Part 18 (1/2)

”Tompkins was easy,” said Captain Bilge. ”Excuse me as I enter his death in the log.”

”Yes,” he continued presently, ”it will be a great help if they mutiny. I suppose they will, sooner or later. It's customary to do so. But I shall take no step to precipitate it until we have first fallen in with pirates. I am expecting them in these lat.i.tudes at any time. Meantime, Mr. Blowhard,” he said, rising, ”if you can continue to drop overboard one or two more each week, I shall feel extremely grateful.”

Three days later we rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered upon the inky waters of the Indian Ocean. Our course lay now in zigzags and, the weather being favourable, we sailed up and down at a furious rate over a sea as calm as gla.s.s.

On the fourth day a pirate s.h.i.+p appeared. Reader, I do not know if you have ever seen a pirate s.h.i.+p. The sight was one to appal the stoutest heart. The entire s.h.i.+p was painted black, a black flag hung at the masthead, the sails were black, and on the deck people dressed all in black walked up and down arm-in-arm. The words ”Pirate s.h.i.+p” were painted in white letters on the bow. At the sight of it our crew were visibly cowed. It was a spectacle that would have cowed a dog.

The two s.h.i.+ps were brought side by side. They were then lashed tightly together with bag string and binder twine, and a gang plank laid between them. In a moment the pirates swarmed upon our deck, rolling their eyes, gnas.h.i.+ng their teeth and filing their nails.

Then the fight began. It lasted two hours-with fifteen minutes off for lunch. It was awful. The men grappled with one another, kicked one another from behind, slapped one another across the face, and in many cases completely lost their temper and tried to bite one another. I noticed one gigantic fellow brandis.h.i.+ng a knotted towel, and striking right and left among our men, until Captain Bilge rushed at him and struck him flat across the mouth with a banana skin.

At the end of two hours, by mutual consent, the fight was declared a draw. The points standing at sixty-one and a half against sixty-two.

The s.h.i.+ps were unlashed, and with three cheers from each crew, were headed on their way.

”Now, then,” said the Captain to me aside, ”let us see how many of the crew are sufficiently exhausted to be thrown overboard.”

He went below. In a few minutes he re-appeared, his face deadly pale.

”Blowhard,” he said, ”the s.h.i.+p is sinking. One of the pirates (sheer accident, of course, I blame no one) has kicked a hole in the side.

Let us sound the well.”

We put our ear to the s.h.i.+p's well. It sounded like water.

The men were put to the pumps and worked with the frenzied effort which only those who have been drowned in a sinking s.h.i.+p can understand.

At six p.m. the well marked one half an inch of water, at nightfall three-quarters of an inch, and at daybreak, after a night of unremitting toil, seven-eighths of an inch.

By noon of the next day the water had risen to fifteen-sixteenths of an inch, and on the next night the sounding showed thirty-one thirty-seconds of an inch of water in the hold. The situation was desperate. At this rate of increase few, if any, could tell where it would rise to in a few days.

That night the Captain called me to his cabin. He had a book of mathematical tables in front of him, and great sheets of vulgar fractions littered the floor on all sides.

”The s.h.i.+p is bound to sink,” he said, ”in fact, Blowhard, she is sinking. I can prove it. It may be six months or it may take years, but if she goes on like this, sink she must. There is nothing for it but to abandon her.”

That night, in the dead of darkness, while the crew were busy at the pumps, the Captain and I built a raft.

Un.o.bserved we cut down the masts, chopped them into suitable lengths, laid them crosswise in a pile and lashed them tightly together with bootlaces.

Hastily we threw on board a couple of boxes of food and bottles of drinking fluid, a s.e.xtant, a cronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll in the motion of the s.h.i.+p, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon a line, and under cover of the heavy dark of a tropical night, we paddled away from the doomed vessel.

The break of day found us a tiny speck on the Indian Ocean. We looked about as big as this (.).

In the morning, after dressing, and shaving as best we could, we opened our box of food and drink.

Then came the awful horror of our situation.

One by one the Captain took from the box the square blue tins of canned beef which it contained. We counted fifty-two in all. Anxiously and with drawn faces we watched until the last can was lifted from the box. A single thought was in our minds. When the end came the Captain stood up on the raft with wild eyes staring at the sky.

”The can-opener!” he shrieked, ”just Heaven, the can-opener.” He fell prostrate.

Meantime, with trembling hands, I opened the box of bottles. It contained lager beer bottles, each with a patent tin top. One by one I took them out. There were fifty-two in all. As I withdrew the last one and saw the empty box before me, I shroke out-”The thing! the thing! oh, merciful Heaven! The thing you open them with!”