‘ – In Case of Disaster Only’

It was not Sir Austin Fynes, who occupied Suite A with his stout wife, a trained nurse who had given up the training, who told us the story. Sir Austin Fynes uses affairs like thought-transference every day in that ‘mental-and-nervous’ practice of his which had made him the light of Harley Street, that physician’s paradise of London. No, it was a quiet big fellow who, as so often happens in such cases, had sat over to one side of the ship’s smoking-room, at one of the separate, small tables beside a mug of beer which he had allowed to grow stale, listening to the rest of us. The big fellow was a native West Indian, with an accent you could cut with a knife, a Barbados brogue. He was ‘in sugar’; or, maybe – now that cane isn’t so good any more what with the Tariff and Beetroot, and the German bounty, ‘in mules’; or perhaps ‘in’ what is commercially known in the market as ‘Cuban beef’.

That big fellow got off the ship early the next morning, and I, for one, never even learned his name. He got off at St John, Antigua, where, I dare say, he lived, and bossed his plantation-hands, and rode around his plantation early mornings, and ate fresh-killed tough meat and drank too-strong tea after noon, alternated with swizzels of antique rum.

It had been the subject of telepathy on which our talk had turned towards midnight. It was about last-order time, when the smoking-room steward makes his final rounds to see what you’ll take before he locks up his little cubby-hole of a bar with its swizzel-stick and its green limes, and its staple of Prunier for the French-Island passengers and the even more numerous British calls for ‘B. & S.’s.’

Sir Austin had contributed his bit, about the therapeutic use of ‘suggestion’ in mental-and-nervous and ‘borderline’ cases. The whole field had been pretty thoroughly covered, in fact. Even I had put in a word or two. I’m no scientist but I had read my Laws of Psychic Phenomena by Thompson W. Hudson, Ph.D. Some book, that one! Gives you pretty much all the dope. Shows, incidentally, what’s ‘Science’ and what’s just merely plain blah. Lot of people wouldn’t know the difference, I dare say, me for a good example! The big fellow hitched around in his chair when that midnight lull came, and started in in his big beefy, British voice.

‘Do any of you chaps by any chance know Reuter, in St Thomas – Clinton Reuter? No? Sorry. An exceedingly good chap, Reuter. In 1926 he was in the States, and was rather hastily summoned back to St Thomas. Took the first ship he could get – sailed that same afternoon in rather a rush. It was a tramp, carrying a few pasengers – the Bonaventure.’

Then, the big fellow, having caught everybody’s attention, went on to tell what happened to Clinton Reuter on that voyage from New York to St Thomas, in the Virgin Islands. St Thomas is the first port of call going ‘down the Islands’ from New York. We had been there two days before. It’s about the best-looking town in the Lesser Antilles, way ahead of the rest of them, although Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, and Port-of-Spain down on Trinidad are a lot bigger and a lot busier.

It was some story, and the big fellow told it right: very simply. It was the only real story we had had that evening, although there had, of course, been a number of instances brought up, as there always are when people get together on a subject like telepathy.

I’m not reproducing the English-West Indian’s yarn. It would be a dialect-story, for one thing, with that brogue of his, and besides, I didn’t believe the big fellow’s yarn for sour apples. I handed it to him for a well-told tale, coming in on that general conversation at precisely the right time to click and get a lot of plausibility in such a setting. It didn’t, to tell the truth, impress me, otherwise.

And then, seven months afterwards, by a kind of dumb luck I came back on the Bonaventure myself.

Mr Sills, who had been the Third Officer on Reuter’s voyage, was still with the ship. He was Number One now. That company operated a number of vessels, it seemed, and followed a policy of shifting its men around, Captain Sills told me.

That wasn’t all the genial young Captain told me, however, sitting evenings in his pleasant cabin over a jugfull of mild Martinique rum swizzel with plenty of lime juice in it. Of course, I told him what the big West Indian had told us in that brogue of his, and Sills, one of the least superstitious seamen I have ever encountered, came back at me that the West Indian had not altered the facts in one single particular; had not stretched the plain truth; had not been pulling our leg that night in the smoking-room.

Here, then, is the story.

When Reuter stepped across the sill of his stateroom on the Bonaventure the first thing he saw was a sign, which read:

Alarm-Bell – To Be Used In Case of Disaster Only

When this Bell Rings, Go On Deck At Once

Just above the sign was a gong, painted white with ship’s paint. Reuter had never seen just such an arrangement, and when the steward, just behind him with the hand-luggage, spoke, he had to repeat himself because Reuter had his eyes on the sign and had to pull them away, as it were!

He had a large stateroom to himself. He stowed his luggage, put on a cap, and went up on deck. He took an overcoat, too, it was late October and chilly. He stood up on deck and watched the last of the lading.

