SHORT TALE. IN UNHOLY ORDERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2309, 2 June 1898, Page 42

SHORT TALE. IN UNHOLY ORDERS.

THE MOCK PRIEST AND HIS

WOMEN-MEN.

The chief engineer came slowly up o.n the bridge, and we all turned our heads to look at him. The calm was more than dead — it was buried ; but the boat was doing her 14 or so, and that, by the nature of things meant an artificial 14-knotf breeze in her teeth. Wherefore, if we — a dozen or so of us, and , all tropic-seasoned — could barely draw breath under the murderous temperature of the hottest day any of us remembered during half a dozen years of low latitudes, the temperature of the engine room must — but the skipper didn't leave the matier to imagination. He stuck his head for a moment inside the charthouse door.

" Gosh, Mr Carrick ! " he said then, wiping his mahogany forehead, "if our auld Men' Fahrenheit's no a bit of a liar, lit's a hundred an' eighteen in there ; so, wet your wlmstle, man, an' tell's what in all conscience is the feegure down in your department.-"

The man of steam ought to have been a Scotchman, too, but he was only next-tot — a North of Ireland man of Caledonian descent. He passed his scarred and rugged p£w over his short grime- darkened beard, reached for the whisky bottle and a gla-^, paused in the act of pouring out a caulker, and looked over at Father Ducasse.

" What might the temperature of hell be?" he sai<? gruffly; and the skipper frowned. Although, as a good J-'resbv-terian, he had doubtless little enough prejudice- in favour -of the " Scarlet Woman," he was naturally too wide-hearted an old cock not to have fallen, like the rest of us, under the peculiar charm of the courtly French clergyman's manner. " Because, '_' went on Carrick, between gulps, "if it's not much above a hundred and Mty, I tske it that Sandy Carrick might as well be there as here. In your engine room at the present moment," Captain Macfarlane, the glass stands at one — hundred — and — forty — seven ! " He absorbed the last drops, took a sheroot from the box, and solemnly descended to his inferno again.

The priest crossed his alpaca-clad legs, stroked with a long white hand the shaven blue of his cheek, and laughed gently. " Our good friend," he said softly, "'s un pea difficile — deefecoolt, you call"; but he is all ze same — vot is * your English phrase? Tiens ! — von rough diamond ! " " Ye're no far wrang there, Faither," the skipper agreed. " Sandy Carriek's no exac'ly an acquiseetion to polite society, but a better engineer never stepped on a footplate ; and — the old man swept his little eye aloft and down again, ahead and astern — " I'm much mistaken if there isn't somethin' brewin' that'll call for all himsel' an' his engine gear can get awa' wi' ! " . I stood up and looked all around. The haze that an hour ago had only dimmed the outline of the vast sea circle had closed in now to half-diameter or less ; the sky above had settled down, solid, in a greenish-black roof that seemed almost to touch our mastheads ; dead ahead there was a swift occasional flicker of faint violet light, and at the instant I turned an inquiring eye upon the skipper, there stole upon the ear, from far awa}', -a long,- slight sound of that extreme profundity that" might -almost be described as silence inaudible.

Macfarlane nodded. "Ay, lad— that's it, sure enough — an' a tickler at that ! But we ll no get it for half an hoor yet." Everybody understood except Father Ducasse.

" Yon starrm, is it? "he asked. " Unouragan ? " The word was sufficiently like the English term to let Macfarlane understand. "■ Ay, stion/' he saicL as.ke locked anxiously

to where a couple of score of white clad Atchin womer were squatted on the iorecastle head like gulls on a rock. " A hurricane, right enough ; an' a doni'd wicked one, even for these latitudes, if I'm no san mistaken. So," and the skipper waved his han'J towards the brown women forward, " the sooner ye get yere chairge under cover the better sir; am goin' to snug-doon the vaissel, an' the weemen-folk '11 be in the way, ye ken."

The "' weemin-folk " — about fifty of them — were converts to Christianity going down to Gamarang under the care of the good Pere Ducasse, to be formally received into the bosom of the. Catholic Church. That's what they had shippedat Atchln as, at all events ; but Carrick, for some reason which he couldn't explain, had grown suspicious about our urbane clerical passenger and his dusky flock.

