*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78563 ***


THE JUDGEMENT OF JOHAN COULL

A powerful tale of the North Sea and the salvaging
of ships which fell prey to German submarines.

By Frederick Sleath

Author of “Sniper Jackson,” “The Seventh Vial,”
“The Hill of the Crows,” etc.

Illustrations by Raymond Sisley


In the saloon of the Seabird, of the Carn Shipbreaking and Salvage
Company, Big Jim Martin, managing director, sat with Davis, his
under-manager, and MacArthur and Stewart, skipper and mate
respectively, the chiefs of his salvage staff. The Seabird lay, with
two sister vessels, at anchor on a North Sea shallows, over a sunken
auxiliary cruiser--the Warpindi, a large liner that Big Jim had come
to raise. For weeks divers had been busy at her shot holes; she was
almost ready for lifting. One of them, straying from his fellows
that afternoon, had made a strange discovery. Big Jim and MacArthur
were newly returned from a trip to the sea bed to confirm the report
that had been brought to the surface.

“There’s five of them,” he said, and he looked from one to the other
of his assistants with the air of a man who had broached a subject
that wants a deal of explaining.

“They lie in beauty side by side!” MacArthur murmured.

Davis hitched himself up in his deck chair.

“Do you mean to say,” he enquired, “that five German submarines are
lying down there, and undamaged?”

He spoke a little querulously, for he was ill from a long spell of
overwork ashore, and the heat of a very hot day had tried him, placed
though his chair was in the draught of the open larboard and starboard
doors. Big Jim reached over and filled his empty glass with iced lime
juice before replying.

“If I had not seen them, Davis,” he replied, “I would scarcely have
believed it myself. But there they are, not forty feet from the stern
of the Warpindi--just under us, by Jove! Jackson missed his direction
when he went down, and walked straight into them. First one, then two,
with one athwart on top, and then the other; almost as if someone had
chosen the place and popped them all down together. And not a plate
started on one of them--leastways as far as we could see. It’s mighty
queer, and I’ve heard of some queer things at sea in my time.”

“You said something about a freighter being there as well, MacArthur,”
he continued, after a pause, and addressing his captain. “I didn’t see
her. Where was she lying?”

For a moment there was silence, as a wistful, far-away look came into
MacArthur’s eyes. Then:

“Just beyond the furthest away sub, sir,” replied the skipper. “She is
on her side, half her bottom torn out amidships, though whether by mine,
torpedo, or collision I would not like to say. I found her by tumbling
up against a great pile of her coal.”

“Did ye happen to notice her name?” Stewart asked him.

“I did--the Artic. But where she hailed from I couldn’t make out. The
weed has her badly.... Been there at least a year before the subs, I
should say.”

“I missed her altogether,” Big Jim admitted. “My light began to get
bad just about there, so I hauled out. I noticed you stayed down a bit
longer. Reckon we could find a good many of her kind lying about if we
liked to look for them. It’s the submarines that strike me as queer. I
could understand one being there--”

“So could I,” interrupted Davis. “Or even two. Some of the Hun boats
leaked like sieves under pressure, and might easily have filled--a
good many did. But five! It’s a bit remarkable. Will you raise them,
sir?”

“I don’t think so, Davis,” replied Big Jim, shaking his head doubtfully.
“Though if they are really undamaged except for leaks it would not be
difficult, and I must say I’m a bit curious.... But shift your chair up
now. Steward wants to come in.”

The steward had appeared to set the table for the evening meal, and
was standing--the cloth on his arm, his hands filled with knives and
forks--gazing doubtfully at the deckchair stretched across his
pantry doorway. Languidly Davis arose, folded up his chair, and went
on deck, his nerves too apprehensive to let him remain through the
jarring clatter of the table setting. There he remained until it was
done, his elbow resting on the hot deck rail, his gaze on the oily
sea, in his mind thoughts of the five mysterious craft beneath him.

How had they come to be there? He too, had heard of some queer things at
sea in his time, but never anything like this.

                   *       *       *       *       *

A midsummer night was settling down. Dew was falling. But no coolness
was in the air; no evening breeze had come to clear the ship of the
heat with which ten days of torrid, windless weather had filled her.
He responded unwillingly to the steward’s call. Dinner in that stuffy
saloon had little appeal to him, and he lingered in the entrance
alley, looking in at the men inside, more than ever unwilling to
enter; for two engineers had joined the party, and the overcrowded
place reeked with tobacco smoke.

