Читать книгу Eve's Island - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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William C. Hackitt was a sturdy, thick-set man of fifty. He was prosperous-looking, and apparently he has quite a bunch of money invested in real estate in Rio—where I met him.

He was an interesting type of American seaman—better educated than most men who have lived their lives afloat, cautious of speech and exact of statement. I have only given part of his story, the latter portion being identical with that told by the correspondent Callus—except that the latter's statement is considerably more detailed and probably, since he shared the confidence of Tatham, more accurate.

"I AM a native of Seattle, Washington, and by profession I am a seaman. I first went to sea in 1872 on the sailing vessel Star of the West, 'Frisco to Boston.

"I served before the mast for ten years before I got my mate's certificate in an English ship. I earned a master's ticket in 1889, and three years later I entered the service of the Coastwise line, being appointed second officer on the steamship O'sango trading between Liverpool and Cabinda.

"In '95 the company extended its operations, shipping freights to the Cape and Natal in competition with the Castle and Bucknall Lines. I was promoted to be chief officer of O'laki in 1901 at a salary of $40 a month. The work was hard, we were under-officered, and, to make matters worse, I very soon discovered that the captain of the O'laki drank heavily.

"We started our homeward voyage for Durban, Natal, in January, 1902.

"One day out, the second officer went sick, which meant that the navigation and the care of the ship devolved upon myself and the third officer. We were due to call at Port Elizabeth, and we entered the Bay in a strong north-easterly gale.

"It was rather dubious as to the advisability of anchoring, especially as the gale showed signs of increasing in strength, and the glass continued to fall. I communicated my doubts to the skipper, who was in his cabin sleeping off the effects of a drinking bout.

"He gruffly ordered me to anchor. This I did, at what I considered to be a safe distance from the shore. The wind increased in velocity, and at half-past three the harbour master signalled, 'Get to sea with all despatch.'

"I reported this to the skipper, who, however, told me to ignore the signal. I was considerably scared, but I flew, 'Have decided to remain' in answer to the shore signal. As a cautionary measure I ordered the third officer to stand by to let go the storm anchor. At five o'clock our cable parted, and I dropped over the drogue, but there was no checking our drift, and I hoisted 'N.C.'

"We went ashore at six p.m., and the crew was rescued by the Port Elizabeth lifeboat. The ship was a total wreck. At the Board of Trade inquiry my captain stated that the warning of the harbour master had not been conveyed to him, that he was in his berth ill at the time, and that I was in sole charge of the ship, and that the responsibility for obeying or disobeying the signal was mine.

"As a result of this lie, I was adjudged by the Board to have been guilty of unseamanlike conduct, and my certificate was suspended.

"The agents of the company paid me my salary, and informed me that they were advised by cable that the company had no further use for my services. Thus I found myself stranded in Port Elizabeth with some $200 and no prospects whatever.

"Luckily for me, the S.S. Inkonka, a Rennie boat, was in the Bay, commanded by Captain Moore, a big-hearted seaman of the old type, who offered me an opportunity of working my passage home as bo'sun. This, however, I declined. I was sick of seafaring and wanted a rest.

"I fixed up a passage on board the ship, and sailed for Cape Town a week after the finding of the Court. The Inkonka, although nominally a cargo boat, has excellent accommodation for passengers, and I found myself in clover, for the food was most excellent and the officers were a decent lot of men.

"There were no other passengers but myself, and, so far as the Captain knew, there was little likelihood of anybody coming aboard at Cape Town. But, to our surprise, on reaching that port we were informed by the agents that a party of fifty had booked passages for Loanda—that is, St. Paul de Loanda—which was our next port of call.

"Captain Moore was a little mystified by this unusual passenger list and pointed out the difficulty of accommodating so large a party, but the agent stated that the party were prepared to rough it, and their rates had been adjusted on that assumption. He furthermore explained that it consisted of a party of prospectors who were going to tramp through Portuguese territory to the Katanga in search of minerals.

"The party came aboard that afternoon. A harder crowd of citizens I have never struck; they were all men who had apparently seen service during the recent war, and each was armed with a Mauser rifle and a bandolier of ammunition, which I was informed represented Boer loot.

"In addition, their equipment consisted of picks, shovels, and the rough cradles that I have seen miners use in the Australian alluvial fields. Yet for all their tough appearance, they were a quiet, orderly lot of men, and there did not seem to be an ounce of whisky between the party. The leader was a singularly striking man, who was variously addressed as 'Captain Tatham' and 'Ned,' and his authority appeared to be absolute.

