He turned as I mounted the ladder, and helped me up with an icy cold hand. The little group there, I thought, seemed awed and afraid to speak. Larry himself merely pointed with his hand to a sailing ship sagging heavily in the swell, perhaps half a mile from our port quarter. The glass which he put into my hand helped me but little, so dense was the spray upon its lens. I could, at the first glance, make little of the spectacle save that the ship had four masts, was of unusual size, and seemed to be standing well up to the gale, although her masts were bare. For the rest, she might have been any ship you like bound from Europe to “down under,” and thence returning by Cape Horn. I told Larry as much, and then looked at the stranger again. Undoubtedly there was something queer about her. Yet what it was a landsman might well have been unable to say.
“Well, Larry, and what do you make of it now?” I asked the captain presently. Had I not known him too well, his answer would have made me doubt his sanity.
“I think she is the ship you are seeking, sir.”
I took up the glass without a word, and focussed it upon the deck of the sailing ship. Not a living soul could be discerned there. It might have been a derelict buffeted at hazard about the great Atlantic waste. And yet the vessel appeared to hold a steady course. Behind it my quick eye detected a wake of water such as is left by the propeller of a steamer. There were black objects at the bows which, in sober reason, might have been given the shape of machine guns. These things I was almost afraid to admit aloud. The idea that came to me had been purchased at a heavy price. I felt that I could share it with none.
“She is a sailing ship, Larry,” I said, “and yet not a sailing ship.”
“Far from it, sir. Yon’s no sailing ship.”
“You are thinking that she is fitted with auxiliary steam?”
“I am thinking that she has enough arms on board to serve a cruiser of the line. Machine guns fore and aft and big stuff amidships. The masts are all blarney, sir, or I’m a Dutchman. That vessel’s heavily engined, and we may thank God we’re the fastest yacht afloat. If there were less sea running they would have fired at us already.”
“You mean it, Larry?”
“As true as there’s blue sky above, sir, yonder ship will sink us if we stand by. I’m telling you what I see with an old sailor’s eyes. Ten minutes ago, we came on her suddenly out of the mists. She had fifty men on her poop then, and one dead man she put overboard. The sound of a gun they were firing called my attention to her. I saw a group of hands on the quarter-deck, and one shot down in cold blood. They put him overboard and then discovered us. What happens then? The men go out of sight like so many spiders to their webs. The ship is navigated, heaven knows how. She keeps by us, and wants to know our business. I signal to them and no man answers. What shall I make of that, sir?”