Sonnie-Boy's People Part 30

The first likely place we came to we hauled to and shifted Red d.i.c.k's cargo to the _Svend Foyn_. By this time, with the ambergris back and five thousand extra sealskins below, all hands were willing to take a moderate chance on almost anything. We swung away for the straits, but not making great headway. The little old _Svend Foyn_ was never any wonder for steaming. At her best she could do perhaps ten miles an hour.

Now, with all her battle-ship topgear and with the wind ahead, she was doing perhaps six.

It began to breeze up, but nothing for us to worry over until we saw a steamer's smoke coming up astern. We were then clear of the coast islands and into the straits, with wind and sea fighting each other.

I had another good look at the steamer coming up astern, and took my prize crew off Red d.i.c.k's whaler and turned her adrift. I hated to. Not alone the prize money, but to see a good ship go to loss any time is bad. I did it in hopes that the cargo steamer coming upon us would stop to get her, and while they were getting her--what with the gale and the dark coming--we would be able to slip away. But they didn't stop.

Perhaps the little whaler was too close in to the cliffs for the big steamer to have a chance in the tide that was running. They let her pile up against the cliffs, and came on and ranged up abreast of us. Red d.i.c.k was on her bridge. She came so close to us that I could almost have jumped aboard. It was blowing pretty hard at the time, but she was making easy weather of it--a good sea-boat. We weren't. The williwaws, which are what they call the hard squalls off the high hills down there, were having a great time with out battle-ship topsides. She was something of a roller on her own account at any time, the _Svend Foyn_, but now she rolled her wooden turrets under and every once in a while her bridge.

Red d.i.c.k leaned over the bridge rail and laughed. He looked the _Svend Foyn's_ top gear over and laughed again. "Blank sh.e.l.ls and wooden guns!"

he called out. "Fine! Any more left?"

"Oh," I said, "not all blanks and not all wooden, and a few left--yes."

"So?" he says, and gives an order. A man pulls a tarpaulin off a long needle-gun amidships. "Got anything like that in your battery?" he calls out.

I looked it over as if I was interested. At the same time I made a sign to my mate behind me. I'd long before this loaded my two whaling bomb-lance guns, but this time I put in them the lances, which were of steel, weighed eighty pounds, and were four and a half feet long--not a bad little projectile at all.

"What's it for?" I called out, pointing to his needle-gun.

"What's it for?" he mimics. "What d'y' think it's for?"

I shake my head. "I could never guess."

"Well, you will soon. You know me?"

"I do. And you know me?"

"I know you, and I'll take no chances with you. I'm going to heave you a line and take you in tow."

"I don't remember flying any signals for a tow."

"No? Well, I think you'd be better off for a tow. Take my line."

"We don't want your line."

"Take my line or I'll blow a few holes in you, and while you're on your way to the bottom of the straits--all hands of you--I'll ram you to make sure."

"You're foolish to sink us," I says, "till you take off the ambergris and the sealskins."

He began to get mad. "Take my line or take a sh.e.l.l from this gun. Which is it?" he yells.

His gun was trained on our midship topsides. I couldn't see where he was going to sink us, leastwise not with one shot, so, "Come aboard with your sh.e.l.l!" I called out, and he did. I didn't look to see what damage the sh.e.l.l did in pa.s.sing, but it went clear through our pine topsides one side and out the other.

I'd already pa.s.sed the word to my mate, and wh-r-oo! went the four-and-a-half-foot bomb-lance from the inside of one of our make-believe seven-inch rifles. The lance tore through just above the water-line of Red d.i.c.k's steamer. The bomb exploded inside her hull.

Through the hold the sea rushed, and from her deck below came whoops of surprise.

I rolled the little fat _Svend Foyn_ around. She near capsized in turning, especially as Red d.i.c.k let me have two more from his needle-gun while we were coming around. One of them burst inside, but didn't kill anybody. Around came the _Svend Foyn_.

"Her water-line!" I yelled, and we let her have it. And again we gave it to her. They both went home.

