THE DERELICT.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXV, Issue 74, 30 March 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DERELICT.

By OUTOLIFPE HYNE.

[Copyright, 1899, by Cutcliffe Hyne.]

"Her cargo'll have shifted," said the third mate, "and when she get that list her people will have,felt frightened and left her." .

"She's a scary look to her, with her yardarms spiking every other sea," said Captain Image, "and her decks like the Bide of a house. I shouldn't care to navigate a craft that preferred to lie down on her beam ends."

"Take this glaas, sir, and you'll see the lee quarter boat davit tackles are overhauled. That means they got at least one boat in the water. To my mind, she's derelict."

"I hope her crew have got to dry land somewhere, poor beggars," said Captain Image. "Nasty things, those old wind jammers, Mr. Strake. Give me steam."

"But there's a pile of money in her still," said the third mate, following up his own thoughts. "She's an iron ship, and she'll ba 2,000 tons good. Likely enough in the Frisco grain trade.''

"And you're thinking she'd he a nice plum if -we could pluck her in anywhere?" said Image, reading what was in his mind. "Well, me lad, I know that as well as you, and no one would be pleaseder to pocket £300. But the old M'poso's a mailboat, and because she's got about a quarter of a hundred weight of badly spelled letters on board, she can't do that sort of salvage work if there's no life saving thrown in as an extra reason. Besides, we're behind time, as it is, with smelling round for so much cargo, and though I shall draw my 2% per cent on that I shall have it all to pay away again and more to boot in fines for being late. No, I tell you it isn't all sheer profit and delight in being skipper on one of these west African coast boats."

Strake drummed at the white rail of the bridge. He was a very young isian, and he was very keen on getting the chance of distinguishing himself, and here on the warm windless swells abeam the chance seemed to sit beckoning him. "I've been thinking, sir, if you could lend me half a dozen men I could take her in somewhere myself."

"I'm as likely to lend you half a dozen angels. Look at the deckhands; look at the sickly trip this has been. We've had to put some of them on doubis tricks at the wheel already, and as for getting any painting done or having the ship cleaned up a bit, why, I can see we shall go into Liverpool as dirty as a Geordie collier. Mr. Strake, if you have a penn'oth of brains stowed away anywhere, I wish to whiskers you'd show 'em sometimes."

"Old man's mad at losing a nice lump of ■• salvage^" thought Strake. "Natural, I guess." So he said quietly, "_4je ; ave,_sir," and walked to the other end of the britlge.-" -

Captain Image followed him hair way, but stopped irresolutely with hi§ hand on the engine room telegraph. On the fore main deck below him his old friend Cap&in Owen Kettle was leaning ca th® rail, staring wistfully at the derelict: . » •'•

"Poor,, beggar!" Image mused. i" JTisn!t, hard to guess what he'a thinking about. I wonder if I could fix it for him to take her home. It might set him on his legs again, and he's come low enough, Lord knows. If 1 liads't given him a room in the first class for old time's sake, he'd have had to go home as a distressed seaman and touched his cap to me when I passed. I've not done badly by him, but I shall have to pay for that room in the first class out of my own pocket, and if he was to tako that old wind jammer in somewhere he'd fork out and very like give me a dash besides. Yes, I will say that about Kettle—he's honest as a barkeeper and generous besides. He's a steamer s&ilor, of course, and has been most of these years, and how he'll do the white wings business again Lord only knows. Forget he hasn't got engines till it's too late and then drown himself probably. However, that's his palaver. Where we're going to scratch him up a crew from's the thing that bothers me. Well, we'll see." He leaned down over the upper bridge rail and called:

"Here a minute, captain!" Poor Kettle's eye lit, and he came up the ladders with a boy's quickness. Image nodded toward tbe deserted vessel. "Fine full rigger, hasn't she been? What do you make her out for?"

"Frisco grain ship. Stuff the bulk, and it's shifted."

"Looks that way. Have, you forgotten all your, mainsail haul and the Square rig gymnastics ?"

"I'm hard enough pushed now to remember the theory sums they taught at navigation school if I thought they would serve me."

"I know, and I'm as sorry for you, captain, as I can hold. But, you see, it's this: I'm short of sailormen; I've barely enough to steer and keep the decks clean—anyway I've none to epare."

"I don't ask for fancy goods," said Kettle eagerly. "Give me anything with hands on it—apes, niggers, stokers, what you like—and I'll soon teach them their dancing steps. Let me go round and see. I believe I can rake up enough hands somehow."

"Well, you must be quick about it," said Image. "I can only £,ive you five minutes, captain."

