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Title: The Iron Pirate
A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea
Author: Max Pemberton
Release Date: September 3, 2008 [EBook #26514]
Language: English
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THE IRON PIRATE
_UNIFORM WITH THIS WORK._
KRONSTADT. By Max Pemberton.
* * *
_Other Works by the same Author._
RED MORN.
THE GIANT'S GATE.
THE GARDEN OF SWORDS.
A PURITAN'S WIFE.
THE SEA WOLVES.
THE IMPREGNABLE CITY.
THE LITTLE HUGUENOT.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED.
[Illustration: THE IRON PIRATE (_p._ 124).]
THE ...
IRON PIRATE
A PLAIN TALE OF STRANGE
HAPPENINGS ON THE SEA
MAX PEMBERTON
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE
MCMV. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
First Edition 1893.
_Reprinted_ 1894, _March and July_ 1895, 1896, 1898, 1900, 1902, 1905.
Popular Edition _July_ 1899.
_Reprinted August, September and October_ 1899, _February and July_
1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904.
Pocket Edition _August_, 1905.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Perfect Fool asks a Favour 1
II. I Meet Captain Black 13
III. "Four-Eyes" delivers a Message 31
IV. A Strange Sight on the Sea 43
V. The Writing of Martin Hall 59
VI. I Engage a Second Mate 92
VII. The Beginning of the Great Pursuit 101
VIII. I Dream of Paolo 114
IX. I Fall in with the Nameless Ship 123
X. The Spread of the Terror 140
XI. The Ship in the Black Cloak 153
XII. The Drinking Hole in the Bowery 166
XIII. Astern of the "Labrador" 180
XIV. A Cabin in Scarlet 193
XV. The Prison of Steel 198
XVI. Northward Ho! 205
XVII. One Shall Live 218
XVIII. The Den of Death 228
XIX. The Murders in the Cove 239
XX. I Quit Ice-Haven 262
XXI. To the Land of Man 274
XXII. The Robbery of the "Bellonic" 285
XXIII. I Go to London 298
XXIV. The Shadow on the Sea 308
XXV. The Dumb Man Speaks 329
XXVI. A Page in Black's Life 345
XXVII. I Fall to Wondering 371
THE IRON PIRATE.
_A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea._
CHAPTER I.
THE PERFECT FOOL ASKS A FAVOUR.
"En voiture! en voiture!"
If it has not been your privilege to hear a French guard utter these
words, you have lost a lesson in the dignity of elocution which nothing
can replace. "En voiture, en voiture; five minutes for Paris." At the
well-delivered warning, the Englishman in the adjoining buffet raises
on high the frothing tankard, and vaunts before the world his capacity
for deep draughts and long; the fair American spills her coffee and
looks an exclamation; the Bishop pays for his daughter's tea, drops the
change in the one chink which the buffet boards disclose, and thinks
one; the travelled person, disdaining haste, smiles on all with a
pitying leer; the foolish man, who has forgotten something, makes
public his conviction that he will lose his train. The adamantine
official alone is at his ease, and, as the minutes go, the knell of the
train-loser sounds the deeper, the horrid jargon is yet more
irritating.
I thought all these things, and more, as I waited for the Perfect Fool
at the door of my carriage in the harbour station at Calais. He was
truly an impossible man, that small-eyed, short-haired, stooping
mystery I had met at Cowes a month before, and formed so strange a
friendship with. To-day he would do this, to-morrow he would not;
to-day he had a theory that the world was egg-shaped, to-morrow he
believed it to be round; in one moment he was hot upon a journey to St.
Petersburg, in the next he felt that the Pacific Islands offered a
better opportunity. If he had a second coat, no man had ever seen it;
if he had a purpose in life, no man, I hold, had ever known it. And yet
there was a fascination about him you could not resist; in his visible,
palpitating, stultifying folly there was something so amazing that you
drew to the man as to that unknown something which the world had not
yet given to you, as a treasure to be worn daily in the privacy of your
own enjoyment. I had, as I have said, picked the Perfect Fool up at
Cowes, whither I had taken my yacht, _Celsis_, for the Regatta Week;
and he had clung to me ever since with a dogged obstinacy that was a
triumph. He had taken of my bread and eaten of my salt unasked; he was
not a man such as the men I knew--he was interested in nothing, not
even in himself--and yet I tolerated him. And in return for this
toleration he was about to make me lose a train for Paris.
"WILL YOU COME ON?" I roared for the tenth time, as the cracked bell
jangled and the guards hoisted the last stout person into the only
carriage where there was not a seat for her. "Don't you see we shall be
left behind? Hurry up! Hang your parcels! Now then--for the last time,
Hall, Hill, Hull, whatever your confounded name is, are you coming?"
Many guards gave a hand to the hoist, and the Perfect Fool fell upon
his hat-box, which was all the personal property he seemed to possess.
He apologised to Mary, who sat in the far corner, with more grace than
I had looked for from him, woke Roderick, who was in his fifth sleep
since luncheon, and then gathered the remnants of himself into a
coherent whole.
"Did anyone use my name?" he asked gravely, and as one offended. "I
thought I heard someone call me Hull?"
"Exactly; I think I called you every name in the Directory, but I'm
glad you answer to one of them."
"Yes, and I tell you what," said Roderick, "I wish you wouldn't come
into a railway carriage on your hands and knees, waking a fellow up
every time he tries to get a minute to himself; I don't speak for
myself, but for my sister."
The Perfect Fool made a profound bow to Mary, who looked very pretty in
her dainty yachting dress--she was only sixteen, I had known her all
her life--and he said, "I cannot make your sister an apology worthy of
her."
"If that isn't a shame, Mr. Hall," replied the blushing girl. "I never
go to sleep in railway carriages."
"No, of course you don't," said Roderick, as he made himself comfortable
for another nap, "but you may go to sleep in _a_ railway carriage;" then
with a grunt, "Wake me up at Amiens, old man," he sank to slumber.
The train moved slowly over the sandy marsh which lies between Calais
and Boulogne, and the vapid talk of the railway carriage held us to
Amiens, and after. During the second half of the long journey Roderick
was asleep, and Mary's pretty head had fallen against the cushion as
the swing of the carriage gave the direct negative to her words at
Calais station. At last, even the maker of commonplaces was silent; and
as I reclined at greater length on the cushions of the stuffy
compartment, I thought how strange a company we were then being carried
over the dull, drear pasture-land of France, to the lights, the music,
and the life of the great capital. Of the man Martin Hall--I remembered
his true name in the moments of repose--I knew nothing beyond that
which I have told you; but of my friends Roderick and Mary,
accompanying me on this wildaway journey, I knew all that was to be
known. Roderick and I had been at Caius College, Cambridge, together,
friends drawn the closer in affection because our conditions in kith
and kin, in possession and in purpose, in ambition and in idleness,
were so very like. Roderick was an orphan twenty-four years of age,
young, rich, desiring to know life before he measured strength with
her, caring for no man, not vital enough to realise danger, an
Englishman in tenacity of will, a good fellow, a gentleman. His sister
was his only care. He gave to her the strength of an undivided love,
and just as, in the shallowness of much of his life, there was matter
for blame, so in this increasing affection and thought for the one very
dear to him was there the strength of a strong manhood and a noble
work.
For myself, I was twenty-five when the strange things of which I am
about to write happened to me. Like Roderick, I was an orphan. My
father had left me £50,000, which I drew upon when I was of age; but,
shame that I should write it, I had spent more than £40,000 in four
years, and my schooner, the _Celsis_, with some few thousand pounds,
alone remained to me. Of what was my future to be, I knew not. In the
senseless purpose of my life, I said only, "It will come, the tide in
my affairs which taken at the flood should lead on to fortune." And in
this supreme folly I lived the days, now in the Mediterranean, now
cruising round the coast of England, now flying of a sudden to Paris
with one they might have called a vulgarian, but one I chose to know. A
journey fraught with folly, the child of folly, to end in folly, so
might it have been said; but who can foretell the supreme moments of
our lives, when unknowingly we stand on the threshold of action? And
who should expect me to foresee that the man who was to touch the
spring of my life's action sat before me--mocked of me, dubbed the
Perfect Fool--over whose dead body I was to tread the paths of danger
and the intricate ways of strange adventure?
But I would not weary you with more of these facts than are absolutely
necessary for the understanding of this story, surpassing strange,
which I judge it to be as much my duty as my privilege to write. Let us
go back to the Gare du Nord, and the compartment wherein Mary and
Roderick slept, while the Perfect Fool and I faced each other,
surfeited with meteorological observations, sick to weariness with
reflections upon the probability of being late or arriving before time.
I would well have been silent and dozed as the others were doing; of a
truth, I had done so had it not become very evident that the man who
had begun to bore me wished at last to say something, relating neither
to the weather nor to the speed of our train. His restless manner, the
fidgeting of his hands with certain papers which he had taken from his
great-coat pocket, the shifting of the small grey eyes, marked that
within him which suffered not show except in privacy; and I waited for
him, making pretence of interest in the great plain of hedgeless
pasture-land which bordered the track on each side. At last he spoke,
and, speaking, seemed to be the Perfect Fool no longer.
"They're both asleep, aren't they?" he asked suddenly, as he put his
hand, which seemed to tremble, upon my arm, and pointed to the
sleepers. "Would you mind making sure--quite sure--before I
speak?--that is, if you will let me, for I have a favour to ask."
To see the man grave and evidently concerned was to me so unusual that
for a moment I looked at him rather than at Roderick or Mary, and
waited to know if the gravity were not of his humour and not of any
deeper import. A single glance at him convinced me for the second time
that I did him wrong. He was looking at me with a fitful pleading look
unlike anything he had shown previously. In answer to his request I
assured him at once that he might speak his mind; that, even if
Roderick should overhear us, I would pledge my word for his good faith.
Then only did he unbosom himself and tell me freely what he had to say.
"I wanted to speak to you some days ago," he said earnestly and
quickly, as his hands continued to play with the paper, "but we have
been so much occupied that I have never found the occasion. It must
seem curious in your eyes that I, who am quite a stranger to you,
should have been in your company for some weeks, and should not have
told you more than my name. As the thing stands, you have been kind
enough to make no inquiries; if I am an impostor, you do not care to
know it; if I am a rascal hunted by the law, you have not been willing
to help the law; you do not know if I have money or no money, a home or
no home, people or no people, yet you have made me--shall I say, a
friend?"
He asked the question with such a gentle inflexion of the voice that I
felt a softer chord was touched, and in response I shook hands with
him. After that he continued to speak.
"I am very grateful for all your trust, believe me, for I am a man that
has known few friends in life, and I have not cared to go out of my way
to seek them. You have given me your friendship unasked, and it is the
more prized. What I wanted to say is this, if I should die before three
days have passed, will you open this packet of papers I have prepared
and sealed for you, and carry out what is written there as well as you
are able? It is no idle request, I assure you; it is one that will put
you in the place where I now stand, with opportunities greater than I
dare to think of. As for the dangers, they are big enough, but you are
the man to overcome them as I hope to overcome them--if I live!"
The sun fell over the lifeless scene without as he ceased to speak. I
could see a crimson beam glowing upon a crucifix that stood on the
wayside by the hill-foot yonder; but the cheerless monotony of plough
land and of pasture, stretching away leafless, treeless, without bud or
flower, herd or herdsman, church or cottage, to the shadowed horizon,
looming dark as the twilight deepened, was in sympathy with the gloom
which had come upon me as Martin Hall ceased to speak. I had thought
the man a fool and witless, flighty in purpose and shallow in thought,
and yet he seemed to speak of great mysteries--and of death. In one
moment the jester's cloak fell from him, and I saw the mail beneath. He
had made a great impression upon me, but I concealed it from him, and
replied jauntily and with no show of gravity--
"Tell me, are you quite certain that you are not talking nonsense?"
He replied by asking me to take his hand. I took it--it was chill with
the icy cold as of death; and I doubted his meaning no more, but
determined to have the whole mystery, then so faintly sketched, laid
bare before me.
"If you are not playing the fool, Hall," said I, "and if you are
sincere in wishing me to do something which you say is a favour to you,
you must be more explicit. In the first place, how did you get this
absurd notion that you are going to die into your head? Secondly, what
is the nature of the obligation you wish to put upon me? It is quite
clear that I can't accept a trust about which I know nothing, and I
think that for undiluted vagueness your words deserve a medal. Let us
begin at the beginning, which is a very good place to begin at. Now,
why should you, who are going to Paris, as far as I know, simply as a
common sightseer, have any reason to fear some mysterious calamity in a
city where you don't know a soul?"
He laughed softly, looking out for a moment on the sunless fields, but
his eyes flashed lights when he answered me, and I saw that he clenched
his hands so that the nails pierced the flesh.
"Why am I going to Paris without aim, do you say? Without aim--I, who
have waited years for the work I believe that I shall accomplish
to-night--why am I going to Paris? Ha! I will tell you: I am going to
Paris to meet one who, before another year has gone, will be wanted by
every Government in Europe; who, if I do not put my hand upon his
throat in the midst of his foul work, will make graves as thick as
pines in the wood there before you know another month; one who is mad
and who is sane, one who, if he knew my purpose, would crush me as I
crush this paper; one who has everything that life can give and seeks
more, a man who has set his face against humanity, and who will make
war on the nations, who has money and men, who can command and be
obeyed in ten cities, against whom the police might as well hope to
fight as against the white wall of the South Sea; a man of purpose so
deadly that the wisest in crime would not think of it--a man, in short,
who is the product of culminating vice--him I am going to meet in this
Paris where I go without aim--without aim, ha!"
"And you mean to run him down?" I asked, as his voice sank to a hoarse
whisper, and the drops stood as beads on his brow; "what interest have
you in him?"
"At the moment none; but in a month the interest of money. As sure as
you and I talk of it now, there will be fifty thousand pounds offered
for knowledge of him before December comes upon us!"
I looked at him as at one who dreams dreams, but he did not flinch.
"You meet the man in Paris?" I went on.
"To-night I shall be with him," he answered; "within three days I win
all or lose all: for his secret will be mine. If I fail, it is for you
to follow up the thread which I have unravelled by three years' hard
work----"
"What sort of person do you say he is?" I continued, and he replied--
"You shall see for yourself. Dare you risk coming with me--I meet him
at eight o'clock?"
"Dare I risk!--pooh, there can't be much danger."
"There is every danger!--but, so, the girl is waking!"
It was true; Mary looked up suddenly as we thundered past the
fortifications of Paris, and said, as people do say in such
circumstances, "Why, I believe I've been asleep!" Roderick shook
himself like a great bear, and asked if we had passed Chantilly; the
Perfect Fool began his banter, and roared for a cab as the lights of
the station twinkled in the semi-darkness. I could scarce believe, as I
watched his antics, that he was the man who had spoken to me of great
mysteries ten minutes before. Still less could I convince myself that
he had not many days to live. So are the fateful things of life hidden
from us.
CHAPTER II.
I MEET CAPTAIN BLACK.
The lights of Paris were very bright as we drove down the Boulevard des
Capucines, and drew up at length at the Hôtel Scribe, which is by the
Opera House. Mary uttered a hundred exclamations of joy as we passed
through the city of lights; and Roderick, who loved Paris, condescended
to keep awake!
"I'll tell you what," he exclaimed, after a period of profound
reflection, "the beauty of this place is that no one thinks here,
except about cooking, and, after all, cooking is one of the first
things worthy of serious speculation, isn't it? Suppose we plan a nice
little dinner for four?"
"For two, my dear fellow, if you please," said Hall, with mock of
state--he was quite the Perfect Fool again. "Mr. Mark Strong
condescends to dine with me, and in that utter unselfishness of
character peculiar to him insists on paying the bill--don't you, Mr.
Mark?"
I answered that I did, and, be it known, I was the Mark Strong referred
to.
"The fact is, Roderick," I explained, "that I made a promise to meet
one of Mr. Hall's friends to-night, so you and Mary must dine alone.
You can then go to sleep, don't you see, or take Mary out and buy her
something."
"Yes, that would be splendid, Roderick," cried Mary, all the girlish
excitement born of Paris strong upon her. "Let's go and buy a hundred
things"--Roderick groaned--"but I wish, Mark, you weren't going to
leave us on our first night here; you know what you said only
yesterday!"
"What did I say yesterday?"
"That there were a lot of bounders in Paris--and I want to see them
bound!"
I consoled her by telling her that bounders never made display after
six o'clock, and assured her that Roderick had long confessed to me his
intention to buy her the best hat in Paris, at which Roderick muttered
exclamations for my ear only. By that time we were at the hotel, and
the Perfect Fool had much to say.
"Could any gentleman oblige me with the time, English or French?" he
asked; "my watch is so moved at the situation in which it finds itself
that it is fourteen hours too slow."
I told him that it was ten minutes to eight, and the information
quickened him.
"Ten minutes to eight, and half-a-dozen Russian princes, to say nothing
of an English knight, to meet; so ho, my toilet must remain! Could
anyone oblige me with a comb, fragmentary or whole?"
He continued his banter as we mounted the stairs of the cozy little
hotel, whose windows overlook the core of the great throbbing heart of
Paris, and so until we were alone in my room, whither he had followed
me.
"Quick's the word," he said, as he shut the door, and took several
articles from his hat-box, "and no more palaver. One pair of
spectacles, one wig, one set of curiosities to sell--do I look like a
second-hand dealer in odd lots, or do I not, Mr. Mark Strong?"
I had never seen such an utter change in any man made with such little
show. The Perfect Fool was no longer before me; there was in his place
a lounging, shady-looking, greed-haunted Hebrew. The haunching of the
shoulders was perfect; the stoop, the walk, were triumphs. But he gave
me little opportunity to inspect him or to ask for what reason he had
thus disguised himself.
"It's five minutes from here," he said, "and the clocks are going
eight--you are right as you are, for you are a cipher in the affair
yet, and don't run the danger I run--now come!"
He passed down the stairs with this blunt invitation, and I followed
him. So good was his disguise and make-pretence that the others, who
were in the narrow hall, drew back, to let him go, not recognising him,
and spoke to me, asking what I had done with him. Then I pointed to the
new Perfect Fool, and without another word of explanation went on into
the street.
We walked in silence for some little distance, keeping by the Opera,
and so through to the broad Boulevard Haussmann. Thence he turned,
crossing the busy thoroughfare, and passing through the Rue Joubert,
stopped quite suddenly at last in the mouth of a _cul-de-sac_ which
opened from the narrow street. He had something to say to me, and he
gave it with quick words prompted by a quick and serious wit, for he
had put off the _rôle_ of the jester at the hotel.
"This is the place," he said; "up here on the third, and there isn't
much time for talk. Just this; you're my man, you carry this box of
metal"--he meant the case of curiosities--"and don't open your mouth,
unless you get the fool in you and want the taste of a six-inch knife.
That's my risk, and I haven't brought you here to share it; so mum's
the word, mum, mum, mum; and keep a hold on your eyes, whatever you see
or whatever you hear. Do I look all right?"
"Perfectly--but just a word; if we are going into some den where we may
have a difficulty in getting out again, wouldn't it be as well to go
armed?"
"Armed!--pish!"--and he looked unutterable contempt, treading the
passage with long strides, and entering a house at the far end of it.
Thither I followed him, still wondering, and passing the concierge
found myself at last on the third floor, before a door of thick oak.
Our first knocking upon this had no effect, but at the second attempt,
and while he was pulling his hat yet more upon his eyes, I heard a
great rolling voice which seemed to echo on the stairway, and so leapt
from flight to flight, almost like the rattle of a cannon-shot with its
many reverberations. For the moment indistinct, I then became aware
that the voice was that of a man singing and walking at the same time,
and seemingly in no hurry to give us admission, for he passed from room
to room bellowing this refrain, and never varying it by so much as a
single word:--
"There was a man of Boston town,
With his pistols three,
With his pistols three, three, three;
And never a skunk in Boston town
That he didn't chaw but me!"
When the noise stopped at last, there was silence, complete and
unbroken, for at least five minutes, during which time Hall stood
motionless, waiting for the door to be opened. After that we heard a
great yell from the same voice, with the words, "Ahoy, Splinters, shift
along the gear, will you?" and then Splinters, whoever he might be, was
cursed in unchosen phrases as the son of all the lubbers that ever
crowded a fo'cas'le. A mumbled discussion seemed to tread on the heels
of the hullabaloo, when, apparently having arranged the "gear" to
satisfaction, the man stalked to the door, singing once more in
stentorian tones:
"There was a man of Boston town,
With his pistols three,
With his pistols----"
"Hullo--the darned little Jew and his kick-shaws; why, matey, so early
in the morning?"
The exclamation came as he saw us, putting his head round the door, and
showing one arm swathed all up in dirty red flannel. He was no sort of
a man to look at, as the Scots say, for his head was a mass of dirty
yellow hair, and his face did not seem to have known an ablution for a
week. But there was an ugly jocular look about his rabbit-like eyes and
a great mark cut clean into the side of his face which were a fit
decoration for the red-burnt, pitted, and horribly repulsive
countenance he betrayed. His leer, too, as he greeted Hall, was the
evil leer of a man whose laugh makes those hearing hush with the horror
of it; and, on my part, forgetting the warning, I looked at him and
drew back repelled. This he saw, and with a flush and a display of one
great stump of a tooth which protruded on his left lip, he turned on
me.
"And who may you be, matey, that you don't go for to shake hands with
Roaring John? Dip me in brine, if you was my son I'd dress you down
with a two-foot bar. Why don't you teach the little Hebrew manners, old
Josfos? but there," and this he said as he opened the door wider, "so
long as our skipper will have to do with shiners to sell and land
barnacles, what ken you look for?--walk right along here."
The room indicated opened from a small hall, for the place was built
after the Parisian fashion--akin to that of our flats--and was a house
in itself. The man who called himself "Roaring John" entered the
apartment before us, bawling at the top of his voice, "Josfos, the Jew,
and his pardner come aboard!" and then I found myself in the strangest
company and the strangest place I have ever set eyes on. So soon as I
could see things clearly through the hanging atmosphere of tobacco
smoke and heavy vapour, I made out the forms of six or eight men, not
sitting as men usually do in a place where they eat, but squatting on
their haunches by a series of low narrow tables, which were, on closer
inspection, nothing but planks put upon bricks and laid round the four
sides of the apartment. Of other furniture there did not seem to be a
vestige in the place, save such as pertained to the necessities of
eating and sleeping. Each man lolled back on his own pile of dirty
pillows and dirtier blankets; each had before him a great metal
drinking-cup, a coarse knife, which I found was for hacking meat, long
rolls of plug tobacco, and a small red bundle, which I doubt not was
his portable property. Each, too, was dressed exactly as his fellow, in
a coarse red shirt, seamen's trousers of ample blue serge, a belt with
a clasp-knife about his waist, and each had some bauble of a bracelet
on his arm, and some strange rings upon his fingers. In the first
amazement at seeing such an assembly in the heart of civilised Paris, I
did no more than glean a general impression, but that was a powerful
one--the impression that I saw men of all ages from twenty-five years
upwards; men marked by time as with long service on the sea; men
scarred, burnt, some with traces of great cuts and slashes received on
the open face; men fierce-looking as painted devils, with teeth, with
none, with four fingers to the hand, with three; men whose laugh was a
horrid growl like the tumult of imprisoned passions, whose threats
chilled the heart to hear, whose very words seemed to poison the air,
who made the great room like a cage of beasts, ravenous and
ill-seeking. This and more was my first thought, as I asked myself,
into what hovel of vice have I fallen, by what mischance have I come on
such a company?
Martin Hall seemed to have no such ill opinion of the men, and put
himself at his ease the moment we entered. I had, indeed, believed for
the moment that he had brought me there with evil intent, distrusting
the man who was yet little more than a stranger to me; but recalling
all that passed, his disguise, his evident fear, I put the suspicion
from me, and listened to him, more content, as he made his way to the
top of the room and stood before one who forced from me individual
notice, so strange-looking was he, and so deep did the respect which
all paid him appear to be. We shall meet this man often in our travels
together, you and I, my friends, so a few words, if you please, about
him. He sat at the head of the rude table, as I have said, but not as
the others sat, on pillows and blankets, for there was a pile of
rich-looking skins--bear, tiger, and white wolf--beneath him, and he
alone of all the company wore black clothes and a white shirt. He was a
short man, I judged, black-bearded and smooth-skinned, with a big nose,
almost an intellectual forehead, small, white-looking hands, all ablaze
with diamonds, about whose fine quality there could not be two
opinions; and, what was even more remarkable, there hung as a pendant
to his watch-chain a great uncut ruby which must have been worth five
thousand pounds. One trade-mark of the sea alone did he possess, in the
dark, curly ringlets which fell to his shoulders, matted there as long
uncombed, but typical in all of the man. This then was the fellow upon
whose every word that company of ruffians appeared to hang, who obeyed
him, as I observed presently, when he did so much as lift his hand, who
seemed to have in their uncouth way a veneration for him, inexplicable,
remarkable--the man of whom Martin Hall had painted such a fantastic
picture, who was, as I had been told, soon to be wanted by every
Government in Europe. And so I faced him for the first time, little
thinking that before many months had gone I should know of deeds by his
hand which had set the world aflame with indignation, deeds which
carried me to strange places, and among dangers so terrible that I
shudder when the record brings back their reality.
Hall was the first to speak, and it was evident to me that he cloaked
his own voice, putting on the nasal twang and the manner of an East-end
Jew dealer.
"I have come, Mister Black," he said, "as you was good enough to wish,
with a few little things--beautiful things--which cost me moosh
money----"
"Ho, ho!" sang out Captain Black, "here is a Jew who paid _much_ money
for a few little things! Look at him, boys!--the Jew with much money!
Turn out his pockets, boys!--the Jew with much money! Ho, ho! Bring the
Jew some drink, and the little Jew, by thunder!"
His merriment set all the company roaring to his mood. For a moment
their play was far from innocent, for one lighted a great sheet of
paper and burnt it under the nose of my friend, while another pushed
his dirty drinking-pot to my mouth, and would have forced me to drink.
But I remembered Hall's words, and held still, giving banter for
banter--only this, I learnt to my intense surprise that the pot did not
contain beer but champagne, and that, by its bouquet, of an infinitely
fine quality. In what sort of a company was I, then, where mere seamen
wore diamond rings and drank fine champagne from pewter pots?
The unpleasant and rough banter ceased on a word from Captain Black,
who called for lights, which were brought--rough, ready-made oil
flares, stuck in jugs and pots--and Hall gathered up his trinkets and
proceeded to lay them out with the well-simulated cunning of the
trader.
"That, Mister Black," he said, putting a miniature of exquisite finish
against the white fur on the floor, "is a portrait of the Emperor
Napoleon, sometime in the possession of the Empress Josephine; that is
a gold chain--he was eighteen carat--once the property of Don Carlos;
here is the pen with which Francis Drake wrote his last letter to the
Queen Elizabeth--beautiful goods as ever was, and cost moosh money!"
"To the dead with your much money," said the Captain with an angry
gesture, as he snatched the trinkets from him, and eyed them to my vast
surprise with the air of a practised connoisseur; "let's handle the
stuff, and don't gibber. How much for this?" He held up the miniature,
and admiration betrayed itself in his eyes.
"He was painted by Sir William Ross, and I sell him for two hundred
pounds, my Captain. Not a penny less, or I'm a ruined man!"
"The Jew a ruined man! Hark at him! Four-Eyes"--this to a great lanky
fellow who lay asleep in the corner--"the little Jew can't sell 'em
under two hundred, I reckon; oh, certainly not; why, of course. Here,
you, Splinters, pay him for a thick-skinned, thieving shark, and give
him a hundred for the others."
The boy Splinters, who was a black lad, seemingly about twelve years
old, came up at the word, and took a great canvas bag from a hook on
the wall. He counted three hundred gold pieces on the floor--pieces of
all coinages in Europe and America, as they appeared to be by their
faces, and Hall, who had squatted like the others, picked them up. Then
he asked a question, while the little black lad, who bore a look of
suffering on his worn face, stood waiting the Captain's word.
"Mister Captain, I shall have waiting for me at Plymouth to-morrow a
relic of the great John Hawkins, which, as I'm alive, you shouldn't
miss. I have heard them say that it is the very sword with which he cut
the Spaniards' beards. Since you have told me that you sail to-morrow,
I have thought, if you put me on your ship across to Plymouth, I could
show you the goods, and you shall have them cheap--beautiful goods, if
I lose by them."
Now, instead of answering this appeal as he had done the others, with
his great guffaw and banter, Captain Black turned upon Hall as he made
his request, and his face lit up with passion. I saw that his eyes gave
one fiery look, while he clenched his fists as though to strike the man
as he sat, but then he restrained himself. Yet, had I been Hall, I
would not have faced such another glance for all that adventure had
given me. It was a look which meant ill--all the ill that one man could
mean to another.
"You want to come aboard my boat, do you?" drawled the Captain, as he
softened his voice to a fine tone of sarcasm. "The dealer wants a cheap
passage; so ho! what do you say, Four-Eyes; shall we take the man
aboard?"
Four-Eyes sat up deliberately, and struck himself on the chest several
times as though to knock the sleep out of him. He seemed to be a
brawny, thick-set Irishman, gigantic in limb, and with a more honest
countenance than his fellows. He wore a short pea-jacket over the dirty
red shirt, and a great pair of carpet slippers in place of the
sea-boots which many of the others displayed. His hair was light and
curly, and his eyes, keen-looking and large, were of a grey-blue and
not unkindly-looking. I thought him a man of some deliberation, for he
stared at the Captain and at Hall before he answered the question put
to him, and then he drank a full and satisfying draught from the cup
before him. When he did give reply, it was in a rich rolling voice, a
luxurious voice which would have given ornament to the veriest
common-place.
"Oi'd take him aboard, bedad," he shouted, leaning back as though he
had spoken wisdom, and then he nodded to the Captain, and the Captain
nodded to him.
The understanding seemed complete.
"We sail at midnight, tide serving," said the Captain, as he picked up
the miniature and the other things; "you can come aboard when you
like--here, boy, lock these in the chest."
The boy put out his hand to take the things, but in his fear or his
clumsiness, he dropped the miniature, and it cracked upon the floor.
The mishap gave me my first real opportunity of judging these men in
the depth of their ruffianism. As the lad stood quivering and
terror-struck, Black turned upon him, almost foaming at the lips.
"You clumsy young cub, what d'ye mean by that?" he asked; and then, as
the boy fell on his knees to beg for mercy, casting one pitiful look
towards me--a look I shall not soon forget--he kicked him with his
foot, crying--
"Here, give him a dozen with your strap, one of you."
He had but to say the words, when a colossal brute seized the boy in
his grip, and held his head down to the table board, while another, no
more gentle, stripped his shirt off, and struck him blow after blow
with the great buckle, so that the flesh was torn while the blood
trickled upon the floor. The brutal act stirred the others to a fine
merriment, yet for myself, I had all the will to spring up and grip the
striker as he stood, but Hall, who had covered my hand with his, held
it so surely, and with such prodigious strength, that my fingers almost
cracked. It was the true sign-manual for me to say nothing, and I
realised how hopeless such a struggle would be, and turned my head that
I should not see the cruel thing to the end.
When the lad fainted they gave him a few kicks with their heavy boots,
and he lay like a log on the floor, until the ruffian named "Roaring
John" picked him up and threw him into the next room. The incident was
forgotten at once, and Captain Black became quite merry.
"Bring in the victuals, you, John," he said, "and let Dick say us a
grace; he's been doing nothing but drink these eight hours."
Dick, a red-haired, penetrating-looking Scotsman, who carried the
economy of his race even to the extent of flesh, of which he was
sparse, greeted the reproof by casting down his eyes into the empty can
before him.
"Is a body to cheer himself wi' naething?" he asked; "not wi' a bit
food and drink after twa days' toil? It's an unreasonable man ye are,
Mister Black, an' I dinna ken if I'll remain another hoor as meenister
to yer vessel."
"Ho, ho, Dick the Ranter sends in his resignation; listen to that,
boys," said the Captain, who had found his humour again. "Dick will not
serve the honourable company any longer. Ho, swear for the strangers,
Dick, and let 'em hear your tongue."
The man, rascal and ill-tongued as I doubt not he was at times, refused
to comply with the demand as the food at length was put upon the table.
It was rich food, stews, with a profuse display of oysters, chickens,
boiled, roast, à la maître d'hôtel, fine French trifles, pasties,
ices--and it was to be washed down, I saw, by draughts from magnums of
Pommery and Greno. I was, at this stage, so well accustomed to the
scene that the novelty of a company of dirty, repulsive-looking seamen
banqueting in this style did not surprise me one whit, only I wished to
be away from a place whose atmosphere poisoned me, and where every word
seemed garnished with some horrible oath. I whispered this thought to
Hall, and he said, "Yes," and rose to go, but the Captain pulled him
back, crying--
"What, little Jew, you wouldn't eat at other people's cost! Down with
it, man, down with it; fill your pockets, stuff 'em to the top. Let's
see you laugh, old wizen-face, a great sixty per cent. croak coming
from your very boots--here, you, John, give the man who hasn't got any
money some more drink; make him take a draught."
The men were becoming warmed with the stuff they had taken, and
furiously offensive. One of them held Hall while the others forced
champagne down his throat, and the man "Roaring John" attempted to pay
me a similar compliment, but I struck the cup from his hand, and he
drew a knife, turning on me. The action was foolish, for in a moment a
tumult ensued. I heard fierce cries, the smash of overturned boards and
lights, and remembered no more than some terrific blows delivered with
my left, as Molt of Cambridge taught me, a sharp pain in my right
shoulder as a knife went home, the voice of Hall crying, "Make for the
door--the door," and the great yell of Captain Black above the others.
His word, no doubt, saved us from greater harm; for when I had thought
that my foolhardiness had undone us, and that we should never leave the
place alive, I found myself in the Rue Joubert with Hall at my side, he
torn and bleeding as I was, but from a slight wound only.
"That was near ending badly," he said, looking at the skin-deep cut on
my shoulder. "They're wild enough sober, but Heaven save anyone from
them when they're the other way!"
I looked at him steadily for a moment; then I asked--
"Hall, what does it mean? Who are these men, and what business carries
you amongst them?"
"That you'll learn when you open the papers; but I don't think you will
open them yet, for I'm going to succeed." He was gay almost to
frivolity once more. "Did you hear him ask me to sail with him from
Dieppe to-morrow?"
"I did, and I believe you're fool enough to go. Did you see the look he
gave you when he said 'Yes'?"
"Never mind his look. I must risk that and more, as I have risked it
many a time. Once aboard his yacht I shall have the key which will
unlock six feet of rope for that man, or you may call me the Fool
again."
It was light with the roseate, warm light of a late summer's dawn as we
reached the hotel. Paris slept, and the stillness of her streets
greeted the life-giving day, while the grey mist floated away before
the scattered sunbeams, and the houses stood clear-cut in the finer
air. I was hungry for sleep, and too tired to think more of the strange
dream-like scene I had witnessed; but Hall followed me to my bedroom,
and had yet a word to say.
"Before we part--we may not meet again for some time, for I leave Paris
in a couple of hours--I want to ask you to do me yet one more service.
Your yacht is at Calais, I believe--will you go aboard this morning and
take her round to Plymouth? There ask for news of the American's
yacht--he has only hired her, and she is called _La France_. News of
the yacht will be news of me, and I shall be glad to think that someone
is at my back in this big risk. If you should not hear of me, wait a
month; but if you get definite proof of my death, break the seal of the
papers you hold and read--but I don't think it will come to that."
So saying, he left me with a hearty handshake. Poor fellow, I did not
know then that I should break the seal of his papers within three days.
CHAPTER III.
"FOUR-EYES" DELIVERS A MESSAGE.
A warming glare of the fuller sun upon my eyes, the cracking of whips,
the shouting of fierce-lunged coachmen, the hum of moving morning life
in the city, stirred me from a deep sleep as the clocks struck ten. I
sat up in bed, uncertain in the effort of wit-gathering if night had
not given me a dream rather than an experience, a chance play of the
brain's imagining, and not a living knowledge of true scenes and
strange men. For in this mood does nature often play with us, tricking
us to fine thoughts as we lie dreaming, or creating such shows of life
as we slumber, that in our first moments of wakefulness we do not
detect the cheat or reckon with the phantoms. I knew not for some
while, as I lay back listening to the hum of busy Paris, if the Perfect
Fool had or had not told me anything, if we had gone together to a
house near the Rue Joubert, or if we had remained in the hotel, if he
had begged of me some favour, or if I had dreamed it. All was but a
confused mind-picture, changing as a kaleidoscope, blurred, shadowy. It
might have remained so long, had I not, looking about the room, become
aware that a letter, neatly folded, lay on the small table at my
bedside. It was the letter which brought the consciousness of reality;
and in that moment I knew that I had not dreamed but lived the curious
events of the night. But these are the words which Martin Hall wrote:--
"Hôtel Scribe. Seven a.m.--I leave in ten minutes, and write you
here my last word. We shall sail from Dieppe at midnight. Do not
forget to cross to Plymouth if you have any friendship for me. I
look to you alone.--MARTIN HALL."
He had left Paris then, and set out upon his great risk. The man's
awe-inspiring courage, his immense self-reliance, his deep purpose,
were marked strongly in those few simple words, and I had never felt so
great an admiration for him. He looked to me alone, and assuredly he
should not look in vain. I would follow him to Plymouth, losing no
moment in the act; and I resolved then to go farther if the need should
be, and to search for him in every land and on every sea, for he was a
brave man whose like I had not often known.
I dressed in haste with this intention, and went to déjeûner in our
private room below. Roderick was there, sleepy over his bottle of bad
Bordeaux, and Mary, who insisted on taking an English breakfast, was in
the height of a dissertation on Parisian tea.
"Did you ever see anything so feeble?" she said, being fond of
Roderick's speech mannerisms and often mimicking them. "Isn't it pretty
awful?" and she poured some from her spoon.
"'Pretty awful' is not the expression for a polite young woman,"
replied Roderick, with a severe yawn; "anyone who comes to Paris for
tea deserves what he gets."
"Yes, and what he gets 'takes the biscuit.'"
"Mary!"
"Well, you always say, 'takes the biscuit'; why shouldn't I?"
"Because, my child, because," said Roderick, slowly and paternally,
"because--why, here's Mark. Hallo! you're a pretty fellow; I hope you
enjoyed yourself last night."
"Exceedingly, thanks; in fact, I may say that I had a most delightful
evening with men who suited me to the--tea--thank you, Mary! I'll take
a cup--and now tell me, what has he bought you?"
I thought that a judicious policy of dissimulation was the wise course
at that time, for I had not then determined to share my secret even
with Roderick, as, indeed, by my word I was bound not to do until Hall
should so wish. In this intent I hid all my serious mood, and continued
the pleasant chatter.
Mary had soon poured out a cup of the decoction which Frenchmen call
tea, an aqueous product, the fluid of chopped hay long stewed in tepid
water, and then she answered--
"Let me see, now, what did Roderick buy me? Oh, yes! I remember, he
bought me a meerschaum pipe and a walking-stick!"
"A what?" I gasped.
"A meerschaum pipe, and a walking-stick with a little man to hold
matches on the top of it."
Roderick looked guilty, and admitted it.
"You see," he said in apology, "they sold only those things at the
first place we came to, and you don't expect a fellow to walk in Paris,
do you? Now, when I've rested after breakfast, I suggest that we all
make up our minds for a long stroll, and get to the Palais Royal."
"Well, that's about three hundred yards from here, isn't it? Are you
quite sure you're equal to it?"
He looked at me reproachfully.
"You don't want a man to kill himself on his holiday, do you? You're
fatally energetic. Now, I believe that the science of life is rest, the
calm survey of great problems from the depths of an armchair. It's
astonishing how easy things are if you take them that way; never let
anything agitate you--I never do."
"No, he don't, does he, Mary? But about this excursion to the Palais
Royal; I'm afraid you'll have to go alone, for I have just had a letter
which calls me back to the yacht. It's awfully unfortunate, but I must
go, although I will return here in a week, if possible, and pick you
up; otherwise, you will hear of my movements as soon as I know them
myself."
Somewhat to my astonishment, they both looked at me, saying nothing,
but evidently very much surprised. Mary's big eyes were wide open with
amazement, but Roderick had a more serious look on his face. He did not
question me, he did not say a word, but I felt his thought--"You hold
something back"--and the mute reproach was keen. Perhaps some
explanation would then have been demanded had not another interruption
broken the unwelcome silence. One of the servants of the hotel entered
to tell me that a man who wished to speak with me was waiting outside,
and asked if I would see him there or in the privacy of our room. As I
could not recall that anyone in Paris had any business with me, I said,
"Send the man here"; and presently he entered, when to my intense
surprise I found him to be no other than one of the ruffians--the one
called "Four-Eyes" by the Captain of the company I had met on the
previous evening. Not that he seemed in any way abashed at the
meeting--he walked into the room with a seaman's lurch, and steadied
himself only when he saw Mary. Then he rang an imaginary bell-rope on
his forehead, and "hitched" himself together, as sailors say, looking
for all the world like some great dog that has entered a house where
dogs are forbidden. His first words were somewhat unexpected--
"Oi was priest's boy in Tipperary, bedad," said he, and then he looked
round as if that information should put him on good terms with us.
"Will you sit down, please?" was my request as he stood fingering his
hat, and looking at Mary as though he had seen a vision, "and permit me
to ask what the fact of your serving a priest in Ireland has to do with
your presence here now?"
"That brings us to the point av it, and thanking yer honor, it's meself
that ain't aisy on them land-craft which don't carry me cargo on an
even keel at all, so I'll be standin', with no offence to the Missy,
sure, an' gettin' to the writin' which is fur yer honor's ear alone as
me instruckthshuns goes."
He rang the bell-rope over his right eye again, and gave me a letter,
well written on good paper. I watched him as I read it, and saw that in
a power of eye that was astounding, he had fixed one orb upon Mary and
one upon the ceiling, and that the two objects shared his gaze, while
his body swayed as though he was unaccustomed to balance himself upon a
fair floor. But I read his letter, and write it for you here--
"Captain Black presents his compliments to Mr. Mark Strong, whom he
had the pleasure of receiving last night, and regrets the reception
which was offered to him. Captain Black hopes that it will be his
privilege to receive Mr. Strong on his yacht _La France_, now lying
over against the American vessel _Portland_, in Dieppe harbour, at
11 to-night, and to extend to him hospitality worthy of him and his
host."
Now, that was a curious thing indeed. Not only did it appear that my
pretence of being Hall's partner in trade was completely unmasked by
this man of the Rue Joubert; but he had my name--and, by his tone in
writing, it was clear that he knew my position, and the fact that I was
no trader at all. Whether such knowledge was good for me, I could not
then say; but I made up my mind to act with cunning, and to shield Hall
in so far as was possible.
"Did your master tell you to wait for any answer?" I asked suddenly, as
the seaman brought his right eye from the direction of the ceiling and
fixed it upon me; and he said--
"Is it for the likes of me to be advisin' yer honor? 'Sure,' says he,
'if the gentleman has the moind to wroite he'll wroite, if he has the
moind to come aboard me--meanin' his yacht--he'll come aboard; and
we'll be swimming in liquor together as gents should. And if so be as
the gentleman' (which is yer honor), says he, 'will condescend to wipe
his fate on me cabin shates, let him be aboard at Dieppe afore seven
bells,' says he, 'and we'll shame the ould divil with a keg, and heave
at daybreak'--which is yer honor's pleasure, or otherwise, as it's me
juty to larn!"
It needed no very clever penetration on my part to read danger in every
line of this invitation--not only danger to myself, who had been
dragged by the heels into the business, but danger to Hall, whose
disguise could scarce be preserved when mine was unmasked. And yet he
had left Paris, and even then, perhaps, was in the power of the man
Black and his crew! What I could do to help him, I could not think; but
I determined if possible to glean something from the palpably cunning
rogue who had come on the errand.
"I'll give you the answer to this in a minute," said I; "meanwhile,
have a little whisky? A seaman like yourself doesn't thrive on cold
water, does he?"
"Which is philosophy, yer honor--for could wather never warmed any man
yet--me respects to the young lady"--here he looked deep into his
glass, adding slowly, and as if there was credit to him in the
recollection, "Oi was priest's boy in Tipperary, bedad"--and he drank
the half of a stiff glass at a draught.
"Do you find this good weather in the Channel?" I inquired suddenly,
looking hard at him over the table.
He made circles with his glass, and turned his eyes upon Mary, before
he answered; and when he did, his voice died away like the fall of a
gale which is tired. "Noice weather, did ye say--by the houly saints,
it depends."
"On what?" I asked, driving the question home.
"On yer company," said he, returning my gaze, "and yer sowl."
"That's curious!"
"Yes, if ye have one to lose, and put anny price on it."
His meaning was too clear.
"Tell your master, with my compliments," I responded, "that I will come
another time--I have business in Paris to-day!"
He still looked at me earnestly, and when he spoke again his voice had
a fatherly ring. "If I make bold, it's yer honor's forgiveness I
ask--but, if it was me that was in Paris I'd stay there," and putting
his glass down quickly, he rolled to the door, fingered his hat there
for one moment, put it on awry, and with the oft-repeated statement,
"Oi was priest's boy in Tipperary, bedad," he swayed out of the room.
When he was gone, the others, who had not spoken, turned to me, their
eyes asking for an explanation.
"One of Hall's friends," I said, trying to look unconcerned, "the mate
on the yacht _La France_--the vessel he joins to-day."
Roderick tapped the table with his fingers; Mary was very white, I
thought.
"He knows a queer company," I added, with a grim attempt at jocularity,
"they're almost as rough as he is."
"Do you still mean to sail to-night?" asked Roderick.
"I must; I have made a promise to reach Plymouth without a moment's
delay."
"Then I sail with you," said he, being very wide-awake.
"Oh, but you can't leave Paris; you promised Mary!"
"Yes, and I release him at once," interrupted Mary, the colour coming
and going in her pretty cheeks, "I shall sail from Calais to-night with
you and Roderick."
"It's very kind of you--but--you see----"
"That we mean to come," added Roderick quickly. "Go and pack your
things, Mary; I have something to say to Mark."
We were alone, he and I, but there was between us the first shadow that
had come upon our friendship.
"Well," said he, "how much am I to know?"
"What you choose to learn, and as much as your eyes teach you--it's a
promise, and I've given my word on it."
"I was sure of it. But I don't like it, all the same--I distrust that
fool, who seems to me a perfect madman. He'll drag you into some mess,
if you'll let him. I suppose there's no danger yet, or you wouldn't let
Mary come!"
"There can be no risk now, be quite sure of that--we are going for a
three days' cruise in the Channel, that is all."
"All you care to tell me--well, I can't ask more; what time do you
start?"
"By the club train. I have two hours' work to do yet, but I will meet
you at the station, if you'll bring my bag----"
"Of course--and I can rest for an hour. That always does me good in the
morning."
I left him so, being myself harassed by many thoughts. The talk with
Black's man did not leave me any longer in doubt that Hall had gone to
great risk in setting out with the ruffian's crew; and I resolved that
if by any chance it could be done, I would yet call him back to Paris.
For this I went at once to the office of the Police, and laid as much
of the case before one of the heads as I thought needful to my purpose.
He laughed at me; the yacht _La France_ was known to him as the
property of an eccentric American millionaire, and he could not
conceive that anyone might be in danger aboard her. As there was no
hope from him, I took a fiacre and drove to the Embassy, where one of
the clerks heard my whole story; and while inwardly laughing at my
fears, as I could see, promised to telegraph to a friend in Calais, and
get my message delivered.
I had done all in my power, and I returned to the Hôtel Scribe; but the
others had left for the station. Thither I followed them, instructing a
servant to come to me at the Gare du Nord if any telegram should be
sent; and so reached the train, and the saloon. It was not, however,
until the very moment of our departure that a messenger raced to our
carriage, and thrust a paper at me; and then I knew that my warning had
come too late. The paper said: "_La France_ has sailed, and your friend
with her."
CHAPTER IV.
A STRANGE SIGHT ON THE SEA.
It was on the morning of the second day; three bells in the watch; the
wind playing fickle from east by south, and the sea agold with the
light of an August sun. Two points west of north to starboard I saw the
chalky cliffs of the Isle of Wight faint through the haze, but away
ahead the Channel opened out as an unbroken sea. The yacht lay without
life in her sails, the flow of the swell beating lazily upon her, and
the great mainsail rocking on the boom. We had been out twenty-four
hours, and had not made a couple of hundred miles. The delay angered
every man aboard the _Celsis_, since every man aboard knew that it was
a matter of concern to me to overtake the American yacht, _La France_,
and that a life might go with long-continued failure.
As the bells were struck, and Piping Jack, our boatswain--they called
him Piping Jack because he had a sweetheart in every port from Plymouth
to Aberdeen, and wept every time we put to sea--piped down to
breakfast, my captain betrayed his irritation by an angry sentence. He
was not given to words, was Captain York, and the men knew him as "The
Silent Skipper"; but twenty-four hours without wind enough to "blow a
bug," as he put it, was too much for any man's temper.
"I tell you what, sir," he said, sweeping the horizon with his glass
for the tenth time in ten minutes, "this American of yours has taken
the breeze in his pocket, and may it blow him to----I beg your pardon,
I did not see that the young lady had joined us."
But Mary was there, fresh as a rose dipped in dew, and as Roderick
followed her up the companion ladder, we held a consultation, the fifth
since we left Calais.
"It's my opinion," said Roderick, "that if those men of yours had not
been ashore on leave, York, and we could have sailed at midnight, we
should have done the business and been in Paris again by this time."
"It's my opinion, sir, that your opinion is not worth a cockroach,"
cried the captain quite testily; "the men have nothing to do with it.
