Robert Thorpe reached languidly for a cigarette
and, with lazy fingers, extracted a lighter from his pocket.
"Be a sport," he repeated to the gray
haired man across the table. "Be a sport, Admiral, and send me across on a
destroyer. Never been on a destroyer except in port. It ... would be a new
experience ... enjoy it a lot...."
In the palm-shaded veranda of this club-house in
Manila, Admiral Struthers, U. S. N., regarded with undisguised disfavor the
young man in the wicker chair. He looked at the deep chest and the broad
shoulders which even a loose white coat could not conceal, at the short, wavy
brown hair and the slow, friendly smile on the face below.
A likable chap, this Thorpe, but lazy—just an
idler—he had concluded. Been playing around Manila for the last two
months—resting up, he had said. And from what? the Admiral had questioned
disdainfully. Admiral Struthers did not like indolent young men, but it would
have saved him money if he had really got an answer to his question and had
learned just why and how Robert Thorpe had earned a vacation.
"You on a destroyer!" he said, and the
lips beneath the close-cut gray mustache twisted into a smile. "That[294]
would be too rough an experience for you, I am afraid, Thorpe. Destroyers pitch
about quite a bit, you know."
He included in his smile the destroyer captain and
the young lady who completed their party. The young lady had a charming and
saucy smile and knew it; she used it in reply to the Admiral's remark.
"I have asked Mr. Thorpe to go on the Adelaide,"
she said. "We shall be leaving in another month—but Robert tells me he has
other plans."
"Worse and worse," was the Admiral's
comment. "Your father's yacht is not even as steady as a destroyer. Now I
would suggest a nice comfortable liner...."
***
Robert Thorpe did not miss the official glances of
amusement, but his calm complacence was unruffled. "No," he said,
"I don't just fancy liners. Fact is, I have been thinking of sailing
across to the States alone."
The Admiral's smile increased to a short laugh.
"I would make a bet you wouldn't get fifty miles from Manila harbor."
The younger man crushed his cigarette slowly into
the tray. "How much of a bet?" he asked. "What will you bet that
I don't sail alone from here to—where are you stationed?—San Diego?—from here
to San Diego?"
"Humph!" was the snorted reply. "I
would bet a thousand dollars on that and take your money for Miss Allaire's pet
charity."
"Now that's an idea," said Thorpe. He
reached for a check book in his inner pocket and began to write.
"In case I lose," he explained, "I
might be hard to find, so I will just ask Miss Allaire to hold this check for
me. You can do the same." He handed the check to the girl.
"Winner gets his thousand back, Ruth; loser's
money goes to any little orphans you happen to fancy."
"You're not serious," protested the
Admiral.
"Sure! The bank will take that check
seriously, I promise you. And I saw just the sloop I want for the trip ... had
my eye on her for the past month."
"But, Robert," began Ruth Allaire,
"you don't mean to risk your life on a foolish bet?"
Thorpe reached over to pat tenderly the hand that
held his check. "I'm glad if you care," he said, and there was an
undertone of seriousness beneath his raillery, "but save your sympathy for
the Admiral. The U. S. Navy can't bluff me." He rose more briskly from his
chair.
"Thorpe...." said Admiral Struthers. He
was thinking deeply, trying to recollect. "Robert Thorpe.... I have a book
by someone of that name—travel and adventure and knocking about the world.
Young man, are you the Robert Thorpe?"
"Why, yes, if you wish to put it that
way," agreed the other. He waved lightly to the girl as he moved away.
"I must be running along," he said,
"and get that boat. See you all in San Diego!"
***
The first rays of the sun touched with golden
fingers the tops of the lazy swells of the Pacific. Here and there a wave broke
to spray under the steady wind and became a shower of molten metal. And in the
boat, whose sails caught now and then the touch of morning, Robert Thorpe
stirred himself and rose sleepily to his feet.
Out of the snug cabin at this first hint of day,
he looked first at the compass and checked his course, then made sure of the
lashing about the helm. The steady trade-winds had borne him on through the
night, and he nodded with satisfaction as he prepared to lower his lights. He
was reaching for a line as the little craft hung for an instant on the top of a
wave. And in that instant his eyes caught a marking of white on the dim waters
ahead.
"Breakers!" he shouted aloud and leaped
for the lashed wheel. He swung[295] off to leeward and eased a bit on the
main-sheet, then lashed the wheel again to hold on the new course.
Again from a wave-crest he stared from under a
sheltering hand. The breakers were there—the smooth swells were
foaming—breaking in mid-ocean where his chart, he knew, showed water a mile
deep. Beyond the white line was a three-master, her sails shivering in the
breeze.
The big sailing ship swung off on a new tack as he
watched. Was she dodging those breakers? he wondered. Then he stared in
amazement through the growing light at the unbroken swells where the white line
had been.
***
He rubbed his sleepy eyes with a savage hand and
stared again. There were no breakers—the sea was an even expanse of heaving
water.
"I could swear I saw them!" he told
himself, but forgot this perplexing occurrence in the still more perplexing
maneuvers of the sailing ship.
This steady wind—for smooth handling—was all that
such a craft could ask, yet here was this old-timer of the sea with a full
spread of canvas booming and cracking as the ship jibed. She rolled far over as
he watched, recovered, and tore off on a long, sweeping circle.
The one man crew of the little sloop should have
been preparing breakfast, as he had for many mornings past, but, instead he
swung his little craft into the wind and watched for near an hour the erratic
rushes and shivering haltings of the larger ship. But long before this time had
passed Thorpe knew he was observing the aimless maneuvers of an unmanned
vessel.
And he watched his chance for a closer inspection.
***
The three-master Minnie R., from the dingy
painting of the stern, hung quivering in the wind when he boarded her. There
was a broken log-line that swept down from the stern, and he caught this and
made his own boat fast. Then, watching his chance, he drew close and went
overboard, the line in his hand.
"Like a blooming native after
cocoanuts," he told himself as he went up the side. But he made it and
pulled himself over the rail as the ship drew off on another tack.
Thorpe looked quickly about the deserted deck.
"Ahoy, there!" he shouted, but the straining of rope and spars was
his only answer. Canvas was whipping to ribbons, sheets cracked their frayed
ends like lashes as the booms swung wildly, but a few sails still held and
caught the air.
