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Title: The isle of dead ships

Author: Crittenden Marriott

Illustrator: Frank McKernan

Release date: September 29, 2022 [eBook #69065]
                Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: J. B. Lippincott Company

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Library of Congress)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLE OF DEAD SHIPS ***

THE ISLE _of_ DEAD SHIPS


[Illustration: “NO,” HE MURMURED, SADLY. “IT IS NOT LAND. IT IS
WRECKAGE.”                                           _Page 74._]




  The
  Isle _of_ Dead Ships

  By
  CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT

  _With illustrations by_
  FRANK McKERNAN

  [Illustration]

  Philadelphia & London
  J. B. Lippincott Company
  1909




  Copyright, 1908
  BY CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT

  Copyright, 1909
  BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

  Published September, 1909

  _Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
  The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A._




PROLOGUE


THERE is a floating island in the sea where no explorer has set foot,
or, setting foot, has returned to tell of what he saw. Lying at our
very doors, in the direct path of every steamer from the Gulf of Mexico
to Europe, it is less known than is the frozen pole. Encyclopedias pass
over it lightly; atlases dismiss it with but a slight mention; maps
do not attempt to portray its ever-shifting outlines; even the Sunday
newspapers, so keen to grasp everything of interest, ignore it.

But on the decks of great ships in the long watches of the night, when
the trade-wind snores through the rigging and the waves purr about the
bows, the sailor tells strange tales of the spot where ruined ships,
raked derelict from all the square miles of ocean, form a great
island, ever changing, ever wasting, yet ever lasting; where, in the
ballroom of the Atlantic, draped round with encircling weed, they drone
away their lives, balancing slowly in a mighty tourbillion to the
rhythm of the Gulf Stream.

Fanciful? Sailors’ tales? Stories fit only for the marines? Perhaps!
Yet be not too sure! Jack Tar, slow of speech, fearful of ridicule,
knows more of the sea than he will tell to the newspapers. Perhaps more
than one has drifted to the isle of dead ships, and escaped only to be
disbelieved in the maelstroms that await him in all the seaports of the
world.

Facts are facts, none the less because passed on only by word of mouth,
and this tale, based on matter gleaned beneath the tropic stars, may be
truer than men are wont to think. Remember Longfellow’s words:

  “Wouldst thou,” thus the steersman answered,
    “Learn the secret of the sea?
  Only those that brave its dangers
    Comprehend its mystery.”




THE

ISLE _of_ DEAD SHIPS




I


AS the prisoner and Officer Jackson, handcuffed together, came up the
gang-plank, Renfrew, the attorney, standing on the promenade deck
above, turned from his contemplation of the city of San Juan as it lay
green and white in the afternoon sun, and bent forward.

“By George,” he cried, exultingly, “that’s Frank Howard! He’s caught!
Caught here, of all places in the world!”

With hands tight gripped on the rail he watched the two men until they
disappeared below; then, eager to share his discovery of the ending of
a quest that had extended over two continents, he turned and hurried
along the deck to where two ladies stood leaning against the taffrail.

“Yes, my dear,” the elder was saying, “Porto Rico is pretty enough for
any one. It looked pretty when I came, and it looks prettier as I go.
But when you say it’s pretty, you exhaust its excellences. I, for one,
shall be glad to see the last of it. And, considering the errand that
takes you home, I imagine that you don’t regret leaving, either.”

“The errand! I don’t understand, Mrs. Renfrew.”

“Why! Your--but here comes Philip, evidently with something on his
mind. Do listen to him patiently, if you can, my dear. He hasn’t had
a jury at his mercy for a month. Unless somebody lets him talk, I’m
afraid his bottled-up eloquence will strike in and prove fatal. Well,
Philip!”

Mr. Renfrew was close at hand.

“Miss Fairfax! Maria!” he cried. “Who do you think is on board, a
prisoner? Frank Howard! I just saw him brought over the gang-plank. He
escaped two months ago, and the police have been looking for him ever
since. They must have just caught him, or I should have heard of it.
Who in the world can I ask?”

He gazed around questioningly.

“Now, Philip, wait a moment. Who is Frank Howard? and what has the poor
man done?”

Mr. Renfrew snorted.

“The poor man, Maria,” he retorted, “is one of the biggest scoundrels
unhung. As state’s attorney it was my duty to prosecute him, and I may
say that I have seldom taken more pleasure in any task. I have spoken
to you of the case often enough, Maria, for you to know something about
it. I should really be glad if you would take some interest in your
husband’s affairs.”

Mrs. Renfrew clapped her hands.

“Of course! I remember now,” she said, soothingly. “It was only his
name I forgot. Mr. Howard is that swindler who robbed so many poor
people, isn’t he, Philip?”

“Nothing of the sort, madam,” thundered the lawyer. “Frank Howard was
an officer of the United States Navy. While stationed at this very
island of Porto Rico he secretly married an ignorant but very beautiful
girl, and then deserted her. She followed him to New York, and wrote
him a letter telling him where she was. He went to her address
and murdered her--strangled her with his own hands. He was caught
red-handed, convicted, and would have been put to death before now if
he hadn’t escaped.

“I am telling this for your benefit, Miss Fairfax. There is no use in
talking to Mrs. Renfrew; details of my affairs go in one of her ears
and out the other.”

“That may not be as uncommon as you think, Mr. Renfrew,” consoled the
girl, laughing. “But, as it happens, I am especially interested in the
Howard case. I am very well acquainted with one of the officers who was
on his ship when he met the girl.”

Mrs. Renfrew clapped her hands.

“Oh! of course,” she bubbled. “Of course! I remember all about it now.
It was Mr. Loving, of course! I had forgotten that he was on the same
ship. Philip, you didn’t know that Miss Fairfax was going to marry
Lieutenant Loving, did you?”

Mr. Renfrew turned his eye-glasses on the girl, who flushed with
mingled anger and amusement.

“Are you a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, Mrs. Renfrew,” she
inquired, “that you can read the future? I assure you that I have had
no advance information on the matter. Mr. Loving hasn’t even asked me
yet. But, of course, if you know----”

“Good gracious! Isn’t it true? Why, I got a paper from New York to-day
that spoke of it as all settled. The paper is in my state-room now. If
you’d like to see it, we’ll go down. Philip, find out all you can about
Mr. Howard, and tell us just as soon as you can.”

Mr. Renfrew nodded.

“I’ll go and ask the captain,” he promised, as the two ladies turned
away.

The captain, however, proved not to be communicative. Not only was
he too busy with the preparations for departure, but he was nettled
because the presence of the convict on board had become known. Convicts
are not welcome passengers on ships, like the Queen, whose chief office
is to carry presumably timid pleasure passengers, and their presence is
always carefully concealed.

“I know nothing at all about it, Mr. Renfrew,” he asserted, gruffly.
“You had better ask the purser.”

The purser was no more pleased at the inquiry than his chief had been,
but he hid his vexation better.

“Yes,” he admitted, with apparent readiness, “Mr. Howard is on
board. He was caught here last week. He was up at a village called
Lagonitas----”

“That’s where his wife lived--the one he murdered.”

“Is it? I didn’t know. Well, they caught him. He surrendered
quietly--didn’t try to fight or run. He hadn’t anywhere to run to, you
know.”

“And where is he confined?”

“Amidships--in one of the second-class cabins. We have plenty vacant
this trip. Officer Jackson is with him, where he can keep close watch.
You tell your ladies not to be uneasy. He can’t possibly get out.
Jackson has got a hundred weight of iron, more or less, on him.”

“Jackson, is it? I thought I recognized him. One of those bulldog
fellows that never lets go. I’m interested in Howard because it was I
who conducted the prosecution at his trial.”

“Gee! Is that so? It must have been exciting. He confessed, didn’t he?”

“Confessed? Not he! Took the stand as brazen as you please, and
swore he had never seen the woman before he went to her room that
day in response to a letter and found her dead. It was nothing less
than barefaced impudence, you know. The proof against him was simply
overwhelming.”

“He denied having married her, then?”

“He denied everything. Swore it was a case of mistaken identity. I
demolished that quickly enough. Dozens of people had seen him up at
Lagonitas with the girl. We even sent for the minister who performed
the marriage ceremony, but he never arrived--lost at sea on the way to
New York. But there was plenty of proof, anyway. The jury found him
guilty without leaving their seats.”




II


WHEN Dorothy Fairfax came on deck again the sun was dropping fast
toward the horizon. A gusty breeze was blowing and the steamer was
pitching slightly in the short, choppy seas that characterize West
Indian waters. Movement had become unpleasant to those inclined to
seasickness and this, combined with the comparative lightness of the
passenger list, caused the deck of the Queen to be nearly deserted.

Dorothy was glad of it. She wanted solitude in order to think in peace,
and there was seldom solitude for her when young men--or old men, for
that matter--were near. They seemed to gravitate naturally to her side.

Mrs. Renfrew’s words, and especially the paragraph in the New York
paper, were troubling her. She could see the words now, published
under a San Juan date-line:

  “Miss Dorothy Fairfax, daughter of the multimillionaire railroader,
  John Fairfax, will sail next week for New York to order her trousseau
  for her coming marriage with Lieutenant Loving, U. S. N. Mr. Fairfax,
  who is financing the railroad here, will follow in about three weeks.”

That was all; the whole thing taken for granted! Evidently the
writer had supposed that the engagement had been already announced,
or he would either have made some inquiry or--supposing that he was
determined to publish--would have “spread” himself on the subject. Miss
Fairfax had been written up enough to know that her engagement would be
worth at least a column to the society editors of the New York papers.
Yes, she concluded, the item must have emanated from some chance
correspondent who had picked up a stray bit of gossip.

She had known Mr. Loving for two years or more, and had liked him.
Three months before, at the close of the Howard trial, she had become
convinced that he intended to ask her to marry him, and she had slipped
away to join her father in Porto Rico in order to gain time to think
before deciding on her answer. And here she was, returning home, no
more resolved than when she had left.

It was odd that her ship should also bear Lieutenant Howard, of whom
Mr. Loving had been so fond, standing by him all through his trial
when everybody else fell away. She had had a glimpse of Mr. Howard
once, and vaguely recalled him, wondering what combination of desperate
circumstances could have brought a man like him to the commission of
such a crime.

The judge, she remembered, in sentencing him to death had declared that
no mercy should be shown to one who, with everything to keep him in the
straight path, had deliberately gone wrong.

The soft pad of footsteps on the deck roused her from her musings, and
she turned to see the purser drawing near.

“Ah! Good evening, Miss Fairfax!” he ventured. “We missed you at tea.
Feeling the motion a bit? It is a little rough, ain’t it?”

Miss Fairfax did not like the purser, but she found it difficult to
snub any one. Therefore she answered the man pleasantly, though not
with any especial enthusiasm.

“Why! no, Mr. Sprigg. I don’t consider this rough; I’m rather a good
sailor, you know. I simply wasn’t hungry at tea-time.”

Mr. Sprigg came closer.

“By the way, Miss Fairfax,” he insinuated. “You know Lieutenant Howard
is on board. If you’d like to have a peep at him, just say the word
and I’ll manage. Oh!” he added, hastily, as a slight frown marred Miss
Fairfax’s pretty brows, “I know you must be interested in his case.
He’s a friend of Lieutenant Loving, and I read the notice in the paper
to-day, you know.”

The look the girl gave him drove the smirk in haste from his face.

“The notice in the paper was entirely without foundation, Mr. Sprigg,”
she declared, coldly. “As for seeing Mr. Howard, I’m afraid my tastes
do not run in that direction. Besides, he probably would not like to be
stared at. He was a gentleman once, you know.”

She turned impatiently away and looked eastward. Then she uttered an
exclamation.

“Why! Whatever’s happened to the water?” she cried.

The question was not surprising. In the last hour the sea had changed.
From a smiling playfellow, lightly buffeting the ship, it had grown
cold and sullen. The sparkles had died from the waves, giving place to
a metallic lustre. Long, slow undulations swelled out of the southeast,
chasing each other sluggishly up in the wake of the ship.

It did not need a sailor’s eye to tell that something was brewing. Miss
Fairfax shivered slightly and drew her light wrap closer around her.

“Makes you feel cold, don’t it?” asked Mr. Sprigg cheerfully. “Lord
bless you, that’s nothing to the way you’ll feel before it’s over.
Funny the weather bureau didn’t give us any storm warnings before we
sailed.”

The weather bureau had, but the warnings had been thrown away,
unposted, by a sapient native official of San Juan, who considered the
efforts of the Americans to foretell the weather to be immoral.

“Will there be any danger?”

“Danger? Naw! Not a bit of it. If you stay below, you won’t even know
that there’s been anything doing. Even if we run into a hurricane,
which ain’t likely, we’ll be just as safe as if we were ashore. The
Queen don’t need to worry about anything short of an island or a
derelict.”

“A derelict?”

“Sure. A ship that has been abandoned at sea for some reason or other,
but that ain’t been broken up or sunk. Derelicts are real terrors, all
right.”

“Some of ’em float high; they ain’t so bad, because you can usually see
’em in time to dodge, and because they ain’t likely to be solid enough
to do you much damage even if you do run into them. But some of ’em
float low--just awash--and they’re just-- Well, they’re mighty bad.
They ain’t really ships any more; they’re solid bulks of wood.”

“I suppose they are all destroyed sooner or later?”

The little purser unconsciously struck an attitude. “A good deal later,
sometimes,” he qualified. “Derelicts have been known to float for three
years in the Atlantic, and to travel for thousands of miles. Generally,
however, in the North Atlantic, they either break up in a storm within
a few months, or else they drift into the Sargasso Sea and stay there
till they sink.”

“The Sargasso Sea? Where is that? I suppose I used to know when I went
to school, but I’ve forgotten.”

Mr. Sprigg waved his hand toward the east and north. “Yonder,” he
generalized vaguely. “We are on the western edge of it now. See the
weed floating in the water there? Farther north and east it gets
thicker until it collects into a solid mass that stretches five hundred
miles in every direction.

“Nobody knows just what it looks like in the middle, for nobody has
ever been there; or, rather, nobody has ever been there and come back
to tell about it. Old sailors say that there’s thousands of derelicts
collected there.”

“The Gulf Stream encircles the whole ocean in a mighty whirlpool, you
know, and sooner or later everything floating in the North Atlantic
is caught in it. They may be carried away up to the North Pole, but
they’re bound to come south again with the icebergs and back into the
main stream, and some day they get into the west-wind drift and are
carried down the Canary current, until the north equatorial current
catches them, and sweeps them into the sea over yonder.”

“For four hundred years and more--ever since Columbus--derelicts
must have been gathering there. Millions of them must have sunk, but
thousands must have been washed into the center. Once there, they must
float for a long time. There are storms there, of course, but they’re
only wind-storms--there can’t be any waves; the weed is too thick.”

“I guess there are ships still afloat there that were built hundreds of
years ago. Maybe Columbus’s lost caravels are there; maybe people are
imprisoned there! Gee! but it’s fascinating.”

Miss Fairfax stared at the little man in amazement. He was the last
person she would ever have suspected of imagination or romance; and
here he was, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, declaiming away
like one inspired. Most men can talk well on some one subject, and this
subject was Mr. Sprigg’s own. For years he had been reading and talking
and thinking about it.

Miss Fairfax rose from her steamer-chair and looked around her, then
paused, awestruck. Down in the southeast a mass of black clouds
darkened the day as they spread. Puffs of wind ran before them, each
carrying sheets of spray torn from the tops of the waves; one stronger
than the rest dashed its burden into Miss Fairfax’s face with little
stinging cuts. The cry of the stewards, “All passengers below!” was
not needed to tell her that the deck was rapidly becoming no place for
women.




III


AN hour later the deck had grown dangerous, even for men. The Queen
drove diagonally through the waves, rolling far to right and to left;
and at each roll a miniature torrent swept aboard her, hammered on her
tightly-fastened doors, and passed, cataract-wise, back into the deep.
Scarcely could the officers, high on the bridge, clinging to stanchions
and shielded by strong sheets of canvas, keep their footing. Overhead
hooted the gale.

It grew dark. To the gloom of the storm had been added the blackness of
the night. Literally, no man could see his hand before his face; even
the white foam that broke upon the decks or against the sides passed
invisibly.

Still, the ship drove on, held relentlessly to her course. For it
was necessary to pass the western line of the weed-bound sea before
turning to the north; and, until this was done, the Queen could not
turn tail to the storm.

Toward morning Captain Bostwick struggled to the chart-house and, for
the twentieth time, bent over the sheet, figuring and measuring. Then,
with careful precision, he punched a dot in the surface and drew a long
breath.

“We are all right now,” he announced. “We can bear away north with
safety. Nothing can harm us, unless----”

He opened the last chart of the Hydrographic Office and noted some
lines drawn in red. His brow grew anxious again and he drew his breath.

“Confound that derelict!” he muttered. “Allowing for drift, she should
be close to this very spot. If we should strike her----”

The sentence was never finished. With a shivering shock like that of a
railroad train in a head-on collision, the Queen stopped dead, hurling
the captain violently over the rail to the deck below.

The first officer was clutching the rope of the siren when the crash
came. The slight support it afforded before it gave way saved him from
following his commander, and at the same time sent a raucous warning
through the ship to close the collision bulkheads.

As he clung desperately to the rail, the Queen rose in the air and came
down with another crash; then went forward over something that grated
and tore at her hull as she passed. But her bows were buried in the
waves, while her screw lashed the air madly.

Had not the involuntary warning of the siren sounded, and had it
not been obeyed instantly, the Queen would have plunged in that
heart-breaking moment to the bottom. As it was, her shrift seemed short.

The force of her impact on the lumber-laden, water-logged derelict had
shattered her bows, and only the forward bulkhead, strained, split,
gaping in a hundred seams where the rivets had been wrenched loose,
kept out the sea. A hurried inspection showed that even that frail
protection would probably not long suffice.

“It’s only an hour to dawn,” gasped the first officer. “If she can last
till then----”

She lasted, but dawn showed a desperate state of affairs. The Queen had
swung round, until her submerged bow pointed to windward and her high
stern, catching the gale, plunged dully northward. The seas, rushing
up from the southeast, broke on the shelving deck like rollers on a
beach, and sent the salt spume writhing up the planks and into the deck
state-rooms.

The engine and all the forward part of the ship were drowned, but
the great dining-saloon and the staircase leading to the social hall
above were still comparatively dry. In the latter and on the deck
just outside of it the passengers were huddled. The captain had
disappeared, licked away by the first tongue of sea that had followed
the collision.

With the earliest streak of light the first officer decided to take to
the boats. Only three remained, and these had already been fitted out
with provisions.

As the crew and passengers filed into the first, Officer Jackson, who
had several times come on deck, only to wander restlessly below again,
once more plunged down into the darkness.

Rapidly yet cautiously he lowered himself down the sloping passageway,
clutching at the jambs of empty state-rooms to keep himself from
sliding down against the bulkhead, on the other side of which the sea
muttered angrily. At last he gained the door he sought, and clung to it
while he fitted a key into the lock.

The electric lights had gone out when the engine stopped, and not a
thing could be seen in the blackness, but a stir within told that the
room was tenanted. Some one was there, staring toward the door.

Jackson lost no time.

“Here you!” he blustered, in a voice into which there crept a quiver
in spite of him. “Last call! The ship’s sinking and they’re taking to
the boats. You gotter decide mighty quick if you’re going to come. Just
gimme your parole and I’ll turn you loose to fight for your life.”

A voice answered promptly:

“I’ll give no parole. I’d a deal sooner drown here than hang on shore.
You can do just as you please about releasing me. It’s a matter of
indifference to me.”

The officer tried to protest.

“I don’t want your death on my shoulders, Mr. Howard,” he muttered.
“Don’t put me to it.”

Howard laughed sardonically.

“What the devil do I care about your shoulders?” he demanded. “Turn
me loose, quick, or get out. Your company isn’t exhilarating, my good
Jackson.”

Both men had raised their voices so as to be heard above the boom of
the storm. As Howard ceased, there came an impact heavier than before,
followed by faint, despairing shrieks.

With an oath, Jackson felt his way to the voice and bent over the berth
in which his prisoner was lying. “Curse you!” he snarled. “For two
cents I’d take you at your word and let you drown. But I can’t. Here!”

The clink of a key and the rattle of metal told that the handcuffs fell
away.

“You’re loose now,” continued the officer. “But, by Heaven, if you try
to escape, I’ll see that you don’t miss the death you say is welcome.
Come on.”

Howard swung his legs over the edge of the berth.

“That’s fair,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ll follow.”

Hastily, Jackson led the way up the slanting passage to the topsy-turvy
stairway, and so to the deck. A single glance about him and he turned
on the other in fury. “Curse you,” he roared, “you’ve drowned us both
with your infernal palavering!”

The decks were deserted; not a human being remained on them. Tossing on
the waves, just visible in the glowing light, were two of the ship’s
boats, crowded with passengers. The nearest was already a hundred yards
away, and rapidly increasing its distance. The guard stared at it
hungrily.

“There goes our last chance!” he muttered.

Howard eyed the tiny craft dispassionately.

“Oh! I don’t know,” he said. “If that boat was your best chance, it was
a slim one. Never mind, Jackson; take comfort from me. Nobody doomed
to hang was ever drowned. I’ll send you home to your wife and babies
yet--I suppose you have a wife and babies; people like you always do.”

“Here! Don’t you take my wife’s name on your lips!”

“Look! I thought so.”

The boat, poised for an instant on the crest of a great wave, suddenly
lunged forward, raced madly down a watery slope, and thrust its nose
deep into an opposite swelling wave. It did not come up. Long did the
two men on the steamer watch, but nothing, living or dead, appeared
amid the heaving waves.

At last Howard’s tense features relaxed.

“Well,” he remarked, carelessly. “That’s a mark to my credit, anyhow.
I’ve saved your life, Jackson. Please see that you do me no discredit
in the ten minutes that you will retain it.”

The other glared at him stupidly.

“Susan didn’t want me to come,” he mumbled. “She said I’d never come
back----”

His voice died away into incoherent murmurs.

Howard looked at the man, and his lip curled contemptuously. He said
nothing, however, but turned in silence toward where the boat had sunk.

The next instant he started and glanced swiftly around him. His eyes
fell on a life-preserver lodged in the broken doorway by the last wave
that had retreated from his feet. He snatched it up and buckled it
round him; then fastened one end of a rope beneath his arms and thrust
the other into the hands of the stupefied officer.

“There! Wake up, man!” he ordered. “Wake up and stand by!”

Jackson stared at him. “Where? What? How?” he mumbled.

“Wake up, man! Don’t you see it’s a woman?”

As he saw the returning intelligence dawn in Jackson’s eyes, Howard
slipped to the toppling brink of the bulwarks and stood watching
for the next heave of the sea. As it came, with a white rag sopping
foolishly on its crest, he waved his hand to the other.

“Give my love to Susan!” he cried, and plunged downward.

Chaos! The sea into which he dived was without form and void. Like a
grain of corn in a popper, he was tossed hither and thither, twisted,
wrenched at--all sense of direction stripped from him.

There was not one chance in a thousand that he would reach the woman;
not one in a million that he could give her the least help if he did
reach her; the very attempt became preposterous the moment he touched
the water. Only blind chance could avail.

The incredible happened. His arm, striking out, caught the girl fairly
round the waist and fastened there. He did not try to get back to the
ship; he made no reasoned effort at all; reason was impossible in that
turmoil.

He struggled, no doubt, but the struggle was unconscious--a mere
automatic battle for life. But he clung to the woman, gasping, with
oblivion pressing hard upon his reeling brain.

Something seemed to grasp him around the waist and drag him backward,
and unconsciously he tightened his arm on the waist he held, meeting
the wrench as the sea withdrew its support.

Crash! Something had struck him cruelly, but struck realization back
into his brain. Before he could act, the sea swelled around him again;
but when it withdrew once more, he knew what had happened. Jackson was
dragging him back to the wreck, and he had struck against its side or
on its submerged deck.

It was the deck! By favor of Providence it was the deck! Aided by the
drag of the rope, the last wave washed Howard and his prize almost to
the feet of the police officer, who braced himself to withstand the
backtow as the water retreated; then reached down and dragged both up
to momentary safety.

Howard opened his eyes for one instant.

“Didn’t I tell you I would have a drier death on shore?” he gasped
before unconsciousness claimed him.




IV


CONSCIOUSNESS came slowly back to Frank Howard. He raised his head, but
otherwise lay still, painfully reconstructing the world around him.
So tightly was he wedged between a broken ventilator and a skylight
coamings that it was only with considerable difficulty that he finally
managed to lift himself to a sitting position and stare dizzily around.

