CHAPTER VIII.
WE VISIT AFRICA.
The Voyage of the“White Wings.”
“And what, in Truth’s name, brings ye to such a shore as this?”
I had been standing to spy out the low African coast, and had forgotten the very existence of Timothy McShanus until he spoke to me. Just, indeed, his question appeared to be. Why had I left Europe, my home, my friends, to visit this desolate No-Man’s-Land, speaking to us as it did of the ultimate desolation and the far kingdoms of solitude? Why had I chosen such a course—and, almost greater wonder, why was such a man as Timothy McShanus aboard with me?
We had left Dieppe almost a month ago. The fastest yacht afloat, as I liked to call ourWhite Wings, had permitted us to call for a day or two at Gib., to put in at Porto Grande in the Cape de Verde Islands; thence to cruise almost at our leisure by the great flat African shore until the hills began to show themselves beyond the surf, and we knew that we were gazing upon English land once more. The question “Why?” remained none the less an enigma to the ship. The men could but call their employer a crank, and justly marvel at his ideas. Timothy McShanus alone ventured to exclaim upon them.
“Ye pick me up at Dieppe,” said he, “and tell me ’tis a bit of a pleasure voyage. I don’t refuse ye, thinking that we will sail away to Spain and twirl a while with the señoritas; but divil a señorita in all the journey. Ye dose me with Spanish wine at Gibralthar, and say I shall keep Christmas in Pall Mall—me that was never out of London a week but I fell to weeping for me children. And here we are in the Old Man’s counthry, and swim ye must would ye go ashore. Ah, be honest with a man, Ean, me bhoy. Ye’re afther something deep, and none but the little Jap has the secret of it. Say ’tis so, and I, Timothy, will trust ye to the world’s end.”
“Timothy,” I rejoined, for the time had come when I must speak openly with him, “you know me well enough to say that I am neither a fool nor a child. I’ll tell you in a word why I came to Africa. It was to learn who stole my bronze pearls which Joan Fordibras wore at Kensington.”
It is never difficult to surprise Timothy McShanus, for he is a man of many exclamations. I think, however, that he approached the confines of astonishment that morning. Turning about, he looked me full in the face—then placed his immense hand affectionately upon my shoulder. The measure of his brogue displayed his interest.
“’Tis no jest, Ean?”
“No jest at all, Timothy.”
“Ye believe that the truth is afloat upon the sea?”
“I believe it so much that I have spent a fifth of my fortune in fitting out this yacht, and will spend three-fifths more if expenditure will help me to the truth.”
“And there is no man alive but me knows the secret?”
“There is a man and there is a woman. I have told it to neither. The man is my Japanese servant, from whom nothing under heaven is hidden. The woman—for in knowledge she is such—is Joan Fordibras.”
He shook his head as though in a measure disappointed.
“Your Jap is Satan himself I’ll not deny him. The girl’s another matter. ’Tis a maniac the ould gentleman would be to steal your jewels and to let his daughter wear ’em under your very nose. Fabos, me bhoy, ye don’t believe that?”
“I will tell you when the time comes, Timothy. It should not be far distant. On the other hand, a year may find me still afloat. Don’t be alarmed, man. I promise you that the first steamer leaving Cape Town after our arrival shall carry you to your beloved Pall Mall. My own duty is plain. I cannot shirk it, let the consequences be what they may. At least, you have had a pleasant voyage, Timothy?”
“A pleasant voyage and the best of company. