The strangers out with revolvers,The strangers out with revolvers, back my men into the fo'c's'le, and lock them in.
As they drew nearer I see she was white-painted, and pretty soon I see she was too big to be anything but a navy sailing cutter, and soon again I made out that they were a crew of American naval officers and bluejackets.
They went out of their way some to sweep under the stern of the bark, and I noticed they all took a look up at her and back at her, wondering, as I thought, how she came to go ashore. They held on for the inside of the bay and ran straight up onto a little reach of pebbly beach; and no sooner grounded than most of them went tearing across the spit with rifles and shotguns. I see what they were now—it was a hunting party.
Without wasting a second they began to blaze away at the wild ducks as they came swooping down from the west. In that country the wild game don't know what a man looks like, and as it was late in the afternoon, with the ducks coming back for the night from the west'ard, the shooting was good. Swooping along the shore they came, across the mouth of the bay, flock after flock so close-set and low-lying that they didn't need guns. They could have sat on the beach and hove up stones or drift-wood and killed 'em as they went kiting by, sixty miles or more an hour to the east'ard.
After twenty minutes or so they must havethought that kind of shooting was too easy, for part of them went off into the brush and the others came back to the spit of beach and, with some kindlings from their boat and some drift-wood and brush, started a fire. It was a north wind, and I could smell the ducks cooking and the coffee making, and I couldn't hold off any longer. I rowed myself over in our second boat. The senior line officer of the party, a lieutenant, invited me to join them, which I did, and pretty soon I was eating broiled duck and drinking real American coffee, with bacon and eggs, and forgetting my troubles.
After supper we sat around and talked, and they told me what had happened to the lumber bark. She had been lured inshore by false lights the night before and boarded by a gang under Red Dick, who had cleaned her out of stores and what money they had, and had driven the crew off in the morning after beating up most of them by way of diverting himself. Then the bark's captain and his crew rowed across the Straits of Punta Arenas in their quarter-boat, looking for satisfaction. Nobody there could do anything for them, because nothing less than a war-ship could have overcome Red Dick, and there was no Chilean war-ship nearer than Valparaiso, and that was six days' steaming away.
"But how did that lumber captain know it was Red Dick?" I asked at this point.
"He didn't know," answered the officer who'd been talking. "But when he described him everybody in Punta Arenas said it was Red Dick. But aren't you an American?"
I said I was and told them my experience, and they all said what a pity my ship wasn't under the American flag so they could put it up to their captain and be sure he would send a party after Red Dick. And they would all like nothing better than to join that party, and an easy matter all 'round, as their ship was to be hanging around the straits for another week.
By this time the others of the party, who'd gone into the brush for wild geese, were coming back. They didn't get any geese, because geese, wild geese, anyway, aren't near so foolish as a lot of people think. They were hungry and sat right down to supper.
Among them, as I looked, was one I knew for Peter Lawson, an old shipmate. A warrant officer I saw he was now, but when I knew him he was a chief carpenter's mate on the oldMissalama. We kept eying each other, and by and by he remembered, and we stood up and shook hands across the fire. In half a minute we were talking of old days in the navy.
By this time it was late day, with the sun going down below the hills on the other side of Pouvenir Bay. I remember it went down red as the heart of the fire we were sitting by. Through the little thin whiffs of the smoke of the fire it looked like that—all hot color and no flame. Nothing to that, of course, only pictures like that do start your brain to going. The little bay was there at our feet and the wide straits off to our elbow, and the water of that bay was smooth green where it shoaled on the pebbly spit; but the straits, as far as we could see them, were one long roll of tossing ridges and scooping hollows, and they were all black except where the williwaws, cutting across the tide, would whip the ridges to a marble white.
I saw the sun set red through the thin blue smoke of the fire, and almost in line with the sun and the smoke was the stranded bark with her deckload of lumber. A little farther off was my own littleSvend Foyn. It was coming on dark by then and I could see them making ready the anchor light on theSvend Foyn. And it was coming colder, too, for the broad, warm north wind had changed to a thin little icy wind from the south.
And now the fiery-red reflection of the sun was gone from above the hills across the bay, and whenthat went all warmth went with it. Everybody drew nearer to the fire except the two apprentice boys, who were cleaning up the mess gear in water made hot at a little fire of their own. One of them was singing to himself little jiggly, ragtime songs while he wiped the dishes:
"Oh-h, ahm gwine down to Macon townTer buy mah 'Liza Jane a gown—Ah feel so happy 'n' ah don' know why,Mah bai-bie, mah hon-ie!"
"Oh-h, ahm gwine down to Macon townTer buy mah 'Liza Jane a gown—Ah feel so happy 'n' ah don' know why,Mah bai-bie, mah hon-ie!"
