Time Travel Omnibus, page 66
Had we actually been by some miraculous agency shunted four hundred years back into the past? Impossible! Such things were written about by highly strung imaginations. The imaginations for the greater part of temperamental individuals who had dedicated themselves to the study of social science, and in that study dreamed long and oft of Utopias, past, present and future, that would best suit their own peculiar idiosyncrasies. But as for really going back—impossible.
And yet here was our ship, a modern steel destroyer capable of express train speed and volcanic destruction, headed straight between two towering galleons of Old Spain in a day that should really be night! What did that mean?
Boom!
Again the flashing and the bellow of guns.
Again the high-fountained sea in our spreading wake. Ha! Speed. How could they, with those lumbering barges they called ships, judge our thirty knots and train their guns to hit? And yet, at that, I thanked the captain’s judgment when he headed straight for the fleet, exposing naught but a knifelike bow to their fire.
We were almost upon the galleon fifth in line now. And on its towering poop, as high as our destroyer’s bridge, climbed a man. He stood erect by the gilded and carven rail. Black-gowned, and shavenheaded—not a hundred feet away as we rushed by—he raised aloft a crucifix, shining gold in the setting sun. We passed with in echoing roar. The giant waves of our wake reached the galleon. She felt the sudden impulse and rolled. With a cry which we heard even above the droning roar of our engine room blowers, the priest fell into the sea, his symbol flashing on high, last to disappear beneath the heaving, water.
Some fool at this moment palled the siren cord, and with the wail of a devil the steam screamed forth. We could make out that men fell upon, their knees on the Spaniard, while another priest in black robes rushed to the bulwarks and held aloft another thing that gleamed golden in the sun. The courage of faith!
Then: Boom! Boom!
Came a crash over head, then the creaking squeal of tortured timber, and in another moment the foremast raised havoc with the number three gun on the midships deck house.
“Wow!” the captain cried, his face lighting up. “This is good!”
T stared at him, and Professor Callieri, seeming well over whatever had rendered him unconscious in the radio shack when first the night had become day, gripped him by the sieve.
“Dios! Thee radio eet ees gone! Capitan, do you not fight, sair? American do not run, sair!”
The captain looked down upon the little naturalized American.
“We have three guns left as a port broadside,” he said with a smile. “They have twenty in each. At close range they could send us to the bottom inside of two minutes. At long range—” he shrugged his shoulders, “but we won’t do that. Those poor devils—not a chance, not a chance. We’ll go back, and try to make a truce—”
He broke off suddenly, his eyes to the westward. I followed his glance! All of us did, I think. The sun’s rim was just touching the horizon. The ship rushed on; the galleon fleet, still flashing fire, fell back.
A moment more and darkness fell as in sudden eclipse.
A gunner’s mate stepped beside the captain, and saluted.
“Mr. Cowling reports six torpedoes ready in their tubes for action, sir.”
The captain started with a slight grunt. “Humph! Good work. Report when all are ready. May not use ’em now, but tell Mr. Cowling to have ’em ready.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The lad saluted and leaped away.
THE captain turned to me.
“That sun—another day—another age—I can’t go back and destroy those ships. I can’t. Not the game. Not sport.” Callieri broke in again.
“But, capitan, they did shoot at you, sair. They haf break thees radio. They—”
“I know, I know, professor. But they’re men from a different age. They don’t know what or who we are. They don’t know our power. Probably take us for some kind of a devil. Undoubtedly. Smoke, and all that. Too much advantage. And—” He looked about him with a peculiar light in his eyes which shone even in the darkness that now enveloped the bridge. “Who can tell? This came on us in a flash. Who can tell but that in another flash we’ll be—back? And we can’t destroy fellows like that. We don’t belong. They are in the past—we—by accident—No. No. I’ll go, back shortly and we’ll try to make a truce and find out. It’s interesting, astonishingly interesting. But as to their destruction—no, no.”