He was alone on the deck, which had become much steeper than he
remembered it in the gray dawn. Evidently another bulkhead forward had
given way, allowing another compartment to become filled with water and
causing the bow of the steamer to sink deeper.

In compensation the stern had risen somewhat higher, so that the waves
broke against the deck, but no longer rushed violently up it. The sea,
too, had gone down, curbed perhaps by the thick mantle of yellow weed
that floated all about.

With much difficulty he scrambled to his feet, clinging desperately the
while to the ventilator.

“Steady! Steady!” he muttered. “If I tobogganed down into that water I
shouldn’t get up again in a hurry.” He held out his hand and noted its
tremulousness. “By Jove! I’m weak as a cat.”

Rapidly his brain grew clearer. Ship and sea and sky ceased their
momentary whirlings and settled into their proper places. He looked up
at the zenith, to which the sun, though still veiled, had indubitably
climbed.

“Six hours at least,” he soliloquized. “Heavens, I must have been
pounded hard to lie unconscious for that long! If the old tub has
floated six hours she may float indefinitely. But----”

He stared curiously around him. As far as his eye could reach stretched
the yellow gulf-weed, blanketing the blue of the sea. So thick was it
that it held the Queen comparatively stationary, despite the strong
breeze that pressed against her.

Howard uttered a cry of dismay.

“The Sargasso Sea,” he groaned. “We’re inside it--far inside it. Great
Scott!” His brain reeled again. “Where the deuce is Jackson?” he
muttered irritably. “And where’s that woman?”

Pat to the moment, Jackson thrust his head out of the doorway of the
social hall. His dark face was pallid now, and he glared around him
wildly. When he saw Howard standing, his expression brightened.

“So you’re alive,” he rumbled, surlily. “It takes a devil of a lot to
kill some people.”

Howard stared at the man curiously. It was hardly the way he had
expected to be greeted.

“Yes,” he answered, slowly, “it takes a good deal--sometimes. It
didn’t take much for those poor devils in that boat you wanted to go
in. Where’s the girl?”

Jackson jerked his hand over his right shoulder.

“She’s in there,” he responded. Then he hesitated for an instant. “It
was a brave thing you did,” he finished, grudgingly.

Howard shrugged his shoulders.

“Merely a choice of deaths,” he answered. “I expected the ship to sink
any minute, and, personally, I preferred to die fighting. How is she?”

“She’s breathing, but that’s all. She hasn’t moved since I got her
aboard.”

“No wonder. She really hasn’t any right to be alive after what she went
through. Have you done anything for her?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I took her into the social hall and laid
her on the sofa and got some whiskey for her, but I couldn’t get her
to take it, and she looked so horrible and----” He paused, evidently
shaken.

Howard stretched up his hand.

“I must see her,” he declared. “I’m pretty shaky still, but if you’ll
give me a lift I’ll try to scramble up beside you and then we’ll see
what we can do.” He took the hand that Jackson offered. “Now brace
yourself,” he warned. “All set?”

Jackson nodded, and Howard, after an experimental tug or two, put forth
all his strength and drew himself up to the other’s side.

“That’s good,” he remarked. “I guess we’re both worth a dozen dead men
yet. By the way, how did you get the girl up here?”

Jackson showed more animation than he had yet done.

“The deck wasn’t so steep when I moved her,” he explained. “It tilted
worse just as I got her inside. I thought at first we were going down,
but we didn’t.”

Howard stepped inside the social hall--which had never before so belied
its name--and looked around him. After the bright light of the deck,
the room seemed dark, and for a moment he could see nothing. Then he
caught a glimpse of something lying on the big athwartship sofa, and
scrambled over to it.

A girl lay there in a crumpled heap. In her rich golden brown hair
alone was any touch of color. Her eyes were closed and her lips blue.
Her cheeks were so bloodless that it seemed impossible that she still
lived.

Once she might have been pretty--even beautiful--but the sea had robbed
her of all charm, leaving only the pitifulness of youth and womanhood.
Howard drew a long breath as he looked at her, and a sudden rage rose
within him. She should not die! He had torn her from the sea. She
should not die!

Fragmentary ideas as to the proper thing to do came back to him. He
bent down, chafing her wrists and temples; and then, raising her head,
touched Jackson’s bottle to her lips. A long, shuddering sigh shook
the girl’s body, and Howard saw a pair of brown eyes open and stare
up at him; then close wearily. Again he raised her head. “Drink,” he
commanded, as he poured the spirit between her parted lips.

As the strangling liquor went down, the eyes flashed open again, and
the girl shook from head to foot with a coughing--so violent and so
prolonged that Howard feared that he had overdone his task.

But it soon passed, leaving her conscious.

For a moment she lay still, vaguely puzzling over her situation. Then
recollection returned with a jerk, and she sat up.

“I remember,” she gasped. “Oh, that dreadful wave! To see it come down,
down, down---- Where am I?”

“You’re back on the Queen. It’s all right. Try to keep cool. You’ll be
better in a moment.”

The wonder grew in the girl’s eyes. “The Queen!” she murmured.
“The--Queen! How did I get back?”

“The waves washed you back and we managed to pull you on board. You had
better rest a while. You have been unconscious a long time.”

The girl looked from one to the other.

“Thank you! Thank you both,” she murmured. “I can’t find words now,
but--the others! Were any of them----?” Her lips moved, but no sound
followed.

Howard bowed his head, but he answered unflinchingly--better the clean,
sharp cut of certainty than dragging suspense.

“You were the only one in your boat who was saved,” he answered
quietly. “I know nothing of the other boats.”

The girl covered her face with her hands. “Oh, poor people!” she
moaned. “Poor, poor people!” Then she dashed the tears from her eyes
and dragged herself to her feet, holding fast to the back of the sofa.

“I am Miss Dorothy Fairfax,” she said, with a pretty access of dignity.
“And you?” Her eye traveled from one man to the other.

If Howard hesitated, it was for so short a time that it passed
unobserved.

“This is Detective Jackson, of the New York police,” he answered
steadily, “and I am Frank Howard, his prisoner.”

“Frank Howard! Not--not----”

“Yes.”

“My God!” For the first time in her life, Dorothy Fairfax fainted dead
away.




V


AS Dorothy fell Howard caught her in his arms and laid her upon the
sofa. Then he faced Jackson.

“Nice thing, this!” he remarked, grimly. “A very nice thing,
considering the state of affairs. No!” he interjected, as he saw
Jackson’s eyes wander to the girl. “Don’t worry about her just now.
She’s exhausted, anyway, and she’ll sleep it off and be all the better
when she rouses. Meanwhile, there’s work for us. We all need food, and
it’s imperative that we should find some at once. Come.”

The angle of the ship’s deck made examination both difficult and
dangerous; but when, by the exercise of care, it had been safely
carried out, it was evident that the voyagers need not fear either
starvation or thirst for a long time to come. The store-rooms of the
Queen were above, though only just above, the new waterline, and in
them there was food for months to come.

It was good food, too, intended for the consumption of passengers
who paid well. In addition to canned goods, of which the stock was
large and varied, there was a quantity of ice and fresh meat, fresh
vegetables, flour, biscuits, sauces, breakfast foods, and so forth, to
say nothing of wines, liquors, and tobacco.

With water the ship was equally well supplied. Not only was the saloon
scuttle-butt full, but, after some search, Howard found two large tanks
whose contents had not even been touched. In the pantry, just forward
of the saloon, was a refrigerator with cooked food enough for two or
three days.

All these things were not found in an instant. As it chanced, the
pantry came last; and the moment the cooked food was discovered,
further investigation was promptly suspended and preparations made to
comfort the inner man. A plentiful supply was quickly transferred to
the big saloon-table, where it was held in place by the fiddles, which
had been put on the night before at dinner and had not been removed.

Leaving Jackson to brew the coffee, an art in which he asserted that he
was proficient, Howard went to see after Miss Fairfax.

As he had expected, he found her sleeping, her swoon having quietly
passed into slumber. A little color had come back to her cheeks and to
her lips, and her breathing was regular.

For several moments he stood looking down at her, noting the sweep of
her long lashes on her cheeks, the delicate penciling of her eyebrows,
and the pure curve of her parted lips. She was of his own class in life
and---- He checked his thoughts shortly.

From this girl and all connected with her he had been cut off by his
trial and his sentence. Had it not been for the storm and the wreck, he
would never have spoken to one of her kind again.

Suddenly he realized that her eyes were open and that she was regarding
him curiously. The next instant she blushed furiously and struggled to
her feet. Howard did not offer to help her; he did not dare to.

“Oh!” she begged. “Please forgive me.”

Howard mumbled something indistinct. He was too much surprised to speak
clearly. Miss Fairfax, however, did not accept his presumably polite
disclaimer.

“No, but really,” she reiterated, “I owe you an apology. It was very
silly of me to faint. I was exhausted, and the discovery----”

“The discovery that you were alone at sea with a detective and a
convicted murderer appalled you--as well it might. Do not blame
yourself, Miss Fairfax, and do not think that I am sensitive. No man
can go through an experience such as mine and fail to have his cuticle
thickened. Give yourself no uneasiness about me.”

Dorothy began to reply, when suddenly the dinner-gong rang out
imperatively.

“What’s that?” she gasped.

Howard smiled. “That’s Jackson,” he explained, “and he’s hungry. Will
you come to dinner?”

But Dorothy did not come to dinner at once. When she did, ten minutes
later, after a visit to her state-room, which luckily was far aft
and consequently above water, Howard noted with amused surprise that
in those few minutes she had managed to bind up her tangled hair
and change her dress for another. She glanced at the table as she
approached and flushed at Jackson’s glum looks.

“Oh!” she cried. “Why did you wait? I told you not to.” She slipped
into her seat. “I’m so hungry!” she sighed.

The hot coffee and the abundant meal lightened the spirits of the trio
in spite of the predicament in which they found themselves. With a
ship, albeit a crippled one, under their feet and with plenty of food
and water at hand, it was not in human nature to despair, especially as
the sea had gone down so much that it no longer threatened them.

To both Jackson and Miss Fairfax the worst seemed to be over; in a day
or two some one would pick them up, they thought, and all would be
well. Howard alone, wiser in the ways of the sea, doubted. He listened
to the others’ hopeful prognostications, but said little.

“I must study the situation before I can say anything,” was as far as
he would commit himself, even in answer to a direct question.

When they had finished their meal, Dorothy rose.

“I’ll clear away these dishes,” she announced. “I’m sure you two have
more important things to attend to. Later, when Mr. Howard has studied
the situation, as he wishes, we will hold a council of war.”

Howard bowed and went on deck. His first glance assured him that his
worst fears were true. The Queen was evidently far within the Sargasso
Sea, and under the impulse of a strong breeze from the west was
steadily driving eastward, into ever-thickening fields of weeds.

Wreckage was floating here and there, mute evidence of disasters that
had occurred, perhaps close at hand, perhaps thousands of miles away.
The passages of open water that had trellised the sea an hour before
had disappeared, and with them had gone whatever faint hope Howard
might have had of rescue.

No skipper would venture into that tangle; no boat could move through
it; almost it seemed that one could walk on it; yet Howard knew that
any one trusting to that deceptive firmness would drown, and drown
without even a chance to swim. The weeds would coil round him, soft,
slimy, but strong, and drag him down.

Like all who have sailed these waters, Howard had heard many tales of
the great Sargasso Sea, and had whiled away many an hour listening to
the sailors’ yarns of the haven of dead ships buried far within those
tangled confines--a haven in the middle of the ocean, a haven without
a harbor, a haven where the ships, dropping to pieces at last by slow
decay, must sink for two miles or more before they reached the floor of
the ocean.

And into this haven the Queen was drifting, slowly but surely. Nothing
but sinking could prevent her from moving onward till she reached the
innermost haven.

What would it be like? he wondered. Would the wrecks really be crowded
together so that one could pass from one to the other? That there had
been plenty of them borne in to make a very continent of ships he did
not doubt, but had they floated long enough to accumulate to any great
extent?

The sailors declared that the sea was as large as Europe; that the weed
was impenetrable over an area larger than France; that there might well
be an area of massed wreckage two or three hundred miles in diameter.
But these were sailors’ tales. Would they prove true?

“Well?”

Howard turned around. Dorothy and Jackson had come up behind him and
were staring curiously over the weedy sea. “Well?” reiterated the
latter.

Howard hesitated.

“I fear it is not well,” he answered at last. “Our chances of escape
for the present seem practically nil.”

Miss Fairfax paled, but Jackson flushed darkly.

“What are you givin’ us?” he demanded, roughly. “The ship ain’t going
to sink, is she?”

“No. That is not the danger. Look around you.” He waved his hand to the
weed-strewn horizon.

Jackson looked again. “Well! What of it?” he demanded.

“This! You see how thick the weed is--thicker even than it was an hour
ago. I’ve sailed these seas long enough to know what that means. It
means that we have been blown a long way inside the Sargasso Sea.”

“No ships come here; sailing ships would lose nearly all their speed,
and steamers would lose all of it, for their screws would soon be
hopelessly fouled. No vessel will come to rescue us. If we are ever to
leave the Queen, it must be by our own efforts.”

“What can we do?” asked Dorothy, quietly.

“That is it exactly. What _can_ we do? Frankly, I don’t see that we
can do anything at present. We have no boats, and nothing but a boat,
and a sharp-edged one at that, could make any way through this morass.
And every minute we are getting deeper in. The current below catches
our sunken bow, and the wind above catches our uplifted stern, and
both sweep us eastward--toward the center of the weed. If we took to
a raft we would move much more slowly--but we would starve much more
quickly--and our chances of being picked up would not be improved.”

“But what will become of us?”

“I don’t know. It seems likely that we will be swept into the center
of the sea, where there are supposed to be thousands of derelicts, the
combings of the North Atlantic for four hundred years--I say ‘supposed’
because nobody has ever seen them, but there isn’t much doubt about it.”

Jackson laughed scornfully.

“What are you givin’ us?” he demanded incredulously.

Dorothy turned to him.

“It’s all true,” she corroborated, with a catch in her voice. “Only
yesterday Mr. Sprigg told me about it. He was wishing for a chance to
explore the place, poor fellow. And now----” She broke off and turned
to Howard. “Isn’t there any chance at all of our being picked up?” she
asked.

Howard shook his head.

“None, I fear,” he answered, gently. “I am sorry, Miss Fairfax, more
sorry than I can say; but I fear we shall be on this wreck or on
another for weeks and months to come. So far as I can see now we can do
nothing till we reach the central wreckage. There we may find a boat or
the tools to build one--ours are far under water--or some other way to
escape.”

“It will be desperately hard to wait; to drift deeper and deeper into
this tangle day after day, hoping that things will change when they
come to the worst; but it’s all we can do. Meanwhile we can thank God
that we have food, drink, and comfortable shelter, and we are on our
way to see what no one has ever seen before and returned to tell it.
Let’s make the best of it.”

“The best of it!” Jackson’s face was flushed and his eyes distended.
“The best of it!” he vociferated. “By Heaven, it’s well for you to yap!
You’re all right here. You’re safe from the electric chair here. You
can afford to wait and wait. But how about us? How about me? How about
my wife and children?”

“It’s hard,” Howard assented. “It’s bitter hard, but----”

“Bah! You’re lying to us! You’re a sailor and can get us out of this,
if you will. You don’t want to get out. You hope that you’ll get a
chance to escape, but, by Heaven, you shan’t! I’ll kill you first! By
God, I will!”

“It’s your duty to do so!” Howard spoke quietly, but a spot of red
glowed on each cheek. “It is your duty to kill me rather than let me
escape. But it is not your duty to insult me. I permit no man to do
that, and I warn you not to repeat your offense.

“For the rest, Miss Fairfax, there is some reason in what this
man says. The catastrophe which has brought death to so many, and
suffering, both past and future, to you, has saved me. I am safe from
the electric chair. Anywhere else in the wide world I would have to
shrink from every casual glance; would have to lie in answer to every
wanton question. But no extradition runs to the heart of the Sargasso
Sea. So it might seem natural that I should wish to stay here. In so
far, our excitable friend is right. But I give you my word of honor,
not as a jailbird, but as the gentleman I once was, that I am even more
anxious to get out of here than yourself. I have still a task to do in
the world; my view is not entirely bounded by the electric chair. If
any faintest chance offers for us to escape, be sure that I will seize
it. But I am helpless until we reach the central wrecks and see what
aid they have to offer. Then I will do what a man may.”

“I do not promise to go on to New York with Jackson, but I do promise
to get you and him safely out of this place, if it is within my power
to do so--and I believe it will be. Say that you believe me.”

It was impossible not to believe this clear-eyed, straight-spoken
gentleman, convicted murderer though he were. Dorothy held out her hand.

“I believe you,” she said, “and I trust you.”

Howard looked at the hand doubtfully.

“That is not nominated in the bond,” he suggested.

“Then we’ll put it in,” returned the girl. “As for what you have done
in the past--I have forgotten it. We will all forget it--till then.”

“So be it--till then!”

The hands of the two met. But Jackson, standing aside, grunted
scornfully.

“I’ll not forget it,” he growled. “Not for a single minute; not till I
get you to New York. I’ve known your smooth-spoken sort before.”




VI


TWO weeks passed without change in the situation, except that their end
saw the Queen still deeper in the tangle. The breeze from the west had
continued, but day by day had grown fainter, until at last it barely
cooled the faces of the weary passengers. Day by day, too, the weed
and the wreckage in the tangle grew thicker. Here and there floated
broken spars, fragments of shattered deck-houses, moss-grown planks,
Jacob’s-ladders, and all the fugitive spoil of the sea. Broken boats,
bottom upward; rafts with tumbled fragments of canvas screening perhaps
some terrible burden; a red buoy wrenched from some coast harbor;
a bottle with a little flag bobbing above it--these appeared, grew
nearer, and dropped astern, sometimes just out of reach of the Queen.

Several times abandoned ships appeared; one with a patch of sail gave
Jackson some agonizing alternations of hope and despair before its
final nearness forced him to admit that it, like their own vessel, was
a derelict, bound for the port of dead ships. None of this wreckage,
however, kept pace with the Queen. The tallest caught the wind and the
deepest caught the current, but the Queen caught both, and moved ahead
accordingly.

The marvel of it all affected the voyagers according to their several
natures. Jackson took it hardest. Used to the roar of New York and
to the electric contagion of great crowds, and without resources
within himself, the comparative solitude and the uncertainty drove him
frantic. Had he been alone, he would never have lived so long; despair
would have robbed him of his wits altogether and have driven him to end
it all by a plunge over the side. Even as it was, his state caused his
companions grave alarm. Howard took care never to let him be very long
out of his sight by day. Fortunately, he slept like a log at night,
and Howard was able to lock him in his room late and release him early
without his ever discovering that he had been confined.

This state of affairs, however, could not continue. Day by day the
detective grew more and more surly, until Howard began to long for the
open conflict that was sure to come. Had they two been alone together,
he would have speedily brought affairs to a crisis, but the misery of
Dorothy’s position should anything happen to himself made him hold off,
hoping that Jackson’s mood might pass. The worst of it all was the man
had a revolver--the only one on board.

For the rest, Howard seemed to be not at all troubled. In fact, so far
as Jackson knew, the situation worried him not at all. Only Dorothy,
who, light-footed, had once come upon him unheard and found him on
his knees with bowed head and shaking shoulders, suspected that his
lightheartedness was assumed. On that occasion she had stolen away as
silently as she had come.

As a matter of fact, Howard, though wild to get back to the task
of which he had spoken to the others, was yet not anxious to go to
execution. Moreover, the wonder of the situation appealed to him
mightily, and he tried to be content to grasp the hours as they came,
and not to worry over the future. After he had thoroughly explored the
reachable portions of the vessel and had worked out their position as
well as it was possible with such makeshift instruments as he could
devise, he had devoted himself to the study of the myriad life that
swarmed among the weeds. A scoop, trailed overboard for a few minutes,
invariably brought aboard hundreds of living forms.

Something of a naturalist already, he took delight in studying the sea
creatures, and in noting the marvellous protective resemblances by
which they hid from foes or crept upon enemies, themselves similarly
equipped.

In this study he was enthusiastically joined by Dorothy. No past record
of crime could prevent the intimacy that sprang up between these two,
so like in tastes and training, thus thrown upon each other for human
companionship. Again and again Dorothy told herself that she ought to
shrink from Howard and confine their intercourse to the needs of bare
civility, and, accordingly, for a time she would devote herself to
Jackson and let Howard go. But Jackson, blameless police officer as he
was, had no resources within himself to long content an educated girl
like Dorothy, and soon she would drift back to Howard’s side--much, it
must be owned, to Jackson’s relief.

Curiously enough, the girl was not unhappy. The situation, as yet, was
too novel for that. The fact that she could see no possible means for
rescue did not greatly trouble her. With the natural resilience of
youth, she threw off her anxiety; with the natural trust of woman in
man, she was content to leave everything to Howard, and to put implicit
faith in his promise, vague and unsubstantial though it was, to do what
he could to save her. This was the more surprising as he had as yet had
no chance to prove himself capable. Nevertheless, Dorothy threw all
responsibility on his shoulders and concerned herself no more about the
outcome. If sometimes uneasy questions assailed her, she drove them
away. There was nothing to do but to trust him. After she had attended
to the meals--a duty which she insisted upon taking on herself after
the first day--she would join him at his nets, and together they would
pass away the hours. They grew very friendly in those days, especially
in the long silences of sympathetic understanding that ever bind heart
to heart.

One day, the fifteenth since the storm, after one of these silences,
Dorothy turned to the man impulsively. “Mr. Howard,” she exploded. “You
say you are not thin-skinned. Won’t you tell me something about your
case?”

Howard flushed. “To what end, Miss Fairfax?” he asked quietly. “I can
say that I am innocent, of course; but that is what every convict in
the land says. I could not convince the jury. Is it not better that I
keep silence till I can get the proof?”

“Nevertheless, tell me.”

“Certainly; if you really wish it.” Howard’s tones were coolly
impersonal. “On May 8 of last year, I received a letter in a woman’s
writing. It was short and I remember every word of it. ‘Dear Frank,’
it said, ‘I am here. Come to see me at once. Dolores.’ Then followed
the address. Perhaps I was foolish to go, but I did go--to a cheap
lodging-house, where the landlady told me to ‘go right up’ to the third
floor and knock on the door marked 8. The door was ajar, however,
and as I got no answer to my knock, I pushed it open and looked in. A
woman’s body was lying on the floor. Again I was foolish. I should have
summoned aid at once. Instead, I went in, and stooped over the body.
Immediately I saw that the woman was dead; strangled apparently. As I
rose to call for help, the landlady appeared at the door. Probably the
inference she drew was justified; at any rate, she tried to blackmail
me, and when I refused to submit she shrieked and summoned assistance.
She declared that she had seen me choking the woman, and I was
arrested. Later it developed that some one passing under my name had
married the girl--for she was nothing more--in a little village near
San Juan at the very time my ship was stationed there.”

“That, of course, furnished the motive for the crime. I had, so it was
charged, married the girl and deserted her. Later, when she followed
me to New York, I had sought her out and murdered her. There were
plenty of people to swear to the marriage and to send in affidavits
identifying my photograph as that of the bridegroom--though, as it
seems, none of them had seen very much of him. Only the minister who
performed the ceremony was doubtful, and him my lawyers arranged to
bring to New York. He started, but his ship was wrecked and he was
drowned on the way. All I could say was that I had never seen the girl
until I looked on her dead body, and that went for little.”

“Evidently, the girl thought that she had married Frank Howard. Perhaps
she did marry a Frank Howard; the name is not uncommon. Perhaps she
married some one deliberately masquerading under my name. I do not
know. At all events, the case was complete against me, and the jury
found me guilty without leaving their seats. I escaped and went to
Porto Rico to look for evidence, but I was captured before I could find
it. That is all, Miss Fairfax. I cannot blame you if you agree with the
jury.”

“But I don’t----”

The sentence was never finished. Jackson, who for two hours had been
standing by the rail, staring northward, suddenly whirled around and
came toward the two, pistol in hand.

“Put your fists up,” he ordered Howard tensely. “Up! Quick! Hang you!”

Taken by surprise, Howard could do nothing but obey.

Jackson laughed madly. “You’ve run things just about long enough,” he
grated. “We’ve been driftin’ in this wreck for two weeks now and I’m
dog tired of it. I ain’t no sailor, but I know when a man’s givin’ me
the double cross, and you’re doin’ it. You’ve got to get us out of
this.”

Howard’s face grew dark. “Kindly specify?” he said.

