His Unknown Wife

The chief engineer had already assured the captain many times that any further pressure by the engines would inflict irreparable damage, so, risking everything on the throw of the dice and wishful to know the worst, at any rate, before daylight vanished, he ordered the sails to be hoisted again.

All hands were brought on deck, life-belts were adjusted, and boats’ crews stood by. At that moment Maseden caught a glimpse of the two girls. They, with other passengers, were summoned by the ship’s officers and placed in the smoke-room, which, by reason of its situation beneath the bridge, provided a convenient gathering ground in case the boats were lowered.

He saw them only for a moment – two cloaked figures, wearing cloth caps tied tightly to their heads with motor-veils. He could not distinguish Madge from Nina.

It was a strange and most bizarre notion that when the gates of eternity were opening a second time before his eyes the woman who was his lawful wife should now be sharing his peril, yet be separated from him far more effectually than in the Castle of San Juan.

The incongruity of their position did not trouble him greatly, however. Soon he ceased thinking about it. He realized that he, as an individual, could do nothing but obey orders and abide by the decree of Providence.

He was not frightened. Some hours earlier, knowing the physical features of the western coast of South America, he had decided that the odds were a thousand to one against the escape of the ship and her seventy-four occupants. He hoped that when the end came it might not be a long drawn-out agony – that was all. For the rest, he looked forward with a certain spice of curiosity to the fight which captain and crew would make against the giant forces of nature.

An awesome panorama of mighty cliffs, inaccessible islands and isolated rocks over which the seas dashed with extraordinary fury, was opening up with ever-increasing clearness. A mist of driven froth and spindrift hung low over the surface of the water, but the great hills of the interior were distinctly visible.

Irregular white patches near their summits marked the presence of huge glaciers. Lower down the valleys were choked with black masses of firs. Countless generations of trees had grown, and fallen, and rotted, ultimately forming a new, if unstable, basis for more recent growths.

An occasional red scar down a hillside revealed the latest landslide. A cascade would leap out from the topmost part of a forest and bury itself again in the depths.

These outstanding features were all on a huge scale. It was a weird, monstrous land, a place utterly unfitted for human habitation, a part of creation quite out of keeping with the rest of the world. Surveying it impartially, one might wonder whether it had traveled far in advance of the general scheme of things or lagged millions of years behind.

But its aspect was sinister and forbidding in the extreme, and never have its depressing characteristics been etched in darker shadows than when viewed that January day from the decks of the ill-fated Southern Cross.

CHAPTER VII

THE WRECK

Up to the last the ship’s path was dogged by misfortune. She approached Hanover Island at a point where the sea was comparatively open; hence, the tremendous waves rolling in from the Pacific were not only unchecked by island breakwaters, but their volume and force were actually increased by the gradual upward trend of the rock floor.

Still, undaunted by conditions which suggested the plight of a doomed craft being hurried to the lip of a cataract, keen eyes searched the frowning coast-line for one of the many estuaries which pierced the land, some merely the mouths of short-lived rivers, others again carrying the ocean currents to the very base of the Andes.

At last an opening did seem to present itself. The great rock walls, springing sheer from sea level to a height of a thousand feet or more, fell apart, and, so far as might be judged, a wide and deep channel flowed inland.

It was at this crisis, when life or death for all on board might depend on the veriest trifle, that the captain had to decide whether or not to let go both anchors and endeavor to ride out the gale.

He was an experienced and cool-headed sailor. He knew quite well that the odds were heavy against an anchor holding in such ground, or, if it held, against any cable standing the strain of a six-thousand-ton ship in that terrific sea. But, as Maseden learned subsequently, he sought advice.

The first and second officers were consulted in turn, and each confirmed their chief’s opinion that the only practicable course was to run into the passage which still offered a comparatively clear way ahead.

So the Southern Cross sped on.

The second officer came forward with some of the crew to superintend the dropping of the anchor. The fourth officer took charge of the aft anchor. All other members of the crew stood by the boats.

Maseden, feeling oddly remote and unclassed among men of his own race, followed the second officer to the forecastle deck. There, at least, he could stare his fill at the inferno of rock and broken water which the vessel was approaching, though even his landsman’s eyes saw that she was in a waterway of considerable width, while each mile now traversed must tend to diminish the seas and bring a secure anchorage within the bounds of possibility.

No one paid heed to him. Among these stolid sailor-men he was a “Dago,” a somewhat dandified specimen of the swaggering vaqueros they had met at times in the drinking dens of South American ports. He was minded to have speech with the second officer, and proclaim once and for all that he was of the same kith and kin; but the impulse was stayed by a glance at the set, resolute face, intent only on obeying a signal from the captain. It was no time for confidences. He questioned even if the sailor would have answered.

