Title: Voice in the fog
Author: Leverage, Henry
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Voice in the fog" ***


The Voice in the Fog

by Henry Leverage


The _Seriphus_ was a ten thousand ton, straight bow ocean tanker, and
her history was the common one of Clyde-built ships--a voyage here
and a passage there, charters by strange oil companies, petrol for
Brazil, crude petroleum that went to Asia (for anointment purposes
among the heathen) and once there was a hurried call to some
unpronounceable Aegean port where the _Seriphus_ acted against the
Turks in their flare-up after the Great War.

The ordinary and usual--the up and down the trade routes--passed away
from the _Seriphus_ when Ezra Morgan, senior captain in the service
of William Henningay and Son, took over the tanker and drove her bow
into strange Eastern seas, loading with oil at California and
discharging cargo in a hundred unknown ports.

Of Ezra Morgan it was said that he had the daring of a Norseman and
the thrift of a Maine Yankee; he worked the _Seriphus_ for everything
the tanker could give William Henningay and Son; he ranted against
the outlandish people of the Orient and traded with them, on the
side, for all that he could gain for his own personal benefit.

Trading skippers and engineers with an inclination toward increasing
wage by rum-running and smuggling were common in the Eastern service.
Ezra Morgan’s rival in that direction aboard the _Seriphus_ ruled the
engine-room and took pride in declaring that every passage was a gold
mine for the skipper and himself.

The chief engineer of the _Seriphus_ saw no glory in steam, save
dollars; he mopped up oil to save money. His name was Paul Richter--a
brutal-featured man given to boasting about his daughter, ashore, and
what a lady he was making of her.

Paul Richter--whom Morgan hated and watched--was far too skilled in
anything pertaining to steam and its ramifications to be removed from
his position aboard the _Seriphus_. Henningay, Senior, believed in
opposing forces on his many tankers--it led to rivalry and
efficiency, instead of close-headedness and scheming against owners.

The _Seriphus_, after a round passage to Laichau Bay, which is in the
Gulf of Pechili, returned to San Francisco and was dry-docked near
Oakland, for general overhauling.

Richter, after making an exact and detailed report to Henningay, Jr.,
visited the opera, banked certain money he had made on the
round-passage, then went south to his daughter’s home. He found
trouble in the house; Hylda, his daughter, had a heart affair with a
marine electrician, Gathright by name, a young man with a meager wage
and unbounded ambition.

Through the Seven Seas, from the time of his Bavarian wife’s death,
from cancer of the breast, Richter, chief engineer of the _Seriphus_,
had sweated, slaved, saved and smuggled contraband from port in order
to say:

“This is my daughter! _Look at her!_”

Now, as Richter discovered, Hylda, twenty-seven years of age,
somewhat prim and musical, had given her promise to an electrician
whom the engineer believed was not fit to dust her shoes. Richter,
used to breaking and thrashing coolie oilers, ordered Gathright from
the house and locked up his daughter.

She cried for seven days. Gathright was seen in town. Richter’s rage
gave way to an engineer’s calculation.

“What for I study in University and college? Why do I hold
certificates? I fix Gathright!”

No oil was smoother than Richter’s well-laid plan; he sent Hylda away
and met Gathright.

“All right about my daughter,” he told the electrician. “You go one
voyage with me--we’ll see Henningay--I’ll fix you up so that you can
draw one hundred and fifty dollars in wage, with a rating as
electrician aboard the _Seriphus_.”

Gathright went with Richter to San Francisco. They recrossed the Bay,
without seeing Henningay, Jr., and, at dusk, climbed over the shoring
timbers and went aboard the _Seriphus_. Richter’s voice awoke echoes
in the deserted ship and dry-dock:

“Come, I show you my dynamo and motors. We go to the boiler-room
first, where the pumps are.”

