Читать книгу Mystery Island - Percy Francis Westerman - Страница 4

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It had been a man once—this shrunken relic of humanity. Most of the flesh had already disappeared from the skull; what remained had been blackened by long exposure to the tropical sun and the salt-laden breezes. Beneath the frayed sleeves of a tattered shirt projected the clenched and skeleton-like hands. The feet were encased in ancient canvas shoes, through which projected the toes of the luckless seaman. For seaman he evidently had been, judging by the serge trousers and leather belt. In a sheath attached to the latter was a bone-handled knife. Round the waist of the corpse was a rope that, bent to the remains of the mast, was knotted over the man’s chest by means of a reef-knot.

Curiously enough the man’s head had not fallen forward on his chest. It remained erect and immovable, the sightless eyes staring—that was the impression they gave—straight at the crew of the whaler. Each seemed to be the object of the dead man’s gaze.

“I say!” exclaimed Chris in awe-struck tones. “What’s to be done?”

“Done?” echoed Alec sharply, for the “thing” was beginning to get on his nerves. “Done—carry out orders, of course. Take a turn with the painter there. Make sure you are making fast to something secure. The raft looks a bit rotten. That’s right.”

Stepping over the thwarts to the bows, Alec leapt nimbly to the raft. It dipped under his weight, but promptly recovered its trim. There was plenty of buoyancy left in spite of its long immersion.

The others followed with decided reluctance. Theirs was a distasteful job, and the best way to do it, they decided, was to hurry up and get it done.

“See what’s in his pockets, Alec,” suggested Curtiss.

“Look yourself,” replied his chum with asperity.

Without hesitation, Brian turned out the man’s trousers pockets. Both were empty.

“Doesn’t help us much,” he remarked. “Now for that chest.”

He pointed to a small mahogany sea-chest placed against the raised breastwork. At each end were “beckets” of tarred rope, through which lashings had been rove to secure the chest to the raft.

The hinges were stiff with rust. The lid creaked as Curtiss threw it back. Within were two files, a hatchet, a small saw, a ball of tarred twine, an old clay pipe, and an empty tobacco-pouch. The tools were red with rust, the twine and pouch sodden with salt water.

“Not much there,” commented Chris.

“No; it makes me wonder why the fellow went to the trouble to lash the chest to the raft. No; don’t touch them. They aren’t worth taking away.”

“Perhaps some one’s been here before us,” suggested Alec. “I shouldn’t be surprised if there hadn’t been two men, survivors from some wrecked craft. They quarrelled over something—perhaps money, brought off in the sea-chest—and one murdered the other.”

“Then what’s happened to the other chap?” asked Curtiss. “If he had been rescued, the people who picked him up must have known he had killed the other fellow.”

Alec shook his head.

“Probably he was almost starved to death, and threw himself off the raft to end it all. There’s no sign of any food or fresh water. Goodness knows. Stranger things happen at sea. Well, let’s be getting back, or Durnford’ll make it hot for us.”

“I say——” began Chris.

“What?” asked his chum.

“This poor fellow—we can’t leave him like this,” continued Alderson slowly.

“ ‘Spose not,” agreed Alec. “We ought, by rights, to ask the Old Man for instructions.”

“We can semaphore,” remarked Brian, “but it’s too far off for us to read the reply. We haven’t a telescope. And it’s no use for the Old Man to hoist a signal. There’s no wind.”

“That’s a fact,” agreed Alec. “The best thing we can do is to row back to the ship. It’ll mean another pull to the raft and back for us, but I don’t mind that, if only—— Look out, you fellows!”

He pointed hurriedly in the direction of the Cosmos. From no great distance, apparently, came a shrill, hissing sound. It was the all-too-brief warning of the approach of the dangerous white squall.

Often with a velocity of a mile a minute, the white squall hurls itself out of a clear and hitherto peaceful sky. Unaccompanied by rain or clouds, the white squall is heralded only by the shriek of the wind, the noise travelling five times as quickly as the actual blast of air.

