"To-night?" she persisted, lying back in his arms. And watching him, sensing his uncertainty, her gaze hardened, she sat up away from him, waiting for him to speak, as though she were fate indeed. Always she gave him that impression of hair-trigger readiness to fight, to rip and tear and give no quarter. As he looked at her now, turning over his dire predicament the while, he noticed the truculent solidity of her jaw, the indomitable courage and steadiness of her gaze.
"Wait," he muttered, putting up his hand and then holding it to his brow. "I must think. I don't know when we arrive. To-morrow, perhaps."
"Why do you look so sad?" she demanded. "Mon Dieu!To-morrow at Ismir. What happiness!"
"For you," he added in a low voice.
"And for you," she twittered in his ear and patting his hand. "I see the plan of Monsieur Dainopoulos now. We shall have good fortune."
There was a faint tap at the door.
"Supper, Madama," said the young Jew, making a low bow, and they went up.
Mr. Spokesly, sitting on the engineer's settee an hour later and discussing the matter cautiously with that person, was not so sure of the good fortune.
"What can we do?" he asked, and the engineer, who was of a peaceful disposition and perfectly satisfied so long as he got his pay, said:
"You can't do nothing in this fog. He's the captain."
"We may hit something," said Mr. Spokesly, who was talking more for comfort than for enlightenment.
"Why, yes, we may do that. Do it anywhere, come to that. Where do you think we are now, Mister Mate?"
"I don't know, I tell you. He says to me, 'I'll attend to the course,' and he may have put her round. But I've got a notion he's carrying out his orders. I see now why I got six months' pay. Did you?"
"No, I got a note on the captain, same as usual," said Mr. Cassar.
"What do you think they will do with us?" pursued Mr. Spokesly.
"I don't know, Mister Mate. There's always plenty o' work everywhere," was the equable reply.
"Is that all you think of?"
"I got a big family in Cospicua," said the engineer, standing up. "I can't afford to be out of a job. I think I'll go and eat, Mister Mate. Perhaps the fog will lift a bit and we can see what the course is."
They went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge-deck, and stood staring into the damp, palpable darkness. The absence of all artificial light, the silence, the tangible vapour concealing the surface of the sea, and possibly, too, the over-hanging uncertainty of their destination, combined to fill them with a vague dull sense of impending peril. They were on the starboard side, abaft the lifeboat. They could not see the bridge clearly, and the forecastle was swallowed up in the blank opacity of the mist. It was a situation in which both care and recklessness were of equal futility. The imagination balked and turned back on itself before the contemplation of such limitless possibilities. And it was while they were standing there in taciturn apprehension that they suddenly sprang into an extraordinary animation of mind and body at the sound and vibration of a loud crash forward. TheKalkisheeled over to port from the pressure of some invisible weight and Mr. Spokesly started to run towards the bridge.
"They're shellin' her!" he bawled. "Stand by! Look out! What's that?"
He stood still for a moment, his hands raised to balance himself against the returning roll of the ship as she recovered. And in that moment, out of the fog, above him and over the rail, came an immense gray vertical wall of sharp steel rushing up to him and past into oblivion with a grinding splintering roar. There were cries, the dim glow of an opened door high up, the sough of pouring waters in the darkness, a shadowy phantom and a swirl of propellers, and she was gone.
And there was an absolute silence on theKalkismore dreadful to Mr. Spokesly than the panic of the mob of Asiatics on theTanganyika. He tried to think. Mr. Cassar had disappeared. They had been in collision with a man-of-war, he felt certain of that. There was no mistaking the high cleaving flare of those gray bows as they fled past. And she must have struck theKalkisforward as well as amidships. A glancing blow. Yet there was silence. He strode forward and climbed the ladder to the bridge.
"Are you there, sir?" he called.
There was no answer. He went up to the man at the wheel, who was turning the spokes of the wheel rapidly.
"Where is the Captain?" he demanded harshly.
"He's over there," said the man confidentially, nodding towards the other side of the bridge. "What was that, sir? Explosions?"
"I don't know," said Mr. Spokesly angrily. "Ask the captain," and he went down again and descended the ladder to the fore-deck.
He fell over something here in the dark, something rough and with jagged edges. He felt it with his hands and discovered that it was one of the heavy cast-iron bollards which were mounted on either side of the forecastle head. Mr. Spokesly began to realize that he was confronting a problem which he would have to handle alone. He stepped over the mass of metal, which had been flung fifty feet, and immediately tripped upon a swaying, jagged surface that tore his clothes and cut his hands. He said to himself, "The deck is torn up. I must have a light." There was no sound from forward and he wondered miserably if any of them had been hurt. He climbed to the bridge again to get a hurricane lamp that he knew was in the chart room. While he was striking a match to light it he was once more aware of the fact that the engines were still going. So he hadn't stopped or anything. The captain's form was dimly discernible against the canvas dodger, extraordinarily huge and rotund. Mr. Spokesly's anger broke out in a harsh yell.
"Hi, Captain! Do you know your forecastle's carried away? Or perhaps you don't care."
"I won't be spoken to in that manner," came the lisping, toothless voice from the darkness. "Go forward and report on the damage. I should think it wouldn't be necessary to tell an experienced officer his duty...."
Mr. Spokesly, swinging the hurricane lamp in his hand, laid his other hand upon Captain Rannie's shoulder.
"Look you here, Captain. You won't be spoken to in that manner? You'll be spoken to as I want from now on. Do you get that? From now on. I'm going forward to report damage. And when I find out if the ship's sinking, I'll not trouble to tell you, you double-crossing old blatherskite you!" And he gave the captain a thrust that sent him flying into the pent-house at the end, where he remained invisible but audible, referring with vivacity to the fact that he had been "attacked."
"I'll attack you again when I come back," muttered his chief officer as he went down the ladder.
And the lamp showed him, in spite of the fog, what had happened. The fore-deck was a mass of ripped and twisted plates, splintered doors, and fragments of the interiors of cabins looked strangely small and tawdry out on the harsh deck. A settee-cushion, all burst and impaled upon a piece of angle iron, impeded him. "Won't be spoken to that fashion!" he muttered, holding up the lamp and peering into the murk. "Good Lord! The forecastle's carried away." He stumbled nearer. There was no ladder on this side any more. The high sharp prow had struck a glancing blow just abaft the anchor and sliced away the whole starboard side of the forecastle. Standing where the door of the bosun's room had been, Mr. Spokesly lowered his lamp and saw the black water rushing past between the torn deck-beams. And Mr. Spokesly had it borne in upon him that not only was Plouff vanished, but his cabin was gone. There was scarcely anything of it left save some splintered parts of the settee and the inner bulkhead, on which a gaudy calendar from a seaman's outfitter fluttered in the night breeze against the blue-white paint.
Mr. Spokesly's heart was daunted by the desolation of that brutally revealed interior. It daunted him because he could imagine, with painful particularity, the scene in that little cabin a few moments before. He had looked in at the door a day or two since, and seen Plouff, a large calabash pipe like a cornucopia in his mouth, propped up in his bed-place, reading a very large book with marbled covers which turned out to be the bound volume of a thirty-year-old magazine picked up for a few pence in some port. He could see him thus engaged a few moments ago. Mr. Spokesly gave a sort of half-sob, half-giggle. "My God, he isn't here at all! He's been carried away, cabin and bunk and everything. Smashed and drowned. Well!"