Every time he stacked up a few plates he would stop to roll a few more cake-walk steps.
"I wish I was feeling as good as you!" I said to myself while I watched him.
And, watching him, I got to thinking of Hilda in the big front room in what was home for me—and of having to tell her what a failure my cruise had been. It did set me to thinking.
All at once it came to me, and "I've got it!" I said, not knowing I said it out loud until I saw that everybody around the fire was looking at me; and at last Peter said, "What's it you got?"
And I told them what I had in mind, and they all thought it was a great scheme—if I could carry it out. And the lieutenant in charge of the party said: "And we'll help you; but not to-night—the first thing in the morning after a good night's sleep."
We had a good sleep that night, sleeping till sunrise on the pebbly beach with the mainsail of the sailing cutter for a tent over us. And in the morning the first thing after breakfast I pulled the lumber bark off the beach and moored her in the bay. That was so she wouldn't break up and go to pieces the first gale of wind came along; and, as after that service I figured her owners wouldn't call it stealing, I helped myself to a few thousand feet of lumber off her deck, and we all set to work to make theSvend Foynover into what her builder back in Norway certainly never intended her for.
First, we built up her topsides to make a superstructure, and then added the other things a first-class battle-ship ought to have. TheSvend Foynhad two masts and one smoke-stack. The two masts were all right. We had only to set fighting-tops around them, but she would be a poor class of a battle-ship with only one smoke-stack. So we gave her two more. We painted her lower sides white and her topsides yellow-brown, and for turrets we had one to each end with what was intended for 12-inch gun muzzles sticking out of them. And we allowed the ends of what looked like twelve 7-inch black boys to peek through the sides of what we called her gun-deck. Two of those 7-inch muzzles were real muzzles, that is,black-tarred wood like the others, but they were hollow so we could train a bomb-lance whaling-gun through them, one to each side. When we got that far they said I would have to name her, and I called her theCape Horn, and there being no flag that any of us had ever heard of for Terra del Fuego, we made one for her out of three pieces of green, red, and purple cloth, and broke it out to her main-peak.
And when that little round-bowed, fat-sterned whaler waddled out of Pouvenir Bay that afternoon there wasn't a thing that one lieutenant, one ensign, one doctor, a warrant carpenter, and sixteen enlisted men of the United States Navy could see she was shy of, except a wireless outfit, and we soon fixed that by stringing a stretch of old wire between her masts, with half a dozen old barrel hoops for a wireless plant, and for fear there was anybody of Red Dick's party who knew battle-ships only from pictures, I had the stokers keep feeding her fires with whale-oil. After that, with the clouds of smoke belching out of her, I felt sure nobody could doubt us—especially at a distance.
We gave three whistles and dipped the ensign to our navy friends, and for the rest of that day and night, and all next day and night, we steamed through the straits toward the Pacific. And onthe second morning we turned north and ran in among the islands off the Chilean coast; and pretty soon we ran into the place I was bound for—a bottle-shaped passage with a narrow inlet to each end and the shadow of the Andes Mountains darkening all. And, laying to moorings there, was a cargo steamer of perhaps fifteen hundred tons. Even if she wasn't too big a steamer to be loafing there, I knew her of old. Red Dick was handy. I took a look around to the north'ard, and at the other end of the passage and jam in to the high rocks was a whaling steamer about our own tonnage. I also knew her of old.
I might as well say now that Red Dick and I weren't strangers. We used to be sort of friends, but not since the day we walked up the long timber pier in Punta 'renas together and met Hilda with her father. She was straight from school in Norway then, and 'twas the first time we'd seen her. We looked out together on the wonderful straits, and 'twas me she walked home with.
But that was a year back, and it was other business now. I had now to make an impression, and right away, to back up our battle-ship looks. So we cut loose and gave them, port and starboard, one after the other, twenty-one whaling bombs in good, regulation style. They made a terrible racket against the Andes Mountains, which come down here to the water's edge.
'Twas me she walked home with.'Twas me she walked home with.
And Red Dick's gang must have thought we were some awful power, for there was soon great doings on the deck of the whaling steamer. Smoke began to come out of her, and pretty soon she began to move; but when we bore down, with a great white wave ahead of us and rolls of smoke over us, they quit. Two boats dropped over her side and headed for a bit of beach, and twenty men scurried off and lost themselves in holes between the rocks. We shot a few bombs over their heads just to let them know we were a rich nation with ammunition to spare. The echoes coming back sounded like a battle-fleet saluting port in foreign waters.