The boiler-room, forward the engine-room of the tanker, was a place
of many snakelike pipes, valves, sea-plates and oily seepage from the
feedtanks. The _Seriphus_ was a converted oil-burner, having been
built before crude petroleum was used for steaming purposes. Three
double-end Scotch boilers made the steam that drove the tanker’s
triple-expansion engine.

Richter knew the way down to the boiler-room, blindfolded. He struck
matches, however, to guide Gathright, and remarked that the newer
ships of Henningay’s fleet had a storage-battery reserve for lighting
purposes when the dynamo ceased running.

Gathright, somewhat suspicious of Hylda’s father, took care to keep
two steps behind the chief-engineer. They reached and ducked under
the bulkhead beam where the door connected the engine-room with the
boiler-room. Richter found a flashlamp, snapped it on, swung its rays
around and about as if showing Gathright his new duties.

“There’s a motor-driven feed-pump,” he said. “Something’s the matter
with the motor’s commutator. It sparks under load--can you fix it
up?”

There was a professional challenge in the chief engineer’s voice;
Gathright forgot caution, got down on his knees, leaned toward the
motor and ran one finger over the commutator bars. They seemed
polished and free from carbon.

Richter reversed his grip on the flashlamp, swung once, twice, and
smashed the battery-end of the lamp down on Gathright’s head, just
over the top of the electrician’s right ear.

Gathright fell as if pole-axed and dropped with his hands twitching
on a metal plate.

Striking a match, Richter surveyed the electrical engineer.

“Good!” he grunted. “Now I put you where nobody’ll ever look--unless
I give the order.”

                *       *       *       *       *

A stump of candle, stuck by wax to a feed-pipe, allowed Richter
illumination sufficient to work by. Swearing, sweating, listening
once, he fitted a spanner to bolt-heads on a man-plate in the spare
boiler and removed the stubborn bolts until the plate clanged at his
feet.

Gathright was a slender man, easy to insert through the man-hole;
Richter had no trouble at all lifting the electrician and thrusting
him out of sight.

It seemed to the engineer, as he hesitated, that Hylda’s lover moaned
once and filled the boiler with a hollow sound.

Hesitation passed; and Richter swallowed his superstitious fears, put
back the man-hole plate, bolted it tighter than it ever was before,
almost stripping the threads, and stepped back, mopping his brow with
the sleeve of a shore-coat.

There was nothing very unusual in Richter’s further actions that
evening. The ship-keeper, who came aboard at daylight, long before
the dry-dock men began work, noticed a wet shore-hose, a thin plume
of steam aft the tanker’s squat funnel, and there was a trailing line
of smoke drifting aslant the _Seriphus’_ littered deck.

“Been testing that spare boiler,” explained Richter, when the
ship-keeper ducked through the bulkhead door. “I think it’s tight an’
unsealed, but th’ starboard one will need new tubes and general
cleaning. Get me some soap--I want to wash up.”

Richter dried his hands on a towel, tossed it toward the motor-driven
feedpump, then, when he left the boiler-room, his glance ranged from
the tightly-bolted man-hole cover up to a gauge on a steam-pipe. The
gauge read seventy-pounds--sufficient to parboil a heavier man than
Hylda’s lover.

“I think that was a good job,” concluded the first engineer of the
_Seriphus_.

The second engineer of the tanker, a Scot with a burr on his voice
like a file rasping the edge of a plate, stood watching Richter
balance himself as the stout chief came along a shoring-beam.

“I mark ye ha’ steam up,” commented the Scotchman, when Richter
climbed over the dry dock’s walk.

“Yes, in the spare boiler.”

Mr. S. V. Fergerson tapped a pipe on his heel.

“I made an inspection, myself, of that, not later than yesterday
forenoon. She was tight as a drum an’ free from scale. I left th’
man-hole--”

“Damn badly gasketed!” growled Richter.

Ferguson started to explain something; but the chief was in a hurry
to get away from sight of the _Seriphus_. There was a memory on the
tanker that required a drink or two in order to bring forgetfulness.
Richter gave the Scot an order that admitted of no answering back.