He was on the after deck, and he leaped first for
the wheel that was kicking and whirling with the swing of the rudder. A glance
at the canvas that still drew, and he set her on a course with a few steadying
pulls. There was rope lying about, and he lashed the wheel with a quick turn or
two and watched the ship steady down to a smooth slicing of the waves from the
west.
And only then did the man take time to quiet his
panting breath and look about him in the unnatural quiet of this strangely
deserted deck. He shouted again and walked to a companionway to repeat the
hail. Only an echo, sounding hollowly from below, replied to break the vast
silence.
***
It was puzzling—inconceivable. Thorpe looked about
him to note the lifeboats snug and undisturbed in their places. No sign there
of an abandonment of the boat, but abandoned she was, as the silence told only
too plainly. And Thorpe, as he went below, had an uncanny feeling of the crew's
presence—as if they had been there, walked where he walked, shouted and laughed
a matter of a brief hour or two before.
The door of the captain's cabin was burst in,
hanging drunkenly from one hinge. The log-book was open; there were papers on a
rude desk. The bunk was empty where the blankets had been[296] thrown hurriedly
aside. Thorpe could almost see the skipper of this mystery ship leaping frantically
from his bed at some sudden call or commotion. A chair was smashed and broken,
and the man who examined it curiously wiped from his hands a disgusting slime
that was smeared stickily on the splintered fragments. There was a fetid stench
within his nostrils, and he passed up further examination of this room.
Forward in the fo'c'sle he felt again irresistibly
the recent presence of the crew. And again he found silence and emptiness and a
disorder that told of a fear-stricken flight. The odor that sickened and
nauseated the exploring man was everywhere. He was glad to gain the freedom of
the wind-swept deck and rid his lungs of the vile breath within the vessel.
He stood silent and bewildered. There was not a
living soul aboard the ship—no sign of life. He started suddenly. A moaning,
whimpering cry came from forward on the deck!
Thorpe leaped across a disorder of tangled rope to
race toward the bow. He stopped short at sight of a battered cage. Again the
moaning came to him—there was something that still lived on board the ill-fated
ship.
***
He drew closer to see a great, huddled, furry mass
that crouched and cowered in a corner of the cage. A huge ape, Thorpe
concluded, and it moaned and whimpered absurdly like a human in abject fear.
Had this been the terror that drove the men into
the sea? Had this ape escaped and menaced the officers and crew? Thorpe
dismissed the thought he well knew was absurd. The stout wood bars of the cage
were broken. It had been partially crushed, and the chain that held it to the
deck was extended to its full length.
"Too much for me," the man said slowly,
aloud; "entirely too much for me! But I can't sail this old hooker alone;
I'll have to get out and let her drift."
He removed completely one of the splintered bars
from the broken cage. "I've got to leave you, old fellow," he told the
cowering animal, "but I'll give you the run of the ship."
He went below once more and came quickly back with
the log-book and papers from the captain's room. He tied these in a tight
wrapping of oilcloth from the galley and hung them at his belt. He took the
wheel again and brought the cumbersome craft slowly into the wind. The bare
mast of his own sloop was bobbing alongside as he went down the line and swam
over to her.
Fending off from the wallowing hulk, he cut the
line, and his small craft slipped slowly astern as the big vessel fell off in
the wind and drew lumberingly away on its unguided course.
She vanished into the clear-cut horizon before the
watching man ceased his staring and pricked a point upon his chart that he
estimated was his position.
And he watched vainly for some sign of life on the
heaving waters as he set his sloop back on her easterly course.
***
It was a sun-tanned young man who walked with
brisk strides into the office of Admiral Struthers. The gold-striped arm of the
uniformed man was extended in quick greeting.
"Made it, did you?" he exclaimed.
"Congratulations!"
"All O.K.," Thorpe agreed. "Ship
and log are ready for your verification."
"Talk sense," said the officer.
"Have any trouble or excitement? Or perhaps you are more interested in
collecting a certain bet than you are in discussing the trip."
"Damn the bet!" said the young man
fervently. "And that's just what I am here for—to talk about the trip.
There were some little incidents that may interest you."
He painted for the Admiral in brief, terse
sentences the picture of that day[297]break on the Pacific, the line of
breakers, white in the vanishing night, the abandoned ship beyond, cracking her
canvas to tatters in the freshening breeze. And he told of his boarding her and
of what he had found.
"Where was this?" asked the officer, and
Thorpe gave his position as he had checked it.
"I reported the derelict to a passing steamer
that same day," he added, but the Admiral was calling for a chart. He
spread it on the desk before him and placed the tip of a pencil in the center
of an unbroken expanse.
"Breakers, you said?" he questioned.
"Why, there are hundreds of fathoms here, Mr. Thorpe."
***
I know it," Thorpe agreed, "but I saw
them—a stretch of white water for an eighth of a mile. I know it's impossible,
but true. But forget that item for a time, Admiral. Look at this." He
opened a brief case and took out a log-book and some other papers.
"The log of the Minnie R.," he explained
briefly. "Nothing in it but routine entries up to that morning and then
nothing at all."
"Abandoned," mused the Admiral,
"and they did not take to the boats. There have been other instances—never
explained."
"See if this helps any," suggested
Thorpe and handed the other two sheets of paper. "They were in the
captain's cabin," he added.
Admiral Struthers glanced at them, then settled
back in his chair.
"Dated September fourth," he said.
"That would have been the day previous to the time you found her."
The writing was plain, in a careful, well-formed hand. He cleared his throat
and read aloud:
"Written by Jeremiah Wilkens of Salem, Mass.,
master of the Minnie R., bound from Shanghai to San Pedro. I have sailed the
seas for forty years, and for the first time I am afraid. I hope I may destroy
this paper when the lights of San Pedro are safe in sight, but I am writing
here what it would shame me to set down in the ship's log, though I know there
are stranger happenings on the face of the waters than man has ever seen—or has
lived to tell.
***
All this day I have been filled with fear. I have
been watched—I have felt it as surely as if a devil out of hell stood beside me
with his eyes fastened on mine. The men have felt it, too. They have been
frightened at nothing and have tried to conceal it as I have done.—And the
animals....
"A shark has followed us for days—it is gone
to-day. The cats—we have three on board—have howled horribly and have hidden
themselves in the cargo down below. The mate is bringing a big monkey to be
sold in Los Angeles. An orang-outang, he calls it. It has been an ugly brute,
shaking at the bars of its cage and showing its ugly teeth ever since we left
port. But to-day it is crouched in a corner of its cage and will not stir even
for food. The poor beast is in mortal terror.
