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Title: The city in the sea
Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole
Release date: March 13, 2025 [eBook #75608]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: George H. Doran Company, 1925
Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CITY IN THE SEA ***
THE CITY IN THE SEA
By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
_Author of_
"THE BLUE LAGOON," "POOLS OF SILENCE,"
ETC.
Gaze deep-sea horses 'neath the wave
And dolphins in mosaic shown,
Up-glimmer from the courts they pave
Far down, what more?...
The winds, alone
Make answer with the gulls, across
The blue, blue depths of Hyalos.
_New York_
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1925
BY H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
THE CITY IN THE SEA
--Q--
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[Illustration: The ISLAND OF HYALOS from a sketch map made on board the
_Lorna Doone_, giving soundings within and without the reefs.]
FOREWORD
In June of last year, 1925, long after this book was finished, the
_Morning Post_ published an account of how an Arab fisherman off the
Isle of Jerba had discovered a city under the sea, giving intimate
details that might have been taken from my little town Hyalos--details
vouched for by Count de Prohak and Sir Dennison Ross.
Five months later--November 1925--an American reader of "The City in
the Sea," then appearing serially in the States, sent me the following
cutting from a Hartford Paper:
"_Moscow, October 29._--Discovery of an ancient submerged city near
Shikov, a sandy bank on the Caspian Sea, was made Wednesday by
Alexis Atayeff, a captain in the Soviet mercantile fleet. Atayeff's
ship, bound from Persia to Baku, accidentally changed its usual
course, and while soundings were being made he noticed buildings
on the sea floor. Atayeff asserts that under the bright sunshine
he could distinguish streets and buildings of ancient Asiatic
architecture. Archæologists believe the discovery reveals the lost
city of Karadasheger, which is believed to have been submerged
centuries ago by an earthquake."
I make no complaint at these two old cities, one from the Caspian, the
other from the Mediterranean, presenting themselves like this to the
public; the desire for the limelight is excusable and understandable in
a way, but I think with some propriety they might have delayed their
appearance. As matters stand, many readers of the Press might fancy
they were first on the stage--this is not so. Hyalos was discovered by
me long before these venerable antiquities thought fit to appear at
the wings to be brought before the footlights by their producers, Sir
Dennison Ross and Captain Atayeff.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
I. A MODERN BUSINESS GIRL
II. A SMALL YACHTSMAN AND AN OLD DEALER
III. THE QUESTION
IV. THE REVELATION
V. HOW?
VI. MISS BEAMAN
VII. POOLE
VIII. THE PURCHASE OF THE "LORNA DOONE"
IX. MARTIA
X. DEEP SEA GEAR
XI. THE CREW OF BLIND MEN
XII. MARTIA'S SECRET
XIII. THE START
XIV. GENOA
XV. TOWARDS HYALOS
XVI. HYALOS
XVII. THE HOUSES
XVIII. A TERRIBLE DANGER
XIX. ONE OF THE DELIGHTFUL PEOPLE
XX. PLANS
XXI. THE SHIP
XXII. THE DUMPING OF THE VICTORY
XXIII. THE BOAT FROM ÆGINA
XXIV. A MAN OF WAR
XXV. GENOA AGAIN
XXVI. THE CUSTOMS
XXVII. THE GREAT ATTEMPT
XXVIII. WEST
XXIX. VISCONTI
XXX. CORNERED
XXXI. BEHRENS
XXXII. A GREAT ART DEALER
XXXIII. LONDON
XXXIV. THE END
The City in the Sea
CHAPTER I
A MODERN BUSINESS GIRL
One dry bright morning in early September, Robert Lestrange left his
rooms in Cadogan Street, and, boarding a bus bound for Charing Cross
climbed on to the roof.
Robert was good to look at, though as a matter of fact he was not
particularly good-looking, but he was young, well dressed, well groomed
and clean, innocent-seeming and light-hearted; a person one might fancy
most engaging to the eyes of girls and confidence trick men.
At Charing Cross he dropped off the bus and took his way along the
south side of the Strand, walking in a leisurely manner and absorbing
the details around him.
The Strand is much more than a street. It is the life of many nations,
the activities of many men; the past and present all made visible and
audible. In the Strand walk Henry Irving and Toole, no less surely
than Berry and Godfrey Tearle; Disraeli no less living than Baldwin.
It is an extension of the Bund of Nagasaki, and an earthquake in San
Francisco tells of itself here an hour after the event.
It has also some of the most delightful shops in the world. The shop,
for instance, where the sporting guns and rifles are arranged for view
and where the big game and the trees of the jungle show shadowlike
behind the express rifles.
Bobby hung before this window, absorbing its atmosphere of sport and
adventure; then he went on, crossing the mystic boundary line that
divides the West End from Newspaperland, on down Fleet Street and up
White Lion Court to the doorway of No. 1, Mortimer Buildings.
This is a bit of old London, and here, as in most bits of old London,
Romance sits in gloom and, frankly, dirt: the leases have not fallen
in, but the railings seem on the point of doing so, and the hall
doorsteps up which Bobby went, and the steps of the stairs leading to
the first floor, are hollowed out by the feet of generations.
The offices of Beaman & Hare are situated on the first floor facing
the court. The principal had not arrived, but Miss Hare was in and
would see Mr. Lestrange if he would wait. He agreed to this reasonable
proposition, took his seat in the tiny outer office, which was
furnished with the _Times_, two chairs, a table, and a portrait of
Thomas Hardy.
Bobby was a writing man. You never would have guessed it following him
down the Strand or now, as he sat nursing his knee, regardless of the
literature on the table and waiting to interview Miss Hare. When old
Nicholas Lestrange had gone broke over post-war industrials and died,
and when the Government had done taxing the estate, his one and only
child had found himself an orphan, possessed of the furniture of his
room at Bibliol College, Oxford, expensive tastes, and two hundred a
year to indulge them on.
He did not grumble. He dropped Oxford, came to London with some good
introductions, and plunged into the world of newspaperland.
When you start to learn how to be a chef you have to start to learn how
to wash up dishes. In Fleet Street it is the same. The great editor
is great partly because he has been through the mill and knows every
detail of his business; this Robert Lestrange found out after he had
been a month in the Street of Adventure, also the fact that he was
never likely to become a great editor. He had not the flair for news or
the instinct for news values, and the morning paper that is furiously
alive at breakfast time and dead at lunch seemed to him of all forms of
the printed word the most ephemeral.
Then he found, all at once and by accident, that he could write
stories, that he could invent news much more interesting than the news
in the papers, and doings much more intriguing (anyhow, more lasting in
interest) than the doings of the people of Shoreditch and Belgravia as
chronicled in the Press.
He sent his first short story to a friend who was a magazine editor,
and it was accepted. He sent a second, and it was refused. Challoner,
the editor, explained that the first one was a story and the second
was not, showed him the subtle difference between a tale and a record
of events; the fact that his first effort was instinctive and right,
and that in the second he had failed in a difficult theme for want of
craftsmanship; gave him a little book on the art, and dismissed him.
It was a defeat, and suffering under it he did something quite
distinctive. He burned his boats, dismissed his employers in Fleet
Street, and sat down to this new business, sending his productions to
no editor, but to Beaman & Hare, a literary agency recommended by a
friend.
This was his first visit to the office, with which he had been
corresponding for some months and with which he had already done fairly
satisfactory business.
The place did not impress him; it seemed small and cramped, and he was
still recovering from the stairs and the fact that Hare was a Miss. He
had always fancied the "M. Hare" who signed the typewritten letters and
also the cheques, a man; the text of the letters and the handwriting
had never suggested anything else. He wondered vaguely, as he sat
nursing his knee and waiting for his interview, whether the man who had
recommended him to this firm had been altogether happy in his advice.
He was not left long in doubt.
The office-boy returned, and he was shown down a passage into a room
where a girl seated before a desk littered with papers rose to receive
him. She was pleasingly dressed, her auburn hair was shingled, she wore
tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, she was nice-looking--not pretty,
nice-looking, in a new way.
And now, as she took off her reading glasses and they talked together,
she seemed to lose her sex; it was like talking to a man, only much
pleasanter.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting," said the businesslike Miss
Hare, "but I am glad you have come. These are your papers and our
correspondence on the desk, and I kept you waiting whilst I got them
in order. That last story you sent us has been turned down by three
magazines because of the deficiency of feminine interest in it.
There's no woman at all in it, as a matter of fact, and that's not a
fault--it's a crime--in the eyes of the ordinary magazine editor. Yet
it is the best story you have written."
"I'm glad you think that," said Bobby.
"Yes, but I'm not an ordinary magazine editor," said Miss Hare. "It was
not the fault of the story that it was turned down, it was the fault
of our office. I have been away, and Miss Beaman has been busy and
Miss Strudwick, whom I am training, sent it to those magazines, quite
unsuitable for it. However, when I came back I sent it to the editor of
_Hoof and Horn_ with a strong personal note, and this morning I have
a letter from him. He likes it, and will pay ten pounds--a wretched
price. You see, the people who are interested in hoofs and horns are
not nearly so numerous as the people who are interested in girls."
Bobby assented. This frank confession and open way of doing business
came to him as a revelation pleasantly new.
"I'm afraid girls are not my strong point," said he.
"When a woman is reading a story," said Miss Hare, "she is the girl. If
there are six girls in the story, she is each one of them; if she is
eighty, she is still the heroine. If you make your girls pretty, and
not impossible, and make them go through adventures, your women readers
will supply all the rest. But there must be adventures, that is to say
love interest, for love is the only adventure that counts with women
readers. I know it's absurd, but there you are. I am not talking of
literature, but of story-writing for profit."
The gunshop in the Strand came before Bobby's eyes, and the visionary
jungle beasts that had called to him as a storyteller.
"Only half an hour ago," said he, "a shop-window in the Strand gave me
a lot of ideas--open air--half-formed ideas, but I felt as if I had
tumbled into a nest of stories--it wasn't a bonnet shop."
"What sort of shop?"
"A gunshop."
"I know it," said Miss Hare. "I've often looked in. At least, I think I
know the one you mean."
"Do you mean to say you are interested in guns?"
"Anything that takes one's mind away from London is interesting. I was
born in the country and could shoot before I was twelve, but that was
in the days before the war swept everything away."
A distant look came into her eyes, passed, and putting on the
tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, she turned to the table littered with
papers.
"Now here," said she, "is something that I want you to do. I would have
written about it had you not called. Do you know anything about Tanagra
statuettes?"
"I know the things you mean," said Bobby, "but I don't know much about
them."
"Well, the editor of the _Paternoster Magazine_ has a cover design for
the January number, and he wants a story written around it. Editors
sometimes want this sort of thing done. It's not high-class work, but
the _Paternoster_ is important and the story will be 'featured,' of
course, as representing the cover design. This is it."
She handed him a picture.
It represented a man's hand, open, and, standing on the palm, a Tanagra
figurine about nine inches high, a statuette of a Greek girl carrying a
jar on her shoulder.
Lestrange, holding the drawing a little distance away from him,
contemplated it with his head slightly on one side, and Miss Hare, in
her turn, contemplated him.
He pleased her.
Already, and before she had seen him, she had taken a liking to him.
She liked the stories he had sent in and she liked, even better, his
business letters addressed to the firm; modest, straightforward,
unassuming letters, always to the point: his handwriting had pleased
her, and she was a judge of handwriting.
"Of course," said she, "many writers would consider it perhaps _infra
dig_ to be asked for a story in this way written round a cover design,
but the _Paternoster_ is worth pleasing, and, after all, nobody will
know but the editor."
"Oh, I'm not bothering about that," said he. "It's the difficulty. How
on earth am I to make a story of this thing--that's the question."
"Johnson said he could write a story about a broomstick if called
upon," said Miss Hare.
"Yes, but this isn't a broomstick. I know something about broomsticks,
but this----Well, I'll try. I must hunt round and find out things about
Tanagra statuettes. The British Museum might help me, or the South
Kensington."
"Try Behrens, in Museum Street," said she. "He's sure to know, and he's
a dear old man, and you'll get atmosphere there, if you get nothing
else. Number Six A Museum Street is his address, and you can mention my
name. He's one of my best friends."
She paused, and into her eyes came that far-away look again, as though
she were gazing over the past.
"Shall I take the drawing with me?" asked he, rising to go.
"No," said the girl, "I'll send it to your address by registered post.
It's the only copy, and you might leave it in a cab or something. I'm
sure you are forgetful."
"Now, how on earth did she know that?" said Bobby as he came down the
stairs.
CHAPTER II
A SMALL YACHTSMAN AND AN OLD DEALER
Coming down the stairs he was quite a different person from the man who
had gone up only half an hour before.
Only women and wine are able to work magic like that.
He felt warmed and cheered, and his work seemed worth doing. A little
appreciation goes a long way with a writer, and though Martia Hare had
said little enough in the way of appreciation, what she had said was
genuine. But though the appreciation had cheered, it was the woman who
had warmed.
For the last three months he had been leading a pretty lonely life.
When he had dropped Fleet Street he had lost touch with a great number
of people, women and men, fellow-workers and fellow human beings; the
smash his father had come in the financial world had made him chary of
approaching the people he had known in better days, and as a result
he had been living in an isolation excellent for work but bad for the
worker.
If you want to find loneliness do not go to the Sahara desert. Go to
London, with its population of seven million people crowded within a
radius of a few miles. Here you will find the real thing as Bobby had
found it, and here you will appreciate at its full value the interest
of a fellow man or woman.
Out in the desolation of roaring Fleet Street he found that he was
not alone. The pleasant image of the girl of the literary agency was
with him. She had not only attached herself to his work, but also in
some way to himself. It was not a question of love at first sight,
or of love at all, but of something more subtle; even, perhaps, more
mysterious--liking.
It was fifteen minutes to one, and reckoning that it was useless to
call on Behrens till later in the afternoon, Bobby hailed a taxi, got
in, and told the driver to take him to the Café Chianti in Old Compton
Street.
Here when he had paid and dismissed the driver, he found that he had
left his walking-stick in the cab, a fact that, so far from annoying
him, made him chuckle. How did Miss Hare know his bias in this respect?
And what an amazingly fortunate thing it was that he had not left
the picture behind in the cab instead of a half-crown walking-stick.
The picture that carried with it the good-will of the editor of the
_Paternoster Magazine_.
She had saved him from the effects of his own forgetfulness, and it was
as though another little bond had been tied between them.
The angel who looks after lonely young men was busy that day with the
affairs of Bobby, for, as he took his seat at a table to the right of
the doorway and picked up the menu, a man at the next table on the
left leaned across and touched him on the arm.
It was Hackett, unseen for several years. Samuel Hackett, otherwise
known as Sam, who had been sent down from St. John's for screwing a
tutor so firmly up in his rooms that a carpenter had to be called in.
Sam looked just the same, rather disreputable--no tailor could ever
dress him--just the same, but for an attempt at a beard and the deep
bronze of an out-of-door man.
"I've got a boat," said he, after greetings had been exchanged and
in answer to inquiries as to his doings. "I used to keep her up the
Hamble, but I've shifted to Poole Harbour. Do you know Poole Harbour?"
"No I don't," said Bobby; "only that it is near Bournemouth. But what
are you doing with the boat?"
"Living in her," said Sam. "It's the only life. No rates and taxes,
only harbour dues; no servants, only one man; fishing as much as you
want, and the whole Channel to cruise in."
"You're not married?"
"No," said Sam. "You don't want to be married if you have a boat. She
wants all your attention, and women are a nuisance, anyway, at least on
board a boat."
"Well, I'm jolly glad to see you," said Bobby. "What are you doing
to-night? Let's have some dinner somewhere and go to a theatre
afterwards."
"No," said Hackett. "I only came up to get some gadgets and a spare
suit of oilskins in the East India Dock Road. I'm going back by the
five train; but I'll always be glad to see you at Poole. Anyone will
show you my boat--she's the _Sandfly_--everyone knows me at Poole."
A feeling had come to Bobby that the joyous Sammy of other days
must have encountered strange influences to make him like this, so
indifferent to pleasure, so different from his old self. He did not
know the type yet, or the fact that he was talking to an almost perfect
specimen of the full-blown small yachtsman; a being for whom towns
existed only as suppliers of mast-winches and oilskin suits, and in
whose eyes God made the ocean as a practice ground for five to forty
tonners.
They parted outside the café, Hackett making east for the delights of
the Dock Road and Bobby north for Museum Street and the shop of Behrens.
Museum Street is the conduit that leads from Oxford Street and to-day
to where antiquity sits sheltered by the roof of the Museum and amidst
the well-preserved ruins of the world she once knew as young.
Miss Hare was right. Museums are destructive to inspiration, and
hunting for mushrooms in Labrador would be a fruitful occupation
compared to hunting for a living story amidst the marbles.
But Museum Street is a different matter, and Behrens' shop, which
stands half-way down on the right hand side, is another matter still.
I have never seen anyone pass Behrens' without stopping to look in. By
"anyone" I mean of course strangers to the street and people not in
too great a hurry.
Behrens is the man who beat Wangenheim at the great Sale of Japanese
Surinomo held in London in 1912, securing the whole of a Baron
Kamekura's collection for the British Museum.
Surinomo are Japanese Christmas cards, the newest craze among
collectors, and invaluable, some of them, especially when signed by
Hokuga, whose signature looks like a corkscrew, or Korinsai, whose
device suggests three five-barred gates and a gridiron. It was Behrens
who outbid the Americans for the Hispano Mauro lustre-ware at the Huth
sale, a collection which beats even that at Warwick Castle; and it
was he who declared the wax bust of the hunting Diana, attributed to
Benvenuto Cellini by a certain great critic of art, to be an impudent
fake.
But in the windows of his shop there is little to indicate these
activities of mind and purse; a chair of Beauvais tapestry, an arquebus
inlaid with silver, a set of crystal vases, always something attractive
without ostentation, and appealing to the sense of form or colour.
Bobby pressed the latch and entered the shop of Behrens, releasing as
he did so a bell that rang wildly in the back premises and fell dumb
when the door closed on the street.
Then he stood in the silence, looking around him and waiting for
someone to come.
The centre of the shop was taken up with a show-case, flat like a table
and filled with all sorts of small coloured and glittering things
from the antique world. It was as though a magic net had been cast in
time, a net sweeping the shores of the Roman and mediæval worlds and
the world of later days, a net made only for the catching of gems and
bibelots and bringing up everything from a snuffbox of Pettio's to a
chaplet by Benvenuto Cellini.
On either side and lining the shop walls, tall glass show-cases
exhibited armour and swords, crystal cups and goblets, German
chest-locks, carvings of John Voyez, and, occupying two large cabinets,
reposed a wonderful collection of Japanese masks, almost life-sized
faces in ivory, carved to represent Diakoku the god of Wealth, the Rice
god, the god of Roads, and twenty others, to say nothing of mousmés and
mouskos, old women and comic actors.
Bobby was looking at these things, when from the back of the shop and
past a tapestried screen came Behrens.
Behrens looked exactly as a man ought to look who is seventy-five, and
who has spent sixty years of his life face to face with antiques in
the stuffy atmosphere of cities, and surrounded always by either the
silence of the show-room or the noise of the market.
He wore glasses with tortoiseshell rims, after the modern fashion, and
a grey beard and moustache that hid the expression of his lower face.
An old fellow with a grey beard and spectacles; quite commonplace to
anyone but a connoisseur of men, who would have at once noticed his
hands; delicate, extraordinary sensitive-looking hands, that seemed
never quite at rest, but always questing to touch, to weigh and to feel.
"I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Behrens?" said Bobby.
"Miss Hare, of the firm of Beaman & Hare, asked me to call. At least,
she suggested that I should call--she said you knew her."
"I know her well," said Behrens. "And what can I do for you, Mr.----"
"Lestrange. My name is Lestrange."
"Any relationship to Mr. Nicholas Lestrange?"
"He was my father."
"Think of that now," said Behrens. "I have had many dealings with your
father, Mr. Lestrange, and now that I come to look at you closely I
seem to see a likeness. I always found him an easy customer to deal
with and I think he always found me an honest dealer, two things that
rarely come together in this world, Mr. Lestrange."
"I suppose you know that my father is dead?"
"Yes, I know that," said Behrens. He did not add that he had attended
the sale at Bramshott in Kent and bought half the pictures and all the
china, over which he had made a considerable profit.
Behrens, though a man with a heart, believed in the motto of Balzac:
"There is no friendship in business," and though he had felt an
affection for the good-hearted Nicholas Lestrange, he had had no qualms
at all about profiting from his estate.
"My father was ruined," said Bobby. "He was speculating in things and
they went the wrong way. So I've just had to set to to earn my living."
Behrens, half sitting on a great Elizabethan chest covered with red
leather, took a cigarette case from his pocket, and offered it while he
examined the young man before him with the terrible eye that could tell
worth from dross in men no less than in antiques.
"And how are you setting about that, if I may ask?" inquired he.
The question covered Bobby with confusion. It was perhaps the
matter-of-fact and businesslike air of the art dealer that made
story-writing for a living seem, suddenly, an occupation of the
feminine gender, an employment on the embroidery side of things, good
enough for girls but not good enough for a young man beginning life.
"I started with newspaper work," said he, "and then I turned from that
to writing."
"And what do you write?" asked Behrens.
"Stories."
"Ah, stories. And do you manage to sell these stories that you write?"
"Yes, some."
"And they are published?"
"I believe so," said Bobby, laughing. "I believe there are publishers
crazy enough to publish my work and pay for it."
"There are no crazy business men in London," said Behrens. "Take my
word for it as a trader. If publishers take your work and pay for it,
you may be sure that it is worth what they pay, twice over. That is
not flattery, it is an axiom. Why are you ashamed of your work?"
"I'm not," said Bobby, brought to a halt in his mind by this alarming
old man who seemed to see his thoughts. "Only sometimes it seems to me
that storytelling is too easy to be called work--isn't exactly the work
for a man."
"How old are you?" asked Behrens.
Bobby told, and the art dealer was silent for a moment. Then he spoke.
"What work is easy that is difficult? And is a man any the less a man
because his work has pleasure for its objective and not utility or
destruction? All the same, I see what you mean. But if you go about the
world collecting material for your stories, you will find the business,
I think, eminently the work for a man."
"How do you mean collecting material?"
"How do I mean? Well now, look here. How can any man who paints
pictures or writes stories or poems convey to his audience the effects
of hate, of love, of passion, of dread, of fear, on the human mind if
he has not experienced those emotions? How can he show you Spain if
he has never seen Spain, or a storm at sea if he has never known the
sea except at Margate? You think you are talking to an art dealer,
Mr. Lestrange. You are not. You are talking to Jacob Behrens, who has
always been a dealer in Life, and who owes all the money he has in the
bank to his recognition that a real work of art is a living thing, and
that the study of man is as important to the success of an art dealer
as the study of textures and surfaces and forms. Also," added Behrens,
with a chuckle, "to the fact that he is an adventurer at heart.
"Do you want my advice? Well, then, throw down your pen for a while
and go and have adventures: see the world in all its various forms,
get robbed, get heart-broken by women, get anything you like, but
get experience, before you get rheumatism, like me, and wealth and
possessions, which are worse than rheumatism as far as the adventurous
spirit of a man is concerned."
"I'd like nothing better," said Bobby; "only knocking round the world
takes money."
"Then knock around the world and make money," said Behrens, with
another of his little chuckles.
"How?"
"Well, that depends. You are talking to Jacob Behrens, who never wastes
time and who knows that the surest way of wasting time is to spend it
in giving advice to young men."
"Well, seems to me you have been doing it."
"No, I have just been preparing the ground for a suggestion. When I had
been speaking to you only a few minutes and found you were the son of
your father and read your face, I said to myself, 'Here is the man you
want. Here is a young man strong and healthy and to be trusted. The
only question is, has he the spirit for a big adventure?' That I have
not yet found out."
Bobby said nothing. Things were taking a strange turn--unless, indeed,
Behrens was a little bit touched in the head, which he did not seem to
be.
"It's sudden," said the old man, "my talking like this and asking a
question like that, seeing I've only known you ten minutes. But my name
is Jacob Behrens, and if I hadn't been sudden all my life, I wouldn't
have the money I have in the bank to-day. I can't abide slow thinking
or dilatory acting, and I'm going to ask you a snap question. Would you
on the chance of making anything from five to twenty thousand pounds
take a risk, pack a bag, and go where I tell you?"
"Depends on what you call the risk," said Bobby.
"That's a fair answer," replied Behrens, "and shows your head is
screwed on right. Well, now, I've no more time to waste to-day, but
if you will call upon me to-morrow evening at nine o'clock and have a
cigar and a cup of coffee, I'll tell you what is in my mind, unless I
have concluded the business with someone else--which is possible, but
not probable."
"I'll come," said Bobby.
Mad or not, Behrens pleased him. Like the guns in the shop window, the
old gentleman had induced in his mind the atmosphere of adventure. One
could not fancy Behrens chasing as much as a rabbit, and yet the effect
of his talk was almost as though some bold buccaneer had clapped the
young man on the shoulder.
"If I have no business to offer you," said Behrens, "you shall at
least have a good cigar and we will talk of art and these things." He
waved his hand at the treasures around whilst he began to walk Bobby
to the door. "These pretty trifles from the courts of France and the
old courts of Italy, and these pieces of armour from a greater age than
ours."
He opened the door, and Bobby was about to say good-day when he
remembered something that he had forgotten, something even more
important than the walking-stick he had forgotten in the cab.
"That reminds me," said he. "The reason I came to you to-day was to
find out all about Tanagra statuettes. I had to write a story about
them. It's stupid of me, for now I have taken up so much of your time I
don't like to bother you on the subject."
"You are talking of the figurines found in the olive groves of Tanagra
and dating from the fourth and fifth century before Christ. Well, it
is an interesting subject, and to-morrow night, if we have no better
business to discuss, we will talk about them."
Saying this, Behrens bowed his visitor into Museum Street and closed
the door.
In the street, and released from the spell of the old gentleman and his
shop, Bobby felt for a moment cheap. He had failed in the business he
had set out upon, and, instead of gathering the information he desired,
had allowed himself to be hypnotised by an interesting personality,
wound up in a bobbin of talk, and dismissed like a child.
This unbusinesslike habit of forgetting things had gone against him
in the newspaper world and was pursuing him in Storyland. He felt
depressed, but the depression did not last long. The spell of Behrens
returned on him, and, as he walked towards the Museum, failure was
forgotten in the interest of the question: "What on earth can he want
to see me about to-morrow night?"
CHAPTER III
THE QUESTION
When he got home that evening with a whole sheaf of information on the
subject of figurines which he had culled from the courteous authorities
of the Museum, he found that the post had brought him the cover design
for the _Paternoster Magazine_.
Martia Hare had not forgotten her end of the business, and her
thoughtfulness contrasted with his own carelessness made him sit down
to work with a determination to succeed. He lit a pipe, went over his
notes, closed his eyes and waited for inspiration to come. Nothing
came but Behrens asking him the question: "Would you, on the chance of
making anything from five to twenty thousand pounds, take a risk, pack
a bag, and go where I tell you?"
The question would not let him work, and as he sat, the tobacco
livening his imagination, the whole proposition took on a new form, new
colours and a reality which gave him pause.
Behrens had been in earnest. What did he mean by a risk? Was he
proposing a shady deal? No, Behrens did not seem that sort of person.
He was a respectable man in a large way of business, and even if he had
been a crook, would any crook in the world propose such a thing to an
absolute stranger after only ten minutes' conversation.
Then what was the meaning of it all?
He went to bed asking himself the question. The business had seized
upon his imagination.
It pursued him in dreamland and next day, when he sat down to work, it
stood at the gates of his mind, chasing all other ideas away.
At three o'clock, after a blank day and feeling as though the art of
story-writing had forever gone from him, he left his rooms, took a bus
and got off in Fleet Street. A few minutes later he was in White Lion
Court.
Yes, Miss Hare would see him. He was shown into her room.
"I've come to bother you again," said Bobby, taking the chair she
pointed out to him. "You must think me an awful worry, but it's not
business I've come about--at least, not the story business--it's old
Behrens."
"Yes?"
"I called on him and we had a long talk; it seems he knew my father in
a business way and he got quite chummy, asked what I was doing, and
when I told him, he said I ought to chuck the story-writing for a while
and go about the world and get experience."
The girl, seated sideways at the desk-table, took off her reading
glasses and, placing them on the papers at her elbow, turned more fully
towards Lestrange; she was tired after a long day's work, and still
with work to be completed before leaving the office, yet she showed no
sign of impatience.
"I told him," went on Bobby, "that I hadn't money enough to travel.
I've only two hundred a year of my own, you know, and he told me to go
and travel and make it. However, what I've come about is just this:
after we'd been talking a while, he sprung a proposition on me that was
pretty staggering, and I've come to ask your opinion on what I should
do. Sure I'm not taking up your time with all this?"
"No, no. Go on."
"Well, he asked me would I be willing to go into a venture that might
bring me in a lot of money? He hinted that it might be risky and he
asked me to call to-night at nine o'clock and talk the matter over."
"And you said----?"
"I said I'd call, but the whole thing is so extraordinary I had to come
and tell you about it and ask your advice."
"Why my advice?"
"Because you are cleverer than I am," said Bobby, "and you know him.
I'm perfectly sure he is straight, but still I just thought I'd come
and ask you what you thought."
"As a matter of fact," said the girl, "I had a telephone message this
morning from him asking about you."
Bobby laughed.
"Asking what I knew about you and saying that he had some business he
might be able to put in your way. He wanted to know if I thought you
were to be trusted and I said certainly you were."
He laughed again.
"But how do you know that I am to be trusted?"
"I don't know it," replied she, "I feel it."
She looked straight in his eyes and it seemed to Bobby in that
moment as though a link had been welded binding him to the girl in a
friendship that would never be broken.
"You came," she went on, "to ask me was _he_ to be trusted, and I can
answer you: yes, certainly. Also I believe I know the business he is
thinking of asking you to engage in. There is nothing wrong in it, but
it is extraordinarily--fascinating. I can't say more. It's his secret,
but I can say this----"
"Yes?"
"I believe I know why he thought of you in connection with the matter.
He had a son of about your age who was killed just at the end of the
war, and who would have carried this project through for him had he
lived. I may be wrong, but I fancy--well, no matter."
She turned. One of the typewriting girls had come in, carrying a little
tray with two cups of tea.
Bobby accepted a cup and a cigarette.
"Well, that's settled," said he, when they were alone again. "I'll call
on him this evening. There seems to me a lot in this business, and who
knows what may come of it. But the thing that's on my mind now is that
Tanagra statuette story. I feel that I will never be able to do it.
That worries me."
"Don't worry about that," said Martia. "If the thing does not appeal to
you, turn it down. I will try it with someone else."
"It's not the story that worries me," said he, "but the fact that
you took such trouble over it, and that I have wasted your time--and
there's more than that, you took an interest in my doing it--and I'd
do anything on earth to do anything you wanted me to do. I'm bad at
explaining things--but there are so few people in this world that
really care a button for one--I mean for one's work--that--well, there
it is."
He was frightfully tied up all at once. His tongue had got away with
him and he felt that somehow he had made a fool of himself.
But the girl understood.
"You will come and tell me all about it," said she, as he rose to take
his departure. "I shall be more than interested to know what happens
between you two."
"Yes, I'll come," said Bobby.
Out in the street he walked, not knowing or caring whither he went.
He wanted exercise, and to walk off the new flood of energy that had
suddenly filled his being. He wanted also to think. He felt like a
canoeman who has floated from a big stream into a broad and swiftly
flowing river; the river of Adventure, whose very breath is life. He
felt no longer alone; it was as though with him in the canoe was seated
the girl who had brought him into this business, the girl with the
auburn hair and green-grey eyes, expressive eyes, that darkened and
lightened to the sun or shadow of her thoughts.
And yesterday morning he did not even know of her existence--only of
her name.
CHAPTER IV
THE REVELATION
At five minutes to nine o'clock, Bobby turned into Museum Street.
Looking at his watch and finding himself five minutes too early, he
walked up and down the street opposite Behrens' shop. He was just about
to cross when the side door opened, and a tall, black-bearded man came
out, followed to the door-step by Behrens himself.
"Well, good-night, Visconti," said Behrens.
Bobby crossed over, and Behrens, who was just going in again, held the
door open for him to enter.
"You are to the moment," said the old fellow. "A minute earlier and you
would have been too early, and a minute later I would have had to come
down to open for you. My servant is out. Come up."
He closed the door and led the way upstairs to a sitting-room on the
first floor.
An astonishing place, considering that it was Behrens', for here was
nothing that hinted of antiquity. Big saddle-bag easy chairs, an
Axminster carpet, pictures of the modern French school on the walls,
a centre table with an open tantalus case, a soda syphon and a big
tin of cigarettes, a side table with a coffee apparatus and cups. An
astonishing place.
"Sit down," said Behrens. "Put your hat on the table, make yourself
comfortable. You will have coffee? That is right. I will make you the
coffee. It is Bourbon coffee; fools drink Mocha. Take a cigarette. And
how do you like my apartment? Bourgeois, isn't it? Well, trust me, the
bourgeois knows. Stattenheimer of Bond Street--and I beat him last week
at the Clement sale, as you might have seen in the papers, only young
men don't read the art news in the papers--Well, Stattenheimer, he
lives in Chelsea, in a Jacobean house, where there is no chair you can
sit on with comfort, no pictures; he said my apartment was bourgeois.
'Very well,' said I, 'I am an old bourgeois who takes an interest in
art as a business and a science, that is all I am. My shop is my art
gallery, and I keep my eye fresh by looking at modern things in my
home. I don't sit on my antiques, I sell them.' Here's your coffee."
He handed the cup and took his seat in an arm-chair opposite to his
guest, took off his glasses, wiped them with a silk handkerchief, and
then lit a cigar.
Bobby noticed that everything this old gentleman did, even to the
wiping of his glasses, was done with care and particularity, and
apparently to the exclusion from his mind of all other matters
whatsoever. The cigar-lighting took him a full half-minute. When it was
accomplished he leaned back in his chair and started to talk.
"Did you see that man I was letting out? Well, he's my agent in Italy.
He's going back to Rome to-morrow. He's a pig-headed fellow. Only for
that he might have taken up this business I am going to tell you about
to-night, but he refused it. I went to the trouble of going into the
whole of the plans with him, and he had the impudence to tell me that
it would be a waste of time, that there was nothing in it. Told that
to me, Jacob Behrens, who knew all about time and how not to waste it
before he was born. I did not press the matter with him to-night. I had
you in mind. You are younger than he is, for one thing. Also you are an
Englishman, and all Englishmen love the sea."
"Oh, it's a sea job?" said Bobby.
"Yes, it's a sea job," said the old man with a little chuckle. "Very
much so. A contest with Poseidon which I wish to engage you in. I
do not ask if you are a sailor or used to ship matters. If we come
to terms, we will engage the crew you will require for this matter.
What I do want is a man I can trust, a young man full of life, and an
Englishman. What made me ever think of an Italian for this business I
don't know."
"Well, I believe you can trust me," said Bobby. "But why do you want an
Englishman, especially?"
"Go and ask the gods who made the Great War," said the other. "It is
the British who do things, even impossible things. Well, I didn't ask
you to call to-night to talk of the British, but of our friend Poseidon
and the little matter between myself and him. My son was a naval
officer. I'm a naturalised Jew, and Isaac, my son, was swept into the
net of the Great War. He was in the submarine service, employed in the
Mediterranean, and out there, almost as the last gun was fired, he died
of enteric fever. You can't imagine what that meant to me; you are too
young to imagine the grief of a father for the loss of his only son,
and may you never know it. But there it is: he died.
"Six months before his death he sent me a most interesting
communication and a plan, which we would have worked out together had
he lived.
"Do you know the Greek Islands?"
Behrens rose and went to a bureau near the door, from which he produced
a map.
"Here they are, right from 40 degrees to 36 degrees, from Giura to
Christiana. Look at them and the way they are spread like a net across
the mouth of the Ægean and the road to Constantinople. You can fancy
how useful they were in the war as lurking places for submarines.
Isaac's boat used to hunt round from Milo to Andros and the mouth of
the channel between Negroport and the mainland. Now look here, look at
this small island Polykandros, and this dot south of Polykandros which
is not named on the map, but the name of which is Hyalos. Well, some
time before he died Isaac's boat was ordered south to lie in wait for
an enemy ship, and it anchored in a quiet little bay on the north of
Hyalos.
"Hyalos is a high island, uninhabited, and consisting mainly of rock. A
man was sent ashore to keep watch, and one day, having nothing better
to do, Isaac and a couple of his fellow-officers put off in a small
boat to fish in the bay.
"Here, under water on the eastern side of this bay, they came upon the
ninth wonder of the world--a little Greek town."
Behrens paused to relight the cigar which had gone out.
"I beg your pardon?" said Bobby.
"Town. A little town submerged at a depth of only some five fathoms;
a thing as old as history, yet perfect in its way, preserved in the
lap of the tideless sea and by the reefs that break the storms and
high waves to the north of Hyalos. The reefs have not only protected
the town from the sea and its storms, they have also protected it from
visitation. No ships ever go near Hyalos, not even the fishing vessels
of Nios and Thera. But the British Navy goes everywhere, especially in
war time, and British naval officers are born sportsmen. There were
three other men in the boat with Isaac. It was he who, looking over,
saw first the wonderful thing in the water below--houses, some in
partial decay, some entire; streets, public buildings; an agora--all
quiet down in the glittering water, and flown over by fish instead of
birds.
"Do you know anything of the structure of old Greek cities and houses?
I am not talking about Pompeii, which was Græco-Roman, but of the true
Greek city centuries before Pompeii was destroyed. Well, the house of
the old Greek was simply a courtyard open to the sky, surrounded by a
covered colonnade off which opened rooms. That is roughly what it was.
The courtyard, open to the sky, and the colonnade were the main things;
the rooms might be more or less in number, they were generally small.
"The floor of the courtyard was as a rule done in mosaic work, and in
the centre stood an altar to the Zeus of the home, and in front of the
house before the door of entrance stood as a rule a statue of Hermes or
a cone-shaped pillar indicating Apollo.
"When Isaac looked over first, the boat was floating above a house,
the walls and colonnade of which were intact, and the mosaic-paved
courtyard glimmered up at him, showing its pattern of dolphins and
sea-horses.
"You can fancy his astonishment! Sea-horses prancing beneath the sea
and done in mosaic; dolphins in blue and red, all brilliant in colour
despite the ages that had passed since man's foot had trodden them.
"He held his breath in his surprise whilst the boat drifted across a
street where ruts were still visible, left by the wheels of vehicles
vanished before Christ was born. What I am telling you is the truth.
Just as Mariette entered the tomb of the Apis saw on the sand the
foot mark a man had left three thousand years before, Isaac saw the
wheel-marks of the traffic that once had been in this street given over
to silence and the sea.
"He saw also a Hermes that had fallen down before a house, and then,
calling to his companions, he bade them look.
"Now these men with him were British sailors, men of the highest type
of manhood, and what they saw when they looked over the side of the
boat interested them, yet left them cold. A big living fish would have
appealed to them more than this little dead city where people had loved
and lived and traded before Christ was born or the Roman Empire--for,
mark you this, Hyalos is no Græco-Roman town, but a town submerged in
the flower-time of Greek art.
"Isaac who had the artistic sense and knowledge denied to his
companions, and who, moreover, was my son, knew at once the
extraordinary nature of the find. Knew that they had not only
discovered a dead city, but a very treasure-house of ancient art.
The indifference of the others so vexed him that he said nothing of
this. He sealed the matter in his heart. Isaac was the son of an art
collector, who is also a tradesman. I am quite frank. During the week
that his ship stayed in the bay he brooded over the matter, questioning
his heart as to whether, when the war was over, he would return with
my help, secretly, and recover from this place all he could by diving
operations, or whether he would tell the Greek Government and make the
matter public. He decided on the first course. Hyalos belonged to no
Government. It belonged only to the sea and to antiquity, and its art
treasures to the bold diver who first laid hands upon them.
"Without doubt many a Greek fisherman had looked down through the
ages and seen what Isaac saw, but without caring or knowing or
understanding, not guessing that here lay a treasure worth all the
fishing fleets of the islands. Without doubt through the future years
the place would be equally neglected, for no one comes to Hyalos,
which is only a rock surrounded by reefs.
"Yes, he felt quite easy in his mind on the question of secretly
looting this place, and during the week of his stay laughed at by
his companions as an antiquarian, he would put out every day in the
smallest boat of the destroyer, and spend hours exploring and mapping
this town where nothing moved but the fish and their shadows. This is
the map he made."