MacArthur was telling the newcomers of the submarines; they were
listening intently, now and then interrupting him with an eager
question. Back to the bulkhead, his great shoulders almost on a level
with the portholes, Big Jim Martin sat playing solitaire. The draught
from the open portholes was playing on his beard where it lay, parted
in two at the chin and pushed out of the way over his shoulders;
occasionally loose strands would blow down among his fingers. To push
them back again was the only movement he made apart from the playing,
so completely absorbed did he appear in his game.

Stewart sat watching him from the other side of the table, but to Davis
it seemed that he was far more interested in what MacArthur and the
engineers were saying; and at every question asked he would twitch his
head around a little, as though the better to hear the reply. Suddenly
he turned and put a question himself:

“Did ye notice whether ‘Arctic’ was the only name that freighter had,
MacArthur?” Stewart enquired.

Davis entered, his curiosity aroused. Stewart was a dour old Scots
sailorman, who seldom spoke, seldom showed interest in anything, and
never asked a question unless for a very good reason.

“Hello, Davis! Been having a squint overside at those submarines?”
MacArthur remarked facetiously, as he noticed the under-manager. “What
was that you said, Stewart?” he continued immediately, directing his
attention to the mate. “‘Artic’ the only name?... I don’t know. It was
her stern I looked at, and as she is on her starboard side, the name was
pretty high up. All I saw was A-r-c-t-i--the second “c” had dropped off,
I expect. Now that you have mentioned it, though, I shouldn’t be a bit
surprised if there was a second name. There was plenty room for it. The
lettering began well to her port side.... Jove! that would make her one
of old Johan Coull’s boats. They were all the Artic-something.... Good
Heavens!” he added slowly, his manner suddenly becoming solemn. “Young
Johnny Coull must be lying down there, and I knew him better than I know
anyone here. She must be the Arctic Queen!”

“I was thinking that,” said Stewart quietly.

STEWART turned to Big Jim, as though to say something more. Davis had
never seen him so animated. But the entrance of the steward to light
the lamp preparatory to serving dinner, checked him, and no one else
spoke until the man--the curious fellow--had gone away.

They were eager to do so, however, or to listen. The name of Coull was
more than well known to them, and MacArthur’s disclosure had suddenly
made them aware that, all unwittingly, they had stumbled over the
threshold of the tragedy connected with it. Old John Coull had been the
owner of the Arctic Line, a famous Scandinavian line of many vessels,
liners, whalers, and tramps. Although a millionaire, he had commanded
several in person, and won great renown by his voyages into the world’s
least frequented seas. Only two of them had been lost in the war--there
lay the tragedy, his own and his son’s--the one was a whaler, the other
a freighter. Hence MacArthur’s certainty that he had found the ship of
his friend.

Young Johnny Coull had followed in his father’s way, and bade fair to
become the greater sailor of the two. During the war, at one time when
ships had almost ceased to cross the North Sea, he had persistently
run the blockade to bring the coal so sorely needed by his country. A
torpedo had found him in the end. Old Johan had set out in a whaler to
bury his grief in the Greenland Seas. A few weeks later a British
“Q”-boat had picked up a lifeboat containing all that was left of his
crew; a lifeboat submerged to the gunnel, its oars and sails gone, its
tanks and bottom pierced with auger holes, its eight occupants dead,
save one, unconscious and dying--sure evidence to the allied world of
the work of the German submarine.

What had added interest to the story to those aboard the Seabird was
the fact that Big Jim had commanded that “Q”-boat, with Stewart as his
second in command.

“You were going to say something,” Davis reminded the latter, as a
clatter of dishes in the pantry broke the silence.

“Do you mind where we picked up that lifeboat, sir?” said the mate to
Big Jim.

Big Jim nodded.

“Where?” demanded Davis.

“Just about ten miles North of where we are now,” said Big Jim quietly.

“Oh, the swine!” exclaimed MacArthur. “They must have sunk old Johan on
top of his son.”

“It looks very like it,” Big Jim admitted.

