The Red Derelict

Chapter Twenty Five.
The Red Derelict

“What would happen if we went ashore here? Why, we’d very likely be eaten.”

“Eaten! Oh, captain, you can’t really mean that. In these days too!”

“But I do mean it. Yonder’s a pretty bad coast. As for ‘in these days,’ we haven’t yet captured quite all the earth, only the greater part of it. There are still some rum places left.”

“Oh!” And the inquiring lady passenger stared, round-eyed, to eastward, where, however, no sign of any coast was visible, nor yet in any other quarter.

The steamship Baleka was shearing her way through the smooth satiny folds of the tropical swell, and the light breeze which stirred the surface combined with the air the ship was making to render life quite tolerable beneath the grateful shade of the awnings. Otherwise it was hot – unequivocably hot; and where the glisten of brasswork was exposed to the overhead noonday sun the inadvertent contact of the bare hand with the said brasswork was sufficient to make the owner jump. So completely alone on this shoreless sea was the steamer that the plumes of smoke from her great white funnels seemed as though they had no business to taint this free, pure air with their black abominations – seemed, in fact, an outrage on the blue and golden solitude. Yet the said solitude was by no means devoid of life. Flying-fish skimming above the liquid plain singly or in flights like silvery birds, or a school of porpoises keeping pace with the ship for miles in graceful leaps, as their sportive way is, constituted only hints as to the teeming life of the waters in common with the earth and air; or here and there a triangular fin moving dark and oily above the surface in scarcely perceptible glide. The sight started the inquiring lady passenger off afresh.

“Look, there’s another shark; what a number we’ve seen within the last day or two, captain. Is there any truth in that idea that a shark following a ship means that there’s going to be a death on board?”

“But this one isn’t following the ship; he’s going very nearly clean in the contrary direction.”

“Yes, I know. But do you think there’s anything in the idea?”

“Why, I think that if somebody died every time a shark followed a ship there’d soon be none of us left to go to sea at all. What the joker’s really smelling after is the stuff that’s thrown overboard from the cook’s galley from time to time.”

“Really? Well, there goes another weird legend of the sea – weird but romantic.”

“It’d be a good thing if a few more of them went overboard,” laughed the matter-of-fact captain. “They soon will, too – a good many have already. In the old ‘windjammer,’ days when you had nothing to do half the voyage but sit and whistle for a breeze, these yarns got into Jack’s head and stuck there. Now with steam and quick voyages, and a rattling spell of work in stowing cargo every few days or so, Jack hasn’t got time to bother about that sort of thing.”

“Then sailors aren’t superstitious any more?”

“No more than shore folk. I’ve seen landsmen both on board ship and ashore who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tar who ever munched salt horse, and knock him hollow at that.”

“Then you’ve no superstitions of your own, captain – you, a sailor?”

“Not one; I don’t believe any such nonsense.”

A solitary passenger, passing at the time in his walk up and down, overhearing, smiled and nodded approval.

The Baleka was steering north by north-west, every eleven or eleven and a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water that creamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England. She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular passenger boat, being one of a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freight between England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargo she carried a limited complement of passengers and a quite unlimited ditto of cockroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat, and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on current rates of passage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was a consideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea mattered nothing.

The smoking-room amidships was a snug apartment with roomy chairs and well-cushioned lounges. In one corner three or four of the male passengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal – a form of amusement widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yet been started; rather should we have omitted the transition qualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxious republic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Then the discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of the proposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.

“I maintain it would be utterly unjustifiable,” said one. “It’s all very well to urge that it would be for the good of civilisation and numbers, and all that sort of thing, but we can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s a hard and fast rule.”

“There’s no such thing as a hard and fast rule, or oughtn’t to be,” retorted with some heat he who had borne the main part of the argument; “but if there is, why, ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ is a fairly safe one. What do you think sir?” turning to a man who was seated in another corner reading, but who had paid no attention to the discussion at all.