"All this is more like the wandering talk of
an old woman muttering in a corner by the fireside of witches and the like than
it is like a truthful account set down by Jeremiah Wilkins. And now that I have
written it I see there is nothing to tell. Nothing but the shameful account of
my fear of some horror beyond my knowing. And now that it is written I am
tempted to destroy—No, I will wait—"
"And now what is this?" Admiral
Struthers interrupted his reading to ask. He turned the paper to read a coarse,
slanting scrawl at the bottom of the page.
"The eyes—the eyes—they are everywhere above
us—God help—" The writing trailed off in a straggling line.
***
The lips beneath the trim gray mustache drew
themselves into a hard line. It was a moment before Admiral Struthers raised
his eyes to meet those of Robert Thorpe.
"You found this in the captain's cabin?"
he asked.
"Yes."
"And the captain was—"
"Gone."
"Blood stains?"
"No, but the door had been burst off its
hinges. There had been a struggle without a doubt."
The officer mused for a minute or two.
"Did they go aboard another vessel?" he
pondered. "Abandon ship—open the sea-cocks—sink it for the
insurance?" He was trying vainly to find some answer to the problem, some
explanation that would not impose too great a strain upon his own reason.
"I have reported to the owners," said
Thorpe. "The Minnie R. was not heavily insured."
The Admiral ruffled some papers on his desk to
find a report.
"There has been another," he told
Thorpe. "A tramp freighter is listed as missing. She was last reported due
east of the position you give. She was coming this way—must have come through
about the same water—" He caught himself up abruptly. Thorpe sensed that
an Admiral of the Navy must not lend too credulous an ear to impossible
stories.
"You've had an interesting experience, Mr.
Thorpe," he said. "Most interesting. Probably a derelict is the
answer, some hull just afloat. We will send out a general warning."
He handed the loose papers and the log book to the
younger man. "This stuff is rubbish," he stated with emphasis.
"Captain Wilkins held his command a year or so too long."
"You will do nothing about it?" Thorpe
asked in astonishment.
"I said I would warn all shipping; there is
nothing more to be done."
"I think there is." Thorpe's gray eye
were steady as he regarded the man at the desk. "I intend to run it down.
There have been other such instances, as you said—never explained. I mean to
find the answer."
***
Admiral Struthers smiled indulgently. "Always
after excitement," he said. "You'll be writing another book, I
expect. I shall look forward to reading it ... but just what are you going to
do?"
"I am going to the Islands," said Thorpe
quietly. "I am going to charter a small ship of some sort, and I am going
out there and camp on that spot in the hope of seeing those eyes and what is
behind them. I am leaving to-night."
Admiral Struthers leaned back to indulge in a
hearty laugh. "I refused you a passage on a destroyer once," he said,
"and it was an expensive mistake. I don't make the same mistake twice. Now
I am going to offer you a trip....
"The Bennington is leaving to-day on a cruise
to Manila. I'll hold her an extra hour or two if you would like to go. She can
drop you at Honolulu or wherever you say. Lieutenant Commander Brent is in
command—you remember him in Manila, of course."
"Fine," Thorpe responded. "I'll be
there."
"And," he added, as he took the
Admiral's hand, "if I didn't object to betting on a sure thing I would
make you a little proposition. I would bet any money that you would give your
shirt to go along."
"I never bet, either," said Admiral
Struthers, "on a sure loss. Now get out of here, you young
trouble-shooter, and let the Navy get to work." His eyes were twinkling as
he waved the young man out.
***
Thorpe found himself comfortably fixed on the
Bennington. Brent, her commander, was a fine example of the aggressive young
chaps that the destroyer fleet breeds. And he liked to play cribbage, Thorpe
found. They were pegging away industriously the sixth night out when the first
S.O.S. reached them. A mes[299]sage was placed before the commander. He read it
and tossed it to Thorpe as he rose from his chair.
"S.O.S.," said the radio sheet,
"Nagasaki Maru, twenty-four thirty-five N., one five eight West. Struck
something unknown. Down at the bow. May need help. Please stand by."
Captain Brent had left the room. A moment later,
and the quiver and tremble of the Bennington told Thorpe they were running full
speed for the position of the stricken ship.
But: "Twenty-four thirty-five North," he
mused, "and less than two degrees west of where the poor old Minnie R. got
hers. I wonder ... I wonder...."
"We will be there in four hours," said
Captain Brent on his return. "Hope she lasts. But what have they struck
out there? Derelict probably, though she should have had Admiral Struthers'
warning."
Robert Thorpe made no reply other than: "Wait
here a minute, Brent. I have something to show you."
***
He had not told the officer of his mission nor of
his experience, but he did so now. And he placed before him the wildly improbable
statement of the late Captain Wilkins.
"Something is there," surmised Captain
Brent, "just awash, probably—no superstructure visible. Your Minnie R. hit
the same thing."
"Something is there," Thorpe agreed.
"I wish I knew what."
"This stuff has got to you, has it?"
asked Brent as he returned the papers of Captain Wilkins. He was quite
evidently amused at the thought.
"You weren't on the ship," said Thorpe,
simply. "There was nothing to see—nothing to tell. But I know...."
He followed Brent to the wireless room.
"Can you get the Nagasaki?" Brent asked.
"They know we are coming, sir," said the
operator. "We seem to be the only one anywhere near."
He handed the captain another message.
"Something odd about that," he said.
"U. S. S. Bennington," the captain read
aloud. "We are still afloat. On even keel now, but low in water. No water
coming in. Engines full speed ahead, but we make no headway. Apparently
aground. Nagasaki Maru."
"Why, that's impossible," Brent
exclaimed impatiently. "What kind of foolishness—" He left the
question uncompleted. The radio man was writing rapidly. Some message was
coming at top speed. Both Brent and Thorpe leaned over the man's shoulder to
read as he wrote.
"Bennington help," the pencil was writing,
"sinking fast—decks almost awash—we are being—"
In breathless silence they watched the pencil,
poised above the paper while the operator listened tensely to the silent night.
***
Again his ear received the wild jumble of dots and
dashes sent by a frenzied hand in that far-off room. His pencil automatically
set down the words. "Help—help—" it wrote before Thorpe's spellbound
gaze, "the eyes—the eyes—it is attack—"
And again the black night held only the rush and
roar of torn waters where the destroyer raced quivering through the darkness.
