The promotion of the admiral, and other sea comedies

by Morley Roberts

THE REHABILITATION OF THE VIGIA.

The mate or the Palembang walked the weather side of the poop, and felt just then that he was full up to the back teeth of the mighty sea and all its works. He yearned for Leith Walk or Wapping; to lie on a hot dry beach would be heaven, for the hot wet south-west monsoon was blowing the Palembang towards Bombay, and the Maldivhs were on the starboard beam.

Jack Wilson propped his eyes open and cursed the slow passage of time towards midnight. As he peered down below at the lighted clock he was inclined to swear that the second mate had come out and stopped it. But presently it was five minutes to twelve, and to his disgust sleepiness passed away as his relief stumbled up the poop ladder and came aft. "Jerusalem, but it's dark," said the second greaser, as he looked up aloft and round about him.

"Have the gas lit," growled Wilson, as he was going forward.

"Sulky devil!" replied the second. "When do you have a civil word for any one?"

This was all in the night's work, and no one was a penny the worse. Civility at midnight is often too dear to be bought from any one but an inferior; and Wilson and Green knew each other very well.

The Palembang was running with the wind on the port quarter, and for a quiet life the old lady was under shortened canvas. She went at it like an old dame in wind and snow; a reefed foresail represented picked-up petticoats; the stowed royals and topgallant-sails suggested that a hat with feathers had been replaced by a handkerchief. For the monsoon was blowing stiff that July night seven degrees to the north of the Line, and threatened to blow stiffer yet.

As it was getting towards two o'clock, or four bells, the captain came on deck, and nodded at the binnacle when Green said: "Good-morning, sir." Then he spread his legs out and considered the dark universe for awhile.

"It has waked up a bit since I went below, Mr. Green," he said presently; and, wanting no answer, he got none. The song of the wind in the rigging and the draught under the foot of the foresail were answer sufficient. There was a pleasing hiss alongside as the Palembang shoved through the Indian Ocean and left a lighter wake behind.

"There's a vigia marked on the chart for hereabouts," said Captain Spiller presently; "it got there through that old fool Banks of the Simoom. He reported it years ago, but it warn't never confirmed. Rocks, he said, and one like Cleopatra's Needle."

"Then you don't credit it either, sir?" asked Green presently.

"I know Banks," replied Spiller, snorting, "and never was such a man for imagination and want of judgment. I'd take it as proof positive as nothing was, if he said it stood to reason it must be. And I'm a man as likes a clean and decent chart. A chart is the character give to an ocean by them as has employed it, a bundle of chits, as the Hindoo beggars say, and to go an' lump in a suspicion agin' the character of an ocean on the word of a man like Banks, why, I've no patience. I've a notion that the law of libel ought to have a say in it."

"Aye, sir," said Green. "The Indian Ocean versus Banks."

"And I'd believe it of Banks that he done it just to get his name mentioned, and to rise a bit of a palaver about him. He's a most conceited chap is Banks, and not by any means the seaman he'd like to be thought. And they actually sent a man-o'-war down to look up his Simoom Rocks and they came back and never seen 'em."

"And nobody else ever did, sir?"

"Of course not," said Spiller; "they might as well set traps to catch the rats that a man sees when he's got the jimjams. And nothing makes Banks angrier than to throw out a hint you don't believe in them rocks. I always gets him on it, by asking for a clean chart and proved shoals, and what not, and giving it him hot and heavy on vigias and the like. Bah, I ain't no patience."

And Spiller tramped the deck for a bit. Presently he came back to where Green stood.

"He'll be in Bombay before us," he said gloomily. "I have to own the Simoom's faster than the Palembang, but if she was sailed by a better man she'd make quicker passages. Why, an engineer in a steamer can pass a thorough sailor in a scow."

His heart was bitter, but the thought that Her Majesty's cruiser Amphion had discredited the Simoom vigia was balm to his inmost soul, as he turned to go below.

"Keep a bright look-out," he growled, and he left Green to consider the matter of vigias in general, and the Simoom vigia in particular.