Look above; if you'll show me how to move this ship without a hatful of
wind, I'll do it, sir," and he strutted off to breakfast, leaving us
with Dan, the forward look-out.
Dan was a grand old seaman, and there wasn't one of us who didn't
appeal to him in our difficulties.
"Do you think it means to blow, Dan?" I asked, as I offered him my
tobacco-pouch: and Mary said earnestly--
"Oh, Daniel, I do wish a gale would come on!"
"Ay, Miss, and so do many of us; but we can't be making wind no more'n
we can make wittals--and excusing me, Miss, it ain't Daniel, not
meaning no disrespect to the other gent, whose papers were all right, I
don't doubt, but my mother warn't easy in larning, and maybe didn't
know of him--it's Dan, Miss, free-and-easy like, but nat'ral."
"Well, Dan, do you think it will blow? Can't you promise it will blow?"
"Lor, Miss, I'd promise ye anything; but what is nater is nater, and
there's an end on it--not as I don't say there won't be a hatful o'
wind afore night--why should I? but as for promisin' of it, why I'd
give ye a hurricane willing--or two."
We went down to breakfast, the red of sea strength on our cheeks; and
in the cosy saloon we made short work of the coffee and soles, the
great heaps of toast, and the fresh fruit. I could not help some gloomy
thoughts as I found myself on my own schooner again, asking how long
she would be mine, and how I should suffer the loss of her when all my
money was spent. These were cast off in the excitement of the chase,
and came only in the moments of absolute calm, when all the men aboard
fretted and fumed, and every other question was: "Isn't it beginning to
blow?"
The morning passed in this way, a long morning, with the sea like a
mirror, and the sun as a great circle of red fire in the haze. Hour
after hour we walked from the fore-hatch to the tiller, from the tiller
to the fore-hatch, varying the exercise with a full inspection of every
craft that showed above the horizon. At eight bells we lay a few miles
farther westward, the island still visible to the starboard, but less
distinct. At four bells, when we went to lunch, the heat was terrible
below, and the sun was terrible on deck; but yet there was not a
breeze. At six bells some dark and dirty clouds rose up from the south,
and twenty hands pointed to them. At "one bell in the first dog" the
clouds were thick, and the sun was hidden. Half-an-hour later there was
a shrill whistling in the shrouds, and the rain began to patter on the
deck, while the booms fretted, and we relieved her in part of her press
of sail. When the squall struck us at last, the Channel was foaming
with long lines of choppy seas; and the sky southward was dark as ink.
But there was only joy of it aboard; we stood gladly as the _Celsis_
heeled to it, and rising free as an unslipped hound, sent the spray
flying in clouds, and dipped her decks to the foam which washed her.
During one hour, when we must have made eleven knots, the wind blew
strong, and was fresh again after that; so that we set the foresail
unreefed and let the great mainsail go not many minutes later. The
swift motion was an ecstasy to all of us, an unbounded delight; and
even the skipper softened as we stood well out to sea, and looked on a
great continent of clouds underlit with the spreading glow of the
sunset, their rain setting up the mighty arched bow whose colours stood
out with a rich light over the wide expanse of the east. Nor did the
breeze fall, but stiffened towards night, so that in the first bell,
when we came up from dinner, the _Celsis_ was straining and foaming as
she bent under her pressure of canvas, and it needed a sailor's foot to
tread her decks. But of this no one thought, for we had hardly come
above when we heard Dan hailing--
"Yacht on the port-bow."
"What name?" came from twenty throats.
"_La France_," said Dan, and the words had scarce left his lips when
the skipper roared the order--
"Stand by to go about!"
For some minutes the words "'bout ship" were not spoken. The schooner
held her course, and rapidly drew up with the yacht we had set out to
seek. From the first there was no doubt about her name, which she
displayed in great letters of gold above her figure-head. Dan had read
them as he sighted her; and we in turn felt a thrill of delight as we
proved his keen vision, watching the big cutter, for such she was,
heading, not for Plymouth, but for the nearer coast. But this was not
the only strange thing about her course, for when she had made some few
hundred yards towards the coast, she jibbed round of a sudden, with an
appalling wrench at the horse; and there being, as it appeared, no hand
either at the peak halyards or the throat halyards, the mainsail
presently showed a great rent near the luff, while the foresail had
torn free from the bolt-ropes of the stay, and was presenting a sorry
spectacle as the yacht went about, and away towards France again.
Such a display of seamanship astounded our men.
"Close haul, you lubbers; close haul!" roared Dan, in the vain delusion
that his voice would be heard a quarter of a mile away. "Keep down yer
'elm and close haul--wash me in rum if he ain't comin' up again, and
there she goes right into it. Shake up, you gibbering fools; luff her a
bit and make fast. Did ye ever see anythin' like it this side of a
Margit steamer?"
The skipper said nothing, but as the yacht luffed right up into the
wind again, he groaned as a man who is hurt. Piping Jack looked
sorrowful too, and said, almost with tears in his eyes--
"Axin' yer pardon, sir, but hev you got a pair of eyes in your head
which can make out anything unusual aboard there?"
"They're a queer lot, if that's what you mean, and they haven't got
enough seamanship amongst them to run a washing tub. Is there anything
else you make out?"
"A good deal, sir; and look you, there ain't a living soul on her deck,
or may I never see shore again."
"By all that's curious, you're right. There isn't a man showing!"
"'Bout ship," roared the skipper, and every man ran to his post, while
I touched Captain York on the shoulder and pointed to the seemingly
deserted and errant yacht.
But the skipper's eyes were not those of a ground-gazer; he needed no
aid from me; what others had seen, he had seen, and he nodded an
affirmative to my unspoken question.
"What do you think it means?" I asked, as we came up into the wind, and
the men were belaying after close hauling for the beat; "are they
hiding from us, or is she deserted?"
But the only answer I got was the one word "Rum," uttered with a jerky
emphasis, and taken up by Dan, who said--
"Very rum, and a good many drunk below, or I don't know the taste of
it."
The obvious thought that the yacht we had sought and run down was
without living men upon her decks had taken the lilt from the seamen's
merry tongues, and a gloom settled on us all. Perhaps it was more than
a mere surmise, for an uncanny feeling of something dreadful to come
took hold of me, and I feared that, finding the yacht, we had also
found the devil's work; but I held my peace on that, and made up my
mind to act.
"Skipper," said I, "order a boat out; I'm going aboard her."
He looked at me, and shook his head.
"When the wind falls, perhaps; but now!" and he shrugged his shoulders.
"Is there any sign that the breeze will drop?"
"None at present; but I'll tell you more in an hour. Meanwhile," and
here he whispered, "get your pistols out and say nothing to the men. I
shall follow her."
His advice was wise; and as the dark began to fall and the night breeze
to blow fresh, while the yacht ahead of us swung here and there, almost
making circles about us, we hove to for the time and watched her. I
begged Mary to go below, but she received the suggestion with
merriment.
"Go below, when the men say there's fun coming! Why should I go below?"
"Because it may be serious fun."
She took my arm, and linking herself closely to me as to a brother, she
said--
"Because there's danger to you and to Roderick; isn't that it, Mark?"
"Not to us any more than to the men; and there may be no danger, of
course. It's only a thought of mine."
"And of mine, too. I shall stay where I am, or Roderick will go to
sleep."
"What does Roderick say?"
He had joined us on the starboard side, and was gazing over the sea at
the pursued yacht, which lay shaking dead in the wind's eye, but Mary's
question upset whatever speculation he had entered upon.
"I've got an opinion," he drawled, with a yawn.
"You don't say so----"
"The wind's falling, and it's getting beastly dark."
"Two fairly obvious conclusions; do you think you could keep
sufficiently awake to help man the boat?--in another ten minutes we
shall see nothing."
"Do you think I'm a fool, that I'm going to stop here?"
"Forgive me, but I'm getting anxious. Martin Hall sailed on that yacht;
and I promised to help him--but there's no need for you to do anything,
you know."
"No need when you are going--pshaw, I'll fetch my Colt, and Mary shall
watch us. I don't think she is afraid of much, are you, Rats?"--he
called her "Rats" because they were the one thing on earth she
feared--and then he went below, and I followed him, getting my revolver
and my oil-skins, for I knew that it would be wet work. I had scarce
reached the deck again when I felt the schooner moving; but no break of
light showed the place where the other was, and the skipper called
presently for a blue flare, which cast a glowing light for many hundred
yards, and still left us uncertain.
"She's gone, for sure," said Dan to the men around him, for every soul
on board, even including old Chasselot--called by the men
"Cuss-a-lot"--our cook, was staring into the thick night; "and I
wouldn't stake a noggin that her crew ain't cheated the old un at last
an' gone down singing. It's mighty easy to die with your head full o'
rum, but I don't go for to choose it meself, not particler."
Billy Eightbells, the second mate, was quite of Dan's opinion. The
looks of the others told me then that they began to fear the adventure.
Billy was the first really to give expression to the common sentiment.
"Making bold to speak," he said, "it were two years ago come Christmas
as I met something like this afore, down Rio way----"
"Was it at eight bells, Billy?" asked Mary mischievously. She knew that
all Billy's yarns began at eight bells.
"Well, I think it were, mum, but as I was saying----"
"Flash again," said the skipper, suddenly interrupting the harangue,
and as the blue light flashed we saw right ahead of us the wanderer we
sought; but she was bearing down upon us, and there was fear in the
skipper's voice when he roared--
"For God's sake, hard a-starboard!"
The helm went over, and the yacht loomed up black, as our own light
died away; and passed us within a cable's length. What lift of the
night there was showed us her decks again; but they were not deserted,
for as one or two aboard gave a great cry, I saw the white and horridly
distorted face of a man who clung to the main shrouds--and he alone was
guardian of the wanderer.
The horrid vision struck my own men with a deadly fearing.
"May the Lord help us!" said Dan.
"And him!" added Piping Jack solemnly.
"Was he alive, d'you think?" asked Dan.
"It's my opinion he'd seen something as no Christian man ought to see.
Please God, we all get to port again!"
"Please God!" said half-a-dozen; and their words had meaning.
For myself, my thoughts were very different. That vision of the man I
had left well and hopeful and strong not three days since was terrible
to me. A brave man had gone to his death, but to what a death, if that
agonised face and distorted visage betokened aught! And I had promised
to aid him, and was drifting there with the schooner, raising no hand
to give him help.
"Skipper," I cried, "this time we'll risk getting a boat off; I'm going
aboard that vessel now, if I drown before I return." Then I turned to
the men, and said: "You saw the yacht pass just now, and you saw that
man aboard her--he's my friend, and I'm going to fetch him. Who amongst
you is coming with me?"
They hung back for a moment before the stuff that was in them showed
itself; then Dan lurched out, and said--
"I go!"
Billy Eightbells followed.
"And I," said he, "if it's the Old One himself."
"And I," said Piping Jack.
"And I," said Planks, the carpenter.
"Come on, then, and take your knives in your belts. Skipper, put about
and show another light."
He obeyed mechanically, saying nothing; but he was a brave man, I knew.
It was our luck to find that the boat went away from the davits with no
more than a couple of buckets of water in her; and in two minutes' time
the men were giving way, and we rose and fell to the still choppy sea,
while the green spray ran from our oilskins in gallons. In this way we
made a couple of hundred yards in the direction we judged the yacht
would turn, and lit a flash. It showed her a quarter of a mile away,
jibbing round and coming into the wind again.
"We shall catch her on the tack if she holds her bearing," said Dan,
"and be aboard in ten minutes."
"What then?" said Billy.
"Ay, what then?" echoed the others.
"But it's a friend of the guv'nor's," repeated Dan, "and he's in
danger--no common danger, neither. Please God, we all get to port
again."
"Please God!" they responded, and Roderick, who sat at the tiller with
me, whispered--
"I never saw men who liked a job less."
As the good fellows gave way again, and the boat rode easily before the
wind, I noticed for the first time that the clouds were scattering; and
we had not made another cable's length when a great cloud above us
showed silver at its edges, and opaquely white in its centre, through
which the moon shone. Anon it dissolved, and the transformation on the
surface of the water was a transformation from the dark of storm to the
chrome light of a summer moon. There, around us, the panorama stretched
out: the sea, white-waved and rolling; the lights of a steamer to port;
of a couple of sailing vessels astern; of a fishing fleet away ahead,
and nearer to the shore. But these we had no thought for, since the
deserted yacht was beating up to us, and we stood right in her track.
"Get a grapnel forward, and look out there," cried Dan, who was in
command; and Billy stood ready, while we could hear the swish of the
waves against the cutter's bows, and every man instinctively put his
hand on his pistol or his knife.
As if to help us, the wind fell away as the schooner came up, and she
began to shake her sails; making no way as she headed almost due east.
It seemed a fit moment for effort, and Dan had just sung out "Give
way," when every man who had gripped an oar let go the handle again and
sat with horror writ on his countenance. For, almost with the words of
the order, there was the sound as of fierce contest, of the bursting of
wood, and the spread of flame; and in that instant the decks of the
yacht were ripped up, and sheets of fire rose from them to the rigging
above. The light of this mighty flare spread instantly over the sea
about her, and far away you could look on the rolling waves, red as
waves of fire. A terrible sight it was, and terrible sounds were those
of the wood rending with the heat, of the stays snapping and flying, of
the hissing of the flame where it met the water. But it was a sight of
infinite horror to us, because we knew that one who might yet live was
a prisoner of the conflagration--the one passenger, as it seemed then,
of the vessel which was doomed.
"Give way," roared Dan again, for the men sat motionless with terror.
"Are you going to let him burn? May God have mercy on him, for he needs
mercy!"
The words awed them. They shot the long-boat forward; and I stood in
her stern to observe, if I could, what passed on the burning decks. And
I saw a sight the like to which I pray that I may never see again.
Martin Hall stood at the main shrouds, motionless, volumes of flame
around him, his figure clear to be viewed by that awful beacon.
"Why doesn't he jump it?" I called aloud. "If he can't swim, he could
keep above until we're alongside"; and then I roared "Ahoy!" and every
man repeated the cry, calling "Ahoy!" each time he bent to his oar, his
voice hoarse with excitement. But Martin Hall never moved, his gaunt
figure was motionless--the flames beat upon it, it did not stir; and we
drew near enough anon and knew the worst.
"Devils' work, devils' work!" said Dan; "he's lashed there--and he's
dead!" But the men still cried "Ahoy!" as they rushed their oars
through the water, and were as those mad with fiery drink.
"Easy!" roared Dan. "Easy, for a parcel of stark fools! Would you run
alongside her?"
There they lay, for any nearer approach would have been perilous, and
even in that place where we were, twenty feet on the windward side, the
heat was nigh unbearable. So near were we that I looked close as it
might be into the dead face of Martin Hall, and saw that the fiends who
had lashed him there had done their work too well. But I hoped in my
heart that he had been dead when the end of the ship had begun to come,
and that it were no reproach to me that he had perished: for to save
his body from that holocaust was work no man might do.
So did we watch the mounting fire, and the last tack of the yacht _La
France_. Saucily she raised her head to a new breeze, shook her great
sail of flame in the night, and scattered red light about her. Then she
dipped her burning jib as if in salute, and there was darkness.
"Rest to a good ship," said Dan, in melancholy mood; but I said--
"Rest to a friend." I had known the man whose death had come; and when
his body went below I hungered for the grip of the hand which was then
washed by the Channel waves.
"Give way," I cried to the men, who sat silent in their fear of it, and
when they rowed again they cried as before, "Ahoy": so strong and vivid
was the picture which the sea had then put out.
As we neared our own ship, Roderick endeavoured to speak to me, but his
voice failed, and he took my hand, giving it a great grip. Then we came
on board, where Mary waited for us with a white face, and the others
stood silent; but we said nothing to them, going below. There I locked
myself in my own cabin, and though fatigue lay heavy on me, and my eyes
were clouded with the touch of sleep, I took Martin Hall's papers from
my locker, and lighted the lamp to read them through.
But not without awe, for they were a message from the dead.
CHAPTER V.
THE WRITING OF MARTIN HALL.
The manuscript, which was sealed on its cover in many places, consisted
of several pages of close writing, and of sketches and scraps from
newspapers--Italian, French, and English. The sketches I looked at
first, and was not a little surprised to see that one of them was the
portrait of the man known as "Roaring John," whom I had met at Paris in
the strange company; while there was with this a blurred and faint
outline of the features of the seaman called "Four-Eyes," who had come
to me at the Hôtel Scribe with the bidding to go aboard _La France_.
But what, perhaps, was even more difficult to be understood was the
picture of the great hull of what I judged to be a warship, showing her
a-building, with the work yet progressing on her decks. The newspaper
cuttings I deemed to be in some part an explanation of these sketches,
for one of them gave a description of a very noteworthy battleship,
constructed for a South American Republic, but in much secrecy; while
another hinted that great pains had been taken with the vessel, which
was built at a mighty cost, and on so new a plan that the shipwrights
refused to give information concerning her until she had been some
months at sea to prove her.
All this reading remained enigmatical, of course, and as I could make
nothing of it to connect it with the events I have narrated, I went on
to the writing, which was fine and small, as the writing of an exact
man. And the words upon the head of it were these:--
SOME ACCOUNT OF A NAMELESS WARSHIP,
OF HER CREW, AND HER PURPOSE.
_Written for the eyes of Mark Strong, by Martin Hall, sometime
his friend._
I put from me the sorrow of the thought which the last three words
brought to me, and read therefrom this history, which had these few
sentences as its preface:--
"You read these words, Mark Strong, when I am dead; and I would ask
you before you go further with them to consider well if you would
wish, or have inclination for, a pursuit in which I have lost all
that a man can lose, and in which your risk, do you take the work
upon you, will be no less than mine was. For if you read what is
written here, and have in you that stuff which cannot brook
mystery, and is fired when mystery also is danger, I know that you
will venture upon this undertaking at the point where death has
held my hand; and that by so doing you may reap where I have sown.
And with this, think nor act in any haste lest you lay to my charge
that which may befall you in the pursuit you are about to begin."
I read on, for the desire to do justice to Martin Hall was strong upon
me at the very beginning of it.
From that place the story was in great part autobiographical, but in no
sense egotistical. It was, as you shall see, the simple narration of a
man sincere in his dreaming, if he did dream; logical in his madness,
if he were mad. And this was his story as first I read it:--
"Having well considered the warning which is the superscription of
this record, you have determined to continue this narrative, I do
not doubt; for I judge you to be a man who, having tasted the
succulent dish of curiosity, will not put it away until you have
eaten your fill. I will tell you, therefore, such a part of my life
as you should know when you come to ask yourself the question, 'Is
this man a fool or an imbecile, a crack-brained faddist or the
victim of hallucination?' This question should arise at a later
stage, and I beg you not to put it until you have read every word
that I have written here.
"I was born in Liverpool, thirty-three years ago, and was educated for
a very few years at the well-known institute in that city. They taught
me there that consciousness of ignorance which is half an education;
and being the son of a man who starved on a fine ability for modelling
things in clay, and plaster-moulding, I went out presently to make my
living. First to America, you doubt not, to get the experience of
coming home again; then to the Cape, to watch other men dig diamonds;
to Rome, to Naples, to Genoa, that I might know what it was to want
food; to South America as an able seaman; to Australia in the
stoke-hole of a South Sea liner; home again to my poor father, who lay
dead when I reached Liverpool.
"I was twenty-two years old then, and glutted with life. I had no
relation living that I knew of; no friend who was not also a plain
acquaintance. By what chance it was I cannot tell, but I drifted like a
living log into the detective force of my city, and after working up
for a few years through the grades, they put me on the landing stage at
Liverpool to watch the men who wished to emigrate because they had no
opinion of the police force here. It was miserable employment, but
educating, for it taught me to read faces that were disguised, old men
became beardless, young men made old at the touch of a _coiffeur_. I
suppose I had more than common success, for when I had been so employed
for five years, I was sent to London by our people and there commanded
to go to the Admiralty and get new instructions. Regard this, please,
as the first mark in this record I am making. Of my work for our own
people I may not tell even you, since I engaged upon it under solemn
bond of secrecy; but I can indicate that I was sent to Italy to pick up
facts in the dockyards there, and that our people relied on my gifts of
disguise, and on my knowledge of Italian, learnt upon Italian ships and
in Italian ports. In short, I was expected to provide plans and
accounts of many things material to our own service, and I entered on
the business with alacrity, gained admittance to the public dockyards,
and knew in a twelve-month all that any man could learn who had his
wits only to guide him, and as much of those of other men as he could
pick up.
"But I imagine your natural impatience, and your mental exclamation,
'What has all this rigmarole to do with me--how does it affect this
pretended narrative?' Bear with me a moment when I tell you that it is
vital to my story. It was in Italy during my second year of work that I
had cause to be at Spezia, inspecting there a new type of gun-boat
about which there was much talk and many opinions. I have no need to
tell you, who have not the bombastic knowledge of a one-city man, that
at Spezia is to be found all that is great in the naval life of Italy;
on the grand forts of the bay which received the ashes of Shelley are
her finest guns; on the glorious hills which arise above her limpid
blue waters are her chief fortifications. There, at the feet of the
hills where grows the olive, and where the vine matures to luxurious
growth, you will find in juxtaposition with Nature's emblems of peace
the storehouses of the shot and shell which one day shall sow the sea
and the land with blood. Amongst these fortifications, amidst these
adamantine terraces and turrets, my work lay; but the most part of it
was done in the dockyards, both in the yards which were the property of
the Government and in the private yards. My recreation was a rare
cruise to the lovely gulfs which the bay embosoms, to the Casa di Mare,
to Fezzano, to the Temple of Venus at the Porto Venere; or a walk when
there was golden-red light on the clustering vines, and the Apennines
were capped with the spreading fire which falls on them when the sun
passes low at twilight. Many an hour I stood above the old town, asking
why a common cheat of a spy, as I reckoned myself, should presume to
find other thoughts when breathing that air laden of solitude; but they
came to me whether I would or no; and it was often on my mind to throw
over the whole business of prying; and to set out on a work which
should achieve something, if only a little, for humanity. That I did
not follow this impulse, which grew upon me from day to day, is to be
laid to the charge of one of those very walks upon the hillside about
which I have been telling you. It was an evening late in the year, and
the sun was just setting. I watched the changing hues of the peaks as
the light spread from point to point; watched it reddening the sea, and
leaving it black in the shadows; watched it upon the church spires of
Spezia, upon the castle roof, upon the steel hulls of great ships. And
then I saw a strange thing, for amongst all the vessels which were so
burnished by the invisible hand of Heaven, I saw one that stood out
beyond them all, a great globe, not of silver, but of golden fire.
There was no doubt about it at all; I rubbed my eyes, I used the glass
I always carried with me; I viewed the hull I saw lying there from
half-a-dozen heights, and I was sure that what I saw was no effect of
evening light or strange refraction. The ship I looked on was built
either of brass, or of some alloy of brass, as it seemed to me, for the
notion that she could be plated with gold was preposterous; and yet the
more I examined her, the more clearly did I make out that her hull was
constructed of a metal infinitely gold-like, and of so beautiful a
colour in the reddened stream which shone upon it that the whole ship
had the aspect of a mirror of the purest gold I had ever seen.
"The sudden fading of the light behind the hills shut the vision--I
could not call it less--from my eyes. The dark fell, and the vines
rustled with the cold coming of night. I returned to the town quickly,
and neglecting any thought of dinner, I went straight to the sea-front
and began, if I could, to find where the water lay wherein this
extraordinary steamer was docked. I had taken the bearings of it from
the hills, and I was very quickly at that spot where I thought to have
seen the strange vessel. There, truly enough, was a dock in which two
small coasting steamers were moored, but of a sign of that which I
sought there was none. I should have had the matter out there and then,
searching the place to its extremity; but I had not been at my work ten
minutes when I knew that I was watched. A man, dressed as a rough
sailor, and remarkable for the hideousness of his face and a curious
malformation of one tooth, lurked behind the heaps of sea lumber, and
followed me from point to point. I did not care to have any
altercation, so I left the matter there; but, being determined to probe
the mystery to the very bottom, I returned in a good disguise of a
common English seaman on the following evening, and again entered the
dockyard. The same man was watching, but he had no suspicion of me.
"'Any job going?' I asked, and the question seemed to interest him.
"'I reckon that depends on the man,' he replied, sticking his hands
deep into his pockets, and squirting his filthy tobacco all over the
timber about. 'What's a little wizen chap like you good for, except to
get yer neck broken?'
"'All in my line,' I answered jauntily, having fixed my plan; 'I'm
starving amongst these cursed cut-throats here, and I'm ready for
anything.'
"'Starving, are you! Then blarm me if you shan't earn your supper.
D'y'see that four feet of bullock's fat and nigger working at them iron
pins in the far corner?'--he pointed to a thick-set, dark and burly
seaman working in the way he had described--'go and stick yer knife in
him, and I'm good for a bottle--two, if you like, you darned little
shootin' rat of a man'; and he clutched me with his great paw and shook
me until my teeth chattered again. But his look was full of meaning,
and I believe that he wished every word that he said.
"'Stick your knife into the man yourself,' I replied, when I was free
of him, 'you great Yankee lubber--for another word I'd give you a taste
of mine now.'
"He looked at me as I stood making this poor mock of a threat, and
laughed till he rang up the hill-sides. Then he said--
"'You're my sort; I reckon I know your flag. Out with it, and we'll
pour liquor on it, I guess; for there ain't no foolin' you--no, by
thunder! You're just a daisy of a man, you are; so come along and let
the nigger be. As for hurtin' of 'im--why, so help me blazes, he's my
pard, he is, and I love him like my own little brother what died of
lead-poisonin' down Sint Louis way. You come along, you little cuss,
and see if I don't make you dance--oh, I reckon!'
"I take these words from my note-book, and write them out for you, to
give you some idea of the class of man I met with first on this
adventure. More of his nice language I do not intend to trouble you
with; but will say that I drank with him, and later on with his
companions, about as fine a dozen of self-stamped rascals as ever I
wish to see. Next day, I came again to the dockyard, for the
conversation of the previous evening had convinced me beyond doubt that
I was at the foot of a mystery, and, to my delight, I got employment
from the chief of the gang, named 'Roaring John' by his friends; and
was soon at work on the simple and matter-of-fact business of cutting
planks. This gave me an entry to the dockyard--all I wished at the
moment.
"Now, you may ask, 'Why did you take the trouble to do all this from
the mere motive of curiosity engendered by the strange ship you thought
you saw from the hills?' I will tell you briefly. The fact of my being
watched when I entered the dock convinced me that there was something
there which no stranger might see. That which no stranger may see in a
foreign yard spells also the word money. If there was any information
to be got in that dock, I could sell it to my own Government, or to the
first Government in Europe I chose to haggle with. This reason alone
made me a hewer of wood amongst foul-mouthed companions, a tar-bedaubed
loafer in a crew of loafers.
"You see me, then, at the stage when I had got admission to the dock,
but had learnt nothing of the vessel. It is true that I was admitted
only to the outer basin, where the coasting steamers lay, and that the
man 'Roaring John' threatened me with all the curses he could command
if I passed the gate which opened into the dock beyond; but such
threats to a man whose business it was to lay bare mystery had no more
effect on me than the braying of an ass in a field of clover. Minute by
minute and hour by hour, I waited my opportunity. It came to me on the
morning of the eighth day, when, in the poor hope of getting something
by the loss of sleep, I reached the yard at four o'clock; and the gate
being unopen, I lurked in hiding until the first man should come. He
was no other than the one who had engaged me; and when he had gone in,
about five minutes after I had come, he did not close the second door
after him, there being no men then at their work. I need not tell you
that I used my eyes well in those minutes, and while he was away--this
was no more than a quarter of an hour--I had seen all I wished to see.
There, sure enough, lay the most remarkable warship I had ever
beheld--a great, well-armed cruiser, whose decks were bright with
quick-firing guns, whose lines showed novelty in every inch of them.
More remarkable than anything, however, was the confirmation of that
which I had seen from the hills. The ship, seemingly, was built of the
purest gold. This, of course, I knew could not be; but as the sun got
up and his light fell on the vessel, I thought that I had never seen a
more glorious sight. She shone with the refulgent beauty of a thousand
mirrors; every foot of her deck, of her turrets, of her upper house
made a sheen of dazzling fire; the points of her decklights were as
beacons, all lurid and a-gold. So marvellous, truly, was her aspect,
that I forgot all else but it, and stood entranced, marvelling,
forgetful of myself and purpose. The flash of a knife in the air and a
fearful oath brought me to my senses to know that I was in the grasp of
the man 'Roaring John.'
"'Curse you for a small-eyed cheat! what are you doing here?' he asked,
shaking me and threatening every minute to let me feel his steel; 'what
are you doing here, you little cat of a man? Spit it out, or I'm darned
if I don't spit you; oh, I guess!'
"I should have made some answer in the rough voice I always put on in
this undertaking, but a bad mishap befel me. The best of my disguise
was the thick, bushy black hair I wore about my face. As the ruffian
went to take a firmer hold of my collar, he pulled aside a portion of
my beard, and left my chin clean-shaven beneath as naturally it was.
The intense surprise of this discovery seemed to hit him like a blow.
He stepped back with a murderous look in his eyes--a look which meant
that, if I stayed there to deal with him alone, I had not another
minute to live. But I cheated him again, and, turning on my heel, I
fled with all the speed I possessed, and got into the street with
twenty ruffians at my heels, and a hue and cry such as I hope never to
hear again.
"The escape was clever, but I reached my hotel and sat down to find
expressions equal in power to my folly. The thought that I, who was a
vulgar spy by profession, had committed a mistake worthy of a
novelist's policeman, was gall and wormwood to me. Yet I was sure that
I had cut off all hope of returning to the yard; and what information I
was to get must come by other modes. The nature of these I knew not,
but I was determined to set out upon a visit to Signor Vezzia, who was
the builder to whom the docks wherein I worked belonged. To him I came
as the pretended agent of a shipping firm in New York, with whom I had
some little acquaintance, and he gave me audience readily. He was very
willing to hear me when he learnt that I was in quest of a builder to
lay down steamers for the American trade with Italy; and some while we
passed in great cordiality, so ripe on his part that I ventured the
other business.
"'By-the-by, Signor Vezzia, that's a marvellous battleship you have in
your second dock; I have never seen anything like her before.'
"I spoke the words, and read him as one reads a barometer. He shrank
visibly into his bulb, and the tone of his conversation marked a storm.
I heard him mutter 'Diavolo!' under his breath, and then the mercury of
his conversation mounted quickly.
"'Yes, yes; a curious vessel, quite a special thing, for a South
American Republic, an idea of theirs--but you will extend me the favour
of your pardon, I am busy'--and in his excitement he put his spectacles
off and on, and called 'Giovanni, Giovanni!' to his head clerk, who
made business to be rid of me. Clearly, as a piece in the game I was
playing, Signor Vezzia had made his solitary move. He was no more upon
my board, miserably void as it was, and in despair I mounted to my
hill-top again; and spent the morning where the vines grew, looking
down upon the golden ship which was built for a 'South American
Republic.' That tale I never believed, for the man's face marked it as
a lie as he gave it to me; but the mere telling of it added piquancy to
the dish I had tasted of, and I resolved in that hour to devote myself
heart and soul to the work of unravelling the slender threads, even if
I lost my common employment in the business. The reverie held me long.
I was roused from it by the sight of a dull vapour mounting from the
funnel of the nameless ship. She was going to sail then--at the next
tide she might leave Spezia, and there would be no more hope. I threw a
word at my dreaming, and hurried from the vines to my hotel in the town
below.
"Now you may form opinion that my prospects in this abstruse and
perplexing chase were not at that time much to vaunt. My theories and
my acts had led me into a mental _cul-de-sac_, a blind alley, where, in
lack of exit, I took hold of every straw that the wind of thought set
flying. Here was the problem at this stage as it then appeared to
me:--Item (1): A ship built of some metal I had no knowledge of. Item
(2): A ship that shone like a rich sunset on a garden lake. Item (3): A
ship that was armed to the full, as a casual glance told me, with every
kind of quick-firing guns, and with two ten-inch guns in her turret.
Item (4): A ruffianly blackguard, to whom the cutting of a throat
seemed meat and drink, with ten other rogues no less deserving, from a
murderous point of view, put to watch about the ship that no strange
eye might look upon her. Item (5): The confusion of Signor Vezzia, who
made a fine tale and said at the same time with his eyes 'This is a
lie, and a bad one; I'm sorry that I have nothing better ready.' Item
(6): My own adamantine conviction that I stood near by some mystery,
which was about to be a big mystery, and which would pay me to pursue.
'A fine bundle of nonsense,' I hear you say; 'as silly a flight of a
vaporous brain as ever man conceived'--but stay your words awhile;
remember that one who is bred up at the keyhole lets himself, if he be
wise, be moved by his impulses, and first opinions. He does not quit
them until he knows them to be false. Instinct told me to go on in this
work, if I lost all other, if I starved, if I drowned, if I died at it.
And to go on I meant.
"This was my musing at the Albergo, and when it was over I laughed
aloud at its quixotic folly. 'Oh, poor fool,' I said, 'miserable,
brain-blinded, groping fool, to talk of going on when the ship sails
this night, this very night; and unless you put agents on in every part
of the globe, you will never hear of her again. What a fine piece of
dreamer's wit is yours! what a bar-parlour yarn to tell rustics in
Somerset! Get up, and mind your own business, go on with your common
labour, and let the ship and her crew go to the devil if they like.'
For the matter of that, this advice perforce I had to follow, for I did
not possess one single clue at that moment; and although I racked my
brains for one all the afternoon, and went often to the hill-top to see
if the nameless ship yet lay in the dock, I could pick up no new
thread, nor light upon any infinitesimal vein of material. The very
want of a _point d'appui_ irritated a brain already excited to a fine
condition of unrest. Any hour the ship might sail; any hour something
which would give me the name of her owner might come to me--but the
hours went on and nothing came. I dined, and was no step advanced; I
smoked cigars in three cafés, and was again at the beginning; I visited
half-a-dozen folk I knew, and drew no word to help me. At last, mocking
the whole mystery with a fine English phrase, I said, 'Let her go'; and
I returned to the Albergo and to bed. I had hunted a marine covert for
two days and had drawn blank.
"I have said that I went to bed, but it was a poor folly of a process,
you do not doubt. I lay down, indeed, and read Poe's tales, which I
love, an hour or more; then I went over the whole business again,
raised every point; made my brain aflame with speculation; put out the
candle; lit it again; read more mystery; held out the hand to sleep;
told sleep I did not want her. You who know me will know also how
useless are such gamings of man with Nature. I could not have slept if
a king's ransom went with the sleeping; and so I lay fretful, blameful,
scolding myself, condoling with myself, vowing the whole problem a
plague and a cheat. This idle wandering might have lasted until dawn,
had it not been for my neighbour in the room to my left, who began to
talk with a low buzz as of a night-insect humming in a bed-curtain. The
surging of the voice amused me; I lay quite still and listened to it.
Now it rose loud--I gleaned a word, and was pleased; now it fell--and I
fretted; but anon another voice was added to the first, and, if the one
had pleased me, the second thrilled me. It was the voice of my friend
who wished to stab me at the dock.
"Two words spoken by this man brought me to my feet; two more to the
thin wooden door which divided our rooms, as oft you'll find them
divided in cafés through Italy. With feverish impatience, I knelt to
pry through the keyhole; and muttered a big oath when I saw that it was
stuffed with paper, and that the sight of the two men was hidden from
me. But I listened with an ear long trained to listening, and, although
the men spoke so that few words reached me, I remained a whole hour
upon my knees, amazed that the man should thus be sent by Providence to
my very hotel; excited with the new sensation of a foot upon the trail.
The ship had not sailed, then, for here was the ruffian, who watched
her, wasting rest in the first hours to hold a parley; and if a parley,
with whom? Why, with those who paid him for the work, I did not doubt.
"At the end of an hour the voices ceased, but there was still a
movement in the room. That was hushed too; and I judged that my
neighbour had gone to bed. For myself I had one of two courses before
me: either to court sleep and wait luck, with the sun, or to see there
and then what was in the room, and by whom it was occupied. You ask,
How was that possible? but you forget my scurvy trade again. In my bag
were forbidden implements sufficient to stock Clerkenwell. I took from
that a brace and bit, and an oiled saw. In ten minutes I cut a hole in
the partition and put my eye to it, waiting first to see if any man
moved. For the moment my heart quaked as I thought that both the
fellows had gone, but one look reassured me. A burly, black-bearded man
sat in a reverie before a dressing-table, and I saw that there was
spread upon the table a great heap of jewels which, at the lowest
valuation, must have been worth a hundred thousand pounds. And beside
the jewels was a big bull-dog revolver, close to the man's hand.
"The tension of the strange situation lasted for some minutes. I had no
clear vision through my spy-hole, and knew not at the first watching
whether the man I saw was asleep or awake. A finer inspection of him,
made with a catlike poise as I knelt crouching at the door, showed me
that he slept: had fallen to sleep with his fingers amongst the
jewels--a great rough dog of a man clutching wealth in his dreaming.
And he was, then, one of those connected with the golden ship in the
harbour--the strange ship manned by cut-throats, and built for a 'South
American Republic.' Indeed did the mystery deepen, the problem became
more profound, every moment that I worked upon it. Who was this man? I
asked, and why did he sit in an Italian hotel fingering jewels, and
giving a meeting-place at midnight to a common murderer from a
dockyard? Were the jewels his own? Had he stolen them? Suggestions and
queries poured upon me; I felt that, whatever it might be, I would know
the truth; and I resolved to dare beyond my custom, and to learn more
of the bearded man and of his gems.
"Watch me, then; as I knelt for a whole hour at the place of
observation, and waited for the fellow to awake. It must have been well
on towards morning when he stirred in his chair, and then sat bolt
upright. I thought he looked to have some tremor of nervousness upon
him; clutching hastily at the jewels to put them in a great leather
case, which again he shut in a large iron box, locking both, and
placing the key under his pillow. After that he threw off his clothes
with some impatience, and, leaving the lamp which burned upon his
dressing-table, he dropped upon his bed. For myself my plan was already
contrived; I had determined to go to great risk, and to enter the
room--playing the common cheat again, yet more than the common cheat,
for that was an enterprise which needed all the fine caution and daring
which long years of police work had taught me. I had not only to ape
the housebreaker, but also to get the good cunning of a jewel
robber--and yet I knew that the things I had seen warranted me, from my
point of view, in doing what I did, and that desperate means alone were
fit to cope with the situation.
"Now the new work was quick. Being assured that my man slept, I put
back with some cold glue, which was always in my tool chest, the piece
I had cut from the door, and then picked the lock with one grip of my
small pincers. My revolver I carried in the belt at my waist, for my
hands were occupied with a soft cloth and a bottle of chloroform. I had
big felt slippers upon my feet; and went straight to his bed, where I
let him breathe the drug for a few moments, and deepened his light
sleep until it became heavy unconsciousness. In this state I did what I
would with him, and, having no fear of his awaking, I got at his keys
and his jewels, and saw what I wished. There, true enough, were
precious stones of all values: Brazilian diamonds, Cape stones tinged
with yellow, yet big and valuable, the finer class of Indian turquoise,
pink pearls, black pearls--all these loosely wrapped in tissue paper;
but a magnificent parcel such as you would see only in a West End house
in London. I must confess, however, that these stones interested me but
little, for as I delved amongst his treasures I brought up at last a
necklace of opals and diamonds, the first set gems I had discovered;
and as I held them to the lamp and examined the curious grouping of the
stones, and the strange Eastern form of the clasp, I knew that I had
seen the bundle before. The conviction was instantaneous, powerful,
convincing; yet even with my aptitude for recalling names, places, and
things, I could not in my mind place those jewels. None the less was I
assured that the one solid clue I had yet taken hold of was in my
keeping; and, as a quick glance round the chamber told me no more, I
put up the baubles in their case again, replaced the key, and quitted
the chamber. Do not think, however, that I had neglected to mark my
man; every line of his face was written in my mental notebook, every
peculiarity of head and countenance, the shape of his arms, above all,
the mould of the hands, that wonderful index to recognition; and
henceforth I knew that I could pick him from a hundred thousand.
"When I had done with this business, I lay upon my bed, and brought the
whole of my recollection back upon the jewels. Where had I seen them;
in what circumstances; in whose hands? Again and again I travelled old
ground, exhumed buried cases, dwelt upon names of forgotten criminals,
and of big world people. An hour's intense mental concentration told me
nothing; the dark of the hour before dawn gave way to the cold breaking
of morning light, and yet I tossed in an agony of blank and futile
reasoning. I must have slept from the sheer blinding of the brain
somewhere about that hour; and in my dreaming I got what wakefulness
had denied to me. There in my sleep was the whole history of the stones
written for me. I remembered the Liverpool landing-stage; the departure
of the Star liner, _City of St. Petersburg_, for New York; the arrest
of the notorious jewel-thief, Carl Reichsmann; the discovery of the
opal and diamond necklace upon him; the restoration of it to--to--the
brain failed for a moment--then with a loud cry of delight, which
roused me, I pronounced the words; to Lady Hardon, of 202A, Berkeley
Square, London.
"It is a ridiculous situation to sit up in bed asking yourself if your
dream be reality, or your reality be a dream; but when I awoke with
that name on my lips, the joy of the thing was so surpassing that I
repeated the name again and again, muttering it as I got into my
clothes, using it all the time I washed, and speaking it aloud when I
stood before the glass to tie my cravat. Here, I suppose the folly of
the whole repetition dawned upon me, for, of a sudden, I shut my lips
firm and close, and bethought me of the man in the next room. What of
him? Was he still there? I listened. There was no sound, not so much as
of a heavy sleeper. He had gone then, and had Lady Hardon's jewels--yet
Lady Hardon, Lady Hardon----nay, but you could never know the sudden
and awful emotion of that great awakening which came to me in that
moment when my memory travelled quickly on to Lady Hardon's end; for I
remembered then that she went down in the great steamer _Alexandria_,
which was lost in the Bay of Biscay twelve months before I discovered
the golden ship in the dockyard at Spezia; and I recalled the fact,
known worldwide, that her famous jewels, this necklace amongst them,
had gone with her to her end. Lost, I say; yet that was the account at
Lloyd's; lost with never a soul to give a word about her agony; lost
hopelessly in the broad of the bay. How came it, then, that this man
who knew the ruffians in the dockyard below; who seemed a common
fellow, yet possessed a hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewellery,
how came it that he had got that which the world thought to be lying on
the sands of the bay? You say, 'Pshaw, it was not the same bauble';
that is the obvious answer to my theorising, but in the recognition of
historic gems a man trained as I was never makes an error. I would have
staked my life that the jewels were those supposed to be under the sea;
and, moved to a state of deep excitement, I left my hotel without
breakfast, and mounted to the hill-top for tidings of the great vessel.
"But she had sailed, and the dock which had held her was empty.
"This discovery did not daunt me, for I had expected it. I should have
been surprised if she had been at her berth; and the fact that she had
weighed under cover of night fell in so well with my anticipation that
I waited only to ascertain officially what ships had left Spezia during
the past twenty-four hours. They told me at the Customs that the
Brazilian war-vessel built by Signor Vezzia weighed at three a.m.; but
more I could not learn, for these men had evidently been well bribed,
and were as dumb as unfee'd lawyers. I knew that their information was
not worth a groat, and hurried back to the Albergo to assure myself
that my neighbour with the necklace had sailed also. To my surprise, he
was at breakfast when I arrived at the hotel; and so one great link in
my theoretic chain snapped at the first test. As he had not sailed with
the others, he could have no direct connection with the nameless ship,
no nautical part or lot with her. But what was he, then? That I meant
to know as soon as opportunity should serve.
* * * * *
"I have led you up, Strong, step by step, through the details of this
work to this point, that you may have the facts unalloyed as I have
them; and may construct your history from this preamble as I have
constructed mine. I am now about to move over the ground more quickly.
I will quit Spezia, and ask you to come with me, after the interval of
nigh a year--during which no man had known that which I now tell
you--to London, where, in an hotel in Cecil Street, Strand, I was again
the neighbour of the man with the jewels whom I had taken so daring an
advantage of in Italy. Let me tell you briefly what had happened in the
between-time. The day on which the nameless ship left the dock, this
man--whom, I may say at once, I have always met under the name of
Captain Black--quitted the town and reached Paris. Thither I followed
him, staying one day in the French capital, but going onward with him
on the following morning to Cherbourg. There he went aboard a small
yacht, and I lost him in the Channel. I returned at once to Italy, and
wired to friends in the police force at New York, at London, and San
Francisco, and at three ports in South America for news (_a_) of a new
war-ship lately completed at Spezia for the Brazilian republic; (_b_)
of a man known as Captain Black, who left the port of Cherbourg in the
cutter-yacht _La France_ on the morning of October 30th. For nearly
twelve months I waited for an answer to these questions; but none came
to me. To the best of my knowledge, the nameless war-ship was never
seen upon the high seas. I began to ask myself, if she existed, how
came it that a vessel, burnished to the beauty of gold, had been spoken
of none, seen of none, reported in no harbour, mentioned in no
despatch? Yet she remained known but to her crew and to me: and my
study of shipping lists, gazettes, and papers in all tongues, never
gave me clue to her. Only this, I had such a record of navigation as I
think man never kept yet before; and I marked it as curious, if nothing
more, that in the month when the cruiser quitted Spezia three
ocean-going steamers, each carrying specie to the value of more than
one hundred thousand pounds, went down in fair weather, and were paid
for at Lloyd's. What folly! you say again; what are you going to
conclude? I answer only--God grant that I conclude falsely--that this
terrible thing I suspect is the phantom of a too-keen imagination.
"Now, when no tidings came, either of the ship I sought or of the
man Black, I did not lose all hope. Indeed, I was much occupied
making--during a month's leisure in London--a list, as far as that were
possible, of all the gems and baubles which the dead men and women on
the sunken steamers had owned. This was a paltry record of bracelets,
and rings, and tiaras, and clasps, such stuff as any fellow of a
jeweller may sell; unconvincing stuff, worth no more than a near
relation for purposes of evidence. There was but one piece of the whole
mass that did not come in my category--a great box with a fine painting
by Jean Petitot upon its lid, and a curious circle of jasper all about
the miniatures. This was a historic piece of _bijouterie_ mentioned as
having once been the property of Necker, the French financier; then
lost by a New York dealer, who was taking it from Paris to Boston in
the steamship _Catalania_; the ship supposed to have foundered, with
the loss of all hands, off the Banks of Newfoundland, sixteen days
after the nameless ship left Spezia. I made a record of this trifle,
and forgot it until, many months later, a private communication from
the head of the New York Secret Service told me that the man I wanted
was in London; that he was an American millionaire, who owned a house
on the banks of the Hudson River; who had great influence in many
cities, who came to Europe to buy precious stones and miniature
paintings, a man who was considered eccentric by his friends. I kept
the notes, and hurried to England--for I had been to Geneva some
while--and took rooms in the hotel where Captain Black was staying.
Three days after I was disguised as you have seen me, selling him
miniatures. Within a week, by what steps I need not pause to say, I
knew that the jasper box, lost, by report, in the steamer _Catalania_,
was under lock and key in his bedroom.
"I cannot tell you how that discovery agitated me. Here, indeed, was my
second direct link. The man had in his possession an historic and
unmistakable casket, which all the world believed to be lost in a
steamer from which no soul had escaped. How I treasured that knowledge!
Three months the man remained in London; during three months he was not
thirty hours out of my sight or knowledge. Day by day when with him, I
consulted such shipping information as I could get; and scored another
mark upon my record when I made sure that no inexplicable story from
the sea was written while he remained ashore. This was perplexing for a
surety. I could not in any way connect the man with the nameless ship,
and yet he knew her crew; he was the one in whose possession the jewels
were; above all, while he was ashore there were no disasters which
could not be set down to ocean peril or the act of God, as the policies
say. This further knowledge held me to him with the magnetic attraction
of a mystery such as I have never known in my life. I resigned my work
for the Government; and henceforth gave myself heart and soul to the
pursuit of the man. I followed him to Paris, to St. Petersburg; I
tracked him through France to Marseilles; I watched him embark, with
three of the ruffians I had seen at Spezia, in his yacht again; and
within a month the yacht was in harbour at Cowes without him; while a
steamer, bound from the Cape to Cadiz, and known to have specie aboard
her, went out of knowledge as the others had done. Then was I sure,
sure of that awful dream I had dreamed, conscious that I alone shared
with that man and his crew one of the most ghastly secrets that the
deep has kept within her.
"The end of my story I judge now that you anticipate. Though absolutely
convinced myself, I had still lack of the one direct link to make a
legal chain. I had positively to connect the man Black with the
nameless ship, for this I had only done so far by pure circumstance.
For many months I have made no gain in this attempt. Last year in
Liverpool I sketched in yet another point in my picture. I received
tidings of the man in that city, and there I did trade with him in my
old disguise; but he was not alone--the crew of ruffians you have known
by this time kept company with him in that bold and bestial Bohemianism
you will have witnessed with me. I kept vigil there a week, but lost
him at the end of that time. When he reappeared in the circles of
civilisation it was in Paris, but two days ago, when I asked you to
accompany me. You know that I attempted to sail with him on his cruise,
and your instinct tells you why. If I could, by being two days afloat
in his company, prove beyond doubt that he used his yacht as a
pretence; if I could prove that when he left port in her he sailed out
to sea, and was picked up by the nameless ship, my chain was forged, my
book complete, and I had but to call the Government to the work!