We boarded Red Dick's steamer, and there were our sealskins and ambergris. There were also four or five thousand other fine sealskins which weren't ours, but which we took along, knowing they weren't Red Dick's. And with Red Dick's steamer in charge of six of my crew behind us, we started back the way we came. In steaming past the cargo steamer we counted four long glasses levelled at us.
The first likely place we came to we hauled to and shifted Red Dick's cargo to theSvend Foyn. By this time, with the ambergris back and fivethousand extra sealskins below, all hands were willing to take a moderate chance on almost anything. We swung away for the straits, but not making great headway. The little oldSvend Foynwas never any wonder for steaming. At her best she could do perhaps ten miles an hour. Now, with all her battle-ship topgear and with the wind ahead, she was doing perhaps six.
It began to breeze up, but nothing for us to worry over until we saw a steamer's smoke coming up astern. We were then clear of the coast islands and into the straits, with wind and sea fighting each other.
I had another good look at the steamer coming up astern, and took my prize crew off Red Dick's whaler and turned her adrift. I hated to. Not alone the prize money, but to see a good ship go to loss any time is bad. I did it in hopes that the cargo steamer coming upon us would stop to get her, and while they were getting her—what with the gale and the dark coming—we would be able to slip away. But they didn't stop. Perhaps the little whaler was too close in to the cliffs for the big steamer to have a chance in the tide that was running. They let her pile up against the cliffs, and came on and ranged up abreast of us. Red Dick was on her bridge. She came so close to us that I could almost have jumpedaboard. It was blowing pretty hard at the time, but she was making easy weather of it—a good sea-boat. We weren't. The williwaws, which are what they call the hard squalls off the high hills down there, were having a great time with out battle-ship topsides. She was something of a roller on her own account at any time, theSvend Foyn, but now she rolled her wooden turrets under and every once in a while her bridge.
Red Dick leaned over the bridge rail and laughed. He looked theSvend Foyn'stop gear over and laughed again. "Blank shells and wooden guns!" he called out. "Fine! Any more left?"
"Oh," I said, "not all blanks and not all wooden, and a few left—yes."
"So?" he says, and gives an order. A man pulls a tarpaulin off a long needle-gun amidships. "Got anything like that in your battery?" he calls out.
I looked it over as if I was interested. At the same time I made a sign to my mate behind me. I'd long before this loaded my two whaling bomb-lance guns, but this time I put in them the lances, which were of steel, weighed eighty pounds, and were four and a half feet long—not a bad little projectile at all.
"What's it for?" I called out, pointing to his needle-gun.
"What's it for?" he mimics. "What d'y' think it's for?"
I shake my head. "I could never guess."
"Well, you will soon. You know me?"
"I do. And you know me?"
"I know you, and I'll take no chances with you. I'm going to heave you a line and take you in tow."
"I don't remember flying any signals for a tow."
"No? Well, I think you'd be better off for a tow. Take my line."
"We don't want your line."
"Take my line or I'll blow a few holes in you, and while you're on your way to the bottom of the straits—all hands of you—I'll ram you to make sure."
"You're foolish to sink us," I says, "till you take off the ambergris and the sealskins."
He began to get mad. "Take my line or take a shell from this gun. Which is it?" he yells.
His gun was trained on our midship topsides. I couldn't see where he was going to sink us, leastwise not with one shot, so, "Come aboard with your shell!" I called out, and he did. I didn't look to see what damage the shell did in passing, but it went clear through our pine topsides one side and out the other.
I'd already passed the word to my mate, andwh-r-oo! went the four-and-a-half-foot bomb-lance from the inside of one of our make-believe seven-inch rifles. The lance tore through just above the water-line of Red Dick's steamer. The bomb exploded inside her hull. Through the hold the sea rushed, and from her deck below came whoops of surprise.
I rolled the little fatSvend Foynaround. She near capsized in turning, especially as Red Dick let me have two more from his needle-gun while we were coming around. One of them burst inside, but didn't kill anybody. Around came theSvend Foyn.
"Her water-line!" I yelled, and we let her have it. And again we gave it to her. They both went home.
Red Dick quit laughing. He ran down from the bridge and out of sight below. Pretty soon, through her sides, as we hear him and his gang yelling, came the ends of blankets and mattresses, to keep the sea out of the holes we'd made.
And while they are at that we give them another. And that settled it. Five minutes before, I had an idea we might have to go to the bottom—s-sst! like that. And now Red Dick and his cargo steamer were belting through the tide rips toward the Terra del Fuego shore, to find a bay, I suppose, and a bit of a beach to haul up andpatch things. And I couldn't help thinking as he went that he'd lost a desperate reputation about as easy as any ever I heard of; but I might as well also say now that I'd been shipmates with Red Dick, and I always did believe he was a good deal of a bluff. But my crew didn't think that. There was great rejoicing among them, and I let them rejoice so long as they didn't stop setting things to rights.