The other glared at him. “Don’t you try to bluff me with your big
words,” he shouted. “I won’t have it. You’ve been lettin’ on that you
wanted to get us out of this and all the time you’ve been lettin’ us
drift deeper in. You don’t want us to get away at all, for all your
smooth talk.”

“I told you that I was helpless until we reached the central mass of
wrecks and----”

“Yah! You and your mass of wrecks! I ain’t no come-on. You can’t work
no con game on me. I never took no stock in those fairy tales, but I
thought I’d let you play your game out. Now I’m tired of it, and it’s
up to you to do something quick!”

Howard shrugged his shoulders. “With pleasure,” he agreed, “if you’ll
kindly tell me what to do.”

“How do I know? I ain’t no sailor. You are! And you’re going straight
back to your state-room and stay there till you study out some plan to
get us out of this. You belong in quod, anyway, and you’re going to
stay there--with the bracelets on, too, until you get us out of this.
March, now.”

But Howard shook his head. “I’ll never wear irons again,” he declared.
“Never! You’re armed and I’m not. You can kill me, but you can’t jail
me. Make up your mind to that. As for the central mass of wrecks, it
must exist; it’s impossible that it should not exist. The only question
is as to the area it covers. If you can---- By Jove!”

His eyes left the detective’s face and travelled into space. “Fool,” he
cried, “look yonder.”

Jackson laughed scornfully. “Not good enough,” he cried. “You can’t
fool----”

But Dorothy broke in. “Land! Land!” she cried.

In spite of himself the detective looked around. Through the haze
before them loomed what seemed to be the bulk of an island, set with
lofty tiers and dark beaches on which white houses gleamed in the
setting sun. So real it seemed that the happy tears streamed from
Dorothy’s eyes. “Oh!” she sobbed, “it’s land! land! land!”

Howard’s voice came to her from afar off. “No,” he murmured, sadly. “It
is not land. It is wreckage. We have reached our destination.”

Moved by a slight breeze, the haze shredded away and there, on the
waters before them, stretching away to right and to left, lay an
interminable mass of wrecks of every shape and description, banked
together so thickly that they seemed to touch--and did touch--each
other. Dead! all of them. Some newly dead; others long dead; but all
unburied, waiting in the haven of dead ships for the long-deferred
end. The trees were not trees, but masts hung with ravelled cordage;
the beaches were the black hulls of ships; and the white houses were
deck-houses or patches of canvas.

For a moment no one spoke. Dorothy stood staring, every muscle tense,
while the tears dripped slowly from her distended eyes. Jackson’s mouth
fell open; his pistol hand fell nerveless to his side. For the first
time he realized the situation.

As they gazed, the sun with tropic suddenness dropped below the horizon
and hid the scene.

Howard’s voice broke the silence. “Now,” he encouraged, “we can get to
work.”




VII


IT was late that night before the voyagers dropped into uneasy slumber.
The wonder of their situation, suddenly brought home to them, had
roused them all to unusual volubility. In the excitement consequent on
the discovery of the massed wrecks even Jackson forgot his suspicions,
and the three talked together freely. Howard had promised that they
should join the wrecks, and they had done so. Now he would have a
chance to keep his other promise to get them out; in the first flush of
arrival they did not doubt that he would do so.

But Jackson, at least, changed his opinion the next morning when he
came on deck and viewed the scene before him.

During the night the Queen, drawn by the same natural attraction
that holds the planets in their sphere and brings floating chips
together in a basin, had taken its place with the dead ships. Under
her counter lay a water-logged schooner; beside her rubbed a dismasted
sailing-ship; over her submerged bow hung a tramp steamer, whose
blackened masts, bare of cordage, gave evidence of the flames that had
ravaged her. Beyond, stretched a mass of wreckage, ship pressing upon
ship, in an endless iteration of ruin. Only to the west the view was
open, and there stretched the weed in slimy convolutions.

Over all screamed the sea-birds.

Each of these countless wrecks had once sailed the sea, new and strong,
and each had come here at last to slumber peacefully until the deep
should open and receive it. No more would they ride out the hurricane
or take with frolic welcome the buffetings of the waves; no more would
they visit the great ports of men and groan beneath the heavy cargoes
placed upon them. Their days of turmoil were over. Here, in this quiet
haven, in the great calm of the tropics, with only the faintest
breezes to whisper into their ears tales of the open sea, and with the
birds to nest in their deserted rigging, they dreamed their old age
away.

To Dorothy the sight was solemn, but not sad; to Howard it was amazing;
to Jackson it was maddening.

Less than ever did he believe that he was hopelessly trapped far out on
the ocean; more than ever was he convinced that Howard was deceiving
him for his own ends. He saw the ships rocking gently on the swells,
noted white patches of sails showing here and there, heard the cries of
the gulls, and told himself afresh that he could easily walk ashore if
he only knew how; and when a flock of parrots lighted in the rigging
and demanded crackers, and a monkey poised on the end of a near-by mast
and gibbered, he was convinced beyond peradventure that Howard had
lied to them and was only watching his chance to desert them. He did
not even listen to that officer when he explained that both birds and
beasts must have drifted in on wrecks and had probably thriven.

“The birds will feed on the roaches on the old rattle-trap wrecks,” he
explained, “and the monkeys will live on the birds’ eggs. Perhaps, too,
both catch shell-fish in the weeds.”

Breakfast was a silent meal. Dorothy was awed and frightened by the
sight of the wrecks, and Jackson was glum. In vain Howard strove to
rouse them. Finally he gave up and finished his breakfast in silence.
Then he pushed away his plate.

“Listen to me, please,” he said coldly. “We have arrived at our
destination and must now take steps to help ourselves. Two things are
necessary: first, to explore the ships around us; second, not to get
lost. Make no mistake; the danger of this last is very great. These
ships will not look the same as we leave them and as we return to
them; where we climb down a ship’s side in going away, we must climb
up it in coming back, and _vice versa_. Often this may be difficult;
sometimes it may be impossible. Yet, if we try to vary our route, we
may lose ourselves; and once lost the chances are a thousand to one
against our ever finding our way back to the Queen again. Not that we
shall stay by the Queen long; probably we shall soon find some ship
better suited for a base of operations. But we must remember that this
continent of ships is a desert except around its edges. New wrecks
arriving will bring food and water, but a few hundred yards inside the
borders neither can remain. It may seem to you that it would be easy to
get back to the border again, but I assure you that it would not be.
Without a compass, we would not know which way to go, and might easily
be plunging deeper and deeper into the mass.”

He paused, waiting for comment, but none was made. He was leader,
however grudgingly so, and it was for him to map out their course of
action. No one dreamed of disputing it--Jackson, no less than Dorothy,
realized his helplessness and his ignorance.

“I beg you, therefore, to be very careful,” resumed Howard, seeing
that the others waited. “I am particularly insistent, because we
must explore first of all. To-day the danger is not great, because
we are not likely to get far away, but we might as well start right.
First, we must run up all the signal-flags we can find; they will be
conspicuous for a long ways off. Next, we must light a fire in the
galley range; its smoke will be visible still farther away. Third, we
must never go out of sight of our base--the Queen, at present--under
any circumstances; when we climb to each new ship we must look back and
make sure that we can still see the flags or the smoke. Fourth, we
must each carry a hatchet and mark our way just as a woodman blazes a
path through a forest; the hatchet will come in handy, anyhow. Later,
if we do not find what we want, we can shift our base to some other
vessel along the ‘coast,’ and explore farther with that as a new
center. Do I make myself clear?”

Dorothy nodded. “Shall we all go together?” she asked.

Howard shook his head. “No, I think not,” he answered gently. “I hope
you will be willing to stay here for the present and keep the galley
fire alight; I’ll show you how to make it smoke. Jackson and I will
do the exploring for to-day, anyway. He can go to the north along the
coast, and I will go to the south, and----”

“Not much!” The policeman was shaking his head doggedly. “Not much,
you don’t. I don’t leave you out of my sight. I’ve got my orders from
headquarters and----”

Howard stifled an exclamation. “Very well,” he said coldly. “As you
please! Perhaps it is better anyway. Two can do things that one could
not. Come! Let’s get ready.”

“But----” Dorothy looked very dubious.

Howard turned to her. “I know what you would say, Miss Fairfax. You
would like to go, of course. But, believe me, it is best not. Moving
about these wrecks will be difficult and even dangerous for any one
hampered by skirts. You would be exhausted very soon. Besides, we may
meet unpleasant sights. Later, when we know our ground better, we will
take you for a sight-seeing tour. You will be perfectly safe on the
Queen. You are not afraid to be left alone, are you?”

“Oh! No! It will be lonely, of course, but isn’t there some way that I
can signal to you if anything should happen?”

Howard considered a while; then plunged down into the vitals of the
Queen, returning shortly with a double armful of straw dug from a
hogshead once filled with crockery.

“There,” he said, dropping it at the entrance of the galley. “If
anything happens, wet some of that and put it on the fire; it will make
a thick black smoke. By alternately closing and opening the draft, you
can let it go up and cut it off altogether. We’ll watch for it.”

Howard and Jackson climbed down the Jacob’s-ladder that still swung
at the Queen’s counter, and dropped lightly to the deck of the
water-logged schooner that lay there. Of this, nothing but a few inches
of the deck and the stumps of the masts were above water; whatever
deck-houses there might have been had been carried away, together with
the entire rail. Consequently there was nothing to investigate, nothing
that could help the castaways in their efforts to escape, and the two
men crossed over her with merely a glance, using her as a bridge to
reach a ship floating high in the water just beyond.

The second vessel had a gangway lowered down her side, evidently to
help her passengers to reach the boats. Her masts were gone, but
otherwise she seemed intact.

“Crew and passengers taken off by another ship,” explained Howard,
“probably in fair weather after a storm. Most likely another storm was
brewing and the crew expected their own vessel to sink.”

A rapid search showed that the ship had nothing of value to offer. Her
boats were gone; her compasses, charts, chronometers, and sextants
all were gone. Some tools remained, but were so rusted as to be of
little value. Howard soon led the way to her taffrail, whence he could
clutch the shrouds of a full-rigged ship which had evidently been in a
collision.

As he stepped on the deck of this craft, there was a scurry of feet,
and a dozen huge rats bolted across the deck and disappeared under the
poop.

“Confound the brutes,” he muttered. “I hate them! Wonder what they have
been eating.”

The answer was not far to seek. Close beside the davits of the
quarter-boat lay two skeletons; one with a smooth, round hole drilled
through the fleshless skull, the other with a broken backbone. Howard
looked at them and nodded.

“Probably the crew made a rush for the boats,” he suggested.
“Somebody--one of the officers, I suppose--tried to stop them. He shot
one, but the others ran over him and broke his back. Then came the
rats. Well, it was a man’s death. If you can find a couple of bags,
Jackson, we will commit the bones to the sea.”

From the ship the two men descended to a steamer, much down by the
stern, with a gaping hole in her port counter, where something must
have driven deep into her vitals. From this they climbed upon a small
yacht, floating just awash. (“Held up by water-tight compartments,”
explained Howard.) Thence they passed to another vessel, and to
another, and another, each bearing mute record to the manner of its
ruin.

But on none did the explorers find what they sought. The boats were
invariably gone; the tools were always rusty; the compasses had all
been snatched from the binnacle and from the cabin; the charts had
mostly been torn from the racks and tables, often so roughly that the
thumb-tacks that had held their corners were left in the board, each
holding a triangular scrap of torn paper. In the few instances where
any did remain, they were rotten with mildew, and charted regions far
distant from the Sargasso Sea.

It was noon when Howard gave the word to return to the Queen. “Don’t
be downcast, Jackson,” he consoled. “What we have found to-day is only
what we had to expect. The boats would, of course, be taken, even if
everything else was left. The compasses, and charts, and sextants, and
so on, would naturally be taken next, for those who went in the boats
would need them to shape their course. The tools and engines would have
almost invariably been left exposed to the weather and would be badly
rusted. It would have been by mere chance had we found what we wanted
on the very first day. At least we have learned that there is plenty
of food and water and clothing and coal to be had for the taking.
To-morrow we will search in another direction. Now, let’s go home.”

But return was not so easy as the two men expected. As Howard had
foretold, there was an important difference between climbing up and
climbing down, and this difference was accentuated by the fact that in
leaving the Queen they had chosen the easiest route. When they could
have gone from one ship to any one of two or three others, they had
naturally moved to the one that appeared the least difficult of access.

Taking the route in reverse, this small detail of choice often meant
that they must return to the one that was the most difficult to board.

To this expected obstacle was added another that was unexpected. In
more than one instance they found that their morning route, as shown by
their blazed marks, was absolutely impracticable. The ships had moved,
slightly perhaps, but yet enough to bar their passage, ten feet of
water being often as impassable as ten hundred. Howard struck his brow
with his hand when he realized this.

“I was a fool not to foresee this!” he exclaimed. “Of course, these
ships are not absolutely stationary. Even far inside they must be
somewhat subject to currents and to winds, and must move slightly,
while here, on the outskirts, they must move considerably. As a matter
of fact, the whole mass must be swinging around and around in a vast
circle, moved by the same current that brought them here in the first
place. Well, we must simply abandon our blazes, and go home by the
flags and the smoke.”

Jackson peered into the distance. “I can’t see no flags,” he objected.

“Can’t you? I can, but they are undoubtedly hard to make out in this
mass of frayed cordage and flapping streamers. However, we can see the
smoke clearly enough, and must set our course by it.”

Ten minutes later the first accident of the day occurred. In stepping
from one ship to another, Jackson missed his footing, caught wildly at
a ratline, which broke in his grasp, and shot downward with a yell into
the water.

By the time he had risen to the surface, Howard, who had been a little
in advance, was back, peering down at him.

“Can you climb out?” he demanded. “No! I guess you can’t without help.
Hook your fingers into that port-hole--there, just behind you. That’s
right! Can you hang on for a while? It may take some time to find a
rope sound enough to bear your weight.”

Jackson clawed the weed from off his face. “Yes! I can hang on all
right,” he returned, savagely. Evidently his involuntary bath had
ruffled his temper. “I can swim, too,” he added.

Howard disappeared, and the policeman settled himself to wait. He had
learned to swim in the North River, and had no difficulty in keeping
afloat, even without the adventitious aid of the bull’s-eye in the
steamer’s side just above him. If he had fallen in almost anywhere else
he could have gotten out himself, but, as it chanced, this particular
bit of water was shut in by the sides of three ships, none of which
offered a foothold by which to climb. The bull’s-eye by which he hung
was the only orifice that broke the smoothness of the overhanging sides.

Time passed, however, and Howard did not return, and a vague uneasiness
began to work in the policeman’s mind. There were ropes everywhere.
Surely, it did not take so long to find one. He called, but received no
answer. Could Howard have lost the place? Or could some accident have
befallen him? Or, could--good God! Did the man mean to leave him to
drown?

The suggestion, once offered, would not down. It was, he told himself,
the very thing to be expected. With him out of the way, Howard would be
freed from the shadow of the gallows. He alone--except Miss Fairfax,
and what was a girl’s life--he alone knew that Howard had survived the
wreck of the Queen. With him dead, Howard--supposing that he could
regain dry land--could live out his life in safety. And what was a
policeman’s life to one whose hands were already stained with the blood
of his own wife?

Jackson drew a long breath as conviction forced itself upon him. It was
characteristic of the man that he did not whimper. He had been dealing
with criminals for twenty years, and conceded them the right to fight
for their own hand. He had always declared that he would take his dose
when it came without doing the baby act; and, by George, he would keep
his word.

Hope had vanished when Howard reappeared. In his hand was a boat’s
tackle, which he proceeded to hitch to a davit that projected over
Jackson’s head. But, instead of dropping down the other end, he quietly
seated himself on the bulwarks and stared thoughtfully at the man below.

“Well, Jackson,” he remarked, deliberately, “our positions seem to be
reversed.”

The policeman scowled. “Damn you, yes,” he responded, truculently.

An expression of admiration floated over Howard’s face. “By Jove,
Jackson!” he cried. “You’re all right. I didn’t think you had the nerve
to speak up like that under the circumstances. ‘What dam of lances
brought you forth to jest at the dawn with death?’ That’s from Kipling,
Jackson, if you do not recognize it.”

“G’wan. If you’re goin’ to murder me, do it. You’ve had experience, all
right.”

“Fie! fie! Jackson! Call things by their proper names. This wouldn’t
be any murder. But, there”--Howard’s voice grew stern--“enough of
this. I see you realize the situation. All I have to do is to leave
you where you are, and to-morrow I will be a free man. But I am not
going to do it; I am going to pull you up in a minute. But I want you
to realize that I have deliberately put aside the best chance possible
to free myself from your surveillance, and I want you to cease dogging
my footsteps and watching me everywhere I go. I don’t ask you to
let me escape or anything like that, but I do ask you to act on my
suggestions without any talk of not letting me out of your sight. Our
escape from this wreckage may any day depend on your prompt obedience,
and I want you to obey. In return, I reiterate my assertion--which you
did not believe--that I am even more anxious than you are to get back
to dry land; and in addition I promise you, on the word of an officer
and a gentleman, that if I do get back, you and Miss Fairfax shall go,
too. I will not desert you, even though I know you will arrest me the
moment you have force enough at hand to do it. Now, put your foot in
the hook on this block, and I’ll haul you up.”

Jackson caught the block that Howard dropped, and put his foot in it
mechanically. He was a slow thinker, and Howard’s words bewildered him
for the moment; later he would realize their import. Anyhow, now was
the time to act; the time to think would come later. So he grasped the
rope and waited while his former prisoner hoisted him up to the deck.

Once there he turned to Howard and opened his mouth. But that
individual checked him with a smile.

“After a while! After a while!” he counselled. “Let’s get back to the
Queen now. Where’s that smoke?”

He turned and gazed around the horizon; then he started.

“Something’s wrong on the Queen,” he cried. “Miss Fairfax is signalling
for us!”




VIII


WHEN the two men left Dorothy alone in the Queen, she was not uneasy,
although she did not welcome being alone in that desolate place. She
had so grown to depend on Howard’s companionship, and to take comfort
even in Jackson’s bear-like presence about the ship, that she felt a
queer sinking at heart when they left her. Still, she realized that it
was necessary that some one who understood thoroughly what was wanted
should explore, and she knew that Howard was the only one possessed of
that information. If Jackson felt it his duty to go along, she would
not for worlds ask him to stay with her, although she was entirely
convinced that Howard would not desert them. She had accepted without
reservation Howard’s story of the crime for which he had been tried,
and she put implicit trust in him.

The fire in the galley was burning well when the two men left, and
Dorothy decided to postpone her dishwashing and tidying up, and to
remain on deck and watch their progress. Several times before the
tangled masts and hulls, torn canvas, and frayed cordage hid them from
her view, Howard turned to wave his hand to her and shake his head
in token that the search had as yet brought them nothing. When they
disappeared at last behind a big, high-floating steamer, she went below
to attend to her duties, which included the preparation of what she
told herself should be an extra fine dinner, in celebration of the
completion of the first stage of their journey.

Time passed rapidly in accompaniment to the cheerful clink of the pans
and the rattle of the dishes with which she set the table. At last she
paused and looked at her watch.

“Twelve o’clock,” she murmured. “He ought to be coming back now.” It
was noticeable that she said “he,” not “they.” “I’ll go on deck and
look.”

She started up the companionway, then paused, as a faint shout was
borne to her ears. “There they are now,” she thought, happily. “I
wonder what they have found.” She hurried up the stairway.

The call was repeated as she went, and was unmistakable now. “Ahoy, the
ship!” it came again and again.

Dorothy stopped short. “That’s not Mr. Howard’s voice--nor Mr.
Jackson’s,” she gasped. “Who----”

Cautiously she peered from the door and looked around anxiously. Two
unknown sailors were standing on the deck of the fire-blackened steamer
that lay across the bows of the Queen. As she stared, one of them
hailed again. “Ahoy, the steamer!” he shouted.

Dorothy’s first feeling was one of delight. There were people then in
this place of desolation, and people, to Dorothy, meant civilization
and all that it connotes--including facilities of communication with
the world. She was about to answer the hail when something made her
hesitate. It might be all right, but she was alone. She turned, and,
slipping back to the galley fire, rapidly thrust into it an armful of
wet straw. An exclamation outside, faintly heard, showed that the smoke
had changed accordingly. Twice she repeated the signal with an interval
between; then warned by the thump of feet on the deck overhead, she
thrust in a last armful and hurried toward the companionway.

As she reached its top, the sailors appeared at the door. Dorothy bowed.

“Good morning, gentlemen!” she cried. The men started back with one
accord; their hands flew to their caps and pulled them from their
heads. One seemed too amazed for speech, but the other was somewhat
bolder.

“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” he stammered. “I--we--Bill an’ me hailed,
but--I hopes you’re well, ma’am.”

Dorothy smiled. “Yes! I’m well,” she returned, “and very glad to see
you. Tell me, do you live here?”

“On this ship, ma’am? No, ma’am.”

“Oh, no, I know you don’t live on this ship, for we have just drifted
in on it. I mean here.”

She waved her hand comprehensively.

Bill had recovered somewhat by now. “No, ma’am,” he declared
positively. “Joe and me live in little old New York. But we’ve been
here ten years!”

“Ten years!” Dorothy’s cheeks paled. “Ten years! Oh! can’t you get
away? Don’t tell me you can’t get away!”

“No, ma’am, we can’t get away. We’d go like a shot if we could. You
see, ma’am, nothing but wrecks ever come in here, and there ain’t no
way of getting out.”

“Can’t you build a boat?”

“We might, ma’am, but how could we get it through the weed. Nobody ever
has. Everybody who’s ever come in here is here yet.”

“Everybody! How many are there of you?”

“Twenty-two--not countin’ the women and the child.”

“Women! Are there women here? I’m so glad! Oh! poor creatures! Have
they--But, there! Come up here and sit down. We drifted in here only
yesterday--three of us. The men have gone to explore, but they will be
back soon. While we are waiting for them, you must tell me all about
everything.”

Dorothy led the way aft, reaching the taffrail just in time to see
Howard and Jackson speeding toward her over the wrecks. She waved her
hand at them; assured of their safety she felt more secure.

“There comes the rest of our party,” she explained.

The story told by Bill and Joe over the dinner-table was long and
involved with many interruptions and many repetitions. According to
them, there had always been people living on the assembled wreckage.
The one of their number who had been there longest--for twenty-five
years--knew personally others before him who had been there for as long
again, and declared that these in turn knew of still others who had
been there before them. It seemed very probable that the colony--if
such a name could be applied to it--had existed for centuries.

The people, like the ships, had always come and never gone; once on
the wrecks, they had stayed there till they died. Several of those now
there had been born on the wrecks, and had lived there all their lives.
Fresh wrecks brought them food, water, clothing, and many luxuries, and
if these failed, there were abundant rain, birds’ eggs, and fish to
fall back upon. Mostly sailors, trained to handiness, the castaways
had developed many lines of industry, and, on the whole, lived very
contentedly.

“Some of us is willing to live here always,” said Joe, “an’ some
ain’t--especially at first. But, Lord love ye, they comes round to it
after a while, seein’ they’ve got to.”

The castaways, it seemed, had developed a sort of government, under a
former ship captain named Peter Forbes, whose ascendency rested partly
on the fact that his strength enabled him to overcome everyone who
contested the leadership with him, and partly on his native ability.
Under his rule, stores were collected from the newly arrived ships
and carried, sometimes from miles away, to what may be called the
village--the central point where the castaways lived. A patrol--Joe and
Bill, at present--was maintained, which made regular trips for fifty
miles in each direction, investigating such new wrecks as might come
in. The patrol only went as far as fifty miles in order to pick up any
new arrivals, it being impracticable to transport stores more than a
few miles over the ragged surface of the wreckage, even by swinging
them on an aerial trolley from mast to mast.

Forbes divided up the work, and saw that each individual did his
share. He also acted as a fount of justice, settling disputes in a
rough-and-ready fashion, and, on occasion, dealing out punishments,
more or less severe, for infractions of the rules he had laid down.
Altogether, he seemed such an exceptional sort of man that Howard could
not understand why he had made no effort to escape to shore.

Bill tried to make things clear. “You see, sir,” he explained, “it’s
like this: This here weed stretches out for two hundred miles and more.
We’d first have to build a boat, and then cut our way through it inch
by inch. We couldn’t get grub or water enough in the boat to last us
till we got out. An’ if we did get out, where’d we be? At sea without
a compass or nothin’! We all wanted to try at first, but Forbes, he
explains things to us so plain that we sees how impossible it is. Two
or three times coves have tried to get out, but they allus got stuck
in the weed, an’ mighty glad they was to get back to where there was
plenty to eat and drink.”

