The Grain Ship Part 6

"Still another belt encircled me, and, though I had come up warmly clad in woolen shirts and monkey jacket, I felt these garments being torn away from me. Then I was dragged forward, but the turn of rope had slipped down toward my waist, and I was merely bent double.

"And all the time that German was whirling his machine, and shouting to strike for any blood I saw. But I saw none. I felt it going, however.

Two spots on my chest began to smart, then burn as though hot irons were piercing me. Frantically I struck, right and left, sometimes at the coils encircling me, again in the air. Then all became dark.

"I awakened in a stateroom berth, too weak to lift my hands, with the taste of brandy in my mouth and the professor standing over me with a bottle in his hand.

"'Ach, it is well,' he said. 'You will recover. You haf merely lost blood, but you did the right thing. You struck with your knife at the blood, and you killed the creature. I was right. Heart, brain, und all vital parts were in der stomach.'

"'Where are we now?' I asked, for I did not recognize the room.

"'On board der steamer. When you got on your feet und staggered aft, I knew you had killed him, and gave you my a.s.sistance. But you fainted away. Then we were taken off. Und I haf two or three beautiful negatives, which I am printing. They will be a glorious contribution to der scientific world.'

"I was glad that I was alive, yet not alive enough to ask any more questions. But next day he showed me the photographs he had printed."

"In Heaven's name, what was it?" I asked excitedly, as the old artist paused to empty and refill his pipe.

"Nothing but a giant squid, or octopus. Except that it was bigger than any ever seen before, and invisible to the eye, of course. Did you ever read Hugo's terrible story of Gilliat's fight with a squid?"

I had, and nodded.

"Hugo's imagination could not give him a creature--no matter how formidable--larger than one of four feet stretch. This one had three tentacles around me, two others gripped the port and starboard pin-rails, and three were gripping the stump of the mainmast. It had a reach of forty feet, I should think, comparing it with the beam of the craft.

"But there was one part of each picture, ill defined and missing. My knife and right hand were not shown. They were buried in a dark lump, which could be nothing but the blood from my veins. Unconscious, but still struggling, I had struck into the soft body of the monster, and struck true."

NOAH'S ARK

Sam Rogers told me the story that follows, as we sat in the coils of the foremain and topsail braces--easy chairs aboard ship--and, sheltered from the blast of wind and spume by the high-weather rail, killed time in the night-watch by yarn-spinning.

For neither of us had a wheel or lookout that night; and as he and I were the only Americans in the forward end of the ship, we naturally sought each other for communion and counsel--he, a tall, straight, and slim man of fifty, an ex-man-of-war's man; I, a boy, beginning the battle of life.

Sam was an inveterate reader; and, while his diction embraced a choice stock of profanity, which he used when aroused, it also expressed itself in the choicest of English, his sentences full of commas, semicolons, and periods. He reeled off his stories as though reading from a book.

I had mentioned my boyish terror of bears, wolves, and other bugaboos of childhood, and Sam responded with his yarn. Here it is, just as he told it:

"She was a menagerie ship--Noah's Arks, as we called them. One of these craft that sail out to the Orient in ballast; and, stopping at Anjer Point for monkeys; Calcutta, Bombay, and Rangoon for elephants, tigers, lions, and cobras; Cape Town for orang-utans and African snakes, and over at Montevideo and Rio for wild hogs, pythons, boa-constrictors, porcupines, and other South American jungle denizens.

"I don't know just where this craft had been to get the a.s.sorted cargo that I saw when I shipped for the run from Rio to New York; but I found a mess of trouble in that hold that made me think a lot, and a limited skipper and mates that made me worry a lot. For they had stowed a mad elephant under the fore-hatch; and this gentleman kept all hands awake when he liked, snorting and trumpeting, with no regard for eight bells or the watch below.

"There were Hindoo keepers aboard, but these fellows are useless in cold weather; they shrivel up and move slowly, paralyzed by the cold.

We got the cold up in the north lat.i.tudes, just above the trades; and it was about this time that the trouble began.

"We had the ordinary mixed crew of a Yankee ship--only, this craft was a bark; and we had the usual bull-headed and ignorant Yankee skipper and mates; men with no understanding of human or brute nature; men who would rather hit you than listen to your proposition of peace. They hit us all, and got us into a condition of mind that discounted that of the elephant under the hatch.

"Besides that elephant there were stowed in that hold cages containing wolves, hyenas, wild hogs, wild a.s.ses, monkeys, porcupines, and zebras.

There were three or four cages full of poisonous snakes, one variety of which I recognized, the curse of India--the hooded cobra. Then there was a big python, picked up at Rio, and a boa-constrictor, taken aboard at one of the Pacific islands.