“Go aboard an’ blow off steam! That boiler’s all right!”

A roar, when Richter strode past the dry-dock’s sheds, caused him to
wheel around and listen. Ferguson, according to orders, was blowing
off the steam from the spare boiler.

Something, perhaps water or waste, clogged the pipe; and the escaping
vapor whistled; sputtered, and rose to a high piercing note that
sounded to the chief’s irritated nerves like the cry of a soul in
agony. The note died, resumed its piercing screeching. Richter’s arm
and hand shook when he mopped his brow and drew a wet sleeve down
with an angry motion.

In fancy the noise that came from the _Seriphus’_ starboard side,
echoed and deflated by the hollow dock, was Gathright calling for
Hylda. Richter covered his ears and staggered away.

                *       *       *       *       *

Ezra Morgan hastened such repairs as were required for making the
_Seriphus_ ready for sea; the tanker left the dry-dock, steamed out
the Golden Gate, and took aboard oil at a Southern California port.

All tanks, a well-lashed deck load of eased lubricant--consigned to a
railroad in Manchuri--petroleum for the furnaces, brought the
_Seriphus_ down to the Plimsoll Mark; she drove from shore and
crossed the Pacific where, at three God-forsaken Eastern roadsteads,
she unloaded and made agents for the oil-purchasers happy with
shipments delivered on time.

The romance of caravan routes, and pale kerosene lamps burning in
Tartar tents, escaped both Ezra Morgan and Richter; they went about
their business of changing American and English minted gold for
certain contrabands much wanted in the States. The chief engineer
favored gum-opium as a road to riches; Ezra dealt in liquors and
silks, uncut gems and rare laces.

Fortunately for the chief engineer’s peace of mind, the spare,
double-end Scotch boiler was not used on the Russian voyage.
Gathright was forgotten and Hylda, safe in an eastern music school,
was not likely to take up with another objectionable lover. Richter,
relieved of a weight, went about the engine-room and boiler-room
humming a score of tunes, all set to purring dynamos, clanking pumps,
and musical crossheads.

At mid-Paciflc, on a second voyage--this time to an oilless country,
if ever there were one, Mindanao--a frightened water-tender came
through the bulkhead door propelled by scalding steam, and there was
much to do aboard the _Seriphus_. The port boiler had blown out a
tube; the spare, midship boiler was filled with fresh water and the
oil-jets started.

Richter, stripped to the waist, it being one hundred and seventeen
degrees hot on deck, drove his force to superhuman effort. Ezra
Morgan, seven hours after the accident, had the steam and speed he
ordered, in no uncertain tones, through the bridge speaking-tube.

Fergerson, a quiet man always, had occasion, the next day, to enter
the chief’s cabin, where Richter sat writing a letter to Hylda, which
he expected to post via a homeward bound ship. Richter glared at the
second engineer.

“That spare boiler--” began Fergerson.

“What of it?”

“Well, mon, it’s been foamin’ an’ a gauge-glass broke, an’ there’s
something wrong wi’ it.”

“We can’t repair th’ port boiler until we reach Mindanao.”

Fergerson turned to go.

“Ye have m’ report,” he said acidly. “That boiler’s bewitched, or
somethin’.”

“Go aft!” snarled Richter, who resumed writing his letter.

He hesitated once, chewed on the end of the pen, tried to frame the
words he wanted to say to Hylda. Then he went on:

    “--expect to return to San Francisco within thirty-five days.
    Keep up your music--forget Gathright--I’ll get you a good man,
    with straight shoulders and a big fortune, when I come back and
    have time to look around.”

Richter succeeded in posting the letter, along with the Captain’s
mail, when the _Seriphus_ spoke a Government collier that afternoon
and sheered close enough to toss a package aboard. Ezra Morgan leaned
over the bridge-rail and eyed the smudge of smoke and plume of steam
that came from the tanker’s squat funnel. He called for Richter, who
climbed the bridge-ladder to the captain’s side.

