Yorke The Adventurer

He held up his hand, smiling the while: “I’m glad to have such a good comrade as you, Drake. You have the makings of a good sailorman in you, but you’re too quick and excitable, and want an old wooden-headed, stolid buffer like me to steady you. Now let us start.”

We walked across the narrow strip of land to the weather side, and sat down upon a creeper-covered boulder of coral rock. Before us the ocean still heaved tumultuously, and the long, white-crested breakers thundered heavily on the short, fringing reef; but overhead was a wondrous sky of myriad stars, set in a vault of cloudless blue.

“The gale is blowing itself out,” said my companion. “We shall see a fine day in the morning. And, Drake, we shall see the brigantine back in three days.”

“I hope so,” I said, laughingly, “but I’m afraid we won’t. Both the brigantine and cutter must have had to heave to, or else run, and if they have run, they may be two hundred miles away from here by now. And I think that Guest would run to the westward for open water, instead of heaving-to among such an infernal lot of reefs and shoals.”

“Whatever he may have done, he, and my cutter, too, are safe, and we shall see them back in three days,” he reiterated, with such quiet emphasis, and with such a strangely confident, contented look in his eyes, that I also felt convinced the vessels would, as he said, turn up safely.

We sat silent for some minutes, watching the sea, and noting how quickly the wind was falling, when presently my comrade turned to me.

“You asked me why I did not try to make the German head station in Blanche Bay, after my crew were killed,” he said. “Well, I’ll tell you. I am frightened of no man living, but I happened to hear the name of the manager there—a-Captain Sternberg, an ex-captain of the German navy. He and I served together in the same ship—and I am a deserter from the German service.”

I was astonished. “You!” I exclaimed; “surely you are not a German?”

“Indeed, I am,” he replied, “and if I fell into the hands or the German naval authorities, or any German Consul, or other official anywhere, I should have but a short time in this world.”

“Why, what could they do?”

“Send me home to be tried—and shot.”

“Surely they cannot shoot a man for desertion in the German navy.”

“There is something beyond desertion in my case— I killed an officer. Sternberg knows the whole story, and though as a man and a gentleman he would feel for me, he would have no hesitation in arresting me and sending me home in irons, if he could get me. And he could not fail to recognise me, although eight and twenty years have passed since he last saw me.”

“But he is not an Imperial officer now,” I remarked.

“Yes, he is. He is Vice-Consul for Germany in the Western Pacific, and, as such, would have authority to apprehend me, and apprehend me he certainly would, though, as I have said, he knows my story, and when we served together, was always a kind and good friend to me, despite the fact that he was an officer and I was not; for I came from as good a family as his own—and that goes a long way in both the German army and navy.”

I made some sympathetic remark, and then Yorke resumed:

“What I am telling you now—and I’ll tell you the whole story—is no secret, for thousands of people have read of the Brandt extradition case in the United States. Twenty years ago I was arrested in San Francisco at the instance of the German Consul there, but managed to escape after being in custody for six weeks.

“My real name is Brandt. My father was a German, my mother a Danish lady—a native of Klampenborg, a small sea-coast town not far from Copenhagen. My father was an officer in the army, and was well-known as an Asiatic traveller and linguist, and I was the only child. At fifteen years ot age, much to my delight, I went into the navy, served one commission in the Baltic, and two on the west coast of South America. Then when I was about twenty-one years of age, I was given, through my father’s influence, a minor position on the staff of a scientific expedition sent out by the German Geographical Society to Arabia. I came home at the end of a year, and was given three months’ leave, at the end of which I was to join a new ship.

“Being pretty liberally supplied with money by my father—who was a man of means—I determined to spend my leave in London, and there I met the woman who was to prove the ruin of my future. She was the daughter of the woman in whose house I lodged in Chelsea, and was a very handsome, fascinating girl about nineteen. I fell madly in love with her, and she professed to return my feelings, and I, poor young fool, believed in her. Her mother, who was a cunning old harridan, and greedy and avaricious to a degree, gave us every opportunity of being together. As I spent my money most lavishly on the girl, and they both knew my father was well-off, and I was the only son, they had merely to spread their net for me to fall into it.

