Part 36 (1/2)

”Back starboard!”

The boat spun round like a top, sweeping right under the vessel's stern.

”Give way to starboard! Easy port!”

The boat slid up alongside the derelict as though coming to a landing place. The men trailed their oars, the bow oar grappled with a boat-hook and Eric leaped for the p.o.o.p rail of the vessel, and swung himself aboard. The deck was pitched forward at an angle of 30 degrees, but evidently the vessel had floated in that condition for some time, for a sort of barricade had been made, with the right angle of the half-sunk cabin companion hatchway as a base, and on this three bodies were lying.

A keg of water and a maggoty ham--the latter exposed to the full sunlight of the tropics--was all the food in sight.

Eric slid down the deck to this barricade. The first man seemed to be dead, the heart of the second was beating feebly, but the third, a white-haired old man, appeared only to be asleep, the deep sleep of exhaustion. When the boy put his hand on his shoulder, the old man opened his eyes wide.

”So you have come the third time,” he said, in a queer far-away voice, ”but it is too late.”

Eric slipped his hand into his coat pocket and brought out a small phial of restorative he had provided just before leaving the cutter. He gave the survivor a few sips. The old man changed not a muscle, only repeated in the same dull and far-away voice,

”So you have come the third time, but it is too late!”

Perceiving that the sufferer regarded him as an apparition and that in his hallucinations born of exhaustion and exposure he must have believed he saw rescuers before, Eric picked the old man up bodily and, half crouching, half climbing on the sloping deck, carried him to the derelict's side. Two of the sailors climbed up and helped him lower the old man to the boat.

Meantime the other boat had made fast and the second lieutenant joined him. He was a man of considerable experience, and while Eric was quite proud of his knowledge and skill as a life-saver, he was amazed at the deft handling of his superior officer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREATEST MENACE OF THE SEAS.

A sunken derelict ready to sink any vessel that strikes her.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNED TO THE WATER'S EDGE.

Vessel abandoned and floating in the path of commerce, hunted as a dangerous beast, and found by the Coast Guard cutters.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

”I think this one's gone,” said Eric in a low voice, pointing to the first man he had seen.

The other cast a quick look at him and shook his head.

”Pretty far gone, but not quite,” he answered. ”There's always a fighting chance that we can pull him through. I'll take these two into my boat and get back to the cutter. We'll probably blow this craft up, afterwards; we couldn't ever tow her this way.”

”Why, sir? Because she's too heavy?”

”Not only that, but she lies too low. On end, the way she is now, she's probably drawing thirty-five or forty feet of water. She might stick in a channel somewhere and that would be worse than getting rid of her out here.”

The boats raced back to the s.h.i.+p and the survivors were handed up to the _Miami_ where the surgeon immediately took charge. All preparations had been made, meanwhile, for the placing of mines and Eric was told off in the boat under the second lieutenant to see to the placing of the charges.

This was work to which Eric was unaccustomed and he watched with considerable interest the gunner's handling of the mines. It was easy enough to place the charges in the upper works of the stern where they would be sure to blow that part of the s.h.i.+p to pieces, but so much of the forward portion of the hulk was under water that the problem there was more difficult. In order to make sure of the job, five mines were set and connected with each other by electric wiring. A long strand of insulated wire was then carried to the boat, over a hundred feet in length.

At a signal given him by the lieutenant, Eric pressed the b.u.t.ton. There was a tremendous roar as a waterspout shot up from the surface of the sea. As though some vast leviathan had pa.s.sed underneath the old bark and shouldered her out of the water, the long black hull heaved herself up slowly. She seemed to hang poised for a fraction of a second on the surface of the water as if, in her death agony, she had for a moment thought of her old life when, under press of sail, she flew bounding over the billows, defying the very elements which at last had worked her ruin. Only for a moment she hung there, then with a dull crash she broke her back. The bow plunged downward with a sullen plunge, but the stern still held poised. Then, quite suddenly, the air imprisoned in the hull broke free and slowly, almost, it seemed, with dignity, the remainder of the vessel sank forever beneath the surface of the waters.