The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 3

  “It was a lee shore at that, the wind still blowing northeast, and blowing hard. The barometer was jumpy and it looked as if it might boil up and over again into another hurricane any minute. Ordinary times we’d have kept clear of that place, but we had to have water, we needed fresh meat, and we wanted to get a chance to strengthen our rudder a bit. As we got closer we caught glimpses of patches of green. By the looks of the island we hoped to find pigs, doves, fish, and fruit: coconuts, papus, guavas, wild oranges, and bananas. If there were natives they’d do the provisioning, and if not we’d forage for ourselves.

  “You must understand, miss, that we’d all, from the skipper down, had a tough time of it; cold victuals for days at a time, no chance to light the galley fire, soaked through, up day and night with just snatches of sleep. Sick and well, we were nigh tuckered out. Thought of getting ashore for the fruit and meat, most of all for some fresh water, got us close to crazy to make it. We discounted the risks. But we might not have, at that, if the sun hadn’t suddenly rent through the sky like it was rotten cloth. For a minute it hung over the jagged peak and turned the green of the trees to emerald before it faded. That settled it. The first mate and myself—I was second—took four men apiece with water barrels, while the old man, with his head tied up, handled the schooner, off and on, outside the barrier reef. We didn’t dare try to get into the lagoon unless it moderated, though we wanted to ’count of fixing the rudder. But we made sure of the water, anyhow.

  “We were careful in landing for we didn’t have any guns but a pistol apiece for the first and myself and the skipper’s shotgun that I took along to try to get some fresh meat. My boat hung back a bit like a covering boat. It’s the usual way in the islands, and we figured the natives would argue we were well armed. I show my shotgun barrel plainly enough. There was one freshwater creek opposite the gap in the outer reef, its flow having made the gate in the coral. It looked like another one flowed into the lagoon at the far end of the curving bay. Anyway there were cocoa palms there and we planned for the first mate to tackle the first creek and me the one by the palms. If there was no fresh water we’d get nuts.

  “It was a narrow reef, as barrier reefs go, little more than a hundred yards wide but with a mean, jaggy entrance and the waves spouting over the slabs of coral that looked like stone sponge layers. We didn’t see a sign of natives. We worked fast in case of a hurry signal from the ship for, while the sun was blinking in and out, the sea was running high and every now and then the wind would blow in gusts that came like the explosions of big guns.

  “There was no creek after all, where my boat went, so we went after the nuts. A native could have climbed the trees and thrown them down but none of us were monkeys enough for that—and we were all battered and bruised up anyhow—so we cut down the palms. I hate to cut down palms like that, they are so mighty useful, but we had no time to lose.

  “I heard doves cooing and I thought I heard the grunting of a pig, so I worked into the stiff jungle that came bristling down to the beach, best way I could. Looking for pigs in there, unless you found a runway and had luck, was next to impossible. Most places the bush was woven together like high hurdles with the creepers and vines twisted about the trees. But I came across a lot of deadfall—trees uprooted in some big blow that hadn’t happened so very long ago, to judge by the looks of them and the new growth. I had got half a dozen ringdoves, a jumper-full of vi-apples, oranges, bananas, and mangoes when the sun worked through again and suddenly I saw something shine in the trees. First I thought it was some sort of idol—I was new to these South Seas and didn’t know but what they had ’em of metal—and I went mighty careful, watching for savages. I was there after food, not to furnish it.

  “Presently I saw what it was—the figurehead of a ship lying there prow on to the mountain, the decks aslant a bit but all cradled up in vines, half a mile inland from the lagoon and, so far as I had time to determine, undamaged. It was just as if it had been picked up from the sea like Gulliver did with the fleet at Lilliput; picked up by a kid giant for a toy and dropped in the forest like a toy yacht might fall on the grass.”

  Jim paused, sipping his tea, nearly cold now, declaring he liked it, making it an excuse to gather his thoughts. He wanted to eliminate certain details, to color others optimistically, but was not sure if that would be the right thing.