“Well, I married the girl, both she and her mother promising to keep the matter secret from my parents until after I returned from my next voyage and got a commission. I knew well that I should get into very serious trouble with my superiors if the fact of my marriage became known, but was so infatuated with the girl that I allowed no considerations to influence me.

“A month before my leave expired, I sent my wife over to Bremerhaven, where I had some friends on whose secrecy I could rely. My ship—a small gunboat—was being fitted out at that port, and my wife seemed delighted that she would see me pretty frequently before I sailed. I was cautious enough not to travel with her from London, for that would have meant almost certain detection, and, as an additional precaution, she went to my friends in Bremerhaven under her maiden name. I was to follow her in a week, by the next steamer.

“That evening, as I was being driven home to my wife’s mother’s house in Chelsea, the horse bolted. I was thrown out of the cab, and half-an-hour later, I was in a hospital with a broken arm and severe internal injuries. It was six weeks before I was able to leave England to join my ship; but my father had written to the navy office, telling of my accident, and my leave had been extended. During all this time my wife wrote to me weekly, telling me she was very miserable at my not allowing her to return to England to nurse me, but would obey me; for I had written to her and told her not to return, as I did not think it advisable—the doctors and nurses at the hospital knew I was in the German navy, and I was then becoming somewhat fearful of the news of my marriage getting to the knowledge of the naval authorities.

“When I reached Bremerhaven, I had still three days of my extended leave to expire, so had no need to report myself; but at once went to my friends’ house, where I met my wife, who was overjoyed to see me again. My friends, too, welcomed me warmly, though I somehow fancied there seemed to be some underlying restraint upon them. They were quite a young couple: the husband was a clerk in the customhouse, and he and I had been friends from boyhood.

“In the morning I went to look at my new ship, and was greatly pleased to find that my old officer, Lieutenant Sternberg, had been appointed to her. He saw me at once, came along the deck, and spoke very kindly to me. Whilst he was talking to me, an officer from the port guardship came on board. He was a very handsome man, about thirty, with a deep scar across his forehead, and I noticed that he looked at me very keenly—almost rudely—and I fancied I saw something like a sneer on his face as he turned away to speak to Sternberg.

“My young friend, the custom house clerk, whose name was Muller, returned every day from his office at six o’clock, when we had supper, and on this occasion I began to tell him of my new ship, and then said casually:

“By the way, who is that conceited-looking fellow from the guardship—a man with an ugly scar across his forehead?”

“No one answered, and then to my surprise I saw that Muller was looking inquiringly at my wife, whose face suddenly became scarlet, while Mrs. Muller bent her face over her plate. Then Muller looked at me and said quietly:

“‘That was Captain Decker. I believe that he has the honour of the friendship of Frau Brandt.’

“There was something so stern in his tones that I could not understand; but another look at my wife’s face filled me with the blackest misgivings. She had turned a deathly pale, and, faltering something inaudible, rose from the table and went to her room. Then I asked Muller what it meant.

“‘Ask your wife,’ he said sadly; ‘you are my dear friend, and she is my guest—but her conduct has not been satisfactory.’

“I now insisted upon him telling me more, and soon learnt the whole miserable story. My wife had been in the habit of meeting Captain Decker clandestinely ever since she had been in Bremerhaven, although she had denied it when Mrs. Muller had indignantly threatened to write and tell me if she did not at once cease the intimacy. This she had sworn to do, but, Muller said, she had, he feared, violated her promise frequently, though he could not absolutely prove it.

“I went direct to my wife. Instead of a shrinking, trembling woman, I found a defiant devil—a shameless creature who coolly admitted her guilt, told me that she had never cared for me, and that she had only married me to escape from the monotony of her London life with her mother—if she was her mother, she added with a mocking laugh.

“Thank God, I didn’t hurt her! The revelation was a heavy one, but I braced myself up, and the rage and contempt that filled me were mingled with some sort of pity. I did not even reproach her. I had in my pockets about thirty pounds in English gold. I put down twenty on the table.

