The Cruise of the Dry Dock

T >> T. S. Stribling >> The Cruise of the Dry Dock

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"Hey, Caradoc! Caradoc!" screamed Madden. "Straight for the schooner!"
The American stared around with tense nerves for the little swishes on
the surface that betray the attack of a shark.

From something near middle distance, the Englishman raised a hand toward
his comrades and motioned them forward.

"Go on! Go on!" he gasped in a tired voice. "I'll catch you!"

Indeed, there was little to be gained from waiting. Caradoc moved toward
his friends with a long overhand stroke that gave him the queer
appearance of some huge water bug striding along. Madden and Greer
propelled themselves slowly toward the schooner, waiting for their
friend to close up. They could not keep their eyes off the Englishman.
Every moment they expected to see him jerked under, or they expected to
see a huge shadowy form strike at themselves through the clear green
water.

Once Madden looked at the dock. Hogan on the rim of the red flaring wall
was flinging out all kinds of despairing gestures.

By this time Caradoc was in hailing distance.

"Did you say sharks?" he called out in a dull voice.

"Yes, sharks!"

"Where a way?"

"Don't know!"

At that moment a trickling thrill went through the American. A long dark
motionless shadow lay in the water straight in front of him. He stopped
swimming suddenly.

"Stop, Greer! Straight ahead!" he warned in a low tone, easing himself
carefully up on his buoy for a better look.

By this time the swimmers were nearly together and all three stared
ahead with painful intentness.

"That dark thing?" inquired Greer in an undertone,

"Yes, we ought to have a knife apiece."

"I never saw a shark lying still," panted Caradoc straining his eyes.

"Say, that's a little streak of seaweed," decided Farnol, beginning to
move toward it.

Then all three perceived it was merely seaweed. The shark-like illusion
disappeared completely the moment someone doubted it.

"Who cried out sharks anyway?" demanded Smith of Madden.

"Greer there warned me--he yelled 'school of sharks.'"

"Where did you see them?" inquired Caradoc of Farnol.

"You shouted school of sharks to me yourself," defended Greer.

"I! I!" puffed Caradoc, whose spurt had blown him badly. "I said nothing
about sharks!"

"Well, what did you say?" demanded Greer.

Caradoc thought back fretfully. "I said we were running into a _cul de
sac_."

"A cool de sock!" repeated Greer with irritation. "What did you want to
say 'cool de sock' for?"

"I was calling to a gentleman," panted Smith with an edge of temper in
his tone, "and here you've swung us clear off our bearings because you
didn't know a common French phrase----"

"French! I'm no Frenchman! Why don't you talk English!"

The two tired, worried, overheated men were rapidly brewing a quarrel,
when Madden interrupted.

"Look how close we are to that schooner! If somebody would raise another
shark alarm, we'd land plump on her decks."

"Yes, but this Zulu here has run us straight into a loop of seaweed
it'll take two hours' swimming to get out of--_cul de sac_, school
of sharks! Why the two phrases scarcely resemble each other!"

Madden turned longing eyes toward the motionless schooner that was not
more than three-quarters of a mile distant. "Say, it's too bad to turn
around and swim away from that vessel!" he lamented wearily, "and this
sun is fierce!"

"I say let's try going through!" encouraged Greer.

"It'll be--difficult," warned Caradoc.

"Won't swimming clear around the earth be difficult?" demanded Greer
hotly.

"Proceed," agreed Caradoc tersely. "It's all one to me."

The boys adjusted their floats and once more began their weary labor,
all three disgruntled at the false alarm. As they worked their way
forward, clumps of seaweed, similar to the first they had seen,
thickened in their path. After a long swim in and out, they reached a
point where these floating masses coalesced into an island, or a
continent, that swung far back toward the barge in the segment of a
great semicircle. Fortunately there were still open channels in this
main field, and one of them led toward the schooner. They struck out up
this estuary, which presently became so narrow that they were forced to
travel single file. Occasionally their kicking feet would strike slimy
filaments in the water, but for a while the channel cheered the
swimmers, for they could now see they were making progress toward the
ship.

Ten minutes later, however, they reached the end, and an inexorable
continent of slime lay between them and their goal. Madden paused in the
last yard of clear water, hung to his buoy, his big biceps flattened on
the canvas cover and slowly blistering in the sun.

"All right, boys, close up," he panted; "let's stay in helping distance
of each other."

"Shall we try to take our buoys through, sir?" inquired Greer.

"We'll start with them."