For these vigias, the terror of seamen, are like malicious spirits. Some man has seen them, or has imagined them, and for ever after they bear sway in the minds of those who sail upon the great deep. Perhaps they are but a floating mass of wreck, on which the sea breaks; in the south, what was seen was, it may be, a drifting berg; on the shores of West Africa, perchance a river has sent out a floating island. Any accident of imagination may create them; alcohol bears them on its tide: they are the rats and ghosts and terrible creeping things of the delirium of the sea that is born of rum. A heavy heeled spar as it floats becomes a pinnacle of rock; the boat that bears dead men in it is for ever after to be avoided. Here a rip of currents, and there a heavy overfall, become fixed terrors and are given names.

For this is the sea that is unknown yet, and shall for ever be unknown. It works upon the mind of man very subtly, and yet again with tremendous strength. Under the sea are earthquakes, and in it volcanoes. Of these islands are born, and again they pass away, while the little creature man skims upon the surface of the ocean like a water-beetle, and may be seen no more.

When Green was left alone upon the poop of the Palembang, save for the presence of the man at the wheel, something of the wonderful majesty of the sea came down upon him, and for a moment touched his nerves. Trust in the captain he had none, for Spiller was of the usual alcoholic order; so he got out the chart and looked at it. There stood the vigia marked "Simoom Rock." Perhaps it existed after all. He remembered the history of the Aurora Islands to the cast of the Falklands. Even now, some old sailors believe there are such islands, real land, not ice grounded on deep soundings. And the Simoom vigia was close at hand, if it existed at all. Allowing for sufficient uncertainty in its supposed position, it might be anywhere within a degree. He stared out into the darkness and imagined he saw it. It was here, it was there, it was nowhere: it was a wraith of the mind, and dissolved. He put back his night-glasses, and whistled, till he remembered there was quite enough wind, and that he had no desire to turn the hands up to shorten sail.

"Jerusalem, it is dark," he said again, and he recalled Wilson's reply, "Have the gas lit." Aye, that would be pleasant. For a moment he saw the streets of London town with a diminuendo in lamps, and then he pulled himself together. It breezed up a bit and was four bells. He hove the log, and went along the lee side to go below to enter it on the slate. She made a biggish weather roll, and the decks being slippery, he steadied himself and put his head outside the rail to take a look ahead. And at that moment, as he says, he saw the Simoom vigia. His heart stood still, and then thumped furiously. In spite of the hiss of the seas, and the windy roar of the rigging, the sound of his pulse in his ears was like the sound of a pump. He was paralysed, and yet he knew that the Palembang was rushing on destruction.

"Hard a starboard!" he said coolly, but in a choking voice.

"Sir?" said the astounded man at the wheel.

"Hard a starboard, damn you," said Green fiercely.

And the helmsman ground the wheel hard down with the air of a surprised martyr. As the Palembang bowed and came round almost at right angles to her former course, Green swears he saw broken water, though he lost the sharp pinnacle of rock he had seen at first.

Old Spiller, who was not asleep, came up on deck in a hurry.

"What's she off her course for?"

Green told him, and Spiller swore.

"You saw nothing, you damn fool."

"I did."

"You didn't, you imaginative ass."

Green wanted to plant his fist between Spiller's eyes, but did not; for he was a married man and hated to lose a job. He ground his teeth and turned away. The Palembang was put on her course again, and after interrogating the man on the look-out and the man at the wheel, who acknowledged they had seen nothing, the skipper swore promiscuously at everything, and went below to lay his soul in soak.

"What one man sees another'll look for, and what a fool looks for a fool will see," he cried, without knowing what a neat addition he had made to the subject of suggestion. And by the time that Wilson relieved him at four o'clock Green was curiously uncertain as to whether he had seen straight or not.

"Now, did you?" asked Wilson.

"Two hours ago I'd have sworn to it," said the second mate, scratching his head.

"Well, I've a notion you did," cried Wilson. "Between you and me and the mizzen-mast, I think Banks is a right smart man."

"I believe I can swear I saw it," said young Green, much encouraged. "Yes, there were at least three rocks, one of them a pinnacle like an obelisk."