“‘There are twenty pounds,’ I said—‘take it and go. I will send you another two hundred pounds as soon as I can communicate with my father—on one condition.’

“‘What is it?’ she said sullenly.

“‘That you’ll never try to see me, or harass me again. If you do, by God! I’ll kill you.’

“I promise you that much,” she replied. In half an hour she had left the house, and I never saw or heard of her again.

“That evening I made special preparations. First of all I wrote to my poor father, and told him everything, and bade Muller and his wife goodbye, telling them I was going on board my ship. They, pitying me deeply, bade me farewell with tears.

“But I had no such intention. I wanted to settle scores with the man who had wronged me. At a marine store dealer’s that night I bought two common cutlasses, and waited for my chance. I had learnt that Decker went to the service club on certain evenings, and stayed very late.

“My time came the following night. I saw my man come out of the club, and followed him closely till he entered a quiet street. Then I called him by name. He turned and faced me and asked me angrily what I wanted.

“‘I am Theodor Brandt,’ I said, and handed him one of the two cutlasses I was carrying under my overcoat.

“The man was no coward, and fought well, but in less than a minute I ran him clean through the body. He fell in the muddy street, and by the time I had dragged him away into the shadow of a high wooden fence enclosing a timber yard, was dead. Half an hour later I was on board a fishing-smack, bound for Wangeroog, one of the Frisian Islands, off the coast. At that place I remained in safety for a month, then got away to Amsterdam, and from there to Java. Then for the next eight-and-twenty years, down to this very moment, I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth. Six years after I escaped I joined an American man-of-war—the Iroquois—at Canton, and when we were paid off in the States I took out my naturalisation papers. This served me well, when, two years afterwards, I was recognised at San Francisco by some German bluejackets as ‘Brandt, the murderer of Captain Decker,’ and arrested. Fortunately, I had money, and while the German Consul was trying hard to get me handed over to the German naval authorities on the Pacific Coast, my lawyers managed to get me out on bail. I got away down to the Hawaiian Islands in a lumber ship, and—well, since then I’ve been knocking around anywhere and everywhere.... Come, let us turn in.”

Chapter VI

At dawn the wind had died away to a light breeze, and the sun rose to shine upon an ocean of unspecked blue. To the eastward, the slopes of New Britain were hidden from our view by a thick mist, only the tops of some high mountain peaks far inland showing above, and there seemed to be every appearance of the fine weather lasting. This gave us much satisfaction, and after a bathe in a rocky pool on the reef, we ate our breakfast of fish and coconut with good spirits, then filling our pipes, went down to the inner beach to bask in the glorious sunshine.

“If this sort ot weather keeps up,” I remarked to Yorke, “I’m afraid your prediction about our seeing Guest and the cutter in another two days won’t be verified—it’ll fall calm before noon to-day, and may keep so for a week. I’ve known a calm to last for a solid ten days on the north side of New Britain.”

“Perhaps so,” he replied; “but then the current about here sets strongly to the eastward, and somehow I feel certain that, wind or no wind, we’ll see the ships.”

“Well, if we do, you ought to give up sailoring, Captain Yorke, and go into business as a prophet. I for one would always come to you for a tip. But, joking apart, let us imagine that Guest or the cutter did not run far to the eastward, but hove-to, and as soon as the hurricane had blown itself out, headed back for us; in such a case, both vessels may be within half a day’s sail of us at this very moment.”

“That is quite possible—it is also possible they may be within twenty miles of us, becalmed. It would not surprise me if Guest actually drifts in sight of these islands, and comes to look for us in his boat.”

“Now that brings me to the kernel of my imagination. I think it very likely he may have no boat to send, and–”

He gave me a mighty thump on the back.

“Good boy! I know what you’re thinking of—the raft?”

“Exactly, Captain. So don’t you think it would be as well for us to turn to at once, and make a couple of good paddles? though in an emergency the butt ends of dry coconut branches do very well for paddles.”

Then I went on to say that it was quite likely that Guest had lost both his boats, and the cutter her dingy, before there was time to have them properly secured; and that the brigantine had lost the whaler, which had brought us ashore, I was sure of, for she had, as I have mentioned, been nearly thrown over on her beam ends when struck by the first blast, and the boat must certainly either have been hopelessly stove when she was forced below, or torn away from the davits by the weight of water in her when the ship righted herself.