"Don't try to use your legs in the weed," warned Caradoc. "Don't kick;
you'll get tangled."

"We'll experiment and work through the best way we can. If it turns out
too bad, we can turn back, that's one consolation."

Just then, under Madden's astonished eyes, a queer thing happened. The
long open tongue of the sea which they had just entered, silently closed
up. It seemed to close very slowly, and yet it was accomplished in an
amazingly brief time. Some dull movement in the Sargasso current had
blocked the adventurers with sinister precision. Madden felt the hot
slimy mass close softly around him.

It was now as easy to go forward as to return.

CHAPTER VII

TRAPPED

There was something so sinister in this silent closing of all avenue of
retreat that for a moment Madden was dismayed, then he struck out toward
the schooner with a certain bold weariness.

As an experiment he threw his buoy ahead of him by a snap of wrist and
forearm, then tried to swim to it. The long yielding growth slid under
and around him, but it took all the dash out of his stroke. He pawed his
way forward with his arms, legs stretched out idle. A thousand wet
sticky fingers dragged their length over his body, retarding, clogging,
holding him. It left him stranded like a bug in gelatine. His flesh
crawled at this slimy swimming, he shrank from it, and it sapped his
heart and strength.

The only stroke possible was the overarm, and his hands fell with a
gummy plop instead of the heartsome splash of open water. By the time he
reached his buoy and threw it again, he regretted miserably that he had
not swum the clean water route if it were five miles farther.

By the time he had thrown his buoy twice, he could hardly advance it a
yard beyond his reach; finally it simply slushed along the surface. The
sun seemed much hotter in this congestion than in the open sea.

Behind him came his two men in a queer snakelike procession of plopping
buoys and wriggling bodies. Ahead of them the seaweed stretched,
apparently all the way to the schooner. As they worked their way through
the scum of many seas, the noon sun broiled their backs into thin water
blisters, and stewed saline odors out of the clammy life about them.

Once Madden's hand struck a yellowish line of algae and a score or two
of little jelly-like insects writhed into the grass below. One of these
things touched the swimmer's arm and gave the boy a stinging sensation.
He knocked it off desperately and pushed on.

Presently his shoulder muscles ached and burned so keenly, he could no
longer continue the overarm. Then he took the buoy in both hands, held
it straight out, thrust it edge down into the oozy substance, used it as
a kind of anchor and drew it to him. At first this technique seemed to
advance him somewhat, but presently he appeared merely to disturb the
viscous mass without going forward. He grew acutely discouraged; his
back, shoulders, cramped, ached and burned. The brilliantly lighted
schooner seemed to regress as he progressed. The sun was like an auger
boring into the back of his head. His mind began to wander again, and a
sudden fear came on him lest he should go insane out in this horrible
slime.

A fiery burning on his right foot jerked him back out of his half
delirium, and he knew that an insect of the same kind he had seen a few
minutes before had stung him. He kicked it off convulsively, but the
thrust of his foot brought a wash of new stings.

All of a sudden, his patience, endurance, pluck seemed to give out. This
new torture made him as unreasonably frantic as a baby. He kicked
furiously. He scraped the toe nails of one foot against the flesh of the
other leg. As he did so the animalculae settled on the abraded skin,
like streaks of melted steel. The boy doubled up, like a grub worm
covered with ants, fighting, scraping, twisting, squirming. He writhed,
beat, scratched, this great hundred and sixty pound animal fighting an
enemy that would weigh about twenty to the gram.

He heard a shout from Caradoc, a question from Greer, then his insane
struggles carried him under the surface of the clammy seaweed. The
seaweed, infested with stinging insects, closed over his form like a
wave of fire.

Only lack of breath stopped Leonard's mad struggles. Bursting lungs and
the mere necessity to live at last made him disregard the attacks of
these wasps of the Sargasso. He struck out for the surface again like a
diver, reaching up arms, spreading legs with a stroke and a kick. But
the gelatinous stuff simply quivered with his struggles and held him
firm. He stuck like a fly in mucilage.

The sliminess of the element utterly destroyed the mechanics of
swimming. A forward stroke in pure water displaces portions of the water
and the return stroke sends the body forward. In this mass the forward
stroke merely compressed the weed in front of the arm, and left a cavity
through which the return stroke received no power.

Madden dared not open his eyes. In fiery blackness he kicked and struck
in useless froglike movements. His heart was beating like a trip-hammer
in his ears. Streaks of red fire played against the blackness of his
eyelids. He knew that in a few more seconds his straining lungs would
gulp in the stinging ooze, he knew his will could not prevent his
drawing in some sort of breath.

