"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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.ses at sea? We"re behind time as it is, thanks to the barnacles we"ve acc.u.mulated. 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 pa.s.senger 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, pa.s.sengers 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 superst.i.tious."
"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 c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.ses, 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 const.i.tutionally 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 a.s.sistance that may be long enough in coming.
Such was the prevailing state of mind among the pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers 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 G.o.d 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!"
Rea.s.sured 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 pa.s.sengers had gone out, including the lady at his right. He had purposely sat on longer than usual.
"Yes. You could sc.r.a.pe together a considerable fool show out of it,"
laughed the other, filling his gla.s.s. "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_... Lat.i.tude 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 lat.i.tude 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 sh.o.r.e 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sed, except that there was no rigging trailing from it. But that may have carried away or been knocked off."