Callieri’s face tightened.
“But, capitan, they haf broke thee mast down by t’eir shot. They haf thus stop radio from all work, sair. Ees t’at not enough for make war upon t’em, sair? They shoot upon thee flag of my adopted countree, sair. They—”
The captain stopped him with an upraised hand.
“Professor, think a minute. Did they ever see that flag before? Remember, they’re of the past. How, I don’t know. But they’re more mystified than we. We know what we are. We know what they are. They only know their own present, and we are of their future. A devil. A monster of the unknown seas. Remember those stories even the men with Columbus brought back? Monsters. They’ll go home and tell ’em hair-raising tales° of the sea monsters belching fire and smoke and rushing down upon them with the speed of wind, raising the sea in tidal waves with the tremendous whipping of their tails. You see, professor?”
Slowly the little Italian nodded. Yet I do not doubt that it was for the love of his adopted land, the country to which he had given his great radio secret, the life of his life, that he pleaded for vengeance upon the guns that had fired upon us. But the captain’s point of view was right. We had to play the game. We were supermen. We were gods. We could forgive, we could be merciful—for we understood the condition, though the cause was yet enwrapped in mystery.
Callieri’s hand shot out. “I would shake your hand, capitan,” he said gravely. And the captain as gravely took it in his own. “We will play the game,” he repeated, quietly.
At that moment one of the crew stepped before me.
“Doctor! On the galley deck house, sir. Mr. Rowland! He was in the crow’s nest for spotting if we fired. He’s pretty badly—”
“What!” The captain turned upon the lad fiercely.
“Yes, sir. That’s his G.Q. station, captain—in the crow’s nest—forward spotter. And when the mast was shot down he—”
“Is he badly—”
“We just found him, sir, forgot all about him being there, heard him groan.”
The old man swung upon me. “Doctor, get Rowland out of that. Get him out. By Heaven!” He turned to the galleon fleet just discernible in the gloom astern of us. “By Heaven! Young Rowland! If they—Wheelsman! Hard left! On the jump.” He leaped from under the bridge overhead, and called up to the executive officer who had the fire control. “Get ready there!”
“Ready now, sir!”
Captain Williams’ face was grim as I hurried away. Young Rowland with whom he played chess every evening after dinner, hurt. I well understood the old man’s love for the lad. And when the foremast fell, young Rowland—medical officer though I be, I found myself shudder at the thought. Rowland, the life of the ship!
And the captain determined now to fight. Changed his mind. A clean sport—but young Rowland. Fight. Fight now. Revenge upon these fools of a bygone age. Revenge. A lesson.
I rushed to the youngster’s side, and found that I had to cling hard to the rail of the bidder communicating with the gun deck of the galley deck house, for the Shoshone was heeled twenty degrees with the rudder hard aport. The captain was going back. No truce now. Fight. Fight. One against twelve. And fight.
Odds? Glorious!
Chapter V
DESTRUCTION
THE ship steadied as I reached Rowland. I knew that we then must be heading straight back for the galleon fleet. With my heart pounding with excitement, I leaned into the rushing wind and gazed ahead, trying to penetrate the darkness: The Spaniards were almost invisible in the sudden fall of night.
As I bent over my young friend a sputtering crackle reached my ears even over the roaring of the fire room blowers. Then came a glow of white light, and from forward shot out the long white finger of the searchlight, keenly penetrating the gloom before us in search of the craft that had lain the ship’s favorite low.
No bones broken. A bruise, welling purple in the aura of radiance sent back by the intense light from the bridge overhead, showed on Rowland’s left temple. With what little skill I possessed I determined to my own satisfaction that though the lad’s skull might be fractured, it was not damaged to such an extent that the dear life within would find exit.
