She was a ship with a dead crew!

The professor promptly dashed into the pilot-house, and backed the ship off to a distance at which she would be safe from infection; and then the men of the party held a consultation as to what should be done in the matter of this ghastly tragedy upon which they had stumbled. Here was another case wherein it was desirable, for obvious reasons, that the name, nationality, and other particulars of the ship should be ascertained; and this, of course, could only be done by boarding her.

It is true that her name and nationality might perhaps be determined by the simple expedient of running round her and reading the inscription upon her stern; and this was tried, but with no very satisfactory result, the only letters decipherable being "insch--en--otter--m."

It was at once apparent that Sir Reginald was distinctly averse from the idea of boarding the ship; and this was not to be wondered at, for who was to say of what disease the unfortunate crew had died? It might be plague, cholera, or something equally malignant; and if so, what guarantee was there that the boarding-party would not bring the infection of it back to the _Flying Fish_? Even when Mildmay suggested the possibility that life might still be lingering in some poor wretch aboard the stranger, he still hesitated, questioning the prudence of exposing eight healthy persons--or eleven, if they included Ida's nurse, George, and the _chef_ below--to serious risks of infection upon so remote a probability, as that there _might_ possibly be a survivor of the tragedy still existing. Yet, the idea having been mooted, he could not bring himself to say the word that would leave the floating charnel-house unexplored. He therefore appealed to von Schalckenberg to say whether there were any means, either by the use of disinfectants or otherwise, whereby an examination of the ship might be rendered possible; and upon the latter answering in the affirmative, it was ultimately arranged that Mildmay should go alone on board her, and learn what he could, but that he was to bring nothing away from the ship.

"The skipper" accordingly, following the professor's instructions, went below and changed into the oldest and most worthless garments that he could find; after which he joined the worthy German in the latter's own cabin, and there imbibed a certain draught, and otherwise underwent elaborate preparations for his projected expedition, that were guaranteed to render him personally immune.

Meanwhile, Sir Reginald and Lethbridge got out, lowered, and brought to the gangway, one of the boats, into which Mildmay presently stepped, and pushed off for the strange ship.

He was absent a full hour, or more, and he had scarcely reached the empty deck of the _Flying Fish_ upon his return, when those who had been watching his movements from the dining-saloon ports saw thin wreaths of blue smoke go soaring upward between the masts from the two ends of the stranger. Mildmay had carefully set her on fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

CAPTAIN SILAS BARKER OF THE AMY PELHAM.

Pausing only long enough to hoist the boat to the davits, the adventurous sailor descended to one of the bathrooms, where the professor awaited him with a medicated bath already prepared, which was to remove from his person every germ of infection that he might perchance have brought with him from the ship. And the moment that he was safely immersed in this, and further seen to be vigorously applying it to his face, hair, and beard, von Schalckenberg made the rejected clothing into a bundle--which he carefully wrapped in a cloth saturated with disinfectant--and, carrying it up on deck, dropped it overboard.

The result of these somewhat drastic, but perfectly justifiable precautions was, that when Mildmay emerged, fully clothed, from the bathroom, the professor announced him to be as clean and wholesome as any of the others of the party.

Meanwhile, Sir Reginald, having noted Mildmay's return, and waited until he was safely in the bathroom, at once proceeded to the pilot-house, and starting the engines, put the _Flying Fish_ again on her course. Thus, when at length "the skipper" made his appearance on deck--exhaling a powerful odour of disinfectants--the ship that he had visited was on the horizon, and in flames from stem to stern.

"You did your work pretty effectually," said Sir Reginald to him, nodding towards the blazing ship. "I suppose it was the proper thing to do, eh?"

