Chapter I (4)

"But things did not remain as they were. The next morning, about half an hour after breakfast, I was walking up and down the upper deck, smoking my pipe, and wondering when Miss Minturn would be coming up to talk to me about the state of affairs, when suddenly I felt the deck beneath me move with a quick, sharp jerk, something like, I imagine, a small shock of an earthquake.

"Never, in all my life, did the blood run so cold in my veins; my legs trembled so that I could scarcely stand. I knew what had happened,--the Water-devil had begun to haul upon the ship!

"I was in such a state of collapse that I did not seem to have any power over my muscles; but for all that, I heard Miss Minturn's voice at the foot of the companion-way, and knew that she was coming on deck. In spite of the dreadful awfulness of that moment, I felt it would never do for her to see me in the condition I was in, and so, shuffling and half-tumbling, I got forward, went below, and made my way to the steward's room, where I had already discovered some spirits, and I took a good dram; for although I am not by any means an habitual drinker, being principled against that sort of thing, there are times when a man needs the support of some good brandy or whiskey.

"In a few minutes I felt more like myself, and went on deck, and there was Miss Minturn, half-scared to death. 'What is the meaning of that shock?' she said; 'have we struck anything?' 'My dear lady,' said I, with as cheerful a front as I could put on, 'I do not think we have struck anything. There is nothing to strike.' She looked at me for a moment like an angel ready to cry, and clasping her hands, she said, 'Oh, tell me, sir, I pray you, sir, tell me what has happened. My father felt that shock. He sent me to inquire about it. His mind is disturbed.' At that moment, before I could make an answer, there was another jerk of the ship, and we both went down on our knees, and I felt as if I had been tripped. I was up in a moment, however, but she continued on her knees. I am sure she was praying, but very soon up she sprang. 'Oh, what is it, what is it?' she cried; 'I must go to my father.'

"'I cannot tell you,' said I; 'I do not know, but don't be frightened; how can such a little shock hurt so big a ship?'

"It was all very well to tell her not to be frightened, but when she ran below she left on deck about as frightened a man as ever stood in shoes. There could be no doubt about it; that horrible beast was beginning to pull upon the ship. Whether or not it would be able to draw us down below, was a question which must soon be solved.

"I had had a small opinion of the maid, who, when I told her the crew had deserted the ship, had sat down and covered her head; but now I did pretty much the same thing; I crouched on the deck and pulled my cap over my eyes. I felt that I did not wish to see, hear, or feel anything.

"I had sat in this way for about half an hour, and had felt no more shocks, when a slight gurgling sound came to my ears. I listened for a moment, then sprang to my feet. Could we be moving? I ran to the side of the ship. The gurgle seemed to be coming from the stern. I hurried there and looked over. The wheel had been lashed fast, and the rudder stood straight out behind us. On each side of it there was a ripple in the quiet water. We were moving, and we were moving backward!

"Overpowered by horrible fascination, I stood grasping the rail, and looking over at the water beneath me, as the vessel moved slowly and steadily onward, stern foremost. In spite of the upset condition of my mind, I could not help wondering why the Vessel should move in this way.

"There was only one explanation possible: The Water-devil was walking along the bottom, and towing us after him! Why he should pull us along in this way I could not imagine, unless he was making for his home in some dreadful cave at the bottom, into which he would sink, dragging us down after him.

"While my mind was occupied with these horrible subjects, some one touched me on the arm, and turning, I saw Miss Minturn. 'Are we not moving?' she said. 'Yes,' I answered, 'we certainly are.' 'Do you not think,' she then asked, 'that we may have been struck by a powerful current, which is now carrying us onward?' I did not believe this, for there was no reason to suppose that there were currents which wandered about, starting off vessels with a jerk, but I was glad to think that this idea had come into her head, and said that it was possible that this might be the case. 'And now we are going somewhere' she said, speaking almost cheerfully. 'Yes, we are,' I answered, and I had to try hard not to groan as I said the words. 'And where do you think we are going?' she asked. It was altogether out of my power to tell that sweet creature that in my private opinion she, at least, was going to heaven, and so I answered that I really did not know. 'Well,' she said, 'if we keep moving, we're bound at last to get near land, or to some place where ships would pass near us.'

