootleggers were too deep in the mud themselves to try to pull anybody else into the mire.

Brill turned out grumbling and swearing when I shook him awake and by the light of the smoky,, swinging cabin lamp went to rub his eyes and stare at the barometer. “Ump!” he growled; “jus' as I thought—glass a-droppin' like a deep-sea lead. Told you afore I turned in that I smelled hell a-comin'.”

“Weather?” I queried; adding: “It's bright starlight.”

“That's aw right; but the glass don't lie,” he retorted and with that he stumbled sleepily up the steps to take his watch on deck.

Left to myself I took the swinging lamp out of its sling and went to have a look at Dorgan. He was stirring a little and moaning in his sleep and when the light of the lamp fell upon his face he opened his eyes and licked his lips like a drunken man awakening from a debauch. “Water!” he gurgled and I put the lamp down and drew him a cupful from the cabin keg.

He gulped the drink to the final drop and let the cup fall on the floor. Gropingly he put his free hand to his head and felt the bandages.

“What hit me?” he asked thickly.

“I did,” I said.

Next he felt the clumsy bundle that represented the broken arm and raised his head to try to look at it.

“Busted?” he queried.

“Both bones,” I told him.

“The hell you say! Whadju do it with?”

“A belaying pin. The next time you go to sea you'd better be sure your belaying pins are made of wood instead of iron pipe.”

He licked his lips again and closed his eyes. When he opened them there was a flicker of something like sardonic humor in them.

“Say; it was a helluva scrap, wasn't it? I didn't allow there was a man this side o' Dempsey that could stand up to me as long as you did. Whadju do to Isra'l Brill?”

I told him briefly and he said: “That was dead easy. Isra'l's got a streak o' yellow in him a mile wide. What you doin' with the schooner?”

“Chasing that steam yacht. When I can get aboard of her, you and Brill may take your hooker and go where you please.”

“Jesso. What about the crew?”

“They are with me for the present. You and Brill have bullied them over the edge and I don't think they'll sail with either of you again.”

Silence for a bit and then he said: “Of course you know what yacht that is and who's in her?”

“Yes. I imagine I know a good bit more about her and her company than you do.”

“Well, it's a helluva note all round,” he remarked, closing his eyes again; whereat I put the lamp back in its place and telling him to go to sleep if he could rolled into the bunk lately vacated by Brill and was dead to the world about as soon as I hit the blanket roll that served as a pillow.

I hadn't been asleep for more than a few minutes—or so it seemed, though it turned out to have been a couple of hours—before I was rudely awakened by being flung bodily out of the bunk. At first I thought Brill had taken some sort of a hitch in his courage and had attacked me but I soon found that it was the sea and the wind that were doing the attacking. The little ship seemed to be on her beam ends and the noise on deck, canvas slatting and thundering, cordage shrieking and seas crashing, was like pandemonium let loose. Above the clamor I could hear Brill bawling to me to turn out; and dazed and half drowned in a deluge of water that came pouring down the companion steps I clawed my way to the deck and closed the slide.

Pandemonium was the name for it. A squall, or in my ignorance of nautical matters I thought it was a squall, had struck us and everything was in the wildest confusion. Brill was at the wheel trying to head the schooner up into the wind and the two Minorcans were doing their best to haul in on the mainsheet to help her around. Instinctively I tailed on to the sheet with them and after a battle that threatened to take the canvas sheerly out of the bolt ropes we won. Agile as a monkey, José leaped to the halyards the moment we had the great boom inboard and let the sail come down on the run.

“Make fast—anyway to hold it!” Brill yelped; and after we had flung ourselves upon the sail which was still threatening to carry itself and us away and had blindly muzzled it with the slack of the halyards: “Now the fores'l! Jump for it if you want to go on livin'!”

Since it had little more than half the spread of the big mainsail we got the foresail down and smothered in short order, though with her head to the rising seas the Vesta was taking water in tons over the forward bulwarks and the three of us were all but swept away half a dozen times before we could get the boom guyed amidships and the thrashing canvas subdued. How we were able to do all this in the paralyzing confusion, with the seas tumbling aboard and no light save that which was born of a sort of phosphorescent glow that came from the sea itself I can never tell. But it was done in some fashion.