We set to at once with a good will—Yorke overhauling the cane fastenings with which the great bamboos were lashed together, whilst I went along the beach in search of some young futu trees, the wood of which is soft when green, but dries hard, and could be easily worked, even by such a tool as a sheath knife.

A quarter of a mile from our camp I found just what I wanted—three or four young futu saplings lying on the ground, torn up by the roots. Taking two ot the best, I stripped off the branches, and returned to my companion, who was still at work on the raft, relashing its timbers wherever needed.

In a couple of hours I had made quite a decent pair of paddles, each about four feet in length, and with four inches of blade in the widest part. Then Yorke, having finished with the raft, went with me along the beach, and collected some old coconuts for food, and some young ones to drink, for, as my comrade observed, one never knew what might happen, and it would be as well to have some provisions all ready to hand in case of emergency. There were still thousands of dead fish to be seen everywhere lying on the sand, cast up among the débris above high-water mark, but these were now turning putrid, and of no use.

We had noticed a huge banyan tree not far distant from our sleeping place, which was the roosting and breeding place of a vast number of whale birds, so Yorke proposed that we should go there and see if we could kill some by hurling sticks at them. We had often seen this done by the natives ot the western Caroline Islands, for the birds are very stupid, and allow themselves, when not on the wing, to be approached quite closely. We cut ourselves each a half-dozen of short, heavy throwing-sticks of green wood, and set out for the rookery, and within an hour had killed thirty or forty of the poor birds, some of which we at once picked, cleaned, and roasted. We had no lack of salt, for every rock and shrub above high-water mark on the weather side of the island was covered with a thin incrustation of it, caused by the rapid evaporation of the spray under a torrid sun. The remainder of the birds we cooked later in the day, intending them as a stand-by.

In the afternoon we again bathed, this time in the lagoon, and Yorke, who was one of the strongest and swiftest swimmers, for an European, that I had ever seen, succeeded in capturing a turtle which was lying asleep on the surface of the water, and brought it ashore; but it proved to be so old and poor that we let it go again in disgust.

Towards the close of the day we again crossed the islet to have a better look at the New Britain shore, the heavy mist which had hung over it most of the day having now vanished. That the native owners of the plantations would put in an appearance before many days had passed I was certain, for they would be anxious to see what damage had been done by the hurricane, and no doubt dig up some of the taro, which, as I have said, was fully grown.

The moment we emerged from the scrub out upon the eastern shore, we obtained a splendid view of the opposite coast of the great island, though the actual shore was not visible on account of the extreme lowness of the belt of littoral, which was many miles in width; but by climbing a tree we could just discern the long, dark line of palms, and here and there a narrow strip of white, denoting either surf or a sandy beach.

“Why,” I said to Yorke, “that land cannot be more than five miles distant to its nearest point, and if there are niggers living there we should see their fires to-night, and–”

The next moment I uttered a loud hurrah! and nearly fell off the tree in my excitement, for away on the northern horizon was a sail, shining snowy-white in the rays of the sinking sun!

Yorke echoed my cheer. “A day sooner than I prophesied, Drake! Wish we had a glass, so that we could make out which it is. I am rather inclined to think it is the Fray Bentos it looks too big for the cutter. Anyway, whichever it is, she’s becalmed; but even if there is not a breath of wind during the night, she’ll be closer in in the morning, as the current is bound to set her along this way.”

We descended from the tree jubilantly, and I suggested that we should make a big blaze on the eastern shore, so as to let the ship know we saw her, but the more cautious Yorke said it would be rather risky. Natives, he said, might be quite near at that moment, a party of canoes could have easily crossed over during the day, and we should be none the wiser unless we happened to see the reflections of their fires, after they had arrived, on the lagoon waters. So, after waiting another ten minutes, when the sun set, we returned to camp.