"But I have failed, and the labour I have set myself shall be done by
others, but chiefly, Mark Strong, by you. From the valley of the dead
whence soon I must look back, if it is to be on a life that has no
achievement before God in it, I, who have laid down such a life as mine
was in this cause, urge you upon it. You have youth, and money
sufficient for the enterprise; you will get money in its pursuit. You
have no fear of the black After, which is the end of life; but, after
all, it may come to you as it came to me, that there is the finger of
the Almighty God pointing to your path of duty. I have lived the life
of a common eavesdropper; but believe me that in this work I have felt
the call of humanity, and hoped, if I might live to accomplish it, that
the Book of the Good should find some place for my name. So may you
when my mantle falls upon you. What information I have, you have. The
names of my friends in the cities mentioned I have written down for
you; they will serve you for the memory of my name; but be assured at
the outset that you will never take this man upon the sea. And as for
the money which is rightly due to the one who rids humanity of this
pest, I say, go to the Admiralty in London, and lay so much of your
knowledge before them as shall prevent a robbery of your due; claim a
fit reward from them and the steamship companies; and, as your
beginning, go now to the Hudson River--I meant to go within a
month--and learn there more of the man you seek; or, if the time be
ripe, lay hands there upon him. And may the spirit of a dead man
breathe success upon you!"
_On the yacht "Celsis" lying at Cowes, written in the month of
August, for Mark Strong._
When I put down the papers, my eyes were tear-stained with the effort
of reading, and the cabin lamp was nigh out. My interest in the writing
had been so sustained that I had not seen the march of daylight, now
streaming through the glass above, upon my bare cabin table. But I was
burnt up almost with a fever; and the oppressive fumes from the
stinking lamp seemed to choke me, so that I went above, and saw that we
were at anchor in the Solent, and that the whole glory of a summer's
dawn lit the sleeping waters. And all the yacht herself breathed sleep,
for the others were below, and Dan alone paced the deck.
The first knowledge that I had of the true effect of Martin Hall's
narrative was the muttered exclamation of this old sailor--
"Ye haven't slept, sir," said he; "ye're just the colour of yon
ensign!"
"Quite true, Dan--it was close down there."
"Gospel truth, without a hitch! but ye're precious bad, sir; I never
seed a worse figger-'ed, excusing the liberty. I'd rest a bit, sir."
"Good advice, Dan. I'll sleep here an hour, if you'll get my rug from
below."
I stretched myself on a deck-chair, and he covered my limbs almost with
a woman's tenderness, so that I slept and dreamt again of Hall, of
Captain Black, of the man "Four-Eyes," of a great holocaust on the sea.
I was carried away by sleep to far cities and among other men, to great
perils of the sea, to strange sights; but over them all loomed the
phantom of a golden ship, and from her decks great fires came. When I
awoke, a doctor from Southsea was writing down the names of drugs upon
paper; and Mary was busy with ice. They told me I had slept for thirty
hours, and that they had feared brain-fever. But the sleep had saved
me; and when Mary talked of the doctor's order that I was to lie
resting a week, I laughed aloud.
"You'd better prescribe that for Roderick," said I; "he'd rest a month;
wouldn't you, old chap?"
"I don't know about a month, old man, but you mustn't try the system
too much."
"Well, I'm going to try it now, anyway, for I start for London
to-night!"
"What!" they cried in one voice.
"Exactly, and if Mary would not mind running on deck for a minute, I'll
tell you why, Roderick."
She went at the word, casting one pleading look with her eyes as she
stood at the door, but I gave no sign, and she closed it. I had fixed
upon a course, and as Roderick, dreamingly indifferent, prepared to
talk about that which he called my "madness," I took Hall's manuscript,
and read it to him. When I had finished, there was a strange light in
his eyes.
"Let us go at once," he said; and that was all.
CHAPTER VI.
I ENGAGE A SECOND MATE.
We caught the first train to London; and were at the Hotel Columbia by
Charing Cross in time for dinner. Mary had insisted on her right to
accompany us, and, as we could find no valid reason why she should not,
we brought her to the hotel with us. Then by way of calming that
trouble, excitement, and expectation which crowded on us both, we went
to Covent Garden, where the autumn season of opera was then on, and
listened to the glorious music of _Orfeo_ and the _Cavalleria_. Nor did
either of us speak again that night of Hall or of his death; but I
confess that the vision of it haunted my eyes, standing out upon all
the scenes that were set, so that I saw it upon the canvas, and often
before me the wind-worn struggle of a burning ship; while that awful
"Ahoy!" of my own men yet rang in my ears.
When I returned to the hotel I wrote two letters, the beginning of my
task. One was to the Admiralty, the other to the office of the Black
Anchor Line of American Steamships. I told Roderick what I had done,
but he laughed at the idea; so that I troubled him no more with it,
awaiting its proof. On the next morning, in a few moments of privacy
between us, he agreed to let me work alone for two days, and then to
venture on suggestion himself. So it came to be that on the next day I
found myself standing in a meagrely furnished anteroom at the
Admiralty, and there waiting the pleasure of one of the clerks, who had
been deputed to talk with me. He was a fine fellow, I doubt not: had
much merit of his faultless bow, and great worth in the nicety of his
spotless waistcoat, but God never made one so dull or so preposterous a
blockhead. I see him now, rolling up the starved hairs which struggled
for existence upon his chin, and letting his cuffs lie well upon his
bony wrists as he asked me, with a floating drawl--
"And what service can I do for you?"
For me! What service could _he_ do for me? I smiled at him, and did not
disguise my contempt.
"If there is any responsible person here," I said, with emphasis upon
the word responsible, "I should be glad to impart to him some very
curious, and, as it seems to me, very remarkable, information
concerning a war-ship which has just left Spezia, and is supposed to be
the property of the Brazilian Government."
"It's very good of you, don't you know," he replied, as he bent down to
arrange his ample trousers; "but I fancy we heard something about her
last week, so we won't trouble you, don't you know"; and he felt to see
if his bow were straight.
"You may have heard something of the ship," I answered with warmth,
"but that which I have to communicate is not of descriptive, but of
national, importance. You cannot by any means have learnt my story, for
there is only one man living who knows it."
He looked up at the clock a moment as though seeking inspiration, but
his mind was quite vacant when he replied--
"It's awfully good of you, don't you know; we're so frightfully busy
this month; if you could come up in a month's time----"
"In a month's time," I said, rising with scorn, "in a month's time, if
you and yours don't stand condemned before Europe for a parcel of fools
and incompetents, then you'll send for me, but I'll see you at blazes
first--good-morning!"
I was outside the office before his exclamation of surprise had passed
away; and within half an hour I sat in the private room of the
secretary to the Black Anchor Steamship Company. He was a sharp man of
business, keen-visaged as a ferret, and restless as a nervous horse
long reined in. I told him shortly that I had reason to doubt the truth
of the statement that a warship recently built at Spezia was intended
for the purposes set down to her; that I believed she was the property
of an American adventurer whose motives I scarce dared to realise; that
I had proof, amounting to conviction, that this man possessed jewels
which were commonly accounted as lost in his firm's steamer, _Catalania_;
and that if his company would agree to bear the expense, and to give me
suitable recompense if I succeeded in supporting my conjectures, I
would undertake to bring him the whole history of the nameless ship
within twelve months; and also to give him such knowledge as would
enable him to lay hands on the man called "Captain Black," should this
man prove the criminal I believed him to be. To all which tale he
listened, his searching eye fixing its stare plump upon me, from time
to time; but when I had done, he rang the bell for his clerk, and I
could see that he felt himself in the company of a maniac. So I left
him, and breathed the breath of liberty again as I went back to the
hotel, and told Roderick of the utter and crushing failure waiting upon
the very beginning of the task which Martin Hall had left to me.
Roderick was not at all surprised--it seemed to me rather that he was
glad.
"What did I tell you?" he said, as he sat up on the couch, and took the
tube of his hookah from his mouth; "who will believe such a tale as we
are hawking in the market-place--selling, in fact, to the highest
bidder? If a man came to you with the same account, and with no more
authority to support him than the story of a dead detective--who may
have lost his wits, or may never have had any to lose--would you put
down a shilling to see him through with the business? Pshaw! my dear
old Mark, you, with your long head and that horribly critical eyes of
yours, you wouldn't give him a groat."
"Exactly, I should consider him a dupe or a stark-staring madman; but
the case is different as it stands. I know--I would stake my life on
it--that every word Martin Hall wrote is true, true as my life itself.
I am not so sure that you are convinced, though."
I awaited his answer, but it did not come for many minutes. He had
passed through his momentary enthusiasm and lay at full length upon the
couch, making circles, parabolas, and ellipses of fine white smoke,
while he fixed his gaze upon the frieze of the wall, as if he were
counting the architraves.
"Mark," he said at last, "when we were at Harrow together an aged sage
impressed upon us the meaning of Seneca's line, '_Veritas odit moras_.'
I regard myself at the moment in a position of truth; but whether on
calm reflection I believe the whole of your dead friend's story, I'm
hanged if I know, and therefore"--here he made a long pause and smoked
violently--"and therefore I have bought a steamer."
"You have done what?"
"At two o'clock to-day, in your absence, I bought the steam-yacht
_Rocket_, lately the property of Lord Wilmer, now the property of
Roderick Stewart, of the Hotel Columbia, London."
I think I must have laughed sorrowfully at him, as a man laughs at a
drawing-room humorist, for he continued quickly--
"Before we go on board her, the yacht will be re-christened by
Mary--who will stay with her dear maiden aunt in our absence--and will
be named after your vessel _Celsis_. Her crew will consist of our
silent friend, Captain York, of his brother as chief mate, and of your
men now at Portsmouth, with half a dozen more. We shall need eight
firemen, whom the agents will engage, and three engineers, already
found, for I have taken on Lord Wilmer's men. Your cook, old
'Cuss-a-lot,' will serve us very well during the fourteen or fifteen
days we shall need to go across the Atlantic, and we want now only a
second and third officer. As these men will be mixed up with us on the
quarter-deck, I have told the agents to send them up to see you
here--so you'll run your eye over them and tell me if they'll do. I
hate seeing people; they bore me, and I mean you to take the charge of
this enterprise from the very beginning--you quite understand?"
"Roderick, my old friend, I'm as blank as a drawing-board--would you
mind giving me that yarn from the beginning again--and tell me first,
why are we going; then, where are we going; and after that, what has
your steamer to do with the business of Martin Hall--and, well, and
what we know?"
He spoke quickly in answer, and seemed disappointed.
"I hate palaver," he said, "and didn't think to find you dense, but
you're growing silly at this business anyway. Now, look here; until you
read me that paper in your cabin, I don't know that I ever felt anger
against any man, but, before God, I'll bring the man who murdered
Martin Hall, and Heaven knows how many others, to justice or I'll never
know another hour's rest. You have been talking of Governments and
ship-owners for twenty-four hours; but what have Governments and
ship-owners to do with us? Is it money you want? Well, what's mine is
yours; and I'm worth two hundred and fifty thousand pounds if I'm worth
a shilling. Is it profit of a dead man's work you're after? Well then,
mark your man, learn all about him, run him to his hole; and then, when
other people besides yourself know his story, as it must be known in a
few months' time, put your price on what is your own, and don't fear to
recompense yourself. What I want you to see is this:--For some months,
at any rate, we shall get no outside help in this matter from any
living creature; what we're going to do must be done at our cost, which
is my cost. And what we're going to do isn't to be done at this hotel,
or on this couch, or in the City: it's going to be done on the high
seas, and after that in America on the Hudson River, where, if Hall be
right, is the home of Captain Black. It is to the Hudson River that I
mean to go now--at once, as soon as money and the devil's own number of
men can get the steam-yacht _Celsis_ ready for sea. And at my cost,
don't forget that; though I'm a fool in the game, which is yours to
make and yours to play, as it has been from the beginning, when the
dead man chose you to finish it and to reckon with the scoundrels now
afloat somewhere between here and the Banks. In his name I ask you now
to close your hand with me on this bargain, to ask no question, to make
no protests, and to remember that we sail in three days, if possible,
and if not in three, then, in as small a number as will serve to get
the steamer ready."
What could I say to a story such as this one? I could only wring his
hand, and feel how hot it was, knowing that the same haunting wish to
be up and off in pursuit was about him as about me. For half-an-hour we
sat and smoked together. In three-quarters I was closeted in the room
below with Francis Paolo, who had come from the agents to seek the
berth of second officer to the new yacht _Celsis_. When the servant
gave me this man's name, I had some misgiving at its Italian sound, but
I remembered that Italy is breeding a nation of sailors; and I put off
the prejudice and hurried down to see him. I found him to be a
sprightly, dark-faced, black-haired Italian, apparently no more than
twenty-five years old; and he greeted me with much smoothness of
speech. He had served three years as third officer to the big
steam-yacht owned by the noted Frenchman, the Marquis de Cluneville;
and, as he was unmistakably a gentleman, and his discharges were in
perfect order, I engaged him there and then for the post of second
officer to the _Celsis_, and gave him orders to join her at Plymouth,
where she lay, as soon as might be.
But had I known him then as I know him now, I would have paid a
thousand pounds never to have seen him!
CHAPTER VII.
THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT PURSUIT.
It was our last day in London. Roderick and I sat down to dinner in the
hotel, the touch of depression upon us both. Mary had left us early in
the morning to go to Salisbury, where her kinsfolk lived, and I confess
that her readiness to quit us without protest somewhat hurt me. I
imagine that I was thinking of it, for I blurted out at last, when we
had been silent for at least a quarter of an hour--
"I suppose she's arrived by this."
"No, I didn't post her till three," Roderick replied in equal
reflective mood.
"Didn't post who?" I asked indignantly.
"Why, old Belle, of course. I sent her down with the guard to get her
out of the way."
"Oh," I replied, "I was thinking of Mary, not of your dog."
"You always are," he said; "but, between ourselves, I'm glad she went.
I thought there'd be a fuss; and if it comes to a row, as it most
probably will, girls are in the way. Don't you think so? But, of
course, you don't."
I didn't, and made no bones of pretence about it. Mary was a child;
there was no doubt about that; but as I girded up my courage for this
undertaking, I thought how much those pretty eyes would have encouraged
me, and how sweet that childish laugh would have been in mid-Atlantic.
But there--that's no part of this story.
We were going down to Plymouth by the nine o'clock mail from
Paddington, and there was not a wealth of time to spare. So soon as we
had dined, I went up to my room to put the small things of need away,
meaning to be no more than five minutes at the work; but, to my
amazement, the whole of the place had been turned utterly inside out by
one who had been there before me. My trunk lay upside down; my
writing-case was unlocked and stripped, my diary was torn and rent, my
clothes were scattered; I thought at first that a common cheat of a
hotel thief had been busy snapping up trifles; but I got a shock
greater than any I had known since Martin Hall's death when I felt for
his writing, which lay secure in its case, and found that, while the
main narrative was intact, his letters to the police at New York, his
plans, and his sketches had been taken. For the moment the discovery
made me reel. I could not realise its import, and almost mechanically I
rang for a servant, who sent the manager to me.
His perplexity and dismay were no less than mine.
"No one has any right to enter your rooms," he said; "and I will
guarantee the honesty of my servants unhesitatingly. Let us ring and
ask for the porter."
The porter was emphatic.
"No one has been here after you since yesterday, sir, when the Italian
gentleman came," he pleaded. "To-day he sent a man for a parcel he left
here, but I know of no one else who has even mentioned your name."
"What is the amount of your loss?" asked the manager, as he began to
assist me to make things straight, and the question gave me
inspiration. I made a hurried search, and I must have shown feeling,
for I was conscious of pallor of face and momentary giddiness.
"You have lost something of great value, then?" he continued, as he
watched. And I replied--
"Yes, but to myself only. Nothing has been taken from the room but
papers, which may be worth ten thousand pounds to me. They are not
worth a penny to anyone else."
"Oh! papers only--that is fortunate; it is, perhaps, a case for your
own private detective."
"Quite so; I shouldn't have troubled you had I made a search before. I
will see to it myself--many thanks."
He withdrew with profuse apologies, but I remained standing, with all
the heart out of me. What, in Heaven's name, did it mean? Who had
interest to rifle my portfolio and take the papers? Who could have
interest? Who but the man I meant to hunt down? And what did he know of
me--what? I asked, repeating the words over again, and so loudly that
those in the neighbouring rooms must have heard them.
Was I watched from the very beginning? Had I to cope, at the very
outset, with a man worth a million, the captain of a band of
cutthroats, who stood at no devil's deed, no foul work, no crime, as
Martin Hall's death clearly proved? My heart ached at the thought; I
felt the sweat dropping off me; I stood without thought of any man; the
one word "watched" singing in my ears like the surging of a great sea.
And I had forgotten Roderick until he burst into my room, a great laugh
on his lips, and a telegram in his hand; but he stood back as he saw
me, and went pale, as I must have been.
"Great Scott!" he said; "what's the matter?--what are you doing? We
leave in ten minutes; why aren't you ready?"
The excuse gurgled in my throat. I stammered out something, and began
to pack as though pursued by Furies. Then I put him off by asking what
his humour was about. He laughed again at the question--
"What do you think?" he said; "Mary's arrived all right."
"Oh, that's good; I hope she'll like Salisbury," I replied, bundling
shirts, collars, and coats into my trunk with indiscriminate vigour.
"Yes, but you don't wait to hear the end," he continued, with a great
roar of laughter; "she isn't at Salisbury at all; she's at Plymouth, on
board the _Celsis_. She went straight down there, and devil a bit as
much as sent her aunt a telegram!"
I rose up at his word, and looked him in the face.
"Well," he said, "what do you think?--you don't seemed pleased."
"I'm not pleased," I said, going on with my packing. "I don't think she
ought to be there."
"I know that; we've talked it all over, but when I think of it, I don't
see where the harm comes in; we can't meet mischief crossing the
Atlantic, and when the danger does begin in New York I'll see she's
well on the lee-side of it."
I did not answer him, for I knew that which he did not know. Perhaps he
began to think that he did not do well to treat the matter so lightly,
for he was mute when we entered the cab, and he did not open his lips
until we were seated in the night mail for Plymouth. The compartment we
rode in was reserved for us as he had wished; and, truth to tell, we
neither of us had much liking for talk as the train rolled smoothly
westward. We had entered upon this undertaking, so vast, so shadowy, so
momentous, with such haste, and moved by such powerful motives, that I
know not if some thought of sorrow did not then touch us both. Who
could say if we should live to tell the tale, if our fate would not be
the fate of Martin Hall, if we should ever so much as see the nameless
ship, if chance would ever bring us face to face with Captain Black?
And whither did we go? When should we set foot again in that England we
loved? God alone could tell; and, with one great hope in a guiding and
all-seeing Providence, I covered myself up in my rug, and slept until
dawn came, and the fresh breezes from the Channel waves brought new
strength and men's hearts to us again.
It was full day when we went on board the yacht, and I did not fail to
cast a quick glance of admiration on her beautiful lines and perfect
shape as I clambered up the ladder, at the top of which stood Captain
York.
"Welcome aboard," he said, giving us hearty hand-shakes; and without
further inspection at that hour we followed him to the cabin, where
steaming coffee brought the blood to our hands and feet, and put us in
better mood.
"So my sister's here," said Roderick, as he filled his cup for the
third time.
"Yes, last night, no orders," jerked the skipper with his usual
brevity.
"Ah, we must see to that--and the second officer----"
"Still ashore; he left a bit of writing; he'll be aboard midday!"
He had the writing in his hand, and was about to crumple it, but I
caught sight of it, and snatched it from him. It was in the same
handwriting as the letter which Captain Black had sent to me at the
Hôtel Scribe in Paris.
"What's the matter?" said Roderick, as he heard me exclaim; but the
skipper looked hard at me, and was much mystified.
"Do you know anything of the man?" he asked very slowly, as he leant
back in his chair, but I had already seen the folly of my ejaculation,
and I replied--
"Nothing at all, although I have seen that handwriting before
somewhere; I could tell you where, perhaps, if I thought."
Roderick nodded his head meaningly, and deftly turned the subject. I
yawned with a great yawn, and the episode passed as we both rose to go
to our cabins. It is not well to greet the waking day with eyes that
are half-closed in sleep; and, although the skipper seemed to desire
some fuller knowledge as to the ends of our cruise and the course of
it, we put him off, and left him to the coffee and the busy work of the
final preparation. But Roderick followed me to my berth and had the
matter of the handwriting out. I told him at once of the robbery of
some of the papers, and the coincidence of the letter which the second
mate had left with the skipper. He was quick-witted enough to see the
danger; but he was quite reckless in the methods he proposed to meet
it.
"There's no two thoughts about this matter at all," he said; "we've
evidently run right into a trap, but luckily there's time to get out
again--of course, we shall sail without a second mate?"
"That's one way out of the hole, no doubt, but it's very serious to
find that our very first move in the matter is known to others. Hall
said well that his diamond-buyer could command and be obeyed in ten
cities: and there isn't much question that we've got one of his men
aboard this ship--but I don't know that we shouldn't keep him."
"Keep him! What for?--to watch everything we do, and hear everything we
say, and arrange for the cutting of our throats when we land at New
York? You've a fine notion of diplomacy, Mark!"
"Perhaps so; but we won't quarrel about that. There's one thing you
forget in this little calculation of yours--our men are as true as
steel; this rogue couldn't turn one of them if he staked his life on
it. Suppose he has come here to use his eyes, and hang about keyholes;
well, we know him, fortunately; and what can he learn unless he learns
it from you or me? There's not another soul aboard knows anything. You
will tell the skipper that we cross to America for a pleasure trip; you
will help me to keep so close an eye on Master Francis Paolo, second
mate, that if he lose a hair of his head we shall know it. In that way
it may turn out that we shall get from him the link which is lost in
the chain; and when he would draw us, we shall pump him as dry as a
sand-pit. At least, that's my way of thinking, and I don't think it's
such a poor notion, after all."
"It's not poor at all--it never came to me like that. Of course, you're
right; let's take the man aboard, but I wish we could have left Mary
behind--don't you?"
That I did, but what could I tell him? It was bad enough to be hugging
all those fears and thoughts of danger to my own heart, without setting
him all a-ferment with apprehension and unrest; so I laughed off his
question, and after a six hours' sleep I went aft to the quarter-deck,
to take stock of the yacht and get some better acquaintance with her.
She was a finely-built ship of some seven hundred tons, and was
schooner-rigged, so that she could either sail or steam. Her engines
were unusually large for so small a vessel, being triple-compound;
while the main saloon, aft, and the small library attached to it,
showed in the luxurious fitting that her late owner had been a man of
fine taste. In the very centre of her there was a deck-house for the
chart-room, the skipper's and engineers' quarters, and a couple of
spare cabins; but generally the accommodation was below, there being
three small cabins with two berths apiece each side the saloon, and
room for the steward and his men amidships. The fo'castle was large,
and airy, giving ample berthing for the stokers and seamen; while the
whole ornament of the deck was bright-looking with brass, and smart
rails, and pots of flowers, these last showing clearly that Mary had
been at work. Indeed, I had scarce made my inspection of our new ship
when she burst up from below, and began her explanation, standing with
flushed cheeks, while the wind played in her hair, and her eyes danced
with the merriment of it.
"Come aboard," she said, mocking the seaman's "_Adsum_," and I said--
"That's evident; the question is, when are you going ashore again?"
"I don't know, but I guess I'll get ashore at New York, because I mean
to go to Niagara----"
"You think you'll go ashore at New York, not 'you guess,' Mary."
"But I do guess, and I don't think, and I wish you wouldn't interrupt
me with your perpetual grammar. What's the good of grammar? No one had
a good time with grammar yet."
"That's not exactly the purpose of grammar----"
"No, nor of orthography, nor deportment; I learnt all these at a guinea
a quarter extra when I was at school, so you're just wasting your time,
because I'm finished."
"Finished?"
"Yes, didn't Roderick tell you that I went to a finishing school? You
wouldn't finish me all over again, would you?"
"Not for anything--but the question is, why did you come aboard here,
and why didn't you go to Salisbury? What is your old aunt thinking
now?"
She laughed saucily, throwing back her head so that her hair fell well
about her shoulders; and then she would have answered me, but I turned
round, hearing a step, and there stood our new second mate, Francis
Paolo. Our eyes met at once with a long, searching gaze, but he did not
flinch. If he were a spy, he was no poor actor, and he stood his ground
without the movement of a muscle.
"Well?" I said.
"Is Mr. Stewart awake yet, sir?" he said, asking for Roderick.
"I don't know, but you may wake him if he isn't."
"The skipper wants a word with him when he gets up," he continued; "we
are all ready to heave anchor when he speaks."
"That's all right: I'll give you the word, so you can weigh now;
perhaps, Mary, you'll go and hammer at Roderick's door, or he'll sleep
until breakfast time to-morrow."
She ran at the word, and the new second mate turned to go, but first he
followed the girl with his eyes, earnestly, as though he looked upon
some all-fascinating picture.
I watched him walk forward, and followed him, listening as he directed
the men; and a more seaman-like fellow I have never seen. If he were an
Italian, he had left all accent of speech in his own country, and he
gave his orders smartly and in a tone which demanded obedience. About
his seamanship I never had a doubt from the first; and I say this now,
a more capable officer than Francis Paolo never took a watch.
Yet he was a man of violent temper, soon displayed before me.
As I watched him from the hurricane deck, I heard a collier who had not
yet left the ship give him some impudence, and look jauntily to the men
for approval; but the smile was not off his cheeks when the new mate
hit him such a terrific blow on the head with a spy-glass he held that
the fellow reeled through the open bulwarks right into his barge, which
lay along-side.
"That's to set your face straight," cried the mate after him; "next
time you laugh aboard here I'll balance you on the other side."
The men were hushed before a display of temper like this; the skipper
on the bridge flushed red with disapproval, but said nothing.
The order "Hands, heave anchor!" was sung out a moment after as
Roderick joined me aft, the new _Celsis_ steamed away from Plymouth,
and the episode was forgotten.
For truly, as we lost sight of the town and the beautiful yacht moved
slowly upon the broader bosom of the Channel, thoughts of great moment
held us; and I, for my part, fell to wondering if I should ever see the
face of my country again.
And in that hour the great pursuit began.
CHAPTER VIII.
I DREAM OF PAOLO.
We had left the Scilly Light two days; the _Celsis_ steamed steadily on
the great broad of the Atlantic. Night had fallen, and Mary had gone
below, leaving me with Roderick upon the aft-deck, watching the veriest
rim of a moon which gave no pretence of a picture, no ornament to the
deck.
It was Paolo's watch; and the skipper had turned in, so that, save for
the occasional ringing of a bell, or a call from the look-out, no sound
but the whirring of the screw and the surge of the swell fell upon our
ear. A night for dreamy thoughts of home, of kinsfolk, of the more
tender things of life; but for us a night for the talk of that great
"might be" which was then so powerful a source of speculation for both
of us. And we were eager to talk, eager then as ever since the
beginning of it all; eager, above all things for the moment, to know
when we should next hear of Captain Black or of the nameless ship.
"I shouldn't wonder," said Roderick, after twenty surmises of the sort,
"if we heard something of her as we cross. I have given York orders to
keep well in the track of steamers; and if your friend Hall be right,
that is just where the unknown ship will keep. I would give a thousand
pounds to know the story of the man Black. What can he be? Is he mad?
Is it possible that a man could commit piracy, to-day, in the Atlantic,
where is the traffic of the world; where, if the Powers once learnt of
it, they could hunt him down in a day? And yet, put into plain English,
that is the tale your friend tells."
"It is; I have never doubted that from the first. Captain Black is
either the most original villain living, or the whole story is a silly
dream--besides, we have yet to learn if he is the commander of the
nameless ship: we have also to learn if the nameless ship is not a
myth. Time alone will tell, and our wits."
"If they are not knocked out of us in the attempt, for, see you, Mark,
a man with a hole in his head is a precious poor person, and, of
course, you are prepared either way, success or the other thing."
"For either; but I trust one of us may come out of it, for Mary's
sake."
The thought made him very silent, and presently he turned in. I
remained above for half an hour, gazing over the great sweep of the
Atlantic. Paolo was on the bridge, as I have said, and, in accordance
with my design, I took all opportunity of watching him. That night some
inexplicable impulse held me awake when all others slept. I made
pretence, first of all, to go to my cabin; and bawled a good-night to
the mate as I went; but it was only to put on felt slippers and to get
a warm coat, and, with these secured, I made my way stealthily
amidships; and took a stand aft of the skipper's cabin, where I could
pry, yet not be seen. Not that I got much for my pains; but I heard
Paolo address several of the men forward, and it seemed to me that his
mode of speech was not quite that which should be between officer and
seaman. Perchance he was guilty of nothing more than common affability;
but yet I would rather have had him gruff and meddlesome than free and
intimate.
It chanced that in this watch the new men were on deck, my old crew
being in the port watch, or I would have questioned them there and
then. As it was, I let the matter go, and smoked; and, indeed, when
another bell had struck, I was more than rewarded for my pains.
Suddenly, on the far horizon over the starboard bow, I saw the flare of
a blue light, bright over the water; and showing as it flared, the dark
hull of a great ship. The light was unmistakably, I thought, the signal
of an ocean-going steamer which had sighted another of her company
still far away from us; but I had no more than time to come to this
conclusion when, to my profound amazement, Paolo himself struck light
to a flare which he had with him on the bridge, and answered the
signal, our own light showing far out, and lighting the great moving
sea on which we rode so that one could count every crest about it.
The action completely staggered me. Without a thought I rushed up the
ladder to the hurricane deck and stood beside him. He started as he saw
me, and I could see him biting his lips, while an ugly look came into
his eyes. But I charged him at once.
"Good-evening, Mister Mate," I said; "will you kindly tell me why you
burnt that blue light?"
His excuse came readily.
"I burnt it to answer the signal yonder."
"But that was no affair of ours!"
He shrugged his shoulders, and muttered something about custom and
something else, which he meant to be impudent. Yet in another moment he
made effort to recall himself, and met me with an open, smiling face
which covered anger. I began to upbraid myself for the folly of it,
bursting out thus when there was no call for show; and I turned the
talk to other things, searching to learn about him and his past; yet it
was without reward, for he fenced in speech with all the point of a
close Scotsman. But we came down the bridge together when the new watch
was set; and he took a glass of wine with me in the saloon.
It was all well acted, a fine pretence of common civility, yet I
believe that we two then took acquaintance of each other in the fullest
measure; and he learnt, though he did not show it, that in the game of
eavesdropping there may be two that play.
When I turned in at last, the little wind there was had fallen away, so
that the yacht was almost without motion; save, indeed, that long roll
from which an ocean-going ship is rarely free. I had the electric light
in my cabin with a tap on the end of my bunk, mighty convenient for
reading and waking; but I was full of sleep in spite of what had been
above, and I turned out the lamp directly I fell upon my bed.
I think I must have slept very heavily for an hour, when a great sense
of unrest and waking weariness took me, and I lay, now dozing, now
dreaming, so that in all my dreams I saw the face of Paolo. I seemed to
walk the deck of the _Celsis_, yet was Paolo there more strong and
masterful than I; again I went to the stoke-hole, and he was charging
the men with much authority; I hurried thence to the saloon, and in my
silly dream I thought to see Captain Black upon the one hand and Paolo
on the other, and a great friendship of manner and discourse between
them.
Again I slept the black sleep; but it passed into other visions, so
that in one of them I seemed to be lying awake in my own cabin, and the
man Paolo stood over me, looking straight into my eyes; and when I
would have risen up to question him I was powerless, held still in
every limb, living, yet without life or speech--a horrid dream from
which I seemed to rouse myself only at the touch of something cold upon
my outstretched hand; and then at last I opened my eyes and saw, during
the veriest reality of time, that others looked down into mine. I saw
them for some small part of a second, yet in the faint light that came
from the port I recognised the face and the form, and was certain of
them; for the man who had been watching me as I slept was Paolo.
A quick sense of danger waked me thoroughly then. I put my hand to the
tap of the electric light and the white rays flooded the cabin. But the
cabin was empty and Roderick's dog sat by my trunk, and had, I could
see, been licking my hand as I lay.
I knew not how to make out the meaning of it; but I was trembling from
the horror of the dream, and went above in my flannels. It was dawn
then; and day was coming up out of the sea, cold and bearing mists,
which lay low over the long restful waves. Dan was aft on the
quarter-deck, and the first officer was on the bridge, but I looked
into Paolo's bunk, and he slept there, in so heavy a sleep that I began
to doubt altogether the truth of what I had believed. How could this
man have left my cabin as he had done, and yet now be berthed in his
own? The dream had cheated me, as dreams often do.
But more sleep was not to be thought of. I fell to talk with Dan, and
paced the deck with him, asking what was his opinion of our new second
mate.
He scratched his head before he answered, and looked wise, as he loved
to look--
"Lord, sir, it's not for me to be spoutin' about them as is above me;
but you ask me a fair question, and I'll give you a fair answer. In
course, I ain't the party to be thinking ill of any man--not Dan, which
is plain and English, though some as is scholars say it should be
Dan'el; but what I do know, I know--you won't be contradictin' that,
will you?"
I told him to get on with it; but he was woefully deliberate, cutting
tobacco to chew, and hitching himself up before he was under weigh
again.
"Now," he said at last, "the fact about our second is this, in my
opinion--which ain't mine, but the whole of 'em--he's no more'n a ship
with a voice under the fore-hatch----"
I laughed at him as I asked, "And what's the matter with a ship like
that? Why shouldn't there be a voice under the fore-hatch, Dan?"
He lit his pipe behind the aft skylight, and then answered, as he
puffed clouds of smoke to the lee-side--
"Well, you see, sir, as there ain't nobody a-livin' in that perticler
place, you don't go for to look to hearin' of voices, or, in plain
lingo, there's something queer about it."
"And that's your opinion, Dan?"
"As true as this fog's a-liftin' to windward."
I looked as he jerked his thumb to port, and, sure enough, the curtain
of the fog was drawn up from the sea as the wind's wand scattered it.
Glorious and joy-giving the sun arose, and the whole horizon-bound
expanse of rolling, green water lay beneath us. There is something of
God in every daybreak, as most men admit, but I know nothing against
the glory of a morn upon the Atlantic for bringing home to a man the
delight in mere existence. The very sense of strength which the breeze
bears, the limitless deep green of the unmeasured seas, the great arch
of the zenith, the clear view of the sun's march, the purity and the
stillness and the mastery of it all, the consciousness of the puny
power of man, the mind message recalling the sublimity and the awe of
the unseen Power beyond--all these things impress you, move in you the
deepest thoughts, turn you from the little estimates of self as Nature
only can in the holiest of her moods, which are sought yet never found
in the cities. Nor can I ever welcome the breath of the great sea's
vigour and refuse to listen to her voice, which comes with so powerful
a message, even as a message from the great Unknown, whose hand
controls, and whose spirit is on, the waters.
The sound of a gun-shot to leeward awoke me from my thoughts. The fog
was yet lying there upon the sea, and for some while none of us,
expectant as we were, could discern aught. But, fearing that some
vessel lay in distress, we put the helm up and went half-speed for a
time. We had cruised thus for five minutes or more when a terrific
report burst upon our ears, and this time to the alarm of every man who
trod deck. For this second report was not that of a small gun such as
crippled ships may use, but the thunderous echoing of a great weapon
which a man-of-war only could carry.
The sound died away slowly; but in the same minute the fog lifted; and
I saw, away a mile on the starboard bow, a spectacle which brought a
great flush upon my face, and let me hear the sound of my own heart
beating.
CHAPTER IX.
I FALL IN WITH THE NAMELESS SHIP.
There were two great ships abreast of each other, and they were
steaming with so great a pressure of steam that the dark green water
was cleaved into two huge waves of foam before their bows; and the
spray ran right over their fo'castles and fell in tons upon their
decks.
The more distant of the two ships was long in shape and dark in colour;
she had four masts upon which topsails and staysails were set, and two
funnels painted white, but marked with the anchor which clearly set her
down to be one of the famous Black Anchor fleet. My powerful spyglass
gave me a full view of her decks, which I saw to be dark with the
figures of passengers and crew all crowding to the port side, wherefrom
the other ship was approaching her.
Yet was it this other ship which drew our gaze rather than the great
steamer which seemed to be pursued. Almost of the same length as the
passenger steamer, which she now approached obliquely, she rode the
long swell with perfect grace, and many of her deck-houses and part of
her prow shone with the brightness of pure gold. Full the sun fell
upon her in a sheen of shimmering splendour, throwing great reflected
lights which dazzled the eye so that it could scarce hold any continued
gaze upon her. And, indeed, every ornament on her seemed to be made of
the precious metal, now glowing to exceeding brilliance in the full
power of the sunlight.
She was a very big ship, as I have said, and she had all the shape of a
ship of war, while the turrets fore and aft of her capacious funnel
showed the muzzles of two big guns. I could see by my glass a whole
wealth of armament in the foretop of her short mast forward; and high
points in her fo'castle marked the spot where many other machine guns
were ready for action. At her towering and lofty prow there was
indicated clearly the curve of the ram which now ploughed the dark
water and curdled it into the fountains of foam which fell upon her
decks; while amidships, the outline of a conning-tower showed more
clearly for what aggressive purpose she had been designed. There was at
this spot, too, a great deck erection, with a gallery and a bridge for
navigation; but no men showed upon the platform, and, for the matter of
that, no soul trod her decks, so far as our observation went. Yet her
speed was such as I do not believe any ship achieved before. I have
spent many years upon the sea; have crossed the Atlantic in some of the
most speedy of those cruisers which are the just pride of a later-day
shipbuilding art; I have raced in torpedo-boats over known miles; but
of this I have no measure of doubt, that the speed of which that
extraordinary vessel then proved herself capable was such as no other
that ever swam could for one moment cope with. Now rising majestically
on the long roll of the swell, now falling into the concave of the sea,
she rushed onward towards the steamer she was evidently pursuing as
though driven by all the furies of the deep.
As we watched her, held rooted to our places as men who are looking
upon some strange and uncanny picture, the gun in her foremost turret
belched out flame and smoke, and we observed the rise and fall of a
shell, which cut the water a cable's length ahead of the straining
steamer and sank hissing beneath the sea. At that moment she ran up a
flag upon her signal mast, and, as I read it with my glass, I saw that
it was the flag of the Chilian Republic.
Now, indeed, the pursuit became so engrossing that my own men began to
sing out, and this reminded me that every soul aboard the _Celsis_ had
watched with me when I first set eyes on the nameless ship. I turned to
our skipper, who stood near on the hurricane deck, and saw that he in
turn was looking hard at me. Roderick had come up from his cabin, but
rested at the top of the companion ladder in so dazed a mood that no
speech came from him. The first officer had scarce his wits about him
to steer our own course, and the whole of the hands forward in a little
group upon the fo'castle now called out their views, then turned to ask
what it meant.
It was a matter of satisfaction to me that Mary still slept, and I
looked for the appearance of Paolo with some question. But he remained
below through it all. And at that I wondered more.
The skipper was the first to speak.
"That ship yonder," said he, jerking his thumb to starboard; "is it any
business of ours?"
"None that I know of," I replied; "but it's a mighty fine sight,
skipper, don't you think, a Chilian warship running after a liner in
broad daylight? What's your opinion?"
He shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and took another sight through
his glass. Then he answered me--
"It's a fine sight enough, God knows, but I would give half I'm worth
to be a hundred miles away from it"; and here he suddenly wheeled, and,
facing me roughly, he asked--
"Do you want me to get this boat into port again?"
"Of course. Is there any great need to answer a question like that?"
"At the moment, yes; for, with your pleasure, I'm going to put up the
helm and sheer off. I'm not a man that loves fighting myself, and, with
a ship and crew to look after, I've no business in any affair of that
sort; but it's for you to say."
Before I could answer him, Roderick moved from his place and came up on
the bridge where we stood.
"Hold on a bit, skipper," he cried, "as we are, if you please; why,
man, it's a sight I wouldn't miss for a fortune."
The skipper searched him with his eyes with a keen, lasting gaze, that
implied his doubt of the pair of us. His voice had a fine ring of
sarcasm in it when he replied after the silence; but all he said was,
"It's your affair," and then turned to the first officer.
"Don't you think he was right?" I asked Roderick in a low voice, when
the chief's back was turned, but he whispered again--
"Not yet--we must see more of it; and they're too much occupied to hunt
after us. We'll be away long before those two have settled accounts;
and, look now, I can see a man on the bridge of the yellow ship. Do you
mark him?"
I had my glass to my eye in a moment, and the light was so full upon
the vessel, which must then have been a mile and a half away from us,
that I could prove his words; for, sure enough, there was now someone
moving upon the bridge, and, as I fixed my powerful lens, I thought
that I could recognise the shape of a man; but I would not speak my
mind to Roderick until I had a nearer view.
"You are right," I answered; "but what sort of a man I will tell you
presently. Did you ever see anything like the pace that big ship is
showing? She must be moving at twenty-five knots."
"Yes, it's amazing; and what's more, there isn't a show of smoke at her
funnel."
This was true, but I had not noticed it. Throughout the strange scene
we saw, this vessel of mystery never gave one sign that men worked at
her furnaces below. Neither steam nor smoke came from her, no evidence,
even the most trifling, of that terrible power which was then driving
her through the seas at such a fearful speed.
But of the activity of her human crew we had speedily further sign;
for, almost as I answered, there was some belching of flame from her
turret, and this time the shell, hurtling through the air with that
hissing song which every gunner knows so well, crashed full upon the
fore-part of the great liner, and we heard the shout of terror which
rose from those upon her decks. The men appeared at the signal-mast of
the pursuer, and rapidly made signals in the common code.
"Skipper, do you see that?--they're signalling," I cried out. "Get your
glass up and take a sight"; but he had already done so.
"It's the signal to lie to, and wait a boat," he said; "there's someone
going aboard."
The fulfilment of the reading was instant. While yet we had not
realised that the onward rush of the two boats was stayed the foam fell
away from their bows; and they rode the seas superbly, sitting the long
swells with a beautiful ease. But there was activity on the deck of the
nameless ship, the men were at the davits on the starboard side
swinging off a launch, which dropped presently into the sea with a crew
of some half-a-dozen men. For ourselves, we were now quite close up to
them, but so busily were they occupied that I believed we had escaped
all notice. Yet I got my glass full upon the man who walked the bridge;
and I knew him.
He was the man I had met in the Rue Joubert at Paris, the one styled
Captain Black by my friend Hall.
The last link in the long chain was welded then. The whole truth of
that weird document, so fantastical, so seemingly wild, so fearful, was
made manifest; the dead man's words were vindicated, his every
deduction was unanswerable. There on the great Atlantic waste, I had
lived to see one of those terrible pictures which he had conceived in
his long dreaming; and through all the excitement, above all the noise,
I thought that I heard his voice, and the grim "Ahoys!" of my own
seamen on the night he died.
This strange recognition was unknown to Roderick, who had never seen
Captain Black, nor had any notion of his appearance. But he waited for
some remark from me; yet, fearing to be heard, I only looked at him,
and in that look he read all.
"Mark," he said, "it's time to go; we'll be the next when that ship's
at the bottom."
"My God!" I answered, "he can't do such a thing as that. If I thought
so, I would stand by here at the risk of a thousand lives----"
"That's wild talk. What can we do? He would shiver us up with one of
his machine guns--and, besides, we have Mary on board."
Indeed, she stood by us as we spoke, very pale and quiet, looking where
the two ships lay motionless, the boat from the one now at the very
side of the black steamer, whose name, the _Ocean King_, we could
plainly read. She had, unnoticed by us, seen the work of the last
shell, which splintered the groaning vessel, and made her reel upon the
water, and Mary's instinct told her that we stood where danger was.
"Don't you think you're better below, Mary?" asked Roderick; but she
had her old answer--
"Not until you go; and why should I make any difference? I overheard
what you said. Am I to stand between you and those men's lives?"
She clung to my arm as she spoke, and her boldness gave us new courage.
"I am for standing by to the end," said I; "if we save one soul, it's
an English work to do, anyway."
Roderick looked at Mary, and then he turned to the skipper--
"Do you wish to go on the other tack now?" he asked; but the skipper
was himself again.
"Gentlemen," he said, "it's your yacht, and these are your men; if you
care to keep them afloat, keep them. If it's your fancy to do the other
thing, why, do it. It's a matter of indifference to me."
His words were heard by all the hands, and from that time there was
something of a clamour amongst them; but I stepped forward to have out
what was in my mind, and they heard me quietly.
"Men," I said, "there's ugly work over there, work which I make nothing
of; but it's clear that an English ship is running from a foreigner,
and may want help. Shall we leave her, or shall we stand by?"
They gave a great shout at this, and the skipper touched the bell,
which stopped the engines. We lay then quite near both to the pursued
and the pursuer, and there was no longer any doubt that we had been
seen.
Glasses were turned upon us from the decks of the yellow ship, and from
the poop of the _Ocean King_, whose men were still busy with the signal
flags, and this time, as we made out, in a direct request to us that we
should stand by.
I doubt not that the excitement and the danger of the position alone
nerved us to this work of amazing foolhardiness, which was so like to
have ended in our complete undoing; and, as I watched the captain of
the steamer parleying with the men in the launch below him, I could but
ask--What next? when will our turn be?
But the scene was destined to end in a way altogether different from
what we had anticipated.
While a tall man with fair hair--my glass gave me the impression that
he was the fellow known as "Roaring John"--stood in the bows of the
launch, and appeared to be gesticulating wildly to the skipper of the
_Ocean King_, the nameless ship set up of a sudden a great shrieking
with her deck whistle, which she blew three times with terrific power;
and at the third sound of it the launch, which had been holding to the
side of the steamer, let go, running rapidly back to the armed vessel,
where it was taken aboard again.
The whole thing was done in so short a space of time that our men had
scarce an opportunity to express surprise when the launch was hanging
at the davits again. The great activity that we had observed on the
decks of the war-vessel ceased as mysteriously as it had begun. Again
there was no sign of living being about her; but she moved at once, and
bounded past us at a speed the like of which I had never seen upon the
deep.
So remarkable a face-about seemed to dumbfound our men. They stood
staring at each other like those amazed, and seeking explanation. But
the key to the riddle was given, not by one of them, but by Paolo, whom
I now found at my elbow, his usually placid face all aglow with
excitement.
"Ha!" he cried, "she's American!"
He made a wild point at the far horizon over our stern; and then I saw
what troubled him. There was a great white steamer coming up at a high
speed, and I knew the form of her at once, and of two others that
followed her. She was one of the American navy, crossing to her own
country from Europe, whither she had been to watch the British
manoeuvres. The secret of the flight was no longer inexplicable; the
yellow ship had fled from the trap into which she was so nearly
falling.
"You have sharp eyes, Paolo," said I; "I imagine it's lucky for the
pair of us."
He shrugged his shoulders angrily, and then said very meaningly--
"Perhaps."
I had no time to reckon with him, for I was as much absorbed as he was
in the scene which followed. The nameless ship, of a sudden, ceased her
flight, and came almost to a stand some half a mile away on our
port-bow. For a moment her purpose was hidden, yet only for a moment.
As she swung round to head the seas, I saw at once that another
cruiser, long and white, and seemingly well-armed had come up upon that
side, and now barred her passage. At last, she was to cope with one
worthy of her, and at the promise of battle, a hush, awful in its
intensity, fell upon all of us.
For some minutes the two vessels lay, the one broadside to the other,
the Americans making signals which were unanswered; but the nameless
ship had now hundreds of men about her decks, and these were at the
machine-guns and elsewhere active in preparation. It became plain that
her captain had made up his mind to some plan, for the great hull swung
round slowly, and passed at a moderate speed past the bow of the other.
When she was nearly clear, her two great guns were fired almost
simultaneously, and, as the shells swept along the deck of the cruiser,
they carried men and masts and deck-houses with them, in one devilish
confusion of wreckage and of death. To such an onslaught there was no
answer. The cruiser was utterly unprepared for the treachery, and lay
reeling on the sea; screams and fearful cries coming from her decks,
now quivering under a torrent of fire as her opponent treated her to
the hail of her machine-guns.
The battle could have ended but in one way, had not the other American
warships now come so close to us that they opened fire with their great
guns. The huge shells hissed over our heads, and all about us, plunging
into the sea with such mighty concussions that fountains of green water
arose in twenty places, and the near surface of the Atlantic became
turbulent with foam. Such a powerful onslaught could have been resisted
by no single vessel, and, seeing that he was like to be surrounded, the
captain of the nameless ship, which had already been struck three times
in her armour, fired twice from his turrets, and then headed off at
that prodigious speed he had shown in the beginning of his flight. In
five minutes he was out of gun-shot; in ten, the American vessels were
taking men from their crippled cruiser, whose antagonists had almost
disappeared on the horizon!
Upon our own decks the noise and hubbub were almost deafening. From a
state of nervous tension and doubt our men had passed to a state of
joy. Half of them were for going aboard the damaged vessels at once;
half for getting under weigh and moving from such dangerous waters. Our
talk upon the quarter-deck soon brought us to the first-named course,
and we put out a boat with ease upon the still sea, and hailed the
passenger steamer after twenty minutes' stout rowing. She was yet a
pitiful spectacle; for as we drew near to her, I could see women
weeping hysterically on the seats aft, and men alternately helping them
and looking over in the direction whence the three American ironclads
steamed. Indeed, it was a picture of great confusion and distress, and
we hailed those on her bridge three times before we got any answer.
When we did get up on her main-deck, Captain Ross, her commander,
greeted us with great thanks; but he was a sorry spectacle of a man,
being white as his own ensign with anger, and his voice trembled as the
voice of a man suffering some great emotion. He took us to his
chart-room, for he would have all particulars about us, both our names
and addresses, with those of our officers, for a witness when he should
call the British Government to take action.