We were shook up some—our bridge loosened up, our wireless hoops hanging droopy, our two fake smoke-stacks lying over on their sides, and the for'ard turret with some dents in it; but bow first, and in peace and quiet, we steamed on. And we were still steaming in peace and quiet when we made Punta Arenas.
And, steaming in, I thought I might as well do it in style. Here we were, a victorious battle-ship entering a foreign port, and so I hoisted our international code—spelling it out that we were theCape Hornof the Terra del Fuegan navy, and asking permission to anchor. The captain of the American battle-ship was standing on his bridge as we steamed down the line, with a man in our chains heaving the lead, my mate on the fore-bridge and myself on the after-bridge, a quartermaster to the wheel, and the second mate spying, busy as could be, through a long glass; and notalone the captain, but the nine hundred and odd officers and men of the American battle-ship roared in review of us. The other ships in port didn't know what to make of it no way.
We came around and dropped our young anchor, splash! and saluted the port—twenty-one guns from our bomb-lance things.
Our lieutenant of the hunting party seemed to be officer of the deck on the real battle-ship. "How'd you come out?" he hails.
"We met the enemy and their loot is ours," I answers.
"Captain Fenton presents his compliments and would like to have you come aboard," he hails.
And I went aboard, sitting in the stern-sheets of my second boat, with the red, green, and purple flag trailing astern and eight men to the oars. And they gave me two bosun's pipes with four side-boys and two long ruffles from the drums as I came over the side, and in the captain's cabin I told him what the officers of the hunting party couldn't tell him already. And he thought it the best story he'd heard in a long time.
I thought it was a pretty good story myself, and told it again to Mr. Amundsen on the same long pier where I had first met him with Hilda, and he said the blood of the old vikings must be in my veins, and uncorked four solid hours of theold sagas, finishing up in the big front room with fiat bread and goats' cheese and dried ptarmigan chips and Trondhjem beer.
By and by I got a chance to tell it to Hilda—that and a little more while I was telling it. The band, a fine band, too, was playing their Sunday-night concert out in the plaza. I remember how the music made pictures in my brain while I talked, though I never could remember what they played.
However, that's no matter. Hilda says I told the story right that night. And I've told it many a time since—to her and the children when I'm home from sea. They are good children, who believe everything that is told them—even the sagas of their grandfather.
Meade was having his coffee in the smoking-room. Major Crupp came in and took a seat beside him.
A watchful steward hurried over. "Coffee, sir?"
"Please."
"Cigarette, Major?" asked Meade.
"I will—thanks."
Lavis came in. Both men passed the greetings of the evening with him, and then Meade, at least, forgot that he existed. Only interesting people were of value to Meade, and he had early in the passage appraised Lavis—one of those negligible persons whose habit was to hover near some group of notables and look at them or listen to them, and, if encouraged, join in the conversation, or, if invited, take a hand in a game of cards.
"Seen Cadogan since dinner, Major?" asked Meade.
"He's patrolling the deck right now."
"With the beautiful lady?"
"Nope—alone."
"Thank God! And where is she?"
"Oh, she's nicely enthroned, thank you, in an angle of the loungeroom with that sixty-millionaire coal baron, Drissler."
"It's bath-tubs, and he's only got twenty millions."
"The poor beggar! Well, Meade, if ever she gets within shelling distance of his little twenty millions they'll melt like a dobey house in the rain."
"No doubt of that, I guess. And yet—and yet up to late this afternoon, at least, she appeared to be delighting in the presence of Cadogan."
"She surely did. But"—Major Crupp eyed Meade quizzically—"what are you worrying about?"
"I'm afraid she hasn't really shook him. I know too much about her. The twenty millions would be nice to draw upon, but her one unquenchable passion is man, and in build, looks, age, and temperament Cadogan is just one rich prize. But how do you account for Cadogan? He's certainly bright enough in other matters."
Crupp projected three smoke rings across the table at Meade. "I was stationed in the wilds of the Philippines one time. The native women where I was were unwashed, bow-legged, blackcreatures about four feet high. After three years of it I returned home in a government transport. I landed in San Francisco. At first I thought it was a dream."
"Thought what was a dream, Major?"