“We’re only logging nine, point five knots,” said Ezra Morgan. “Your
steam is low--it’s getting lower. What’s th’ matter? Saving oil?”

“That spare boiler is foaming,” the chief explained.

“Damn you and your spare boiler! What business had you leaving San
Francisco with a defective boiler? Your report to Mr. Henningay
stated that everything was all right in engine-room and boiler-room.”

“Foam comes from soap or--something else in the water.”

“Something else--”

Richter got away from Ezra Morgan on a pretense of going below to the
boiler-room. Instead of going below, however, he went aft and leaned
over the taffrail. Somehow or other, he feared that spare boiler and
the consequence of conscience.

Limping, with three-quarters of the necessary steam pressure, the
_Seriphus_ reached Mindanao and was forced to return to California
without repairs to the port boiler. While repairs, new tubes and
tube-sheet were put in place by boilersmiths, Richter saw his
daughter, who had come west from music school.

The change in her was pronounced; she spoke not at all of Gathright,
whose disappearance she could not understand; and Richter, keen where
his daughter was concerned, realized that her thinness and
preoccupation was on account of the missing electrician.

“I get you a fine fellow,” he promised Hylda.

He brought several eligible marine engineers to the house. Hylda
snubbed them and cried in secret.

An urgent telegram called Richter back to the _Seriphus_. He made two
long voyages, one down Chili-way, the other half around the world,
before the tanker’s bow was turned toward California. Much time had
elapsed from the night he had thrust Gathright into the spare boiler
and turned on the oil-jets beneath its many tubes. Once, in
Valparaiso, an under-engineer pointed out red rust leaking from the
gauge-glass of the spare boiler.

“Looks like blood,” commented this engineer.

Richter scoffed, but that afternoon he drank himself stupid on
kummel, obtained from an engineer’s club ashore. Another time, just
after the tanker left the port of Aden on her homebound passage, a
stowaway crawled out from beneath the cold boiler and gave Richter
the fright of his life.

“Why, mon,” said Fergerson, who was present in the boiler-room,
“that’s only a poor wisp o’ an Arab.”

“I thought it was a ghost,” blabbered Richter.

Barometer pressure rose when the _Seriphus_ neared mid-Pacific. Ezra
Morgan predicted a typhoon before the tanker was on the longitude of
Guam. Long rollers came slicing across the _Seriphus’_ bow, drenched
the forecastle, filled the ventilators and flooded the boiler-room.

Richter went below, braced himself in the rolling engine-room,
listened to his engines clanking their sturdy song, then waddled over
the gratings and ducked below the beam that marked the bulkhead door.
An oiler in high rubber boots lunged toward the chief engineer.

“There’s something inside th’ spare boiler!” shouted the man. “Th’
boiler-room crew won’t work, sir.”

Richter waded toward a frightened group all of whom were staring at
the spare boiler. A hollow rattling sounded when the tanker heaved
and pitched--as if some one were knocking bony knuckles againt the
stubborn iron plates.

“A loose bolt,” whispered Richter. “Keep th’ steam to th’ mark, or
I’ll wipe a Stillson across th’ backs of all of you,” he added in a
voice that they could hear and understand.

Superstition, due to the menacing storm and high barometer, the
uncanny noises in the racked boiler-room, Richter’s bullying manner,
put fear in the hearts of the deck crew. Oil-pipes clogged, pumps
refused to work, valves stuck and could scarcely be moved.

“I’ve noo doot,” Fergerson told his Chief, “there’s a ghost taken up
its abode wi’ us.”

Richter drank quart after quart of trade-gin.

                *       *       *       *       *

The barometer became unsteady, the sky hazy, the air melting hot, and
a low, rugged cloud bank appeared over the _Seriphus’_ port bow.

Down fell the barometer, a half-inch, almost, and the avalanche of
rain and wind that struck the freighter was as if Thor was hammering
her iron plates.

