The Cruise of the Dry Dock

by T. S. Stribling

The two boys moved gingerly up to the hatchway that led down to the forecastle. If disease had smitten the Minnie B they hoped to get some clew from the taint of the sailors' quarters. Greer stuck a nose down the ladder first. Beyond the usual close ship smells there seemed to be nothing wrong. Then they climbed down.

Here again they found order. The bunks against the bulkheads and the curve of the prow were clean with neatly rolled blankets. The lockers were open and empty. The two searchers climbed out and walked aft to the lazaret. They were rapidly getting over their fright of the plague. Again Greer entered first, and this time Madden heard a loud snort of disgust.

Half expecting some sinister sight, Madden ran down the three steps and entered the storeroom. But what had roused the sailor's dislike was that the lazaret contained no provisions. It was as empty as the forecastle; not a chest, not a canister, not even a spice box remained. Here again the lockers were open and empty. From one of the keyholes hung a bunch of keys. The steward had deserted his ring, knowing it could never be of service to him again.

The little metal bunch hung straight down without the slightest oscillation. Such lack of motion and life amid the close stewing heat of the lazaret threw a glamor of unreality over the whole affair. The schooner might well have been warped to a dock in some port of the dead. The very newness of everything accentuated its amazing loneliness.

"Doesn't seem real, does it?" said Greer in a low tone, drawing a long breath in the heat. "I keep listening."

Madden shook himself. "It seems as if someone ought to be aboard." He broke away from the spell: "I wish they had left us some provisions—we need 'em."

The hot heavy silence fell immediately after the remark, like a curtain that was heavy to lift.

"Let's look through the hold and see if there isn't someone here!" suggested Greer uneasily.

With a feeling that they were likely to encounter some being, human or spectral, at every turn, they went below. The farther they went the more inexplicable became the Minnie B's desertion. Her engines were in perfect order, her furnace so new that the grate bars were still unsealed from heat; the maker's name-plate was still bright on the boilers; her hull was quite dry, with less than six inches of water in her bilge. She had no cargo, except four or five tons of raw metal ingots used as ballast. The coal in her bunkers was nearly exhausted. Indeed she was riding so light that heavy weather would upset her like a chip. It seemed as if the crew had looted the Minnie B in a thorough and extraordinary manner, and then had simply vanished. Every now and then in their search the two would find themselves standing motionless, open-mouthed, listening intently to the brooding silence.

More puzzled than ever by these explorations, the two adventurers climbed into the chart room. Here, also, everything was intact, and in order. In a desk they found the ship's log and clearance papers. The captain's and the mate's licenses hung in frames against the wall. Near these was tacked the picture of a sunny-haired little girl and underneath it was written the name "Minnie." So the schooner was the little smiling-faced girl's namesake, this tragedy-haunted abandoned vessel. A Mercator's projection lay thumb-tacked on a table, and the last position of the schooner was indicated by a pin sticking in the map.