“Think? Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t been in that part long enough to have formed an opinion,” was the answer.

“But you don’t agree with our friend there that there should be a hard and fast rule for everything? Surely you are of opinion that every question should be decided on its own merits?”

“Certainly,” replied the other politely, though inwardly bored at being dragged into a crude and threadbare discussion upon a subject in which he felt no interest whatever. “That’s a sound principle all the world over, and a safe one.”

“There you are,” cried the first speaker triumphantly, turning upon his antagonist. “What did I tell you? This gentleman agrees with me entirely, as any sensible man would on such a point as that.”

“We can’t do evil that good may come of it,” reiterated the said antagonist. “That’s a hard and fast rule.”

“Hard and fast rule be blowed! You might as well apply that to the Valpy case,” naming a somewhat prominent lawsuit then going forward, and relating to a disputed succession. “If the Valpy in possession weren’t justified in sticking to possession when he knew the real heir was a congenital idiot, and a homicidal one at that – why, there’s no such thing as any law of common sense.”

“What were the facts?” asked the man who had been appealed to from outside. “I have not been much in the way of reading the papers of late.”

They told him – several of them at once, as the way of a smoking-room gathering is. By judicious winnowing down he managed to elicit that a vast deal of property had been in dispute, that the holder had been an exemplary landlord, and, in short, a sort of Providence to all dependent on him; whereas the man who had successfully established his own claim, and thereby had ousted him, was one of those subjects for whom a few minutes in a lethal chamber would have constituted the only appropriate and adequate treatment. Indeed, the only matter of debate was as to whether the former holder, knowing that he was not legally entitled to remain in possession, was justified in retaining the same. Those here present were of opinion that he was.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” said the uncompromising man. “We can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s the divine law, and – ”

“Hallo! What’s the excitement?” interrupted somebody, as several persons hurried by the open door, some with binoculars in their hands.

“Oh, we’ve only sighted some ship, I suppose,” said the leader on the other side. “What I was going to say is – ”

But ever so little to break the sea and sky monotony of a voyage will avail to raise a modicum of excitement; wherefore, what the speaker “was going to say” remained perforce unknown, for the group incontinently melted away in order to see what little there was to be seen.

That little was little enough. A solitary speck away towards the sky-line; to those who had binoculars, and soon to those who had not, taking shape – that shape the hull of a ship. Little enough in all conscience.

But – was it? The submerged hull of a ship and no more, save for two stumps of mast of uneven length sticking out of her. The poop and forecastle were above water, and in the wash of the increasing evening swell part of the bulwarks heaved up as the hulk rolled lazily, her rusty red sides, glistening and wet, showing a line of encrusting barnacles. This was what met the eager gaze of the passengers of the Baleka in the lurid, smoky glare of the tropical sunset as the steamer swept up to, and slowed down to pass, the sad relic; and there may have been some among them who noticed that the long, straight path of her foamy wake has undergone an abrupt deviation behind her – for the derelict had been lying right in her course.

Right in her course! An hour later and it would have been dark – very dark – and then!

There was quite a buzz of interest among the passengers; the man who had been to sea a great deal advancing, of course, all sorts of wild and impossible theories with regard to the wreck. But though glasses were strained upon her no trace was visible as to her name or nationality.

“By George! I’m blest if it isn’t the Red Derelict herself!” exclaimed the fourth officer, lowering his binoculars. Instantly he became the centre of an inquiring group, chiefly ladies.

“The Red Derelict? What’s that, Mr Ransome?” came the eager query.

“Haven’t you heard of her?” said the other, who was little more than a merry-faced boy. “Why, she’s a sort of Flying Dutchman. She’s been cruising around in these waters some time now, and they say it isn’t lucky to sight her.”

“Luckier than not to sight her – and an hour later we shouldn’t have sighted her – in the dark.”

