The Devil\'s Admiral - Frederick Ferdinand Moore
THE DEVIL'S ADMIRAL
An Adventure Story
BY FREDERICK FERDINAND MOORE
1913
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Missionary and Red-Headed Beggar
II. Red-Headed Beggar and Missionary
III. The Spy and the Dead Boatswain
IV. I Go Aboard the _Kut Sang_
V. The Dead Man in the Passage
VI. The Red-Headed Man Makes an Accusation
VII. I Turn Spy Myself
VIII. Mr. Harris Has a Few Ideas
IX. A Fight in the Dark
X. The Devil's Admiral
XI. A Council of War
XII. The Battle on the Bridge
XIII. We Plan an Expedition
XIV. The Pursuit Ashore
XV. Two Thieves and a Fight
XVI. The Gold and the Pirates
XVII. The Art of Thirkle
XVIII. Big Stakes in a Big Game
XIX. "One Man Less in the Forecastle Mess"
XX. The Last
CHAPTER I
MISSIONARY AND RED-HEADED BEGGAR
Captain Riggs had a trunk full of old logbooks, and he said any of them
would make a better story than the _Kut Sang_. The truth of it was, he
didn't want me to write this story. There were things he didn't wish to
see in type, perhaps because he feared to read about himself and what had
happened in the old steamer in the China Sea.
"Folks don't care nothing about cargo-boats," he would say, taking his
pipe out of his mouth and shaking his head gravely, whenever I hinted
that I would like to tell of our adventure of the _Kut Sang_. "They want
yarns of them floating hotels called liners, with palm-gardens in 'em and
bands playing at their meals and games and so on going from eight bells
to the bos'n's watch.
"It was mostly fighting in the _Kut Sang_, and the mess you and me and
poor Harris and the black boy there got into wouldn't be just the quiet
sort of reading folks want these days. It was all over in a night and a
day, anyway--look at them Northern Spy apples, Mr. Trenholm!"
He wanted to forget the _Kut Sang_ and the awful night we had in her. He
imagined he didn't figure to advantage in the story, and he winced when
I mentioned certain events, although I always insisted that he was the
bravest man among us, having a better realization of the odds against us.
Those who have faced danger know it takes a brave man to admit that he is
beaten, and still keep up the fight.
We all have better memories for our brave moments than for the fear which
threatened for a time to prove us cowards. The man who has faced death
and says he was not afraid is either a fool or a liar; and, if only a
liar, still a fool for telling himself that which he knows to be a lie.
The bravery of the seaman is that he fears the sea and knows its
ruthlessness and its ultimate victory, and accepts it as a part of his
day's work. This is a sea-story.
Captain Riggs had log-book stories that were good, and they might have
served him for a volume of marine memoirs. But I was with him when
we freighted the _Kut Sang_ with adventure and sailed out of Manila, so
his musty records of rescues and wrecks lacked life for me. In the old
logbooks I found no men to compare with the Rev. Luther Meeker; or
Petrak, the little red-headed beggar; or Long Jim or Buckrow or Thirkle.
I never found in their pages a cabin-boy like Rajah the Malay, strutting
about with a long kris stuck in the folds of his scarlet _sarong_, or a
mate whose truculence equalled the chronic ill-humour of Harris, who
learned his seamanship as a fisherman on the Newfoundland Banks. And in
all his log-books I never found another Devil's Admiral!
Riggs is dead, and I can tell the story in my own way; for tell it I
must, and the manuscript will be a comfort to me when I am old and my
memory and imagination begin to fail. Not that I ever expect to forget,
because that would be a calamity; but I want to put down the events of
the day and night in the _Kut Sang_ while they are fresh in my mind.
How well I can see in a mental vision the whole murderous plot worked
out! Certain parts of it flash on me at off moments, while I am reading a
book or watching a play or talking with a friend, and every trivial
detail comes out as clearly as if it were all being done over again in a
motion picture. The night gloom in the hall brings back to me the
'tween-decks of the old tub of a boat; the green-plush seats of a
sleeping-car remind me of the _Kut Sang's_ dining-saloon, and even a
bonfire in an adjacent yard recalls the odour of burned rice on the
galley fire left by the panic-stricken Chinese cook.
I know the very smell of the _Kut Sang_. I caught it last week passing a
ship-chandler's shop, and it set my veins throbbing again with the sense
of conflict, and I caught myself tensing my muscles for a death grapple.