He felt he couldn't stop there any more. It was worse than finding Plouff's mangled body in the ruins. To have been wiped out like that without a chance to explain a single word to any one was tragic for Plouff. Mr. Spokesly gave a shout.
"Anybody down there?" There was no answer. He found himself wondering what the captain's comment would be upon Plouff's sudden departure for parts unknown. He tried to convince himself that there was no reason for supposing him to be dead. He saw him sitting up in his bunk in the sea, still clasping the large book and smoking the trumpet-shaped pipe, and indulging in a querulous explanation of his unusual behaviour. Which would not be his fault for once, Mr. Spokesly reflected. No doubt, however, Captain Rannie would log him for deserting the ship. Mr. Spokesly went aft and looked at the boat near which he had been standing when the collision happened. It was hanging by the after davit, a mere bunch of smashed sticks. Trailing in the water and making a soft swishing sound were the bow plates and bulwarks which had been peeled from the forepart of theKalkisby the sharp prow of the stranger. And yet she seemed to have suffered nothing below the water-line. Mr. Spokesly, who knew Plouff kept the sounding rod in his cabin, wondered how he was going to sound the wells. He thought of the engineer, stepped over to the port side to reach the after ladder, and pulled himself up short to avoid falling over a huddled group gathered alongside the engine-room hatch.
"What's the matter?" he stammered, astonished. He saw the steward, a coat hastily put on over his apron, Amos, whose glittering and protuberant eyes were less certain than ever of his future fortune, and Evanthia. She was not afraid. She was angry. She darted at Mr. Spokesly and broke into a torrent of invective against the two wretched beings who wanted to get into the boat and couldn't untie the ropes.
"Pigs, dogs, carrion!" she shrilled at them in Greek, and then to Mr. Spokesly she said,
"The ship. Is it finished?"
"No. Ship's all right. Why don't you go down?"
"Mon Dieu!Why? He asks why! Did you hear the noise? The bed is broken. The window, the lamp,Brr-pp!" She clapped her hands together. "Why? Go and see," and she turned away from him to rage once more at the two terrified creatures who had been unable to carry out her imperious orders. These had been to set her afloat in the lifeboat instantly; and willingly would they have done it, and gone in with her themselves; but alas, they had been unable to let the villainous boat drop into the water.
Mr. Spokesly was genuinely alarmed at this news. He left them precipitately and ran down the cabin stairs to find out if the ship was making water.
There was no need. TheKalkis, on rebounding from the terrific impact on her forecastle, had heeled over to starboard, the side of the ship had been buckled and crushed along the line of the deck, and the concussion had knocked the lamp out of its gimbals and it was rolling on the floor. He picked it up and relit it. He hurried out again to find the engineer. His training was urging him to get the wells sounded. Moreover, the filling of the forepeak through the smashed chain-locker had put the ship down by the head a little. She might be all right, but on the other hand....
He found the engineer calmly hauling the line out of the forward sounding pipes.
"Is she making anything, Chief?" he asked anxiously.
"Just show a light please, Mister Mate. I got a flashlight here but it's gone out on me. Why, four inches. Nothing muchhere. We'll try the other side, eh?"
They scrambled over the hatch and hastily wiped the rod dry before lowering it into the pipe.
"Hm!" The engineer grunted as he brought the rod into view again. "Three feet!I reckon she's makin' some water here through that bulkhead, Mister Mate. What say if I try the pumps on her, eh?"
"You do that, will you? I was afraid o' that, Chief. You know the bosun's gone?"
"Is that so? Gee! That's a big smash! The bosun? Tk—tk! I'll get the pump on her."
"Now!" said Mr. Spokesly to himself, "I'm going to see the Old Man." And he sprang up the ladders once more.
Captain Rannie was not to be seen, however. Mr. Spokesly went upon the bridge charged with belligerence. But Captain Rannie was an old hand. He had had an extraordinarily varied experience of exasperated subordinates and Mr. Spokesly's conscientious tantrums worried him not at all. Especially did he fail to appreciate the significance of his chief officer's anxiety at this moment since from his own point of view this smash in the fog, supposing they did not meet any inquisitive craft for an hour or two, and this was not at all likely—this smash was a piece of singular good fortune. The cruiser would report ramming a small vessel in the fog, and the people in Saloniki, knowing the position of theKalkis, would conclude she was lost with all hands, when she failed to appear at Phyros. It was so perfectly in accordance with his desires that he decided to run down and get one of his own special cigarettes. Now that he was actually in the middle of carrying out the plans of the owner of theKalkis, Captain Rannie suffered from none of the timidity and truculent nervousness which had assailed him the day before. He had more courage than Mr. Spokesly would ever admit because that gentleman was not aware that his captain was a bad navigator. To the bad navigator every voyage is a miracle.
So he came up jauntily, behind Mr. Spokesly, smoking a special cigarette, and ignoring his chief officer completely until the latter chose to speak. This was another trick he had learned in the course of his career of oblique enthusiasms and carefully cultivated antagonisms. He had once been savagely "attacked," as he called it, by a sailor simply because he waited for the man to speak before saying a word! He had found that men might growl at being treated "like dogs" but to rowel the human soul it was far better to act as though they did not exist at all. There was a blind primeval ferocity to be engendered by adumbrating, even for a few moments, their non-existence. And now, with everything in his favour, for he had heard the engineer's remarks on the condition of the bilges forward, he was resolved to "maintain his authority," as he phrased it, by "a perfectly justifiable silence."
But it was no use trying to convince Mr. Spokesly that he did not exist. That gentleman, in the course of the last few minutes, since the collision in fact, had experienced a great accession of vitality. He felt as though not only his own existence but the integrity of the ship as a living whole, her frame, her life, her freight, and the souls clinging to her in the blind white void of the fog, was concentrated in himself. He looked over the side and tried to see if the engineer had succeeded in getting the pump on that bilge. She was down by the head—no doubt of that. And yet there couldn't be any real fracture of that bulkhead, or the fore-hold would have filled by now. Lucky all the caps were well lashed on the ventilators. He looked over the side again. The fog seemed clearing a little. And the ship was moving faster. The beat of the engines was certainly more rapid. He stared at the ostentatiously turned back of his commander with a sort of exasperated admiration. He was evidently a much more accomplished scoundrel than Mr. Spokesly had imagined. Here he had extra speed up his sleeve. Why, it might be anything up to thirteen knots. Not that theKalkishad boilers for that speed. Wow! He was a card!
"I suppose you know the bosun was carried overboard when that ship hit us," Mr. Spokesly remarked in a conversational tone as the captain approached in his stroll.
"And I've no doubt," said Captain Rannie with extreme bitterness to the surrounding air, "that you blame me for not stopping and picking him up."
"You might have stopped, certainly," said his chief officer; "but the point is, if you'd been on your right course you wouldn't have hit anything."
"Oh, indeed! Oh, indeed!" said the captain.
"Yes, oh, indeed. You won't maintain you were on the right course, I suppose."
"I maintain nothing," snapped the captain. "I'll merely trouble you to ask the man at the wheel what course he was making when we were run into by one of those infernal, careless naval officers who think they know everything, like you. And after that I'll merely invite you to mind your own business."
"Mind my own business!" repeated Mr. Spokesly in a daze.
"And I'll mind mine," added the captain after a dramatic pause, and turning on his heel.
"You're like some bally old woman," began Mr. Spokesly, "with your nag, nag, nag. I don't wonder that Maltee mate used to go for you."