Ezra Morgan, unable to escape from the typhoon’s center, prepared to
ride out the storm by bringing the _Seriphus_ up until she had the
sea on the bow, and he had held her there by going half speed ahead.
A night of terror ruled the tanker; the decks were awash, stays
snapped, spume rose and dashed over the squat funnel aft the bridge.

Morning, red-hued, with greenish patches, revealed a harrowed ocean,
waves of tidal height, and astern lay a battered hulk--a freighter,
dismasted, smashed, going down slowly by the bow.

“A Japanese tramp,” said Ezra Morgan. “Some _Marau_ or other, out of
the Carolines bound for Yokohama.”

Richter, stupid from trade-gin was on the bridge with the Yankee
skipper.

“We can’t help her,” the engineer said heavily. “I think we got all
we can do to save ourselves.”

Ezra Morgan entertained another opinion. The storm had somewhat
subsided, and the wind was lighter, but the waves were higher than
ever he had known them. They broke over the doomed freighter like
surf on a reef.

“Yon’s a distress signal flying,” said Ezra Morgan. “There’s a few
seamen aft that look like drowned rats. We’ll go before th’ sea--I’ll
put th’ sea abaft th’ beam, an we’ll outboard oil enough to lower a
small boat an’ take those men off that freighter.”

The maneuver was executed, the screw turned slowly, oil was poured
through the waste-pipes and spread magically down the wind until the
freighter’s deck, from aft the forehouse, could be seen above the
waves.

Over the patch of comparative calm oars dipped, and a mate, in charge
of the small boat lowered from the _Seriphus_, succeeded in getting
off the survivors who were clinging to the freighter’s taffrail.

The small boat lived in a sea that had foundered big ships. It
returned to the tanker’s bow; and the four men, bruised, broken, all
half-dead from immersion, were hoisted to the forepeak and taken aft.
Two were Japanese sailors and two were Americans--a wireless operator
and an engineer. The engineer had a broken leg which required
setting, and the wireless operator was in a bad fix; wreckage had
stove in his features, and twisted his limbs.

Ezra Morgan was a rough and ready surgeon-doctor; he turned the
_Seriphus_ over to the first mate and made a sick room out of
Richter’s cabin. The chief protested.

“Get below to your damn steam!” roared Ezra Morgan. “You hated to see
me bring aboard these poor seamen; you said I wasted fuel oil; your
breath smells like a gin-mill. Below with you, sir!”

The engine-room and boiler-room of the tanker, she being in water
ballast, was not unlike an inferno; the first mate, acting on Ezra
Morgan’s instructions, drove the _Seriphus_ at three-quarter speed
into a series of head-on waves; the ship rolled and yawed, tossed,
settled down astern, then her screw raced in mingled foam and brine.

Richter’s stomach belched gas; he became sea-sick, climbed into a
foul-smelling “ditty-box” of a cabin, aft the engine-room, and
attempted to sleep off the effect of the gin. Picture-post-cards;
mostly of actresses, a glaring electric over the bunk, oil and water
swishing the metal deck below, and the irritating clank of
irregular-running engines drove sleep away from him.

Fergerson, the silent second engineer, came into the “ditty-box” at
eight bells, or four o’clock. Fergerson’s thumb jerked forward.

“I’ll have t’ use that spare boiler,” said he.

“What’s th’ matter now?”

“Feed-pipes clogged in starb’ard one, sir.”

“Use it,” said Richter.

Steam was gotten up on the spare, double-end Scotch boiler; the
starboard boiler was allowed to cool; Fergerson, despite the tanker’s
rolling motion, succeeded in satisfying Ezra Morgan by keeping up the
three-quarter speed set by the skipper.

Richter sobered when the last of the trade-gin was gone; the
_Seriphus_ was between Guam and ’Frisco; the heavy seas encountered
were the afterkick of the simoon.

Rolling drunkenly, from habit, the chief went on the bridge and asked
about getting back his comfortable cabin aft. Ezra Morgan gave him no
satisfaction.