"There is nothing in this world," said the marine, "which does a man so much good in time of danger as to see a hopeful spirit in a woman--that is, a woman that he cares about. Some of her courage comes to him, and he is better and stronger for having her alongside of him."

Having made this remark, the speaker again glanced at the blacksmith's daughter. She had put down her work and was looking at him with an earnest brightness in her eyes.

"Yes," he continued, "it is astonishing what a change came over me, as I stood by the side of that noble girl. She was a born lady, I was a marine, just the same as we had been before, but there didn't seem to be the difference between us that there had been. Her words, her spirits, everything about her, in fact, seemed to act on me, to elevate me, to fill my soul with noble sentiments, to make another man of me. Standing there beside her, I felt myself her equal. In life or death I would not be ashamed to say, 'Here I am, ready to stand by you, whatever happens.'"

Having concluded this sentiment, the marine again glanced toward the blacksmith's daughter. Her eyes were slightly moist, and her face was glowing with a certain enthusiasm.

"Look here," said the blacksmith, "I suppose that woman goes along with you into the very maw of the sunken Devil, but I do wish you could take her more for granted, and get on faster with the real part of the story."

"One part is as real as another," said the marine; "but on we go, and on we did go for the whole of the rest of that day, at the rate of about half a knot an hour, as near as I could guess at it. The weather changed, and a dirty sort of fog came down on us, so that we couldn't see far in any direction.

"Why that Water-devil should keep on towing us, and where he was going to take us, were things I didn't dare to think about. The fog did not prevent me from seeing the water about our stern, and I leaned over the rail, watching the ripples that flowed on each side of the rudder, which showed that we were still going at about the same uniform rate.

"But toward evening the gurgling beneath me ceased, and I could see that the rudder no longer parted the quiet water, and that we had ceased to move. A flash of hope blazed up within me. Had the Water-devil found the ship too heavy a load, and had he given up the attempt to drag it to its under-ocean cave? I went below and had my supper; I was almost a happy man. When Miss Minturn came to ask me how we were getting along, I told her that I thought we were doing very well indeed. I did not mention that we had ceased to move, for she thought that a favorable symptom. She went back to her quarters greatly cheered up. Not so much, I think, from my words, as from my joyful aspect; for I did feel jolly, there was no doubt about it. If that Water-devil had let go of us, I was willing to take all the other chances that might befall a ship floating about loose on the Bay of Bengal.

"The fog was so thick that night that it was damp and unpleasant on deck, and so, having hung out and lighted a couple of lanterns, I went below for a comfortable smoke in the captain's room. I was puffing away here at my ease, with my mind filled with happy thoughts of two or three weeks with Miss Minturn on this floating paradise, where she was bound to see a good deal of me, and couldn't help liking me better, and depending on me more and more every day, when I felt a little jerking shock. It was the same thing that we had felt before. The Water-devil still had hold of us!

"I dropped my pipe, my chin fell upon my breast, I shivered all over. In a few moments I heard the maid calling to me, and then she ran into the room. 'Miss Minturn wants to know, sir,' she said, 'if you think that shock is a sudden twist in the current which is carrying us on?' I straightened myself up as well as I could, and in the dim light I do not think she noticed my condition. I answered that I thought it was something of that sort, and she went away.

"More likely, a twist of the Devil's arm, I thought, as I sat there alone in my misery.

"In ten or fifteen minutes there came two shocks, not very far apart. This showed that the creature beneath us was at work in some way or another. Perhaps he had reached the opening of his den, and was shortening up his arm before he plunged down into it with us after him. I couldn't stay any longer in that room alone. I looked for the maid, but she had put out the galley light, and had probably turned in for the night.

"I went up, and looked out on deck, but everything was horribly dark and sticky and miserable there. I noticed that my lanterns were not burning, and then I remembered that I had not filled them. But this did not trouble me. If a vessel came along and saw our lights she would probably keep away from us, and I would have been glad to have a vessel come to us, even if she ran into us. Our steamer would probably float long enough for us to get on board the other one, and almost anything would be better than being left alone in this dreadful place, at the mercy of the Water-devil.