"Undoubtedly," answered Mildmay. "We could not salve her, you see; and to leave her drifting about, derelict, would only be to expose other ships to a very serious danger--not necessarily the danger of infection, but the peril of a disastrous collision. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that many a good ship has gone to the bottom, taking her crew with her, as the result of collision with a derelict in the dark hours of a dirty, windy night; and if a derelict is fallen in with under circ.u.mstances which render the salving of her impossible, she certainly ought to be destroyed. Yet, in the case of yonder ship-- which, by the way, is the _Linschoten_, of Rotterdam, Dirk Dirkzwager, master, bound from Batavia to Amsterdam--the necessity was rather a regrettable one; for she carried a valuable cargo, consisting chiefly of coffee, indigo, and tobacco. Her logbook shows that she sailed for home nearly three months ago, and was becalmed on her fourth day out, her present position seeming to indicate that she has remained becalmed ever since--at least, her logbook makes it clear that she met with no wind for seven full weeks after running into the calm. And about that time it appears that sickness of some virulent and deadly kind broke out aboard her--the log does not specify what it was, possibly because the skipper did not know--and within twenty-four hours all hands were down with it. The entry conveying this information is the last in the book, and the rest can only be guessed at; but it must have been pretty bad, for there were nineteen corpses on board her, which is clear enough evidence that the living were too ill to dispose of the dead. And that, I think, is all I need tell you. I will not attempt to describe to you what I saw aboard her; for, in the first place, no language of mine could do justice to it, and, in the second place, there is no good to be done by attempting to harrow your feelings. In accordance with your wish, I brought nothing in the shape of doc.u.ments or otherwise away with me; so, having told you all that there is to tell, I will now go below, and write a full account of the affair in my diary while everything is fresh in my memory."

When the party a.s.sembled on deck after dinner that evening, somebody suggested that, as there was now a good moon coming on, rendering the nights light and beautiful, the remainder of the voyage should be proceeded with on the surface of the sea, by night as well as by day, for the sake of securing a full measure of enjoyment of the delightful weather then prevailing. It was true that such a method of progression would entail upon the men--or at least the four of them who understood how to work the ship--the necessity to keep a watch; but they were unanimous in declaring that this would be no hardship at all, but a pleasure rather than otherwise, if only on account of the novelty of the thing. The new arrangement was therefore adopted that same night. The route chosen was through the Straits of Sunda, the Java Sea, the Straits of Maca.s.sar, and the Sea of Celebes, into the Pacific, this route taking them past many small islands, and perhaps affording them a few novel and interesting sights. The speed was, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, to be the exceedingly moderate one of fifteen knots.

Java Head (the westernmost of the three headlands so named) was sighted shortly after noon on the following day; and the ship entered the Straits--at that point about forty miles wide--as the party sat down to lunch, which Sir Reginald had ordered to be served on deck. There were several craft in sight, native and otherwise, under steam and sail, and as the _Flying Fish_ drew farther into the Straits, and the waterway narrowed, the scene became very animated. They pa.s.sed Krakatoa, and gazed with interest and amazement at the evidences of the awful havoc and ruin that had been wrought by the terrific eruption of '83; and emerged into open water again in time to witness a magnificent sunset behind the mountain of Radja Ba.s.sa, on the island of Sumatra.

It took them sixty hours to traverse the Java Sea, the helm being shifted for the pa.s.sage through the Maca.s.sar Strait at sunrise on the third morning out from the Straits of Sunda. The Balabalongan Islands were safely pa.s.sed that same evening, ere darkness fell; and twenty-four hours later they emerged into the open Sea of Celebes, and again shifted their helm.

Thus far nothing of importance had happened; they had enjoyed glorious weather, and found almost constant entertainment in watching the various craft fallen in with, and the beautiful pictures offered to their gaze by the islands that they had pa.s.sed. But on the evening that witnessed their entrance into the Sea of Celebes there were indications that a change of weather was impending. A somewhat rapid decline of the mercury in the tube of the barometer was the first symptom, and this was quickly followed by a dimming of the hitherto crystalline blue of the sky that produced a wild, fiery, smoky sunset, suggestive of a whole continent ablaze away down there to the westward. As the darkness closed in there were but few stars to be seen, and they quickly vanished in the mistiness that gradually obscured the heavens. The moon, now near the full, appeared for a short time as a shapeless film of hazy light, and then she also vanished. The north-east monsoon, which had been blowing fresh and steadily for the last few days, died away, and the stagnant air became close and suffocatingly hot.

"Phew!" exclaimed Sir Reginald, as the party stepped out on deck; "this is the hottest night we have had this trip, and stark calm. What does it mean, skipper? I thought that we were now in the monsoon region."