"Ask the man at the wheel what course he was steering," repeated the captain distinctly, coming back out of the gloom and wheeling away again.
"I'll be going for you myself before this trip is over," added the mate.
"And then kindly leave the bridge," concluded the captain, reappearing once more, as though emerging suddenly from the wings of a theatre and declaiming a speech in a play. Having declaimed it, however, he retreated with singular precipitancy.
"I must say, I've been with a few commanders in my time," Mr. Spokesly began in a general way. He heard his captain's voice out of the dark opining that he had no doubt every one of those commanders was glad enough to get rid of him. He could easily believe that.
"Perhaps they were," agreed Mr. Spokesly. "Perhaps they were. The point is, even supposing that was the case, they never made me want to throw them over the side."
The voice came out of the darkness again, commenting upon Mr. Spokesly's extreme forbearance.
"Don't drive me too far," he warned.
The voice said all Mr. Spokesly had to do was remove himself and come on the bridge when he was sent for. No driving was intended.
"Ah, you talk very well, captain. I'm only wondering whether you'll talk half so well at the Inquiry."
The voice asked, what inquiry? with a titter.
"There's always an inquiry, somewhere, sometime," said Mr. Spokesly, dully, wondering what he himself would have to say, for that matter. He heard the voice enunciate with a certain lisping exactitude, "Not yet."
"Oh, no, not yet. When the war's won, let's say," he replied. This seemed such a convenient substitute for "never," that he was not surprised to get no answer save a sound like "Tchah!"
"The fog's lifting," he remarked absently. It was. He could already see a number of stars above his head through the thinning vapour. "I'll leave you," he added, "must get some sleep. However," he went on, "we'll have another look at the bilges. I got a certificate to lose as well as you—if you've got one."
The captain remained in obscurity, and made no reply.
"I mean, if you haven't had it endorsed, or suspended, or any little thing like that."
There was no answer, and tiring of the sport, Mr. Spokesly picked up the hurricane lamp and went down again to sound the starboard bilge. He was getting very tired physically, now the reaction from the excitement of the collision had set in. He found the sounding-rod, neatly chalked, ready to lower. Very decent party, that engineer, he reflected. Rather disconcerting though in his almost perfect neutrality. The wife and the big family out at Cospicua, which is near Valletta, seemed to be a powerful resolvent of sentimental ideas. For such a man there was nothing of any permanence in the world to compare with a permanent billet. His loyalty was to his job rather than to abstract principles of nationality. Well! The rod showed two feet eight inches. Mr. Spokesly breathed more easily. He had got his pumps going, then. He decided to go aft. Yes, the fog was clearing.
In the stress of the crisis through which he was passing, the mysterious and exacerbating strife going on between himself and the captain, Mr. Spokesly seemed to himself to be separated from Evanthia as by a transparent yet impassable barrier. The insignificance of such a creature in the face of a material disaster as had been impending appalled him. He saw with abrupt clarity how, if the ship had been mortally hit, and if there had been any manner of struggle to save their lives, she would not have sustained the part of fainting heroine rescued by lion-hearted men, or that of heroic comrade taking her place in the peril beside them. Nothing of the sort. She would have got into the boat and commanded the crew to row away with her at once. She did not know that Plouff was gone, and if he went down and told her, she would not care a flip of her fingers. That, he was surprised to realize, was part of her charm. She was so entirely pagan in her attitude towards men. She was one of those women who were born to be possessed by men, but the men who possess them can possess nothing else. They are the destroyers, not of morals, but of ideals. They render the imagination futile because they possess the powerful arts of the enchantresses, the daughters of Helios. They demand the chastity of an anchorite and the devotion of a knight of the Grail. While the virtuous and generous bend under the weight of their self-appointed travails, these pass by in swift palanquins of silk and fine gold, and are adored by the valiant and the wise.
And he was going to marry her.
He slept heavily on the engineer's settee. He had told that obliging person to give him a call at midnight—he wanted to see what the Old Man was up to. The Old Man, however, later gave Mr. Cassar explicit orders to let the mate sleep—he would remain on duty himself. The chief felt it incumbent upon him to oblige the captain, and Mr. Spokesly slept on, much disturbed none the less by grotesque and laboured forebodings of his subconscious being, so that he moved restlessly at times, as though some occult power within was striving to rouse him. Indeed, it was the spirit of duty struggling with wearied tissues. It was past three when the former was so far successful as to wrench his eyes open. He started up, stretched, looked at the engineer's clock, and muttered that he must have fallen asleep again. He put on his coat and cap, and taking a hurried glance at the engineer, who was sprawling on his back in his bunk with his mouth open and his fingers clutching the matted growth of black hair on his chest, he hurried out on deck.
The fog was gone, and a high, level canopy of thin clouds gave the night the character of an enormous and perfectly dark chamber. TheKalkiswas moving so slowly, Mr. Spokesly could with difficulty keep tally of the beat of the engines. Yet she was moving. He could hear the sough of water, and there was a faint phosphorescence along the ship's side. And a change in the air, an indefinable modification of temperature and possibly smell, led him to examine the near horizon for the deeper blackness of a high shore. He listened intently, trying to detect the sound of waves on the rocks. He tried to figure out what the position would be now, if they had made the course he suspected. They ought to be under the southern shores of Lesbos by now. But if that were the case the cool breeze coming off shore would be on the port side. He listened, sniffed, and resigned himself passively for a moment to the impact of influences so subtle that to one unaccustomed to the sea they might be suspected of supernatural sources. He climbed to the bridge-deck and went over to where the smashed boat hung like a skeleton from the crumpled davit. And he was aware at once of the correctness of his suspicions. But it would not be Lesbos. It was the high land which juts northward and forms the western promontory of the long curving Gulf of Smyrna. He could see it as an intenser and colder projection of the darkness. And then his curiosity centred about the more complex problem of speed. They could not be doing more than a couple of knots. What was the old fraud's game? Waiting for a signal, perhaps. He had evidently got himself and his old ship inside any mines that had been laid between Chios and Lesbos. If there were any. Perhaps he was waiting for daylight.
This was the correct solution. Captain Rannie had crept as close in under Lesbos as he had dared according to the scanty hints he had gotten from Mr. Dainopoulos, who had been informed by a Greek sailor from a captured Bulgarian schooner that there was a safe passage inshore to the east of Cape Vurkos. The result, however, of clearing the southern coast of Lesbos in safety was to engender a slight recklessness in the captain. For his dangers were practically over. Even if he got run ashore later, they could get the cargo out of her. And he had made too much distance east before turning south, so that, in trying to raise a certain point on the western side, he had grown confused. The chart was not large enough. When Mr. Spokesly appeared once more on the bridge, Captain Rannie had rung "Slow" on the telegraph, and was endeavouring to locate some sort of light upon the immense wall of blackness that rose to starboard.
And it could not be asserted that he was sorry to see his chief officer. That gentleman could not do much now. Captain Rannie, with his binoculars to his eyes, was trembling with excitement. According to the chart he ought to see a red light on his port bow within an hour or two. There was a good reason for supposing that light was still kept burning even during the war. It could not be seen from the northward and was of prime importance to coasting vessels in the Gulf when making the turn eastward into the great inland estuary at the head of which lay the city. He was creeping along under the high western shore until he felt he could make the turn. It was shallow water away to the eastward, by the salt-works. It was nearly over. He would get the money, in gold, and wait quietly until the war was over, and take a passage back to China. He knew a valley, the Valley of Blue Primroses, a mere fold in a range of enormous mountains, where men dwelt amid scenes of beauty and ineffable peace, where he would live, too, far away from the people of his own race, and far from the detestable rabble of ships. He had never got on with seamen. Sooner or later, they always attacked him either with violence or invective. He would be revenged on the whole pack of them!