"The women going by. I posted myself on the corner of two streets, and there I stood transfixed, except every ten minutes or so, when I'd run into the hotel bar behind me and have another drink. And I'd come out again, and I'd take another look at those big, beautiful, upstanding creatures floating by, hosts and hosts of 'em, and I'd whisper to myself: 'Cruppie, you're dead. You've been boloed on outpost and gone to heaven, and you don't know it.' And googoo-eyed I kept staring at 'em, investing every last one of 'em with a double halo, till a long, splayfooted, thin-necked hombre in a policeman's uniform came along and says: 'Here, you, I've been pipin' you off for about four hours now. About time you moved on, ain't it?' Lord, and not one of 'em that couldn't have married me on the
spot, I held 'em in such respect."
"Thick, wasn't he?"
"I thought so—then. But I wonder if Caddie would think we were thick, too, if we told him to move on? He's just back, remember, from two years in the jungle, and her eyes haven'tchanged color and her hair still shines like a new gold shoulder-knot at dress parade. She is still beautiful—and clever."
"Clever? She's surely that; but he's only a boy, Major."
"M-m—twenty-six!"
"What's twenty-six? He's still a dreaming boy. I'd like to say what I really thought of her."
"Don't. They'd be having a squad of stewards in here to police the place after you got through."
"Why don't you give him a hint?"
"Huh! No, no, Mister Meade—I'm still young and fair. You break it to him. Who knows, your age may save you from being projected through the nearest embrasure!" Crupp crushed the smoking end of his cigarette against the ash-tray. "I'll have to run along now."
"Back soon?"
"After I've said good night to two or three dear old ladies in the loungeroom before they go below."
"And two or three dear young ladies who won't be going below."
"Don't be saucy, Meade. You look out of uniform when you try to be saucy. Exactness as to fact and luminosity of language—that's you, if you please."
"Bring Vogel on your way back."
"If I can detach him from his beloved maps. Forty millions in railroads he's got now. And colored maps of 'em he's got. He gloats over 'em—- gloats, every night before he turns in."
"Hurry him up, anyway. And drive Cadogan in. I'll get him going on a few adventures, and make him forget his beautiful lady."
Lavis had been sitting on the transom. He always seemed to be sitting on the transom—a long, lean, huddled-up figure in the corner, looking out with half-closed eyes on the life of the smoking-room.
Cadogan came in. Meade revolved the chair next to him at the table, so that Cadogan had only to fall into it. Cadogan abstractedly nodded his thanks. Catching sight of Lavis, he nodded and smiled.
With eyes staring absently into space Cadogan was drumming on the table with his fingers.
"Sounds like some tom-tom march you're trying to play," interrupted Meade, and proffered a cigar. Cadogan shook his head.
"No?" Meade dropped his cigar placidly back into its case. "But listen here, Cadogan. As a writer and newspaper man, my main business in life is to discover people who know more thanother people about some particular thing, and then get it out of them. What about this ocean-liner travelling of to-day—is it perfectly safe?"
"The safest mode of travel ever devised—or should be."
"But lives are lost?"
"Surely. And probably will be. But they should not be—not on the high sea—except in a collision, and then probably one ship or the other is to blame. Even inshore, if they keep their lead and foghorn going, and steam up to kick her off, nothing will happen either, unless"—he shrugged his shoulders—"they've gone foolish or something else on the bridge."
Meade questioned further. And Cadogan answered briefly, abstractedly, until—Meade growing more cunning and subtle—he was led into citing one experience after another from out of his own life in proof of this or that side of an argument.
Cadogan had begun in short, snappy sentences, and in a tense, rather high-keyed voice; but once warmed up he swung along in rounded, almost classic periods; and his voice deepened and softened and, as he became yet more absorbed in his subject, grew rhythmical, musical almost, the while his words took on added color and glow.
Once in full swing it was not difficult for Meadeto get him to run on; and he ran on for an hour, and would have gone on indefinitely only, suddenly coming to himself and looking around, he discovered that half the room had gathered in a semicircle behind his chair. He flushed, cut his story short, and said no more. The crowd dispersed to their various seats.
Presently Meade observed: "How did you ever find time in your young life for the half of it? And how you do suggest things—possibilities that try a man's spirit even to contemplate!"
Cadogan did not respond; but from Lavis, the man on the transom, came: "And now you are suggesting the really great adventuring!"
Meade turned in surprise. "What is that?"
"Isn't it in the spirit we have the really great adventures?"
Meade studied him curiously. "You mean that the most thrilling adventures are those we only dream about, but which never happen?"
"I didn't mean exactly that, for they do happen. What I meant was that to try your body was nothing, but to try your soul—try it to the utmost—there would be something."
"To risk it or try it?" asked Meade.
"Oh, to try it only. To risk it, would not that be sinful?"