Through it all I had to give Brill the credit of playing the man and the able skipper, however much he lacked of attaining the stature of a man in other respects. In the breath-catching intervals I could see him braced at the wheel, holding the schooner from falling off by sheer main strength, his stocky, shapeless body bent like a strained bow. And above the unearthly din of the elements his bellowed directions came to our ears in a steady stream of orders, each in its proper sequence and none of them, as I remembered afterward, garnished with his usual outpouring of profanity.

With the bulk of her canvas off, the schooner was meeting the mounting billows with only her head sails—staysail and jib—still spread. But these were more than she could carry if Brill should let her fall off to run before the hurricane. And to run before it was our only hope; though she was doing nobly the little ship could not rise to the curling crests which came crashing down upon her foredeck like a succession of waterspouts.

“Get them head sails off her, quick!” Brill yelled. “I can't hold her much longer!” and together we three began to struggle forward, fighting desperately for every foot of the way with the seas that were coming aboard.

Before we could reach the foremast the schooner began to fall off in spite of Brill's utmost exertions to hold her, and the slat ting, hammering headsails took the wind, bellying out with thunderings like the booming of guns. Being the lighter canvas the jib went first. I had a glimpse of it between gasps as it was flicked out of its bolt ropes as if by the sweep of a whirling, keen-edged sword to disappear as a white patch in the spume to leeward. As for the heavier staysail, we got it down and reefed to a mere triangular patch but only after strugglings that were fairly superhuman and drownings so heavy and prolonged that more than once I thought the schooner was actually going down by the head and would never recover.

The instant we had finished this man-killing job Brill put the helm up, and spinning like a toe dancer under the lift of-the rag of staysail we had left spread the Vesta whirled and raced away before the blast, taking breath-cutting leaps over the mountainous seas, climbing their backs with a rush like some frantic wild thing trying to escape and sliding down into the yawning valleys at an angle that seemed to promise certain engulfing at the bottom.

When we got back to the after deck Brill was about all in. “Rig a life line and lash me to it!” he panted; and while I didn't know what he meant, José did, and in a trice we had a line stretched from rail to rail, with a sling around Brill's body to keep him from being torn from his place at the wheel. Motioning Pedro to take hold with him I asked him what about the motor, which was alternately racing like a windmill when the propeller kicked out of water and bringing up with a shock that threatened to tear the inwards out of the vessel when the spinning screw buried itself in a following sea.

“We need it!” he gulped. “That rag o' stays'l ain't enough to give her steerage way and if she broaches to we're gone! But the damn' thing's goin' to rip the inside out of her the way it's actin' now!”

I may confess frankly that it asked for a mustering up of all the nerve I had left before I could dive into the engine hold of that tossing chip on the sea mountains to do what the occasion called for; namely, to stand over the straining motor, easing it when the screw kicked out and giving it the gas again at the burying moment. There was no way of making it do this automatically; it was a plain case of handwork with the throttle—off when the propeller came to the surface; on when the next plunge gave it a grip, timing the movements with the leap and slide of the schooner over the giant seas.

I got the hang of it after a few experiments and fancied I could feel at once the easing of strain on the vessel. Though the racing speed did not slacken and the sickening climb and still more sickening descent into the trough kept on with the regularity of a pendulum swing the laboring motor no longer threatened to tear itself loose from its bed on the keelson, so we were that much better off.

Now that I was chained to a mechanical job asking little or nothing of the brain I began to speculate anxiously upon the probable fate of the Waikiki in the hurricane. In the short time I had spent aboard of her at Miami I had seen nothing of her sailing master or crew, other than the cabin stewards. If she were well-officered and manned she was most likely doing just what we were doing; running before the storm; making heavy weather of it without doubt, as we were, but in no special peril if she were well handled. Hiram Carter had spared neither pains nor money to make her entirely seaworthy and I knew that she had twice crossed the Atlantic in winter storms and had thus proved herself.