He heard his chief officer behind him and maintained his attitude of close attention. He was trembling. One, two, or perhaps three or four hours and he would know that all was well. He wished he could see better, though. During the fog there had been a curious sense of satisfaction in his heart because he knew that, whatever happened, his defective vision would make no difference. Oh, he could see all right. But those damned red lights. He was sure there was nothing, yet. That chief officer of his had gone into the chart room. Captain Rannie forgot himself so far as to titter. Imagine a simple-minded creature like that trying to puthimout of countenance! Inquiry! A fine showhewould make at the inquiry, with a woman in his cabin, and six months' pay in his pocket! Ho-ho! These smart young men! He hated them. There was only one kind of human being he hated more and that was a young woman. He was perfectly sincere. The Caucasian had come to him to appear like a puffy white fungus, loathsome to come in contact with. Without ever expressing himself, for there was no need, he had conceived a strong predilection for the Oriental. He loved the permanence of the type, the skins like yellow silk, the hair like polished ebony, the eyes, long and narrow, like black satin. He liked to have them on the ship, silent, incurious, efficient, devoid of ambition. He put the glasses in the little locker by the bridge-rail. There was no light to be seen.
He started towards the chart-room door and found himself confronted by his chief officer. He would have brushed past with his almost feminine petulance had not Mr. Spokesly once again seized his shoulder.
"She hasn't got steerage way," said the mate.
"What do you mean by steerage way?" he inquired sarcastically.
"Do you know where you are?" demanded Mr. Spokesly, steadily, "or is it your intention to run her ashore? I'm only asking for information."
Captain Rannie forced himself into the chart room and putting on his glasses examined the chart afresh. Mr. Spokesly followed him in and shut the door.
"I won't have this," the captain began rapidly, laying his hand on the chart and staring down at it. "I won't have it, I tell you. You force yourself in upon me and I am obliged to speak plainly."
"I only want to tell you," said Mr. Spokesly, "that you are too far to the westward. The current is setting you this way," he tapped the chart where a large indentation bore away due south, "and by daylight you won't have sea room."
"I don't believe it!" exclaimed the captain, who meant that he did believe it. "I have taken the log every quarter of an hour."
"Well," said Mr. Spokesly, who was perfectly at ease in this sort of navigation, "the current won't show on the log, which is away out any way. I tell you again, she's going ashore. And it's deep water all round here, as you can see. It won't take a very heavy wallop to send her to the bottom with her bows opened out and the fore peak bulkhead leaking already. Put her about. If you don't," said the mate with his hand on the door and looking hard at his commander, "do you know what I'll do?"
He did not wait for an answer but went out and closed the door sharply. He picked up the telescope and examined the horizon on the port bow. He could discern without difficulty the lofty silhouette of a rocky promontory between the ship and the faint beginnings of the dawn. He turned to the helmsman.
"Hard over to port," he said quietly, and reaching out his hand he rang "Full ahead" on the telegraph. It answered with a brisk scratching jangle, and a rhythmic tremor passed through the vessel's frame, as though she, too, had suddenly realized her peril.
"You do what I say," he warned the man at the wheel, who did not reply. He only twirled the spokes energetically, and the little ship heeled over as she went round. Mr. Spokesly looked again at the approaching coast. There was plenty of room. He heard the door open and the captain come out.
"Easy now," Mr. Spokesly said. "Starboard. Easy does it. That's the style. Well, do you believe what I say now, Captain?"
"I'll report you—I'll have you arrested—I'll use my power——" he stuttered, stopping short by the binnacle and bending double in the impotence of his anger. "Remember, I can tell things about you," he added, pointing his finger at the mate, as though he were actually indicating a visible mark of guilt.
"Shut up," said Mr. Spokesly, staring hard through the telescope. "Hold her on that now, Quartermaster, till I give the word. There will be enough light soon."
Captain Rannie came up to his chief officer's shoulder and whispered:
"You're in this as deep as I am, remember."
"I'm not in it at all and don't you forget it," bawled Mr. Spokesly. The man at the wheel said suddenly in a querulous tone:
"I can't see to steer."
Captain Rannie had fallen back against the binnacle and the sleeve of his coat covered the round hole through which the compass could be seen.
"You threaten me?" he whimpered. "You threaten the master of the ship?"
"Threaten!" repeated Mr. Spokesly, looking eagerly through the binoculars. "Couple of points to starboard, you. I reckon she's all right now," he muttered to himself, "but we'll go half speed for a bit," and he pulled the handle. At the sound of the reply gong and the obsequious movement of the pointer on the dial Captain Rannie was galvanized into fresh life. It was as though the sound had reminded him of something.
"You've been against me ever since you came aboard," he announced. "I noticed it from the first. You had made up your mind to give me all the trouble you possibly could. I don't know how it is, I'm sure, but I always get the most insubordinate and useless officers on my ship. You go in these big lines and get exaggerated ideas of your own importance, and then come to me and try it on here. How can a commander get on with officers who defy him and incite the crew to mutiny? Don't deny it. What you're doing now is mutiny. It may take time, but I'll do it. I'll get you into all the trouble I possibly can for this. I—I—I'll log the whole thing. I'm sorry I ever shipped you. I might have known. I suspected something of the sort. A manner you had in the office. Impudent, insubordinate, self-sufficient. On the beach. Not a suit of clothes to your back. Had to borrow money—Iheard all about it. And then bringing a woman on the ship. Told some sort of tale to the owner. All very fine. I might as well tell you now, since you've taken this attitude, that I knew we wouldn't get on. If it had been a regular voyage I wouldn't have had you. It's been nothing but trouble since you came. The other man was bad enough, but you...."
"Starboard, Quartermaster. Go ahead, Captain. That's one thing about you. Nothing matters so long as you can go on talking. Fire away if it eases your mind. But I'm taking this ship in. See the fairway? If you make anything out of this trip, and I dare say you'll make it all right, don't forget you owe it to me. You had me rattled a bit when you ran into that ship last night. I thought you knew what you were doing. And you were just scared. Sitting over there on that life-belt, blowing up that patent vest of yours. Thought I didn't notice it, eh? So busy blowing it up you couldn't answer me when I called you. Master of the ship! Yah!"
Captain Rannie was visible now, a high-shouldered figure with one hand in his pocket and the other resting on the corner of the chart house. During the night he had put on a thick woollen cap with a small knob, the size of a cherry, on the point of it, and it made him look like some fantastic creature out of an opera. It was as though he had materialized out of the darkness, an elderly imp foiled in his mischievous designs. He stood there, looking down at the deck, his mouth working over his toothless gums, silently yet frantically marshalling the routed forces of his personality.
"All right!" he exclaimed. "You take her, I hold you responsible, mind that. I wash my hands of you. You incited my crew to mutiny. Defied my orders."
Mr. Spokesly turned suddenly and Captain Rannie rushed to the ladder and descended halfway, holding by the hand-rail and looking up at Mr. Spokesly's knees.
"Don't you attack me!" he shrilled. "Don't you dare...." He paused, breathing heavily.
Mr. Spokesly walked to the ladder.
"You'd better go down and pull yourself together," he said in a low tone. "You're only making yourself conspicuous. I can manage without you. And if you come up here again until I've taken her in, by heavens I'll throw you over the side."