Howard nodded. “I see the difficulty,” he conceded. “But have you no
instruments? Of course there are not likely to be many, but I should
think you would have found a few in all these years.”

Joe hesitated. “The cap’n allers looks out for them things,” he
declared at last. “Nobody knows how to use ’em but him.”

“Ah! I see.”

To himself Howard added that it was tolerably evident that Forbes
was not over-anxious to escape; probably he agreed with Cæsar that
he “would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second
in Rome”; and, contented with his little realm and sway, threw his
influence against any attempt of the others to deplete it. Howard felt
that he and Forbes might come to a clash later on.

Dorothy changed the subject by asking about the women. There were two,
it appeared, one old and one young. The older one, of whom the sailors
spoke affectionately as Mother Joyce, was nearly sixty years old; she
and her husband had been on the wrecks for fifteen years. The younger
had been there only two years; she had been a widow, but had married
one Gallegher, Forbes’s right-hand man, some time before. The only
child in the community was hers.

“So you marry here, just as you do elsewhere?” interjected Dorothy,
lightly, at this point. “Who performs the ceremonies?”

Joe hesitated. “Cap’n Forbes used to up to last year,” he answered at
last. “Then Mr. Willoughby floated in on a wreck. He’s a regular gospel
sharp, an’ he’s done it since.”

“Gallegher ain’t pretty,” continued Joe, thoughtfully. “An’ I guess
Mrs. Strother that was wasn’t over-anxious to marry him. But women
is awful skearce here, and they generally gits married right off.”
He paused and looked from Dorothy to Howard. “Your wife, sir?” he
questioned.

Dorothy flushed hotly, but Howard did not seem to notice it.

“No,” he said. “This is Miss Fairfax. I am Lieutenant Howard, of the
navy. This is Mr. Jackson, of the New York police force.”

The men ducked their heads awkwardly. “We did have another lady here,”
remarked Bill, abstractedly. “She was the cap’n’s wife, but she died a
month or two ago. The cap’n is mighty anxious to marry again--mighty
anxious.”

“Ah! indeed.” Howard rose from the table. “Come,” he continued, “let’s
go on deck. I want you to point out something to me!”

As Dorothy led the way, followed by Bill and Joe, Howard turned to
Jackson, who had been listening to the sailors in dazed silence.

“If you want to get away from here, Jackson,” he counselled hurriedly,
“for God’s sake keep quiet about me. If you don’t, Forbes is likely to
keep us here for the rest of our lives. The chances are he will try to
do it anyway.”




IX


SHORTLY after dinner the entire party set out for the village, which
was, it seemed, only half a mile away, and would have been reached by
Jackson and Howard had they chanced to go in the right direction.

Bill and Joe knew all the easiest routes across the wreckage, and led
the newcomers by one, which, though not quite direct, yet involved
the minimum of effort on Dorothy’s part. Nevertheless, progress was
necessarily slow, and it took nearly an hour to go the so-called half
mile.

When the village was sighted, it was evident that considerable pains
had been taken to make it comfortable. A score of modern vessels,
mostly steamers, of about the same phase of flotation had been pulled
into place and so bound together as to constitute a solid mass.
Over what had once been the interstices between them, planking had
been laid, making it possible to go anywhere about the place without
difficulty. Awnings, spread from mast to mast, gave promise of cool
shade.

“The cap’n fixed this up about a year after he came,” explained Bill
to Howard. “Before then we just pigged around any which-a-ways. But he
says that what with new ships drifting in continual, we’re gettin’ too
far from the coast and we’ll have to move soon. Yonder he is, sir.”

As Bill spoke, a tall, thickset man came hurriedly on deck, ran to the
edge of the platform, cast a quick glance at the newcomers as they
scrambled over the wreckage toward him, and then turned and beat a
rapid tattoo on a ship’s bell that hung close at hand.

“That’s the signal that something’s doing,” explained Joe.

The village awoke to life. Half a dozen hatchways gave out figures
in every style of costume, and when the newcomers reached the deck,
practically the entire population was waiting to welcome them.

Forbes was first, the rest holding back respectfully to give him
precedence.

“Welcome! Welcome!” he called, holding out both hands. “Seldom indeed
has any one been so welcome. And a special welcome to you, fair lady,”
he added, as he bent low over Dorothy’s slender fingers. Then he turned
to the villagers behind him. “Come, all of you,” he commanded. “Come
and make our new friends feel at home.”

They came, all of them, crowding round the newcomers with a babble
of greetings and questionings as to the world from which they had
been so long cut off. So rapid was the fire of interrogation, and so
multifarious the questions, that they fairly swept Jackson off his
feet, and left the other two in little better case.

When the hubbub was at its height, there came, from behind the rest,
a hearty, bustling sort of a voice. “Arrah! arrah! boys,” it pleaded.
“Don’t you see you’re crowding the young lady? Make room for old Mother
Joyce. How are you, me darlint? It’s terrible glad I am to see you;
gladder than you are to see any of us, I’ll venture. There! deary!
don’t cry. It’s all right.”

The old woman’s voice dropped to a soothing note. For Dorothy, all the
experiences of the past two weeks coming on her afresh at sight of a
woman’s face, had broken down completely, and was sobbing on Mother
Joyce’s ample bosom.

“Oh!” she wailed, “I didn’t know how awful it has been until I saw you.
All these dead ships----” Her voice died away.

“I know! I know! It was fifteen years agone that I--but I remimber.
There, mavourneen, be aisy. Come along down to Mother Joyce’s cabin and
have your cry out.”

She took Dorothy down a hatchway some distance from the babbling
throng, into a cool and airy cabin.

“Sit down wid yees,” she commanded. “Sit down with Mother Joyce and
wape it all out. I understand, dear heart; I understand.”

Dorothy’s curiosity soon mastered her tears, and before long the two
women were exchanging confidences like old friends. Belonging to two
different social worlds, elsewhere they would never have known each
other. But adventure makes strange companions.

After a while Joe tapped at the door.

“Cap’n Forbes says, Mother Joyce,” he explained, “as how he hopes you
an’ the young lady will take supper with him.”

Mother Joyce looked at Dorothy, who responded promptly.

“I’ll be glad to do so, of course,” she answered.

“All right, Joe. We’ll come.” Then, as the sailor’s footsteps
died away, the old lady turned to Dorothy. “My dear,” she essayed
diffidently. “It’s cautioning you a bit I must be. It’s a bad state of
things for a pretty young woman like yourself we’re after having here,
so it is. Will you be goin’ to marry that young man who saved your life
and who’s been so kind to you ever since the wreck?”

Dorothy sat up very straight, and her cheeks flamed.

“Indeed, I am not,” she exclaimed.

Mother Joyce looked more troubled than ever. “It’s not for idle
curiosity I’m asking,” she continued, “but because---- Are you quite
certain you don’t want to marry him? It’s good and true he looks
and--maybe it’s not another chance you’ll be getting.”

Dorothy’s cheeks still burned, but uneasiness tugged at her
heart-strings. Clearly there was something behind the old woman’s
words--something of grave import, too. Joe and Bill had also hinted
something she did not quite understand.

“Marriage between me and Mr. Howard is entirely out of the question,”
she replied quietly. “There are reasons that I can’t go into now. But I
wish you would tell me exactly what the trouble is, dear Mother Joyce;
for I am sure there is something dreadfully wrong.”

Mother Joyce studied the girl for a moment.

“Faith and I will,” she acquiesced. “Maybe it’s all right it is--if
you’re certain you don’t want to marry that young man of yours. The
trouble is the plentiful lack of females we have here in the sea. You
haven’t seen Prudence Gallegher yet. She’s the one other woman here.
She drifted in alone and half crazy on the ship Swan two years ago. Her
husband and everybody else had been drowned. In the two years she’s
been here she’s been married four times.”

“Four times! How horrible! How could she----”

“It’s no choice she had. There were twenty odd men here and only two
women besides her. It’s not much about men in the rough you’ll be
knowing, I think. Prudence had to make her choice and make it quick.
She _had_ to, or--well, she did the best she could, and she married
two days after she got here. Six months later the poor creature was a
widow--her husband killed by a block fallin’ from aloft and knocking
his brains out. The morning after she married again. She had to,
you’ll understand. Six or eight months afterward her second husband
disappeared, and Cap’n Forbes declared it’s dead he must be, and
that she must many once more. So marry she did. Three months ago Mr.
Gallegher’s wife died--Mr. Gallegher is the mate--and within a week
Prudence was a widow once more. It was a big snake that Captain Forbes
keeps as a pet that did the worruk that time; it got loose and crushed
poor Strother to death. The very next day Prudence was forced to
marry Gallegher--and her with a two-months’-old baby. Captain Forbes,
you’ll understand, had a wife of his own all this time, but she died
a week ago, and it’s myself that’s looking for somethin’ to happen to
Gallegher any day.”

Dorothy gasped. “You mean----” she cried.

“I mane that Cap’n Forbes wants a wife mighty bad, and that Gallegher
wants even worse to find one for him. I mane that you’d better be
considerin’ whether you’d rather marry your young man--or Cap’n Forbes.”

Dorothy listened with strained attention. This thing was too horrible
to be true. That she, Dorothy Fairfax, ran the slightest danger of
being forced to marry anybody was simply unthinkable. Mother Joyce
was exaggerating. This Prudence Gallegher must be a weak sort of a
woman--not one by whom to measure herself.

She turned to Mrs. Joyce. “Have--have _you_ been married more than
once?” she asked.

A grim look banished the kindly lines from Mother Joyce’s face. “Only
once, mavourneen,” she answered. “I gave them all to understand long
ago that if they did away with Tim, it’s follow him I would--after I
had killed all of them I could. And they belaved me. Besides, it’s an
old woman I am--not a pretty young colleen like you. You’d better be
after takin’ my advice; marry your young man quick if you want him and
stay on your own ship till he can get you away from here.”

“But they all say we can’t get away.”

“Arrah! Go way wid you! Tell me twinty men can’t get away from anywhere
if it’s any sinse they’ve got. Cap’n Forbes could have got us ashore
long ago if he’d been wantin’ to. It’s talk he does about gittin’ stuck
in the weed! What’s a lot of weed? You can cut through it, can’t you?
Faith, the rale trouble is Cap’n Forbes ain’t wantin’ to go, an’ he’s
the only wan here with any seafarin’ since and any git up and git about
him--unless your young man is after havin’ some.”

“Mr. Howard said we could get away if we could get a boat and compass
and----”

“Oh! Sure, you’ll have to be havin’ a boat and some instruments to
guide her, an’ it’s none so aisy to foind boats here. It’s me own
opinion that the cap’n has destroyed all he found, so it is. As for
compasses and such like, sure the cap’n has thim right enough locked
away in his storehouse, even though he kapes them mighty secret. He
don’t want to go himself and, be the same token, he don’t want any wan
else to go. He moightn’t be such a big man if he was ashore, so he
moightn’t! But you and your friends can get away--if Cap’n Forbes don’t
prevent.”

Freed from the restraint of Dorothy’s presence, the conversation on
deck had grown even more animated than before. Howard and Jackson could
scarcely answer one question before half a dozen more were plumped at
them. Evidently, thirst for news of the world had not died out in the
members of the colony.

Howard noticed, however, that Forbes himself soon drew aside from
the rest and engaged in earnest talk with Joe and Bill, evidently
questioning them in regard to the Queen and her passengers, and that
later he devoted himself particularly to drawing out Jackson. Finally
he came toward Howard.

“I guess your throat’s pretty dry, Mr. Howard,” he said, “and if you’ll
come down to my cabin, I’ll see if I can’t find something to irrigate
it with.”

Howard willingly accepted the invitation. From all he had heard it
was obvious to him that this puppet king had resolutely set his face
against any member of his colony leaving the wreck-pack, and it was
highly necessary to discover whether he would go so far as to oppose
any attempts of the newcomers in that direction. If a contest was to
come, the sooner Howard knew it, the better.

Forbes led the way to his cabin and pushed forward a chair.

“Choose your own poison, Mr. Howard,” he offered hospitably, indicating
a sideboard loaded with bottles. “We have pretty nearly everything
there is. A single steamer last month brought us more than we could
drink in a lifetime. What I have here doesn’t represent half her
selection. There is beer in the ice-box over in that corner, if you
prefer it.”

Upon Howard’s accepting the beer, his host set half a dozen bottles on
the table, adding one of whiskey for himself.

“Bourbon is good enough for me,” he observed. “I sample the fancy
drinks once in a while, but always come back to the straight stuff. I’m
surprised that you don’t also. You are a naval officer, aren’t you? I
hope you are better up in other details of your profession.”

Howard laughed. “Hard drinking isn’t exactly compulsory in the
service,” he observed, lightly.

“Oh, no offense! I was only joking, of course. I suppose you have
specialists in that line as well as in others. From what I read in
the papers that drift in to us here, I take it that everything is
being specialized nowadays. What’s your particular line--navigating,
engineering, submarining?”

Howard laughed again. “This is an age of specialization, all right,
captain,” he returned, “but it hasn’t struck the navy yet. Quite the
contrary! Only a year or two ago, Congress wiped out all special lines
and insisted that all officers should know everything. Perhaps it was
right, but----”

“But you don’t think so. Well, it’s a good thing to know all about your
own job if you can. I suppose, however, you can’t help specializing
more or less. For instance, you must have special men who manage your
submarines.”

“Not exactly. Still, only a few men have had any experience in that
line yet. The boats are too new and too few to give everybody a chance
yet. Personally, I have been lucky enough to have had a good deal of
experience with them, but comparatively few others have as yet.”

Forbes threw himself back in his chair with a look of intense
satisfaction on his face. “That’s good,” he said heartily. “Humph! By
the way, Howard, this party of yours is a curiously mixed one.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, it’s evident on the face of it!-- Have a cigarette?-- A navy
officer, a New York policeman, and a girl; that’s odd enough, isn’t it?
Not that sailors and girls are antipathetic--quite the contrary--but
where does the policeman come in? I don’t quite place him in the
picture.”

Howard lighted his cigarette with a steady hand. “I believe he had been
to Porto Rico to bring a convict back to New York,” he returned.

“A convict. Humph! Too bad he didn’t bring him here. ‘There’s never
a law of God or man runs in the Sargasso Sea.’ I’m up in the modern
poets, you’ll observe, Howard. We have no extradition here. Well, as I
was saying, Neptune makes some queer bed-fellows, especially here. Who
is the lady, by the way?”

“Miss Dorothy Fairfax, daughter of Colonel John Fairfax, a millionaire
railroad man who has been building lines in Porto Rico of late. His
daughter was on her way home after visiting him on the island.”

Forbes’s eyes glittered. “Colonel John Fairfax’s daughter, eh! I was
reading an article in the paper about him the other day that said he
owned about half the railroads in the United States. His daughter will
be quite a catch for a poor man. Eh, Howard!”

Howard made a slight movement. “I would rather not discuss Miss
Fairfax, captain,” he returned, quietly. “When and how can we get away
from here?”

Forbes held his glass to the light and squinted at it. “Well, Howard,”
he remarked reflectively. “I’ve been kind of expecting you to ask me
that. In fact, I brought you down here to give you a chance to ask me.
The truth is, you can’t get away at all unless you come to terms with
me.”

“What are your terms?”

“Well--I’ll come to that after a while. Look here, Howard, I’ve been
here ten years and I never was so comfortable in my life before. I’ve
lived easy and slept soft, and never had a minute’s worry about grocery
bills or taxes, or any of the other plagues of civilization. And my men
have been in the same case. They’ve had just work enough to keep them
healthy, and just drink enough to keep them happy. If they were out of
this, they’d either be working like dogs or drunk--also like dogs. Why
in thunder should either they or I want to go back to that old damnable
life?”

“No reason at all, captain, if you’re content here.”

“That’s the devil of it. I’m not content. I’m just fool enough to ache
to get back. But I don’t want to go back empty-handed. I don’t want to
go back poor. I want to go back rich, with influential connections,
social relations, and all the rest of it.”

Howard smiled. “You’re not the only one who wants all that, captain,”
he observed. “There are others.”

“So I suppose. But the difference between them and me is that since you
got here I’ve got all this right in my fist. This morning it was far
away; now it is close at hand. As I said, I’ve been here for ten years.
In that time I have been over about five thousand wrecks, old and
new. Nearly every one of them has had money on her. Some have had very
large sums. Large or small, I have collected them all. It makes a great
fortune for one; it is enough for two; but it isn’t a hill of beans
among a score.”

“I am beginning to see.”

“I couldn’t take this money away secretly by boat--it’s too bulky. I
couldn’t take it openly without sharing it with a dozen others--and it
would need about a dozen to cut a way through this damnable weed. I’ve
been ready to go for six months, but I didn’t see my way. Now I do.”

“Well.”

“Recently I found a safe, quick, and easy way for a man with the right
technical knowledge to get away from here with two or three people--and
my money. But I didn’t have the technical knowledge. Of all the ships
that have floated in with libraries on them, not one has had a book
that told me what to do. Now you have come especially trained in the
very line I want. Can you guess what my terms are now?”

“Humph! Perhaps. What is your way?”

“Don’t worry about that now. It’s all right, and that’s enough. I’m
telling you a good deal, because I want your help, but I’m not giving
myself away altogether. But about those terms. If you’ll help me get
ashore with my money, I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars.”

Howard lay back in his chair and stared at his host thoughtfully. The
conversation had proceeded far otherwise from what he had expected. The
man whose opposition to his leaving he had feared, was actually asking
his aid. Yet this assistance was asked not slavishly, but as if the
asker could compel it if he liked, but preferred to request. Howard
felt that he must choose his words warily.

“Such a question is hardly worth asking, captain,” he returned. “Of
course, I shall be glad to accept. I take it for granted that my
friends are included in your invitation!”

“Your friends!” Forbes burst into a roar of laughter. “Your friends!
That’s good! That’s very good! One of your friends--Mr. Jackson--I
intend to leave behind as a special favor to you.”

For an instant Howard saw red. Then the fit passed, and he answered
quietly, “You astonish me, captain.”

“Oh, no, I don’t! Look here, I’m on to you, Howard. You are the convict
that Jackson went to Porto Rico for. You are now supposed to be dead.
Leave Jackson here, and you can change your name and live anywhere in
the world you like in perfect safety.”

“And Miss Fairfax?” Howard almost choked as he uttered the words, but
the necessity of dissembling was strong upon him.

“Miss Fairfax will go with us--as my wife!”

“What!”

“Sit down, Howard, and keep your shirt on. What’s the use of getting
worked up. I know I’m not exactly in Miss Fairfax’s line, but she won’t
be the only woman who has married out of her class. I’ll make good with
her father, all right.”

“You think you can get Miss Fairfax to marry you?”

In spite of himself the scorn that Howard tried to hide showed in his
voice. Forbes did not notice it.

“She can’t help herself,” he declared. “I’ve got her dead to rights.
Besides, I’ve got the law--our law--on my side. You don’t suppose
ordinary rules govern here, do you? Not much! The sexes are too
frightfully disproportionate. Counting your party, there are just
twenty-four men and only three women here. The coming of a new woman
has always been the signal for trouble. Bad blood, quarrels, and
murders have followed inevitably. So we made a law some years ago that
every woman must marry within twenty-four hours after her arrival.
Under that law I intend to marry Miss Fairfax. What have you to say
about it?”

With the last word Captain Forbes put his elbows on the table and
leaned forward, staring into Howard’s face. Huge, shaggy, and evidently
immensely powerful, he towered menacingly above the smaller naval
officer.

Howard wanted to say a good deal, but forbore. Clearly Forbes took him
for an ordinary scoundrel who had his price like other scoundrels. If
he was to help Dorothy, the obvious thing was to appear to fall in with
the plan until opportunity offered to defeat it, or until action could
no longer be deferred. That is, he must gain time, and the only way to
gain time was to dissimulate.

“I don’t believe I have anything to say about it just now, captain,” he
returned, mildly, “except that I think you could make a better bargain
with Colonel Fairfax if you merely returned his daughter to him safely.
She’ll hate you forever, you know.”

Forbes’s brows relaxed. “Not much she won’t,” he returned. “She’ll come
to time, all right, and mighty soon, too. I know how to handle the sex.
She’ll be too proud to confess the truth, and she’ll praise me up to
the skies. You’ll see! Besides, I don’t want the old man’s money; I’ll
have enough of my own. I want his social help. Well! is it a bargain?”

Howard hesitated. “I must think about it for a while, captain,” he
returned.

“What do you want to think about? Oh! I guess I see! You’ve got an idea
of marrying the girl yourself, I reckon. Humph! Son-in-law saves girl,
and rich daddy saves son-in-law. I don’t blame you, but I guess I’ll
just have to queer that game once for all. Gallegher!”

The last word came like a pistol-shot. Howard leaped to his feet, only
to find three armed men standing behind him.

Forbes threw himself back in his chair and laughed.

“Stung!” he remarked lightly. “You might as well go quietly,
Howard. There’s no use of committing suicide, you know. We won’t
hurt you--you’re too valuable. And we’ll turn you loose--after the
ceremony.”




X


FOR one moment, as the men closed in on him, Howard struggled with a
furious desire to wrest a cutlass from one of them, and with it exact
terms from the others. The odds, though great, were not necessarily
overwhelming, and victory would mean much. Had he stood on equal terms
before the law, he would have risked everything in an immediate fight.

But he did not stand even. Against him as a convict fighting for
freedom, Forbes could throw the entire population of his colony; even
Jackson might join in the unequal odds. The result of a struggle on
that basis must be inevitable; Dorothy would lose her only defender.
Later, when the time came, if it did come, to shift the fight to the
defense of womanhood, he would have a better cause and might win
allies. So he surrendered.

“Take him to the Chester,” ordered Forbes, “and lock him up. Give him
anything he wants to make him comfortable, and see after his meals. If
he makes any trouble, put him in irons. Off with you.”

Sick at heart, Howard marched away between his captors. The way led
to the edge of the wide platform that constituted the village, down a
gang-plank, and away for some distance across the wrecks. Finally it
led through a rent in the side of a big iron steamer, and up to what
had evidently once been the captain’s cabin. Into this he was thrust.

Gallegher paused, with his hand on the lock. “You heard what the cap’n
said,” he growled. “You behave yourself and nobody’ll hurt you. And,
remember, there ain’t a mite of use tryin’ to escape, because there
ain’t nowhere to escape to.”

The door slammed and Howard was left to his own reflections.

His first act was, of course, to inspect his prison. It was not
uncomfortable. Large, airy, and well furnished, it had evidently been
selected because all its sides were of iron, three of them being formed
by the sides of the vessel, and the fourth by one of her bulkheads.
Numerous port-holes admitted air and light, but were too small for a
man’s body to pass through them. A skylight overhead had been closed
with heavy timbers. Altogether it was a strong place.

Before he had had much more than time enough to familiarize himself
with his surroundings, the key grated in the lock, and one of his
captors entered with a tray, which he placed on a table built around
the mizzenmast of the ship.

“Here’s your dinner, sor,” he announced.

Howard came over and sat down. As he did so, his eyes fell on some
curious-looking mechanism which the man had pushed aside in making room
for the tray. A question sprang to his lips, but he choked it back as
the other bent suddenly forward.

“I heard of what you said to Bill and Joe, sor,” he breathed. “Is it
true that you could get away from here if you had the chance, sor?”

“True? Of course it’s true. Give me a boat, two or three men, and a
compass, and I’d start away at an hour’s notice. I wonder that you men
don’t see that.”

“And will you take me and Kathleen with you when you go, sor?
Kathleen’s my wife--Joyce they call her, sor, though its nather chick
nor child we’re after having, sor.”

“I’ll take anybody. But I’ve got to be free in order to prepare----”

“Whist! That’ll be all right, sor. Kape a stiff upper lip and
everything will come right. The young lady and you have friends here,
sor. I don’t dare to stop now, but it’s back again I’ll be later on.”

Howard made no effort to detain the man. He was in a fever of
impatience to examine the instruments on the table, and the moment he
heard the key turn in the lock, he pushed aside his dinner and began to
finger them.

“It isn’t possible,” he muttered. “It isn’t possible! Forbes would know
better. But, by George, he doesn’t. It’s true! It’s true! _He’s locked
me up with a wireless outfit._ If it’s only in working order.” He
pressed the key and a rumble and a crash gave answer. “It is! It is!”
he exulted. “By Heaven! It is!”

“Now to raise somebody before Forbes finds me out,” he continued. “If
the wireless only sent as silently as it received, it would be all
right. But--well! maybe no one will notice. It’s pretty noisy here!
Anyhow, there’s nothing to do but try.”

