Plundered Cargo/Chapter 11

by Robert Welles Ritchie

 

Chapter XI

SURPRISE AT SABINA ISLAND

The stranded steamer presented every aspect of death to Spike Horn as the yawl from the Lonney Lee crossed flat water headed for her side. There was about the craft an indefinable air of slackness and decay which even a landsman's unpracticed eye could note. Captain Judah saw much more. He observed, for example, that the four boat davits, two on each side, were swung outward and with the falls hanging where boats had been cut away. As they drew nearer the craft his practiced eye caught the hint of a bulge in the iron plates along what had been normal water-line when the steamer floated free—a swelling outward of the vessel's skin like a giant blister abeam of where the main cargo hold should be. Captain Judah saw this out-thrust of the plates and smiled inwardly as might one who checked up on a job well done.

The obvious aspect of a death ship was emphasized just before the yawl's prow raked along the side where pendant falls of a davit offered a way aboard. A nauseous odor of decay was wafted from the hulk; a gagging smell of decomposition calculated to set the most callous gorge to twittering.

“Wauf!” Spike snorted across the backs of the Chinese rowers. “What're we up against, Cap: a slaughter house?”

“Hides,” Captain Judah answered with a monosyllable, and he swarmed up the falls to disappear overside. Horn, encumbered by his rifle, followed more slowly. He poised himself atop the rail to survey the scene of desolation below him. Storrs already was climbing the ladder to the high bridge for'ard.

The maindeck Horn looked down upon was cluttered with evidence of a hasty abandonment; lengths of rope uncoiled and trailing nowhere; empty biscuit tins; a champagne case with straw jackets sticking out of the top. He saw up by the foremast a ragged hole in the deck boards, all fringed about the edges with splintered wood. Such a hole as could have been made only by some interior explosion.

Horn strode over to the rent and looked down. He almost swooned under the odor which assailed his nostrils—the smell of decomposition which had greeted their approach. All that he saw in the instant before a reflex of outraged nerves pulled his head away was a filthy mass of something dun and white floating on water, a most unwholesome mess.

Storrs, descending from the bridge, had come to peer through the hole in the deck. He appeared to find satisfaction in what he saw. At least, crinkles of something like humor splayed out from his eyes.

“Nice job—a very tidy job, I'd say.” The man spoke more to himself than for Spike's ears.

“Looks like somebody'd tried to blow up the ship, Cap.” Horn felt the situation called for some explanation, even though from a man who hated him. Captain Judah rewarded the remark by a searching glance. He might have been sounding Horn's demeanor for masked innocence.

“You know what cotton packed tight and green hides atop that will do to a ship if enough water is allowed to get into the hold.” Here was challenge for Horn to come out from behind subterfuge. A shake of his head was Spike's genuine assurance of ignorance. The Lonney Lee's master favored him with a long unwinking scrutiny.

“Horn, what's the use of playing this child's game with me?” he snapped. “As if you didn't know Cap'n Lofgren of this ship, the Sierra Park, had his orders from your gang to wreck her—wreck her neatly so's not to invalidate the insurance. Barratry, Horn: ever hear that word?”

“Sounds like somethin' in metallurgy—a new kind of rock.”

Captain Judah assumed the bored air of a schoolmaster with a dunce: “Barratry, young fellow, is wrecking a ship so that the underwriters can't come down on you for fraud. Here's a ship which cleared from Mazatlan with baled Sinaloa cotton packed tight with a jack, then called at La Paz for green hides to be stowed on top of the cotton—stowed snug right up to the deck beams. First night out of La Paz somebody aboard this ship—mind you, I name no names—somebody, I say, let about five hundred gallons of water, say, run in the main hold, then bolted down the hatch——”

“I get you!” Spike interrupted. “Like dried apples in soak—everything swelled.”

“Swelled enough to push out the plates at the waterline,” the skipped added dryly. “Your Cap'n Lofgren—pious soul!—had to make a run for Sabina Island here and beach his ship to keep from sinking. Record all tidy and shipshape in case he's called before the inspectors in San Francisco.”

Spike pointed to the hole in the deck with an inquiring finger.

“Gas, of course,” Storrs grunted. “Decaying hide would account for that even if the cotton didn't. This godly Cap'n Lofgren doubtless figured on combustion and a fire which would burn the ship after he quit it.”

The Lonney Lee's master suddenly checked himself and scowled. His saturnine eyes launched shafts of hate at the rag-tag Horn.

“Here you are, Horn, making a monkey of me again,” he grated. “Getting me to tell you what you damn' well know already.”

Horn's clown mouth widened to show the gap which the smash of Storrs' fist had made in his dentition that first day out from Abalone Cove.

“Cap, cross my heart an' hope to choke if this ain't all news to me.”

For a long minute Captain Judah's eyes bored into him. Almost was there conviction of the truth of Spike's confession in their moveless irises, then doubt filmed over them. The master's fetter of whisker stirred in a sneer.

“Horn, you're the cleverest scoundrel of the lot, and I give you fair warning: I'm going to get out of this wreck what I came to get. If there's any interference from you I'll kill you, rifle or no rifle. So——”

The man's jaw hung open on the unspoken words. His eyes, shunting over Horn's shoulder, widened so that their whites flickered eerily. Spike whirled to follow the direction of the set gaze. What he saw staggered him.

The figure of a woman sat carelessly on the lee rail opposite where they stood and just beneath one of the outswung davits. She wore the blue trousers and woolen shirt of a steamship under-officer. Heavy braids of hair, thick and black, fell over her shoulders from the brim of a vizored cap. Her right hand was advanced slightly away from her body and toward them. At first Spike thought she was pointing at them with a long finger; strangely silvered; then he saw at that finger's end the small black bore of a revolver.

“Which one of you is named Storrs—Cap'n Judah Storrs?' The challenge came in a firm throaty voice. Captain Judah mastered his bewilderment sufficiently to speak.

“I am Captain——”

A jet of smoke from the silvery pointing finger, and Captain Judah's tight mariner's cap lifted and turned askew on his head.