A Desperate Voyage Part 8

The wild beast acknowledged its master and proceeded to obey his orders in a surly fas.h.i.+on, even as Caliban might have reluctantly carried out some behest of the superior intelligence that had enslaved him.

"This calm seems as if it would never end," said Carew to the mate. "It looks black yonder. Another squall, I suppose. Just enough to entice us to hoist our sails, and then to die away again."

"I don't see anything like the trade-wind sky about," said Baptiste, who had sailed the tropical seas before.

Carew took his midday observation of the sun; then, lowering his s.e.xtant, called out, "Make it eight bells, Baptiste," and went below to work out his position.

He found that the _Petrel_ had only travelled five miles in the last twenty-four hours. He was seventy miles north of the equator, and his longitude by dead-reckoning (he had, as has been explained, no chronometer on board) was about 30 west, so that he was distant some five hundred miles from Cape St. Roque, the most easterly point of the New World.

Soon after noon the dark bank of cloud rose rapidly from the horizon and overspread the whole heavens; the rain began to pour down as it only can in these equatorial regions, and a fresh breeze from the south-east cooled the heated atmosphere.

The sails were hoisted, and the yacht ran some two or three miles; then the hopeless calm fell again, and there was not a cloud to be seen in the blue vault above. The sails flapped to and fro with a loud noise as the vessel rolled in the swell which the breeze had left behind it.

"Oh, this accursed calm!" cried Carew impatiently; "down with all your canvas again."

The men obeyed, grumbling at their ill-luck, and then resumed their game of _monte_.

In the afternoon the heat became more oppressive than ever, and it was impossible to stay below; so all hands remained under the awnings on deck.

The mate, after pondering for some while, said to Carew, "We shall run short of water if this continues much longer."

"I have thought of that. We must serve out a smaller allowance."

"Buenos Ayres is a long way off yet, captain. Would it not be well to put into some Brazilian port for water and vegetables? This heat is very trying on a small vessel like this. We shall have illness on board if we are not careful."

"I do not wish to break the voyage anywhere, unless it is absolutely necessary," Carew replied.

"I know these countries," Baptiste continued; "and there is one very good reason why you should call at some port on the way."

"What is it?"

"You have no bill of health with you. Now in Buenos Ayres the authorities are very afraid of yellow fever, and if you arrive there with no papers to show where you are from, they will take it for granted that you have come from some infected port, and that you have probably lost some hands on the voyage and wish to conceal it. They would, therefore, put you in quarantine for who knows how long. They might, under the suspicious circ.u.mstances, refuse even to give you pratique at all, and send you off to sea again."

"How will calling at a Brazilian port remedy that?"

"Because in Brazil they are not afraid of yellow fever, as they always have it there. At Rio they won't trouble you at all, and your consul will give you a clean bill of health for Buenos Ayres. Then, being satisfied that you have had no illness on board, the Buenos Ayres people will grant you pratique after, let us say, a quarantine of four days, even if yellow fever were raging at Rio."

"A queer plan to avoid quarantine for Yellow Jack by calling at the headquarters of the fever!" said Carew; "but I see that you are right. I will put into Rio."

After a pause the Frenchman said thoughtfully, "I shall be sorry to leave this vessel, sir. I suppose you still think of selling her in the River Plate. I should like to continue the cruise for another year."

"So should I, but I can't afford it. Yachting is an expensive amus.e.m.e.nt."

"Oh, I don't know that. A cruise may be made to pay its way even in these days, especially if one carries a warrant from the Admiralty of one's country like you do. The authorities are always civil to one who sails under the Government blue ensign, and never trouble him with the tedious formalities the common merchantman is subjected to."

"I don't know what you mean," said Carew. "There is no money to be made now by legitimate trade at sea. Besides, a yacht is not allowed to trade at all."

"I said nothing about legitimate trade," said the Frenchman quietly, as he rolled himself another cigarette.

The eyes of the two men met, and they understood each other.

The mate had never let drop so broad a hint before; but he knew that he was safe in doing so. There had existed for some time a sort of freemasonry of crime between himself and Carew. They had been thrown altogether upon each other's society of late. Both were educated men, and gentlemen by birth; both were shrewd readers of character; and it is so far easier for the bad than for the good man to recognise a kindred nature.

