The After House

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.