"Before I left the deck I felt another shock. This took out of me whatever starch was left, and I shuffled below and got to my bunk, where I tumbled in and covered myself up, head and all. If there had been any man to talk to, it would have been different, but I don't know when I ever felt more deserted than I did at that time.

"I tried to forget the awful situation in which I was; I tried to think of other things; to imagine that I was drilling with the rest of my company, with Tom Rogers on one side of me, and old Humphrey Peters on the other. You may say, perhaps, that this wasn't exactly the way of carrying out my promise of taking care of Miss Minturn and the others. But what was there to do? When the time came to do anything, and I could see what to do, I was ready to do it; but there was no use of waking them up now and setting their minds on edge, when they were all comfortable in their beds, thinking that every jerk of the Devil's arm was a little twist in the current that was carrying them to Calcutta or some other desirable port.

"I felt some shocks after I got into bed, but whether or not there were many in the night, I don't know, for I went to sleep. It was daylight when I awoke, and jumping out of my bunk I dashed on deck. Everything seemed pretty much as it had been, and the fog was as thick as ever. I ran to the stern and looked over, and I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw that we were moving again, still stern foremost, but a little faster than before. That beastly Water-devil had taken a rest for the night, and had probably given us the shocks by turning over in his sleep, and now he was off again, making up for lost time.

"Pretty soon Miss Minturn came on deck, and bade me good morning, and then she went and looked over the stern. 'We are still moving on,' she said, with a smile, 'and the fog doesn't seem to make any difference. It surely cannot be long before we get somewhere.' 'No, miss,' said I, 'it cannot be very long.' 'You look tired,' she said, 'and I don't wonder, for you must feel the heavy responsibility on you. I have told my maid to prepare breakfast for you in our cabin. I want my father to know you, and I think it is a shame that you, the only protector that we have, should be shut off so much by yourself; so after this we shall eat together.' 'After this,' I groaned to myself, 'we shall be eaten together.' At that moment I did not feel that I wanted to breakfast with Miss Minturn."

"Mr. Cardly," said Mr. Harberry to the school-master, "have you ever read, in any of your scientific books, that the Bay of Bengal is subject to heavy fogs that last day after day?"

"I cannot say," answered the school-master, "that my researches into the geographical distribution of fogs have resulted--"

"As to fogs," interrupted the marine, "you can't get rid of them, you know. If you had been in the habit of going to sea, you would know that you are likely to run into a fog at any time, and in any weather; and as to lasting, they are just as likely to last for days as for hours. It wasn't the fog that surprised me. I did not consider that of any account at all. I had enough other things to occupy my mind." And having settled this little matter, he went on with his story.

"Well, my friends, I did not breakfast with Miss Minturn and her father. Before that meal was ready, and while I was standing alone at the stern, I saw coming out of the water, a long way off in the fog, which must have been growing thinner about this time, a dark and mysterious object, apparently without any shape or form. This sight made the teeth chatter in my head. I had expected to be pulled down to the Water-devil, but I had never imagined that he would come up to us!

"While my eyes were glued upon this apparition, I could see that we were approaching it. When I perceived this, I shut my eyes and turned my back--I could look upon it no longer. My mind seemed to forsake me; I did not even try to call out and give the alarm to the others. Why should I? What could they do?"

"If it had been me," said Mrs. Fryker, in a sort of gasping whisper, "I should have died right there." The marine turned his eyes in the direction of the blacksmith's daughter. She was engaged with her work, and was not looking at him.

"I cannot say," he continued, "that, had Miss Minturn been there at that moment, that I would not have declared that I was ready to die for her or with her; but there was no need of trying to keep up her courage, that was all right. She knew nothing of our danger. That terrible knowledge pressed on me alone. Is it wonderful that a human soul should sink a little under such an awful load?" Without turning to observe the effect of these last words, the marine went on. "Suddenly I heard behind me a most dreadful sound. 'Good Heavens,' I exclaimed, 'can a Water-devil bray?'