"There was a huge Nubian lion; a big, striped Bengal tiger; a hippopotamus, and a rhinoceros, to complete the list. I tell you, it made me creepy to go down among them, as we had to on occasions, to wash down.

"The elephant was moored to a stanchion by a short length of chain shackled around his hind leg, but it gave him a radius of action equal to his length and that of his hind leg and trunk. This precluded our using the fore-hatch to reach the hold, so we used the main-hatch; and, as there was daily use of it, this hatch was fitted with steps, and always kept open, even in bad weather.

"The immediate cause of the trouble was the carrying away of the foretop-gallant-yard, due to rotten halyards, and braces and lifts, when we were scudding before a gale off Hatteras. The yard came down on the whirl, but when it hit the deck it hit like a pile-driver--a straight, perpendicular blow--directly over the partners that held the upper end of the stanchion to which that crazy elephant was moored.

"It weakened it. We heard the big brute's protest, and then we heard the crash as he carried away the stanchion.

"Then we heard other noises as he raced aft among the cages--the mad squealing of the elephant, the growling and roaring of the lion and the tiger, the barking of the wolves and hyenas, the gruntings of the wild hogs, the heehaws of the wild a.s.ses and zebras, and the terrible, mumbling snorts of the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, as their cages were upset and destroyed.

"That mad elephant smashed them all, as we learned when the whole bunch, according to their acceptance of the situation, appeared on deck, growling or whining, looking for something to do or to kill. All hands were up, and we all took to the rigging, even the skipper and mates and the man at the wheel.

"The ship broached to, and away went the upper spars and yards. The canvas slatted and thrashed and, one by one, the sails went to ribbons and rags; but we could not help it. Down on deck were a big yellow lion and striped tiger wandering round, swishing their tails to starboard and port, looking for trouble.

"Also a python and a boa-constrictor, a half-dozen wolves from the Russian plateaus, the zebras and wild a.s.ses, the hyenas, with their ugly faces; the porcupines, and some of the small venomous snakes. We could see them as they climbed up the steps of the main-hatch.

"Even the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus came up; but, when the mad elephant tried, the steps broke under his weight, and he remained below. Still, we had a problem.

"There wasn't a gun among us, and to go down and face those beasts with handspikes was out of the question.

"I was in the mizzen crosstrees with the skipper, the second mate, the helmsman, and a couple of Sou'wegians who had been working aft. In the maintop were the first mate and three or four of the crew, and in the foretop were the rest, all bunched together and waiting for instructions.

"The skipper gave them.

"'Go down out o' that,' he yelled, 'and drive them down the hatch!'

"But not a man moved. Who would? He told me to go over and lash the wheel amidships, and I declined, as politely as I could. The wheel was spinning back and forth, the ship rolling in the trough, and the upper spars, hanging by their gear, slatting back and forth as the ship rolled.

"Down on deck were those murderous wild beasts, nosing round, and only waiting for the chance of getting together. I told this to the skipper.

"'Right,' he said. 'Perhaps they'll kill each other.'

"This seemed possible a few minutes later, when the tiger and the lion met face to face. They glared and growled and spit, just like two huge tomcats, then they sailed into each other.

"It was a lively sc.r.a.p. They fenced and dodged and nipped as they could, but their motions were too swift to give either a good chance at a bite. They were in the air half the time, on their backs the other half, and it seemed an even fight until the tiger, in one of his plunges, b.u.mped into the python, who had been squirming around the deck.

"Now, a python is not poisonous; but, nevertheless, he has a strong grip of jaw. He closed his jaws on the tiger's nose, and then began a funny sight. The big, striped brute could not shake him off; but he backed away, snarling and screaming with rage and pain, forward round the house, and aft on the other side to the s.p.a.ce abaft the main-hatch, the snake writhing like a whip-lash, and the tiger never making an effort to use his forepaws.

"It seemed as though hereditary fear had seized him, for with a few digs and blows he could have clawed him off. This fight ended by the writhing python getting too close to the boa-constrictor, who happened to be nosing his way across the deck amidships. In the twinkling of an eye, the boa wrapped himself around the python, and the tiger got away.

"Then, while the two big snakes thrashed around the deck, Mr. Bengal slunk away like a cat scared by a dog--his tail between his legs, and the fur on his back raised up so that it looked like that of a razor-backed hog.

"He went forward of the house to think it over, and the two snakes fought it out, while the lion, thinking that he had won the fight, roared and growled his defiance to the rest.

"He was too confident; the big rhinoceros looked him in the face, and the trouble was resumed.

"Mr. Lion charged; but the rhino lowered his head, caught him between the forepaws with his horn, and sent him flying over his head, with a big gash in his body. That was enough for the lion, king of beasts though he was.