He placed his finger on the key. “Let’s see!” he soliloquized. “The
naval station at Guantanamo is nearest, but I don’t know its call. I’ll
have to try C Q D--the emergency signal.”

Again and again he pressed the key, and again and again the apparatus
roared, sending the cry for help broadcast over the sea. No
interruption came. The village was some distance away, and the noise
passed unheard or unheeded. “C Q D! C Q D!” he called.

At last the answer came, faint but distinct, whispering in through the
microphone on his head. “Hello! Hello! Hello!” it sounded. “Who’s this?”

“Survivor of the wrecked steamer Queen, now on board an unknown steamer
in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Is this Guantanamo?”

Sharply the answer came: “Yes. What did you say? Survivors of the
Queen? Good Heavens, you were given up for lost. How many are you?”

“Three! Miss Fairfax--”

“Great Scott! Colonel Fairfax has been wild. Who else?”

“Police Officer Jackson!”

“Yes.”

“And Frank Howard.”

“What! The murderer?”

“No. The convict. This is he talking.”

“Oh! Beg pardon! Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Where did you say
you were?”

“We drifted into the Sargasso Sea on the Queen, and brought up finally
against the wreck-pack in the middle. Then we changed to another ship.
It’s a long story. You’d better note it down carefully. I may be cut
off any minute.”

“Oh! I’ll note it down all right. Go ahead. But first about the others
on the Queen. Two boats got to port all right. How about the third?”

“Capsized! All lost except Miss Fairfax, who was washed back to the
Queen, and pulled aboard by Jackson and Howard, who had been left there
by accident. Now listen. This is urgent. We are in great danger here,
and need aid at the first possible moment----”

“In danger? What’s the matter?”

“Listen, and I’ll tell you.”

Hurriedly, but concisely, Howard narrated their adventures, describing
the wreck-pack and its queer colony, and pointing out the danger
to which Miss Fairfax was subjected. Toward the end of the story,
Guantanamo evidently became restless, for he broke in.

“Say!” he clicked, disgustedly. “Do you expect me to believe all that?”

“Surely. Why not?”

“Because it’s nonsense. Say, friend, you are wasted at sea. You ought
to be a New York yellow-journal reporter. Now, who the devil are you,
really?”

“I’ve told you.”

“You’ve told me a pack of lies--begging your pardon. I’d got into a
pretty fix if I reported this nonsense; now, wouldn’t I?”

“You’ll get into a worse one if you don’t. For God’s sake, man, don’t
be a skeptical fool. As I’ve told you, I’m a prisoner, and am only
able to talk to you because this man Forbes apparently knows nothing of
the wireless. My jail may be changed any minute, and I may never get
another chance. This thing is very serious. There are about twenty-five
people hopelessly confined here on these wrecks, and aid should be sent
them at once.”

“Bah! You mean to tell me that people have been living there for years
and years, and nobody has ever found it out?”

“Lots of people have found it out, but nobody has ever gone back to
tell. If you never heard of the wreck-pack, ask any old sailor, and
he’ll tell you of it--though he’s never seen it or known any one who
has. Why shouldn’t there be people on it?”

“Well, suppose there are. How can we help you?”

“A ship can get to us if it tries hard enough. The weed can be cut
through, though with difficulty. A sort of steam-saw projecting over
the bow will do the work. The propeller will have to be screened to
prevent fouling. Perhaps a paddle-wheel steamer would get along best.
When it is once in, it should skirt the edge of the wreckage till
it finds us. The latitude and longitude I have given you are only
approximate. I have no proper instruments.”

“Who shall I notify?”

“Notify Colonel Fairfax, first of all. This Forbes may keep his threat
and marry Miss Fairfax by force, or he may not. He shall not if I can
help it. But I’m a prisoner and helpless just at present, though I have
made at least one friend and hope for some others. Anyway, Colonel
Fairfax will want to rescue his daughter. Then notify the government;
there must be ships at Guantanamo now that could start for here very
soon. Then notify the newspapers; if no one else will help us, they
will. Notify anybody and everybody you like. Stop! Somebody’s coming.
Keep out till I call you again.”

It was only the Irishman who came to take away the tray. He must have
heard the rumbling of the wireless, for only a deaf man could have
failed to do so, but he asked no questions about it, though he looked
sharply at the instruments that Howard had thrust aside.

Howard in fact gave him little chance, plying him with questions as to
Forbes’s probable course of action. After he had gone, Howard talked
with Guantanamo until late in the night.

The next morning the man came again. “Can you foight, sor?” he demanded.

“Fighting is my trade, Joyce. Why?”

“Well, sor, the captain’s going to marry the young lady at four o’clock
the day, unless somebody stops him. And the only way to stop him is to
foight him. It’s a big man an’ a bad man he is, sor. Are ye game for
it?”

Howard smiled. “Oh! yes. I’m game,” he declared.

“Then I’ll get ye out in good time. Tare and ’oun’s, but it’ll be a
grand foight entoirely.”




XI


IN accepting Captain Forbes’s invitation to supper Dorothy had taken it
for granted that the other two survivors of the Queen were included,
and was somewhat startled to find that they were not.

“Gallegher insisted on your friends eating with him,” explained Forbes,
with a smile. “He declared that I might have the best, but that I
shouldn’t hog everything, and I had to give in.”

Dorothy accepted the explanation, but her heart beat anxiously. Nor
was her anxiety lessened by Captain Forbes’s attitude. Had she not
been warned of his probable designs, she might have passed over his
behavior as merely the would-be gallantry of an uncultivated man, and
even then would have found it sufficiently offensive. But, in view of
all she had been told, its import quickly became portentous. Between
extravagant compliments, often so pointed as to cause her considerable
embarrassment, Forbes sandwiched encomiums of the life on the wreckage,
for support of which he appealed to Mother Joyce, declaring that
Dorothy would soon submit to the inevitable, and settle down to remain
there for life. All suggestions as to the possibility of escape he
pushed aside.

“Our known history of life here goes back for more than fifty years,”
he declared, “and in that time nobody has escaped. Nobody ever will.
It’s impossible. You will fight against the idea for awhile, and then
settle down to enjoy yourself.”

“Enjoy myself!”

“Why not? We have everything here that any one needs--all the
necessaries, and far more of the luxuries than any except a very few
favored people enjoy anywhere. We have a storehouse full of everything
that delights a woman, and if it was destroyed to-morrow, we could
easily fill it again. Duplicates of all its contents will drift in to
us again sooner or later on some ship. Ask what you will, and it will
be my delight to lay it at your feet.”

Dorothy tried to smile. “Very well, then,” she particularized, “just
give me a telegraph-office.”

“With pleasure. We have a complete outfit. I’m sorry to say, though,
that the wires are not strung yet.”

“Then give me a boat and a--compass, isn’t it, that we need?”

“Those are about the only things we cannot furnish, Miss Fairfax. When
sailors are forced to leave their ships, they invariably take the boats
and the compasses with them. But why do you wish to leave us? It will
be our constant study to make you happy. You shall have the best of
everything, and your lightest wish shall be law.”

“My only wish is to get back to dry land. If my wish is law, help me
to do so.”

“I cannot! And I would not if I could. I have waited long for a woman
as fair and sweet as you to drift in to me, and now that you have come,
I will not give you up lightly. The wrecks and their contents are ours
by right of salvage. You, too, are salvage--and the fairest salvage I
have ever known.”

This was forcing the game with a vengeance. Dorothy’s lip quivered, and
she cast a frightened glance at Mother Joyce. But that lady was eating
her supper stolidly, and made no sign. Evidently, for the moment at
least, she intended to let Dorothy play her own hand.

Forbes continued: “No, you are here for life, Miss Fairfax. I regret it
for your sake, but I rejoice in it for my own. You are here for life,
and you must make up your mind to it, choose a husband, and settle
down.”

“I shall never marry.”

“You must consider a moment. There are twenty-two of us men here
and only two women. Under such circumstances, how can we afford to
permit any woman to remain single. We used to do it years ago, when
the disproportion was not quite so great, and what was the result?
Decimation of our numbers, no less! The men quarreled and fought and
murdered each other, exactly as wild beasts do, all for the sake of
one woman. Well do I remember the last time this happened! In a week
five men had been killed, and bad blood stirred up that did not subside
for years. We could not chance a repetition of this sort of thing,
and we made a law that every woman who arrived here must marry within
twenty-four hours. She could choose any one she liked, but choose she
must.”

“But no such rule can apply to me.”

“Why not? You are a lady, of course, and far above the level of
nine-tenths of the men here. But there is the remaining tenth to
choose from. Of course, none of us are worthy of you, but--we will make
good husbands.”

Dorothy tried to laugh the words away, but could not. She told herself
that all this was some horrible dream from which she would presently
awake, but all the while she knew it was terribly real. The toils
were closing round her fast. Her thoughts flew to Howard. He, she
felt, would save her, if man could; but he was one, and Forbes and
his followers were many. If it came to a struggle the result would be
inevitable. What could she do? What _could_ she do?

Forbes was watching her keenly. “You realize the situation now?” he
continued. “For our own welfare we cannot permit you to remain single.
You could not get away, and we would not permit you to do so if you
could. You must marry--in twenty-four hours. And since you must marry,
let me advise you to choose one who can provide for you--and there
is no one here who can do that so well as I. I won’t talk about
love--that is for boys, and I am a man; but if you will marry me, you
shall be queen here. Come! what do you say?”

Dorothy pushed back her chair and rose. “I say that this is utterly
preposterous. I will not marry any one on compulsion. Certainly I will
not marry you. I wish you good day, Captain Forbes.”

She turned toward the door, but Forbes stepped before her.

“One moment, Miss Fairfax,” he said. “I know how you feel, and I do not
wish to turn you against me by undue persistency. If you want to go
now, go! But think over what I have said. I believe that you will come
to see that it is the best thing you can possibly do. Talk it over with
your friends, I think they will advise you to consent. At all events,
you have twenty-four hours--till four o’clock to-morrow, to get used to
the idea. Take my advice and wait calmly till then.”

Dorothy bowed haughtily. “Very well,” she returned. “I will wait. Now,
will you kindly summon my friends. I wish to return to my ship.”

Forbes’ lips curved in a cruel smile. “_Your_ ship, Miss Fairfax,” he
echoed. “You have no ship. You and your companions abandoned the Queen
of your own accord, and by the law of the sea she and everything on
her became the property of any one who salvaged her. My men have taken
possession of everything, including your abandoned trunks--which are
now mine. You have no place to lay your head, and nothing in the world
except what you have on your person. However, I am not unkind. For
twenty-four hours I will give you food and shelter. At the end of that
time--well, we will see. Now you may go with Mother Joyce, who will
care for you. And think over my proposition.”




XII


DOROTHY’S hours of grace passed all too quickly. The girl’s natural
impulse was to turn at once to Howard for aid, and when the moments
sped by without bringing him, she turned to Mrs. Joyce and learned of
his imprisonment.

“But don’t you be worryin’ about that, miss,” said the kindly
Irishwoman. “It’s safe and sound he is. The cap’n is just kapin’ him
locked up till after the wedding.”

“There’ll be no wedding,” flashed Dorothy.

“An’ why not? It’s worse you might do, my dear. All men are
cantankerous, but Cap’n Forbes ain’t a bad sort, if you take him the
right way; an’ he’ll make a good husband--the best here, anyway. An’
you’ve got to remember that while a smart man might get out of here,
if he was free, even the smartest man--let alone a woman--couldn’t if
the cap’n didn’t want him to; and sure it is the cap’n don’t want you
to go. I know it’s hard, but I don’t see but what it’s the best thing
you can do--seein’ you wouldn’t marry your friend, Mr. Howard, under
any circumstances.” And Mother Joyce glanced quizzically into Dorothy’s
face.

The girl blushed; then hid her face. “Oh! Mrs. Joyce,” she sobbed.
“I--he--things were different when I said that.”

“Oh! indade! Now, were they? You nad’n’t say any more, miss. A nod’s as
good as a wink to a blind horse. It’s a fine, upstandin’ young fellow
he is, and I don’t blame you. Joyce and I’ll do what we can for you and
him. And you’ll not be lavin’ us behind when you sail away?”

“Leave you! Never!”

Fortunate it was that this understanding had been reached so quickly,
for little further opportunity for talk was offered later. All that
evening and all the next morning the members of the community visited
Dorothy, one by one, each with tales to tell of the pleasures of life
in the Sea and with praises of Captain Forbes. Not one seemed disposed
to help the girl.

Even Mr. Willoughby, the minister, could give her little comfort. When
she appealed to him directly to help her, he squirmed uncomfortably.

“Captain Forbes is a man of wrath,” he mumbled; “hard to resist. My
sacred calling is of little import in his eyes. If you decide to refuse
him, I trust I shall find strength to offer you such support as I may.
But you must remember that I am only one--and a man of peace besides.”

Clearly there was little hope to be placed in the minister. But Dorothy
made one more appeal.

“You could refuse to perform the ceremony,” she suggested, tearfully.

“And so I shall,” promised Mr. Willoughby. “If I must,” he added, with
quickly following repentance. “But to what end? Captain Forbes is a
sea-captain, and as such can perform marriages at sea. Whether he can
marry himself is doubtful. But I know him; he will settle the doubt in
his own favor and marry you willy-nilly. I--I really think that you had
best submit. Since you have to stay here, you cannot occupy a better
place than as Captain Forbes’s wife.”

“But I don’t have to stay. I won’t stay. Mr. Howard promised----” She
stopped and bit her lip. “I see you cannot help me, Mr. Willoughby,”
she finished. “Good morning.”

The minister sneaked away, and Prudence Gallegher crept in, weak,
ill, and frightened, to add her mite to the weight that was crushing
Dorothy’s heart.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, glancing fearfully behind her from time
to time. “Oh, I’m so sorry. But--but hadn’t you better marry Cap’n
Forbes? Nobody will dare to hurt him, and--and--you won’t be handed on
from one to another as I was.”

This sort of thing, kept up almost without cessation for twenty-four
hours, drove Dorothy almost to distraction. As four o’clock drew near,
her condition grew pitiful. In vain she looked for a means of escape.
If any had offered she would have taken it instantly, facing without
hesitation the terrors of the foodless desert in the heart of the
wreckage. But none did offer. Always she was surrounded by jailers. She
could see no hope anywhere--nothing to do but resist till the last, and
then---- What then? What should she do then? What could she do? One
weak girl beset by a score of men. Her brain reeled at the thought.

Eight bells rang out, and Joe appeared at the door.

“Cap’n Forbes says as how will you an’ Mother Joyce please step on
deck, miss,” he petitioned.




XIII


THE deck had been decorated as for a gala occasion. Bright-colored
flags were twined everywhere under the cool, airy awnings; canaries, in
gilded cages, hung about, each carolling at the top of its tiny throat;
the members of the colony were all standing about, each dressed in
garments which, though perhaps lacking somewhat in taste and style, at
least left nothing to be desired in the way of color or ornament. The
scene, though odd, was undoubtedly bright and cheerful.

Mother Joyce led Dorothy to a slightly raised platform, in front of
which were ranged chairs, in which, at her approach, the sailors
hurriedly seated themselves. Dorothy looked eagerly among them for a
sight of Howard, and her last hope vanished when she knew he was not
there.

As she stepped upon the platform, Forbes came up from below. Clean
shaven, and well and correctly dressed, he furnished a strong contrast
to the others with their motley attire.

He bowed courteously to Dorothy, and greeted her as though their
relations were of the pleasantest. “Please sit down for a moment,”
he concluded, and turned away without waiting to see whether the
invitation was accepted.

“Men,” he said, stepping to the edge of the platform and looking them
over, “by our laws every unmarried woman coming into this community
must, within twenty-four hours, choose a husband from those who come
forward to offer themselves. The one she chooses must defend his right
against all others, and, if conquered, must give way to his conqueror.
So she will wed the best man, and all smoldering quarrels that might
disrupt our community will be avoided.”

He paused a moment and then went on:

“As you all know, Miss Fairfax joined us yesterday. She is so far
above all of us in beauty, grace, and culture that it is presumptuous
for any of us to aspire to her hand. Yet, the law is the law, and we
must all bow to it. So I call on all candidates for her hand to speak
out that she may choose. I offer, for one. Who else comes forward?”

He stopped and looked around inquiringly, but no one moved. Evidently
all knew what was planned, and had no wish to interpose. Even if not
awed by his ascendency, his significant assertion that the favored
suitor must defend his right against all comers was enough to give them
pause. For Forbes was six feet high, broad and strong in proportion.

After a moment, seeing that no one spoke, Forbes turned to Dorothy. “It
seems, fair lady,” he began, “that I am the only suitor for your hand.
I beg you to believe, however, that this is rather from the desire of
my men not to oppose the dearest hope of their captain, whom they so
love, than from any lack of appreciation of your charms. But it comes
to the same thing. I am the only candidate. Does it please you to
accept me?”

Dorothy rose and faced him. “Sir,” she said, with a break in her voice.
“I am only a girl, alone, unprotected, far from all her friends. I beg
you, I implore you, to be merciful. Do not do this thing. Let me go.”

Forbes shook his head. “Your presence here, single, must cause strife,”
he began, “and----”

“Then let me go away. Let me wander away by myself. You nor your men
shall ever see me again. I will lose myself in the wreckage, and----”

“You are salvage, and I cannot surrender you.”

“Think! Think! My father is rich--a multimillionaire. In his name I
promise you a million dollars if you will spare me and get me back to
him. Think! A million dollars.”

“Even if I would, it is impossible. We are all alike helpless here.”

“You will not spare me?”

“I love you too much to do so.”

With a quick movement Dorothy pushed by him and faced the others.
“Men,” she cried, “will you let this thing be done? Will you let me be
forced into marriage with a man I loathe. For God’s sake have pity on
me, and say to this man that he shall not do this thing.”

The men shifted uneasily in their seats, but no one spoke. Dorothy’s
eyes flashed.

“Cowards!” she cried. “Is there not one of you who dares face this man.
Come! I offer you a bargain. If any man will save me, to him will I
give myself in all wifely humility. Any man! _Any_ man! Speak! What!
Does no one speak? Am I so poor a prize?”

“I speak!”

Absorbed in the scene, no one had noted Howard’s approach, but at the
sound of his voice all faced him. His sea-stained clothes were torn,
and there was a fleck of blood on his lip, but his glance was high.

“I speak,” he repeated. “Not for the prize, but for the honor of
womanhood.” He turned to Forbes, who had flushed furiously at his
appearance. “Ah! you craven,” he flared. “You thought you had me safe
while you worked your coward will. Look better to your shackles next
time.”

Three or four of the men had risen and were closing in on Howard,
but Forbes waved them back. “Since you are here,” he remarked,
nonchalantly, “do I understand that you offer as a candidate for the
lady’s hand? If not, you have no standing.”

“I offer for anything that will save this lady from your insults.”

“Ah! So you _do_ offer. That is well. That is in line with the very
object of this ceremony and shows the wisdom of our laws. You and I
will fight this out and bury all ill-feeling--in your grave. Kindly
choose some one as second, and let’s get to work.”

Howard looked around him. “I’ll take my companion, Jackson,” he
decided. “I suppose you’ve got him locked up somewhere.”

“Bring him,” ordered Forbes, calmly. He turned to Howard and began to
take off his coat. “Get ready,” he ordered.

“You’ll give me fair play?”

“Surely. And marry you to the lady--if you win.”

In the revulsion of feeling consequent on the appearance of her
champion, Dorothy’s limbs had given way, and she would have fallen had
not Mother Joyce caught her and helped her to a chair, where she leaned
back, white and dazed. When she recovered enough to note what was
going on, Howard and Forbes, stripped to the waist, stood facing each
other before her, the latter towering, giant-like, above his smaller
adversary.

With a cry she sought to struggle up, but Mother Joyce restrained her.
“Don’t interfere,” she whispered. “It’s your only chance.”

“But he’ll kill him.”

The older woman seemed to have no difficulty in assigning the confused
pronouns correctly. “I’m not so sure,” she muttered consolingly. “I
fancy the captain has his work cut out for him. Anyhow, it’s for you to
kape still.”

Jackson’s eyes had lighted up when he had reached Howard’s side and
understood what game was on. “It’s many a fight I had in the ring
myself before I went on the force,” he whispered, with something very
nearly approaching enthusiasm. “It’s a big fellow he is. Can you do
him?”

Howard smiled grimly. “I’ve got to,” he answered.

“Well, take the tip from me and tire him out. He’s too big to rush, and
if he hits you square once, he’ll knock you out of the ring. Sprint
all you can. Get him mad. He’s got a wicked temper, if I know anything
of men; and when he loses it, he’ll forget to guard, and you can slug
him.”

Under other circumstances Howard would have smiled at the detective’s
unaccustomed volubility, but at the moment he had other things to think
about. With a nod to show that he understood, he stepped forward to
face his adversary.

The disproportion between the two men was very marked. Howard was not
a small man, but Forbes was several inches taller, and at least forty
pounds heavier. His corded arms looked capable of felling an ox. On
the other hand, he was twenty years older, and presumably, slower in
his movements than the naval officer, who was in the prime of the late
twenties.

Forbes wasted no time in preliminaries. Evidently he meant to show his
power by crushing his adversary without delay. The moment that Howard
faced him he sprang forward and launched a right-hand swing that would
have ended the fight then and there had it connected with Howard’s
body. But it did not connect. Howard sprang back, just out of reach,
and returned a half-arm jolt that brought the big man up standing.

“Ugh!” he exclaimed, stepping back. Then he grinned viciously. “You
know something, do you,” he half soliloquized. “So much the better.
There’ll be some sport in it.”

He rushed in again, striking furiously.

Howard gave ground slowly under the attack, dodging when he could,
parrying as he might, every nerve alert to save himself from being
crushed by the sheer weight of his adversary. In vain Forbes tried to
beat down his guard. Dorothy’s frightened face was ever before his
eyes, and he fought on breathless, but unharmed, until the first fury
of the attack had spent itself; until the passing moments told him
that the struggle would not be so uneven as it had seemed. Exultation
swelled in him when at last he could stand steady and give back blow
for blow.

Gradually his opponent’s mood changed. From coolness to anger; from
anger to baffled fury. Howard watched the changes as they mirrored
themselves in the other’s face. And when, with the recklessness of
utter rage, Forbes dropped his guard and threw all his weight into one
smashing blow, Howard ducked beneath it, swung his right with deadly
force against the bull neck and beat the devil’s tattoo on the thick
ribs before him.

Then the round ended.

But Howard knew that there was still plenty of fight in the big man. He
had shaken him, but had accomplished nothing more. Indeed, the fury of
the attack in the second round was little less than that of the first,
and Howard again had to give ground. Had Forbes been able to regain his
temper as he had regained his strength, there would still have been
little doubt as to the result.

But this the captain could not do. So often had he fought and won in
the past, so invariably had his bull strength served him well, that he
could not believe that he had at last met one who could withstand him.
Wild with rage, he spent himself against the impenetrable defense of
the naval officer until the second round ended with the odds of the
fight in favor of the latter.

So plain was this that Gallegher urged treachery, only to be repelled;
not yet would Forbes admit the possibility of defeat. “Naw! I’ll kill
him myself,” he muttered hoarsely, as, red-eyed, he stumbled forward
once more to the attack.

Howard met him with changed tactics. Jackson’s trained eye had read the
signs, and he had counselled the officer wisely. “Rush him,” he had
said. “Rush him. He’s all in. Don’t give him time to get his second
wind. Rush him.”

And Howard obeyed, drawing on some fount of nervous energy for a fury
of attack almost as violent as Forbes’s had been. The fighting rage was
on him at last, and bubbled over in words.

“So you’ll persecute a helpless woman, will you,” he jeered, as he
handed a jolt on the captain’s cheek. “How do you like to face a man?
Oh! never mind that eye; you’ve got one left. Don’t worry about your
nose; it’ll straighten out again. Here’s one for your solar plexus. Why
don’t you guard better? And here’s the end of the show.”

With every ounce of his weight behind it, he drove his left against
the point of the captain’s chin, and that individual went down like a
pole-axed ox and lay still.

As he fell Gallegher sprang forward, belaying-pin in hand, but shrank
back again as Jackson shoved his revolver into his face.

“Hold hard!” cried the policeman. “Fair play, ain’t it, mates?”

For an instant the situation hung in the wind as the sailors hesitated.
Then Joyce sang out:

“Fair play!” he cried. “The cap’n said he should have fair play. And
hurrah for Lootenant Howard, says I.”