The stevedores, like bees, swarmed above and below the opened hatches. The winches creaked and groaned incessantly to the usual accompaniment of various bellowed directions, commands, and counter-commands. Both the forward hatches had already been closed because the lading forward had been finished. Now the First Officer, a chap named Pollard, was driving the work aft. A cold wind blew up the Hudson River where the ship was docked.

Reuter looked on at all this, and, I dare say, anyone watching him might have supposed him immensely interested. But, as a matter of fact, he had been at sea a good bit and such affairs were an old story to him. His mind was really in St Thomas. He looked at the maneuvers of two tugboats which hovered out in the river off the Bonaventure’s stern, flannel-shirted captains with peaked caps aslant over their eyes leaning nonchalantly out of their respective pilot-houses, spinning the great wheels as though negligently, jockeying skillfully about among the thick and varied traffic of the river.

Only that morning he had received Morrison’s letter from St Thomas. Morrison was his partner. When he had grasped its purport he had dropped everything else abruptly, hurriedly telephoned to the steamship office, and cabled Morrison of his sailing at once. It was his singular good fortune that there happened to be this vessel sailing late that afternoon. Because of that stroke of luck he would be able to arrive in St Thomas at the end of six days, even though the Bonaventure was no more than a slow tramp which carried passengers only incidentally. There had been no time to await a reply to his cabled message; cables had to be relayed through Porto Rico. Morrison should, of course, have cabled him in the first place instead of writing. The mails were very slow. Perhaps, though, poor old Morrison had not realized the gravity of his own condition. Reuter had been obliged to use his instinct over that letter. The information it contained and his knowledge of the tropics and of Morrison all had conspired to make him realize the necessity for this hastily undertaken voyage.

Morrison had written that he was coming down again with another attack of pneumonia. His letter had been written in the Municipal Hospital. This attack, Reuter knew, would be likely to finish him. If he were to see Morrison alive – if their affairs were not to dissolve in sudden ruin, now that they were in their most critical state of development – he must go, and go at once; be standing by to see poor Morrison out if he should last until his arrival, and then immediately take over the control of affairs himself. One thing was certain; Morrison was still alive. Otherwise he would have had a cable. It was peculiarly unfortunate that Morrison had come down ill at this particular time. Their business required constant, personal attention, Morrison on one end, in St Thomas; he on the other, in New York.

A sudden, general movement among the stevedores aroused Reuter out of his thoughts to watch what was going on below him on deck. The stevedores, their task finished, were collecting their coats, swarming over the ship’s side onto the dock. Under the direction of a ship’s officer the crew now turned to at getting the tarpaulins over the closed hatches; the wedges were already being driven home on one of them. Hawsers were being cast off. The two tugboats were no longer weaving in and out among the traffic out in the river. Both were attached, now, and hauling skillfully.

The ship was beginning to move. Reuter watched the careful process of backing out into the stream, but his mind was still on Morrison. Poor old Morrison! Well, if he passed out in the meantime, he would be getting a message, after three days at sea, at about the extreme range of the St Thomas wireless station. He arranged for that in his cable. He could not keep his mind off Morrison, somehow. Well, that was natural enough. He sighed deeply, turned, and went forward to the boat-deck. The Bonaventure was well out in the river now, her bows swinging towards the open sea. The tugs dropped off. The breeze from the lower bay began to blow. The voyage had begun.

When Reuter went back to his stateroom afer the early dinner which the occasional passengers on his line took with the ship’s officers, the alarm-bell and its accompanying sign again struck his eye. He read through the sign again, carefully, his mind still preoccupied with Morrison.

After a short evening spent arranging his cabin for the voyage, and tired out by the unusual exertions of that very busy day ashore, he turned in not long after eight bells. It was a comfort to settle down in the narrow berth and relax. Just before switching off the light he paused and read the sign through once more. Then he shut his eyes and slept like the dead until a smiling black steward carrying hot black coffee awakened him at six bells in the morning, announcing: ‘Breakfast in half an hour, sir.’

The voyage was entirely uneventful. For three days and nights the Bonaventure plowed along at a steady ten knots S.S.E. through the deepening blue of the ocean. Every day, at first as they traversed the Gulf Stream, then later, to the south’ard of it, the hue of the water became more intense until it took on that perfect indigo color which artists find easy to paint, and viewers of their pictures who have not seen the West Indian waters, find hard to credit. About the ship the trailing edge-weed of the Atlantic Sargasso wavered out in long strings, indicating the direction of the current wind to the least knowing landsman. Reuter noted the first of the flying fish in the late afternoon of the second day, and on the early morning of the third a few of the snouted porpoises which suggest to the beholder the dolphins of antique pictorial art.