He clung desperately to the control of his diaphragm, as a falling man
clings to a ledge of rock. His great chest muscles gave convulsive
jerks. His control was going, going.

Suddenly a human hand gripped his wrist. He was jerked upwards, perhaps
a foot. A moment later he was gulping in great lungfuls of air.

He had been suffocating ten or twelve inches beneath that repulsive
slime, as securely captured as if he had been a thousand feet deep.

It had taken Greer and Smith that length of time to wriggle a yard or
two and fish him out.

"Steady! Steady!" said Caradoc in a lifeless voice. "Steady there,
Madden! Hold him tightly, Greer!"

Greer made some sort of groaning reply, when Caradoc snarled, "Let 'em
sting, you scullion! What if they do kill you! Is there any better way
to die?"

Madden felt a great pushing and jostling at his body. He raked the
seaweed from his face and opened his eyes. The Englishman was shoving
fiercely at the American's shoulder, Greer, ahead, pulling at an elbow.
The burning insects had swarmed on both his rescuers. Caradoc's
sun-baked face had a yellowish, bloodless hue, his lean jaws clenched
under his choppy white mustache. In the midst of his burning pain he
held his legs rigid, pushed Leonard with one hand and pawed furiously
through the viscid tangle with the other.

The constancy of his companions braced Madden like a dash of ice water.
His own weakness had brought about this dangerous plight. The American
caught up his buoy, and between great gasps of the blessed air, rapped
out that he could go by himself, and began making his own way forward.

So the three worked themselves over the oozy bed of fire. The
Englishman's arms shot into the slime with the regularity of pistons. He
appeared to make no haste, yet he made remarkable speed. Only his
distended nostrils, pain-tightened mouth, grim eyes, showed that he was
in torture.

Even amid his own suffering Leonard felt a thrill of admiration for
Smith's endurance and working power. He even found time to wonder dimly
if Smith's people, that rich, cold, proud family, if they could see
their remittance man now, would not stoop to claim him as a kinsman.

All at once the poignant and disgusting attack of the insects ceased. A
flood of ecstatic relief swept over the adventurers. Without a word, all
three quit squirming, caught their floats under their armpits and swung
down in a limp luxurious rest.

Then they saw a marvelous thing had happened. The same slow swirl of the
Sargasso current that had closed up their avenue on the west side, had
opened another on the east. Their way toward the schooner lay
unobstructed.

The clean delightful seawater soothed the pain of their stinging flesh.

"We'll be there in fifteen minutes," murmured Leonard weakly.

"When you're ready, say so," said Greer with a frown still lingering on
his heavy face.

At that moment Madden heard a groan from Caradoc.

"What's the matter?" aspirated the American.

"Nothing--weak--don't bother." He closed his eyes, blew out his breath
like a sick man. His face was bloodlessly sallow, and Madden could see
his grip slipping on the canvas buoy.

"You're all in!" gasped Madden in exhausted staccato, "I knew you
oughtn't to--aren't you about to faint again?"

The Englishman shook his head slightly. "Don't worry," he murmured, then
his eyes closed, his hands slipped loose.

With brusque directness, Madden caught the shock of tawny hair, jammed
Caradoc's chin against the buoy and held him tight with little exertion
for himself. Smith swung out as awkwardly as a turkey on a chopping
block. The water was level with his lips, but his nose did not go under.

"Petered at last," grunted Madden, staring at the corpselike face in
dull speculation. "How in the world are we going to get him out of
here?"

"I guess we can tow him out, sir," growled Greer with dull indifference.
"Mighty puny chap--always flopping over when he's in a tight place."

"Come here, stick his arms through our buoys, put his own under his
head!"

The plan was quickly carried out and Smith's unconscious form was placed
beyond immediate danger.

The two youths took up their long swim once more. As they moved down the
opening, they could see what slow progress they were making. Presently
Madden explained in a low whispering tone:

"His heart's bad... can't stand much... poisoned with alcohol."

Another pause filled with slow weary swimming, then Greer said:

"Said I was no gentleman... didn't know a French word... I keep sober."

Madden made no defense to this reflection on the unconscious Englishman,
but after a while he said:

"We ought to overlook lots in him, Greer--unfortunate fellow... there's
good in him, Greer... bad too."

"I've got no call to please you," growled the sailor with astonishing
frankness.

"Then why did you come with us?" inquired Madden amazed.

"Wanted to see the schooner."