“Let us kill the fatted calf and divide it between us,” said my companion, taking our plug of tobacco and cutting it in halves; “I’m going to smoke all night, or at any rate until I fall asleep. Did you see how the sun set? Well, that thick, yellow haze means a calm to-morrow, to a dead certainty, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if we see Guest pulling into the lagoon at daylight, that is, if he has a boat left.”

I do not think either of us slept for more than a quarter of an hour that night. That Yorke could have done so, I do not doubt, but I would persist in talking, getting up, walking about, and smoking, and he, good-naturedly, kept awake on my account. The night was wondrously calm and beautiful, so calm and quiet that there was not the slightest surf on the outer reef, and the only sound that broke the silence would be the croak of some night-fishing bird, as it rose, prey in bill, from the slumbering lagoon.

As soon as ever we could see our way through to the other side of the island, we were afoot, unheeding the drenching we got from the dew-soaked trees whenever we touched a branch. Within five minutes after we had emerged out into the open the sun rose, and a cheer broke from us when we saw both the cutter and the brigantine lying becalmed about four miles away, between the islet and the mainland of New Britain, and almost abreast of where we stood.

“They have both lost all the boats, I am almost sure,” said Yorke, “or we should see one coming ashore; unless, indeed, a boat is already pulling down the lagoon on the other side. Let us wait an hour. That will decide us what to do; if we see no boat between now and then, we can be assured that Guest has none to send, and that he is waiting for a breeze, so that he can run in close to the reef, and try to get within hail of us. I daresay that he has a raft of some sort already made, and is trying to get closer to the land to send it ashore for us. So we’ll give him a pleasant surprise.”

We waited impatiently till the hour had passed, but could see no sign of a boat putting off from, or on the way from the brigantine, and were then certain that she had none to send, as if it had left the vessel, even at daylight, it would have entered the lagoon and been with us by that time.

Whilst we were waiting we had piled together on the shore a great heap of dried coconut branches, on top of which we threw masses of a thick, green, saline creeper. This heap we lit as a signal, and a pillar of dense smoke rose high in the windless atmosphere. It was answered by Guest in a few minutes—not by a gun, as we expected, but by a similar signal of smoke, caused by a mass of cotton waste being soaked in coal tar and ignited.

“He’s answering us,” exclaimed Yorke. “Now, let’s get the raft launched and make a start.”

We tore back through the scrub to our camp, I panting with excitement, Yorke as cool as ever. Carrying the raft down to the water we quickly put on board the bundles of young coconuts, not deeming it worth while to bother with the old ones and the cooked birds, as we quite expected to be alongside the Fray Bentos within three hours at least, the sea being as calm as a mill-pond, and the raft very light.

“Go easy, my lad, go easy,” said Yorke with a smile, as he saw the state of flurry I was in. “We’ve got two or three hours paddling to do, so don’t knock yourself up needlessly. Now, what about our rifles?”

I had actually forgotten them, but at once ran back for them (the cartridges we always kept in our pockets), and picking one up in each hand, tore down the bank again, caught my left foot in a vine, and pitched upon my nose on the top of the broken coral and pebbles covering the beach with such violence that had it not been for the muzzle of the rifle I was carrying in my right hand plunging into the loose stones, and bringing me up sharply, I might have broken my jaw against a big boulder, which just caught me on the chin.

Pretending I was not hurt, though my chin was skinned, and my shoulder was strained, I picked myself up, handed the rifles to Yorke, and said I was ready.

“Take a drink first,” he said in his authoritative, yet sympathetic way, as he opened a young coconut. “Then fill your pipe and rest awhile. We’re in no hurry for ten minutes. Poor chap, you did do a flyer. Talk about the Gadarene swine! Why you could give them points in running down steep places!”

I certainly had given myself a tremendous shaking, for I felt quite dizzy, but after a few draws at my pipe, said I was fit to paddle the raft to Cape Horn.

We pushed off, then poled along shore till we came to the passage, which was as smooth as glass. Here, on account of the deep water, we had to take to our paddles, and were soon out in the open sea, heading for the vessels. The sun was intensely hot, but we took no heed of it, and congratulated ourselves upon having such a calm sea, instead of having to paddle against a swell, which would have greatly impeded our progress.