Sailors are like children; a straw will turn them. With one accord
they burst into a cheer. “It was a good fight,” they cried. “The
lieutenant’s won the girl fair.”

While they had hesitated Howard had acted. He was under no illusions
as to the permanency of their mood, and, even as they cheered him, he
turned to Dorothy.

“Quick!” he whispered. “Don’t lose a moment. Come, Jackson! Get Miss
Fairfax out of this and back to the Queen. I’ll cover your retreat.”

But escape was not to be so easy. As Howard turned to face the sailors,
Forbes struggled to his feet. His face was gray with rage and his words
came thick.

“You’ve won,” he gritted. “You’ve won. Take your prize.” Then his eyes
fell on Dorothy and Jackson, now close to the edge of the deck. “Stop
those two!” he yelled. “By Heaven, no one shall say Peter Forbes does
not play fair. She’s chosen you, you infernal convict, and marry you
she shall, here and now.”

Howard faced him. “I refuse,” he declared. “Miss Fairfax owes me
nothing. I give her back her promise.”

“You do! Then she shall marry me. Me or you! The captain or the
jailbird. We’ll have a wedding before we part.”

The man’s face was a mass of cuts and bruises, and his words came
gaspingly; but there was no doubt that he was in earnest, and none that
he had the men behind him.

Fickle as the wind, they veered back to his side. “A wedding. Let’s
have a wedding!” they cried.

Howard looked despairingly around, then darted to the mainmast, caught
up a handspike, and swung Dorothy behind him. The fight would be
hopeless, but it was for her!

“Come on,” he challenged.

Grimly the men drew near, but before a blow could be struck, Dorothy’s
voice rang out.

“Wait!” she cried. Then she turned to Howard. “If you will have me, I
will marry you,” she murmured, gently.




XIV


NIGHT was falling fast as Howard and Dorothy, with Jackson close
behind, made their way slowly back to the Queen over the tangled
wreckage, following the trail blazed by Howard two days before. The
Joyces had promised to join them later.

Except for necessary help and caution about the road, the three walked
and climbed for the most part in silence, each immersed in thought.
Only once did Dorothy speak.

“Captain Forbes said that his men had taken possession of the Queen and
were removing her stores,” she warned. “Do you think he was telling the
truth?”

Howard shook his head. “Probably not,” he answered. “But we shall see.”

The Queen came in view at last, and each of the three thrilled at sight
of her familiar form. Wrecked, ruined, half-sunken, nevertheless she
stood to all three as a home and place of refuge, however insecure.
Glad as they had been to leave her, they were far gladder to return and
find her untouched. For Forbes had been lying.

With the touch of the deck beneath their feet, a feeling of
embarrassment descended on the three. On the way over they had been
silent because they were thinking; now they were silent because of the
strange new relation in which they stood to each other. Even Jackson
was conscious of it, and stammered and hesitated when he tried to
speak; while Dorothy’s flushed cheeks and quivering lips showed that
the nerves which had so well sustained her while necessity lasted, were
on the verge of giving way.

Fortunately supper had to be prepared and served and eaten, and these
familiar tasks relieved the tension somewhat. Even then no one dared
to speak of what had occurred, though no one thought of anything
else. The thing lay too close to their hearts to be lightly or easily
broached. At last Jackson, with glances at his two companions, threw
down his knife and fork and slouched out of the saloon without a word.

Left alone, the girl and the man looked at each other, she with
trembling lips and lovely, frightened eyes, and he with an infinite
compassion in his face.

“You want to say something to me?” he questioned, gently. “Say it.
Don’t be afraid. You will find that I can understand.”

Tears welled in Dorothy’s eyes. “To-day,” she murmured, brokenly, “I
made a bargain. I saw myself trapped, driven into marriage with a
man whom I loathed--oh, God only knows how I had come to loathe him!
Anything was better than he--anything! So I made my offer. I would be
a loyal wife to any man who would save me from Captain Forbes. You
answered.”

“I answered.”

“You are a much smaller man than Captain Forbes. No one would have
thought you a match for him, least of all himself. He meant to kill
you. There was murder in his eye. You must have seen it. Yet you faced
him. Why did you do it?”

Howard shrugged his shoulders. “You make too much of the affair,” he
said, lightly. “The man was strong, but he was past his first youth and
moved slowly. After the first two minutes I had no fear of the result.
But you ask me why I came forward. What else could any gentleman
do--and, in spite of my trial and conviction, I trust I am still a
gentleman. I came forward because I had to.”

“Then you did not fight for the poor prize I offered?”

Howard smiled. “Assuredly not,” he answered. “Why, you yourself saw
that I was ready to fight again a moment later to avoid taking it!”

“But you took it.”

“Yes--I took it.”

“And now I ask you to give it up again. I--I--Mr. Howard, I have heard
of you for two years. You have been painted very black in my eyes. I
have known you two weeks, and they have reversed the picture. I should
not have looked for generosity in the man I once thought you to be,
but I beg it from the man I have found you to be. I am your wife. I
have promised before God to be loyal, loving, and obedient to you. I
made that promise with my eyes open, and if you ask it I shall try to
keep it. I am not of those who take their marriage vows lightly. I am
your wife and I am wholly at your mercy. But--but--you do not love me
nor I you. We are mere acquaintances. Do not--oh, it is hard for me
to say this. Have pity on me. Hold me, not as your wife, as I must
hold myself, but as only a poor girl in distress, and--see, I kneel to
you----”

Howard caught her hands and drew her to her feet again. “Poor little
girl,” he murmured gently. “So that is what is troubling you! Do not
fear. You are my wife--yes. But it is a tie that can easily be sundered
when once we get back to dry land. A marriage like this is no marriage
without the after-consent of the parties. Any court in the land would
dissolve it--or, more likely, declare it null and void from the
beginning. Do not fear. You are quite safe with me.”

Dorothy’s breath came fast, but she did not speak. She tottered and put
her hand out for support. Howard guided her to a chair.

“Sit quietly for a moment,” he ordered gently. “I must see Jackson
about something, but I will soon be back and help you to your
state-room. You must be worn out.”

With the last word he turned and went up the companionway, more to give
the girl time to recover herself than because of any desire to see
Jackson. As he reached the top of the stairs his foot struck something,
and he stooped and picked up a pistol wrapped round with a half-sheet
of paper.

Wonderingly he took it to the lamp. He read:

  I know where Forbes keeps his rifles. Mrs. Joyce is going to get some
  of them for us. I’m going back to help. I leave my pistol in case I
  don’t get back. Anyhow, I guess you’d rather be alone to-night.

                                                               JACKSON.

  P.S.--That was a great match.--J.

Howard laughed bitterly. Then he turned and descended the stairs.

“Jackson has gone on an errand to Mrs. Joyce,” he said. “He left his
pistol for you. After what has happened, he thinks, and I think, that
you had better be armed. If any man--if _any_ man molests you do not
hesitate to use it. I believe you told me once that you were rather a
good shot.”

It had been no part of Howard’s intention to spend the night upon the
Queen. He had no faith in Forbes’s protestations of fair play, and
felt certain that he would hear from that individual very shortly and
in unpleasant fashion. Although he scarcely expected any attack that
night, doubting Forbes’s ability to bring his men to the fighting point
so speedily, he intended to take no chances, and to seek sleeping
quarters on some near-by vessel. But Dorothy’s fear of himself and her
very evident nearness to collapse, taken with Jackson’s unexpected
departure, had knocked his plans completely on the head.

After Dorothy had retired, he sat up for some time considering the
situation. He was terribly sore and wearied from the heart-breaking
struggle of the afternoon, which had been nothing like so easy as
he had portrayed it to Dorothy. Coming on top of the anxiety of his
confinement, in ignorance of what was happening to the girl he had
promised to restore to her home, it had nearly worn him out. The
question that presented itself to him was whether he should trust to
his belief in Forbes’s inability to resume the struggle so quickly, and
take his much-needed rest so as to be ready for the probable stress of
the morrow, or whether he should remain on watch all night and thereby
be less efficient the next day, supposing the contest were put off till
then.

Doubts and difficulties lay in each alternative, but he finally decided
to sleep while he could, trusting to his life-long ability to awake
fully and instantly at the slightest unaccustomed sound. He did not
believe that Forbes and his men could steal upon him without waking
him; and, in any event, he could not hope, alone and unarmed, to keep
them off the ship.

So, after stringing several ropes across the gangway in the deepest
shadows of the Queen’s deck, he slipped into his state-room, just
across the corridor from Dorothy’s, and lay down, fully dressed,
with an axe--his sole weapon, since he had given Dorothy Jackson’s
pistol--close beside him. In an instant he was fast asleep.

He was aroused several hours later by a sound whose cause he had no
difficulty in interpreting. Somebody had tripped over one of the ropes
he had stretched, and had fallen. Instantly he was on his feet, axe in
hand, and was cautiously opening his door. Stillness now reigned, but
Howard had no doubt that murder was stalking close at hand.

With infinite precaution he stole from the room, noted that Dorothy’s
door was still fast, and slipped like a shadow along the corridor. It
took him half an hour to gain the other deck, scarcely fifty feet from
where he had slept. But when he had done so, he was certain that no
foes lurked in his rear.

The moon loomed huge in the cloudless sky as he peered from the door
of the social hall. Before him the deck stretched away, silvery-white
except where criss-crossed by the black shadows cast by the stanchions
that supported the half-furled awnings, and by the narrow border of
shadow cast by the awnings themselves.

Slowly he crept out into the black border and made his way forward,
eager to front the danger, whatever it might be.

But all was still save for a very faint, rustling sound impossible to
locate--a sound like dry leaves whisking through a November night; a
sound that made Howard’s hair stir upon his head. At two o’clock in the
morning courage is rare, and never perfect.

Still Howard crept on until he reached a spot where a broken boat-davit
was twisted across a stanchion. By this he paused and stood listening.

Then, without warning, the attack came. From the cross-beam overhead
something fell upon him with cruel force--something heavy, crushing,
deadly; some live thing that wrapped him round and round.

[Illustration: THE END COULD NOT BE LONG DEFERRED; YET THE MAN FOUGHT
ON.]

With a half-strangled shriek of terror he caught himself back
against the crossed davit and the stanchion, just in time to involve
them in the coiling horror. His right arm, instinctly thrown aloft,
grasped vainly at the throat of a huge serpent whose darting head cut
fantastic silhouettes against the Milky Way, while its body tightened
swiftly about his middle.

Had it not been for the iron rods that shielded him, Howard’s first cry
would have been his last. To the great snake the resistance of a man’s
body was as nothing. One unhampered constriction of its mighty coils
would have crushed an ox. But the davit and the stanchion stood firm;
not for nothing had they been planned to withstand the assaults of the
sea. They held firm, while Howard, with starting eyeballs and slowly
crushing chest, strove to beat back the forked death that flicked about
his face.

The end could not be long deferred; yet the man fought on, as living
things will fight for life--life so common, life so cheap, yet so
desperately clung to. He fought and shrieked until the ever-tightening
constriction stopped the inflation of his lungs; till the roaring in
his ears swelled to thunder; till the driven blood burst from his ears
and nostrils.

Then came a flash and a louder roar; the gleaming eyes that confronted
him grew suddenly dull; the great coils relaxed and fell away; dimly he
saw Dorothy’s face; her gown white in the moonlight; the smoking pistol
in her hand.

Then girl and snake and moon and sky blended in one common blur of
blackness. For the first time in his life Frank Howard fainted.

When he came to, he was lying on the deck, with his head in Dorothy’s
lap. On his face her tears dropped slowly, one by one. As, dazed, he
lay still for an instant, he heard her pray:

“Oh, God! God!” she sobbed, “give him back to me! Give my darling back
to me.”

A mad throb of exultation crossed through Howard’s veins to be followed
by a quicker revulsion. “Not yet, oh, God!” he implored in his turn
silently. “Not until----”

He opened his eyes and looked up into hers.

The moonlight was white and bright as day, and for one moment each
looked deep into the other’s heart.

“Thank God! Oh, thank God!” sobbed the girl. “You’re alive! Alive!
Alive!”

Howard tried to smile. “Thanks to you,” he answered. “It was the
bravest act I have ever known. I don’t see how----”

But Dorothy threw up her hand. “Please! Please, don’t speak of it!” she
implored. “I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it.”

Howard struggled to his feet. He longed to take her in his arms and
comfort her, but honor held him back. Perhaps she loved him--yes, but
she was overwrought. He could not take advantage of her emotion--nor
of her position. Later, when she was restored to her friends--the light
died from his eyes as he remembered his own doom.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “It is all that I can say. Thank you.”

Dorothy’s bosom heaved. “No,” she said, “it is not all. You said more
while you were unconscious. You were about to say more an instant ago.
Then you stopped. Why?”

“I--I----”

“I could read your heart in your eyes. Say what you had in it. Say it!
Say it!”

“I am not worthy. I am----”

“Hush! Not that! You are not guilty. You could not be guilty. You! so
brave, so tender, so sacrificing! You! to murder a woman. It is not
true. Since the day I first met you I have never believed it. Since you
told me the story, I have wanted no other testimony. Now, will you say
what was in your heart a moment ago?”

“I cannot. I----”

“Listen. To-night I said that we were mere acquaintances. I said I did
not love you. I lied! I do love you. With all my heart and soul I love
you.”

“Dorothy!”

“Frank! Husband!”




XV


DESPITE the nerve and body-racking experiences of the day before,
Howard was up and on deck the next morning at the first peep of day,
straining his eyes for sight of Jackson and the Joyces.

The need for instant action was strong upon him. He did not doubt
that Forbes had sent the snake upon him, just as (judging from Mother
Joyce’s tale to Dorothy) he had before sent it against one of Prudence
Gallegher’s ill-fated husbands, and he only wondered that the doughty
captain had not followed up the attack.

“I suppose the fellow didn’t know how devilish near he came to
succeeding,” he muttered to himself grimly. “But he’ll bring his men
next time, and we must fight or get out of his reach in a hurry. If
Jackson and the others were only here!”

But neither Jackson nor the Joyces were there. Strain his eyes as he
might, Howard could see no moving figures anywhere on the wreck-pack,
and, with an anxious sigh, he turned away to inspect the scene of the
last night’s encounter.

Half submerged in the weed at the foot of the sloping deck he made out
the great body of the snake, terrible even in death, and shuddered as
he thought of what would inevitably have been his fate had Dorothy been
less courageous or the iron stanchions been less honestly wrought;
these last, bent almost double, gave mute but effective evidence of the
mighty power of the reptile.

Wishing to save Dorothy, as far as he could, from all reminders of the
contest, Howard lowered himself to the water’s edge and poked the snake
down beneath the weed; then he climbed back to the taffrail and again
searched the horizon for sight of Jackson.

This time his quest was successful. Approaching over the wreckage,
quite near at hand, were four figures. As they drew nearer he
recognized Jackson, the minister who had married him the day before,
Mother Joyce, and his jailer of the day before. Each of the men carried
several rifles over his shoulder, and was girt about with belts of
cartridges. Mother Joyce bore a less and indeterminable weight.

At Howard’s call, Dorothy came on deck to greet the newcomers. Rosy and
smiling, with head erect and sparkling eyes, she looked little like the
woebegone maiden who had answered Forbes’s call the day before.

Mother Joyce’s sharp eyes quickly spied the difference. “Holy mither!
What’s this?” she cried. “And was it you, miss, that didn’t want to
marry at all, at all? And was it you that was so sure that you and Mr.
Howard could niver be anything to each other? Faith, look at the bright
eyes and the blushing cheeks of her! Sure, Tim, man, it carries me
back forty years, so it does!” With a fond look she turned to the man
beside her.

“Thrue for you, Kathleen, darlint,” he replied. “The top of the mornin’
to you, ma’am, and may you live a million years and have a hundred----”

“Arrah! Be still with your foolishness, Tim. Sure, you make the young
lady blush.”

Meanwhile Jackson was explaining matters to Howard. He had, he said,
circled round to the other side of the village and lurked there for
several hours, waiting his chance. Then he had slipped up on the deck
and run directly into Mother Joyce, who promptly whisked him below.
“Cap’n Forbes’s big snake had got away, and he had gone after it,”
continued the policeman, “and----”

Howard held up his hand. “It won’t get away again,” he interjected. “It
came here.”

“Here?”

Howard nodded. “Yes, it came here,” he repeated. “Came here and
attacked me. It was a very intelligent snake--from Forbes’s standpoint.
It would have killed me, beyond a doubt, but for Miss Fair--but for my
wife. She shot it with your pistol, Jackson. But we haven’t time to
talk about it now,” he concluded with some impatience. “Go on with your
story.”

Jackson, however, had little more to tell. In Forbes’s absence, it
seems, he and the others had had no difficulty in getting at the rifles
and ammunition. Further, under Mother Joyce’s direction, he had broken
open the captain’s private storeroom and procured a compass, sextant,
and a chronometer, which Mother Joyce had declared would enable them to
navigate a boat as soon as they found one. “An’,” concluded Jackson, “I
think we’d better be findin’ it soon, for Gallegher has gotten out a
Gatling gun, and is making every preparation to do us up for fair.”

“I expected something of the sort,” said Howard, nodding. “We shall be
ready to leave the Queen the moment we have had breakfast. So, now, if
you’ll come below----”

At the breakfast-table Howard unfolded his plan.

“None of us want to fight if we can help it,” he declared. “We haven’t
anything to gain by it, and everything to lose. And we don’t want to
stay near here. From all I can learn, Forbes has destroyed all the
boats within fifty miles or so, and we must go at least that far away
to have any chance of finding one. Now, what I propose is this: We will
leave now in a few minutes, but instead of going north along the coast,
which is what Forbes will expect us to do, we will go east straight
into the pack, make a detour around the village, and come back to the
coast to the south. By this means I think we will outwit him, and
can make our preparations in peace. Without a compass, I might have
hesitated to go into the depths of the pack, but since Mother Joyce
has brought us one, we can afford to risk it. As there will probably
be nothing to eat there, we must take food and water enough to carry
us through. I have already made up three bundles of these, and it will
take only a few moments to prepare three more. Then we can be off.”

Ten minutes later the party left the Queen forever. Dorothy’s eyes were
streaming wet as she looked at the vessel for the last time.

“Frank! Frank!” she murmured. “We’ve been happy on her, after all.
Shall we be equally happy elsewhere? I--I would be glad to stay here
with you if-- Oh! I know it’s impossible, of course. We must go back to
the world and clear your name. Yes, we will! We must! God is good. I
have confidence in His justice. He would not have let me love you so
much if He didn’t mean to clear you.”

Hand in hand the two followed the others, already well ahead, plunging
straight into the wreck-pack. Howard drew a long breath when they were
well away without having seen any sign of Forbes or his companions.
Unfortunately, though he saw no one, he did not go unseen. As the
little party vanished among the tangle of masts and sails, a man rose
from behind a deckhouse, where he had been lurking, and peered after it
till certain of its course, then he set off for the village as fast as
he could go.




XVI


IT is one thing to lay a course even in the open sea, and it is quite
another to follow it. Wind, waves, and currents often drive a vessel
from the way she wishes to go; and all of these had acted on the
wreck-path, seemingly conspiring to make difficult the line of progress
that Howard had mapped out. Again and again he had to make long detours
to pass some insurmountable wreck that lay across his path, and
finally he had to turn aside from it altogether to skirt a narrow but
impassable channel of weed-grown water that corkscrewed unexpectedly
across his path.

“It’s that hurricane we had a month agone,” explained Joyce. “It isn’t
often they come here, but when they do, faith it’s the foine mix-up
they make! I moind one of thim ten years agone! It split the pack
for miles back, and filled the hole up again with wrecks that would
have made the fortune of a dime-museum man, so they would. The most of
them were fair rotten with age, and sank as soon as they began to rub
up against the strong new ships. The last storm wasn’t so bad, and,
belike, it only split the pack here and there.”

Howard nodded. The explanation seemed very probable, as in no other
way could he account for the open channel in the midst of the
vessel-wrecks. Mere mutual attraction ought to have closed it up years
before. It made him anxious, for the channel had already led him a mile
deeper into the pack than he had intended to go, and still showed no
signs of ending.

It might go on even to the heart of the wreckage, where lay the ancient
ships on which all food had rotted away centuries before. If a former
storm had opened up a channel that far, so might a later one.

That the cases were parallel was soon exhibited with startling
proof. For some moments Howard had been noticing a great grey hull,
banded with tarnished gold, that loomed across the pack two or three
ships ahead. As he drew nearer, he saw, with wonder, its strange
architecture. Huge, round-bellied, with castle-like structures reared
at stem and stern, it rose about the other wrecks, tier above tier,
with lines of frowning ports from which protruded the mouths of old
fashioned cannon. No such ship had sailed the ocean for years--not
since the days when Spain was in her glory and her rich fleets bore
the riches of America to fill her already overflowing coffers. It must
have lain screened in the heart of the ship-continent for at least two
centuries, to be at last spewed forth in time to meet the curious gaze
of an alien race.

From the topgallant poop of a modern sailing-ship, Howard studied
it curiously, while behind him the rest of the party looked on with
amazement.

“Sure, and that’s the very spirit and image of them I was spakin’
about,” remarked Joyce, triumphantly. “An’ what sort of a ship do you
suppose she is, sor?”

“She’s a Spanish galleon, beyond doubt,” rejoined Howard. “She’s the
very type of those old treasure-ships. And there are more of the same
kind behind her. Look!”

Along the open channel, far away to the sunset, stretched a file of
ancient vessels, now in single file, now in double. Not all were
galleons, but all plainly belonged to dead and gone ages. While the
others of their kind had long ago perished from human sight, here, in
this lost corner of the world, these had lingered on, slowly decaying,
like the once mighty nation that sent them forth. Howard stared at them
in wondering amaze.

But Joyce recalled him to himself. “Did you say treasure, sor?” he
insinuated.

Howard laughed. “Oh, yes,” he answered, indifferently. “She’s a
treasure-ship, all right, though that isn’t to say that she has
treasure aboard. Still, it’s not unlikely. There may be a million
apiece for all of us on her--if we could only carry it away. Hold on!
Where are you going?”

Joyce was already climbing through one of the open ports of the
galleon, but at Howard’s call he paused. “Sure, an’ I’m going to look
after that million,” he returned, defiantly.

Howard hesitated. Then he noticed a restless movement of the missionary
and eager glances by the two women and laughed. “Go ahead and look for
it,” he said. “But be careful. Remember the ship must be rotten through
and through; I doubt whether her decks will bear your weight.”

Joyce disappeared, but a moment later stuck his head out of the port
again. “She’s better nor she looks, sor,” he averred. “The planks are
rotten, but I think they’ll hold. Perhaps your good lady would like to
come aboard.”

Howard glanced at Dorothy.

“His good lady certainly would,” she smiled back. A moment later all
stood on one of the galleon’s many decks.

Joyce was right. The deck, though rotted, seemed to be reasonably
sound, and the stairway leading upward did not give way when Jackson
mounted it. As he was the heaviest in the party, the rest felt safe in
following him.

Once on the upper deck, the cause of the ship’s plight was evident.
All about her, tumbled in inextricable confusion, lay the bones of
men mingled with the rust-eaten remains of guns and pikes and sabres.
In some places, doubtless where the nameless fight had raged most
fiercely, the skeletons were heaped high upon each other. Flesh and
clothing alike had long since disappeared, but parts of belts and
buckles and fragments of the tinsel of war remained to tell of the
bitterness of the fight.

“Probably the work of buccaneers,” explained Howard. “They did not
hesitate to attack ten times their number, and often won by the very
fury of their assault. Evidently they did this time. Joyce, I’m afraid
your million went to make a pirate holiday centuries ago.”

“Bad cess to thim, whoiver they were. But where would it be, sor, if it
was on board?”

“I really don’t know. And yet--the hold under the captain’s cabin, aft
there, would be a likely place. Suppose you look there.”

Joyce and Jackson hurried away, and soon the sound of dull hammering
and the tear of rending wood came to the ears of the others, followed
a moment later by a series of triumphant yells. Then Joyce appeared,
fairly mad with excitement.

“Hurroush! Hurroush!” he screamed. “We’ve found it! We’ve found it!
Tons and tons of solid gold! Kathleen, _mavourneen_, we’re rich--we’re
rich! We’ll go back to Galway and buy the little place beyant the hill,
and----”

“Whist! Whist! Tim, man! An’ will you first be tellin’ me how you’re
going to get yerself away, let alone your tons of gold?”

So absorbed was the party in the discovery of the gold that they forgot
everything else--the danger from Forbes, the utter uselessness of the
treasure, the necessity of crossing the channel and making their way to
the southern coast. Even Dorothy, used to wealth as she was, caught the
infection, and babbled away as excitedly as a child.

