Читать книгу Captain Cain - Percy Francis Westerman - Страница 3

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“Now, you treacherous mutineers!” thundered Captain Cain, of the pirate submarine Alerte, “I’ll give you one minute to get your lifebelts. You’re to choose between being eaten by sharks or hanging by your necks in a British prison!”

Before the astounded men, who had so basely turned against their skipper, could realise the significance of the pirate captain’s words, Cain made for the only open hatchway. There he stopped, his eyes roving whimsically over the dumbfounded men, a supercilious smile lurking in his heavy bull-dog features.

“Forty-five seconds more!” announced Cain in cold, level tones.

The next instant Captain Cain disappeared from the view of the demoralised pirate crew. The conning-tower hatch descended with a metallic clang.

In the electrically lit interior he noticed that Barnard, the faithful boatswain, was at the wheels actuating the valves of the ballast tanks. Close to him stood the other loyal men, Davidge and Cross.

“Stand by!” ordered Cain, glancing at his wristlet watch.

“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the bo’sun, tentatively easing one of the valves a fraction of an inch.

Overhead came a terrific crash that shook the vessel from end to end.

Captain Cain raised one eyebrow—a favourite trick of his. He knew the significance of that detonation. The avenging cruiser Canvey had commenced to shell her victim. On the metallic deck overhead the shuffle of many boots told clearly enough that the miserable remnant of the mutineering crew was in a state of panic.

Again the pirate captain glanced at the watch, nodded curtly.

“Submerge: all tanks!” he ordered.

During the brief period between the giving of the order and the settling of the submarine on the bed of Bahia Arenas, Captain Cain remained as still and silent as a statue. His active mind was reviewing not only the present situation but practically the whole of the career of the vessel that was even now doomed to destruction.

He recalled the circumstances under which the scrapped submarine R 81 was converted into a vessel, the Alerte, that looked like a tramp, but was actually an armed craft still retaining her diving capabilities. There was Pengelly, his second in command, that treacherous, incapable babbler who for a time had supplanted Cain as skipper of the Alerte to give place meekly to the indomitable captain when he found himself in a tight corner. . . . Then his mind dwelt upon the unexpected arrival of those two bright lads, Broadmayne and Vyse. They were, he remembered, a pretty tough proposition. His estimation of them was none the less on that account. . . . The Alerte’s successive scraps with the Cap Hoorn, the Surcouf and the Villamel, whereby Cain had aroused the ire of Germans, Frenchmen and Spaniards; the courteous treatment he had accorded to the Yankee Bronx City, and finally the mutiny and the pursuit by the British warship Canvey brought his hurried reminiscences down to the present moment.

In the back of his mind Captain Cain felt a slight resentment against the Canvey. In all his unlawful dealings he had studiously avoided any act of aggression that would affect British ships and shipping; and it seemed hardly poetic justice that the Alerte should be destroyed by the action of a vessel flying the white ensign. On the other hand, he realised that as a pirate every man’s hand was ’gainst his; he was a fugitive, an outlaw either on the face of the waters or beneath the surface. In short, he was being treated as vermin to be exterminated without compunction.

A dull thud as the Alerte grounded upon the sandy bottom of the West African lagoon coincided with the conclusion of the pirate captain’s train of thought. Although trapped in a steel cage, he was not “going out” without a desperate effort to save himself and the lives of the three loyal men who had risked everything on his behalf.

It was a decidedly lucky circumstance, whatever the cause, that the avenging cruiser had not continued to shell the Alerte as she submerged. Possibly, he decided, the white-livered mutineers had shown the white flag.

“You’ve got the rapid-flooding valve-plate, Barnard?” he inquired of the bo’sun. “Good, now listen; it’s no use thinking that by lying doggo the cruiser will give us a miss; she won’t. In a few minutes she’ll start depth-charging us; so get busy. Now, all hands will don diving-dresses, and proceed through the air-lock. On gaining the bottom you will proceed to the starboard whaler, disconnect the release-gear and manhandle her along. With decent luck we ought to be well outside the radius of action of a depth-charge before they start operations. Yes, take your automatics and fifty rounds. Look lively, there!”

In record time the four men had put on their self-contained diving-dresses, adjusted the helmets and satisfied themselves that the air-supply contained in reservoirs strapped to their backs was in working order.

Communication save by signs and tapping the metal head-gear was now out of the question. One after another the four entered the air-lock in which only a feeble electric lamp was burning. The water-tight door was closed. There was no need to secure it, for the pressure of the admitted water would quickly jamb it immovably against the bulkhead.

Then Cain opened a valve, admitting a steady flow of sea-water at high pressure. In less than a minute the pirate captain and his companions were immersed, the water thrusting strongly against their rubbered canvas suits and at the same time relieving the wearers of the hitherto handicapping weight of their leaden-soled boots and of the lumps of metal suspended from their corselets.

