The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest Part 24

"Where?" cried Harry.

"About two points to the starboard--change your course a bit, Frank, and we'll be bearing directly up for it."

Frank gave the wheel a slight twist and the Golden Eagle obediently swerved off to the right.

"What was it you saw?" asked Frank.

"A ship, though whether it is the one we are after is doubtful," was Ben's reply. "I reckon there are enough ships drifting about in this tangle to stock up a dockyard."

It was not long before all doubt on this point was resolved. The object Ben had sighted was indeed a ship.

As the Golden Eagle soared nearer they perceived that the vessel was a small steamer--a craft of perhaps 2,000 tons, painted black with a yellow funnel. Except that no smoke curled upward from her stack and there was not a sign of life about her, she looked as if she might have just set out on a voyage. From her mainmast a flag hung, wrapped about the spar in the breathless atmosphere.

"I'm going to drop," announced Frank.

Instantly the Golden Eagle's steady, forward motion ceased and she began to descend with a rapidity that would have taken the breath away from less experienced aviators than her occupants.

It was like going down in a rapidly falling elevator.

She struck the water with a gentle gliding impact that hardly did more than ripple the surface, and a cheer broke from the boys as they perceived how perfectly the new pontoons worked.

"As easy as lighting on a feather-bed," was the way Harry put it.

The spot where they had settled was some little distance from the steamer, so, at a pace which would not raise the aeroplane from the water, Frank steered her toward the derelict.

Viewed even in the cheerful sunlight she was a melancholy object.

Although at a distance it was not perceptible that she was an abandoned craft, a near view showed that it must have been some time, perhaps even a period of years, since she had been trapped in the Sarga.s.so.

As she rose and fell in the gentle, heaving swell, the boys could see that long green weeds grew on her sides where the water laved them and her paint was blistered and flaked off in great patches, showing the rusty red of her iron plates beneath.

In the presence of this mystery of the ocean the boys grew silent as Frank maneuvered the Golden Eagle alongside and stopped the clattering motor.

The silence was profound.

Except for the occasional creak of a block as the derelict slowly swung to and fro it was as still as noonday in the desert. Even the usually light-hearted Harry was awe-stricken in the presence of the silent derelict.

Ben was the first to break the stillness.

"I'm going aboard," he announced, singling out with his eye a dangling rope which depended from a davit.

"Look, boys," he went on; "perhaps the poor fellows got away. See, the boats are gone."

"Let's hope they did," replied Frank, making fast the Golden Eagle to another of the dangling "falls," and preparing to follow Ben's example and clamber aboard.

Soon the boys stood on the main deck of the abandoned steamer, whose name they now saw was Durham Castle.

"She was a Britisher," declared Ben.

As he spoke there was a mighty noise like that of rushing water from the forecastle and the boys started back in affright. And well they might, for on the heels of the noise came a perfect torrent of rats.

Gray rats, brown rats, young rats, old rats, thin rats, fat rats. They dashed directly at the boys, seeming mad with terror, or rendered ferocious from thirst or other causes.

Their little beady black eyes gleamed wickedly and their sharp yellow teeth were exposed.

The boys ran and Ben leaped into the main shrouds by which they had been standing, but the forerunners of this avalanche of crazed creatures was upon them. The rodents with squeaks and cries swarmed after the human beings as if they meant to devour them by sheer force of numbers.

"Shoot--shoot," shouted Ben, as he dashed from his waist a big brown rat that left the imprint of its teeth in his hand as he struck at it.

Frenziedly the boys emptied their magazine revolvers at the ma.s.s of swarming creatures and they fell dead in heaps at their feet. But still the onrush came and the lads shuddered with repulsion as they felt the tiny claws of the rodents fixed in their trousers as the creatures tried to swarm up them.

They seemed to have a leader. An immense gray fellow almost as big as a rabbit. A sudden idea came into Frank's head, he did not know at the time whether he had been told it, or read of it somewhere, but it seemed to him if he could kill that old gray leader the rest might take fright.

Hastily he fired, almost blowing the creature's head off, so close was it to him.

As the others saw their leader killed they hesitated, and Ben and Harry took advantage of the pause to empty a fresh magazine full of bullets into the closely packed ma.s.s.

It was the turning point.

With shrill squeaks and cries the rats turned and dashed for the other rail. As they reached it they swarmed over it madly, unheeding of the water beneath. In whole battalions they plunged into the sea, most of them sinking immediately; but some of them swimming about in circles with piteous cries. The sea was discolored with their swarming heads for some distance about the ship.

Suddenly there shot up from the seaweed a long fleshy arm covered with what seemed to be huge excrescences. It curved like a serpent and swept deftly within its grasp dozens of the struggling rodents. Other arms appeared waving and seizing on the rats as they swam desperately about.

The boys knew that the arms were the tendons of giant devil-fish that had scented from afar the feast of rats.

They shuddered as they thought of the fate of human beings who should be cast adrift in such waters. In a short time not a rat remained on the water and the arms too subsided and sank.

White and shaky from the creepiness of the scene they had just witnessed the boys turned to Ben. The old mariner was mopping the sweat off his brow with a huge, red bandanna handkerchief.

"Wall, boys, if that's one of the sights of the Sarga.s.so," he said, "I'd prefer Africa or even the Everglades--oof."

"How could such myriads of rats exist aboard a ship?" asked Frank.

"Easy enough, boy. This ship was a sugar ship bound from New Orleans to England with raw sugar for refining I take it.--See the remains of the sugar bags scattered about where the rats dragged 'em?"

The boys nodded.

"Well, rats swarm aboard such ships if they are not kept down, and I suppose that when this craft drifted in here to the Sarga.s.so, and her crew deserted her, that the rats just naturally multiplied till they ate the holds clean of sugar and gnawed into the water tanks. Then we come along and they figures on making a meal out of us. They're queer things are ship rats, look how they ran when their leader was killed,"

went on the old sailor. "No sailor would go to sea on a ship that hasn't got any aboard though."

"Why is that?" asked Frank.

"Well, it's the old saying, 'rats leave a sinking ship,' you know,"

rejoined Ben.

"Let's explore the ship," said Frank, "that is, if there are no more rats about. Thank goodness, there is no chance of our meeting any devil-fish aboard here."

"No, that's one good thing," put in Harry. "Ugh!--did you ever see such horrid looking things as those waving arms?"

Peeping down into the deserted engine-room, where the machinery was rusting and rotting from long neglect, the boys made their way aft to what had evidently been the quarters of the vessel's captain.