The Grain Ship

The contents of this volume first appeared in the following magazines:
The Grain Ship — Harper's Monthly . From the Darkness and the Depths — New Story Magazine . Noah's Ark — The All-Story Magazine . The Finishing Touch — The Popular Magazine . The Rock — The Sunday Magazine . The Argonauts — Hampton's Magazine . The Married Man — The Smart Set . The Triple Alliance — Sunday Magazine . Shovels and Bricks — Harper's Weekly . Extracts from Noah's Log — The Home Magazine .
THE GRAIN SHIP
I could not help listening to the talk at the next table, because the orchestra was quiet and the conversation unrestrained; then, too, a nautical phrasing caught my ear and aroused my attention. For I had been a lifelong student of nautical matters. A side glance showed me the speaker, a white-haired, sunburned old fellow in immaculate evening dress. With him at the table in the restaurant were other similarly clad men, evidently of good station in life, and in their answers and comments these men addressed the white-haired man as Commodore. A navy captain, I thought, promoted on retirement. His talk bore it out.
Yes, sirree, he said, as he thumped the table mildly. A good, tight merchant ship, with nothing wrong except what might be ascribed to neglect such as light canvas blown away and ropes cast off the pins, with no signs of fire, leak, or conflict to drive the crew out, with plenty of grub in the stores and plenty of water in the tanks. Yet, there she was, under topsails and topgallant-sails, rolling along before a Biscay sea, and deserted, except that the deck was almost covered with dead rats.
What killed them, Commodore, asked one; and what happened to the crew?
Nobody knows. It might have been a poisonous gas from the cargo, but if so it didn't affect us after we boarded her. The log-book was gone, so we got no information from that. Moreover, every boat was in its chocks or under its own davits. It was as though some mysterious power had come down from above and wiped out the crew, besides killing the rats in the hold. She was a grain ship from 'Frisco, and grain ships are full of rats.