Every evening, before retiring, he read through gravely the sign below the bell in his cabin. Every morning when he awakened it was always, somehow, the first object to catch his eye. It was as though some vague premonition, connected inexplicably with the alarm-bell, had laid its strong hold upon his imagination. Once, after he had switched off the light and slipped into his bunk, so strongly did this feeling persist, that he could not get asleep. Rather shamefacedly he rose, turned on the light, drew out and dusted a life-preserver, and tried it on. Rather grimly he smiled at his reflection, wearing it, in the small mirror before he replaced it and turned in again.

On the stroke of six bells – three o’clock in the early morning – of the fourth day at sea, he was abruptly wrenched into full wakefulness by a deep, insistent clanging beside him. The alarm-bell!

He rolled hastily out of his bunk and fumbled for the light. When he had found it and switched it on, and struggled to adjust his suddenly blinded eyes to its glare, he noted the bell had ceased ringing, though clearly in his mind still sounded its harsh note of clangorous, insistent warning.

He reached up and rapped the gong smartly with his seal ring. It answered with the note which had awakened him. Though that made it unmistakable, he wondered vaguely why it had ceased ringing. It should, he supposed, have continued automatically. He wondered what disaster could have overtaken the ship. As he tugged on his bathrobe and thrust his feet hurriedly into his slippers, and reached to the rack for a life-preserver, he heard, clearly, the steady throb of the engines. Disaster? What had happened? Well, the directions on the sign – (did he not know them by heart?) – were to go on deck at once. Out there, of course, he would find out in short order.

He opened his cabin door, expecting to meet he knew not what. He stepped carefully over the high iron door-sill, life-preserver hanging over his left arm. He turned aft at once and made his way, rapidly for the semi-darkness, along the covered-in passageway on which his door opened, towards the ladder leading to the deck above. It was there that the lifeboats stood in their chocks. As he mounted the ladder he remembered, inconsequently, that he had always wanted to see just how efficiently those new-fashioned leaning davits worked in the actual launching of a lifeboat. Now, probably, he was to find out!

He found the boat-deck deserted. A slight breeze, the very north-ernmost edge of the early-morning Trade, freshly blowing, was just beginning to make itself felt. Above, in a perfectly cloudless sky, the great stars flamed and glowed. There was no moon, but the reflection of Venus lay to starboard like a thin, unbroken bar of faint moonlight along the smooth sea. The Bonaventure forged steadily onward, her engines throbbing monotonously in their incessant, sustained beat.

Somewhat bewildered now, he walked farther forward along the boat-deck. He paused under a broad canvas awning just below the extension of the bridge on the port side. There was no motion except the slight, undulating pitch of the vessel as she responded to the long Atlantic swell of Latitude 28. In the soft and silent calm of this subtropic night the footfalls, regular and unhurried, of the slowly pacing officer on duty came delicately to his ears. It would be Mr Sills, the Third Officer, at this hour.

Reuter spoke hesitantly up the bridge companionway.

‘Good morning, Mr Sills.’

The officer on the bridge paused in his steady walk. Doubtless he would think it somewhat strange for a passenger to be up on the boat-deck at this unusual hour. That bell!

‘Good morning, Mr Reuter,’ came Sill’s voice. ‘Very bright starlight this morning. Did you notice Venus?’

‘Remarkably clear – yes! I was noticing Venus particularly. Shows up quite like a regular little moon, doesn’t she?’

The officer remained to chat for a moment, then resumed his duty-tramp along the bridge, his tread leisurely – no indication here of anything out of the ordinary. Disaster!

Reuter glanced down at his life-preserver, dangling awkwardly from his arm. He hoped Mr Sills had not noticed it. The life-preserver seemed an incongruity on this perfect night.

That bell!

Could this, perhaps, be one of those cases such as one read about occasionally – an assumed, reassuring calm on the part of the officers, a professionally false calm to keep the passengers from a stampede in the face of imminent danger? No! Hardly that, here, under these circumstances. There were only two or three passengers aboard the tramp besides himself, all men. He was alone on this deck where the lifeboats, stood, still in their chocks, belted down, their rigging coiled as though no one ever expected to disturb it. This, of course, was no passenger ship. The ringing of the alarm-bell at this time of night could have no possible meaning except public and necessary announcement of disaster. Even on passenger vessels boat-drills always came day-times at convenient hours. The wording of the sign was explicit and unmistakable.

To Reuter’s now thoroughly alert mind only one explanation was possible. He must have dreamed, vividly, of the bell’s ringing. Such an explanation seemed absurd, ridiculous. But that would at least account for its silence after he had switched on his light and noticed that it was ringing no longer. Perhaps, he reminded himself, the sign had made, in his state of preoccupation about poor Morrison, an absurdly strong impression on his mind. It was curious, though, that the note of the bell, as he had heard it – in his sleep, if that were the true explanation – had exactly corresponded to its actual note; the sound it had given out when he had rapped it with his ring. He had never tried ringing it before. He had no previous knowledge of the gong’s note.

