I found myself convinced against my will, and that
afternoon, alone, I made a second and more thorough
examination of the forecastle and the hold.
In the former I found nothing. Having been closed
for over twenty-four hours, it was stifling and full
of odors. The crew, abandoning it in haste,
had left it in disorder. I made a systematic
search, beginning forward and working back. I
prodded in and under bunks, and moved the clothing
that hung on every hook and swung, to the undoing
of my nerves, with every swell. Much curious
salvage I found under mattresses and beneath bunks:
a rosary and a dozen filthy pictures under the same
pillow; more than one bottle of whiskey; and even,
where it had been dropped in the haste of flight,
a bottle of cocaine. The bottle set me to thinking:
had we a “coke” fiend on board, and, if
we had, who was it?
The examination of the hold led to one curious and
not easily explained discovery. The Ella was
in gravel ballast, and my search there was difficult
and nerve-racking. The creaking of the girders
and floor-plates, the groaning overhead of the trestle-trees,
and once an unexpected list that sent me careening,
head first, against a ballast-tank, made my position
distinctly disagreeable. And above all the incidental
noises of a ship’s hold was one that I could
not place—a regular knocking, which kept
time with the list of the boat.
I located it at last, approximately, at one of the
ballast ports, but there was nothing to be seen.
The port had been carefully barred and calked over.
The sound was not loud. Down there among the
other noises, I seemed to feel as well as hear it.
I sent Burns down, and he came up, puzzled.
“It’s outside,” he said. “Something
cracking against her ribs.”
“You didn’t notice it yesterday, did you?”
“No; but yesterday we were not listening for
noises.”
The knocking was on the port side. We went forward
together, and, leaning well out, looked over the rail.
The missing marlinespike was swinging there, banging
against the hull with every roll of the ship.
It was fastened by a rope lanyard to a large bolt
below the rail, and fastened with what Burns called
a Blackwall hitch—a sailor’s knot.
CHAPTER XVI
JONES STUMBLES OVER SOMETHING
I find, from my journal, that the next seven days
passed without marked incident. Several times
during that period we sighted vessels, all outward
bound, and once we were within communicating distance
of a steam cargo boat on her way to Venezuela.
She lay to and sent her first mate over to see what
could be done.