"I found Captain Tatham a most charming companion. Apparently he had a nodding acquaintance with every country in the world, and he even had a fair working knowledge of seamanship, having as a boy shipped before the mast.*

[* This possibly explains the disappearance of Tatham from London and the difficulty of tracing his history as a youth.]

"Very naturally, with my grievance uppermost in my mind, I confided to him the story of the wreck of the O'laki, and not only was he sympathetic, but he seemed unusually interested. He inquired as to whether I was a married man, what were my prospects, what I intended to do for a living on my return to America, and I told him I was single, and that my prospects were nil, and that for all I knew I should starve, or else go to sea again before the mast.

"He asked me in all seriousness whether I should like to be a pirate, and I answered jokingly that such a life had its attraction.

"We reached Lobito Bay after a pleasant voyage of six days, and, landing some railway material, continued our journey up the coast. It was the night before we reached Loanda that Captain Tatham made his proposition to me. It was the offer of the mastership of the Pealo.

"I had frequently seen the Pealo. She was a steamer of 900 tons, and was employed by the Government of the Congo Free State to carry mails and telegrams between Loanda and Broma.

"You must understand that the Congo Free State had no direct cable communication with the outer world, and cables were either sent via Brazzaville over a thousand miles of land wire to a port in French West Africa, or by boat to Loanda for transmission.

"The latter method was more usually adopted.

"For this purpose the Pealo was employed. She was a little craft with a remarkable history. She had been wrecked on the rocks that abound near Matadi, and had remained high and dry for twelve months before a wandering engineer had salved her, first purchasing the wreck for something like $250. By blasting away the rocks that pierced her hull, and making her roughly watertight with cement, he got her beached and put into working order.

"I told Captain Tatham that I knew the history of the ship, but I could not understand his offer, unless, indeed, he held some high office under the Congo Government and was in a position to confer the mastership. He seemed very much amused at my answer, and replied—

"'You must understand, Mr. Hackitt, that I am in a very difficult position, and although I am not able to confide my plans to you, yet I may elucidate the situation by setting forth the following primal and vital facts.

"'(1) I am engaged in carrying through an expedition which, were it properly equipped and every contingency provided for, would cost some £15,000.

"'(2) So far my outlay has been £75 16s. 4d. This has covered all preliminary expenses other than the expedition fare, which the expedition has paid for itself. I have computed the further expenditure necessary, as follows:—

"'Purchase of steamship for purpose of expedition: $35,000

Victualling and coaling same: $9,000

Wages: $4,250

Scientific equipment: $14,000

Provisions and field equipment: 1,000

Sundries: $6,750

Making a total of: $70,000

"'(3) Face to face with these liabilities, I have the knowledge that the combined capital of the expedition is about fifty dollars net.'

"I asked him under these circumstance how he reconciled his offer of the mastership of the Pealo. I pointed out that under any circumstances the Pealo being a government ship would not be for sale. His reply was simple.

"'We must borrow the Pealo,' he said quite seriously; 'in other words, we must steal her.'

"He extracted no promise of secrecy from me before he made this remarkable statement, but as I was afterwards to learn, he was a very keen judge of character, and I have no doubt he had sized me up pretty well.

"'It is regrettable that such a course is necessary, but unfortunately the old adventurous spirit, that in the days of Elizabeth led the London merchant to finance the privateering craft of the Spanish Main, is utterly and totally dead, and it is necessary for the success of the expedition that we should possess a steamer. I have chosen the Pealo, because it belongs to an unpopular Government, in fact a Government that isn't a Government at all. No court of law with a sense of humour would pursue a charge of piracy brought by the Congo Free State—the very idea is so grotesquely comic that the case would laugh itself out of court. Now, as to you,' he said, addressing me, 'you are a broken man. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and if things go wrong I give you my word of honour that I will establish your innocence.'

"He then went on to give me elaborate particulars regarding the object of the expedition. I cannot truthfully say that I thought overlong on the offer Captain Tatham made to me. Indeed I believe I accepted it on the spot.

"The next day we reached Loanda and Captain Tatham landed. The Pealo was lying at her moorings, having arrived the night previous. I observed her with greater interest. She was a neat, compact-looking little craft, bearing the stamp of seaworthiness that any sailor could distinguish a mile away.