"And what have _I_ done to _you_?"

"Called me a thief!" the sailor elevated his dull tone. "After I
telegraphed ye about th' men... fought for ye... called me a thief!"

"Was that you tapping on the dock?"

Greer nodded resentfully. "And ye insulted me for it."

"I'm sorry... I was almost wild that night. I'll apologize... before the
crew."

"I don't care nothing about that dull English crew." This strange
fellow's tone carried in it an illiterate man's undying resentment.

"Since you feel that way," panted Madden at last, "I think I ought to
tell you--he took the medicine chest," Leonard nodded at the finely
carved motionless face that lay on the float before them.

"Him!" gasped Greer.

Leonard nodded. "He wanted the alcohol in it."

"And you call him a _gentleman_?"

Leonard nodded again. "Somehow I still call him a gentleman. He's hurt,
sick, bruised, but he's a gentleman."

"Well I don't!"

At that moment, the buoy under Caradoc's head bumped into a wooden wall
and upset their swimming arrangements.

They were under the overhang of the mysterious schooner.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MYSTERY SHIP

Waves from the exhausted swimmers sent bright streaks of watershine
wavering up the green hull over Madden's head. Utter silence pervaded
the vessel. There was no creaking of spar or block. Hot tar stood in her
seams in the beating sunshine.

The boys kicked wearily through the tepid water to the schooner's prow,
where Greer succeeded in catching the bobstays and climbing aboard. A
little later he lowered a rope to Madden with a double bight in it. The
Yankee made the Englishman fast in the loops, climbed on deck himself
and helped haul the unconscious fellow aboard.

The two boys lugged the senseless man wearily across deck into the shade
of the superstructure, then in default of any better restorative,
Leonard began slapping the bottom of the Englishman's feet to revive
him. Presently Caradoc groaned, drew up his legs.

"He's coming around all right," said Greer, then he looked about him.
"What do you make out of this anyway, Mr. Madden?"

Leonard glanced around and did see a remarkable derelict. The schooner
was as newly painted and trig as if fresh from the ways. Her deck was
holystoned to man-o'-war cleanliness; every sheet, hawser, stay, tackle,
pin, spike, was in place. Three small boats, her full complement, hung
in davits. On the bow of these boats, on their oars and buoys, was
painted the name of the schooner, "Minnie B."

From the port side of the vessel there stretched a long cable patently
leading to a sea anchor. All sails were brailed except mains'l and
tops'l, which were reefed and set against each other to hold her steady
in case of a blow. The funnel was freshly painted black with a red band
at the top. Judging from her appearance, the desertion of the _Minnie
B_ had been carefully planned. Yet why desert a new vessel? By what
means did the crew leave the schooner, since all her small boats
remained?

What was their motive in anchoring the _Minnie B_ in the middle of
the Sargasso?

There appeared to be no easy answer to these questions.

"I don't understand this," said Greer, in answer to Madden's unspoken
perplexity. "Where did the crew go, sir, and how did they go?"

"They might have deserted her for her insurance," suggested Madden
tentatively.

"Then why didn't they scuttle her--besides, a new vessel like this is
worth more than her insurance."

"Maybe it was her cargo. Perhaps they faked it, rated it away above its
value."

"Why she has no cargo, sir. She's riding light as a skiff; I noticed
that as I climbed up."

"Then what is your idea?" inquired the American.

Greer glanced around with a trace of uneasiness. "The crew went by the
board, sir, I'm thinking."

"Overboard--all washed overboard! Why there isn't one chance in a
million of such a thing hap--"

"I didn't say 'washed overboard,' sir," corrected Greer heavily. "I
think they got throwed overboard, one by one, sir."

"One by one!" Madden stared at the solemn faced fellow.

Farnol nodded stolidly. "Just so, sir."

"You mean--?"

"The plague, sir."

"O-oh!" The American stared around the deck with new eyes. Greer's
explanation struck home with a certain convincingness. The mere thought
of disease-laden surroundings filled him with alarm. Could they have
unwittingly wandered into a deserted pest-ship? A focus of death in
these rotting seas? The very air he breathed, the wood he touched, might
inoculate him with malignant germs. Then he began reasoning on it.

"Even if it were the plague, there ought to be someone left aboard,
Greer, a last corpse." The American sniffed the hot, breathless,
tar-scented air.

"He could well have gone crazy, sir, in this heat and followed his mates
overboard--but we can look and see."

At this moment, Caradoc stirred and pulled himself to a sitting posture
on the burning deck.