"The sound was repeated. Without knowing what I did, I turned. I heard what sounded like words; I saw in the fog the stern of a vessel, with a man above it, shouting to me through a speaking-trumpet.

"I do not know what happened next; my mind must have become confused. When I regained my senses, Miss Minturn, old Mr. Minturn, and the maid were standing by me. The man had stopped shouting from his trumpet, and a boat was being lowered from the other ship. In about ten minutes there were half-a-dozen men on board of us, all in the uniform of the British navy. I was stiff enough now, and felt myself from top to toe a regular marine in the service of my country. I stepped up to the officer in command and touched my cap.

"He looked at me and my companions in surprise, and then glancing along the deck, said, 'What has happened to this vessel? Who is in command?' I informed him, that, strictly speaking, no one was in command, but that I represented the captain, officers, and crew of this steamer, the _General Brooks_, from San Francisco to Calcutta, and I then proceeded to tell him the whole story of our misfortunes; and concluded by telling the officer, that if we had not moved since his vessel had come in sight, it was probably because the Water-devil had let go of us, and was preparing to make fast to the other ship; and therefore it would be advisable for us all to get on board his vessel, and steam away as quickly as possible.

"The Englishmen looked at me in amazement. 'Drunk!' ejaculated the officer I had addressed. 'Cracked, I should say,' suggested another. 'Now,' spoke up Mr. Minturn, 'I do not understand what I have just heard,' he said. 'What is a Water-devil? I am astounded.' 'You never said a word of this to me!' exclaimed Miss Minturn. 'You never told me that we were in the grasp of a Water-devil, and that that was the reason the captain and the crew ran away.' 'No,' said I, 'I never divulged the dreadful danger we were in. I allowed you to believe that we were in the influence of a current, and that the shocks we felt were the sudden twists of that current. The terrible truth I kept to myself. Not for worlds would I have made known to a tenderly nurtured lady, to her invalid father, and devoted servant, what might have crushed their souls, driven them to the borders of frenzy; in which case the relief which now has come to us would have been of no avail.'

"The officer stood and steadily stared at me. 'I declare,' he said, 'you do not look like a crazy man. At what time did this Water-devil begin to take you in tow?'

"'Yesterday morning,' I answered. 'And he stopped during last night?' he asked. I replied that that was the case. Then he took off his cap, rubbed his head, and stood silent for a minute. 'We'll look into this matter!' he suddenly exclaimed, and turning, he and his party left us to ourselves. The boat was now sent back with a message to the English vessel, and the officers and men who remained scattered themselves over our steamer, examining the engine-room, hold, and every part of her.

"I was very much opposed to all this delay; for although the Englishmen might doubt the existence of the Water-devil, I saw no reason to do so, and in any case I was very anxious to be on the safe side by getting away as soon as possible; but, of course, British officers would not be advised by me, and as I was getting very hungry I went down to breakfast. I ate this meal alone, for my fellow-passengers seemed to have no desire for food.

"I cannot tell all that happened during the next hour, for, to tell the truth, I did not understand everything that was done. The boat passed several times between the two vessels, bringing over a number of men--two of them scientific fellows, I think. Another was a diver, whose submarine suit and air-pumping machines came over with him. He was lowered over the side, and after he had been down about fifteen minutes he was hauled up again, and down below was the greatest hammering and hauling that ever you heard. The _General Brooks_ was put in charge of an officer and some men; a sail was hoisted to keep her in hand, so that she wouldn't drift into the other ship; and in the midst of all the rowdy-dow we were told that if we liked we might go on board the English vessel immediately.

"Miss Minturn and her party instantly accepted this invitation, and although under ordinary circumstances I would have remained to see for myself what these people found out, I felt a relief in the thought of leaving that vessel which is impossible for me to express, and I got into the boat with the others.

"We were treated very handsomely on board the English vessel, which was a mail steamship, at that time in the employment of the English Government. I told my story at least half-a-dozen times, sometimes to the officers and sometimes to the men, and whether they believed me or not, I don't think any one ever created a greater sensation with a story of the sea.