And with Wilson secretly on his side, he was quite sure of it before they reached Bombay, though Spiller was for ever jeering at him, and making the ship as uncomfortable as he could.

"Mebbe you can see ghosts, too," he was constantly suggesting.

"I'll quit at Bombay if he'll give me my discharge," said Green.

And sure enough Spiller did, when he met Green on the Apollo Bunda in a confidential yarn with Banks, who, for a seaman of the old class, was a very gentlemanly man with neat white whiskers.

"You've been encouraging him about that vigia," roared Spiller, and when he wrote out Green's discharge, he offered to give him a special character for seeing ghosts.

"But not rats!" said Green nastily, as he put his discharge into his pocket; for the last time Spiller overdrank himself he had a very bad time with rodents.

It was the best of luck for Green that he got out of the Palembang, for Banks's mate fell ill, and the second had no mate's ticket. So Green, being in great favour, through having seen the poor discredited Simoom vigia, got the job, for he had passed for mate just before signing as second in the Palembang.

Banks took him round with him, and again tackled the captain of the Amphion about that vigia, showing his new witness; but Captain Melville shook his head.

"The old man is crazy about those rocks," was all he said, as he refused to discuss the matter.

But Banks and Spiller went at it hammer and tongs when they met ashore.

"He saw nothing," said Spiller.

"Only what I saw."

"I told the fool about it and he imagined the rest, as you did."

Banks fumed.

"Lucky you didn't run the Palembang on my imagination. Slow as she goes, she'd have slammed herself into matchwood."

Spiller choked with rage.

"Look here, I'll sail all over your blooming rocks, as I have done afore. You just made this up to get notoriety, and have your ship's name on the chart, and be put in the Directory. I know you, Banks, and I don't think much of you, and never did. To get yourself talked about you'd report that you'd seen the Flying Dutchman. Vigias, indeed! A disfigurement on any chart! You'll have the chart of the Indian Ocean as big a disgrace as the North Atlantic if you have your way. Didn't you find nothing new to report this time?"

Banks rose up in a towering rage.

"You're no gentleman, Captain Spiller, and I'll speak no more with you, not till you own that the Simoom Rocks are real. And may you never have occasion to rue finding them out as such. I'll let you know I've as great a respect for the chart as you have, and if you ever run your old tub on my rocks, you can call 'em Spiller's Reef, for all I care, so there," and he perspired off to his vessel.

In shipping circles opinion was divided between the master of the Simoom and the master of the Palembang. And it being the fashion of the sailorman, or, for that matter, of human-kind in general, to decide matters that admit of doubt according to personal prejudice and ancient opinion, there were more on Spiller's side than on Banks's. For one thing, it is the perpetual ambition of all true sons of the ocean to discover something new and have his ship's name tagged on to it, and every one was jealous of Banks. When the Amphion looked for the rocks without success, they threw out dark hints about a dead whale or a tree stump having been seen, and some said "Rum," just as others said "Rats," contemptuously.

Others, with a very fine contempt for the Navy, were of opinion that Captain Melville of H.M.S. Amphion considered he owned half the Indian Ocean and all the Arabian Sea, and would be as much put out at finding an unmarked rock or shoal in either as if he slipped upon an old chew on his own quarterdeck. These were on Banks's side, of course. And some who disliked Spiller said they believed in this new set of rocks to annoy him, ending very naturally in holding the opinion they argued for.

When old Banks got on the high horse and swore he would not speak again to the disbeliever in the vigia, he meant it, and added details to his statement.

"Not if I found him in a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean," he swore excitedly.

The quarrel was as bitter as polemic theology. Spiller was a rank atheist, a scorner, a scoffer, a pagan, a heathen. If Banks had written a new creed, he would have begun it: "I believe in the Simoom Rocks to the west of the Maldivhs." He clung to their existence pathetically, and when an impecunious skipper of a storm-disgruntled tramp wanted to borrow a couple of hundred rupees from him, and remarked incidentally that he had seen broken water in the supposed position of the discredited reef, Banks forked out with enthusiasm and took down a lying statement joyfully.