He walked back quickly to the bridge-rail, and stared with anxious eyes into the stretch of fairway. He could not help feeling that something tremendous was happening to him. To say that to the captain of the ship! But he had to keep his attention on the course. Looking ahead, it was as though he had made the same error of which he had accused the Captain, of running into the land. On the port side the low shore in the half-light ran up apparently into the immense wall of blue mountains in the distance. A few more miles and he would see. He looked down at the torn strakes draggling in the water alongside, at the smashed boat, and the tangled wreckage on the fore-deck. She was very much down by the head now, he noted. Yet they were making it. It would be any moment now when the land would open out away to the eastward and he would give the word to bear away.
And as the sun came up behind the great ranges of Asia and touched the dark blue above their summits with an electric radiance so that the sea and the shore, though dark, were yet strangely clear, he saw the white riffle of contending currents away to port, and got his sure bearings in the Gulf. And as he rang "Full speed ahead" he heard a step behind him and felt a quick pressure of his arm.
She was wearing the big blue overcoat, which was Plouff's last demonstration of his own peculiar and indefatigable usefulness, and her face glowed in the depths of the up-turned collar. The morning breeze blew her hair about as she peered eagerly towards the goal of her desire.
"See!" she cried happily, pointing, one finger showing at the end of the huge sleeve. "See the town?" She snatched the glasses and held them to her eyes. "Giaour Ismir!"
"You don't want to get into the boat after all," he said, putting his arm about her shoulders.
"Me? No! That fool said the ship would go down. Look! Oh,quelle jolie ville!"
"Where?" he said, taking the glasses.
"See!" She pointed into the dim gray stretch of the waters that lay like a lake in the bosom of immense mountains. He looked and saw what she meant, a spatter of white on the blue hillside, a tiny sparkle of lights and clusters of tall cypresses, black against the mists of the morning. And along the coast on their right lay a gray-green sea of foliage where the olive groves lined the shore. Range beyond range the mountains receded, barring the light of the sun and leaving the great city in a light as mysterious as the dawn of a new world. Far up the Gulf, beyond the last glitter of the long sea wall, he could see the valleys flooded with pale golden light from the hidden sun, with white houses looking down upon the waters from their green nests of cypresses and oaks.
"Why don't they come out?" he wondered half to himself. "Are they all asleep?"
"Oh, the poor ones, they must come out in a boat. They have no coal," she retorted. "Look! there is a little ship sailing out! Tck!"
He looked at it. Well, what could they do? He held her close. She must be interpreter for him, he said. Oh, of course. She would tell them what a hero he was, how he had brought them safely through innumerable dangers for her sake. They would live, see! Up there. He had no idea how happy they would be!
The little sailing boat was coming out, her sail like a fleck of cambric on the dark water.
He said there was no need to tell them he was a hero.
"They will know it," she said, "when they see the poor ship. Oh, yes, I will tell them everything. I will tell them you did this because you love me."
"Will they believe it?" he asked in a low tone, watching the city as they drew nearer.
"Believe?" she questioned without glancing at him. "It is nothing to them. What matter? I tell them something, that is all."
He did not reply to this, merely turning to give an order to the helmsman. The other seaman was coming along the deck, and he called him to take in the log and run up the ensign. It was nothing to them, he thought, repeating her words to himself. Nothing. They would make no fine distinctions between himself and the captain. Yes, she was right in that. He went into the chart room and got out the flags of the ship's name. She, the ship, was not to blame, he muttered. She had been faithful. "And so have I!" he cried out within himself. He could not make it clear even to himself, but as he bent the grimy little flags to the signal halyards and hoisted them to the crosstrees, and saw them straighten out like sheets of tin in the breeze, he had an uplifting of the heart. He rang "Stop" to the engine room, and went over to Evanthia.
"Go down," he said gently, "and tell the captain he must come up. We are going to drop the anchor. There is a boat coming alongside."
He stood watching the boat bearing down upon them. He tried to think clearly. Yes, the captain must come up. The complex animosities of the night must be put away. And though he was a little afraid of what lay before him in that great fair city rising from the sea, he had no regrets for the past. He felt, in spite of everything, he had been faithful.
"You can have no idea," said the flat and unemotional voice by Mr. Spokesly's shoulder, "simply no idea how miraculous the whole business seems to us. Astonished? No word for it. We were flabbergasted. For you saved the situation. You arrived in the nick, positively the nick, of time. I don't go beyond the facts when I say things were looking decidedly, well blue, for us. Oh, don't misunderstand me. No ill-treatment. Just the reverse, in fact. But you can understand we weren't bothering much about politeness when we couldn't get anything to eat. And that's what it amounts to."
"Yes, I suppose so," said Mr. Spokesly. "I must say, finding so many of you here, has surprised me."
"We had to stay. Couldn't get out," replied the other man, shooting a frayed cuff and flicking the ash delicately from his cigarette.
They were seated, as it were, at the centre of that vast crescent which the city forms upon the flanks of Mount Pagos. On either hand the great curves of the water-front sprang outward and melted into the confused colours of the distant shore. From their vantage point on the roof of the Sports Club, they could see in some detail the beauty of the buildings, the marble entrances, the cedar-wood balconies and the green jalousies of the waterside houses. They could see the boats sailing rapidly across the harbour from Cordelio in the afternoon breeze, and beyond, bathing the whole panorama in a strong blaze of colour, the sun, soon to set in the purple distances beyond the blue domes of the islands. To the right the shore curved in a semi-circular sweep to form the head of the great Gulf, while on their left the green waters, ruffled by the breeze and given a magical lustre by the rays of the setting sun, stretched away into the distance.
And it was into this distance that Mr. Spokesly, his elbow on the stone balustrade of the roof of the Sports Club, was thoughtfully directing his gaze. Even with his physical eyes he could make out a faint dot, which he knew was theKalkis. And while he listened to the remarks of his companion, his thoughts went back to the final catastrophe of the voyage. He had been leaning over watching the boat come alongside, his hand on the telegraph to put her astern, when the whole ship shook violently, there was a grinding of metal on metal and a sound as of a load of loose stones pouring harshly upon hollow iron floors. He stared round him even as he pulled the handle back to full astern, searching for some hint of the cause. And he realized he had been searching for something else, too. He had been voicelessly calling for Plouff and for the captain. As he sat calmly looking out across the water at the wreck—for he did not disguise from himself the fact that theKalkiswas a total loss—he was thinking of that moment when he had to decide what to do and had turned his head to call for help. And he knew now that if he had called, if he had run down and hammered on that man's door to come up and take charge, to resume the authority he had abdicated so short a time before, there would have been no answer.
That was the point around which his memories clustered now, although nobody save himself was aware of it. Indeed, there had been a distinctly admiring note in this gentleman's voice, flat and unemotional as it was by habit, when he had climbed up the ladder and set foot on the deck of theKalkis. "You were very cool," he had said. He had not been cool. There had been a moment, just after he had pulled that telegraph-handle, and the ship, instead of slowly gaining sternway and moving off into the turbulence of her wake, had given another inexplicable shudder, and the bows sank into a sudden deathlike solidity when he rang "stop," as though that noise and that shudder and that almost imperceptible subsidence had been her death-throe, the last struggle of her complicated and tatterdemalion career. That moment had settled theKalkisand it had nearly settled him, too. He had turned right round and seen the man at the wheel methodically passing the spokes through his hands, his eye on the ship's head, his ear alert for the word of command. Mr. Spokesly had seen this, and for an instant he had had a shocking impulse to run to the far side of the bridge and go over, into the water. A moment of invisible yet fathomless panic. Looking back at it, he had a vague impression of a glimpse into eternity—as though for that instant he had really died, slipping into an unsuspected crevice between the past and the future.... The man at the wheel was looking at him. He heard a voice, the voice of the helmsman, saying, "She don't steer," and the moment was past. He walked firmly to the side and looked down at the boat, and heard someone calling, "Where is your ladder?"