Cadogan's instinctive liking for Lavis had ledhim from the beginning of the voyage to take a keen interest in whatever he might do or say; but until to-night he had found him a most unobtrusive and taciturn man. He had a feeling that this man, who before to-night had barely said more than good morning and good night to him, understood him much better than did Meade, the professional observer, who was forever questioning him. The answer to Meade's last question stirred him particularly, because he felt that it was meant, not for Meade, but for himself.
Thinking of Meade, who was a famous author and journalist, Cadogan said hesitatingly and shyly: "I've often thought I'd like to be a writer." He meant that for Lavis, but it was Meade who took it to himself to ask him why.
"If I were a writer, I'd have hope right now of taking part in one of the greatest adventures that could befall a man."
"Where, Cadogan?"
"Right aboard this ship. How? Here we are tearing through the iceberg country trying to make a record. If ever we piled up head on to one of those icebergs, where would we be?"
"But it is a clear night. And the lookouts."
"Never mind the clear night—or the lookouts if they are not looking out."
"But this ship can't sink."
"No? But suppose she can sink, and that she is sinking. There are four thousand people aboard—and down she goes. Wouldn't that be an experience?"
With meditative eyes directed down to the ashes at the end of his cigar, Meade mulled over the question. "A great adventure it surely would be," he at length emitted from behind a puff of smoke. "The right man, a great writer, for instance, if he could live through that, would make a world's epic of it."
Cadogan wondered what the man on the transom was thinking of. He put his next question directly to him. "There would be some great deaths in such an event, don't you think, sir?" His own eyes were glowing.
"Some great deaths, surely—and some horrible ones, doubtless, too."
"Oh, but men would die like gods at such a time!"
"No doubt—and like dogs also."
Meade did not relish losing control of the conversation to an undistinguished outsider. "Look here, Cadogan," he interjected; "could a man live through that—go down with the ship and survive?"
"He could survive the sinking—yes; but he would not live long—not in water near icebergs.The numbness soon creeps up to your heart, and then——"
"But how could a man do it and live?"
"Why, sir, do you insist that he should live?" It was Lavis who had spoken.
Meade's eyebrows rose above the tops of his horn glasses. "Eh!" Cadogan, too, stared at Lavis.
"To live after it would be only to half complete the adventure. We began by speaking of an adventure in the spirit. To make a real, a great adventure of it, should not the man die?"
Meade now smiled with obvious tolerance. "But a man dead and buried in the depths of the sea!"
"That would only be his body, and we were speaking of an adventure of the spirit—of the soul. The man should experience every physical dread, every nervous fear, every emotional horror of those last few minutes, share the bitterness of the disillusionment inevitable when three or four thousand ordinary, every-day human beings are dying in despair, because, as they would judge it, dying so needlessly. To get the full measure of it, and to share also in the sweetness and resignation of great souls in the hour of death, would not his mortal body have to meet death, even as the others?"
Meade readjusted his horned spectacles. He would have to revise his notes of the man, that was plain. Forty, or forty-five possibly, he was. Tall and large-framed, but spare, thin-cheeked, and hollow-templed, with white streaks among the close-clipped, very black, and very thick hair which showed from under his cap. A worn-looking man, a student. M-m—he had him now—a teacher of the classics in some college, possibly a young women's college.
"To get back to our steamer and your extraordinary proposition," suggested Meade; "you say that the man should actually die?"
"Surely die. And he should face death even as our highly vitalized young friend here faces life. Mr. Cadogan, coming back to us from perilous experiences, makes us share with him in every tremor, every dread, every thought he himself felt in his adventure. And how does he manage to do that? Isn't it because in the perilous moment his soul remains tranquil? If death comes, well and good—it cannot be helped; if not, then a glorious adventure. He meets danger with every faculty keyed up to the highest. Now, if a man would meet his death, as this steamer went down, in the same mood, would he not march into the shadows with a soul ennobled?"
"And then what?"
"Then? If we are heirs in spirit even as in body will God ever allow a great spirit to become extinct?"
Meade abandoned his young-ladies'-teacher supposition. He speared the man with another glance. "Pardon me, you are not a scientist?"
Lavis smiled—for the first time. "Do I talk like one?"
"You do not believe, then, in present-day scientific methods?"
"I believe in any constructive method, but"—he betrayed a shadow of impatience—"why limit our beliefs to what can be proved with a surgeon's knife?"
Meade thought he remembered that Roman Catholic priests were on special occasions allowed to travel without the outer garb of their calling; but would a priest talk so freely to a stranger? And yet—"You must have had a religious training at some time in your life?"
Lavis smiled again, but more slowly. "You are persistent, Mr. Meade."
