The Ghost Ship/Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Fifteen. We start in Chase of the Ship.

The effect of this appeal was electrical, not only on the skipper, but on all of us standing by.

“Great heavens, man!” cried the captain, staring at the other in wild astonishment. “What do you mean? I cannot understand you, sir. Your ship, you say—”

“My words are plain enough, captain,” said the stranger, interrupting the skipper. “Our ship, the Saint Pierre, is in the possession of a gang of Haytian negroes who rose on us while we were on the high seas and murdered most of the officers and the crew. They then threw poor Captain Alphonse, who commanded her, overboard, after they had half killed him, and the rest of the unfortunate sailors and passengers, amongst them my little daughter, are now at the mercy of the black devils!”

“My God!” exclaimed the skipper, confounded by this lucid statement. “And you, sir?”

“I am an American!” said the other with a proud air, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet and more and with his eyes flashing, while a red flush mounted to his cheeks, which had formerly been deadly pale. “I’m a white man, captain, and it’s not likely I would stand by and see people of my own colour butchered! Of course, sir, I went to the poor captain’s assistance, but then the murderers served me almost as badly as they did him, chucking me overboard after him.”

“I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure, for appearing to doubt your story,” cried the skipper, stretching forward his hand, which the other eagerly grasped. “The fact is, sir, I thought at first your sufferings had set your head wrong; but now I need hardly say I believe thoroughly every word you’ve told us, and you may rely on my aid and that of every man aboard here to help you and yours. There’s my hand on it, sir, and my word you’ll find as good as my bond, so sure as my name is Jack Applegarth!”

“And mine, captain, is Vereker, Colonel Vereker, at your service,” returned the other, reciprocating the skipper’s cordiality as he looked him straight in the face, holding his hand the while in a firm grip. He let go the skipper’s fist, however, the next moment and a puzzled expression came into his eyes as he glanced round occasionally, apparently in search of some one or other. “Heavens! Where’s my unfortunate comrade who was in the boat with me—poor Captain Alphonse? Alas, I had forgotten him!”

“We have not forgotten him, though, colonel,” said the skipper smiling. “He has been carried below to the saloon on the maindeck, where my second mate, Mr O’Neil, who is a qualified surgeon, is now attending to his injuries. He has been terribly mauled, poor fellow; we could see that!”

“Aye, terribly!” repeated the other with a shudder, as if the recollection of all he and his fellow-sufferers had gone through suddenly came back to him at the moment. “But, great Heavens! captain, we’re losing time and that accursed ship with those scoundrels and our remaining comrades, and with my darling child on board, is speeding away while we’re talking here. You will, will you not, Señor Applegarth, go in pursuit of her, my friend?”

“By George I will, colonel; I will at once—immediately—if you’ll tell me her bearings,” cried the skipper excitedly. “When was it this terrible affair happened? When did you leave the ship, and where?”

“The revolt of the blacks, or mutiny, I should call it, captain, broke out four days ago, on last Friday, indeed, sir,” said the American promptly in his deep musical voice, and whose foreign accent obliterated all trace of the unmelodious Yankee twang. “But we kept the rascals at bay until last night, soon after sundown, when they made an ugly rush and overpowered us. Captain Alphonse had just sighted your vessel in the distance and was burning a blue light over the stern to attract your attention, so as to get assistance at the time this happened.”

“Was yours a large, full-rigged ship?”

“Yes, sir, the Saint Pierre is of good size and had all her sails set,” replied the other to the skipper’s question. “We were running before the wind with our helm lashed amidship, as it had been since the previous Friday, for we were all too busy defending our lives to think of attending to the ship.”

“Steering about nor’-east, I suppose?”

“Confound it, captain!” said the colonel impatiently. “We were drifting, I tell you, sir, at the mercy of the elements, and heaven only knows how we were going! Fortunately, the weather was pretty fair, save the very day the mutiny broke out, when it blew heavily and our canvas got split to pieces as there was no one to go aloft and take it in. Otherwise we must have gone to the bottom!”

“By George!” exclaimed the skipper, turning round to old Masters and myself, who were still standing by with the hands who had come aft to haul up the boat. “Then my bo’sun here, and this young officer were right when they declared they saw a large full-rigged ship to the westward of us, though I only noticed the light of your flare-up. You were too far off for me to make you out.”

“Ojala!” ejaculated the American, reverting again to the familiar Spanish tongue in his emotion. “Would to God, captain, you had seen us!”