  The girl and her cousin, the bony spinster, hung on his words with growing excitement, their eyes urging him on to the finish. Moreover, it was fairly evident that not only was his tale magic to them by reason of their personal interest, but that he had made it vivid to their imaginations. Under the glow of the lamp the girl leaned forward as eagerly as Desdemona must have done, her eyes luminous, her lips, soft and red as rose petals, slightly apart, her breath short. The glamour of the thing was upon the older woman. Finishing his cup of tea, Jim Lyman decided to submit the more gruesome details to her privately, and took up the thread of his yarn.

  “It was a good ship. If the sea could have been brought to her I believe she would have floated. Strained a bit, of course, but sound. The masts were gone by the board. One lay over the port rail like a companion ladder. The others might have been alongside hidden in the heavy growth. I’ve got an idea they snapped off like carrots when she landed.

  “You see, I figure she must have been flung ashore in some combination of great wind and tidal wave. Great rollers sometimes come up out of the ocean and sweep the islands. The skipper said afterward that they had them at Tahiti every so often. That would account for the ship riding unbroken over barrier and fringing reef, to be left high and dry inland. I have heard of such ships before.

  “I went up by the mast. The deck was a mess, and the glass of the skylights broken. The slide of the main companionway was jammed, so I swung down through the skylight. Vines had worked their way in and the rains had mouldered things, but there was no sign of looting, no disorder outside of that natural to the jolt of such a landing. Now that, Miss, was proof positive to me there were no natives on the island. They would have dismantled the ship, gutted it, and probably burned it. I’d seen some lettering on the bows, raised letters with some of ’em dropped off, and I’d seen the full name on the stern. They tied up with the figurehead and name of that model in the window; they were the same as that sign you’ve got hanging up outside:

  THE GOLDEN DOLPHIN

  BOSTON

  That was the name of her.

  “The cabin was much the same as other cabins—a mast running through, transom cushions between the doors leading off to the staterooms, fixed table and chairs in the middle, swinging lamp with the chimney busted, but oil in the container. She was well fitted up. It was getting dark outside and I could hear the wind rising, tossing about the treetops. I had to hurry. There was an empty birdcage, I remember, and books on shelves behind doors with the glass broken. The books were mouldy and had mostly come apart with the damp. I took along one of them that was small enough to get into my pocket. Gulliver’s Travels. That’s how I happened to read it.”

  “Oh!” The girl gave the exclamation with shining eyes. “Father thinks that Swift is the most wonderful of satirists. He always had Gulliver with him. I gave him that copy that was in the little library. And the canary. Poor Dick! Go on.”

  “Well, Miss, that’s about all, so far as the island goes. I told you it was getting dark. There was a recall from the ship, three shots from the saluting gun. My men were shouting for me and there was the schooner with a flag streaming from the main spreader. It was about mid-afternoon, but by the time we got aboard it was black as midnight. It was as if that big hurricane had been blowing in a circle and we had come from one edge of it through comparative calm only to go smack into it again. We clawed off that island by some miracle and away we went again, south and east. Our rudder went for the third and last time, we were blown along the top of the waste with no more control than a chip in a millrace.

  “There are leagues of open water down where we were, to
look at the chart, but there are deeps in the South Pacific, troughs, they call ’em, where the depth is five thousand fathoms—thirty thousand feet—and more, and right close to those troughs you’ll find great reefs built up. I suppose they are built to sea level by the coral insects working on top of big peaks. They make big patches of shallows where, if it is calm, you see the sea breaking for miles at low tide. We saw nothing. There was as much water in the air as the ocean, it seemed. The spume blew level and stung like hail from the force of the wind back of it. There was no sky, no horizon, only a white welter, and the ship leaking, staggering along till she went smashing and dragging over coral that ripped her almost to splinters. There was no bottom left to the old hooker.