He pushed away his cards, and continued in deference to their expectant
glances:

“It seems a perfectly extraordinary coincidence,” he said. “And
perfectly extraordinary that we, of all people, should tumble up against
it. I knew Old Johan, MacArthur, even better than you knew young Johnny.
But the most remarkable thing to me is those submarines being there as
well. Is that coincidence?”

“No, it’s not,” said Davis. “There’s none of it coincidence at all.
It’s far too extraordinary. Old Johan must have come here visiting the
spot where young Johnny was drowned, and those five submarines caught
and sank him. And I’ll bet my last dollar he sank them as well.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Possibly he and his crew were taken aboard as prisoners,
and they scuttled them out of revenge for young Johnny.”

“I believe you have struck it, by Jove!” burst out MacArthur. “Old Johan
thought the world of young Johnny, and so did the gang who usually
sailed with him. It’s just the sort of thing they would make up their
minds to do as soon as they saw they were going to be collared.”

“And what do you make o’ that boat-load o’ deid folk?” asked Stewart.

“That’s the strongest link of all,” maintained MacArthur, warming up to
his theory. “Those were the people who did not fancy drowning. So they
hid. And the Germans simply left them with a sinking ship and stove-in
boats, rather than waste time looking for them. It’s pretty convincing.
Don’t you think so?”

“I doubt there is more in it than that,” grunted Stewart.

“You could test it, sir, by raising one of those submarines,” Davis
suggested.

“Aye,” Big Jim agreed. “And I admit I’d like to get to the bottom of it.
But do you really think it worth while?”

“Rather,” answered Davis, without hesitation. “What a story, if it is
true.”

“We’ll see if the weather looks like holding tomorrow,” Big Jim
promised. “After all, the Warpindi’s our game, and we must get her up
while the calm lasts. Better not say anything to the hands about what
we think, or there will be precious little interest left for her....
Now, steward,” he continued, raising his voice, “you have heard all
we are going to say, so get the food on the table. If you let a word
get for’ard, it’s in another ship you will do your next trip. Quick’s
the word!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

The steward hastily brought in the dinner; the two engineers departed
to eat in their own quarters; and no more was said of Johan Coull and
his son--nor much of anything else, Big Jim seeming indisposed for
conversation, and MacArthur, usually the wit of the party, sombre
from thought of young Johnny Coull. But for once Stewart volunteered
a general remark at mealtime, and that about the heat: he had never
experienced such a spell of it in the North Sea before, he confessed
to Davis.

Because of it, and also because of the disturbed nature of his
thoughts, Davis could eat little; and the same causes kept him from
sleeping, when, at the close of the tedious meal, he could escape to
his berth. All the sleep-bringing tricks he could remember or devise he
tried; he flung the clothes from him; without either bringing peace to
his throbbing mind, or ease to his tortured frame. One after the other
he heard his companions turn in. Unable to endure the irritation of the
useless struggle any longer, he slipped down from his bunk and went out
on deck.

The deck plates were still warm to his feet, but the air was cooler.
He took long draughts of it into his lungs. The muscles of his
forearms thrilled gratefully to the wetness of the dew as it struck
through the thin cloth of his pajamas from the rail. Beneath him the
gig gently rubbed against the Seabird’s side. The sea lay still and
inviting, waveless in the slack of the tides. There were haze patches
showing faintly against the darkness of the further waters, but his
sailor’s eye could note no fog danger. Acting on the impulse, he
swarmed down the rope ladder to the gig, cast off, and gently pulled
astern.

The gig had been lowered and left in the water for the seams that the
heat had opened to close. There were several inches of leakage in her
bottom. When about a cable’s length from the Seabird he unshipped oars
and lay down in it, cool for the first time for days.

So at ease did he feel that he could have slept there, undisturbed
even by the faintest remembrance of the grim drama so lately troubling
his mind. But at regular intervals he raised his head to judge of his
position by the lights of the Seabird and her consorts. Each time he
might as well have lain in peace, for the gig hardly moved.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was from no sudden apprehension that he was drifting away, that he
rose with a start from the bottom of the boat and looked over the
side--not at the Seabird, in the other direction; a chill struck
through his body and soul that did not come from the water. His hair
rose stiff on his head; his flesh congealed and contracted all down
his backbone at the touch of some deep and primordial fear. Not a
hundred yards from him was a sight he had never beheld in the wildest
of his dreams--a ship rising without a sound out of the depths of the
sea.