The message, as the waiting men well knew, would never be completed.
"A derelict!" Robert Thorpe exclaimed
with unconscious scorn. But Captain Brent was already at a communication tube.
"Chief? Captain Brent. Give her everything
you've got. Drive the Bennington faster than she ever went before."
The slim ship was a quivering lance of steel that
threw itself through foaming waters, that shot with an endless, roaring surge
of speed toward that distant point in the heaving waste of the Pacific, and
that seemed, to the two silent men on the bridge, to put[300] the dragging
miles behind them so slowly—so slowly.
"Let me see those papers," said Captain
Brent, finally.
***
He read them in silence.
Then: "The eyes!" he said. "The
eyes! That is what this other poor devil said. My God, Thorpe, what is it? What
can it be? We're not all insane."
"I don't know what I expected to find,"
said Thorpe slowly. "I had thought of many things, each wilder than the
next. This Captain Wilkins said the eyes were above him. I had visions of some
sky monster ... I had even thought of some strange aircraft from out in space,
perhaps, with round lights like eyes. I have pictured impossibilities! But
now—"
"Yes," the other questioned,
"now?"
"There were tales in olden times of the
Kraken," suggested Thorpe.
"The Kraken!" the captain scoffed.
"A mythical monster of the sea. Why, that was just a fable."
"True," was the quiet reply, "that
was just a fable. And one of the things I have learned is how frequently there
is a basis of fact underlying a fable. And, for that matter, how can we know
there is no such monster, some relic of a Mesozoic species supposed to be
extinct?"
He stood motionless, staring far out ahead into
the dark. And Brent, too, was silent. They seemed to try with unaided eyes to
penetrate the dark miles ahead and see what their sane minds refused to accept.
***
It was still dark when the search-light's sweeping
beam picked up the black hull and broad, red-striped funnels of the Nagasaki
Maru. She was riding high in the water, and her big bulk rolled and wallowed in
the trough of the great swells.
The Bennington swept in a swift circle about the
helpless hulk while the lights played incessantly upon her decks. And the
watching eyes strained vainly for some signal to betoken life, for some sign
that their mad race had not been quite vain. Her engines had been shut down;
there was no steerage-way for the Nagasaki Maru, and, from all they could see,
there were no human hands to drag at the levers of her waiting engines nor to
twirl with sure touch the deserted helm. The Nagasaki Maru was abandoned.
The lights held steadily upon her as the
Bennington came alongside and a boat was swung out smartly in its davits. But
Thorpe knew he was not alone in his wild surmise as to the cause of the
catastrophe.
"Throw your lights around the water
occasionally," Brent ordered. "Let me know if you see anything."
"Yes sir," said the man at the
search-light. "I will report if I spot any survivors or boats."
"Report anything you see," said
Commander Brent curtly.
"You go aboard if you want to," he
suggested to Thorpe. "I will stay here and be ready if you need
help."
Thorpe nodded with approval as the small boat
pulled away in the dark, for there was activity apparent on the destroyer not
warranted by a mere rescue at sea. Gun-crews rushed to their stations; the
tarpaulin covers were off of the guns, and their slender lengths gleamed where
they covered the course of the boat.
"Brent is ready," Thorpe admitted,
"for anything."
***
They found the iron ladder against the ship's
side, and a sailor sprang for it and made his way aboard. Thorpe was not the
last to set foot on deck, and he shuddered involuntarily at the eery silence he
knew awaited them.
It was the Minnie R. over again, as he expected,
but with a difference. The sailing vessel, before he boarded it, had been for
some time exposed to the sun, while the Nagasaki Maru had not. And here there
were slimy trails still wet on the decks.[301]
He went first to the wireless room. He must know
the final answer to that interrupted message, and he found it in emptiness. No
radio man was waiting him there, nor even a body to show the loser of an
unequal battle. But there was blood on the door-jamb where a body—the man's
body, Thorpe was sure—had been smashed against the wood. A wisp of black hair
in the blood gave its mute evidence of the hopeless fight. And the slime, like
the trails on the deck, smeared with odorous vileness the whole room.
Thorpe went again to the deck, and, as on the
other ship, he breathed deeply to rid his lungs and nostrils of the abhorrent
stench. The ensign in charge of the boarding party approached.
"What kind of a rotten mess is this?" he
demanded. "The ship is filthy and not a soul on board. Not a man of them,
officers or crew, and the boats are all here. It's absolutely amazing, isn't
it?"
"No," Thorpe told him, "about what
we expected. What do you make of this?" He touched with his foot a broad
trail that shone wet in the Bennington's lights.
"The Lord knows," said the ensign in
wonder. "It's all over and it smells like a rotten dead fish. Well, we
will be going back, sir." He called to a petty officer to round up the
men, and the boat was brought alongside.
***
Their return to the Bennington again through a
pathway of light that Thorpe knew was safe under the black muzzles of the
destroyer's guns.
Or was it, he asked himself. Safe! Was anything safe
from this devilish mystery that could pluck each cowering human from the lowest
depths of this steel freighter, that could drag her down in the water till the
radio man sent his cry: "We are sinking!..."
He told Brent quietly, after the ensign had reported,
of the struggles in the wireless room and its few remaining traces. And he
watched with the commander through the hour of darkness while the Bennington
steamed in slow circles about the abandoned hulk, while her search-lights
played endlessly over the empty waters and the men at the guns cast wondering
glances at their skipper who ordered such strange procedure when no danger was
there.
With daylight the scene lost its sense of
mysterious threat, and Thorpe was eager to return to the abandoned ship.
"I might find something," he said,
"some trace or indication of what we have to fight."
"I must leave," said Commander Brent.
"Oh, I'm coming back, never fear," he added, at the look of dismay on
Thorpe's face. The thought of leaving this mystery unsolved was more than that
young seeker after adventure could accept.
"I'm coming back," Brent repeated.
"I've been in communication with the Admiral—Honolulu has relayed the
messages through. All code, of course; we mustn't alarm the whole Pacific with
our nightmares. The old man says to stick around and get the low-down on this
damn thing."
"Then why leave?" objected Thorpe.
***
Because I am coming around to your way of
thinking, Thorpe. Because I am as certain as can be that we have a monster of
some sort to deal with ... and because I haven't any depth charges. I want to
run up to the supply station at Honolulu and get a couple of ash-cans of TNT to
lay on top of the brute if we sight him."