But when the Simoom was ready for sea again, that same tramp skipper, who was a wild disgrace to the respectable mystery of the sea, executed a few manoeuvres which let the Palembang get ahead of her. For the tramp (Julius Cæsar was her name) had engines of an obstinate and eccentric character. Sometimes they worked, and sometimes they didn't, and on this particular occasion they refused to be reversed at any price. As the Julius Cæsar wouldn't go astern, her captain shoved her at the crowded shipping ahead and put her through, whooping on the bridge like a maniac. He grazed three other steamers, took a bumpkin off a sailing vessel, slipped between two others, and in one last complicated evolution smashed the jibboom of the Simoom, brought down her fore-topgall'n'-mast, and escaped to sea in a cyclone of curses of which the calm centre was the Palembang.

"I'll report you," said Spiller to Banks, when he left Bombay.

"Go to hell," cried Banks, who rarely swore save in a gale of wind.

"After you," said Spiller, with what is popularly known as truly Oriental politeness; and as a parting taunt he sang out, "What about them rocks?"

"You're an ungrammatical, uneducated man," screamed Banks, dancing furiously.

But Green and Wilson waved their caps to each other. For all their way of passing compliments when one gave the other a Western Ocean relief at midnight, they were good friends.

The Simoom got to sea inside of forty-eight hours, for Banks lost no time. He had made up his mind to waste some on the next chance he had of looking for his blessed rocks, unless the monsoon blew too hard.

They had a fairly decent show running down the coast on the inside of the Laccadivhs, and, taking the usual circumbendibus to the eastward between Keeling and the Chagos Archipelago, picked up beautiful "passage" winds and south-east trades, and went home booming. Green found Banks a first-class "old man," and the Simoom as comfortable as a good bar parlour, compared with the sorry old bug-haunted Palembang, where a man's toes got sore with the pedicuring work of cockroaches. He made up his mind to stick to her, as he evidently suited Banks. They both got cracked a little on the Simoom Rocks, and gradually talked themselves into the belief of a shark's-tooth reef a mile long with one special fang that rivalled a young peak of Teneriffe.

The Palembang came into Liverpool River about three weeks after the Simoom, and Green, back at work after ten days at home, had a high time with Wilson. But the skippers passed each other with their noses in the air as high as squirrels' tails, and never swopped a word in a fortnight.

As luck would have it, they were both for Bombay again, only to give Spiller a chance of getting there first, the Simoom was to call at the Cape. Just before the Palembang cleared, Banks and Spiller fell up against each other on the landing stage, and as Spiller was full up to his back-teeth and uvula, he broke silence and went for the upholder of the vigia in high style. He could have taken a first-class in bad language at any Australian back-blocks academy of cursing—and what they don't know in blasphemy there can only be learnt from a low-class Spaniard. So the air was blue from Liverpool to Manchester, and to the Isle of Man, and Banks got up and left. For when he was ashore he was very religious. Even at sea he carried a prayer-book and an odd volume of virulent sermons, of the kind which indicate that no man need forgive any enemy who is not of the same persuasion. But to tell the truth, Banks could have forgiven anything but an insult to his beloved rocks.

"Such a man oughtn't to live," he cried angrily, as he went off in a tremulous rage. "He's predestined to the pit!"

And he trusted that Providence might one day yield him a chance of getting even. His prayers were fervent towards that end, and if Providence works, as it sometimes appears to do, through rum and ignorance and a good conceit in a man, there was a chance of his appeals being attended to.

On the passage out to the Cape they saw nothing of the Palembang. But there she was heard of as having being seen somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Agulhas Bank, having a real good time in that native home of the god of the winds, where fifty per cent. of all the breezes that do blow are gales that dance in and out and about like a cooper round a cask.