A full rigged ship! Already her masts and yards were exposed to the
level of her main topmast crosstrees. Slowly she rose higher, her
upper topsail yards breaking above the surface--first the main, then
the fore, then the mizzen--she was rising in almost perfect trim; the
point of a high flying jib-boom appeared almost simultaneously with
the crossjack yard on her mizzen. Soon he could make out her poop and
forecastle. There she rode, motionless, her hull submerged, but the
lines of it clear to him. For from truck to keel, from counter to
cutwater, she glowed with a ghostly, white phosphorescence that
clothed every stay, every brace and halliard, and hung in long
streamers from every cap and end, and from every point of her dropped
in a fine, glittering shower into the sea.

[Illustration: “Not a hundred yards from him was a sight he had never
beheld in the wildest of his dreams--a ship rising without a sound out
of the depths of the sea.”]

A phantom ship! That was his vision. With the thought departed the
physical effects of his fear. He stirred, slid on to one of the
thwarts, shipped the oars, stroked into the direction of the Seabird,
then resolutely shut his eyes and rowed away.

He was under the Seabird’s stern when next he opened them and the
vision had disappeared. Gently he sculled to the rope ladder, and
with a thankful exclamation, made fast. He had been afraid--not of
that ship, for, after the first involuntary panic, it had been but a
warning symptom--but that the rest of his sanity would leave him
before he could make good his return. The severity of his illness had
at last dawned on him. Ships did not rise from the depths of the sea
unless to men faced with nervous breakdown. He had struggled with his
angry nerves too long, and now they were bent on their revenge.

He clambered aboard, hurried to Big Jim Martin’s berth, and roused him.

“I’d like you to look me over, sir,” he said. “I feel a bit queer. Just
seen the Flying Dutchman rise out of the sea.”

Big Jim was out of his bunk in an instant, and had caught him by the
shoulders.

“Stewart!” he called.

The old mate came in, was told the story, and without a remark fell-to
to help Big Jim. They stripped off the soaking pajamas, towelled Davis
vigorously, and got him into his bunk. They did not attempt to distract
him with useless remarks or questions. To them there was nothing strange
in his tale. They also regarded it as a warning symptom. Each in his
time had seen the Flying Dutchman come tearing up into the gale, and
knew the condition that evolved such a phenomenon. Their sole concern
was to aid the comrade whose state had called from the deep a still
greater phantasm. Deftly Big Jim took his temperature, felt his pulse,
quietly put questions. His relief was obvious as he gave the result of
his diagnosis.

“I was afraid of sunstroke at first, Davis,” he said. “But it’s not
that, thank goodness. It’s your nerves. I bargained on this trip
pulling you together a bit, but it is only making you worse. Back you
go tomorrow in one of the other ships, and for any sake stay away
from the yard for six months at the very least. Mix him up a drink,
MacArthur.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

The skipper had appeared while he was speaking, roused from his sleep
by the unwonted stirrings. Without a single curious query, he began the
drink mixing; and while he mixed, Davis repeated his tale.

In the midst of it he noticed Stewart, at a sign from Big Jim, follow
the latter out into the saloon. Thence came the sound of their voices
for a little while, then the sound of their departing footsteps. The
gig was tied up not far from his open porthole; he thought he heard
men getting into her and the splash of oars, and stopped talking to
MacArthur to raise his ear to the opening to listen. But he heard
nothing more, and thinking himself mistaken, he lay down again and
resumed the conversation. A few minutes later, however, he knew his
ears had not tricked him. The gig bumped against the ship’s side. The
rope ladder rattled as from men scaling it hastily. Quick footsteps
sounded across the deck plates and into the saloon, and he leaped
from his bunk as Big Jim and Stewart entered.

“Man! It’s a ship right enough,” the former exclaimed. “And what’s more,
it’s the Arctic Belle!”

“Old Johan Coull’s ship!” exclaimed MacArthur, his excitement almost
choking him. “What ‘private locker o’ Davy Jones’ is this we have
tumbled into?”

“Are you sure, sir?” Davis enquired incredulously.

“Quite sure, Davis,” Big Jim replied, now calmer than any of them. “The
dawn is coming up. We will be able to see her from the deck in half a
minute.”