"Glory be!" said Thorpe fervently.
"That sounds like business. Go and get your eggs and perhaps we can feed
them to this devil—raw.... And I think I'll stay here, if you will be back by
dark."
"Better not," the other objected; but
Thorpe overruled him.
"This thing attacks in the dark," he
said. "I will lay a little bet on that. It left the orang-outang on the
Minnie[302] R.—quit at the first sign of daylight. I will be safe through the
day, and besides, the beast has gutted this ship. It won't return, I imagine.
And if I stay there for the day—live as they lived, the men who manned that
ship—I may have some information that will be of help when you get back. But
for Heaven's sake, Brent, don't stop to pick any flowers on the way."
"It's your funeral," said Brent not too
cheerfully. "The old man said to give you every assistance, and perhaps
that includes helping you commit suicide."
But Robert Thorpe only laughed as Commander Brent
gave his orders for a small boat to be lowered. A ship's lantern and rockets
for night signals were taken at the officer's orders. "We'll be back
before dark," he said, "but take these as a precaution."
One favor Thorpe asked—that the ship's carpenter
go over with him and help him to make a strong-barred retreat of the wireless
cabin.
"And I'll talk to you occasionally," he
told Brent. "I tried the key while I was aboard; the wireless is working
on its batteries."
He waved a cheery good-by as the small boat pulled
away. "And hurry back," he called. The destroyer commander nodded an
emphatic assent.
***
On board the Nagasaki Maru, Thorpe directed the
carpenter and his helpers in the work he wanted done. The man seemed to know
instinctively where to put his hands on needed supplies, and the result was a
virtual cage of strong oak bars enclosing the wireless room, and braces of oak
to bar the single door. Thorpe was not assuming any bravado in his feeling of
safety, but he was doing what he had done in many other tight corners, and he
prepared his defences in advance.
These included weapons of offense as well. As the
boat with the destroyer's men pulled back to the Bennington, he placed in easy
reach in a corner of the room a heavy calibered rifle he had taken from his
belongings.
And, still, with all his feeling of security,
there was a strange depression fell upon him when the Bennington's narrow hull
was small upon the horizon, and then that, too, was gone and only the heaving
swells and the wallowing hulk were his companions.
Only these? He shivered slightly as he thought of
that unseen watcher with the devil-eyes whose presence Captain Wilkins had
felt—and his men, and the poor terrified ape! He deliberately put from his mind
the thought of this; no use to start the day with morbid fears. He went below
to examine the cabins. But he carried the heavy elephant gun with him wherever
he went.
***
Below decks the signs of the marauder were
everywhere, yet there was little to be learned. The slimy trails dried quickly
and vanished, but not before Thorpe had traced them to the uttermost depths of
the ship.
There was not a nook or corner that had gone
unsearched in the horrible quest for human food. And one thing impressed itself
forcibly upon the man's mind. He found a lantern, and he used it of necessity
in his explorations, but this thing had gone through the dark and with unerring
certainty had found its way to every victim.
"Can it see in the dark?" Thorpe
questioned. "Or...." He visioned dimly some denizen of the vast
depths, living beyond the limits of the sun's penetration, far in the abysmal
darkness where its only light must be self-made. But his mind failed in the
attempt to picture what manner of horror this thing might be.
Even in the hold its evil traces were found. There
were tiers of metal drums that still shone wet in his lantern's light. Calcium
carbide—for making acetylene, he supposed—marked "Made in U.S.A." The
Nagasaki must have been westward bound.[303]
***
He went, after an hour or so, to the wireless
room, and only when he relaxed in the safety of his improvised fortress did he
realize how tense had been every nerve and muscle through his long search. He
tried the wireless and got an instant response from the destroyer.
"Don't shoot it too fast," he spelled
out slowly to the distant operator: "I am only a dub. Just wanted to say
hello and report all O.K."
"Fine," was the steady, careful
response. "We have had a little trouble with our condensers—" There
was a short pause, then the message continued, this portion dictated by the
commander. "Delay not important. We will be back as agreed. Have picked up
S. S. Adelaide bound east in your latitude. Warned her to take northerly course
account derelict. See you later. Signed, Brent, commanding U. S. S.
Bennington."
The man in the barred room tapped off his acknowledgement
and closed the key. He suddenly realized he had had no breakfast, and the hours
had been slipping past. He took his gun again and went down to the galley to
prepare some coffee. It was not the time or place for an enjoyable meal, but he
would have relished it more had he not pictured the Adelaide and her lovely
owner steaming across these threatening seas.
He knew the captain of the Adelaide.
"Obstinate pigheaded old Scotchman!" "Hope he takes Brent's
advice. Of course Brent couldn't tell him the truth. We can't blat this wild
yarn all over the air or the passenger lines would have our scalps. But I wish
the Adelaide was safe in Manila."
***
His explorations in the afternoon were
half-hearted and perfunctory. There was nothing more to be learned. But he had
seen in his mind some vague outline of what they must meet. He saw a something,
mammoth, huge, that could grasp and hold an ocean freighter—against whose great
body he had seen the waves dash in a line of white spray. Yet a something that
could force its way down narrow passages, could press with terrific strength on
bolted doors and crush them inward, wrecked and splintered. Some serpentine
thing that felt and saw its way and crawled so surely through the dark—found
its prey—seized it—and carried off a man as easily as it might a mouse.
No octopus, no matter what proportions, filled the
description. He gave up trying to see too clearly the awful thing. And he kept
away from the ship's rail when once he had ventured near. For there had come to
him a feeling of fear that had sent the waves of cold trickling and prickling
up his spine. Was there something really there?... A waiting lurking horror in
the depths?
"The eyes," he thought, "the
eyes!..." And he went more quickly than he knew to his barred retreat
where again he might breathe quietly.
***
The position of the deserted ship was south of the
regular steamer lanes on the TransPacific run. Only a trace of smoke on the
northern horizon marked through the afternoon the passage of other craft. It
was a long and lonely vigil for the waiting man. But the Bennington would
return, and he listened in at intervals hoping to hear her friendly signal.
The batteries operating the Nagasaki's wireless
were none too strong; Thorpe saved their strength, though he tried at times to
raise the Bennington somewhere beyond his reach.
The sun was touching the horizon when he got his
first response. "Keep up the old nerve," admonished the slow, careful
sending of the Bennington's operator. "We have been delayed but we are on
our way. Signed, Brent."