  “And, then, just as if it had done what it set out to do, though you can’t imagine such a hullabaloo to sink one schooner, or a dozen, for that matter, the wind vanished, blew out, the snarling sea worried over us for a bit and went down, though where it was deep the waves ran high enough, as we soon found out. The sky had cleared by sunset. It was the most gorgeous sight I’ve ever seen. The stars were out and the moon up before midnight, shining down on our two boats running before a sweet southeaster.

  “We parted company that night. The skipper and the first mate were in the other boat. Far as I know they’ve never been heard of. Insurance has been collected on the Whitewing, I know that. We’d broken up on the Maria Theresa Reef, I imagine, or maybe the Legouve Reef. The last reckoning taken and set down was the one made by the skipper when the sun broke through at noon off the island; Dolphin Island, I’ve always called it, for want of a better name. There’s nothing down on the charts.

  “That’s as far as you’re interested, Miss, and farther. We had a pretty mean time. Ran out of grub and water, the usual open boat luck. Two poor devils died and another went mad with drinking salt water, but we were picked up at last and brought back to Panama. There was a chap who was half purser, half steward along with me, and I came up north with him looking for a job. There was nothing doing on the coast so I worked inland after I’d stayed with his folks till I was ashamed of myself.

  “That’s all.”

  He had dodged the skeleton successfully and the fallen jaw with the golden bridge. He could ask the spinster if Captain Whiting had bridge work in his teeth. It might establish his death and, if so, a relative could better break it to the girl. It seemed convincing that there were no survivors. For one thing—he had avoided mention of it—the ship’s boats were gone. They might have been carried away in the storm that had flung her on the island; they might have been launched during that storm; they might have been launched from the island after the final catastrophe. If the crew had not been swept overboard, if they had not escaped in boats, they would surely have stayed with the ship and used it as headquarters, if not for a permanent habitation. Supposing the ship had been there a year even—in the hurry of departure Lyman had not thought to look for ship’s papers—that meant that the boats had been lost, like the skipper of the Whitewing, long ago.

  The island was uninhabited. Natives or white survivors of the Golden Dolphin would always have been looking for a ship. They would have seen the Whitewing, come down to the beach or signaled. Yet proof that one, at least, of the Golden Dolphin’s crew had come ashore, lay in the skeleton of the man who had been murdered. Such dentistry would hardly be that of a common sailor. It was an enigma probably insoluble this side of the grave. But Jim Lyman had not begun to gauge the intricacies of the riddle.

  The girl turned questioner and her inquisition showed that her knowledge of sea-craft was not merely inherent, but acquired, and that she knew how to apply it.

  “You said that the captain of the Whitewing took an observation that would give the position of the island?”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “And set it down in the ship’s log?” Jim nodded. He saw what she was driving at.

  “I suppose he had the ship’s papers with him when you took to the boats?”

  “Yes. I saw the entry in the log and copied it. I have a master’s certificate and I have always kept a log of my own, as a matter of habit, whether acting as first or second. Just a pocket diary that trip. I told the skipper about the ship in the jungle and he noted it. He didn’t seem to attach much importance to it. We had troubles of our own. And all of us in my boat were in pretty bad shape when we were picked up. The Portugee that rescued us wasn’t over well found, though we were grateful enough to them. But they didn’t have much of a medicine chest and Spigotty grub needs lifelong training. We had boat sores and scurvy on top of being famished, and we just about crawled ashore at Panama. I didn’t know then but what our skipper might have been picked up or made a landing. It was his duty to report such a find and he would have turned in his log. But there’s no question but what he’s perished at sea, I’m afraid. I was in hospital on the Isthmus for awhile with Stallings, the steward—the rest, too, for that matter. I got a quick chance with Stallings to work north on a fruit freighter when I got out, and—though it may seem strange to you, being personally interested—I forgot about the Golden Dolphin until I saw your sign. It all came back in a flash when I saw the model in the window.”