The others heard the sound. Instinctively the three looked in the direction of the ship. Even as they did so they saw the Cosmos, taken aback by the furious squall, heel over on her beam-ends.

For a few long-drawn-out seconds they could see the storm-lashed water foaming and flying in sheets over the capsized hull. Then, with appalling suddenness, the ship disappeared from sight. The last glimpse the lads had of her was her fore-rigged t’gallant sail and her main skysail as, in her plunge to the bed of the Pacific, the ill-fated vessel temporarily recovered from her heel.

Already the rapidly-advancing line of foam-flecked water was bearing down upon the raft. Alec, the first to be alive to the imminent peril, grasped his chums and shouted.

“Into the boat with you! Look nippy, there!”

The three leapt into the whaler. Brian was about to cast off the painter when Alec yelled to him to belay.

“Out oars and get to lee’ard of the raft!” he ordered. “Look alive. It’s our only chance.”

Curtis and Alderson obeyed promptly. Already three months in the Cosmos had installed into them a sense of discipline. Instinctively they realised that Alec’s orders, by virtue of his seniority, had to be carried out smartly; yet as they urged the heavy whaler into the position to lee’ard of the raft, they wondered at their chum’s seemingly cold-blooded indifference to the fate of their shipmates, many of whom might well be struggling for dear life in the angry sea. Surely, they thought, Alec ought to have made an attempt to row to the rescue of possible survivors.

But the senior apprentice had already thought out the situation. To attempt to pull the heavy whaler dead in the eye of the squall would have been an impossible task. Even fully manned the boat would not have been able to make headway. With only two oars she would be swept to lee’ard like a cork, with the additional and almost certain risk of being thrown broadside on and swamped by the furious waves.

On the other hand, by riding to lee’ard of the heavy raft the whaler’s drift would be tremendously reduced; while the raft itself would act as a floating breakwater. And since white squalls are rarely of long duration, there might be a fair chance of pulling to the scene of the Cosmos’ disappearance in the ensuing calm and picking up any survivors.

Suddenly the vanguard of the squall swept down upon the boat. The whaler was blown quite thirty feet to lee’ard before the painter took up the strain. Fortunately the rope was almost new and therefore sound, and had been properly bent to the raft. As it was, the painter tautened like a bow-string with a jerk that shook the boat from stem to stern.

Crouching in the bottom-boards, the three lads had momentary glimpses of the triangular raft lifting and dipping as wave after wave swept over it. Spray dashed in heavy clouds completely over the whaler, but of green water hardly a drop came inboard.

The noise of the wind and the thunder of the now menacing waves upon the raft was terrific. It was impossible for any one to hear a word. Not that any of the three members of the whaler’s crew spoke. All they could do was to keep as far beneath the plunging gunwales as possible, and hang on like grim death to prevent themselves being thrown violently against thwarts and side-benches each time the sorely-tried painter tautened with a disconcerting jerk.

In about three-quarters of an hour the wind dropped almost as suddenly as it had sprung up, and before long the sea subsided considerably, although there was what seamen term “a tidy lop on.”

The raft still held, but the mast and its grisly burden had vanished. The remainder of the low breastwork had also been swept away, but the sea-chest remained, held fast by its securing lashings.

“Cast off!” ordered Alec.

The painter was unbent and the oars were manned. This time Alec relieved Chris, who in turn took the tiller.

Although the sea was still considerably agitated, the whaler rode the waves like a duck. But the search for survivors was unsuccessful. Beyond a couple of gratings, a chicken-coop, and a brass-treaded ladder, there was hardly any wreckage.

So suddenly had the Cosmos capsized that the watch below had not had the ghost of a chance, while those on deck had no doubt been trapped under the press of canvas and taken down by the sinking ship.

The three chums were the sole survivors. They were in a desperate plight. Far from land, well away from the recognised steamer tracks, almost without water and provisions, their position was hazardous in the extreme.

But, as ever, grit will tell.