But the Simoom had luck, and slipped through as if Æolus never spotted her. And old Banks chortled happily, and sang an extra hymn on Sunday, compensating the men (otherwise disposed to growl at the innovation) with an extra lot of grog. For your true sailorman is the real conservative, and things that don't happen in the first week of a new ship have no business to happen afterwards—which is a hint some young second mates may find handy to remember. And remembering this will enable you to see why no true old shellback will ship in a steamboat, any more than the guard of a coach would let himself to any beastly new railroad.

The south-west monsoon had backed down to the Line about the time they crossed it; and the Simoom sweated up to the Maldivhs very comfortably.

"We've made a good passage—a ripping good passage," said old Banks, rubbing his hands, "and I'm condemned if I don't shape a course for my rocks, Mr. Green."

As he had been shaping for them ever since he had deliberately gone out of his way to take the route east of Madagascar, instead of the Inner or Mozambique route, Green winked the other eye and said nothing. To tell the truth, he himself had a hankering to set his mind at rest on the subject, for he felt his credit involved with the skipper's.

The man at the wheel overheard what Banks said, and when he stumped for'ard the whole crew knew that the Simoom was looking for a needle in the Indian Ocean.

"A life's job, my bullies," said their informant. "We'll be like the crew of the Flying Dutchman yet."

"I'm wondering whether Spiller came up this way, now," said old Banks presently, with an interrogative cock of his head.

"And not by the channel?" asked Green.

Banks turned about.

"Mr. Green, may the Lord forgive me, but I just hate that Spiller with an unholy hatred. Every time he gets a show he brags he's run right over where I located my rocks, and not only that, but criss-cross in the latitude where they might be. And he set about that he'd herring-boned a course on the chart on the longitude, going back and forth on it like a dog in a turnip field. So now he'll be up here again to have another shy for it. If he saw 'em, he'd swear he never. And why he hates me so I can't tell, unless it was I did my duty once, and let him know what a God-fearing man thought of a blasphemer."

Green nodded.

"That's likely it, sir."

"So it is, so it is," cried Banks pensively; "he has no grace in him, and he set it about, I know, that I soak at sea if I'm sober ashore. He said my rocks were delirium tremens; and I'm a discredited man, wounded in a tender spot."

It was just four bells in the forenoon watch then, and soon after they snugged her down, as the wind was very heavy in puffs and the sky low and dark. Just before eight bells Green spotted a vessel on the starboard bow, and called the old man. He came on deck like a whiteheaded Jack-in-the-Box.

"Keep her away," he cried. "I'll bet she's the Palembang. Shake out them reefs and hoist the main-t'gall'n's'l again."

His grammar failed in excitement.

"We're overhauling her hand over hand, anyhow," suggested Green.

"If I can pass him going two foot for his one, I'd run the Simoom under," screamed the skipper. "And when we come up with him, if my voice in a trumpet can carry, I'll tell him what I think of him. He thinks I'm soft because I sing hymns on Sunday. I'll let him know before I sang hymns I was the biggest tough on the Australian coast. God's truth I was! And I wish I was now—oh, how I wish it, and him ashore with me!"

And Green believed it, because he had to! There was something in the old man's eye as he walked to and fro, an unregenerate blood-thirsty snap, that was very convincing. So the reefs were shaken out of the topsails, and even that did not satisfy the skipper.

"I'll let him know that a saved and repentant Christian isn't necessary a worm," said Banks. "Mr. Green, set the mainsail!"

The Simoom was snoring through it now, and Green stared.

"What she can't carry she may drag," said the skipper, with flashing eyes.

And the Simoom lost her courtesy with the sea under the influence of the mainsail, for the monsoon was a stiff one. She shouldered the Indian Ocean aside like a policeman shoving through a crowd; she scooped up tons of it as a scraper team scoops sand, and ran at any extra sea like a bull at a hedge. The men were under the break of the t'gallant foc'sle, sheltering from the cataract. They knew the Palembang was ahead, and were as eager as the skipper to overhaul her. Through the bos'on and his mate it had leaked out that the old man was keen for a palaver with Spiller.

"He's like a bull whale in a flurry," said one who had been whaling. "Now my notion is that the skipper kin blaspheme if he wants to."

The Palembang was visibly herself and no other vessel by this time, and she carried all she could stand.