The rejoinder was significant, and it came from the quiet passenger who had been appealed to for his opinion during the smoke-room discussion. The fourth officer looked not at all pleased at this encroachment on his own privileges as oracle. But he was destined to look less pleased still.

“Mr Ransome,” interrupted the captain’s voice from the bridge overhead, “just send me the second quartermaster here. After that I want you here yourself.” And the captain’s tone was crisp, and his face was grim – and the merry-faced boy looked no longer merry, for he knew a wigging was in store.

“Right, sir,” he answered, starting off with alacrity.

“Powis, d’you hear that blighted young fool blithering away about Red Derelicts and Flying Dutchmen?” said the captain in an undertone to the chief officer. “As if passengers ain’t a skeery enough crowd without filling ’em up with all sorts of sick old sea lies into the bargain. He ought to be sent back to school again and well swished. Well, log the derelict.”

The bugle rang out its second dinner summons to the strains of “The Roast Beef of Old England,” and there was something of a scurry among the passengers, who had ignored the first in their eagerness to watch the derelict. A few, however, remained, gazing after the ghastly eloquence of the deserted hulk, now black and indistinct in the dusk, for in the tropical seas darkness comes down with a rush.

“Wonder if there’s anything in Ransome’s yarn about that beauty,” said one man, shutting his binoculars. “Hang it! I’m not superstitious, but, all the same, I wish we’d never sighted her.”

Chapter Twenty Six.
An Omen

There was the usual clatter of knives and forks, and chinking of glasses, and scurrying of stewards in the well-lighted saloon, and during dinner the derelict they had just passed took up a large proportion of the conversation. As to this the captain’s table constituted no exception.

“What sort of ship would she have been, Captain Lawes – English?” The speaker was the lady passenger we heard making inquiries as to sea superstitions. She was a bright, rather taking woman of about thirty, making the homeward voyage with one child, a sweetly-pretty little girl, who was made a great pet of among the passengers – indeed, a great deal more than was good for her.

“Can’t say for certain, but am inclined to think so. She must have been a timber ship or she’d hardly have kept afloat for so long.”

“How long do you think she’s been like that?”

“Can’t say either for certain. She may have been months, and, from the look of her, a good few of them. Or she may have been years.”

“And do you think there’s anyone on board?” The captain stared.

“Anyone on board?” he echoed. “Well, not anyone living, of course. But it’s hardly likely anyone would have remained on board. The fact of her being still afloat shows that they had plenty of time when they abandoned her.”

“But if there is? What a ghastly idea it seems, that old ship floating about for ever in those oily seas, a floating coffin for some poor wretches imprisoned within her! Ugh! it’s horrible!”

“You’ve got a lively imagination, Mrs Colville,” said the captain drily. “You’re not a novelist, are you?”

“Oh no; I wish I were. But isn’t a half-sunk ship like that, right in our way, rather dangerous to navigation?”

“That’s exactly the wording of our log-book when we report the occurrence: ‘Dangerous to navigation.’”

“But why don’t you sink her, then, and get her out of the way?”

The captain stole a quick, comical glance at the passenger on his other side.

“In the first place, as the American lady said when she was asked why she didn’t get married: ‘I guess I haven’t time.’ You see, I don’t own this boat, Mrs Colville, nor yet her cargo. What would my owners say if I spent half the night hanging around trying to sink every derelict one passes at sea? We’re behind time as it is, thanks to the barnacles we’ve accumulated. Again, she may be worth salvaging, though I don’t think so.”

“Mr Ransome was saying she had been around here quite a long while. He called her the Red Derelict; said she was a sort of Flying Dutchman, and it was unlucky to sight her.”

“I know he did,” answered the captain grimly, with a complacent recollection of the savage wigging that rash youth had received at his hands. The other passenger struck in:

“I told him it would have been still more unlucky if we hadn’t sighted her till – say, an hour later. She was right bang in our course.”

The captain looked not altogether pleased at this remark, but the speaker was a personage of some consideration on board.