And the next thing he remembered was the remark of this gentleman when he arrived on deck: "You were very cool." He had said in reply: "There is something I wish to tell you. I have sent for the captain and he has not come up. I must go and fetch him." He remembered also the dry comment, "Oh, so you are not the captain?" and the start for the cabin as Evanthia came out, buttoning her gloves, dressed for walking. He remembered that. The gentleman who had told him he was very cool, and who sat beside him now on the roof of the Sports Club, had been explaining that he came as an interpreter and was English himself, when the door opened and Evanthia appeared. He had stopped short and let his jaw drop, and his hand slowly reached up to remove his old straw hat. The others, who were in white uniforms with red fezzes on their heads, stepped back involuntarily in stupefaction at such an unexpected vision. And he, dazed by his recent experience, stood staring at her as though he were as astonished as the rest. For she came up to him in that long stride of hers that always made him feel it would be hopeless to explain to her what was meant by fear, and slipped her hand through his arm. "My husband," she said, smiling at the men in fezzes, and she added, in their own tongue. "My father was Solari Bey, who had the House of the Cedars near the cemetery in Pera."
It was she who had been "very cool." She was wearing her black dress and the toque with the high feather. Her eyes glowed mysteriously, and she stood beside him dominating them all. He heard the astonished interpreter mumbling: "Oh—ah! Really! Dear me! Most unexpected pleasure! Plucky of you, permit me to say. Oh—ah!..." and the men in fezzes making respectful noises in their throats as the conversation suddenly became unintelligible. He had stood silent, watching her while she spoke that bewildering jargon, the words rushing from her exquisite lips and catching fire from the flash of her eyes. There was a potent vitality in the tones of her voice that seemed to him must be irresistible to all men. She spoke and they listened with rapt attentive gaze. She commanded and they obeyed. They laughed, and bent their tall heads to listen afresh. She might have been some supernatural being, some marine goddess, come suddenly into her old dominions, and they her devout worshippers.
He heard the word "captain" and opened his mouth to speak to the interpreter.
"Is he English?" asked that gentleman. "She says he is a—well, I hardly know how to explain just what she means.... You had better tell this officer here. He speaks some English. Colonel Krapin? Ah, quite so. The colonel wishes me to say, he must see the captain. Perhaps, if you will allow us, we can sit down in the cabin, he says."
And when they had entered the cabin, and were seated about the table, the young Jew, who had been cowering in the pantry, was brought forth and ordered in crisp tones to descend and inform the captain.
"I knocked at the door," Evanthia told them quickly. "I said, a boat is coming. I heard him move. I heard him come to the door and then, he strike the door with all his force while I have my hand on it. The door shake,boom! The fool is afraid for anybody to go in. Ask the boy, the young Jew. He will tell you."
The colonel studied his sword, which he had laid on the table before him, and made a remark in a low tone. He had been somewhat embarrassed by the absence of the captain. Without a captain and without the papers which would apprise them all of the exact nature of the cargo, he was at a loss.
And the young Jew had come stumbling up the stairs, his hands outspread, and in quavering tones said something which had brought the officer to his feet and grasping his sword. He had remembered that moment.
"You know," said his companion with a slight smile, "really you know, when he came up and told us the captain was leaning against the door and wouldn't let him open it—said he could see the captain's shoulder, just for a moment I thought you had been let in. Poor old Krapin was in a funk. He was sure he was in a trap. You remember he wouldn't go down. Mademego."
"Yes," said Mr. Spokesly steadily, "I remember. I couldn't explain because I didn't know myself. He thought I was in the plot, I suppose."
"And now he thinks you ..." he paused and flicked his cigarette again. "H—m! Down there in that dark passage, I was ready to think all sorts of funny things myself. I saw his shoulder. Extraordinary sensation running up and down my spine. I said, 'Captain, you are wanted.' No answer, of course. What is one to say in a situation of that kind? I ask you. For a moment I stood with my foot in the door and him leaning against it. It reminded me of my boyhood days in London when all sorts of people used to come round to sell things and try to keep you from shutting the door. For a moment I wondered if he thought I had come off in a boat to sell him something."
He gave a short laugh and looked down with reflective eyes upon the people walking in the street between the houses and the sea. His straw hat and linen suit were very old and frayed and his shoes were of canvas with rope soles. Yet he gave the impression of being very smartly attired. A gentleman. His bow tie burst forth from a frayed but spotless soft collar. A cotton handkerchief with a spotted blue border hung fashionably from his pocket. And his features had the fine tint and texture of a manila envelope.
"Absurd, of course. Yet in a case like that one doesn't know how to avoid the absurd. And finally, when I gave a smart shove, I said: 'Excuse me, Captain, I really must ...' the shoulder disappeared and there was a most awful clatter and a thud. And then a silence. Frankly I was unable to open the door for a second, I was so upset. I half expected the thing to fly open and a crowd of people to rush out on me. That was the sensation I got from that rumpus. Imagine it!"
"Yes," said Mr. Spokesly, "I can believe you felt strange. But how was anybody to know?"
"And you still think it was an accident?" said his companion curiously.
"Yes, it was an accident," replied Mr. Spokesly steadily.
"H—m! Well, you knew him."
"I don't believe he had the pluck to do such a thing," went on Mr. Spokesly. "He hadn't the pluck of a louse, as we say. And you must remember he was all dressed for going ashore. He had all his money on him, all his papers. He very likely had his hat on. But for some reason or other, before he could do anything and speak to anybody, he had to take some sort of pill. Small, square white tablets. I've known him keep out of the way, go over the other side of the bridge and turn his back before speaking to me. I could see his hand go to his mouth as he came along the deck. I don't know for sure. Nobody will know for sure. But I know what I think myself."
"Yes? Some private trouble? That's the usual reason, isn't it?"
"He had a grudge against everybody. Thought everybody was against him. They were, but that was because he hadn't the sense to get on with them."
"Perhaps it was a woman," suggested his companion hopefully.
"Him! A woman? Do you think a woman would have anything to do with him?"
Mr. Spokesly's tone as he put this question was warm. It was a true reflection of his present state of mind. "My husband," Evanthia had said, and it was as her husband he had stepped ashore. And he was conscious of a glow of pride whenever he compared other men with himself. She was his. As for the captain, the very idea was grotesque. He stirred in his chair, moved his arm on the balustrade. He did not want to talk about the captain. The words, "Perhaps it was a woman," did not, he felt, apply exactly to any one save himself. He heard his companion reply doubtfully, as though there could be any doubt:
"Oh—well, you know, one has heard of such cases. Still, as you say, the circumstantial evidence is strong. Those tablets of his were all over the place, I remember."
"He had the medicine-chest in his room," said Mr. Spokesly.
"Yes. The Doctor showed me where he'd been mixing the stuff in a cup. And there was a mould for making them. So you think he had no intention of...."
"No intention of taking anything fatal himself," was the reply.
