The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne
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I heard the grunting of a pig, so I worked into the stiff jungle that came bristling down to the beach, best way I could. Looking for pigs in there, unless you found a runway and had luck, was next to impossible. Most places the bush was woven together like high hurdles with the creepers and vines twisted about the trees. But I came across a lot of deadfall—trees uprooted in some big blow that hadn’t happened so very long ago, to judge by the looks of them and the new growth. I had got half a dozen ringdoves, a jumper-full of vi-apples, oranges, bananas, and mangoes when the sun worked through again and suddenly I saw something shine in the trees. First I thought it was some sort of idol—I was new to these South Seas and didn’t know but what they had ’em of metal—and I went mighty careful, watching for savages. I was there after food, not to furnish it.
“Presently I saw what it was—the figurehead of a ship lying there prow on to the mountain, the decks aslant a bit but all cradled up in vines, half a mile inland from the lagoon and, so far as I had time to determine, undamaged. It was just as if it had been picked up from the sea like Gulliver did with the fleet at Lilliput; picked up by a kid giant for a toy and dropped in the forest like a toy yacht might fall on the grass.”
Jim paused, sipping his tea, nearly cold now, declaring he liked it, making it an excuse to gather his thoughts. He wanted to eliminate certain details, to color others optimistically, but was not sure if that would be the right thing.
The girl and her cousin, the bony spinster, hung on his words with growing excitement, their eyes urging him on to the finish. Moreover, it was fairly evident that not only was his tale magic to them by reason of their personal interest, but that he had made it vivid to their imaginations. Under the glow of the lamp the girl leaned forward as eagerly as Desdemona must have done, her eyes luminous, her lips, soft and red as rose petals, slightly apart, her breath short. The glamour of the thing was upon the older woman. Finishing his cup of tea, Jim Lyman decided to submit the more gruesome details to her privately, and took up the thread of his yarn.
“It was a good ship. If the sea could have been brought to her I believe she would have floated. Strained a bit, of course, but sound. The masts were gone by the board. One lay over the port rail like a companion ladder. The others might have been alongside hidden in the heavy growth. I’ve got an idea they snapped off like carrots when she landed.
“You see, I figure she must have been flung ashore in some combination of great wind and tidal wave. Great rollers sometimes come up out of the ocean and sweep the islands. The skipper said afterward that they had them at Tahiti every so often. That would account for the ship riding unbroken over barrier and fringing reef, to be left high and dry inland. I have heard of such ships before.
“I went up by the mast. The deck was a mess, and the glass of the skylights broken. The slide of the main companionway was jammed, so I swung down through the skylight. Vines had worked their way in and the rains had mouldered things, but there was no sign of looting, no disorder outside of that natural to the jolt of such a landing. Now that, Miss, was proof positive to me there were no natives on the island. They would have dismantled the ship, gutted it, and probably burned it. I’d seen some lettering on the bows, raised letters with some of ’em dropped off, and I’d seen the full name on the stern. They tied up with the figurehead and name of that model in the window; they were the same as that sign you’ve got hanging up outside:
THE GOLDEN DOLPHIN
BOSTON
That was the name of her.
“The cabin was much the same as other cabins—a mast running through, transom cushions between the doors leading off to the staterooms, fixed table and chairs in the middle, swinging lamp with the chimney busted, but oil in the container. She was well fitted up. It was getting dark outside and I could hear the wind rising, tossing about the treetops. I had to hurry. There was an empty birdcage, I remember, and books on shelves behind doors with the glass broken. The books were mouldy and had mostly come apart with the damp. I took along one of them that was small enough to get into my pocket. Gulliver’s Travels. That’s how I happened to read it.”
“Oh!” The girl gave the exclamation with shining eyes. “Father thinks that Swift is the most wonderful of satirists. He always had Gulliver with him. I gave him that copy that was in the little library. And the canary. Poor Dick! Go on.”
“Well, Miss, that’s about all, so far as the island goes. I told you it was getting dark. There was a recall from the ship, three shots from the saluting gun. My men were shouting for me and there was the schooner with a flag streaming from the main spreader. It was about mid-afternoon, but by the time we got aboard it was black as midnight. It was as if that big hurricane had been blowing in a circle and we had come from one edge of it through comparative calm only to go smack into it again. We clawed off that island by some miracle and away we went again, south and east. Our rudder went for the third and last time, we were blown along the top of the waste with no more control than a chip in a millrace.
“There are leagues of open water down where we were, to look at the chart, but there are deeps in the South Pacific, troughs, they call ’em, where the depth is five thousand fathoms—thirty thousand feet—and more, and right close to those troughs you’ll find great reefs built up. I suppose they are built to sea level by the coral insects working on top of big peaks. They make big patches of shallows where, if it is calm, you see the sea breaking for miles at low tide. We saw nothing. There was as much water in the air as the ocean, it seemed. The spume blew level and stung like hail from the force of the wind back of it. There was no sky, no horizon, only a white welter, and the ship leaking, staggering along till she went smashing and dragging over coral that ripped her almost to splinters. There was no bottom left to the old hooker.
“And, then, just as if it had done what it set out to do, though you can’t imagine such a hullabaloo to sink one schooner, or a dozen, for that matter, the wind vanished, blew out, the snarling sea worried over us for a bit and went down, though where it was deep the waves ran high enough, as we soon found out. The sky had cleared by sunset. It was the most gorgeous sight I’ve ever seen. The stars were out and the moon up before midnight, shining down on our two boats running before a sweet southeaster.
“We parted company that night. The skipper and the first mate were in the other boat. Far as I know they’ve never been heard of. Insurance has been collected on the Whitewing, I know that. We’d broken up on the Maria Theresa Reef, I imagine, or maybe the Legouve Reef. The last reckoning taken and set down was the one made by the skipper when the sun broke through at noon off the island; Dolphin Island, I’ve always called it, for want of a better name. There’s nothing down on the charts.
“That’s as far as you’re interested, Miss, and farther. We had a pretty mean time. Ran out of grub and water, the usual open boat luck. Two poor devils died and another went mad with drinking salt water, but we were picked up at last and brought back to Panama. There was a chap who was half purser, half steward along with me, and I came up north with him looking for a job. There was nothing doing on the coast so I worked inland after I’d stayed with his folks till I was ashamed of myself.
“That’s all.”
He had dodged the skeleton successfully and the fallen jaw with the golden bridge. He could ask the spinster if Captain Whiting had bridge work in his teeth. It might establish his death and, if so, a relative could better break it to the girl. It seemed convincing that there were no survivors. For one thing—he had avoided mention of it—the ship’s boats were gone. They might have been carried away in the storm that had flung her on the island; they might have been launched during that storm; they might have been launched from the island after the final catastrophe. If the crew had not been swept overboard, if they had not escaped in boats, they would surely have stayed with the ship and used it as headquarters, if not for a permanent habitation. Supposing the ship had been there a year even—in the hurry of departure Lyman had not thought to look for ship’s papers—that meant that the boats had been lost, like the skipper of the Whitewing, long ago.
The island was uninhabited. Natives or white survivors of the Golden Dolphin would always have been looking for a ship. They would have seen the Whitewing, come down to the beach or signaled. Yet proof that one, at least, of the Golden