Captain Kettle ran down off the bridge arid was quickly out of sight and hard at his quest for volunteers. Captain Image waited a minute, and he turned to his third mate. "Now, my lad, "he said, "I know you're disappointed, but with the other mates sick like they are it's jesfc impossible for me to let you go. If I did, the company would sack me, and the dirty board of trade would probably take away my ticket. So you may as well

do tho kind and help poor old Coppie Kettle. You see-what he's come down to, through no fault of his own. You're young, and you're full to the coamings with confidence. I'm older, and I know that luck may very well get up and hit me, and I'll be wan ting.a helping hand myself. It's a rotten, undependable trade, this sailoring. You might just call the carpenter and get the cover off that smaller lifeboat."

"You think he'll get a crew, then, sir, and not our deckhands?"

"Him? He'll get some things with lega and arras to them if he has to whittle 'em out of kindling wood. It's not that that'll stop Cappie Kettle now, me lad."

Presently Kettle came back.

"Well, captain," he said, "I got a fine crew to volunteer, if you can see your way to let me have them. There's a fireman and a trimmer, both English. There's a third class passenger, a dago of some sort, I think he is, that was a ganger on the Kongo railway; a negro stonemason, and there's Mr. DaytonPhilipps. That'll make a good, strong ship's company."

"Dayton-Philipps!" said Image. "Why, he's an officer in the English army, and he's been some sort of a resident or political thing up in one of those nigger towns at the back there. What's he want to go for?"

"Said he'd come for the fun of the thing."

Captain linage gave a grim laugh. "Well, I think he'll find all the fun he's any use for before he's ashore again. Now, Mr. Strake, hurry with that boat. You're to take charge and bring her back, and, mind, you're not to leave the captain here and his gang aboard if the vessel's too badly wrecked to be safe."

The word was ''hurry." The third mate fended off the boat while Kettle's crew of nondescripts scrambled unhandily down to take their places. The negro etone mason who had been a stowaway refused stubbornly to leave the steamer and so was lowered ignominiously in a bowline, and then, as he still objected loudly that he came from Sa' Leone and .was a free British subject, some one crammed a bucket over his head, amid the uproarious laughter of the onlookers.

Ahead of them the quiet ship shouldered clumsily over the rollers, now gushing down till she dipped her martingale, now swooping up again, sending whole cataracts of water swh'ling along her waist.

The boat was run up cannily alongside and Kettle jumped into the main chains and clambered on board over the bulwarks. "Now, pass up my crew, Mr. Strake," said he.

"I'm coming myself nest, if you don't mind," said the third mate. "Must obey the old-man's orders," he explained as they stood together on the sloping decks. "You heard yourself what he* said, captain.''

"Well, Mr. Mate," said Kettle grimly, "I hope you'll decide she's seaworthy, because whatever view you take of it here I'm going to stay." frowned.. He was a young man, he was~HSfQ-ia_^uthority, and he had a great notion of **mafefߧJhis authority felt. Captain Kettle was to him merely a down en his luck free passage nobody, and as the mate was large and lusty he did not anticipate trouble. So he rather crabbedly that he was going to obey his order, and went aft along the slanting deck.

It was clear that the vessel had been swept, badly swept. Ropes ends streamed here and there and overboard in every direction, and everything movable had been carried away eternally by the sea. But the hatch tarpaulins and the companions were still in place, and, though it was clear from the list-(which was so great that they could not walk without holding on) that her cargo was badly shifted, there was no evidence so far that she was otherwise than sound.

The third mate led the way down to the lazaret hatch. He got his fingers in the ring and pulled it back. Then he whistled. "Half full of water," he said. "I thought so from the way she floated. It's up to the beams down here. Likely enough she'll have started a plate somewhere. 'Fraid it's no go for you, captain. Why, if a breeze was to come on half the side of her might drop out, and she'd go down like a stone."

Now, to Kettle's honor be it said (seeing what he had in his mind),, he did not tackle the man as he knelt there peering into the lazaret. Instead he waited till he stocd up again and then made his statement coldly and deliberately.

"This ship's not too dangerous for me, and I choose to judge. And if she'll do for me, she's good enough for the crew I've got in your boat. Now I want them on deck and at work without any more palaver."

"Do you, by gad 1" said the mate, and then the pair cf them closed without any further preliminaries. They were both of them well -used to quick rough and tumbles, and they both of them knew that the man who gets the first grip in these wrestles usually wins, and instinctively each tried to act on that knowledge. But if the third mate had bulk and strength Kettle had science and abundant wiriness, and, though the pair of them lost their footing on the sloping cabin floor at the first embrace and wriggled over and under like a pair of eels, Captain Kettle got a thumb artistically fixed in the bigger man's windpipe and held it there doggedly. The mate, growing more and more purple, hit out with savage force, but Kettle dodged the brill-like blows like the boxer he was, and the mate's efforts gradually relaxed.

