第16章

We sighted the Brunhilda some five hundred miles south of the Carolines.The wind had fallen soon after Papua had dropped astern.The Suwarna's ability to make her twelve knots an hour without it had made me very fully forgive her for not being as fragrant as the Javan flower for which she was named.Da Costa, her captain, was a garrulous Portuguese; his mate was a Canton man with all the marks of long and able service on some pirate junk; his engineer was a half-breed China-Malay who had picked up his knowl-edge of power plants, Heaven alone knew where, and, I had reason to believe, had transferred all his religious impulses to the American built deity of mechanism he so faithfully served.The crew was made up of six huge, chattering Tonga boys.

The Suwarna had cut through Finschafen Huon Gulf to the protection of the Bismarcks.She had threaded the maze of the archipelago tranquilly, and we were then rolling over the thousand-mile stretch of open ocean with New Hanover far behind us and our boat's bow pointed straight toward Nukuor of the Monte Verdes.After we had rounded Nukuor we should, barring accident, reach Ponape in not more than sixty hours.

It was late afternoon, and on the demure little breeze that marched behind us came far-flung sighs of spice-trees and nutmeg flowers.The slow prodigious swells of the Pacific lifted us in gentle, giant hands and sent us as gently down the long, blue wave slopes to the next broad, upward slope.

There was a spell of peace over the ocean, stilling even the Portuguese captain who stood dreamily at the wheel, slowly swaying to the rhythmic lift and fall of the sloop.

There came a whining hail from the Tonga boy lookout draped lazily over the bow.

"Sail he b'long port side!"

Da Costa straightened and gazed while I raised my glass.

The vessel was a scant mile away, and must have been visible long before the sleepy watcher had seen her.She was a sloop about the size of the Suwarna, without power.All sails set, even to a spinnaker she carried, she was making the best of the little breeze.I tried to read her name, but the vessel jibed sharply as though the hands of the man at the wheel had suddenly dropped the helm--and then with equal abruptness swung back to her course.The stern came in sight, and on it I read Brunhilda.

I shifted my glasses to the man at wheel.He was crouch-ing down over the spokes in a helpless, huddled sort of way, and even as I looked the vessel veered again, abruptly as before.I saw the helmsman straighten up and bring the wheel about with a vicious jerk.

He stood so for a moment, looking straight ahead, entirely oblivious of us, and then seemed again to sink down within himself.It came to me that his was the action of a man striv-ing vainly against a weariness unutterable.I swept the deck with my glasses.There was no other sign of life.I turned to find the Portuguese staring intently and with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us by a scant half mile.

"Something veree wrong I think there, sair," he said in his curious English."The man on deck I know.He is cap-tain and owner of the Br-rwun'ild.His name Olaf Huldricks-son, what you say--Norwegian.He is eithair veree sick or veree tired--but I do not undweerstand where is the crew and the starb'd boat is gone--"He shouted an order to the engineer and as he did so the faint breeze failed and the sails of the Brunhilda flapped down inert.We were now nearly abreast and a scant hun-dred yards away.The engine of the Suwarna died and the Tonga boys leaped to one of the boats.

"You Olaf Huldricksson!" shouted Da Costa."What's a matter wit' you?"The man at the wheel turned toward us.He was a giant;his shoulders enormous, thick chested, strength in every line of him, he towered like a viking of old at the rudder bar of his shark ship.

I raised the glass again; his face sprang into the lens and never have I seen a visage lined and marked as though by ages of unsleeping misery as was that of Olaf Huldricksson!

The Tonga boys had the boat alongside and were waiting at the oars.The little captain was dropping into it.

"Wait!" I cried.I ran into my cabin, grasped my emerg-1

dricksson softly.

"What's the matter, Olaf?" he began--and then was silent, looking down at the wheel.The hands of Huldricksson were lashed fast to the spokes by thongs of thin, strong cord; they were swollen and black and the thongs had bitten into the sinewy wrists till they were hidden in the outraged flesh, cutting so deeply that blood fell, slow drop by drop, at his feet! We sprang toward him, reaching out hands to his fetters to loose them.Even as we touched them, Huldricksson aimed a vicious kick at me and then another at Da Costa which sent the Portuguese tumbling into the scuppers.

"Let be!" croaked Huldricksson; his voice was thick and lifeless as though forced from a dead throat; his lips were cracked and dry and his parched tongue was black."Let be!

Go! Let be!"

The Portuguese had picked himself up, whimpering with rage and knife in hand, but as Huldricksson's voice reached him he stopped.Amazement crept into his eyes and as he thrust the blade back into his belt they softened with pity.

"Something veree wrong wit' Olaf," he murmured to me.

"I think he crazee!" And then Olaf Huldricksson began to curse us.He did not speak--he howled from that hideously dry mouth his imprecations.And all the time his red eyes roamed the seas and his hands, clenched and rigid on the wheel, dropped blood.

"I go below," said Da Costa nervously."His wife, his daughter--" he darted down the companionway and was gone.

Huldricksson, silent once more, had slumped down over the wheel.

Da Costa's head appeared at the top of the companion steps.

"There is nobody, nobody," he paused--then--"nobody --nowhere!" His hands flew out in a gesture of hopeless in-comprehension."I do not understan'."

Then Olaf Huldricksson opened his dry lips and as he spoke a chill ran through me, checking my heart.