Red d.i.c.k quit laughing. He ran down from the bridge and out of sight below. Pretty soon, through her sides, as we hear him and his gang yelling, came the ends of blankets and mattresses, to keep the sea out of the holes we'd made.

And while they are at that we give them another. And that settled it.

Five minutes before, I had an idea we might have to go to the bottom--s-sst! like that. And now Red d.i.c.k and his cargo steamer were belting through the tide rips toward the Terra del Fuego sh.o.r.e, to find a bay, I suppose, and a bit of a beach to haul up and patch things. And I couldn't help thinking as he went that he'd lost a desperate reputation about as easy as any ever I heard of; but I might as well also say now that I'd been shipmates with Red d.i.c.k, and I always did believe he was a good deal of a bluff. But my crew didn't think that.

There was great rejoicing among them, and I let them rejoice so long as they didn't stop setting things to rights.

We were shook up some--our bridge loosened up, our wireless hoops hanging droopy, our two fake smoke-stacks lying over on their sides, and the for'ard turret with some dents in it; but bow first, and in peace and quiet, we steamed on. And we were still steaming in peace and quiet when we made Punta Arenas.

And, steaming in, I thought I might as well do it in style. Here we were, a victorious battle-ship entering a foreign port, and so I hoisted our international code--spelling it out that we were the _Cape Horn_ of the Terra del Fuegan navy, and asking permission to anchor. The captain of the American battle-ship was standing on his bridge as we steamed down the line, with a man in our chains heaving the lead, my mate on the fore-bridge and myself on the after-bridge, a quartermaster to the wheel, and the second mate spying, busy as could be, through a long gla.s.s; and not alone the captain, but the nine hundred and odd officers and men of the American battle-ship roared in review of us. The other ships in port didn't know what to make of it no way.

We came around and dropped our young anchor, splash! and saluted the port--twenty-one guns from our bomb-lance things.

Our lieutenant of the hunting party seemed to be officer of the deck on the real battle-ship. "How'd you come out?" he hails.

"We met the enemy and their loot is ours," I answers.

"Captain Fenton presents his compliments and would like to have you come aboard," he hails.

And I went aboard, sitting in the stern-sheets of my second boat, with the red, green, and purple flag trailing astern and eight men to the oars. And they gave me two bosun's pipes with four side-boys and two long ruffles from the drums as I came over the side, and in the captain's cabin I told him what the officers of the hunting party couldn't tell him already. And he thought it the best story he'd heard in a long time.

I thought it was a pretty good story myself, and told it again to Mr.

Amundsen on the same long pier where I had first met him with Hilda, and he said the blood of the old vikings must be in my veins, and uncorked four solid hours of the old sagas, finishing up in the big front room with fiat bread and goats' cheese and dried ptarmigan chips and Trondhjem beer.

By and by I got a chance to tell it to Hilda--that and a little more while I was telling it. The band, a fine band, too, was playing their Sunday-night concert out in the plaza. I remember how the music made pictures in my brain while I talked, though I never could remember what they played.

However, that's no matter. Hilda says I told the story right that night.

And I've told it many a time since--to her and the children when I'm home from sea. They are good children, who believe everything that is told them--even the sagas of their grandfather.

THE LAST Pa.s.sENGER

Meade was having his coffee in the smoking-room. Major Crupp came in and took a seat beside him.

A watchful steward hurried over. "Coffee, sir?"

"Please."

"Cigarette, Major?" asked Meade.

"I will--thanks."

Lavis came in. Both men pa.s.sed the greetings of the evening with him, and then Meade, at least, forgot that he existed. Only interesting people were of value to Meade, and he had early in the pa.s.sage appraised Lavis--one of those negligible persons whose habit was to hover near some group of notables and look at them or listen to them, and, if encouraged, join in the conversation, or, if invited, take a hand in a game of cards.

"Seen Cadogan since dinner, Major?" asked Meade.

"He's patrolling the deck right now."