"Twenty years," he said, with tears of anger in his eyes, "twenty years
I have crossed the Atlantic, but this is the first time that I ever
heard the like. Good God, sirs! it's nothing less than piracy on the
high seas; and they shall swing, every man Jack of them, as high as
Haman! What think ye? They signal me to lie to--me that has the mails
and a hundred thousand pounds in specie aboard; they fire a shot across
my bows, and when I signal that I'll see them in hell before I bate a
knot, why--you watched it yourselves--they struck me in the fo'castle,
and there's two of my dead men below now; but they shall swing"--and he
brought his fist upon the table with a mighty thud--"they shall swing,
if there's only one rope in Europe."
I had sorrow for the man who was thus moved--for the most part, I could
see, at the loss of his two men. Then I went forward with the others to
the place of wreckage, and for the first time in my life I observed the
colossal havoc which a shell may leave in its path. The single shot
which had struck the steamer had cut her two skins of steel as though
they had been skins of cheese: had splintered the wood of the men's
bunks, so that it lay in match-like fragments which a fine knife might
have hewed; had passed again through the steel on the starboard side,
and so burst, leaving the fo'castle one tumbled mass of torn blankets,
little rags of linen, fragments of wood, of steel, of clothes which had
been in the men's chests; and, more horrible to recount, particles of
human flesh. Three men were below when the crash came, and two of them
had their limbs torn apart; while, by one of the miracles which oft
attend the passage of a shot, the third, being in a low bunk when the
shell struck, escaped almost uninjured. This desolate and wrecked cabin
was shown to us by Captain Ross, whose anger mounted at every step.
"What does it mean?" he kept asking. "Are we at war? You saw the
Chilian flag. Is there no Treaty of Paris, then? Does he go out to
filch every ship he meets? Will he do this, and our Government take no
steps? Can't you answer me that?" But he poured out his questions with
such rapidity, and he was so overcome, that we followed him in silence
as he walked beneath the awnings of the upper decks, and showed us
women still talking hysterically, men unnerved and witless as children,
seamen yet finding curses for the atrocity that had been. By this time,
the first of the American ships had come up with us, and the commander
of her put out a boat, and having gone aboard the maimed cruiser, he
came afterwards to the Black Anchor ship, and joined us in the
chart-room. I will make no attempt to set down for you his surprise nor
his incredulity. I believe that the scene in the fo'castle alone
convinced him that we were not all raving madmen; but, when once he
grasped our story, he was not a whit behind us, either in intensity of
expression or of sympathy.
"It's an international question, I guess," he said; "and if he doesn't
pay with his neck for the twenty men dead on my cruiser, to say nothing
of the twenty thousand pounds or more damage to her, I will--why, we'll
run her down in four-and-twenty hours. You took his course?"
"West by south-west, almost dead," said the captain; and I heard it
agreed between them that the second cruiser of the American fleet
should start at once in pursuit, while the iron-clads should accompany
us to New York, so making a little convoy for safety's sake.
With this arrangement we left the ship and regained the _Celsis_. Paolo
stood at the top of the ladder as I came on deck, and listened, I
thought, to our protestations that the danger was over with something
of a sneer on his face.
Indeed, I thought that I heard him mutter, as he went to his cabin,
"_Vedremo_--" but I did not know then how much the laugh was to be
against us, and that we should leave the convoy long before we reached
New York.
CHAPTER X.
THE SPREAD OF THE TERROR.
For full five days we steamed with the other vessels, under no stress
to keep the sea with them, since they made no more than twelve knots,
for the sake of the cruiser which had been so fearfully maimed in the
short action with the nameless ship. During this time there was little
power of wind; and the breeze continuing soft from the north-east, it
was easy business to hold sight of the convoy, which we did to the
satisfaction of every man aboard us. But I could not put away from
myself the knowledge that the events of the first three days had made
much talk in the fo'castle and that a feeling akin to terror prevailed
amongst the men.
This came home to me with some force on the early morning of the fifth
day. I found myself unable to sleep restfully in my bunk, and went
above at daybreak, to see the white hulls of the American war-vessels a
mile away on the port-quarter and the long line of the Black Anchor
boat a few cables'-lengths ahead of them. Paolo was on the bridge, but
I did not hail him, thinking it better to give the man few words until
we sighted Sandy Hook. He, in turn, maintained his sullen mood; but he
did not neglect to be much amongst the hands, and his intimacy with
them increased from day to day.
Now, when I came on deck this morning, I found that the breeze, strong
and fresh though it was, put me in that soporific state I had sought
unavailingly in my bunk. There was a deck-chair well placed behind the
shelter of the saloon skylight, and upon this I made myself at ease,
drawing my peaked hat upon my eyes, and getting the sleep-music from
the swish of the sea, as it ran upon us, and sprinted from the tiller
right away to the bob-stay. But no sleep could I get; for scarce was I
set upon the chair when I heard Dan the other side of the skylight, and
he was holding forth with much fine phrase to Roderick's dog, Belle.
"Yes," he said, apparently treating the beast as though possessed of
all human attributes. "Yes, you don't go for to say nothing, but you're
a Christian dog, I don't doubt; and yer heart's in the right place; or
it's not me as would be wasting me time talking to yer. Now, what I
says is, you're comfortable enough, with Missie a-makin' as much of yer
as if good fresh beef weren't tenpence a pound, and yer mouth warn't
large enough to take in a hundredweight; but that ain't the way with
the rest of us--no, my old woman, not by a cable's-length; we're afloat
on a rum job, old lady; and some of us won't go for to pipe when it's
the day for payin' off--not by a long way. So you hear; and don't get
answerin' of me, for what I spoke's logic, and there's an end of it."
I called him to me, and had it out with him there and then.
"What's in the wind now, Dan," I asked, "that you're preaching to the
dog?"
"Ay, that's it," he replied, putting his hand into his pocket for his
tobacco-box. "What's in the wind?--why, you'd have to be askin' of it
to learn, I fancy."
"Is there any more nonsense amongst the men forward?"
"There's a good deal of talk--maybe more than there should be."
"And what do they talk about? Tell me straight, Dan."
"Well, I've got nothing, for my part, to hide away, and I don't know as
they should have; but you know this ship is a dead man's!"
"Who told you that stuff?"
"No other than our second mate, sir, as sure as I cut this quid. Not as
yarns like that affect me; but, you see, some skulls is thick as
plate-armour, and some is thin as egg-shells: and when the thin 'uns
gets afloat with corpses, why, it's a chest of shiners to a handspike
as they cracks--now, ain't it?"
"Dan, this is the most astounding story that I have yet heard. Would
you make it plainer? for, upon my life, I can't read your course!"
He sat down on the edge of the skylight--long service had given him a
claim to familiarity--and filled his pipe from my tobacco-pouch before
he answered, and then was mighty deliberate.
"Plain yarns, Mister Mark, is best told in the fo'castle, and not by
hands upon the quarter-deck; but, asking pardon for the liberty, I feel
more like a father to you gentlemen than if I was nat'ral born to it;
and this I do say--What's this trip mean; what's in yer papers? and why
ain't it the pleasure vige we struck flag for? For it ain't a pleasure
vige, _that_ a shoreman could see; and you ain't come across the
Atlantic for the seein' of it, nor for merchandise nor barter, nor
because you wanted to come. That's what the hands say at night when the
second's a-talkin' to 'em over the grog he finds 'em. 'Where's it going
to end?' says he; 'what is yer wages for takin' yer lives where they
shouldn't be took? and,' says he, 'in a ship what the last skipper died
aboard of it,' says he, 'died so sudden, and was so fond of his old
place as who knows where he is now, afloat or ashore, p'r'aps a-walking
this very cabin, and not bringing no luck for the vige, neither,' says
he. And what follows?--why, white-livered jawings, and this man afeard
to go here, and that man afeard to go there, and the Old One amongst
'em, so that half of 'em says, 'We was took false,' and the other half,
'Why not 'bout ship and home again?' No, and you ain't done with it,
not by a long day, and you won't have done with it until you drop
anchor in Yankee-land, if ever you do drop anchor there, which I take
leave to give no word upon."
"It's a curious state of things. You mean to say, I suppose, that
there's terror amongst them--plain terror, and nothing else?"
"Ay, sure!"
"Then it remains for us to face them. What's your opinion on that?"
"My opinion is, as you won't go for to do it, but will take your
victuals, and play your music in the aft parlour, and skeer away the
Old One with the singing, as ye've skeered him already--that's what
ye'll do afore Missie and the skipper--but by yourself, you won't have
two eyes shut when you sleep, and you won't have two eyes open when
you're above; and when you're wanted you won't be an hour getting
yourself nor Mr. Roderick under weigh--and that's the end of it, for
there goes the bell."
The watch changed as he spoke, and I went below to the bathroom;
thence, not thinking much of Dan's terror, nor of the men's petty
grumbling, I joined the others at breakfast. We were now well towards
the end of the journey, and I itched to set foot in America. The new
safety in the presence of the warships had given us light hearts; and
that fifth day we passed in great games of deck-quoits and cricket,
with a soft ball which the bo'sun made for us out of tow and linen. The
men worked cheerfully enough, giving the lie direct to Dan; and when
Mary played to us after dinner at night I began to think that, all said
and done, we should touch shore with no further happening; and that
then I could make all use of the man Paolo and his knavery. So I went
to bed at ten o'clock, and for an hour or two I slept with the deep
forgetfulness which is the reward of a weary man.
At what hour Dan awoke me I cannot tell you. He shook me twice in the
effort, he said, and when I would have turned up the electric light, he
seized my hand roughly, muttering in a great whisper, "Hold steady." I
knew then that mischief was afloat, and asked him what to do.
"Crawl above," he said, "and lie low a-deck"; and he went up the
companion ladder when I got my flannels and rubber-shod shoes upon me.
But at the topmost step he stood awhile, and then he fell flat on his
hands, and backed again down the stairway, so that he came almost on
top of me; but I saw what prompted his action, for, as he moved, there
was a shadow thrown from the deck light down to where we lay; and then
a man stepped upon the stair and descended slowly, his feet naked, but
in his hand an iron bar; for he had no other weapon. At the sight of
him, we had backed to the foot of the stairway; and, as the man crept
down, we lay still, so that you could hear every quiver of the glass
upon the table of the saloon; and we watched the fellow drop step by
step until he was quite close to us in the dark, and his breath was hot
upon us. Swiftly then and silently he entered the place; and, going to
my cabin door, he slipped a wedge under it, serving the other doors
around the big cabin in the same way. The success seemed to please him;
he chuckled softly, and came again to the ladder, where, with a quick
motion, Dan brought his pistol-butt (for I had armed him) full upon the
fellow's forehead, and he went down like a dead thing at the foot of
the swinging table.
There we left him, after we had bound his hands with my scarf; and with
a hurried knock got Roderick from his berth. He, in turn, aroused his
sister, and in five minutes we all stood in the big saloon and
discussed our plan.
Dan's whispered tale was this. The watch was Paolo's, who had persuaded
four stokers and six of the forward hands to his opinion. These men,
the dupes of the second officer, had determined on this much--that the
voyage to New York should be stopped abruptly, come what might, and
that our intent should go for nothing. We, being locked in our cabins,
were to have no voice in the affair; or, if waked, then we should be
knocked on the head, and so quieted to reason.
It was a desperate endeavour, wrought of fear; but at that moment the
true hands of the fo'castle were battened down, and Dan, who had seen
the thing coming, escaped only by his foresight. That night he had felt
danger, and had wrapped himself up in a tarpaulin, and lain concealed
on deck.
As it was, Paolo stood at the door of the skipper's room; there were
three men guarding the fo'castle, and five at the foot of the hurricane
deck. One man we had settled with; but we were three, and eight men
stood between us and the true hands.
Roderick was the first to get his wits, and plan a course.
"We must act now," he said, "before they miss their man. They've
stopped the engines, and we shall drop behind the others. There's only
one chance, and that is to surprise them. Let's rush it and take the
odds."
"You can't rush it," I replied; "they're looking for that; and if one
now went forward they would shoot him down straight--and what's to
follow? They come aft, and how can we hold them? But we must get the
skipper awake, or they'll knock him on the head while he sleeps."
Mary had listened, shivering with the night cold; but she had a word to
add, and its wisdom was no matter for dispute.
"If I went," she said, "what could they do to me?"
We were all silent.
"I'm going now," she said; "while I'm talking to them they won't be
looking for you."
"Certainly, we could follow up," I added, "and might get them down if
you held them in talk; but don't you fear?"
She laughed, and gave answer by running up the companion-way, and
standing at the top; while we cocked our pistols, and crept after her.
Then we lay flat to the deck, as she ran noiselessly amidships, and
into the very centre of the five men. To our astonishment, they gave a
great howl of terror at the sight of her--for it lay so dark that she
seemed but a thing of shadow hovering upon the ship--and bolted
headlong forward; while we rushed in a body to the hurricane deck, and
faced Paolo. He turned very white, and would have opened his lips; but
Dan served him as the other; and hit him with his pistol, so that he
rolled senseless off the narrow bridge, and we heard the thud of his
head against the iron of the engine-room hatch. He had scarce fallen
when Mary, with the laugh still upon her lips, reeled at the sight of
him, and fell fainting in my arms. I knocked at the skipper's door, but
he was already on his feet, and passed me to the bridge, where I laid
the swooning girl on the sofa in the chart-room.
The skipper got the whole situation at the first look, and acted in his
usual silence. He re-entered his own cabin, and came to us again with a
couple of rifles, which he loaded. We were now all crouching together
by the wheel amidships, for Mary had recovered, and insisted that I
should leave her, and we waited for the heavy black clouds to lift off
the moon; but the fore-deck lay dark ahead of us; and we could not tell
whether the men who had fled had gone below, or were crouching behind
the galley, and the skylights of the fore-cabins. Nor could we hear any
sound of them, although the skipper hailed them twice. He was for going
forward at once; but we held back until the light came, and then by the
full moon we saw dark shadows across the hatch. The men were behind the
galley, as we thought--the eight of them.
The skipper hailed them again.
"You, Karl, Williams--are you coming out now, for me to flog you; or
will you swing at New York?"
I could see their whole performance in shadow, as they heard the hail.
One of them cocked a pistol, and the rest huddled more closely
together.
"Very well," continued the skipper, ironically deliberate. "You've got
a couple of planks between you and eternity. I'm going to fire through
that galley."
He raised his rifle at the word, and let go straight at the corner of
the light wood erection. A dull groan followed, and by the shadow on
the deck I saw one man fall forward amongst the others, who held him up
with their shoulders; but his blood ran in a thick stream out to the
top of the hatchway, and then ran back as the ship heaved to the seas.
For the fifth time the skipper hailed them.
"There's one down amongst you," he said; "and that's the beginning of
it; I'm going to blow that shanty to hell, and you with it."
He raised his rifle, but as he did so one of them answered for the
first time with his revolver, and the bullet sang above our heads. The
skipper's shot was quick in reply; and the wood of the shanty flew in
splinters as the bullet shivered it. A second man sprang to his feet
with a shout, and then fell across the deck, lying full to be seen in
the moonlight.
"That's two of you," continued the skipper, as calm as ever he was in
Portsmouth harbour; "we'll make it three for luck." But at the
suggestion they all made a run forward, and lay flat right out by the
cable. There we could hear them blubbering like children.
The skipper was of a mind to end the thing there and then. He sprang
down the ladder to the deck, and we followed him. They fired three
shots as we rushed on them; but the butt ends of the two muskets did
the rest. Three of them went down straight as felled poplars. The
others fell upon their knees and implored mercy; and they got it, but
not until the skipper, who now seemed roused to all the fury of great
anger, set to kicking them lustily, and with no discrimination--for
they all had their full share of it.
We had the other hands up by this, and, despite the tragedy and horror
of the thing, a smile came to me as the true men set to binding the
others at the skipper's order; for Piping Jack and Planks, and the
whole ten of them, fell into such a train of swearing as would have
done your heart good to hear. They got them below at the first break of
dawn, and the dead they covered; while Paolo, who lay groaning, we
carried to a cabin in the saloon, and did for his broken head that
which our elementary knowledge of surgery permitted us.
As the day brought light upon the rising sea, I looked to the far
horizon, but the rolling crests of an empty waste met my gaze. Again we
were alone. The night's work had lost us the welcome company.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SHIP IN THE BLACK CLOAK.
The day that broke was glorious enough for Nature's making, but sad
upon our ship, in that the folly of eight poor fellows should have cost
the life of two, with three more lying near to death in the fo'castle.
The sea had risen a good deal when we got under steam again, and clouds
scudded over the sun; but we set stay-sails and jibs, and made a fine
pace towards the shores of America. It was near noon when we had buried
the two stokers shot by the skipper, and more on in the afternoon
before the decks were made straight, and the traces of the scuffle
quite obliterated. But Paolo lay all day in a delirium, and Mary went
in and out, bearing a gentle hand to the wounded, who alternately cried
with the pain of it, and begged grace for their insanity. The second
officer's case was worse than theirs, and I thought at noon that the
total of the dead would have been three; for he raved incessantly,
crying "Ice, Ice!" almost with every breath, while we had all
difficulty possible to hold him in his bunk. His words I could not get
the meaning of; but I had them later, and in circumstances I had never
looked for.
After the hour of lunch the skipper called Roderick and me into his
cabin, and there he discussed the position with us.
"One thing is clear," he said; "you've brought me on more than a
pleasure trip, and, while I don't complain, it will be necessary at New
York for me to know something more--or, maybe to leave this ship. Last
night's work must be made plain, of course; and this second officer of
yours must stand to his trial. The men I would willingly let go, for
they're no more than lubberly fools whose heads have been turned. But
one thing I now make bold to claim--I take this yacht straight from
here to Sandy Hook; and we poke our noses into no business on the way."
"Of course," said Roderick somewhat sarcastically, "you've every right
to do what you like with my ship; but I seem to remember having engaged
you to obey my orders."
"Fair orders and plain sailing," replied Captain York, bringing his
fist down on the table with emphasis; "not running after war-ships that
could blow us out of the water without thinking of it. Fair orders I
took, and fair orders I'll obey."
"That's quite right, Roderick," I said; "there's no reason now why we
shouldn't go straight on--if we don't meet with anyone to ask questions
on the way; of that I'm not so sure, though."
"Nor I," said the skipper meaningly, and waiting for me to add more;
but I did not mean to gratify him, and we all went out on deck again
after we had agreed to let him have his will. We found the first
officer on the bridge, looking away to the south-east, where the black
hull of a steamer was now showing full. I do not know that the distant
sight of a ship was anything to cause remark, but as I looked at her, I
noticed that she steamed at a fearful speed, and she showed no smoke
from her funnels.
"Skipper," I said, "will you look at that hull? Isn't the boat making
uncommon headway?"
He took a long gaze, and then he spoke--
"You're right. She's going more than twenty knots."
"And straight towards us."
"As you say."
"Is there anything remarkable about that?"
He took another sight, and when he turned to me again he had no colour
in his face.
"I've seen that ship before," he said.
"Where?" asked Roderick laconically.
"Five days ago, when she fired a shell into the _Ocean King_."
"In that case," said I, "there isn't much doubt about her intentions:
she's chasing us!"
"That may or may not be," he replied, as he raised his glass again,
"but she's the same ship, I'll wager my life. Look at the rake of
her--and the lubbers, they've left some of their bright metal showing
amidships!"
He indicated the deck-house by the bridge, where my glass showed me a
shining spot in the cloak of black, for the sun fell upon the place,
and reflected from it as from a mirror of gold. There was no longer any
doubt: we were pursued by the nameless ship, and, if no help fell to
us, I shuddered to think what the end might be.
"What are you going to do, skipper?" asked Roderick, as gloom fell upon
the three of us; and we stood together, each man afraid to tell the
others all he thought.
"What, am I going to do?" said he. "I'm going to see the boats cleared,
and all hands in the stoke-hole that have the right there"; and then he
sang out, "Stand by!" and the men swarmed up from below, and heard the
order to clear the boats. They obeyed unquestioningly; but I doubt not
that they were no less uneasy than we were; and, as these things cannot
be concealed, the whisper was soon amongst them that the danger lay in
the black steamer, which had been five days ago the ship of gold. Yet
they went to the work with a right good will; and presently, when a
canopy of our own smoke lay over us, and the yacht bounded forward
under the generosity of the stoking, they set up a great cheer
spontaneously, and were ready for anything. Yet I, myself, could not
share their honest bravado. The black ship which had been but a mark on
the horizon now showed her lines fully; there could be no two opinions
of her speed, or of the way in which she gained upon us. Indeed, one
could not look upon her advance without envy of her form, or of the
terrifying manner in which she cut the seas. Churning the foam until it
mounted its banks on each side of her great ram, she rode the Atlantic
like a beautiful yacht, with no vapour of smoke to float above her; and
not so much as a sign that any engines forced her onward with a
velocity unknown, I believe, in the whole history of navigation. And so
she came straight in our wake, and I knew that we should have little
breathing time before we should hear the barking of her guns.
The skipper did not like to see my idleness or this display of inactive
indifference.
"Don't you think you might help?" he asked.
"Help--what help can I give? You don't suppose we can outsteam them, do
you?"
"That's a child's question; they'll run us to a stand in four
hours--any man with one eye should see that; but are you going down
like a sheep, or will you give them a touch of your claws? I will, so
help me Heaven, if there's not another hand breathing!"
"The skipper's right, by Jove!" said Roderick; "if it's coming to close
quarters, I'll mark one man anyway," and with that he tumbled down the
ladder, and into his cabin. I followed him, and got all the arms I
could lay hands on, a couple of revolvers and a long duck-gun amongst
the number. There were two rifles--the two we had used in the trouble
with the men--in the chart-room, and these we brought on deck, with all
the other pistols we had amongst us. We made a distribution of them
amongst the old hands, giving Dan the duck-gun, which pleased him
mightily.
"I generally shoots 'em sittin'," he said, "but I'll go for to make a
bag, and willin'. You're keepin' the Missie out of it, sir?"
"Of course; she's looking after the sick hands downstairs. You go
forward, Dan, and wait for the word, then blaze away your hardest."
"Ay, ay," replied he; and I took myself off to see after the others,
whom we posted in the stern to keep a closer look-out; while Roderick,
the first officer, and myself went above to the bridge.
The men now fell to work in right good earnest. They had all the grit
of the old sea-dogs in them--how, I know not, except in this, that
their lives had been given to the one mistress. The thought of a
brush-up put dash and daring into them; they had the boats cleared, the
water-barrels filled, and the life-belts free, with an activity that
was remarkable. Then they stood to watch the oncoming of the nameless
ship; and when we hoisted our ensign, they burst again into that hoarse
roar of applause which rolled across the water-waste, and must have
sounded as a vaunting mockery to the men behind the walls of metal. But
they answered us in turn, running up an ensign, and a cry came from all
of us as we saw its colour, for it was the blue saltire on a white
ground.
"Russian, or I'm blind," said the skipper, and I looked twice and knew
that his sight was safe to him; for the nameless ship, which five days
ago showed her heels under a Chilian mask, now made straight towards us
in Russian guise.
"Are you sure she's the same ship?" asked Roderick, when his amazement
let him speak.
"Am I sure that my voice comes out of my throat?" said the old fellow
testily. "Did you ever see but one hull shaped like that? And now she
signals."
So rapidly had she drawn towards us that she was, indeed, then within
gun-shot of us. After the first enthusiasm the men had stood, held
under the spell of her amazing approach, and no soul had spoken. Even
with their plain reckoning and hazy notion of it all, they seemed
conscious of the peril; but not as I was conscious of it, for in my own
heart I believed that no man amongst us would see to-morrow. There we
stood alone, with no prospect but to face the men who openly declared
war against us. I turned my eyes away to the crimson arch which marked
the sun's decline; I looked again to the east, whence black harbingers
of night hung low upon the darkened sea; I searched the horizon in
every quarter, but it lay barren of ships, and soon the last light
would leave us, and with the ebb of day there was no security against
an enemy whose intentions were no longer disguised. I say no longer
disguised--but of this the skipper made me cognisant. He pointed to the
mast on the nameless ship, where the Russian ensign had hung ten
minutes before. It was there no longer; the black flag took its place.
"Pirates, by the very devil!" said the skipper; and then he whistled
long and loud and shrilly as a man who has solved a sum.
"Gentlemen," he added very slowly, "I said I would resign this ship at
New York: with your permission I will withdraw that. I will sail with
you wherever you go."
He shook our hands heartily, as though the discovery of our purpose had
unclouded his mind. But we had no time for fuller understanding, for at
that moment the air itself seemed torn apart by a great concussion, and
a shell burst in the water no more than fifty yards ahead of us. When
the knowledge that we were not hit was sure on the men's part, they
bellowed lustily; and old Dan fired his gun into the air with a great
shout. Yet we knew that all this was the cheapest bravado; and when the
skipper touched the bell to stop our engines, I was sure that he was
wise.
"That's the end of it, then," I said. "Well, it's pretty ignominious,
isn't it, to be shot down like fools on our own quarter-deck?"
"Wait awhile," he answered, looking anxiously behind him, where a mist
gathered on the sea; "let 'em lower a boat, the lubbers!"
By this time the great vessel rode still some quarter of a mile away
from us; but the glass showed me the men upon her decks, and
conspicuous amongst them I saw the form of Captain Black standing by
the steam steering gear. Others below were moving at the davits, so
that in a small space a launch was riding in a still sea, and was
making for us. I watched her with nerves strained and lips dry; she
seemed to me the message boat from Death itself.
"Stand steady, and wait for me!" suddenly yelled the skipper, his
fingers moving nervously, and his look continually turning to the banks
of mist behind us. "When I sing 'Fire!' pick your men!"
The boat was so near that you could see the faces in it; and three of
the five I recognised, for I had seen them in the room of the Rue
Joubert. The others were not known to me, but had rascally
countenances; and one of them was a Chinaman's. The man who was in
command was the fellow "Roaring John"; and when he was within hail he
stood and bawled--
"What ship?"
"My ship!" roared back the skipper, again looking at the mist-clouds,
and my heart gave a bound when I read his purpose: we were drifting
into them.
"And who may you be?" bawled the fellow again, growing more insolent
with every advance.
"I'm one that'll give you the best hiding you ever had, if you'll step
up here a minute!" yelled the skipper, as cool as a man in Hyde Park.
"Oh, I guess," said the man; "you're a tarnation fine talker, ain't
you? But you'll talk less when I come aboard you, oh, I reckon!"
They came a couple of oars' lengths nearer, when Captain York made his
reply. There was a fine roll of confidence in his voice; and he almost
laughed when he cried--
"You're coming aboard, are you? And which of you shall I have the
pleasure of kicking first?"
The hulking ruffian roared with pleasant laughter at the sally.
"Oh, you're a funny cuss, ain't you, and pretty with your jaw, by
thunder! But it's me that you'll have the pleasure of speaking to, and
right quick, my mate, oh, you bet!"
"In that case," said the skipper, with his calmness well at zero; "in
that case--you, Dan! introduce yourself to the gentleman."
Dan's reply was instantaneous. He leant well over the bulwark, and his
cheery old face beamed as he bellowed--
"Ahoy, you there that it's me pleasure to be runnin' against so far
from me old country. Will you have it hot, or will you have it the
other way for a parcel of cold-livered lubbers? By the Old 'Un, how's
that for salt 'oss!"
He had up with his shot gun, and the long ruffian, who had reached
forward with his boat-hook, got the dose full in his face as it seemed
to me. At the same moment the skipper called "Fire!" and the heavy
crack of the rifles and the sharp report of the pistols rang out
together. The very launch itself seemed to reel under the volley; but
the Chinaman gave a great shout, and jumped into the sea with the agony
of his wound; while two of the others were stretched out in death as
they sat.
"Full steam ahead!" roared Captain York, as the nameless ship replied
with a shell that grazed our chart-room. "Full speed ahead!" Then,
shaking his fist to the war-ship, he almost screamed--"Bested for a
parcel of cut-throats, by the Powers!"
There was no doubt about it at all. The moment the yacht answered to
the screw the fog rolled round us like a sheet, in thick wet clouds,
steaming damp on the decks; and twenty yards ahead or astern of us you
could not see the long waves themselves. But the sensations of that
five minutes I shall never forget. Shot after shot hissed and splashed
ahead of us, behind us; now dull, heavy, yet penetrating, and we knew
that the ship lay close on our track; then farther off and deadened,
and we hoped that she had lost us. Again dreadfully close, so that a
shell struck the chart-room full, and crushed it into splinters not
bigger than your finger, then dying away to leave the stillness of the
mist behind it. An awful chase, enduring many minutes; a chase when I
went hot and cold, now filled with hope, then seeming to stand on the
very brink of death. But at last the firing ceased. We left our course,
steaming for some hours due south across the very track of the nameless
ship; and we went headlong into the fog, the men standing yet at their
posts, no soul giving a thought to the lesser danger that was begotten
of our speed; every one of us held in that strange after-tension which
follows upon calamity.
When I left the bridge it was midnight. I was soaked to the skin and
nigh frozen, and the water ran even from my hair; but a hot hand was
put into mine as I entered the cabin, and then a thousand questions
rained upon me.
"I'll tell you by-and-by, Mary. Were you very much afraid?"
She tossed her head and seemed to think.
"I was a bit afraid, Mark--a--a--little bit!"
"And what did you do all the time?"
"I--oh, I nursed Paolo--he's dying."
The man truly lay almost at death's door; but his delirium had passed;
and he slept, muttering in his dream, "I can't go to the City--Black;
you know it--let me get aboard. Hands off! I told you the job was
risky"; and he tossed and turned and fell into troubled slumber. And I
could not help a thought of sorrow, for I feared that he would hang if
ever we set foot ashore.
I returned to the saloon sadly, though all was now brightness there. We
served out grog liberally for the forward hands, and broke champagne
amongst us.
"Gentlemen," said the skipper, giving us the toast, "you owe your lives
to the Banks; and, please God, I'll see you all in New York before
three days."
And he kept his word; for we sighted Sandy Hook, and harm had come to
no man that fought the unequal fight.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DRINKING HOLE IN THE BOWERY.
The beauty of the entrance to the bay of New York, the amazing medley
of shipping activity and glorious scenery, have often been described.
Even to one who comes upon the capital of the New World, having seen
many cities and many men, there is a charm in the sweeping woods and
the distant heights, in the group of islets, and the massive buildings,
that is hardly rivalled by the fascinations of any other harbour, that
of San Francisco and the Golden Gates alone excepted. If you grant that
the mere material of man's making is all very new, its power and
dignity is no less impressive. Nor in any other city of the world that
I know does the grandeur of the natural environment force itself so
close to the very gates, as in this bay which Hudson claimed, and a
Dutch colony took possession of so long ago as 1614.
It was about six o'clock in the evening when we brought the _Celsis_
through the Narrows between Staten and Long Islands, and passed Forts
Wandsworth and Hamilton. Then the greater harbour before the city
itself rolled out upon our view; and as we steamed slowly into it the
Customs took possession of us, and made their search. It was a short
business, for we satisfied them that Paolo suffered from no malignant
disease, although one small and singularly objectionable fellow seemed
suspicious of everything aboard us. I do not wonder that he made the
men angry, or that Dan had a word with him.
"Look here, sir," he whispered, making pretence to great honesty; "I
won't go for to deceive you--p'r'aps that dog's stuffed wi' di'monds."
"Do you reckon I'm a fool?" asked the man.
"Well," said old Dan, "I never was good at calcerlations; but you
search that dog, and p'r'aps you'll find somethin'."
The man seemed to think a moment; but Dan looked so very solemn, and
Belle came sniffing up at the officer's legs; so he passed his hand
over her back, and lost some of his leg in return.
"Didn't I tell you," said Dan, "as you'd get something if you searched
that dog?--well, don't you go for to doubt me word next time we're
meetin'. Good-day to yer honour. Is there any other animal as I could
oblige you with?"
The officer went off, the men howling with laughter; and a short while
after we had made fast at the landing-stage, and were ready to go
ashore.
Paolo still lay very sick in his cabin, and we determined in common
charity to take no action until he had his health again; but we set the
men to keep a watch about the place, and for ourselves went off to dine
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. There, before a sumptuous dinner, and with
all the novelty of the new scene, we nigh forgot all that happened
since the previous month; when, without thought of adventure or of
future, we had gone to Paris with the aimless purpose of the idle
traveller. And, indeed, I did my best to encourage this spirit of
forgetfulness, since through all the new enjoyment I could not but feel
that danger surrounded us on every hand, and that I was but just
embarked on that great mission I had undertaken.
In this mood, when dinner was done, I suggested that Roderick should
take Mary through the city awhile, and that I should get back to the
_Celsis_, there to secure what papers were left for me, and to arrange,
after thought, what my next step in the following of Captain Black
should be. The skipper had friends to see in New York, and agreed that
he would follow me to the yacht in a couple of hours, and that he would
meet the others in the hotel after they had come from their excursion.
This plan fell in with my own, and I said "Good-bye" cheerfully enough
to the three men as I buttoned up my coat; and sent for a coach. If I
had known then that the next time I should meet them would be after
weeks of danger and of peril, of sojourn in strange places, and of life
amongst terrible men!
I was driven to the wharf very quickly, and got aboard the yacht with
no trouble. There was a man keeping watch upon her decks; and Dan had
been in the sick man's cabin taking drink to him. He told me that he
was more easy, and spoke with the full use of his senses; and that he
had fallen off into a comfortable sleep "since an hour." I was glad at
the news, and went to my own cabin, getting my papers, my revolver, and
other things that I might have need of ashore.
This work occupied me forty minutes or more; but as I was ready to go
back to the others I looked into Paolo's cabin, and, somewhat to my
surprise, I saw that he was dressed, and seemingly about to quit the
yacht. This discovery set me aglow with expectation. If the man were
going ashore, whither could he go except to his associates, to those
who were connected with Black and his crew? Was not that the very clue
I had been hoping to get since I knew that we had a spy aboard us?
Otherwise, I might wait a year and hear no more of the man or of his
work except such tidings as should come from the sea. Indeed, my mind
was made up in a moment: I would follow Paolo, at any risk, even of my
life.
This thought sent me forward again into the fo'castle, where Dan was.
"Hist, Dan!" said I, "give me a man's rig-out--a jersey and some
breeches and a cap--quick," and, while the old fellow stared and
whistled softly, I helped to ransack his box; and in a trice I had
dressed myself, putting my pistols, my papers, and my money in my new
clothes; but leaving everything else in a heap on the floor.
"Dan," I said, "that Italian is going ashore, and I'm going to follow
him. No, you mustn't come, or the thing will be spoilt. Tell the
forward lookout to see nothing if the fellow passes, and get my rubber
shoes from my trunk."
Dan scratched his head again, and must have thought that I was
qualifying in lunacy; but he got the shoes, and not a moment too soon,
for, as I came on deck, I saw a shadow on the gangway. The man was
leaving the yacht at that moment, and I followed him, drawing my cap
right over my eyes, and lurking behind every inch of cover.
Once out into the city, and having turned two or three times to satisfy
himself that he had no one after him, Paolo struck for Broadway; thence
with staggering gait, the result of his weakness, he made straight for
the City Hall, at which point he turned and so got into Chatham Street
and the Bowery. At last, after a long walk, and when the man himself
was almost failing from the exertion of it, he stopped before an open
door in the dirtiest of the streets through which we had come, and
disappeared instantly. I came up to the door almost as soon as he had
passed through; and found myself before a steep flight of steps, at the
bottom of which through a glass partition I could see men smoking and
drinking, and hear them bawling uncouth songs.
It was a fearful hole, peopled by fearful men; all nations and all
sorts of villains were represented there: low Englishmen, Frenchmen,
Russians, even niggers and Chinamen; yet into that hole must I go if I
would follow Paolo to the end.
You may forgive me if I hesitated a moment; waited to balance up the
odds upon my recognition. I might have decided even then that the risk
was too great, the certainty of discovery too palpable; but at that
moment a party of six hulking seamen descended the steps before me,
and, taking advantage of the cover of their shoulders, I pulled my cap
right over my face and passed through the swinging door with them into
the most dangerous-looking place I have ever set foot in.
The room was long and narrow; banked its whole length by benches that
had once been covered with red velvet, but now showed torn patches and
the protruding wool of the stuffing. Mirrors were raised from the dado
of the ragged seats to the frieze of the smoke-blackened ceiling; but
they were for the most part cracked, and some had lost much of their
glass. The accommodation for drinkers consisted of marble-topped
tables, old and worn and stained with the dirt which was characteristic
everywhere of the foul den; but there was nothing but boards beneath
one's feet; and the wretched bar at the uppermost end of the chamber
was no more than a plain deal bin with a high stool behind it for the
serving man; he being a great negro, grotesquely attired as a man of
fashion. Indeed, had not the whole place been so threatening, I should
have paused to laugh at this dusky scoundrel, whose white hat sat
jauntily on the side of his woolly head, and whose well-cut black coat
was ornamented with a great bunch of white flowers. But there was evil
in this man's face, and in the faces of the others who sat close-packed
on the faded couches; and when I had paused for a moment to take
reckoning of the room, I passed quickly to a bench near the door, and
there sat wedged against a fair-haired seaman, whose look stamped him
to be a Russian.
The scene was very new to me. I had heard of these drinking dens in
that low quarter of New York called the Bowery; but my American friends
had cautioned me often to have no truck with them should I visit their
city. They spoke of the poor regard for life which prevailed there; of
murders committed with an impunity which was as astounding as it was
impossible for the police to suppress; of mysterious disappearances,
mysterious alone in the lack of knowledge as to the victim's end; and
they conjured me, if I would see such things, at least to go under the
escort of the police. All this I had paid scant attention to at the
time; but the reality was before me with its grim terror. The room was
filled with the scum of sea-going humanity; foul smoke from foul pipes
floated in choking clouds to the dirt-begrimed ceiling; great brown
pots of strong drink were emptied as though their contents had been
milk; horrid blasphemies were uttered as choice dishes of speech;
ribald songs rose in giant discord as the spirit moved the singers. Now
and again, betwixt the shouting and the singing, a young girl, whose
presence in such a company turned my heart sick, played upon a harp,
while to serve the crew with liquor there was a mahogany-faced hag whom
the men addressed as "Mother Catch." An old crone, bent and doubled
like a bow, yet vigorous in her work, and shuffling with quick steps as
she laid down the jugs, or took the uncouth orders so freely given to
her, she seemed to have the eye of a hawk; nor did I escape her glance,
for I had not been seated before the marble table a moment when she
shuffled up to me and stood glaring with her shining eyes, the very
presentment of an old-time witch.
"Ha!" she said sharply, "ha! a sailor boy in proper sailor clothes; ho,
little man, will ye wet yer throat for a pretty gentleman?"
I did not like her mock courtesy, or the way in which she pronounced
the word "gentleman"; but I called for some beer to get her away, and
when she brought it I remembered that I had no American money; but I
put an English florin before her and waited for the change. She hissed
at the sight of it like a serpent about to strike.
"Ha! Englishman! and no money; ho! ho! ye've got to find it, little
man. Mother Catch likes you; but she spits on it!"
She spoke the last words in such a loud voice that several men near me
turned to look, and I feared to become the centre of a brawl. This
would have defeated everything, so I threw her a half-sovereign, and,
feigning her own savage merriment, I said--
"Gold, little woman, English gold; spit on it for luck, little woman";
and I am bound to say that she did so, hobbling out of the room with
the gold piece clenched in her nut-cracker jaws. Then I began to search
with my eyes for Paolo; and, although the smoke was very thick, I saw
him seated near the drinking-bar, a tumbler of brandy before him, his
arms resting on the edge of the counter where the liquor was sold. I
judged then that he had made no idle visit to this place; and in a
quarter of an hour or so my surmise was proved. The glass door again
swung open; three men entered through it, and I recognised the three of
them in a moment. The first was the Irishman, "Four Eyes"; the
second-was the lantern-jawed Scotsman, who had been addressed in Paris
as "Dick the Ranter"; the third was "Roaring John," into whose face Dan
had emptied the contents of his duck-gun three days before. The ruffian
had his mouth all bound in a bloody rag, so I hugged myself with the
knowledge that he had been well hit; but he was in nowise depressed;
and, although the gun had stopped his speech, he smacked Paolo on the
back when he greeted him, and the others soon had their faces in the
great brown jugs.
The sight of this company warmed me to the work. I seemed to stand on
the threshold of discovery. If only I could follow them hence to
Black's house the whole aim of my journey would be fulfilled. And why
not? I said; they will leave this place and go to their leader some
time--if not now, at least to-morrow; and why should I lose touch with
them? So far it was certain that my presence was undiscovered. The hag
had suspicion of me, but not in their way; the men were too busy, I
thought, talking of their own affairs to meddle even with their
neighbours. Dan knew on what business I had left the ship, and would
quieten Roderick's alarm for me. It was plain that fortune had turned
kindly eyes on me.
I sat sipping the beer and smoking an old clay pipe, which I found in
the breast-pocket of Dan's garment, doing these things to escape the
remarks which the neglect of them would have occasioned, when there was
some change in the bibulous entertainment as yet provided for us in the
drink-hole. The hag raised her voice, worn to a croak with long
scolding, and shrieked--
"Jack's a-going to dance for ye! Silence, pretty boys. Ho! ho! Jack the
Fire-Devil, will ye listen, then? And it's help me move the tables ye
will, Master Dick, or ye're no minister that I took ye for. Back, my
pretty gentlemen, lest I throw me vitriol on ye. Ha! but they love me
like their own mother!"
She poked round with her stick at the seamen's feet, compelling them to
fall back, and to make a ring for the dancer in the centre; and I saw
with no satisfaction that the foul-mouthed villain who was called the
"Ranter" came to give her his help to the work.
"Hoots, mither," he cried in his broadest Scots, "did ye mistake that I
was a gentleman frae the Hielands o' bonnie Scotland? And I'll be verra
glad to throttle some for a wee cup o' yer pretty poison. So ho! ye
lubbers, it's an ower-fine discoors for a summer Sawbath that my boot
will teach you. Mak' way, mak' way!"
Thus, with unctuous mockery and rough menace, the fellow followed the
fury round the room, and forced the drunken crew to the wall. He came
to my seat; but I buried my head in my hands, lest he should have
carried the memory of my face from Paris; and he passed, having taken
no notice of me as I hoped. Soon he had made a great ring for the
dancing; and one of the long mirrors opened, showing a door, whose
existence I had not suspected; and a great negro with a flaming firepot
entered the room. His entry brought applause; but he was a common quack
of a performer at the beginning, for he made pretence to eat the fire,
and to bring it up again from his vitals. Then, to some wild music from
a fiddler, he bound coils of the flaming stuff about his head; and, the
lamps being lowered, he gave us a weird picture of a man dancing, all
circled with flame; working himself up until I recalled pictures of the
dervishes I had seen in the old quarter of Cairo. It was an
extraordinary exhibition, and it pleased the men about so that they
roared with delight. I was watching it at last as intent as they were;
but my attention was suddenly diverted by the sense that something
under the marble table at which I was sitting was pulling at my leg. I
looked down quickly, and saw a strange sight: it was the black face of
the lad Splinters, who had been treated so brutally in Paris. He,
crouching under the table, was making signs to me, earnest, meaning
signs, so that without any betrayal I leant my head down as though upon
my hands, and spoke to him--
"What is it, lad?" I asked in a whisper. "What do you want to say?"
"Don't stop here, sir!" he answered in a state of great agitation.
"They know you, and are going to kill you!"
He said no more, crawling away at once; but he left me hot with fear.
The mad dance was still going on, and the room was quite dark save for
the glow cast by the spirit flames about the huge negro. It occurred to
me at once that the darkness might save me if only I could reach the
door unobserved; and I left my seat, and pushed amongst the men,
passing nearer and nearer to the street, until at last I was at the
very portal itself. Then I saw that a change had been made while I had
been sitting. The doors of glass were wide open, but the way to the
street without was no longer clear--an iron curtain had been drawn
across the entrance, and a hundred men could not have forced it.
This was a terrible discovery. It seemed to me that the iron door had
been closed for an especial purpose. I knew, however, that when the
dance was over some of the audience would wish to go out, and so I
waited by the curtain until the lamps were turned up, and the negro had
disappeared. The men were then about to push their tables to the centre
again, but the hag raised her voice and cried--
"As you are, my pretty gentleman; it's only the first part ye've been
treated to. No, no; ye don't have the door drawn till ye've seen yer
mother dance awhile. Good boys, all of ye, there's work to do; ho! ho!
work to do, and Mother Catch will do it!"
At the words "work to do" a strange silence, which I did not then
understand, fell on the company. Somehow, all the men immediately
around me slunk away, and I found myself standing quite alone, with
many staring at me. The four men whom most I feared had turned their
backs, and were busy with their mugs; but the rest of the assembly had
eyes only for the terrible woman and for myself. Presently the
discordant music began again. The hag, who had been bent double, reared
herself up with a "Ho!" after the fashion of a Scottish sword-dancer,
and began to make a wretched shuffle with her feet. Then she moved with
a hobble and a jig to the far end of the room; and she called out,
beginning to come straight down to the door whereby I stood. I know not
what presentiment forewarned me to beware as the creature drew near;
but yet I felt the danger, and the throbbing of my heart. That I could
hope for help amongst such a crew was out of the question. I had my
revolver in my pocket, but had I shown it twenty barrels would have
answered the folly. There was nothing to do but to face the screeching
woman; and this I did as the unearthly music became louder, and the
stillness of the men was speaking in its depth.
At the last, the old witch, who had danced for some moments at a
distance of ten paces from the spot where I stood, became as one
possessed. She made a few dreadful antics, uttered a piercing shriek,
and hurled herself almost on me. In that instant I remember seeing the
three men with Paolo suddenly rise to their feet, while the others in
the room called out in their excitement. But the hag herself drew from
her breast something that she had concealed there; and, as she stood
within a yard of me, she brought it crash upon my head, and all my
senses left me.
CHAPTER XIII.
ASTERN OF THE "LABRADOR."
Complete unconsciousness is a blessing, I think, which comes rarely to
us. Sleep, they say, is akin to death; yet I have often questioned if
there be an absolute void of existence in sleep; and I am sure that in
few cases where a blow robs us of sense does the brain cease to be
active or to bring dreams in its working. I have been struck down
unconscious twice in my life; but in each instance I have suffered much
during the after-days from that trouble of mind which is akin to the
feverish dream of an exhausted system. Horrid sights does the brain
then bear to us; terrible situations; weird phantoms known to the
opium-eater; wild struggles with unnatural enemies; wrestlings even for
existence itself. All these I knew during the days that followed my
rash visit to the drinking den. How long I lay, or where, I know not to
this hour; but my dreams were very terrible, and there was a fever at
my head which the ice of a great lake scarce could have cooled. Often I
would know that I had consciousness, and yet I could not move hand or
foot, so that the terror moved me to frenzies of agony, though my lips
were sealed, and I felt myself passing to death. Or I would live again
through the night when Martin Hall died, and from the boat where I
watched the holocaust, I climbed to the shrouds of the cutter, and
stood with my poor friend in the very shelter of the spreading flames.
Or I struggled with Black, having hunted him to his own quarter-deck,
and there with great force of men I sought to lay hands on him; but he
escaped me with a mocking laugh, and when I looked again the deck was
empty.
For short moments the delirium must have left me. Once I opened my
eyes, and knew that the sun shone upon me, and that the breeze which
cooled my forehead blew from the sea; but my fatigue was so great that
I fell asleep in the next instant, and enjoyed pure rest during many
hours. When I regained consciousness for the second time, it was
because rain beat upon my face, a drizzling warm rain of late summer,
and there was spray from a fresh sea. For some minutes I set myself to
ask where I was; but I knew that I was bound at the left hand and at my
feet, and, to my unutterable astonishment, when I raised my head, I saw
that I lay in an open boat which was moving very slowly, but my feet
were towards the stern of it, and, as my head lay below the level of
the gunwale, I could see nothing of the power which moved the boat or
of the scene about us.
It was a long time before my throbbing head let me put together a chain
of thought to account for my position. The scene at the drinking den
would not at first come back to me, think as I would; but when it did,
the clue which was lacking came with it. There could be no doubt that I
had walked into a trap, and that the hag who had struck me had been in
the pay of Paolo and his crew. These men must have taken me as I lay,
and so brought me to this boat; but what time had intervened, or where
I was, I knew no better than the dead. Only this was sure, that I was
in the hands of one of the greatest scoundrels living, and that, if his
past were any precedent, my hours of life would be few.
I cannot tell you why it was, but, strange to say, this reflection did
not give me very great alarm at the moment. Perhaps I suffered too much
from bodily weakness, and would have welcomed any release, even death;
perhaps I was buoyed up with that eternal hope which bears its most
generous blossom in the springtime of life. In either case, I put away
the thought of danger, and set to the task of conning my position a
little more closely. The boat in which I lay was painted white, and was
of elegant build. She had all the fine lines of a yacht's jolly-boat;
and when I raised my head I could see that her fittings had been put in
only at great expense. She was not a large boat, but the centre seat
had been removed from her to let me lie on a tarpaulin which covered
her keel, and the stern seat had been used to bind my feet. A second
tarpaulin, folded twice, had been propped under my head, but my left
hand was bound close to the boat thwart, and there was a rope doubled
round my right forearm so that I could not raise myself an inch, though
my right hand was free. The meaning of this apparent neglect I soon
learnt. There was a flask on the edge of the tarpaulin which supported
my head, and by it half a dozen rather fine captain's biscuits. I had a
prodigious thirst on me, and I drank from the flask; but found it to
contain weak brandy, and would willingly have exchanged thrice its
contents for a long draught of pure water. But the biscuits I could not
touch; and I began to be chilled with the rain which fell copiously,
and with the sea which sent spray in fountains upon my body.
Up to this time, I had heard no sound of human voices, but the silence
was broken at last by a shout, and the boat ceased to move.