  “Naturally. But you’ve got the position?”

  “Yes. The diary is with my things in my room here.”

  “Ah!” The girl stood up with shining eyes. “Mr. Lyman, I am going to make you an offer for those figures.”

  “Why, they’re yours Miss, of course, without the asking.” She checked him.

  “Wait. I am positive my father is alive. We were closer than most fathers and daughters. I have sailed with him and been his constant companion up to the trip of the Golden Dolphin. There were special reasons why he would not take me on that voyage. But if he had died I should have known it. I am sure of it—here.”

  She put her hand over her heart, speaking with a ring to her voice that carried the assurance of an ancient sybil. Jim supposed many people had felt that way about their loved ones, desire fanning the flame of hope. Again he felt the force of her conviction against his own force of logic.

  “And now you have come here, a special messenger, coming as you thought by chance or coincidence. I do not believe in such things. It was not by chance you forced your way through that jungle; God brought you to me. I am a sailor’s daughter. I am going to that island and I know that there I shall find the clew that will help me find my father, alive.”

  Jim sat dumbfounded. He looked appeal at the spinster cousin and managed to convey a meaning in his glance that he had something to tell her in private. That the girl did not realize the magnitude, the expense, the forlorn chances of the quest she so proudly announced, he was certain.

  “I shall find my father,” she said again. “You are a sailor; you have been a mate; you have a master’s certificate and you have been looking in vain for a berth. I offer it to you in exchange for the position of the island. More than that, I offer you a share in a fortune that is hidden safely aboard the Golden Dolphin.” She paused for a moment with her forehead wrinkled. “I am not alone in the matter,” she went on, “but I have a third interest in the affair, my father another third. I offer you a sixteenth of all that we recover, in addition, of course, to your pay as master. Your share should be in the neighborhood of sixty thousand dollars.”

  Jim wondered if the girl was insane; if grief for her father had unsettled her mind. But the eminently practical face of Miss Warner showed no such apprehension.

  “It would cost a lot of money,” he said. “And the chances of finding your father are—”

  “I shall find him. I can find the money for outfitting. I have had good offers for this business. This old furniture is valuable. I have collected it personally and sold much at a good profit already.”

  “But I do not want pay for giving you your clue. I should despise myself if I did. Common humanity—”

  “It is common justice that you should share if you bring the means of restoration. The money
means nothing to me compared to the finding of dad. You are the only person in the world who could have furnished me with this clue. You have been brought halfway across the world to me. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you. You found the ship; I ask you to go back to it with me. I cannot take your information unless you agree to my terms. You would not rob me of my chance to find my father?”

  This was placing him in the small end of the horn with a vengeance, Jim reflected. Common justice, she called it. He supposed it was the working of the New England conscience. But it was a fool’s errand.

  “You’ll have to tell me more about it,” he temporized.

  “I will. But that should come with a full consultation. The Golden Dolphin was outfitted for a special purpose. There are others, two others, who have a third share between them. My uncle—the husband of my aunt, and his son. I can get in touch with them by telephone. We will hold a meeting tonight. I think it can be arranged. I’ll see.”

  She went toward the front of the shop where the telephone stood upon a wall table. If she was insane, there was method in her madness, Jim told himself. He could imagine her capable in business. But this wild undertaking? He seized his opportunity and leaned toward the spinster, whispering:

  “Did Captain Whiting have a gold bridge in his lower jaw?”

  Lynda Warner’s own jaw sagged momentarily, but she rallied to the occasion. Here was a keen-witted woman. Jim realized. And she did not answer one question with another.

  “No. Every tooth in his head sound,” she answered in the same tone. “Why?”

  Katherine Whiting had got her connection and was talking over the wire.

  “Found a skeleton beside the ship,” said Jim. “Skull had gold teeth. I was afraid it was her father. Afraid to tell her.”