Howard was the first to recover his poise and to plan for the future.
It was, he knew, utterly hopeless to try to tear Joyce and Jackson,
or even the missionary away from the galleon until their excitement
had spent itself. Indeed, he himself felt positively ill at thought
of abandoning the gold, unavoidable as such action undoubtedly was.
By rough calculation, he estimated that there were twelve tons of the
treasure, worth about six million dollars, under their very feet, free
for them to carry away, and yet as utterly unavailable as so much sand.
Indeed, in so far as unwillingness to leave it should delay movements
of the party, it was a positive detriment.

He turned and looked at the others. Joyce, Jackson, the missionary,
and even Mother Joyce, were working as they had never worked before,
taking from the hold the golden bars, each a load for a strong man,
and staggering on deck with them in their arms. In vain, Howard tried
to check them; they only glared at him, cursed, and hurried back for
another load. Joyce and his wife, too old for such labor, soon had to
give way, crying like children as they did so; but the others toiled
on, hot, black with the grime of ages, half ill from the smells of the
shut, musty hold. Their muscles cracked; their backs ached; the sweat
streamed down their faces, but still they kept on.

Sick at heart, Howard turned from the scene and wandered to the side of
the galleon, where he stood, looking east, hoping the end of the zigzag
channel might be somewhere in sight. In vain! As far as his eyes could
serve, it stretched away.

Disappointed, his glance dropped to the open water of the channel close
at hand, and he stood transfixed. Close beside the galleon, moored
strongly fore and aft, lay a slender, queer-shaped boat about sixty
feet long. It needed not the trained knowledge of the naval officer to
tell that it was a submarine.

Intensely modern in its lines, it was as much out of place in
that ancient company as would be a rifle in the hands of Cæsar’s
legionaries. Howard’s mouth fairly dropped open as he gazed at it.

But in a moment understanding came. This was the means of escape that
Forbes had spoken of: safe, quick, and easy for one with the necessary
technical knowledge; the gold on the galleon was part of the fortune
that he wanted to get home in safety. No wonder he had been eager to
enlist Howard’s aid; and he could have had it--had it all, if he had
not presumed on his power to grasp the girl, too! Now he would lose all.

Dorothy had tired of the gold and was standing on the deck, looking
wonderingly around. Howard called her, and together they descended
to the lower deck of the galleon, and, slipping out through a port
opposite to that by which they had entered, stepped easily out upon the
deck of the submarine, which floated high in the water. With trembling
fingers, Howard pushed back the bolts that held the manhole cover in
place, lifted it off, and peered into the darkness of the interior.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” he promised, glancing up at Dorothy as he
swung himself downward.

Soon he was back again with radiant features. “She’s in perfect
condition, so far as I can tell without starting the engines,” he
announced, “and I guess they are all right. She’s almost the latest
type in submarines--gas-engine for running at the surface, and an
electric motor for use below. Her oil-tanks are full, and she has an
extra supply in glass jars and plenty of other necessary stores. Unless
there’s something wrong about her that I can’t see, she’ll get us all
to land without the least difficulty.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Straight from heaven, I guess. At least, I can’t imagine how else she
got into the sea. No, stop! I believe-- Yes, by George, that’s it.
Maybe you remember that a Spanish cruiser was lost at sea two or three
years ago--disappeared in a big storm and was never heard of again?
If I remember rightly, she had a submarine on board. This may be it.
Yes! See! Here’s its name--Tiburon; that’s Spanish for Seashark. That
cruiser must have drifted in here with it on board.”

“But where is she? How did this boat get here--to this very place?”

“I don’t know, but I can guess. Forbes must have brought it here. He
threw out hints about such a boat the first time I talked with him.
Yes, he must have brought it here. How he managed it I don’t know, and
I don’t much care. The boat is ours now by that same law of salvage by
which he claimed the Queen and her contents. What’s sauce for the goose
will do for the gander. But think how marvellous it is that we should
have come here, straight as a homingbird--to here! the exact place
where he had left his gold and his boat. And, yet, after all, it is not
quite so marvellous as it seems, since he could hardly have kept her
anywhere except up this channel, and we have been following the line of
it for miles.”

“Can we get away on her?”

“Certainly! All of us, and more, too, if necessary.”

“But how will we get through the weed?”

“We won’t go through it. We’ll go under it. The weed isn’t thick, you
know--only a few feet at most; it grows on top of the water, which is
two miles deep here, and we’ll simply dive under it.”

Dorothy shuddered. “Go under the water, you mean?” she questioned. “Oh!
Frank, is it safe?”

“Safe? Surely! I have been down many a time in boats much like this. Of
course--I won’t deceive you--accidents are always possible, but there
is really little risk, if the machinery works well. And we can’t tell
about that till we try. Don’t be afraid, dear. God has been too good to
us to let it all come to naught now.”

“I’m not afraid, Frank. I’m not afraid anywhere with you, my king of
men.”

Howard had something to say to this, but it is scarcely worth setting
down; lovers’ confidences seldom are. By and by he started up. “I’m
afraid we’re as mad one way as those people on the galleon are in
another,” he smiled. “I’m wasting valuable time that should be used in
getting you out of this before Forbes finds us. He’s sure to be looking
up this place very soon.”

A thought struck Dorothy. “Oh, those poor people!” she exclaimed.
“Can’t you take some of their gold for them, Frank? A little money
will mean so much to the Joyces. They are too old to go to work again,
and----”

“It would come in rather handy with me, too. But I don’t see-- By
George! Yes, I think I do! Let’s look.” He dived down again into the
body of the submarine and soon reappeared, his face radiant.

“There is about five tons of detachable lead ballast in the bottom,” he
cried, joyously. “We can take it out, and put gold in its place--two
million dollars’ worth. If you will wait here. I’ll go and tell the
others. Maybe they are tired enough to listen to reason now.”

They were! Howard found them all sitting glumly on the deck of the
galleon, glaring despairingly at the great pile of gold bars they
had extracted from the hold. One by one they had dropped their loads
and sank down where they stood, when, with increasing weariness, the
situation had at last dawned upon them. When Howard approached, they
did not heed him further than to cast savage glances in his direction.
Then they returned to contemplation of the gold.

Howard understood the situation without words. “You oughtn’t to
have worked so hard,” he observed, in a matter-of-fact tone. “You,
especially, Joyce. And you, Mrs. Joyce. You’ll feel this to-morrow. But
now that you have gotten all the gold up here, I’m glad to tell you
that I’ve got a boat outside that will carry us, and just about this
much gold besides--say a third of a million for each of us. The rest,
I’m afraid, we’ll have to abandon.”

[Illustration: IT TOOK ONLY ABOUT TWO HOURS TO DUMP THE LEAD OUT OF THE
SUBMARINE AND REPLACE IT WITH THE GOLD.]




XVII


FIVE tons of gold, worth about three million dollars, is not near so
hard to move as five tons of coal, for instance, especially when it is
put in seventy-five pound bars and there is plenty of tackle handy.
It took Jackson, Joyce, and Willoughby only about two hours to dump
the lead out of the submarine and replace it with the gold--surely the
richest ballast the world ever saw.

Meanwhile Howard, after stationing Dorothy and Mother Joyce in elevated
positions where they could watch for the possible approach of Forbes
and his men, had set to work to get the submarine into order, oiling
the machinery, testing the engines and all the various pumps and
motors, and finally starting the gas-engine, which discharged the
double duty of driving the boat while on the surface, and of charging
the electric accumulators for use below. All this took time, and was
not finished until after the last bar of gold had been stored away in
place.

Then Howard called the others around him. “Before we start,” he said,
“I have something to tell you. Until now I have kept it to myself,
because I did not want to rouse any false hopes. Joyce, did you ever
hear of wireless telegraphy?”

Joyce scratched his head. “And what’s that, sor?” he demanded.

“Telegraphy without the aid of wires. I didn’t suppose any of you here
had ever heard of it, else Captain Forbes would certainly not have shut
me in the operating-room of a steamer that had a full outfit in perfect
working order. During the time I was confined there I was in constant
communication with the naval station at Guantanamo. I told them of our
plight, and I will venture to say that the papers of the country are
ringing with the story of the Sargasso Sea colony and with our personal
adventures. Toward the end--just before Joyce set me free--I got into
communication with your father, Dorothy. He was wild with delight to
know that you were alive and was about to start to rescue you. In
fact, half a dozen vessels are probably now making an effort to break
a way through the weed to aid us. If we can get back to the coast and
wait, we are tolerably sure to be taken off sooner or later. Now, the
question is whether we shall wait or not?”

Joyce and his wife had listened in dazed silence. “Do you mane, sor,”
demanded the former, “that you can talk through the air with those
quare instruments in that little room?”

“That’s it exactly, Joyce. I can, and I did. But let me get back to
the point. I could give our friends only a very doubtful approximation
of our latitude and longitude, so that it may take them a long
time to find us, if they ever do. Not hearing further from us, they
may conclude that the whole thing is a fake and give up the search.
They will certainly have a long and tedious battle with the weed.
Altogether, if they get anywhere near the right spot in less than a
month it will be most surprising. Certainly they will not in less
than two weeks. Now, what can we do during the interval? If we decide
to wait for them, we must run down the coast and establish a camp
somewhere--as far from the village as we can get. Perhaps I can find
another wireless outfit and get into communication with Guantanamo
again. Certainly, we can find food and shelter, and all we will have
to do will be to wait--supposing that Forbes doesn’t find us, which he
will move heaven and earth to do when he finds we have his gold and his
boat.

“That is one alternative open to us. The other, of course, is to dive
under the weed and start for home at once. If we meet one of the
searching steamers, all right; if we don’t, we can get to port under
our own power. There is a risk about such an attempt, of course, but
I don’t think it’s a very great one. Now, this is the situation: what
shall we do?”

Howard paused, and the others looked at each other doubtfully.
Finally, Mr. Willoughby cleared his throat. “I confess,” he observed
hesitatingly, “that I fear the depths of the sea. I should much prefer
to remain on top of it and go home in a steamer. May we not run down
this--er--river on the surface and talk it over as we go?”

“Surely. That’s good sense. We’ll do it. Joyce, suppose you run up
on the galleon and take a last look for Captain Forbes. Meanwhile,
everybody else get aboard. Hurry, Joyce!”

Joyce hurried. In five minutes he came racing back as fast as his legs
would carry him. “The cap’n’s comin’,” he cried. “Coming with his
whole force. He isn’t three ships away.”

Howard smiled grimly. “Just too late,” he exclaimed. “On board with
you, Joyce! Quick! Off we go!” With the word, he cast loose the last
mooring, and the Seashark moved slowly away.

As, with gathering headway she rounded the galleon’s high-decked
poop, she came in view of a dozen or more armed men, who were rapidly
clambering over the wrecks, and who burst into excited babble as they
spied the little vessel. An instant later Forbes appeared.

“Curse you!” he shrieked. “I’ll get you yet.” He threw his rifle to his
shoulder and fired, his men following suit with a scattering volley.

But at the first sign of hostilities, Howard, who was alone on deck,
dropped nimbly down inside the body of the Seashark, and remained,
steering by aid of the camera lucida put there for the purpose, until a
curve in the channel sheltered the little vessel from the bullets that
had pattered harmlessly around her.

For an hour the Seashark dropped swiftly down the slowly widening
channel between ever-changing banks of massed ships. In that hour
she passed in review the shipping of more than two centuries.
Squat-bellied, round-bowed Dutchmen, high-pooped Spaniards, clippers
that had made the American flag famous, frigates shot-torn and
shattered in the American Civil War, deep-water ships still bearing
the indelible imprint of the Chinese trade, steamers old and new--one
by one they passed in a progression constantly growing more and more
modern. Howard, alone in the conning-tower, glanced at them with
wonder; never before had they so impressed him. Until then, nearness
had obscured the vastness of the ruin, and only now had the full
meaning of it all been hammered into his mind.

But he resolutely threw off the spell, and concentrated his entire
attention on the navigation of his little vessel. It was very
necessary. The channel, being newly formed, was reasonably clear of
weed, but it was impossible to guess how soon its character might
change. The smallest patch of vegetation might foul the screw of the
Seashark, or might conceal a water-logged spar, floating just awash,
that would rip a plate from her bow and send her to the bottom, ending
at once the lives of the castaways and their dreams of fortune. In some
ways it would be safer beneath the water; yet Howard knew that every
turn of the gas-engines was aiding to store up power in the electric
accumulators, on which alone they must depend when the time came to
dive. He did not dare to go below an instant sooner than he must.

After an hour the channel opened more rapidly, and the weed began
to thicken, showing that the edge of the wreck-pack was near. Soon
the accumulation grew so thick that it was no longer safe to push
through it. Howard glanced at the indicators that measured the power
accumulated. “Enough to run us three and a half hours,” he murmured,
“or perhaps four. At eight knots, that means about twenty-five miles of
distance. Twenty-five miles! Humph! I guess it’s safe.”

He brought the boat to a stop, and spoke to those in the semi-darkness
below.

“Well,” he queried, “have you decided? Is it go ahead, or land and
wait?”

No one answered, and in the stillness he heard up-channel the far-off
chug-chug of a boat rapidly driven. “Humph!” he exclaimed, bending down
again. “Forbes seems to have been well supplied with boats. He’s after
us in a steam-launch. That settles the question definitely. We’ve got
to dive. If any one wants to take a last look at this marvellous place,
now is the time.”

No one spoke.

Howard laughed. “What!” he exclaimed. “Nobody? Joyce, don’t you want
to see the last of your old home?”

Joyce shook his head. “Faith,” he answered, “I’ve seen enough of it to
do me for the rest of my life.”

“Jackson?”

“New York’s good enough for me.”

“Mr. Willoughby?”

The missionary looked up. “Man! Man!” he cried. “How can you think of
such things when we are about to plunge into uttermost peril of our
lives? Rather, let us pray.”

“Pray by all means, Mr. Willoughby. More things are wrought by prayer
than this world dreams of, you know. Dorothy, don’t you want to look?”

But Dorothy, too, shook her head. “No, Frank,” she answered. “I never
want to see the horrible place again.”

“Then down we go. Here comes Forbes, by the way.”

Around a curve, up-channel, appeared a steam-launch, still far off, but
rapidly approaching. Howard stood up and waved his hand sarcastically;
then, with rapid motions, snapped on the manhole cover, cut off the
gas-engine, and threw on the electric starting-lever. Then, as the
little vessel started forward, he turned the diving-rudder downward.

Instantly the Seashark slid gracefully down beneath the ripples. From
her little turret sprang out a sword of white light that pierced the
water before her, while within a score of tiny bulbs illumined the
darkness. Down she went; down, down, till the gage at Howard’s hand
showed that a depth of fifty feet had been attained; then slowly he
shifted the diving rudders until the boat held steadily to her depth,
the rudders just balancing her tendency to rise to the surface. “All
set,” he called down cheerily, but without moving his gaze from the
front. “Nothing to do now but go ahead. Make yourselves comfortable. We
won’t come to the surface for three hours, and perhaps longer.”

No one answered. The experience, utterly new to them all, was
sufficiently terrifying to destroy the desire for conversation. Shut
up in this tiny shell which might any moment prove their tomb, fifty
feet below the surface of the ocean, driving forward blindly into
the unknown, it would have taken one braver--or more callous--than
any there to make merry. Howard, used as he was to submarine work,
might have cheered them up, had he not been compelled to give all his
attention to driving the vessel.

For the dangers, though not what the rest vaguely conceived, were by
no means imaginary. Let the Seashark rise a few feet above the level
at which she ran, and she might easily smash herself against a more
than ordinarily deeply sunken wreck. Let her plunge too deeply, and
the increased pressure of the water might force its way in at some
weak spot, and crush her like an egg-shell. Let her power give out
too soon, at a spot where she could not come to the surface to run
her gas-engine, and so replenish her accumulators, and they would all
perish miserably. On Howard rested all the responsibility, and he had
no time to give to anything else.




XVIII


ONE, two, three hours slid by, and, at last, Howard, his eyes fixed on
the gage of the accumulators, saw that the power was getting low, and
began to watch anxiously for some gleam of light that, striking down
through the water, might show a break in the mantle of weed overhead.
In vain! Everywhere blackness ruled. Several times he slowed down and
turned off the headlight, hoping that, with its effulgence removed,
he might see the longed-for gap. After each attempt he went back to
driving the Seashark along at her maximum eight miles an hour.

This could not last forever. Rapidly his anxiety grew. The Seashark had
been beneath the water for four hours, and his accumulators were nearly
bare. To try to break through the weed was dangerous, but not more so
than to remain below until all the power was gone. At all risks they
must reach the surface.

For a scant ten minutes longer Howard held on, now very close beneath
the mantle of weed, then stopped altogether, and waited for the reserve
buoyancy of the Seashark to carry her upward.

Slowly she rose again, and then into the weed. Howard could see its
slimy fronds through the thick glass of the conning-tower. Slowly and
more slowly it seemed to brush downward as the Seashark worked herself
upward. Slowly and more slowly until all motion ceased, leaving the
vessel still far below the surface.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Howard pulled a lever, and in quick
response came the throb of the pumps beneath him as with powerful
strokes they drove out the water-ballast and made the Seashark lighter.

Under this new impulse she rose once more, little by little, until at
last the pumps sucked dry and motion ceased once more. Howard, peering
upward, saw the light faintly gleaming through the interstices of the
weed. The surface could be scarcely a yard overhead.

“Only a yard.” Howard muttered the words bitterly. “Only a yard! Might
as well be a thousand!” Gently he started the propeller; half a dozen
revolutions he knew would hopelessly foul it; but little difference
that would make if the Seashark could work her way upward by its aid.
Now forward, now backward he drove it, with his heart in his mouth.

Not for long, for the drag on the shaft soon warned him that to go on
would shatter the machinery and, even if they reached the surface,
leave them helpless far within the bounds of the weedy sea. With a
sudden impulse he stopped the engine, and waited to see whether time
might not do what machinery had failed to accomplish.

Half an hour passed, and the same frond of weed that had lain across
his view at its beginning still held its place. The Seashark was
stationary.

One desperate recourse remained, and Howard prepared to take it. He
swung down into the cabin where sat the rest of the party forlornly
waiting. Long before they had realized that something was desperately
wrong; but none of them, except perhaps the missionary, were of the
weak-kneed type, and none had moved to question Howard, even during the
age-long interval when he had sat in silence.

Howard looked at them one by one, his eyes lingering fondly on
Dorothy’s flower-like face. “Friends all,” he said, quietly, “our
situation is most serious. I knew when we dived that in about four
hours we must come to the surface to run our gas-engine and recharge
our electric batteries. I hoped and believed that in four hours we
would come to a place where there were breaks in the weed, or where it
was so thin that we could rise through it. Neither has turned out to be
true. There are no breaks, and the weed is so thick that it holds us
down. I have expelled all the water-ballast, and the Seashark is now
very buoyant; yet it cannot rise to the surface. We are scarcely a foot
below it, but we can rise no higher.

“The explanation is evident. The Seashark is nearly fifty feet long.
Probably she intercepted a score of cables of weed as she rose. No
doubt there is now a whaleback of sargassum standing above the water
just over her. Its weight must be very great--too great for even our
increased buoyancy to lift farther; while the cables across us prevent
the weed from slipping off. The only way to get to the surface--that is
to say, the only way to save all our lives, is to cut away the cables
that hold us down.”

Howard ceased speaking, but no one moved. With the failing power, the
electric lights had grown perceptibly dimmer, and the _voyageurs_ could
barely see each other’s faces. Soon, it was evident, the lights would
go out altogether.

“Obviously,” Howard resumed, “we cannot cut the cables from inside the
ship. They can only be reached from the outside by some one who will
leave the boat.

“Fortunately, this last is not difficult. On the open sea it is even
easy. The Seashark is a torpedo boat, fitted to discharge torpedoes
under water. Time and again the crew of an injured submarine have
escaped--all but one--by getting into the torpedo tube and being fired
out by a moderate charge of compressed air. Here in the weed it will
be more difficult, of course, but not especially dangerous. So”--the
speaker paused and looked around him--“so if one of you will come and
touch me off, I’ll see what I can do toward cutting those confounded
cables.”

As Howard’s voice died away, the electric lights went suddenly out,
and a gasp of sheer horror ran through the tiny cabin. For a moment
no one spoke; then Dorothy groped her way through the blackness to
Howard’s side.

“Not you! not you, my husband!” she murmured. “Not you. Let me go.”

Howard laughed gently as he caressed the unseen face. “Not likely,
dear,” he answered.

The strident voice of the missionary broke through the gloom. “And
if you are drowned in the attempt, what will the rest of us do?” he
demanded.

“If I fail, another must try. But I won’t fail.”

“Even if that other succeed, what good will it do us? No one but you
can run this boat, and we would only exchange death down here for death
on the surface. No, Mr. Howard, you must not go. I will go.”

“You.”

“Yes! I.” If the missionary smiled bitterly, no one saw it in the
darkness. “Oh! I know you all think I am a coward, and perhaps I
am. Certainly, I did not dare to oppose Captain Forbes, nor to----
But never mind. I can swim like a fish almost. It is my one manly
accomplishment. I can get through the weed if any man can--and if I
fail, you will have lost nothing. Come! show me what to do.”

Howard groped his way to the missionary, and wrung his hand. “I beg
your pardon. Mr. Willoughby,” he said, simply, “I misunderstood you. I
accept your offer. Come.”

“Wait a moment.” Dorothy’s soft voice sounded. “I want to thank you,
Mr. Willoughby, and tell you that I never thought hard of you about
Captain Forbes. He was a terrible man. Can--can I do anything in--in
case you don’t come back?” Her voice trailed sobbingly off.

“Nothing. I haven’t a chick or a child in the world, and--God bless
you, my dear.” With a last pressure of her hand he turned away. “Come,
Mr. Howard,” he commanded.

In Cimmerian gloom the two men felt their way to the torpedo port.
“Better take off all your clothes,” counselled Howard. “The least thing
may serve to hold you in the weed. Strap this knife tightly to your arm
so you will be sure not to lose it. Carry this smaller one between your
teeth. Don’t lose your head; if you get entangled, keep cool and cut
yourself free. When you get to the surface look for the lump of weed
above us; it will be conspicuous enough. Cut first at one end of the
boat, and then at the other, so that we can rise on an even keel. Now,
if you are ready, climb in head-first.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The ten minutes that elapsed after Howard had “fired off” the
missionary were the longest that any of the party had ever known.
Beneath the water, beneath the weed, in darkness so intense that it
positively weighed, each waited in silence the results of the venture
on which, in all human probability, depended his or her chance for
life. For if Mr. Willoughby, comparatively small, agile, and a good
swimmer, could not get through the interlacing weed, the chances were
that none of the others could do so.

Bearing Mr. Willoughby’s clothes, Howard had groped his way back to the
conning-tower, and to Dorothy’s side, and had found her on her knees.
“Oh! Frank! Frank!” she sobbed. “Let us pray for him. Frank! Frank!”
Howard sank beside her, and no more fervent petition than his was ever
wafted to the throne of grace.

Slowly the minutes ticked themselves away. Then, just as hope seemed
gone, the Seashark gave a sudden lurch, and a gasp of relief arose. It
required no expert to tell her passengers that something was happening
above the water--a something that could have but one cause.

Howard explained it: “Mr. Willoughby has cut one of the cables that are
holding us down--there goes another--and another.” A faint light showed
through the grass-filled peep-holes of the conning-tower; promise of
the glorious burst to come. “We are rising. We are tearing free.”

Rapidly the light grew, until a tiny beam from the westering sun shot
straight through a window, and danced gaily about as the Seashark
rocked to and fro on the smooth surface. At sight of it the women
sobbed aloud. What the men did in the darkness can only be guessed.

Rapidly Howard threw back the cover of the manhole, and let the blessed
air of heaven in. Instantly Mr. Willoughby’s head appeared. “Have you
got my clothes there?” he demanded in a stage whisper.

With a snicker of relief, Howard passed up the clothes and, when the
missionary was properly arrayed, called all the rest to come on deck.

The Seashark was floating in the familiar ocean of weed. No open water
was in sight; if any was near it was not visible from a point so low in
the water. Wreckage floated here and there; not a hundred yards away
was the hulk of a dismasted water-logged lumber schooner, and a little
farther off were the tangled spars of a huge ship.