I breathed a sigh of relief. And yet the thing was dangerous enough. On the destroyer, if bad came to worse, there were no conveniences for proper surgery. We must wait until we reached port in the morning—then the naval hospital on the beach, and proper care and treatment. Silence, above all things. And absolute motionlessness. If only the old man would let these ghost galleons go and head straight back for—a terrifying thought struck me.
Go back?
Where?
Go back—to what place? We were not in the present. We were in the past. How, Heaven alone held that mystery. But four hundred years must lie between us and going back. But one thing to do—
Boom!
The man beneath my hand groaned, and I with him.
Shooting. Then I started. The ship had not trembled with that “Boom!” We had not fired. It was the fire of that ancient—
We hurried Rowland below to his stateroom and made him as comfortable as our small conveniences would permit. There was little I could do save bandage his head, and give him something that would keep him restful until we reached port.
Reached—I shook my head again, and gave utterance to a fervent oath. Would we ever reach the port we knew—Colon? And if we did reach the place where we had known Colon to be, would Colon yet be there? Four hundred years, and years are not miles. Time does not speed up.
Time, the mysterious, the unchangeable, the relentless, the absolute. Beginning—a brain stunning infinity of eons in the past. Continuing—a soul scourging infinity of infinities into the future. Coming from—going to—God alone knew; and I, in the then shriveled state of my own mind and soul, began to doubt that there was a God.
Time—time was the god. Time willed, and it was by Time’s will that we, on a modern destroyer of the finest type, were even now speeding to give battle to a fleet of ships that had passed into oblivion four hundred years ere our own ship slid from the ways into the sea.
Boom!
Rowland had fallen under the power of the opiate, and I left him in charge of his Filipino boy and stumbled down the passageway into the wardroom—ghostly blue now, with the battle lamps close to the deck. I shuddered. Ghostly. Galleons. And the sun breaking out of the black night.
Even as I stepped upon the deck and turned for the ladder leading up to the bridge, the Shoshone heeled again. I dashed up. We were swinging to the right again, and a great galleon, crimson sailed, stood out like a bloody spectre in the piercing column of blinding white from the forward searchlight. Game a series of flashes from the galleon’s bellied sides; deep-throated concussions; the awkward whish of their slow arching projectiles as they flew overhead.
The galleon was almost on our beam when the captain, who had been standing by one of the devices near the flag rail peering out to port, suddenly bent his head to the voice tube.
“Let go!”
Came a slight jerk under foot, followed by a gentle cough.
A curious trembling shook me as I peered out upon that ill-fated warrior of old Spain; a mingling of hope and horror. Then the thought of young Rowland suffering down below stiffened me.
Not five hundred yards were we when abeam of the crimson-sailed apparition of the past. And perhaps a minute passed from the time the shock of discharge came to us through the slender frame of the Shoshone.
Then the strange picture on the screen of the searchlight suddenly fell in upon itself. The great masts tottered, the decks upheaved, shattered fragments flew up to greet the drooping canvas. A great muffled roar—shivering deck—silence. And when the searchlight flashed but again, where the galleon had been—naught but the heaving sea.
“Next!”
The captain’s order. Cool. Inexorable.
The white finger of the searchlight slid back and forth, dallying now and again as the electricians in charge thought they had located another of the doomed fleet, sweeping the sea in great horizon-paralleling paths. Then steadied. Shifted a bit to the right.
And another picture stood forth in the glare.
The rudder was put to right fifteen. Shortly afterward, back amidships; and we swept on broadside to the second galleon of the fleet. The roaring flashes of the ancient guns broke forth again, and the captain cursed.
“If they hit! If they hit! By Heaven, gentlemen—Hello, Hello, doctor! How’s the boy?”
Even as he peered through the directing telescope, one hand reached out and clutched at my sleeve.
“As well as can be expected, captain. Of course there is danger of a fracture of the skull. He’s quiet down below, sir.”
AGAIN the old man swore a terrible oath.
“For that—it’s for that I’m doing this. Hellish. Not sport. But they brought it upon themselves. We would have been friends. Investigation. For history. Photographs. Wonderful. But—Rowland—Rowland.”
