The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast (15 page)

Mad ! The hounds! Could I have set forth this terrible story with such lucidity were I mad ?

THE "LEONID."

The " Leonid."

THEY were sitting in the cabin of the second officer of the
Cracksang,
at Cheemoy, recalling memories of the first Jubilee.

" I was just out of my teens then," concluded the white - haired consul's constable, after a reminiscence.

" I say, chuck it," remonstrated the second, " I was no giddy chicken myself in eighty-seven."

The consul's constable eyed him with nascent indignation, then his eyes twinkled.

" Now, how old would you put me down to be ? " he asked presently.

The second officer looked him critically over.

" Well, wishing to flatter you, I should start the bidding at fifty."

" And you ? " he turned to the first.

" I should go five better," returned that individual.

The consul's constable smiled a little smile that softened for the moment the haggard lines of his face.

" I suppose you 'd be surprised if I told you I was only thirty-four ? " he asked.

"
I 'd be more than surprised," the second assured him, " I 'd be jolly well incredulous."

" Nevertheless," mused their visitor, " there are some things that age a man more in a week than ten years of ordinary living can."

" Whisky's one," murmured the first, " taken inconsiderately."

The consul's constable saw the need of vindication.

" Did you ever have a meteorite fall near you at sea ? " he questioned.

" Can't say I have.''

" Well, I will tell you about one."

But the second held up his hand, entreating delay, and bellowed " booy! "

When the China boy made his appearance he pointed desolately to the empty glasses; then, while their visitor held his new-filled glass to the light and gazed at it with the critical eye of the connoisseur, the second coiled himself up more comfortably on the settee, and the first swung into the bunk.

The consul's constable absorbed the moisture on the inside of his glass and looked up.

" What do you want—the yarn of the
Leonid ?
"

" We want to know why you are thirty-four instead of sixty-four," the second told him severely.

" Well, it happened more than ten years ago, when I was a scatter-brained, devil - may - care youngster like yourself."

The second officer smiled indulgently.

" Steady as she goes," he murmured.

" And held the appointment of third mate in a little coaster owned by a syndicate of wealthy Chinese merchants. We were manned much the same as you, white officers and engineers, China crew, and Malay quartermaster, and used to run down to Saigon and Java, or anywhere that the kind fates offered a decent cargo.

" At the time of the occurrence of which I am to tell you we were on our way up from Bangkok to Hong-Kong. It was a fine, starlit night, and my eight to twelve watch on the bridge of sighs. I was leaning over the rail looking up at the constellation of Orion, some of the stars of which were crossing the meridian about that time, and wondering if it were worth while taking a couple of altitudes, when I saw a shooting star shine out near Betelgeuse, and travel across the heavens.

" One is always more or less interested in a brilliant meteorite, and as I watched this one its angular motion seemed to be getting slower and slower and the star growing brighter.

" A moment after I realised, with a start, that it had left the tangent on which it was moving, and was travelling straight toward us.

" By this time it was far brighter than Venus at her best, and f was debating in my mind whether I should slip down and give the skipper a shake-up, when there came a blinding glare, with a sudden
glow of intense heat in my face, followed almost instantly by a terrific explosion that made the old ship reel and tremble from truck to keelson, as the meteorite plunged into the sea a couple of miles on the starboard bow.

" Little enough need was there then to call anybody, for the whole ship's company from the captain to the cook's boy came pouring up on deck inquiring with scared faces what had happened.

" While I still clung to the bridge rails, blinded by the light that had so swiftly been extinguished, and half stunned by the concussion, a dense bank of steam or something rolled like a pall over our ship, the lights flickered for a little and went out, and we found ourselves in impenetrable darkness.

" But this was not the worst. We had turned the ship's head to windward with the idea of steaming out of the fog, but before the engines had made a dozen revolutions, first one began to cough then another. We felt a choking sensation, followed by ever-increasing difficulty of breathing; and as the sulphurous fumes got denser, we lost our heads in the terror of this unknown thing, and panic reigned.

" I can recollect as I fought desperately in that utter blackness for breath, seeing one of the quartermasters rush past, shrieking like mad. Then a Chinaman dashed himself blindly against me, recoiled and fell howling to the deck, where he writhed and gasped, tearing wildly at his throat with both his hands.

"
Groping my way along the bridge, I tried to get down the ladder leading to the main deck, missed my footing, and fell several feet landing at last on something soft. It was darker still here, but I seemed to breathe a little easier, and feeling round with my hands, I concluded I must be in the lower hold. In my panic I had slipped through the ladder rail, and plunged, feet first, down one of the cowls that ventilated the lower hold.

" No, you needn 't look at me. I know very well I 'd stand a good chance of sticking half-way now. I was slimmer then."

" Granted! " said the second impatiently. " Go on with the yarn."

" Well, luckily for me, I had come down on bags of rice, and though a good bit shaken, was unhurt. The hold was only two-thirds full, so there was ample standing-room between the bags and the 'tween decks.

"As I sat, half-dazed, under the ventilator, wondering how I was to get up again, the terrible, choking vapour came pouring down on me, threatening soon to make the hold as deadly as the deck I had so precipitately left. There was not much time to think matters over. I saw that if I wanted time to draw many more comfortable breaths I must stufl that ventilator up; so, drawing my knife, I slit three or four bags, emptied the rice out, and jammed them with all my strength up the shaft.

"
Then, stumbling across the bags, I did the same with the port ventilator, and when I had got them as air-tight as I could I found I could breathe with comparative freedom.