"I've half a notion to have the t'gall'n-sails set," said Banks, looking up aloft. "And if we weren't overhauling her twenty-three to the dozen, damme, but I would!"

For the Palembang showed nothing above her reefed topsails, and the foresail had a reef in it, and the Simoom came after her like the inside edge of a cyclone.

"Gimme my trumpet," cried Banks. "Mr. Green, take the wheel, and run her as close as maybe."

And the second mate stood at the main-topsail halliards.

"Palembang ahoy!" yelled Banks through his trumpet as he came tearing up on the weather side of his enemy's ship.

"Where the blue blazes are you coming to?" shrieked Spiller, who was both drunk and angry.

"Passing you as if you was standing still, you low, uneducated swine," said Banks. "And I could do it under jury rig."

"What about them rocks?" jeered Spiller through his trumpet. "What's the price of vigias, you notorious old liar, you disgrace to the perfession?"

They were close alongside now, not half a cable's length apart; a good cricketer could have shied a cricket ball the distance easily.

"Leggo the main-topsail halliards," said Banks, and then to the surprise of his crew and the utter astonishment of Spiller he poured out a torrent of the most blood-curdling abuse which had ever defiled the Indian or any other ocean.

"You think I'm soft, you dog," he boomed through his spurt of blasphemy, "and reckon because I've got notions of decency I'm to be trod on. Run on my rocks and sink and burn."

His voice rose to a scream and cracked. He tried to speak, but tried in vain.

"Mr. Green, here," he whispered, and leaving the wheel to the man he had displaced, the mate jumped to the lee poop rail.

"Tell him he's no sailor; my voice is gone. Say he's a—oh, tell him anything you feel."

Green did so, and satisfied himself and Banks and the entire crew. And then, seeing Wilson, he gave him a friendly bellow.

"What cheer, Wilson!"

And hoisting the topsails, they ran on, leaving Spiller choking with helpless rage.

As it grew darker and they dropped the Palembang they picked up the mainsail, and shortened down for the night.

"We ain't in no hurry," whispered Banks, "and to-morrow we'll be up with my rocks, if I've hit it off right."

He was now sombre and dignified, and spoke with particular grammatical and moral accuracy. Not the ghost of a damn issued from his lips. He reproved Green for swearing, and held a service in the cabin, much to the disgust of the entire ship, as it wasn't Sunday. Perhaps to punish himself, for he always liked to stand well with the crowd, he gave them no grog after it.

In the morning he sent a man on the fore-topgallant-yard looking for his rocks, and as he gave notice that any one who sighted them first should have five pounds, the entire watch, which should have been below snoring, sat like crows up aloft and strained their eyes all round the horizon.

At ten Banks was jovial and got his voice back. At noon he was anxious. By four o'clock he shortened sail again.

"We've overrun 'em," he said sadly. "If they're still about, we're to the west of 'em. Mr. Green, during the night we'll stand under easy sail to the eastward. I'm set on seeing those rocks again, if I lose a week."

And the night fell darkly.

No matter whose watch it was, mate's or second mate's, the white-whiskered skipper was on deck every ten minutes, peering into the black darkness with his glasses. The old chap's nerves were on edge; his imagination flamed; he saw reefs and pinnacles of islands every moment, and heard the boom of breakers.

When Green relieved his subordinate at midnight, the second mate whispered to him:

"The old man's as nervous as a cat. To hear him jaw you'd think the bottom of the sea was rising up. Mind you ain't high and dry on a new continent by daylight."

"We'll whack it out fair among the lot of us," said Green. "Jeewhillikins, what's that?"

He spoke suddenly, in an altered voice, and Milton jumped.

"What?"

"I thought I saw a flare to the southward."

"Lordy, you've got them too," said Milton. "Let's go ashore, and have a walk on the Apollo Bunda."

"Stow it," cried Green, and holding on to the mizzen-topgallant backstay, he jumped upon the rail.

"Look, look!" he cried, and Milton, looking, saw a faint glow to the southward—or fancied he saw it.