“We keep a look out, you know, Mr Wagram,” he said.

“Of course. But I always notice that the first hour of these tropical nights is the darkest, perhaps because of the suddenness with which it rushes down. Now, a hulk like that, flush with the surface and showing no lights, would it be discernible until too late?”

The captain knew that the chances were twenty to one it wouldn’t, but for expediency’s sake he was not going to own as much. As he had said before, passengers were a skeery crowd, and didn’t want any extra frightening.

“Chances are it would,” he answered, “especially in a smooth sea like this. There’s always a disturbance on the surface as the thing rises and falls, an extra gleam of phosphorus, or something that the lookout man on the forecastle can’t miss.”

“That’s satisfactory,” rejoined the lady. “Do you believe in luck, Mr Wagram?”

“In the sense in which we are going to be unlucky because we’ve seen a dismantled hulk – decidedly not. The idea is too puerile even for discussion.”

“Oh, I wish I were as strong-minded! Do you know, I’m terribly superstitious.”

“Really? Well, I believe many people are,” he answered politely, with a faint dash of banter.

“Mrs Colville was trying to get at me on that very subject this afternoon,” laughed the captain. “She thought all sailor-men were born fetish-men.”

“It’s all very well, no doubt,” she answered. “You may laugh, and all that, but, all the same, I wish we hadn’t seen that Flying Dutchman of yours. I’m sure it’ll bring us ill luck.”

Hardly were the words uttered than a hush fell upon the saloon. To the clatter of knives and forks, the chink of glasses, and the loud hum of voices – at this stage of the dinner at its highest – had succeeded a dead silence. It had seemed compulsory, for it had begun without. The regular, monotonous thrashing of the propeller – which had become almost a necessity, so habitual was it by now – had ceased. The ship lay still upon the smooth, oily waters. The engines had stopped.

Those who have experience of sea voyages will be familiar with the effect produced by such an occurrence. So thoroughly has the churning beat of the propeller become a part of one’s existence that the sudden cessation thereof is enough to awaken the soundest sleeper, and when it befalls during waking hours, and in mid-ocean, why, then, it is not the constitutionally timid alone who can plead guilty to a misgiving, and the conjuring up of a disabled ship rolling helplessly on the swell, and waiting for assistance that may be long enough in coming.

Such was the prevailing state of mind among the passengers of the Baleka at that moment. The timid decided that it was a case of breakdown; those not timid hoped it was not. Tongues began to wag again, but not so briskly, and immediately a steward came in and reported something to the chief engineer, who presided at another table in the saloon. The latter went out.

“What has gone wrong, captain?” said Mrs Colville, not without a dash of anxiety. “Have the engines broken down?”

“I haven’t been down to the engine-room to see yet,” was the bland reply. “McAndrew has just gone out, so we shall know directly.”

“Ah! There now, Mr Wagram, look at that!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t I say that wretched derelict would bring us ill luck? And just as I was saying so we stop.”

“Is that ill luck?” said Wagram, with a smile. He himself had made no comment whatever on the occurrence, but was going on with his dinner as if nothing had happened. “It is no uncommon event at sea for the engines to stop for a few minutes for various intelligible and harmless reasons. Am I right, Captain Lawes?”

“Perfectly.”

“But why don’t they send up to let you know what’s gone wrong, captain?” persisted the lady. “I should have thought that’s the first thing they’d do.”

“The fact that they don’t shows that there’s nothing the matter. McAndrew knows better than to set up a scare among the passengers by sending despatches into the saloon in the middle of dinner.”