Behrens rose and took from the bureau a large sheet of paper, a
map carefully made, and showing the minute and complicated city in
its entirety. The agora, the streets, a tiny theatre, houses, some
half-ruined, some entire, complete just as when some subsidence slow or
sudden had brought the waters of the sea above the market-place, the
streets, the house tops. Bobby brooded over this thing, fascinated by
the story of Behrens.
"When the destroyer left Hyalos," went on the old man, "she was
ordered north, and was mined off Eubœa, by a floating mine from the
Dardanelles. No one was saved but Isaac and an old quarter-master.
Isaac died later, as I told you, of enteric fever. But he had sent me
home all I have told you and this map. Had Isaac lived he and I would
have gone together to this place, taken divers with us, and reaped
the harvest of the centuries and the sea; but I am too old now; his
death aged me ten years in ten minutes, and I have lost the appetite
for adventure, unless it is the adventure of the sale rooms. Yet I
want to secure from this place some part at least of the treasure it
holds, not from greed, for I am worth most of a million, but for three
reasons. One is sentiment. Isaac had his heart set on this business,
it was his desire that I should profit by it. Another reason is that
it would grieve me to the heart should Gundermann, or François Boucy,
or any of the big men in the world of antiquities get hold of this
business by any chance. Another is the desire for acquisition which is
part of my nature. I am frank with you. I spoke of a risk. There is a
risk of the sea and there is a risk that, should the Greek Government
find you removing things from this place, of which they do not know the
existence, there might be trouble. I cannot tell you the law on the
subject; the case is quite unique, but I can at least say that should
there be trouble, I will stand by you--should you care to take the
matter up and work it for me. I will give you half the worth of the
things recovered, and that may be a very large sum of money. I would,
of course, pay for the expedition."
Bobby was silent for a moment, looking at the map on his knee. The
thing fascinated him, but he was the son of Nicholas Lestrange,
a business man with a level head, despite his losses in post-war
industries. Then he said:
"There's nothing I'd like better, but I can't say right off. I'd like
twenty-four hours to think of it."
"That is only fair," said Behrens. "I do not wish to rush you into
a business that has its dangers. One question you will be asking
yourself--is it honest? Well, I think you can be sure on that point. I
care nothing for what the Greeks might say about the law. Morally, I am
sure that whoever comes first on these treasures, that belong to nobody
by right, since the owners had vanished before Rome was an Empire,
morally I say, I am sure that the first finder of them is entitled to
keep them. Besides," finished the old fellow grimly, "I am no friend of
the Greeks either in the sale room or the world of politics--but that
is another question."
"Oh, I'm not bothering about the morals of it," said the other. "The
stuff's there, whatever it is, to be dredged up by anyone, it seems
to me, and I'm ready to run the risk of the Greeks jumping on us.
It's only I want to think things over. I've done some sea work down
in Devonshire, and can handle a boat. It's only just I want to think
things over. It's a big proposition. Are you sure the treasures,
whatever they are, will be all right and worth anything after being in
the sea all these years?"
"In 1901," said Behrens, "the sponge-fishers off Cape Malea found an
old ship on the sea-floor laden with Greek bronzes and statuary. It was
a ship of the fleet of Sulla, and had been lying there for two-thousand
years. The bronzes and statuary were perfect. In 1905, or thereabouts,
divers brought up from the Lake of Nemi bronze beam-heads and ornaments
from the ship of Calligula. They were perfect, yet Calligula died on
January 24th, forty-one years after the birth of Christ. No, Mr.
Lestrange, you need not fear that the treasures of Hyalos are not worth
taking. The only thing you need trouble about is the expedition. Should
you take this matter up, I will do the paying; you will have to do the
leading. You will have to get the proper men together and a small ship,
an outfit for diving, and so forth. The men must be selected: men who
will not talk, and men who will be content with a salary, not a share
in the business. Have you any idea how to set about all this?"
"Not the slightest," said Bobby.
"Good--you at least know where you stand, and will be open to
suggestions."
"I haven't the slightest idea how the thing is to be done," said Bobby;
"but I'm perfectly sure if I tackle it I'll do it. With your help, of
course."
"Good. And you will have this great assistance--the treasure you are
after is neither gold nor silver; the things you go to seek will not
rouse the demon of cupidity in the breast of any ordinary Englishman of
the seafaring type. They are indeed useless to any man except a person
like myself, who is able to dispose of them. And there are only four
persons like myself in Europe, that is to say men who have the American
market in their hands, and who are known and trusted by the great
American connoisseurs--not that I am likely to dispose of the treasures
in my lifetime. I buy these valuables not yet recovered from the sea,
and it is I who will pay you half their worth. A good bargain for me,
Mr. Lestrange, and I venture to say a good bargain for you. They may
be worth five, ten, twenty thousand pounds or half a million, it is all
the same. You shall receive your half, and the valuer shall be Jacob
Behrens, who though working for his own hand, will be just with you."
"That I am certain of," said Bobby. A new flame was burning in his
breast, not lit by cupidity, but by the challenge in this affair. He
would have to get this expedition together and lead it, choose his
men, get the vessel and equipment, and bring the thing to a triumphant
conclusion. The difficulties were not the least attractive part of the
affair, and Behrens would back him financially.
He sat for a moment brooding. Then he looked up.
"I'll do it," he said. "I asked for twenty-four hours to think it over.
I don't want them. If you are willing, I'll clinch the matter now."
"Think twice," said Behrens. "I would not have you go into this matter
without full consideration. There are the risks of the sea and the
risk of trouble with Governments, not only the Greek, but the British
Government. Nothing, I am sure, would please the British Government
more than to spoil a little deal like this, quite forgetting that
Britain herself stole the Elgin marbles, not from under the sea, but
from their only true setting, the Acropolis of Athens. So if you obtain
these things and bring them in safety to the English coast, you will
still have the difficulty of landing them unknown to the Custom House.
There is no duty on objects of art, but, all the same, questions would
be asked."
"I know," said Bobby. "I can see the whole clearly. All the same I'll
take the business on."
"I bind you to nothing," said Behrens, "and if to-morrow or next day
you should wish to withdraw, you are at liberty. Having said that,
I would like also to say that I think you have chosen rightly. Any
Government risk would only amount to a fine and confiscation; the fine
would fall on me. The sea risks are only what any young man ought to be
prepared to face.
"Now, as to the money side of the business. I am prepared to allocate a
sum of three thousand pounds to be used for ship hire and so forth, all
accounts to be presented to me for payment. I believe that amount will
cover the business. I will deduct it from the amount at which I value
any treasure found before dividing that amount with you. Have you need
of ready money?"
"No," said Bobby. "I have about fifty pounds loose in the bank--enough
to carry on with."
"Well," said Behrens, "any money you may spend in this business make a
note of, and I will refund it. You understand the position? There are
three thousand pounds for you to use. I am not going to tie your arms.
I trust you to spend nothing foolishly. I give you _carte blanche_ so
that you may make your dispositions, hire your men, hire your ship,
get your diving apparatus and so forth. You say you have been used to
fishing on the Devonshire coast. I would advise you to go there for
your men and your vessel. They are honest men down there."
"Thanks," said Bobby. "It's nice to be trusted like that, and I shan't
waste your money. Yes, I might try Devonshire. Anyhow, I'll think the
whole thing over and get to work as quickly as possible. I'll keep you
informed of what I am doing."
Half an hour later he was in the street.
It was twenty minutes past eleven. In two hours and twenty minutes the
course of his life had been changed; he had been turned from a humdrum
existence to face Adventure and the deep sea, with a chance of making a
fortune at a single coup, and with a credit of three thousand pounds to
back him.
CHAPTER V
HOW?
Bobby got a bus from Oxford Circus to Charing Cross. It was after
twelve when he reached Cadogan Street and turning on the electric light
in his sitting-room, sat down to smoke, to think, and to plan.
It seemed to him that he had never come against the real things of life
till now. Up to this he had followed the grooves worn and polished by
other men. Even in story-writing he had followed custom, the advice
of experts and the leading of his literary agent. Here was a business
in which no other people were engaged, where there were no rules to
follow, and where a mistake might land him in worse than difficulties.
He would have to manufacture his own mechanism, guide it and direct it.
The most essential part of that mechanism was its human element.
He had fished with the Devonshire men of Plymouth and Brixham, and
the thought of them had sprung to his mind at Behrens', but it was
some years now since he had been on the Devonshire coast, and he had
forgotten the very names of the men he had known there, but he had not
forgotten certain facts about the Devonshire fishing people. They were
like a huge family; they knew one another's affairs, and a man going
off to the Mediterranean on a job like this would be sure to talk of it
when he got back.
And it was not a question of one man. He would want half a dozen.
Half a dozen men chattering on their return would mean that the port
authorities, who are all in touch with the fisherfolk, would know
of the matter in a week. Bribery would be no use; Bobby had enough
imagination to see that a gallon of cider would be enough to undo the
business, no matter how much money was spent on bribery.
Well, failing Devonshire, where else could men be found? The docks?
He knew enough of the docks to understand that this would be a very
difficult place to work. There were loads of men to be found on the
East India Dock Road, or down in Lambert Road, Canning Town. But what
sort of men? Men from the deep-sea ships, steamboat men, who knew
nothing of the handling of small sailing craft; men whose characters
might be good or might be bad.
Then, leaving the men aside, how about the vessel? Where could he go
for a boat to suit his purpose?
At two o'clock in the morning, by which time the whole proposition had
taken on the colours of a nightmare and Behrens the appearance of a
fiend, Bobby was knocking out the ashes of his last pipe, when before
him rose like an angel the picture of Samuel Hackett.
Sam, bronzed and weather-beaten, just as he had seen him in the
restaurant; Sam, with his old coat and scrubby beard and his absolute
indifference to all things earthly but his "boat" and the sea; Sam, who
lived as the gulls live in Poole Harbour; the man of all men to help,
or at least point out where help might be obtained.
Bobby put out the light in his sitting-room, switched on the light in
his bedroom, and went to bed, feeling that the weight of a world had
been taken from his shoulders.
Sam, from a man, had become an inspiration, a refuge, a star. Fantastic
fears assailed Bobby as he lay awake in the dark revolving the picture
of Hackett in his mind, suggestions that Sam in his peregrinations in
search of a suit of oilskins might have been run over by an omnibus, or
that he might fall sick, or be drowned before Bobby could get at him.
No mother was ever more anxious for the safety of a child; yet a few
hours ago news of the death of this precious one would scarcely have
moved him.
Then, under the alchemy of drowsiness, the vision of Sam turned
into the picture of Martia Hare, and then came sleep, profound and
dreamless, as it only comes to the young.
CHAPTER VI
MISS BEAMAN
He was up at eight o'clock next morning, was dressed and out by nine.
An hour too soon. At nine o'clock London is seemingly awake, but with
its eyes still closed.
He walked from Sloane Square to Charing Cross and then on to Fleet
Street, arriving at White Lion Court a few minutes after ten. Martia
had not arrived yet, but the senior partner, Miss Beaman, was there--a
capable, middle-aged woman who received him and held him in talk till
the arrival of the junior.
Rose Beaman was one of those people who do not hang on formalities. She
talked to Bobby as though she had known him all her life; she talked of
his work and she talked of her partner.
Martia was killing herself with work; she was one of those
conscientious people who slave themselves to death over detail; she had
taken only a week's holiday that summer, and a month would not have
been too much.
"You see," said Miss Beaman, "it all depends on the person and where
they were born. A born Londoner is different from a person brought up
in the country. I have known Martia since she was a child. We used to
call her March Hare, she was so wild and such a tom-boy: now she is
like a creature tamed and depressed by captivity. Cities are all wrong,
it seems to me; great prisons--work-houses--where the people are quite
content, not because they ought to be content but because they are
subdued to their surroundings."
Then the arrival of the discussed one broke off the conversation, and
a minute later Bobby found himself tête-à-tête with her and trying to
explain Behrens' whole proposition in a few words.
"He's backing me to the extent of three thousand pounds," he finished
at last, "and we are to divide the profits. And that brings me to what
I want to say. You introduced me to this business and, of course, your
firm must have a share in it."
The girl laughed.
"I think we will discuss that," said she, "when we see how things turn
out. There mightn't be anything to share. Then, again, it's all very
well to say we ought to share in the profits, but how about the work
and the danger of the business? It was no trouble to me to give you an
introduction to Mr. Behrens. He asks you to take the matter up; you
take all sorts of risks and the work is sure to be hard. Why should we
take a commission when we run no risks with you and do no work?"
She spoke without animation, in a tired way. Here, in the full light
of morning, Bobby began to perceive the truth of Miss Beaman's words.
March Hare, the light-hearted creature of other days pictured by Miss
Beaman, was far from being suggested by this girl, fading in the air of
Fleet Street, exhausted by office work and the struggle with editors,
authors, clerks, typewriters, and all the gnomes and fiends that move
behind the great set stage of Storyland.
Bobby sometimes had luminous ideas; one came to him now.
"Why not?" asked he.
"Why not what?" asked she.
"Share in the risks and the work. Take a holiday and come with us.
I'm not joking. We'll only be a few months, and think of it--think
of it," said Bobby, almost frightened at the daring of the proposal,
which in the Victorian age would have caused him to be exterminated
by an outraged parent or guardian, but which left Martia Hare quite
unshocked--she had, indeed, driven an ambulance in the Great War.
"Think of it! There was never such an expedition before. Think of the
fun and the excitement? Fishing? It beats fishing hollow. It's not
fishing for fish but for old gods and things. There's no knowing what
we may get up out of that place. Think of the Greek Islands! It's a
regular town, streets and buildings, all covered with shallow water
clear as a diamond. Hyalos is the name of it."
"Don't," said the girl almost irritably. "How could I? I'm tied to my
work. It's like holding out an apple to a donkey that's behind bars and
can't reach it. Would I come? Of course I would come, if I were free."
"Miss Beaman said you were working yourself to death, and that you
wanted a long holiday. She'd let you free soon enough. Besides,
you're a partner, aren't you? And it's business; you would have your
commission on your share!"
"It's impossible," said Martia. "There are too many things to be done
here."
"Leaving everything else aside," said he, "your brains would help to
make the thing a success. I'm not a brainy person, at all events in
that way. I'm always forgetting things. Well, say this at all events;
say that you'll think of it."
"I'm sure to do that," she answered, with a sigh.
"I mean as a business proposition. Promise me to think it over and try
and find some way by which you may be able to come."
"Yes, I'll do that, if you wish, but it's hopeless."
"No, that's no use. Promise me that you will put the hopelessness aside
and really think of it and try and find some way out. Think it out like
a problem."
"Very well. I will."
"Remember you will be one of the expedition, so you'll have no
expenses. Oh, promise me another thing."
"What?"
"That you'll talk the matter over with Miss Beaman."
"But I thought it was to be kept a secret?"
"So it is. But Miss Beaman is safe."
"Very well. I will talk to her about it."
He looked at his watch.
"Now I must be going. I have to catch the train to Bournemouth and get
to Poole Harbour to see a man I know there who may be able to help me.
May I come to-morrow and tell you how I am getting on?"
"Yes, certainly," said Martia, looking at the clock behind him. "Have
you got your luggage with you or will you have to go home to pack?"
"Which luggage?" asked Bobby.
"Well, a bag or something. You see, Poole is a good way from
Bournemouth, and you mayn't be able to get back to-night."
He hadn't thought of this. He had reckoned in a hazy way that he could
be back by the evening.
"There you are," said he. "I clean forgot all about that. You remember
the first time I saw you you said I was a forgetful person. I am.
I'll just have to buy a toothbrush and a few things on the way to the
station."
Off he went, and the girl sat for a moment looking at the morning
correspondence before her on the desk, but gazing in reality at
the mental picture of Bobby and his irresponsibility. She knew his
character quite well by now--or so she thought. Anyhow, she knew pieces
of it. Picking up the railway guide that lay on her desk, she followed
the traveller in her mind. She found that the proper way to get to
Poole is not to go to Bournemouth but to Poole, direct.
CHAPTER VII
POOLE
He found this out later in the day at the cost of considerable time.
Forgetfulness and carelessness as to details are not assets in the
conduct of business dealings with a world that goes by time-table and
is mostly inhabited by practical folk, to say nothing of sharks.
It was after four o'clock when he reached his destination.
The old, quaint town of Poole stands by a natural harbour all pockets
and dents and much used by fishing boats and various sailing craft. The
tide here ebbs and flows twice in the twelve hours and at low water
the mud banks, the sand banks, and the slob lands emerge, or hint of
themselves, beneath the swarms of chanting gulls.
Bobby had bought a cheap attaché-case, a toothbrush, and a suit of
pyjamas on the way to the station. These he deposited at the _Anchor
Inn_, whilst he started out to hunt for Samuel Hackett.
The waiter at the _Anchor_ knew of Sam, had seen him on the wharf that
morning, and reckoned that he would be aboard his boat, which was
anchored out towards Brownsea Island.
On the wharf Bobby fell in with an old longshore crab, who offered to
take him out to "Muster" Hackett's boat for five shillings.
Bowler was his name, and on the row out Bobby, if he had listened,
might have gathered not only the name of the oarsman, but his age and
the age of his wife, the number of his children, the parlous state
of Poole as a seaport, and the condition of the Christchurch salmon
fishing.
But he was not listening. The great harbour in the evening light, with
Corfe Castle against the sunset and the ring dottrels and curlews
flighting around Brownsea Island, held his mind from all else.
The sea-marks rippling to the tide, that was just beginning to ebb,
held his eye, and then the sandbanks at the mouth showed their gorse
and yellow dunes as the boat drew up to a yawl, over the stern of which
a man in a bo'sun's chair was hanging, paint brush in hand and busy at
work.
It was Hackett.
"Hallo!" cried Bobby, as the boat drew up.
"Mind my paint!" cried Hackett. "Bring her round to starboard. Good
lord, Bobby, where on earth have you sprung from?"
"Come to pay you a visit about something important. Can I come aboard?"
"_Can_ you come on board? One minute."
He got on deck, threw down the ladder, and helped the visitor overside.
Then he ordered Bowler to take the boat back.
"But I've left my luggage at that inn place," said Bobby.
"You don't want luggage here," said Sam. "I can give you all you want,
and you can have the dinghy to go back in whenever you want to go. You
can stay the night, anyhow, can't you? This is the _Sandfly_. Ain't she
a little beauty?"
Bobby looked around him, at the narrow deck, the taut standing-rigging,
the neatly-coiled ropes. He saw nothing beautiful, but he did not say
so.
She was a ten-tonner with a cockpit leading into a little cabin where
the head-room was so low that Bobby had to stoop when standing. He sat
down on a cushioned locker whilst Sam offered whisky and a box of Burma
cheroots, which he fetched down from a net shelf. Whilst he fussed
about, the visitor looked around him.
There was nothing here that could carry away in bad weather. Everything
was plain but clean, and the only decorations were some photographs
nailed to a bulkhead; photographs of ships and small yachts--the ruling
passion.
"How long have you had her?" asked Bobby, referring to the _Sandfly_.
"Got her the season before last," replied Sam, soda-syphon in hand.
"Say when. Got her at Cowes. Her only fault is, she's a wet boat. But
you can't have everything unless you have money."
"Ever been a long distance in her?"
"Only to Cherbourg and Boulogne. She's too small for long cruising with
comfort. That seat easy?"
"Quite. Look here, Sam, I've come down to you about a thing, one of
the biggest things I've ever struck. What sized boat would you want
for a cruise to the Mediterranean, a deep-sea expedition to the Greek
Islands, taking a diver and all his traps, and five or six for a crew?"
"What on earth would you want with a diver?"
"Never mind that. I'll tell you in a minute. What I want to know first
is the size of the boat."
"Well," said Sam, "a forty- or fifty-tonner would be best, ketch or
yawl rigged for choice, and a good sea boat. The Mediterranean is the
devil sometimes. But why do you ask?"
"I'll tell you, Sam, if you'll swear on the soles of your boots never
to let it out. I can trust you, can't I?"
"I never talk."
"Well, it's this way."
Bobby, leaning forward, began his story. Sure of his man, he told
everything from start to finish, and Sam, curled up on the opposite
side of the table, his old pipe in his mouth, absorbed the tale.
But the romantic part of it seemed to leave him quite unmoved. The
town under the sea, the treasures of art to be recovered from it, the
dangers of the expedition--all these were nothing to Samuel Hackett.
"You'd want a forty-tonner at least," said he, when the story was over,
"auxiliary-engined. Yawl for choice. You'd want a boat for the diving
pump and a dinghy. What's this you said? Statues and things? Well,
statues are pretty heavy, ain't they? Well, you might use the anchor
winch or rig a tackle for getting them up, but you'd want storage
room. What are you prepared to spend?"
"Well, how much do you think a boat like that would cost?"
"Oh, eight hundred to a thousand."
"Do you know of any boat that would do?"
Sam fell into a reverie.
"Well, if you're not particular as to appearances," said he, "there's
the _Lorna Doone_. She's alongside the wharf at Poole now. Ketch
over forty ton. Just been re-masted and the hull's as sound as I am.
Purbeck, the chap that owns her, had her fitted out for cruising and
only used her once this season, because of the masts, but they are
right enough now. He's been hit on the Stock Exchange, and I believe
he'd sell. He picked her up cheap."
"She'd do if she's sound. Sam, look here, supposing I could get her, or
some other boat as good, will you come along and lend a hand?"
"Me!"
"Yes, you. It'll be no end of fun, and I'll make it worth your while.
I'm on my beam ends. I know next to nothing about this sea business and
you're an expert."
"No," said Sam. "I couldn't go. I can't leave the boat."
"But why on earth can't you?"
"Oh, I've a lot of repairs to do to her this winter. You don't know
what a boat requires in that way. There's no end to be done to her.
But I'll help you in any other way I can. I can get you the men you
want, and see you right about stores, and all that. I can get you
Glastonbury, the chief diver of the Poole Construction Board--or was
till he quarrelled with them last June. He'd take on a winter job down
south."
"But I don't want a man who will talk."
"Glastonbury isn't a man; he's a diving machine," replied Hackett. "And
now come along and help me to get dinner ready."
In a microscopic galley for'ard of the hole where the sleeping bunks
were, Sam produced eggs from a basket and eight slices of raw bacon
wrapped in the financial page of the _Times_.
"There'll be enough for dinner to-night, and breakfast to-morrow
morning," said Sam. "I'd have got beefsteak if I'd known you were
coming. Hold on to this whilst I light the stove."
The stove smoked and stank, the place became filled with the lee-shore
sound of frying bacon, a sound as of waves tearing the shrieking shale
to their hearts, above which came the shouting of Sam giving directions
as to the laying of the table in the cabin, and the gash-gash of eggs
being sacrificed.
"You'll find the knives and forks in the starboard afterlocker. And the
cloth!" cried Sam. "And the cups--we'll have coffee. I'll fetch the
bread along."
Then as they dined, a rising breeze dispelling the perfume of paraffin
and filling the cabin with delicious harbour scents and voices of
guillemots and tern, shell-ducks, and dottrel, from the emerging
mudbanks and sandpits, Sam took up the theme of the _Lorna Doone_, and
the voyage down south.
Bobby noticed that he seemed more enthusiastic over the business than
he had been an hour before. The thing had evidently sunk into his
mind, arousing all the passions of the small yachtsman who is never so
happy as when he is fitting out and fiddling over gadgets. He talked
of the _Lorna Doone_ with enthusiasm. She had an auxiliary engine, it
seemed, and a propeller shaft piercing the port quarter. The propeller,
he explained, was not directly behind the rudder as in a steamer, but
sticking out at an angle. It was a patent propeller that opened out
like an umbrella when revolving, and closed up when not in use. She had
water tanks capable of holding five hundred gallons. She had beautiful
sleeping accommodation, a cabin aft of the main cabin, and a bath-room.
"But you'll see her to-morrow," said Sam. "I'll row you over after
breakfast, and we'll find Purbeck at the inn."
They sat on deck after dinner, smoking and watching the lights
of Poole, and the lights on the sandpit, talking but little--for
everything that Sam had ever learned, at Oxford or London or from life
in general, seemed to have been ousted for a general cargo of sea-craft
lore ranging from the question of main sheet buffers to the burning
subject of water-ballast as a substitute for metal.
Then they turned in.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PURCHASE OF THE "LORNA DOONE"
Bobby was awakened by a lamenting voice, or, rather, chorus--the gulls.
He came on deck to find the sun pushing up from behind the sandspit.
Black and white sheldrakes were fishing round the _Sandfly_, and a
flock of curlews showed, making away towards the trough of Poole.
Breakfast was over by eight, and half an hour later, rowed by Sam,
they were landing at the wharf where the _Lorna Doone_ was moored--a
white-painted, broad-beamed ketch of some forty-five or fifty tons, new
masted, as one could easily see, and with the Poole yacht club flag at
her jack-staff.
All the same, and despite her new paint, new masts, and gaily
fluttering flag, she did not look it. Did not look the yacht her owner
made her out to be. Her builders had never meant her to play this part.
They had meant her for trawling, for beating against North Sea weather,
for carrying tons of fish and discharging them on Grimsby wharves,
maybe even for the Icelandic banks and the seas off Flugasker. A plain
work-woman in silks and satin and a diamond tiara, that is what she
looked like, but Sam said her heart was good.
From the wharf they dropped on to her deck, where a shipkeeper received
them.
"Mr. Purbeck ain't down yet," said the man, "but he won't have no
objection to you looking over her. Thinkin' of buyin', are you? Well,
you might do worse. Purbeck ain't down yet. Been celebratin' at the
inn till lord knows what o'clock with some of them young chaps from
the club. Mighty free he is with his money to everyone, but those that
serve him; a pound a week is good enough for the likes of me, and him
cuttin' and shinin' ashore, champagne corks poppin' like guns and
cigars as big as your leg and----"
"Jim," said Hackett, seized with a sudden brain wave, "do you want to
earn half-a-crown?"
"Spit it out!" said Jim.
"What did Purbeck pay for her?"
"Three hundred and fifty," replied Jim, "and the masts and standin'
riggin' and paint cost him another hundred. Cough up your half-crown."
The money changed hands and they went below. Yes, everything was as
Hackett had said. A comfortable cabin with an after cabin, a sleeping
cabin leading forward to a galley, a fo'c'sle, a bath-room, metal
ballast, and a general appearance of solidity and soundness that
appealed even to the inexperienced eyes of Bobby.
On deck it was the same, from the anchor-winch to the wheel.
"Now," said Sam, as they scrambled on to the wharf, "we'll go and see
Purbeck. You ought to get her for five hundred, or six at the most.
He wants to sell, and the winter is before him and there aren't many
buyers about, not for a boat like her. I'll do the business for you and
you keep your mouth shut."
They found Purbeck at breakfast at the inn; a stout and red-faced
individual with small blue eyes and a blue serge coat with brass
buttons on it.
Sam knew him.
"Hello, Purbeck," said Sam, ringing the coffee-room bell. "Didn't
know you were here. I've just been looking at that boat of yours. Two
glasses of beer"--to the waiter who had answered the bell. "A friend of
mine is wanting a boat--are you selling?"
"That depends," said Purbeck. "I'd thought of selling, but, to tell you
the truth, I've scarcely the heart to. I'm used to her. There's nothing
to touch her on the coast, and I've made arrangements to lay her up for
the winter by Nicholson's yard."
"Well, she's a bit too small, anyhow," said Sam. "You don't by chance
happen to know of a boat a wee bit bigger, yawl for choice? By the
way, what were you thinking of asking for her when you thought of
selling--if it's not a rude question?"
"Twelve hundred," said Purbeck.
"Twelve hundred? Oh, that's no use to us, even if she was big enough.
Fifty-five is what we thought of. This is Mr. Lestrange. He's the man
who wants to buy. But he can't afford big money. Why, laying her up for
the winter will knock a lot off her value. It's not as if you were
selling at the beginning of the season. But, of course, that's your
affair."
Then began a long conversation on the question of laying a yacht up for
the winter, and Bobby, as he sat listening to these two yachting toughs
manœuvring for a stranglehold, thought the deal off. But it wasn't, by
any means.
Slowly and by degrees they got down to tin-tacks and prices, Sam
shamelessly dropping the question of the boat being too small, and
Purbeck, robed in the garb of the hypothetical, suggesting prices that
he might accept were he disposed by any chance to enter on a deal.
Bobby left them at it, and went out to smoke a pipe.
Half an hour later Sam joined him, flushed under his tan and exhausted.
"He'll take seven hundred," said Sam. "I can't beat him down a penny
more. Seven hundred as she stands, without anything taken off her, and
ready for sea; everything in the sail-room, the galley as it stands,
and the cabins--bunk-bedding--everything."
"Would you advise me to close?" asked Bobby.
"I would. You won't do better and might do a lot worse. She's a sound
boat, and you can sell her when you've done with her."
"Well, I hadn't thought of that before. That makes it easier. You
see, Sam, I'm dealing in this matter with old Behrens' money, not my
own, and I have to go carefully. You're sure she's big enough for
Mediterranean work?"
"Oh, gosh, yes."
"Then I'll close. Behrens will send him the cheque to-morrow."
They went back to the inn and concluded matters with Purbeck, who would
make out all the necessary papers and hand them over to Sam on receipt
of the cheque. Then Bobby collected his traps and made for the station,
Hackett accompanying him.
The soul of Sam seemed upraised by the triumphant conclusion of the
deal. It was more. It was trapped, entangled, snared like a rabbit by
the sticks and strings of the _Lorna Doone_. She had taken possession
of him just as a woman takes possession of a man, and his love for the
_Sandfly_ was under eclipse.
He was married to the _Sandfly_, and up to last night he had been quite
happy with her, but this morning had made all the difference. He had
gone over the _Lorna_ with the eyes of a prospective buyer, approved
of her, and finally bargained for her. It is true he had bargained for
her on behalf of another man. That made no difference. The act had
somehow tied him and her together. He was already beginning to dream of
the contents of her sail-room, asking himself how she would go under a
spinnaker, telling himself that he had been blind to her up to this,
that her lines of strength were in reality lines of beauty--the only
beauty worth having. And only a week ago he had called her a tub!
It was the beginning of the sort of thing that leads a man into the
divorce court. To-morrow he would be telling himself that the _Sandfly_
was a soap-dish, a toy, a woman's boat.
Bobby, in some subtle and extraordinary manner, sensed something of
this as they stood together at the station waiting for the London train
that was to take him to Town.
"Well," said he, "it's good of you to have taken all this trouble, and
to promise to help in getting me my crew, but there's one thing I do
wish, and that is that you were going with us in command."
"How do you mean in command?"
"I mean if you had thought of going with us I'd have asked you to take
charge; you'd have been captain. But I suppose it's not to be. Anyhow,
you'll give a hand, won't you, in getting things together, and when the
business is finished with Purbeck I give you _carte blanche_ to go over
and see what's wanted, and make any alterations or improvements, if it
won't take too much of your time."
"I'll give an eye to her," said Sam. "Make your mind easy. And take
it from me you've got a boat that won't let you down. I'll have her
dry-docked at Mattheson's and go over the copper, and I'll let you know
anything that's wanted. Don't bother about the crew and all that. I'll
see to everything."
Then the train came in and Bobby went off, and Samuel Hackett, slowly
retracing his steps to the inn, had a glass of beer, lit his pipe, and
returned to the wharfside, standing with his hands in his pockets and
his eyes fixed in contemplation on the new boat that had come into his
life.
The boat that yesterday had been nothing to him. Blind, blind he had
been, yet blind chiefly because she was above the tonnage that he had
been accustomed to. She was too big to work single-handed.
He got into his dinghy and returned to the _Sandfly_, tied up and came
on board, got the paint and brush and went on with the interrupted
business of yesterday. But it was no longer entirely a labour of love.
His mind was elsewhere, pleasantly occupied, yet uneasy.
CHAPTER IX
MARTIA
In the train the purchaser of the _Lorna Doone_ began to have
misgivings. He had agreed to pay seven hundred pounds for the boat,
and now, away from the small-yacht atmosphere of Poole, and beyond
the magnetism of Hackett, the amount seemed enormous and out of all
proportion to the size of the purchase.
Seven hundred pounds, and that was only the start, the first day's
work, so to speak. Almost a third of the money at his disposal gone at
one blow. What would Behrens say?
At Victoria he took a taxi and drove to Museum Street, where he found
the art-dealer in his shop looking over a case of Cosway miniatures he
had just purchased.
"Good-day," said the old man as Bobby came towards him past the
show-case and suits of armour. "Come and look at my beauties. Seventeen
hundred pounds they have cost me. Well, what news of our expedition?"
"It has cost you seven hundred already," said Bobby, "but I believe the
thing is half done."
Then he told.
Behrens did not seem at all alarmed at the tale.
"This Mr. Hackett is an expert in his way?" said he.
"The best man in England," replied Bobby.
"Well, there you are. You have begun well by choosing a good man.
Napoleon's battles were all won, not by Napoleon, but by the men he
chose to win them. This Mr. Hackett, you say, will choose your crew and
your captain? That is as it should be. And when do you think you can
get away?"
"Hackett said we ought to be out in a fortnight."
"That is better still. You have done well. And do not trouble too much
about the expense. The boat will be insured, and on her return she will
be saleable. I do not know anything of boats, but I do of prices in
general, and I reckon she will sell for half what she cost."
"Oh, more than that."
"No matter. I put it at half. So already we have spent only three
hundred and fifty pounds. Now to another matter. I have seen our friend
Miss Hare."
"Yes?"
"She called upon me yesterday. As I told you, I have known her from
childhood. She is a good girl. Good in all ways. Did you know that she
was engaged to Isaac?"
"To your son?"
"Yes, to my son. He who discovered Hyalos, and for whose sake and to
whose memory I am financing this expedition. I speak sentimentally. I
hope to make a large profit out of it for myself and for you, but in my
heart of hearts the memory of my Isaac stirs and gives colour to the
whole thing. He so wished that I should profit from it."
The old man leaned on the case of cameos and seemed for a moment to
forget his hearer, who stood without speaking, scarcely heeding the
naïve confession about profit, engrossed by this new fact.
Martia Hare had been engaged to Isaac Behrens; had loved him, without
doubt, and without doubt loved him still.
He knew now the reason of the far-away look of sadness that had come
into her face when she told him about the death of Isaac.
It was as though a ghost had suddenly come between himself and this
girl who had been living in his thoughts ever since he first met her.
She had been one of his chief inspirations in this business, she had
got into his heart, but he had not known how much he really cared for
her till now.
"She called on me yesterday," went on Behrens, knowing nothing of what
was passing in the other's mind, "she told me you had asked her to join
in this expedition and that she had told you it was impossible, that
she could not by any means leave her work. Then as she told me that
she began to cry. Women are women. I said to her, 'Martia, you want to
go with this expedition to Hyalos to see the wonder that poor Isaac
discovered and on which he set his heart'; she said, 'Yes,' and I said,
'You shall go, work or no work, you shall go even if I have to pay
Miss Beaman, your partner, for any loss that may be sustained by the
business during your absence. But there will be no loss. I am an old
business man and I know that businesses have a habit of carrying on,
even though one of the partners be taken away. You shall see Isaac's
city.' Women are strange people. It was the one desire of her heart to
go, yet she fought against the idea till I prevailed. I called a cab,
and leaving this place in charge of my man I took her to Miss Beaman,
who made no difficulty about the matter. Indeed she was entirely with
me. So the thing is settled, if you think the boat you have chosen will
not expose her to too great hardships."
"I had her in mind when I was looking over the boat," said Bobby. "I
had made her promise to think about coming with us. The boat is all
right, there is plenty of accommodation, and an after-cabin she can
have. When I asked her, one of the things that prompted me was the fact
that she was looking dog-tired and in need of a change. Of course, I
have only known her a short time, but that was how it seemed to me.
She's one of the people who work themselves to death, and she's one
of the people who were made, it seems to me, for the open air, not a
stuffy office. Of course, the _Lorna Doone_ is small, but Hackett says
she's safe, and that one could go round the world in her. But I can
explain all that to Miss Hare, and I will call on her to-morrow, first
thing."
"Do so," said Behrens, "and let me know all about it. Now to business.
I will send that cheque to-night to your friend Hackett. The purchase
papers will be made out in my name. It is just as well. And you? Have
you enough money to carry on with?"
"Plenty."
"You will keep an account of your expenses and let me have the bill?"
"Yes."
"Then," said Behrens, "that closes the matter for the present. Keep me
informed how things go from day to day. I am always in at night, and
there is always a cup of coffee awaiting you."
Then Bobby found himself in the street.
It was ten minutes to three. He had plenty of time to reach White Lion
Court and see Martia before the office closed. But something held him
back--the idea of Isaac Behrens.
His feeling towards Martia had not altered, but something had pushed
her away from him ever so little. He wanted time to accommodate himself
to the new fact that she had been in love with another man, that she
loved his memory still, and that if she went on this expedition her
main reason for going would be to visit the place Isaac had discovered
and to help in realising his dream.
You cannot be jealous of a dead man; yet a dead man may stand between
you and the woman you care for.
Bobby understood this fact for the first time in his life as he came
along New Oxford Street, making towards Oxford Circus. By the time he
reached the Circus his mind had settled down and become clear. His plan
was made. He would dismiss from his thoughts all things other than the
expedition and its needs till the affair was over. Martia was coming
with him; well and good. She would be one of the party, nothing more.
Love had nothing to do with a business like this. It had to be cut
clean out. After everything was over things might be different, but,
till everything was over and success grasped, hard work would be the
order of the day. Hard work, attention to detail, watchfulness, and
unswerving determination--those were the four essentials.
CHAPTER X
DEEP SEA GEAR
He put his hand to his breast pocket and drew out the envelope on the
back of which Sam had scribbled the address of the deep-sea diving
outfit company. The great firm that supplies all the pearl fisheries of
the world with their diving equipment, to say nothing of the harbour
boards.
Truly Behrens was right when he spoke of the importance of men and the
importance of being able to choose men, for Bobby might have been days
wandering about on this diving-dress business, and gone, perhaps, to
some second-hand dealer, but for Hackett.
There is one thing you must not skimp money over, and that is diving
equipment.
He reached Bermondsey at ten minutes to four o'clock, and at four found
himself at the works, which are situated in the Grange Road.
By five o'clock he had made his purchases: a three-cylinder air pump,
a helmet and gun-metal corselet, two diving dresses of bark-tanned
twilled cloth, three fifty feet lengths of rubber floating air hose
tested to two hundred and fifty pounds to the square inch, boots,
signal line, lead weights, special underclothing, and all sorts of
sundries from spare helmet glasses to wrist rings--the total cost
under a hundred and fifty pounds, also packing-cases. The whole to be
packed and despatched to him on board the _Lorna Doone_ at Miller's
Quay, Poole, Dorset.
Then he came West, well satisfied with his day's work, dined at a
restaurant, went home and fell asleep, waking next morning to find a
letter from Hackett, sent by the last post from Bournemouth. Sam's
handwriting, despite his public school and Oxford education, was that
of a school-boy, but the letter itself was full of fire and passion. It
might have been the letter of a lover describing his mistress.
"When I left you," wrote Sam, "I went back to the _Sandfly_ and
tinkered about, but I couldn't help going back to the _Lorna_ and
having a look round. What possessed Purbeck to part with her, I
don't know. Jim was off her, so I had her to myself. You can't get
at the innards of a boat unless you're alone on her, with no one
to bother and take one's mind off business. Of course, I knew she
was good when I recommended you to buy, but I did not know _how_
good she was. There's not a square inch of dry rot anywhere. How
could there be? It's all teak, and though she was built somewhere
before the war, she's better than new. The auxiliary engine wants
nothing done to it, and the sails in the sail-room are in good
condition; but there's no try-sail. We must have a try-sail. That
brute Purbeck mishandled her. Nothing much, but coming in last time
he touched on the West Point sandspit and she wants a new bobstay.
He must have been drunk. Adams, one of the crew he had, told me of
it this afternoon. Well, no more at present.
"Yours,
"SAM HACKETT.
"P.S.--I have thought of the men we'll want for a crew, and _I
believe I have got you a skipper_."
The last eight words were heavily underlined. Bobby laughed as he
put the letter back in its envelope and started to dress. Sam must
evidently have sent a special messenger or gone himself to Bournemouth
to get it off by the last post. He was keen as paint and his keenness
had been born of his sudden love for the _Lorna Doone_.
From half a lifetime's study of small-yachtsmen, I can say that
cases like that of Sam are not uncommon. I have seen a man making
a fool of himself over a boat, waste his money over her clothes in
the form of sails, and her jewellery, in the form of extra-patent,
sure-to-stick-at-the-last-moment gadgets, only to be let down by her in
a squall off the Needles because she was not honest. I have seen a boat
come between a man and his wife, and have seen a "triangle" of a man
and a girl and a boat--and the girl get the worst of it.