The light went out, apparently by the pressure of the water against the comparatively fragile bulb. For a few moments Cain fumbled for the locking gear that held the exterior door in position; found it and wrestled with the recalcitrant door. At last it swung open, revealing a greenish haze—the sunlit water at ten fathoms beneath the surface.

One by one the men made their way through the open door in the hull of the Alerte, the pirate captain being the last to leave his ship, and trod on the hard, sandy bottom of the bay. Their first instinct was to put as great a distance as possible between them and the doomed submarine in the least possible time, for at any moment might come a tremendous explosion that would destroy them in an instant. It required all the will-power at their command to follow their captain as he felt his way along the bilge-keel of the submerged vessel. To increase their alarm the water overhead was continually darkened by swiftly-moving objects, while occasionally hideously dismembered portions of what had once been their comrades sank slowly, to be followed in their descent by enormous sharks. Captain Cain and his companions had little difficulty in guessing at the fate of several of the mutineers.

At length the four survivors arrived at the starboard quarter of the Alerte. Twenty feet above their heads they could discern the outlines of the whaler—a steel-built boat from which a plate with the quick-flooding device had been surreptitiously removed and retained by the bo’sun just previous to the Alerte’s last submergence.

A wire rope trailed overside, its flake resting on the bottom. Seizing it, one of the men swarmed up with surprising ease, clambered over the gunwale and tripped the releasing gear. The whaler with the man in it dropped gently to the floor of the lagoon.

The boat was eighteen feet in length, built of pressed galvanised steel sheets, and provided with hermetically-sealed air-chambers that, although insufficient to impart buoyancy, reduced the dead weight of the submerged craft to about forty pounds. This provision had been made in order to maintain as nearly as possible the Alerte’s metacentric height whether submerged or otherwise; and Captain Cain thanked his lucky stars for the foresight that was now reaping its reward, but in a different manner to that originally intended.

Davidge and Cross lifted one end of the whaler, one on either side of the bow thwart; Captain Cain and the bo’sun took the almost negligible weight of the after-end, and as quickly as their somewhat impeded movement would allow the four set off towards the shore—a distance of about half a mile.

The firm sandy bottom made good going. It was not uniformly shelving. In places there were depressions, in others submarine mounds that approached within three fathoms of the surface. Cain, as he occasionally checked his course by means of a luminous compass, realised that if the British cruiser had carried a seaplane, their chances of escape would have been minimised almost if not quite to zero. In places there were dense patches of weed and kelp which had to be avoided. Fortunately these grew in comparatively small and isolated groups, but had they stretched in long lines parallel with the beach it would have entailed long and possibly fruitless efforts to attempt to hack a way through the barrier of tenacious marine growth.

On and on the four plodded with their burden, expecting every moment to hear the terrific explosion that was to give the Alerte her coup de grâce, and perhaps to be hurled on their faces by the surge of violently displaced water. According to Cain’s calculation they were already beyond the effective limit of the expected depth-charge, but the possibility of being severely shaken was still to be taken into account.

Almost at every step fishes of weird aspect darted frantically away at the approach of the unusual apparition. Gigantic crab, pausing at first to contemplate an onslaught or a possible victim, scuttled sideways for safety, leaving behind them a trail of stirred-up sand. Eels too, distorted by the water, glided to and fro, showing more daring than the rest of the submarine denizens of the lagoon.

Yet there was a noticeable absence of sharks. Although these fearsome creatures will hesitate to attack a diver, possibly on account of the huge and distorted appearance of the man in his copper helmet, they have been known to put up a terrible fight. The four men were thankful that no sharks did appear; but they knew that not so very far behind them a ghastly tragedy was being enacted in which easily-gotten food was the factor that had relieved them of the monster’s presence.

The bed was now shelving rapidly. The depth had decreased to a maximum of three fathoms. Only a short distance separated the fugitives from the beach, and up till now no explosion had taken place.

A fresh situation was thereby created. It wanted but an hour to sunset, but the rays of the setting orb were shining straight on to the shore, while the avenging cruiser would be silhouetted against the light. It was, consequently, a highly risky business for Captain Cain and his companions to emerge from the water. As likely as not their burnished copper helmets would be detected from the ship the moment they broke surface. Their only chance, short of remaining submerged until after sunset, was to attempt to find the mouth of a small river which Cain had previously noted. It flowed into the lagoon by means of a right-angled channel, the seaward side of which was screened by a ledge of rocks covered with reeds; but in the circumstances this shelter required some finding. They might easily miss it and perhaps skirt the coast in the opposite direction in a vain attempt to strike the bed of the stream.

At last the depth decreased to one and a half fathoms. It was inadvisable to proceed nearer in-shore. Cain decided that if direction had been fairly maintained during the submarine walk, the mouth of the river ought to be to the right.

It would have been a simple matter to wait until dark. There was an ample reserve of air in each of the reservoirs. But to Captain Cain inaction was almost unbearable. He was always fretting to be up and doing. Possessed of super-abundant energy, the ability to do without sleep for sixty hours at a stretch and to feel no ill-effect from it, and a restless disposition, he refused to take the simple path and wait. He wanted, if possible, to witness the destruction of the submarine upon which he had built his hopes of untold wealth—hopes that had crumpled to dust leaving him worse off than before.

