CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
THE RED DERELICT.
"What would happen if we went ashore here? Why, we'd very likely beeaten."
"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 thesedays,' we haven't yet captured quite all the earth, only the greaterpart 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 otherquarter.
The steamship _Baleka_ was shearing her way through the smooth satinyfolds of the tropical swell, and the light breeze which stirred thesurface combined with the air the ship was making to render life quitetolerable beneath the grateful shade of the awnings. Otherwise it washot--unequivocably hot; and where the glisten of brasswork was exposedto the overhead noonday sun the inadvertent contact of the bare handwith the said brasswork was sufficient to make the owner jump. Socompletely alone on this shoreless sea was the steamer that the plumesof smoke from her great white funnels seemed as though they had nobusiness to taint this free, pure air with their black abominations--seemed, in fact, an outrage on the blue and golden solitude. Yet thesaid solitude was by no means devoid of life. Flying-fish skimmingabove the liquid plain singly or in flights like silvery birds, or aschool of porpoises keeping pace with the ship for miles in gracefulleaps, as their sportive way is, constituted only hints as to theteeming life of the waters in common with the earth and air; or here andthere a triangular fin moving dark and oily above the surface inscarcely perceptible glide. The sight started the inquiring ladypassenger off afresh.
"Look, there's another shark; what a number we've seen within the lastday or two, captain. Is there any truth in that idea that a sharkfollowing 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 inthe 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 shipthere'd soon be none of us left to go to sea at all. What the joker'sreally smelling after is the stuff that's thrown overboard from thecook's galley from time to time."
"Really? Well, there goes another weird legend of the sea--weird butromantic."
"It'd be a good thing if a few more of them went overboard," laughed thematter-of-fact captain. "They soon will, too--a good many have already.In the old `windjammer,' days when you had nothing to do half thevoyage but sit and whistle for a breeze, these yarns got into Jack'shead and stuck there. Now with steam and quick voyages, and a rattlingspell of work in stowing cargo every few days or so, Jack hasn't gottime 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 andashore who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tarwho 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 elevenand a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water thatcreamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England.She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular passenger boat, being oneof a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freightbetween England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargoshe carried a limited complement of passengers and a quite unlimitedditto of cockroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat,and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on currentrates of passage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was aconsideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea matterednothing.
The smoking-room amidships was a snug apartment with roomy chairs andwell-cushioned lounges. In one corner three or four of the malepassengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal--a form ofamusement widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yetbeen started; rather should we have omitted the transitionqualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxiousrepublic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Thenthe discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of theproposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.
"I maintain it would be utterly unjustifiable," said one. "It's allvery well to urge that it would be for the good of civilisation andnumbers, and all that sort of thing, but we can't do evil that good maycome 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 afairly safe one. What do you think sir?" turning to a man who wasseated in another corner reading, but who had paid no attention to thediscussion at all.
"Think? Oh, I don't know. I haven't been in that part long enough tohave formed an opinion," was the answer.
"But you don't agree with our friend there that there should be a hardand fast rule for everything? Surely you are of opinion that everyquestion should be decided on its own merits?"
"Certainly," replied the other politely, though inwardly bored at beingdragged into a crude and threadbare discussion upon a subject in whichhe felt no interest whatever. "That's a sound principle all the worldover, and a safe one."
"There you are," cried the first speaker triumphantly, turning upon hisantagonist. "What did I tell you? This gentleman agrees with meentirely, as any sensible man would on such a point as that."
"We can't do evil that good may come of it," reiterated the saidantagonist. "That's a hard and fast rule."
"Hard and fast rule be blowed! You might as well apply that to theValpy case," naming a somewhat prominent lawsuit then going forward, andrelating to a disputed succession. "If the Valpy in possession weren'tjustified in sticking to possession when he knew the real heir was acongenital idiot, and a homicidal one at that--why, there's no suchthing as any law of common sense."
"What were the facts?" asked the man who had been appealed to fromoutside. "I have not been much in the way of reading the papers oflate."
They told him--several of them at once, as the way of a smoking-roomgathering is. By judicious winnowing down he managed to elicit that avast deal of property had been in dispute, that the holder had been anexemplary landlord, and, in short, a sort of Providence to all dependenton him; whereas the man who had successfully established his own claim,and thereby had ousted him, was one of those subjects for whom a fewminutes in a lethal chamber would have constituted the only appropriateand adequate treatment. Indeed, the only matter of debate was as towhether the former holder, knowing that he was not legally entitled toremain in possession, was justified in retaining the same. Those herepresent were of opinion that he was.
"I don't agree with you at all," said the uncompromising man. "We can'tdo evil that good may come of it. That's the divine law, and--"
"Hallo! What's the excitement?" interrupted somebody, as severalpersons hurried by the open door, some with binoculars in their hands.
"Oh, we've only sighted some ship, I suppose," said the leader on theother side. "What I was going to say is--"
But ever so little to break the sea and sky monotony of a voyage willavail to raise a modicum of excitement; wherefore, what the speaker "wasgoing to say" remained perforce unknown, for the group incontinentlymelted away in order to see what little there was to be seen.
That little was little enough. A solitary speck away towards thesky-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 allconscience.
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p; But--was it? The submerged hull of a ship and no more, save for twostumps of mast of uneven length sticking out of her. The poop andforecastle were above water, and in the wash of the increasing eveningswell part of the bulwarks heaved up as the hulk rolled lazily, herrusty red sides, glistening and wet, showing a line of encrustingbarnacles. This was what met the eager gaze of the passengers of the_Baleka_ in the lurid, smoky glare of the tropical sunset as the steamerswept up to, and slowed down to pass, the sad relic; and there may havebeen some among them who noticed that the long, straight path of herfoamy wake has undergone an abrupt deviation behind her--for thederelict had been lying right in her course.
Right in her course! An hour later and it would have been dark--verydark--and then!
There was quite a buzz of interest among the passengers; the man who hadbeen to sea a great deal advancing, of course, all sorts of wild andimpossible theories with regard to the wreck. But though glasses werestrained 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!" exclaimedthe fourth officer, lowering his binoculars. Instantly he became thecentre 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 amerry-faced boy. "Why, she's a sort of Flying Dutchman. She's beencruising around in these waters some time now, and they say it isn'tlucky to sight her."
"Luckier than not to sight her--and an hour later we shouldn't havesighted her--in the dark."
The rejoinder was significant, and it came from the quiet passenger whohad been appealed to for his opinion during the smoke-room discussion.The fourth officer looked not at all pleased at this encroachment on hisown privileges as oracle. But he was destined to look less pleasedstill.
"Mr Ransome," interrupted the captain's voice from the bridge overhead,"just send me the second quartermaster here. After that I want you hereyourself." And the captain's tone was crisp, and his face was grim--andthe merry-faced boy looked no longer merry, for he knew a wigging was instore.
"Right, sir," he answered, starting off with alacrity.
"Powis, d'you hear that blighted young fool blithering away about RedDerelicts and Flying Dutchmen?" said the captain in an undertone to thechief officer. "As if passengers ain't a skeery enough crowd withoutfilling 'em up with all sorts of sick old sea lies into the bargain. Heought to be sent back to school again and well swished. Well, log thederelict."
The bugle rang out its second dinner summons to the strains of "TheRoast Beef of Old England," and there was something of a scurry amongthe passengers, who had ignored the first in their eagerness to watchthe derelict. A few, however, remained, gazing after the ghastlyeloquence 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," saidone man, shutting his binoculars. "Hang it! I'm not superstitious,but, all the same, I wish we'd never sighted her."