Sam had dreamt of the _Lorna Doone_, and after an early breakfast he
was on board her making notes of things that required looking to at the
same time that Bobby, having left his rooms, was making for White Lion
Court.
He found Martia just arrived at the office.
It was as though she had turned into another person. The look of
tiredness had gone from her. She had more colour. Her eyes were
brighter and she laughed as she greeted him.
"I'm coming," said Martia. "I never, never thought I could do it, but
Mr. Behrens has taken things in hand. He's making me go. Not that I
wanted much making, but still, he's settled things."
"I know," said Bobby. "I saw him and he told me, and I've got the boat."
He explained, telling how by good luck he had got a man to look after
things and find not only the boat but a crew.
"What's his name?" asked Martia.
"Hackett. He was up with me at Oxford. He's an awfully good chap, and
what he doesn't know about boats isn't worth knowing."
"Is his other name Samuel?"
"Yes."
"Oh!"
"D'you know him?"
"I knew a Samuel Hackett once, but I don't suppose it's the same. And
it doesn't matter," replied Martia. "And now, go on and tell me. You've
got the boat and the crew--how many men are there in the crew?"
"I don't know. Sam will see to all that."
"And a captain--for you don't know anything about sailing a boat, do
you?"
"How do you know that?"
"I didn't. I only guessed."
"Well, I don't know much, as a matter of fact. But Sam will get us a
captain."
"And stores and things?"
"Oh, Sam----I mean, we'll see to that," replied Bobby, sick of Sam and
the fact that Sam was really, and as far as things had gone, running
this expedition. "I've got the diving rig-out."
"You _have_ been busy. Where did you get it?"
"Place in Bermondsey." He had forgotten the name and he took from his
breast pocket the envelope on the back of which Hackett had pencilled
the name.
The envelope was addressed in a large clear hand to "S. Hackett, Esq.,
The Yacht _Sandfly_, Poole." He saw that she had taken in the fact.
"Sam gave it to me," said he as he put the envelope back in his pocket.
"And now tell me. Would you be ready to start in a fortnight if we have
the boat and everything ready?"
"I could start to-morrow," said Martia.
"Well, we'll hurry up things. You'll like the boat. There's a cabin aft
you can have, and the main cabin is large and comfortable, and there's
a bath-room. The only bother is the Bay, if we have rough weather."
"Oh, I don't mind weather," said Martia. "I'm never ill."
"I only thought if you cared to escape the Bay you might go overland to
Marseilles and pick us up there."
"In a stuffy French train? Never! No, I'll be ready to start whenever
you are. Are you going back to Poole?"
"Yes, to-day, after seeing Behrens. I've done everything I want in
London and I'll stick down there till we start. Meanwhile I'll keep you
informed as to how we are getting on."
She accompanied him through the outer office to the top of the stairs
to say good-bye, and then he found himself in Fleet Street, making for
Behrens.
He felt dissatisfied and a bit upset. Bobby was always finding out
unsatisfactory things about himself, which is a hopeful sign in a young
man.
He had started from home that morning quite satisfied with himself
and the world, feeling in fact that he had acted pretty smartly in
this affair and had overcome difficulties that would have floored many
another man. Then, all of a sudden, in his interview with Martia, yet
without a word from her, he had discovered that he had done next to
nothing, that Hackett had done the whole business and that he, Bobby,
had only acted the part of a marionette. Also, he felt vaguely that
right from the start he had been the pawn, not the player--the moved
one, not the mover.
Martia had introduced him to Behrens, Behrens had put him into the
affair, Hackett was practically running it. So he thought, quite
forgetting that the real hook upon which everything hung was his own
act in closing at once on Behrens' offer. That act showed courage and
determination and daring. The three things that make a man, even
though he be wanting in nearly everything else.
He did not see this. He felt cheap. And in the omnibus that took him
to Museum Street another thing troubled him. What did Martia know of
Hackett? Why did she drop the subject so quickly? Evidently she had
known him in the past. Had there been anything between them?
He got out at Oxford Circus and walked to Behrens' carrying with him
this riddle unsolved.
CHAPTER XI
THE CREW OF BLIND MEN
During the next ten days Bobby Lestrange was busy--busy doing things
under the orders of Sam.
They camped in the _Sandfly_, and to the labours incident on the
fitting out of the _Lorna Doone_ were added the labours of cooking
their own food and washing-up. Bobby wanted to stop at the inn, but Sam
would have none of that.
"You've got to get used to a boat," said Sam, "and you'll be thanking
me before you've got through the Gut of Gibraltar."
They had to take the auxiliary engine down, examine it in all its
parts, put it together again and run it. They had to renew several
ratlines that were doubtful, fit a new mainsheet-buffer and bobstay,
and devise a boom to carry a watch-tackle necessary for their work at
Hyalos. They had to look to the ballast, fill the water-tanks with five
hundred gallons of water, make out the list of stores, receive them and
stow them.
Whenever Bobby ventured to ask about the crew and captain, Sam made the
same reply:
"That's all right; leave it to me."
But on the evening of the tenth day, as they sat smoking after supper,
he broke the silence.
"Everything is ready to put out the day after to-morrow," said he, "and
I propose to get the crew to sign on to-morrow. I've got four chaps,
not including Glastonbury, the diver, and they're all blind and dumb."
"Good lord!" said Bobby. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking sense. You said you want men who won't come home and
chatter about what you are doing. These chaps won't. First there's
Glastonbury. He never talks about anything. He's a diver and nothing
else; silent as a seal when he's out of the water, same as when he's
in. Then there's Bowler, brother of that longshoreman who rowed you off
first day you were here. He's a Christchurch man whose one idea is the
salmon fishing; his head wouldn't hold two ideas. Then there's Longley,
Church, and Atherfield; they are all small-yacht sailors out of jobs. I
know them all, and the whole crowd are blind--not the way you mean, but
the way I mean. They take no interest in anything but their grub and
their pay, and the sea qualities of the boat they are in. You say you
expect to fish up Greek statues and things? Well, if you were to fish
up the great god Pan, alive and kicking, you wouldn't interest these
chaps. They are blind to everything but just the things that matter
to them, and it's only those things they talk about. Now, a deep-sea
sailor is different. There's a lot of intellect of sorts in a fo'c'sle.
They are always talking in the fo'c'sle, and a lot of them read books.
But this longshore crowd is different."
"I see," said Bobby. "But how about the skipper?"
Sam laughed.
"I've been looking round for a skipper," said he. "It has given me an
awful lot of trouble to make a decision, but I've got one."
"Where is he?"
"Here," replied Sam; "and he won't cost you anything but his grub."
"Do you mean to say you'll come yourself?"
"Unless you have any objection. I can't keep off it. It's not me; it's
the _Lorna_. She's got me in her grip. I've never had her out, but I
know she's good. Lines can't lie."
"Well, that's the best news you've given me yet," said Bobby. "I've
always been funky of a skipper; some chap that would, maybe, barge in
with objections to what we were doing, or maybe try to grab a big share
in the deal. But, Sam, you aren't going for nothing. You've got to have
a pull out of it some way."
"I've money enough of my own," said Sam, "and I'm going for my own
fun. I don't take any interest in your archæological business. You can
fish up what you dashed well please, so long as you don't bother me to
admire it or hand me out any mythological junk. Well, that's settled,
isn't it?"
"Yes," said Bobby.
Suddenly into his mind had come Martia Hare. He had never told Sam that
a girl was to be one of the party, simply because he had never looked
on Sam as having anything to do with the business except as regards
the outfitting. He remembered Martia's inquiry about Sam, and then
how she had closed up as though the subject were distasteful to her.
Heavens, if there had been anything between these two, anything that
would make one not want to sail with the other, what a complication
would ensue!
"I didn't tell you," said he, "but there's a girl going."
"Going where?"
"Going with us."
"A girl? But for heaven's sake, man, what are you taking a girl along
on an expedition like this for?"
"She's not a girl of the ordinary sort. She's ready to rough it and
lend a hand. She told me she could do cooking."
"Who is she?"
"She's a friend of Behrens. He's known her since she was a child, and
she's not strong and wants a change. She's my literary agent, and she
introduced me to Behrens, and but for her this affair would never have
come off."
He spoke hurriedly, keeping back the name and hoping Sam would forget
to ask it. There might be nothing in his fears, but it was just as well
to risk nothing. The expedition was due off the day after next at the
first of the ebb; that is to say, six o'clock in the morning. Martia
would not come down till the night before, and there would be no time
for Sam to kick, even if he wanted to.
Bobby did not take into account the possibility that there might be
some deep misunderstanding or family feud between these two people,
making it impossible for them to be messmates. His whole suspicions
were based only on the manner of the girl when she closed her inquiries
as to Sam. There might be nothing in it. He determined to leave it at
that and keep dumb until the critical moment, unless Sam pressed him.
But Sam was not bothering about the name of this girl who had suddenly
been foisted on him and would be sure to want the after-cabin, which
he had mentally reserved for himself as skipper. Sam was not the sort
of skipper who sleeps in the chart-room to oblige a lady. He looked on
women as a bore and a nuisance in the main business of life--that is to
say, small yachting--and his back now was all bristles.
"We've got cooks," he said. "Bowler and Church will take it in turns.
And it doesn't seem the thing, taking a girl on a show like this with
nothing but men on board."
He was perfectly honest in saying this. Sam was Victorian in a lot of
ways--a fact that was no discredit to him, however it might limit his
ideas or the range of woman's activities.
"She's driven an ambulance in the war," said Bobby, "and she's the sort
of girl who could go anywhere. Doesn't make you feel as if she was a
girl, you know."
"All the same," said Sam, "she's outside this job. It's absurd. You are
going on an important and risky business and you take a delicate girl
along for her health. You said she was delicate. You'll be wanting
to take a cow next, I suppose, so that she can have fresh milk every
morning. And I suppose she will be wanting the after-cabin?"
"Yes, of course. But the bunks in the sleeping cabin are quite
comfortable--you told me that yourself--and there's only you and me, so
we won't be crowded."
"I know, but I reckoned on the after-cabin as skipper. I reckoned to
keep my charts and things there."
"Well, keep the after-cabin," said Bobby. "Let her bunk in the sleeping
cabin and I'll shake down in the galley. I don't mind."
"That's clear nonsense," said the other. "If she comes, she'll have
to have the best, naturally. I may be old-fashioned--thank heaven I
am--but I have a feeling of respect for women. I suppose it's a part
of my make up. A woman's a woman--all the same they're a dashed lot of
nuisances."
He tapped his pipe out and the conversation dropped.
* * * * *
An hour later, when they had turned in and the _Sandfly_, moving to the
tide ripples, was rocking them to sleep, Sam's voice came through the
darkness.
"What did you say that girl's name was?"
"Which girl's name?"
"The girl who's coming on this show."
"Hare."
"What's her other name?"
"Which other name?"
"Her Christian name."
"March."
"March Hare? Who on earth ever labelled a girl with a name like that?"
"I don't know. Girls are called after the names of months--May and so
on--why not March?"
He heard the other snorting and turning in his bunk, and then the even
breathing that proclaimed sleep. But Bobby could not sleep for a long
time.
Why was Sam so anxious to know the other name? Had he done wrong in
not telling him the truth? Might Sam and she have been in love with
each other once, or anything like that? He remembered with relief that
she had been in love with Isaac Behrens and engaged to him. Still, who
could tell how many love affairs and engagements she might have had? On
this question, which had no answer, he fell asleep.
CHAPTER XII
MARTIA'S SECRET
Martia had a terrible secret; a secret known only to her mother and
herself; a secret only half-guessed by Behrens.
In the war, whilst she had been driving an ambulance, the disaster had
occurred which still overshadowed her life.
There are disasters that finish themselves and everything round them,
like a bursting shell, in a moment of time, and there are disasters
that, having done their work, go on living like horrible reptiles,
ruining the lives of their victims, ay, and of their victims' children
and grandchildren.
The Hares, before the war, had been very well-to-do, drawing some six
thousand a year from a business in Birmingham that seemed solid as the
town-hall itself. It tottered under the new condition of things, fell,
and went to smithereens, leaving Richard Hare dead amidst the ruins
with a pistol bullet in his heart; leaving also his wife, Martia, and
his youngest daughter, Violet, almost unprovided for.
Mrs. Hare had a hundred and fifty pounds a year of her own, Violet
obtained the post of companion to a woman of means, and Martia joined
with Miss Beaman as working partner in the agency. The money she made
was just sufficient to maintain herself whilst helping her mother, and
in making it she had nearly ruined her health. For several years she
had not taken a proper holiday. And on top of everything was the fact
of Isaac Behrens' death.
It was old Jacob Behrens who had forced her hand, made her see that
work without health was impossible, promised to keep an eye on her
mother should any accident happen to the expedition, and by pure will
power made her accept a hundred pounds for an outfit and expenses, to
be repaid--some day.
"Should the affair be successful, there will be much money in it," said
Jacob. "It is a business affair pure and simple. Leaving everything
else aside, I wish you to go as a person who has a knowledge of
business, and common-sense. I trust Mr. Lestrange completely, but he is
younger than his years and has not seen much of the world. I have great
faith, too, in a woman's intuition. I owed much of my early success to
my wife Sarah. She, with her clear sight, often saved me from rogues
and from my own stupidity. So, you see, you will be killing all sorts
of birds with the one stone; getting back your health, establishing the
business, helping to look after old Jacob's affairs and helping him to
make money, of which you shall have your share. Also, Isaac would have
wished it. Also, I believe you will bring luck."
He came on the evening of her departure to see her off by the
six-thirty train from Waterloo, buying her a first-class ticket and
entrusting her with the ship's money, some eight hundred pounds, to
hand to Bobby.
Then, as the train glided out of the station and she sat in the corner
of the comfortable first-class carriage she had to herself, a sense of
relief and release came to her such as she had never before experienced.
Gone were the cares of the office and the weariness and worries of
life; Fleet Street and White Lion Court, journeys in omnibuses to
save shillings, and all the petty and mean details that make up the
life of the poor--not the poor of the slums, but the poor of the
middle-classes, who have to keep up an appearance on insufficient means.
She was free, free as a bird. To-morrow she would not awake to
breakfast in a hurry and catch the train from Hampstead to the City,
there to spend the day wrestling with other people's affairs, returning
at night wearied out or going to a theatre she would be too tired to
enjoy.
All that was over, for the present at least. Life had turned over
for her an entirely fresh page, all the more charming because it was
unwritten upon.
Martia had no illusions about Jacob Behrens. She knew him to be a good
man; but she knew that he was also a trader, whose business followed
him everywhere, and whose business it was to make money. She knew that
he was really in earnest in urging her to take up this affair for the
benefit of her health, knowing as he did that what she wanted was not
only change of air but excitement and an absolutely new environment.
But she also knew that his keenness in this matter had been whetted
by his estimate of Bobby as a person excellent in every way but as a
business man.
So this new blank page that life had turned over for her had the
additional attraction that the writing on it would be partly hers in
the success or failure of the expedition which it would record.
The express drew into Poole Station at eight minutes past nine, and the
first person she saw on the lamp-lit platform was Bobby.
He helped her to get her small luggage from the carriage and her trunk
from the van, then, followed by a porter wheeling the lot, they started
on foot for the inn.
"Is everything all right?" she asked.
"Everything. The crew's on board; stores, water, and everything. We
swung her to-day to test the compass, and we are due out at sunrise.
I've got a room for you at the inn for to-night, and they'll wake you
up in time to-morrow morning, so that you can settle down and get your
gear stowed before we start. Hackett is coming along as skipper."
"Oh!"
"He's the best man we could possibly have, and he's coming just for the
fun of the thing."
"Are you sure he is responsible?"
"Quite."
Here was a relief. Evidently she had no objection to Sam, whatever she
may have known of him before this.
As he led the way into the coffee-room of the _Anchor_, they met
Hackett, who was just coming out. He had shaved off his beard, and
looked like the old Sam again. Bobby introduced him to the girl, and
watched as they shook hands.
Yes, without any manner of doubt these two had met before. He could
tell by their manner, by their faces, by the way they shook hands. Yet
not one word did they say in confirmation of the evident fact. Then,
after a few commonplace remarks about the weather and the time of
starting in the morning, Sam went off to the boat, where, having seen
the girl comfortably settled at the inn, Bobby followed him, found him
on deck, and, unable to restrain his curiosity, asked him the question
right out.
"Sam," said Bobby, "have you met that girl before?"
"Yes," replied Sam. "And, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not
talk about it."
"I don't want to talk about it or pry into your affairs. It's only just
this: when you asked me her other name, I told you the nickname she
was known by as a child. I did so because--well, it doesn't matter.
But I've only just thought that if there has been any unpleasantness
between you and her, I was maybe wrong, and----"
"There has been no unpleasantness," cut in the other. "And if it's all
the same to you, we'll say no more on the subject."
"All right," said Bobby. "We'll leave it at that."
He went below and turned in, and lay awake for an hour revolving
in his mind the problem of it all. What in the name of common-sense
could have happened between these two to make them--having known each
other--meet like strangers? Sam had evidently done nothing wrong, or
Martia would have refused to sail with him. And Martia _couldn't_ have
done anything wrong. Had they cared for one another in the past and
quarrelled? No, their manner did not point to that, and Martia, when he
told her that Sam was coming along with them, had shown little surprise
and no sign of hesitation.
CHAPTER XIII
THE START
Martia was awakened by the maid of the _Anchor_ opening the bedroom
door and turning on the light.
It was still dark outside--the sun would not rise for another half an
hour or more--and this hurried dressing by lamplight in order to catch
the tide and a little boat that would take her to distant and unknown
places was the weirdest experience that had yet befallen Martia.
It was the same when she found herself outside the inn, with Bowler
carrying her small baggage and making for the quay, against which no
big steamer was moored.
Bowler with the luggage, the smell of the harbour, the quay, all called
up journeys to the Continent from Dover or Folkestone; but here there
was no mail-boat to receive her, no great funnels belching smoke, no
crowd, nothing but the stick-like masts of the _Lorna Doone_ against
the fading night, and a lantern moving furtively by the quay edge.
There was no need for secrecy or concealment, at least at present.
The _Lorna's_ papers were in order, and it was only a question of
getting out. All the same there was a suggestion of a hurried and
surreptitious departure, not without its charm, in that atmosphere of
night and sea scents and sounds.
It was full flood, and the old quay gang-plank used for excursion boats
had been rigged leading to the deck of the _Lorna_, raised by the tide
almost to the quay level. Martia crossed the plank and was received on
the little deck by Bobby.
She stood for a moment looking around her. The deck looked smaller
than it was in reality, and the spars and rigging more fragile and
unreliable than daylight would show them. Forward she could see a
great bulk. It was Glastonbury. Church and Atherfield were beside him,
waiting to attend to the shore fasts. On the quay, talking to them,
stood a longshoreman, ready to haul up the gangway and attend to the
mooring ropes.
"We'll be off now in a minute," said Bobby. "Sam's below tinkering with
the engine. Wouldn't you like to come down and see your cabin?"
"Oh, that can wait," said she. "I wouldn't go down just now for worlds.
I want to see it all. It's more like a fairy tale or a dream than
anything real I have ever known. Listen to the gulls."
The gulls were clanging against the brightening east beyond Brownsea
Island and the sandbanks, and the wind, freshening with the dawn,
came charged with their voices and the smell of the open sea. The
longshoreman came to the gang-plank, and hauled it in just as Sam rose
from the hatch, wiping his hands with a piece of cotton waste, which
he flung over the port rail as he turned to the girl and greeted her.
"It's a fair wind," said Sam, "and the glass is as steady as a rock.
All your luggage on board?"
"Yes, everything."
"Aren't you going to get any sail on her?" asked Bobby.
"Not till we're out," replied the skipper of the _Lorna Doone_.
Bobby looked at the other, now fully visible in the morning light.
Sam on his quarter-deck, so to speak, in command of a ship, and about
to give orders, was quite a different person from the Sam he had
hitherto known. The new Sam was short of speech, a bit aloof, heedless
of the girl as though she had been a mere man, and seeming absolutely
indifferent to everything but the work in hand. And that was a fact. He
was in the grip of the _Lorna Doone_ just as she was in his grip now,
as he stood with his hands on the wheel-spokes giving his last orders.
The shore fasts came in, the little engine began to mutter, and the
_Lorna_, gliding gently and dropping the wharf behind her, fronted the
sunrise.
Martia did not look back. She was held by the view before her. For
in all the world there is nothing lovelier than Poole Harbour in the
sunrise of a perfect morning.
Gulls raced them as they glided over the golden water, where the stakes
and sea-marks that outlined the passage rippled to the first of the
ebb. They passed the _Sandfly_, deserted and snugged down in her
winter dress, and Brownsea Island hailed them with a chanting of gulls,
ring-dottrel and herons crossed their course to the lamentable wheezing
of guillemots, whilst to complete the picture two white swans from
Abbotsbury circled in the sunlight, the boom of their flight feathers
filling the air.
Then the sandbanks slid by, and the Isle of Wight showed the white
sharpness of the Needles and the banded tubular tower of their
lighthouse across the sparkling water, whilst, with the engine shut
off, the canvas rose thrashing in the breeze.
Then Martia, to whom all this was as new as it was strange, watched as
the great main boom, upheld by the topping lifts, shook and bucked and
then swung to port, straining at the main sheet, whilst the great sail,
ceasing its struggles, filled hard against the blue, and the _Lorna
Doone_, almost before the wind, drove into the swell to a sound like
the fizzing of soda-water.
"She steers," said Sam, seeming to address the universe in general.
"A child might handle her. Oh, lord, no!" in answer to a question
of Martia's. "We won't start the engine again till we're going into
harbour at Genoa. That's all the use auxiliaries are for, or if there's
a flat calm close to port. Here you are, Bowler, take the wheel and
keep her as she goes."
He handed the wheel over to Bowler, and stood for a moment beside the
girl, looking at the distant coast to starboard.
Bobby, who had just come up to tell them that breakfast was ready,
stood also to look whilst Sam pointed out the shoremarks to the girl.
"That's Corfe Castle," said he, "and away right over there is St.
Alban's head, beyond that is Weymouth Bay and Portland Bill. That? Oh,
she's a Union Castle liner."
"What's all that stuff on the sea there?" asked the girl, pointing
across the port bow.
"That's oil refuse from some ship. Full of tangled-up seabirds, maybe."
"Tangled-up seabirds?"
"Guillemots. It's generally the guillemots that get caught. They get in
the oil, and it tangles their feathers so's they can't fly or swim."
"And what happens to them?"
"They drift about and die of starvation."
"Oh, how frightful! Do people _know_?"
"Of course they do," replied Sam. "But they don't see it as we see it
who use the coast. Nothing is done, though it could be easily stopped.
Only just the question of putting oil-separators, that would pay for
themselves, on board the ships."
Bobby listened to this talk, thinking less of the conversation than
the manner of it. These two were quite easy with one another, like old
acquaintances. They _were_ old acquaintances. And yet they had met like
dead strangers, and Sam had indicated that he wanted to say nothing
about his past relationship with the girl. There was no possible
solution of this extraordinary state of things--at least none that
Bobby could discover or imagine--and, leaving it at that, he gave them
word that breakfast was ready.
Down below, the pleasant sunlight streaming through port and skylight
lit the cabin, the white-painted bulkheads, the breakfast things laid
out, and a little jar of October flowers provided by Bowler, of all
people in the world.
Bowler, who, to look at, seemed as destitute of all the finer feelings
as a derrick, hearing that a lady was coming as passenger, had procured
the flowers from his brother the longshoreman's garden. An angel could
not have done better, for they made the girl feel instantly at home.
"And this is your cabin," said Bobby, opening the door of the
cubby-hole and exposing to view the bunk with its neat coverlet, the
gadgets for holding things secure against the roll of the ship, and a
bookshelf with a tiny library--an after-thought provided only the day
before at Bournemouth.
She looked in, lost in admiration. Then, turning and casting her eyes
over everything, from the cabin carpet to the lamps swaying on their
gimbals, she heaved a sigh and tried to find words to express her
feelings.
"Why, it's just like a little steamboat," she said. "It's absolutely
and perfectly wonderful!"
A little steamboat!
Sam's jaw fell. His _Lorna Doone_ compared with a steamboat! However,
he swallowed the insult, knowing that it proceeded from ignorance not
malice, and they sat down to table.
They had lots to talk about.
It was the first real meeting of the board of directors of this
expedition, and Sam, without putting himself into the chair, soon
exhibited the qualities of chairman and leader. He had received the
ship's money from Martia and had locked it up in the safe. It would
only be needed for accidents, harbour dues, pilotage, and, in the
remote event of the auxiliary breaking down on approaching a harbour,
towage charges; the crew, who had received advances on their wages,
would not be paid off till the _Lorna_ returned to Poole.
They talked this matter over, and then came the question of a
Mediterranean base. Neither Bobby nor Martia had thought of this part
of the business. They had imagined the _Lorna_ sailing straight ahead
to the Greek archipelago without stopping anywhere. Why should they
stop? Sam answered that question very easily.
"You see," he said, "we've got to take water on somewhere. Hyalos may
have a water supply on it or it mayn't. The fact remains that when we
get there our water-tanks will be getting too low unless we touch at
some port on the way and fill up. Genoa is the best place for us to
touch at. First of all, I know it. Secondly, I can speak Italian of
sorts. Thirdly, the port authorities are pretty easy-going. Leaving
the water alone, let's come to the question of this stuff you want to
salve, and which seems to me pretty much like contraband.
"We must be able to run straight home with it without touching port.
Same time, we may have accidents, or Hyalos mayn't have a water source
on it, so that, having taken your cargo of antiques or whatever they
are on board, we may have to run to a port for water. The thing to do,
of course, is to run to a place you're known in, so that you won't have
trouble with the Customs smelling round the ship. That's why I want to
touch at Genoa, so that coming back we may be known there."
He took from his pocket the map of Hyalos, which Behrens had sent with
the ship's money, and spread it on the table before him.
The map showed the town as it lay beneath the water--the streets, the
market-place, the theatre, everything--but of the island of Hyalos,
beside which the sunken town lay, the map showed little; just the
outline of the bay.
"There you are," said Sam. "The fellow who drew this has put in
streets, squares, everything about this town that's supposed to be
submerged; details that are quite useless to us, seeing that we have
eyes in our heads. But of the most essential thing to a working party,
the presence or absence of water on the island, he says nothing."
Martia flushed slightly, and Bobby recognised that Sam had put his hoof
into it. He could not say, "Isaac Behrens drew that map and she was
engaged to him." He tried to catch Sam's eye, but failed.
"He must have been a silly ass," said Sam, still contemplating the map.
"You can see he was an archæologist all right, but no headpiece on him
for anything else."
Martia crimsoned.
"He was my best friend," said she, "and cleverer than--than a great
many people."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know," said Sam.
"Cleverer than a great many people I could name," she went on, anger
possessing her for a minute. "And he had headpiece enough to prevent
him going off and spoiling his life just in a fit of temper. Anyhow,
let us say no more about him."
"Very well," said Sam. "Let us agree to do so. I did not know you knew
him or, of course, I would not have said that."
He put the map away, and they rose from the table and went on deck,
Bobby greatly wondering at the girl's words. Was it Sam who had gone
off and spoiled his life in a fit of temper? If not, why did she fling
the words and the implied fact in his face?
When he had met Hackett first of all in the restaurant he had wondered
at the change in him, and at the hermit life he was leading. Was it
possible that before Isaac Behrens had come into Martia's life Sam and
she had been engaged? That Sam had broken it off in a fit of temper and
spoiled his life by taking to the small yacht business? It seemed the
only possible solution of the mystery.
* * * * *
Half an hour later, when the girl had gone below, he took Sam forward
of the wheel, where Church was steering.
"She was engaged to Isaac Behrens," said he. "That's what made her cut
up so rough."
"How the deuce was I to know that?" answered the other.
"How do people know anything? You were a friend of hers before I ever
knew her."
"Maybe," said Sam.
"Then why did you and she meet last night as though you were strangers,
though I could see quite well you had met before? Why did you get ratty
with me, and say you didn't want to talk about her? Why did she speak
to you like that at breakfast? What's the mystery?"
"There's no mystery. My affairs are my own and we'll be much better
friends, Lestrange, if you will recognise that fact and remember it.
One might think you were in love with the girl, the way you keep
harping on her. Leave the thing alone. We are out on serious work.
Forget that she's a girl, as I do, and we'll all be better friends.
This is a deep-sea expedition with, maybe, lots of dangers ahead; not a
charabanc ride to Margate."
He turned away, and Bobby, snubbed and feeling a bit small, stood with
his hands on the starboard rail watching the distant coast.
Sam had put his finger on the spot. He _was_ in love with Martia, and
that was the chief reason of all his suspicions and self-questionings
as to her possible past relationship to Sam. But he recognised the
truth that this expedition was no holiday trip, but an affair difficult
and maybe dangerous, in which there was no room for anything but
strict attention to business. He determined to think no more of her as
a woman till he had proved himself as a man; to put her from his mind
except as a companion till the _Lorna Doone_ was berthed at Poole Wharf
and the venture a success.
A decision easier come to than observed.
* * * * *
Half an hour later, when the girl came on deck again, the English coast
lay a great distance away across the blue and summer-like October sea.
Portland Bill was a point on the starboard beam, and before them lay
the great stretch of Lyme Bay, marked by the far-off sails of a fishing
fleet and the smoke of a coastwise freighter making for Brixham.
Martia seemed to have forgotten all her anger against Sam, and when
Bobby, having gone below for a smoke, returned on deck, she was at the
wheel, Sam beside her, and Bowler, one great hand on a spoke, "Larning
her to steer."
CHAPTER XIV
GENOA
Somewhere about four in the afternoon Start Point showed away on the
starboard beam; and with the dark the Eddystone light, sixteen miles or
so away, winked at them just within the range of visibility.
The wind had shifted a bit towards the south, and the nip had gone out
of the air, but no clouds showed. St. Luke's little summer held the
Channel, and the warm dark night was full of lights--lights talking to
one another through the great silence that was broken only by the creak
of block and spar and the whisper of the bow wash. Bolt Head and the
Eddystone and the red and green lights of shipping were all domed by
the stars, against which the great spread of the mainsail showed black
beneath the truck, writing its tale of adventure on the heavens. They
passed Ushant next morning, carrying the fine weather with them into
the Bay; they passed the Bay and the Barlengas Islands handed them on
to Cape St. Vincent, and then, one day never to be forgotten by Martia,
far ahead before them stood Africa facing Europe in a blaze of sunshine
across the narrow straits.
* * * * *
The wind was with them--the west wind is generally blowing through the
gut of Gibraltar. They passed the Rock, a great P. & O. boat homeward
bound giving them her wash and a string of coloured flags that wished
them a pleasant voyage. And then, through days of blazing sunshine
and nights of stars and winking sea lights, they coasted the southern
shores of Spain till the Balearics showed like a cloud on the starboard
bow and sank astern like burning ships in the blaze of a sunset never
to be forgotten.
Then one morning, just as Martia was dressed, a hail from above brought
her on deck, and there across the sea lay Genoa. Genoa terraced and
glittering in the early sunlight, above the crowded harbour and
the foam-washed breakwater. Genoa throned on her hills facing San
Fruitiossa and the tombs of the Dorias across the glittering sea. Genoa
_la superba_, yet a trader at heart now as in the past.
A pilot-boat ran out to meet them, and as the pilot came on board Sam,
his work and responsibility finished with for the moment, turned to
the rail and lit a pipe, whilst the girl, standing by him, watched as,
passing the eastern end of the breakwater, they came into the outer
harbour and from there into the inner, beside which lay the great Silos
de Genoa.
Genoa is the Southampton of Italy, and here were ships the form and
lines and names of which the girl had never imagined or heard of; ships
of the Nederland Line and the Holland-Oast-Azie Line; the great South
American liner _Conte Verde_, close to which the pilot moored them; a
turret boat of the Clan Line; coasters from Savona, Leghorn, and Naples
that seemed to have been built by Noah; an old green ship rotting
at its anchorage, and a fruit boat from Sicily full of bronzed men
graceful as Apollos.
Then the port authorities came off in their launch, gave them
_pratique_, examined their papers, threw up their hands at the mad
English who had come all the way from England in such a small boat just
for fun, and departed, smiling--at Martia.
"And now," said Sam, "let's get ashore. Bowler will look after the
ship. We can have breakfast at the _Mirimare_--that's that big hotel up
there you can see to the left of the Silos--and then we can go for a
cruise round the town."
Martia's mind jumped at the idea, and yet, strangely enough, something
held her back. Women have their premonitary warnings that come from
nowhere. But her doubt lasted only for a moment.
"Why not have breakfast here and then go ashore?" said she. "It's only
half-past eight, and we have the whole day before us."
"I want to stretch my legs," said Sam. "And as we'll be off to-morrow
morning, we may as well make the most of our time. Unless you'd rather
breakfast here."
"Oh, I don't mind," said she. "If you want to, let's go."
Bowler rowed them ashore, and landing at the quay by the Silos they
took the lift that brings passengers from the lower level right into
the premises of the great hotel. Here they breakfasted, surrounded by
all the nations of the world in the form of tourists. Sam was in the
highest of spirits, laughing and talking and self-congratulatory on the
success of the voyage up to this.
This was a new Sam. Bobby had never once seen him like this since the
Oxford days, and was pleased at the change, little dreaming of the
newer Sam he was to see before nightfall.
There is a hairdressing shop for men and women attached to the
_Mirimare_, and after breakfast the skipper of the _Lorna Doone_,
lighting a big cigar and leaving the others seated in the lounge, went
off to be barbered.
"I won't be a minute," said Sam.
He was half an hour, and it was ten minutes to eleven before, delivered
from the hotel and the lift, they took a tram for the Piazza Differari.
Modern Genoa is divided into two parts, the harbour town and the
eastern town of fine shops and business houses.
Having bought some things, they had luncheon at a café on the Piazzo
Aqua Verde, and here, after luncheon, they lost Sam. They lost him in
a crowd caused by a big Fascist demonstration marching with drums and
banners, and they could not find him again.
"He'll be all right," said Bobby. "He knows the place better than we
do, and he'll go back to the boat when he's tired. Come on. We haven't
done the Campo Santo yet, nor a single church. Which shall it be?"
"The Campo Santo," said Martia. "I've often heard of it, and would like
to see it. But are you sure Mr. Hackett will be all right?"
"Absolutely," said Bobby; "and it serves him right being such a fool as
to lose himself. We can't hunt for him all day."
He hailed a taxi-cab and drove to the great cemetery, but Martia's
interest in the marble tombs, the family groups, the widowers in marble
frock coats, and the enormousness and enormity of the whole place was
marred by the vision of Sam, lost and maybe still hunting for them,
wandering like a stray dog. She felt that they had deserted him, and it
was a relief to her when they reached the quay at last and took a shore
boat to the _Lorna Doone_. Sam had not returned.
Bobby looked at his watch.
"It's only half-past five," said he. "He's sure to be back soon. If he
isn't, I'll go ashore and have a hunt for him."
"He couldn't have got into trouble or anything?" asked the girl.
"Not he. He's just amusing himself. He'll be back by six."
But six passed without the return of the missing one, and seven. At
eight o'clock, as much disturbed as the girl, Bobby put ashore and
landed at the Silo quay, told Bowler to stick by the landing-stage with
the boat, and started on his hunt. He had not far to go. On a bollard
near the shore end of the quay, conversing jocularly with several
Italian boatmen and punctuating his remarks with hiccoughs, was seated
Sam.
"Hallo," said Sam.
"What on earth have you been doing?" asked Bobby, shocked by this new
development and scarcely believing his senses. "Where have you been?"
"All over the place," said the skipper of the _Lorna Doone_. "Give's
your arm."
Now the funny thing was that Bobby, who knew Sam's Oxford record for
brightness and liveliness, and who had not seen him for years before
their meeting in the restaurant, was shocked by his present condition
almost as much as though Samuel had been a rural dean, shall we say.
Yet perhaps the thing was not so funny after all, for the skipper of
the _Lorna Doone_ had up to this shown no deviation from the normal.
Furthermore, he was not of the type that produces drinking men.
As a matter of fact, Sam did not care for drink in the least in the
ordinary way.
"I know," said he, in reply to Bobby's comment, and taking the other's
arm. "It's silly of me to get like this. Let's take a walk round. I
want to swing my compass before going on board. Not fit to meet _her_
like this."
"Shall I get you a bed at the hotel?" asked Bobby.
"No," said Sam.
They left the quay and walked along the road that leads to the station.
"No," went on the skipper after a long pause, and as if in reply to
a repeat of the invitation. "I don't want beds at any hotels. I'll be
all right presently, and all the better for it. I meant to do it when I
started this morning. I had to get her off my mind."
Bobby felt unhappy. He did not want to hear the confidences of a
man whose intellect was under a cloud, and he tried to turn the
conversation.
"Forget it all," said he. "You'll be as right as rain when you've had a
sleep."
"Forget it all? If you'd got a girl in your head--if you'd gone the
mucker I have--if----"
Again Bobby tried to stop him, but Samuel Hackett, taking the bit in
his teeth, broke into open confession and spun a yarn--so wandering,
however, and so confused that all Bobby could make out was that
deponent, sometime in the past, had loved a girl, became engaged
to her, broken off the engagement owing to a mutual quarrel, and
sacrificed his brilliant future, whatever it was, for the life of a
small-yachtsman. He had five hundred a year of his own.
Presumably the girl was Martia Hare, though he mentioned no names, and
the close proximity in the _Lorna Doone_ life had brought about this
crisis.
* * * * *
This was a nice complex in an affair already complex enough. If Sam,
the hub of this expedition, were to be subjected to crises like this
every time Martia became too much for his feelings, what might not the
upshot be?
It came into Bobby's head just then what Martia had said, in his
first interview with her, about editors and their predilection for
stories with a female interest, a predilection born of nothing but the
business instinct telling them what the public wants. It seemed to him
that the public was not far wrong, and that if the interest of any
story depended upon its complexity, elements of surprise, and possible
dramatic developments, a woman was absolutely necessary in it. All the
same, he wasn't writing a story, but engaged in a deal that might lead
the whole lot of them into unknown trouble, should any hitch occur.
This fact had been developing in his mind during the voyage, helped,
maybe, by the sea air and the absence of all other worries.
Behrens, it seemed to him, had not fully gauged the possibilities of
this business if it went wrong. Behrens was an old man whose life had
been spent in auction-rooms and the atmosphere of shady deals. He was
absolutely to be trusted as a friend, but as a business antagonist he
was a bandit pure and simple. He would not cheat a customer or sell
faked goods as real stuff, but he would take any and every advantage
conferred upon him by his knowledge of business and the length of his
purse.
The sacking of Hyalos, to Behrens, was a perfectly legitimate
undertaking. To Bobby, during the last fortnight or so, the
question had been steadily recurring as to whether Behrens had not
underestimated the seriousness of it, should the Greek Government step
in by any chance and find them at work.
Bobby had no doubt as to the morality of rescuing for personal profit
stuff that had been lying for long centuries under the sea, whenever it
might be found. All the same, he had grave doubts as to what the upshot
might be should they be detected. The situation was serious, and this
grave defect that had suddenly shown itself in Sam made it more so.
After half an hour's walk up and down the vile street by the wharves,
the skipper's compass seemed to be coming into order again, and he
declared himself fit to return on board.
Martia was on deck when they drew alongside, and she seemed to notice
nothing as Sam, on the dark deck and controlling himself, explained
that he had "been to the pictures." Then he went below and the girl and
Bobby were left alone.
The night was warm as a night in August, and Genoa, spangled with
lights, looked down upon her harbour, where the great ships lay with
their ports and anchor lights spilling amber on the water. A Dutch
boat, ripping up the night with her syren, was putting to sea from the
outer harbour, and the tangling of a mandoline came across the water
from where the fruit boats lay, beyond the great bulk of the _Conte
Verde_.
Bobby was greatly exercised in his mind. To speak about Sam's recent
condition, if he were really in love with Martia, seemed an act of
disloyalty, considering that he--Bobby--was also in the same condition
as regarded her. Still, it was unfair to the girl to keep silent. She
was sharing the risk they all ran and she ought to know everything.
"I'm rather worried about Hackett," said he at last. "He's the best of
good fellows, but I think his mind is upset a bit about something, and
he's been dining on shore--and----"
"I know," said Martia.
"The bother is," said he, "this isn't an ordinary pleasure cruise. We
all want our heads screwed on tight. It's risky, and I'm worried about
you."
"Why me?"
"Well, if anything goes wrong, I don't want you to be let in for it.
I'm not saying anything will, but, all the same, one never knows. You
know how I bothered you to come. Well, I almost wish I hadn't."