“Better stay near your boilers,” advised the captain. “Everything’s
gone to hell, sir, since you changed from kummel to gin!”

“Are not th’ injured seamen well yet?”

“Th’ wireless chap’s doing all right--but th’ engineer of that
Japanese freighter is hurt internally. You can’t have that cabin,
this side of San Francisco.”

“What were two Americans doing in that cheap service?”

Ezra Morgan glanced sharply at Richter.

“Everybody isn’t money mad--like you. There’s many a good engineer,
and mate, too, in th’ Japanese Merchant Marine. Nippon can teach us a
thing or two--particularly about keeping Scotch boilers up to th’
steaming point.”

This cut direct sent Richter off the bridge; he encountered a
bandaged and goggled survivor of the freighter’s wreck at the head of
the engine-room ladder. The wireless operator, leaning on a crutch
whittled by a bo’sain, avoided Richter, who pushed him roughly aside
and descended the ladder, backward.

White steam, lurid oaths, Scotch anathema from the direction of the
boiler-room, indicated more trouble. Fergerson came from forward and
bumped into Richter, so thick was the escaping vapor.

“Out o’ my way, mon,” the second engineer started to say, then
clamped his teeth on his tongue.

“What’s happened, now!” queried Richter.

“It’s that wicked spare boiler--she’s aleak an’ foamin,’ an’ there’s
water in th’ fire-boxes.”

Richter inclined his bullet shaped head; he heard steam hissing and
oilers cursing the day they had signed on the _Seriphus_. A blast
when a gasket gave way, hurtled scorched men between Richter and
Fergerson; a whine sounded from the direction of the boiler-room; the
whine rose to an unearthly roar: Richter saw a blanket of white vapor
floating about the engine’s cylinders. This vapor, to his muddled
fancy, seemed to contain the figure of a man wrapped in a winding
shroud.

He clapped both hands over his eyes, hearing above the noise of
escaping steam a call so distinct it chilled his blood.

“_Hylda!_”

                *       *       *       *       *

Now there was that in the ghostly voice that brought Richter’s
gin-swollen brain to the realization of the thing he had done in
disposing of Gathright by bolting him in the spare boiler.

No good luck had followed that action; Hylda was still disconsolate;
trade and smuggling was at a low ebb; there was talk, aboard and
ashore, of reducing engineers’ and skippers’ wage to the bone.

Richter had a Teutonic stubbornness; Ezra Morgan had certainly turned
against his chief engineer; the thing to do was to lay the ghostly
voice, make what repairs were necessary in the boiler-room, and give
the tanker’s engines the steam they needed in order to make a quick
return passage to San Francisco and please the Henningays.

An insane rage mastered Richter--the same red vision he had
experienced when he threw Gathright out of his daughter’s house. He
lowered his bullet head, brushed the curling vapors from his eyes,
and plunged through the bulkhead door, bringing up in scalding steam
before the after end of the midship, or spare boiler.

Grotesquely loomed all three boilers. They resembled humped camels
kneeling in a narrow shed by some misty river. Steam in quantity came
hissing from the central camel; out of the furnace-doors, from a
feed-pipe’s packing, around a flange where the gauge-glass was
riveted.

The _Seriphus_ climbed a long Pacific roller, steadied, then rocked
in the trough between seas; iron plates, gratings, flue-cleaners,
scrapers, clattered around Richter who felt the flesh on neck and
wrist rising into water blisters.

No one had thought to close the globe-valve in the oil supply line,
or to extinguish the fires beneath the spare and leaking boiler.
Richter groped through a steam cloud, searching for the handwheel on
the pipe line. All the metal he touched was simmering hot.

A breath of sea air came down a ventilator; Richter gulped this air
and tried to locate the globe-valve with the iron wheel. Vision
cleared, he saw the red and open mouth of the central camel--the
flannel-like flames and he heard, through toothed bars a voice
calling, “Hylda!”