' It may be all right enough," he had said to the skipper j " bii£ there's no harm in bein' on the safe side ; an' if I was you, sir— bearin' in mind we have two hundred thousand dollars in the hooker — I'd jusfc clap the whole caboodle, of -j'ellowskins under the hatches till we get under the guns of' Fort Kuimper "

"What? — a paircel o' weemenT Gae >a "wi ye mon ! " the skipper had answered. " D'ye think, A want ta mak' mysel' a laifenstock frae Singapore to Sourabaya? "

Closer in upon us moved the palpitating wall of haze, and, as the awnings were being taken in fore and aft, here and there a huge^ raindrop splashed to the size of a crownpiece black upon the 'heat -baked deck. The uncanny sky reflections shifted their colours, so that while we upon the bridge caw on each other's faces a lurid coppery glare, uprni everything forward of the main natch rested a ghastly tint of green, until a sudden spear of flame — intensely violet by contrast — leaped fiercely at us from the zenith, an 'l, with a crash that shook the ash from the cheroots, the overture to "El Tornado " commenced.

'■ Best get below, gentlemen," the skipper said, bristling up to meet his ancient en,emy, " or in a couple o' cracks yell hae a wee bit mair breeze than yell hae ony use for." " One word, Captain Maefarlane." We all started at the sudden transformation of the French priest's mincing jargon into strong and facile English. "What do you intend to do? Run for it?"

" Rin for it ! Nae fear, mon ! The only thing ta do in sic a blow as Am expecting is to steam full speed into the teeth o' it — an' then, as like as no, we'll do nae mair than hauld oor am ! "

"I should advise you to run back for Gokrar Island. .It's not more than fifty " "Off the bridge, sir, this instant I Wha are ye, tae advise " • " Off the bridge, yourself, you d d old fool ! " and out of the priest's cassock came swiftly a pair of heavy six shooters. A moment's astounded pause — Macfarlane dashed towards the charthouse for his own revolver— dropped on the threshhold with ■■■■ bullet thimigh his skull — and then, at tinsound of the shot, a demoniacal yelling out-^ out forward and the Atehinese passengt : - came running aft — not women, but men aud in every fierce right hand a kris .' " Case of loot, by God ! " shouted b'g Starbury, as he dropped himself from tlio bridge by the hands, and in like fashion Unrest of us followed on the instant, and rusiicl to our cabins for arms, but as I dashed «»»t again with a Winchester, I saw that the Lascar crew had been already swept out of existence. The deck was littered with figures blue and red — dungaree and lifeblood ! — and one miserable wretch, who ha.l been passing storm-grips round a midship boat, still clung with stiffened fingers to tha gunwale, though his entrails actually hung from the hideous kris gash in his abdomen A sharp crackle of firing, a fall of two, and the white .clad devils were amongst us! I remember only a mixture of shots anj shouts and smoke and thuds and curses — a sharp dart of pain along my right side — a fierce head 'blown to pieces at the very muzzle of my rifle. Tiien !

A noise as if the universe had burst asunder blotted out all other sounds, and away Aye all went into the lee scuppers — white, black, and brown together — as the vessel heeled suddenly over under the tremendous inpact of the tornado. Had it struck us fairly abeam, indeed, I believe it would have been Davy Jones for the lot of us, and even as it was — stiff though sne" was for a steamer — the Timor Laut lay for a full minute with the water pouring in upon as over the lee rail in a torrent. Inch by inca then the stout old hooker began to force herself up again, and I could see by the bunding lightning that the first mate, the white boatswain, and Starbury were having all that three immensely powerful men could do in fighting the wheel over to get her head to wind. Then suddenly came Olankness. I had been bleeding freely, though I didn't know it, from the kris thrut that Jiad just scored along my right ribs, and irom what I learnt afterwards, about ten minutes must have passed before I came to. When 1 dll 1 was again under a cataract of water, but this time fresh and from the clouds, for the vessel was upon a tolerably even keel again ; and, as I understood that she must now hare her sharp nose to work, it was with a tnrob of thankfulness I bethought me that, though the boat was no chicken, her engines were nearly spick-span new, and had a topnotcher like Carrick behind them. Then the thought of the sour-visaged Ulsterman reminded me that he had been right, after all, about this bogus priest and his precious converts.