Howard looked around him and shook his head. “It’s farther to clear
water than I had thought,” he told Dorothy. “Not that it matters. We’ll
be out to-morrow morning.” He turned to the rest. “Joyce! if you and
Jackson will cut away the weed from around our propeller, I’ll do the
rest. Mr. Willoughby will give you his knives. By the way, don’t lay
them down on the water, or they’ll be a mile or so deep when we want
them again.”

Joyce turned to Willoughby, who blushed. “I--I’m afraid that’s just
what I did do, Mr. Howard,” he explained, confusedly. “Anyway, I’ve
lost one of the two you gave me.”

“No matter, sir, I’ve got another,” interjected Joyce, as he and
Jackson turned to their allotted task.

Left to himself, Howard threw the screw-shaft out of connection, and
turned the full power of the gas-engine to recharging the electric
accumulators. When all was running smoothly, he turned to the rest.

“It will be several hours, at best, before we can start, and I think,
on the whole, we had better not do so until toward daylight, so as to
be sure of plenty of light when we come up again. If you girls will get
supper ready, we might as well dine.”

Dinner--or supper--began light-heartedly enough on the part of most
of the party. Civilization seemed very near, and the spirits of the
majority were high accordingly. Only Howard, to whom rescue meant
something very different from what it did to the others, and Dorothy,
who grieved in sympathy with him, were silent and distrait. Toward the
end of the meal, Jackson, who had been unwontedly talkative, suddenly
awoke to the realization that the time was rapidly approaching when he
must again become the jailer of the man who had saved his life and his
happiness. Under this incubus he suddenly shut up.

The other three did not understand Howard’s situation. For some reason
Forbes, it seemed, had not told his information (or suspicions), about
the naval officer, and his single reference to them, at the time of
the wedding, had passed over the heads of both the Joyces and of Mr.
Willoughby. So they chattered on light-heartedly enough, until the meal
was over, and Howard dismissed them to sleep.

A little later that night, when all the rest were sleeping, worn out
by the excitement and arduous labors of the day, Dorothy slipped up on
deck, where Howard was watching the dials of his accumulators as they
slowly crept toward the maximum.

There was no moon, but the phosphorescence of the weed filled the air
with a weird witch-light, in which the Seashark and floating wreckage
bulked black. So strong was the gleam that Howard could see the dark
circles under Dorothy’s eyes as she sank down by his side.

“There, there! sweetheart,” he whispered, gently. “You ought to be
getting your beauty sleep. We’ll probably be picked up to-morrow, and
you must look your best.”

But Dorothy refused to heed the badinage. “Oh! Frank, Frank,” she
murmured, miserably. “I don’t want to be picked up. Can’t--can’t we put
the rest ashore somewhere, and slip away--just you and I. When I think
of what will happen---- Oh, Frank, I can’t bear it!”

Howard drew her toward him, and tilted up her face until he could look
down into her troubled eyes. “Don’t be afraid, dear,” he murmured,
“everything is going to come out right. It will take a little time
perhaps, but it will all come right in the end. The Providence that has
watched over us and brought us through so much will not fail us now.”

“But--but--to have you in prison, even for a day! Oh, Frank, I can’t
bear it! You have saved Mr. Jackson’s life, rescued him, made him
rich--surely he will not be cruel enough to----”

“Hush! Hush! dear. Jackson must do his duty. I wouldn’t have him
fail in it on my account for the world. Besides, I must surrender
in order to prove my innocence. Before, I did not have the money to
send to Porto Rico for witnesses; now I have. There must be plenty of
people down there who have seen the real husband of that poor Dolores
Montoro. Money will bring them to New York. Once they see me they
will know that I am not he--even though they may have identified my
photograph. I ran away before only because I knew of no other way to
reach them. Now that I have another way, I must take it.”

Dorothy was thoughtful for a moment. Then she nodded slowly. “You are
right, Frank,” she murmured. “You always are. It will break my heart,
but--it is the only way. I see that. It isn’t only your liberty I want;
your honor must be cleared as well.”

“There’s my brave girl!”

Soon Dorothy spoke again. “Frank,” she said, “tell me! How did you
escape from prison? I don’t understand.”

Howard hesitated. Then: “I can’t tell you very much about it, dear. But
this I will say: An officer on my last ship--one, too, for whom I am
ashamed to say I had never cared much--stood my friend all through the
trial, and at the end aided me to get away. He----”

“It was Mr. Loving! I know it was Mr. Loving!”

“Hush! Even the sea-weed has ears. You must never say anything about
it, or it would get him into terrible trouble. Yes, it was Loving. Do
you know him?”

Dorothy twisted and untwisted her fingers. “Yes,” she murmured, “I know
him. It--it was on his account that I went to Porto Rico.”

“On his account?”

“Yes. He--he wanted to marry me, and father wanted me to accept
him, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t! I knew you must exist somewhere,
Frank--you--the only man in the world for me--and I ran away from New
York to avoid him. You are not angry, are you, Frank?”

“Angry! At what? But I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible botch of things;
saddled a convict husband on you, and robbed my best friend of his
bride.”

Dorothy raised her hand to his lips. “Hush! dear,” she said. “I
wouldn’t exchange my husband for any man in the wide world; and as for
Mr. Loving--well, he couldn’t be robbed of what he never had, and never
could have had.”

The note of the engines suddenly changed, and Howard, bending over,
glanced at the accumulator dial. “The battery is fully charged, dear,”
he said, as he shut off the engine. “And it is certainly time to rest.”




XIX


LONG before dawn Howard was astir. Possessing in an eminent degree the
not very rare faculty of being able to awake at any hour desired, he
had set his mental alarm-clock for four o’clock, and, in spite of his
fatigue, had awakened within fifteen minutes of that time.

Without disturbing any of the others, who lay stretched in more or less
uneasy postures on the comfortless floor of the Seashark, he made his
way first to the conning-tower for a last examination of the fixtures
there; then to the deck, where a brief inspection showed that the
propeller was still clear; and, at last, to the pilot’s seat, where,
taking his place, he pulled the lever that let the water into the
ballast tanks.

Swiftly the tanks filled, and silently and smoothly the Seashark sank
down through the water. For a time the weed scraped against her sides,
but soon this ceased, and the electric beam showed only black water
before the tiny windows of her conning-tower. When fifty feet of depth
was registered on the gage, Howard turned on the power and, gathering
way, the Seashark drove along beneath the sea.

Three hours later, when the weary sleepers began to stir, he was still
at his post, tirelessly staring before him. As the day waxed, a faint
light, interspersed with occasional stronger beams, filtered down from
above, giving token that the canopy of weed had grown thin, and was
broken here and there by channels of open water. Soon it would be safe
to go to the surface.

Suddenly, with terrifying swiftness, came a sound and a shock that
shook the Seashark from stem to stern. Simultaneously the black hull of
a great ship showed across the path, not a hundred feet away. There
was no time to stop; no time to check the speed; scarcely time to
deflect the course. But quicker than thought, quicker than lightning,
automatically, Howard’s trained brain and hand met the danger.

The horizontal rudders sent the Seashark diving down, down, down, in a
desperate endeavor to pass beneath the obstruction--down till Howard
saw clear water in front of him.

Under the keel of the ship sped the Seashark, still diving desperately.
For one agonizing instant she touched, scraped, shrieked; then tore
free.

But the danger was not passed; though, with reversed rudders, the
Seashark strove to beat her way upward. A glance at the dials showed
that the depth was increasing--not diminishing; a glance behind showed
that the black hull was ominously close. The slant of the Seashark
grew steeper, steeper; almost it stood on end. The rumble of falling
objects came from below, followed by startled shrieks, as the sleepers,
rudely awakened, slid in a tangled heap to the after-end of the boat.
Howard clung wildly to the steering-wheel to save himself from being
hurled down upon the rest. As he clung, confused, not understanding,
the tiny vessel was shaken like a rat in a dog’s jaws. Her machinery
began to tear loose from its bed. Mere peas in a pod, her passengers
tumbled right and left as willed by the mighty power that grasped them.

After turmoil peace. Howard pulled his dazed wits together to the
realization that the Seashark was lying quiescent on the surface of the
water, though by no means on an even keel. Her engines had stopped, and
her lights were out. Only a faint glimmer through the windows of the
conning-tower illumined the scene of wreckage around him. Wild with
anxiety, he lowered himself into the blackness of the sleeping room,
and called Dorothy’s name.

“Here I am, Frank,” came the answer.

Howard groped his way toward the sound. “Are you hurt?” he asked in
trembling accents.

“No! I think not--certainly not seriously.” The girl’s tones were
broken, but brave as ever.

“The rest of you? Is everybody alive? Answer as I call. Joyce?”

“I’m alive, sor, and so is Kathleen.”

“Jackson?”

“Here.”

“Mr. Willoughby?”

“I, too, have escaped.”

Howard drew a long breath. “Thank God! We seem to have our lives, at
any rate.”

“What was it, sor?”

“I’m not certain. But I think a wreck must have chosen the very moment
of our passage to sink, and must have drawn us down into her vortex. We
escaped at last, and are now at the surface. But I fear our machinery
is ruined. I’ll open the manhole.”

Turning, Howard clambered back to his perch, and tried to push back
the bolts. They were badly jammed, and it took him some time to loosen
them; but at last they gave way, and he shoved back the cover and
thrust out his head.

The Seashark was rolling gently on smooth weed-clear water. A quarter
of a mile away lay a white cruiser, and not a hundred yards distant was
a boat rapidly approaching.

Howard rubbed his eyes. “Ahoy, the boat,” he called.

The officer in charge gasped. “Way enough,” he ordered. “Ahoy, the
submarine. Where in heaven did you come from?”

“From mighty near the other place,” answered Howard grimly. “Did you
torpedo that wreck?”

“That’s what we did. We’re destroying derelicts, and hunting for a
party of castaways from the Queen. Do you know anything about them?”

[Illustration: “THIS IS, OR, RATHER, WAS--MISS FAIRFAX,” HE EXPLAINED.
“AND YOU----”]

Howard nodded affirmatively in answer to the officer’s question. “Yes,”
he answered. “We are the castaways--we and three others who escaped
with us in this submarine from the little king of the Sargasso Sea. I
suppose you know the story that I sent by wireless?”

The boat scraped along. “Know it! I should say so,” exclaimed the
startled officer. “The whole country knows it. I suppose you are----”

“Frank Howard. Come, Dorothy,” Howard climbed to the deck, and helped
the girl to follow him. “This is, or, rather, was--Miss Fairfax,” he
explained. “And you----”

The officer suppressed a whistle of admiration at sight of Dorothy’s
flower-like face. “I’m McCully!” he answered, as he stood up and took
off his cap. “I say! This is awfully lucky. Colonel Fairfax will be
wild with delight.”

“My father! Where is he?”

“On board the Duluth, yonder. The navy department ordered us to look
for you, and he came along. There are a dozen searching for you.”

Dorothy’s head swam. The month of stress was over, and the revulsion of
feeling was too great not to affect her. Tears started to her eyes as
she turned to Howard. “Oh! Frank!” she cried. “Father is here.”

“Yes. He’s here, sure,” interjected Mr. McCully, “and if you’ll get
into this boat we’ll take you to him in a jiffy.”

Dorothy looked at Howard inquiringly, and he nodded. “Yes, you’d better
go,” he assented. “You and Mrs. Joyce and Willoughby, perhaps. The rest
of us will stay here for the present. Mr. McCully, will you kindly
ask your captain if he cannot come alongside us? The Seashark, though
damaged by your torpedo, is still valuable, and, besides, we have about
two million dollars in gold bars on board of her.”

The lieutenant looked his astonishment. What manner of man was this who
carried two millions of gold about in a submarine. “Two millions?” he
gasped.

“Yes! We found an old Spanish galleon with five or six millions on
her, and brought away all we could. Look! There’s another boat coming.
Is that your father on her, Dorothy? And--why, yes, it’s Loving, too,
isn’t it? How frightfully ill he is looking.”

Another boat was close at hand. Dorothy looked at her, and clasped her
hands with excitement. “Oh! It is!” she cried. “Father! Father! Don’t
you know me?”

The gray-bearded civilian stood up. “Dorothy! Dorothy!” he trumpeted.
“Is it you! Is it really you?”

“Yes! Yes!” As the boat touched the Seashark, the girl fairly sprang
into her father’s arms. “Oh! father! father!” she cried. “How good it
is to see you.”

Meanwhile, Lieutenant McCully had turned to Howard and the others, who
had now climbed up on the deck. “The Duluth is moving,” he explained.
“Captain Morehouse probably intends to come alongside without being
asked. Hadn’t you all better get into this boat, and let my men fasten
your manhole down? The waves from the Duluth might swamp her, you know.”

“Thank you. If you’ll be so kind. But first let me present my fellow
travelers.”

In a few moments the Seashark was made safe against swamping, and her
former passengers were about to enter the cutter, when Dorothy called
to Howard: “Frank, dear, I want you.”

Everybody started. Not one there was ignorant of Howard’s record, and
the use of his Christian name by the girl was somewhat surprising.

“Frank, dear!” cried the girl, alive with excitement. “This is my
father. Father, this is Lieutenant Frank Howard, who saved me from
death and from worse than death. See, I wear his ring.”

She held up her hand, and, at the sight of the plain gold band, Colonel
Fairfax’s outstretched hand dropped heavily to his side. “A wedding
ring,” he gasped.

“Yes, father. I am not Dorothy Fairfax any more. I am Dorothy Howard
now. Mr. Willoughby married us day before yesterday.”

All Colonel Fairfax’s coolness; all the aplomb that had made him a
master of men; all his traditional self-possession dropped from him,
and he stood stammering like any schoolboy.

Dorothy’s eyes sparkled. “It’s all right, father,” she declared. “Frank
married me to save me from that horrible Forbes. He didn’t want to do
so because of that ridiculous accusation against him, but he couldn’t
help it. I insisted on it. Shake hands with him. You and I are going to
find the real murderer, and clear his name.”

“But--but--Mr. Loving----”

Loving, his face pale, but with a forced smile on his lips, struck in.
“Hallo, Howard, old man,” he said, holding out his hand. “I was just
waiting my chance to speak to you. Frank Howard is all right, colonel,”
he continued earnestly, turning to the elder man. “I’ve told you so
before, you know.”

Colonel Fairfax had recovered his poise somewhat. “Well,” he said,
“this isn’t the time or place to talk about it, though it is the time
to thank you, Mr. Howard, for saving my girl’s life. It nearly killed
me when I lost her. Come, let’s get on board--Good Heavens! Loving!
What’s the matter?”

Loving’s face had grown white as death, and his distended eyes seemed
popping from their sockets. Following his gaze, the others saw Mr.
Willoughby picking his way along the Seashark toward them.

“Ah! Mr. Howard,” he said, holding out his hand to Loving, “I’m glad
to see you here, for, of course, it means that you must have cleared
yourself of that terrible charge. Quite a coincidence having another of
the same name in our little party, isn’t it? I had meant to speak to
him about you, but we have been in such a turmoil that I haven’t had
the chance.”

The changing expressions in the faces of his listeners suddenly caught
the good man’s attention. “Why! What is the matter?” he explained.
“I--I hope I don’t---- Surely you have cleared yourself of that charge,
Mr. Howard?”

Loving’s dry lips moved, but no sound came. The other men, too, were
stricken dumb. Only Dorothy found breath.

“This gentleman is Mr. Loving, Mr. Willoughby,” she gasped. “Why do you
call him Howard?”

The missionary turned a bewildered face to the girl. “I don’t
understand,” he stammered. “I knew this gentleman as Mr. Howard in
Porto Rico, where I married him to Dolores Montoro. Later she followed
him to New York, and he was reported to have murdered her. I was
coming to testify when I was wrecked, and----”

Loving burst suddenly into a fit of jarring laughter. “You needn’t say
any more, Mr. Willoughby,” he cackled. “You’ve put the noose around my
neck all right. Yes, I did it, I did it. I married that she-devil under
your name, Howard, and when she followed me to New York I killed her. I
didn’t mean to get you into it, but you got a letter she intended for
me, and butted in just in time to get accused. You’ll bear me witness
that I tried to save you; and I would have done it, too, if those fools
in Porto Rico hadn’t identified your photograph as the man who married
Dolores. All smooth-faced men in uniform look alike to them, I suppose.
Well, it’s all up now, and I’m glad of it. Maybe you won’t believe me,
but I haven’t had a happy moment since you were arrested. I’m not so
bad as you think; that woman was a fiend and--but there’s the ship.
I’ll go on board and write out a formal confession.”

Unseen, the Duluth had approached and, as she ran smoothly alongside,
Loving caught a Jacob’s-ladder swinging from a boom, and ran up it to
the deck.

Before any one could follow, the Duluth swung past, and, when a
moment later her reversed screw brought her to a halt, the sound of a
pistol-shot in her ward-room told that Loving had signed his confession
with his blood.




EPILOGUE


The Sargasso Sea will soon be robbed of half its terrors. The Seashark
Wrecking Company, with Howard at its head, and all his party as
share-holders, has been formed to recover the great wealth still
existing on the derelicts in the sea. It has opened communication with
the wreck-pack by a paddle-wheel steamer that is expected to maintain a
reasonably clear channel through the weed. The company is projecting a
series of relief stations, and will keep up a constant patrol all round
the wreck-pack. The expense, of course, will be enormous, but there
is no doubt that the enterprise will meet it and will pay an enormous
profit besides, even if not a single other treasure-ship is found.

A message just received by wireless from the sea says that the first
steamer of the company is about to start back to New York with a
tremendously valuable cargo of salvage. It adds that Forbes and all
his men have begged for passage, and that it will be granted them.
The money left on the galleon, which Forbes was forced to divide, has
made them all comparatively rich, and they are anxious to get back to
civilization to spend their money. Their departure leaves Howard and
his friends with an undisputed title to the salvage of the Isle of Dead
Ships.


THE END.




_DELIGHTFULLY FASCINATING_

  The Princess Dehra

  By JOHN REED SCOTT

In which we meet again the characters of his dashing success, “_The
Colonel of the Red Huzzars_” (Eleven editions).

Mr. Scott displays uncommon dramatic skill in the handling of his
characters--the same, by the way, as those who were met in his “Colonel
of the Red Huzzars.” It is a continuation of that former dashing
romance of an American army officer who turns out to have royal blood
in his veins which eventually wins for him a throne and enthrones him
in the heart of a charming princess; mystery, intrigue, plot, and
counterplot, all are here, and the reader will find his attention held
until the very last page, when loyalty and the wit of a woman triumph
in the face of even “the Book of Laws” and a clever rascal.

  “Here is a new story to set the pulses tingling.”--_Philadelphia
  Press._

  “Since Hope’s ‘Prisoner of Zenda,’ nothing better has been done
  than this new story by the author of ‘The Colonel of the Red
  Huzzars.’”--_Cincinnati Enquirer._

  “There are situations involving the principal characters which
  are ingenious in conception and cleverly woven into the story by
  essential and natural sequence, and at these situations the reader
  feels a desire to continue the story, even if the house be burning.
  He has produced a story that is interesting and exciting without
  being overdrawn.”--_Boston Evening Transcript._

  _Four Full-Page Illustrations in Color by Clarence F. Underwood. 12
  mo. Decorated Cloth, $1.50._

  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS      PHILADELPHIA




_THE DASHING NOVEL_

  THE
  COLONEL
  OF THE
  RED HUZZARS

  By
  JOHN REED SCOTT

Stirring adventures, courtly intrigue, and fencing both of sword and
wit, fill the pages of this story. The plot is built upon a wager
between Major Dalberg, U. S. A., and a friend that within a certain
time both would be dining with the king and dancing with the princess
royal of Valeria. Strangely enough, Dalberg proves to be of the blood
royal of Valeria, is reinstated into his ancestral rights, and when
matters are about to reach a climax, the pretender steps in, and there
ensues an encounter between American pluck and unscrupulous cleverness.

  “There’s not a dull page in it.”--_The Index, Pittsburg._

  “A slap-dashing vacation-day romance.”--_Evening Sun, New York._

  “So naïvely fresh in its handling, so plausible through its
  naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the
  far-spreading desert of similar romances.”--_Gazette-Times,
  Pittsburg._

Illustrations in Colors by CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD

12mo. Decorated cloth, $1.50

  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY Philadelphia




BEAU BROCADE

_By BARONESS ORCZY_

_Author of “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” “I Will Repay,” etc._

A captivating romance of love and chivalry--the adventures of a
charming highwayman of the days of the English Pretender.

  “Faith and courage make the story of ‘Beau Brocade’ a very
  interesting one. The hero is delightfully fascinating--bubbling over
  with exuberance of youth; nothing is a hardship for him. He reminds
  one of Dumas’s famous D’Artagnan, and most especially in his fighting
  escapades. Gloriously dramatic is the fight in the forge, when, by
  his prowess, Beau Brocade holds at bay a lot of redcoats, escaping on
  his steed ‘Jack O’Lantern.’”--_N. Y. American Book Review Contest._

  “The story is so well told, so full of life and action, that one
  never loses interest from start to finish.”--_Pittsburgh Dispatch._

  “Let no one begin reading this tale late in the evening, for there is
  no stopping-place till the end, and the end is worth reaching.”--_The
  Congregationalist, Boston._

  “The illustrations in color are unusually attractive.”--_Chicago
  Tribune._

FOUR FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BY CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD.

12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS      PHILADELPHIA




When Kings Go Forth to Battle

By WILLIAM WALLACE WHITELOCK

_Author of “The Literary Guillotine,” etc._

A small German principality is the seat of exciting warfare. An
unscrupulous king and a conniving “minister of interior improvements”
find their match in two invincible Americans who keep the secret of a
young prince’s hiding-place, and with characteristic American energy
join in a revolutionary plot to unseat the reigning monarch and place
the prince upon the throne.

  “A story that grasps our interest with its first chapter and causes
  us to follow breathlessly until the climax.”--_Baltimore Sun._

  “The prettily tinted illustrations by Frank H. Desch are particularly
  praiseworthy.”--_Philadelphia Press._

  “Told with energy and color, and it is well worth reading.”--_San
  Francisco Argonaut._

  “Some excellent illustrations in color add to the beauty of the
  volume.”--_Nashville American._

  THREE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BY
  FRANK H. DESCH.      12mo.      Cloth, $1.50.

  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS   ::   ::   ::   PHILADELPHIA




THE SMUGGLER

By ELLA MIDDLETON TYBOUT

_Author of “The Wife of the Secretary of State” and “Poketown People.”_

This is not, as the title might suggest, a tale of daring deeds on
the deep, but a blithesome story of the adventures of three American
girls while spending their summer vacation on a Canadian island. They
become involved in a series of strange happenings by a band of clever
smugglers who pose as their friends, using them as a blind in their
smuggling operations. There is a pretty love story interwoven with
mystery, adventure, and humor, that holds the reader’s interest from
cover to cover.

  “The characters are mightily convincing, and the rapid-action plot
  makes the most indifferent reader ‘sit up’ until he has devoured the
  last word.”--_Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Va._

  “A happy blending of Stocktonesque humor and Anna Katherine Green
  mystery.”--_New York Globe._

  “A brightly written story for those who like light and agreeable
  fiction that is free from coarseness.”--_Boston Budget and Beacon._

  ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY HOWARD EVERETT SMITH.
  12mo.      Cloth, $1.50.

  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS      PHILADELPHIA




The Affair at Pine Court

By NELSON RUST GILBERT

A truly American novel of love and mystery, taking place at the
Adirondack lodge of a New York millionaire. It is a story of living
people set against a background of October-painted forests, azure
lakes, and limpid trout-streams.

The reader lives through such exciting days in the depths of this great
forest, with characters so well drawn and so intensely human as to
seem alive. The arrival of a German count gives direction and impetus
to incipient love affairs. He arouses the greed of the humble natives
by exhibiting the wonderful “Lens of the Gau” in the presence of his
host’s butler. These envious enemies of the rich pleasure-seekers at
the court put the house in a stage of siege, during which each guest
displays his or her real character. The many incidents of the forest
war are told with admirable skill, and a happily ending love affair
keeps the reader’s attention taut and eager.

  “A tale of mystery, crisply and briskly told.”--_Leader, Cleveland._

  “An unusual story in which the author has pictured real men, who ring
  true in the time of danger.”--_Buffalo Express._

  “A book whose plot is well conceived and wrought out, whose
  craftsmanship is excellent, and whose ability to hold the interest to
  the last page is undisputed.”--_The Interior, Chicago._

  “A book to be read not only for its strong human interest, but
  for its true picture of life in the Adirondacks.”--_Argonaut, San
  Francisco._

  THREE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR
  BY FRANK H. DESCH.

  12mo.     Cloth, $1.50.

  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS      PHILADELPHIA




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

  The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is
    entered into the public domain.



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