"You--you pulled me aboard?" he murmured weakly, looking about with the
face of a corpse.

"How do you feel--anything I can do?"

"If I had a dr--" he broke off, drew a long breath. "Nobody aboard?"

"If you're all right, Greer and I will take a turn below and see what we
can find," suggested Madden.

Caradoc nodded apathetically and stared seaward toward the cable sagging
into the dead ocean.

The two boys moved gingerly up to the hatchway that led down to the
forecastle. If disease had smitten the _Minnie B_ they hoped to get
some clew from the taint of the sailors' quarters. Greer stuck a nose
down the ladder first. Beyond the usual close ship smells there seemed
to be nothing wrong. Then they climbed down.

Here again they found order. The bunks against the bulkheads and the
curve of the prow were clean with neatly rolled blankets. The lockers
were open and empty. The two searchers climbed out and walked aft to the
lazaret. They were rapidly getting over their fright of the plague.
Again Greer entered first, and this time Madden heard a loud snort of
disgust.

Half expecting some sinister sight, Madden ran down the three steps and
entered the storeroom. But what had roused the sailor's dislike was that
the lazaret contained no provisions. It was as empty as the forecastle;
not a chest, not a canister, not even a spice box remained. Here again
the lockers were open and empty. From one of the keyholes hung a bunch
of keys. The steward had deserted his ring, knowing it could never be of
service to him again.

The little metal bunch hung straight down without the slightest
oscillation. Such lack of motion and life amid the close stewing heat of
the lazaret threw a glamor of unreality over the whole affair. The
schooner might well have been warped to a dock in some port of the dead.
The very newness of everything accentuated its amazing loneliness.

"Doesn't seem real, does it?" said Greer in a low tone, drawing a long
breath in the heat. "I keep listening."

Madden shook himself. "It seems as if someone ought to be aboard." He
broke away from the spell: "I wish they had left us some provisions--we
need 'em."

The hot heavy silence fell immediately after the remark, like a curtain
that was heavy to lift.

"Let's look through the hold and see if there _isn't_ someone
here!" suggested Greer uneasily.

With a feeling that they were likely to encounter some being, human or
spectral, at every turn, they went below. The farther they went the more
inexplicable became the _Minnie B's_ desertion. Her engines were in
perfect order, her furnace so new that the grate bars were still
unsealed from heat; the maker's name-plate was still bright on the
boilers; her hull was quite dry, with less than six inches of water in
her bilge. She had no cargo, except four or five tons of raw metal
ingots used as ballast. The coal in her bunkers was nearly exhausted.
Indeed she was riding so light that heavy weather would upset her like a
chip. It seemed as if the crew had looted the _Minnie B_ in a
thorough and extraordinary manner, and then had simply vanished. Every
now and then in their search the two would find themselves standing
motionless, open-mouthed, listening intently to the brooding silence.

More puzzled than ever by these explorations, the two adventurers
climbed into the chart room. Here, also, everything was intact, and in
order. In a desk they found the ship's log and clearance papers. The
captain's and the mate's licenses hung in frames against the wall. Near
these was tacked the picture of a sunny-haired little girl and
underneath it was written the name "Minnie." So the schooner was the
little smiling-faced girl's namesake, this tragedy-haunted abandoned
vessel. A Mercator's projection lay thumb-tacked on a table, and the
last position of the schooner was indicated by a pin sticking in the
map.

Madden moved over to it eagerly, hoping this pin would give him some
inkling as to where the disaster, if there had been one, occurred. He
noted the latitude and longitude indicated by the marker, then turned
excitedly to Greer.

"Look here!" he cried, "this pin marks our position at this moment. We
are right here!" he touched the point on the map.

"How do you know it does?"

"I calculated the dock's position this morning."

"Well, what of that? She will probably lie here till she rots in this
stagnant sea."

"That's the point: This is not a stagnant sea. There is a current of
about six miles a day in the Sargasso, very slow, but it will change a
ship's reckoning."

Greer remained unimpressed. "What do you make of that?"

"Make of that! Why, man, the person who took this reckoning, took it
_this morning_! That's the only way he could have got it. There was
somebody on this schooner this morning when we sighted her."

"This morning! This _morning_! Where in Davy Jones' locker----"

Madden was leaning over the chart scrutinizing it with careful eyes. At
last he raised up in complete bewilderment.

"Farnol," he said in a queer tone, "the crew meant to come here! Meant
to sail through the Sargasso--clear away from all trade
routes--incomprehensible but--just look!"

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