He turned as he spoke, and they followed him out on deck, crowding
on each other’s heels. Along the eastern horizon a faint lightness
was beginning to appear. Against it, dim but unmistakable, hung the
silhouette of a ship.

With one accord they made for the gig, and closed with the stranger. The
stars had paled. There was a greater blackness on the face of the waters
than the night had imposed. Darkly she towered above them, a great
nebulous mass, rank with the tang of sea growths and dead fishes, only
the vague outline of her top-hamper shell to be discerned; for the
phosphorescence which had enabled Davis to see her so clearly had died,
save where it glowed faintly in patches of greatest blackness. Yet Big
Jim was certain as to whose ship she was, Stewart and MacArthur hardly
less certain. They lay on their oars in her loom and waited for morning,
awed, silent, afraid to approach her more closely in the darkness.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The shadows at last came scurrying over the sea. With the rush of
the summer dawning, the light of the morn broke above the horizon.
The strange craft lay revealed, a ship sunk to the level of poop and
forecastle, a monstrous, slimy thing from the bed of the sea. The
weed covered her; not an inch of her planking or cordage was
visible. It made a sponge of her hull, grew thick round her masts,
hung in huge masses from her lower spars, festooned every stay, and
interlaced between the yards as close as ever canvas filled them.

“That is why she phosphoresced so much, Davis,” whispered Big Jim.
“There can’t be so much wrong with your nerves, if they could stand
what she must have looked like last night.”

“Do you think it is the weed that has lifted her, sir?” MacArthur
inquired in a whisper.

“No. It’s that!... Do you see it, Stewart?”

Big Jim pointed to a rounded mass of weed, swelling a little above
the surface of the water between the mizzen and the mainmast. Stewart
nodded, but did not speak. Still in the same hushed tone that they
were all adopting unconsciously, Big Jim continued:

“That’s her hatch tarpaulin bellied out. She must be half full of some
kind of gas, and the hot weather has brought her up. One thing certain
now--she’s the Arctic Belle. Gad! I wonder what is behind it all.”

“First the submarines. Then Young Johnny Coull’s ship. Now Old Johan’s,”
MacArthur recapitulated. “And she’s at anchor, too. Do you notice, sir?
Whatever had he been doing here?”

“Aye,” growled Stewart.

“We’ll get a cradle under while this calm lasts, and try to find out.
Back to the Seabird. Quick,” Big Jim ordered. “The sun will crackle up
that tarpaulin once it gets overhead, and down she’ll go.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

MacArthur and Davis dashed the oars into the rowlocks and pulled
strongly away. Boats were setting out from the other vessels, the
growing light having discovered to their crews the presence of their
strange companion. But at Big Jim’s signal they closed on the gig, and
he issued his instructions. Ere the sun had well cleared the horizon,
the Arctic Belle was safe from any immediate danger of sinking.

The big steel buoyancy cylinders, brought for the Warpindi’s raising,
had been towed alongside and strapped together in pairs by hawsers
passing underneath her keel. Divers were on board, clearing the way to
lazarette and forepeak. There were to be placed the patent flexible air
envelopes, which, when expanded, would help to keep her afloat when her
hatches were opened. Soon they were in position and filling. Slowly she
lifted her bulwark out of the sea.

The waist of the Arctic Belle was filled to the level of her bulwarks
with a mass of weed and slime. Strong hose jets from the Seabird cleared
it. Freed of so weighty a burden her deck rose flush with the surface of
the sea--and continued to rise, slowly, almost imperceptibly.

“It’s but a wee hole that sank her, to let the water out again as slow
as that,” grunted old Stewart. “She will easy stand the hatches being
opened, sir. The pumps will soon suck her dry.”

The deduction was incontrovertible, and Big Jim at once led a working
party aboard, armed with axes and crowbars for the stoving in of the
hatches. Davis noticed that the men walked gingerly, casting nervous
glances about them. With the weed hanging rankly from the spars
overhead, it was more like entering a grotto raised temporarily from
the depths of the sea. And the smell of the sea bottom was stronger,
almost nauseating. But the odor of the gas that rushed through the
gaps made in the hatches was distinctive enough, and he looked quickly
around to see that none of the men were smoking.