Carew did not exactly entertain a liking for his mate, but he found his companions.h.i.+p far pleasanter than that of any other man could have been.

The Frenchman's tolerant way of looking at crime was peculiarly gratifying to the ex-solicitor. It acted as a most soothing salve to his conscience.

He liked to hear the man's cynical talk--the superficial philosophy with which he defended crime as being the least hypocritical way of obeying nature's law of the struggle for existence. The very presence of this villain seemed to exert a strange, magnetic influence on Carew's pliable soul, lulling it into a fool's paradise.

Such an affinity for evil between two men who are much together will soon destroy any conscience that either of them may happen to possess.

So Carew, having become accustomed to an atmosphere of crime, no longer shrank from the thought of it, and, with an amused smile, replied to the mate's remark, "What piece of villainy are you going to suggest now, Baptiste?"

"I don't think you ought to use that word villainy," protested the Frenchman, with an air of comic indignation. "As a matter of fact, I was not at that moment thinking of any one particular 'piece of villainy,'

but vaguely of a great number of feasible schemes I know of for transferring the wickedly-earned riches of others into our own deserving pockets."

"This is highly interesting," said Carew, in a bantering tone. "Explain one of these notable schemes of yours, Baptiste."

But the Frenchman did not reply. He looked round the horizon with a puzzled expression, and, putting his hand to his ear, appeared to be listening intently.

"Hark, captain! What is that?" he cried.

CHAPTER VIII

Carew listened, and heard a low, rumbling sound like distant thunder.

"Thunder out of a cloudless sky! That is strange."

"That is no thunder, captain," said Baptiste, with a scared look, "but what it is I know not."

The sound became louder. It did not seem to be approaching from any direction, but to be everywhere--around, below, above--filling all s.p.a.ce. Then it swelled to a great roar, as of the rolling of thousands of drums. The air trembled at the sound, and the surface of the sea no longer reflected the blue sky above, but, appearing like a mirror over which one has breathed, vibrated into myriads of wrinkles and gyrating rings. Soon the water began to be greatly disturbed, and raved and foamed about the vessel as if she were floating in a boiling caldron.

Then occurred an appalling prodigy. First, louder than loudest thunder, was heard a deafening explosion, and immediately the sea leapt up, not in waves, but in steep pyramids of water, piling itself up in domes, as if some mighty force were thrusting it up from below. The yacht pitched wildly into the confused whirl till she was nigh to break up with the violence of the shocks, and the water poured over her decks in ma.s.ses, threatening to swamp her. Hollow whirlpools opened out suddenly in front of her, seeking to engulf her: a fearful spectacle to behold, which might make even the bravest men go mad with fright. Then came another explosion, and the superst.i.tious Spaniards, holding on to the rigging for dear life, shrieked with abject terror as they saw the limpid sea suddenly thicken and change its colour to a dark, sulphurous yellow.

There was an odour of sulphur in the air, and the sun was s.h.i.+ning through a sickly yellow haze.

The crew, who would have done their duty with cool courage in a hurricane, were completely unnerved by this alarming portent. The two men forward thought that the fiend himself had opened h.e.l.l under them to swallow up their sinful souls; they prayed and blasphemed in turns. The French mate, white to his lips and trembling, clutched the rigging, with his eyes closed. Carew alone, though his cheeks were pale, was calm.

Holding on to the bulwark to prevent himself from being thrown overboard by the violent leaping of the yacht, he looked around him with a resolute expression. He would fight bravely for his life, but he had no fear of death.

In the midst of this turmoil a strong wind suddenly arose.

"Hoist the foresail!" he shouted; but none of the terrified men obeyed the order. "Cowardly idiots!" he cried, and scrambling forward as well as he could to the mast, he seized the fore-halyards and set the sail.

Then he returned to the tiller, after having been nearly washed overboard by a sea on the way, and steered the vessel dead before the wind.

In ten minutes he had sailed, not without danger, outside the circle of raging water; and looking back he saw that the disturbance had already commenced to subside, and the loud roaring had lessened to a distant moaning.

"_Locos!_" he cried; "madmen, cowards, hoist the mainsail! Are you women to be so scared by a slight _terremoto_?"