And the speaker, like Wagram, continued tranquilly to ply his knife and fork. At heart he felt annoyed at the turn events had taken. He knew – while despising it – the depths of asininity to which the average human understanding will plunge in the matter of “luck” and “ill luck,” and such a coincidence as that which had befallen was sufficient to start some idiot among the passengers getting it into the newspapers on arrival in England. Moreover, he knew, of course, that a merchant captain is by no means the almighty little tin god that most landsmen think him, even while at sea, and that in the eyes of owners he is of fairly small account. And, strange as it may seem to the enlightened mind, the reputation of an “unlucky ship” is easier gained than lost. So when, a minute or two later, a note was brought to him from the engine-room he at once stood up and addressed the saloon.

There was no cause whatever for alarm, he explained. The stoppage was due to something wrong with the machinery, but of a trifling nature, and which was even then nearly repaired. Any minute they might be under way again.

There was clapping of hands at this, and cries of “Hear, hear!” Reassured tongues began to wag again, and the lowered voices and murmurs of misgiving were heard no more. And lo! even before dinner was done, there came a pulsation through the fabric of the ship, gentle at first, then increasing. The beat of the propeller was heard as well as felt. They were on the move again, and now a marked increase of hilarity was significant of reaction after the recent depression of alarm.

“The world is very full of prize idiots, Mr Wagram,” observed the captain when the bulk of the passengers had gone out, including the lady at his right. He had purposely sat on longer than usual.

“Yes. You could scrape together a considerable fool show out of it,” laughed the other, filling his glass. “But between ourselves, now that we are alone, why don’t the naval people send out a gunboat to look for this confounded hulk and sink her? They can’t have so much to do on this West Coast Station, and she must be infernally dangerous to shipping.”

“So she is really. But at sea we have to take a lot of chances – a sight more than you landsmen would dream of, I don’t mind telling you.”

“So I should imagine. Look at this.” From a notecase he extracted a newspaper cutting and handed it to the captain. It was the identical account of the appearance of the derelict which Haldane had read out that happy summer morning at dear old Hilversea, and something of a sigh escaped him at the recollection. “Think it’s the same?”

“‘The Rhodesian… Latitude 10 degrees 5 minutes North, longitude 16 degrees 38 minutes West… about 900 or 1000 tons’” … went on the captain, skimming the report. “H’m, h’m – it’s rum, certainly, but it might easily be. The description seems to tally exactly. Why, it’s quite a long while ago too. And the latitude isn’t far out with our present position. Yes; it’s rum.”

“But how the deuce can the thing stick about in one place? Seems as if it were bound to drift away, Heaven knows where – perhaps on shore and get broken up.”

“Ever heard of circular currents, Mr Wagram? It’s that that forms the Maelstrom. There are some queer currents hereabouts too, which may account for the thing hanging around here till the crack of doom. I knew she’d been a long time in the water by the look of her. But may I ask, without being curious, what made you keep that cutting – let alone carry it about with you?”

“That’s more than I can tell you, for I hardly know myself. I suppose the circumstance struck me as an out-of-the-way strange one, so when all at once I made up my mind for a voyage or two it came back to my mind, and so I hunted up the number it was in and cut it out.”

“Yes; it’s a rum thing, very,” repeated the captain, glancing again through the newspaper cutting. “‘About eight feet of iron foremast standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it.’ That’s exactly the description of the hooker we’ve just passed, except that there was no rigging trailing from it. But that may have carried away or been knocked off.”

“Well, it’s behind us, at any rate,” said Wagram, rising. “Let’s hope it’ll soon go to the bottom of its own accord. I suppose the thing can hardly keep afloat for ever.”

To his fellow-passengers Wagram was a sealed book, in that all conjectures as to his identity and his circumstance failed. He was very reticent, and this they were at first inclined to resent; but a certain charm of manner and a never-failing courtesy to all quickly dispelled any idea that “side” might be the underlying motive of such reticence. The fact that he had paid extra for the privilege of having a cabin to himself, and that nearly the best on the ship, seemed to throw some light upon his circumstances. Though reticent, however, about himself he could not exactly be called unsociable, for he would spend his evenings in the smoke-room, entering into the current chat over a pipe or so. But who he was, and where from – that nobody knew.