"So we are; but, as you see, the wind has fallen calm," answered Mildmay. "Moreover, the mercury is dropping a good deal faster than I like; and this thickening up of the atmosphere means bad weather; I am sure of it."

"_Very_ bad weather, do you mean, Mildmay, or merely a bit of a breeze?"

questioned Sir Reginald.

"Something very much worse than 'a bit of a breeze,' I imagine," was the reply. "Indeed, it would not greatly surprise me to find that we are in for a regular typhoon."

"A typhoon!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lethbridge, who was standing close by; "that means something pretty bad, doesn't it?"

"Well, about the same sort of thing as we encountered upon the memorable occasion when we saved the life of the lady who is now our charming and gracious hostess," answered Mildmay.

"What is that? Are you talking about me?" demanded Lady Olivia, who, a few feet away, had happened to catch the word "hostess."

"Mildmay has just been telling us, my dear, that appearances point to the approach of a gale of somewhat similar character to that which occurred in the Bay of Bengal on a certain memorable occasion,"

explained her husband.

"Oh dear, how dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Olivia. "I shall never forget that time,"--with a shudder--"it comes to me, even now, sometimes, in my dreams. Shall we be in any danger, Captain?"

"Danger! in such a ship as this?" cried Mildmay. "None whatever. But, of course, if you feel nervous, we can go up aloft, and avoid it by the simple process of rising above it; or we can descend one or two hundred feet below the surface, and ride it out there."

"Oh, but I do not think I should like that; at least, certainly not the last. It is one thing to go down to the bottom in fine weather, as we did when you were examining the wreck, and quite another to do the same when a hurricane is blowing. And, of the three alternatives, I really think I should prefer to remain on the surface of the sea, and watch all the wild commotion, if I could feel a.s.sured that we were quite safe."

"You certainly may feel a.s.sured of that, my Lady," exclaimed von Schalckenberg. "With this ship afloat and in the open sea, you may laugh to scorn the fiercest gale. The wind may smite her in its wildest fury, the waves sweep her from end to end, and she will still go unharmed and undeterred on her way."

"Then let us stay on the surface and risk it. I should love to witness a really furious storm, with the feeling that I was perfectly safe,"

said the lady. And so it was settled.

But when Lady Olivia retired to her cabin that night the air was still calm, and the only difference perceptible to her was that, whereas earlier in the evening the sea had been almost perfectly smooth, her swinging bedstead was now swaying with a very perceptible movement due to the fact that a heavy westerly swell had arisen, and was now following the ship.

It was not until close upon midnight that any very decided change occurred; and then came a shower that burst upon the ship with true tropical suddenness and violence, and in the midst of the shower the wind came away strong out of the westward, blowing in fierce, sudden gusts that quickly hardened down to a strong and rapidly increasing gale. When daylight laggingly came upon the scene the wind was blowing with true hurricane force, and a very high, steep sea was running, which would undoubtedly have been still higher had not the wind taken the crests of the seas, torn them off, and sent them flying away to leeward in blinding torrents of scud-water that lashed the walls of the _Flying Fish's_ pilot-house with a sound like that of the continuous crash of hail. Although the ship's engines were set for a speed of only fifteen knots, she was going through the water at something more than twenty; yet, despite the fact that she was being swept from end to end by the wildly breaking seas that followed her, her movements were so easy and comfortable that Mildmay became quite enthusiastic upon the subject.

Shortly before noon they sighted and pa.s.sed, within a quarter of a mile, a big battleship. She was riding head to wind, and apparently steaming ahead dead slow, or, at all events, merely at a speed sufficient to give her steerage-way. She was making positively frightful weather of it, diving deeply into every sea, as it met her, and literally burying herself in a perfect smother of whiteness which had no time to flow off her decks ere she plunged into the next sea. And, strangely enough, within the hour they fell in with and pa.s.sed a small gun-boat, undoubtedly British. She was rigged as a barquentine. Her three topmasts were housed, and she was hove-to under the lee clew of her close-reefed topsail and a small storm-trysail. She was being flung about in a manner that was absolutely appalling to look at, at one moment standing almost upright, and anon thrown down on her beam-ends at such an extreme angle that, to the onlookers, her decks seemed to be almost vertical. Yet, with it all, she was making better weather of it than her bigger sister, for though the spray flew over her in heavy clouds, she seemed to be shipping very little green water. Still later, they pa.s.sed something that had the appearance of being a capsized junk, after which they sighted nothing more; and on the following morning, with sunrise, the gale broke, the sky cleared, the wind softened down and finally shifted; and by the afternoon the north-east monsoon was again blowing, and nothing remained of the gale save the turbulent sea that it had knocked up. The same evening saw them abreast and about ten miles to the north of the island of Tagulanda, and twenty-four hours later they sighted and pa.s.sed North Cape, on the island of Moro, and swept into the great Pacific ocean.