"That's nonsense!" said Martia. "I don't mind risk. We are doing
nothing wrong. I went into the whole thing in my mind before I
decided to come. What we are going to do is no more harm than picking
blackberries--blackberries belonging to no one. These things you hope
to get belong to no one. That's the whole thing in a nutshell."
This feminine logic seemed to Bobby all right in its way amongst
themselves, but dubious as an argument to advance before the government
at Athens should fate land them at the Piræus in charge of some
wretched tin-pot man-of-war.
"There's still time for you to think twice of it," said he. "You could
go home from here."
"Do you want me to go?"
"I do and I don't," replied Bobby.
"Then I won't," said she. "I'm not that sort of person. Mr. Hackett is
a splendid sailor, and I have no fear of the sea with him. And if he
did behave stupidly to-day, men sometimes do stupid things. I am sure
he won't do it again. Besides, he won't be on shore again till we get
home. Go back and not see that wonderful place under the sea and have
all the fun of fishing for those things? I'd rather die than go back!"
"I'm glad you feel like that," said Bobby. "I felt that I ought to put
the thing before you. You don't think it mean of me, peaching on Sam? I
just had to tell you, seeing the position we are in."
"Oh, he peached on himself," said Martia, laughing. "I knew at once
when he spoke. I'll say nothing and he'll never know. He'll be himself
again to-morrow."
She was right.
The skipper of the _Lorna_ was on deck at sunrise next morning. He had
remembered the water tanks. They were filled by eight, and at nine
o'clock the _Lorna_, under her auxiliary engine, cleared the port of
Genoa, and spread her wings for the Isles of Greece.
CHAPTER XV
TOWARDS HYALOS
They passed through the Straits of Messina one brilliant morning, the
west wind still holding, the sea like a tray of broken sapphires, and
Etna a cone of almost translucent purple against the flower-blue sky.
A nautilus fleet was going with them with sails set to the favouring
wind, and away to starboard Sicilian fishing-boats putting out for the
Lipari Islands dotted the sea.
Martia, alone on deck for a moment but for Bowler at the wheel, and
Church and Atherfield forward, gazing from the Sicilian to the Italian
shore, breathed deep, half-intoxicated with the brilliancy and beauty
of it all.
Then her eyes fell on Bowler, his gaze fixed on the compass card, and
the others, indifferent to their surroundings as though they were in
the Thames estuary, and she remembered what Sam had said to Bobby
and repeated to her, that these men cared for nothing but their own
immediate interests and wants, that the great god Pan hauled alive and
kicking out of the waters of Hyalos would move them scarcely more than
the capture of a porpoise, that they were a crew of blind men, safe to
hold their tongues when they returned home.
She came to understand how, even if Greek fishermen looking down
through the water had observed the submerged town, as undoubtedly they
had in the course of centuries, the sight would have moved them not
at all, would have been forgotten when seen, or scarcely remembered,
having nothing to do with their interests, their comfort, or their
welfare.
It seemed to her that a great book could be written on the blindness of
the world, and not only on the blindness of common people, but of every
man towards everything unconnected with his own special desires and
ambitions.
She was thinking this when Bobby's head emerged from the saloon hatch;
he glanced around, seemingly as indifferent to the beauties about him
as Bowler, then he called to the girl.
"Come down," said Bobby. "We've got the charts out, and I want you to
have a look at them."
Sam was in the cabin in his shirt sleeves, before the table littered
with charts and maps.
"Here we are," said the skipper of the _Lorna_, pointing to their
position on the map. "We'll be into the Ionian Sea when we've passed
the straits, and then it will be a straight run for the Straits of
Cervi; from that it's only eighty or ninety miles to Hyalos. It's not
marked on the map, it's too small, but it's on the charts; it's just
about there, seventy miles or so south of Milo."
Martia looked at the map, and at the great strew of islands to the
east of Greece, stretching from Eubœa to Santorin; islands of eternal
summer still tinged with the light of the Golden Age.
She had read them up before leaving England, and she could tell the
others things they did not know.
"Seventy miles south of Milo?" said she. "That's where the Venus came
from."
"Which Venus?" asked Bobby.
"The Venus of Milo."
"Oh, that thing without arms," said Sam, putting the map aside and
spreading a chart.
"Yes, that thing without arms--the most beautiful statue in the world.
A peasant found it; he was pulling down a heap of stones, and there
it was. All these islands, at least the big ones, must have been full
of beautiful works of art once. I can't understand it. You have a
civilisation capable of producing these things, and then it vanishes,
and the people who come after smash them and destroy them, pull
down the temple of the Venus of Milo, break all the figures of the
Parthenon, and even haven't the eyes to find what we are going to find
at Hyalos. The Greeks deserve to lose their art treasures."
"They are going to lose the ones at Hyalos, anyhow," said Bobby.
"No, they aren't," said Martia. "How can a man lose what he doesn't
possess? Anyhow, what he doesn't deserve to possess. If a man possesses
a horse and treats it badly, it's taken away from him, isn't it? It's
just the same here."
"Well, I'm not bothering about the Greeks so much as the reefs," cut in
Sam. "Look, here's the chart of the waters round Hyalos, and I'll bet
a sovereign the soundings are all wrong. You see, they haven't bothered
about the island or the bay; the place is only a rock to be avoided.
But the reefs are given. Here to the north, where the bay lies, it's
all reefs, overlapping; doesn't seem to be a decent passage a ship
could take. Look!"
The girl sat down and examined the chart, and Bobby, watching them,
forgot everything, even the expedition itself, his mind engaged again
with the exasperating problem set for it by these two people.
There was something between them sufficient to make Sam fly off the
handle at Genoa, and yet, in the ordinary shipboard affairs, as now,
they seemed almost indifferent to one another's existence--just
ordinary shipmates. And yet Sam had distinctly given him to understand
that his aberration at Genoa was due to a girl who was in his mind--had
as good as said that the girl was Martia.
Taking the whole business from the start, every indication pointed to
the same conclusion, which was this:
Sam had once been engaged to the girl, or at all events they had been
in love with each other, then Isaac Behrens had turned up and captured
the affections of the lady, and the idiotic Sam had gone off in a rage
and "spoiled his life," by throwing his prospects away and taking to
longshore life at Poole.
What made Bobby bother about the whole business was the fact that he
was in love himself.
Martia had fascinated him from the first, and the close acquaintance
of shipboard life had not decreased that fascination; day by day her
hold had grown upon him. Had they been on shore, leading an ordinary
life, he would have declared himself at once, or even before this;
but the expedition tied him. Whatever his feelings might be, it was
impossible to show them till this business was complete and the work
before them finished.
All the same, that night when he was alone on deck with her, with
Church at the wheel and Atherfield on the look-out, something in the
depths of his mind rose up and spoke.
"Did you know much of Sam before he went off and took up with the
yachting business?" asked he.
"No," replied Martia; "very little."
She spoke in an ordinary tone as though Hackett was of no account at
all to her, and mystified more than ever, but relieved in his mind, he
said no more.
CHAPTER XVI
HYALOS
Two mornings later, as they were finishing breakfast, Sam suddenly
rose from the table. His sharp ear had caught something unheard by the
others, but they heard the voice of Atherfield, who was steering:
"Where away?"
And the voice of Church, who was on the look-out, faint against the
wind:
"On the starboard bow."
"Land," said Sam.
They left the table and came on deck.
Away on the starboard bow, above the horizon of the blue and empty sea,
a point showed clear in that crystal air, remote, like the sail of a
ship dyed with Tyrian purple.
The glass resolved it into a rock, a vast rock two hundred feet in
height, cleft at the summit and broadened at the base, the highest peak
of an island whose low shore was vaguely indicated.
"Hyalos," said Sam, handing the glass to the girl.
Holding a stay and steadying the glass, she looked. Nothing but
sea--sky line--then as she shifted the glass the great rock, lavender
and purple, with its broken crest and spurs and gulleys, broke into
view, leaped at her across the sea, captured her mind and imagination
for ever with its desolation and loneliness.
It was less a rock than a vast monolith, a column of a single stone
erected before Troy was a city or Athens a town. On it might have been
written, "I saw the Persian ships pass on their way to the beach of
Marathon and the Argo sailing to find the Golden Fleece. I was here
before Sappho sang, and at my base lies Hyalos, a town of dreams sunk
in an enchanted sea."
That was how the distant vision spoke to Martia.
Sam, taking the glass back from her, had another long look. Then he
turned to the steersman.
"Keep her as she goes," said Sam. "We want to get well to the north."
Then he turned to Bobby, "Get a fellow ready forward with the lead and
then fetch me that chart up. No. A chart. You'll find it on top of the
others in the chart locker. Bowler, get a tackle ready for lowering the
boat. I'll anchor outside, if I can find decent holding ground, and
take soundings with the boat. How's the glass?"
"Glass is steady, sir."
The _Lorna_ carried two boats, a solid clinker-built four-oar for shore
work and the diving business, and a collapsible dinghy.
The skipper of the _Lorna_, having glanced at the boat, went to the
sail-room; here he had stored a lot of other things besides canvas.
Before leaving Poole he had studied the whole of this affair, and
worked it out to the minutest detail. The sail-room contained, amongst
other things, six or eight lobster-pot buoys with ground tackle,
also a croquet-set box, labelled "Dangerous, don't touch," containing
dynamite charges, a small electric battery, and the wiring necessary
for deep-sea blasting operations.
He brought the buoys out now and placed them on the deck. Then he
turned to the chart which Bobby had given him, and, laying it on the
cabin skylight, pored over it, memorising once again the lie of the
reefs.
There was one good thing. In this all-but tideless sea the difference
between low and high water was next to nothing. The reefs did not play
hide and seek, and, as a matter of fact, the reefs north of Hyalos
were frank almost to the point of frightfulness. An hour later, with
Hyalos full in view, they showed themselves, faint lines of foam where
the flower-blue sea broke gently to the heave of the swell, traces of
purple, and over all gulls flying and calling.
The _Lorna_ held on. The helm had been shifted, and the island lay no
longer on the starboard bow but straight ahead.
On and on, the voices of the gulls growing clearer and the "Get
away--get away" of the guillemots sharper against the wind, whilst Sam,
who had swarmed up to the cross-trees, swept the reef lines from east
to west with his gaze.
It was easy to understand why the bay of Hyalos, with its hidden
treasures, had lain sealed through all the years. Only in one place,
towards the westward end of the shark-toothed reefs, was there an
opening through them, a blue line of clean water, too narrow for a
full-sized ship to pass but sufficiently broad for a vessel of small
tonnage.
Strangely enough, the fact that this was the only way of entrance
simplified the whole problem enormously. Since there was only one way
in, and that way had evidently been taken by Isaac Behrens' boat, it
stood to reason that it must be a fairway: it must, from the very fact
of its narrowness, be free of danger from rocks--as Behrens' boat would
have had no room for manœuvring--and permanently free since there were
no tides.
Sam came down at a run. His whole plans were changed. He ordered the
buoys and tackle to be put back in the sail-room, the canvas to be
taken in and stowed, and the auxiliary engine started. Then he went
aloft again to conn the ship.
The reefs drew closer: the whisper of them came now through the faint
thud of the little engine, and the challenging gulls, like snowflakes
against the blue sky, flew around and above the _Lorna_ shouting,
calling, passing away on the wind only to return, whilst the gently
heaving swell broke now on the rocks to port and starboard, and the
narrow line of blue water ahead seemed to grow narrower.
"We'll never get through," murmured Martia, half to herself, half to
Bobby, as they stood in the bow with the reefs a biscuit toss on either
side. "Ouch!" A heave of the swell had taken charge of them so that for
a moment the steerage way seemed lost. She shut her eyes.
"We're through!" said Bobby.
She opened them. Only fifty yards of passage separated them from clear
water, into which they passed, gliding with engine shut off over the
surface of a vast bay. A bay two miles long by a mile wide, a bay
closed to the sea by the reefs, and whose water changed in colour from
aquamarine beneath the keel to emerald, and from emerald to the blue of
sapphire.
The shore showed nothing but boulders, sand patches, and desolation,
above which the great hill of rock stood, gaunt and seamed with
gullies, sharp-cut against the cloudless sky. They were at the western
end, and the two-mile stretch of water to east of them seemed infinite
in extent, whilst beyond the reefs through which they had passed the
outer sea lay hard and brilliant as a gem.
As the anchor fell and the _Lorna_ rode to her moorings, Bobby looked
overside. Nothing. Nothing but rock and sand patches showing clear as
through air in the diamond-bright water. He had forgotten for a moment
that the submerged town lay, unless its existence was a dream of Isaac
Behrens', in the eastern side of the bay. Martia reminded him of this
fact. As for Sam, he had not even glanced over. He was busy snugging
things down and as indifferent to his surroundings as though he had
been in Poole Harbour.
When everything was right, he ordered the boat to be got over. They
crowded into her immediately, and, with Bowler and Church at the oars,
started.
"It'll be down to the east side of the bay," said Sam, "if it's here at
all."
He had taken the yoke lines and was steering.
"Here at all?" said the girl. "Of course it's here." His words, as
though casting a doubt upon Isaac's story, wounded her. "What makes you
think it's not?"
"Oh, I don't know," said he. "It's only that, in my experience, things
once they're sunk on the sea-floor aren't found again as a rule. Look
at Tobermory. Of course, there are no tides here, but it's in the
earthquake zone, and one never knows."
Sam was right enough. Once the sea has grasped a thing, be it ship or
treasure, she holds it, hides it, defends it by all sorts of trickery.
Very, very rarely is anything recovered from her clutch once it has
been held for even a few years. But the case of Hyalos was different
from all other cases. It had been seen and mapped recently, and it
was unlikely that any earthquake disturbance would have destroyed or
covered it from sight since then.
Bobby said this. Then, leaning over the starboard gunnel whilst the
girl bent over the port side, they watched, gazing deep down through
the clear, bright water, the floor of the bay shimmering up at them
through the undulations caused by the oars.
Nothing. Sand and rock, fish fleeting here and there, the long red
ribbon-fish of the Mediterranean and Ægean, a bass followed by its
black shadow on the floor, a silver shoal of sardines, a globe
jellyfish and a number of cup-shape jellyfish opening and closing like
umbrellas as they pumped their way along--nothing more.
The leisurely creak of the oars sounded against the far crying of the
gulls; the sun struck hot on their backs as they leant watching for
that which never showed itself. And now, as minute after minute passed,
and though they had not quite reached the eastern zone of the bay,
there came to Bobby that horrible clutch at the throat known to the man
who sees before him defeat, the man who sees the horse that carries his
fortune falling back in the race.
Had Isaac Behrens suffered from illusion? Had the floor of the bay
altered? Had they come to the wrong place, and was this not Hyalos,
after all?
He did not dare to ask the questions aloud. Confused and dizzy with the
heat of the sun he continued gazing.
Nothing. Though they rowed for ever and gazed for ever, nothing would
they see but the rocks and the sand and the fish; all their work was
undone and their labours in vain.
Then suddenly a great white mass shot up waveringly, as though to
strike the keel of the boat, and Bobby, expecting the crash, yelled to
the rowers to stop.
There was no crash: the thing was fathoms under; and now, as the boat
floated placidly, gazing over they saw shimmering up at them not rock
and sand but what seemed the interior of a vast white shallow bowl over
the rim of which they had passed.
It was the theatre of Hyalos.
A theatre once open to the sky and breezes, once filled with people who
had vanished from the earth before Christ was born.
Broken and ruined in places, the tiers of marble seats still showed, in
parts almost perfect.
Sam, who had brought the map of Isaac Behrens with him, spread it on
his knee.
"Yes," said he, quite unmoved by what was lying beneath them. "That's
the theatre all right, and it's lying just where it should be by the
map--it's the most westerly building of the town. Here's a note that
says: 'It being possibly beyond the city wall, of which there is no
distinct trace.'"
Martia scarcely heard him. She was fascinated; she could have gazed
for ever. In that moment she caught the spirit and inner meaning of
this lost town with a vividness that never came again; this town once
filled with life and beauty and laughter, set now in the crystal
silence of the sea. And it had been there before she was born, before
the Victorian age and the age of Elizabeth; before the Norman Conquest;
and when Romulus was making his wall which was to expand and ring the
mighty Roman Empire, it had been there, just as now, preserved in the
clear and tideless water of this bay, watched only by the seagulls.
Then the theatre began to fall away and vanish behind them, the boat
was moving slowly forward under the direction of Sam, and now beneath
them lay ruins. Heaps of marble blocks lying as though cast about by a
giant, and broken columns, suggestive of some great building gone to
ruin, glimmered up at them and passed astern, giving place to a level
floor where there was nothing.
"This would be the agora," said Sam, referring to the map, on which
Isaac Behrens had marked not only the streets and places but their
names--names of his own invention except in the cases of the theatre
and the agora, or market-place. "Hermes Street opens on the right of
it, the Street of Victory on the left of it. Let's have a look at
Victory Street first. Go slow, Bowler."
He steered to the left, and the agora passed under them, the boat's
shadow flitting across it as the shadows of gulls and swallows had
flittered in ancient days. They could see the ruts in its floor made by
wheeled traffic, and now to the right the standing columns of what had
once been a roofed colonnade.
Then again, as in the case of their approach to the theatre, something
rose through the water ahead of them as if to hit the keel.
Houses. Houses closing this, the north, side of the market-place;
houses whose walls rose to within a fathom and a half of the surface.
The old Greek house had no roof; it was, in fact, a courtyard
surrounded by rooms and open to the sky, a covered colonnade running
round the tiny courtyard.
Looking down now as the boat slowly drifted, they could see the
colonnade roofs within a few yards of the keel, and the square
courtyards whose tessellated floors showed vague patterns through the
waving water. Spaces lay between these houses of a vanished world,
spaces that had once been dark and narrow lanes; broader spaces that
had once, perhaps, been gardens; and all lay here, shy, secret, hidden,
yet suddenly revealed.
It was like opening the hand of Time and looking at things never
intended to be seen by living eyes.
They had drifted over the houses on the right-hand side of Victory
Street, and now, with a stroke of an oar and a shift of the helm, they
came upon the street itself. Broad almost as Regent Street it lay
beneath them, the houses on the left vaguely visible, the houses they
had just passed over close and clear to sight.
Actually in this gin-bright water, as in some Pacific lagoon, things
at a depth of six or seven fathoms were more clearly visible than they
would have been if seen through air. As in the agora, here, too, the
wheel-ruts of long-forgotten traffic showed, and here and there in
front of a house a little cone-shaped column lay, the Apollo of the
street, once the guardian of the house to which it belonged.
Sam ordered the oars in and let the boat drift. There was a gentle
current here, setting north in the direction in which the street ran,
and Bowler and his mate, released from their work, condescended to look
over and take an interest in what was going on.
"You've never seen houses and a street like that before, Bowler," said
the girl, flushed with excitement and looking up at the other.
"No, miss; I don't remember that I have," replied the salt: "It's
the clear water shows 'em up. There's a place like this off Suffolk,
where there's a church an' all sunk close off shore, but you can't see
nuthin', the water bein' thick."
"Hoi! Look at that fish!" cried the other fellow. "Ain't it a big 'un?"
An enormous bream, stolen out of some back alley, had caught the sun;
then, frightened by the boat shadow, with a twist of its tail it turned
and vanished.
The boat floated on.
Then glimmering up at them from the street centre something white
showed, a small mound of marble blocks--no, a group of statuary gone
to ruin. It was their first find; up to this they had seen nothing of
man's handiwork with the exception of the theatre and the houses, the
street, and the broken Apollos of the street. This was different.
The oars were got out to stop the drift, and, gazing over, they
absorbed the vision beneath them.
When Hyalos, with a great shudder, had sunk eight fathoms below the
sea level, here in the Street of Hermes a wonderful group of statuary
must have fallen, shaken at the base. Close to the little heap of
white ruins lay a marble chariot-wheel and a horse's head; a headless,
marble-winged woman with one wing broken lay near the wheel. The
appealing charm of these things was their small size.
The winged woman could not have been more than four feet in height
when standing in her chariot, the horses not so large as Shetland
ponies, the wheel as it lay seemed not more than thrice the diameter of
a dinner plate. Splendour of size had evidently no charm for the people
of Hyalos.
The statuary had represented a Victory, standing in her chariot driving
her horses across the face of the world. How lovely the thing must have
been in its delicate minuteness when complete might be guessed by the
little horse's head showing in profile from the floor of the street, a
head beautiful as that of the horse of the Moon that once graced the
eastern pediment of the Parthenon.
That mutilated woman and that severed head were worth, alone, all the
trouble of the expedition. That little horse's head of marble filled
with fire, what would it not "fetch" in a world where Art is not, only
art dealers?
The Victory had fallen prone, the face could not be seen.
"Can we get them up?" asked Martia, appealing to Sam. "Now--at once? I
want to hold that little wheel in my hands. Oh, the poor, lovely broken
things!"
Her voice failed, her eyes were filled with tears. Hyalos had spoken to
her through this little shattered dream, more appealing than any work
of grandeur and magnificence.
"Yes," said the skipper. "We can get them up easy enough, but not now.
I'll have to bring the ship right over here and rig a tackle. You
can't do that in a minute. We've got the location, and it's easy to
pick it up again. Let's go on and see what else there is."
The rowers, at his direction, put the boat forward with a stroke of the
oars, and then let her drift, correcting her course now and then whilst
the Street of Victory passed beneath them, showing now a fallen column
that had once stood proudly in its centre, and now a Hermes of the
street that had fallen from some house front, and now a grim fact.
The street had suddenly grown narrow, the houses dwarfed--almost hovels.
They had come upon poverty.
Hyalos, old as history itself, had its slums just as London has its
slums, and New York. It seemed to say to the gazers: "Look, here is the
evil that runs through all cities, in all times; so it was in ancient
Athens, so it ever will be."
Martia, the most sensitive of the boat's crew, ceased gazing down into
the water and turned her eyes across the sunlit bay to where the _Lorna
Doone_ was riding at her anchor.
A curious feeling of depression had now come over her. It had been
stealing upon her mind almost imperceptibly from the moment when,
looking down, she had seen the wheel-tracks on the pavement of the
market-place. Now, raising her eyes to the blue and sunlit bay, the
living, laughing gulls, the perfect sky, the town beneath the keel
seemed almost terrible, almost sinister, almost evil. This feeling in
its acutest form lasted only a moment; it passed, but there still
remained the vague depression.
"I don't know how you feel," said she to the others, "but I'd like to
go back to the _Lorna_ for a while and rest. We've succeeded, haven't
we? Everything is as it should be? But it's a bit overpowering at
first. It wants getting used to."
"I was just feeling the same," said Bobby. "I want to sit down and
think and smoke a pipe over it."
"Right!" said Sam.
He altered the helm, and, the rowers taking to their oars, the boat
turned and headed due west across the sparkling water. The skipper
of the _Lorna Doone_, without admitting it, had seen enough for the
present moment. The thing wanted getting used to, and he was silent as
he steered, an unlit pipe between his teeth.
It was Bowler who spoke. He was rowing stern oar.
"How long do you think them old houses has been sunk, sir?" asked
Bowler, addressing Bobby.
"Ages ago," said Bobby, waking from a reverie. "Ages before William the
Conqueror landed in England, and that's a good many years, Bowler."
"Would it be a hundred, sir?"
"Yes, and more than that."
Bowler, satisfied in his mind on this point, spoke no more, and the
boat creaked on reaching the _Lorna_, where they scrambled on board.
Later, getting on for sundown, Bobby, who had come on deck, leaving
the others resting below, heard voices from the fo'c'sle. The whole
crew, Glastonbury included, were in the fo'c'sle smoking and talking. A
furious discussion was going on, presumably on the wonders of Hyalos,
and Bobby, anxious to hear what was said, paused by the fo'c'sle hatch
to listen. Came Church's voice:
"It weren't, it weren't him; it was Black Jack. They wouldn't serve
him no more at the _Anchor_, and he comes to the _Bull_. The girl drew
him a glass, but, seein' him rockin' like a ninepin, took it back. Up
he gets a knee on the bar, and over he'd 'a' been only for Benson, the
landlord, who was sittin' talkin' to Hammond. Benson caught him by the
foot and brought him down all standing and chucked him out, and that
was the beginnin' of the whole business. Swore Benson had kicked him in
the innards, he did, and got his licence took from him."
"That's so," came the deep voice of Bowler. "I was there."
So much for the wonders of Hyalos.
CHAPTER XVII
THE HOUSES
They dined at six o'clock, and after dinner they sat on deck in the
gathering dark making plans for the morrow.
The map of Hyalos, which they had studied so often, was impressed on
their minds so that they had no need to refer to it. Roughly, and for
their purpose, the town of Hyalos might be described as framed around
three streets and the market-place or agora. The theatre, presumably
outside the walls, did not come into the plan of the town.
The three streets, as named by Isaac Behrens, were the Street of the
Winged Victory running north, the Street of the Winds running east, and
the Street of Hermes running south.
The town was roughly half-moon shaped, the curve to the east.
Behrens, who must have carried a photographic camera in his brain, had
drawn his map with the most loving minuteness, showing all sorts of
little by-streets intersecting the main avenues. Amongst the notes on
the back of the map was one which read: "Search mainly houses adjoining
agora end Victory, Hermes, St. of Winds."
That evidently referred to treasure.
It was obvious enough that whatever works of art Hyalos might
disclose would be found in the better-class houses adjoining the big
streets. But why did Isaac specify the agora end of the streets? What
antiquarian or art-lover instinct prompted him? Who could tell?
"To-morrow," said Sam, "I'll bring the ship along and we'll anchor
right over one of those houses. The drift is nothing. I won't use the
anchor--just a couple of ballast pigs at the end of the cable will
hold her steady--and we can work the air pump from deck. She has a low
freeboard, and will be just as handy to use as the boat and a lot more
comfortable."
"Glastonbury knows what to look for," said Bobby. "I've given him a
course of instruction. Pretty simple, too. Everything moveable he
can lay hands on, and especially anything in the way of figures or
heads made of stone. There's no use in talking of objects of art to
Glastonbury, but he understands the meaning of figures."
"It's nothing of a job as far as he's concerned," said Sam. "It's only
a six- or seven-fathom drop into one of those courtyards, and the
Sooloo pearl divers will do seventeen fathoms without a diving dress."
"Tell me," said Martia. "I only know about diving that the diver has an
air-pipe to give him air which has to be pumped to him. Well, suppose
we lower Glastonbury down into one of those courtyards."
"We don't lower him," said Sam--"he goes down himself."
"Well, he's in the courtyard, then he goes under the colonnade and
into the room of the house. Isn't there danger of the air-pipe getting
tangled round something, or bent, so's he can't breathe?"
"Not with a diver who knows his work," replied the other. "Those houses
are nothing to Glastonbury. Why, he's often gone down to a sunk ship
and into it, into the cabins and places, and that off the English
coast, where the water's as thick as pea-soup compared with the water
here."
"How will he see when he gets into the house?"
"Oh, he's got an electric torch. We lower a net-bag with a sinker in
it--I've got two in the sail-room. He puts what he finds in the bag and
we haul it up, so he hasn't to come to the surface every time he finds
anything."
"And how does he come up when he's finished. Do we pull him?"
"No, he comes up a rope; or if he's in a hurry he just shuts the escape
valve in his helmet and the air balloons out his dress, and he rises
like a bubble."
Martia sat for a moment in silence. The moon was just lifting, a great
silver moon lighting the bay and the sea beyond, silver-faced yet
rosy-fingered, for where she touched the bunt of a badly stowed sail
and the white planking of the deck the light showed in it a tinge of
rose.
"There's one thing I haven't thought of till now," said she. "Are we
doing right in keeping this place a secret from the world?"
"How do you mean?" said Bobby.
"I mean this is one of the wonders of the world, like Pompeii. It is a
Pompeii, covered with water instead of lava. Well, oughtn't we to talk
about it?"
"Why?" asked Bobby.
"So that people may see it; archæologists and people."
"I don't see why we should make ourselves advertising agents for this
place," said Sam. "Anyhow, I don't see there's any 'ought' in it.
You've come out here to scrape up statues and things for old Behrens,
and from what you say the Greek Government might lay claim to them if
they knew. No, keep it dark. Suppose you did tell? Even if the Greeks
didn't make trouble, what good would it do? You'd have shiploads
of beastly tourists coming here, that would be all, and fusty old
archæologists. The world wouldn't be a bit better for it."
"Anyhow," said Bobby, "it's always up to us to give information about
the place. We could do it in a year or so, anonymously: write a letter
to the _Times_ or something of that sort."
They sat whilst the moon rose higher, lighting the island, the bay and
the reefs; the girl trying to fancy shiploads of tourists breaking
into this beautiful desolation--tourists come to "do" Hyalos. Her mind
refused the idea. The city that time had hidden so carefully appealed
against it.
"Take what you will of my treasures," it said, "but spare me that."
They were up an hour after sunrise next morning, and, after tea and
biscuits served on deck by Bowler, they started to get the anchor up
and the auxiliary engine going.
It was good to be alive. A tepid sea-scented breeze ruffled the bay and
brought a faint whisper from the reef where the foam traces showed in
lines of gold. Gulls filled the air and followed them as the _Lorna_,
with the anchor up and the engine going, turned to the helm and glided
eastward, whilst the hands forward were getting ready the ballast pigs
to serve as anchors and Glastonbury, on his knees, was going over the
diving gear which he had spread out on deck. The great brass helmet,
the lead sinkers, the boots so heavy that they were difficult to lift,
the air tube and signal line, the electric torch--all and each of
these he was inspecting with the care of a man whose life depended on
perfection of detail. The pump had been rigged on the starboard side,
and, having finished with the gear, he turned to the pump, overhauling
it, whilst Sam, forward and leaning over the side, was giving
directions to the steersman.
They passed over the theatre, then the market-place showed its wide
surface glimmering up through the breezed water.
Sam ordered the engine to be shut off, and the _Lorna_, gliding with
the way on her, stole towards the advancing houses, whose walls showed
now like a submarine cloud, now more solidly.
"Ready with the anchor there!" cried Sam.
Martia, standing by the steersman, watched breathlessly whilst the
fellows handling the two great ballast pigs attached to the cable got
ready to heave them over.
Then came the voice: "Port--steady so." And a moment later: "Damn,
we've overrun it! Put her back a stroke or two."
The little propeller flopped and was still. The _Lorna_ receded
slightly, ceased to move, and then began gently to drift.
"Over with the anchor!" The order came sharp as a pistol-shot; and on
the splash Martia came forward and looked down.
Sam had manœuvred the _Lorna_ right over the courtyard of a house on
whose tessellated pavement the ballast pigs were resting: seven and a
half fathoms of cable were out and the bubbles were still coming up.
"Will she hold?" asked Glastonbury, who was leaning over beside Sam.
"Sure," said Sam. "But let her swing first. That weight will hold her
with this move of current, but we'll soon see."
The _Lorna_ was shifting her position, coming round gently bow on
to the almost imperceptible drift. Then she hung motionless to the
tautened cable.
"She holds all right," said Sam. "But, if you like, I'll put another
anchor out."
"No, I reckon that's enough," said the diver. "If she did drift them
pigs would catch up against the roof there"--he pointed to the roof of
the colonnade. "House you call it. Why, it's more like a darn cistern
without a lid."
"Well, that's how they built in the old days," replied the other. "And
now, you'll remember all I told you. Under that roof-place you'll find
the rooms. Take your time over it and don't be in a hurry. Nab anything
you can find and fix in your head all the details."
Glastonbury turned from the side, and then, indifferently, as though he
were going down in Poole Harbour to free an anchor-chain or fix a pile,
he began to dress.
Martia watched. It was the most exciting moment of her life. What might
happen to him? What might he not find? No treasure hunt could have more
thrills in it than this search--not for base gold but for that which
no gold could create. This was the moment of moments towards which all
their labours had tended.
She watched him getting into the canvas suit, and the boots weighing
sixteen pounds each being put on his feet, and the lead sinkers on his
shoulders; the great helmet with the front glass open put on his head
and fixed, with the air-tube attached.
Church and Bowler were at the pump, and they set it going.
"Right," said Glastonbury; and the helmet was closed to a hiss of air
from the escape valve.
Then she watched as slowly, with the movements of a paralysed elephant,
he turned to the side, got over, and began to crawl down the ladder.
Oh, if anything should happen to the pump, to the air-tube! She had
never seen a diver going down before, and the thought clutched her so
that for a moment she did not dare to look. When she did, leaning
over beside Bobby, she saw on the tessellated pavement beneath her the
diver like a horned monster, a long stream of bubbles ascending from
his head. He was standing erect and seemed looking round him, then,
followed by the pipe and the signal line, he vanished beneath the
colonnade roof.
The clanking of the pump, slow and rhythmical, filled the air,
answering to the voices of the far-off gulls.
"Now over with the net," said Sam; and the net-bag with its sinker went
down, resting on the courtyard floor. As it did so a fish, blue and
grey, and big as a twenty-pound salmon, darted from the shadows where
the diver had vanished. He had frightened it out, and it fled hither
and thither, scared by the ship above, and disappearing at last under
the colonnade roof at the northern end.
A minute passed, two, three, four--then the figure in the helmet, the
air bubbles gaily spraying upwards from it, reappeared; he was carrying
something.
He bent by the net-bag, then rose and passed off again into the
shadows. Bobby and Sam between them hauled up the bag, dripping from
the sea.
A Greek vase showed through the meshes of the bag, a vase of red
glazed earthenware, exquisite in shape and pictured in black with men
reclining at a banquet and girl flute-players playing double flutes.
It stood nearly eighteen inches in height in the light of the sun that
it had not seen for two thousand years, and Martia, kneeling before
it, could not speak. She lifted it in both her hands to pour the water
from it, when out tumbled a little figure that seemed made of crystal:
a winged Eros, fat as a Roman Cupid, standing on its hands on a base
of crystal, its feet in the air, turning a somersault. Some child's
toy, possibly, dropped into the jar by the child or by its mother for
safe keeping. Bowler, who had turned his head for a moment as he worked
at the pump, saw this thing as it stood on the deck where Martia had
placed it beside the jar, and laughed--a single laugh like a knock on
a board. Then, without a word, he went on with his pumping. The humour
of the thing had kept through all the centuries, and the artist had not
worked in vain.
Meanwhile, Sam had flung the net over again, but it did not come up
again immediately. Glastonbury, going and coming, was collecting things
in a dump to save time. Then they began to come up so rapidly that the
receivers had only time to disengage them from the bag.
Vases like the first; shallow drinking-cups, all exquisite in
form, unbroken, and pictured with feasts, battles, and ceremonies,
flute-girls and girls at play, men sacrificing animals on altars, and
men putting on armour for the fight; a bracelet of metal, heavy as
gold; a cup of black metal, possibly silver, and carved with figures;
a sea nymph of marble astride a marble dolphin, the whole not over
ten inches high; and a disc thrower in marble like the discobolus of
the Museum, except in size, for the plinth was not bigger than a soup
plate.
All these things the collector of antiques, seven fathoms below the
keel, sent up to be received dripping from the sea; and all these
things, to the value of thousands of pounds, stood on the deck-planking
in the burning sun, of little interest to any but Martia and Bobby. Sam
had talked of a crew of blind men; in reality he was nearly as blind as
his crew, as far as these things were concerned.
Then Glastonbury came up, reporting a clean sweep. With helmet off and
cigarette in his lips he gave a sketch of the rooms he had entered.
"More like cells in a police-station than decent rooms," said
Glastonbury--"all but the big room I got them things from," pointing to
the statuary.
It seemed that the largest of the jars had come from the big room, and
the rest, from a room that might have been a kitchen. There were stone
benches but no trace of any wooden furniture: that would no doubt have
been eaten by the sea ages ago.
Well, there on the deck was the result of the sacking of a single
house, and if all the other houses in the better-class streets of
Hyalos were to give up an equal amount of treasure, it seemed to Sam
that they would want the _Mauretania_ to bring the stuff back to
England. He said so.
The remark did not trouble Martia. Her mind was already in trouble.
They had clean forgotten packing material. Her woman's instinct for
crockery had brought this fact suddenly into her mind.
Those lovely jars, which she would not have allowed a servant to
handle! How were they to be carried unbroken to England? The statuary
was all right: it would stand rough usage--but the jars? Where was the
straw and where were the hampers that ought to have been provided?
She asked all this kneeling on the deck beside her treasures.
"We can shove them in the sail-room," said Sam. "Put them close enough
together and they won't carry away."
"Shove them in the sail-room? Don't you know that each one ought to
be wrapped round with straw and then straw put between them? It is my
fault. I ought to have thought of this. But then how was I to know? I
never imagined finding things so fragile as these."
"Beg your pardon, miss, but you are talkin' about straw," said Bowler.
"Yes."
"Well, there's enough grass growin' ashore to make all the straw you
want. It's all there bar the cutting."
"We've nothing to cut it with," said Bobby.
"There are knives enough, and we can sharpen them," replied Sam. "We'll
start in to-morrow, and when we've cut enough we'll leave it to dry in
the sun. Meanwhile, you can stow those things in the sail-room; there's
no roll or pitch here to harm them."
They went below to get some food, and two hours later, the anchor being
got in, Sam jockeyed the _Lorna_ over the courtyard of the next house.
Glastonbury was down five minutes. He sent nothing up; he came up
himself with the report that the place was stripped. Stone couches, a
chair of marble too heavy to be moved, and a few scraps of corroded
metal were all the things he found.
A depressing result after the first glorious discoveries.
The inhabitants had either removed their things or had cared nothing
for objects of art and adornment.
It was Sam who cheered the others up as they sat in the cabin that
night discussing matters.
"There's no use in thinking on a job like this," said Sam. "We've begun
well, anyhow. I don't care whether these Hyalites cleared out before
the sea took them or were swallowed whole. It stands to reason that one
house can't be full of things and all the rest empty. We've just got
to go ahead and go slow and methodical, and to-morrow there'll be no
diving. We'll land and cut grass--and pray for fine weather."
CHAPTER XVIII
A TERRIBLE DANGER
Next day whilst the hands were cutting grass, Bobby, who had come on
shore with them and who was not wanted for the work, started on an
expedition of his own.
Hyalos from far at sea, to the west looks like a single rock washed by
the waves, closer and to the north you can see a high down by the peak,
and the beach seems just a strip of foreshore, but when you land it is
different, the beach is broad and the high lands are broken showing two
cañons on this the northern side.
You can in fact cross the island from north to south by taking either
of these cañons which run east and west of the main peak.
Lestrange, having helped to pull the boat up, and whilst the hands were
getting to work, took his seat on a rock for a moment to look at the
view. The island looked nothing from the sea, but the sea seen from the
island was a vision of pure enchantment. It is like that amongst the
Greek islands. One world when you are on board ship, another world when
you land.
The sea brimming in to the beach, the diamond-clear green-blue sea,
showed scarcely a ruffle; smooth as a satin sheet, under-blown by a
gentle wind it raised and let fall the _Lorna_ mirroring her and
passing on to break on the beach in foot-high waves.
Then, from the cliff foot and from the cañons cutting inland a faint
fragrance filled the air, the warm smell of lavender and thyme and all
sorts of low-growing herbs trodden on by the sun, a bouquet sweet as
that of the Corsican maquis, the incense of a hundred humble plants
that in some subtle way brought back the past. It was strange to think
that when Hyalos was a town standing in the sunlight and not in the
sea those plants were as fragrant as to-day, the thyme just as curious
in its speech and the wild lavender just as sweet. Strange, were they
not denizens of a world where flesh is more enduring than the Alps and
the daisy a million years older than the pyramid, and where a song may
outlive a people and a story a civilisation.
Here on the north beach of Hyalos or over at Naxos or Milo, if you
get by yourself with no companions but the sun and blue sea and the
sky above and the perfume of the shore, a trireme coming in with the
black bearded rowers keeping time to a flute would be perfectly in the
picture. Nothing has altered since the change in the land level that
has submerged a city and the attrition that has made the peak a shade
less high than the peak observed by the Argo or the wool ships of
Amorgos.
Leaving the beach and the grass cutters at their work, Lestrange came
up the eastern-most cañon treading the sweet herbs under foot and
avoiding the vast rocks that the course of ages had tumbled from the
peak and higher lands.
A turn of the valley brought him to a place where it widened out and
spread into a vast down, like the downlands above Freshwater in the
Isle of Wight. It was steep climbing, yet easy compared with the
stair-steep cañon, and worth the trouble, for here on the shoulder when
he reached it, he found himself in a new world, a world of silence and
high clear air, where the turf and thyme bushes spread to the edge of
the southern cliffs and beyond the cliff edge the southern sea sailless
to the remote and sharp-cut sea-line. The down sweep had only one break
in it, a broad and cup-like hollow where, sheltered from the sea winds,
grew a few distorted trees; near the trees something was moving--a wild
goat cropping the herbage.