Not much inclined for sociability was he to-night. The incident of the derelict had brought back the past – the old happy past – and again he seemed to live through those bright sunny days at Hilversea, surrounded by all that made life joyous, and, underlying all, the ecstatic sense of possession. But now – ! Well, his quest was ended. He had carried it out conscientiously, energetically, and – nothing had come of it.

No; nothing whatever. He had followed out Develin Hunt’s directions to the letter – sparing not himself. He had betaken himself, always with care and absence of ostentation, to the locality in which that worthy had pronounced his half-brother to be, but of the latter he could learn nothing. Once he had lighted on what seemed a clue, but it had ended in smoke. Then, acting upon another, he had taken ship for Australia, and had followed it up, with like result. Once more he had returned to South Africa, to meet again with no reward to his efforts. At last, baffled at every turn, he had concluded he might legitimately abandon the search, and so here we find him again on his way homeward.

His wanderings, although he had spared no expense towards the attainment of his object, had been undertaken on no luxurious lines. He had roughed it in strange wild places, had undergone real hardships, and on occasions real peril, and the experience had hardened him. He was in splendid condition, dark, sunburnt, and as hard as nails. But now had come upon him a great home-sickness, and he was regretting the easy-going lack of foresight which had moved him to take passage on board the Baleka instead of upon one of the more crowded but swifter steamships of the regular mail line.

Pacing the deck in the tropical starlight he recapitulated to himself the whole situation. All had gone below now, but he remained, as his custom was; the swirl of the phosphorescent lines from the stem of the ship; the muffled clank of the engines; the weird, long-drawn cry of the lookout on the forecastle as the bells were struck every half hour – the sole accompaniment to his meditations. It all came back – the weeks of blank desolation following upon his father’s death, and how the voice of conscience, proving stronger than that of his advisers, had spurred him forth upon his fruitless quest. Well, it had proved fruitless, which seemed to point to the certainty that his advisers had been right.

It all came back. The wrench of that uprooting – of tearing himself away from Hilversea, and all it involved; the farewells, too, though he had avoided these as much as possible – in cowardly fashion he now told himself. Haldane’s hearty regrets and expectation to see him soon again; Yvonne’s blue eyes brimming with tears, which the affectionate child was at no pains to conceal; the genuine grief of his humbler friends; the last Mass in the chapel; and the final shutting out of everything behind him as the carriage whirled him off to Bassingham station in the murk of the winter day. Delia Calmour, too, whom he could not but think that he and his father and the indirect influences of their surroundings had been incidental, under Heaven, in guiding into the way of light. Poor child! He knew she would miss him, as he recalled the brave effort she had made to subdue all manifestation of the extent of her regret when he had bidden her good-bye; and he smiled to himself as he remembered certain arrangements which he had made with his solicitors providing that, in the event of anything happening to him, this girl whom he and his father had befriended should never be thrown upon the world to combat that uncompromising enemy with her own unaided resources.

Yes; Hilversea rose up before him now, fair, pleasant, restful in its sunshine as the very plains of heaven. Soon he would be within it again. He had trampled all considerations of self under foot and had followed the voice of conscience – and the result had been “As you were!” Surely he had done enough. Clearly his stewardship was his still, and, Heaven help him, he would endeavour to fulfil it to the utmost of his power, and would teach his son to do the same after him. Gerard? He must have grown quite tall, he reflected. What a splendid-looking fellow he would be.

Pacing up and down, hour after hour, Wagram’s thoughts ran too fast for his mind – and ever the silence, the swirl of the sea, and the streaking fall of a star in the murky tropical zenith. Then came a sudden jar, and a crash that shivered the ship from stem to stern. For a few moments this horrible jarring vibration continued, then the whole fabric gave a convulsive kind of heave, and the tremor ceased. All was still – but the thrash of the propeller was no longer felt, no longer heard. The throbbing of the engines had ceased – again.