The man in the wireless room placed the oak bars
across the door, and tried to believe he was nonchalant and unafraid as he laid
out extra clips of cartridges. But his eyes persisted in[304] following the
sinking sun, and he watched from within his cage the coming of the quick dark.
The protecting glare of day must be unbearable to
this monster from the lightless depths, and daylight was vanishing. Thorpe's
mind was searching for additional means of defense. He found it in the cargo he
had seen. The drums of carbide! He could scatter it on the deck—it reacted with
water, and those slimy arms, if they came and touched it, could find the
contact hot. He took his lantern and went hastily below to stagger back with a
drum upon his shoulder.
In the half-light that was left him he forced the
cover and then rolled the drum about the swaying deck. The gray, earthly lumps
of carbide formed erratic lines. Useless perhaps, he admitted, but the
threatening dark forced the man to use every means at his command.
***
He was scattering the contents of a second drum
when he stiffened abruptly to rigid attention.
The ship, thrown broadside to the wide-spaced
swells, had rolled endlessly with a monotonous motion. But now the deck beneath
him was steadying. It assumed an abnormal levelness. The boat rose and fell
with the waves, but it no longer rolled. There was something beneath holding,
drawing on it.
Thorpe knew in that frozen second what it meant.
The drum clattered to the rail as he dashed for his room. Gun in hand, he
watched with staring eyes where the deserted deck showed dim and vague in the
light of the stars and the bow of the ship was lost in the uncertain dark of
night.
Wide-eyed he watched into the blackness, and he
listened with desperate attention for some slightest sound beyond the splashing
of waves and the creaking of spars.
Far in the west a light appeared, to glow and
vanish and glow again in the tumbling waters. The Bennington! His heart leaped
at the thought, then sank as he knew the destroyer's lights would not appear
from that direction.
Through a slow hour that seemed an eternity the
oncoming ship drew near, and he knew with a sudden, startling certainty that it
was the Adelaide—and Ruth Allaire—coming on, through into the horror awaiting.
He leaned forward tensely as a sound reached his
ears. A ghostly echo of a sound, like the softest of smooth, slipping fabric
upon hard steel. And as he listened, before his staring eyes, a something came
between him and the lighted yacht.
It wavered and swung in the darkness. It was
formless, uncertain of outline, and it swung in the night out beyond the ship's
rail till it suddenly neared, waved high overhead, and the cold light of the
stars shone in pale reflection from an enormous, staring eye.
It surmounted a serpentine form that took shape in
the dim radiance without and came lower in undulating folds to crash heavily
upon the deck.
***
Thorpe's hand was upon the wireless key. He had
wanted to warn off the yacht, but not till the thud of the creature on the bare
deck proved its reality could he force his cold fingers to press the key.
Then, fast as his inexperience allowed, he called
frantically for the Adelaide. He spelled her name, over and over.... Would the
sleepy operator never answer?
The Bennington broke in one. "Is that you,
Thorpe? What is up?" they demanded.
But Thorpe kept up his slow spelling of the
yacht's name. He must get a warning to them! Then he realized that the
Bennington could do it better.
"Bennington," he called, "Adelaide
approaching. I am attacked. Warn them off. Warn them—" His frantic,
hissing dots and dashes died immediately. Beneath his feet the Nagasaki Maru
was rolling again, swinging free to the[305] lift and thrust of the swells
beneath.
"Good God!" he shouted aloud in his
lonely cabin. "It's gone for the yacht. Adelaide—turn north—full
speed—" he clicked off on a slow, stuttering key. "Head north. You
are being attacked!" He groaned again as he saw the Adelaide's shining
ports swing away from the safety of the north; the ship broached broadside to
the waves and came slowly to a stop.
"Bennington," he radioed. "Brent—it
has got the Adelaide. Help—hurry! I am going over."
He tore wildly at the barred door, and he made a
dash across the deck to slip sprawling in a heap against the rail where the
slimy traces of the recent visitor stretched glistening on the deck.
***
How he lowered the boat Thorpe never knew. But he
knew there was one that the men from the Bennington had swung over the side,
and tore madly at the tackle to let the boat crash miraculously upright into
the sea. He slung the rifle about his neck with a rope end—there were
cartridges in his pocket—and he went down the dangling lines and cast off in a
frenzy of haste.
What could he do? He hardly dared form the question.
Only this stood clear and unanswerable in his mind: The yacht was in the
monster's grip, and Ruth Allaire was there on board. Ruth Allaire, so smiling,
so friendly, so lovable! Food for that horror from the depths.... He rowed with
super-human strength to drive the heavy boat across the wave-swept distance
that separated them.
Between gasping breaths he turned at times to
glance over his shoulder and correct his course. And now, as he drew near, he
saw though indistinct the unmistakable, snakelike weaving of horrible tenuous
fingers, rolling and groping about the yacht.
They were plain as he drew alongside. The trim
ship rose and fell with the water, while over her side where Thorpe approached
swung a long, white monstrous rope of flesh. It retreated like the lash of a
whip, and the horrified watcher saw as it went the struggling figure of a man
in the grasp of flabby lips. And above them a single eye glared wickedly.
Another vile, twisting arm rose from the afterdeck
with a screaming figure in its grasp and vanished into the water beyond the
yacht. There were others writhing about the decks. Thorpe saw them as he made
his boat fast and clambered aboard.
***
A wave of reeking air enveloped him as he reached
the deck; the nauseous stench from the monster's tentacles was horrible beyond
endurance. He gagged and choked as the stifling breath entered his lungs.
A huge rope of slippery, throbbing flesh stretched
its twisted length toward the stern. It contracted as he watched into bulging
muscular rings and withdrew from the afterdeck. The deadly end of it stopped in
mid-air not twenty feet from where he stood. The jawlike pincers on it held the
limp form of an officer in its sucking grip, while above, in a protuberance
like a gnarled horn, a great eye glared into Thorpe's with devilish hatred.
The beak opened sharply to drop its unconscious
burden upon the deck, and the watching man, petrified with horror, saw within
the gaping maw great sucking discs and beyond them a brilliant glow. The whole
cavernous pit was aflame with phosphorescent light. Dimly he knew that this
light explained the ability of the beastly arms to grope so surely in the dark.
