The Ghost Ship: A Mystery of the Sea. John C. Hutcheson

at his expense, while the others grew serious in a moment; and as for Atkins, his whilom grinning face seemed now to be carved out of some species of wood of a particularly hard and fibrous nature.

      “Now, don’t get angry, Stokes, old fellow,” cried the skipper shoving out his fist and gripping that of the chief in the very nick of time, for the vessel gave a lurch just then and, still “standing on his dignity,” as the poor old chap was, without holding on to anything, he would have been precipitated over the rail to the deck below, but for the skipper’s friendly aid. “Don’t be angry with me, old chum. I’m sorry I laughed; but you and I have been shipmates too long together for us to fall out now. Why, what the devil has got over you, Stokes? You’ve never been so huffy since I first sailed with you, and I should have thought you one of the last in the world to take offence at a little bit of harmless chaff.”

      “Well, well, Cap’en Applegarth, let it bide, let it bide,” replied the old chief, coming round at once, his rage calming down as quickly as it had risen. “I don’t mind your laughing at me if you have a mind too. I daresay it all seemed very funny to you, my being anxious about my engines, but I’m hanged if I can see the fun myself.”

      “But it was funny, Stokes; deuced funny, I tell you, ‘ho-ho-ho!’ ” rejoined the skipper, bursting out into a regular roar again at the recollection of the scene, his jolly laugh causing even the cause of it to smile against his will. “However, there’s an end of it, gudgeon pin and all. Now, about that stoke-hold of yours. It’s flooded, you say?”

      “Aye; there’s eighteen inches of water there now, right up to the footplates,” said the engineer with a grave air. “The bilge-pumps won’t act, and all my staff of stokers are so busy keeping up the steam that I can’t spare a man to see to clearing out the suctions, though if the water rises any higher, it will soon be up to the furnace bars and put out the fires.”

      “Humph, that’s serious,” answered the skipper meditatively. “I’ll see what I can do to help you. I say, Fosset?”

      “Aye, aye, sir! Want me?”

      “Yes,” replied the skipper. “Mr. Stokes is shorthanded below and says the bilge-pumps are choked. Can you spare him a man or two to help clear the suctions? I daresay there’s a lot of stray dunnage washing about under the stoke-hold plates. You might go down and bear a hand yourself, as I won’t leave the bridge.”

      “Certainly, sir; I’ll go at once with Mr. Stokes and take some of the starboard watch with me. It’s close on seven bells and they’d soon have to turn out, anyway, to relieve the men now on deck.”

      “That’ll do very well, Fosset,” said the skipper, and, raising his voice, he shouted over the rail forwards—

      “Bosun, call the watch!”

      Bill Masters, who had been waiting handy on the deck amidships, immediately below the bridge, expecting some such order with the need, as he thought, of the skipper reducing sail, at once stuck his shrill boatswain’s pipe to his lips and gave the customary call: Whee-ee-oo-oo—whee-ee-ee.

      “Starboard watch, ahoy!”

      The men came tumbling out of the fo’c’s’le at the sound of the whistle and the old seadog’s stentorian hail; whereupon the first mate, selecting six of the lot to accompany him, he followed Mr. Stokes towards the engine-room hatchway.

      Before disappearing below, however, the engineer made a last appeal to the skipper.

      “I say, cap’en,” he sang out, stopping half-way as he toddled aft, somewhat disconsolately in spite of the assistance given him, “now won’t you ease down, sir, just to oblige me? The engines won’t stand it, sir; and it’s my duty to tell you so, sir.”

      “All right, Stokes; you’ve told me, and may consider that you’ve done your duty in doing so,” replied the skipper, grimly laconic. “But I’m not going to ease down till seven bells, my hearty, unless we run across Dick Haldane’s ship before, when we’ll go as slow as you like and bear up again on our course to the westwards.”

      “Very good, sir,” answered the old chief as he lifted his podgy legs over the coaming of the hatchway, prior to burying himself in the cimmerian darkness of the opening, wherein Mr. Fosset and his men had already vanished.

      “I’ll make things all snug below, sir, and bank the fires as soon as you give the signal.”

      With that, he, too, was lost to sight.

      The skipper, I could see, was not very easy in his mind when left alone; for he paced jerkily to and fro between the wheel-house and the weather end of the bridge as well as he was able, the vessel being very unsteady, rolling about among the big rollers like a huge grampus and pitching almost bows under water sometimes, though the old barquey was buoyant enough, notwithstanding the lot of deadweight she carried in her bowels, rising up after each plunge as frisky as a cork, when she would shake herself with a movement that made her tremble all over, as if to get rid of the loose spray and spindrift that hung on to her shining black head, and which the wind swept before it like flecks of snow into the rigging, spattering and spattering against the almost red-hot funnels up which the steam blast was rushing mingled with the flare of the funnels below.

      After continuing his restless walk for a minute or two, the skipper stopped by the binnacle, looking at the compass card, which moved about as restlessly as the old barquey and himself, oscillating in every direction.

      “We ought to have come up with her by now, Haldane,” he said, addressing me, as I stood with Spokeshave on the other side of the wheel-house. “Don’t you think so from the course she was going when you sighted her?”

      “Yes, sir,” I answered, “if she hasn’t gone down!”

      “I hope not, my boy,” said he; “but I’m very much afraid she has, or else we’ve passed ahead of her.”

      “That’s not likely, sir,” I replied. “She looked as if crossing our track when I last saw her; and, though we were going slower then, we must be gaining on her now, I should think.”

      “We ought to be,” said he. “We must be going seventeen knots at the least with wind and steam.”

      “Aye, aye, sir, all that,” corroborated old Masters, the boatswain, who had come up on the bridge unnoticed. “Beg pardon, sir, but we can’t carry on much longer with all that sail forrad. The fore-topmast is a-complainin’ like anythink, I can tell ye, sir. Chirvell, the carpenter, and me’s examinin’ it and we thinks it’s got sprung at the cap, sir.”

      “If that’s the case, my man,” said Captain Applegarth to this, “we’d better take in sail at once. It’s a pity, too, with such a fine wind. I was just going to spare the engines and ease down for a bit, trusting to our sails alone, but if there’s any risk of the spars going, as you say, wrong, we must reduce our canvas instead.”

      “There’s no help for it, sir,” returned the boatswain quickly. “Either one or t’other must go! Shall I pass the word, sir, to take in sail?”

      “Aye, take in the rags!”

      “Fo’c’s’le, ahoy there!” yelled Masters instantly, taking advantage of the long-desired permission. “All hands take in sail!”

      We had hauled the trysails and other fore and aft canvas, which was comparatively useless to a steamer when running before the wind at the time we had altered course towards the south, in quest of the ship in distress, the Star of the North speeding along with only her fore-topsail and fore-topgallantsail set in addition to her fore-topmast staysail and mizzen staysail and jib.

      The gale, however, had increased so much, the wind freshening as it shifted more and more to the north that this sail was too much for her, the canvas bellying out, and the upper spars “buckling” as the vessel laboured in the heavy sea, the stays taut as fiddle-strings and everything at the utmost tension.

      The skipper perceived