But at. this point they were interrupted. "That wabbly boat was making mo seasick," said a voice, "sol came on board here. Hello, you fellows!"

Kettle looked up. "Mr. Fhilipps," he said, "I wish you'd go and get the rest of our crew on deck out of the boat."

"But w]^Q^^^^^^^^^^^^| there?" "We disag.vec^^^^^^^^^^^^^H judgment. He saic^^^^^^^^^^H and I shouldn't have tffl^^^^^^^^f her home. I say there's noWBBH with her that can't be. remedied, and! home I'm going to take her any way. It may be the one chance in my life, sir, of getting a balance at the bank, and I'm not going to miss it."

"Ho," said Dayton-Philipps. "If you don't liko to come, you need not," said Kettle. "But I'm going to have the stone mason and the dago and those two coal heavers. Perhaps you'd better go back. It will be wet, hard work hero; no v/ay the sort of job to suit a soldier."

Dayton-Philipps flushed slightly, and then he laughed. "I suppose that's intended to be nasty," he said. "Well, captain, I shall have to prove to you that we soldiers are equal to a bit of manual labor sometimes. By the way, I don't want to interfere in a personal matter, but I'd like it as a favor if you wouldn't kill Strake quite. I rather like him."

"Anything to oblige," said Kettle, and he took his thumb out of the third mate's windpipe. "And now, sir, as you've, so to speak, signed on for duty here, away "with you on deck and get those four other beauties np ont of the boat."

Dayton-Philipps touched his cap and grinned. "Aye, aye, sir," he said and went back up the companion.

Shortly afterward he came to report the men on board, and Kettle addressed his late opponent. "Now, look here, young man, I don't want to have more trouble on deck before the hands. Have you hadenough?"

• 'For the present, yes,'' said the "third mate huskily. "But I hope we'll meet again some other day to have a bit of further talk." '

"I'm sure I shall be quite, ready. No man ever accused me of refusing a scrap. But, me Jad, just take one tip from me—don't you go and malce Captain Image anxious by saying this ship isn't seaworthy, or he'll begin to ask questions, and he may get'you to tell more than you're proud about."

"You can go and get drowned your own way. As far as I'm concerned, no one will gness it's coming off till they see it in the papers."

"Thanks," said Kettle. "I knew you'd be nice about it."

The third mate went down to his boat, and the three rowers took her across to the M'poso, where she was hauled up to davits again. The steamer ' s siren boomed out farewells as she got under way again, and Kettle with his own hands unbent the reversed ensign from the ship's main rigging and ran it up to the peak and dipped it three times in salute. He breathed more freely now. One chance and a host of unknown dangers lay ahead of him. But the dangejs he disregarded. Dangers were nothing new to him. It was the chance which lured him on. Chances so seldom came in his way that he intended to make, this one into a certainty if the efforts of desperation could do it. Alone of all the six men on the dereJictCaptain Kettle had knowledge of these3lHfiJllg^£^af t, but for the present thews and not'le^SiHßslup were required. The vessel layin"i?asfeetio fagJP* lessness on her side, liable to capsize in the first squall which came along, and their first effort must be to get her in proper trim while the calm* continued. They pulled away the hatch covers and saw beneath them smooth slopes of yellow grain. - ' ' As though they were an invitation to work, shovels were made fast along the combings of the hatch. The six men

Kettle dodged, and the mate's effort* gradually relaxed.

took these, and with shouts dropped down upon the grain. And then began a period of Homeric toil. The fireman and the coal trimmer set the pace, and with a fine contempt for the unhandiness of amateurs did not fail to give a display of their utmost. Kettle and Dayton-Philipps gamely kept level with them. The Italian ganger turned out to have his pride also and did not lag, and only the freeborn British subject from Sierra Leone endeavored to shirk his dtie proportion of the toil. But high minded theories as to the rights of man were regarded: here as little as threatsto lay information before a justice of the peace, and under the sledge . hammer arguments of shovel blows from whoever happened to be next to him the unfortunate colored gentleman descended to the grade of nigger again and toiled and sweated equally with his betters. "

The heat under the docks was stifling, and dust rose from the wheat in choking volumes, but the pace of the circling shovels was never allowed to slacken. They worked there stripped to trousers, and they understood one and aH that tbey were working for their Irfes. A breeze.had sprung up almost as soon as the M'poso had steamed away, and hourly, it was freshening.