"All hands, make sail!" cried someone, apparently above me; and after
that I heard the "yo-heave" of the men hauling, as I judged, at a
main-sail. The second order, "Sheets home!" proved to me that I was
behind a sailing ship, perhaps a yacht which these men had secured, as
they got _La France_--and burnt her. I shuddered at the second thought,
and my head began to burn again despite the wet. Did they mean to leave
me there until the end of it, when the cold and my wound should do
their work? Had they forgotten me? Had they any reason for keeping me
alive? My questions were in part answered by a sudden shout from the
deck of the ship.
"Ho, Bill, is the young un gone?"
"No, my hearty, he's gone about!"
"Getting his spirits damped, I reckon."
"Some, you bet."
And then I heard a voice I knew, the voice of the Irishman,
"Four-Eyes."
"Is it the boi ye're mindin', bedad?"
"Ay, sir, he's moved a point."
"The poor divil. Throw him a sheet, one av yer; it's meself that's not
bringing the guv'ner a dead body when he wants a live one, be Saint
Pathrick!"
They tried to throw me a sheet as the man had ordered, but we had begun
to move rapidly again, and I heard it fall in the water by my head.
Though there was more hailing, the thud of the choppy sea against the
boat forbade any more hearing, and the sheet never reached me. Yet the
men had told me something with their words, and I pondered long on the
remark of the Irishman, that the "guv'ner" wanted me alive. It
explained much; and it put beyond doubt the reason why I had not been
killed in the drinking den. It was quite clear that my life was safe
from these men until they reached their chief; but where he was I had
no notion, except he were on the nameless ship; and, if that were so,
to the nameless ship I was going--that ship of horror and of mystery.
Nor could I remember anything in what I knew of Captain Black to lead
me to the hope that such a voyage was other than one to death, and
perhaps to that which might be worse than death itself.
When this strange procession had lasted about an hour, the rain ceased
and the sun shone again with renewed power, drying my clothes upon me
and giving me prodigious thirst. I struggled to reach the flask, and in
doing so I found that the ropes binding my right arm were tied with
common hitches, such as any sailor could force; and my experience as a
yachtsman let me get free of them with very little trouble. I did not
sit up at once, for I feared to be seen from the decks; but I turned my
head to look at the boat which towed me, and saw that she was a
barque-rigged yacht after the American fashion; her name _Labrador_
being conspicuous across her stern. My boat, which was no larger than I
had thought, was towed by a double hawser; but no man watched me from
the poop, and I lay down again reassured. The hope of escape was
already in my head, for I judged that we could not be far out from New
York, although no land was visible on the horizon. It occurred to me
that if they would only let me be until night I could get my left hand
and my feet free; and, as the hawser was passed through a ring at the
bow, I needed but a knife to complete the business. But I had no knife,
for a search in my pockets proved that I had been relieved of all my
valuables and trifles; and I knew that another way must be found, and
that ingenuity alone would help me. So I sat thinking; and all the long
afternoon--I knew it was afternoon, as I saw the sun sinking in the
horizon and heard the bells, moreover--I examined such devices as came
to me, only to reject them and to seek for others.
Towards the second bell in the second "dog" there was a change in the
monotony of the scene. I heard an order to heave the barque to, and
presently I made haste to put the ropes back in their places and to
await the happening. I felt all motion cease, and then someone hauling
at the hawser, so that the jolly-boat was pulled against the side of
the bigger ship; and, looking up, I saw half-a-dozen of Black's gang
watching me from the quarter-deck. Then a ladder was put over the
bulwark, and Four-Eyes himself cried out not in an unkindly tone--
"Gi-me the soop, bhoys, and let's get it in him; begorra, the divil 'll
have him afore the skipper if it's no mate you're givin' him!"
He came down the ladder with a great can of steaming stuff; and the sea
having fallen away with the sun to a dead calm, he stepped off the
ladder to the stern seat, and then bent over me. But I saw this only,
that he had a knife in his belt; and I made up my mind in a moment to
get it from him.
"The young 'un from Paris," he cried, as he took a long look at me,
"and near to axin' for a priest, by the houly saints; but I was tellin'
ye to stop where ye was, and it's no thanks ye were giving me. Bedad,
and a pretty place ye're going to, sorr, at your own wish--the divil
knows what's the end av it--but sup a bit, for it's fastin' ye are by
the luk av ye, and long gone at that!"
Kindly words he gave me; and he held to the rope with one hand while he
put the can of hot stuff to my lips with the other. I drank half of it
with great gulps, feeling the warmth spread through my body to my very
toes as the broth went down; and a great hope consoled me, for I had
his knife, having snatched it from him when first he stooped, and it
lay in the tarpaulin beneath me. The good luck of the theft made me
quick to empty the pot of gravy; and when I had returned the can,
Four-Eyes went over the side again, and the yacht moved onward lazily
in the softest of breezes from the west. But my boat lay behind her
again; and I did not stir from my restful position until it was full
dark; though the going down of the sun had left a clear night and a
zenith richly set with a shimmer of stars, which did not give any great
promise to my thoughts of coming freedom.
When I deemed that I had waited long enough, and had assured myself
that the later night would not be more auspicious for the attempt, I
cut away the remaining ropes at my feet, and crouched unbound in the
boat. There was good watch upon the ship, I knew, for I could hear the
"All's well!" as the bells were struck, and the passing of the orders
from the poop to the fo'castle. This did not deter me; and, being
determined to stake all rather than face the terrors of the nameless
ship, I crawled to the bow, and began to cut the strands of the hawser
one by one. The rope was very thick and hard, and the knife which I had
stolen was blunt, so that the work was prodigiously slow and difficult;
and when I had been at it for half an hour or more, I was interrupted
in a way that sent my heart almost into my mouth. There was a man
standing on the poop of the _Labrador_, and he seemed to be watching my
occupation. I threw myself flat instantly, and listened to his hail.
"Ahoy, there, young 'un, are you getting a chill?" cried a bluff voice,
which I did not recognise; but presently the man Four-Eyes hailed also,
and I heard him say--
"If it's dead ye are, will ye be sending word up to us?" and, seeing
the mood, I bawled with all my strength--
"I'm all right; but I'll call out for some more of that soup of yours
just now."
They gave a great shout, and one of them said--
"You ken calcerlate ez you will be gettin' it all nice en' hot when you
meet the old 'un in the mornin'"; and the crew roared with laughter at
the sally, and disappeared one by one from the poop. Then I whipped out
my knife again, and with a few vigorous strokes I cut the rope clean
through, and felt my boat go swirling away on the backwash. It was a
moment of supreme excitement, and I lay quite flat, waiting to hear if
I were missed; but I heard no sound, and looking round presently, I saw
the yacht away a mile, and I knew that I was a free man.
The delight of the enterprise would have been intense if my unexpected
success had not allowed me to forget one thing when I had made my hasty
plans. _There were no oars in the boat._ The terrible truth came to me
as I fixed the seat and prepared to put greater distance between the
_Labrador_ and myself. But one look round convinced me that the
position was hopeless. With the exception of the tarpaulins, the seats,
and the tiller, the boat was unfurnished. As I thought of these things,
and remembered that I was some hundreds of miles from land, that I had
a couple of biscuits for food, and a half a flask of brandy and water
for drink, I experienced a terror greater than any I have known; and so
weak was I with sickness and so low with the disappointment of it, that
I put my head between my hands and sobbed like a great child who had
known a childish sorrow. Only when the tears had dried upon my face,
and there was that after-sense of resignation which follows a nervous
outbreak, did I upbraid myself for a weakling, and set to think out
plans for my release. I had no compass, but, taking the north through
the "pointers," I tried to make out the course in which I was drifting;
yet this, I must confess, was a hopeless task. I thought that the boat
was being carried by a steady current; yet whether the current set
towards the land or away from it, I could not tell.
When a couple of hours had passed, and I could see the yacht no longer,
I took a new consolation in the thought that I must, after all, be in
the track of steamers bound out from, or to, New York; and in this hope
I covered myself in the tarpaulins and lay down again to shield myself
from the wind which blew with much sharpness as the night grew. I did
not sleep, but lay half-dazed for an hour or more, and was roused only
at a curious light which flashed above me in the sky. Its first aspect
led me to the conclusion that I saw a reflection of the Aurora; but the
second flash altered the opinion. The light was clearly focussed, being
a volume of intensely bright, white rays which passed right above me
with slow and guided motion, and then stopped altogether, almost fixed
upon the jolly-boat. I knew then what it was, and I sat up to see the
great beams of a man-of-war's search-light, showing an arc of the water
almost as clear as by the sun's power. The vessel itself I could not
make out; but I feared at once that fate had sent me straight to the
nameless ship; and that the very misfortune I had thought to have
undone was brought home to me. Yet I could not take one step to defend
myself, and must perforce drift on, to what end I knew not.
The light shone in all its brightness for some five minutes; then it
died away suddenly, and on the spot whence it had come I could just
distinguish the dark hull of a steamer. To my vast consolation, she had
two funnels and three masts, and I remembered that Black's boat had but
one funnel and two masts, so that good fortune seemed to have come to
me at last. Over-delighted with the discovery, I stood up at my risk in
the jolly-boat and waved my arms wildly; when, as if in answer, the
search-light flashed out again and bathed me in its refulgent beams.
Some moments, long moments to me, passed in feverish conjecture; and
then in the pathway of the light I saw in all distinctness the outline
of a long-boat, fully manned, and she was coming straight to me. There
could be no more doubt of it; I had passed through much suffering, but
it was all child's play to the "might have been"; and in the reaction I
laughed aloud like an hysterical woman, and blushed to remember those
great tears which had rolled over my face not an hour gone. And all the
time I never took my eyes from the boat; but feasted on it as a
beggar-child feasts in imagination on the gauds of a groaning table.
Its progress seemed slow, wofully slow; the men in it made me no manner
of signal, never gave an answer to my erratic hand-waving; but, what
was of more consequence, they came in a bee-line towards me, and the
radiating light never moved once whilst they rowed. In the end, I
myself broke the silence, shouting lustily to them, but getting no
answer until I had repeated the call thrice. The fourth cry, loud and
in something desperate, brought the response so eagerly awaited; but
when I recognised the voice of him who then hailed me I fell down again
in my boat with a heart-stricken burst of sorrow, for the voice was the
Irishman's, and Four-Eyes spoke--
"Avast hailin', young 'un," he cried; "we ain't agoin' to part along o'
your society no more, don't you be frettin'."
They dragged me into their boat, and taking my own in tow, they rowed
rapidly to the distant steamer, on whose deck I stood presently; but
not without profound fear, for I knew that at last I was a prisoner on
the nameless ship.
CHAPTER XIV.
A CABIN IN SCARLET.
There was light from six lanterns, held by giant negroes, to greet me
when I had mounted the ladder and was at last on the deck of the great
ship; but none of the men spoke a word, nor could I see their faces. Of
those who had brought me from the jolly-boat, I recognised two besides
"Four-Eyes" as men whom I had seen in Paris, but the Irishman appeared
to be the captain of them; and, in lack of other leader, he spoke when
all were aboard, but it was in a monosyllable. "Aft!" he said, looking
round to see if anyone else were near; and one of them silently touched
me upon the shoulder, and I followed him along a narrow strip of iron
deck, past a great turret which reared itself above me, and again by
the covered forms of quick-firing guns. We descended a short ladder to
a lower deck; and so to the companion way, and to a narrow passage in
which were many doors. One of these he opened, and motioned me to
enter, when the door was closed noiselessly behind me, and I found
myself alone.
My first feeling was one of intense surprise. I had looked to enter a
prison; but, if that were a prison, then were lack of liberty shorn of
half its terrors. The cabin was not large, but one more artistic in
effect was never built. Hung all round with poppy-coloured silk, the
same material made curtains for the bunk--which seemed of unusual size,
and furnished with sleep-bespeaking mattresses. It was employed also
for the cushions and covering of the armchair and the couch, and to
drape the dressing-glass and basin which were in the left-hand corner.
It seemed, indeed, that the whole room was a harmony in scarlet, with a
scarlet ceiling and scarlet hangings; but the luxury of it was
unmistakable, and the feet sank above the ankles in the soft Indian
rug, which was ornate with the quaint mosaic-like workings and
penetrating colours of all Eastern tapestry. For light, there was an
arc-lamp, veiled with gauze of the faintest yellow; and upon the table
in the centre stood a decanter of wine and a box of cigars. The room
would have been perfect but for a horrid blot upon it--a blot which
stared at me from the outer wall with bloodshot eyes and hideous
visage. It was the picture of a man's head that had been severed from
the body; and was repulsive enough to have been painted by Wiertz
himself. The picture almost terrified me, but I thought, if no worse
harm befall me what odds? and I sat down all wondering and dazed, and
drew a cigar from the box upon the table. The wine, of which I drank
nearly a tumblerful, put new courage of a sort into me; and so,
troubled and amazed, I began to ask myself what the proceeding meant,
or what the portent of it all could possibly be.
My conclusion was, when I thought the whole thing out, that the man
Black could be showing me this marked consideration only for some
motive of self-interest. It was evident that he had been aware of my
intention to follow him from the moment when Roderick purchased our new
steam-yacht. He had put one of his own men craftily upon the ship to
watch us, and had made a bold attempt to deal with us in mid-Atlantic.
Foiled there, he had taken advantage of my folly in entering such a
place as the Bowery, and had given orders that I should be carried to
his own ship--for I knew then that the strange craft he owned was
capable of many disguises--and should be carried alive. Why alive, if
not that he might learn all about me, or that a more dreadful fate than
mere death should be mine? I had seen the appalling end of poor Hall,
the merciless severity with which his death had been compassed: why
should I expect more gentle usage or other recompense? If ever man had
been trapped, I had been; and, beneath all my placid self-restraint, I
felt that my life was not worth an hour's--nay, perhaps ten
minutes'--purchase. It was as if I had been taken clean out of the
world with no man to extend me a helping hand. Roderick, truly, would
move heaven and earth to reach me, but what could he hope for against
such a crew; or how should I expect to be alive when he brought his
attempts to a head? And I thought of him with deep feelings of
friendship at that moment, and wondered what Mary would say. She will
be serious, I argued, for the first time in her life, and they will
know much anxiety. Yet that must be--in the floating tomb where I lay I
could hope to send no word to the living world which I had left.
I had smoked one cigar in the cabin, listening to the tremendous throb
of the ship's screws, and the swish of the sea as we cleaved it, when
the electric light went out, and I was left in darkness. The sudden
change gave me some alarm, and I cocked my revolver, being resolute to
account for one man at least, if any attempt were made upon me; but
when I had sat quite still for some half-an-hour there was no noise of
movement save on the deck above, and my own cabin remained as still as
the grave. It appeared that I was to be left unmolested for that night
at any rate; and, being something of a philosopher, I waited for
another hour or so, and finding that no one came near me, I undressed
and lay down in one of the most seductive beds I have met with at sea.
I did, indeed, take the precaution of putting my Colt under the pillow;
but I was so weary and fatigued with my sufferings in the open boat
that I fell asleep at once, and must have slept for many hours.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PRISON OF STEEL.
I awoke in the day, but at what hour of it I know not. The red curtains
opposite to my bunk were drawn back, admitting dull light from a
port-hole through which I could look upon a tumbling sea, and a sky all
girt with rain-clouds. But I had not been awake five seconds when I saw
that my arm-chair was occupied by a man who did not look more than
thirty-years old, and was dressed with all the scrupulous neatness of a
thorough-going yachtsman. He was wearing a peaked cloth cap with a gold
eagle upon it, a short jacket of blue serge, with ample trousers to
match, and a neat pair of brown shoes; while his linen would have
touched the heart even of the most hardened _blanchisseuse_ of the
city. He had a bright, open face, marred only by a peculiarly
irritating movement of the eye, which told of a nervous disposition;
and there was something refined and polished in his voice, which I
heard almost at once.
"Good-morning to you," he said; "I hope you have slept well?"
"I have never slept better; it must be twelve o'clock, isn't it?"
"It's exactly half-past three, American time. I didn't wake you before,
because sleep is the best medicine in your case. I'm a doctor, you
know."
"Oh! you're the physician-in-ordinary to the crew, I suppose; you must
see a good deal of practice."
He looked rather surprised at my meaning remark, and then said quite
calmly, "Yes, I write a good many death certificates; who knows, I may
even do that service for you?"
It was said half-mockingly, half-threateningly; but it brought home to
me at once the situation in which I was; and I must have become
serious, which he saw, and endeavoured to turn me to a lighter mood.
"You must be hungry," he continued; "I will ring for breakfast; and, if
you would take a tub, your bathroom is here."
He opened the door in the passage, and led the way to a cabin furnished
with marble and brass fittings, wherein was a full-sized bath and all
the appurtenances for dressing. I took a bath, and found him waiting
for me when I had finished. We returned to the scarlet room, and there
spread upon the table was a meal worthy of Delmonico's. There was
coffee served with thick cream; there were choice dishes of meat, game
pies, new rolls, fruit, and the whole was finished with ices and
bon-bons in the true American fashion. My new friend, the doctor, said
nothing as I ate; but when the repast was removed he pushed the cigars
to me, and, taking one himself, he began to talk at once.
"I regret," he said, "that I cannot supply you with a morning
newspaper; but the latest journal that I can lend you is a copy of the
_New York World_ of Saturday last. There is a passage in it which may
interest you."
The paper was folded and marked in a certain spot. I read it with blank
amazement, for it was a full account of the nameless ship's attack upon
the American cruiser and the _Ocean King_. The paper stated shortly
that both ships had been impudently stopped in mid-Atlantic by a big
war-vessel flying the Chilian flag; that the cruiser had been seriously
damaged and had lost twenty of her men; while a shell had been fired
into the fo'castle of the passenger ship and two of her men killed,
with other such details as you know. The matter was the subject of a
profound sensation, not only in America, but throughout the world. The
Chilian Government had been approached at once, but had repudiated all
knowledge of the mysterious ship. Meanwhile war-vessels from England,
America, and from France had set out to scour the seas and bring such
intelligence as they could. The whole account concluded with the rumour
that a gentleman in New York had knowledge of the affair, and would at
once be interviewed, with the result, it was hoped, of disclosing that
which would be one of the sensations of the century.
When I had put the paper down, the doctor, who followed me with his
eyes, said laughingly--
"You see that interview was unfortunately interrupted. You are the
gentleman with the full particulars, for we know that your friend
Stewart plays a very small part in the affair. Without your energy, I
think I may say that he is little less than a fool."
"Hardly that, as you may yet discover," I said, seeing instantly which
way safety lay; "he knows as much as I know."
"Which is not very much after all, is it?--but that we must have fuller
knowledge of. I am here to ask you to write accurately for us a
complete account of every step you have taken in this matter since you
were fool enough to follow Martin Hall, and poke your nose into
business which did not concern you. As you know, Hall was punished in
the Channel: you saw his end, as I hear from my comrade Paolo. We have
spared you, and may yet spare you, if you do absolutely what we tell
you."
"And otherwise?"
He smiled cruelly, and his eyes danced when he answered--
"Otherwise, you would give all you possessed if I would shoot you now
as you sit; but don't let us look at it that way. You must see that
your case is utterly hopeless; you will never look again on any
civilised city, or see the face of a man you have known. For all
purposes you are as dead as though twenty feet of earth covered you. If
you would still have life, not altogether under unfavourable
conditions, you have but to ask for pen, ink, and paper--and to make
yourself one of us."
"That I will never do!"
"Oh, you say that now; but we shall give you some days to think of it.
Let me advise you to be a man of common sense, and not to run your head
against a stone wall. Believe me, we are a curious company; I don't
suppose there is a man aboard us who has not some deaths to his
account. I am wanted for a murder in Shropshire; but I am giving your
people a little trouble. Ha! ha!"
This was said with such a fearful laugh that I shrank back from the
man, who restrained himself with an effort as he rose to go; but as he
stood at the door, he said--
"We are now bound on a four-days' voyage. During these four days, you
need fear nothing. We should have paid off our score in the Atlantic,
and sent you and your fellows to join other intrusive friends of ours,
if we had not wished to get this little account of yours. So don't
disturb yourself unnecessarily until Captain Black puts the question to
you. Then, if you are foolish, you had better feed your courage. I have
seen stronger men than you who have cried out for death when we had but
put our fingers on them; and we shall do you full honour--in fact, we
shall treat you royally."
When he was gone, I thought that he had spoken with truth. To all my
friends I was as dead as though twenty feet of earth lay on my body.
What hope had I, shut in that grave of steel? What friend could hear
me, battened in that prison on the sea? Should I tell the men frankly
all I knew, and crave their mercy, or should I seek hope in the
pretence that Roderick had information which might yet be fatal to
them? I thought the position out, and this was the sum of it. These men
had a home somewhere. If I had known where that home was, and had
communicated the knowledge to Roderick, then the Governments of Europe
could bring the ruffian crew to book with little difficulty. That,
without a doubt was the question Black would put to me. He would wish
to know all I knew; but, if I refused to tell him, he would proceed to
extremes, and I shuddered when I remembered what his extremes had been
in the case of Hall. The man undoubtedly had conceived a scheme daring
beyond any known in the nineteenth century. The knowledge of his
hiding-place was the key to his safety. If Roderick had it, then,
indeed, I might have looked for life; but I knew that Hall had never
discovered it, and what hope had Roderick where the greater skill had
failed?
This consideration led me to one conclusion. I would pretend that I had
some knowledge, and that my friends had it too. If that did not save my
life, God alone could help me, and the home of Captain Black would be
my grave. Nor did I know in any case that I had much expectation of
life in such surroundings or in such company.
CHAPTER XVI.
NORTHWARD HO!
During some days I saw no more of the doctor, or of anyone about the
ship save an old negro, who became my servant. He was not an
unkindly-looking man, being of a great age, and somewhat feeble in his
actions; but he never opened his lips when I questioned him, and gave a
plain "Yes" or "No" to any demand. Those days would have been
monotonous, had it not been for the ever-present sense of coming
danger, of a future dark and threatening, likely to be fruitful in
trial and in peril. Each morning at an early hour the age-worn black
entered my cabin and told me that my bath was ready. When I was
dressed, a breakfast, generous in quality and in quantity, was set upon
my cabin table. At one o'clock luncheon of like excellence was served;
and again at five o'clock and at eight, tea and dinner. Some thought
evidently was given to my condition, for on the second morning I found
clean linen with a neat suit of blue serge awaiting me in the bathroom,
and when I had breakfasted, the black brought a parcel of books to me;
I found amongst them, to my satisfaction, several light works by Bret
Harte, Mark Twain, and Max Adeler, as well as more solid literary food.
The books saved me from much of that foreboding which I should have
known wanting them, and after the first fears had passed I spent the
hours in reading or looking through the port-hole over the deserted
waste of a fretful sea. I had hoped to learn something of our
destination from this diligent watching of the waves; but for the first
forty hours, at any rate, I saw nothing--not so much as a small
ship--though it felt much colder; and again on the third day the lower
temperature was yet more marked, so that I welcomed fresh and warmer
clothing which the negro brought me for my bed; and observed with
satisfaction that there were means within the ship for heating the
cabin during the daytime.
It must have been on the fourth day after my capture that the nameless
ship, which hitherto had not been speeding at an abnormal pace, began
to go very fast, the rush of water from the head of her rising
frequently above my port, and permitting but rare views of the distant
horizon. The greater speed was sustained during that day until the
first dog-watch, when I was disturbed in my reading by the
consciousness that the ship had stopped, and that there was great
agitation on deck. I looked from my window and observed the cause of
the confusion, for there, ahead of us a mile or more, was one of the
largest icebergs I have ever seen. The mighty mass, from whose sides
the water was rushing as in little cataracts, towered above the sea to
a height of four or five hundred feet, rising up in three snow-white
pinnacles which caught the crimson light of the sinking sun and gave it
back in prismatic hues, all dazzling and beautiful. As a great island
of ice, all rich in waving colour and superb majesty, the berg passed
on, and the screw of the steamer was heard again. I watched intently,
hoping to see other bergs, or, indeed, any ships that should tell me
how far we had gone towards the north; but the night fell suddenly, and
the negro served dinner, asking me if I had warmth enough? My curt
answer seemed to astonish him; but the truth was that I was thinking of
the man Paolo's words when sick upon my own ship. He had cried, "Ice,
ice," more than once in his delirium; but none of us then had the
meaning of his cry. Yet I had it, and with it a notion of the second
secret of Captain Black. For surely he was running to hiding; and his
hiding-place lay to the north, far above the course even of
Canadian-bound vessels, as I knew by the number of days we had been
steaming.
This new surmise on strange openings did not in any way combat the
terror which visited me so often in that floating prison. Every day,
indeed, seemed to take me farther from humanity, from friends, from the
lands and the peoples of civilisation. Every day confirmed me in the
thought that I was hopelessly in this man's grip, the victim of his
mercy, or his rigour; that none would know of my end when that end
should come; no man say "God help you!" when at last the fellow should
show his teeth. Such dire communings robbed me of my sleep at night;
led me to books whose pages passed blurred before me; made me start at
every rap upon the cabin door; brought me to fear death even in the
very food I ate. Yet during the week I was a prisoner on the ship no
harm of any sort befell me. I was treated with the hospitality of a
great mansion, served with all I asked, unmolested save for the
doctor's threat.
And so the time passed, the weather growing colder day by day, the
bergs more frequent about my windows; until on the evening of the
seventh day the ship stopped suddenly, and I heard the anchor let go.
This was late in the watch, at the time when I was in the habit of
going to bed; but hearing great movement and business on the deck I sat
still, waiting for what should come; and after the lapse of an hour or
more I found that we were moving very slowly again, and with but
occasional movements of the screw. I opened my port, and could hear
loud shoutings from above, and although there was no light of the moon,
I could see enough to conclude that we were passing by a great wall of
rock, and so into some harbour or basin.
The work of mooring the ship was not a long one when once we had come
to a stand. When all was done the noise ceased, and no one coming to me
I went to bed as usual. On the next morning I got up at daybreak, and
looked eagerly from my spying place; but I could discern only a blank
cliff of rock, the ship being now moored against the very side of it.
The negro came to me at the usual hour, but he brought a note with my
breakfast; and I read an invitation to dine with Captain Black at eight
o'clock on that evening. You may be sure that I welcomed even such a
prospect of change, for the monotony of the cabin prison had become
nigh unbearable; and when at a quarter to eight that evening the old
man threw open the door and said, "The Master waits!" I went with him
almost joyfully, even though the next step might have been to my open
grave.
He led the way up the companion ladder, which was, in fact, a broad
staircase, elaborately lit with the electric light; and so brought me
to the deck, where there was darkness save in one spot above the
fore-turret. There a lantern threw a great volume of white light which
spread out upon the sea, and showed me at once that we were in a cove
of some breadth, surrounded by prodigiously high cliffs; and the light
being focussed right across the bay, disclosed a cleft in these rocks
leading apparently to a farther cove beyond. I had scarce time to get
other than a rough idea of the whole situation, for a boat was waiting
at the gangway, and the negro motioned to me to pass down the ladder
and take my seat in the stern. The men gave way at once, keeping in the
course of the searchlight, and rowing straight to the cleft in the
cliffs, through which they passed; and so left the light and entered a
narrower fjord, which was ravine-like in the steepness of its sides,
and so dark, that one could see but a narrow vista of the sky through
the overhanging summits of the giant rocks. This second cove opened
after a while into a lake; above whose shores, at a high spot in the
side of the precipice on the left hand, I observed many twinkling
lights, which seemed to come from windows far up the face of the cliff.
These lights marked our destination, the men rowing straight to them;
and I found, when we came near the precipitous shore which bound the
fjord, that there was a rough landing-stage, cut in the rock, and that
an iron stairway led thence to the chambers which evidently existed
above.
When we had come to shore, and had been received there by several men
who held lanterns, and had the look of Lascars, the negro conducting me
pointed to the iron stairway and told me to mount: he following me to
the summit, where there was a platform and an iron door. The door
opened as we arrived before it, and there standing by it I found the
young doctor, who greeted me very heartily and appeared to be
altogether in a merry mood.
"Come in," he said, "they're waiting for you; and this infernal cold
gives men appetites. This way--but it isn't very dark, is it?"
We were in a broad passage lit by electric light--a passage cut in a
crystal-like rock, whose surface had almost the lustre of a mirror. At
intervals facing the cove were incisions for windows, but these were
now hung with heavy curtains; and there were cupboards and pegs against
the rock wall on the opposite side to make the place serve the purposes
of a hall. The passage led up to a second door--this one built of fine
American walnut; and we passed through it at once into a room where I
was astounded to see indisputable evidence of civilisation and of
refinement. The whole chamber was hung round with superb skins, the
white fur of the Polar bear predominating; but there were couches
cushioned with deep brown seal; and the same glossy skin was laid upon
the floor in so many layers that the footfall was noiseless and
pleasantly luxuriant. The furniture otherwise was both modern and
artistic. A heavy buhl-work writing-table opposite the door was
littered with maps, books and journals; there was a sécretaire
book-case in Chippendale by the side of the enormous fire-place, in
which a great coal fire burned; and above this was an ivory overmantel
of exquisite work. A grand piano, open and bearing music, was the chief
ornament of the left-hand corner; while another Chippendale cabinet,
filled with a multitude of rare curiosities, completed an apartment
which had many of the characteristics of a salon and not a few of a
study.
But I had not eyes so much for the room as for the solitary occupant of
it, who sat before the writing-table, but rose after I had entered. One
glance assured me that I was face to face with Captain Black--the
Captain Black I had seen at the drunken orgie in Paris; but yet not the
same, for all the bravado and rough speech which then fell from his
lips was wanting; and his "Come in!" given in answer to the young
doctor's knock, was spoken melodiously in a rich baritone voice that
fell very pleasantly upon the ear. When he stepped forward and held out
his hand to me, I had the mind almost to draw back from him, for I knew
that the man had crime heavy upon him; but a second thought convinced
me of the folly of making a scene at such a moment; so I took the great
hard hand and looked him full in the face. He was not so tall as I was,
but a man who appeared to possess colossal strength in his enormous
arms and shoulders; and one not ill-looking, though his black beard
fell upon his waistcoat, and his jacket of seal was loose and
ill-fitting. The strange thing about our meeting was this, however.
When he had taken my hand, he held it for a minute or more, looking me
straight in the face with an interest I could not understand; and,
indeed, he then forgot himself entirely, and continued to gaze upon me
and to shake my hand until I thought he would never let it go.
When at last he recovered himself it was with a quick start.
"I am glad to see you," said he; "dinner waits us;" and with that we
passed into another chamber, hung with skins as the first was, but
containing a dining-table laid for four persons in a very elegant
manner, with cut glass, and silver epergnes laden with luscious-looking
fruit and the best of linen. The light came from electric lamps in the
ceiling, and from other lamps cunningly placed in a great block of ice,
which formed the central ornament. Nor have I eaten a better dinner
than the one then served. The only servant was a black giant, who
waited with a dexterity very singular in such a place; and the guests
of the captain were the young doctor, the Scotsman known as Dick the
Ranter, and myself. The Scotsman alone displayed signs of that
rollicking spirit of dare-devil which had characterised the meeting in
Paris; but the captain soon silenced him.
"D'ye ken that we've no said grace?" remarked the lantern-jawed fellow,
as we sat to table; and then, raising his hands in impudent mockery, he
began to utter some blasphemy, but Black turned upon him as with the
growl of a wild beast.
"To the devil with that," said he. "Hold your tongue, man!"
The Scotsman looked up at the rebuke as though a thunderbolt had hit
him.
"Verra weel, mon; verra weel," he muttered; "but ye're unco melancholy
the nicht, unco melancholy." And then he fell to the silence of
consumption, eating prodigiously of all that was set before him; but in
high dudgeon, as a man rebuked unworthily. Of the others, the doctor
alone talked, chatting fluently of many European cities, and proving
himself no mean _raconteur_. I listened in the hope of getting some
idea of what was intended in my case; also, if that could be, of the
situation of this strange place in which I found myself; for as yet I
knew not if it were to the North of America; or, indeed, in what part
of the Arctic Sea it might be. To my satisfaction the captain made no
attempt to conceal the information from me. The first occasion of his
speaking during dinner was in answer to a remark of mine that I found
the room very pleasantly warm.
"Yes," he said, "you must feel the change, although you will feel it
more when we get winter here. You know where you are, of course."
I said unsuspectingly that I had not the faintest idea, when he cast a
quick glance at the doctor, and the latter slapped me on the back quite
joyously.
"Bravo!" he cried. "That prevents our putting one unpleasant question
to you, anyway. I knew that your innuendo in the cabin was all
make-believe."
"Of course it was," added the captain; "but the knowledge of it saves
our bustling you. However, this isn't the time for talk of that sort. I
may tell you, since you do not know, that you are on the west coast of
Greenland, and that there is a Danish settlement not fifty miles from
you--although we don't leave cards on our neighbours."
He called for champagne then, and gave a toast--"The new recruit!" I
did not raise my glass with the others, which he saw, and became stern.
"Well," said he, "I won't have you hurried, and you're my guest until I
put the straight question to you. When that happens you won't think
twice about the answer, for we can be very nasty, I assure you. Now try
a cigar. These are good. They came from the collection of Lord
Remingham, who was on his way to America a few weeks ago."
"And met with an unfortunate accident," said the doctor, with mock
seriousness, which was taken up by the Scotsman, who remarked in his
best drawl--"May his soul ken rest!" and they all shouted with infamous
laughter, but I listened with a morbid interest when the doctor
continued--
"It's astonishing how good the quality of the tobacco and the champagne
is on board the ocean-going steamers; now this Bolinger '84 was the
special pride of the skipper of the _Catalania_, which unhappily sank
in the Atlantic through the sheer impudence of the man who commanded
her. As he liked it so much, I broke a bottle over his head before we
sent him to the devil, with five hundred others."
"You may say, in fact, that he made the acquaintance o' the auld man
wi' the flavour o' this gude stuff on him," said the Scotsman, which
made them laugh again; but Black was satiated with the banter, and he
rose from the table suddenly as the man Four-Eyes entered.
"This pleasant party must disperse," he said to me; "you can go to the
quarters we have provided for you, unless you would like to see more of
us. We are well worth seeing, I think, and we may give you some idea of
our other side."
"I should like to see everything you can show me," I replied, being
aflame with curiosity to know all that the strange situation could
teach me; and then he made a motion for the others to follow, and we
passed from the room.
CHAPTER XVII.
ONE SHALL LIVE.
The way from the dining-room was through a long passage, lighted with
arc lamps at intervals, and having the doors of many rooms on the
right-hand side of it. Several of these doors were open; and I saw the
interiors of well-furnished bedrooms, of smaller sitting-rooms, and of
a beautifully-furnished billiard-room. At the end of the passage, we
descended a flight of stairs to another landing, where there was a
steep rock-slope leading right through the cliff almost to the level of
the water. This proved the way to a small stretch of beach which was at
the uppermost end of the fjord; and here I found several substantial
buildings of stone, evidently for the use of Black's company. The
largest of the houses seemed to be a kind of a hall, well lighted by
arc lamps. Into this we passed, lifting a heavy curtain of skins; and
seated there, on all sorts of rough lounges and benches, were the men I
had seen in Paris, with fifty or sixty others, no less ferocious-looking
or more decently clad. There were negroes in light check suits and red
flannel shirts; Americans in velveteen coats and trousers; Italians
muffled up in jerseys; Spaniards playing cards before the roaring fire;
half-castes smoking cheroots and drinking from china pots; Englishmen
lying wrapped in rugs, asleep, or bawling songs to a small audience,
which gave a chorus back in mellifluous curses; Russians drunk with
spirits; Frenchmen chattering; Chinese mooningly silent; over all an
atmosphere of smoke and foul odours, of fetid warmth and stifling
heaviness.
As we entered the place the din was deafening, a medley of shouts and
oaths, of songs and execrations; but it ceased when the captain bawled
"Silence!" and an unusual stillness prevailed. The man Four-Eyes, who
was always the immediate "go-between" so far as the captain and crew
were concerned, at once put chairs for us near the huge fireplace,
setting a great armchair for the skipper, with a small table whereon
were many papers, and a small wooden hammer such as the chairman of a
meeting commonly uses. Black took his seat in the great chair, with the
doctor, the Scotsman, and myself around him; and then he harangued the
men.
"Boys," he said, "we're home again. I give you luck on it--and swill it
down in liquor."
I noticed that he had put on with his entry into the room all his old
fierceness of manner and coarseness. He shouted out his words whenever
he spoke, and emphasised them with bangs of the hammer upon the table.
The call for wine was answered by some of the niggers fetching in cases
of champagne, and soon the stuff was running in every part of the hall.
The captain waited until the men were drinking, and then he continued--
"I guess, boys, the next thing to do is to make our calculations. We've
had a smart month's work, and there's a matter of two hundred and fifty
pounds a man waiting for you when next you foot it in New York. That's
my calculation; and if there's one of you doubts it, he can see the
figures."
He waited for them to speak, but they gave him only a great shout of
approval, when he became more serious.
"You know, lads, there'll be a spell of holiday here for you, which you
may reckon that I regret as much as any of you. The skipper of the
American cruiser has made hell in Europe, and there's twenty cruisers
out after us if there's one. That I snap my fingers at; but fighting
isn't the game for you and me, who are looking for dollars; and we
won't hurt to lie low until the spring. Has any man got anything to say
against that?"
There was not a word in answer to the threatening question; and then
Black, bracing himself up to anger, went on--
"I now come to speak of a bit of business which you all want to hear
about. There was two of you refused a double watch when we left the
Yankee cruiser. Let 'em step forward."
One man, a dark-visaged Russian, with a yellow beard, stepped to the
table at the words, but he was alone.
"Where is Dave Skinner?" asked the captain in a calm, but horridly
meaning, voice.
"I guess he's sleeping on it," said the man Roaring John, whom I
noticed for the first time, curled up on a bench in the corner, the
bandages still upon his face.
"Kick him awake, the blear-eyed bullock," said Black, and the kicking
was done right heartily; the subject, a huge man with dark hair,
closely cropped, and a stubbly beard, rising to his feet and looking
round him like one dazed with strong drink.
"Wall," said he, speaking to Roaring John, "you big-booted swine, what
d'ye reckon ez you want along o' me?"
"Ask the skipper, cuss," replied the other, pushing the sleepy man
forward to the chair where the Russian stood; and then Black began to
speak to them quite calmly--
"Boys," he said, "I got it agen you that you refused my orders, and
refused them at a pinch when me and the rest of 'em ran for our lives.
Each of you lays the blame for this on the other, and I'm not going to
haggle about that. You know what we're bound by, and that I can't go
beyond what's written any more than you can go beyond it. There are two
of you in this, and you settle your own differences--one of you lives.
John, give 'em knives!"
As I heard these words, amazed and doubting, the men, without any other
incitement, and uttering no remark, stripped off their coats and stood
naked to the waists. The crew about left off their games and drew near,
forming a ring round the men, who had taken up great clasp-knives, and
were evidently to fight for their very lives. I knew then the meaning
of the words "One of you lives;" and an excitement, strange and full of
morbid interest, took possession of me.
That the men were to fight, and fight to the death, was sufficiently
terrible; but a savour of horror was added to the dish by the flagrant
unfairness of the conditions under which they fought. The American,
Skinner, was thickly built, and of a sturdy physique. He had the better
of his man in height, in reach, in physical strength; for Tovotsky, as
I heard the Russian called, was a man of small stature, rather a shred
of a man, full hairy about his breast, yet giving small signs of
hardihood, or of power. It seemed to me that he might well have
protested against the manner of the contest, and urged that a fight
with knives would go to the stronger, skill being no part of it; but he
said nothing, wearing an air of sullen determination, while his
antagonist bellowed at him as though to overawe him by cheap bravado.
"Stand up right here, so ez I ken stick you, boss," he cried, when they
faced each other; adding as the Russian dodged him: "What, my hearty,
have ye got the taste of it already?--now steady, ye yellow-haired
buzzard; steady, ye skunk, while I make hog's meat of you."
They stood crouched like beasts, or revolved about each other, the
gleaming blades poised in the air, their left hands seeking
holding-place. Skinner struck first, his knife shining bright against
the light as he slashed at Tovotsky's throat, but the Russian doubled
down between his legs, and the pair fell heavily a yard away from each
other.
"Slit him as he lies, Dave!" "End him, Tov!" "Do you reckon you're
abed?" These and other equally elegant exclamations fell from the lips
of the crew, as the men lay dazed, fearful of mischief if they rose.
But the Russian was first up, and springing at the other, who rolled
aside as he came, he sent his knife home in his opponent's back, and a
great shout of "First blood!" turned me sick with the terror of it. Nor
could I look at them for some minutes, fearing to see a more repulsive
spectacle; but when next I saw them, they were crouching again, and the
American was silent, undoubtedly suffering from his wound, which bled
freely. Presently he made another spring at Tovotsky, who ducked down,
but got a slit across his shoulder, whereon he set up a howl of pain,
and ran round and round the ring; while the other followed him, making
lunges terrible to see, but doing no more mischief. The effort took the
breath out of both of them, and they paused at last, panting like dogs,
and drinking spirits which their friends brought them. When they
resumed again, it was by mutual agreement, rushing at each other and
gripping. Each man then had got hold of the right hand of his
antagonist, so that the deadly knives were powerless, while the pair
struggled, trying to "back-heel" each other. Round and round they went,
bumping against their fellows in the circle, straining their muscles so
that they cracked, uttering fierce cries in the agony of the struggle
for life. But the American had the strength of it, and he forced
Tovotsky's hand back upon him, stabbing him with his own knife again
and again, so that the man's breast was covered with wounds, and he
seemed like soon to faint from weakness. It might have been that he
would have died where he stood, but by some terrible effort he forced
himself free; and with the howl of a wild beast, he thrust his own
knife to the hilt in the American's side. It broke at the handle; but
the long blade was left embedded in the flesh, and the force of the
blow was so overwhelming that Skinner drew himself straight up with
death written in his protruding eyes and distorted features. Yet he had
strength to seek vengeance, for his antagonist had now no weapon left
to him, which the American saw, and ran after him with a scream of
rage; when Tovotsky fled, breaking the ring, and scudding round the
great room like a maniac. There Skinner followed him, crying with pain
at every movement, almost foaming at the mouth as his wiry enemy eluded
him. At last the Russian approached the door, his opponent being within
a few feet of him, but the smaller man fell headlong through the
curtain, and at that the death-agony came upon Skinner. He stopped as
though held in a vice, hurled his knife at the Russian, and fell down
dead. The men gave a great shout, and rushed from the place to find the
other; but they brought him in dead as he had fallen, and far from
being moved at the ghastly sight, they holloaed and bellowed like
bulls, coming to reason only at the skipper's cry.
"Take 'em up to the cavern, some of you there, and lay 'em side by side
to cool," he said brutally, and his orders were instantly obeyed.
Others of the crew brought buckets and swabs unbidden, and cleansed the
place, after which Black addressed the men again as though the terrible
scene was a thing of common happening.
"Before I give you good-night," he said, "I want to tell you that we've
got a stranger with us; but he's here to stay, and he's my charge."
"Has he jined?" asked the blear-eyed Yankee, who had eyed me with much
curiosity; but the captain answered--
"That's my affair, and you keep your tongue still if you don't want me
to cut it out; he'll join us by-and-by."
"That's agen rules," said the man Roaring John, loafing up with others,
who seemed to resent the departure.
"Agen what?" asked Black in a tone of thunder, turning on the fellow a
ferocious gaze; "agen what, did you remark?"
"Agen rules," replied Roaring John; "his man broke my jaw, and I'll pay
him, oh, you guess; it's not for you to go agen what's written no more
than us."
Black's anger was evident, but he held it under.
"Maybe you're right," he said carelessly; "we've made it that no
stranger stays here unless he joins, except them in the mines--but I've
my own ideas on that, and when the time comes I'll abide by what's
done. That time isn't yet, and if any man would like to dictate to me,
let him step out--maybe it's you, John?"
The fellow slunk away under the threat, but there were mutterings in
the room when we left; and I doubt not that my presence was freely
discussed. This did not much concern me, for Black was master beyond
all question, and he protected me.
We went back with him to the long passage where I had seen the doors of
bed-chambers, and there he bade me good-night. The doctor showed me
into a room in the passage, furnished both as a sitting-room and a
bedroom, a chamber cut in the solid rock, but with windows towards the
sea; and when he had seen to the provisions for my comfort, he, too,
went his way. But first he said--
"You must have been born under a lucky star: you're the first man to
whom Black ever gave an hour's grace."
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DEN OF DEATH.
The bed in which I lay was wondrous soft and downy; and the cold gave
me deep sleep, so that I awoke at a late hour to find the sun streaming
through my rock window, and the negro telling me, as he was wont to do
in the ship, that my bath was ready. The bath-room lay away a few paces
from my chamber; but the water that flowed from the silver taps was
icily cold; and I shivered after my plunge, though the beauty and
luxury of the place compelled my admiration. It was no ordinary
bath-room, even in its arrangement, the great well of water being large
enough to swim in, and the basin of pure white marble; while soft and
brightly-coloured rugs were laid on the couches around, and the arched
roof was Eastern in design and decoration. When we returned to my
sleeping-place, I found the bed curtained off, leaving a commodious
apartment, with books, armchairs, a writing-table, and a fireplace, in
which a coal fire burned brightly. But the greater surprise was the
view from my window, a view over a sunlit fjord, away to mountain
peaks, snow-capped and shining; and between them to a vista of an
endless snow-plain, white, dazzling, and not altogether unmonotonous,
yet relieved by the nearer patches of green and almost garden-land
which seemed to stretch towards the sea.
My new home was, as I had thought, upon the side of a fjord which led
through a cañon to the outer basin. There was beach at the upper end of
it, and grass-land where several canoes and kayaks lay; and I saw that
many of the men who had watched the horrors of the night were working
lustily now, dragging stores and barrels from a heavily-charged screw
steamer which was anchored near the beach. The rocks which bound the
opposite side of the bay did not appear to be cut for dwellings as on
our side: but I saw trace of several passages in them; and away above
them there was a small mountain peak by which a river of ice ran into
the sea. But of the outer cave I could observe nothing; or of the shore
itself, though away at a greater distance, over some of the ravines, I
made out the clear blue of the Atlantic, and a waste of peaceful water.
The doctor came to me while I was at breakfast. He was very cheerful,
and began to talk at once.
"The captain sends you his compliments," he said; "and hopes you have
slept. _Entre nous_, you know, he doesn't care a brass button for such
things as we saw last night; but if we didn't keep discipline here, we
should have our throats cut in a week."
I gave him civil words in return, and he went on to speak of personal
matters.
"The men are inclined to resent the exception that has been made in
your case. I am afraid it will lead to trouble by-and-by, unless, of
course, you choose to close with the offer that Black makes to you."
"You speak of an 'exception,' and an 'offer,'" said I; "but for the
life of me, I don't quite know what you mean. How has an exception been
made in my case, and what is the offer?"
"I will tell you in a minute; Captain Black has brought thirty or forty
Englishmen of your position, or better, to this place within the last
three years; not one of them has lived twenty hours from the time he
set foot in the rock-house. As for the offer, it is evident to you that
we could not permit any man to share our privileges, and to be one of
us, unless he shared also our dangers and our risks. In other words,
the time will come when you must sign an agreement such as I have
signed, and these men have signed--and I don't believe that you will
refuse. It is either that, which means full liberty, plenty of money, a
life which is never monotonous, often amusing, and sometimes dangerous;
or an alternative which I really won't dilate on."
"You lay it all down very clearly," I replied, "but you can have my
answer now if you like."
He raised his hand laughingly.
"Curse all emotion," he said, "it affects digestion. Black won't hurry
you--why, for the life of me, I can't tell, but he won't. You can't do
better than take things easy, and see the place. I've brought you a
'Panama,' for the sun can advertise himself at eight bells still; and
if you have nothing better to do, put it on, and light a cigar as we
stroll round."
The idea of inspecting the place pleased me. I followed Doctor
Osbart--for such his name was--down the rock slope we had trodden on
the previous evening; and thence to the beach, hard and baked with the
sun. The men, who had ceased the labour of discharging the steamer,
were lying about on the grassy knolls, smoking and dozing, and they
cast no friendly glances on me as we passed along the shore round the
edge of the bay, and mounted a soft grass slope which led to the
cliff-head on the other side. It was a long walk, but not unpleasant,
in the crisp, sweet, odour-bearing air; and when we had attained the
summit, a glorious seascape was spread before us. All about were the
white peaks and the basaltic rocks, towering above ravines where ice
flowed, or falling away to bright green pastures where reindeer trod.
The coast-line was lofty and awe-inspiring, often showing a precipitous
face to the sea, which beat upon it with the booming of heavy breakers;
and spread surf all foaming upon its ridges and promontories. I stood
entranced with the vigour born of that life-giving breeze; and the
young doctor stood with me watching. At last he touched me upon the
shoulder, and pointed to the first cave, where the nameless ship lay
snugly moored in the creek, with many seamen at work upon her.
"Look," he said, "look there, where is the instrument of our power. Is
not she magnificent? Do you wonder at my warmth--yet why? for without
her we here are helpless children, victims of poverty, of law, of
society. With her we defy the world. In all Europe there is no like to
her; no ship which should live with her. Ask her for speed, and she
will give you thirty knots; tell her that you have no coal, and she
will carry you day after day and demand none. Aboard her, we are
superior to fleets and nations; we ravage where we will; we laugh at
the fastest cruisers and the biggest warships. Are you surprised that
we love her?"
