THE NOVELIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 3430, 9 December 1919, Page 62

THE NOVELIST.

[Published bt Special Aheancemekt.] TEACH.

By C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

(Copyright, 1919, in the United States, by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.) Chapter I. —(Continued.) The convoy, painted in freakish camouflage,- formed up in the sheltered waters of Queenstown Harbour, and ship masters were given sheaves of instructions. Tire name of King Ernestine was being bandied about, though there was nothing in the official orders about him. Captain Teach wanted to know more on the matter, but had a delicacy about putting direct inquiries, because on account of that wretched coal he felt that naval eyes were boring through him from waistcoat buttons to backbone. The eyes of these officers fairly snapped with suspicion. But Captain Teach never lost countenance. He remained the cheerful, competent ship master through it all, in spite of those extra guns and shells under the poal, and the girl behind the manhole door, and the bigamous deserter in his bunker.Only this big black-browed man was beginning to chafe badly at the irritating delay. He had an appointment off one of the Canary Islands, which would not keep. One weakness did he permit himself. He tossed a halfpenny with himself—heads no would go and look at Miss Arncliffe—tails he -would let her stay on where she was. The coin fell heads. To the officer on watch in the engine room ho gave a curt “Clear out of here,” and the pirate engineer, a dull-eyed man of 60, climbed up the steel ladders and disappeared. Then Teach unnutted bolts and swung away a manhole, door. “Phui!” said a girl’s voice from the dark interior. “That' fresh airs tastes good. It’s horribly stuffy in here; you should see to it.- And knobbly. I’ve finished both siphons of lemonade, but one of the tins of sardines you left was bad. You "ought to complain to your grocer.” “I’ll see to that,” said Teach. “Would you like to have further supplies inside that cubby hole, or would you prefer to come out?” “I suppose there are conditions attached to coming out.” “There are. I want your parole that you will do’ exactly as you are told, and not interfere with what is going on in any way whatever.” “And what guarantee have I that you will treat me properly if I«do promise?” “None,” said Teach/ drily. “That’s a delicate thing to admit in Queenstown Harbour, with about a quarter of the British Fleet buzzing round and asking impertinent questions, but I suppose the word Pirate does define my present branch of the profession. So you wilt clearly understand that if you do not behave yourself most exactly, you will be knocked on the*head at once or sooner.” “That is quite clear, thank you. Captain Teach, and as I have no possible other choice, I give you the parole you ask for—during one week. By the end of that I hope you will set me ashore. This place is horribly cramping and smelly. And I think there are rats. Quick! Teach lent a hand, and the girl squeezed out through the n,arro\f man bole .door. Her W.A.A.C. uniform was streaked with gamboge iron rust, and so was her face. Her bobbed hair was clotted with it. Her trim shoes and shapely ankles were rustsmeared as far as one could see. She swayed when Teach had plucked her to her feet. An hour later he came to see her in 'a dark cubby hole of a storeroom which had been fitted with a bunk, a wash basin and a hair brush. He carried a tray of food and a teapot. “It beats conjuring,” he sqid. “the way you women can prink yourselves up out of nothing. Here’s some grub. I can’t stay. Those fussy blighters on the escort may want me on deck any moment.” “You might bring me a novel or something to read.” He looked at her admiringly. “You're a cool one. But- I’m afraid there’s not such a human thing on board. D’ye care for plavs, by any chance?” “Rather keen on them.” “Good.” He pulled a typed manuscript from his pocket. “Here is a thing I came across the other dav. You might tell me what you think of it.” The convoy was a mixed one, of ships making for many ports, and the Littondale’s orders were to keep with it no to a point in the middle of the Bay of Biscay. From there she was to strike west to her South Mexican port. She carried out this programme with exactness, received her signal to part, shifted helm, and steered west to the best of her 13 knots. For a dav she held that course, and was just on the point of altering it for one more conformable with his immediate needs when smoke blotted the horizon dead astern. Captain Teach bit back his orders, and watched an oil-fired destroyer slice up from the direction of Europe at 30 knots. “And now what do you want?” he mused. “Still got that Liverpool-South Welsh coal for Coatzacoalcos on your chest, or has some new bug bit you?” But the destroyer did not open any conversation. She merely circled round the little tramp at outrageous speed, glared at her through prismatic binoculars, and returned whence she had come.

"So that's that," said Captain Teach, and proceeded to make his southing.