"She was flying the flag of the Congo State, which is a five-pointed golden star on a royal blue background. Although Tatham went ashore none of his men accompanied him. He told me he intended arranging the direct transfer of the men from one ship to the other, owing to the stringent Portuguese regulations which forbid the importation of firearms.

"The Inkonka was due to leave at eight, but it was not until seven o'clock that Captain Tatham returned. He said he had fixed up the passages by representing his party as being Italian labourers for the new Stanley Falls railway. He said he had arranged to pay the fares when the men were on board. He also told me that he had ordered enormous stores of provisions to be sent off to the Pealo, and had practically cleared out the floating stock of the Loanda stores.

"These also he had arranged to pay for on delivery. Somehow this scheme was less palatable to me than the larger and more serious matter of the ship, and I ventured to express my opinion to Captain Tatham.

"He listened to me with great patience, and indeed I have never known him to display the least unwillingness to accept and analyse criticism.

"'You have lost sight of one fact,' he said, when I had finished. 'What I am doing is not stealing, it is simply coercing credit. Every penny's worth of stores I take from Loanda I shall pay for sooner or later. I shall even recompense King Leopold's Government for the inconvenience it may suffer from the temporary detachment of his fleet.'

"I am a self-educated man and am not prepared to point out the flaws in Captain Tatham's code of morality, but at the time I was perfectly satisfied that such a flaw existed and just as satisfied to accept his explanation.

"We boarded the Pealo at six bells in the third watch, rowing off from the Inkonka in two of that ship's boats. I said 'Goodbye' to Captain Moore, who saw nothing remarkable in my change of plans. He must have realised that I was a ruined man so far as the sea was concerned, and did not blame me for joining the 'prospecting party.'

"We were received at the gangway of the Pealo by the second officer. There was only a dim gangway light, so that the arms of the party, which were concealed as far as possible, passed without observation. We found our stores piled up on the deck, with two or three European clerks waiting to complete the sale. There were cases of milk, cases of preserved beef, biscuits, sacks of potatoes, bags of rice, flour, and grain. Sugar and salt, tea by the dozen chests, and coffee by the hundredweight.

"Tatham had a brief interview with the clerks. I gathered rather than heard that he requested them to call the following morning, and with some demur they consented. I heard him pointing out that the Pealo was not due to leave until the following afternoon, and heard him refer to 'money' and 'cable.' When they had rowed away the following conversation took place between the second officer of the Pealo—a M. Jacobus van Veld and Captain Tatham:—

"Van Held: 'We will now arrange the matter of the fares for your party, Monsieur Tatham.'

"Tatham: 'Will that not do in the morning?'

"Van Held: 'I would rather the matter were settled tonight. From Loanda to borna the fare is 100 francs.'

"Tatham: 'That will be 5100 francs—is there no reduction for a large party?'

"Van Held: 'Absolutely none.'

"Tatham: 'I would like to see the Captain.'

"Van Held: 'He is ashore. I am the only officer on board.'

"Tatham: 'I think I know the chief engineer—may I have a word with him?'

"Van Held: 'He is also ashore; with the exception of myself and a mechanician on duty and a steward, there is nobody on board.'

"Tatham: 'Why have you the mechanician?' (i.e. engine-room artificer).

"Van Held: 'Because we must keep steam on—that is the regulation. But I would rather discuss the question of fares.'

"Then ensued a long argument, partly in Flemish and partly in French, both of which languages I imperfectly understand, and the 'mechanician' was summoned from below to support the officer. The end of it was, the second officer with the mechanician left the ship to summon the captain, with the hint of a threat that on their return they would be accompanied by the representatives of Portuguese law.

"From the point of view of an American seaman, to leave a ship with no competent person in charge was just mad, but they do queer things on Belgian ships. As their boat pushed off, I saw three of Tatham's men go nipping down the steel ladder that led to the engine-room, and in about a minute one of them shouted, 'All right.'

"I was surprised to see another go forward to the bow with the agility of a born seaman. Tatham and I walked forward to the bridge. 'You are in charge,' said Tatham.

"So I rung the engine 'Slow ahead,' to ease the mooring cable. I heard the pin knocked out and the cable fall with a splash in the sea, and felt the vessel riding free. Tatham turned and ordered all lights out, and I sent the telegraph over to 'half ahead' setting the course west and a point north. 'Stand right out to sea,' said Tatham at my elbow. 'I will give you the course to-morrow.'"