"Back starboard!"

The boat spun round like a top, sweeping right under the vessel's stern.

"Give way to starboard! Easy port!"

The boat slid up alongside the derelict as though coming to a landing place. The men trailed their oars, the bow oar grappled with a boat-hook and Eric leaped for the p.o.o.p rail of the vessel, and swung himself aboard. The deck was pitched forward at an angle of 30 degrees, but evidently the vessel had floated in that condition for some time, for a sort of barricade had been made, with the right angle of the half-sunk cabin companion hatchway as a base, and on this three bodies were lying.

A keg of water and a maggoty ham--the latter exposed to the full sunlight of the tropics--was all the food in sight.

Eric slid down the deck to this barricade. The first man seemed to be dead, the heart of the second was beating feebly, but the third, a white-haired old man, appeared only to be asleep, the deep sleep of exhaustion. When the boy put his hand on his shoulder, the old man opened his eyes wide.

"So you have come the third time," he said, in a queer far-away voice, "but it is too late."

Eric slipped his hand into his coat pocket and brought out a small phial of restorative he had provided just before leaving the cutter. He gave the survivor a few sips. The old man changed not a muscle, only repeated in the same dull and far-away voice,

"So you have come the third time, but it is too late!"

Perceiving that the sufferer regarded him as an apparition and that in his hallucinations born of exhaustion and exposure he must have believed he saw rescuers before, Eric picked the old man up bodily and, half crouching, half climbing on the sloping deck, carried him to the derelict's side. Two of the sailors climbed up and helped him lower the old man to the boat.

Meantime the other boat had made fast and the second lieutenant joined him. He was a man of considerable experience, and while Eric was quite proud of his knowledge and skill as a life-saver, he was amazed at the deft handling of his superior officer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREATEST MENACE OF THE SEAS.

A sunken derelict ready to sink any vessel that strikes her.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNED TO THE WATER'S EDGE.

Vessel abandoned and floating in the path of commerce, hunted as a dangerous beast, and found by the Coast Guard cutters.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

"I think this one's gone," said Eric in a low voice, pointing to the first man he had seen.

The other cast a quick look at him and shook his head.

"Pretty far gone, but not quite," he answered. "There's always a fighting chance that we can pull him through. I'll take these two into my boat and get back to the cutter. We'll probably blow this craft up, afterwards; we couldn't ever tow her this way."

"Why, sir? Because she's too heavy?"

"Not only that, but she lies too low. On end, the way she is now, she's probably drawing thirty-five or forty feet of water. She might stick in a channel somewhere and that would be worse than getting rid of her out here."

The boats raced back to the ship and the survivors were handed up to the _Miami_ where the surgeon immediately took charge. All preparations had been made, meanwhile, for the placing of mines and Eric was told off in the boat under the second lieutenant to see to the placing of the charges.

This was work to which Eric was unaccustomed and he watched with considerable interest the gunner's handling of the mines. It was easy enough to place the charges in the upper works of the stern where they would be sure to blow that part of the ship to pieces, but so much of the forward portion of the hulk was under water that the problem there was more difficult. In order to make sure of the job, five mines were set and connected with each other by electric wiring. A long strand of insulated wire was then carried to the boat, over a hundred feet in length.

At a signal given him by the lieutenant, Eric pressed the b.u.t.ton. There was a tremendous roar as a waterspout shot up from the surface of the sea. As though some vast leviathan had pa.s.sed underneath the old bark and shouldered her out of the water, the long black hull heaved herself up slowly. She seemed to hang poised for a fraction of a second on the surface of the water as if, in her death agony, she had for a moment thought of her old life when, under press of sail, she flew bounding over the billows, defying the very elements which at last had worked her ruin. Only for a moment she hung there, then with a dull crash she broke her back. The bow plunged downward with a sullen plunge, but the stern still held poised. Then, quite suddenly, the air imprisoned in the hull broke free and slowly, almost, it seemed, with dignity, the remainder of the vessel sank forever beneath the surface of the waters.

It was the end of the _Luckenback_ and somewhere at the bottom of the sea her distorted steel plating marks the spot where rest the nine members of her crew lost before the rescuing Coast Guard cutter hove in sight.

CHAPTER XI

THE WRECKERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN

"Well, Eric," said Homer Tierre to his friend, as they stood together one evening a few days after the rescue of the survivors of the _Luckenback_, watching the phosph.o.r.escence of the sea, "we're getting down to the old Spanish Main, now."

"Isn't that a great word for bringing up ideas!" exclaimed Eric in reply. "It makes one think of the old stories we used to read as kids, of the black flag with the skull and crossbones and all that sort of thing. Too bad there aren't any pirates left!"

"I suppose you'd want us to go chasing them!"

"Of course. We should have to, if there were any, wouldn't we?"

"Certainly," his friend answered. "Don't you remember how the old bos'n of the _Itasca_ used to tell us about the early days of the Revenue Cutter Service when chasing pirates was a regular part of its duties?

Officially it is still, I suppose, but there aren't any more pirates to chase."

"What has put them all out of business?" Eric said thoughtfully. "I've often wondered."

"Steam, mainly," his friend replied, "that 'insult to a seaman's intelligence,' as our friend the fluent skipper of the _Northwestern_ called it."

"But I don't see why," persisted Eric. "After all, in the days of sailing ships, the pirates only had sailing ships--and they weren't always such an awful lot faster. Why couldn't pirates to-day have steamships, just as fast in comparison to the steamers of to-day as their clippers were to the sailing ships of old? They'd get much bigger hauls. Why, one good hold-up of an Atlantic steamer would make a pirate crew rich for life!"

"You'd better take to the trade," suggested his companion.

"I'd sooner do the chasing," replied the boy; "it's much more fun, anyway, and I'd rather be on the right side, every time. But don't you think that there really would be a chance for a big Atlantic greyhound pirate?"

"I don't think so," the other answered meditatively. "For one thing, we'd have pirates if there was any such chance. After all, Eric, you've got to remember that a pirate was successful because of his own personality. They were a mighty forceful lot--Kidd, Blackbeard, Lolonnois, and all those early pirates. On a big steamer, the pirate captain wouldn't have the same sort of chance. There's too many in a crew, for one thing. Then he'd be practically at the mercy of his engineers and engine hands. In a mutiny, he'd be up against it for fair."

"But if a pirate captain could bluff a couple of mates and forty sailors in his crew, I don't see why he shouldn't he able to bluff a couple of engineers and fifty stokers," suggested Eric.

"Even supposing he did," said the other, "suppose he had every man on board terrorized, or so heavily bribed that they would obey him to the letter, still his troubles would have hardly begun. In the old days, as long as there was food and water aboard, a sailing ship could cruise around for months at a time. A steamer needs coal."

"She could take the coal from the bunkers of the ships she held up,"

suggested the boy.

"It would be a good deal more of a job than you reckon," the other answered. "She couldn't do it at all if there was any sea running, and even on a calm day, it's a tricky proposition. If you've ever seen a man-o'-war on a sea cruise trying to coal from a naval collier, that's built just for that very purpose, you'd get an idea how hard it is.

Meantime, what would the crew and pa.s.sengers of the liner be doing?"

"Putting in coal, or getting shot down if they resisted."

"You've a bloodthirsty turn of mind," his friend rejoined. "I know the idea, 'scuppers pouring blood,' and that sort of business, eh?"