To me the _Kut Sang_ is a personality, a sentient being, with her own
soul and moods and temper, audaciously tossing her bows at the
threatening seas rising to meet her. She is my sea-ghost, and as much a
character to me as Riggs or Thirkle or Dago Red.
The deep, bright red band on her funnel gave her a touch of coquetry, but
she had the drabness of senility; she was worn out, and working, when
she should have gone to the junk pile years before. But her very
antiquity charmed me, for her scars and wrinkles told of hard service in
the China Sea; and there was an air of comfort about her, such as
one finds in an ancient house that has sheltered several generations.
Precious little comfort I had in her, though, which is why I remember
her so well, and why I never shall forget her. If she had made Hong-Kong
in five days, her name would be lost in the memory of countless other
steamers, and there would be no tale to tell. But now she is the
_Kut Sang_, and every time I whisper the two words to myself I live once
more aboard her.
Rajah is with me--inherited, I might say, from Captain Riggs. Perhaps he
keeps my memory keen on the old days, for how could I forget with the
black boy stalking about the house--half the time in his bare feet and
his native costume, which I rather encourage--for his _sarong_ matches
the curtains of my den and adds a bit of colour to my colourless
surroundings.
I am quite sure that if Captain Riggs were still alive he would agree
that the story should begin with my first sight of the missionary and the
little red-headed man, so I will launch the narrative with an account of
how I first met the Rev. Luther Meeker.
He was in the midst of a litter of nondescript baggage on the Manila mole
when I came ashore from a rice-boat that had brought me across the
China Sea from Saigon. The first glance marked him as a missionary, for
he wore a huge crucifix cut out of pink shell, and as he hobbled about on
the embankment it bobbed at the end of a black cord hung from his neck.
Quaint and queer he was, even for the Orient, where queerness in men and
things is commonplace and accepted as a part of the East's inseparable
sense of mystery. With his big goggles of smoked glass he reminded one of
some sea-monster, an illusion dispelled by his battered pith helmet with
its faded sky-blue _pugri_ bound round its crown, the frayed ends falling
over his shoulders and flapping in the breeze.
He was a thin old man, clad in duck, turning yellow with age. When he
threw the helmet back it exposed a wrinkled brow and a baldish head,
except for a few wisps of hair at the temples. He appeared to be of great
age--a fossil, an animated mummy, a relic from an ancient graveyard;
and the stoop of his lean shoulders accentuated these impressions. It was
plain that the tropics were fast making an end of him.
He was whining querulously as I stepped ashore, and the first words I
heard him say were:
"An organ! An organ! An organ in a cedarwood box! An organ in a cedarwood
box, and the sign of the cross on the ends! Oh, why do you try my soul?
Such stupidity! Such awful stupidity!"
The native porters were grinning at him as they simulated a frantic
search for his organ in a cedarwood box, but they probably knew all the
time where it was. He was surrounded by baskets and chests; and, if the
crucifix were not enough to indicate his profession, black lettering on
his possessions advertised him as "The Rev. Luther Meeker, London
Evangelical Society." The multiplicity of labels proclaimed him a
traveller known from Colombo to Vladivostok, and he must have been
wandering over Asia for years, as his luggage was as ancient as himself.
Fighting my way out of the multitude on the river-bank, I gained the
cable office near the customhouse and reported myself in Manila, bought
all the newspapers I could to learn how the war was going in Manchuria,
and to anticipate if possible where I might be ordered next.
I revelled in the noise and crowds as only one can after a week at sea.
While I was on the way from Saigon the Russian armies might have been
beaten or the Japanese fleet destroyed. There might be orders sending me
anywhere, but I hoped that I would leave Manila for the Strait of Malacca
to meet the Baltic fleet. What I feared most was the end of the war, for
a war-correspondent without a war is deprived of his profession. I was
young and ambitious, then, and seeking a journalistic reputation at the
cable's mouth.
It happened that I had allowed myself to heed the glib tongue of a
hotel-runner before I left the rice-steamer, and he had commandeered my
bag and taken it to the Oriente Hotel, of which I knew nothing except
that it was in the walled city and across the river from the cable
office. To recapture the bag and my clean linen I would have to take an
instrument of torture known as a _carromatta_ and drive across the Bridge
of Spain.
I could cross the river in a small boat with a Filipino pirate, and go on
a hunt for a conveyance on the other side; but thought it better to risk
being shaken to death than drowned in the dirty Pasig, so I hailed a
_cochero_. The villain demanded a double rate, and, while we were
haggling, a bus of the Oriente drew in sight and I caught it as it was
spinning up Calle San Fernando.