"I beg your pardon. It is the journalist's interviewing habit. And I thought I recalled, also——"
Lavis seemed to be waiting for Meade to finish, but Meade, who suddenly realized to what he was leading, did not finish; and Lavis turnedhis head so as to look squarely at Cadogan. Through the half-closed, wistful eyes Cadogan caught a gleam that he again felt was an answer to Meade's unfinished question, and yet was again meant, not for Meade, but for himself.
"But to return," persisted Meade; "how is the world to benefit by your theory that God does not allow a great spirit to die?"
"Well, call it theory. After the mortal death of a man whose dying was a tremendous experience, there will be born again a great soul. And if the being in whom that soul is enshrined is but true to the best in himself, he will attain to the utterance of a great message, compel the world to listen to his message; and the world, having listened, will be for all time the better."
"I suppose"—Meade was by now not wholly free of self-consciousness—"a man should have had a training as a writer to best fit him for such an experience?"
"Writer, sculptor, painter, musician, lawgiver—anything, so that he possesses the germ, the potential power to make others see, hear, or feel things as he does."
"But who aboard this ship possesses such a gift?"
Lavis turned to Cadogan. "Here is the man."
"Who!" Cadogan bounded in his seat; andthen, smiling at himself: "That's a good one—I took it seriously."
"Take it seriously, please."
Cadogan instantly sobered. "But I'm not aching to die. And the Lord never intended me for a martyr."
"Are you sure you know what the Lord intended you for? You have done great deeds in one way. You could do great deeds in another way. A great deed is never more than a great thought in action. You need but the great thought to give the great deed birth."
"But I never originated a great thought in my life."
"What man ever did? The seeds of great thoughts are born in us, which means that they come from God. But great deeds are man's. And if it should come to pass in your adventurous life that you go to a calamitous death, it may not be altogether a pity. If your heart remains pure as now, it surely would not be. You have every qualification, if you could but be born again."
"Why wouldn't you yourself be the man for such a thing?" It was Meade, eying the man from under contracted eyebrows, who put this question.
"Thanks!" Lavis's smile was almost perceptible.
"I did not mean——"
"No harm. It would require the creative genius. I am no longer creative."
"But you have an intellect."
"Meaning that I have a well-developed muscle in the brain? The man who lifts heavy weights in the circus has also a well-developed muscle in his arm, or back, or legs, but what does he teach us that is for the betterment of the race? But Mr. Cadogan here has the flaming soul. And the last passenger on this ship should be such as he, a strong man with the innocence of the child." He turned from the older to the younger man. "You are creative in thought, powerful, direct, tireless in action, Mr. Cadogan. Every new experience still comes to you with the dew of the morning on it. You should die hard, with your eyes open to the last. Nothing would escape you. And you would know what dying was, because for you to give up life would be a great renunciation."
Cadogan shook his head. "Even if all the rest of it were true, I have nothing in life to renounce."
"How can you know that? You would be renouncing a limitless capacity for enjoyment, if nothing more." Lavis rose to his feet. "I hope I haven't bored you too much? I think I will go out and get some fresh air." He bowed andsmiled to Meade, smiled more warmly on Cadogan, wrapped his top-coat over his evening clothes, and went out on deck.
Meade saw that Cadogan was gazing thoughtfully on the seat which Lavis had vacated. "What do you make of him, Cadogan?"
Cadogan's face, when he swung his chair around, was flushed, his dark-blue eyes more glowing than usual. "I don't know, except that he had me thinking. He made me feel that he was reading my mind, and before he left I was saying to myself, 'When I grow older I'll be something like him,' only, of course, with less brains than he's got."
"You'll have brains enough, don't fear. He made me think of the head of a religious order who went wrong some years ago. But that was before I knew much of the inside of Continental affairs. A woman, as I recall it. However, he's gone—he made my head ache trying to follow him, and—but there is the major and Vogel passing the port-hole. I'll call them in and we'll have our little rubber."
They sat in to their little rubber, and while they played a passenger of importance was auctioning off the pool on the ship's run for the next day.
He stood on a table to see and be seen, a short, fat, bearded man who sometimes had to pause for breath. "Here she is, gentlemen, the largest ship of all time making marine history. What d'y' say, gentlemen? We all know what we did up to noon to-day. We did even better, impossible though it may seem, this afternoon. Now, what am I offered for the high field? Come now, gentlemen. By Tuesday morning, at ten o'clock, are we to be abreast of Sandy Hook or not? It will be a record run if we make it, but whether we are a few minutes late or early, every indication points to a grand day's run for to-morrow. Come, gentlemen, bid up!"
"What of the rumors of icebergs?" asked a voice.