"In an hour or so the officer in charge of the operations on the _General Brooks_ came aboard. As he passed me on his way to the captain, he said, 'We found your Water-devil, my man.' 'And he truly had us in tow?' I cried. 'Yes, you are perfectly correct,' he said, and went on to make his report to the captain."

"Now, then," said the blacksmith, "I suppose we are going to get to the pint. What did he report?"

"I didn't hear his report," said the marine, "but everybody soon knew what had happened to our unlucky vessel, and I can give you the whole story of it. The _General Brooks_ sailed from San Francisco to Calcutta, with a cargo of stored electricity, contained in large, strongly made boxes. This I knew nothing about, not being in the habit of inquiring into cargoes. Well, in some way or other, which I don't understand, not being a scientific man myself, a magnetic connection was formed between these boxes, and also, if I got the story straight, between them and the iron hull of our vessel, so that it became, in fact, an enormous floating magnet, one of the biggest things of the kind on record. I have an idea that this magnetic condition was the cause of the trouble to our machinery; every separate part of it was probably turned to a magnet, and they all stuck together."

"Mr. Cardly," said Mr. Harberry to the school-master, "I do not suppose you have given much attention to the study of commerce, and therefore are not prepared to give us any information in regard to stored electricity as an article of export from this country; but perhaps you can tell us what stored electricity is, and how it is put into boxes."

"In regard to the transportation," answered the school-master, speaking a little slowly, "of encased electric potency, I cannot--"

"Oh, bless me!" interrupted the marine; "that is all simple enough; you can store electricity and send it all over the world, if you like; in places like Calcutta, I think it must be cheaper to buy it than to make it. They use it as a motive power for sewing-machines, apple-parers, and it can be used in a lot of ways, such as digging post-holes and churning butter. When the stored electricity in a box is all used up, all you have to do is to connect a fresh box with your machinery, and there you are, ready to start again. There was nothing strange about our cargo. It was the electricity leaking out and uniting itself and the iron ship into a sort of conglomerate magnet that was out of the way."

"Mr. Cardly," said Mr. Harberry, "if an iron ship were magnetized in that manner, wouldn't it have a deranging effect upon the needle of the compass?"

The marine did not give the school-master time to make answer. "Generally speaking," said he, "that sort of thing would interfere with keeping the vessel on its proper course, but with us it didn't make any difference at all. The greater part of the ship was in front of the binnacle where they keep the compass, and so the needle naturally pointed that way, and as we were going north before a south wind, it was all right.

"Being a floating magnet, of course, did not prevent our sailing, so we went along well enough until we came to longitude 90°, latitude 15° north. Now it so happened that a telegraphic cable which had been laid down by the British Government to establish communication between Madras and Rangoon, had broken some time before, and not very far from this point.

"Now you can see for yourselves that when an enormous mass of magnetic iron, in the shape of the _General Brooks_, came sailing along there, the part of that cable which lay under us was so attracted by such a powerful and irresistible force that its broken end raised itself from the bottom of the bay and reached upward until it touched our ship, when it laid itself along our keel, to which it instantly became fastened as firmly as if it had been bolted and riveted there. Then, as the rest of this part of the cable was on the bottom of the bay all the way to Madras, of course we had to stop; that's simple enough. That's the way the Water-devil held us fast in one spot for two days.

"The British Government determined not to repair this broken cable, but to take it up and lay down a better one; so they chartered a large steamer, and fitted her up with engines, and a big drum that they use for that sort of thing, and set her to work to wind up the Madras end of the broken cable. She had been at this business a good while before we were caught by the other end, and when they got near enough to us for their engines to be able to take up the slack from the bottom between us and them, then of course they pulled upon us, and we began to move. And when they lay to for the night, and stopped the winding business, of course we stopped, and the stretch of cable between the two ships had no effect upon us, except when the big mail steamer happened to move this way or that, as they kept her head to the wind; and that's the way we lay quiet all night except when we got our shocks.

"When they set the drum going again in the morning, it wasn't long before they wound us near enough for them to see us, which they would have done sooner if my lights hadn't gone out so early in the evening."