Yet, we were in the midst of a raging hell of waters—and Alison was aboard of the yacht. Steadily and for years I had been telling myself that I was not in love with my childhood playmate; that Hiram Carter's money had built an impassable barrier between us for all time. But I knew, now that the assurance was a lie; that she was more to me than any other woman could ever be; and the mere knowledge that she was in a vessel—no matter how stanch—exposed to all the dangers of a tropical hurricane, wrung me with the torments of a lost soul. Why hadn't Jeffreys put in at Havana as his original purpose was? What crazy notion had sent him steaming out upon an unknown sea when his ship's instruments must have told him, as ours had told Brill, that a storm was on its way?

There were no answers to these questions. The thing was done and my chance for interference, if I had ever had one, had vanished in the roaring of the blast. Morning might find the two ships, if both were afloat, a hundred miles apart, and the next time I should see Alison, if we both lived to meet again, she would be—but no; I couldn't, wouldn't think of her as Wickham Jeffreys' wife. That way lay madness incurable.

For hours that were longer than any unbroken night watch I had ever endured I stood over the throbbing motor, twitching the throttle lever first one way and then the other, keeping even time with the plunge of the schooner over the wave crest, the hissing descent into the trough and the racing climb up the next wave. Morning came at last. I saw the first faint graying of a delayed and storm-driven dawn marking the square outline of the hatchway overhead. There was an ankle-depth of sea water surging back and forth in the small engine hold, and I coupled in the power-driven bilge pump to free it, as I had had to do many times during the night.

Though the tempest was still shrieking like a chorus of fiends in the schooner's rigging, its extreme violence seemed to be spent. The billows continued to run mountain high but their crests no longer curled and broke to throw the propeller out of water and the endless twitchings of the throttle became unnecessary. Stiff and weary, I pulled myself up the ladder, clinging limpetlike to the hatchway coaming when I got my head above the deck level. Brill, or what I thought might be his dead body, was hanging in the rope sling by which we had anchored him to the life line and José had the wheel. I crept aft and drew myself up by the binnacle post to speak to the Minorcan.

“The skipper—is he dead?” I asked.

“No lo sé. I t'ink he will be—how you call eet?—knock' out.”

I freed Brill from the lashings and he stirred feebly, as one utterly exhausted. Even with the help he had had the job at the wheel had been a frightful one. Leaving him lying spread-eagled upon the deck I made my way to the galley forward. A fire was out of the question, of course, but in rummaging the day before I had found a few candles of solidified alcohol. With one of these I contrived to heat a kettle of water and to make a pot of strong coffee. After I had poured a little of the hot drink down Brill's throat he was able to sit up and help himself to the rest.

Shortly afterward the two of us, strange bedfellows of peril, managed to open some of the food tins and prepare breakfast of a sort, and it was Brill himself who carried a portion to José, taking the helm while the Minorcan ate. In the cabin I fed Dorgan what little he would eat. So far as I could determine he was none the worse for the half night of terror. He wanted to know if we'd lost the number of our mess in the storm and I told him we hadn't; that we were all still alive and kicking, thanks to Brill's seamanship.

“Yah,” he grunted. “You'll have to hand it to Isra'l when it comes to worryin' a windjammer through a blow. That's one place where his 'yellow' don't show none. You've lost the yacht in the raffle, I reckon?”

“I suppose so,” I admitted but I added that the weather was still too thick to let us see very far.

“You'll never see her ag'in,” he thrust in with a grin that the pain of his wounds turned into a ghastly grimace. “I know them white-collar yacht skippers. They ain't one, two, three when the real thing hits 'em. I'll bet my share o' the rake-off on the cargo we got in the hold that Mister Man's play-sized liner went down with all on board when that twister hit 'em last night.”

And because Dorgan's gruesome prediction was the echo of a great fear that was hourly growing upon me, I climbed to the deck with a heavy heart.