"Pray do not joke, gentlemen. I beg of you, do not joke. Has any person here observed any notice of icebergs posted on the ship's board? I fancy not. To-day I myself put the question to the man whose word is law on this ship. Do I have to name him, gentlemen? No need, is there? No. 'Are we going to slow down?' was my question. 'On the contrary, we are going to go faster,' was the reply."
There was a laugh. "Seventy pounds!" was called.
"That's the spirit, gentlemen. Seventy poundsfor the high field. The gentleman who shall be fortunate enough to win this pool will have something to brag about in future days. Come, now, how much for the high field? Seventy-five? Good! Gentlemen, I am offered——"
"What's the high field worth, Cadogan?" asked Vogel.
"All you want to bid, if nothing goes wrong. But with ship's officers spending more time with distinguished passengers than on the bridge, I wouldn't give a nickel for it."
"I won't bid, then."
The voice of the man on the table was increasing in volume. "Eighty-five pounds I am offered for the high field. It is not enough, not enough by far, gentlemen—eh! Eh, I say."
The ship heaved, not violently; gently rather, under them. There was an easy, slight roll to port, a dull, almost noiseless bumping, a slow, heavy resistance, as of a heavy object being forced over a stubbornly yielding surface.
To either side of him and in the mirrors Cadogan could see a dozen men peer inquiringly up over cards or books or glasses. Meade stared around the room. "What the devil's that?" he asked, and held a card high, with eyes directed to the nearest deck door.
There was a recoil of the ship, which slowlyand gently, but surely and almost comically, to Cadogan's way of thinking, urged the stout waist of Meade against the edge of the table.
Cadogan waited his last turn to play, laid down his card, and scooped in the trick. "Forty on points, eight on honors, Major," he said, and set it down. "If nobody minds, I'll step out on deck and see what stopped her."
"Stopped! Is she stopped?" exclaimed Vogel.
"She is." Cadogan strolled out of the smoking-room. Three or four had preceded him; half a dozen, who had nothing else to do, strolled out after him.
In a few minutes those who had gone out were beginning to return. "Well, what do you know about that?" whooped the first one. "Hit a lump of ice! Lucky for the ice we didn't hit it fair, with this forty-five-thousand-tonner going along at twenty-five or six knots an hour like she is!"
Several laughed at that, and Major Crupp, who was patiently riffling the cards, called out to the last speaker: "Did you see Mr. Cadogan out there?"
"I saw him going toward the bow of the ship, Major," was the answer.
"Investigating, I suppose. Well, suppose we play dummy—what do you-all say?—till Caddiecomes back. He's possessed of a demon for finding out things. Your deal, Mr. Vogel."
A steward stepped in from the deck. "Major Crupp, sir?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Cadogan told me to say not to wait till he came back, sir, but to go on with the game, sir."
Vogel picked up his cards. "How long will we be delayed, steward?"
"Oh, not more than an hour or two, they say, sir."
"H-m-m"—Vogel stared reflectively at the table—"I'll have to buy Cadogan a good smoke when he comes back. He saved me ninety or a hundred pounds on that high field."
They resumed play.
Lavis was pacing the wide promenade deck and sniffing the air as he paced. It was as if a breath of the north were on them, and yet—having reached the uncovered part of the deck astern he looked up to observe the steamer's smoke—the wind was not from the north.
Such passengers as were still making their rounds were doing so determinedly, in sweaters or top-coats. Without halting in their rapid walkingthey, too, at times drew short, sharp breaths through high-held nostrils. It surely was growing colder. But why? A group held up an officer who was smoking his pipe in the lee of the canvas forward to ask him why. He at once set them right about it. Why, surely it should be cool—on the North Atlantic, in April, and well on in the evening!
A couple that Lavis knew for bride and groom turned out to lean over the rail. He was pointing down by the ship's side. "Hardly a ripple on it—see!" he exclaimed. "Only for the bubbling up from underneath, none at all. Like an endless belt sliding by so smoothly, isn't it? And above—see, sweetheart—a clear sky."
"Ah-h, a beautiful night!" she murmured. "On such a night—" Lavis, as he turned the corner of the house, saw him snatch her close and kiss her.
In lounge and smoking rooms all was cosey, cheerful, lively company. Lavis in passing had only to glance into air-ports to be sure of that. It was card-playing and easy gossip in the one, and not infrequent drinks being brought to impatient men by alert, deferential, many-buttoned servants in the other. In the grill those who must have a special little bite before turning in were having it; and, this being a chilly sort of anight, there were those who were also having a warming drink, with the bite or without it.
It was growing late. The deck was now almost deserted. Lavis took a last look over the rail, a last gulp of the cooling air, and went into the loungeroom. Here he got from the steward paper and envelopes, sat down and wrote:
Now see that you make no attempt to lure him back