The weather had by this time again become all that the voyagers could desire. The sky was of a beautifully clear, rich blue tint, flecked here and there with thin, fleecy, fine weather clouds; the monsoon swept down upon their port bow in a cool gush, redolent of the exhilarating smell of the open ocean, a very life-giving tonic; and the long, low mounds of the Pacific swell, wrinkled with the sweep of the breeze, just sufficed to give life in a long, easy plunging movement to the hull of the _Flying Fish_, at one moment lifting her sharp-pointed nose and some twenty feet of her fore-body clear out of the blue, sparkling brine, and anon causing her to dive into the on-coming undulation until she was buried nearly midway to her superstructure.

About mid-afternoon they pa.s.sed a small island that lay some half a dozen miles to the northward of their course, and about half an hour before sunset another and still smaller one was sighted, almost directly ahead.

As usual, every gla.s.s in the ship was at once brought to bear upon it; for, despite the ever-fresh and ever-changing beauty of sea and sky, a break in the monotony of it is always welcome, and even such an object as a barren rock becomes interesting.

"Mildmay, do you notice anything peculiar about that island ahead?"

asked Sir Reginald, when he had been peering through his binocular for a minute or so.

"Looks to me, very much like a wreck of some sort upon it," remarked Lethbridge.

"It is a wreck," said Mildmay; "the wreck of a small craft--apparently a schooner. I have just been looking at her."

"Uncommonly awkward spot to be cast away upon," said Sir Reginald.

"Why, it is a mere rock, by the look of it. And yet not quite a rock, either, for there is gra.s.s on it, and a few stunted bushes. But the whole place cannot be much more than ten acres in extent. And, as I live, there are people upon it. I can see smoke, and the flicker of a fire."

"You are right, Elphinstone. There is a fire there; I have just caught sight of it," said Lethbridge.

"Well," said Sir Reginald, "we must stop and take them off, although I don't much like the idea of admitting strangers to this ship, and so 'giving our show away' to a certain extent. But, of course, we can't allow any considerations of that sort to weigh with us where the question is one of saving life. And n.o.body could contrive to sustain life for any length of time on that little patch of earth. Why, if another gale should spring up, they would be washed off, for a dead certainty."

"Ay, that is a fact that there is no disputing," agreed Mildmay. "And, after all, you know, Elphinstone, there is no need for us to make those people acquainted with the fact that we are on an aerial and submarine, as well as an ordinary ship; they need know very little more about us than those people of the _Baroda_ know. And we can trans-ship them into the next craft belonging to a civilised nation that we fall in with."

"Yes, of course we can," a.s.sented Sir Reginald. "Their fuel seems to be pretty damp, poor chaps; there is a good deal more smoke than fire there, to my thinking."

"That, I take it, is intentional," said Mildmay. "They have probably seen us, and are making that big smoke to attract our attention. With your permission, Elphinstone, I will hoist our ensign, to let them know that we have seen them, and will get one of the boats ready for lowering."

"Right, skipper; I will come and lend you a hand with the boat. Perhaps it would be as well to get both boats to the quarters, wouldn't it, as we are henceforth going to remain on the surface until we can say good-bye to those people."

Mildmay agreed that it would; and in a few minutes both boats were hanging from their davits over the ship's two quarters, and the ensign flying from the staff. By this time the ship was within two miles of the island, and the interested watchers had caught sight of a man standing upon the highest point of his mere hand's-breadth of territory, waving his arms, as though still doubtful whether he had succeeded in attracting their attention.

"There seems to be but one man there," observed Lethbridge, as the two men joined him. "If so, he must have had a pretty bad time of it. How long will he have been there, I wonder!"