“It would have been useless if I had, my friend,” said the skipper soothingly. “We couldn’t move to come to your assistance if every soul on board had seen you and known your peril, sir; for our engines were broken-down and we were not able to get up steam again until late this afternoon, when we ran down to pick you up!”

“But, sir,” hastily whispered the colonel, suppressing a sob of emotion, “you can and will steam now?”

“Why ask?” replied the skipper. “The moment we know where to go in search of your ship, that very moment we’ll start and try to overhaul her. You say you quitted her last night?”

“Quitted her? We were thrown overboard, sir, by the black devils!”

Captain Applegarth in reply said calmly, “Yes, yes, of course,” accepting the correction and trying by his manner to soothe the infuriated man. “But what time was that?”

“I can’t say the exact hour,” replied the American, whose vexed tone showed that the captain’s methodical mode of setting to work did not quite harmonise with the excited state of his feelings. “I think, however, it must have been nearly seven o’clock, as well, sir, as I can remember.”

Then I chimed in. “Ah!” I exclaimed quickly, “that was just the very time that Masters and I heard the shooting in the distance to win’ard, and it was six bells in the second dog watch!”

“So it were, Master Haldane; so it were,” agreed the old boatswain, looking from me to the skipper and then at Colonel Vereker. “Well, I’m blowed! and I’m glad, then, for that there ghost-ship wor a rael ship arter all said and done. Now who was right, I’d like to know?”

“Of course it was a real ship, you old dotard!” said the skipper gruffly and looking angrily at him. “Of course it was,” he added, while our new acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into another direction by asking him a second question. “How long did you keep in sight of your vessel after leaving her, colonel, do you think?”

“She was in full view of us at sunrise this morning,” replied the American. “The boat in which we were adrift kept near her all night as there was very little wind, if any. A slight breeze sprang up shortly after the sun rose and she then steadily increased her distance from us as the day wore on, finally disappearing from my gaze about noon, and taking with her my little darling, my pet, my Elsie.”

The poor fellow broke down again at this point throwing up his hands passionately and burying his face in them, his whole frame convulsed with sobs, though not a man present thought his emotion a thing to be ashamed of, all of us being deeply interested in his narrative and as anxious as himself for the skipper to start off in pursuit of the black mutineers and pirates.

We were not long kept in suspense, the colonel’s last words and violent burst of emotion apparently touching our “old man’s” feelings deeply, and hastening his decision.

“Cheer up, sir, cheer up,” said he to the other, whose shoulders still shook with his deep hysterical sobs. “And we’ll find your little girl yet for you all right, and restore her to you, and we’ll settle matters too, with those scoundrels, I promise. Now tell me how far off do you think the ship must have drifted from us by now, Mr Fosset.”

“Between twenty and thirty miles, sir,” replied the first mate. “She was lighter than us, and of course she had the advantage of what wind there has been, though, thank goodness, that has been little enough!”

“Away to the nor’-east, I suppose?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr Fosset. “The breeze, what there was, has been from the sou’-east and the current trends in the same direction.”

“Then if we steer east-nor’-east we ought to pick her up soon?”

“Not a doubt of it, sir. We have four good hours of daylight left yet!”

“Precisely my opinion,” cried the skipper. “Mr Stokes, will the engines stand full speed now, do you think?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” replied the old chief, who with the rest of us was all agog to be after the strange ship again, now that he had heard the colonel’s explanation of her true character, “if you’ll send some one below to tell Stoddart what you want. I would go myself, but I’m rather shaky in getting down the hatchway as yet. I twisted my arm just now when I went down.”

“That’s all right. Stoddart, I am sure, will excuse you,” said the skipper kindly, and turning to me he added: “You, Haldane, run down and tell Stoddart we want all the steam we can get. He won’t spare the engines, I know, when he knows the circumstances of the case, and you will explain matters!”

So saying, the skipper started off forwards in the direction of the bridge, while I dived down the engine-room hatchway, reaching the machinery-flat just as the “old man” sounded the gong to put on full speed ahead, the telegraph working quick as if he were in a great hurry!

Ere I could tell my story Stoddart sent an answering blast up the steam pipe to let the skipper know his signal was being attended to; and then, pulling back the lever of the throttle valve, the piston began to go up and down, the cylinder oscillated from side to side and the crank shaft revolved at first slowly, but presently faster and faster until we were now going to the utmost of our pace.