He remained there on the boat-deck a few minutes longer, greatly puzzled. He looked out at the slightly phosphorescent sea and upward at the serene stars. Disaster! Well – it had been a very queer experience for him, in his matter-of-fact existence; something to think about, surely – it would supply him with a story to tell . . .

He went below, almost reluctantly, now, because of the charm of this warm night out here on deck, and the soft early-morning breeze, which was now coming in little puffs from the West, the land side – somewhere off Florida they would be now – back to his cabin. He looked first at the sign and the bell, half fascinated, his brows heavily puckered in his deep puzzlement. He did not tap the bell again before putting out the light and turning in. Contrary to his expectation, for he felt very completely awake, he fell asleep immediately. He slept straight through until the arrival of the steward with the morning coffee aroused him at seven.

After his shower and breakfast he settled himself in a deck chair on the shady starboard side of the boat-deck, away from the blazing morning sun. Idly he ran through the unread portions and even the advertisements of a magazine hastily purchased just before coming aboard four days before. It was here, about the middle of the morning that the wireless operator found him and handed him a message just received. It was from St Thomas, from the Chief Municipal Physician, at the hospital, Commander Joseph Carver of the Navy. The message was explicit and terse, Navy style.

Morrison died three this morning. – Carver.

Poor old Morrison! Always careful and considerate, Morrison. He, of course, had provided for the sending of this message in case he was called West before Reuter’s ship arrived.

He would not even be able to get there in time for the funeral! Two full days, possibly a third, must necessarily intervene before the Bonaventure could tie up to the West India Docks in St Thomas harbor. In the Islands they buried people, usually, the same day on which they died. Reuter looked at his watch. It was ten thirty-three now. Morrison had been dead more than seven hours.

He had gone out at three o’clock! Abruptly it flashed into Reuter’s mind – that was when he had heard the ‘disaster’ bell. He could feel little chills now running up and down his spine . . .

He pulled himself together. He stood up, thrust the wireless message into the pocket of his drill coat. There would be a tremendous lot for him to attend to when he arrived. Too bad he could not be at the funeral! That could not be helped. Thinking of the endless details that would be piled up for him on his arrival, an anxious frown on his forehead, he walked aft, descended the ladder, and entered his stateroom.

The sign took his first glance, held it. He stood there, just inside the stateroom door, looking at it fixedly, as though fascinated. Had it actually rung or not? Would he ever, really, know? He walked the length of the room and looked closely at the bell. It was, of course, no more than an inanimate thing, a mechanical device, glistening in its white ship’s paint. He could recall, as though it were only a few moments ago, the precise tone of it, as it had sounded, recording itself in his sleep-ridden brain; that had been nearly eight hours ago, just at the time when Morrison had passed out, hundreds of miles away down there in St Thomas.

Abruptly he reached up and inserted his index finger under the gong’s heavy spherical clapper. As he tried to raise it he encountered a stiff resistance. He thrust a little harder with a muscular finger. He saw that he was only bending the wire by which the globular copper ball was attached to the make-and-break electrical appliance which rang the gong. Then, very carefully, he straightened the bent wire. He took hold of the rectangular piece of metal to which the wire was attached at its other end. He tried to force this up. Again he encountered resistance. It would not budge. The gong was not in working order! He stepped on the metal railing of the lower bunk. He peered at the apparatus, his head bent close.

Successive coatings of the ship’s paint had fastened down the gong’s clapper rigidly. Reuter took out his knife and pried under the paint, hard now as cement. Flakes of it came away under the knife blade. He had the clapper entirely freed now. Probably it had not rung the gong since its original installation. It moved stiffly, grating back and forth reluctantly under his hand. He lifted it up forcibly, then let it fall back into place upon the gong’s rim with a solid impact . . .

The gong sounded in the very middle of the note that had been ringing in his mind; the note he had been expecting; the note that had been stamped into his mind at three o’clock that morning, when Morrison had died.

Disaster.

He stepped down slowly to the stateroom’s deck, dusting off white flaked particles and chippings of ancient paint from his hands and the front of his coat. He stood in the middle of the room, his feet wide apart, and read the sign through once more. Unconscious of his own action, he shook his head, doubtfully. He remained standing there for a long time, balancing himself to the ship’s slow roll, in a musing daze.

At last he lowered his eyes, turned, and walked slowly out of his stateroom, mounted to the deck, resumed his chair, and picked up the abandoned magazine.

But he did not open the magazine. Instead he laid it across his knees to serve as a writing desk. It had occurred to him that he ought to jot down as many things as he could think of – it would be wise to have them clearly in mind – the many things that would have to be attended to as soon as the Bonaventure had made fast alongside the West India Company’s docks in St Thomas.