He sat down amidst the thyme to rest and smoke a pipe. It was
delightful, just as if a door had been closed shutting out the ship and
Sam and the voyage, and the hunt after hidden treasure, ambition, the
past, everything he had ever known--even Martia. That was the strange
thing. He never once thought of her; in this feeling of release that
had come upon him there was no place for the past.
The cry of a bird from far above made him turn as he lay on his elbow
and look up. An eagle that had left its eerie on the peak was wheeling
in the blue, it passed away and he turned again on his side watching
the goat that had left the zone of the trees and was browsing now on
the grass beyond. Something lying on the turf in the centre of the
depression caught his eye, it looked at first like a small tree trunk,
ash-coloured and fluted--then he saw that it was part of a broken
pillar. Some old temple had once been there no doubt, of which it was
the sole remains.
The warmth of the sun had brought out more than the perfume of the
herbage, the tiny song of innumerable insects filled the air; he only
noticed it now when resting and close to the earth; occasionally the
chanting of gulls came from the southern cliffs, sounds that had
ringed and filled this place for ages and ages, sharing to-day in the
terrible antiquity of the grass, of the thyme bushes and the hidden
wild hyacinth bulbs that later would flower in the face of Spring with
a shameless pretence of newness.
He was, perhaps, the first man to visit that spot since--when? The
reef-strewn sea that guarded Hyalos alone could tell, and one might
have fancied that all those vague scents and tiny sounds of nature so
long unsampled by man had gained potency by reason of man's abstention
from them. They were of the essence and nature of slumber, a drug in
the air that gathered force till presently, turning from his side to
his back and with his hat over his eyes, he fell asleep.
He was awakened by a hand on his shoulder; someone was shaking him and
calling on him to wake up. It was Sam.
Sam had seen him go up the cañon and had come to look for him and
fetch him. It was dinner time; he must have been asleep for hours.
"Wake up, you old fool," said Sam, "going to sleep in the sun like
that!"
The sleeper roused himself, propped himself on his elbow and stared at
the other. Then he yawned, rubbed his eyes and sat up.
Sam had wakened him from a most delightful dream; he could not remember
a single detail of it, yet the after-taste was heavenly.
It seemed to him that he had been with a number of people who had been
leading him to some place more beautiful than earth, that he had almost
clasped an impossible happiness, the rays of which still clung to him.
"Here's your pipe and hat," said Sam. "I found them away over
there--What you want fooling about and going to sleep in the sun
without a hat for?"
Bobby, fully awake now, saw that he was not in the place where he
had fallen asleep. He must have got up in his sleep and crossed the
depression in the ground and lain down again here--led, perhaps, by
those delightful people of his dream. It was well that they had led him
no further for the cliff edge was only a few yards away.
"I must have been doing a sleep walk," said Bobby, quite unconcerned,
"sit down a moment, there's no hurry--What you say? Rot, there was no
danger. It's not the first time I've done it."
"I know," said Sam, who remembered this peculiarity of the other in
Oxford days, "but it's been darned near the last time. This stuff is
slippery and you stopped just where it begins to shelve. Get up, you
old fool, and come on. I want my dinner."
He got him up at last, and they recrossed the hollow and got back to
the beach where the men who had knocked off work for dinner were seated
about with the grass they had cut that morning lying in a pile near the
boat landing place.
After dinner this stuff had to be dealt with. It would have been easy
enough to get it into the boat in armfuls, but the real problem was how
to get it from the boat on the _Lorna_. It would have to be lifted.
They solved the problem by making it into bundles, this took time--it
took them till four o'clock, when by common consent they knocked off
work for the day.
It was curious how this alien business had tired the hands and put them
out of temper, even Bowler the proposer of it was short in manner and
Sam was not too sweet about it.
The skipper of the _Lorna_, though he had fallen in with Bowler's
suggestion, before the accomplished fact resented his ship being turned
into a hay barge; that the hay was to be used to pack antiques, not to
feed horses, was a fact that made no difference to him--he objected to
the hay. Sailors are queer things, especially small-yacht sailors, and
at supper when the question was touched on he refused to take it as a
joke.
"I'm sure I don't know what is wrong with the place," said Martia.
"You're all come back in such a bad temper--all except you," she
finished, turning to Bobby.
"No reason to," said Sam. "He's had the whole morning off snoozing on
top of that blessed downs...."
"It was such a relief to get rid of you," replied the other. "It's a
wonder I didn't stick there."
"You'd have stuck there right enough," grumbled Sam, "if you'd tumbled
over that cliff." Then lighting his pipe, off he went on deck, leaving
the others to finish their meal.
"What cliff?" asked Martia.
"Oh, Sam's an idiot," replied Bobby, "there wasn't any danger. I
climbed up to the top there and went to sleep on the grass, and I must
have got up and walked a bit in my sleep--I've done it before, and I
expect it was finding myself on land and able to use my legs that made
me do it. You must come up there to-morrow and see that place, it's
just like the Sussex downs when you get there."
"The Sussex downs?"
"Yes, you'd never believe it from here, the land goes rolling away to
the cliffs on the south side and there are wild goats and there's a
temple."
"A temple?"
Bobby paused for a moment. "No, what was I saying, a temple, there's
just a bit of an old pillar lying on the ground--I remember now, I
dreamt something about a temple being there, I suppose it was the sight
of that pillar started the idea in my mind. I had a most awfully jolly
dream. I can't remember a bit of it except that temple which has just
cropped up in my mind." He paused and fell into a frowning reverie as
though trying to recapture other parts of that jolly dream and failing.
"No, it's gone--clean."
"Maybe," said Martia, "you saw what once had been there."
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know--things leave photographs of themselves, at least
I believe they do. I was told some time ago by a person who said the
story was absolutely true, that an old farmer was coming home one night
over the downs somewhere on the south coast, where there had been a
Roman camp. When he got home he said he had seen the funniest sight on
the way--a race between a lot of milk carts."
"Milk carts?"
"That's what he said. What he did see without any doubt was a chariot
race."
"A chariot race?"
"What else could it have been? A Roman chariot would at once recall a
milk-cart to a farmer's mind."
"But surely," said Bobby, "you don't believe that nonsense?"
"Why not? We know very little about this world and its
possibilities--and now if you have done, I'll clear up. Yes, I'll go
and see that place with you, to-morrow. I'd love to."
CHAPTER XIX
ONE OF THE DELIGHTFUL PEOPLE
Next morning broke gorgeous and absolutely windless, the sea like a
mirror, and Sam grumbling that they had to put in another day over the
grass.
Martia, who never let pleasure stand in front of business, had so much
to do on board, that she could not get ashore before ten. She had not
only to tidy up things and put the cabin to rights, but also to pack
food for the working party.
Bobby rowed her off, and having beached the boat with the help of
Bowler, he led her along to the opening of the cañon he had ascended
yesterday.
Sam did not bother them. He was on board writing up his log.
The air was hot in the cañon, the atmosphere even out in the _Lorna_
was many degrees hotter than yesterday, the wind having withdrawn for
the last twenty-four hours seemed to have made way for a momentary
summer.
When they reached the place where the cañon fanned out and the downs
lay before them, Martia paused to rest for a moment. She was tired.
Nothing tires one more than sudden change in the temperature like
this, especially coming after weeks of invigorating sea breezes.
"Sure you're up for the climb?" asked Bobby. "Or would you sooner go
back? We can come another day."
"No thanks," replied Martia. "I'm all right."
They took the rise at a slant and with intervals for rest, and when
they arrived on the shoulder of the down, the girl stood for a moment
looking around her. Then she glanced up at the peak. The eagle had
left his eerie and was circling in the blue just as he had circled
yesterday. His sharp cry came through the crystal clear air; then he
passed away and vanished towards the eastern-most side of the peak, and
the silence resumed itself. The silence which yet held so many sounds,
the faint murmur and hum of insects, the vaguest murmur of the sea,
less sounds than indications of what might be hidden in the way of
sounds in that silence old as the peak or Hyalos itself.
"This is the strangest, queerest place," said Martia, half laughing
and turning her head this way and that as though she were listening or
looking for something. "You'd never expect a bit of country like this
up here, it's almost English."
"Yes, I told you," said Bobby. "It's like the downs."
"'Where the wild bee makes honey
And the thyme
Is sweet as when the gods of old were young,'"
murmured Martia.
"Yes, it's something like that," said Bobby, who had caught the words.
"Makes you feel lonely, doesn't it?"
He looked up. The eagle had returned to the sky and was circling above
them at a great height. He seemed climbing a spiral staircase in the
air, and they sat down to watch him, leaning on their elbows and
looking up till reaching a certain height he struck off seaward and to
the north-west.
"I wonder where he is going to?" said the girl.
"If he goes far enough on that course he'll reach Milo," replied the
other. "I expect he's making for there, it's not so very far in a
straight line."
It was the first time they had been alone together since leaving
England, and Bobby who had always lots to say on board ship found
himself without conversation now.
The fact of the matter was he wanted to say a lot of things to Martia
but couldn't. Much as he was beginning to care for her, the expedition
stood first, it was a serious business that had to be finished and done
with before personal considerations were to be thought of. He did not
know in the least how her feelings stood towards him, and to risk a
refusal or a rebuff that might make the position on board impossible,
was not to be thought of.
"Where was the place by the cliffs that you were talking about?" asked
Martia, waking from a moment of reverie during which she seemed to have
forgotten the eagle and its destination and even Bobby.
"Which place?"
"The place by the cliffs where you went and lay down."
"Oh, right over there." He pointed to the grass line where the southern
slope began. "I went to sleep somewhere about here and then I must have
got up and walked over there and lain down."
"Right by the cliff edge?"
"A few yards away."
"You might have gone over."
"Oh, there is a Providence who looks after sleep-walkers."
"I believe there is," said Martia. "At least a Providence that protects
people from evil and danger. I don't like this place."
"Hyalos?"
"No; here. It feels like a room that has been locked up for ever so
long--I should think no one ever comes up here, not even fishermen."
She paused and they could hear the faint murmur of insects and the
fainter murmur of the sea. The wild goats were not feeding here to-day,
they had moved towards the other side of the peak.
Martia, leaning on her side listening to the murmuring that filled the
warm air, forgot for a moment her dislike for this place. The sense of
release from the weariness and distress of life that had touched Bobby
yesterday came to her now even more strongly than it had come to him,
yet meeting with a stronger opposition. Looking across the hollow where
the temple column lay, her eyes were fixed on a far-off gull, just a
flake of white on the southern sky, when something in the hollow drew
her gaze.
The air seemed boiling in the hollow. That was the only way she could
express it to herself. Just as the air quivers and shakes over a hot
sandy beach so the air in the hollow was disturbed.
Then suddenly the boiling ceased, the air became normal, but there was
something left, a whirling, a residuum, a dream, a reality, a terror,
grotesque, obscene, soul-shaking.
In the amazement of the moment she clutched her companion by the arm,
clinging to him for ten or twelve seconds--releasing him for want of
power to retain her grip.
Then, as quick as they could, rising to their feet, they left that
place, saying not one word to each other as they made their way down
and back to the beach in a silence understandable--if you have ever
seen a faun.
Neither then nor during their after life did they ever refer to this
terrible matter which formed, yet, a bond between them, the bond of a
common danger which they had escaped.
CHAPTER XX
PLANS
From that day began the real work of the expedition. Grass-cutting in a
burning sun--relieved by the fact that they found a water source from
which they could not only drink, but refill the tanks on board--gave
place to shifting moorings, exploring house after house of the town,
sometimes finding nothing, sometimes jars, drinking-cups, small figures
of earthenware more or less mutilated, and metal ornaments. In the
fifteenth house they found a marble Hermes with winged feet, so light
and delicate that, standing on the deck of the _Lorna_, he seemed on
the point of taking flight towards the sun.
Even Bowler and his companions admired this "little chap with the
sparrow wings on his feet." To Martia the thought came with a pang that
she would have to part with him. All these things, by the contract,
were Behrens', to be turned into money, and, long though she had known
Behrens, she well knew that this thing was too valuable to be thought
of as a gift.
Bad weather had interrupted them for a few days, and it was now over
three weeks since the morning of Glastonbury's first descent. They had
explored the Street of Victory all but the last six houses--that is
to say, the part of it that promised treasure--and there remained the
Street of the Winds and the Street of Hermes, which they had not even
touched.
Nor would they touch them. Although they did not speak of breaking off
work and going home they spoke quite definitely on the other point; at
least Sam did, the others agreeing.
"Glastonbury is showing signs of being used up," said Sam. "And between
you and me and the stern post I don't propose hunting through the rest
of this town. Besides, we're pretty full up; every locker, not to
speak of the sail-room, is stuffed with jars in straw, and the spare
bunks won't hold any more statuary. As it is, you've had to put that
discobolus thing in the lazarette. There's the bath-room you can stuff
a few things into, and we might put anything that's not breakable in
the ballast. There's room here in the cabin; but the bother is, the
stuff has to be hidden, for we've got to put into Genoa on the way
back--and there's the Customs. They haven't got to see any of those
things, for the Italians are pretty strict about works of art, and they
might think we'd taken them from some Italian island or territory.
Anyhow, they'd stop them and make inquiries, and we'd have to say where
we pinched them, and then the Greek Government would be notified. Only
for all that we might take a deck cargo."
"But why put into Genoa?" asked Martia. "Why not go straight home or
stop at some French port?"
"We've salted Genoa," replied the skipper of the _Lorna_. "They know
us there. They know us as mad English cruising about for fun, and they
won't bother to more than come on board and look at the papers and
smoke a cigarette, whereas if I put into a French or any other port
where we aren't known the Frogs would come on board and turn things
over. The French Customs are beastly. They aren't so keen on works of
art as the Italians, but they'd be down on us for not declaring them.
See? As for going straight home without touching anywhere, I can't.
Even if we fill up with water here, it's not enough for the run home.
We may be held up in the Bay by bad weather. One never knows."
"When do you propose to start off?" asked Bobby.
"When we've done with the last of these houses and fished up that
Victory thing in the street," replied Sam. "That'll give us a fuller
cargo than we want."
It was in the last house, four days later, that they brought up the
crown of the expedition--a marble Aphrodite, small, like all the
statuary of Hyalos, not more than four feet from crown to base, but
exquisite as a dream. The hands were folded on the breast, recalling
the attitude of Botticelli's Venus rising from the sea. Unlike the
Venus of Milo, she was entire, without loss of a finger of her perfect
hands or a toe of the feet that rested on a plinth suggestive of a
breaking wave.
The after cabin, which was Martia's, had two bunks, an upper and a
lower. The Aphrodite was placed in the lower, fastened securely with
lashings, and covered with a bunk coverlet.
"To-morrow," said Sam, "we'll pick up those Victory fragments in the
street, and the day after, if this wind holds, we'll put out for home."
But things were not to be as easy as that.
CHAPTER XXI
THE SHIP
People boxed up together in a small boat like the _Lorna_ react on
one another in a most surprising way. Bad temper or good humour in an
individual is felt by his companions as it never would be ashore. On
board the _Lorna_ that night, down in the cabin under the swinging
lamp, Sam was the wet blanket.
He sat with his nose in a book while the other two talked. He did not
seem to be reading so much as brooding. Bobby had given up the whole
problem of Sam and Martia, and Sam's fits of depression, and so on. The
girl had as good as told him that there was nothing between her and
the skipper and he left it at that. The expedition up to this had put
everything else aside, love included, and would do so till the English
coast was reached and the contract with Behrens completed.
All the same, this brooding fit that had fallen on Samuel Hackett, now
that work had relaxed, worried Bobby.
The only comfort to him was that there was no town ashore, no bars to
which the depressed one could fly for relief in the shape of alcohol.
There was whisky on board the _Lorna_, but the presence of Martia was a
restraining influence strong enough to prevent any outburst.
The Fates who try to spoil plans and wreck expeditions had, however,
taken note of this last fact, as the sequel was to prove.
The ship's company retired early that night, and were on deck next
morning an hour after sunrise. The engine having been set going, the
ship was manœuvred over the selected spot and the anchor dropped.
The depths were not yet fully lighted, owing to the lowness of the
sun, yet they could see glimmering up to them through the water the
shattered group--the little wheel of the chariot, the horse's head, the
figure of Victory growing momentarily more defined in the strengthening
light.
Glastonbury, a cigarette in his mouth, was getting ready to don the
diver's dress, and Sam was assisting Church to rig the tackle necessary
for the work, when Bowler, who had been looking seaward, suddenly left
the deck and swarmed up to the cross-trees. He clung there for a moment
in silence. Then his voice came.
"Below there! Ship to the nor'-west, comin' up this way."
Then he came down with a run, and Sam, leaving the tackle to look after
itself, and taking the glass from its sling, went up.
Glastonbury ceased dressing and lit another cigarette, whilst the
others stood, faces uptilted, watching Sam.
Yes, away on the distance of that miraculous sea, blue as sapphire
and lit by morning, a stain of smoke showed, and beneath the smoke
an object that the glass resolved into a vessel of small tonnage
travelling fast and making dead for Hyalos. It was the smoke-stain that
had attracted the bird-keen eyes of Bowler from the deck, and without a
glass he had been able to see the truth.
Sam came down with a run.
"This does us," said he. "I don't know what she is. Too quick and small
for a freighter. Not a warship by any English standard, but these
confounded foreign navies have all sorts of bumboats in their service.
Whatever she is, she's coming here and there's sure to be trouble--cuss
and confound her. We've got to camouflage. Man the winch and get the
anchor in. Church, nip down and get the engine ready. Glastonbury, get
all that truck of yours into the fo'c'sle. We'll bring her west of this
place and drop the hook closer inshore. We're an English yacht put in
the day before yesterday."
The others said not a word.
The clanking of the winch pawls filled the air, the anchor was brought
home, and the _Lorna_, under the auxiliary and steered by Sam, turned
and stole off across the agora, across the submerged theatre, across
the tranquil bay, dropping anchor three cable-lengths from the shore.
Here the wily Sam, after another observation from the cross-trees that
confirmed his worst suspicions, ordered the boat to be got over.
"What do you want with the boat?" asked Bobby.
"You'll see in a minute," replied the other.
They had brought a small tent for possible camping-out. It was stowed
down below. He had it brought up and got into the boat that was now
alongside. Then he ordered Church and Atherfield to take it ashore, set
it up, and come back.
"We've been exploring the island and fishing," he explained to the
others. "The tent will help the story out. Now there's nothing more to
do but trust in Providence and have breakfast."
They went below, where Martia had laid out the things and made the
coffee. There had been no time to cook anything, so they had to content
themselves with canned stuff and biscuits. During the meal Bowler from
time to time kept them informed, through the skylight, as to the doings
of the stranger.
"You can see her from the deck now, sir. She's aisin' down. A boat
pullin' off, sir, for the reefs."
From time to time, Sam or one of the others popped up on deck.
The thing was painted grey, with a yellow smoke-stack and a white
deck-house. She looked as though she might be some foreigner's idea of
a yacht. No Englishman would have been seen dead on board her at Cowes.
The stove-pipe funnel, the sheer stern, and the size of the deck-house
were enough in themselves; and, to complete the picture, the paint on
the hull had gone rusty.
"She's a howling ambulance," said Sam. "She's no navy boat, unless the
Digger Indians have started a fleet. And she hasn't been here before,
else she wouldn't be sending that boat to take soundings of the
channel. Look at that chocolate-box of a deck-house, and the rake of
those masts, and the size of that jack-staff."
A siren that might have belonged to the _Majestic_ suddenly let off,
answered by a bellow from the astonished echoes of the island, and they
saw that the stranger was moving again, following the boat through the
channel.
The boat of the _Lorna_ had returned from pitching the tent, and Sam,
getting into her, prepared to put off and board the newcomer.
"I'll go and see them," said he. "It's better than them coming to see
us. You can bet I'll do all I can to make them keep their distance and
fool them."
He put off, Bowler and Church rowing, just as the stranger, passing the
reefs, breasted the waters of the bay, going dead slow, a fellow in the
chains swinging the lead and calling out the fathoms in a voice that
came sharp as the cry of a gull.
"That's a foreigner," said Bobby, as he stood watching with Martia.
"There's one thing certain, she doesn't know this place or she wouldn't
be stealing in like that. At least, she doesn't know the passage and
the soundings. There goes the anchor."
The rumble of the chain, following the splash, came across the water,
and then they stood watching the _Lorna's_ boat closing with the
newcomer, Sam at the yoke lines steering to fetch her on the starboard
side. They saw the ladder thrown down and the redoubtable Sam climbing
on deck.
"He's talking to a tall, black-bearded chap in a white yachting cap,"
said Bobby, who had the glass. "He's pointing towards us and they're
jabbering together. Now they've gone into the deck-house."
He handed the glass to the girl, and she put it to her eye.
"Oh, I can see it quite close!" cried she, as though the fact were a
phenomenon. "Look at the little men on deck. They're all on this side
looking at us. And there's a man throwing a bucket of water overboard.
There's a man all in white with a white cap: he must be the cook. I can
see a name on the bow."
"Can you read it?"
"Now I can, almost. And now I can't. It goes and comes. It's the
movement of the ship. It's a double name. _Santa_--_Santa_----Oh,
that's it, _Santa Margharita_. It's the name of a place near Genoa.
I've heard it before."
She handed the glass back to him and they continued to watch the
stranger, alongside which Bowler and Church in the _Lorna's_ boat were
seated, smoking and making no attempt to fraternise with the fellows on
board.
Nearly half an hour passed, and then Sam, followed by the black-bearded
man, appeared on deck, dropped into the boat and pushed off.
"It's all O.K.," said the skipper of the _Lorna_ as he came over the
side. "It's a chap that fancies he's doing a yachting trip in that
bath-tub. Visconti is his name. Italian, and they've put in here to do
a repair."
"How long will they be over it?" asked Bobby.
"Oh, says he'll be off to-morrow, and he's asked me to drop over and
have dinner with him to-night."
"Didn't he ask us, too?"
"No," said Sam. "I told him the _Lorna_ was my boat and I was down here
for my health, and the fishing, and we went on yarning, without my
mentioning you two, and suddenly he sprung the dinner proposition on
me. It was too late then. I couldn't say I have two friends on board.
It would have looked as if I were fishing for an invitation for you."
"I don't think it would," said Martia. "And if it did, why shouldn't
you fish for an invitation?"
She was disappointed. A break in the monotony of the life on board
would have been welcome. So would a change of food and the opportunity
to put on an evening frock. She could have smacked Sam for his
stupidity, but Sam had sense on his side as well as diffidence.
"You see, it's not only that," he explained. "It's the bother of
getting too friendly with him and his staying on here and messing
about. If we all went to dinner with him we'd have to ask him back.
He'd be sure, anyhow, to call before leaving. Whereas, if I just nip
over alone, the thing is ended and done with."
"Are you sure he's all right?" asked the girl. "I mean that he's not
anyone connected with the Greek Government or anyone come to spy on
us?"
"He's quite all right," said Sam. "He's a gentleman and he's cruising
for his health."
"Oh, dear," said she.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. Only that doesn't sound, somehow, as if it was all right. Was
it on account of his health that he came exactly here? Didn't it seem
funny, when you were talking to him, to think that you both had come
here for your health, at least that you were both yachting for your
health?"
"No," said Sam. "Why should it? These seas, at least the Mediterranean
and Ægean, are pretty much health resorts. If two people met in Buxton,
say, and told each other they had come there for their gout, would it
be funny?"
"I'm not talking of Buxton. I only say the whole thing seems to me
fishy. Does he call that thing he's in a yacht?"
"Yes. He hired her for three months. He's got no illusions about her.
Couldn't. She's offal, and the deck-house is a cockroach trap. But he
says she's good enough to 'see sunsets from,' and the open deck is his
chief home on board of her."
"Italian?" asked Martia.
"Yes, he's Italian."
"Visconti," said Bobby, who seemed plunged in meditation. "Where have I
heard that name before? Visconti--Visconti----"
"Genoa, maybe," said Sam.
"No, it wasn't in Genoa. It was before that, and it seems to me it
was in connection with the expedition. It wasn't at Poole or at the
stores. Somewhere or another I heard it, but I can't remember where."
"Well," said Martia, "there's no use in bothering if you can't. Maybe
I'm hypersensitive and quite wrong. But I feel, somehow, as if danger
had suddenly sprung up against us; as though we ought to beware of
the man and his boat. Anyhow," said she, speaking to Sam, "if you go
to dinner to-night, be careful of what you say. Don't let him trap
you into telling anything. I know--I didn't mean to suggest you'd do
anything foolish, I only meant to warn you."
"Thanks," said Sam, evidently huffed. "I'm not a child, whatever else I
may be. And as for Visconti, he showed no sign at all of trying to pump
me or of having any idea at all about this place except that it was a
good harbour for a small boat to put into."
Martia said nothing more and went below.
She had a lot of work to do. Hers from the start had been the business
of keeping things tidy below deck. During the treasure hunt, nobody
had much time for anything but the great business in hand. As a
consequence, things were all over the place and confusion everywhere.
Clothes and all sorts of gear had been ejected from lockers to give
place to the vases wrapped in straw, and small objects of statuary and
things that ought to have been in the lazarette were finding refuge on
the cabin floor.
She set to on these matters, but the work did not stop her from
thinking; and the more she thought, the more she disliked the idea
of Sam going off to dine alone with this gentleman who was cruising
for his health. But there was no use in worrying, and the hard work
of putting things straight soothed her mind. The stranger could know
nothing of the work they had been doing, even if he knew of the
existence of Hyalos. Their story was plausible, and the appearance of
the tent ashore bore it out. All the same her mind, though quietened,
was not quite satisfied.
* * * * *
At seven o'clock Sam, in his best coat and looking a bit more
respectable than usual, was rowed off to the _Santa Margharita_ through
a blue luminous twilight, above which the constellations were sketching
themselves, and through which the voice of the reefs came ghostly,
mixed with the occasional weak cry of a gull.
Bobby and the girl watched him go and then went down to their own
dinner--canned corned beef and potatoes boiled by Church, with canned
asparagus to follow. The beef they had brought in the harness cask had
suddenly become tainted, and they had been living for a week mostly on
canned stuff, helped out with fish when they had time to do any fishing.
Anyone who has been condemned to live on canned food for any time will
know how it palls. The fact that Sam was possibly enjoying a good
dinner, served by a French cook, did not improve the flavour of the
food before them, and Martia said so.
"The only comfort is," said Bobby, "that Sam doesn't know good from bad
and can't be enjoying it."
He was sitting opposite to her, and it seemed to him that whatever
else might be the outcome of the voyage, it had been up to this the
re-making of the girl before him. The tired look had gone from her eyes
and the colour that London had driven away had come back to her cheeks.
Martia was good to look upon as she sat there, the lamplight falling
on her shapely little head; good to look at, despite the fact that her
get-up would have destroyed the attraction of any Continental woman,
consisting as it did of a coat and skirt the worse for sea-wear and
salt. Bobby, alone with her for the first time in weeks, had to crush
down the desire of his heart and leave unspoken the words rising to his
lips. There was still much to be done ere he could treat her other than
as a shipmate and fellow-worker and say to her what he wanted to say.
He got pretty near it, though.
"Even if he was," he went on, "he'd deserve it, for he's been working
like a nigger this last month."
"We all have," said she.
"Yes, we all have, and we deserve what we've got. What do you think is
the worth of the stuff we've hived already?"
Martia knitted her brows in thought.
"I don't know," said she; "anything over a hundred thousand pounds, I
should think."
"A hundred thousand?"
"Why not? Some of these things are priceless; far, far above the
rubies, for rubies are always being found. That Aphrodite alone might
bring a little fortune. It all depends on finding a buyer."
"That's where Behrens comes in. He as good as told me that these things
would go to America."
"If I tell you something," said Martia, "you won't speak of it to
anyone else?"
"Never."
"Well, I believe Mr. Behrens has arranged that everything we find shall
go to South America. Argentina. The wealth of Argentina is simply
fabulous, and things can be sold there without too much bother as to
where they came from. I'm telling you this in confidence, though he did
not make me promise to keep it to myself."
"I shan't say a word," said Bobby, "but I'm glad to know. It makes
things all the surer, and it seems to me there's almost certainly a big
profit coming from this business. And that's what worries me."
"How?"
"This way. I'm to get half, according to my contract with Behrens. That
is to say, half after all expenses are deducted."
"Yes?"
"Well, where do you come in? You've worked as hard as any of us."
"Me? Why I've had this trip for nothing. I don't want anything more."
He did not reply for a moment; he could not say what was in his mind,
that whatever money he made was hers as well as his.
"We'll talk about that later on," he said at last. "There's no use in
counting our chickens before they are hatched, and we haven't got the
stuff home yet. But there's another point--Sam."
"I doubt if he'll take anything," replied she. "First of all he's one
of those queer people who don't care a button for money, and secondly
he looks on all this not as work but as fun."
"But he's worked a lot harder than I have."
"Yes; but what you call work isn't work to him. He's never happier than
when he's in his shirt-sleeves rigging tackles and overhauling spars.
He'd be absolutely and perfectly content if he could only repaint
the _Lorna_ on top of everything else. He was grumbling to me only
yesterday because there was no paint on board."
Bobby said no more. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her right
out what she had known about Sam in the past, and exactly what their
relationship had been, but he restrained himself. Presently they went
on deck, Martia retiring to her cabin about an hour later.
It was now ten o'clock, and as he sat smoking he could see the forms of
the men, who had gathered for'ard round the fo'c'sle hatch, and away
across the moonlit bay the lights of the _Santa Margharita_. It was a
far cry from Cadogan Street and Piccadilly Circus, and the remembrance
of London brought up before him the fact that his life in the course
of a very few weeks had taken a new direction, and his future a new
significance.
If what Martia said was true--and he felt that it was true--he was no
longer a man scraping about to make a living at story-writing, but a
man of means, maybe of wealth.
Twenty thousand pounds would be a fortune, and the profit of this
wonderful haul from the sea might even bring him in much more than that.
The expedition was a success. It was only just in this minute of
relaxation that he recognised the full fact, and the real meaning of
it, and the truth that in a few weeks he had made what many a man
labours a lifetime to make. Had made? Ah, there was the rub! The thing
was not ended yet. They had still to face the sea's pleasure and the
chance of storms. They had still to face mischance.
Everything up to this had been easy--too easy, almost. Of Fortune,
one true thing can be said--that she has two faces, one beautiful as
heaven, one hideous as hell.
Thinking like this, his eyes fell on the lights of the _Santa
Margharita_, and a sudden vague uneasiness seized him.
What did that hooker want, putting in just now? There was no reason why
she should not have put in to do a repair. Still, it was a nuisance.
A day or two more and they would have been gone, and no one would
ever have known that they had been to Hyalos. But there was no use in
bothering. The _Santa Margharita_, whatever she was, had evidently
never been here before, else she would have come in without sending a
boat before her to take soundings. Hyalos was evidently as strange to
her as it had been to them; stranger, for they had been able to come in
without any bother.
If the people on board her knew nothing about the place, it was almost
a sure thing that they knew nothing of the treasure city. Still, he
wished Sam was back.
It was now a quarter to eleven.
He went forward and had a word with the fellows by the fo'c'sle hatch,
then he paced the deck. The idea came to him to send a boat off for
Sam, but the arrangement had been that the _Santa Margharita_ people
would send the skipper back, and Bobby put the idea away.
Time passed. The fellows on deck dropped below, leaving only Atherfield
as anchor watch. The moon dropped further to the west. Then, at last,
away over the water something showed. It was a boat, and at the same
moment, like the windows of a house shutting up after some festivity,
the deck-house lights of the _Santa Margharita_ went out.
The boat came alongside to port. Bobby dropped the ladder. The skipper
of the _Lorna_ came on board, leg over rail, and the boat started back.
Sam was breathing hard, with his lips closed. He was not quite steady
on his pins. He took Bobby by the shoulder and drew his head close.
"Is she in bed?" whispered Sam.
"Yes, that's all right," said the other. "What have you been doing?"
"Glorious time," whispered the festive one. "Awful good chap, that
chap. Help us down. Don't make a noise."
When he was in his bunk he refused to undress. Bobby sat for a moment
contemplating things.
Then a movement from the bunk drew his attention. Sam, with his hair
horribly and suddenly tousled, was motioning him to come close.
"Don't tell her I got like this," whispered the reveller. "It's not
what I've had has done me, but the worry of life. If you'd--ruined your
life in the past same's I've ruined mine, you'd know--you'd know."
"Oh, shut up and go to sleep," replied Bobby.
CHAPTER XXII
THE DUMPING OF THE VICTORY
Lying awake that night, Bobby remembered again his first interview with
Martia, and her talk about the predilection of editors and the public
for stories with a feminine interest. He began to wonder, as he lay
listening to the heavy breathing of the skipper, whether there ever
existed a story, in real life or fiction, since the story of Adam,
without some woman somewhere or somewhen having a finger in it.
If he had set out to choose on sight, for this expedition, a skipper
absolutely fool-proof against females, he would have chosen Sam. Yet
look!
How could he have known that Sam had a mysterious female somewhere in
the background of his life; a love tragedy, the remembrance of which
tended now and then to make him fly off the handle? He couldn't. Sam
had been foisted on him as sound goods by the god of expeditions--who
sends ships to sea with rotten garboard strakes, who puts weevils in
biscuits, and leaks in water tanks: the god who loves to watch strong
men fighting against adversity.
Had Sam talked on board the _Santa Margharita_? Had he by any chance
said a word too much?
Bobby was quite sure that Samuel in no circumstances whatever would
have told of their doings at Hyalos. All the same, he might by accident
have done just as bad, letting fall a chance word that would arouse
suspicion.
Well, if he had, the thing was done, and there was no use in bothering
about it. Time would tell. Leaving it at that, Bobby turned on his side
and fell asleep.
* * * * *
Coming on deck next morning, he found the festive one dressed and in
his right mind, without a trace of his doings upon him. He was talking
to Martia, telling her what a pleasant time he had spent the night
before, the tonnage of the _Santa Margharita_, the fact that Visconti
was a really good sort--a Neapolitan gentleman whose ancestry went
back to the time of Virgil--that the _Santa Margharita_ had damaged a
cylinder-cover, which had been put right, and that she was off that
morning back to Naples.
Bobby said nothing. He was content to let the matter rest at that and
trust in the Providence that had protected them up to this.
After breakfast, when they came up on deck, the anchor winch of the
_Santa Margharita_ was rousing the shore echoes. Bowler got the flag
ready and ran it up and dipped it as the stranger, turning in a big
curve, made for the reef opening, her siren letting off in salute of
the _Lorna_ and her ugly stern showing as she cleared off down the
channel.
In ten minutes she was a smoke-wreath on the far sea--a memory.
"Now fetch back that tent," said Sam, "and we'll go and scrape up that
mess in the street."
* * * * *
The mess in the street, brought on board by eight bells--four o'clock
in the afternoon--included the Victory, her broken wing, the little
chariot-wheel and the horse's head. There were other fragments, but
they were left. As it was, to use Sam's expression, they had bitten
off more than they could chew. The Victory was impossible to stow. The
only place for her was the fo'c'sle, and the fo'c'sle was over-crowded.
Besides, the hatch was too narrow to get her down. It was the wing that
did the mischief.
Sam proposed to break it off, but they could not do it. They could not
break and brutally treat that living marble. Time and disaster had done
enough to it. So they dumped her--and she was worth heaven only knows
what.
The funeral took place after dinner, in the dark, just before the moon
had time to lighten the depths of the bay. Getting into the boat which
was alongside, they released her from the lowering tackle and let her
slip into the darkness of the water, through which a long stream of
phosphorescent bubbles rose, dissolved, and vanished.
"And that's the end of the job," said Sam, little knowing how far from
them the end of the job was yet.
Next morning they filled the water tanks early and devoted the forenoon
to exploring the parts of the city they had missed. Actually,
notwithstanding all the time they had been there, they knew little of
the place beyond the theatre, the agora, and the Street of Victory.
Time being the essence of their contract they could not waste it. Never
for a day, or for a moment, had they been quite free of the vague dread
that someone might turn up to see what they were doing; some Greek
naval boat or even some fishermen from Milo or Polykandro away to the
north.
To-day they could breathe freely and look about them. It was their last
day there, Sam having determined to weigh anchor next morning, and the
last time, in all probability, that any one of them would see the place.
They rowed across the theatre and leaving the agora struck over the
street to the right, named by Isaac Behrens the Street of Hermes. It
seemed to them narrower than the Street of Victory, and the houses
poorer. As for the Street of the Winds, opening on the east of the
agora, it was narrower still.
There was no statuary, either standing or fallen, in these streets as
in the Street of Victory, yet in the Street of the Winds they came on
something more fascinating than any piece of sculpture.
The water was shallow here, only a couple of feet above the roof tops,
and down below, at a depth of only five fathoms, lay a slab of stone
with something written on it in Greek characters.
Sam declaring that he would dive for it, as the water was shallow, they
put back to the ship and got some signal halyard line. Armed with
this, he went down as he was and brought it up. It was a slab of marble
about a foot by eighteen inches, and scratched roughly but fairly deep
there appeared these characters:
Τὸ μέλημα τοὐμόν.
"What's the meaning of it?" asked the girl.
Bobby's classical education was enough to allow him to decipher the
thing.
"It's a graph," said he. "Same as you find on the walls of Pompeii,
only those are in Latin. Some fellow in love with some girl must have
scratched it on the front of her house, which was probably faced with
marble slabs. It means 'my darling.'"
He was probably right as to the origin of the thing, but he did not
know that it was a tag taken from Sappho and possibly had some extra
meaning, owing to the context of the lost poem to which it belonged.
Martia touched the words with her finger and a far-away look came into
her eyes. Possibly she was thinking of the lover who had written that
beneath the window of the girl he loved; on the wall of her house, or,
maybe, on the wall of some public place, just to give relief to his
heart; some lover whose very bones had vanished from the world but
whose voice still spoke in the language of the human heart, which is
older than Greek.
Bobby watched her.
He would have given a good deal to have known her thoughts.
She had cared for Isaac Behrens. Was it possible that she was thinking
of him?
The vague absurd jealousy he had felt when Behrens had told him that
she had been engaged to Isaac came back. He had forgotten it, almost,
but Hyalos was Isaac's find, and this love message--was she possibly
connecting it with Isaac's memory?
He wished that Sam had let the thing lie.
They rowed back to the ship, Martia holding the little tablet on her
knee. Once on board she took it to her cabin as though she looked upon
it as her own property.
Bobby could have kicked Sam.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BOAT FROM ÆGINA
The start was fixed for eight o'clock next morning, immediately after
breakfast.
There was nothing to hold them, and now that everything was clear,
with a steady glass, a fair wind and a full hold, a strange uneasiness
manifested itself amongst the afterguard of the _Lorna Doone_,
infecting even Sam.
It was the uneasiness that comes with the all-but-accomplished.
Bobby during the night had dreamed that the _Santa Margharita_ had
somehow sunk herself in the reef passage, blocking their exit; Martia
at breakfast was silent and Sam fidgety, rising to look at the glass.
The wind that had been blowing from west of north had shifted more to
the north, but the glass still held steady.
The skipper returned to his breakfast and the chart which he had
unfolded on the cloth. He was in the act of folding it up and rising
from the table when Bowler's voice came through the skylight.
"There's a boat comin' up, sir," cried Bowler. "Looks as if she was
layin' for the island."
Sam cast the chart on the table and dashed on deck. The others followed
him.
Sure enough, away to the nor'-nor'-west, a boat was coming; a
fishing-boat, seemingly, lateen rigged, with a vast triangular sail
like a swallow's wing pencilling itself against the sky. She was coming
with the swiftness of a swallow, and that she was making for Hyalos
there could be no doubt.
"She's only some island craft," said Sam. "Heavens, isn't she laying
the knots behind her? She's doing twelve, if she's doing an inch."
"Onhandy I call her," said Bowler. "That there yard was never made of a
single spar. Where'd she be if it was sprung? It's easy for her goin'
as she goes but I'd like to see her on a wind."
"What are you going to do?" asked Bobby.
"How d'you mean?"
"Well, oughtn't we to get out before she comes?"
"Oh, she's all right," replied Sam. "And she's seen us anyway. Better
stick and find out what she's after, if she comes here. Ten to one
she'll shift her helm."
"Yes," said Martia. "It's better not to run away. Let's just see what
they want. Maybe, after all, they are not coming here."
Meanwhile, the sail loomed larger and took on colour. There was some
dye in the canvas that now showed deep red and now rose-colour as the
great lateen yard swung to the wind. The hull, because of its colour,
was scarcely visible though she was coming close in now.
