When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead: A Thrilling Detective Story

by Mrs. George Corbett

Such a sight always saddened Captain Pereiro, for it reminded him of what might possibly be his own fate, and made him pray the more fervently that the beloved wife and children whom he had left at home might be long ere they were deprived of their bread winner. Imagining that it was the body of some shipwrecked sailor that was now within a boat’s length of him, he was about to turn away from the painful sight, when his heart gave a startled bound on hearing a weird cry, as of some human being in the depths of agony and despair.

“Mother of God!” he cried, crossing himself vigorously, “what was that?”

Convinced that the cry he had heard did not originate on board, Captain Pereiro turned his gaze over the side again in the direction of the weird object which had already impressed him painfully. With ears and eyes strained to their utmost tension, he waited for he scarcely knew what. Would the body float quietly past, with not a sign of life or vitality about it? Or would his impressions be realised, and would it turn out that the awful scream he had heard proceeded from that which he had shudderingly looked upon as a corpse?

He was not left many seconds to conjecture, for once more the moonlit air was rent with the desponding shriek of the dying, and this time all doubt and superstitious fear were simultaneously removed from his mind. For not only was it evident whence the cry proceeded, but the hands of the supposed corpse were thrown up imploringly, yet feebly, as though by one from whom the vital spark had nearly fled.

Others had now also both seen and heard what was going on, and it scarcely needed Captain Pereiro’s sharp command to back the mainyard in order to induce his sailors to bring about the end he desired. In an incredibly short space of time the course of the “Halcyon” was arrested, a boat was lowered, the drowning man secured, and preparations for starting again made. As soon as rescuers and rescued were safely on board, Captain Pereiro gave the order to brace the mainyard, and speedily, with well-filled sails, the barque was being steered on her course once more.

It seemed, however, that the fine fellows had wasted their energies in a vain cause, for the stranger had relapsed into total unconsciousness, which was so profound that for a long time it resisted every benevolent effort to dispel it.

“The fates are against the poor fellow,” murmured the captain, sorrowfully. “I fear we were too late to help him. And yet it is a shame to be so cheated after all the trouble. Pedro, we will have another try, and by the Virgin, I will renounce—I mean I will be angry with—my patron saint if he does not help us to succeed in keeping this man’s soul out of purgatory a while longer.”

Pedro, who, by the way, was the steward of the “Halcyon,” was already fatigued by the vigorous exertions he had made. He was, moreover, convinced that the thing upon which he had been operating no longer contained a soul, and he felt a horror at the idea of pulling and twisting a dead body about. But he dared not refuse to do as he was told, so, invoking the aid of St. Peter as a corollary to the help St. George had been asked to extend to the captain, he set bravely to work once more, and soon became as full of faith and energy as Pereiro himself.

Fortunately for St. George, the captain had no need to be angry with him, for after a prolonged and fatiguing spell of rubbing, fomenting, dosing, and artificial respiration, the stranger’s eyelids began to quiver, and short, gasping sighs escaped his labouring breast. Thanks to Pereiro’s clever treatment, he was already partially relieved of the brine which he had perforce swallowed, but no sooner did the latter realise that his efforts were being rewarded by success, than he promptly administered another emetic, which proved thoroughly effectual, and left the patient gasping with exhaustion, but on the high road to recovery.

As the reader no doubt guesses, it was Hilton Riddell who was thus miraculously saved from what appeared to be certain death. His would-be murderers were so anxious to avoid observation on their own ship that they had not noticed the proximity of the barque at right angles with them, and felt as sure that they had compassed their desired end, as that they themselves were alive and well.