He spoke with extraordinary enthusiasm--the enthusiasm of a fanatic or
a lover. The great ship reflected the sun's glow from her many bright
parts, and was indeed a beauteous object, yet swan-like, the guns
uncovered as the men worked at them, and a newer lustre added to her
splendour.
"She is a wonderful ship," said I, "and built of metal I never met
with."
"Her hull is constructed of phosphor-bronze," he answered, "and she is
driven by gas. The metal is the finest in the world for all
shipbuilding purposes, but its price is ruinous. None but a man worth
millions could build the like to her."
"Then Captain Black is such a man?" I said.
"Exactly, or he wouldn't be the master of her--and of Europe. Doesn't
it occur to you that you were a fool ever to set out on the enterprise
of coping with him?"
I did not answer the taunt, but looked seaward, away across the west,
where Roderick and Mary were. The boundless spread of water reminded me
how small was the hope that I should ever see them again; ever hear a
voice I had known in the old time, or clasp a hand in fellowship that
had oft been clasped. They thought me dead, no doubt; and to take the
grief from them was forbidden, then and until the end of it, I felt
sure.
But the doctor was still occupied with the great ship, looking down
upon her as she lay, and he called my attention to a fact I had not
been cognisant of.
"We are coaling here, do you see?" he said. "It was one of Black's
inspirations to choose Greenland for his hole; it is one of the few
comparatively uninhabited countries in the world where coal is to be
had, somewhat of a poorer quality than the anthracite we are accustomed
to use, but very welcome when we are close pressed. He is filling his
bunkers now, in case we should decide to break up this party before the
end of the winter. That will depend on our friends over in Europe. We
have given them a nightmare, but it won't last, and they'll go to bed
again to get another."
"Who are your miners?" I asked suddenly, interrupting him, for I saw
that the rock above the nameless ship was pierced with tunnels leading
down to the shafts, and that forty or fifty coal-black fellows were
shooting the stuff into the bunkers.
"These are our guests," he said lightly, "honest British seamen whose
voyages have been interrupted. We give them the alternative of work in
the mine, or their liberty on the snow yonder."
"But how can they live in such a place?"
He laughed as though the whole thing were a joke.
"They don't live," said he. "They die like vermin."
"I'm evidently afloat with a lot of fine-spirited fellows," said I;
"or, to put it in plain English, with a beautiful company of
blackguards."
"Why not say with a lot of devils--that would be more accurate? But you
can't forget that you came to us unasked, and now you must stop."
His leer at this sally was terribly expressive, and I showed all the
contempt I felt for him, turning away to the sea fondly, as the hope of
my liberty, since thence only should it come. He read my thoughts,
perhaps, taking me by the arm with unsought pretence of kindness, and
he said--
"Don't let's dissect each other's morals; we have the place to see, and
you must be getting hungry. I will show you only one thing before we
go--it is our cemetery."
It was not a fascinating prospect, yet I followed him across the high
plateau to the creek wherein the rock-house was, but to the side which
was opposite to my bedroom window. There he descended the face of the
cliff by rough steps; and entered one of the passages which I had
observed from my chamber. The passage was long and low, lighted by
ships' lanterns at intervals, and I discovered that it led to a great
cavern which opened to the face of one of the glaciers going down to
the sea on the farther side. Nor have I entered a sepulchre which ever
gave me such an infinite horror of death, or such a realisation of its
terrors.
The end of the cavern was nothing but a wall of ice, clear as glass,
admitting a soft light which illuminated the whole place with dim rays,
making it a place of mystery and awe. Yet I had not noticed its more
dreadful aspect at the first coming; and, when I did so, I gave a cry
of horror and turned away my face, fearing to see again that most
overwhelming spectacle. For blocks had been cut from the clear ice, and
the dead seamen had been laid in the frozen mass just as they had died,
without coffin or other covering than their clothes. There they lay,
their faces upturned, many of them displaying all the placid
peacefulness of death; but some grinned with horrible grimaces, and the
eyes of some started from their heads, and there were teeth that seemed
to be biting into the ice, and hands clenched as though the fierce
activity of life pursued them beyond the veil. Yet the frightful
mausoleum, the den of death, was pure in its atmosphere as a garden of
snow, cool as grass after rain, silent as a tomb of the sea. Not a
sound even of dripping water, not a motion of life without, not a sigh
or dull echo disturbed its repose. Only the dead with hands uplifted,
the dead in frozen rest, the dead with the smile of death, or the hate
of death, or the terror of death written upon their faces, seemed to
watch and to wait in the chamber of the sepulchre.
I have said that the sight terrified me; yet the whole of my fear I
could not write, though the pen of Death himself were in my hands. So
profoundly did the agony of it appeal to me that for many minutes
together I dare not raise my eyes, could scarce restrain myself from
flying, leaving the dreadful picture to those that should care to gaze
upon it. Yet its spell was too terrible, the morbid magnetism of it too
potent; and I looked again and again, and turned away, and looked yet
once more; and went to the ice to gaze more closely at the dead faces,
and was so carried away with the trance of it that I seemed to forget
the dead men, and thought that they lived. When I recalled myself, I
observed Doctor Osbart watching me intently.
"A strange place, isn't it?" he said. "Observe it closely, for some day
you will be here with the others."
I shuddered at his thought, and muttered, "God forbid!"
"Why?" he asked, hearing it. "It's not a very fearful thing to
contemplate. I would sooner lie in ice than in earth--and that ice is
not part of the glacier; it never moves. It is bound by the rock there
which cuts it off from the main mass."
"It's a horrible sight!" I exclaimed, shivering.
"Not at all," he said. "These men have been our friends. I like to see
them, and in a way one can talk to them. Who can be sure that they do
not hear?"
It was almost the thought of a religious man, and it amazed me. I was
even about to seek explanation, but a sudden excitement came upon him,
and he raved incoherent words, crying--
"Yes, they hear, every one of them. Dick, you blackguard, do you hear
me? Old Jack, wake up, you old gun! Thunder, you've killed many a one
in your day. Move your pins, old Thunder! There's work to do--work to
do--work to do!"
His voice rang out in the cavern, echoing from vault to vault. It was
an awful contrast to hear his raving, and yet to see the rigid dead
before him. My surmise that Doctor Osbart was a madman was undoubtedly
too true; and, horrified at the desecration, I dragged him from the
cavern into the light of the sun, and there I found myself trembling
like a leaf, and as weak as a child. The cold crisp breeze brought the
doctor to his senses; but he was absent and wandering, and he left me
at the door of my room.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE MURDERS IN THE COVE.
For some days I saw no more of Doctor Osbart or of Captain Black. My
existence in the rock house seemed to be forgotten by them, and where
they were I knew not; but the negro waited on me every day, and I was
provided with generous food and many books. I spent the hours wandering
over the cliffs, or the grass plains; but I discovered that the place
was quite surrounded by ice-capped mountains and by snowfields, and
that any hope of escape by land was more than futile. Once or twice
during these days I saw the man "Four-Eyes," and from him gained a few
answers to my questions. He told me that Captain Black kept up
communication with Europe by two small screw steamers disguised as
whalers; that one of them, the one I saw, was shortly to be despatched
to England for information; and that the other was then on the American
coast gleaning all possible news of the pursuit; also charging herself
with stores for the colony.
"Bedad, an' we're nading 'em," he said in his best brogue, "for,
wanting the victuals, it's poor sort av order we'd be keepin', by the
Saints. Ye see, young 'un, it's yerself as is at once the bottom an'
the top av it. 'Wot's he here for?' says half av 'em, while the other
half, which is the majority, they says, 'When's the old 'un a-sending
him to Europe to cut our throats?' they says; and there's the divil
among 'em--more divil than I ever seed."
"It must be dull work wintering here," I said at hazard; and he took up
the words mighty eagerly.
"Ay, an' ye've put yer finger on it; sure, it's just then that there's
work to do combing ov 'em down, young 'un. If I was the skipper, I
wudn't sit here with my feet in my pockets as it was, but I'd up an'
run for it. Why, look you, we're short av victuals already; and we turn
fifty av the hands in the mine ashore to-morrow!"
"Turn them ashore--how's that?"
"Why, giv' 'em their liberty, I'm thinking: poor divils, they'll die in
the snow, every one av them."
I made some poor excuse for cutting short the conversation, and left
him, excited beyond anything by the thought which his words gave me. If
fifty men were to be turned free, then surely I could count on fifty
allies; and fifty-one strong hands could at least make some show even
against the ruffians of the rock-house. Give them arms, and a chance of
surprise, and who knows? I said. But it was evident beyond doubt that
the initiative must be with me, and that, if arms and a leader were to
be found, I must find them.
It might have been a mad hope, but yet it was a hope; and I argued: Is
it better to clutch at the veriest shadow of a chance, or to sit down
and end my life amongst scoundrels and assassins? Unless the man
"Four-Eyes" deliberately deceived me, Black would connive at the murder
of fifty British seamen before another twenty-four hours had sped.
These men would have all the anger of desperation to drive them to the
attack; and I felt sure that if I could get some arms into their hands,
and help them to wise strategy, the attempt would at the least be
justifiable. It remained only to ascertain the probability of getting
weapons, and of joining the crew without molestation; and to this task
I set myself with an energy and expectation which caused me to forget
for the time my rascally environment, and the peril of my very
existence in the ice-haven.
During the remaining hours of the day I engaged myself in searching the
houses on the beach; but, although I looked into many of them, I found
no sign of armoury, or, indeed, of anything but plain accommodation for
living. Here and there in some rude dormitories I encountered lazy
loafers, who cursed at the sight of me; and I did not approach the
great common-room, for I knew the danger of that venture. But I made
such a tour of the block of buildings as convinced me of the futility
of any attempt to get arms from them; for such as were storehouses had
iron doors and heavy locks upon them, and elsewhere there was scarce so
much as a pistol. The discouragement of the vain search was profound,
and in great gloom and abandoned hope I mounted the steep passage to my
own apartment, and sat down to ask myself, if I should not at once
surrender the undertaking, and preserve my own skin. That, no doubt,
was the counsel of mere prudence; yet the knowledge that fifty men
would stand by me to the assault on the citadel of crime and cruelty
haunted me and drove me from the craven prompting. I remembered in a
welcome inspiration that Black had a stand of Winchester rifles in his
study; I had seen them when I dined with him; and although there were
not more than half-a-dozen of them, I had hopes that they would
suffice, if I could get them, with knives and any revolvers I might lay
hands upon, to hold a ring of men against the company, or at least to
warrant a covert attack on the buildings below. This thought I hugged
to me all day, going often to the iron platform above the creek to know
if there were any sign of the release of the men, or of preparation for
getting rid of them; but I could see none, and I waited expectantly,
for it were idle to move a hand until those who should be my allies had
their so-called liberty.
Towards evening, when I was weary with the watching, I returned to my
room and found that the negro had spread the tea-table as usual; and I
drank a refreshing draught, and began to question him, if he knew
anything of that which was going on below. He shook his head stupidly;
but presently, when I had repeated the question, he said, laughing and
showing his huge teeth--
"Begar, you wait--plenty fire jess now--plenty knock and squeal; oh
yes, sar."
"Are they going to murder the men?" I asked aghast.
"No murder; oh no, sar, no murder, but plenty fight--ah, there he goes,
sar!"
There was the sound of a gun-shot below in the creek; and I went to my
window, and getting upon a chair, I saw the whole of a cruel scene.
Some twenty of these seamen, black as they had come from the
coal-shaft, were going ashore from a long-boat; while an electric
launch was bringing twenty more from the outer creek where the nameless
ship lay. But the men who had first landed were surrounded by the
others of Black's company, and were being driven towards the hills at
the back; and so to the great desolate plain of snow where no human
being could long retain life. From my open window, I could hear the
words of anger, the loud oaths, the shouts, could see the blows which
were received, and the blows which were given. Anon the fight became
very general. The pirates hit lustily with the butt-ends of their
pistols; the honest fellows used their fists, and many a man they laid
his length upon the rock. Yet there was no question of the sway of
victory, for the prisoners were unarmed, and the others outnumbered
them hopelessly. Inch by inch they gave way, were driven towards the
ravines and the countless miles of snow-plain; and as the battle, if
such you could call it, raged, the armed lost control of themselves and
began to shoot with murderous purpose. Death at last was added to the
horrors, and, as body after body rolled down the rocky slope and fell
splashing into the water, those unwounded took panic at the sight, and
fled with all speed away up the side of the glacier mount; and so, as I
judged it must be, to their death in that frozen refuge beyond.
When all was quiet I shut my window, and sat in my chair to think. The
negro had left me, and the whole place was very still. Neither Black
nor the doctor had showed during the scene of the massacre (for I could
call it nothing else); and in the rock-house itself there was not so
much as a footfall. I began to hope that the master of the place might
chance to be away; and when darkness had fallen I went into the long
passage then deserted, and found the door of his sitting-room ajar, but
the place was dim within; and I feared to make an attempt to get the
arms until I knew that all slept. But one misfortune could lie between
myself and the aid which I should bear to these men--it was the chance
that Black locked the door of his study when he slept. If he did not, I
could get the rifles, and convey them across the bay to the other
fellows; if he did, all hope were gone.
At seven o'clock I dined as usual, no one coming to me; and at eight
the negro had cleared away the repast, and had left me for the night. I
closed my own door, and for three hours or more I paced my chamber, the
fever of anticipation and of design burning me as with fire. It must
have been eleven o'clock when at last I put out my light, and listened
in the passage; yet heard nothing, not even the echo of a distant
sound.
Of the doors about, the majority were closed; but the doctor's was
open, and his room was in darkness, so that I began to fear that he was
closeted with Black; and I went very stealthily, having left my boots
behind me, to the man's study, and found that door ajar as it had been
when I had come to it some hours before. This discovery set me almost
drunk with hope. There was no doubt that both the men were away from
their rooms, so that my time could not have been better chosen; and,
more fearless in their absence, I pushed the door wide open and began
to feel my way in the blinding dark.
My first proceeding was to run upon some slight article of furniture,
and to overturn it. The crash that followed echoed through the vaulted
passages, and I stood quite still, thinking that all chance of success
had gone with the mishap. But no sound followed, and after many minutes
I went on again with great care, feeling my way as a cat, quite sure
that at last I should succeed. Twice I went round the room, and could
not put my hand upon the rifles; but at the third attempt I found them,
and gave a sigh of relief. Then an overwhelming terror struck me chill
and powerless. My sigh was echoed from the corner by the window; and a
low chuckle of laughter followed it. I stood as a man petrified, my
hand upon a gun, but my nerves strained to a tension that was horrible
to bear. Who was there with me? By whom was I watched?
Alas! I knew in another moment, when the electric light flooded the
chamber, and I saw Black sitting at his writing-table, observing me, a
jeer upon his lips, and all the terrible malice of his nature written
in his keen and mocking eyes. I stood transfixed by that searching
gaze, held spellbound by the fascination of the obvious danger, my hand
still upon one of the rifles, yet trembling with the agitation of
discovery. Words rose to my lips--excuses, pleadings; but they died
away in my throat, and I could not utter them. Plans for the undoing of
that which had been done, ways of escape, efforts to gain time,
suggested themselves to me, but remained suggestions. I could do
nothing but stand and sway my body as a victim before a python--the
prey before a snake that is about to strike.
We must have watched each other thus for a minute or more. I saw during
those moments when I was bereft of all power that the man had a
revolver cocked at his left hand, but a pen in his right; while
manuscript lay before him, so that he must have been in the room for
some time, and had extinguished his light only at my coming. And he had
heard me quit my own chamber, I did not doubt; yet this surprised me,
for I had no shoes upon my feet, and had walked with the stealth of a
cat. Indeed, he appeared to read the fleeting speculations of my
thought, and at last to take pity on my position, for he leant over the
table, and drew near to it a lounge on which the skin of a polar bear
was spread.
"Sit here," he said, and at the bluff word my nerve came back to me. I
sat before him, facing him with less fear. Yet it was humiliating to be
treated almost as a child, and I knew from the inflexion of his voice
that he spoke to me then as one would speak to a school-lad who had
played truant. And in this tone he continued--
"You're a smart boy, and have ideas; but, like all little boys, your
ideas don't go far enough. I was just the same when I was your age,
always trying to climb perpendicular places, and always falling down
again. When you're older, you look to see what your hold's like before
you begin. Meanwhile, you're like a little dog barking at a bull, and
you're precious lucky not to be over the hedge by this time--maybe the
bull doesn't mind you, maybe he's waiting a day--but take his advice
and go to kennel awhile."
He said this half-laughing, and in no sense fiercely; but his words
angered me beyond restraint, and I could have struck him as he sat. He
saw my anger, and ceased his provocation.
"Silly lad," he said again, "silly beyond expression to put your head
into a business which never concerned you, and to stake your life on a
struggle which must have only one end. Don't you think so?"
At this I plucked up courage and answered him--
"I came here to-night to stop your devilry in murdering fifty innocent
men;" but he started up at the words and raved like a maniac.
"And who made you judge, you puppy?" he cried. "Who set you to watch
me, or give your opinions on what I do or what I don't do? Who asked
you whether you liked it or didn't like it, you sneaking little brat? I
wonder I let you live to spit your dirty words in my face?"
His anger was fierce, terrible as a tornado. His teeth gnashed, his
hands shook, he rolled in his chair like a great wounded beast; but
when he saw that I was unmoved, he fell quiet again, and wiping his
forehead, where the sweat had gathered thickly, he said in a low,
coaxing voice--
"Don't compel me, lad, to do what I have meant not to do. You're here
for good or ill, and if you wish to keep your life, put a control on
your tongue. These men are nothing to you; they're lazy hogs that the
world's well rid of--let 'em die, and save your own carcass. You've
been here days now--the first man that ever lived among us without
signing our papers. But you can't stay that way any longer. You know
this business. You've a straight notion that my hand's agen Europe,
and, for the matter of that, agen the world, too; those that share with
me shall swing with me, and if I burn when it's done, by the devil
himself they shall burn too. It isn't of my asking that you're amongst
us, or that you took up the work of the hound Hall, who put the first
nail in his coffin that night he came to my bed at Spezia. I saw him
there, though he thought me sleeping; and that night I wrote death
against his name, as I wrote it against yours when you entered my room
in Paris. There's reasons why I've broken my word in your case, though
you'll never know 'em; but there's no reason why you shouldn't swear to
go through it with me and mine, man for man, life with life, be it
rope's-end or bullet, to rot among the fish, or to share every mate
among us what's got upon the sea. That's my question, and you'll answer
it now, yes or no, plain word and no shuffle; meaning to you whether
you go on as you've gone on in the past, or freeze amongst the others
lying up there in the cavern; whether you swim in money, as my lot swim
in it, or get bullets in you thick as hail from northward. That's my
question, I say again, and there's my papers. Sign 'em now, or you lie
a corpse before an hour on the clock."
He leant over his writing-table and put the paper into my hands, a
rough sheet of parchment, which he wished me to read. But my eyes were
dimmed with the restless excitement of the situation, with the dread
terror of the alternative put to me; and I saw nothing but lines of
writing which swam before me. The silence of the room was terrible to
bear; and it was as though I struggled for life while already in the
tomb. My thoughts went hurriedly to Europe, to my home, to my friends;
above all I recalled the night when Martin Hall went to his death, and
his shadow seemed by me, his face beseeching me, his hand holding mine
back from the pen that it would have clutched. During this time the man
Black leant towards me, and watched me, expectancy in his face,
threatening in his pose. Yet he did not speak, and my eyes left the
paper and I gave him look for look, and from his face my glance passed
to his right hand which held the pistol; and in that instant I took
heart for a step which was the last mad design of a driven man.
"Give me the pen!" I said suddenly, rising and bending over the table.
He put the pen into my hands, and leant back with a chuckle of
satisfaction; but the movement cost him the game. I clutched his pistol
with a lightning grasp, and covered him with it--
"If you raise a finger I'll shoot you like a dog," I cried.
Then the man, who was no craven, sat motionless in his chair; and I saw
the beads of terror falling from his forehead, but he betrayed no
emotion, and his face might have been cut from marble. I had the muzzle
of the pistol upon him, and I continued with greater confidence--
"If you raise your voice to call out, or if anyone comes to this room,
you die where you sit."
He heard me then more calmly, and replied deliberately--
"Boy, you are the first that's bested Black."
"I'll take your word for that," I said; "but take care--you are moving
your hand." He held it still at once and continued--
"I'm caught like a rat in the hole. What do ye want? Name it, and I'll
know how we stand!"
"I want my life--my life, now that I refuse to sign that paper."
"Yes," he said, "that's a fair request, though I can't say it's in my
power to make it that way."
"It's in your power to stand with me--you can give the order that no
man's to lay a finger on me, and you will?"
He thought a moment, looking straight down the barrel of the Colt. Then
he said--
"Yes, I can't avoid that--I'll give you that."
"And my liberty on the first occasion offering."
"No," he replied very slowly and sternly; "that's more than the devil
himself could offer you; they'd tear me to pieces."
There was no doubt that he had right in this; and I reflected that I
could gain nothing whatever by holding out. There was just the hope
that he would abide by his word in the matter of my personal safety,
but more I could not look for. The man could only die, and, if he gave
me freedom, his own men would requite him as he said. I thought of this
and put the pistol down; then I offered him my hand, and he jumped up
from his seat, grasping it with a great clutch altogether painful to
bear, while he dragged me to the light and looked at me with that
curious expression I had noticed when first I met him in the room.
"You're a sound plank of a boy," he said: "shake my hand, young 'un,
shake it hearty; go on, don't you think I mind; shake it right so, you
beauty of a boy!"
What else he would have said or done, what new token of his repulsive
favour he would have bestowed on me, I know not; but his wild antics
were cut short by the sound of firing, rapid and oft repeated, which
came to us from the shore of the cove below. At the first report he let
go my hand and went to his window, from which he drew the curtain, so
that I saw the whole bay lit with silver light from a full-risen moon,
and the distant peaks as grim beacons above a land of rest; a land
which once, perchance, flowered with exotic luxuriance, but which now
wore the snow-silk mantle that had fallen upon countless centuries of
its past. Yet the whole glory and enhancement of the perfect peace were
for the moment ruined, for out on the snow there was a hungry crowd of
starving souls, crying, I doubt not, for bread; and those to whom they
cried answered them with their muskets, dyeing the glittering white
with many a red stream, bringing many a hungered wretch to his last
sleep in the frozen night of death. And out over the silence of the
hills the cries for mercy rang as in bitterness to God, the dreadful
cries of the weak, down trodden beneath the feet of those who knew not
God, the last scream of perishing souls, the sobs of strong men in
their agony. In vain I closed my ears, shut out the sight from my eyes.
The picture came to me again and again, the sound of the voices would
not be hushed, and in turn I cried to Black--
"For God's sake, help those men, if you have anything but the instincts
of a brute in you!"
He shrugged his shoulders defiantly. "What am I to do?" he asked.
"Stop the devil's work, and give the men bread, as I've just given you
your life!"
There was a pause before he answered me, and I could see that an old
nature and a new impulse fought within him. He did not give me any
direct answer to my earnest appeal, but he snatched a rifle from a case
and said--
"Take that pistol, and come on; you've fooled me once, and we'll make
it even numbers. But it ain't as easy as cutting cheese, and there's
blood to let."
I followed him down the passage to the beach, where he blew a whistle
sharp and shrill, and the note had a strange ring as it echoed through
the cañon.
"That'll wake 'em on the ship," he explained. "I'm not afeard of these,
but there's fighting to be done--now lie behind me, and don't show till
you're wanted."
He advanced towards the snow-plain and sang out--
"John, you there, Dick--hands to quarters, do you hear me! Move right
quick, or I'll move you, by thunder!"
They put down their arms from their shoulders in blank amazement, and
listened to him as he went on--
"There's enough down for one night, I reckon, and I'm not going to be
kept awake by your cursed firing--what's to be done can be done in the
morning; why, you boat-load of night rats, ain't any of you got sleep
in you?"
They came round him slowly and sulkily, and he drove them to the big
houses with pleasant oaths and fine round phrases. I lurked near him,
but an American saw me and cried--
"Say, Cap'en, hev ye took to nursin' that boy ez ye seems so fond of?"
"Shut your jaw, or I'll shut it for you!" replied Black. "Is the boy
your affair?"
"He's the affair of all of us, I calcerlate, an' some of us wishes to
know particler if he's signed or no."
Black was smothered in anger, but he showed it only with that terrible
growling of the voice and his horrid calmness.
"Oh, you want to know, do you? Which of you, might I ask, is particler
anxious about my business?"
There were thirty or forty of them round, and they pressed the closer
at the question, as he continued--
"Let them as makes complaint step right here."
Only four joined the leader; but the captain suddenly snatched my
revolver from me, and fired four shots; and for each shot a man dropped
dead on the beach; but the American stood untouched. The appalling
brutality of the action seemed to awe the rest of the crew. They stood
motionless, dumb with their rage; but when they recovered themselves
they rushed upon us with wild ferocity; and the Yankee fired at Black
point-blank. I thought, truly, that the end was then; but I heard a
shout from the water, and, looking there, I saw Dr. Osbart in the
launch; and there was a Maxim gun in the bows of her.
"Clear that beach!" roared Black in awful passion; and instantly, as he
dropped flat and I imitated him, there was a hail of bullets, and the
main part of the crowd fell shrieking; but some threw themselves down,
while many stiffened and rolled in death, and blood spouted from scores
of wounds.
The victory was awful, instantaneous. As the men fled towards the
hills, Black called after them--
"Bring to, you limp-gutted carrion, or I'll wipe you out, every one of
you! Any man who'll save his throat, let him come here!"
At these words they turned back to a man, and came cowering to the
water's edge. Thirty of their fellows lay dead or wounded on the
stones, and many of those crawling towards us had bullets in their
limbs. Yet Black had no thought for them.
"Where's your leader?" he asked, and they pointed to the American, who
lay with the blood pouring from a wound in his left thigh.
"He's there, is he?" screamed the infuriated man. "The darned skunk's
down, is he? Well, I'll cure him like a ham. Get torches, some of you
and ice him in."
He was swaying with passion; yet, even regarding it, I could not
understand what his order meant, and I asked--
"What are you going to do with that man?"
"What am I going to do with him?" he yelled, scarce noticing who spoke
to him; "I'm going to bury him."
It was wonderful in that moment to see how the men, who had before
defied him, then became as slaves at his command. A silence deep and
profound rested upon them; even those with the captain watched him in
his outrageous anger and were dumb; but all helped him in his ghastly
work, and brought shovels and picks, which they carried to the higher
plane of snow. As for the American, who sat upon the beach groaning
with the pain of his wound, I do not know how any man could have wished
to add to his hurt; yet he asked for no sympathy, and it was plain that
he knew what they meant to do with him. At one time feverish ravings
seized him, and he shook his fist at all around him; then he poured his
anger upon Black, who listened to him, gratified that he should provoke
it. And the more the man cursed, the greater satisfaction did the other
show.
"We've got to die, both of us," said the American at last, ceasing his
wilder oaths; "you en me, Black, en there isn't much ez we kin look
for; but, if there's en Almighty God, I reckon ez He'll place this yere
off my score, and lay it on yours, or there ain't no hell, an' there
ain't no justice, and what seamen dreams of is lies--lies as your word
is lies, en everything about your cursed ship. Go on, lay me right here
as I lay now; but I'll rize agen you, and the day'll come when you'd
give every dollar ye're worth to dig me up, and give me life agen."
The softer speech availed the poor fellow as little as the other. I
felt then an exceeding pity for him, and I touched Black on the arm and
was about to plead with him; but at the sight of me he raised his fist,
and I moved away, seeing by the light of his eyes that he was as much a
madman in that moment as any maniac in Bedlam. For he stood foaming and
muttering, his hands clenched, his hat upon the snow, great drops of
sweat on his bronzed forehead. The haste of the men to get the picks
was not half haste enough for him; and when they began to dig he
hurried them the more, until a great pile of snow had been thrown out.
It was a weird scene--the most weird I have ever known. We stood in a
snow-pit amongst the hills, and above us rose in grandeur the great
pyramids of basalt and gneiss. There was no sign of living green thing,
even of lichens or of moss, in that elevated plain above the sea; and
the shrill call of the gulls was hushed in the greater stillness of the
night. The moon, high in the unclouded sky, gave light far down into
the crevasses--clear, silvered light that made a jewel of every higher
point, and sprinkled the crests of the breakers as with floss of fire.
Nor was there wind, even a breath of the night's breeze, but only the
melancholy silence of the omnivorous frost, the boom of falling
avalanche echoing in the ravines and the ice-caverns, the groans of the
doomed man--a very _Miserere_ amongst the hills, as down below amongst
the dead upon the shore.
In the snow-plain, which was the centre of this northern desolation,
they dug the grave of the living man. I watched from afar--held by what
hideous power I knew not--and I saw them roll him over into the trench
they had dug, and shovel the snow quickly upon him. He watched them,
silent in his terror; but when his head only was uncovered he gave a
shriek of agony, which rose like the great cry of a man going before
his God, and ceased not to echo from height to height until long
minutes had passed. Then all was hushed, for the cold mantle of death
fell upon him. Slowly those who had done their work took up their tools
and returned doggedly to the beach; but Captain Black was unable to
move from the man who had put that last great curse upon him not five
minutes gone. Bare-headed and alone, he stood at the snow-grave, and
looked down upon the mound now sparkling with the crystals of the frost
that bound it. And as he looked there came a great weird wailing from a
distant hill, a piercing cry, as of another soul passing, and it echoed
again and again from peak to peak and ravine to ravine--a wild
"ochone," that had sadness and grief and misery in it; and I knew that
it was the cry from one of the seamen who had been turned from the
mines--from one who mourned, perchance, the death of a friend or of a
brother. Yet, at the cry, Black gave a great start, and shivering as a
man struck down with a deadly chill, he passed from the grave to the
beach. And this was the agony of his returning reason.
CHAPTER XX.
I QUIT ICE-HAVEN.
It was on the next afternoon, near to the setting of the sun, there
having been unusual activity about the creek during the forenoon, that
Doctor Osbart came to my room with great news for me.
"This business with the men has completely upset our plans," said he.
"Black hoped to winter here; and to let the hubbub in Europe quite
subside before he put to sea again. Now he can't do that, for there'll
be trouble just as long as the crew eats its head off in this
wilderness. There's only one thing that will keep the hands quiet, and
that's excitement. After all, it's the same motive with most of us,
from the gutter-beggar who lives on the hope of the next penny to the
democrat who supports existence on a probable revolution. If we once
get them away to sea, with money to win, and towns to riot in, we shall
hear no more of this folly, and Black knows it. He has determined to
sail to-night; and he'll take some of the men he put out of the mines
to do the work of those who went down yesterday. I'm very glad, for I
should have cut my throat if I'd been here the winter through, and I
dare say you won't be displeased to get a change of quarters; but,
before we talk of that, we must have the conditions."
"I won't sign that paper, and Black has been told so," cried I at once;
"it's no good coming here again with that."
"You're premature," he replied, with a smile, "premature, as you always
are. Isn't it time enough to discuss the paper when I bring it to you?"
"Then what have you to ask?" said I, prepared to hear of something
which I must refuse, but longing with a great hope for the freedom of
the sea.
"Simply this," he answered, "and, for the life of me, I don't see what
the guv'nor is driving at in your case; for he asks only that, if he
take you from here, where you'd starve in a month if he left you, you
shall give him your word, as a man of honour, that you will make no
attempt to leave his ship without permission. Under no pretence or plea
will you try to escape, and, whatever you see, you will not complain
about when aboard with him. You are to hold no converse with the men,
nor will you interfere with them in any work they do; and you will
carry out this contract not only in the letter but in the spirit. If
you will give me your word on that now, you can pack your trunk and
come aboard without any fuss; but I don't disguise it from you, that
any folly after this may cost you your life, and that if you have half
a thought of playing us false, you'd better stop where you are."
I debated on the whole extent of his proposition, and made up my mind
on it in a few moments. I was aware that, if I remained at the station,
I could expect nothing but speedy death upon the ice, since the doctor
had told me that the place would be deserted during the winter. Against
this I had to ask myself if my going aboard the nameless ship meant in
any way approval of the occupation of those who sailed it; but this
suggestion was too trivial, and I dismissed it in a moment; while the
thought flashed across my mind that if I could but once be taken to
European or American waters, there would be at least the probability
that this man might fall into the hands of those who were seeking him.
In that case liberty would come with his undoing; which was even more
pleasant to think upon than to contemplate it with him yet free as a
voracious beast of the seas.
"You accept?" said the doctor, who sat watching me as I thought these
things; and I answered him without hesitation--
"I accept."
"The captain has your word of honour as between gentlemen?"
"As between--well, if you like it so--as between gentlemen."
The satire of the last word was too much for him, for he was one of the
pleasantest fellows in his saner moments that I have ever met. We both
laughed heartily, and then he said--
"But I'm forgetting, you've got no trunk, and I must lend you one.
You're rather short of duds, I know, but we can rig you out until we
get to Paris, and there the skipper will see to it--any way, so long as
you've a coat thick enough, we won't criticise you in these parts; and
I don't suppose you're thinking of garden parties."
"Anything but," I answered, as pleased as he was at the prospect of it
all, and especially at the thought of quitting the ice-prison, if only
for the winter; "I have neither clothes nor cash."
"Well, I don't see what you're going to do with the latter, just yet;
but, man, you can just help yourself from the first Cunarder we
stop--pshaw! don't look like that; wait until you feel the excitement
of it all. Why, what is but one ship against the world, big men on
their knees to you, money enough to wade in, and a fig for all the
navies and all the fleets that ever left a port? I defy 'em to put a
hand on the ship if they spend a million in the process. Come with us
and see it all, and you'll say it's the most daring, the grandest, the
most stupendous enterprise that man ever conceived."
It was no good to lift up one's voice against enthusiasm of this sort,
so I let him lead me to his room, and took from him a trunk with some
linen. As he said, it was more convenient to have my own things, and we
were much of a build, so that his clothes were no ill-fit; and he was
ridiculously generous, pressing all that he had upon me, and lending me
a great gold watch and gold studs that were illicitly gotten, I felt
sure.
In the end I had quite a store of clothing; and I waited while he
finished his own work that we might go down together to the launch
awaiting us. There we found Black, watching men who were putting large
bales of goods into the screw steamer, and everywhere there was sign of
the break-up of the settlement. The captain merely nodded when I gave
him a word, and I thought that he was sore depressed, with scarce
energy enough to be irritable. He seemed to doubt the wisdom of the
departure even then; and he often hesitated in his walk, looking up to
the windows of his home behind him. At the last, when the negro
servants had come down the iron stairway, he locked the great door
after them; and then he stood and cast his gaze over to the hills and
the desolate land, which I believed he had a great kindness for. When
he did join us, he gave the word, "Let her go!" with a dogged sort of
indifference; and at his command the launch ploughed ahead, and passed
through the cañon to the outer basin.
The sun was almost in the horizon then, and the northern lights were
playing in the heavens, so that all the water was then alight with the
glory of a hundred colours. Now orange, or a lighter golden, or blue as
the Corsican Sea, or flaming scarlet, or emerald green, or all shades
of yellow, with the pink and pearl and fainter green as of a colossal
opal, the light fell and spread from bight to bight, and crag to crag;
and above there were sheets of eruptive flame and great rumblings, and
mighty arcs of fire spanning the whole heavens, and gripping them as
with the glittering jewelled hand of some monstrous keeper of the skies
whose mutterings came to us below. Or the scene changed again, and it
was as though elves of the zenith had brought their golden caskets
above the firmament, and there had burst them open, so that all the
jewels of the light rained upon sea and land, and burnt each other with
their own beauty as they fell; and the earth answered them back with
her shining face. One of the supreme moments of life, truly, to bathe
in this shower of multi-coloured splendour, to follow it in its golden
path, where rocks took shape, and snow-forms lived, and the seas danced
to its accompanying music, and one stood nearer to the great mysteries
while yet farther from the homes of man.
Black watched the aurora as we watched it, but chiefly as it played
upon his ship, lying moored in the very centre of the outer basin. They
had made a great change in her since I had seen her but two days
before; for she was now given bulwarks of white canvas, and her funnel
was painted white, while covers hid away the bright points of her
deck-houses and her turrets. She had become a white ship; and her
transformation had been made with vast skill, so that I felt I should
not have known her had I met her in the Atlantic. From her position
away from the shaft of the mine, it was evident that she was ready to
weigh, and I was reminded grimly of her mission by seeing a streamer of
black at her mast-head instead of the Blue Peter. This time, too, there
was a faint haze above her funnel, as though coal was being burnt in
her furnaces; yet I had no wonder that I did not see steam coming from
her, for I knew that she was driven by gas, and was in many ways a ship
of mystery.
We boarded her at a ladder amidships, for the most part of her
accommodation was contained in a towering deck erection round her
funnel. Here there were two stages of cabins with a wide gallery
running between them, and protruding so that it was directly above the
water. There was, indeed, a companion-way aft of this which led to the
cabin I had occupied when a prisoner in the ship, and I found at a
later time that the library of the vessel, with the store-rooms and a
number of private cabins, was built in the 'tween decks abaft the
funnel. Yet the great saloon I was to use during so many months, the
quarters which Black occupied, the doctor's room, the rooms for the
engineers, and for certain of the others who were privileged, were all
ranged amidships; and I learned that while there was a big fo'castle,
it was given over entirely to the niggers, with whom the white men
would not serve. These superior fellows, as they thought themselves,
had accommodation in the poop, where there was a big cabin with berths
all round it; yet with all this, the small part of the whole vessel
devoted to quarters was noteworthy, and was designed, I did not doubt,
for some purpose which I should learn presently.
These things I did not ascertain, you may be sure, on first boarding
the ship. Although they left me to myself upon the high gallery whence
I could see all the life on the decks below, they were so busy with the
preparation for weighing anchor that no man spoke a word to me. The
hands themselves, the moment they were afloat, settled down to work
with surprising steadiness. Black upon the bridge now wore a smart
uniform with gold buttons and much show of lace; and the self-command
of the man, the perfect knowledge of all things nautical which he
displayed, and his all-absorbing love of his child, the ship, accounted
for much that I had not understood in him before. I found to my
amazement that Doctor Osbart acted not only as surgeon to the crew, but
also as second officer; "Four-Eyes" being first officer; and the bully,
"Roaring John," third. The coarse-mouthed Scotsman who assumed the
title of "meenister" was, they told me, as good a seaman as any of
them, and a wonderful gunner, so that he was in charge of the armament,
with a big staff of men at his back. Of the engineers I saw nothing on
first coming aboard; but later I heard the sound of pumping below, and
there came up to the bridge where Black and the others were, a little,
thin, wizened, and spectacled man, quite bald, very ragged and black,
yet with a head on him that could have stamped him "First-Class" in any
assembly of the learned. I thought at the first glance that he was a
German, and my surmise was confirmed by the doctor, who remembered me
at last, and said--
"Do you see that little fellow?--well, he's the genius of this ship.
He's deaf and dumb, and no man has ever heard a word from his lips; but
he designed our engines, and he runs them with his three sons. It's
almost pitiable to see the man's disregard for anything but that
infernal machinery. He never leaves it; it's meat and drink to him. If
we make money, he doesn't want it; if we're going for a spell ashore,
he won't come, but stays here poking about the wheels. He was the first
man in all Europe to see that gas would finally supplant steam for
maritime vessels; and Black gave him _carte blanche_ to carry out his
ideas on this ship. You may be surprised to hear it, but fore and aft
in those great cigar-shaped ends of ours we have nothing but gas--three
million feet, at a pressure of between two and three atmospheres. Why,
man, it's the idea of the century; for every four pounds of coal burnt
by an Atlantic liner, we don't burn a pound. We can steam for ten days
without lighting a fire; and all the coal we need to go round the world
will go in our bunkers. Save for that, and Karl Remey's genius, there
wouldn't be a man jack of us with a neck to call his own to-day. Now,
we snap our fingers at the best of them; there isn't a cruiser that can
live with the thirty knots we can show; and there isn't a
line-of-battle ship swimming that could get the better of us while our
engines are moving. It's a big claim you think, but wait until you see
us in action, then you'll know how much we owe to the little man in
rags, but who has one of the clearest brains that ever was put into
human being."
I was silent under this revelation, for it came to me that, with all
the terrors of the great ship, there was also a scientific side, which
marked the presence of a mighty intellect. The doctor saw the
impression he had made upon me, and he said--
"To-morrow we will show you more; you shall meet the ragged man----"
"Which is mysel'," said the Scotsman, who had joined us silently,
"mysel' that has'na a dud to my back. D'ye ken that when there's ony
distribution o' the gudes I get a' the female apparel; which is no
justice ava for a meenister, let alone a sea-faring man."
"Never mind, Dick," said the doctor laughing, as I did; "we'll beg a
skirt for you the first time we say how-d'ye-do to a passenger
vessel----"
"Hands, heave anchor!" roared Black at that moment; and our
conversation stopped suddenly at the cry. Then slowly, as the bell rang
out, the great engines began their work, and we swept out to the open
sea. Night had fallen, but the aurora still gave her changing light;
and as we felt the first oscillations of the rolling breakers, Black
took a long look behind him to his Arctic home. There before us was the
black, towering, indented coast of Greenland, the bluff headlands of
gneiss, the beacons of snow all crimson in the playing colours of the
mighty arc; and away beyond them, the vista of the eternal stillness,
and the plain of death. A long look it was that the man of iron cast
then upon his wild habitation; a look almost prophetic in its sadness,
as if he knew that he should look upon it no more. A great farewell of
an iron heart, and the breakers sang the "Vale!" as the ship sped
onward to her deadly work.
CHAPTER XXI.
TO THE LAND OF MAN.
We dined that night in the saloon upon the deck, a commodious place
lighted by electricity, and in every way luxuriously fitted. The walls
of it were panelled in white and gold, and were covered with curious
designs, old heroes fighting, old gods drawn by lions at their
chariots; Bacchantes revelling, Jason seeking the fleece in a golden
barque; Orestes fleeing the Furies. The long seats were covered in
leather of a deep crimson, and there was a small piano, with many other
appointments that were significant. The dinner itself was admirably
served, and was partaken of by the deaf-and-dumb engineer, by the
doctor, the Scotsman, and myself. We were waited on by a couple of
negroes; and when the meats were removed we went above to an
exquisitely-furnished little smoking-room, and there drank rich brown
coffee and enjoyed some very fine cigars. I was all ears then to learn,
if I could, what was the destination of the ship; and I found that
Black talked without reserve before me, knowing well that I could do
him no injury. He relied mostly on the doctor for advice, and discussed
everything with him in the best of tempers.
"My plan is this," he said: "we're short of oil, and Karl here is
beginning to get uneasy. I shall knock over a couple of whalers in
these seas, and fill the tanks. Then, as they're looking for us in
mid-Atlantic, we'll get south of Madeira, and run against two or three
of the big ones making for Rio or Buenos Ayres. We shall pick up a good
bit of money; and it'll be a month before they get on our course that
way, for I mean to let 'em down light when it's not a case of saving
our own skin."
The Scotsman gave a deep sigh at this, and said in a melancholy voice--
"Hoot, mon, the deid frichtened you."
"You're a liar," continued Black quite quietly, and then continued: "As
Europe knows my game, it doesn't matter how often she hears of me. Let
her hear, and come agen me, and I'll show my teeth. What we're out for
this journey is money, specie, pieces in piles, and we'll get that on
the lay of Rio-bound ships better than in any waters. It'll be quick
work, one against the rest of 'em; but I built this ship to fight, and
fight she shall--you agree on that, doctor?"
"Of course. The more fighting the men see the less trouble we shall
have with them."
"That's what I say--give 'em work to do, and they'll sleep like dogs
when it's done; give 'em money and drink, and you've got hogs to drive.
Now, let me get through the winter, and I'll run south a spell in
hiding, and then make northward with ten thousand pounds a man when the
fall comes. But first we'll have a week in Paris, I reckon, and stretch
our legs amongst them as is most anxious to shake with us--what do you
say, Dick?"
"Man," said the Scotsman deliberately, "if there's nae killing, I
misdoubt me o't a' thegither."
"You're a fool," replied the skipper testily, "and if you don't go to
bed, I'll kick you there."
The fellow rose at this, and coolly emptied half a tumbler of whisky;
but before he could leave "Four-Eyes" came off the bridge and said
laconically--
"Whaler on the port-bow."
"Signal 'em to come to, and drop a shot," cried Black rising; and then
he called to the Scotsman and gave his orders--
"Stand by the gun!" and with that we all went out to the gallery, and
saw by the clear power of the moon a full-rigged ship not a mile from
the shore. She was homeward bound, and seemed by her build to be a
Dane.
Upon our own deck there was already activity, some of the men getting
away the launch, and others putting empty barrels into it before they
swung it out over the sea. There was a method and quietness about it
all which showed long habit at the same practice; and when at last the
great gun before the funnel boomed out, the fine accuracy of the
shooting scarcely caused comment. The shot appeared to drop into the
water almost under the whaler's bob-stay, and sent up a cloud of foam
and spray, glistening in the moonlight; but the ship answered to it as
to a deadly summons; and the tide and wind setting off shore, she went
into the breeze easily, and lay to at the first demand. Then Black gave
his orders--
"You, John, go aboard and buy their oil up--I'm getting you notes from
my chest."
At the word _buy_, the man John seemed astounded.
"Oh, I reckon," he said, "we'll pay 'em hard cash with a clout on the
skull, cap'n; come right along, boys, and bring your shootin' irons.
Oh, I guess we'll pay 'em, money down, and men a-top of it."
"You'll do nothing of the sort, you lubber!" roared Black; "but what
you take you'll pay for, d'ye hear me?--then shut your mouth up and go
aboard."
John was not the only man who was struck by the skipper's whim. There
were mutterings on the deck below, and Dick, who had come from the
conning-tower, was bold enough to make remark.
"It's a'most sinfu'," he said, "to be sae free wi' the siller; why man,
ye could verra weel buy me a hundred pairs o' breeks wi' the same, and
no be wanting it."
But Black was watching the launch, now speeding in the moonlight
towards the rolling whaler. I watched it too, remembering how, not many
weeks before, I had stood on the deck of my own yacht, and awaited the
coming of the same craft with my heart in my mouth. Now the danger was
not mine, but I felt for the men who had to face it, since Black's talk
about purchase could scarcely soften the native ferocity of those who
served him; and I feared that the scene would end in bloodshed.
Happily the surmise was quite incorrect. That which promised a tragedy
gave us but a comedy. We saw from the platform that our men were taken
aboard the ship, and we watched to see them hoist their barrels after
them. But they did not, making no sign of having the oil, although
there came shouts and sounds of altercation from the anchored vessel;
and we saw the flash of pistols, and dark objects presently in the sea.
To the surprise of us all, the launch returned after that; and when our
men came aboard, they presented a shocking spectacle. "Roaring John"
was covered from head to feet with a thick, black, oleaginous matter;
two of the others had their faces smeared in tar; the rest were like
drowned rats, and were chattering until their teeth clashed with the
cold. Nor could they for some time, what with their spluttering and
their anger, tell us what misfortune had overtaken them.
"The darned empty skunks," gasped John at last--"they haven't got a
barrel aboard, not a barrel, I guess; and when I gave 'em play with my
tongue, they put me in the waste-tub--oh, I reckon, up to my eyes in
it----"
"Do you mean to say," asked Black, "that they've took no whales?"
"Except ourselves, yer honour," said a little Englishman, who was
cowering like a drowned rat, "which they throw'd overboard, like the
whales in the Scriptures, never a fish."
"Then we've wasted our time!" cried the skipper, stamping his great
foot; "and you're lazy varmin to stop so long aboard parleying with
'em. I'm going on; you can settle your scores among you."
He gave the order "Full steam ahead!" at which the third officer showed
the temper of a whipped beast.
"You're going ahead leaving them swimming? Then darn me if I serve,"
said he. "What? They pitch me in their dirty tub, and you laugh! By
thunder! I'll teach you."
Captain Black watched his anger with a pitying leer; but "Dick the
Ranter" and "Four-Eyes" were overcome with laughter, and roared until
the ship echoed.
"Houly Moses, it's a fine picture ye are, my beauty," said the mate;
"and if oi'll be scraping ye down with a shovel, it's yer own fayther
wouldn't know ye, so clane ye'll be."
"To the which I would add, man," said Dick, "that if ye'd let yersel'
drip into the lubricators you'd be worth siller to us; not to say
onything o' the discoorse I micht verra weel preach on Satan from yer
present appearance."
The banter turned the man from his more meaning purpose. He stood
gibbering for a moment, while the crowd pressed on him with gibes and
jeers; but he had his revenge, after all, for there was a tar-bucket at
the foot of the upper-deck ladder, and with this he armed himself. The
brush was well-charged and dripping, the tar yet liquid, the Scotsman's
face was all-inviting. With a fierce shout the enraged man went to the
attack, and painted his lantern-jawed opponent merrily. In less time
than I can tell of it, the Ranter dripped from head to foot; the black
stuff poured from his hemp-like hair, from his ears; it oozed down his
neck, it even ran through to his boots; and when his enemy could no
longer wield the brush from fatigue, he emptied the bucket on the man's
head as a last triumphant vindication of his strength.
"Now we're a pair!" he said, pausing for breath, and surveying his work
as an artist surveys a finished picture; "and I guess you ain't going
to take the biscuit in this beauty show."
"Man, I could hae weel dispensed wi't," spluttered the Scotsman; "but I
thank ye for dyeing my breeks. They've been wanting colour since New
Year."