"Call the old man," said Green, and in two and three-fifths seconds by any man's chronometer, Banks was on deck, and saw nothing.

"But did ye see it, man?" he yelled; "and if so, what's it mean?"

"Some one struck a match in Colombo," said the second mate irreverently. For he had sailed with Banks for years, and at times took liberties.

"I only trust to Providence that it isn't that wicked man's ship in any trouble," said the skipper viciously. "Mr. Green, we'll stand to the south'ard for a while."

"Lay aft the watch," sang out Milton, and they braced her up to within two points of the wind.

Both watches stayed on deck in the little excitement, and in the course of the next hour they reported all kinds of non-existent things. "Rocks on the starboard bow" were varied by "A vessel on the port bow," and a planet low down in a break of cloud was "A steamer's head-light, sir."

"Collision with Venus," cried Milton.

But just in the 'twixt and 'tween of earliest dawn, when the grey ghost of day walked in the east, a man up aloft sang out with startling energy:

"Two dark rocks right ahead, sir."

The main-deck hummed suddenly, and a patter of bare feet told that the entire crew had run for the foc'sle head. The skipper nipped into the mizzen rigging quick as a chipmunk.

"Keep her away a point or two," he cried.

"Away a point or two, sir," echoed the helmsman.

"I see 'em, Mr. Green," yelled the old chap; "and just where I figured them out to be. There'll be three, there'll be three."

He paused and looked down on Green.

"But—but two will do me," he added cautiously. "I never pinned my faith to three."

Green climbed alongside him, and even a bit higher.

"Lord, sir, they're boats," he cried.

"No, rocks," said the skipper.

"Boats," repeated the mate, obstinately.

"So they are! Damn!" cried the skipper.

And then the same verdict came from aloft, and was confirmed by the entire sea jury.

The disappointed captain dropped back on deck.

"Now, if they were the Palembang's boats," suggested Green.

"No such luck," said the skipper. "Is there any one in 'em, and do they see us?"

"By the same token they see us now!" shouted Green, and in a quarter of an hour the boats were alongside, and the Simoom lay to.

"What boats are those?" squealed Banks.

"The Palembang's," replied a voice from the tumbling cockleshells.

The skipper and the mates said "Whew!" and Banks was fairly dancing.

"And where's your ship?"

"Bottom of the Indian Ocean," said a voice that Banks recognised as Spiller's.

"Is that you, Captain Spiller?" he inquired, with much exaggerated courtesy.

"It is," growled Spiller.

"Did you by any chance come across my rocks as you sailed along so pleasant?"

Spiller swore in a muffled voice.

"Not by your description of 'em: far from it," he replied at last.

"We'll see about that," said Banks. "Now then, come under the lee quarter, and we'll have some of you aboard; the captain of the Palembang last."

"Whad yer mean?" cried Spiller sulkily.

"What I say," said Banks softly.

And when every one was out of the boats but Spiller, he stood by the line.

"Now, captain, were they my rocks or not?"

"No," said Spiller.

"Then stay in your damned boat," cried Banks. "Cast that line off, Spiller. You won't? Then cut it, Mr. Green."

Green smiled but didn't move. The skipper borrowed a knife from the nearest seaman by taking it out of its sheath.

"Now, was they or not?"

"No," cried Spiller.

"One, two, and at three I cut," said Banks. "One—two——"

"Very well, they was, then," shrieked Spiller; and the next minute he was on deck.

"I'll have you sign a paper to that effect," said Banks, "and if you don't, the whole of your crew will, including your mate."

Wilson, who was standing by Green, said that he would willingly, and when Spiller scowled, he scowled back.

"And now, Mr. Green," cried Banks cheerfully, "since we know where they are, and can find 'em any time, you may put her on her course again. And we'll have a little thanksgiving service for all this."

He did not explain whether the service was for the established character of the Simoom Rocks, or for the rescue of the shipwrecked crew, but when he got them all below he handed round hymn books.

"First of all we will sing hymn No. 184 of Hymns Ancient and Modern," he said softly, and when Spiller looked it up he was very much annoyed.