The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

the speed. They shared the same wind, they might have been built from the same design. Their footage of canvas seemed equal. With the brilliant tropic moonlight nights ahead it wasn’t going to be such a simple matter for them to part company as it might seem to a layman. Of course there was always luck at sea. Jim realized that. He had seen wind in the equatorial doldrums fail for weeks at a time; or a squall thrash the sea in one area while a ship a mile away might lie becalmed. But in the present case both had engines. One must be faster than the other. Dark nights would help and they could count on them with the waning moon. Or a storm. But there was no use bothering about such matters until after Suva.

      Newton, by his indiscretions, had accomplished one thing. Without doubt the chap with the pointed beard, Swenson’s mate possibly, had pumped him dry, and such information would take in the personnel of the Seamew and the principal fact that they had plenty of arms aboard. Swenson would weigh the chances of forcible boarding and seizure, Jim was certain. The man was an unprincipled pirate. Without doubt he had already weighed them and decided that it was not worth while. So, for the time being, it resolved itself into a race to Suva.

      And they raced every foot of the way, with both crews on the jump to make the constant changes called for, swaying up, hauling in, changing headsails. Jim took only catnaps. Baker was a good man but slow, content to move after he saw that he was being overhauled, lacking initiative, lacking the instinct that Lyman owned for getting the best out of the Seamew. For three days and three nights the schooners were never more than a sea mile apart. Both sailed wing-and-wing with booms stayed out. Jim rigged a squaresail on his foremast to offset a big ballooner spread by Swenson. For the seventy-two hours they never split tacks. Five times during the night the Seamew swung off on a new course, showing no lights, the Shark, only a dark shadow flitting over the seas, sometimes to windward, sometimes to leeward, never ahead, hanging on like a hound on scent. Five times the lookout on the Shark saw the maneuver and the Shark followed suit with gleam of the waning moon turning her sails to glints of mother-of-pearl.

      The log of the Seamew registered seven hundred and twenty-four miles of sailing. Over a fourth of their distance between Honolulu and Suva. Then the wind grew fitful, the weather, hazy. There were gaps when the breeze seemed to have died altogether, leaving bald spots on the sea. The schooner would come slashing along at ten knots, eleven perhaps, and slide into the becalmed area like a skater suddenly striking soft slush, all speed snatched away instantly. Or a rain squall swept down enveloping her in a downpour that vanished as suddenly as it had come, leaving her with canvas taut, stays and halyards tight as fiddle strings. Meeting with these was purely a question of chance, and luck seemed with the Seamew. On the evening of the fourth day she had gained a full sea league on the Shark and the sun sank in a mist that veiled the already risen moon.

      “If we get wind,” said Jim, “we’ll dodge her before this clears. If there’s no wind we’ll start the engine. Sanders has been bothering me to do it all day, but it hasn’t seemed worth while. I look for uncertain weather from now on. The closer we get to the line at this time of year, when the southeast trade fights the northeast, the less likelihood there is of any wind to speak of. Ships have knocked about for weeks trying to cross the equatorial belt. We’ll plug along at eight knots and trust in the engine. What wind we do strike is likely to come from any quarter. It’s a toss-up for both of us.”

      The sun went down crimson; the moon appeared like a fire-balloon without reflecting power; the Shark was swallowed up in the dusk. Sanders, with his engine oiled up and overhauled, turned it over and the screw revoked steadily, the schooner pulsing to the drive of the shaft. Jim changed his course to five points more easting. Sanders’ confidence in his “power” proved to be well founded. With Walker spelling him, the pistons never missed a stroke. Dawn came clear with an empty horizon. Jim went to his main spreaders with a glass to make certain, and came down exultant. They might meet the Shark at Suva but it had been demonstrated once that they could lose Swenson and it could be done again.