Now some time previous to all these happenings 101. King Ernestino hSd received a very unmistakable notice to quit his throne, not only from the Allied powers, but also from a tidy majority of his own faithful subjects. He sailed

from his country's shores in a good deal of a hurry, and told Swiss newspapers that he had left his heart behind there. That may possibly be so. But what gave him considerably more mental worry was the plain fact that he had left also a very warm sum in bullion and American bearer bonds, lacking which he saw prospects of spending a very hard-up old age.

The mere index of King Ernestino's faults would fill several pages; but some of his talents shone, and conspicuous amongst these stood out his. knack for subterraneap diplomacy. Men who know will tell you that there is not a crookeder old rogue in Europe, or one more competent in covering his shifty tracks. So he summoned physicians, who assured the Swiss press that their royal guest was moribund, retired to a dying bed, and got very busy. The generous details of who was bought and who sold who, are beyond the scope of this memoir; but the main fact juts out that the goods were ferried in smelling fishing boats under the noses of a very inquisitive British patrol, and transferred (at sea under cover of night) to a ramshackle old steamboat, which the patrol aforesaid had satisfied itself very completely carried no other cargo beyond currants and lead ore. Thev were carried down the Mediterranean in this venerable craft at a steady six knots .when her engines were in order, and the Navy, which discovered too late what had slipped through, made sure that their .destination was .Spain.

However, King Ernestino felt that the trouble about Spain was not her dubious neutrality, but her.frank dishonesty, about which there was no doubt whatever. So off lvica, in the Balearics, transfer was once more made, this time to- a highpooped Genovese timber barque (which was not entirely manned by mariners from Genoa), and then, taking their several ways, the pair of vessels made for the jut of Gibraltar. Here the Vigilant Navy went through that ancient steamer with the finest mesh in their repertoire, and, of course, found nothing that interested them. The clumsy old barque locking like an Armada ship, -blew through into the Atlantic without being even sniffed at. All of these naval manoeuvres occupied, as you will rightly observe, much time, and in places they-leaked. How Captain Edward Teach smelt out one of these leaks I do not pretend to understand, but the fact remains that he got hold of information that struck him as valuable, and to realise on it he stole the s.s. Littondale, and some of my country's artillery and ammunition, and kidnapped Miss Mary Arncliffe, W.A.A.C., and .took them not to fever-ridden Coatzacoalcos, with tits concrete wharfs and electric cranes, but to the charming old-world isle of Graeiosa, which as you will remember lies just north of Lanzerote, in the Canaries. (The light is on Alegranza, which is just north again. So now you will know it.) There is a snug little harbour between Isla Graeiosa and Lanzerote, "with good holding ground (6-17 f.s. and small shells, sheltered except from south-west, no fresh water), and at one time the island held a baccalhao factory. But-nothing now remains of this except some weathered lumber and the remains of the smell, which even the trade that snores unceasingly over these scraps of land, is powerless to sweep away. It is powerful stuff, that Canary dried fish, and will probably give you leprosy if you indulge your taste in it too far.

The high-quartered Genovese barque creaked into the anchorage, disrobed herself with noise and skill, rounded up, dropped a wooden-stocked relic, and rode to it at the end of thirty fathoms of rustscaled chain. Her crew sat round and scratched themselves, festooned the sunbleached rigging with a rainbow of washing and awaited further orders. For a week they wrang-led, and basked and perfused the trade wind with garlic, and then one morning, just on the tail of dawn, the anchor watch roused them with the news that two steamers were approaching the harbour. Now, one steamer they were expecting. Two wer e embarrassing. After the manner of Eastern Europe, they all talked at once, and gesticulated even more graphically. Some of them even acted. A few ran aloft to loose topsails. A gang of them began to pump at the clumsy windlass and actually shortened in cable by six fathoms before'they thought of something else. But, on the whole, they did nothing' efficient, except to sneak away below, one by one, to put on the best clothes they could find, and to loot anything available.

In the meanwhile the two steamers converged towards the entrance of the harbour. The one coming up from the southward was a well-decked tramp of some 3000 tons, which called herself the Bolshevette and flew a British red ensign, and blatantly showed a considerable armament. The other, which was heading down from the norrard, was half her size. But she was Captain Teach's Littondale, and although newly built deck houses hid most of her armament, the armament was undeniably there, and ex-P.O. Wm. Pickles had seen to it that his gun crews were thoroughly efficient. Captain Teach had a fine repertory of bunting in- his flag locker, but he showed nothing till the Bolshevette fired her first shell —which went over her. Then he broke out the British .Naval white ensign (to which, of course, he had no right whatever), whistled down the sides of his deckhouses, which fell with a clang, and six 6-inch shells hurtled back in reply. It is hard to get shipping lists to-day, and probablly that is why I have failed to discover the Bolshevette on any registry. I do not know who she was (though I may have a sharp suspicion, but I have got to put on record that she showed a gallant fight. Btit the Littondale outshot her. Also she outmanoeuvred her.