Painfully and slowly I worked my way from where I had somehow gob jammed under some wreckage ; I couldn't make out where I was until I had half raised myself in tlie lee of the condensing house. Then, by the lightning — blinding even through the curtain of the bucketing rain— l saw that what had lain upon me was part of the wreckage of about 20ft of the starboard -bulwarks — carried away probably by sheer weight of wind as she came lip to it, for there was practically no sea. Under that desperate rush of atmosphere the water was actually powerless to break up from the level smother point of the compass. Of the enemy I could see no sign, until, as I was cautiously crawling aft — to walk erect was absolutely impossible — I struck my head against 'something .whioli sres sfto it had no business

to be; andi which the next flash shoAved tobe the pig pen, swept from, abaft the galley, and smashed open against the after cargo derrick. The porkers presumably had gone to sea an their own account, but inside their deserted domicile I placed my hand on something soft and warm, like , a human body. .This I dragged with difficulty out, and when the next flash lent to it a quivering blue illumination, I saAV that it was " Father Ducasse " — insenible or dead. " Just as well for him if he's cooked ; the bullet's no worse than the rope," I told myself, as I crawled r&uud towards the ca.ptain"s cabin on the starboard side of the break of the poop. The door had e been burst in, and as the awful darkness Avas noAT beginning to let up on us a bit, .1" was able without the aid of the lightning ,to reach the poor man's bottle rack and take such a swig of his prime Scotch <js I-shouldn't have liked to venture on hi less urgent circumstances. It was new life ; and, as I could tell by the strenuous thumping of the screw and the steadiness of the deck that the vessel was still fighting dead up-wind, I took a few minutes to collect my scattered wife, and review the situation. The tremendous rain had! slackened a good deal ; the light was fasst increasing ; and,

a- fa though- the weight and uproar rA the win/I was as terrific 'as -ever, I Knew that the boat —kept at it as she was nc«r — was in little danger, if nothing went amiss with, the engine.

Well, the mock priest and his women-men had been after the dollars, that was certain. " Would have had them, all right, too," T thought, "if this hurricane business hadn't forced the reverend buccaneer's hand. When he found poor Man wouldn't run back so as to bring us amongst that devil's nest >jf islands about Gokrar, 'I suppose he determined to make sure of the spoil before wo took" the chances of fighting straight into the tornado." That AY.as all I could make of it. anyfiow ; and I knew that if, as ' I suspected, the surviving yellow cut-throats had intrenched themselves in the quarters of the slaughtered Lascars, Aye were still very c ar from being through with the contract. The light iwas now good enough to let m.3 see our three Titans still Avrestling with the Avheel, and by the aid of the good liquor I had swalloAved I managed, after a five muiutes v - struggle, to get to them with the bottle and let them snatch a tot in turns.

"What's become of the other Ghaps? yelled into Starbury's ear.

■' In the house for'ard," he baAvled, " keeping guard over the fo' castle."

I nodded. It was, then, as I supposed, and 'I made for the saloon to get a Aveapon, for my rifle had disappeared. In the saloo'i T found it, hoAverer, bioAvn. in thither by the resistless blast that had burst "in the doors and piled up at the after-end all tbe furniture and fittings in a heap of hopeless ruin, apiungst Vhich -were three dead bodies, also h'oAvn hither fxoin where they had fallei. Two of them were Lascars, and the other an Atchinese Avith the top of his skull shat-ki-fid away. I shuddered as I looked- at him ;• he might have been, the mau the "muzzle of my Winchester had been touching Avhen I fired.

But there Avas no time for sentiment. The stock of the rifle was so badly damped that I<had to get my little Web'ley out of my cabin, and, as the wind was now sensibly abating, I was able to get forward without much, difficulty.. There I Avas warmly greet id by- the rest, who thought I had been sweai Qverboard.

" Poor Bulgiu's lost the number of hr& mess, though!" said Long Latimer " With the captain, that makes two ; and some of the rest of us, as you see, have got bits- of scratches. 'Latimer's own " bit at a scratch " \ras a stab through the thigh that afterwards aU but cost him the leg, but nevertheless, as an old Indian Irregular, he now took charge of the situation. • "No good rushing the devils," he said. " There's a goad three dozen of 'em left, aai those d — d krises are just- the thing for close quarters. What we've got to do is just to watch and watch until o>r,e of two things happens. Either they'll die of thirst where they are, or they'll mike a sally and get duly potted." "There's a terbium quid." said old Tonics. "Things much more likely to Happen than either of the others."

