Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

The tortuous voyage to Capetown somehow dragged on. After the death of Stewart the master apparently feared the consequences of his death if they were reported to the American consul by the crew.

He enforced further signatures, drew up incriminating statements to discredit those who might cause trouble. This fear became even greater after Hansen’s death and the brutal measures of the master and mates became well-nigh indescribable. New and awful deeds were perpetrated.

Then the master went into the storeroom where Campbell was working around and hurled a cup with all his might at his head. It was a dainty cup, such as was used on those rare occasions when ladies came aboard, and it splintered into the flesh, cutting a gash as clean as a surgeon’s knife, laying the bone of the skull open.

Campbell, for no reason that he could find, was then put in irons, thrown into the lazaret, and told to “confess.”

They took him out because he had no idea what to confess to, and held him beneath the water pump for the water cure.

Barney Olsen was led before the brave captain, handcuffed. The captain held up a screw-driver.

“Is this yours?” he asked, shaking it menacingly.

How could Olsen know what to answer? Yes? Or no?

He hazarded a guess — the wrong one.

“No, sir,” he said. Pedersen struck him full in the face with the blunt end. “Now whose is it?” he demanded.

“Mine, sir,” gasped Olsen, shaking away the blood from his face as best he could to answer.

One morning the second mate, as was his playful jest, strode up to some men trussed up in irons. “I’ll blow your brains out,” he jeered at them.

“Do,” begged one of the men hopelessly, “I am bad enough off as it is. Death would be welcome.”

Off Capetown

At last the ship, after what must have seemed to the crew an interminable period, sighted the coast of Africa. The crew took heart just as the master and mates began to lose it. The Pedersens juggled the confessions rather worriedly to see if they embraced everything, and held a consultation as to how to avert trouble.

“We’ll get to Capetown,” proposed the resourceful second mate while his elder brother, handy only at the heavier work of beating and wounding, listened agape. “We’ll beat it for the consul, say that we have a lot of mutineers on board, and ask for military aid. We’ll show these confessions, get the crew jailed before they can open their black mouths.”

“I do hope the authorities will hang them,” said the captain, kindly.

On August 27, Captain William Howe, of Capetown, had a phone message from a naval intelligence officer. An American sailing vessel, the Puako, was in difficulty about forty miles off shore.

There was mutiny aboard; the captain asked for a tug to come and fetch him in, and for an armed party to take over the crew.

“We went out to meet this boat,” testified Captain Howe. “It was dark and rainy, and although we had searchlights, we failed to pick her up until the next morning. We had twelve men, four armed with rifles, the rest with revolvers.

The Consul’s Opinion

“We boarded the Puako at daybreak. Her cargo, we saw, was lumber. We saw some men about the deck, but could see no indication of trouble save that the captain looked worried, very worried, indeed. We read the log and found certain contradictions. I asked to have the crew mustered upon deck, and Captain Pedersen said:

“ ‘We must have a guard for the ship; I am afraid all the men wall jump overboard.’

“So the men were lined up under guard. I expected to see a gang of cutthroat desperadoes; instead, I saw the most miserable lot of men I had ever seen in my life. Nine men, some sitting, some lying, too weak to stand. Eight of these nine men had black eyes, several, marks on their faces. The other men, I found, had not been lined up, they were too weak to bring out and had been kicked beneath sails and into lockers to avoid discovery.

“The men were fearfully thin, emaciated, bruised, shins swollen, and many in great pain. I could not get a statement from William Jones he was in such a weak condition. And these mutinying men seemed glad, very glad, to see us — we who had come to place them under arrest!

“Jack Joe was doubled up with pain. He looked an old, worried man when I saw him. Jim Campbell had an open wound red and raw between his eyes.

“I took the men off, intending to let them rest and eat for a couple of days and then get statements. I did not arrest the captain and the mates — then. But I searched their cabin.

“I found clubs, blood stained, rope ends, knotted, and brass knuckles. I found knuckle-dusters and firearms. There were rifles and repeating guns and automatic pistols in the captain’s bureau. The crew began to talk and I believed them.

“I arrested the three officers. I have never seen men eat as that crew ate when we fed them ashore. One man ate fifteen biscuits after the meal — a large one — had been nominally completed.”