The eye narrowed as the gaping, fleshy jaws
distended, and Robert Thorpe, in a flash that galvanized him to action, was
aware that his fight for life was on. He fired blindly from the hip, and the
recoil of the heavy gun almost tore it from his hands. But he knew he had aimed
true, and the toothless, seeking jaws whipped in agony back into the sea.[306]
There were other arms whose eyes were searching
the stern of the yacht. Thorpe plunged frenziedly down a companionway for the
cabin he knew was Ruth Allaire's. Was he in time? Could he save her if he found
her? His mind was in a turmoil of half-formed plans as he rushed madly down the
corridor to find the body of the girl a limp huddle across the threshold of her
cabin.
***
She was alive; he knew it as he swung her soft
body across one shoulder and staggered with his burden up the stairs. If he
could only breathe! His throat was tight and strangling with the reeking
putrescence in the air. And before his eyes was a picture of the strong oak
bars of his own retreat. Somehow, some way, he must get back to the abandoned
ship.
An eye detected him as he came on deck, and he
dropped the limp body of the girl at his feet as he swung his rifle toward the
glowing light within the opening jaws. The sucking discs cupped and wrinkled in
dread readiness in the fleshy, toothless opening. He emptied the magazine into
the head, though he knew this was only a feeler and a feeder for a still more
horrible mouth in the monstrous body that rose and fell tremendously in the
dark waters beyond. But it was typical of Robert Thorpe that even in the horror
and frenzy of the moment he rammed another clip of cartridges into his rifle
before he stooped to again raise the prostrate figure of Ruth Allaire.
The forward deck for the moment was clear; it rose
high with the weight of the writhing, twisting arms that weighed down the stern
of the yacht where the crew had taken refuge.
To think of helping them was worse than folly—he dismissed
the thought as another great eye came over the rail. Once more he used the gun,
then lowered the girl to the waiting boat, and cast off and rowed with the
stealthiest of strokes into the dark.
***
Behind him were whipping points of light above the
white brilliance of the yacht Adelaide. The boat was tossing in great waves
that came from beyond, where a body, incredibly huge, was tearing the waters to
foam. There were ghostly arms that shone in slimy wetness, that lashed
searchingly in all directions, as the monster gave vent to its fury at Thorpe's
attack. There were screaming human figures grasped in many of the jaws, and the
man was glad with a great thankfulness that the girl's stupor could save her
from the frightful sight.
He dared to row now, and his breath was coming in
great choking sobs of sheer exhaustion when at last he pulled the senseless
form of Ruth Allaire to the deck of the Nagasaki and drew her within the frail
shelter of the wireless room.
Stout had the oaken bars appeared, and safe his
refuge in the barricaded room, but that was before he had seen in horrible
reality the fearful fury of this monster from the deep. He placed the braces
against the door and turned with hopeless haste to seize the wireless key.
"Bennington," he called, and the answer
came strong and clear. "Where are you.... Help—" His fingers froze
upon the key and the answering message in his ears was unheeded as he watched
across the water the destruction of the yacht.
This craft that had dared to resist the onset of
the brute, to fight against it, to wound it, was feeling the full fury of the
monster's rage. The gleaming lights of the doomed ship were waving lines that
swept to and fro in the grip of those monstrous arms. The boat beneath Thorpe's
feet was tossing in the waves that told of the titanic struggle. He had meant
to look south for some sign of the oncoming destroyer, but in fearful
fascination he stared spellbound where the masts of the trim yacht swept
downward into the waves, where the green of her star-[307]board lantern glowed
faintly for an instant, then vanished, to leave only the darkness and the
starlit sea.
***
A voice aroused him from his stupefaction.
"Where am I ... where am I?" Ruth Allaire was asking in a frightened
whisper. "That terrible thing—" She shuddered violently as memory
returned to show again the horror she had witnessed. "Where are we,
Robert? And the Adelaide—where is it?"
Thorpe turned slowly. The insane turmoil of the
past hour had numbed his brain, stunned him.
"The Adelaide—" he mumbled, and groped
fumblingly for coherent thoughts. He stared at the girl. She was half-risen
from the floor where he had laid her, and the sight of her quivering face
brought reason again to his mind. He knelt tenderly beside her and raised her
in his arms.
"Where is the yacht?" she repeated.
"The Adelaide?"
"Gone," Thorpe told her.
"Lost!" A thought struck him.
"Was your father on board, Ruth?"
Ruth was dazed.
"Lost," she repeated. "The
Adelaide—lost!... No," she added in belated response to Thorpe's question.
"Daddy was not there. But the men—Captain MacPherson ... that horrible
monster...." She buried her face in her hands as she realized what
Thorpe's silence meant.
He held the trembling figure close as the girl
whispered: "Where are we, Robert? Are we safe?"
"We may win through yet," he told her
through grim, set lips. He realized abruptly that he was seeing the face of
Ruth Allaire in the light. He had left a lantern burning! He withdrew his arms
from about her and sprang quickly to his feet to put out the tell-tale light.
In darkness and quiet was their only safety. And he knew as he sprang that he
had waited too long. A soft body crashed heavily on the deck outside.
***
The girl's voice was shrill with terror as she
began a question. Thorpe's hand pressed upon her lips in the dark where he
stood waiting—waiting.
A luminous something was glowing outside the
cabin. It searched and prodded about the deserted deck to whip upward at the
audible hiss of wet carbide. Another appeared; the rifle came slowly to the
man's shoulder as a pair of jaws gaped glowingly beyond the windows and an eye
stared unblinkingly from its hornlike sheath. It crashed madly against the
walls of the wireless room to shatter the glass and make kindling of the
woodwork of the sash. Thorpe fired once and again before the specter vanished,
and he knew with sickening certainty that the wounds were only messages to some
central brain that would send other ravening tentacles against them. But the
oak bars had held.
He reached in the brief interval for the key, and
he sent out one final call for help. He strained his ears against the head-set
for some friendly human word of hope.
"—rocket," the wireless man was saying.
"Fire rockets. We can't find—" A swift, writhing arm wrapped
crushingly about the cabin as the message ceased.
***
Thorpe seized his rifle and fired into the gray
mass that bulged with terrible muscular contractions through the window. He
fired again to aim lengthways of the arm and inflict as damaging a wound as his
weapon would permit.
The arm relaxed, but a score of others took up the
attack. Again the sickening stench was about them as gaping jaws gleamed fiery
beneath the hateful eyes and tore at the flimsy structure. Thorpe jammed more
cartridges into the gun and fired again and again, then dropped the weapon to
fumble for the rockets that Brent had given him.