Yes, she was making for Hyalos. She took the passage through the reefs
without dropping a shred of canvas, the foam shearing from her stem
and the white gulls racing her across the bay in a grand curve, luffed
up into the wind and stopped dead. An old stone killick went overside
and the lateen yard came down with a run.
"Oh, how beautiful!" cried the girl, lost in admiration of this living
thing from the sea, so full of life and speed and the very breath of
freedom, yet in a moment tamed and halted. "I have never seen anything
so lovely as that. And look at the colours of it!"
The hull of the stranger was painted a green-blue after the fashion
of the Italian fishing-boats, turning to a darker tint near the water
line. She was open, with a covered-in poop where the steersman stood,
the goose-necked tiller still in his hand, and in the well, on the sand
ballast, the crew of half a dozen fellows with red handkerchiefs tied
round their heads were busy with the lateen yard and getting out a boat.
"They're coming aboard," said Bobby.
"Looks like it," said Sam. "If I didn't know to the contrary, I'd think
they had business with us--either friends or going to pirate us."
But the boat that put off was no pirate. Only two fellows were at the
oars and a third standing aft, with the steering oar.
It came alongside and hooked on and the steersman, dropping his oar,
came overside. A man of thirty or so, bronzed, with curly black hair,
rings in his ears and a smile that showed teeth evenly set and white as
a hound's.
Facing the strangers, he bowed to Martia, and then went for Sam,
who was standing a bit in advance of the others, in an explosion of
language that might have been abuse only for his manner.
"He's talking bad Italian," explained Sam to the others after the
torrent had lasted for a minute. "Petropolis is his name, as far as I
can make out, and he expected to meet us here, and is apologising for
being late. Rum business, and wants handling, seems to me."
He drew the newcomer aside, gave him a cigarette and then they talked.
Martia could not understand a word of what they were saying, but she
noticed, as the bronzed one talked and gesticulated, that he seemed
ill at ease, and now and then, as he swept his hand round indicating
Hyalos, his face took on a wild look as though something had frightened
him.
The talk lasted five or six minutes. Then it broke off and Sam turned
to the others, whilst Petropolis, relighting his cigarette, stood
suddenly quiet, his gaze roving about over the details of this strange
ship as though whatever he had said had ceased to be of the slightest
interest to him.
"Here's a rum yarn," said Sam. "This chap's from Ægina, away up north,
and, as far as I can make out, he was hired by an Italian to come down
here with his boat and bring four sponge-divers with him to meet a
vessel that would be waiting for him here. He was to put in nowhere
and say nothing to anyone, but he had to put in to Milo for water,
and at Milo one of his men got talking to the fishermen, and let out
that they were coming here. The fishermen warned him that Hyalos was
haunted or some rot of that sort; that dead men lived here; and that
not a fisherman in the islands would go near the place for fear of the
bad luck it would bring. He thinks we are the boat he was to meet, and
he's tumbling over himself with regrets because his men are nearly in
a state of mutiny and the sponge-divers refuse to have anything to do
with the place."
"I knew it," cried Martia. "I felt that there was something wrong about
that man Visconti. His was the boat they had to meet. Cruising for his
health? I never believed it."
"This is a nuisance," said Bobby.
Sam said nothing.
He saw as clearly as the others that the pleasant-spoken Visconti was,
a million to one, not after health, but treasure.
The human mind, suddenly brought into juxtaposition with a fateful
problem of this nature, often sees instinctively and in a flash its
true proportions. Sam saw quite clearly that, though it was a million
to one Visconti had come to Hyalos to dive for marbles, it was also a
million to one against the probability that his expedition would have
synchronised with that of the _Lorna Doone_ by chance.
Hyalos had been lying sealed for two thousand years, yet the _Lorna
Doone_ and the _Santa Margharita_ had arrived in the same month and for
the same purpose--loot. Common-sense viewing this statement would say
at once, "There must be some connection between these two expeditions;
the coincidence is too extraordinary."
"Suppose we go down below and talk it over," said Sam.
He followed Martia down below.
"I can't see the sense in this business at all," said he when they
were seated. "If that chap was lying, if he was really after the same
game as we, why did he sail off and leave us here? He knew that this
Petropolis man would be coming along and that, if we met him, we'd
guess the truth. Leaving that aside, why didn't he stick till we were
gone?"
"Maybe," said Bobby, "he thought we'd been working here and had cleaned
out the place. That night you dined with him, did you say by any chance
how long we'd been here, or say anything that might have given the show
away?"
Sam flushed under his tan.
"Do you think I'm a fool?" he asked.
"Not at all," said Bobby. He did not wish to push the matter, seeing
the condition in which the skipper had arrived home that night of the
dinner party on board the _Santa Margharita_. All the same, he felt in
his heart that Sam somehow or another had told more than he ought.
"Does Petropolis know that we aren't the people he was expecting to
meet?" he asked.
"No," replied Sam. "He doesn't. I didn't say a word; just let him run
on. He seems to think that the Italian fellow who gave him the order to
come here was our agent."
"Then," said Martia, "the thing to do is to pay him anything he wants
in reason, and let us get away at once. He can't ask much, as he says
his divers refuse to work here."
Sam left the cabin and came back in a minute.
"I've squared him for a thousand lire," said he. "That's ten pounds.
The chap's straight enough. He got ten pounds from the agent, whoever
he was, and the terms were ten pounds a week, he paying the divers. It
took him a week to come down, and it will take him a week to go back."
"Pay him," said Martia.
She fetched the ship's money, part of which was in sovereigns obtained
by Behrens from the Bank of England, and they went up. Two minutes
later Petropolis, with the money in his pocket, was overboard and
rowing for his boat.
The breeze had freshened a bit.
Bowler, with a glance to windward, chuckled.
"It's either row her or tow her out, with the wind as it is," said he.
"She come in easy, but it's not easy goin' out with a rig like that.
Onhandy, I call her."
"They're getting the sail on her, anyhow," replied Sam, watching as the
great lateen yard rose to a chorus like the calling of gulls. "Up goes
the killick. Now we'll see."
The stranger, her great sail bellying to the blue, gave a bound like a
startled horse and fled away shoreward, making a soldier's wind of it
and aiming as if to smash herself on the rocks, came round in a grand
curve and up into the wind, the foam racing out behind her as she sped
towards the reefs, aiming like an arrow for the channel. Bounding over
the slight incoming swell, and seeming to drive right into the wind's
eye, she cleared the passage and was away to sea.
Martia, her lips parted and her eyes bright with pleasure, watched the
departing one. It was less a ship than a creature, alive, sensitive,
beautiful.
Bowler, hit in the place where he kept his predictions, turned away
muttering something about the "Flyin' Dutchman."
Then at Sam's orders he went down to attend to the auxiliary engine.
The anchor was hove short and then broken out of the sand, the
auxiliary got to work, and the _Lorna_, with Sam at the wheel, turned
her nose to the break in the reefs.
Outside and beyond danger, the canvas went up and the ketch took the
wind, heeling to port and with her nose to the west.
They were out at last and free, at least for the moment. Hyalos astern
and far away towards the north the Greek boat, close-hauled and showing
her coloured sail against the pale azure of the horizon sky.
A gull from the island astern, still following them, wheeled with a
cry, drifted on the wind and then passed away, leaving them alone to
pursue their course across a sea desolate as when the _Argo_ had sailed
it in pursuit of the Golden Fleece.
CHAPTER XXIV
A MAN OF WAR
The greatest bother about romance in real life is that it generally
brings one outside the law--either the written or the unwritten law.
The strangest thing about the romance of the _Lorna Doone_ and her
crew was the fact that it was only now, clear of land, successful and
unpursued, that the law was beginning to trouble them.
The worry came to Martia first, before Hyalos had quite vanished from
sight astern.
Her mind rejected the idea that they had done wrong almost as soon as
it had formulated it. Hyalos was in the open sea, an absolutely desert
island, belonging to Greece in theory but to the sea and to the past in
reality. It was surely no more wrong to take marbles from its waters
than to take fish or crabs, even though the marbles might be infinitely
more valuable. Greece for two thousand years--either through ignorance
of these treasures or through the superstitions of the islanders, who
considered the place haunted--had never claimed them.
No, in a strictly moral sense they had nothing to worry about in the
rescue of these things from the sea, or even in the sale of them. All
the same, there was the question of International Law, which is not
always moral, and what it might say or do to them in the event of
discovery.
She was not alone with this worry. It was infecting the others, too.
The lightheartedness with which the expedition had started, and which
it had maintained up to the point of success, became dimmed by doubt
and the shadow of anxiety.
The weather still held fine and the wind fair, backing into the east
of north, and except for now and then a trace of smoke on the far
horizon there was no sign of ship or hint of land till the morning when
mountain tops, made gigantic by mirage in the western sky, told them
that Cerigo was dead ahead.
Cerigo is the island pearl that hangs from the ear of Lacedæmonia;
between it and the mainland lie the straits of Cervi.
Sam, having assured himself of his position, and wishing to keep all
Greek land at the extremest distance, altered his course more to
the south, till the great mountains dwindled on the starboard beam,
dwindled and vanished, swallowed by distance, and the sea.
It was at the dinner-table on this day that Martia first spoke openly
of what was in her mind, to the relief of the others, for they had all
been thinking about the same thing, and blotting it up. They arrived at
the same conclusion; there was no use in bothering now that the thing
was done and, moreover, there was nothing to bother about in a moral
sense.
They had thrashed the matter out, and Sam had even gone so far as to
say that there was nothing to bother about in a legal sense, when,
through the open skylight, came the voice of Church, who was on the
watch.
"Smoke comin' up astern, sir," it said.
Sam jumped from the table, and, followed by the others, came on deck.
For a person who had no fear of pursuit or the law, his movements were
singularly active.
When he took the glass, the hull of the ship making the smoke was
beginning to show--a dot in the smother.
"It's either a destroyer or a torpedo-boat," said Sam, "or one of those
rotten gunboats they've got in some of the navies since the war. They
were old submarine-chasers sold off cheap, and mostly oil burners,
but I believe there were coal burners, too, and I've heard Greece and
Montenegro picked some up."
"It's coming along fast," said Bobby.
It was.
When Church had announced the stranger coming up from behind, the
_Santa Margharita_ had suggested herself to their minds, but this
was not the _Santa Margharita_. The funnel told them that, also the
hull--now clearly to be seen--low of freeboard and destitute of
deck-house.
"Anyhow," said Martia, "she can't be bothering about us, even if she is
a warship in a hurry."
"I'm only thinking," said Bobby, "that if Visconti turned sour, as
the Yankees say, at thinking himself done in, he might, just from
viciousness, set the bells ringing."
"There's not only that," said Sam, "there's the probability he'd get a
reward. That's to say, if we have engaged on anything illegal, which I
refuse to admit. Church, what are we doing?"
"Eight knots, sir," replied Church, who had just hauled in the log.
"The engine wouldn't add much?"
"No, sir; and we're running short of juice."
"We have no spinnaker," said Sam. "Might try a balloon jib, only I'm
doubting if it's worth the raising. She's dipping her nose pretty deep
already."
Bobby, as he listened, wondered why Sam should be so anxious to crack
on if he were sure of the position and of the fact that they had done
nothing illegal.
He said nothing, however, but kept his eyes fixed on the stranger, who
was growing like a djinn, the wind banking her smoke in the form of a
plume.
She was not exactly astern, more to the north of their course, and as
this fact became apparent, all nervousness left the watchers.
They were not being pursued. Here was a warship, it was true, but she
was not aiming for them. She was most evidently on one of the thousand
petty businesses that engage the small navies of the Mediterranean
powers, from the chasing of sponge-poachers to the pursuit of
contraband.
She came along, lifting the distance over her at a fine rate, till she
showed in all her hideous simplicity added to by a touch of rust and
neglect.
No, she was not a chaser, but one of the experiments in hideousness
that the Mediterranean shipbuilders make now and again in their efforts
after speed and battle-worthiness.
Not quite a destroyer, not quite a torpedo-boat, not exactly a gunboat,
she slashed along through the blue sea, showing through the glass a
plume of foam at her forefoot and two figures in naval uniform beside
the steersman on her bleak bridge.
She seemed pursuing her way aloof and absolutely unconscious or
contemptuous of the _Lorna Doone's_ existence. It was quite satisfying
to watch her in her pride and to feel by contrast the humble
insignificance of the _Lorna_.
They would have been content if the ketch had been even more humble and
insignificant. They had no false pride at all in that matter now.
Suddenly, and as though she were a blind thing that had only just
sighted them, the stranger altered her helm.
In a moment she was coming for them like a hawk.
Next moment a plume of white smoke jetted from her, and blam! the
report of a gun hit the sea.
"We're done," said Bobby.
Sam moistened his lips. He gave orders to the steersman to bring the
_Lorna_ up into the wind to wait for the oncomer whose imperious order
had just spoken itself. Then he watched, disgusted with the tactics of
the other and wondering what on earth would happen in the next five
minutes.
He was certain that this was an overhaul.
The newcomer showed a flag at her jack-staff, but it was so dirty that
they could not tell whether it was Greek or Roumanian or what. She came
sheering along to within a couple of cable-lengths, then rang off her
engines and set them full astern, turning the sea into a lather and
incidentally, through some mis-shift of the helm, nearly ramming the
_Lorna_, whilst Bowler, who had sprung into the main shrouds, told them
in the fearlessness of innocence, and frankly to their faces, that they
were a pack of sanguinary tailors. In reply to which they dropped a
boat.
Next moment a fat little man, all smiles, came on board, leg over
rail. He saluted the quarter-deck, swept his hat off to the girl, and
addressed himself to Sam, who had stepped forward to receive him.
They spoke in Italian, and Martia could not understand what they were
saying.
"He wants to know if we have seen a boat, like our own, manned by
Italians and engaged in the contraband business," Sam explained. "He
knows we aren't the craft he's hunting for, because of the lady and
also because we are English, and also because I have just told him we
are a yacht--which he can see plainly."
"Take him down and give him drinks," said Bobby, the weight of
mountains suddenly lifted from his mind.
"He also wants to know if we have any sugar to spare," went on Sam.
"They have run short, the steward having forgotten it, as they had to
leave Ægina in a hurry."
"Plenty," said Martia. So great was her relief that she could have
hugged the little fat man. Whilst Sam took him down to the cabin for
drinks, she went to the galley where the sugar was stowed in a locker.
Two pounds of lump sugar went overside with the commander of the
_Kosmos_--for that was the name of the warship. Caps were waved
from the bridge, the engines were set going, and as she drew away a
cartridge was rammed in the gun and fired by way of salute.
The _Lorna Doone_, taking the wind again, filled her sails and resumed
her course.
"That's a job well over," said Sam. "I don't believe those chaps were
hunting for contraband. They ran short of sugar for their coffee,
that's all. We've been getting scared over nothing, and I'm not going
to bother any more about anything. We're as safe as houses."
"Are we?" said Bobby. "I'm not so sure of that. At least, maybe we are
safe enough, but I believe those fellows were after more than sugar.
You remember he said he had to leave Ægina in a hurry? Well, Petropolis
came from Ægina."
"So he did," said Martia.
"What are you driving at?" asked Sam.
"Just this: Visconti evidently sent an agent to Ægina to get those
sponge-fishers to come to Hyalos for the diving. The agent may have
talked, and wind of some contraband work has got about. Of course
it may be only my fancy, but you see there are three coincidences.
First of all Petropolis leaves Ægina on secret business; secondly,
the _Kosmos_ clears out of Ægina hurriedly and evidently in chase of
something; thirdly, she comes down south to this part of the sea."
"And fourthly," said Martia, "that little man said he was looking for
an Italian boat, and the _Santa Margharita_ was Italian."
"You're suggesting that he is hunting for the _Santa Margharita_?"
asked Sam.
"Yes."
"Well, how can he? He distinctly said he was looking for a boat like
ours."
"If you ask me," said Bobby, "I believe that chap is overhauling
everything small that he meets with. If he was going on rumour, he
wouldn't know exactly what the _Santa Margharita_ was like. I don't
want to be a scaremonger, but we've got to be careful. We're not out of
the wood yet, it seems to me."
Bobby was one of those provoking people who keep their cleverness for
the wrong moment. His memory was so tricky that, though Visconti's name
seemed familiar to him, he could not remember where he had heard it.
He was always mislaying things and forgetting where he had left them,
and remembering things that he ought never to have forgotten. This
brain-wave of his, coming at the moment, served no useful purpose, and
only tended to make them uneasy. "We've got to be careful!" How could
they be careful? How could they resist an overhaul from any warship
that chose to speak to them?
Sam said all this, and said it with considerable vigour. Martia
concurred without speaking. Bobby, after a last look at the vanishing
smoke of the _Kosmos_, went down below, silenced if not convinced.
Two days and a half took them across the blue Ionian Sea, showing
them Ætna and Cape Spartivento ahead of them, lit by the light of an
afternoon that seemed to have strayed from the Golden Age.
They ran the Straits of Messina by moonlight, the shore to port all
fairy lights and orange groves, and a great _Messagerie_ boat, lit like
a ball-room and with a band playing, gave them her wash as she passed
to starboard. The air was warm as summer and filled with the scents
of Sicily, which pursued them as morning broke on the Tyrrhenian Sea,
showing the Lipari Islands far on the port quarter like purple splashes
on an ocean of azure.
Fishing-boats with coloured sails; a three-masted schooner,
close-hauled and steering for the Straits; a tanker, almost hull down
and making towards Naples; every hour now showed ships like these, some
far, some near, for now they were in the zone of the populous seas and
the desolation of the Greek waters no longer covered them with its
cloak.
Sam, in his wisdom, determined to give as wide a berth as possible to
the continental seaboard, and steered west till the Sardinian coast
showed them its far mountains by day and its sea lights beckoning by
night. Then he kept on north-west, raising Corsica till he reached its
great long finger-tip, which points almost straight at Genoa.
Beyond this the winds that had followed them so faithfully dropped,
and a wind from the Pyrenees took its place, with a lumpy sea, across
which, one grey dawn, a winking light showed beneath a cloud which
turned with the sunrise into the hills above Genoa.
CHAPTER XXV
GENOA AGAIN
The sea was dashing high on the breakwater as they came in, passing
through the outer harbour and taking up their old anchorage near the
Silos Wharf.
The grey dawn that had threatened rain had passed, the clouds had
dispersed, and the sun was lighting the hills and the harbour, more
densely packed with shipping than ever.
The Customs officials and port doctor came off--the very same men they
had parted with only a little time back--came on deck, did not even
trouble to go below, smoked cigarettes, talked to Martia in broken
English, and went away smiling.
"Now," said Sam as they sat at breakfast twenty minutes later, "if
I hadn't thought of putting in before and getting known to those
greasers, they'd have been all over the shop, poking about. As it is,
we are all right now. The greatest difficulty is over, unless we fall
in with bad luck in the way of weather and have to run into some port
to refit. That's not likely, though. The spars are sound, and you
couldn't break the hull, not with a pick-axe."
"How long are we going to stay here?" asked Martia.
"We ought to clear out the day after to-morrow," replied the other.
"We'll get the water on board to-night and the stores, and I want to
have a thorough overhaul of the rigging."
"I've got a list of the stores we want," said Martia. "I suppose you'll
get the water from the same people on the quay over there who filled
the tanks before?"
"Yes; and the stores from the ship-chandlers. Their boat will be along
for orders this morning, sure."
"There it is," said Bobby.
The sound of a boat coming alongside could be heard through the open
skylight, and Bowler's voice. Next moment the seaman was standing in
the doorway of the saloon.
"A tellygrum for you, sir," said Bowler, handing Sam an envelope.
Sam snatched the envelope and read the message.
"Come to Chiavari to luncheon Hotel d'Italie to-day--important
business.--VANJOUR."
The envelope was addressed to: "Hackett. Yacht _Lorna Doone_, Genoa
Harbour."
"What the devil is the meaning of this?" asked Sam, handing the paper
to the others.
"The chandler's boat is alongside, sir," said Bowler. "They brought the
message, and the chap's waiting to see you about orders."
"Tell him to wait and I'll see him in a minute," replied the skipper of
the _Lorna_. Then, when Bowler had vanished: "What is the _meaning_ of
it?"
"I don't know," said Bobby. "Who on earth is Vanjour? How does he know
we're here? And where's Chiavari?"
"It's on the railway line a bit down the coast," said Martia, who had
taken the map of Genoa and its environs from the map rack, and spread
it on the table. "I remember the name. It's somewhere near here----Oh,
there it is!" She pointed with her finger to the spot. "It's quite
close, and on the railway line."
"Maybe it's someone to do with Behrens," suggested Bobby.
"Behrens?" said Sam. "But how could he know we had put in here this
morning?"
"He may have told someone to be on the look-out for us."
"And look," said Martia. "This telegram hasn't come from Chiavari, but
from Genoa. It's a telegram letter. Someone has been waiting for us to
come in, and then sent this off. They evidently did not want to meet
you in Genoa, for some reason or other. I think it must have to do
with Mr. Behrens. You remember I wrote him from here, telling him we'd
arrived safely and would put in here on our way back."
"I'd forgotten that," said Sam. "That's what it is, as sure as eggs."
"It's very likely himself under an assumed name," put in Bobby.
"Anyhow, it can't be anyone else. You'll go, of course?"
"Of course I'll go," replied Sam. "It looks to be quite close. Will you
two see to the stores whilst I'm gone, and the filling of the tanks?"
He looked around him.
If ever you have seen a true-blue small-yacht owner or skipper leaving
his vessel in charge of others, even for a day, you will have seen Sam
at this moment giving directions like a house-keeper off for a holiday.
He suggested that certain ports should be shut, to keep out the coaling
dust that a vast brute of a Brazilian liner, with derricks out and
barges alongside, would be making in a moment if the wind strengthened.
He ordered this and that to be done, retired, reappeared presently in
a more presentable rig and a bowler hat, got into the ship-chandlers'
boat, issuing directions every step of the way, and was rowed off.
"Thank heaven," said Bobby. "Now we'll be able to think."
"Are you sure he'll be all right?" asked the girl nervously.
He knew what she meant. He had no fear at all of Sam making an
alcoholic fool of himself to-day. He had got to understand the skipper.
Sam with real business on hand was to be trusted.
"You needn't be a bit afraid," said Bob. "Hackett, though he might
fly off the handle once in a way, isn't that sort. He's as steady
as anyone, and a jolly sight better than a lot of people who call
themselves saints."
"I'm so glad to hear you say that," she rejoined, with a sigh of
relief. "I'm not bothering about to-day so much as about things in
general, and his future. I feel just as you do about him. He's a
splendid character, if only--if only he had some real interest in life,
someone to care for him and take care of him."
Bobby agreed, but he felt rather flattened out. Why was she bothering
about Sam's future? For a moment an almost overwhelming impulse came
upon him to take her aside, and, throwing everything else to the winds,
tell her the truth, which she must have guessed by this; that he loved
her.
Common-sense stopped him.
They had to think of stores, of the water-supply, of the overhaul of
the ship. They were in Genoa Harbour with perhaps a hundred thousand
pounds worth of cargo on board that the Genoa port authorities would
certainly seize if they knew of it. A turn of the wheel and the whole
lot of them might be seized with the cargo and the ship and put in
prison. They knew absolutely nothing of the complicated Italian law of
contraband as applied to articles theoretically belonging to a friendly
Power, Greece, and if they had met with a lawyer versed in the business
they would have been afraid to ask.
No, it was not a time for love declarations or philandering of any sort.
Amongst the other directions left by Hackett, was one for the overhaul
of the engine. Bobby went below with Bowler to attend to this messy
job, leaving the girl on deck. It took hours, and when it was done,
and a luncheon of sardines and biscuits consumed, the chandler's boat
arrived alongside with stores that had to be stowed, and after the
chandler's boat, came the water supply for the tanks.
Now, the people who attend to this business in Genoa Harbour do not
consider themselves slaves, as far as Time is concerned. Sam had
ordered the supply for that evening, expecting that it would come on
board by next morning at the earliest. But by some chance--perhaps
fortunately for the crew of the _Lorna Doone_--the foreman, being slack
of work for the moment, sent it off by two o'clock.
By four everything was finished, the decks cleared up and afternoon tea
served in the cabin.
At half-past four they came on deck. The awning that had been
raised after breakfast was taken down, and Bobby had just brought a
basket-chair up from below for the girl, when Church, who was forward,
gave them word that a boat was putting off to them.
"It's the captain," said Church.
It was.
He was being rowed off in a shore-boat, and when he got alongside he
paid off his men without regard to change.
Martia saw at once that something had occurred, but she said nothing,
following whilst Sam led the way below, where the first thing he did
was to fill a pipe.
"Well," asked Bobby impatiently, "what's up?"
"Everything, maybe," said Sam, taking his seat. "And maybe nothing.
Any tea in that tea-pot? Well, give us a cup, and chuck us those
matches. Well, I'll begin at the beginning. Soon's I landed, I made
a bee-line for the station and got a ticket for Chiavari and found
a train just on the point of going. I got there hours too soon, but
it's one of those beastly places that the trains run crooked to, and
if you don't take the first train you can get, it's heaven knows how
long you'll be getting there. I'd left my pipe behind, and for two
hours I had to sit about in gardens and places with nothing to smoke
but Italian cigarettes. I'd called at the hotel, but no M. Vanjour
was staying there. However, I didn't expect him to be waiting for
me. I reckoned he'd turn up about one o'clock. And he did. The hotel
_déjeuner_ was served at half-past twelve, and I was sitting in the
smoking-room listening to the clatter of knives and forks, when the
manager came to me and said that the friend I had been asking for had
arrived. I went into the lounge and there he was. A little dried-up
old chap, like a Spaniard. He was well dressed, but he wasn't quite
a gentleman. 'You are Mr. Hackett?' said he. 'Who has done me the
pleasure of accepting my invitation to luncheon?'
"'I'm him,' said I. 'And I must say your invitation came as a surprise
to me, for, if I'm not mistaken, we've never met before in our lives.'
I was on the point of saying to him at first: 'I suppose you are a
friend of Mr. Behrens?' but something stopped me; something told me to
keep off the grass. This bird didn't please me a bit, and I determined
to lay low. Funny things instincts are.
"'No,' said he. 'We have never met before. But I don't doubt that this
meeting will be to our profit. However, we will discuss that matter
after luncheon. I have asked the manager of the hotel to give us a
private room.'
"I was in a fix. I was beastly hungry, but I didn't at all like the
idea of having to sit and eat with this man. However, I was into the
thing up to the neck, and we had luncheon and he talked of the weather
and all sorts of rot till the coffee was in and the waiter had cleared
off. Then he lit a cigar and leaning across the table, he said: 'I
didn't ask you to Chiavari, Mr. Hackett, to share this bad luncheon,
but to speak to you about your cargo.'
"You could have knocked me off my chair with a feather, and he saw it.
Then I recovered myself, for it came to me that he might, after all,
have something to do with Behrens.
"'Well,' I said, 'what about my cargo?'
"'Ah, what about it?' said he with a wink.
"Then I knew at once that he was working on his own, and that, even if
he was in the know through Behrens, he was playing his own game.
"'What about it?' said he. 'Just this,' he says. 'I propose a deal. It
is not often a valuable cargo like that comes into Genoa Harbour--Greek
tobacco from a crop that grows under the sea. I propose a deal,' he
says again. 'We go shares and I say nothing.'
"There it was, out.
"'I'll see you go to the devil first,' I said to him. 'And for two
pins I'd ring the bell and send for the police.'
"You see, I knew I was dealing with a crook. He'd plainly threatened to
go to the police and tell on us if I didn't split with him; but I knew
that these sort of men don't do that sort of thing. They are too shy of
the police and Customs.
"He threw up his hands. 'Well,' he said, 'if that is how you take my
offer we will say no more.'
"I rang the bell and paid my bill, for I would not allow him to pay
for me. Then I went off and left him smoking his cigar. There was a
car waiting in front of the hotel. I expect it was his. I went to the
station and got a train back. Got to Genoa a little after four. That's
all."
"You did perfectly right," said Martia. "It would be fatal to show any
weakness before a man like that."
"I'm not sure," said Bobby. "Remember we are in Italy, not England. An
English crook wouldn't go to the police, maybe, but the English and
Italian police differ. The Italians might give him a big reward for
splitting on us."
"But who can he _be_?" asked the girl. "How does he know about us?
Behrens is the only person who knows. Unless that man Visconti--but
even he knows nothing of what we have on board."
"Unless he guessed," said Bobby. "Even so, he was on the same job
himself and wouldn't be likely to split. And he didn't know we were
coming to Genoa. But there's no use in talking. I don't like this
development a bit, and I think we ought to clear out right away. The
stores and the water are on board. There's nothing to hold us."
"Oh, the water's on board, is it?" asked Sam.
"Yes; it came just after the stores."
"Then out we'll get," said Sam, "directly it's dark."
"Why wait for dark?" asked Martia, her mind filled with the nightmare
feeling that disaster was only to be avoided by immediate escape. "Why
not now--at once?"
"Because," said Sam, "if this chap is part of a gang, he's back in
Genoa by now. They'd see us clearing and they might have the means to
follow us, see? They may be Camorra men, and they'd think nothing of
boarding us and scooping us; maybe sinking the boat with us when they'd
done. It's the big sum of money involved that would make that possible.
No, I'd prefer to meet and risk the Customs and police rather than put
out with that hornet's nest at our heels. After dark we can steal out
with the lights dowsed and the auxiliary going. After dark? What am I
talking about? No, a couple of hours before sun up. That's the time a
port is really asleep."
"But suppose they boarded us here and scooped us?" asked Bobby.
"Nonsense! Things like that aren't done. A shout would raise the
harbour. No, the only thing we have to fear here is the police, and I'm
perfectly sure we're safe from them. At least, it's a hundred to one
these chaps won't meddle with the law."
"There's one good thing, the engine is over-hauled and cleaned," said
Bobby. "I got to work on it directly you'd gone. Seems like Providence,
too, the water coming off so soon."
"Yes, that was a good thing," replied Sam.
He seemed preoccupied and as though he were turning over something in
his mind.
They came on deck.
The evening had grown warmer with the sinking of the sun, whose rays
came almost level through the forest of shipping occupying the west of
the harbour.
Tugs passed here and there and lighters heavy with grain-sacks. A
yellow-funnelled Nederland Line boat moored to the Silos Wharf was
letting off her siren. She was due out, and the fellows were already
standing by the shore-fasts whilst the last trucks of luggage were
coming along the quay.
Sam contemplated this picture for a moment, then setting Bobby,
Atherfield, and Glastonbury to some work on the rigging, he ordered
Church and Bowler into the boat.
"I'm just going to nose round the harbour for a moment," said Sam.
He steered first for the outer harbour. One might have fancied that he
was examining the fairway and its possibilities of danger to a craft
making out at night. But the harbour of Genoa has no dangers in the
way of sand or mudbanks; it is all clear water. Sam was inspecting the
shipping.
Moored to the wharves out here were big boats from Singapore and the
East, a foxy-looking collier from the Levant, a Clan turret boat, and
several smaller fry; nothing to interest Sam.
He turned the boat and made for the middle and west of the inner
harbour. Here to the west the ships were packed, sailing ships;
schooners from the Italian shore; nondescript steamboats, some of which
seemed to have been rotting at their moorings for years. Amongst them
the eagle-eye of Sam picked out a craft lying astern on to the fairway,
a boat that had been repainted recently.
He had started out to see if amongst the shipping the _Santa
Margharita_ might be hidden, to see if by any chance Visconti might be
here and at the bottom of the Vanjour business. This repainted craft
was not at all unlike her. She had a similar funnel and about the same
tonnage. But the name on the bow was invisible, and he dared not draw
closer to inspect.
He turned the boat and made back for the _Lorna Doone_.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE CUSTOMS
He was disturbed in his mind, but he said nothing when he came on
board. There was no use in worrying the others, and he had reasons of
his own for keeping silence. All the same, if Visconti were here in
Genoa and the prime mover in the Vanjour business, the thing was more
serious than it had seemed at first.
Visconti, from what he knew of him, was no ordinary man. If he were
a crook, then he must be at the very top of his profession. He had
the manner and appearance of an Italian nobleman, and it was possible
that he was strongly enough placed to be able to make overtures to the
Italian police. Failing to make profit out of the cargo of the Lorna
himself, he might choose to make profit out of the information he could
give about it to the authorities.
For a moment Sam almost regretted that he had not closed some sort of
deal with Vanjour. Half a loaf is better than no bread.
Down below, smoking a pipe whilst the others were busy on deck, the
unfortunate Sam had a very unhappy quarter of an hour. His unhappiness
came from this: he could not remember exactly what he had said
during that pleasant evening which he had spent on board the _Santa
Margharita_ at Hyalos, under the influence of Italian champagne,
cigars, liqueurs, and the fascination of Visconti's personality. He did
remember having said that he was touching at Genoa on the way back--a
quite innocent remark between two honest sailor men, but a deadly
admission if Visconti was a rogue. What else had he said that might
have given the whole business away by implication? He could not tell.
Not only did he feel that he might possibly have betrayed his
companions, he felt also that he ought to tell them. Yet what good
could it do? The thing was done and over, and all the confessions in
the world were of no avail.
Besides it would be a horribly unpleasant business, for he would have
to own up before Martia to having taken too much liquor.
He came on deck.
Dusk was just closing her hand on the world, and the shore lights
beginning to sprinkle themselves from the great fort on the left across
the terraced city, preparing itself for the gaiety of the night. The
wind had shifted to east of north, a quarter almost exactly opposite to
that from which it had blown in the morning.
What did that portend? Sam could not say. He was not up in the tricks
of the Mediterranean weather. The glass was steady: that was enough for
him. He set to work helping the others, though their work was nearly
finished.
Then they went downstairs for supper.
"How'd it be," said Bobby, as they sat over the meal, "to shift our
moorings now and get into the outer harbour? It would be easier for us
getting out."
"You can't anchor there," replied Sam. "You'd have to berth beside one
of the steamships, and you can't do that without giving notice. No,
even if we could, I don't believe in two starts."
"Won't they hear the winch taking in the anchor?"
"Who?"
"The harbour people. They'd be sure to think it funny us clearing out
at such an hour."
"I'm not going to raise the anchor. I'll knock the shackle off the
chain and drop it. I have two spares."
"Listen!" said Martia.
Through the open skylight came sounds as of a boat arriving alongside,
of oars being got in, and the voice of Atherfield and--a foreign voice.
The people seated at the table looked at one another. Martia grew a bit
pale, and Bobby half-rose from his chair.
"Sit down!" whispered Sam. "And whatever you do, don't seem to be
flustered if it's anyone that's----"
"Port man come up to see you, sir." Atherfield, standing in the
doorway, stepped aside, and the "port man" entered.
A stout little man with brass buttons on his coat and wearing a
gold-braided cap, which he removed at sight of Martia. He bowed in
her direction. He was very polite, this representative of the port
authorities, but to the girl, brutality of manner would not have been a
whit less terrible than this politeness which spoke of power.
"Captain Hackett?" asked the stranger in a tentative voice.
"I'm him," said Sam, who had risen from the table.
"So. Well, I have some little business with you, Captain Hackett. I am
from the Customs Superintendent, and I have my men with me, but I am
sure we will not need them at all. Just a few questions to ask you,
Captain Hackett. Thanks, I will sit me down. Now my papers." He took a
bundle of blue papers from the pocket of his coat, "Now my spectacles."
He put on a pair of pince-nez. "Very useful things, spectacles, but
very great what you call a nuisance. Will not the lady sit down?"
He opened one of the blue papers and glanced at the writing on it for a
moment, then folded it, and put the whole bundle of papers back in his
pocket, took off his pince-nez, and toyed with them as he spoke.
"You Englishman?"
"Yes."
"And this lady and this gentleman English?"
"Yes, and the crew. All English."
"Boat of pleasure?"
"How do you mean? Oh, a yacht. Yes, that's so."
"No contraband on board, not declared?"
"You mean tobacco and stuff?"
"Captain, I said contraband."
"No, there's neither liquor or anything that you reckon is contraband."
"No wines, liqueurs?"
"No."
"No objects of art shipped from Italy?"
"No."
"Ah, well, it is in our information that this is not so. Pardon me for
saying so, Captain Hackett."
"Let's be clear," said Sam. "I have some objects of art, as you call
them, but they are not from Italy."
"Ah, you have some objects of art, but they are not from Italy. Where
then are they from?"
"Greece."
"You have the papers to show that they are from Greece; bought in
Greece?"
"No; we found them in Greece."
"You found them in Greece! Then from the Greek Government you will have
papers of permission to find those things and to take them with you."
"No, I haven't any papers. We found them on an island."
"So. Well, it is our information that these things were taken from
Italian soil. But we will leave that for the moment. I must make
examination."
"Certainly," broke in Martia, then, turning to Sam, "Show him
everything we have and he will see that they are Greek. Nothing like
them was ever found in Italy, of that I'm sure."
She went to a locker and took out one of the vases, carefully wrapped
in dried grass, and presented it to the officer. He took it, held it
under the light and turned it about without comment. Then, still under
the lead of Martia, the general inspection began. The Aphrodite in the
bunk, the things hidden here and there, some in the bath-room, some
in the galley--everything down to the Eros standing on its head, was
revealed, inspected, and noted.
Then they came back to the cabin and sat down again.
Bobby produced a tin of cigarettes and the officer accepted one and lit
it. He seemed mollified by the frank treatment he had received.
He took a paper from his pocket and made some notes then looking up:
"There is nothing more but these things you have shown me?"
"Nothing," said Sam.
"Well, that brings the affair to conclusion."
Martia gave a deep sigh of relief.
"It still remains that the ship is under arrest. What you say of these
things being Greek I cannot determine. It must be put before the
authorities at Naples, where the experts are. I believe you honest
people and what you say to be truth, but I am not the Government. The
ship must be taken to Naples. My men will take it there and you will
all come ashore with me to attend the enquiry at Naples."
"Oh, good gosh!" said Bobby.
Sam said nothing.
"But surely," cried Martia, waking out of a horrible paralysis and
feeling exactly as though she were in a nightmare--"surely you are not
going to arrest us?"
"Arrest? No!" said the officer. "I will treat you, madame, and your
companions with every consideration. But I must do my duty. There will
be nothing but the going ashore and coming with me, not to-night, but
on the morrow morning, just as friends. It will be nothing but coming
with me till the enquiry makes it plain about this matter. And then I
hope indeed it will be my pleasure to see you depart from Naples in
your ship with these things. You will stay in an hotel at Naples for
the enquiry, which will be expedited as rapidly as in our power."
"And our men?" asked Sam.
"They too, must come. The ship is under arrest, and in strictness it is
my duty to ask you all to come with me ashore to-night, but you will
have your things to pack and take with you and I wish to cause you no
inconvenience."
"But," said Sam, "the expense."
"Should the enquiry prove in your favour, captain, the Italian
government will see to the expense. If otherwise----"
He shrugged his shoulders.
Then he rose and gathered together his papers.
"You will not leave the ship? I have your parole?"
"Yes," said Sam, "I promise we won't leave the ship."
"Well, then, till to-morrow morning," said the other. "And do not
be afraid, miss"--laying his hand in a kindly manner on Martia's
arm--"there will be nothing of unpleasantness for you. Just the matter
of coming ashore with me and taking the train for Naples. No police
show. Nothing. I wish you good-evening."
They accompanied him on deck and saw him overside into the boat that
was waiting.
Then they went below.
No one spoke for a moment. Bobby helped himself to a cigarette. Martia
took her seat at the table.
The prospect before them was frankly appalling. They had all to go
to Naples, afterguard and crew. The ship would be brought there. The
enquiry might take months, and every newspaper in Europe would be full
of it. Greece would have her say. They would have to engage counsel,
pay hotel expenses, and were sure to lose in the end.
It would be a ruinous affair for all concerned.
"What I want to know," suddenly burst out Bobby, "is--who put these
Customs chaps on to us? Vanjour? It couldn't be anyone else, and he's
a crook, for he offered to share in the business. Well, we've got them
there."
"How?" asked Martia hopelessly.
"How? Why, we can prove that the police are in league with Vanjour.
He wouldn't have given the show away without being sure that he would
profit by it. He wouldn't have done it simply from spite."
"I don't see how we are going to prove anything," replied the girl.
"We have only our word to back us. Can't you see?"
Sam, who had been sitting with his face in his fists, suddenly looked
up.
"Look here," said Sam. "We have committed no crime here. We haven't
tried to run contraband. We have things on board that aren't even
listed among contraband articles. I don't believe that, strictly
according to law, they have any right to detain us here. I think
they've overrun their cable. I know a good deal about port authorities
and their ways, and I know they often do things quite indefensible
simply because they have the power. They are the most arbitrary lot in
the world."
"Why didn't you tell that to the Customs man?" asked Bobby. "And what's
the good of talking? They have the power, and that's everything."