A shipless, homeless fugitive, possessing nothing of material value but the diving-dress and the few things in his possession, Cain might well be forgiven if he had chucked up the sponge. The pirate captain had been cast in a stern mould. He realised that he was alive when almost every one else would consider him to be as dead as mutton. Not only alive; he stood a fair chance of going on living; and that qualification he considered to be half the battle. He meant by sheer grit and determination to win through and retrieve the disaster of his previous venture.

Although by no means a vindictive man, he smiled grimly when he thought of the fate of his partner, Paul Pengelly. He had distrusted the man from the very first.

“Hang it all!” he soliloquised. “Give me a fellow who can smile decently and not have a perpetual grin on his face like a sea-sick monkey. Well, Pengelly’s goose is cooked anyway. Either he’s food for shark or else he’s in the cells. There’s one satisfaction, I shan’t have to wring his neck, the double-faced swine!”

Signing to his companions to slue the boat round, Captain Cain shaped a fresh course parallel, as he hoped, to the beach. Before the party had traversed a hundred yards they found the sand giving place to black slime. By this time the sun’s rays were so oblique that the bed of the lagoon was almost in darkness.

Davidge and Cross hesitated. They had struck the soft patch before the skipper and the bo’sun. Finding themselves in danger of becoming stuck in the ooze they dropped their burden.

The captain signed to his “opposite number” to stand easy, and made his way to where the two seamen were held up. He, too, went ankle-deep in the tenacious mud, but the discovery did not in the least cause him any anxiety. On the contrary, it indicated that he had found the object of his quest—the mouth of the stream.

Signing to Cross to take his place aft, Cain grasped the bow gunwale, and as soon as the others had taken up their share of the burden the party set off keeping to the edge of the well-defined mud. In another five minutes the captain found his helmet was only a few inches below the surface and that the sun was right in front of him instead of behind as hitherto. They were safely inside the mouth of the river.

Still exercising the strictest caution the men emerged, dragging the whaler until its snout was out of water. Then, standing in a ring, each diver unscrewed the observation window in the other’s head-dress and removed the helmet.

On taking his bearings, Cain found that the party was screened from observation by the ridge of rocks which rose nearly twenty feet above the surface of the lagoon on one side and the muddy river on the other. Smartly he was divested of his diving-dress, and without waiting for the others climbed stiffly up the irregular wall of rock. Quick to take advantage of cover he made no attempt to stand, but, throwing himself flat upon the summit of the ridge, carefully parted the tall grass and reeds that obstructed his outlook.

What he saw did not surprise him, although it caused intense interest. The cruiser Canvey was under way, but instead of making seawards—which she would almost certainly do had her mission been accomplished—she was steaming slowly and almost bows on to the spot where the fugitives had taken refuge. At about a cable’s length from her bows (although from Captain Cain’s point of view it was difficult to estimate the distance correctly) floated a barrel on which was a staff with a square of bunting that hung listlessly in the motionless air. The pirate captain knew that the buoy marked the resting-place of the Alerte.

“She’s not done in yet, sir,” remarked Barnard, who had taken off his diving-suit and had just taken up a position a few feet from his captain.

“No,” replied Cain shortly. “And don’t flatten the grass down like that. We’ll be spotted if you aren’t careful.”

“Very good, sir,” replied the bo’sun, and relapsed into silence.

Standing out boldly and darkly against the setting sun, the Canvey approached yet nearer to her unseen victim and increased speed. A heavy object leapt from her poop and struck the water, throwing up a shower of foam. The cruiser, starboarding helm, was rapidly turning to port when a tremendous upheaval of water was followed by the vibrating roar of the explosion of the depth-charge. The hitherto placid waters of the lagoon were violently agitated, miniature rollers breaking on the beach almost at the foot of the captain of the destroyed pirate submarine as if to bear tidings of the loss to the redoubtable Cain. Even the reeds swayed in the rush of displaced air following the concussion.

Barnard gave a sidelong glance at his superior officer. Not a muscle of Captain Cain’s face twitched. With set jaw and unflickering eyelids he remained motionless—thinking, scheming.

A minute or so later the pirate skipper broke the silence.

“They’re not wasting much time,” he observed. “Apparently they’re sending down a diver to make certain. . . . Well, Barnard, they won’t find pieces of us.”

The bo’sun nodded soberly.

“Think they’ll send ashore to have a look round, sir?” he inquired.

“Might,” admitted the captain. “If so, we’ll have to make ourselves scarce and leave no tracks. But I fancy they’re in a bit of a hurry. . . . Now, you men! Be careful. The light’s playing right on us.”

They waited and watched; saw the diving-party descend, reappear. Then the boats were hoisted up and turned in, and the Canvey, gathering way, swung about and headed for the entrance to the lagoon. A quarter of an hour later she was swallowed up in the rapidly growing darkness.