The Disentanglers Part 36

The hours of daylight on the first day of the return voyage pa.s.sed peacefully at deck-cricket, as far as Logan, Bude, and such of the officers and men as could be spared were concerned. At last night came 'at one stride,' and the vast ocean plain was only illuminated by the pale claritude that falls from the stars. Logan and Bude (they had not dressed for dinner, but wore yachting suits) were smoking on deck, when, quite suddenly, a loud, almost musical, roar or hum was heard from the direction of the distant island.

'What's that?' asked Logan, leaping up and looking towards Cagayan Sulu.

'The Berbalangs,' said Bude coolly. 'You are wearing the ring I gave you?'

'Yes, always do,' said Logan, looking at his hand.

'All the men have their pearls; I saw to that,' said Bude.

'Why, the noise is dwindling,' said Logan. 'That is odd; it seemed to be coming this way.'

'So it is,' said Bude; 'the nearer they approach the less you hear them.

When they have come on board you won't hear them at all.'

Logan stared, but asked no more questions.

The musical boom as it approached had died to a whisper, and then had fallen into perfect silence. At the very moment when the mysterious sound ceased, a swarm of things like red fire-flies, a host of floating specks of ruby light, invaded the deck in a cl.u.s.ter. The red points then scattered, approached each man on board, and paused when within a yard of his head or breast. Then they vanished. A queer kind of chill ran down Logan's spine; then the faint whispered musical moan tingled in each man's ears, and the sounds as they departed eastwards gathered volume and force till, in a moment, there fell perfect stillness.

Stillness, broken only by a sudden and mysterious chorus of animal cries from the _George Washington_. A kind of wail, high, shrieking, strenuous, ending in a noise as of air escaping from a pipe; a torrent of barks such as no known beast could utter, subsiding into moans that chilled the blood; a guttural scream, broken by heavy sounds as if of water lapping on a rock at uncertain intervals; a human cry, human words, with unfamiliar vowel sounds, soon slipping into quiet--these were among the horrors that a.s.sailed the ears of the voyagers in the _Pendragon_.

Such a discord of laments has not tingled to the indifferent stars since the ice-wave swept into their last retreats, and crushed among the rocks that bear their fossil forms, the fauna of the preglacial period, the Ichthyosaurus, the Brontosaurus, the Guyas Cutis (or Ring-tailed Roarer), the Mastodon, and the Mammoth.

'What a row in the menagerie!' said Logan.

He was not answered.

Bude had fallen into a deck-chair, his face buried in his hands, his arms rocking convulsively.

'I say, old c.o.c.k, pull yourself together,' said Logan, and rushing down the companion stairs, he reappeared with a bottle of champagne. To extract the cork (how familiar, how rea.s.suring, sounded the _cloop_!), and to pour the foaming beverage into two long tumblers, was, to the active Logan, the work of a moment. Shaking Bude, he offered him the beaker; the earl drained it at a draught. He shuddered, but rose to his feet.

'Not a man alive on that doomed vessel,' he was saying, when anew the still air was rent by the raucous notes of a megalophone:

'Is _your_ exhibit all right?'

'Fit as a fiddle,' answered Logan through a similar instrument.

'Our exhibits are gone bust,' answered Captain Noah Funkal. 'Our professors are in fits. Our darkeys are all dead. Can your skipper come aboard?'

'Just launching a boat,' cried Logan.

Bude gave the necessary orders. His captain stepped up to him and saluted.

'Do you know what these red fire-flies were that come aboard, sir?' he asked.

'Fire-flies? Oh, _musae volitantes sonorae_, a common phenomenon in these lat.i.tudes,' answered Bude.

Logan rejoiced to see that the earl was himself again.

'The other gentlemen's scientific beasts don't seem to like them, sir?'

'So Captain Funkal seems to imply,' said Bude, and, taking the ropes, with Logan beside him, while the _Pendragon_ lay to, he steered the boat towards the _George Washington_.

The captain welcomed them on deck in a scene of unusual character. He himself had a revolver in one hand, and a belaying pin in the other; he had been quelling, by the tranquillising methods of Captain Kettle, a mutiny caused by the terror of the crew. The sailors had attempted to leap overboard in the alarm caused by the invasion of the Berbalangs.

'You will excuse my friend and myself for not being in evening dress, during a visit at this hour,' said Bude in the silkiest of tones.

'Glad to see you shipshape, gentlemen,' answered the American mariner.

'My dudes of professors were prancing round in Tuxedos and Prince Alberts when the darned fire-flies came aboard.'

Bude bowed. Study of Miss McCabe had taught him that Tuxedos and Prince Alberts mean evening dress and frock-coats.

'Did _your_ men have fits?' asked the captain.

'My captain, Captain Hardy, made a scientific inquiry about the--insects,'

said Bude. 'The crew showed no emotion.'

'I guess our fire-bugs were more on business than yours,' said Captain Funkal; 'they've wrecked the exhibits, and killed the darkeys with fright: except two, and _they_ were exhibits themselves. Will you honour me by stepping into my cabin, gentlemen. I am glad to see sane white men to-night.'

Bude and Logan followed him through a scene of melancholy interest.

Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay.

The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. Beside an immense tank couched a figure in evening dress, swearing in a subdued tone. Logan recognised Professor Potter. He gently laid his hand on the Professor's shoulder. The Scottish savant looked up:

'It is a dommed mismanaged affair,' he said. 'I could have brought the poor beast safe enough from the Clyde to New York, but the Americans made me harl him round by yon island of camstairy deevils,' and he shook his fist in the direction of Cagayan Sulu.

'What had you got?' asked Logan.

'The _Beathach na Loch na bheiste_,' said Potter. 'I drained the Loch to get him. Fortunately,' he added, 'it was at the expense of the Trust.'

After a few words of commonplace but heartfelt condolence, Logan descended the companion, and followed Bude and Captain Funkal into the cabin of that officer. The captain placed refreshments on the table.

'Now, gentlemen,' he said, 'you have seen the least riled of my professors, and you can guess what the rest are like. Professor Rustler is weeping in his cabin over a shrivelled old mummy. "Never will he speak again," says he, and I am bound to say that I _hev_ heard the critter discourse once. The mummy let some awful yells out of him when the fire-bugs came aboard.'

'Yes, we heard a human cry,' said Bude.

'I had thought the talk was managed with a concealed gramophone,' said the captain, 'but it wasn't. The Bunyip from Central Australia has gone to his long home. That was Professor Wilkinson's pet. There is nothing left alive out of the lot but the natives that Professor Jenkins of England brought in irons from Cagayan Sulu. I reckon them two n.i.g.g.e.rs are somehow at the bottom of the whole ruction.'

'Indeed, and why?' asked Bude.

'Why, sir--I am addressing Professor Jones Harvey?'

Bude bowed. 'Harvey, captain, but not professor--simple amateur seaman and explorer.'

'Sir, your hand,' said the captain. 'Your friend is not a professor?'

'Not I,' said Logan, smiling.

The captain solemnly shook hands. 'Gentlemen, you have sand,' he said, a supreme tribute of respect. 'Well, about these two natives. I never liked taking them aboard. They are, in consequence of the triumph of our arms, American subjects, natives of the conquered Philippines. I am no lawyer, and they may be citizens, they may have votes. They are ent.i.tled, anyway, to the protection of the Flag, and I would have entered them as steerage pa.s.sengers. But that Professor Jenkins (and the other professors agreed) would have it that they came under the head of scientific exhibits. And they did allow that the critters were highly dangerous. I guess they were right.'

'Why, what could they do?'