When I crawled into the bus I wished that I had struck a bargain with the
thief of a _cochero_, for I found myself in a seat beside the whining
missionary. He prayed for his bones over the rough places, and for his
life, when the driver took a corner recklessly, and made us all very
weary with his eternal complaining. That was not the worst of it--he
tried to strike up an acquaintance with me.
There was a letter in my coat-pocket which had been given to me in Saigon
to deliver to the Russian consul in Manila. It was an errand for the
cable-operator there, who had done me favours, and I was to leave it at
the Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank for the consul, who would call for it. That
bank carried an expense account for me, so the delivery of the letter
was of no trouble. The envelope was long and official-looking, and it
fell to the floor of the bus as I clambered in.
Meeker picked it up and handed it to me, but for the instant he held it
he read the address:
Russian Consul,
Care Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank,
Manila
Courtesy Mr. James A. Trenholm,
Amalgamated Press
"My dear sir," said Meeker, "you have dropped a document--allow me."
"Thank you," I replied, and took the letter, which was quite bulky and
sealed with a splotch of black wax imprinted with a coat of arms or a
crest, or some such insignia. I fear I betrayed my irritation over
Meeker's reading the address.
"No offence, I trust, my dear sir," he said, mild surprise in his tone.
"None whatever," I snapped back; but our companions in the bus smiled and
winked at me openly, as if they appreciated my cold manner toward the
missionary.
He said no more to me, but remarked to no one in particular that "an
austere manner is a poor passport in this country," which implied that I
was new to the East, and would learn better if I stayed long enough. I
ignored the remark, somewhat pleased that I had rebuffed him, for I well
knew he would talk me into a fever if I did not keep him at a distance;
and, furthermore, I did not relish the idea of having him intrude upon me
at the hotel. My dislike for him was not because he was a missionary, but
because he was a common enough type of bore. He was over suave, and his
peevishness jarred my none too steady nerves.
The bus was not a pleasant place for me after that, so I dropped off in
Plaza Moraga, when I observed the signboard of the very bank mentioned. I
cashed a draft and handed the letter to the clerk at the barred window.
"Oh, yes, we have been waiting for that!" he said as he took the
envelope. "Mr. Trego! Here are your papers for the consul," he called to
a man somewhere behind the frosted glass wall. "We appreciate your
kindness very much, Mr. Trenholm."
It was then that I first saw the little red-headed man. He was looking in
at the door, but scurried away when the Sikh guard inside moved toward
him. The little man wore a white canvas navy-cap; but his appearance was
dirty and disreputable, and he had the aspect of a beggar. His visage was
wizened and villainous and shot with pock-marks under a coppery stubble
of red beard, and his little mole-like eyes were that close together that
they seemed fastened to his nose.
The clerk kept me waiting for signatures, and finally handed out my gold.
As I filled my purse I was conscious of some one behind me, and, glancing
over my shoulder, I saw the Rev. Luther Meeker.
CHAPTER II
RED-HEADED BEGGAR AND MISSIONARY
Turning my back on him, I edged toward a desk. It seemed to me that he
had not recognized me as the austere man in the bus, or perhaps he chose
to pass without encountering me again. He stared about the place, leaning
on one leg for a minute as if undecided what to do next, or not quite
sure he was in the right establishment.
I could hear voices in a room close at hand, and Meeker turned toward the
door, walking silently in his cloth deck-shoes, and passed into the room.
I heard a man give a cry of astonishment, followed by a growl of wrath,
and Meeker ran out again, retreating backward and holding his hands up in
protest.
"My dear sirs!" he whined. "No offence, I am sure! I hope you have taken
no offence, for none was intended, and I did not mean to disturb any
person--I was simply asking alms for a seamen's chapel, and I do most
sincerely beg your pardons, gentlemen."
He went into the street, and a sallow-faced man with a slender malacca
cane held in his hand as if it were a rapier, came to the door of the
room and said something in French, indignant that he should be disturbed.
He waved the cane menacingly after Meeker and slammed the door.
Leaving the bank, I turned toward the Escolta, which is the principal
business street of Manila. The shop windows attracted me, and I sauntered
for half an hour or more. I wanted a new field-glass, and as I stood on
the pavement at a corner and looked in at a jeweller's window I caught
the image of Meeker in the glass, which was thrown in a shadow by an
awning.