I have said already that Teach was a wonderful seaman from the mercantile point of view. But it appeared he had an instinctive genius for the naval side also* He had sandbagged his upper bridge and his £im positions with coal and he was

not in the least squeamish about casualties amongst his crew. "The fewer there are to share, the more there is to divide," is a well-known axiom of all pirates. But he respected the tender skin of the 1700-ton Littondale, and always anticipated his enemy's move the instant before it was made.

After the habit of modern naval battles, the whole action was over and settled inside eight minutes. “Never mind her guns, lay your sights on her boilers,” was Mr Wm. Pickles’s standing order, and his crew toolc their punishment grimly, and carried out instructions. The action began at full range, but Teach’s motto was toujours I’audace, and he closed at the best of his speed. This kept him more or less end on, and because the bigger steamer, after the first bout, headed m for the shelter of the land, she made a fine target. As 1 say, the whole affair was over in very quick time. Then the Littondale was steamed inside the harbour, and after taking from the Genovese barque those thing-s which she bad come for. dealt with her also very thoroughly. After that, and not’ before, the white ensign was struck, and in its place a grim skull and crossbones on a black ground fluttered and snapped in the Trade. The flag was punctiliously saluted by all hands, and thereafter success was drunk to it in moderate tots of whisky. It was an asinine thing- to do, of course, because there is a cable to the outer world from Lanzerote, and even a Canary Spaniard will stir himself enough to send out news occasionally. The only reason I can give for it was Teach’s colossal vanity—and perhaps some throwback taste from his ancestor, Captain Edward Teach the First, what time he sailed the seas as Blackboard. However, there it was, and Mary Arncliffe coming out on • deck looked at the gristly flag, laughed, and presented it with a little bow. “All that noise,”' said she, “to set on fire one little old wooden ship, and think of the size of this.” “If you’d been up here,” said Teach shortly, “ you’d have seen me’sink a big steamer three times the size of the Littondale.” “Many drowned?” He shrugged. “The lot I suppose. I didn’t wait to see. The rum thing is I don’t know what the boat was. She wasn’t British, anyway, as she claimed to be. She wasn’t on the programme. But she chose to interfere, and so she pot it in the neck. That old duck that’s smoking there was my meat. I guess we’ve raked £300,000 out of her.” “Ernestino’s ?’’ “I expect he thought so.” tAn hour later they met again. On the well deck below, the craw were roaring Eong-s and drinking wine looted from- the Genovese though, be it well noted, none these twentieth century pirates were in the least drunk. On the bridge stood Captain Teach, big, dark, and handsome, in the dandified rig of sea evening kit as worn by officers in the tropics. He looked over Mary Arncliffe as she came up from below, and nodded his bead sourly—“ The afterguard dress for dinner on this ship.” “You big black-haired bully,” retorted the girl with a half smile, “my Service uniform is evening dress. Hand me a deck chair at once. I have read through your friend’s play, by the way. It’s the most piffling rubbish I ever put eyes on.” “Ah,” said Teach. “I didn’t think it was up to much myself. “But though he spoke lightly enough, he flushed through hio sallow skin. “Got him,” said the girl to herself. “I knew he wrote it, the murderous brute. Oh my God! help me to keep a brave face, and never let him guess that Lam twittering with fright. “You ought to have gold rings in your ears,” she added aloud, “to make the picture of the Pirate Chief complete. And now you have got you* loot, what are you going to do with it ? Have you thought that out. Captain Teach?” - - But Teach was thinking of a certain Guild of Sailors’ Mothers which would have benefited if that play had been a success. II. —THE COCHINEAL GROWER. “My week’s parole,” wrote Miss Mary Arncliffe in the letter the cochineal grower found in the floating champagne bottle, “my week’s parole ended yesterday,, and Captain Teach has not even asked me to renew it. So I am quite free to tell all I know. “There was some carbon paper downstairs in the saloon, and by using a very hard pencil I am able to make eight copies, so that I am hoping one will be picked up somewhere and sent on to Mr James Buckden or my father, at AmCliffe’s Bent Wood Works, Skipton. I am weighting the bottom of bottles with sand, so that they will -float upright, and sticking a little flag on a wire in the cork. A re'd flag on a blue sea should catch some decent eye, surely. “The man Teach is now blatantly and openly a pirate, and flies the skull and crossbones through sheer vanity, and also of course to keep his crew together. We have sunk one big steamer, which I fancy was German, though she flew the red ensign, burned an Italian barque (the one which carried King Ernestino’s treasure), and captured two Canary fishing schooners. The crews of the last-named are made to work on the Littondale’s repairs. Our pirates sit round, and if the Spaniards do not work hard enough beat them with wire rope ends. The Littondale, though Teach lied to me and said she hadn’t been touched, was evidently a good deal hit about in the action .with the big Hun steamer. And somewhere aboard of her is stowed (I suppose) the £300,000 of Ernestino’s which they looted. At any rate, I haven’t seen any attempt to hide

