Chapter Five.
The Wreck of the “Harnessed Mule.”
Latitude 80 degrees 25 minutes, longitude 4 degrees 6 minutes—a hot, breathless day. The “Harnessed Mule” glides swiftly over the unruffled blue. The crew loll about, listening to the babbling of the boiling ocean, and now and then lazily extinguishing the flames which break up from the tropically heated planks. It is a typical Pacific day.
The stowaway in the forward hold lies prone, conning his map, and marking the gradual approach of the “Harnessed Mule” to the red cross marked there. Frequently he is compelled to raise himself into a sitting position to give vent to the merriment which possesses him.
“This is better than Latin prose,” says he to himself. “How jolly I feel!”
Could he but have guessed that through an adjoining crack another figure was drinking in every word he uttered, and taking it down in official shorthand, he would have spoken in less audible tones!
Yes. The second stowaway is Solomon Smellie, of Scotland Yard, and he has the plaster cast in his pocket.
“This must be about the spot,” says Sep, comparing his chart with the figures on the mariner’s compass. “Here goes.”
Two vigorous turns of the gimlet, and the “Harnessed Mule” rears on her beam ends, and, with one stupendous lurch, goes to the bottom.
“That’s all right,” says Sep, as he hauls himself to the summit of a mountain of naked rock, which rises sheer out of the sea on all sides to a height of a thousand feet.
The words are scarcely out of his mouth when his face turns livid, and he trembles violently from head to foot, as he perceives standing before him Solomon Smellie, the detective of Scotland Yard.