"Ah! Indeed! That opens up a very interesting departure," said the other.
"Not now," said Mr. Spokesly. "Not now."
"You'll excuse my own curiosity," said his friend, "but when I found him, you know, eh?"
"If he had found you," Mr. Spokesly remarked, looking towards the mountains to the eastward, "he would never have taken the trouble to mention it to a soul except officially. I didn't know him very well, but I should say he is better off where he is. I shall have to be getting along."
They rose and descended the broad staircases to the terrace facing the sea, a terrace filled with tables and chairs. Across the Gulf the lights of Cordelio began to sparkle against the intense dark blue of the land below the red blaze of the sunset. It was the hour when the Europeans of the city come out to enjoy the breeze from the Gulf, making their appearance through the great archway of the Passage Kraemer and sitting at little tables to drink coffee and lemonade tinctured with syrup. They were coming out now, parties of Austrians and Germans, with fattish spectacled husbands in uniforms with fezzes atop, and tall blonde women in toilettes that favoured bold colour schemes or sharp contrasts of black and white, with small sun-shades on long handles. There were Greeks and Roumanians and here and there a quiet couple of English would sink unobtrusively into chairs in a corner. And a band was tuning up somewhere out of sight.
Mr. Spokesly plunged straight down the steps of the terrace, past a group of Austrian girls who were taking their seats at a table, and who eyed him with lively curiosity, and started towards the custom house, his companion, whose name was Marsh, hurrying after him.
"By the way," said he. "I would like, some time, to introduce you to some of the crowd. They are really very decent. They have made things much easier for us than you might imagine. Of course, for the sake of my family and myself I have kept well in with them; but quite apart from the expediency of it, it has been a pleasure. You have been here nearly a week now," he went on, smiling a little, "and we have seen nothing of you."
Mr. Spokesly muttered something about being busy all day on the ship, getting the cargo out of her.
"Yes, but why not come round now? It is only just through the Passage, near Costi's. I can assure you they are a very interesting lot."
"Well, it's like this, Mr. Marsh. I'm under orders, you see. And I've got this launch now and I'm not so sure of the engine that I want to get stuck with it after dark. I'll tell you what. I'll come to-morrow, eh?"
And to this Mr. Marsh was obliged to agree. Mr. Spokesly dived into the custom house and made for the waterside, where a number of gasolene launches were tied up. It was one of these which, on account of the gasolene in the cargo of theKalkis, he had been able to get for his own use. He had had long struggles with the engine, towing it out with him to the ship and working on it while the men loaded the barges. Now it was in pretty good shape; he understood it well enough to anticipate most of the troubles. He got down into it now and took off his coat to start the engine.
It was not that he did not appreciate the offer of his friend. The crowd alluded to were well enough no doubt—clerks and subordinate officials who had gradually formed a sort of international coterie who met in a wing of one of the consulates. Indeed, one of them lived in a house not far from himself on the hillside at Bairakli. But he was in a mood just now which made him reluctant to mix with those highly sophisticated beings. He wanted to go home. As he steered his launch through the entrance of the tiny harbour and made straight across the Gulf towards the eastern end, he was thinking that for the first time in his life he had a home. And she had done it! With a cool indomitable will she had set about it. He knew he could never have achieved this felicity by himself. She had held out her hand for money and he had handed it over to her. If she had not watched he would not have had nearly so much, she told him, and he believed her. That was the key to his mood. He crouched in the stern of his boat and kept his eyes upon the house, a white spot against the steep brown slope of the mountain. That house, rented from a poverty-stricken Greek who had left most of the furniture, and an old woman, who had lived all her life in the village, as servant, represented for Mr. Spokesly his entire visible and comprehensible future. This was another key to his mood. It was as though he had suddenly cashed in on all his available resources of happiness, hypothecating them for the immediate and attainable yet romantic present. By some fluke of fortune he could see that he actually held within his grasp all that men toil and struggle for in this world, all that they desire in youth, all that they remember in age. But he had no certainty of the permanence of all this, and he lived in a kind of anxious ecstasy, watching Evanthia each day with eager hungry eyes, waiting with a sort of incredulous astonishment for the first shadow to cross the dark mirror of their lives.
As it must, he told himself. This could not last for ever. And sometimes he found himself trying to imagine how it would end. To-night he was preoccupied with the discovery that each day, as the end approached, he was dreading it more and more. He had tried to explain this to her as they walked in the garden under the cypresses and looked across the dark waters of the Gulf, and she had smiled and said: "Ah, yes!" She was still a mystery to him, and that was another grief, since he did not yet suspect that the mystery of a woman is simply a screen with nothing behind it. She smiled in her alluring inscrutable way and he held her desperately to him, wondering in what form the fate of their separation would appear.
And when he saw that she had not come down to the jetty to meet him, as she had done on previous nights, he instantly accepted her absence as a signal of change. Yet at the back of his mind there burned a thin bright flame of intelligence that told him the truth. Evanthia had that supreme virtue of the courageous—her dissimulation was neither clumsy nor cruel. It was as much a part of her as was her skin, her hair, her amber eyes. He knew in his heart this was so and made of it a rack on which he tortured himself with thoughts of her fidelity. Each day the difference between this experience and the shallow clap-trap intrigues he had known became more marked to him. The thought of her out there, hidden away from other men, with her delicious graces of body and lucidity of mind, for him alone, was almost too poignant for him. As he came alongside the little staging, and made fast, he returned again to the foreboding thought of the day. There would come an end. And beyond the end of this he could see nothing but darkness, nothing save an aching void.
Nevertheless, as he came up from the jetty and stood for a moment in the road which followed the curve of the shore, and listened to the sounds of the village that nestled in the valley like a few grains of light in a great bowl of darkness, he was conscious of something which he could not successfully analyze or separate from his tumultuous emotions. He put it to himself, crudely enough, when he muttered: "I shall have to take a hand." He was discovering himself in the act of submitting once more to outside authority. Looking back over his life, he saw that as his hitherto invincible habit of mind. He saw himself turning round to call the captain. And now he was the captain. And Evanthia's enigmatic gaze was perhaps the expression of her curiosity. She was above all things in the world, stimulating. He found himself invigorated to an extraordinary degree by his intimacy with that resourceful, courageous, and lovable being, who would never speak of the future, waving it away with a flick of her adorable hand and looking at him for an instant with an intent, unfathomable stare. And as he started to climb the hillside, setting the loose stones rolling in the gullies and rousing a dog to give forth a series of deep ringing notes like a distant gong, he saw that the initiative rested with himself. He would have to take a hand. It would not do for him to imagine they could remain like this in almost idyllic felicity. The ship would be unloaded in a week or so and nothing would remain but to let the water into her after-hold and sink her, according to the commandant's orders, in the fair way. But he could not let himself sink back into a slothful obscurity. He had no interior resources beyond his almost desperate passion for this girl who seemed to accept him as an inevitable yet transient factor in her destiny, a girl who conveyed to him in subtle nuances a chaotic impression of sturdy fidelity and bizarre adventurousness. That was one of the secrets of her personality—the maintenance of their relations upon a plane above the filth and languor of the flesh, yet unsupported by the conventional props of tradition and honour. For she had so just a knowledge of the functions and possibilities of love in human life that he could never presume upon the absence of those props. It amazed him beyond his available powers of expression, that in giving him herself she gave more than he had ever imagined. She had given him an enormously expanded comprehension of character, an insight into the secrets of his own heart. And it was, perhaps, this new knowledge of what he himself might do, that was impelling him to "take a hand." When he reached the gate set in the wall of the garden, he had decided to take a hand at once. He had a plan.