All this while I was yarning away, though I had to shout to the top of my voice in order to overcome the noise of the machinery, as I described all that had occurred.

I did not speak to unheeding ears.

“By Jove, Haldane!” cried Stoddart, who was a man of action if ever there was one. “The cylinder is all right again and will bear any pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life since she was launched and engined!”

“I am with you there, old fellow,” said Grummet, our third engineer, hastening towards the stoke-hold. “I’ll go down and see the firemen and stir them up and put some more oilers to work in the screw well, to lubricate the shaft so as to prevent the bearings from overheating.”

“That’s your sort, my hearty,” said Stoddart. “So you can return on deck, Haldane, and tell the skipper and Mr Stokes that everything shall be done down here by us to overhaul your ‘ghost-ship.’”

He laughed as he uttered this little piece of chaff at my expense, the story being now the common property of everybody on board, and I laughed, too, as I ran up the hatchway with my clothes nearly dry again, even drying in the short space of time I had been in the hot atmosphere below, although, goodness knows, they had been wet enough when I had gone down, having had no time or opportunity to shift them after my dip overboard when taking the line to the drifting boat.

On reaching the main deck I met Spokeshave.

He was coming out from the saloon, and from his puffy face and corpulent appearance generally, he looked as if he had been making a haul on the steward’s pantry, although he had not long had his dinner and it was a good way off tea time.

“Hullo!” he cried out on seeing me. “I say, that chap O’Neil is having a fine go of it playing at doctoring. He has got a lot of ugly long knives and saws laid out on the cuddy table and I think he’s going to cut off the chap’s leg!”

“Which chap do you mean?” I asked; “not the colonel?”

“Aye,” said he. “The chap with the moustache and long hair, like Hamlet, you know!”

“My good chap,” said I, “you seem to know a good deal about other chaps, or think you do, but I never heard before of Hamlet having a moustache like a life-guardsman! Irving doesn’t wear one when he takes the part, if I recollect right, my joker. You think yourself mighty knowing!”

“Quite so,” replied Master Spokeshave, using his favourite phrase as usual. “But you don’t call Irving Shakespeare, Haldane, do ye?”

“I don’t know anything of the matter, old boy. I am not so well informed as you are concerning the dramatic world, Spokeshave. I know you’re a regular authority or ‘toffer,’ if you like, on the subject. Don’t you think, however, you’re a bit hard on poor Irving, who, I’ve no doubt, would take a word of advice from you if you spoke kindly to him and without that cruel sarcasm which you’re apt to use?”

The little beggar actually sniggered over this, being of the opinion that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as a “super,” I believe, and in a part where he had nothing to say!

“Quite so, Haldane; quite so,” chuckled Spokeshave, as pleased as Punch at the imaginary compliment. “I do believe I could teach Irving a thing or two if I had the mind to!”

“Yes, you donkey, if you had the mind to,” said I witheringly, by giving an emphasis he did not mean to his own words. “‘Very like a whale,’ as our old friend Polonius says in the play, the real Hamlet, I mean, my boy, not your version of it. ‘Very like a whale,’ indeed!”

“I’m sure, Mr Haldane,” he answered loftily, cocking his long nose in the air with a supercilious sniff, “I don’t know what ye mean.”

“And I’ve no time to waste telling you now,” returned I.

At that moment we emerged on the open deck from under the back of the poop, where we had been losing our time and talking nonsense; and, looking towards the bridge forward, I saw Colonel Vereker, the very person about whom we had been speaking, standing by the side of the skipper.

“O, Lor’, Spokeshave, what a crammer!” I cried. “You said not a moment ago that Garry O’Neil was about to cut off the colonel’s leg, while there he is standing there, all right!”

“I didn’t say he had cut it off yet,” he retorted; “I said he was going to cut it off. O’Neil told me so himself.”

“Then,” said I, “instead of cutting off the poor colonel’s leg, he was only ‘pulling your leg,’ my joker!”

The cross-grained little beggar, however, did not seem to quite understand the term I employed thus in joke, though it was used at sea to express the fact of “taking a rise” out of any one, and a common enough saying.

“I’m not the only fellow who tells crammers,” he grimly muttered. “How about that yarn of yours of the blessed ‘ghost-ship’ you saw the other night, I’d like to know. I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your Flying Dutchman! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why, this chap, I’ll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any one we’ll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded ‘ghost-ship’ together! Such utter humbug and nonsense, and thinking you take people in with such yarns in these days!”