I turned without thinking Meeker could have any interest in what I might
do, and saw him half a block away talking to the little red-headed beggar
who had looked in at the bank door. Meeker evidently caught me looking at
him, for he whispered to the beggar, who hastened away, taking a furtive
glance at me over his shoulder as he left. I turned toward Meeker, and he
swung away down the street as I approached him, with more nimbleness than
I supposed was in his old bones.
"I suppose the pest will be at my heels for the next week," I told
myself, annoyed at the way the missionary crossed my path. That was the
fourth time I had seen him in an hour, and I dreaded to go to the hotel,
sure I would meet him again--for, of course, he could not have gone
anywhere else but to the Oriente.
I thought it strange that he should be talking to the little beggar,
although it never occurred to me that they were watching me; and, even if
they were, I would have not concerned myself much about it. As it was, I
ascribed Meeker's embarrassment when I last saw him to what had passed
between us in the bus, and concluded that he was trying to avoid me,
which I considered a praiseworthy effort on his part.
There was a possibility of orders awaiting me at the hotel; and, although
it was not yet noon, I hailed a rig and drove there. The clerk passed
over the familiar yellow envelope, and my message read: "Proceed to
Hong-Kong for orders." I replied that I would leave at once, and the
message was gone before I discovered that there wasn't a steamer for
Hong-Kong before the end of the week, five days away.
It would have sounded silly to dispatch another message, telling of lack
of steamers. I had supposed a steamer sailed every day or two, and my
temper was ruffled at my mistake and the prospect of fretting away a week
in the heat of Manila.
A little item in the _Times_ gave me hope. It told of the steamer
_Kut Sang_ coming out of dry dock to sail for Hong-Kong that very
afternoon with general cargo. There was a bare chance that I might get
passage in her, for the paper referred to her as a former passenger boat,
and I was sure I could cajole the company into selling me a berth, or
bribe the captain into signing me as a member of the crew, with no duties
to perform, a common practice.
"This is Mr. Trenholm of the Amalgamated Press," I told the clerk in the
steamship office over the hotel's desk-telephone. "Simply must get to
Hong-Kong as soon as possible, and would like to go in the _Kut Sang_
this afternoon. May I buy passage in her?"
It was hard to make him understand, for he was a Filipino who insisted
on speaking English, although I had a working knowledge of Spanish. He
first mistook me for a stevedore, then for the manager, and next for the
Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank. I stormed at him, irritated that I should have
to shout my business for the benefit of the loafers in the hotel office.
"Correspondent!" I yelled in answer to his questions. "Newspaper
correspondent working on the war. I want to go to Hong-Kong in the
_Kut Sang_!"
"I am very sorry," he said, without explaining his sorrow.
"May I go in the _Kut Sang_?" I insisted, and he told me I could, and
after he had talked in a low tone with somebody in his office, said that
I couldn't, which was exasperating. I decided to go to the steamship
office and plead with the officials. Hanging up the receiver, I signalled
to the boy to call a carriage.
"You want to go in the _Kut Sang_, my dear sir?" came a purring voice at
my shoulder. I looked up, and the Rev. Luther Meeker smiled at me.
I growled something at him to the effect that I wondered if I was ever to
lose sight of him. He bowed again and grinned.
"Sorry that you object to me," he murmured, with lifted eyebrows. "But
we'll let all that pass. I might inform you that it is impossible to go
in the steamer _Kut Sang_. You will pardon me, I am sure, but I heard
what you said at the telephone, and I am willing to annoy you to save you
time and trouble. I repeat, there is absolutely no possibility of your
getting passage in the _Kut Sang_."
"How do you know?" I asked, still curt with him, but feeling a trifle
ashamed of myself for insulting him.
"Because they have just refused me, my dear sir--allow me--the Rev.
Luther Meeker of the London Evangelical Society," and he gave me a
card which had seen considerable service.
"Trenholm is my name. Sorry I haven't a card. Equally sorry, Mr. Meeker,
that you have been refused passage in the _Kut Sang_. Excuse me, but I am
in a hurry."
"It won't avail you anything to visit the office," he said, with sad mien
and a sneer on his lips.
"And why not?"
"If they wouldn't let me go, a man of the cloth, with credentials from
the Bishop of Salisbury, your case is hopeless."
"Thanks for the compliment," I shot at him, and left him staring after me
with puzzled surprise on his wrinkled countenance. He stepped to the door
and saw me enter a _quilez_, and there was a gleam of anger in his crafty
old eyes. The sunlight made him blink, for he was not wearing goggles,
and as I rolled toward the Parian Gate, I looked back and saw him
standing in the door and shading his eyes with his hand to look after me.