The laughter had not yet died away when the men went to their cabins,
and we posted the watches before turning in. We were at that time in
Lat. 65° N. at a rough calculation, and we passed the Danish settlement
of Godthaab early on the next morning, though so far out at sea that I
could make nothing of it; while we lost the coast of Greenland
altogether before the day had passed, a hazy shower of dust-like snow
greeting our coming to the Atlantic and to a perceptibly warmer
latitude. During this day, and until we sighted the Shetlands, the
small screw tender kept our course, and we exchanged signals with her
every morning, her purpose being explained to me by "Four-Eyes," on the
fourth morning out, in his child-like phraseology.
"Faith, she's Liverpool bound, and we'll pick her up again south of the
Scilly when she's tidings of ships out. Bedad, sir, there's fine times
coming; what wi' the say full av big ones, and we one agen 'em, I'm
like to believe as we'll step ashore with our throats cut, ivery man av
us, and on the shore av me own counthry, which sorra a day I left for
this job."
"Why did you leave it, 'Four-Eyes'?" I asked cheerfully; and he said--
"'Twas this way, sorr, but it's a long yarn, and ye don't nade more
than the p'ints av it. When I was priest's bhoy in Tipperary, me and
Mike Sullivan had atween us what you gents call a vendeny, and coming
out av church--'twas Sunday mornin' five year ago--I met Mike, an' he
puts coals av fire on me head. 'Begorra,' says I, 'it's lucky for ye
I'm in the grace, but plase God I'll not be to-morrow;' but the
spalpeen went to Cork next day, and it wasn't till a year that I run
agen him, prepared to do my dooty."
"And you did it, I'll be bound!"
"Sorra a bit; I just fell in with the divil, being an aisy sort av
sowl, and he made me as drunk as a gentleman--that's why I'm here,
sorr. He shipped me aboard and got five pounds from me, me that meant
to thread on his head, the dirty skunk--but it's the way av the world,
sorr; help a man that's down, an' the moment the spalpeen's on his fate
he'll dance on ye."
"Which is verra true," said Dick the Ranter, who after two days had
still tar upon him, and was wrapped in a woman's shawl; "but will ye
postpone your thirdly, and go below to the doctor, who's wanting ye to
see the gear?"
They had not yet shown me the engines of the nameless ship, and I
welcomed the opportunity, grown weary with watching the dull green of
the sea, and the monotony of the sky-laden clouds. Dick led the way
quickly from the gallery to the lower deck, and thence down an iron
ladder to the great engine-room. Here truly was a wondrous sight; the
sight of three sets of the most powerful engines that have yet been
placed in a battle-ship. Each of them had four cylinders, eighty inches
in diameter; and all were driven by the hydrogen from the huge
gasometers which our holds formed. The gas itself was made by passing
the steam from a comparatively small boiler through a coke and
anthracite furnace, the coke combining with the oxygen and leaving pure
hydrogen. The huge cylinders drove upwards with a double crank to carry
their motion to the screw; and I found that the difficulty of starting
and reversing was overcome by an intermediate bevel-wheel gearing and
friction clutch, which could throw the motion off the shaft, and allow
that instantaneous going astern otherwise impossible in a gas-engine.
That day there was a huge fire in the furnace, emitting terrific heat
and crackling sparks, for the men were making gas, in view of a run or
two off the coast of Ireland. It was more pleasant than I can tell you
to watch the entire absorption of the gifted engineer, in the maze of
machinery which surrounded him, to paint the paternal pathos of his
look as he watched every motion and eyed every bearing. The maker of an
empire certainly he was; the man of mind who, for the time, had given
these ruffians the kingship of the sea; had made mockery of the
opposition of the nations; and, I could not help but reflect as I
turned away sick at heart at the sight of so much power, had caused me
to be a prisoner, perhaps for life, in that citadel of metal. Yet, he
was a genius; and to the end of my days I shall think, as I thought
then, of the superb gifts so wasted in their channel, of the masterful
intellect devoted only to pillage and plunder.
In such a frame of mind I left the engine-room and mounted to the upper
deck, to hear the cry, "Land on the port-bow."
It was the coast of Ireland, they told me; and I know not if I have
ever had a greater pleasure than that distant view of my own country
gave to me. For it was as though I had passed from a dead land to the
land of man, from the silent ways of night to the first breaking of the
God-sent day.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ROBBERY OF THE "BELLONIC."
Our view of the distant shore of Ireland was a fleeting one; and we
passed thence almost immediately to the open sea, steaming due S.W. for
some hours, but at no great pace. It was not until daybreak on the
following morning that we reached the track of ocean-bound ships; but
our voyage was altogether in favour of Black, for the sun had scarce
risen when Doctor Osbart got me from my bed to see what he called my
first introduction to business.
"There's the Red Cross Line's _Bellonic_ not a mile off on the
starboard quarter," cried he exultingly, "and we're going to clear her.
Come out, man, and get the finest breakfast you ever tasted."
I dressed anyhow, almost as excited as he was, and stepped on to the
gallery, to see a rolling waste of dull-green breakers, and a sky
washed with broken thunder-clouds, through which the risen sun was
struggling. The wind was keen from the south, and drove a fine rain,
which lashed the face as with a whip; while much spray broke upon us
and there was moaning of the cowls and the shrouds, and many signs of
more wind to come. These atmospheric difficulties troubled no one,
however, for all eyes were turned to the north, where, now almost
abreast of us, at a distance of half a mile or less, there was the long
and magnificent hull of the great liner. She was then in the full
sunlight, a fine spectacle; and I could see her bare decks, trodden
only by the watch, while a solitary officer paced the bridge. The
contrast between her sleepy inactivity and our keen alertness was very
marked, for all hands trod our decks, and there was a restlessness and
an evident ferocity amongst the little group upon the bridge which
marked a purpose brooking no delay.
I had begun to ask myself when the work would be done, for the liner
went at a tremendous pace and was rapidly leaving us, when I got my
answer with the crash of the great gun forward, and the sight of a
shell ploughing the sea fifty yards ahead of the _Bellonic_. The cries
of "Well shot, Swearing Dick!" had not died away before the effect of
the call was seen upon the great vessel, whose decks were soon dotted
with black objects, while three more men appeared on the bridge, and
the signal flags ran up, and were answered by us. "Four-Eyes" was at
our mast, and interpreted the message to Black, who followed all that
was done without betrayal of emotion, but only with the savage
anticipation of the predatory instinct.
"Signal to 'em to lie to, if they don't want to go to hell," he said
between his teeth, and "Four-Eyes" answered:
"Ay, ay, sorr"; then, as the signal came, "He sez uz he'll say us at
blazes afore he bates a knot."
"Give it him for'ard then, and teach him," roared Black; and the shot
that answered his command struck the quivering hull not twenty feet
from the windlass, and you could see the splinters carried fifty feet
in the air, while the shrieks of terror came over the sea to us, and
were piercing then.
"What's he say now?" asked the Captain, cooler than even at the
beginning of the work.
"Says as he'll make it warm for ye at New York, and if ye come aboard,
it's on yer own head, an' ye swing fer it--he'll not stop till ye
disable him."
"The thick-headed vermin," hissed Black; "give him another, amidships
this time."
The second shot made us reel and shiver as she left us; but there was
no hit, for we rolled much, and saw the shell burst on the far side of
the liner. At this, and at the failure of a second attempt, the Captain
lost patience, and gave the order--
"Full steam ahead, and clear the machine-guns."
It was almost superb, I admit now, and the excitement of it was then
upon me, to feel our great ship quiver at the touch of the bell, and
bound forward with waves of foam and spray running from her decks, and
each plate on her straining as though the mighty force of the engines
below would rend it from its fellows.
I had not before known the limit of her speed, or what she could do
when driven as she then was; and the truth amazed me, while it filled
me with a strange exultation. For we, who had dallied heretofore behind
the other, sped beyond her as an express train passes the droning
goods; and coming about, in a great circle, we descended upon her as a
goshawk upon the quarry.
The machine-guns upon our decks were already cleared; the men were
stripped, ready for the fray, as tigers for their food. Indeed, before
I quite understood the purport of the manoeuvre, we were passing the
_Bellonic_ at a distance of not more than fifty yards; and at that
moment it seemed as if all the furies of hell were let loose upon our
decks.
Screaming like wild beasts, the men turned the handles of the Maxim
guns; the balls rained upon the defenceless liner as hail upon a
sheepfold. I heard fierce curses and dull groans; I saw strong men reel
and fall their length as death took them; the breeze bore to me the
wailing of women and the sobs of children.
But we had done the foul work in the one passage, for the flag dropped
at once upon the liner, and the signal was made to us to come aboard.
We had gained a horrid triumph, if such you could call the murders, and
it remained but to divide the spoil.
"Lower away the launch, you John!" cried Black, "and take every
shilling you can lay hands on. You hear me?--and hang up that skipper
for a thin-skinned fool."
"By thunder, I'm yours all along," replied "Roaring John "; and then he
sang out, "Hands for the launch!"
"You'd better go as cox," said Osbart to me, "you'll be amused"; and
suggested it to Black, who turned upon me a look almost of hate.
"Yes, he shall go," he cried; "if we swing, he shall swing, the
preaching lubber! Let him get aboard, or I'll kick him there."
I had loathing at the thought of it, but might as well have put a
pistol to my head there and then as to have refused. They bundled me
into the launch, and I sat shivering at the prospect of the terrors on
the deck; but they would not leave me when they came alongside, and
"Roaring John" himself drove me up the ladder which was put out
amidships. Seven of us at last stood on the bridge, and were face to
face with the captain of the _Bellonic_, and four of his officers.
I have said that I feared the terrors of that deck, but the reality
surpassed the conception.
It was a very babel of sounds, of groans, of weeping. The ship's
surgeon himself seemed paralysed before the sight of the carnage around
him. You looked along the length of the vessel, and it was as though
you looked upon the scene of a bloody battle, for there were dead
almost in heaps, and wounded screaming, and streams of blood, and
fragments of wreckage as though the ship had been under fire for many
hours. But above all this terror, I know of nothing which struck me
with such fearful sorrow as the sight of a fair young English girl
lying by the door of the great saloon, her arms extended, her nut-brown
hair soaked in her own blood, while a man knelt over her, and you could
see his tears falling upon her dead face, and his ravings were
incoherent and almost those of a maniac. At the sight of us he jumped
to his feet, and shrieked "Murderers!" so continuously that the echo of
his cry rang in my ears that day and for many days.
Meanwhile another scene was passing on the bridge between the man John
and the captain of the _Bellonic_.
"What do you want aboard of my ship?" cried the latter; and "Roaring
John" answered him with a mocking leer:
"We've come aboard to hang you, to begin on!"
The men with the young officer cocked their revolvers at this, and I
said in a mad frenzy which would not brook silence--
"You scoundrel, if you touch another soul here I'll shoot you myself!"
for I had my revolver on me. "Do you make a business of killing
children?" I cried again, and pointed to the dead body of the
girl-child.
I don't know who was more surprised, the captain of the _Bellonic_,
listening, or the man John.
"You cub," he cried; "if you talk to me I'll skin you alive!" But I
said quickly--
"Gentlemen, these men want every shilling on this ship. Give it them
now and save your lives, for you have no alternative. If you give the
money up, you have my word that they won't touch you."
"If there's a God above," exclaimed the young captain, "they shall pay
for this day's work with their lives. I hand my specie over under this
protest; but don't deceive yourselves--half the war-ships in Europe
shall follow you within a week."
He turned away, and presently the ruffians with me had lowered money to
the value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds into their launch. The
third mate seemed then somewhat cowed by my interference, and though he
went round the ship and cried "Bail up!" every time he met a passenger,
he did not touch one of them. I remained on the bridge a silent
spectator of it all; and when at last we put off again, and the launch
was full of the jewels and the money, it seemed that I had passed
through a hideous dream.
At the time, I shrank from the ruffians in the boat as from men who
were savage fiends and a hundred times assassins; and their brutality
of speech and threat fell upon ears that would not hear; nor did their
pretence of doing me violence then and there move me one jot. I
maintained a stubborn indifference, my pistol still in my hand, my
teeth shut in the defiance of them, until we reached the great craft,
and joined Black upon the gallery. There, the man John explained that I
had stood between him and his purpose of hanging the skipper of the
_Bellonic_; indeed, with such warmth and anger, that I thought my end
had come upon the spot.
"You barking cub," said Black, more quietly than usual, but none the
less to be feared for that, "what d'ye mean by interfering with my men
and my orders?"
"To save you from yourself," I answered, looking him full in the face;
"you've killed children on that ship, if that's news to you!"
He had a spy-glass in his hand, and he raised it as though to strike
me; but I continued to look him full in the face, and he remained
swaying his body slightly, his arm still above his head. Then, suddenly
it dropped at his side, as though paralysed; and he turned away from
me.
"Get to your kennel," said he; "and don't leave it till I fetch you."
I was glad to escape, if only for a few moments, from the danger of it;
and I went to my cabin in the upper gallery, but not before the angry
shouts of the men convinced me that Black had risked much on my behalf
for the second time. Even when my own door was locked upon me, such
cries as "You're afeared of him!" "Is he going to boss you, skipper!"
and other jeers were audible to me; and the uproar lasted for some
time, accompanied at last by the sound of blows, and cries as of men
whipped. But no one came to me except the negro who brought my meals;
and whatever danger there was of a mutiny was averted, as Dr. Osbart
told me later in the day, by the appearance of a second passenger ship
on the horizon. The report of the single shot, by which we brought her
to, shook me in my berth, where I lay thinking of the horrid scenes of
the morning; and for some time I scarce dared look from my window, lest
they should be repeated. Only after a long silence did I open the port,
and see a majestic vessel, not a hundred yards from us, with our launch
at her side; and I could make out the forms of our men walking amongst
the passengers and robbing them.
The details of this attack Osbart told me with keen relish when he came
in to smoke a cigar with me after my dinner.
"We stripped them without killing a man," said he with hilarious
satisfaction, "and took fifty thousand. Black's pleased; for, to tell
you the truth, there's an ugly spirit aboard amongst the men, and you
upset them altogether this morning. I never saw another who could have
said what you said to the skipper and have lived; but you mustn't show
on deck for a day or two--they'd murder you to pass time; and, as it
is, we've had to post a man at your door, or I doubt if you'd save your
skin in here."
"You seem to be making a paying cruise," I said sarcastically.
"Yes; and it's funny, for the sea is swarming with war vermin. Don't
you feel the pace we're going now? I expect we're showing our heels to
one of them, and shall show them a good many times between this and the
first of next month, though Karl below is grumbling about the oil
again: you want gallons of it with gas-engines. If we don't pick up the
tender to-morrow, it's a bad look-out."
He did not come to me again for three days, but I saw from my port
early the following morning that the tender was with us; and I
concluded regretfully that the difficulty of the oil was overcome. On
the second day after the robbery of the _Bellonic_, we stopped a third
ship; though I saw nothing of it, as all the fighting was on the
starboard side, and my cabin was to port; but there was a sharp fight
on the third morning with a Cape-bound vessel, and again towards the
afternoon with one of the North-German Lloyd boats homeward bound to
Bremerhaven: as before, Osbart, coming to my rooms, delighted to give
me the details of the captures; and that night he was unusually
frivolous.
"Poor business to-day," he said, throwing himself into a lounge and
lighting a cigar; "not an ounce of specie, and no jewellery to
mention--and there was no killing, so don't put on that face of yours.
Why, my dear boy, it was a perfect farce! I, myself, argued for twenty
minutes with an old woman, who sat mewing like a cat on her box, and
when I got her off it, thinking she had a thousand in diamonds, it was
full of baby linen. And I'll tell you a better thing. An old Dutch Jew
threw a two-penny-halfpenny bundle into the sea, and then he was so
sick with himself that he went in after it. We hooked him out by the
breeches with a boat-hook; but I believe he wished himself dead with
the bundle. As for 'Four-Eyes,' he took what he thought was five
hundred in notes from a card-player, but they're bad, dear boy,
bad--every one of them."
"You don't seem very depressed about it," said I.
"Don't I?" replied he. "Well, things aren't all they should be. The
tender we sent to Liverpool came out in a hurry, as they began to watch
her, with a mere bucketful of oil aboard. We must get oil from
somewhere or we shall all swing as sure as we're doing twenty-eight
knots now. That's what I've come to tell you about to-night. The
skipper can't stand it any more, and is going to run to England
himself, and see what those mighty smart naval people of yours are
doing. He'll take you with him, for it would be as good as signing your
death-warrant to leave you here. Don't count upon it, though, for we
shan't let you out of our sight, and you've got to swear a pretty big
oath not to give us away before you set foot on the tender."
I was overjoyed at his saying, but I feared to let him see it, and
asked with nonchalance--"How do you pick up this ship again?"
"Oh, we fix a position," he replied, "and they'll keep it every day at
mid-day after ten days. Meanwhile we're running north out of the track
of the cruisers."
"I can't quite understand why the skipper takes me with him this time,"
I remarked, endeavouring to draw him, but he answered--
"No more can I; between ourselves, he's been half daft ever since you
came aboard. Do you know that the man's more fond of you, in his way,
than of any living thing? I know it. I'm the only man on the ship who
does know it, and why it is I can't tell you. I didn't think he was
capable of a human feeling."
"It's very good of him to waste so much affection on me," said I,
meaning to be derisive, but Osbart checked me.
"Don't laugh," he exclaimed; "you owe your life to him alone."
CHAPTER XXIII.
I GO TO LONDON.
It was a week after this conversation that Captain Black, Dr. Osbart,
and myself entered the 7.30 train from Ramsgate; leaving in the outer
harbour of that still quaint town the screw tender, now disguised, with
the man John and eight of the most turbulent among the crew of the
nameless ship aboard her. We had come without hindrance through the
crowded waters of the Channel; and, styling ourselves a Norwegian
whaler in ballast, had gained the difficult harbour without arousing
suspicion. At the first, Black had thought to leave me on the steamer;
but I, who had an insatiable longing to set foot ashore again, gave him
solemn word that I would not seek to quit him, that I would not in any
way betray him while the truce lasted, and that I would return,
wherever I was, to the tender in the harbour at the end of a week. He
concluded the conditions with the simple words, "I'm a big fool, but
you can come." The others opened their eyes and tapped their foreheads,
for they believed him to be a maniac.
I will not pause to tell you my own thoughts when I set foot on shore
again. So great was my amazement at it all that I went some time
without collecting myself to see that the invisible hand of God, which
had led me all through, was leading me again--even, as I hoped, to the
consummation of it. Fearless in this new thought, I sat in the corner
of the first-class carriage reserved for us in such a state of
exultation and of hope as few men can have known. Before me were the
downs of Kent, the open face of an English landscape, the orchard-bound
homesteads, the verdurous pasture-land. The hedges were bedecked with
their late autumn flowers; the teams and smock-frocked men were going
home to the gabled houses, and the warm-lit cottages. There was odour
of the harvest yet in the air and the distant chiming of bells from the
Gothic tower which rose above the hamlet and the knoll of green. Each
little town we passed cast from its windows bright rays upon the
tremulous twilight; a great bar of fiery redness cut the lower black of
the coming night, showing me in shadow the rising of land towards
Chatham and towards London. Yet it was the peace of the scene that came
to me with the greatest power; the many tokens of home--above all, the
thought "I am in England." I could not help but carry my memory at this
time to the last occasion when, with Roderick and Mary, I had come to
London in the very hope of getting tidings of this man who now sat with
me in a Kent-Coast express. Where were the others then--the girl who
had been as a sister to me, and the man as a brother; how far had the
fear of my death made sad that childish face which had known such
little sadness in its sixteen years of life? It was odd to think that
Mary might be then returned to London, and that I, whom perchance she
thought dead, was near to her, and yet, in a sense, more cut off from
her than in the grave itself. And Black, whom all the Governments were
pursuing so lustily, was at my side smoking a great cigar, apparently
oblivious to all sense of danger or of hazard. Life has many contrasts,
but it never had a stranger than that, I feel sure.
It was after ten o'clock that the ride terminated; and, following Black
and Osbart into a closed carriage that awaited us, I was driven from
the station. I should say that we drove for fifteen minutes or more,
staying at last before a house in a narrow _cul-de-sac_, where we went
upstairs to a suite of rooms reserved for us. After an excellent supper
Osbart left us, but Black took me to a double-bedded room, saying that
he could not let me out of his sight, and that I must share the
sleeping-place with him.
"Boy, if you make one attempt to play me false," said he, "I'll blow
your brains out, though you were my own son."
Then he went to bed at once in a morose and foreboding mood, and I
followed his example quickly.
On the next morning Black quitted the house at an early hour after
breakfast, but he locked the door of the room upon Osbart and myself.
"Not," as he said, "because I can't take your word, but because I don't
want anyone fooling in here." He returned in the evening, at seven
o'clock, and found me as he had left me, reading a later novel of Paul
Bourget's; for Osbart had slept all the afternoon, and was always
complaining when on shore.
The view from the window upon a balcony of lead and the back windows of
near houses was not inviting, and my bond had held me back from all
idle thoughts of eluding him. Life in London under such conditions was
little preferable to life on the ship, and I had no heart to hear
Black's stories of things doing in town; or to examine the many
purchases of miniatures and quaint old jewels, which he had laid on the
dinner-table.
The day following was Thursday. I shall always remember it, for I
regard it as one of the most memorable days in my life. Black went out
as usual early in the morning; his object being, as on the preceding
day, to find out, if he could, what the Admiralty were doing in view of
the robbery of the _Bellonic_; and Osbart, refusing to get up to
breakfast, lay in bed reading the morning papers. We had been left thus
about the space of an hour when there came a telegram for the doctor,
who read it with a fierce exclamation.
"The Captain wants me urgently," said he, "and there's nothing to do
but to leave you here. We are trusting absolutely to you, now; but be
quite sure, if you make half a move to betray us, it will be the last
you will ever make. I may return here in ten minutes. You must put up
with the indignity of being locked in; and, dear boy, don't trouble
yourself to look for sympathy in this place, for the man who owns this
house is one of us, and, if you call out, you'll get a rap on the head
pretty quickly."
He went out jauntily, and I watched him, little thinking that I should
never see him again. When he was gone I sat in the great armchair,
pulling it to the window, and taking up my book. The sensation of being
alone in the centre of London, and unable by my oath to make the
slightest attempt to help myself, was most curious; yet with it all I
could not but think that I had touched the culminating point, and was
near to the ending of it for good or for ill. From the window of my
room I could hear the hum of town, the rumbling of 'buses, and the
subdued roar of London awake. I could even see people in the houses at
the other side of the leads, and it occurred to me, What if I open that
casement and call for help? I had given a pledge, it is true; but
should a pledge bind under such conditions? The sanctity of an oath is
a fine thing for theological subtlety. I had no such subtlety. I knew
that the argument in favour of wrong is pleasing to the mental palate;
and I put it from me, believing that the breaking of my bond would put
me upon the immoral plane of the men to whom it had been given.
I was in the very throes of such a mental struggle when the strange
event of the day happened. I chanced to look up from the book I had
been trying to read, and I saw a remarkable object upon the leads
outside my window. It was the figure of a man with a collapsible neck,
a wonderful neck, which expanded appallingly, and again was withdrawn
into a narrow and herring-like chest. The fellow might have been thirty
years of age; he might have been fifty; there was no hair on his face,
no colour in his hollow cheeks; only a nervous movement of the
bony-fingers, and that awful craning of the collapsible neck. I saw in
a moment that he was looking into my room; and presently, when he had
given me innumerable nods and winks, he took a knife from his pocket,
and opened the catch, stepping into the chamber with the nimble foot of
a goat upon a crag-path. Then he drew a chair up to mine, and, making
more signs and inexplicable motions of the eye, he slapped me upon the
knee, and said--
"In the name of the law!"
This was uttered with such ridiculous levity that I laughed at him.
"Yes," he went on, unmoved, "I take you by surprise; but business, Mr.
Mark Strong," and he became very serious, while his neck went out like
a yard-measure and he cast a quick glance round the room.
"Business," he said, when he had satisfied himself that we were alone,
"and in two words. In the first place I have wired to your friend, Mr.
Roderick Stewart, and I expect him from Portsmouth in a couple of
hours; in the second, your other friend, the doctor, is under lock and
key, on the trifling charge of murder in the Midlands, to begin with.
When we have Captain Black, the little party will be complete."
I looked at him, voiceless from the surprise of it. The magical neck
was absorbed in the chest again, and he went on--
"I needn't tell you who I am; but there's my card. We have six men in
the street outside, and another half dozen watching the leads here. You
will be sensible enough to follow my instructions absolutely. Black, we
know, leaves the country to-night in his steamer--yesterday at
Ramsgate; to-day we do not know where. The probability is that he will
come to fetch you at seven o'clock--I have frightened it all out of the
people down-stairs--if he does, you will go with him. Otherwise, he's
pretty sure to send someone for you, and, as you at the moment are our
sole link between that unmitigated scoundrel and his arrest, I ask you
to risk one step more, and return at any rate as far as the coast, that
we may follow him for the last time. You'll do that for us?"
I looked at his card, whereon was the inscription, "Detective-Inspector
King, Scotland Yard"; and I said at once--
"I shall not only go to the coast, but to his tender, for I've given my
word. What you may do in the meantime is not my affair; but----"
"Yes," he said eagerly, craning his neck again, "'for God's sake keep
your eye on me,' that's what you were going to say. Well, we shall do
it. We owe it to you that we've got any clue to the man, and you're not
likely to lose anything from the Government by what you've done."
"I suppose he's made a sensation?" I asked, in simplicity, and he
looked as a man who has yesterday's news.
"Sensation! There's been no such stir since the French war. There isn't
another subject talked of in any house in Europe--but, read that; and
whatever you do, don't make a sign until we give you the cue. It's not
safe for me to stay here; he may return any minute. I wish you luck of
it; and it's ten thousand in my pocket, any way!"
Detective-Inspector King went as he had come, craning his neck and
passing noiselessly over the leads; but he left me a newspaper, wherein
there was column after column concerning the robbery of the _Bellonic_,
and a dish worthy of all journalistic sensation-mongering. I read this
with avidity; with sharp appetite for the extraordinary hope which had
come so curiously into my life. At last, the police were on the trail
of Captain Black; yet I saw at once that, lacking my help, he would
elude them. It was strange that, after all, I, who had seemed to fail
so hopelessly in my enterprise, should at last bring this giant in
crime to justice. For, if he had not burdened himself with me, he would
then have left in the tender, and, once on the nameless ship, would
have defied the world. But now they watched him; and from the solitude
of my imprisonment I seemed to be lifted in a moment to a joyous state
of expectation and excitement.
It was then about three o'clock in the afternoon. I heard the hour from
a neighbouring church; and I recalled the detective's words, "I have
telegraphed for your friend, Roderick." If his anticipations were
correct, I should see the one man I had the greatest love for within an
hour. Yet, on recollection, I would have had it otherwise. If once I
looked on Mary's face again, I knew that the task would be almost
beyond my strength; and as it happened, it was well I had not this
burden to bear in the last hours of the great struggle. For four
o'clock struck, and five, and no one came; and it was half-past six
when at last a man unlocked the door of my room and entered. He was one
of Black's negroes.
"Sar will come quick," said he, "and leave his luggage. The master
waits."
He gave me no time for any explanations, but took me by the arm, and,
passing from the house by a back door, he went some way down a narrow
street, and turned into Piccadilly. There a cab waited for us, and we
drove away, but not before one, who stood on the pavement, had made a
slight signal to me, and called another cab.
In him I recognised Detective-Inspector King, and I knew that we were
followed.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SHADOW ON THE SEA.
We drove rapidly, passing the Criterion, so into the Strand, and along
the Thames Embankment. Thence, we went through Queen Victoria Street,
past the Mansion House, and to Fenchurch Street Station, where we took
a train for Tilbury.
The journey was accomplished in something under an hour; and when we
alighted and got upon the bank of the river, I saw a steam-launch with
the man John in the bows of her. I thought it strange that there was no
sign of any watchers at this place; but I entered the launch without a
word, and we started immediately, going at a great pace towards
Sheerness; and reached the Nore after some buffet with the seas in the
open. At this point we sighted the tender, and went aboard her, while
they hauled up the launch, when we made full speed towards the North
Foreland.
It was then quite dark, with a stiff breeze blowing right abaft. The
night, a moonless and very black one, favoured us altogether for the
run which, I did not doubt, we had to make against some Government
vessel that would follow us. But I found to my surprise that the men on
the ship knew nothing of the dangerous position in which they were, and
worked with a calm disregard to the blackness of the night, and to the
hazard of the moment. Black I did not meet, for they put me into a
cabin aft, of which I was the sole occupant; and, being ordered by the
man John, who was half-drunk and very threatening, to get below, I
turned in shortly after coming aboard, and lay down to reckon with the
strange probabilities of the hour.
One thing was very evident. Black had made a colossal mistake, from his
point of view, in setting foot in England; but the crowning blunder of
his life was that fatal act of folly by which he had sought to shield
me from the men. How long the Government had been watching for him, or
for tidings of me, I could not tell, but it must have been since
Roderick had reached New York, and had told all he knew of the ship of
mystery and of her owner.
Now the object of letting Black reach his vessel again was as clear as
daylight; it was not so much the man as his ship which they wished to
take, and, by following him to the Atlantic, they were giving him rope
to hang himself.
But were we followed? I had seen nothing to lead me to that conclusion
as I came down the Thames; and now, favoured by an intensely dark
night, we promised, if nothing should intervene, to gain the Atlantic
in two days, and to be aboard that strange citadel which was our
stronghold against the nations.
This thought troubled me very much, so much that sleep was out of the
question, and I went above again, undeterred by the probability of a
difference with the men. The night was somewhat clearer when I reached
the poop, and I could make out the fine flood of light that came from
the North Foreland; while it was evident that we had taken the outer
passage and should pass on the French side of the Goodwins. There were
no men aft as I took my stand by the second wheel, but I heard the bawl
of the watch forward, and a man who wore oilskins was pacing the
bridge. I was able, therefore, to get a good notion of all things about
us; and when the moon showed later, the Channel seemed full of ships.
Away towards the Foreland I made out a fleet of French luggers standing
in close to shore; there were two or three colliers returning to the
Thames on our port-bow, and some English smacks lying-to right ahead of
us, the moon showing them brightly in a lake of light, their men busy
at the nets, or huddled at the tiller as the smacks rolled to a choppy
sea. But there was no sign of any war-ship pursuing; no indication
whatever that the tender, then steaming at thirteen knots towards
Dover, was watched or observed by any living being.
I had just satisfied myself of this, and had become depressed
accordingly, when I heard a step behind me. I turned round quickly, to
find that the man John had come up to the poop. He was in his oilskins,
for there was some sea shipped for'ard, and he greeted me with a savage
ferocity which was meant to be pleasant.
"Keeping a watch on your own hook, my fine gentleman, eh?" said he;
"and after my orders for you to be abed--that's pretty discipline, I
reckon."
I made no sort of answer, but turned my back on him, and continued to
watch the twinkling lights of Deal. This appeared to irritate him, for
he put his hand on my shoulder roughly, and hissed savagely--
"Oh, I guess; you've got your fine coat, ain't you, and your pretty
airs! Darn me if I don't take you down a peg, skipper or no skipper!"
His great hand was almost on my throat, and he shook me with fearful
grip, so that I hit him with my right hand just below his heart, and
bent him double like a reed. His terrible gasps for breath were so
alarming that I thought at first he would never recover his wind; but
when he did he drew his knife, and raised his arm to take aim at my
throat. It is probable that my life had been ended there and then had
not another watched the scene and suddenly clutched the extended wrist.
Captain Black had come to us with noiseless step; and he gave me then
my first knowledge of his prodigious physical strength, for he held
John's arm as in a vice, and, giving the ruffian's wrist a peculiar
turn, he sent the knife flying in the air, and it stuck quivering in
the deck twenty feet from where we stood.
"You long-jawed bully, what d'ye mean by that?" cried the skipper,
white with anger; and then he twisted the fellow's arm until I thought
he would have broken it. Nor did he let him go until he had kicked him
the length of the poop, and tumbled him, torn and bleeding, upon the
main hatch below.
"Lay your finger on the boy again, and I'll give you six dozen," he
said quietly; and then he came to my side, and he stood for a long
while leaning on the bulwarks and gazing over towards the receding
shore. He spoke to me at last, but in a more gentle tone than I had
ever heard from him--indeed, there was almost kindliness in his voice.
"Do you make out anything of a big ship yonder?" he asked, pointing
almost abaft.
"I see nothing but the hull of a collier?" said I.
"Then it's my sight that's plaguing me again," and he continued to look
as though he had some great purpose in satisfying himself, while from
the fo'castle there came shouts of laughter and singing. When he heard
this he spoke again, but almost to himself.
"Shout away, you scum," he muttered; "shout while you can. It'll be a
different tune to-morrow."
I was leaning then on the bulwarks almost at his side, and presently he
addressed himself directly to me, and earnestly.
"We had a narrow shave to-night. It's put me out to leave the doctor,
for he was the best of them--one of the only men that I could reckon
on. If it hadn't been for him and the Irishman, this lot would have
swung long ago--maybe they'll swing now. The hounds have got the scent;
and, God knows, they will follow it! It's lucky for some of them that I
had twenty pairs of eyes open for me in London, and knew the
Government's game in time to get this tender out of Ramsgate; but you
mark me, boy, there's trouble coming, and thick. I've gone out without
a gallon of oil again, and by-and-by we're going to run for our necks,
every man of us."
"What makes you think that?" I asked.
"What makes me think that?--why, my senses. They'll follow us from some
port here, as sure as the wind's rising; maybe they'll let us get
aboard the ship, and then that'll be the beginning of it. But if we
only hold out with the oil, then let 'em take care of themselves----"
"And if not?"
He shrugged his shoulders and was silent; but anon he asked again what
I thought of a long, rakish-looking steamer lying some miles away on
the starboard quarter, and when I had satisfied him he said--
"Come downstairs and get some wine into you, boy"; and I went below to
his small and not very elegant cabin, where he put champagne and
glasses on the table.
"Let's drink against the thirst we'll have to-morrow," cried he,
getting quite jovial, and pouring the Pommery down his throat as though
it had been beer. "This is an occasion such as we shan't often
know--the old ship against Europe, and one man against the lot of them!
Why, lad, if it wasn't for the thought of the oil, I'd get up and
dance. The lubbers could no more lay a finger on me, given fair fight,
than they could touch the moon. You see, it's just the oil that Karl's
feared all along; drive by gas, and you want twenty times the grease in
your cylinders that you'll ever need in a steam-ship. If there hadn't
been that break-up north, we'd never have been in this hole; but that's
one of the risks of a game like this, and I'll play my hand out."
He went on to talk of many other things, but as he did not speak of his
own past, or of the ship, I began to nod with sleep; and presently I
found him covering me up with a rug and turning out the lamp. I was
dead worn-out then, and must have slept twelve hours at the least, for
it was afternoon when I awoke, and the sun streamed in through the
skylight upon a table whereon dinner was set. But Black was not in the
cabin, and I went above to him on the bridge, which he paced with a
restless step and a betraying haste. There was no land then to be seen;
but the clear play of sparkling waves shone away to the horizon over a
tumbling sea, upon which were a few ships. Upon one of these he
constantly turned his glass; she was a long screw steamer, showing two
funnels and three masts, away some miles on the port quarter, and I saw
at once that from this ship the Captain got all his fear.
"Do you make her out?" he said in a big whisper directly I came up to
him, and then, hushing me, he added--"Keep your tongue still, and say
nothing. That's a British cruiser in passenger paint. She's come out
from Southampton."
This was about the very best bit of news he could have given me; but I
did not let him see that I thought so, for I had eyes only for the ship
in our wake. She was a long boat of the _Northumberland_ class; but
there was nothing whatever about her to betray her disguise, since she
had all the look of an Orient, or a P. and O. liner, and was too far
away from us to permit a reading of her flag. The men evidently had not
seen her, or took no notice of her if they had; but John upon the
bridge followed the movements of Black with curiosity, and once or
twice turned his own glass on the black hull just visible above the
horizon. He had forgotten the episode of the previous night--when,
undoubtedly, he was full of drink--and was almost as troubled as the
skipper.
"What's he up to?" he asked me in a whisper, as Black kept turning his
glass towards the hull of the other ship. "Did he get any liquor in him
last night? I never saw him this way before."
And again, after a pause--
"Have you got any eyes for that ship? What's he fixing her like that
for? She's no more than an Orient boat by her jib, and if she lays on
her course we'll make it warm for her outside."
Black heard his last words, and turned round upon him savagely--
"Yes," he said, "it'll be warm enough out there for them as lives as
well as for the dead. Ring down for more firing; what's the lubber
at?--he's not giving her thirteen knots."
By-and-by all the crew began to observe Black's anxiety and to crowd to
the starboard side; but he told them nothing, although he never left
the bridge, and cursed fiercely whenever the speed of the tender
slacked at all. It was somewhat perplexing to me to observe that, while
the great ship was undoubtedly following us, she did not gain a yard
upon us. During the whole of that long afternoon, and through the
watches of that early night, when I remained upon the bridge with
Black, we kept our relative distances; but, do all we could, the other
would not be shaken off; and when, after a few hours' sleep, I came on
deck at the dawn of the second day, she was still on our quarter,
following like the vulture follows the living man whose hours are
numbered.
"There's no humbug about her game," cried Black, whose face was lined
with the furrows of anxiety and pale with long watching; "she means to
take us on the open sea, and she's welcome to the course. If I don't
riddle her like a sieve, stretch me!"
This strange pursuit lasted three days and into the third night; when I
was awakened from a snatch of sleep by the firing of a gun above my
head. I dressed hurriedly and got on deck, where my eyes were almost
blinded by a great volume of light which spread over the sea from a
point some two miles away on our starboard bow. We had been in the
Atlantic then for twenty-four hours, and I did not doubt for a moment
that we had reached the nameless ship. Had there been any uncertainty,
the wild joy of the men would have banished it. From windlass to wheel
our decks presented a scene of wild excitement. Above all the shouting,
the raucous laughter, and the threats against the cruiser--whose lights
showed then less than a mile away--I heard the voice of Black, singing:
"Hands, stand by to lower boats!" and the yelping of "Roaring John." It
seemed at that moment that we should gain the impregnable citadel
without suffering one shot, and while I should have been happier if the
attack had been upon the tender, and my chances of gaining the
Government ship thus more sure, I was in a measure carried away by the
excitement of the position, and I verily believe that I cheered with
the others.
At that moment the cruiser showed her teeth. Suddenly there was a rush
of flame from her bows, and a shell hissed above us--the first sign of
her attempt to stop us joining our own ship. The poor shooting excited
only the derision of the men, who set up their wild "halloas!" at it;
and again, when a second shot struck the aft mast and shivered it, they
were provoked to boisterous merriment. But we could make no reply, and
those on the nameless ship could not fire, for we lay right between
them and the other.
"Hands, lower boats!" yelled Black at this moment, and then, leaving no
more than ten or fifteen men in the steamer, he led the way to the
launch.
We were now no more than a quarter of a mile from safety, but the run
was full of peril, and, as the launch stood out, the nameless ship of a
sudden shut off her light, if possible to shield us in the dark. But
the pursuer instantly flooded us with her own arc, and, following it
with quick shots, she hit the jolly-boat at the third. Of the eight men
there, only two rose when the hull had disappeared.
"Fire away, by thunder!" cried Black, shaking his fist, and mad with
passion; "and get your hands in: you'll want all the bark you've got
just now."
But we had hauled the men aboard as he spoke, and, though two shells
foamed in the sea and wetted us to the skin in the passage, we were at
the ladder of the nameless ship without other harm, and with fierce
shouts the men gained the decks.
For them it was a glorious moment. They had weathered the perils of a
city, and stood where they could best face the crisis of the pursuit.
It was a spectacle to move the most stolid apathy: the sight of a
couple of hundred demoniacal figures lighted by the great white wave of
light from the enemy's ship, their faces upturned as they waited
Black's orders, their hands flourishing knives and cutlasses, their
hunger for the contest betrayed in every gesture. I stood upon the
gallery high above the seas, and looked down upon the motley company,
or along the space of the hazy arc to the other vessel, and I asked
myself again and again, What if we shall win--what if this desperate
adventurer shall again outwit those who have coped with him, and hold
his mastery of the sea?
Nor did it seem so improbable that he would. Those upon the Government
cruiser betrayed their uneasiness every moment by casting the beams of
their searchlight on every point of the horizon; but their signal was
unanswered, no assuring rays shone out in the distant blackness of the
night. We two were alone upon the Atlantic, there to fight the duel of
the nations; and I confess that in the unparalleled excitement of the
moment I rejoiced that it was so; I hoped, even, that the nameless ship
would carry the hour, so much had she fascinated me, so astounding were
her achievements.
This truly was the critical moment in Black's career. He stepped on the
bridge to find Karl wringing his hands, and "Four-Eyes" was no less
uneasy.
"Faith, sorr," said he, as soon as we had come aboard, "it's bad times
intoirely if ye've no oil--we've been working two engines for three
days, and we'll be sore put to ut to kape the third going, if ye can't
mend us."
Karl emphasised the words with stamps and tears and frantic
gesticulation--not lost upon Black, who advanced to the front of the
bridge, and called for silence in a voice that would have split a berg.
A deathlike stillness succeeded; you could hear the wash of the waves
and the moaning of the wind: two hundred upturned faces shone ghastly
white under the spreading beams which the cruiser's lantern cast upon
them.
"Boys," cried Black, "yonder's a Government ship. You know me, that I
don't run after war-scum every day, for that's not my business. But
we're short of oil, and the cylinders are heating. If we don't get it
in twenty-four hours, there'll be devil's work, and we shan't do it.
Boys, it's swing or take that ship and the oil aboard her--which'll you
have?"
There was no doubt about their answer--there could be none. In one way
it was almost as if the cruiser herself gave reply, for there was the
roar of a great gun when Black had finished speaking, and a shot hissed
from above our poop and burst in the seas beyond us. A mighty shout
followed, but was converted instantly into a cry of warning, as the
forward hands sang out--
"Look out aft--the torpedo!" and other hands took up the cry, yelling
"The torpedo! The torpedo!"
The tiny line of foam was just visible for a second in the way of the
light; but, the moment the cruiser had shot it from her tube, she
extinguished her arc, leaving us to light the waters with our own.
There was no difficulty whatever in following the line of the deadly
message, and for a moment every heart, I doubt not, almost stood still.
"Full speed astern!" roared Black, forgetting himself, but instantly
ringing the bell, and the nameless ship moved backwards, faster and yet
faster. But the black death-bearer followed her, as a shark follows a
death-ship; we seemed even to have backed into its course--it came on
as though to strike us full amidships.
The excitement was almost more than I could bear; I turned away,
waiting for the tremendous concussion; I heard awful curses from the
men, the cowardly shouting of "Roaring John," the blasphemies of "Dick
the Ranter." I knew that Black alone was calm; and at the last I fixed
my eyes upon him when the head of the torpedo's foam was not thirty
yards away from us. In that supreme moment the power of the man rose to
a great height. He grasped the situation with the calmness of one
thinking in bed; and waiting motionless for some seconds, which were
seconds almost of agony to the rest of us, he cried of a sudden--
"Hard a-starboard!" and the helm went over with a run.
The movement was altogether superb. The great ship swung round with a
majestic sweep, and as we waited breathlessly, the torpedo passed right
under our bow, missing the ram by a hair's-breadth. The reaction was
nigh intolerable; the men waited for some seconds silent as the
voice-less; then their cheers rang away over the seas in a great volume
of sound, which must have re-echoed down in the caverns of the
Atlantic.
"You, Dick," ordered Black, "return the lubbers that, or I'll whip
you;" and Dick, who had got his wits back, replied--
"Skipper, if I dinna dive into their internals, gie me sax dozen."
"Hands to quarters," continued the skipper; "let no man show himself
till I call, then him as doesn't fight for all he's worth, let him
prepare to swing."
With this there fell a great busyness, the men going, some to the
turrets, some to the magazines below.
Black had not noticed me during the episode of the torpedo, but he
turned round now, and, seeing that I stood near him, he beckoned me
into the conning-tower with him. It was a chamber lined with steel with
a small glass for the look-out, and electric knobs which allowed
communication with the engine-rooms, the wheel, the turrets, and the
magazines. From that pinnacle of metal you could navigate the ship, and
there Black fought the battle of that night and of the days following.
And as I stood at his side I learned from his running comments much of
the course of the fight.
"Boy," he said, "what I'm worth I'm going to show this night; and, as
your eyes are younger than mine, I'm going to borrow the loan of them.
That hen-coop yonder with the Government flag on her isn't far from
company, you may be pretty sure. She's help near, and from that help
I'm going to cut her off, and quick. Take your stand here by me, and
watch the seas while I manage the light."
He had his hand upon a little tap which enabled him to throw the arc
upon every point of the horizon, and, as the light travelled, he asked
me--
"Do you make out anything? Is there more of 'em at her heels?"
"Nothing that I can see; she seems alone."
"Then God help her, though we're only running two engines. Now watch
the shot."
The focus was then upon the cruiser, whose own light kept playing upon
the horizon as though searching for a convoy she awaited. But when the
conning-tower shook with the thunder of our fore gun, the other reeled,
and her arc light went out with a great flash.
"That's a hit," I exclaimed with ridiculous want of control; "I believe
you've hit her abaft the funnel. Yes, I can see the list on her; you've
hit her clean."
His face never moved at the intelligence, but he rang the order "Hard
to port!" and we weathered round, showing our aft turret to the enemy,
whose bark for the moment was stilled.
"Watch again," said Black, as he rang to the turret chamber, and the
aft gun roared; but I could not see that the shot struck, and I told
him so.
"I'll give that parson a dozen if he does that again," he remarked,
unmoved by the crash of a shot which struck us right under our turret.
Then he took a cigar and spoke between his teeth when he had lighted
it--
"There's twelve inches of steel there," he said with a laugh; "let 'em
knock on it and welcome. Don't you smoke?--I always do; it keeps my
head clear."
Two more shots, one right above the engine-room and the second at the
ram, answered his levity.
"Come on, you devils!" he blurted out with glee. "Come in and dance, by
thunder, while I play ye the tune! Now hearken to it."
We came up again, and fired at the cruiser, hitting her right under the
funnel, and a second time near her fore gun, so that you could see her
reel and shiver even under the rays of the search-light. Nor did she
answer our firing, but rolled to the swell apparently out of action.
All this I could see, and I answered the skipper's hurried and anxious
questions as every fresh movement was visible.
"What's she doing, eh?" he asked. "Did that stop her? Is she coaling
up, or does she signal? Lord, if I had the oil I'd sweep the sea from
New York to Queenstown. What is it, boy?--why don't you answer me?"
"You don't give me time; but I can see now. She's coaling up, and there
are men forward working with oars."
"Do you say that?" he said, pushing me away from the glass. "Do you say
that she's coaling? By thunder, you're right! We'll have her oil yet;
and then let them as come after me look to themselves!"
As he said the last word he stepped from the conning-tower on to the
bridge, and I followed him.
There, at the distance of a third of a mile away on the starboard bow,
was the crippled cruiser, helpless by her look; and our light fell full
upon her, showing men in great activity upon her decks, and others
running forward as though there were danger also in the fo'castle. The
night around us was very dark, and the huge, heaving swell shone black
as pitch in mountains and cavities below the gallery. We two were alone
there upon the ocean, finishing that terrible duel--if, indeed, the end
had not come, as I thought from the silence of the other.
"Skipper, are you going aboard her now?" asked the man "Roaring John,"
who came to us on the bridge. "She's done by her looks, and you'll get
no oil if ye delay. Karl there, he ain't as comfortable as if he were
in his bed."
The little German was very far from it. He was almost desperate when
minute by minute his stock of oil grew less; and he ran from one to the
other, as though we had grease in our pockets, and could give it to
him.
Black took due notice, but did not lose his calm. His cigar was now
glowing red, and he took it often from his mouth, looking at the
lighted end of it as a man does who is thinking quickly.
"You're quite sure she's done, John?" he asked, turning to the big man.
"She's done, I guess, or why don't she spit? If she's got another kick
in her, send me to the devil!"
The words had scarce left his lips when the cruiser's aft guns
thundered out almost together, and one shell passed through the very
centre of our group. It cut the man John in half as he might have been
cut by a sword, and his blood and flesh splashed us, while the other
half of him stood up like a bust upon the deck, and during one horrible
moment his arms moved wildly, and there was a horrid quivering of the
muscles of his face. The second shot struck the roof of the turret
obliquely, and glanced from it into the sea. The destruction seemed to
move Black no more than a rain shower. He simply cried: "All hands to
cover; I'm going to give 'em a taste of the machine-guns;" and we
re-entered the conning-tower. Then, as we began to move again, I swept
the horizon with our light; but this time, far away over the black
waste of water, the signal was answered.
"Number two!" said Black quite calmly, when I told him, "and this time
a battle-ship. Well, boy, if we don't take that oil yonder in ten
minutes you may say your prayers."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE DUMB MAN SPEAKS.
He put up the helm as he spoke, and brought our head round so that we
were in a position to have rammed the cruiser had we chosen. This was
not Black's object. He desired first to cripple her completely, then to
finish her with the Maxim guns.
"Now, let's see what that Scotsman's worth," he cried, as he laid down
his cigar, and spoke through one of the tubes. Almost with his words
the tower shook with the thunder, the twenty-nine ton gun in the fore
turret belched forth flame, and the hissing shell struck the steamer
over her very magazine. We waited for a response, but none came. She
had received the shot, as it proved, right on her great gun; and the
weapon lay shivered and useless, cast quite free from its carriage,
while dead men were around it in heaps.
"Dick's earned his dinner," said Black, taking up his cigar again, as
he rang twice, and the men rushed to the small guns, and prepared to
get them into action. "We'll give 'em a little hail this time, for they
haven't the cover we have. If we don't get aboard before the other
comes up, they get the trick."