      It was almost unbearably hot, with the glassy sea and the sky like a bowl of metal reflecting the heat of the fiery, intolerable sphere of the sun. The Seamew reeked of hot oil. The slightest movement brought on a flood of perspiration. Conversation languished; effort died. The sailors had little to do and kept the decks wetted down. This prevented the putty crumbling in the seams and cooled the cabin a trifle. All unnecessary raiment was discarded. Kitty and Lynda kept to their staterooms most of the time. There was a slight general revival at nightfall. Plans for practicing with the weapons faltered, were put off. No fish broke the surface; no far-wandering seabird showed against the fleckless sky. It was a painted ocean that they crossed, but the schooner, thanks to gasoline, was not an idle, painted ship. The engine seemed to pant and labor, but the screw kept turning, every revolution lessening the period of discomfort through which they must pass.

      They crossed the line at the hundred-and-seventy-first meridian. Jim Lyman announced the fact without provoking any especial interest or enthusiasm. There was no suggestion of any initiation of crossing the line. All animal spirits were at a low ebb. Even Cheng’s monkey was content to hunt the shade. The sea divided at the bows in oily ripples. Some sharks made their appearance, their dorsals streaking the surface and their bodies visible as they sculled themselves along keeping pace with the schooner. Just before sunset a filmy speck showed on the eastern horizon. The Shark had picked them up again. But it had vanished by morning.

      Still under power, the gasoline getting low in the tank, they passed to the eastward of the Phoenix Group, barely sighting Phoenix and Sydney Islands. The south equatorial current gave them westing and a clear run lay ahead past Samoa down to the Goro Sea and Fiji. Two hundred and fifty miles south of the line they ran into the southeast trades, a steady river of wind flowing just aft the beam and speeding them along mile after mile at top speed. Every one revived. Sanders and Walker turned idlers for a well earned lest. The rifles were got out and the automatic pistols; targets were rigged at the rail or floating alongside as their marksmanship improved. Sanders proved easily the best marksman among them, excepting Cheng, who only shot once but displayed an accuracy with an automatic that was uncanny. Three shots running pierced the bull of a stationary target, four others hit and smashed three floating bottles as they rushed past the swiftly moving boat, bobbing in the run. Kitty Whiting made good progress; Lyman showed himself a fair shot with a rifle, and a better with the pistol. Newton about equaled his performances. Lynda Warner predeclared her inability to fire without closing both eyes at once or to hit anything smaller than a barn door—and lived up to it. Moore shot well but erratically; the others gained familiarity with their weapons, if nothing more. It was not an ideal shooting gallery, a slanting deck on a plunging ship where even the fixed targets pitched unexpectedly and the floaters raced away at a baffling rate. Finally they devised a can painted white and towed.

      Li Cheng appeared as a treasure of the first magnitude. Through the intensest heat he suffered least, despite his handicap of working in the galley, and he managed to devise meals that coaxed the most languid of appetites. He was a prime favorite with the men, always jovial, taking their fun in good part, coming back with quaint quips in his pidgin English, winning, not merely their respect, but their confidence. The only two who did not get along with Cheng were Walker and Wiltz. Sanders had little to do with him.

      “’E’s a Chink,” said Walker. “I’m palling with no bloody heathen Chinee.” Wiltz’s complaint was also largely racial.

      “He’s a yellow man and he’s treacherous. They are a nation of pirates. He’s a good cook and that lets him out.” There was no open hostility between steward and cook, which was just as well. Cheng smiled on Wiltz as on the rest and showed no offense at the steward’s attitude of tolerance. But he undoubtedly was responsible for the attitude of the crew. The three Norsemen had been apt to hang aloof, stolid if efficient. Now all hands went about as if they shared a perpetual joke that never lost its zest and they worked with a will.

      “They’re too good to be true,” said Baker, the mate. “But Cheng is a wonder.”

      Three days out of Suva, Wiltz sent for Lyman, who found him groaning in his bunk with complaint of dysentery.

      “It’s that yellow cook,” he said, his face shining with sweat on a pallid skin. “He’s poisoned me. I know it. Oh, my God!” He writhed with sudden cramps.