"And that," said the blacksmith, with a somewhat severe expression on his face, "is all that you have to tell about your wonderful Water-devil!"

"All!" said the marine; "I should say it was quite enough, and nothing could be more wonderful than what really happened. A Water-devil is one of two things: he is real, or he's not real. If he's not real, he's no more than an ordinary spook or ghost, and is not to be practically considered. If he's real, then he's an alive animal, and can be put in a class with other animals, and described in books, because even if nobody sees him, the scientific men know how he must be constructed, and then he's no more than a great many other wonderful things, which we can see alive, stuffed, or in plaster casts.

"But if you want to put your mind upon something really wonderful, just think of a snake-like rope of wire, five or six hundred miles long, lying down at the very bottom of the great Bay of Bengal, with no more life in it than there is in a ten-penny nail.

"Then imagine that long, dead wire snake to be suddenly filled with life, and to know that there was something far up above it, on the surface of the water, that it wants to reach up to and touch. Think of it lifting and flapping its broken end, and then imagine it raising yard after yard of itself up and up, through the solemn water, more and more of it lifting itself from the bottom, curling itself backward and forward as it rises higher and higher, until at last, with a sudden jump that must have ripped a mile or more of it from the bottom, it claps its end against the thing it wants to touch, and which it can neither see, nor hear, nor smell, but which it knows is there. Could there be anything in this world more wonderful than that?

"And then, if that isn't enough of a wonder, think of the Rangoon end of that cable squirming and wriggling and stretching itself out toward our ship, but not being able to reach us on account of a want of slack; just as alive as the Madras part of the cable, and just as savage and frantic to get up to us and lay hold of us; and then, after our vessel had been gradually pulled away from it, think of this other part getting weaker and weaker, minute by minute, until it falls flat on the bay, as dead as any other iron thing!"

The marine ceased to speak, and Mrs. Fryker heaved a sigh.

"It makes me shiver to think of all that down so deep," she said; "but I must say I am disappointed."

"In what way?" asked the marine.

"A Water-devil," said she, "as big as six whales, and with a funnelly mouth to suck in people, is different; but, of course, after all, it was better as it was."

"Look here," said the blacksmith, "what became of the girl? I wanted her finished up long ago, and you haven't done it yet."

"Miss Minturn, you mean," said the marine. "Well, there is not much to say about her. Things happened in the usual way. When the danger was all over, when she had other people to depend upon besides me, and we were on board a fine steamer, with a lot of handsomely dressed naval officers, and going comfortably to Madras, of course she thought no more of the humble sea-soldier who once stood between her and--nobody knew what. In fact, the only time she spoke to me after we got on board the English steamer, she made me feel, although she didn't say it in words, that she was not at all obliged to me for supposing that she would have been scared to death if I had told her about the Water-devil."

"I suppose," said the blacksmith, "by the time you got back to your ship you had overstayed your leave of absence a good while. Did your captain let you off when you told him this story of the new-fashioned Water-devil?"

The marine smiled. "I never went back to the _Apache_," he said. "When I arrived at Madras I found that she had sailed from Calcutta. It was, of course, useless for me to endeavor to follow her, and I therefore concluded to give up the marine service for a time and go into another line of business, about which it is too late to tell you now."

"Mr. Cardly," said Mr. Harberry to the school-master, "have you ever read that the British Government has a submarine cable from Madras to Rangoon?"

The marine took it upon himself to answer this question. "The cable of which I spoke to you," he said, "was taken up, as I told you, and I never heard that another one was laid. But it is getting late, and I think I will go to bed; I have a long walk before me to-morrow." So saying he rose, put his pipe upon the mantel-piece, and bade the company good night. As he did so, he fixed his eyes on the blacksmith's daughter, but that young lady did not look at him; she was busily reading the weekly newspaper, which her father had left upon the table.

Mr. Harberry now rose, preparatory to going home; and as he buttoned up his coat, he looked from one to another of the little group, and remarked, "I have often heard that marines are a class of men who are considered as fit subjects to tell tough stories to, but it strikes me that the time has come when the tables are beginning to be turned."