"You wait a minute," said Sam. "If we were out beyond the three
mile-limit what could they do?"
"Take us and haul us back."
"Could they? Well, maybe they could. But that would be seizing a
British ship on the high seas, and at once we could put the matter in
the hands of the British consul. And on what charge would they seize
us? For being in Genoa Harbour with articles on board that are neither
contraband nor munitions of war? Didn't you notice that this fellow is
so uncertain of his position that he has not done what he would have
done if he had been sure we were breaking the law--put us all in quod
right away? But leave all that aside. If we were once out beyond the
sight of land, they might whistle for us. I'm going to have a try."
"To get out?"
"Yes. Creep out as we intended to. It's our only chance."
"But you gave your parole," said Martia.
"Yes, not to leave the ship. I'm not going to leave the ship."
"But they'll be watching us."
"Not they. If we tried to go ashore it would be different. But they'll
never think of us going out. They don't even know we've got an
auxiliary engine on board."
"But look here," said Bobby. "Even if we get out and away, do you mean
to say they won't telegraph to England to stop us?"
"On what charge? The only charge the Italian government can make
against us is that we have antiques on board that have possibly been
taken from Italian soil. Possibly, mind you. They can give no facts.
If they have us arrested in England on a bare supposition--and I doubt
if they can--and if that supposition proves false, what do they let
themselves in for? It doesn't matter a button about Greece. Italy has
no right to act for Greece. What we are being held here for is a mere
suspicion that these are Italian works of art, which they aren't. It's
good enough to hold us, but it's not good enough to set the cables
working, arrest us in England, and lay the Italians open for a big bill
for compensation owing to that arrest."
Bobby whistled.
"By Jove," said he, "there's something in this. If only----"
"What?"
"We can get out."
"I don't know whether we can get out or whether we can't," said Sam,
"but I'm going to have a jolly good try."
Martia, sitting with her hands folded in her lap, rose to her feet.
"I feel we will," she said. "I feel luck is with us. We made our plans
even before that man came on board, and we've got our water and stores.
Luck is with us."
"Maybe," said Sam, touching the wood of the table.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GREAT ATTEMPT
They came up on deck.
The great attempt could not be made for hours yet. Two hours before
daybreak was the time settled by Sam, who knew that in a port or a city
the hours before dawn find Vigilance most off her guard.
A boat had just come in, passing the _Lorna Doone_ and making to berth
at the place left vacant at the Silos Wharf by the Nederland liner that
had put out in the afternoon. She was an Italian warship--a destroyer
or big torpedo-boat. Fortunately she had not taken up moorings close
to the _Lorna_, where she might have proved troublesome owing to the
vigilance of her anchor watch. At the Silos Wharf she was safe, the
distance being so great.
"That's another piece of luck," said Martia.
"And the wind is holding steady," said Sam. "It's backed a bit more to
the east, and that's all to the good. Glass is rising. What's the time?
Quarter to eleven. I'll go and have a talk to the hands, and I'd advise
you two to try and get a bit of sleep."
He went for'ard, and the two others, after a few minutes, went below.
Martia retired to her cabin and lay down.
The idea of sleep was absurd. She told herself that as she lay on her
side, her eyes fixed on the panelling of the door. Even to put out the
light was impossible.
The events of the day passed before her like the scenes in a
cinematograph picture--passed and gave place to imaginary scenes from
the future. Naples--should they fail to get away; a law court; a
strange hotel where they would have to stop under surveillance; perhaps
prison, for if they were caught in this attempt to escape she felt that
things would go very much worse with them, so far as that pleasant
little official in the gold-braided cap was concerned.
Was it wise? The question was dismissed as soon as asked. _Any_ chance
was better than the prospect before them. Actually she would have
preferred the risk of drowning.
Noises came through the open port; the snorting of a passing tug, a
confused sound that became stronger and turned into voices singing,
mixed with the wheezing of an accordion. Italian sailors returning to
some ship, happy and free. She closed her eyes, wondering who they were
and where they were going to, and then she was running along a wharf
in dreamland, the little Italian official running after her calling on
her to stop; he was Behrens, and the wharf became Museum Street, and
Behrens was showing her a Dutch doll he had bought at an art sale....
Then oblivion and a knock at the door.
"It's time for starting," came the voice of Sam. "Douse the lamp and
come up."
Martia raised herself on her elbow, remembered everything in a flash,
got out of her bunk, glanced at her hair in the mirror, and put on the
cap she usually wore on deck. Then she put out the light and went into
the saloon. Sam was there with a dark lantern in his hand. He saw her
up the companion stairs and, closing the lantern, followed her on deck.
The harbour lay asleep beneath the stars. The lights of Genoa had
vanished, except the street lamps and those at the entrance to
the fort. One sound only broke the night--the far, everlasting,
intermittent whistling of the shunting engines in the great station
yard.
Bowler took the dark lantern from Sam and slipped below to attend to
the engine. The anchor light was left burning. To have lowered it might
have been to attract attention. In a harbour at night a light slowly
changing place is scarcely noticeable unless to the eye of an attentive
watcher, whereas a lowered light might draw to itself the most casual
eye.
Sam took his place at the wheel, the girl beside him. He struck his
heel once on the deck, and almost directly on the sound a clank and a
splash told him that the anchor chain had gone.
Then came a moment of silence.
The _Lorna_ was lying with her bow towards the breakwater, so that
she had not to be turned until right on the fairway into the outer
harbour. All the same, the seamanship involved in the business of
getting out was of a nature highly trying to anyone but a man like Sam,
used to ports and estuaries and a seaman by instinct. Two turns had to
be taken; to port to clear the inner harbour, to starboard to clear
the outer, and the star-stained darkness was deception itself to one
judging distance.
Sam rapped twice on the planking with his heel, and Martia, scarcely
breathing, heard the reply. The engine had started. Started with only
speed enough to keep the propeller expanded. The _Lorna_ did not seem
to move.
She heard the rudder-chain click and saw the white hands on the
wheel-spokes shift, but the _Lorna_ seemed as stationary as though her
anchor was still in the mud.
What was holding them? She dared not ask. She felt suffocating, her
lips dry as pumice-stone, the palms of her hands wet with perspiration.
Then on the port bow she saw something dark that seemed drawing up
to them. It was the mass of shipping moored to the quay of the outer
harbour.
Yes, the _Lorna_ was moving. The breakwater light was closer, and now
the fairway was pushing aside the shipping and the quay and the outer
harbour were on their port bow. The wheel went over and the _Lorna_
turned, and now, as she softly glided across the star-sprinkled water
with the shipping to port and the breakwater to starboard, the beam of
the revolving light of the breakwater passed over them, sweeping the
night rhythmically, like the wing of a ruby-coloured slowly flying bird.
Sam struck thrice with his heel on the planking, and the engine below
sprang into full life. The bow wash whispered. The lighthouse moved as
though some unseen finger were rapidly pushing it back, passed almost
astern, and swung round to the starboard quarter as the helm went over
and the bow pointed dead for the open sea.
"We're out," said Sam.
"Thank heaven!" said the girl.
"Out, and no wind," he grumbled.
Bobby, who had been forward, came aft.
"We've done them," said Bobby. "I was afraid you were going to ram the
breakwater. Hackett, you're a jewel! Not another man could have done it
like that. But the wind seems gone."
"Flat calm," said the skipper, altering the course a point or two.
"Dog's luck, isn't it? Only wants the engine to give out and we're
done."
Martia turned away from the grumblers and looked astern, where the
revolving light was beckoning to them. A long way off it seemed now,
beckoning and throwing its arms about as though ordering them back,
whilst beyond it the lights of Genoa showed, a faint trace against the
background on the hills.
Now, further away, the light seemed winking at them like a confederate.
Then, as she stood watching, it shifted its position, shining on
the starboard quarter. Sam had altered the course, making no longer
straight out to sea, but in a more westerly direction, as though
steering for Albenga or Oneglia.
The _Lorna Doone_ kept on her course bravely and in defiance of Fate
and the wind. The engine, working to a charm, seemed to say, "Look at
me. Trustable, aren't I? Without me where would you be? Plug, plug,
plug--one hundred and twenty-five revolutions to the minute--plug,
plug, plug." The demon that lives in auxiliary engines said not a word.
It was just on the point of sunrise, and Sam was handing the wheel to
Atherfield, when the thudding of the engine slowed, hesitated, and
stopped.
"Somethin' wrong with the injin, sir," came the voice of Bowler from
below.
Something indeed was wrong with the engine. Sam, diving below, found
Bowler on his knees before it in the attitude of a worshipper.
"It's the feed-pipe, I believe," said Bowler. "Unless it's one of the
cylinders. She was working badly the last few minutes, and then she
gave a cough and let out."
"How about the cylinder rings?" asked Sam. "Church said something about
them when we were over there at that island. They wanted renewing or
something."
"They were all right when I took her down yesterday," said Bowler,
rising to his feet and scratching his head. "Me and Mr. Lestrange took
her down and gave her a clean, and there was nothin' ailin' with her.
Well, it's down, she'll have to be taken again. Is there no wind, sir?"
"No, confound it, not a breath! And this will mean hours. Well, it's
got to be tackled and done at once. I'll send Church down to help."
He came on deck and gave the order, and then stood at the taffrail with
the others, looking at the east.
It was an amazing spectacle that sunrise, for the sea out of which the
sun was rising was smooth like an infinite sheet of glass. Away to the
north and west lay the coast of Italy, the far mountains painted by the
new-born light against the sky of aerial blue--the heavenly blue that
the old Italian painters knew and caught in their pictures of angels
and saints--whilst in all that world of sun-smitten glacial sea and
purple coast there was not a sound, nor a wing, nor a sail.
Even Sam was held for a moment before turning to reach for the glass.
"Can't see any sign of Genoa," said he as he held the telescope to his
eye. "It's hidden by the line of cape over there. We've made a good
distance, but we've had the current with us. It's not much, but it's
something, and we're moving with it now about as quick as a snail. Wind
may come along after the sun's up a bit, but there's no telling."
"Hadn't we better raise the sail so's to catch it directly it comes?"
asked Bobby.
"No," replied Sam. "We're less visible with bare sticks, and it won't
take a minute to get the canvas on her when we want to. I'm going down
to get some coffee."
Leaving Atherfield on the look-out, they went below for coffee and
biscuits.
It was over this meal, accompanied by the sound of engine-tinkering,
that Sam did what he ought to have done before.
"I didn't tell you," said he, "for it was only a suspicion, but nosing
round the harbour yesterday evening I saw a boat that wasn't unlike the
_Santa Margharita_."
"Visconti's?" said Bobby.
"Yes. It worried me a lot, for you remember at Hyalos, that night I
dined with him----Well, we had a lot of fizz and that sort of thing,
and, being off my guard, I may have said something that might have
given him a hint of what we were doing. I do remember him asking what
port I was going to call at next, and I said Genoa. How could I have
known he was what we suspect him to be?"
"Oh, dear me," said Martia.
She saw the whole thing in a moment. Visconti coming to Hyalos for
the same purpose that they had done, finding them, finding from Sam
that they had been there a long time and had evidently cleared out the
place, hurrying to Genoa to meet them, attempting through his agent
Vanjour to get a share of the spoil and, failing in that, putting the
Customs and police on to them, either from spite or, more likely, in
the hope of a big reward.
There it was, plain enough, and there before her was the wretched Sam,
and for a moment the anger in her mind seemed about to capture her
tongue. She conquered it.
"Well," she said, "there is no use troubling now about it. What's done
is done. You got us out, anyhow, and we are so far away now they won't
be able to find us. And if they did, what could they do? You said we'd
be safe beyond the three-mile limit."
"We're not really safe till we're home," said Sam. "I said if they
captured us beyond the three-mile limit, we could apply to the British
Consul, and put ourselves under his protection, that's all."
"And that would be as bad as anything else," said Bobby, "for then the
whole affair would be out for the world to know."
They came on deck at a call from Atherfield. There was a trace of smoke
on the sea over Genoa way. In the west a steamer had just disclosed
herself, a great way off, making east, and to be disregarded.
Sam turned the glass towards Genoa.
"There are two craft out there," said he, "making either east or west.
I can't tell for the moment."
He hung silent for a full minute, then he spoke:
"They're coming this way."
Martia's throat closed as though a hand had gripped it. Bobby took hold
of the starboard rail.
"If we can see them, they can see us," said he.
Sam did not reply.
A minute and a half passed; then he handed the glass to Bobby.
"One's a small steamer of some sort," said he. "I believe the other is
a warship, the rate she's making."
"Is she coming this way?" asked Martia.
"Yes," said Sam.
"I've got her," said Bobby. "She's stopped firing up. She's a
destroyer, right enough. I believe she's the one we saw berthing last
night at the wharf."
In a few minutes more they wanted no glass to see the oncomer. She was
making dead for them, and covering the distance at a fine speed.
"That does us," said Bobby.
Martia turned away, sick at heart.
They might throw themselves on the protection of the British Consul.
All the same, they had run away. Their position, British Consul or no
British Consul, would be far worse than if they had stayed to face the
music. The very fact of slipping out stealthily at night and making
off was enough to condemn them. What a business! And all through the
wretched Sam.
But she said nothing. She had agreed to make the attempt. If they had
succeeded, everything would have been all right. It was a gambler's
throw, foiled by the failure of the wind, by the failure of the engine,
and by the chance that had brought this destroyer last night into Genoa
Harbour.
Bobby lit a cigarette, and the unfortunate skipper went for'ard a bit,
crossed his arms, and stood watching.
The destroyer was now only half a mile away. She was making twenty
knots if an inch. They had plenty of time to observe her fully. Now the
plume of foam at her stem could be seen, and her wireless outlined on
the morning sky. The line of her course lay a bit to starboard of the
_Lorna_, and now, close to, her size seemed to increase by leaps and
bounds. Huge, she looked, and threatening and swift as a hawk. But why
did she not check her speed?
The hum of her engines rushed up to them as she came abreast and passed
them only a cable's length to starboard, without the officers on her
bridge throwing them more than a glance, tossing them in her wash,
and showing them her turtle stern and the foaming wake of her rushing
propellers.
"Is she going to turn?" cried Bobby.
No; she showed no sign of altering her helm. Minute by minute she
passed farther away across the blue morning sea, no longer a thing to
be feared, no longer a warship--just a dot beneath a smudge of smoke.
Sam began to laugh unsteadily.
"She never was after us!" he cried. "Look at her! Lord, if she'd only
known!"
"We've been fooling ourselves," said Bobby. "I know. I was in as blue a
funk as you were. But what's the meaning of it? She's come from Genoa.
She's the destroyer we saw berthed last night; that I'd swear. She
can't have left port before they found we were gone. Well, if she's not
after us, why isn't she?"
"What do you mean?" asked Martia.
"Just this: the port authorities must have discovered we were gone
at daybreak, maybe before. They had a swift destroyer lying at the
wharf. Well, don't you think they'd have used her to hunt for us? At
all events, even if she were going on naval business--as she evidently
is--don't you think they'd have asked her to overhaul us if met, put a
crew on board, and wireless Genoa? Of course they would."
"Maybe," said Sam, who had recovered himself and was looking through
the glass at the other vessel they had spotted coming from the
direction of Genoa, and had forgotten in their excitement.
"Of course they would," said Martia. "Oh, good gracious, can it
possibly be----"
"What?" asked Bobby.
"Can it possibly be----It is; I'm sure of it! We've been bluffed!"
Sam took the glass from his eyes and turned.
"How do you mean?"
"How do I mean? Why, can't you see? That little man in the gold cap
wasn't a port official. He was fooling us. He was one of the Vanjour
people. I thought there was something queer about him; he was far too
civil."
"You mean to say that the chap who put us under arrest was bluffing?"
cut in Bobby.
"I don't say anything; I only suspect. Look at the whole thing."
"But where would have been the sense of doing that? How would it have
profited Vanjour and Visconti, if he is in this business, to send a
chap like that just to fool us?"
"Remember," said Martia, "what he said. There was to be no fuss or
unpleasantness. He was to call for us early this morning and we were
all to go with him to Naples. Well, what would have happened if we
hadn't been wise enough to put out? I can see what would have happened
quite clearly. He would have come and taken us all ashore. The people
on the quay would have noticed nothing wrong; just a party of people
landing. We would have gone to the station and taken the train to
Naples with him, and he would have vanished when we got to Naples, or
perhaps before. We would have come back like a flock of geese, not
daring to say a word to anyone, and found either the _Lorna_ gone or
the things. They could easily have been taken ashore, packed up; and we
couldn't go to the police or say a word to anyone."
"Upon my word," said Bobby, "there seems something in that. But see
here, the chap was in uniform."
"He had a gold band on his cap and brass buttons," replied Martia, "if
you call that uniform--though it was good enough to fool us with."
"But would he have dared----"
"Why not? You know our position. Even if we had found he was a fraud,
we could have said nothing."
"Well," said Sam, who had the glass still to his eye, "Whatever he
was we'll soon find out, for, if I'm not mistaken, here's the _Santa
Margharita_ herself coming up."
He handed the glass to Bobby, who looked at the oncoming ship steering
straight in their direction.
"I believe it's her," said he.
"I'm certain," said Sam. "And upon my soul," turning to Martia, "I
believe you've struck the nail on the head. That destroyer has given
the whole show away. This coffee-pot must have left the port the same
time as she did. The coffee-pot's after us, and the Government boat
isn't. It's as plain as a pikestaff."
"Think she's going to try and bluff us again?" asked Bobby.
"I don't know," said Sam. "You see, they've brought her into the open.
She's no longer hidden among the shipping at Genoa. They'll know that
we'll be sure to spot her as Visconti's boat. I believe Visconti is the
head of this whole gang that's working against us. Wonder what he has
up his sleeve now?"
Bobby was biting his nails. His memory still refused to render up where
and when he had heard this name Visconti before. He only knew that he
had heard it not long before the start and that it had been in some way
or in some place connected with this expedition.
His reasoning mind told him that he must be right in this matter. The
law of probability was entirely against the idea that Visconti had
fitted out an expedition to ransack Hyalos and that his venture and
theirs had clashed. No; Visconti, acting on the same information as
theirs, had tried to forestall them. That was evident. And it was also
evident that if he, Bobby, could remember where he had heard the name
of this dark player, he might hold trump cards at once.
But memory could not clinch the matter.
The safest way to find a half-forgotten name or event is not to think
too much about it, to forget it entirely, if possible, and then the
subconscious mind, left in peace, goes through its files of documents
and galleries of pictures and hands up all at once the desired thing to
the conscious mind. Everybody knows that. Bobby knew it. But he did not
know that his deep anxiety on the point and his desperate endeavours to
solve it had probably so muddled the gnomes in his subliminal mind that
they might never be able to help him now, unless some extra assistance
came to their aid. They had been inhibited.
He stood watching the oncomer.
Yes, she was the _Santa Margharita_, or her twin. She came boldly on,
impudent as she was dirty, so straight for them that they could not
read the name on her bow, if any were there.
Then she slowed, and a few cables' lengths away reversed her propeller
and dropped a boat.
"Here he is again," said Sam, who had levelled the glass at the boat.
"Visconti? No. The port officer man, gold-laced cap and all. There's
no sign of Visconti on the bridge or anywhere. Yes, it's the _Santa
Margharita_. I can just catch the name as she swings." He shut the
glass.
A cold hand laid itself on Martia's heart. What if they were wrong?
What if the destroyer had come from some southern port beyond Genoa?
What if this man in the gold-laced cap were no bluffer but Authority
itself with power to drag them back?
Sam and Bobby were evidently asking themselves the same question. They
stood silent, watching the boat draw on.
Sam ordered Bowler to throw the ladder down on the starboard side. The
boat hooked on and over the rail like a monkey in his gold-laced cap,
came the port man.
There was no smile on his face this time. He glanced round the deck, at
the hands for'ard and the afterguard by the cabin companion-way. Then
he nodded curtly to Sam.
"Below, please," said he, stepping forward and leading the way down the
companion stairs as though he were the master of the ship.
In the cabin he took off his cap and laid it on the table, motioned the
others to be seated, sat down himself, and took from his pocket a long
envelope, which he laid on the table before him.
"Now we will talk business, Captain Hackett," said he. "In the port of
Genoa we talked as friends, believing as I did that you were innocent
men. You are all under arrest."
Martia gulped.
"You and the ship and the crew. You were foolish men to do what you
have done, knowing that we, having your name and your ship's name,
can stop all ports against you. You can go nowhere in the world, as
you know, as a seaman. Every port would stop you. You must now take
your ship back to Genoa Harbour. You must do it with your own men,
as I have no men to give to help you. That is M. Visconti's boat,
the gentleman who gave us the information about you. He is Italian
Government official and his boat is Italian survey boat. Italian secret
survey boat. That was how he found you, Captain Hackett. But enough.
You must take your ship back to Genoa. I will leave a man with you in
charge. But first, all those things must be transhipped to us. You have
played us one trick, Captain Hackett, but not another. No, captain, not
another shall you play."
It was Martia who began to see light vaguely.
"But why tranship the things?" asked she. Then, the light brightening
as she noticed the look on the port officer's face, "Suppose," she went
on, "you took those things on board the _Santa Margharita_ and then
streamed off without bothering to put a man on board us to take us back
to Genoa?"
The gold-braided one hesitated and was lost. The truth came to Sam like
a thunder-clap. He leaned across the table toward the other.
"You infernal scoundrel!" said Sam.
At the same moment he snatched the official looking envelope from the
table and tore it open; there was nothing in it but a piece of blank
paper.
"Close the cabin door," said Sam to Bobby.
The fraud at the table, with the gold-braided cap at his elbow, said
absolutely nothing, did not seem perturbed, seemed thinking in an
amused way over the situation.
Martia almost admired him.
"Now," said the captain of the _Lorna Doone_, sitting down before the
other, "I don't know why I don't fling you overboard for your cheek. It
would serve you right if we took you back to Genoa and handed you over
to the Customs and police."
"On what charge, monsieur?" asked the other amiably.
"On the charge of impersonating them."
"Impersonating them--yes. And for what purpose?"
Sam was stumped. It would be impossible to tell the police or the
Customs the purpose.
"So we will leave that matter alone," went on the other. "My name is
Pirelli, monsieur, and we have been playing a game, you and I. You for
your own hand, I for Monsieur Visconti, who has hired me. The game is
not yet finished."
"Oh, isn't it?" said Sam.
"No, monsieur, not if I know anything of Monsieur Visconti. Let us
talk, shall we?"
"Fire away," said Sam.
"Well then, it is this way," said Pirelli. "M. Visconti, a very
powerful man in the art world, or so I believe, sent for me some days
ago and said to me, 'Pirelli, I have heard of your fame as a secret
service agent; I want your help in a matter of art.' He gave me my
instructions. Your boat had not yet come to Genoa, but was expected.
He gave me a free hand. I employed my assistant, Vanjour. He failed.
Then at night I take the matter into my own hands, and board you in
Genoa Harbour. And I would have succeeded, monsieur, had you not been
an Englishman. No one but an Englishman would have had the courage to
leave the harbour as you did."
The impudence of the man, and the extraordinary nature of this
conversation, dazed Martia. She suddenly spoke.
"Tell me," she said. "Suppose you had succeeded and we had all gone
with you, would you really have taken us to Naples?"
"Why yes, of course," replied Pirelli, as though he were talking of
some perfectly natural transaction. "I would have left you all at
the Hotel Amalfi or the Metropole. But I am, I hope, what you call a
gentleman. You would have received that night a note telling you of the
game that had been played on you, so that you might not be urged to go
to the authorities making enquiries, and so getting involved. You would
have returned to Genoa next day, to find your ship had been visited and
the goods removed. Also you would have found at your ship-chandler's a
letter with some money as compensation--your _viatique_, as they say at
Monte Carlo--for I had made that a stipulation with M. Visconti."
"Don't talk of Monte Carlo," said Sam. "This was robbery----"
Pirelli put up his hand.
"Monsieur, if a seabird steal a fish from the sea, and a bigger
seabird steal that fish from him, which is the robber? Make yourself
clear on this point. We could not have moved against you if these
marbles, which you have taken from the waters of Hyalos, had been your
property, bought and paid for. I do not call you a robber for taking
these things from there, so do not call us robbers for attempting to
take them from you. It is all a game, nothing more."
"So you know about Hyalos?" said Sam.
"M. Visconti told me all. Also that you had given him to understand
that you had been at Hyalos a long time, and had taken everything worth
taking."
"I never----" cried Sam.
Pirelli held up his hands.
"Excuse me, captain. I will give you what you said to M. Visconti.
M. Visconti asked you what you had been doing, and you told him you
had been fishing. He asked you what you had been fishing for, and you
told him you had been fishing for gods, and that you had got all the
gods worth having out of the place. Of course he knew. He had come
himself to find marbles. He had gone to great expense in fitting his
expedition. He found you had been before him, and taken all worth
taking. You told him you were going to Genoa. Well, can you wonder that
he tried to make you disgorge? I would not tell you all this, only that
you can do nothing to me. You are just the same as us, captain; no
better, no worse. Now I have a deal to propose to you, and for your own
good. Last night, if you remember, I made you show me all the things
you have on board. I took an inventory of them in my own mind, and that
inventory is in the possession of M. Visconti."
"Confound you!" said Sam.
"No, no, captain. It was all in the way of business. Well, these things
are worth money; many thousands of pounds. You are full of treasure,
captain, and M. Visconti is empty. Now I propose you make a deal,
a play for safety. You have an Aphrodite, the one you showed me. I
propose you hand her over to me to take back to M. Visconti as a--what
you call a sop in the pan. It will stop his mouth and hold his hands."
"Never!" said Sam.
"One moment, captain," put in the other. "This is not for myself that I
am talking, but for you. If Visconti not get something, he make trouble
for you. I am not his agent speaking this, but just a sensible man
who is not unfriendly to you. Now see you here, Captain Hackett. I am
Pirelli, of the Piazza Aqua Verde, Genoa. I am an agent that undertakes
delicate matters, but I always work within the law. You may say that
what I did last night, in bluffing you and trying to seize these
marbles for M. Visconti, was not within the law. You are mistaken. I
was only trying to recover from you M. Visconti's property."
"His property?" said Sam.
"A moment, captain. Before moving in this matter I required and
received from M. Visconti a document stating that these things were his
property, and empowering me to get them back for him by what means I
could. I dictated that document to him. It does not matter to me in the
least what truth there is in it; what matters to me is that it clears
my hands. I am only his agent acting on certain advice, and under
Italian law nothing can be done to me acting as agent for him with such
a document in my hand. Under Italian law _you_ could sue me for taking
these things from you by what you might call a trick, but under Italian
law you would have first to prove that they were yours. Which you could
not do. You see, captain? I was a very cautious man."
"Maybe," said Sam. "But I think you are also a dashed scoundrel, if
you'll excuse me for saying so."
"No, captain, not more than yourself. It is all a game of gambling,
nothing more. We are all playing with the loaded dice, nothing more. In
what I am saying to you now, I am quite honest. Beware of M. Visconti.
He is a dangerous man; he feels himself to have been done in this deal,
and he will have his revenge, as the gamblers say. Take my advice,
captain, and cut off his hands. Give him this Aphrodite and keep the
rest. There is such a thing as hush-money, captain, and it is very
useful money. It buys silence, which is sometimes better than gold, as
your English proverb says."
Sam turned to the others.
"Have I a free hand to deal in this matter?" asked he of Bobby and
Martia.
"Yes," said Bobby, "I'll leave it to you, Sam."
Martia agreed.
"Good," said Pirelli, "now we talk sense. This is my position, captain;
for what I have done in this case I have been paid, but I do not hide
it from you I get a commission as well on what I can secure from you.
On the Aphrodite I would get my commission. You see I am straight with
you. But leaving that to one side, as a man to a man, I advise you to
buy the silence and the friendship of M. Visconti by this concession.
There, I have said it."
Martia watched with interest to see how Sam would react to this
temptation.
He sat seemingly lost in thought for a minute. Then he spoke.
"Tell Visconti from me," said Sam, "that if he had acted as a gentleman
I would have given him not only the Aphrodite, but half of the other
things we have on board, seeing that we crabbed his expedition. Tell
him that he invited me on board his ship as a guest and outraged the
laws of hospitality by using what I said in conversation with him for
his own ends and to my disadvantage. Got that down? Tell him I would
sink my ship with all on board, or run it on the rocks, or hand it over
to the Customs, before I would let him profit by his conduct to me.
And tell him," finished Sam, "that he can go to the devil for all I
care, that I am running this show for no profit for myself but entirely
for two friends, and that I have only two ambitions; one is to see it
safely through, and the other is to kick him. That's all."
"That's right; that's splendid," said Martia enthusiastically.
"Ah well, ah well," said Pirelli, seeing the game was up, "it is all
very unfortunate. You will not take my advice. I can do no more. Well,
captain, a pleasant voyage to you, and one word in your ear from a
friend to a friend; beware of M. Visconti. I see you will not deal
at all and I am not saying this to frighten you, for you are a brave
man and not to be treated as a child. The affair now leaves me. I
have acted for M. Visconti as best I could. I receive my payment and
everything is done as far as Alfredo Pirelli is concerned. But I give
you this piece of advice as a present: beware of M. Visconti."
He rose, bowed to Martia, and went on deck.
CHAPTER XXVIII
WEST
They watched him row off to the _Santa Margharita_.
It was still a flat calm, and the _Santa Margharita_ lay, the looking
glass of the sea mirroring her ugliness, and a slight swell rolling her
to show her foul copper sheathing.
They saw Pirelli go on board and vanish below. A minute later the water
poured at her stern, and they heard the tramp of her engine.
"She's making off back to Genoa," said Sam. "I wonder if Visconti is on
board."
"Most likely," replied Bobby. "And I wonder would it have been better
to have given him something to keep him quiet."
"You mean the Aphrodite?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's a thing I couldn't do," replied Sam. "It's not only
that the chap played me such a dirty trick. It's just this: If I had
consented to a thing like that, it would have been practically going
partners with him. I draw the line at that. If we are caught we are at
least caught playing our own game and not confederates of a rogue like
that."
"That's just how I feel," put in Martia, "and I think it was splendid
the way you turned him down straight without a moment's hesitation."
Bobby felt out of count. He also felt that he was figuring in Martia's
eyes as a somewhat sordid person ready to buy safety at too high a
price. All the same, he did not draw back from the position he had
taken, though he said nothing more as he stood watching the last of the
_Santa Margharita_ vanishing now beyond the cape that hid Genoa.
The calm still held the _Lorna_ in its grip. If Visconti, turning
vicious, chose to apprise the Genoese port authorities, nothing could
be easier than for the Customs to send a fast launch out and capture
the _Lorna_ where she lay. She was beyond the three-mile limit, but
port authorities don't bother about the fraction of a mile, and there
are no mile-stones, anyway, to show exactly where the limit begins.
"All the same," said Bobby, "I believe we will have trouble with that
chap yet. From what we know of him, he seems to be an extremely wily
bird, and he's got power behind him. Anyway, he's able to do things.
Look at his record. He gets word of Hyalos by some chance. He fits
out the _Margharita_. He engages those sponge-fishers from Ægina to
meet him there. He comes to Hyalos and finds us on the spot. He gets
you, Sam, on to his ship and hypnotises you with the aid of champagne
into telling him the whole of our business. I'm not rubbing it in,
Sam, I'm just showing you the man we have to deal with. What does he
do then? Fancying that we have scooped everything of value in Hyalos
he vanishes, to swoop on us at Genoa in the form of Pirelli. We have
escaped for a moment, but it's my opinion we haven't done with him yet."
"I don't see what he can do now," replied the skipper; "unless he goes
back now and gives the show away to the harbour people at Genoa. Even
then he'd have to get a warrant to arrest us. That all takes time.
Anyhow, once we are clear away from here we're safe."
"How about England? It will take us three weeks to get home, and he can
get there in two days from here, overland."
Sam did not reply to this. His eyes had caught sight of something far
away to the east, a dulling of the water beyond the sea dazzle. It was
the wind.
In a moment the _Lorna_ was alive again, the hands hauling on the
halyards and the great mainsail rising like a kite to the blue; the
gaskets were cast off the jib, and Sam sprang to the wheel as the
forefoot of the breeze struck them, and the banging of blocks and the
creak of cordage sounded as the main boom lifted and shifted, sweeping
across the deck to starboard, the sail filling and tugging at the sheet.
The _Lorna_ sprang away like a spurred horse.
When the east wind comes like that in the Mediterranean, after a calm,
it blows.
The _Lorna_ was running almost rail under. Down below, things that had
not been secured were fetching away, and Sam, for a moment, was in two
minds about reducing sail. But he held on.
Then the first great booming gusts flattened down into a strong, steady
sailing wind, and handing the wheel over to Bowler, he turned to talk
to the others.
They were safe, for the moment at least. With the start they had, and
the speed they were making, no boat out of Genoa would overhaul them
before they had cleared Italian waters. Later that afternoon, away to
starboard, the Maritime Alps showed the spur they push towards Oneglia,
and that night, hauling closer inshore, they saw a spray of light
through the night glass, a glittering ribbon--the lights of Monte Carlo.
At dawn, in cloudless weather, Antibes showed away on the starboard
quarter; then Cape Camarat loomed across the blue, and far ahead the
islands of Hyères beckoned to them, rose from the sea, and sank behind
them. Whatever they had done at Hyalos they had not offended the gods
who preside over the winds of the Mediterranean, for the wind from the
east and south of east never failed them. It held true and hard and
steady as they passed the Balearics and gave Cape Nao the good-bye,
pursued them, laughing and shouting, past Cape Palos; showed them the
cold, white ridges of the Sierra Nevada on the northern sky-line,
chased them at last through the straits into the arms of the gods who
rule the Atlantic.
Then things became different, with a dirty sky and head winds against
which they had to fight from St. Vincent to Finisterre.
Then the Bay of Biscay played with them for five long days, with light
and variable winds and a ground swell that seemed to have come up from
Cape Horn.
Ushant passed them on into a fog, and the chance of being rammed
by everything turning that villainous corner. Then the fog, like a
suddenly raised dish-cover, lifted, and behold they were in a world of
east wind, blue sky, and hard, emerald sea; a cold, bright beautiful
world with winter-locked England a line on the horizon to port.
Then came the Dorset coast, and next morning at dawn the Isle of Wight
far ahead, the Needles light just winking out, and Poole Harbour only
four or five hours' sail away.
Down in the cabin, over an early breakfast, with the deck in charge
of Bowler, Sam gave it as his opinion that, barring some catastrophe
unimagined and inconceivable, the expedition was over and a success.
"Unless," put in Bobby, "that beast of a Visconti doesn't play us some
last trick."
"There's only one trick he can play us," said Sam, "and that's Customs.
And I know the Customs men at Poole. And, besides, this has nothing to
do with Customs, although the Government, if they were to be applied
to by the Greek Government, might use the Customs to collar the things
pending investigations. I don't believe that trouble will arise."
"Well, suppose it doesn't?" asked Bobby. "What are we to do with the
things when we arrive? We've got to get them ashore and put them
somewhere till we are able to see Behrens and ask how they are to be
disposed of."
"I thought of that only yesterday," replied the other. "I asked Bowler
did he know of any place handy for storing things. And there's a
cottage close to his that's empty. We can shove them there. They'd be
safe as houses whilst we run up to Town, for he'll be there to look
after them."
A couple of hours later, as they stood on deck, the sandbanks showed
ahead, and the entrance to the great harbour, lying idle, wrapped in
its winter sleep.
Only gulls greeted them as they came in, gulls from Brownsea Island
and the slob lands and sandbanks, crying and creaking on the cold east
wind, flying across the cloudless blue against which stood Corfe Castle
in the far distance.
Sam steered, with Bowler for'ard on the look-out; Bobby and the girl
standing by, as they picked their way by the sea marks that showed the
road to Poole town.
Martia, wrapped in a heavy coat of Sam's, scarcely spoke a word. They
were home at last, safe home, and against that background of winter
land and flying gulls the whole remembered picture of the last few
months seemed unbelievable. They were home with everything they had
started to do accomplished. Home, with no one to greet them but the
gulls.
The tide was coming in with them, gurgling against the stakes and
sea-marks. The _Sandfly_ showed close at her anchorage, snugged down
for winter, and near the _Sandfly_ a barge swung, turning to the tide
on her chain, dead and cheerless-looking as a coffin. And now the quay
of Poole, with an old brig moored alongside, could be clearly seen,
even to its bollards, but with not a soul moving on it.
"Ready there with the anchor?" came Sam's voice.
Then, a moment later, the call to let go, a splash, and the rattle of
the chain, and the _Lorna Doone_ swung to her moorings, the canvas
slatting in the wind, and the long voyage over.
And still not a soul on the shore to see them or a voice to greet them.
Bowler, Church, Atherfield, and Glastonbury, as indifferent to the
whole business as Poole itself, dropped below to get their dunnage
together, after having stowed the canvas.
Sam lit a pipe.
"Well, here we are," said Sam. "I said she was a beauty, and she is."
"Who?" asked Martia, astonished at this cryptic remark.
"Who? Why, the _Lorna_. Close-hauled or going with the wind she's not
to be beaten."
"That's so," said Bobby; "and look."
A figure showed on the quay. It came along to the boat steps, got into
a scow that was moored there, and pushed off, rowing towards them.
It was Bowler's brother.
Not a word of welcome as he came alongside, scarcely a nod. They might
have just come back from a sail in the Solent for all the emotion
exhibited by Bowler's brother on their return.
"Hallo!" said Sam.
"Hallo!" answered the brother of Bowler.
"I'll be wanting you to help us take some things on shore," said Sam.
"Right y'are," said the longshoreman, taking in his oars and tying up
to a channel-plate, whilst the fo'c'sle crowd came up from below with
their bags.
Bowler himself came last.
"When I've got the chaps ashore, sir," he said, "I'll come back to do
any cleanin'-up there's to be done, and to help you ashore with them
bits of things. Glastonbury's willin' to stay and look after the ship
till this evenin', if you're wantin' him."
"Right," said Sam. "I'll pay you off to-night at the inn. Tell them
we'll be coming off in an hour or so, and we'll be staying the night,
and we'll want dinner. I'll want you to come on board this evening when
Glastonbury goes and stay as watchman. We'll get some of the things off
before dark and the rest in the morning. Church, I'll want you to help
us. Go off and see your wife now, but I'll want you at four o'clock."
"Right, sir," said Church.
Then the crew, getting into the boat--but not before Martia had shaken
hands with each one of them--pushed off, the boat having orders to
return in an hour.
"'Them bits of things,'" quoted Martia with a laugh. "Could we have
found a port in the whole world safer than here--for our purpose?"
"No," said Bobby, "we couldn't."
CHAPTER XXIX
VISCONTI
Landing an hour later, after a hurried luncheon on board, and leaving
Glastonbury to look after the ship, the adventurers made for the inn,
engaged rooms, and then, under the guidance of Sam, turned in the
direction of the Bournemouth Road, where Bowler's cottage was situated.
Sam knew the place. He knew nearly everyone in Poole, and where they
lived, and how. He knew that Bowler had paid for his cottage and for
the one adjoining which he had bought last summer out of the profits of
the herring fishery, and which he intended to furnish and let in the
summer to come.
"A lucky thing it's empty," said Sam, as he led the way. "Once we have
the things here it's only a question of a motor-lorry to shift them
when we know where Behrens wants them taken to. I'll get Taylor to
bring his cart down to the quay at four o'clock to bring them up here."
"Won't people suspect?" asked Martia.
"Lord, no! It's me, you see. Besides, there's nothing to suspect.
It's only crockery ware and curiosities we have brought from abroad.
Joynson--he's the Customs man--knows me, and I'll have a talk with him.
Here we are."
He stopped at a cottage on the right of the road.
"Here's the place," said he. "Bowler's is just beyond. Wait, and I'll
get the key from him."
He went off, and returned in a minute with the key, opened the door,
and they went in.
It was a five-roomed cottage, counting the kitchen; clean and dry and
empty of everything but a sack of potatoes reposing by the fireplace of
the front room.
Carrying the key with them, they went to the post-office to send a wire
to Behrens, announcing their safe arrival. Then they returned to the
inn.
Entering, they almost ran into the arms of a tall black-bearded man who
was coming out, his hat on the back of his head and a cigarette between
his lips.
It was Visconti! Sam recognised him at once, and whispered the name to
the others.
The inn coming crashing down before their eyes, or even on the top of
their heads, would scarcely have surprised them more.
And it was a double surprise, for Visconti did not try to avoid
them, did not seem startled. He recognised Sam with a smile that had
something of mockery in it, raised his hat to the girl, and passed out
without a word and with the cigarette still between his lips.