And it would have been a valuable experience for him, advancing him some distance in spiritual development, had he been able to see clearly and understandingly into her alert and shrewdly logical mind when he told her his plan. For she saw through it in a flash. It was romantic, it was risky, it was for himself. It might easily be for her ultimate good, yet she saw he was not thinking of that at all. And because he was romantic, because he visualized their departure as a flight into a fresh paradise, they two alone, she turned to him with one of her ineffably gracious gestures and loved him perhaps more sincerely than ever before. It was this romantic streak in the dull fabric of his personality which had attracted her, even if she had not perceived the emotional repose that same dullness afforded her. It was like being in a calm harbour at anchor compared with that other adventure, which had been a voyage through storms and whirlpools, a voyage that would inevitably end in shipwreck and stranding for her anyhow.
"I could do it," he was saying. "They don't know about it, but that boat is the fastest they've got in the harbour and, with luck, it would be easy to get away."
"To where?" she whispered, looking out into the fragrant gloom of the high-walled garden below them.
"Anywhere," he exclaimed. "Once outside, we'd be picked up. Or we could go to Phyros, and get home from there."
"Home?"
"Yes, home. England. I want you to come with me, stay with me, for good. I can't—I can't do without you. I've been thinking every day, every night. There's nobody else now."
She shot a glance at him. He was leaning forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on the floor thinking, in a warm tumult of desire, of the adventure. He saw the boat bounding through the fresh green wave-tops into the deeper blue of the Ægean, he steering, with his arm around her form which would be enfolded in that same big coat, making a dash for freedom.
And as she patted his arm gently, she knew he was not thinking of her save as a protagonist in a romantic episode. For to ask her to go to England was, from her point of view, the reverse of a dash for freedom. In her clear, cold, limited mentality, equipped only with casual and fragmentary tales told by the ignorant or the prejudiced products of mid-European culture, England was the home of debased ideals and gloomy prisons, of iron-hard creeds and a grasping cunning avarice. Her mercenaries were devoted to the conquest and destruction of all that made life beautiful and gay. Out of her cold wet fogs her legions came to despoil the fair places of the earth. And his fidelity, his avowed abandonment of the sentiments of the past, inspired her more with wonder and delight than a reciprocal passion. For she was under no illusions as to her own destiny. She, too, knew this would not last for ever. Her quick mind took in all the fantastic possibilities of his plan, and she perceived immediately the necessity of giving her consent. He must be kept in this mood of exalted happiness. Intuitively she knew that she herself fed on that mood, in which he rose superior to the normal level of his days. And in spite of her dismay at the mere thought of going out again upon the sea, leaving everything she understood and loved, leaving a land of whose spirit and atmosphere she was a part, she asked him when he wanted to go.
"Not yet," he replied, still gazing at the ground, and she looked at him with amazement. She could hardly repress an exclamation at his credulity. He actually believed she would go.
"And we will take all our money?" she suggested.
"Yes, of course," he agreed absently. It was part of his happiness to put everything in her hands. There was for him a supremely sensuous delight in the words, "It is all for you. Take it. Without you, it is of no use to me." He was unable to imagine a more complete surrender, nor could he believe that a woman would accept it save at the price of integrity. Evanthia was like that. Money was never her preoccupation, but she never forgot it. She had none of the futilities of book-education filling her mind like dusty and useless furniture, so that her consciousness of money was as clear and sharp as her consciousness of food or pain. And a sudden perception of his faith in her, his profound absorption in his own romantic illusions, struck her to a puzzled silence, which he took for assent and sympathy. She looked away from him and out across the sea. It was too easy.
"Evanthia," he whispered, and she turned her full, direct untroubled gaze upon him with a swift and characteristic movement of the chin.
"I love you," he muttered and touched her arm with his lips in a gesture of adoration. She looked at him with glowing amber eyes. Sometimes he almost terrified her with the violence of his passionate abnegation. She had never seen anything like it before. He became gloomy with love, she noted; and her quick wit transfused the thought into a presentiment. She would break the spell of his infatuation with a quick movement and lure him back to earth with a smile. She laughed now as he touched her.
"Tell me," he said, "you wish to come to England with me?"
"Ah, yes!" she sighed sweetly, nestling against him. "You an' me, in England."
"Some time next week I'll be ready," he said. "You must get plenty of food for the boat. And the money. Bring that."
She sat leaning against him, his arms about her, but at these words she stared past him into the darkness of the room thinking quickly. Next week!
"I am getting the engineer to make me a silencer, the boat makes so much noise," he explained.
"I understand," she murmured absently, slipping out of his arms. She must send into the town, she thought. Amos must go.
"To-morrow," he went on, "I go to the Club in the Austrian Consulate. Mr. Marsh asked me to go. I may be a little late. You won't mind?"
She turned upon him in the darkness where she was feeling for the lamp, and gave him a blank stare. He never saw it; and if he had he would never have been able to understand that at that moment she could have killed him for his stupidity. He sat in silence wondering a little, and then the emotion had passed and she gave her delicious throaty chuckle.
"Ah, no,mein Lieber. I do not mind."
"Why do you sometimes call me yourLieber?" he asked playfully. "Is it a pet name?"
The lamp was alight and he saw her eyes smouldering as she raised them from the flame she was adjusting.
"Yes,Liebermeans love," she said gravely.
"You are not sorry we did not go to Athens?" he asked, smiling.
"To Athens ..." her face for a moment was blank, so completely had she forgotten the ruse she had employed in Saloniki. "... ah, I understand. Athens? No!" She turned the lamp up and began to set the table for supper.
This was the hour that appealed to him more than anything in their life. To see her moving about in a loose cotton frock, her bare feet thrust into Turkish slippers, to follow the line of her vigorous supple body beneath the thin material, and the expert rapidity of her hands as she prepared the simple meal of stew and young figs in syrup, red wine and coffee with candied dates, was sheer ecstasy for him. He would sit in the dusk of the window, sprawling in his chair, his head sunk on his breast, breathing heavily as he devoured every motion with his eyes. It never occurred to him to wonder what she was thinking about as she worked with her eyes cast down towards the white table or turning towards the door to call in musical plangent accents to the old woman in the kitchen below. She was an object of love and for him had no existence outside of his emotional necessities. He asked in lazy contentment if she regretted Athens. Her eyes, declined upon the table, were inscrutable as she reflected that the young Jew was even then in the city finding out for her whether any officers had arrived from Aidin. "We'll have a house like this, in England," he remarked, smiling. "And you will forget all about Saloniki, eh?"
He would expect this, of course, she thought. It was the duty of a woman selected by a romantic to forget everything in the world except himself. She was thinking of Saloniki even as she smiled into his eyes and nodded. And Saloniki was thinking of her. It was at this hour that Mrs. Dainopoulos said to her husband:
"You are sure they reached port safe?"
Mr. Dainopoulos, who had heard, by his own intricate and clandestine methods, of the unconventional arrival of his ship in Giaour Ismir, and who was not bothering himself very much about either Evanthia or Mr. Spokesly since both had served his turn, remarked:
"Yes, all safe."
"You know, Boris, I should never forgive myself if anything happened to her. If he did not marry her as soon as they got on shore. I did it for the best. Encouraged it, I mean. I do believe he was trustworthy."