Fergerson and a water tender dragged their chief from the boiler room
by the heels; blistered, with the skin peeled from his features,
Richter’s eyes resembled hot coals in their madness. Blabbering
nonsense, the engineer gave one understandable order:

“Put out th’ fire, draw th’ water, search inside th’ spare
boiler--there’s something there, damit!”

Ezra Morgan came below, while the spare boiler was cooling, and
entered Richter’s temporary cabin--the “ditty-box” with the play
actresses’ pictures glued everywhere. Fergerson had applied rude
doctoring--gauze bandages soaked in petroleum--on face and arms.

“What’s th’ matter, man?” asked Ezra Morgan. “Have you gone mad?”

“I heard some one calling my daughter, Hylda.”

“Where do you keep your gin?”

“It’s gone! Th’ voice was there inside th’ spare boiler. Did
Fergerson look; did he find a skeleton, or--”

Ezra Morgan pinched Richter’s left arm, jabbed home a hypodermic
containing morphine, and left the chief engineer to sleep out his
delusions. Fergerson came to the “ditty-box” some watches later.
Richter sat up.

“What was in th’ spare boiler?” asked the chief.

“Scale, soda, a soapy substance.”

“Nothing else?”

“Why, mon, that’s enough to make her foam.”

Richter dropped back on the bunk and closed his lashless eyes.

“Suppose a man, a stowaway, had crawled through th’ aft man-hole, an’
died inside th’ boiler? Would that make it foam--make th’ soapy
substance?”

“When could any stowaway do that?”

Richter framed his answer craftily: “Say it was done when th’
_Seriphus_ was at Oakland that time th’ boilers were repaired in
dry-dock.”

Fergerson drew on his memory. “Th’ time, mon, ye went aboard an’
tested th’ spare boiler? Th’ occasion when ye took th’ trouble to rig
up a shore-hose in order to fill th’ boiler wi’ water?”

“Yes.”

“Did ye ha’ a man-hole plate off th’ boiler?”

“I removed th’ after-end plate, then went for th’ hose. We had no
steam up, you remember, and our feed-pumps are motor-driven.”

“Ye think a mon might ha’ crawled through to th’ boiler during your
absence?”

“Yes!”

“Ye may b’ right--but if one did he could ha’ escaped by th’ fore
man-hole plate. I had that off, an’ wondered who put it back again so
carelessly. Ye know th’ boiler is a double-ender--wi’ twa man-holes.”

Richter was too numbed to show surprise. Fergerson left the
“ditty-box” and pulled shut the door. The tanker, under reduced
steam, made slow headway toward San Francisco.

One morning, a day out from soundings, the chief engineer awoke, felt
around in the gloom, and attempted to switch on the electric light.

He got up and threw his legs over the edge of the bunk. A man sat
leaning against the after plate. Richter blinked; the man, from the
goggles on him and the crutch that lay across his knees, was the
wireless operator who had been rescued from a sea grave.

“No need for light,” said the visitor in a familiar voice. “You can
guess who I am, Richter.”

“A ghost!” said the chief. “Gathright’s ghost! Come to haunt me!”

“Not exactly to haunt you. I assure you I am living flesh--somewhat
twisted, but living. I got out of that midship boiler, while you were
bolting me in so securely. I waited until you went on deck for a
hose, and replaced the after man-hole cover. I was stunned and lay
hidden aboard for two days. Then I looked for Hylda. She was gone. I
shipped as electrician for a port in Japan. I knocked around a
bit--at radio work for the Japanese. It was chance that the
_Seriphus_ should have picked me up from the _Nippon Maru.”_

“That voice calling for Hylda,” cried Richter.

“Was a little reminder that I sent through the boiler-room
ventilator; I knew you were down there, Richter.”

The marine engineer switched on the electric light.

“What do you want?” he whined to Gathright.

“Hylda--your daughter!”

Paul Richter covered his eyes.

“If she will atone for the harm I have done you, Gathright, she is
yours with her father’s blessing.”


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the June 1923 issue of
Weird Tales magazine.]



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Voice in the fog" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.