" There I resolved to wait until that beastly fog cleared up a bit; but the No. 2 hold of a thousandton steamer is none too big to be pleasant, particularly when, it is nearly full, so I told myself I didn't care how soon the vapour cleared away, and gave me the chance of getting out without choking myself.

" While I sat there wondering what they were doing on deck, straining my ears to catch the slightest sound, I fancied the regular beat of the propeller was getting slower. Five minutes after I was sure they were slowing her down on deck, and after another half-hour the engines seemed to be hardly moving.

" What was the idea, I wondered, of slowing her down so gradually ?

" While I was still trying to account for this the engines gave a convulsive throb, swung for a moment or two over their centres, then stopped altogether.

" Still I could hear no sound from the deck, nothing but the swish of the water against the ship's sides as she rose and fell on the light swell that was running.

" One can't stand that sort of suspense for long, with nothing but the monotonous lap of the water
to be heard, so I got up and pulled the bags to one side, with the intention of sending up a hail for a rope. But a downward rush of deadly gas made me stuff them up again as hard as I could, and sit down again with more of fear in my heart than I had felt when I came down here.

" Then it had been hot, unreasoning panic; but now I felt that something had gone wrong. I must have heard them moving about on deck if they had not left the ship, and why would they want to leave her ? Had anything happened after that fog came along ?

" Look at it which way I would, it was no pleasant predicament I found myself in, cooped up in the hold in blank darkness and utter silence, except for the wash; but I dared not tackle that ventilator again until the vapour had cleared, so there was nothing to do but wait. I tell you, though, I felt like a youngster who is locked up in a dark cellar and doesn't know what is going to happen next.

" I hung out like that for the rest of that night, and when I thought morning had come I tried the ventilator again. The air had cleared a good deal, but a violent fit of coughing warned me of the impossibility of gaining the deck.

"All that day I waited, suffering agonies of thirst, and slowly the following night dragged itself away. A racking pain in my head and a tightness across the chest as of slowly-contracting iron bands proved to me pretty forcibly that the confined air of the
hold was becoming unbreathable, that I must make another attempt to get up on deck, or perish miserably where I stood.

" It was about ten in the morning, as nearly as I could judge, when I came to the final decision of getting out of this, even if it should mean out of the frying-pan into the fire. I pulled the bags down and looked up. The air seemed clear enough, and the bit of sky I could see was blue and tranquil, but there was still a distinct trace of the sulphurous fumes of yesterday in the air.

"Anyhow, it looked more promising than the hold. But how was I to reach there ? To climb up that narrow shaft was out of the question, some other way had to be found. I found a way by standing on the iron hold-ladder, and, with what little strength remained to me, pushing aside one of the 'tween-deck hatches sufficiently to scramble through.

" I found myself, stiff and sore, in the 'twegn decks, but there still remained the main-deck hatches overhead, and these must be battened down, else the gas would have filtered through. There could be no chance of raising them, and I spent a fruitless hour in hammering on them with a piece of dunnage wood in the hopes of their hearing me on deck.

" As I sat resting and considering what was best to be done, I remembered the little skylight with glass flaps on th foredeck. This skylight had
190
The "Leonid."

for the stars seem to be rushing down on me, burning into my brain like balls of fire, and I catch myself listening, trembling, again for that terrific explosion that was the commencement of the horror which in three short days transformed me from a light-hearted youngster into the decrepit old'man you say I look."

The "Leonid."
189

furnaces, and had to take her in tow to Saigon.

" There the Chinese merchants, her owners, directed that the ill-fated vessel should be sold for whatever she would fetch, and the whole lot paid over to the Messageries Company as salvage, adding that they must decline to entertain any further correspondence on the subject of the ' badjoss ' ship. I don't know what became of her after that; she must have been sent home, she never would have been of further use in Eastern waters, marked down as she was as a 'devil-joss ship.'

" When I came out of hospital, the British Consul at Saigon had me sent on to Hong-Kong as a D.B.S., and there they wanted me to go home, but I would not go, and so I drifted up here and got this job."

" Why didn't you want to go home ? " asked the first.

" To tell you the truth, my nerves were too shattered to stand the sea voyage. Even coming across from Saigon I was shivering like a scared horse all the way."

" But how about going home later on ?" asked the second.

" I shall never go," he replied sadly; " the mere thought of the sea sets me shuddering. You may think it folly, but even here on dry land I dare not, if I am alone, look up at that group of Orion,

188
The "Leonid."

Frenchman, and used to come and see me at the military hospital in the Rue Chasseloup Loubat, where they took me with brain-fever, every time the ship came to Saigon.

" He spoke a fair amount of English, and what I made out about it was this.

" He had been very much surprised on clambering up from the boat to find the main deck deserted, and that pink powder I told you of scattered all round. Spying a Chinaman apparently asleep on the hatch, he walked up to him, and to his horror found him to be dead. As he hurried up to the lower bridge, he passed two more dead Chinamen, and on the bridge itself the engineers, lying as I have described.

"At the break of the bridge he found me, and seeing that I was still alive, sent the boat back for the surgeon.

"They carried me aboard the
Gascoigne
insensible, and sent back a crew and two engineers to try and get up steam again. They had first to give the ship's company decent burial, and the second of the
Gascoigne
said it was about the most gruesome job he ever thought of doing.

"Several of the men turned green about the gills over it and vomited, and, spite of unlimited cognac, had to be sent back to the ship. After they had got the last remnant of rotting flesh over the side they went below, but found it impossible to dislodge the curiously-caked fuel that choked the