Taking possession of a very surprised steamship-agent, I informed him
that I was going to Hong-Kong in the _Kut Sang_, and I was ready to argue
with him until the vessel sailed. A refusal was out of the question--he
didn't have time to refuse. I spread all sorts of papers on the counter
and threatened to bring all the officers of the Hong-Kong-Shanghai
Bank up there to argue for me.
The talk about the bank seemed to help me wonderfully, for he had a
whispered conversation with a gray-bearded old gentleman, who looked me
over with a shrewd eye, and nodded his assent to my buying a ticket.
"It won't be necessary for you to sign ship's articles," said the agent,
turning affable all of a sudden. "We have a passenger-license for the
_Kut Sang_, although we have withdrawn her from the passenger-trade
except in cases of emergency or delay of the regular ships. But she
hasn't been in the passenger-trade for nearly a year and we won't
undertake to guarantee the table or service.
"You won't find her equal to a liner, and the ticket is sold with the
understanding that she is a cargo-boat, and if you are willing to take
pot-luck with Captain Riggs, that is your affair. However, it is
understood that you are not to make unreasonable complaints or demands of
the master."
My answer to this was to dump a handful of gold coins on the counter
before he could change his mind. I told him I was willing to go to Hong
Kong in a coal-barge.
"You will find it lonesome on the passage," he said.
"I'll manage all right," I replied, not quite rid of my asperity over
their lack of decision about taking a passenger.
"We have already sold one ticket," continued the clerk, as he put down
figures on a pad. He glanced at me with a quizzical expression, and then
smiled.
"One passenger will help," I commented, for something better to say.
"If he doesn't talk an arm off you before you reach Hong-Kong, I'll give
you the ticket for sixpence. He's a missionary," he grinned.
"The Rev. Luther Meeker!" I cried in horror.
"The Rev. Luther Meeker!" he repeated, and gave me my change with a
chuckle.
Naturally, I was astonished to discover that Meeker was to be a passenger
with me in the _Kut Sang_, but I was out in the street again before it
dawned upon me that the situation was more than a mere coincidence. The
missionary had lied to me when he said he had been refused passage,
he had misled me when he said it was impossible to buy a ticket in the
_Kut Sang_, and I could make nothing of it all but that he did not want
me to know he was sailing in the vessel, and that he did not want me to
go in her.
The idea that he would interfere with my plans and delay me for a week
simply because he objected to my presence in the same steamer with him
filled me with wrath. I so lost my temper for a minute that I was bent on
going back to the hotel and knocking him down, missionary or no
missionary; but, instead, came to the conclusion that the joke was on
him, and I would have plenty of opportunities to retaliate upon him
between Manila and Hong-Kong.
Before I got into my _quilez_ my ire was roused again at the sight of the
red-headed beggar lounging in a doorway across the street, obviously
watching me. It was plain enough that Meeker had sent him to spy upon me
and learn if I went to the steamship office. The little beggar saw me
looking at him and dodged into a doorway, but fled when he saw me start
after him.
In the _quilez_ I laughed at myself for allowing a prying old man like
Meeker to upset my temper, and, as I rode back to the hotel, put the both
of them out of my mind; but promised myself that I would take my revenge
on the old pest in some way aboard the steamer.
My bag was packed again, and I was ready for tiffin and then an afternoon
nap, to be called in time to catch the steamer. My telephone rang, and I
hastened to answer it, expecting orders from the cable-office, and hoping
that London had decided, after all, to send me after the Baltic fleet to
the south, rather than to Hong-Kong.
"Is this Mr. Trenholm? This is the steamship office, Mr. Trenholm. We
wish to inform you that the _Kut Sang_ has been delayed until to-morrow
morning for cargo which did not get in to-day. Sails to-morrow sure."
It made little difference to me, and I would be glad to have a night's
sleep ashore after the rice-steamer. However, it would be wise to have
the exact sailing-time of the _Kut Sang_, so I rang up the steamship
office and asked, not wishing to run the risk of getting to the mole and
finding the steamer gone.
"She sails this afternoon at five, as noted on the board," was the
startling response to my query. I was so taken aback for a second that I
didn't know what to think or say. I remarked into the telephone that
somebody in the steamship office must take me for a fool, and that I did
not consider such things jokes.