it or get rid of it, and it's bulky stuff, in heavy, iron-bound boxes. "Me they've put ashore on this island which makes the outside of the harbour. P do not know its name or whereabouts, but I suppose it- is off Africa, as there are canals on the mainland, behind the ship. Possibly they expected me to go back to the Littondale to sleep, but they didn't fetch me, so I didn't go. It was Pickles, the gunner, who nut me ashore in the quarter boat, a detestable fat man who is married eight-deep, so the steward told me, and joined Teach to escape a prosecution for octrigamy, or whatever it is. Pickles has oily ways with him that make me shudder, but the steward says I need not be frightened. 'Pickles always boasts he does it by kindness, miss, never vi'lence. If you'll excuse me, miss, it's Captain Teach you've got to keep your eye on. He's not a lady's man, they say; but then, miss, you've got your looks, which you can't help, and that hogged hair of yours, with the twiddle at ends, is very camilfo, if you'll excuse me mentioning it.' "I may remark that I have washed the 'offending hair in sea water " most thoroughly since J got this tip, and it is as decorative as a bunch of tallow candles at this moment of writing! I've slackened my—well, I've S£> arranged that my stockings sag about my ankles, and if that doesn't put Teach off nothing will. One has to do desperate things. That blackeyed pirate -is awful, and his men are beginning to leer, too—the brutes; all, that is, except the steward. "The steward is in this business because he can't help it. He 'signed on' •(whatever that may mean) in the ordinary . way, and found himself pirating before he knew what was happening. He stands to Jjo hanged with • the rest, if caught; but in the meanwhile, if dividends are going he intends to pocket them.. In reply to a broad hint I gave him a pound note as a tip in advance. He says, 'You never know what might 'appen, miss. Thank you, miss. You'll find you have nothing to complain of, miss, from my department, till I've worked this off.' His name is Llewelyn Jones, which he can't help, and he's got a strong outward squint, which I suppose he didn't arrange for either. You can imagine what I've come to when a man like this is the only soul I've got to trust. "The Littondale's two lifeboats fastened together into a sort of raft with balks of timber, are hovering over the sunken steamer, whose topmasts and a bit of funnel show above the sea. They are salving guns and ammunition. So, with the six 6-inch guns she has already, the Littondale will be a very formidable ship, and, as her people will'fight with halters round their necks, she will be a terror to every merchant ship she can come across. I gather that her main handicap is her speed—which is slow. "There is no slackening of discipline since they all turned pirates. Captain Teach shot one man on Saturday for being drunk, and another on Sunday for not saying 'Sir* when he spoke to an officer. Decks were cleaned and brasses polished far or above the merchant service standard, and the afterguard dresses for dinner, Did any former pirate put on evening clothes? I am not un in piratical history, and do not know. But I doubt it. "But I am the. only woman amongst them, and, in spite of all this iron discipline,' I know that my danger is horrible. From Teach especially. In spite of his reputation of being a man's man only, a look from Captain Teach turns me cold all over. I don't show it. With him I always keep a stiff upper lip, and put him in his place with all the resources of an impudent tongue. But oh, my dear, lam so frightened. Jimmy! Get me out of it.—Your scared MARY ARNCLIFFE."

Eight copies of this letter were (according to Miss Arncliffe) entrusted to ballasted glass and the waves of the Atlantic, and seven of these* have left no trace. The eighth rolled ashore on Grand Canary, near Pxmta Gando,. and was retrieved by Senor Don Carlos Bustamente, who had descended from his ancestral farm near the Caldera de Los Marteles for his yearly bath.

(To be Continued.)