He suddenly leaned to the voice tube again.
“Let go!”
Another jerk underfoot, another muffled cough.
And in a minute more came a second detonation. The crimson sails of the second galleon folded in upon her like a shroud, and as though a giant hand had plucked her by the keel she went beneath the sea.
“Next!”
The captain’s implacable word came clear and vengeful again.
Horrible! I thought to protest. This kind of warfare was not honorable. Murder. And yet they had fired upon us first. They had all but killed one of our company. They were firing even now, aiming, I suppose, for the source of the gleaming column of light. But, poor devils, little did they know what they were up against.
Probably, as the old man had said, they thought us evil demons of the sea. That searchlight—I wondered what they thought of that. A giant, peering eye. The eye of a monster that was fed by the flames of its own vitals. The flame of hell itself. Awful—to them! Terrifying! Soul-searing! Worse than death. The eyes of a more horrible Satan than dwelt in the pit. And the brave priests, seeking to hold us back. Pitiful.
And yet—Rowland!
Awful. And if for some reason we could not—did not get back, back to our own times, our own century, then our very lives were dependent upon our making ourselves masters of the sea. Take what we could, make land somewhere—anywhere—while the fuel oil held out, and live as the people of that day lived.
As they lived?
Would we not be supermen even for the sixteenth century? But—what happened to supermen? Wizardry. The stake. Unless they fell in with the priestcraft—wizardry. Inquisition. The fiery stake.
Or—perhaps the ally of kings. Who could tell? Torture, or preeminence. Who could tell?
Three more galleons found their last harborage on the bottom of the Caribbean, in rapid succession. Then came a miss.
The captain swore again. Quickly calmed. “Six torpedoes left. And seven ships.”
The officer of the deck spoke up. “Shall I go about, sir?”
“No, Ronleigh.” The skipper gave a short, dry cough. “If the Lord has seen fit to save that ship, we won’t interfere. There are still six of them ahead.”
A hail from fire control.
“Picked up another, captain.” The exec’s voice came pleadingly. “Can’t I try my four-inch out. captain?”
“No, no.” He turned to the wheelsman: “Make the same approach.”
“Aye, aye. sir.”
“Manson!”
The chief quartermaster jumped before the captain.
“Take the wheel. Come about.”
The old man stepped back from under the overhead of the bridge.
“Fire control.”
The executive officer’s round face showed over the rail above. “Sir?”
“Get that searchlight on the ship we missed. No. 3 four-inch still out of commission?”
“Both telescopes smashed, and the sight bar bent, sir. Can use the port batten best. Three guns there, captain.” The exec’s voice was hoarsely plaintive. “You Roin’ to get that last ship?”
The captain shook his head.
“It depends,” he replied enigmatically. “Port side, eh? Get it ready.”
The exec’s voice still held the same note. “Been ready for two hours, captain.”
The captain’s face softened with a flickering smile as he noted the protest in his mate’s tones. And I could sense the exec’s disappointment that only torpedoes had come into the game so far.
“On the job!” cried the old man. “Cut down all crews to the limit, and prepare a boarding party.”
“A boarding party! Aye, aye, sir!” Lieutenant Wilson’s voice trembled with eagerness.
WE COULD hear his snapped orders to the man at the voice tubes leading to the guns. Then the repeats at the tubes themselves. A man was sent down to the gunnery officer. Sounds of cheering. A clanking of the steel door of the rifle locker on deck. I saw three men sitting a Lewis gun on its mount between the bridge and the galley deck-house, ready to sweep the decks of a closing ship.
Boarding party!
No wonder the old man had called the chief quartermaster to the wheel. Always did when a ticklish landing was to be made. Had him there when we came through the canal the last time. Three weeks—or was it four hundred years yet to come? By Heaven, the mystery of it. Four hundred years! How? Why?