A touch on a lever would set a winch spinning as the anchor leaped to its task. The man charged with carrying out that duty without hitch or delay could spare thought for nothing else.

One of the deck-hands, stationed near the chocks, chanced to be the very Spaniard whose life had been endangered by the falling block on the day after the ship left Cartagena. The ship’s carpenter was ill, and the Spaniard was carpenter’s mate.

Maseden caught his eye, and the man smiled wanly.

“You did me a good turn the other day, señor,” he said. “Let me repay you now.”

“But how?” came the surprised inquiry.

“Underneath my bunk, the lowest one on the left in number seven berth, you will find my kit-bag. Beneath some clothes is a bottle of good old brandy. Get it, and drink it quickly.”

“Why?”

“You will put a pint of honest liquor to good use, and in ten minutes you won’t care what happens.”

“I have no desire to die drunk,” said Maseden quietly.

The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders.

“You’ll never have a better excuse for swallowing excellent cognac,” he grinned.

“Shut up, you two!” growled the officer.

He had not understood a word of their talk. He simply voiced the eminently American notion that anything said in the Spanish language could not be of the least importance just then.

Oddly enough, Maseden was angered by being thus outcasted, as it were. He was tempted to retort, but happily checked the words on his lips. Nerves were apt to be on a raw edge in such conditions, he remembered. Even the stern-faced ship’s officer, awaiting a command which would settle the fate of the Southern Cross once and for all, might well resent the magpie chattering of a couple of Spaniards.

Maseden turned for an instant to look at the bridge. The captain stood there, apparently the most unmoved person on board. The sails, tugging fiercely at their rings and bolts, still kept the ship under control, notwithstanding the ten-knot tidal current which carried her onward irresistibly. The foresail was bellied out to port, so the captain remained on the starboard side of the bridge, whence he had an uninterrupted view ahead.

Suddenly two cloaked figures emerged from the obscurity of the smoking-room and hurried to the transverse rail which guarded the fore part of the promenade deck. With them came some men, among whom Maseden recognized Sturgess; while another man, who caught the arm of one of the girls in a helpless sort of way, was probably Mr. Gray.

Evidently there was no concealing the ship’s peril from the passengers now. Everyone wore a life-belt, and was clothed to resist the cold. A plausible explanation of this general flocking out on to the deck was that they had discerned the cleft in the rocky heights through a blurred window, and refused to remain any longer in the sheltered uncertainty of the smoking-room.

At this period there was little or no difficulty in keeping one’s feet. The great hull of the Southern Cross swung easily on an even keel with the onrush of the sea-river. The ship was not fighting now, but yielding – a complacent leviathan held captive by a most puissant and ruthless enemy.

During the few seconds Maseden stared at the veiled women. One of those two – which one he could not tell – was his wife. It was the maddest, most fantastic thing he had ever heard of. In a spirit of sheer deviltry he waved a greeting. One of the girls raised a hand to her face – perhaps to her lips.

What did it matter? In all human probability that was their eternal farewell. He waved again, and turned resolutely to scan the frowning headlands now rapidly closing in on both sides of the vessel’s path.

About that time a new and disturbing sound reached his ears. Hitherto there had been nothing but the unceasing chant of the gale, the thud and swish of the seas, the steady plaint of the ship, and an occasional crash like a volley of musketry when the crest was torn off some giant roller and flung against poop or superstructure. But now there came a crashing, booming noise, irregular, yet almost continuous, and ever growing louder and more insistent; a noise almost exactly similar to distant gun-fire and the snarling explosions of heavy projectiles.

It was the noise of the bitterest and longest war ever waged. Those old enemies, sea and land, were engaged in deadly combat, and, as ever, the sea was winning.

Even while the Southern Cross swung past an overhanging fortress of rock, a mighty bastion crumbled into ruin. It was singular to watch a cloud of dust mingle with the spindrift – to note how the next breaker climbed higher in assault over the vantage ground provided by the successful sap.

A disconcerting feature of the ship’s hurried transit into this unchartered territory was the clearness with which all things were visible above a height of some twelve feet from the surface of the sea; whereas, below that level, the clouds of spray and flying scud formed an almost impenetrable wall.

Taking his eyes from the everchanging panorama, Maseden looked over the side. The foam-flecked water was black but fairly transparent. In its depths he was astounded by the sight of writhing, sinister shapes like the arms of innumerable devil-fish.

At first he experienced a shock of surprise so close akin to horror that he felt the chill of it, as though one of these fearsome tentacles were already twined around his shrinking body. Then he realized that he had been startled by some gigantic species of seaweed. The ship was crossing a submarine forest. Down there in the depths on this January day in the southern hemisphere some mysterious form of plant life was enjoying its leafy June.

But science had no joys for him in that hour. Better the outlook on crag and clearing sky than a furtive glimpse of the limbs and foliage of that monstrous growth.