He lighted one with trembling[308] fingers; the
first ball shot straight into a waiting mouth. Another ignited a searing flame
of acetlylene gas where a wet arm writhed in the hot carbide trail. The man
leaned far out through the broken window.
No time to look around. He let the red flares
stream upward high into the air, then dropped the rocket hissing on the deck to
seize once more the rifle.
A mass of muscle crashed against the door; it went
to splinters under the impact, and only the two oak bars remained to hold in
check the horrible tentacles and the darting heads. One mouth closed to a
pointed end that forced its way between the bars. The oak gave under the strain
as Robert Thorpe pulled vainly at an empty gun. Beside him rose shrieks of
terror as the monstrous thing came on, and Thorpe beat with frantic fury with
his clubbed rifle at the fleshy snout.
He knew as he swung the weapon that the shrieks
had ceased, then smiled grimly in the numbing horror as he realized that Ruth
Allaire was beside him. A piece of oak was in her hands, and she was striking
with desperate and silent fury at the slimy flesh.
***
It was the end, Thorpe knew, and suddenly he was
glad. The nightmare was over, and the end was coming with this girl beside him.
But Robert Thorpe was fighting on to the last, and he tried to make his blows
reach outward to the hateful devilish eye.
He saw it plainly now, for the deck was a glare of
white light. He saw the eye and the thick arm behind it and the score of others
that made a heaving, knotted mass were brilliant and wetly shining. He could
see now how best to strike, and he turned his gun to thrust with the barrel at
the eye.
It withdrew before his stroke—the jaws slid
backward to the deck. There were sounds that hammered at his ears. "The
guns! The guns!" a girl was screaming. Across the deck, where a
search-light played, huge arms were lashing backward toward the sea. The waves
beyond had vanished where a monstrous body shone wetly black in a blinding
glare.
And the man hung panting, helpless, on the one
remaining bar across the doorway to look where, beyond, her forward guns a
spitting stream of staccato flashes, the Bennington tore the waves to
high-thrown spray. Her four clean funnels swung far over as the slim ship, with
her stabbing, crashing guns, swung in a sweeping circle to bear down upon the
black bulk slowly sinking in the search-light's glare.
The vast body had vanished as the destroyer shot
like one of her own projectiles over the spot where the beast had lain. And
then, where she had passed, the sea arose in a heaving mound. The big ship
beneath the watching man shuddered again as another depth charge grumbled its
challenge to the master of the deeps.
***
The warship went careening on an arc to return and
throw the full glare of her search-lights on the scene. They lighted a vast
sea, strangely stilled. An oily smoothness leveled waves and ironed them out to
show more clearly the convulsions of a torn mass that rose slowly into sight.
Thorpe in some way found himself outside the
cabin. And he knew that the girl was again beside him as he stared and stared
at what the waters held. A bloated serpent form beyond believing was struggling
in the greasy swell. Its waving tentacles again were flung aloft in impotent
fury, and, beneath them, where their thick ends jointed the body, a head with
one horrible eye rose into the air. A thick-lipped mouth gaped open, and the
gleam of molars shone white in the blinding glare.
The twisting body shuddered throughout its vast
bulk, and the waving arms and futile staring eyes dropped helpless into the
splashing sea. Again the revolting head was[309] raised as the destroyer sent a
rain of shells into its fearful mass. Once more the oily seas were calm. They
closed over the whirling vortex where a denizen of the lightless depths was
returning to those distant, subterranean caverns—returning as food for what
other voracious monsters might still exist.
The man's arm was about the figure of the girl,
trembling anew in a fresh reaction from the horror they had escaped, when a
small boat drew alongside.
"They're safe," a hoarse voice bellowed
back to the destroyer, and a man came monkeywise up a rope where Thorpe had
launched his boat.
And now, as one in a dream, Thorpe allowed the
girl to be taken from him, to be lowered to the waiting boat. He clambered down
himself and in silence was rowed across to the destroyer.
"Thank God!" said Brent, as he met them
at the rail. "You're safe, old man ... and Miss Allaire ... both of you!
You let off that rocket just in time; we couldn't pick you up with our light—
"And now," he added, "we're going
back; back to San Diego. The Admiral wants a word of mouth report."
Thorpe stilled him with a heavy gesture.
"Give Ruth an opiate," he said dully. "Let her forget ...
forget!... Good God, can we ever forget—" He stumbled forward, heedless of
Brent's arm across his shoulders as the surgeon took the girl in charge.
***
Admiral Struthers, U.S.N., leaned back from his
desk and blew a cloud of smoke thoughtfully toward the ceiling. He looked
silently from Thorpe to Commander Brent.
"If either one of you had come to me with
such a report," he said finally, "I would have found it incredible; I
would have thought you were entirely insane, or trying some wild hoax."
"I wish it were a damn lie," said Thorpe
quietly. "I wish I didn't have to believe it." There were new lines
about the young-old eyes, lines that spoke what the lips would not confess of
sleepless nights and the impress of a picture he could not erase.
"Well, we have kept it out of the
papers," said the Admiral. "Said it was a derelict, and the wild
messages floating about were from an inexperienced man, frightened and
irresponsible. Bad advertising—very—for the passenger lines."
"Quite," Commander Brent agreed,
"but of course Mr. Thorpe may want to use this in his next book of travel.
He has earned the right without doubt."
"No," said Thorpe emphatically.
"No! I told you, Brent, there was often a factual basis for
fables—remember? Well, we have proved that. But sometimes it is best to leave
the fables just fables. I think you will agree." A light step sounded in
the corridor beyond. "Nothing of this to Miss Allaire," he said
sharply.
The men rose as Ruth Allaire entered the room.
"We were just speaking," said the Admiral with an engaging smile
beneath his close-cut mustache, "of the matter of a bet. Mr. Thorpe has
won handily, and he has taught me a lesson."
He took a check book from his desk. "What
charity would you like to name, Miss Allaire? That was left to you, you
remember."
"Some seamen's home," said Ruth Allaire
gravely. "You will know best, if you two are really serious about that
silly bet."
"That bet, my dear," said Robert Thorpe
with smiling eyes, "was very serious ... and it has had most serious
consequences." He turned to the waiting men and extended a hand in
farewell.
"We are going to Europe, Ruth and I," he
told them. "Just rambling around a bit. Our honeymoon, you know. Look us
up if you're cruising out that way."