The nameless ship bounded forward into the night as he spoke, and, soon
coming up with the helm a-starboard, she was not fifty yards away from
her long opponent when the deadly steel storm began its havoc. For our
part, the men had cover of a sort in the fore-top, and there were steel
screens round the deck-guns; but when the cruiser replied with her own
small arms many fell; and groans, and shrieks, and curses rose, and
were audible even to us in the tower. Never have I known anything akin
to that terrible episode when bullets rang upon our decks in hundreds,
and the dead and the living in the other ship lay huddled together, in
a seething, struggling, moaning mass. For she had little cover, being a
cruiser, and we had opened fire upon her before such of her men as
could be spared had got below.
"Let 'em digest that!" cried Black, as he watched the havoc, and puffed
away with serene calmness amidst the stress of it all; "let 'em swallow
lead, the vultures. I'd sink 'em with one shot if it wasn't for their
oil; but they ain't alone!"
It was true. I, who had not ceased to watch that distant light which
marked another warship on the horizon, knew that a second light had
shone out as a star away over the sea; and now, when I looked again at
his words, I saw a third light, but I had no courage to tell him of it.
Indeed, we were being surrounded, and the danger was the greater for
every minute of delay. The cruiser, although she suffered so grievously
from the storm of lead which we rained upon her, had not hurled down
her flag, and still replied to our fire, but more feebly. And the
search-lights of the distant ships were clearer to my view every
moment, so that I watched them alone at the last; and Black saw them,
and took a sight from the glass. Then for the first time his cigar fell
from his lips, and he muttered an exclamation which might have been one
of fear.
"Boy," he said, "you should have told me of this. I see three lights,
and that means a fleet of the devils to come. Well, I'll risk it, as
I've risked it before. If I can stop 'em now with a shot, the game's
ours; if she sinks, they trump us."
He gave a long order in careful words down through the tube to the
turret; and, coming up to position, we fired at the cruiser for the
last time, hitting her low down in the very centre of her engine-room.
A great volume of steam gushed up from her deck, with clouds of smoke
and fire; and as all shooting from her small arms ceased, we went out
to the gallery, and the boats were cast free. A minute after, the
ensign of the other was lowered, and we had beaten her.
"You, 'Four-Eyes,' take the launch, and get her oil," Black sang out at
the sight; "you'll have five hands, that's all you want. Go sharp, if
you'd save your skins!"
I stood on the gallery, and watched the passage of the small boat,
which was at the side of the maimed cruiser almost in a moment. There
was no longer any resistance to our men, for the hands of the other
ship had too much work of their own to do. I saw some running quickly
to the aft boats, while some were bearing wounded from below, and
others stood beneath the bridge taking orders from a very young
officer, who had no colleagues in the work. Not that there was any
confusion, only that awful crying of strong men in their agony, of the
dying who feel death's hand upon them, of the wounded who had pain
which was hardly to be endured. For a long time it seemed as though no
one heard the hail of "Four-Eyes" to be taken aboard; and when at last
we watched him get on deck, he met with no resistance, but did as he
would. Under the spreading rays of our great arc you could follow the
whole scene as though by day--the hurrying crowd of seamen, the work at
the boat, the fear and terror of it all. And you could see at the last
a sight which to Black had more import than anything else in that
picture of distress and desolation.
The great ship began to heel right over. Her stern came high out of the
water, so that her screws were visible. She dipped her foc's'le clean
under the breaking sea; and so she rode during some terrible minutes.
Her own men now cast off their boats anyhow, leaving the wounded, who
cursed, or implored, or prayed, or shrieked; but "Four-Eyes" did not
come, and Black raved, looking away where the search-lights of the
other ships now showed their rapid approach. To this extraordinary man
it was the great cast of life. If the cruiser went down and his men got
no oil, we should infallibly be taken by the warships then coming upon
us; and I wonder not that in that moment he lost something of his old
calm, pacing the bridge with nervous steps, and alternately cursing or
imploring the men who could not hear.
"Why don't they come?" he asked desperately. "The lazy, loitering
snails! What are they doing there? Do you see her heeling? She can't
weather that list another five minutes. Dick! for God's sake signal to
them--the creeping vermin! Ahoy, there! Do you hear me? You aboard, are
you looking to live to-morrow, or will you lay a hundred fathoms
under--look, boys! Do you see them lights? They're warships, three of
'em! We've got to show 'em our heels, and we can't--we've no oil, not a
gallon! And they're taking their ease like fine gentlemen aboard
there--the guzzling swine--but I'll stir 'em! You Dick, fire a shot at
'em!"
Dick had just answered him, saying, "Ay, Captain, I'll gie him a wee
bit o' iron in his gizzard," when his further words were broken on his
lips, for our hands appeared at the ladder of the doomed steamer, and
they tumbled into the launch anyhow, flying madly from her side as she
plunged to a huge sea, and with one mighty roll went headlong under the
surface of the Atlantic. At that moment day broke, and, as the silver
light of the dawn spread over the dark of the sea, we saw three
ironclads approaching us at all their speed, and then not three miles
distant from us. But the launch was at our side, and as Black leant
over, and the new light lit up his bloodshot eyes and haggard face, he
asked, with hoarseness in his voice--
"Have ye got the oil?"
"Not a drop!" replied the cox.
The strong man reared himself straight up, and he turned to Karl, at
his side. In that moment he was really great, and I shall never forget
the nonchalance with which he drew another cigar from his case and
lighted it. The two men, who had found their calm as the danger
thickened, were in perfect accord; and, as one descended the ladder to
the engine-room with slow steps, the other went again to the tower,
where I followed him.
"Boy," he said, "I've often wondered how this old ship would break up;
now we'll see, but she's going to bite some of 'em yet, if she can't
last."
"Are you going to run for it?" I asked.
"Run for it, with two engines, yes; but it's a poor business. And we'll
have to fight! Well, who knows? There's luck at sea as well as on
shore. If I run, they'll catch me in ten miles; but we'll all do what
we can. Now smoke and have a brandy-and-soda. You may not get another."
The drink I took, but his calm I could not share. If the nameless ship
were trapped at last I had freedom; but of what sort? The freedom of a
bloody fight, the lottery of life, the remote possibility that, the
ship being taken, I should get to the shelter of the war-vessels. The
man soon undeceived me on both points.
"If we're out-manoeuvred and crippled in what's coming," said he, "I
have given Karl my orders. This ship I've built and loved like a child
isn't going to knuckle under to any man living. She's going to sink,
lad, and we're all going to blazes with her! What's the odds? A man
must die! Let him die on his own dunghill, say I, and a fig for the
reckoning! We shall last out as long as we can, and then we'll let the
cylinders fill with hydrogen, and blow her up. But you're not smoking."
The threat, so jaunty yet so terrible, was almost like a sentence of
death to me. I looked from the glass of the tower, and saw the foremost
ironclad but two miles away from us, and the others were sweeping round
to cut us off if we attempted flight. In the old days, with the
nameless ship at the zenith of her power, we should have laughed at
their best efforts--have flown from them as a bird from a trap. But we
lay with but two engines working, and a speed of sixteen knots at the
best. Nor did we know from minute to minute when another engine would
break down.
At the beginning of this flight we almost held our own, shaping a
curious course, which, if pursued, would have brought us ultimately to
the Irish coast again. For some hours during the morning I thought that
we gained slightly, and those following evidently felt that it would be
a waste of shell to fire at us, for they were silent: only great
volumes of smoke came from the funnels of the battleships, and we knew
that their efforts to get greater speed were prodigious.
We ran in this state all the morning, our men silent and brooding;
Black smoked cigar after cigar with a dogged assumption of
indifference; the German came to us often with his desperate gestures
and his woe-begone face. It was well on in the afternoon before the
position changed in any way, and I had gone down with the Captain to
the lower saloon to make the pretence of lunching. There we
sat--"Four-Eyes" with us--a miserable trio, cracking jokes, and
expressing desperate hopes; sending up the nigger every other moment to
learn how the ironclad lay, and much comforted when at the fifth coming
he said--
"You gain, sar, plenty sar; you run right away, sar."
"We do?" cried Black, who jumped from his seat and ran up the
companion-way to confirm the tale, and he shouted down to us, "Crack
another bottle, if it's the last, and give it to the nigger; we're
leaving them!"
His elation was contagious. "Four-Eyes" awoke from his lethargy, and
drank a pint of the wine at a draught. The nigger put out a glass with
a satisfied leer. The Captain took a bottle and laid his hand on the
cork. But there it stayed, for at that moment there came a horrible
sound of grating and tearing from the engine-room, and it was succeeded
by a moment of dead and chilling silence.
"The second engine's gone," said a man above, quite calmly, and we knew
the worst, and went on deck again.
We found the crew sullen and muttering, but Friedrich, the engineer's
eldest son, sat at the top of the engine-room ladder, and tears rolled
down his face. The great ship still trembled under the shock of the
breakdown and was not showing ten knots. The foremost ironclad crept up
minute by minute; and before we had realised the whole extent of the
mishap, she was within gunshot of us; but her colleagues were some
miles away, she outpacing them all through it.
"Bedad, she signals to us to let her come aboard," said "Four-Eyes,"
who watched her intently.
"Answer that we'll see her in chips first," said Black, and he called
for Karl and made signs to him.
"If so be as ye don't come to, he'll be about to fire upon ye," cried
"Four-Eyes," again, who stood at the flag-line, and this time Black
thought before he answered--
"Then parley with 'em; we'll come alongside and hear their jaw."
There was a leer of positive devilry on his face as he said this, and
he beckoned me into the conning-tower, when he closed the tower and
bade me watch. Those on the battle-ship made quite sure of us now, for
they steamed on and came within three hundred yards of us. Black
watched them as a beast watches the unsuspecting prey. He stood, his
face knit in savage lines, his hand upon the bell. I looked from the
glass, and saw that no man was visible upon our decks, that our engines
had ceased to move. We were motionless. Then in a second the bells rang
out. There was again that frightful grating and tearing in the
engine-room. The nameless ship came round to her helm with a mighty
sweep: she foamed and plunged in the seas; she turned her ram straight
at the other; and, groaning as a great stricken wounded beast, she
roared onward to the voyage of death. I knew then the fearful truth:
Black meant to sink the cruiser with his ram. I shall never forget that
moment of terror, that grinding of heated steel, that plunge into the
seas. Holding with all my strength to the seat of the tower, I waited
for the crash, and in the suspense hours seemed to pass. At last, there
was under the sea a mighty clap as of submarine thunder. Dashed
headlong from my post, I lay bruised and wounded upon the floor of
steel. The roof above me rocked; the walls shook and were bent; my ears
rang with the deafening roar in them; seas of foam mounted before the
glass; shrieks and the sound of awful rending and tearing drowned other
shouts of men going to their death. And through all was the hysterical
yelling of Black, his cursing, his defiance, his elation.
"Come and see," he roared, dragging me by the collar to the gallery;
"come and see. They sink, the lubbers! They go to blazes every one of
them. Look at their faces, the crawling scum. Ha! ha! Die, you vermin!
as you meant me to die; fill your skins with water, you sharks! I spit
on you! Boys, do you hear them crying to you? Music, fine music! Who'll
dance when the devil plays? Dance, you lazy blacklegs; dance on
nothing! Ha, ha!"
No man has ever looked on a more awful sight. We had struck the
battleship low amidships--we had crashed through the thinnest coat of
her steel. She had heeled right over from the shock, so that the guns
had cast free from the carriages, and the sea had filled her. Thus for
one terrible minute she lay, her men crowding upon her starboard side,
or jumping into the sea, or making desperate attempts to get her boats
free; and then, with a heavy lurch, she rolled beneath the waves; and
there were left but thirty or forty struggling souls, who battled for
their lives with the great rollers of the Atlantic. Of these a few
reached the side of our ship and were shot there as they clung to the
ladder; a few swam strongly in the desperate hope that the brutes about
me would relent, and sank at last with piercing and piteous cries upon
their lips; others died quickly, calling upon God as they went to their
rest.
For ourselves we lay, our bows split with the shock, our engine-room in
fearful disorder, our men drunk with ferocity and with despair. The
other warships were yet some distance away; but they opened fire upon
us at hazard, and, of the first three shells which fell, two cut our
decks; and sent clouds of splinters, of wood, and of human flesh flying
in the smoke-laden air. At the fifth shot, a gigantic crash resounded
from below, and the stokers rushed above with the news that the fore
stoke-hold had three feet of water in it. The hands received the news
with a deep groan; then with curses and recriminations. They bellowed
like bulls at Black; they refused all orders. He shot down man after
man, while I crouched for safety in the tower; and they became but
fiercer. Our end was evidently near; and, knowing this, they fell upon
the liquor, and were worse than fiends. Anon they turned upon the
captain and myself, and fired volleys upon the conning-tower; or, in
their terrible frenzy, they pitched themselves into the sea, or raved
with drunken songs, and vented their vengeance upon the Irishman,
"Four-Eyes," chasing him wildly, and stabbing him with many cuts, so
that he dropped dying at our door, with no more reproach than the
simple words--
"God help me! but had I died in me own counthry I would have known more
pace."
Through all this our one engine worked; and so slowly did the great
ironclad draw upon us that the end of it all came before they could
reach us. Suddenly the men rushed to the boats and cast them loose.
Fighting with the dash of madmen, they crowded the launch, they swarmed
the jolly-boat and the life-boat. Even the engineer's son felt the
touch of contagion, and joined the _mêlée_. We watched their insane
efforts as boat after boat put away and was swamped, leaving the
devilish men to drown as the worthier fellows had drowned before them;
and amongst the last to die was "Dick the Ranter," who went down with
blasphemies gurgling upon his lips. When six o'clock came, Black and
Karl and myself were alone upon the great ship; and in the stillness
which followed there came another weird and wild and soul-stirring
shriek--the cry of the dumb engineer, who found speech in the great
catastrophe. Then Black pulled me by the arm and said--
"Boy, they've left nothing but the dinghy. The old ship's done; and
it's time you left her."
"And you?" I asked.
He looked at me and at Karl. He had meant to die with the ship, I knew;
but the old magnetism of my presence held him again in that hour. He
followed me slowly, as one in a dream, to the davits aft, and freed the
last of the boats, overlooked by the hands in their frenzy and their
panic. Then he went to his cabin, and to the rooms below; and I helped
him to put a couple of kegs of water in the frail craft, with some
biscuit, which we lashed, and a case of wine which he insisted on.
The preparation cost us half-an-hour of time, and when all was ready,
the captain went to the engine-room and brought Karl to the top of the
ladder; but there the German stayed, nor did threats or entreaties move
him.
"He'll die with the ship," said Black, "and I don't know that he isn't
wise;" but he held out his hand to the genius of his crime, and after a
great grip the two men parted.
For ourselves, we stepped on the frailest craft with which men ever
faced the Atlantic, and at that moment the first of the ironclads fired
another shell at the nameless ship. It was a crashing shot, but it had
come too late to serve justice, or to wreck the ship of mystery; for
Karl had let the hydrogen into the cylinders unchecked, and with a
mighty rush of flame, and a terrific explosion, the craft of gold gave
her "Vale!" And in a cascade of fire, lighting the sea for many miles,
and making as day the newly-fallen night, the golden citadel hissed
over the water for one moment, then plunged headlong, and was no more.
A fierce fire it was, lighting sea and sky--a mighty holocaust; the
roar of a great conflagration; the end of a monstrous dream. And I
thought of another fire and another face--the face of Martin Hall, who
had seen the finger of Almighty God in his mission; and I said, "His
work is done!"
But Black, clinging to the dinghy, wept as a man stricken with a great
grief, and he cried so that the coldest heart might have been moved--
"My ship, my ship! Oh God, my ship!"
CHAPTER XXVI.
A PAGE IN BLACK'S LIFE.
I know not whether it was the amazing spectacle of the nameless ship's
end, or the sudden coming down of night, that kept attention from our
boat when the great vessel had sunk; but those on the ironclads, which
were at least two miles from us when we put off, seemed to be unaware
that any boat from the ship lived; and, although they steamed for some
hours in our vicinity, they saw nothing of us as we lay in the plunging
dinghy. When night fell, and with it what breeze that had been blowing,
we lost sight of them altogether, and knew for the first time the whole
terror of the situation. Black had indeed recovered much of his old
calm, and drank long draughts of champagne; but he sat silent, and
uttered no word for many hours after the end of that citadel which had
given him such great power. As for the little boat, it was a puny
protection against the sweeping rollers of the Atlantic, and I doubt
not that we had been drowned that very night if a storm of any moment
had broken upon us.
About midnight a thunderstorm got up from the south, and the sea,
rising somewhat with it, wetted us to the skin. The lightning, terribly
vivid and incessant, lighted up the whole sea again and again, showing
each the other's face, the face of a worn and fatigue-stricken man. And
the rain and the sea beat on us until we shivered, cowering, and were
numbed; our hands stiffened with the salt upon them, so that we could
scarce get the warming liquor to our lips. Yet Black held to his
silence, moaning at rare intervals as he had moaned when the great ship
sank. It was not until the sun rose over the long swell that we slept
for an hour or more; and after sleep we were both calmer, looking for
ships with much expectation, and that longing which the derelict only
may know. The Captain was then very quiet, and he gazed often at me
with the expression I had seen on his face when he saved me from his
men.
"Boy," he said, "look well at the sun, lest you never look at it
again."
"I am looking," I replied; "it is life to me."
"If," he continued, very thoughtful, "you, who have years with you,
should live when I go under, you'll take this belt I'm wearing off me;
it'll help you ashore. If it happen that I live with you, it'll help
both of us."
"We're in the track of steamers," said I; "there's no reason to look at
it that way yet. Please God, we'll be seen."
"That's your way, and the right one," he answered; "but I'm not a man
like that, and my heart's gone with my ship: we shall never see her
like again."
"You built her?" I said questioningly.
"Yes," he responded. "I built her when I put my hand against the world,
and, if it happened to me to go through it again, I'd do the same."
"What did you go through?" I asked, as he passed me the biscuits and
the cup with liquor in it, and as he sat up in the raft I saw that the
man had death written on his face.
But at that time he told me nothing in answer to my question; and sat
for many hours motionless, his glassy eyes fixed upon the bottom of the
boat. In the afternoon, however, he suddenly sat up, and took up his
thread as if he had broken it but a minute before.
"I went through much," said he, gazing over the mirror-like surface of
the trackless water-desert, "as boy and man. I lived a life which was
hell; God knows it."
I did not press him to tell me more, for in truth I shivered so and was
so numbed that even my curiosity to know of this life of crime and of
mystery was not so paramount as to banish that other thought: Shall we
live when the sun sinks this night? But he found relief in his talk,
and, as the liquor warmed him, he continued faster than before--
"I was a stepson, boy; bound to a brute with not as much conscience as
a big dog, and no more human nature in him than a wild bull. My mother
died three months after he took her, and I'm not going to speak about
her, God help me; but if I had the man under my hands that treated her
so, I'd crush his skull like I crush this biscuit. Well, that ain't my
tale; you ask me what I went through, and I'm trying to tell you. Have
you ever wanted a meal? No, I reckon not; and you can't get it in your
mind to know what living on bones and bits for more than a couple of
years means, can you, as I lived down in my home at Glasgow, and often
since out West and at Colorado? I'd come out from Scotland as a bit of
a lad not turned thirteen, and I sailed aboard the _Savannah City_ to
Montreal, and then to Rio, and in Japan waters; and for three years,
until I deserted at 'Frisco, no devilry that human fiends could think
of was unknown to me. But they made a sailor of me; and full-rigged
ship or steamer I'd navigate with the best of 'em. After that, I went
aboard a brig plying between 'Frisco and Yokohama, and there I picked
up much, leaving her after two years to get across to Europe, and do
the ocean trade with the Jackson line between Southampton and Buenos
Ayres. It was in that city I met my wife. I married her in Mendoza; for
she came of rich folk, who spat on me, and was only a bit of a girl
who'd never wanted a comfort on this earth until that time, and who
starved with me then and for years. My God! my whole body burns when I
think of it--that bit of a creature who'd never known the lack of a
gratification and who was dragged down to every degradation by my
curse."
I looked at him in surprise, and he answered me instinctively.
"Yes, by my curse. Maybe you don't know what it was, for I've held it
under a bit since she died, but I was a drunkard then--a maniac when I
had the liquor on me, a devil from whom all men fled. Not that there
isn't work for any man in that country--work, and well paid--but I had
the fever on me, and--well, we sank very low. How I lived I can't tell
you; but after a couple of years of it I worked a passage to New York,
and there my son was born. When he grew up he was the very image of
you. That's why I gave you your life when you came on my ship."
The words were spoken in that gentle voice he could command sometimes,
and, as he uttered them, he took my hand and gave it a great grip. I
understood then that curious look he had given me at our first meeting;
his partisanship for me against the men; and that last great risk which
had brought the end of it all, if it had not brought death to both of
us. Somewhere down in that human well of crime and ferocity there was a
spring of purer water. I had set it free when I brought old memories to
him, and I owed it to him that amazing chance that I lived through the
frenzies of Ice-haven.
"Yes," said Black, observing my surprise, and passing me the liquor
which he compelled me to drink; "my boy was your height, and your
build, and he had your eyes. What's more, he had your grit, and there
was no cooler hand living. Not that he owed much to me, for I was mad
drunk half his life; and, when sober, I lived as often as not in prison
for what I had done in liquor. It was when he was nearly twenty that
the change came; for he began to bring home money, do you see? and what
with his work and the way he talked to me, I set myself to get the
craving under; and I was a new man in one year, and in two my brain
came back to me, and I made the discovery that I was not born a fool.
You may reckon I worshipped the lad! God knows, he and his mother did
for me more than man or woman ever did for a breathing body. And when
my wits came back to me, and I thought what I might have done, and what
I had done, and that my boy had borne it all only to drag me to my
reason at last, I could have ended it there and then. Maybe I should
have done it if a new turn hadn't come in my life's road. It was when I
was at my lowest, and we were sore put to it to get food in New York,
that I was taken up by a man who was going to Michigan seeking copper.
My lad was then working with a Mike Leveston in the city--a land-agent
for the up-country work, and the owner of a line of small brigs running
between Boston and the Bahamas; but times had gone bad with him, and
the boy, who had been getting good money, found himself with no more
than enough to keep him, let alone his mother. Well, I thought the
thing out, and, as my partner had some capital and agreed to let me
have ten dollars a week any way, I made an agreement with Leveston that
he should allow the wife and the boy enough to live on for six months,
and I set out for the State where the copper find was beginning to
attract notice, and in a year I was a made man. We found the ore as
thick as clay, and, under the excitement of it, I kept my head, and the
drink craze never touched me. When the money came in, I made Leveston
my New York agent, and sent him enough to set up the woman who'd stood
by me all through in more luxury than she'd known since she married me.
For awhile her letters told me of her new life, and I kept them under
my shirt as I would have kept leaves of gold. In the spring, I sent the
agent twenty thousand dollars for her; and I got his acknowledgment,
saying she'd gone down to Charleston to see about the boy's work there,
and I should hear from her on her return.
"I think this was about eighteen months after I left New York, and from
that time my wife ceased to write to me, and I heard nothing more from
the lad. We'd been doing such work in the mine that we had enough money
to pay our way for life, and we hoped to make an almighty pile before
many years had gone; but I couldn't bear not hearing from them as I
worked for, and in the fall of the year I went back to New York--under
protest from my partner, who could do nothing without me--and I never
rested until I reached my house in Fifty-Fourth Street. I found it shut
up, the furniture gone, not a sign of living being in it; and when I
went to make inquiries amongst my neighbours, they told me what came to
this. My wife had died of starvation--nothing less, boy, for the devil
I'd sent the money to had doled out to her and the lad a few dollars
for the first year, but had cut and run when the big sums reached him;
and he took the boy with him on the pretence of a job in the Southern
city. My son, you see, had turned naturally to architect's work, and
was induced by this long-toothed vulture to quit New York, because they
heard from the mine that I was dead--that I died, as Leveston had told
them, of small-pox--and left not a shilling for them. God! if only I
could bring him to life to clutch his cursed throat again!"
"But what became of your son?" I asked, as he ceased speaking, and we
lay riding gently over the long rollers, with a great flood of sunlight
making the sea as a sheet of beaten gold, touched with diamond points
where the spray broke. Then he went on with it; but you could see some
awful emotion moving him, and he kept plying himself with drink, which
made his words the fiercer.
"What became of the boy?" he repeated after me. "Why, he went south in
the hope of sending money to his mother; and directly he reached
Charleston, Leveston shipped him on a brig, knowing that I must hear of
his doings in a month or more. He sent the lad to Panama, and there he
died, one of the first to be stricken in the fever land. They buried
him in the country, as the Lord is my witness. Then I came home--rich,
my trunks stuffed with notes, able, if I cared, to buy up half the
land-agents in New York City; and the money I'd got seemed to turn
black in my hands when I found that those it was made for needed it no
more. Not as I knew then of the lad's death--that I was to hear of
later; but, free from the drink, I had loved the woman who was gone;
and I was a madman for days and weeks. When I got my head again I
changed as I don't believe any man ever changed before; there was
something in my mind which I could not cope with. I can't lay it down
any clearer than this: it was a hatred of all men that took possession
of me--a fierce desire to make mankind pay for the wrongs I had
suffered. I gave myself up to the drink again, but not as I did when
they named me a drunkard. This time I was the master of it; I used it
for my purpose; I fed my thoughts of vengeance on it; and, while my
partner was sending me more than a thousand pounds a week from
Michigan, I remained in New York with the double purpose in my head--to
get my boy back to me, and to crush the life out of the man who had
left my wife to die.
"All the news I could get at that time was this: the boy had left
Charleston, ostensibly for the Bahamas, three months before I reached
New York City; but nothing more had been heard of him or the ship. I
put the best detectives in the city on Leveston's trail, raining the
money into their pockets to keep them to the work; and they got it out
of some of Leveston's seamen in Savannah that he had gone a long cruise
in one of his barques to Rio, and even farther south. This news was
like red-hot iron to my head. I knew that I couldn't touch the man by
law, except for the robbery of the bit of money, and _that_ I didn't
care a brass button about. What I meant to have was his life, and I
swore that no man should take it but me. Then I went into every low
haunt in New York. I searched the drinking dens of the Bowery; I made
friends with all the thieves, picked up the loafers, and the starving.
The parson who's gone I found running a gambling hell in New Jersey;
the man 'Four-Eyes' I took from a crimp at Boston; John we got later on
at Rio, where we bought him from the police. I had as fine a crew of
scoundrels in a month as ever cursed in a fo'castle; and I shipped them
all on the screw-steamer, _Rossa_, which I bought for six thousand
pounds from the Rossa Company. She was just on six hundred tons, an
iron boat built for the meat trade; but we knocked her about quick
enough, setting three machine-guns for'ard, and fifty Winchester rifles
among her stores. We put out from Sandy Hook, it must be nearly six
years ago; and we steamed straight ahead for Rio, where we got tidings
of Leveston's barque. She had sailed for Buenos Ayres, but they looked
for her return within the month, and we left again next day, cruising
near shore as far as Desterro, where luck was with us.
"I remember that morning as if it was yesterday. We had struck
eight-bells, and the men were going down to dinner, when the mate
sighted a ship on the port-bow. We put straight out to sea at the hail,
and within half-an-hour we stood alongside her; and the man who
answered my call was Mike Leveston. When he saw me hailing him from the
poop of a steamer, he turned green as the sea about him; and he yelled
to me to stand off if I didn't want a bullet in me. The sight of him
maddened me; I turned the machine-gun on his decks, and swept them
clear as a grass field, but he lay flat on his face by the taffrail,
and he bellowed for mercy like a woman. And he got it. I ran the
steamer alongside him, smashing in his quarter, and when we had
gripped, I got aboard. Then he grovelled at my feet, and, as I held my
pistol at his head, he gabbled out the news that my son was dead--told
me that he died at Panama, and he screamed for mercy like a hog at the
block. But I cut his throat from ear to ear with my own knife, and I
threw his body to the sharks limb by limb as you would throw a dead
sheep to the dogs. God knows, I was mad then, as I have been often
since, and am now. My poor son!"
"The man told you the truth, then?"
"Yes. When I had made chips of his ship I went back to Panama, and
there got news of the boy. They had buried him at Porto Bello, and I
stopped there long enough to make his grave decent, and then returned
up the coast to New York. Coming back, the vermin with me took a fancy
on the third day out, when three parts of them were drunk, to do with a
strange brig as they had done with Leveston's. They stopped her with
the guns, and cleared her of every dollar aboard, sending her to the
bottom out of pure devilry. I didn't stop 'em; for I had the madness of
the drink on me again, and I led 'em at the work then, and when they
sent a dozen more coasters after the two that had gone on the voyage to
Sandy Hook. By the time we were in New York again, I had got a taste
for the new work which nothing could cure. It seemed as if I was to
revenge on mankind the wrong I had suffered from one man; and, more
than that, I saw there was money in heaps in it. They said at home that
piracy was played out, but I asked myself, 'How's that? Give me a ship
big enough,' said I, 'and under certain conditions I'll sweep the
Atlantic.' There was danger in the job, and it was big enough to tempt
that curious brain of mine, which had always dreamed of big jobs since
I'd been a bit of a boy; and I was fascinated with this big idea until
I couldn't hold myself. That's what led me to keep the crew together at
New York, and to return to Michigan, where I found that the mine was
making money faster almost than they could bank it, and if I was worth
a penny, I was worth a million sterling at that very time; for my
partner behaved square all through, and paid my share to the last
penny. I stayed with him about a couple of months then, giving my wits
to the job, and it was there I met Karl, the German engineer, who had
got it into his head that gas was the motor of the near future. He
talked of using it for the copper work, and then of building gas
launches for transport; but he didn't know that he'd set me all aglow
with another thought, which was nothing less than this--that I should
build a steamer driven by gas, and run a game of piracy on the Atlantic
with her. Do you call it lunacy? Well, other men have made good company
for such lunatics, the Corsican murderer at Moscow among 'em. And what
was it to be but a fight of one man against the world--a fight to set
your best blood running fast in your veins, to brace every nerve in
your body? Boy, I lived for a year on that excitement, which was more
even than the drink to me. I left the mine to cruise again in the
_Rossa_ with the old hands; but we had added a long 'chaser' to our
list of guns, and in the three months out we took twenty ships and over
two hundred thousand in specie. I saw from the beginning of it that the
one thing we couldn't stand against with a coal steamer was the
constant putting into port to fill her bunkers: and I knew that if we
didn't find some haven of refuge out of the common run, the day would
come when we should swing like common cut-throats. I had taken Karl on
board with me for the trip, and he was the man to set both things
square. He ran me north of Godthaab, in Greenland, and put me into the
fjord you have known; and he drew the plans of my ship, which I made
the Italians at Spezia build for me--for I had the money, and, as for
the metal, the phosphor bronze of which I built her--well, that was
Karl's idea, too. You may know that phosphor bronze is the finest
material for ship-building in the world, but the majority of 'em can't
use it on account of the cost of the copper. Well, the copper I had,
any amount of it; and I shipped it to Italy, and the great vessel which
your friend Hall thought was all of gold had the look of it, and was
the finest sight man ever saw when under her own colours.
"Once the ship was built, our game was easy. She was armoured heavily
amidships; she had two ten-inch guns in her turrets, and machine-guns
thick all over her; and she was the best-fitted ship in her quarters
swimming. It's a rum thing, but I always had a bit of a taste for nice
things--fine painting, gold work, and stones--and my only hobby to
speak of has been the buying of 'em. This led me to meet your friend
Hall. Not that I didn't know him from the first, for my men saw him in
the yards at Spezia, and from that day I never left him unwatched. I
followed him to Paris, to Liverpool, to London, when I was ashore; but
I never brought my ship within a hundred miles of any port: and I used
to hire yachts and sink 'em in mid-ocean when I wanted to reach her.
Your friend would be alive now if he hadn't sought to find out where I
got to when I left port in the _La France_. But I took him aboard to
end him, and they shot him off the Needles and lashed him to the
shrouds of the yacht when we fired her. He was a brave man, and
indirectly he brought me to this--him and you----"
"And the justice of God," I said, thinking hatred towards him again as
I remembered Hall's death.
"Perhaps," he answered, "but you know my history; and what's done can't
be undone. Yet I say again that, if my son was alive, and was taken
from me as he was taken seven years ago in Panama, I'd do what I did,
though they burnt me alive for it. I've been agen Europe, and I've
licked 'em, by Heaven; for what they've took is only my ship, and agen
that I've a million of their money to put. One man with his hand agen
the world's a fine sight, and what I've claimed I've done. Is piracy
not worth a cent? Is it played out, do you tell me? I reckon them as
says it lies. Give me a ship like mine that can show 'em twenty-nine
knots; give me the harbour to coal once in six months; and I'll live
against the lot of them, fight 'em one by one, rule this ocean more
sure than any man ruled a people. I say I'd do it; I should have said I
could have done it, for it's over now, and the day's gone. Before
another twenty-four hours you'll be alone in this dinghy, boy. I've
death on me, and I wouldn't live without the ship; no, I'll go under as
she went under--the Lord have mercy on me!"
The firmness of the captain was near to leaving him in that moment, but
he pulled himself together with a great effort, and sat aft, sculling
with the short oar in a mechanical and altogether absent way. The long
talk with me about his past had exhausted him, I thought; and he did
not seem disposed to speak again. It was then near mid-day, and the
sun, being right above us, poured down an intolerable heat, so that the
paint of the dinghy was hot to the hand, and we ourselves were consumed
with an unquenchable thirst. Nor could I restrain myself, but drank
long draughts from the water-kegs, while Black kept to liquor; and was,
I saw with fear, rapidly working himself up to a state of intoxication.
You may ask if the terrors of the position came home to us thoroughly
in that long day when we rode in a bit of a cockle-shell on the
sweeping rollers of the Atlantic, but I answer you, I do not think that
they did. The fear of such a position is the after-recollection of it.
We were in a sense numbed to mental apprehension by the vigour of the
physical suffering we endured, by that overwhelming thirst, by the
devouring heat, by the cutting spray which drove upon our faces, by the
stiffening of our clothes when the sun scorched them. Seethed in the
brine one hour, we were nigh burnt up the next; and yet we knew that
water would soon fail us--that we could not hope for life for many days
unless we should sight some ship, and she in turn should sight us.
It is, perhaps, only in a small boat that one appreciates the magnitude
of an Atlantic wave, even when the ocean seems comparatively still.
Sometimes on a steamer's deck, when there is heavy wind and the sea is
driven before it, you may watch a huge roller sweeping the great vessel
as a pond wave will sweep a match; but at any time from a boat, which
is, as it were, right down upon the water, you cannot fail to be
impressed by the onward flow of those mighty translucent billows, which
rush forward in their course and thunder at last upon the granite rocks
of the western face of Europe. High above you in one moment as hills of
emerald and silver, you wait with nerves all braced up as they come
upon you, giving promise that you will be engulfed in the liquid bosom
of the towering mountain; and you breathe again as your boat is taken
in their swift embrace, and you are borne far above the darker ravine
of the sea to a pinnacle of spreading foam, whence you may look to the
distant horizon in that search for other ships; which may be pastime,
or may be, as in our case, a search on which your very life depends.
How often during that long afternoon, when my hair was matted with the
salt of the spray, and my hands were burnt with a consuming fire, and
my body was chill or hot with the fever of the long exposure, did I,
from such a pinnacle, cast my eyes around the foam-decked waste, and
finding it all barren, feel my heart sink as the dinghy swept again
into the dark-green abyss, and all around me were the walls of water!
How many prayers did not I send up in the silence of my heart: how many
thoughts of Roderick and of Mary, how many farewells to them! And when
I prayed for life, and no answer seemed to come, and I remembered the
years that might have been before me--years now to be unknown in the
silence of the grave--I had a great bitterness against all fate and all
men, and I crouched in the boat with my suffering heavy upon me. But
Black continued to drink, and when the sun fell low in the west, and
the whole heavens were as mountains and peaks of the crimson fire, I
knew by his mutterings that the frenzy of the old madness was upon him.
At one time he called upon his wife, I doubt not, and gave mad words of
self-reproach and of regret. And then he would mutter of his son, as
though the lad could help him; and many times he cried out: "My God!
the ship's going--hands, lower boats!" Or he raved with fierce threats
and awful cries at the American he had buried, or made desperate
appeals to some apparition that came to him in his dreadful dream. But
at the last he grew almost incoherent, thinking that I was the dead
lad; and he set himself wildly to chafe my hands, and put spirit at my
lips. I was then nigh dead with want of sleep and fatigue, for I had
not rested during the fight with the ironclads; and when he covered me
with the small tarpaulin, and made a rough pillow in the bow, I went to
sleep almost at once; and was as one drunk with the torpor of the rest.
Twice during that long night I must have roused myself. I recall well a
heaven of stars, and a moonlit sea glowing with the pale light; while
looking down upon me were the eyes of a madman, who clutched the sides
of the dinghy with trembling and claw-like hands, and had a scream upon
his lips. And again at the second time I looked upward to behold a
faint break of grey in the leaden sky, and to feel warm raindrops
beating upon me. But I heard no sound, and scarce turning in my
heaviness, I slept again; and all through my sleep I dreamed that there
was the echo of a voice, as of the voice of the damned, calling to me
from the sea, and that, though I would have helped the man whose hand
was above the waters, I could not move, for an iron grip, as the grip
of Fate, held me to my place.
When I awoke for the third time, the dinghy was held firmly by a
boat-hook, and was being drawn towards a jolly-boat full of seamen. I
rose up, rubbing my eyes as a man seeing a vision; but, when the men
shouted something to me in German, I had another exclamation on my
lips; for I was alone in the boat, and Black had left me.
Then I looked across the sea, and I saw a long black steamer lying-to a
mile away, and the men dragged me into their craft, and shouted hearty
words of encouragement, and they put liquor to my lips, and fell to
rowing with great joy. Yet I remembered my dream, and it seemed to me
that the voice I had heard in my sleep was the voice of Black, who
cried to me as he had cast himself to his death in the Atlantic.
* * * * *
Was the man dead? Had he really ended that most remarkable life of evil
enterprise and of crime; or had he by some miracle found safety while I
slept? As the Germans rowed me quickly towards their steamer, and
comforted me as one would comfort a child that is found destitute by
the way-side, I turned this thought over again and again in my mind.
Had the man gone out of my life wrapped in the mystery which had
surrounded him from the first? Did he still live to dream dreams of
vengeance and of robbery? Or had he simply cast himself from the dinghy
in a fit of insanity, and died the terrible death of the suicide? I
could not answer the tremendous question; had no clue to it; but I had
not reached the shelter of the steamer which had saved me before I made
the discovery that the belt of linen which had been about Black's waist
was now about mine, tied firmly with a sailor's knot, and when I put my
hand upon the linen I found that it was filled with some hard and sharp
stones, which had all the feel of pebbles. Instinctively I knew the
truth: that in his last hour the master of the nameless ship had
retained his curious affection for me; had made over to me some of that
huge hoard of wealth he must have accumulated by his years of pillage;
and I restrained myself with difficulty from casting the whole there
and then into the waters which had witnessed his battles for it. But
the belt was firmly lashed about me, and we were on the deck of the
steamer before my benumbed hands could set the lashing free.
It would be idle for me to attempt to describe to you all I felt as the
captain of the steamship _Hoffnung_ greeted me upon his quarterdeck,
and his men sent up rounds of cheers which echoed over the waters. I
stood for some minutes forgetful of everything, save that I had been
snatched from that prison of steel; brought from the shadow of the
living death to the hope of seeing friends, and country, and home
again. Now one man wrung my hand, now another brought clothes, now
another hot food; but I stood as one stricken dumb, holding nervously
to the taffrail as though none should drag me down again to the horrors
of the dinghy, or to that terrible loneliness which had hung over my
life for so many weeks. And then there came a great reaction, an
overpowering weakness, a great sense of thankfulness, and tears
gushed up in my eyes, and fell upon my numbed hands. The good fellows
about me, whose German was for the most part unintelligible to me,
appreciated well the condition in which I was; and, with many
encouraging pats on the back, they forced me down their companion way
to the skipper's cabin, and so to a bunk, where I lay inanimate, and
deep in sleep for many hours. But I awoke as another man, and when I
had taken a great bowl of soup and some wine, my strength seemed to
return to me with bounds, and I sat up to find they had taken away my
clothes, but that the belt which Black had bound about me lay at the
foot of the bunk, and was unopened.
For some minutes I held this belt in my hand with a curious and
inexplicable hesitation. It was not heavy, being all of linen finely
sewed; but when at last I made up my mind to open it, I did so with my
teeth, tearing the threads at the top of it, and so ripping it down.
The action was followed by a curious result, for as I opened the seams
there fell upon my bed some twenty or thirty diamonds of such size and
such lustre that they lay sparkling with a thousand lights which
dazzled the eyes, and made me utter a cry at once of surprise and of
admiration. White stones they were, Brazilian diamonds of the first
water; and when I undid the rest of the seam, and opened the belt
fully, I found at least fifty more, with some superb black pearls, a
fine emerald, and a little parcel of exquisite rubies. To the latter
there was attached a paper with the words, "My son, for as such I
regard you, take these; they are honestly come by. And let me write
while I can that I have loved you before God. Remember this when you
forget Captain Black."
That was all; and I judged that the stones were worth five thousand
pounds if they were worth a penny. I could scarce realise it all as I
read the note again and again, and handled the sparkling, glittering
baubles, which made my bunk a cave of dazzling light; or wrapped them
once more in the linen, using it as a bag, and tying it round my neck
for safety. It seemed indeed that I had come to riches as I had come
again to freedom; and in the strange bewilderment of it all, I dressed
myself in the rough clothes which the skipper had sent to me, and
bounded on deck to greet a glorious day and the fresh awakening breezes
of the sun-lit Atlantic. It was difficult to believe that there was not
a reckoning yet to come: that the nameless ship had gone to her doom.
Had I in reality escaped the terrors of the dinghy? This question I
asked myself again and again as the soft wind fanned my face; and I
went to the bulwarks, looking away where soon we should sight the
Scillies, while the honest fellows crowded round me, and showered every
kindness upon me. Yet for days and weeks after that, even now sometimes
when I am amongst my own again, I wake in my sleep with troubled cries,
and the dark gives me back the life which was my long night of
suffering.
The _Hoffnung_ was bound for Königsberg, but when the skipper and I had
come to understand each other by signs and writing, he, with great
consideration, offered to put into Southampton and leave me there. This
took a great weight from my mind, for I was burning with anxiety to
hear of my friends again; and when we entered the Channel on the third
night, I found sleep far from my eyes, and paced the deck until dawn
broke. We dropped anchor off Southampton at three in the afternoon, and
when I had insisted on Captain Wolfram taking one of my diamonds as a
souvenir for himself, and one to sell for the crew, I put off in his
long-boat with a deep sense of his humanity and kindness, and with
hearty cheers from his crew.
I should have gone to the quay at once then, but crossing the roads I
saw a yacht at anchor, and I recognised her as my own yacht _Celsis_,
with Dan pacing her poop. To put to her side was the work of a moment,
and I do not think that I ever gave a heartier hail than that "Ahoy,
Daniel!" which then fell from my lips.
"Ahoy!" cried Dan in reply, "not as it oughtn't to be Daniel, but with
no disrespect to the other gent--why, blister my foretop, if it ain't
the guvnor!"
And the old fellow began to shout and to wave his arms and to throw
ropes about as though he were smitten with lunacy.
CHAPTER XXVII.
I FALL TO WONDERING.
I had sprung up the ladder, which was always at the side of the _Celsis_,
before Dan had gathered his scattered wits to remember that it was
there. It was worth much to watch that honest fellow as he gripped my
hand in his two great paws: and then let it go to walk away, and survey
me at a distance; or drew nearer again, and seemed to wish to give me a
great hug as a bear hugs its cub. But I cut him short with a gesture,
and asked him if Roderick and Mary were aboard.
"They're down below, as I'm alive, and the hands is ashore, but they'll
come aboard for this, drunk or sober. Thunder! if I was ten years
younger--but there, I ain't, and you'll be waking 'em; do you see,
they're resting after victuals down in the saloon. Shall I tell 'em as
you've called in passing like? Lord, I can hardly see out of my eyes
for looking at you, sir."
Poor old Dan did not quite know what he was doing. I left him in the
midst of his strange talk, and walked softly down the companion way to
the door of the saloon, and I opened it and stood, I doubt not, before
them as one come from the dead. Mary, whose childish face looked very
drawn, was seated before a book, open upon the table, her head resting
upon her hands, and a strange expression of melancholy in her great
dark eyes. But Roderick lay upon a sofa-bunk, and was fast asleep, with
the novel which he had been reading lying crumpled upon the floor.
I had opened the door so gently that neither of them moved as I entered
the room. It was to me the best moment of my life to be looking again
upon them, and I waited for one minute till Mary raised her head, and
our eyes met. Then I bent over the cabin table and kissed her, and I
felt her clinging to me, and though she never spoke, her eyes were wet
with hot tears; and when she smiled through them, it was as a glimpse
of bright sunlight shining through a rain-shower. In another moment
there was nothing but the expression of a great childish joy on her
face, and the old Mary spoke.
"Mark, I can't believe it," she said, holding me close lest I might go
away again, "and I always guessed you'd come."
But Roderick awoke with a yawn, and when he saw me he rubbed his eyes,
and said as one in a dream--
"Oh, is that you?"
* * * * *
The tea which Mary made was very fragrant, and Roderick's cigars had a
fine rich flavour of their own, to which we did justice, as we sat long
that afternoon, and I told of the days in Ice-haven. It was a long
story, as you know, and I could but give them the outline of it, or, in
turn, hear but a tenth part of their own anxieties and ceaseless
efforts in my behalf. It appeared that when I had failed to return to
the hotel on that night when I followed Paolo to the den in the Bowery,
Roderick had gone at once to the yacht, and there had learnt from Dan
of my intention. He did not lose an instant in seeking the aid of the
police, but I was even then astern of the _Labrador_, and the keen
search which the New York detectives had made was fruitless even in
gleaning any tidings of me. Paolo was followed night and day for
twenty-four hours; but he was shot in a drinking-den before the
detectives laid hands on him, and only lived long enough to send Mary a
message, telling her that her pretty eyes had saved the _Celsis_ from
disaster in the Atlantic. On the next day both the skipper and Roderick
made public all they knew of Black and his crew, and a greater
sensation was never made in any city. The news was cabled to Europe
over half-a-dozen wires, was hurried to the Pacific, to Japanese
seas--it shook the navies of the world with an excitement rarely known,
and for some weeks it paralysed all traffic on the Atlantic. Cruisers
of many nations were sent in the course of the great ocean-going
steamers; arms were carried by some of the largest of the passenger
ships, and the question was asked daily before all other questions, "Is
the nameless ship taken?" Yet, it was no more than a few weeks' wonder;
for we had fled to Ice-haven, and people who heard no more of the new
piracy asked themselves, "Are not these the dreams of dreamers?"
Meanwhile Roderick and Mary, who suffered all the anguish of suspense,
returned to Europe, and to London, there to interview the First Lord of
the Admiralty, and to hear the whole matter discussed in Parliament.
Several warships and cruisers were despatched to the Atlantic, but
returned to report the ill result of their mission, which could have
had but this end, since Black was then in the shelter of the fjord at
Greenland, and none thought of seeking him there. Nor was my oldest
friend content with this national action and the subsequent offer of a
reward of £50,000 for the capture of the nameless ship or of her crew,
for he put the best private detectives in the city at the work, sending
two to New York, and others to Paris and to Spezia. These fathomed
something of the earlier mystery of Captain Black's life, but the man's
after-deeds were hidden from them; and when the weeks passed and I did
not come, all thought that I had died in my self-appointed
mission--another of his many victims.
It was but a few days after this sorrowful conviction that Black and I
went to London, and were seen by Inspector King, who had watched night
and day for the man's coming. The detective had immediately telegraphed
to the Admiralty, and to Roderick, who had reached my hotel to find
that I had already left. Then he hurried back to Southampton, there to
hear of the going of the warships and to wait with Mary tidings of the
last great battle, which meant life or death to me.
Long we sat discussing these things, and very bright were a pair of
dark eyes that listened again to Roderick's story, and then to more of
mine. But Roderick himself had awoke from his lethargy, and his
enthusiasm broke through all his old restraint.
"To-morrow, why, to-morrow, by George, you'll astound London. My dear
fellow, we'll go to town together to claim the £50,000 which the
Admiralty offered, and the £20,000 from the Black Anchor Line, to say
nothing of American money galore. You're made for life, old man; and
we'll take the old yacht north to Greenland, and hunt up the place and
Black's tender, which seems to have escaped the ironclads, and it'll be
the finest trip we ever knew."
"What does Mary say?" I asked as she still held my hand.
"I don't mean to leave you again," she answered, and as she spoke there
was a great sound of cheering above, and a great tramp of feet upon the
deck; and as we hurried up, the hands I loved to see crowded about me,
and their shouting was carried far over the water, and was taken up on
other ships, which threw their search-lights upon us, so that the night
was as a new day to me, and the awakening from the weeks of dreaming as
the coming of spring after winter's dark. Yet, as the child-face was
all lighted with radiant smiles, and honest hands clasped mine, and the
waters echoed the triumphant greeting, I could not but think again of
Captain Black, or ask myself--Is the man really dead, or shall we yet
hear of him, bringing terror upon the sea, and death and suffering; the
master of the nations, and the child of a wanton ambition? Or is his
grave in the great Atlantic that he ruled in the mighty moments of his
power? Ah, I wonder.
THE END.
Printed by CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.
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