Old Tonks was yellow and smoke-dried and " eou.tradictori.ous." We didn't like old To»k§ ; but as he had' been eight-and-thirty years in. Java he probaT>ly knew what he wan talking about. He Avagged the end of his everlasting cheroot in tha corner of vis moutli.for half a miuute before 'he spoke. "Kb.ow much, .a.ny of you, about these Atrhm Javanese? " _

. " Oh, yes. The ' English of the Archipelago ' and all that»" Lattimer said. .. ' An' divil a much that's sayiu" for 'em, anyhow ! " put in little red-headed Hartigan. " But they belted the sowl oub ov the measly Dutchmen for waa thiag — more power to 'eon.! " 1 "Ah ! You Philanders can't forgive the nation that produced the man "who ' belted the sowls ' out of you — supposing you ha'vj any ! But about our yellow friends in the fo'caatle, my advice is to let 'em stew in their own gravy till one of 'em gets amok, which is pretty "sure to happen before long." " "By. George I " said Latimer, " I nevsr thought of that. And then? " " Oh, that'll start the circus. The araokker wjil kill two or three before he gets killed himself, and the rush, to settle him will start the blood-madness in two or. three more,, and then,, in half a minute, like fiax taking fire,, the whole, pack, will be pig-stick-ing e,ach other for all they're worth- Wa may ha.ye. at wounded maji oi* two tajmxick on the. head afterwards, but otJi.erwi&e we needn't lift a- finger.."' „ The aoIdL-hLfoded. old savage cackled as. h,e Et a. fjcesh. cheroot,, and Latiiner loo.ked a liitla disgusted 1 . "I skp-B-oaa it's, tie hast way," he s.aid.-. *^but I won't have any ' knocking on- b'he head.' Any survivors must be kept for " "The. rope!:" put in Tonka.. "Not much kiiidnegs in that ! . And, by the wayv w.hafc"s become of their spiritual father? I saw nothing; of the hoty man after, he. sfto.t the skipper." " He's lying aft," I said. "Dead, j .think."

" C lonje with me," Latimer said, "we'll make sure.,"

T helped him. to, sfcaggsc sih; if>n- fche sea •bad gob up as- the wukJ went dtown, and, the tressei's pitching was now tremendous*

The mock priest was obviouly dead enough, though what had killed him we couldn't make out, until we propped the body up againt the mainmast to examine the pockets- "By George ! " then said Latimer, when he saw the pecxiiiar hang of the head, " his neck's brokan ! The hur icane has taken the hangman's job from, him ! What the devil, is that?" A sndden burst of broken yelling came down the wind, and we got forward again as. fast as we could. The yelling had ceased as quickly as it had arisen, and from within the forecastle came a hideously significant sound of scuffling, and doll strokes, and groans, and gasps, and thuds against the bulkheads. Some of us shuddered to think of the hellish work within, hat Tonks laughed. " L' affaire se range! "he said; "but keep your bullets ready, all the same."

No bullets were needed. Within five minutes there was silence, and with capstanbars we burst open the door. The burly j first mate, who had now come forward, vent I in at once, pi&tolin hand, bub came out j again almost immediately "with his brick-rel j face turned duff colour. *

" Good Lord ! " he said hoarsely, " talk about shambles ! *'

I. felt queer about the stomach, and it was some time before I could force myself to enter. No need to give the horrible details o-f what I saw. Enough" to say that not ont of the prostrate wretches appeared to have life in him; The kri.s does its work effect aally, and, as a matter of fact, when ths bodies were individually examined twentythree out of the twenty-eight were corpses. Of the remaining five, four -were mortally injured, and by the time the storm had blown itself out-* and the Timor Laut was >n her course again, we had left to us but one of the would-be raiders. Out of him we

couldn't get a word, and. as our desperate short-handedness lengthened out the trip a bit, he had time ta get blood poisoning an i die also the day before we made port. Whb " Father Ducasse " really was had not been discovered when T left that part -\f the world, hut many people will remember the Timor Laut affair as an actual occurrauce ; and, for my part, I should be glid if the palpitating horror of it didn't so often, come back upon me in ray dreams. — Alex. i-IONTGOJiEiiy, in the Adelaide Critic.