"Well, I'm dashed!" said Sam.
Martia, who had only seen Visconti through the glass at Hyalos, turned
to Sam.
"You are sure it's he?" she asked.
"Yes," said Sam.
She turned to the office, behind the window of which the manageress of
the inn was seated, doing accounts.
"Is that tall gentleman who has just gone out staying here?" she asked.
"Yes," replied the manageress. "He has been here some days."
"May I ask his name?"
"He is Mr. Visconti."
Martia thanked the woman, and, turning to her companions, led the way
into the coffee-room, which was empty.
CHAPTER XXX
CORNERED
A bright fire was burning in the grate. Without a word she drew a chair
towards it and sat down, whilst Bobby and Sam took their seats, one at
the side of the table, the other on the couch by the door.
For half a minute none of them spoke.
It was Martia who broke the silence.
"He has been here waiting for us," said she. Then turning to Sam: "You
must have told him that the boat came from Poole. I don't blame you. It
was just the thing one might say in conversation, and you did not know
he was a rogue."
"I blame myself," said Sam. "No, I didn't know he was a rogue, but I
shouldn't have had all that champagne and stuff. I've let you two down.
Well, there it is."
He crossed his arms.
"Yes," replied Martia. "There it is, and there's no use crying over
spilt milk. The question is, what are we to do? I don't like the thing
at all. He comes here to wait for us, conceals nothing, not even his
name, and meets us like that with a smile, knowing quite well that we
know all about his hand in the Genoa business. You remember Pirelli's
warning to beware of what he might do? I feel that he is a terribly
dangerous man and a terribly clever one. I would much rather he had
concealed himself and tried to steal the things from us by a trick, as
he did at Genoa."
Sam uncrossed his arms, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
Bobby rose and came to the fire, leaning on the mantelpiece.
"You're right," he said. "He must have something up his sleeve or he
wouldn't be acting openly as he is."
"He has nothing up his sleeve," said Sam, talking as though he were
addressing the pattern on the carpet. "It's just this: we can't fight
him, and he knows it. Our business is shady; that's his strength."
"But why didn't he speak to us?"
"I don't know. We've got to wait and see. We'll leave the first move
to him, and I'll go on getting the stuff on shore. I'm not going to be
stopped by him, or show that we are a bit afraid."
"All the same," said Bobby, "if we bring any of the stuff on shore
to-night, I'll sleep in the cottage with it."
"Yes," said Sam. "Either you or I will keep watch, and we'll have news
from Behrens in the morning what to do about it. You'd better drop him
a note this evening giving him details."
At four o'clock, Bowler turning up, they put off to the _Lorna_. Sam
had obtained hampers for the packing of the vases. This work and the
transportation of the things to the cottage took them until eight
o'clock, when they returned to the inn for supper, leaving Bowler on
guard at the cottage. Glastonbury had consented to stay on board the
ship for the night as watchman.
There was no sign of Visconti at the inn. They found from the waiter
that he had dined at six o'clock and gone to Bournemouth; to the
theatre.
It was an unfortunate day for the expedition, and a still more
unfortunate day for Bobby. At nine o'clock, leaving the others in the
coffee-room, he went out to smoke a pipe, taking his way along the
quays by the light of a nearly full moon. Away across the harbour water
he could see the anchor-light of the _Lorna Doone_, and beyond her
the ghostly silhouette of the _Sandfly_ at her moorings; but he was
thinking neither of ships nor of the expedition just completed, nor of
the beauty of the cold, clear winter's night. He was thinking of Martia.
He was free now, free to say to her what he wanted to say, to tell her
what she must have guessed by this--that she was the only woman in the
world so far as he was concerned. She had never given him what one
might call encouragement; they had been shipmates and friends, that
was all; but he knew, or fancied he knew, that all would be right.
The only thing holding him back was his position. If things turned
out well, if Behrens were able to dispose of the marbles taken from
Hyalos, his worldly position would be assured. They were worth a very
large sum, perhaps fifty thousand pounds, perhaps more. The energy and
activity of Visconti in the matter was a guarantee of their worth, and
he, Bobby, was to receive half the profits. Sam had always definitely
refused to share, though, when it came to the point, Bobby had
determined to make him share. Leaving that aside, if things went well,
Bobby would be well off; if they went the other way he would be as poor
as when they started.
He was not the man to ask a woman to share his poverty. No. He could
say nothing to Martia till the money was secure, and that could not be
till Visconti was defeated in whatever plans he had made against them,
and until Behrens had written his cheque and the cheque was cashed.
He turned from the end of the wharf into a mean street that led him by
big warehouses to a path that opened on to the Bournemouth Road. Poole,
that once prosperous shipping port, is, especially on a winter's night
like this, a town of the dead. Not a soul did he meet on his way, and
the road beneath the moon showed nothing but a light from Bowler's
cottage and, as he drew closer, Bowler himself smoking a pipe on guard
outside.
He gave the old sailor good-night and, returning to the inn, knocked
his pipe out in the porch.
He felt suddenly easy in his mind. The deserted town, the fact that
Bowler was on guard at the cottage, and that Glastonbury was taking
charge of the _Lorna_, conspired to create this feeling. All would
be well. There was nothing to fear. This was England, not Italy, and
Visconti, whatever he might attempt, would fail. As he came into the
lighted hall his spirits had risen to the point of exultation.
He was fey.
He put his hat on the rack, and came towards the coffee-room.
Now, the coffee-room of the _Anchor_ is situated at the end of a short
passage floored with thick matting that takes a footstep without a
sound. The coffee-room door was a bit open, and as he reached it a
voice broken made him pause; Sam's voice, broken with emotion:
"I swear to you, Martia, I will never commit that foolishness again.
Never again. I have done with drink of any sort for ever--if you will
only believe me."
And Martia's voice:
"I believe you, and I will trust you. I would have said nothing about
it, only that marriage is a thing more serious even than life--it is
the lives of two people for always and always."
Then a sound as though Sam were snivelling and the girl comforting him.
Bobby turned and stole away. He came into the hall and went to the
hat-rack, put on his hat, absolutely unconscious of what he was doing,
stood for a moment as if undecided, and then stumbled up the stairs to
his bedroom.
So that was it. Martia was engaged to Sam. Not only in love with him,
evidently, but engaged to him. He walked the room with his hat still on
his head, recognising the plain fact yet unable to accommodate his mind
to it.
Then slowly, and little by little, the monstrousness of the whole
business began to piece itself together like the picture that makes a
jig-saw puzzle.
This pair had never shown the least sign of mutual attachment from
start to finish of the voyage--if Sam's lapses from sobriety were left
out of count. Then immediately after landing they were carrying on like
this!
At the beginning of things, when they had first met, it was evident
that they had known each other before; but they had said not one word
of recognition. He remembered how Sam had shaved off his beard when he
had heard that Martia was joining them.
Bobby, trying to think, sat down on the side of his bed and took off
his hat, flung it in a corner of the room, and nursed his knee.
From the very first there had been a mystery in their relationship;
yet the solution of that mystery--mutual love masked and hidden--was
antagonistic to all he knew about them and their relationship on the
voyage. Yet there was no way of refusing it.
"I believe you and I will trust you. I would have said nothing about
it, only that marriage is a thing more serious even than life."
When a girl talks like that to a man and comforts him when he snivels,
what more is to be said? Well, there was one good thing, anyhow. Now
that he knew how things lay, he was saved from making a fool of himself
by asking Martia to marry him. This thought, however, brought little
comfort.
The iron had literally entered his soul. He had not known the intensity
and power of his love for this girl till now that it had been stricken
down, a thing ruined yet living still--ruined yet living still.
He rose and opened the window and looked into the night, telling
himself that whatever happened in the future, nothing mattered now.
CHAPTER XXXI
BEHRENS
If the body had not the power to accommodate itself to injuries, and
the mind to disasters and the tricks of Fate, the world would be
depopulated in a hundred years or inhabited only by cripples.
Bobby awoke next morning feeling as a man might feel who has suddenly
lost a limb, but determined all the same to carry on, keep a stiff
upper lip, and say nothing.
All the same he avoided the others, going without breakfast and turning
up only when the work began, at ten o'clock.
Sam and Martia found him waiting on the quay by the boat slip.
Sam looked at him curiously.
"Where on earth have you been?" he asked. "We waited breakfast nearly a
quarter of an hour for you."
"I had a beastly headache," said Bobby, "and went for a walk. Have you
seen anything of Visconti?"
"Not a sign," replied the other. "But he's in the hotel. I asked the
maid, and she told me he came back late last night from Bournemouth and
was breakfasting in his own room. Then half an hour later, just as we
were coming down here, I got this from him. Read it."
He handed a sheet of letter-paper to Bobby, who read:
"Mr. Visconti would be glad of an interview with Captain Hackett
and his companions. Would twelve o'clock--here, in Mr. Visconti's
sitting-room--suit Captain Hackett? A verbal reply will suffice."
"What did you say?" asked Bobby.
"I said 'yes.'"
"You were right. It's better to see the bounder and have it out with
him. Anyhow, we've forced him to make the first move. There's been no
letter or wire from Behrens yet?"
"None," said Sam. "I think it highly probable Old Man Behrens will
bundle into the train and come down himself instead of writing. I wish
he were here now, that we might consult him."
Martia, who had taken her seat on a bollard, looked up.
"I wonder would it be any use sending a telegram to Mr. Behrens to come
at once," said she, "and putting off the interview with Visconti till
the evening?"
"No," said Sam, after a moment's thought, "I don't like putting him
off. I've a feeling we ought to get to grips with him at once. Besides,
it would be a sign of weakness. What could Behrens do, anyway? No,
we've got to fight this thing ourselves. Anyhow, there's a chance that
Behrens may turn up before twelve. He got our wire yesterday and he
hasn't answered it." He looked at his watch. "Confound Bowler! Why
hasn't he turned up? It's gone ten."
"Let's go and fetch him," said Bobby.
They left the quay and came by the side lane on to the Bournemouth
Road, where they found Bowler, who had just left his cottage. As they
met him a taxi-cab coming from Bournemouth drew up, the door flung
open, and out bundled a little old man with a brown bag in his hand. It
was Behrens.
* * * * *
His keen eyes had spotted the group in the road and recognised Bobby
and the girl.
"It's Mr. Behrens!" cried Martia, moving towards him. "Oh, how
fortunate!"
"I got the early train. It didn't come farther than Bournemouth, so I
had to take a cab," said the old fellow, giving his bag to Bobby and
feeling in his pocket for the money to pay the taxi man. "There's your
fare and sixpence over. No, I'll walk to the inn, wherever it is. And
now let's look at you," said he, holding Martia a bit away from him.
"Knew I was right. You're a different person. Nothing like a sea voyage
after all. Different person. Brought any things?"
"Heaps," cut in Bobby. "We've got some of the stuff ashore, vases
mostly, but the best of them are still on board the ship."
"Then let's go to the ship and look at them," said Behrens.
"But don't you want some breakfast?" asked the girl.
"Breakfasted on the train," replied the art dealer. "And what do you
call the best of them?"
"Marbles," said Bobby. "I think you'll be pleased when you see them. I
couldn't say much in my letter from Genoa, but you'll see."
They reached the quay, where the boat was tied up to the steps, and,
rowed by Bowler, they put off for the _Lorna_.
Behrens said nothing on the way across. The consuming passion of his
life had him in its grip. Marbles! What might not that word, so capable
of magic interpretation, mean now? Marbles from the mystic city of
Hyalos. Marbles perhaps from the chisel of Praxiteles. He scrambled
on board, nearly losing his hat as he did so but still dumb. Still
voiceless, he followed them below, and mute as a fish he stood while
in the after-cabin Martia gently removed the bunk coverlet from the
smiling Aphrodite, the far-gazing, beautiful figure on the face of
which seemed to lie like a veil the sunlight of the Golden Age.
Breathing deeply and swallowing hard, Behrens helped the others to
raise her and rest her standing against the bunk edge, and then,
and only then, drawing back and folding his hands, he found voice,
murmuring to himself, talking in his beard, lost to everything but the
vision before him.
"You are pleased?" asked Martia.
"There is none other like her," said Behrens, speaking like a man in a
dream. "Beside her the Milo is a woman."
Then, with one long last look, he turned and went into the main cabin,
followed by the others, who led him to where the rest of the marbles
waited inspection.
A quarter of an hour later, a business man again and seated at
the cabin table, Behrens, a cigarette between his lips, was being
introduced to the skeleton in the cupboard of the expedition--that is
to say, the subject of Visconti.
It was Sam who did the talking, hiding nothing, and the art dealer,
whose life had been spent in a struggle with rogues and scoundrels,
sat listening to the recital, apparently unmoved, with scarcely a
question. But Martia noticed something in his face that she had never
seen before, something grim, almost repellent; something that seemed to
alter the colour of his eyes, maybe by broadening the pupils. This was
a new Behrens, different from the kindly and almost fatherly individual
she had known from childhood.
She had never seen Behrens in one of his great auction fights, fronting
the hounds of the art-dealing world; she had never seen him up a tree
with an old missal or a Benvenuto Cellini vase under his arm, and the
wolves of the trade leaping for him with their bids, he always climbing
higher; she had never seen him, in fact, with his teeth bared for fight
and the ugly part of his nature in command.
"And this gentleman," said Behrens, "is now at the inn waiting to
receive you and blackmail you at twelve o'clock?"
"That's about the size of it," said Sam.
"And he offered, through this man Pirelli, to say nothing if you would
hand him over the Aphrodite?"
"Yes."
"H'm," said Behrens, and relapsed into thought.
"All the same," put in Bobby, "I don't believe he can do anything."
"I beg your pardon?" said Behrens. "How do you mean?"
"I don't believe he can hurt us if we tell him frankly to go to the
devil."
"He has gone there long ago," said Behrens. "And you are mistaken. He
can cause trouble. Now this is how we are placed. It is not a question
of money for me. You have recovered these things for me, and on the
information given to you by me, and I have financed the expedition. I
intend to pay you, Mr. Lestrange, one-half of what I consider to be
their value. I had intended selling these things at a profit, but,
now that I have seen them, all that is gone. I will never sell these
things. They are so lovely that they are part of my life. At my death
they will go to the world with the story of how they were obtained,
giving none of your names, just saying where and how I got them.
"It will be the fitting postscript to the life of an art-dealer who
loved art more than money. There will be much talk, much fighting over
these things when I am dead. The Greek Government will have its say,
the English Government, too. But they, the lovely things, will remain,
whatever Government gets them, with my name attached to them for ever.
That will be my little monument erected not to me so much as to the
fact that I salved these things from the sea and gave them to the world.
"Now, if you had brought home inconsiderable things, even though
valuable, I would say to Mr. Visconti, 'Dog, take your bone and be
silent.' But the case is different. I must deal differently with Mr.
Visconti. He asked you to be with him at twelve o'clock. Well, you
must send your man now to the inn and ask him to be with you at twelve
o'clock. Tell him to come here to this ship, interview him in this
cabin, and I will be in that little cabin with the door half-shut. I
will hear what he has to say, and--leave the rest to me. I believe I
will be able to say a word after I hear what line he is talking. I was
not born yesterday, Mr. Lestrange, and my life has been spent very much
in a continual struggle with rogues."
"Will he come?" said Sam.
"You must send and tell him to come," replied Behrens. "I would not
write. Just send your man with the word."
"He'll come all right," said Bobby. "He's cool enough to do anything.
Tell Bowler to say you are sorry you can't go to the inn, as you are
busy, but that you will be glad if he'll come to the ship. He knows
most of our men are on shore, so he'll not fear us kidnapping him or
anything like that. He'll come right enough."
Sam went on deck and gave the message to Bowler, who took it ashore.
Then, between them, they lifted the Aphrodite back into the bunk and
covered her with the quilt.
Ten minutes later Martia, who had gone on deck to prospect, came down
with the news that Visconti had evidently accepted the invitation, as
he was coming down the quay to the boat.
"And now," said Behrens, "not a word as to me. I will just listen to
this gentleman who is coming off so boldly, thinking that the trump
cards are his. Well, well, we shall see."
He went into the after cabin and half closed the door.
CHAPTER XXXII
A GREAT ART DEALER
Visconti, as he came on board, found Bobby waiting to receive him.
"I have come----" said Visconti.
"I know," cut in Bobby. "You have come to see Mr. Hackett. Follow me,
please."
He led the way down to the cabin, where Martia was sitting on the couch
and Sam standing by the table.
Sam nodded curtly to the visitor and pointed to a seat. Martia did
not even incline her head. She sat looking at this man who had been
pursuing them for so many weeks, looking at him and wondering, for
Visconti seemed completely and entirely at his ease, and, as he sat
down and placed his hat on the floor beside him, might have been a
friend, or at all events some visitor paying a friendly call.
It was Sam who opened the business.
"I didn't see you at Genoa," said Sam, "but I saw your agent, Pirelli.
I daresay he told you what I said about you. Well, what's your
business?"
"Quite simple, captain," replied Visconti. "It has to do with your
cargo. One word. You feel aggrieved that, coming to Hyalos as I did
with an expedition costing much money, only to find that you had
forestalled me--you feel aggrieved, I say, that, this being so, I have
done what I have done. Well, I will explain."
"You never can explain away the fact that you asked me to dinner to
pump me of information," replied Sam. "There is a lady present, so I
can't tell you in plain English what I think of that business. However,
go on."
"I will go on," replied the other, quite unmoved. "I make no apologies.
Business is business, and in this world, captain, there is no such
thing as friendship in business."
"There's honour."
"Perhaps," replied Visconti. "But we will not talk of honour in a
question that has to do with stolen antiques."
"Stolen?" cried Sam.
"Shut up, Sam!" cut in Bobby. "Don't lose your temper. Yes, Mr.
Visconti, go on. Stolen antiques, you were saying."
"Precisely," replied Visconti. "Stolen antiques. Though, believe me, I
do not wish to press that point on you more than just to touch you with
it."
"Like the point of a dagger," said Bobby. "With a threat that the
dagger will be driven home if we don't consent to share the swag."
"The illustration is highly coloured, but not without verisimilitude."
Visconti smiled. "Now let us talk like reasonable men. Stolen is a
nasty word. I do not believe that either of you gentlemen would consent
to theft in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Nor would I. But you
have done what I would have done had I been able. You have taken from
the sea those things that belong to no man, but to which a certain
Government might lay claim."
"No Government could claim them," said Sam, "any more than they could
claim the fish swimming in Hyalos Bay. These things belonged only to
the men who owned them, and they've been dead two thousand years."
"No doubt," said Visconti. "But all the same--and you know it quite
well, captain--if I were to give this information an embargo would be
laid on these things pending enquiry and the decision of the courts.
The law would take them into its hand and years would be spent in
litigation. You would win your case, perhaps, but you would be ruined
with the expenses. That is so, captain. I ask for a just share. My
expedition, which was frustrated, cost me much. Four thousand pounds
would not cover all, including Mr. Pirelli's charges. I am content
with a small share in return for saying nothing. I ask only for the
Aphrodite which you showed to Mr. Pirelli. She will suffice me."
"And if we don't consent?"
"Then," said Visconti, "I will speak. This is no vain threat, captain.
I will speak, and that immediately--tell the whole thing to the
authorities."
"Yes; and what will they say? They will ask you what you were doing at
Hyalos. You can't lie, for you hired those sponge-fishermen from Ægina
to help you."
"I will say I was looking for a new ground for sponge-fishing," replied
Visconti, without turning a hair. "Don't be deceived, captain. I can
answer all enquiries. Well, what shall we say? Will it be silence
and safety for you, or speech? You know me, and you know enough of
me by now to realise that, being set on this matter, I will have no
compunction. It is a gambling game, and if I don't have a share of the
pool I will have my--what the gamblers call--revenge."
Sam looked at Bobby. He knew this scamp was speaking the truth, and
that he would, if baulked, do as he said. He wished that Behrens would
take a hand in the business, and he cast a sidelong glance at the
door of the after-cabin. But the door was still half closed, and the
concealed listener showed no sign.
It was Martia who spoke next.
"May I ask one thing?" said she. "How did you know of Hyalos?"
"That, mademoiselle, is my secret," replied Visconti. "And, quite
honestly, the question has often occurred to me--how did _you_ know of
Hyalos? How was it that our two expeditions coincided?"
As if in answer to this question, the door of the after cabin suddenly
opened and Behrens stood before them.
"Good-day, Visconti," said Behrens.
Visconti, who had been sitting with his back half turned to the door,
rose and stared at the apparition that had suddenly materialised.
Martia, watching, saw him draw back slightly with the movement of
the animal about to attack or be attacked. Instantly she knew that
he feared Behrens, and from then on she watched the proceedings
breathlessly and with the interest that drama only can give to the
gazer.
"Good-day, Visconti," said Behrens, advancing from the door. "Pray take
a seat. This, Mr. Lestrange, is my foreign agent and half-partner,
Gabriel Visconti, to whom, the day before I spoke of the matter to you,
I entrusted the secret of Hyalos, asking him to take the matter up and
work it for me on a half-share basis. He turned the matter down; said
he did not believe there was anything to it; doubted the legality of it
if there was.
"He turned the matter down as far as I was concerned. He wanted it all
for himself. He left England and fitted out his own expedition, not
knowing that I had secured you, Mr. Lestrange, and that I was fitting
out an expedition myself. Silence, Visconti; let me finish speaking! He
met you at Hyalos, found you had forestalled him, and pursued you here,
where he meets old Behrens, the man who has always befriended him and
whom he betrayed. It is very funny."
Bobby heaved a deep sigh. All at once he remembered where he had heard
Visconti's name before. The thing had worried him for weeks, but it was
clear now. It was in Museum Street, on the evening when he had called
to see Behrens, who had come to his front door to let out a visitor.
He saw in a flash of memory the tall figure of a man departing in the
lamplight, and he heard again Behrens' voice:
"Good-night, Visconti."
Everything was clear now, including the fact that the meeting of the
two expeditions was no fortuitous happening.
Meanwhile, Behrens had taken his seat at the table almost opposite to
his antagonist, who was still standing despite the invitation to be
seated.
"Well," said Behrens, "what have you to say?"
"Only this," replied the other, who having recovered from the shock of
the meeting seemed quite himself again. "How do you know that in this
matter I was not working for you as well as myself?"
Behrens laughed.
"All I can say," he replied, "is that you have been working in a queer
way. You said to me, 'There is nothing in this affair; it would not
pay to go into it, the sea has eaten these things long ago.' Then you
go off. Not a word from you. And the next I hear is that you have been
into this affair up to the ears."
"A man may change his mind," said Visconti. "In fact, that is what I
did. On second thoughts I changed my mind. I said to myself: 'Well, let
us see. It is a gamble with nearly all the numbers zeros. Yet there is
a chance.'"
"Why, then, did you not write to me and say that you were taking the
chance?"
"A man may be too proud to acknowledge an alteration of mind," said
Visconti; and Behrens laughed again.
Martia, who was watching and listening intently, noticed to her
surprise that the tone of the discussion between the two art dealers
was taking a more amicable trend. The anger and irritation had gone
from Behrens' voice and manner, though she saw at once that he did not
believe a word the other was saying. As for Visconti, he was quite
affable and calm.
She did not know that Visconti was Behrens' right-hand man in
Continental affairs, and that Behrens was an absolutely indispensable
factor in the business life of Visconti; that they were a sort of
Siamese twins. She could not appreciate the fact that though Behrens
was an honest man as men go, roguery in the domain of art dealing was
to him a lesser thing than roguery in ordinary life.
He had always found Visconti honest in money matters, but this was not
so much a money matter as an art deal. The temptation had been too
strong for Visconti to let run straight. It was a terrible temptation.
All this was evidently present now in the mind of Behrens, inclining
him to make allowances. Besides that, he did not want to break with the
other. He was too valuable.
"If you say that you went into this matter on my account, as well as
your own," said Behrens, "I cannot say that is not so, but I can say
this: going into it as you did, without my knowledge or consent, leaves
me in this position: I am quite outside your deal, which was undertaken
on your own account, and I am not responsible for any of the money you
spent. On the other hand, you are quite outside my deal and are not
responsible for any of the money I have spent. Also you do not share
in the profits. Yet I am not hard, and I will make you a concession."
Visconti leaned slightly forward.
"Another man," went on Behrens, "might say to you that your story is
open to a shade of doubt, and that doubt between principal and agent
is so undesirable that business relationship must be suspended. But
I am not an ordinary man. I am Jacob Behrens. I am worth to you many
thousand pounds a year. You are useful to me. And I say to you, Gabriel
Visconti, that I will forget your story, I will not dismiss you as my
agent, I will say nothing as long as you run straight. But should you
breathe one word of this matter, either through negligence or malice,
I will dismiss you as my agent and I will crush you, Gabriel Visconti.
Like _that_!"
The terrible old man jabbed his thumb on the table as though he were
crushing a fly.
"I will say nothing," said Visconti; and he meant it.
"One moment more," went on the other. "You do not know Jacob Behrens.
Know him now. These things that have come into my possession I hold in
trust for the world and for Greece, if she chooses to claim them. After
my death all this will be known. Not one penny will I make from them.
That is all I wish to say."
Visconti sighed. He was beaten, utterly beaten, yet he had got off
lightly. If Behrens had broken off business relationship with him it
would have been ruin, or nearly as bad.
"I will say nothing," he repeated, "only this. This
gentleman"--indicating Sam--"gave me to understand that he had taken
everything of value from the bay at Hyalos. May there not be something
left, some little statue, something worth another search?"
"There may," said Behrens. "In fact there is. But nothing more must be
taken. The tomb is sealed, unless it be my will that after my death the
matter of Hyalos is made known as part of my gift to the world with
these marbles."
Visconti sighed again.
He knew at once that all was over, that he was up against something
harder than granite--the will of Behrens; Behrens, who desired a
monument to his name and who had chosen to erect it not only from the
fragments of art salved from Hyalos but from Hyalos itself.
Then suddenly Behrens broke out:
"I will not have the world flooded with these things. Beware, Visconti."
"Be assured," said the other. "I will say nothing. Well, I will not
stay longer. I will call upon you in London on ordinary business in a
day or so. And we are to consider this incident closed?"
"Yes."
Visconti bowed to Martia.
"We have had a keen fight, and I am beaten, captain," said he, turning
to Sam; "but I bear you no grudge."
He bowed to Bobby. Then, hat in hand, he left the saloon and reached
the deck. The others came up to see him off.
"There goes a great rogue," said Sam as they watched the boat reach the
steps of the quay and Visconti stepping off.
"No, captain," said old Behrens, "only a great art dealer."
CHAPTER XXXIII
LONDON
They went below, and Behrens put on his spectacles and opened an
account-book. Seated at the cabin table, and seemingly dismissing
the marbles, Visconti, and everything else from his mind, this
extraordinary man began to go into the accounts of the voyage with
Bobby, the payment for this and that, the crew's wages, provisions
bought in Genoa, harbour dues, everything.
It took half an hour, and then, leaving the _Lorna_, they went to the
inn for luncheon. Visconti had already departed for town, so they
had the place to themselves. When luncheon was over they went to the
cottage to inspect the vases, Behrens nearly weeping at the rough
packing around them, and at the thought of what might have happened to
them.
"It was Providence," said he. "You did your best. You did well. But
how were you to know? No one but an expert should touch such things.
I will telegraph now for my man, Fernandez, to come, bringing with
him a lorry. I take charge of everything now, Mr. Lestrange, and all
responsibility. When I have weighed up matters, you shall receive your
cheque, which you will doubtless divide with your friends."
"Not with me," said Martia. "I have done nothing."
"Nor with me," said Sam. "I went for the cruise. I said so at first. I
have had the fun of the thing and that's all I want."
Now Behrens could understand all sorts and conditions of men, but he
could not understand a small yachtsman of the type of Hackett. He
thought he was mad in a mild sort of way, and he as much as said so.
"I don't want money," said Sam. "But I tell you what I will do. I'll
buy the _Lorna_ from you, if you'll let me have her cheap."
"That," said Behrens, "you must settle with Mr. Lestrange. He will act
for me in selling the ship. I know nothing of ship matters."
They returned to the inn, Sam short in his manner and feeling rather
snubbed. He could no more understand the art-dealer than the art-dealer
could understand him, or the fact that the _Lorna_ was more to Samuel
Hackett than all the treasures of Hyalos. Martia was silent and Bobby
gloomy. It was only now that the tension of the struggle with Visconti
was relaxed that Bobby came under the blighting sense that Martia was
lost to him, that she was Sam's; and that the biggest cheque that
Behrens could pay him would fail to bring him happiness.
It was past three o'clock when they reached the inn.
"I shall go up to town by the five o'clock train," said Bobby. "There's
nothing more to be done here and I wired yesterday to my landlady that
I would be back to-day or to-morrow."
"I'll go with you," said Martia. "There's nothing I can do, and mother
is expecting me. Are you staying?" turning to Sam.
"Yes," he replied. "I'll see you in town, but I'd better stay to-night
to help to look after things. And I want to have a look at the
_Sandfly_, to see how she's getting on."
Bobby went off to his room to pack, leaving the two lovers to say
good-bye. A couple of hours later, seated alone with Martia in a
first-class compartment of the Bournemouth express, it seemed to him
that disaster at the hands of Visconti would have been almost better
than this flat ending of his great adventure. What was the use of
anything now, with the only woman he would ever care a button for lost
to him as surely as that Victory they had dumped overboard in the Bay
of Hyalos?
As he sat, gloomy and distrait, whilst Martia in her corner of the
carriage was turning over the pages of an illustrated weekly and
seeming to have forgotten for a moment his existence, he went over
again in his mind the whole expedition: Genoa and the Greek bay, the
salving of the marbles, Visconti and Pirelli, and the voyage home. It
was all like a dream, the happiest dream, and it was over and done with
for ever.
His gloom and depression seemed to have communicated themselves to the
girl.
Even when the moment for parting came at Victoria, it did not help
things much in the way of cheerfulness.
"I'll come round and see you at the office," said Bobby. "I expect you
won't be settled down for a day or two, and I don't expect I'll hear
anything from Behrens yet. When he does write, and if by any chance
that cheque comes along, I am quite determined----Well, no matter. We
will talk the matter over then."
He closed the taxi-cab door on her and gave directions to the driver. A
little white hand, just stripped of its glove, came out of the window
and he took it in his. Then, as the cab drove away, he turned to see
after his luggage.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE END
It was in his rooms that night, after supper, and comfortably seated
before the fire, that Bobby's troubles began. Common-sense whispered
into his ear:
"She will never know now that you cared for her, really. Bother Sam
Hackett and her engagement to him. You should have told her, told her
in the train or at the station. Instead of that you sat dumb as a fish,
sulking. And who's Sam Hackett, anyhow, that she should care for him
more than for you? He's a nice fellow enough; but look at him. He has
neither good looks nor anything else. Is it too late to speak to her
now? Yes, it's too late. These things can only be done on the spur of
the moment. You had your chance in the train and it's gone. Imagine
calling now at the office in cold blood and saying, 'I'm awfully sorry
but I forgot to tell you something I ought to have told you before----'"
He got up and paced the room.
Next morning brought him all sorts of work that had to be attended to;
letters that had accumulated during his absence, and bills that had to
be paid. His bank balance was low. The time spent on the expedition had
been entirely unproductive in work or money. Unless Behrens paid him
that promised cheque soon, he would be in a very difficult position.
He had determined to call on Martia, but not before that cheque
arrived. He would take it with him and insist on her receiving her
share of it. Anyhow, it would be something to call about. But would it
ever arrive?
He asked himself this question on the morning following, when the post
brought him only a book catalogue and a typewriting agency's circular.
Was Behrens to be trusted?
Behrens at Poole had exhibited a new side to his character. The purely
business side. The way he had gone over the accounts, his grumble at
the expense incurred at Genoa over stores, his refusal to sell the
_Lorna Doone_ at a cheap price, when, surely, out of gratitude he might
have made Sam a present of her--all these things came back to Bobby,
together with a certain coldness in the old man's manner now that
everything was over and his ends secured.
Behrens, now that he had used the adventurers, seemed anxious to get
rid of them all--so it seemed to Bobby--and there was no legal hold
upon him, no contract, nothing.
On the morning of the third day, when the post had brought him nothing,
not even a book catalogue, Bobby made up his mind to call on Behrens.
Behrens by this time, in the super-heated atmosphere of Mr. Lestrange's
imagination, had turned into a figure almost resembling a rogue.
He would have it out with Behrens and stand no nonsense. He was
telling himself this, whilst putting on his overcoat, when a knock came
at the door and the housemaid entered with a telegram.
It was from Behrens, and ran:
"_Please see me either to-day or to-morrow._"
Half an hour later he was in Museum Street. He dismissed his cab and
entered the shop, where a young man was on guard--a foreign-looking
individual, who was engaged at a side-table making a copy of a
catalogue. This was Fernandez, Behrens' assistant, the man who had
brought the lorry down to Poole for the conveyance back to town of the
Hyalos marbles.
Fernandez said that his master was in, and was about to leave the shop
to fetch him when, gliding amongst the antiques and past a Japanese
warrior in steel armour, Behrens himself came.
He wore his skull-cap and he was smoking a cigarette through a long
amber tube. Seeing who the visitor was he came forward, then, taking
Bobby by the arm, he led the way through the back shop and upstairs to
the sitting-room on the first floor.
"Well," said Behrens, "you have come. That is good, and now we can
talk business. Take a seat and make yourself comfortable. Yes, I have
got the things to London safe and sound, and I spent all yesterday
in forming an estimate of their value. A difficult business, Mr.
Lestrange, even for me. A business so difficult that I have determined
to call in to my help, not now but at some future time, no less a
person than M. Claudin Paris. I wish to be exact in my valuation. There
is no use in talking vaguely of thousands of pounds. I wish to be
exact. But till I arrive at some settled figure I have determined to
offer you twenty."
Bobby felt as though someone had hit him on the head with a hammer.
Twenty pounds till Behrens "arrived at some settled figure"!
"Thank you," said he, "I would prefer to make them a present to you."
Behrens looked at him in astonishment.
"I do not know what is the matter with you all," he said. "I think you
must all be a little mad. First Mr. Hackett, he wants nothing; then
Martia Hare, she wants nothing; then Mr. Lestrange, he wants nothing.
Are you so rich, then, as to turn twenty thousand pounds away from you
as though they were twenty pence?"
"Twenty thousand?" cried Bobby.
Whilst he had been thinking in pounds, Behrens had been thinking in
thousands!
Then he explained, and the old man laughed, made him sit down again,
and went on:
"Yes, Mr. Lestrange, twenty thousand. Probably it will be more later
on, but that much I can assure you of. The cheque is already made out.
Here it is."
He rose and went to a desk and took out a cheque.
Bobby, taking it in his hands, looked at it, feeling like a man in a
dream.
It was an extraordinary sensation, holding that slip of paper which was
absolutely his and which represented a fortune.
Twenty thousand pounds! Many a man labours a lifetime without making
that amount, or, making it, has to spend it in outgoing expenses, so
that the end of his life finds him as poor as the beginning.
"It's good of you," was all he could find to say as he folded the
cheque in three and placed it in his pocketbook.
"No," said Behrens, "it is only business. But that cheque is no use to
you without a piece of advice. Draw that money and open an account with
it at the same bank; it's one of the best in the world. Then ask them
to invest it for you through their brokers in good sound securities.
Then go on with whatever work you have taken up. A man of your age has
no right to live on the interest of his money."
"I will do what you say," replied Bobby, "when I have seen Martia Hare,
and if she still refuses to take anything."
The old fellow grinned.
"Go on then and see her," said he, taking Bobby by the arm and leading
him down just as he had led him up. "See her and tell her old Behrens
has not forgotten her. Ah, that is a girl! Do you know, Mr. Lestrange,
why she will not take any money from this business? Well, I will tell
you what is in my thoughts. Isaac was her lover, as you know, and this
expedition would have been his had he lived. She would not make money
out of it on that account. That is what I think. It is a beautiful
thought. More beautiful even than the Aphrodite of Hyalos. Well, may
she be happy yet with some man worthy of her. That is what I pray. Yes,
come and see me again. I am always glad to see you, Mr. Lestrange, and
her."
He showed Bobby into the street.
Here the huge cheque in the young man's pocket hit him again with the
force of its eloquence. That vulgarism "money talks" expresses more
than at first hearing it seems to do.
The cheque in his pocket was telling him that Museum Street was
completely changed; that though the houses were still the same the
atmosphere was different; that though it seemed to be leading him into
New Oxford Street, it was in reality leading him into a new life.
It was only five minutes to eleven, so he determined to walk to Fleet
Street. He was wise in this, for the walk gave him time to think,
and freedom of mind to grasp and hold for a brief space the sense of
Fortune.
Never again, no matter what his success might be, would he feel like
that.
He chose to go by way of St. Martin's Lane, and then along the Strand,
taking the same road as on that morning of his first visit to Martia,
and, just as on that morning, he paused at the gunsmith's window to
look at the guns and rifles.
And, just as on that morning, his heart went out to them; these very
gods who preside over the destinies of their holders and handlers and
the lives of the beasts of the jungle and the plain.
On that first day they had made the world of Literature seem a sick
sort of place beside the world of Adventure. Since then he had tested
the latter and knew the truth.
No. Once he had settled up the business of this cheque with Martia, he
would write no more. He would seek the open spaces, where a man might
breathe freely untrammelled by the thing we call Civilisation and free
of the disease we call Love.
Again he saw the guns fading and giving place to the ghostly forms of
the beasts of the jungle and the wilderness, whilst the sound of the
Strand turned to the far-off roar of the tiger and the torrent. Then he
turned and broke the spell, and passed on his way to White Lion Court.
Yes, Miss Hare was in, and would he wait, as she was engaged for a
moment? It was just the same as on that first morning--the little
waiting-room, the table with the papers laid out on it, the far-off
clicking of typewriters, everything--just the same as though nothing
had happened and the whole expedition had been a dream.
Then he was shown into Martia's room, and here again everything was
just the same, even to the girl at the desk-table who rose to greet
him, offered him a seat, and re-took her place at the table.
"I've got the cheque," said Bobby, after they had spoken a few words.
"Behrens kept me waiting or I'd have called before. It's twenty
thousand."
"Twenty thousand pounds?"
"Yes, twenty thousand. There may be more to come when he's had the
opinion of another expert on the things, but anyhow it's not bad."
He fumbled in his pocket and produced the cheque which he handed to the
girl, who looked at it, holding it for a moment, and then returning it
to him.
He rose and placed it on the desk, and then sat down again.
"Half of that is yours," said he. "It is. I won't touch it unless you
take your share. Sam refused anything, yet but for him and for you we'd
never have pulled the business through. If you won't have it yourself,
you've got to make him take it."
"But how am I to make him?" asked she. "I have no power over Mr.
Hackett."
"Oh, yes you have. At least you will have. I've got to tell you that
I couldn't help hearing what you said to him that night at the inn. I
only heard a word, but it was enough. It told me everything."
"Word? At the inn? What on earth do you mean?"
"That you are engaged to him."
"Me? Engaged to Mr. Hackett?"
Martia looked at him as though she were doubtful as to his reason. Then
a new light came into her eyes and across her face the ghost of a smile.
"Oh, I see now what you mean. I remember what he said that night." She
laughed. "It was about Violet he was speaking."
"Violet?"
"My sister. He was engaged to her and they broke it off. It was the
stupidest thing. That is what made him take to that horrid life all
alone on a yacht. He really loved her just as she loves him. But I have
made it all right now, and they are together again."
Before this news Bobby sat stricken dumb. He saw now the whole mystery
of Sam and Martia in its proper light; the reason they had met in the
first instance as strangers, yet evidently knowing one another; the
reason Sam, the broken-hearted, had lapsed from sobriety at Genoa and
Hyalos; the whole business and his own ghastly stupidity in flying to a
wrong conclusion.
Then he leaned forward and took Martia by the hands.
She had loved him from the very first moment when he had come
blundering into the office and into her life.
She told him so presently, speaking in a calm, level voice with a trace
in her eyes of that strange remoteness which the sculptor had caught in
the eyes of the Aphrodite of Hyalos.
* * * * *
Behrens is still alive. When he is dead the artistic world will, no
doubt, receive the shock of its life, and Hyalos will perhaps deliver
up, from the Street of Hermes and the Street of the Winds, treasures
more wonderful than the Aphrodite or the ruins of the statue of Victory.
Even before that, if you have the money and the spirit of adventure
and the time to hunt--for the location which I have given you is quite
unreliable--you may forestall him and cover yourself with laurels--or,
more likely, get yourself into a Greek prison! But you will get neither
Robert Lestrange nor Samuel Hackett to assist you in the business. They
are two happily married men in an age strangely unproductive of happy
marriages.
THE END
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]
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