“It’s acetylene, sir,” he exclaimed in surprise.

“Aye. She was lit and warmed throughout with it,” said Big Jim, “and
the sea has gradually eaten in among her carbide. Go and see how her
waterline is behaving.”

But the releasing of the gas seemed to have produced no effect on the
whaler’s buoyancy, and soon two powerful centrifugal pumps were sucking
at the water in her hold.

“She’s rising fast, sir,” reported Davis, leaving the bulwarks and
rejoining his chief.

“She must have been scuttled,” said Big Jim. “Served the same way as
that lifeboat. You know, Davis”--his glance roved over the ruin--“this
makes me sad--or savage; I am not sure which. There was not a finer
ship afloat. Nor a finer sailor,” he added in an undertone. “Somehow I
feel he is still aboard.... Let’s have a look into the saloon.”

They squelched aft towards the poop and climbed it by a ladder,
weed-filled to its rail top. With difficulty their sea boots dug for
foothold; their hands slipped on the slimy rails. On the poop itself
the weed was knee deep. At nearly every step things wriggled from
underneath their soles.

“She will never stand all this top-hamper when she lifts,” said Big Jim,
gazing doubtfully from the overgrown poop to the overgrown masts. “Hey,
MacArthur,” he called, “send the hands aloft to clear her upper rigging.
She will turn turtle if we’re not careful.”

He stopped to watch the carrying out of his order; but Davis waded on,
his curiosity too great to allow him to delay. He reached the saloon
entrance and passed within. Yet with one foot still lingering on the
threshold, he paused there, hesitating.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was a great place, broad, long, and high, unusually so; fit skipper’s
quarters for the great skipper who had lived there--probably died there!
But the under-manager’s hesitation sprang from another cause. Outside,
the weed had choked the broad decks, fouled the clean timbers, and made
grotesques of the stately masts and spars. Here there was no weed. A
fine mud overlay each object, making each line and surface more severely
straight and plain.

From without sounded the voices of the salvagers, the crash and thud of
the falling weed, the splash and gurgle of hold--human sounds. Slowly he
began his inspection, treading softly, as though in fear of disturbing
some silent sleeper.

But none such remained. The berths were empty, left just as their
former occupants had left them when they took their departure, some
to die perhaps in that scuttled lifeboat; or in one’s and two’s to
those five. In the under-manager’s heart a new wonder had eclipsed
the old wonder of those sunken submarines. Big Jim came in, followed
by Stewart and MacArthur. Silently he waited for them to make the
discovery that he had made.

They came from the berths and joined him, MacArthur last, hardest to
convince of the three.

“D’ye ever see anything like it!” he exclaimed in an incredulous
amazement. “He has had a harem aboard with him.”

It was true. Six of the berths had contained women--girls, rather;
girls who had worn the fine dresses that Davis had seen hanging in the
cupboards, and the shapely boots and shoes littered about the floors.
And on a whaler, bound for the Greenland Seas!

“There was a woman in that lifeboat,” said Stewart. “The kind that would
have worn these bits of things in there.”

He left them at once, and passed out of sight into an alleyway that led
from the forward end of the saloon.

“We said nothing about it for the sake of old Johan,” Big Jim explained.

“A straighter man never sailed the seas,” murmured MacArthur. “There is
a lot more in this than we can see at present.”

“It’s not a whaler, this, at all,” grunted Stewart abruptly, reappearing
in the saloon. “Come here.”

They followed him through the alleyway and down a companion that
descended to the ’tween decks, and thence straight on, apparently,
to the depths of the ship. But it was onto the ’tween decks he led
them, through a doorway that opened from the companion. They saw the
great space of the upper main hold stretching before them, still
flooded knee-deep, still reeking with the odor of acetylene and
fouler gases, but little at first of what it contained, for the only
light that lit the place was that streaming scantily through the
breach in the hatches, whence the glinting pump pipes descended deep
down into the lower hold. And what they did see, they could scarcely
bring themselves to believe.

“It’s surely never a court?” whispered Davis at last.

“That’s what I was thinking myself,” grunted the old mate, not nearly so
impressed as the others.

“It is,” said Big Jim soberly.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Against the further wall of the ship was a judge’s bench; on one side of
it, a juryman’s enclosure, a prisoner’s dock on the other. Benches and
desks, whose purpose was not so readily discernible, stood in between.
But the general scheme was clear. Someone had planned to sit in judgment
here. Who? And on whom?... And to what end?

“If they caught him trying this game,” Big Jim muttered, “it is easy to
understand that scuttled lifeboat.”

He plunged boldly through the water in the direction of a door in
the forward bulkhead, immediately in front of which point the dock
had been set. He moved so quickly that the others could not overtake
him. But he stopped of his own accord at the sound of a heavy crash
on deck, a crash that was immediately followed by a chorus of shouts
and cries from the crew.

“For the love of Mike, come on deck, sir,” a man called out, poking his
head hastily through the breach in the hatches.

“Gad! I hope no one has fallen,” exclaimed Big Jim, turning immediately
and splashing toward the companion.

But no one had fallen. The crash had come from a heavy mass of weed
that had slithered down from the mainmast, clearing the lower yards as
it fell. Beneath the main yard were grouped the crew, unhurt, staring
up at something that swung above their heads; something still enmeshed
and held together by the weed--the skeleton of a man; a man who had
been hanged by the neck.

Stewart and MacArthur hurried forward. Davis started to follow, but
seeing Big Jim lift an ax and dart below again, he turned and raced
after him.

“Do you think it is Old Johan they have hung there?” he enquired,
excitedly, catching up with him at the beginning of the ’tween decks.

“No, Davis,” he answered gravely. “It is someone who came out of this
door to stand his trial here.... Stand clear.”

With a swing of the massive shoulders the ax came up and round and
down. The whole bulkhead trembled and groaned beneath the blow: the
door gave almost the width of its frame. They found themselves
sprawling on the floor of the forehold, a place darker than the one
whence they had stumbled. But not dark enough! Davis felt Big Jim
grab him and drag him outside--out and away from that silent company
into which they had intruded: men waiting to stand their trial like
that other, thirty or forty of them, drowned in their chains.

“Young Johnny’s death must have made him mad,” said Big Jim, solemnly.
“A kindlier man never sailed. Go and tell MacArthur to see the hands off
the ship. They musn’t get to know. Get all gear back to the Seabird, and
tow those cylinders clear.”

“And the pumps?”

“Leave them. We must find out what happened.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Davis went on his mission. When he returned Big Jim had descended the
companion again, and stood leaning against the side, gazing pensively
down at the receding water.

“He is down here,” he said, and Davis did not venture to question him.

Quickly the pumps sucked the water away, and they heard the sound of the
leak bursting in. Stewart and MacArthur had joined them by then--Davis
had told them. Stewart came direct, but MacArthur from a stealthy visit
to that door in the forward bulkhead.

“My God!” he whispered to Davis, shaking his head expressively.

They had brought flash lamps with them. Big Jim took one and pushed on.

[Illustration: “‘There he is,’ he said, suddenly, stopping and holding
the lamp steady.”]

“There he is,” he said, suddenly, stopping and holding the lamp steady.

A pace or two away was the end of the alleyway. Against a storeroom
door, in the act of breaking it down, leaned a huge man.

“It’s Johan,” murmured Stewart.

Davis drew back, awed. But Big Jim gently took the body in his arms and
set it upright away from the door. With his own strength he completed
what the dead man had almost done. They looked within. In the light of
the lamps three white spouts of water showed gushing from the vessel’s
side. A large auger stuck out from a fourth uncompleted. But another
sight it was that held their gaze.

In the far corner stood a dead German sailor and a dead girl, locked in
each other’s arms....

“He was probably an old sweetheart. And she set him free. And he
scuppered the lifeboats--the pumps also, very likely, and by night. Then
the two went down there to sink the ship and to die together--Old Johan
followed them--too late!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Big Jim was speaking. They were up on deck raising the pumps out of the
hold, quite unaided by any of the men.

“Women are wonderful,” he continued, speaking almost to himself.
“The best and the worst. And the worst more wonderful than the best.
That girl down there--a decoy--God knows what--.” He checked himself
abruptly. “Stove in that forward hatch, Stewart,” he ordered. “We’ll
just let her go down.”

... Davis stole aft and closed the saloon doors!


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the January 1922 issue of
Wayside Tales magazine.]

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78563 ***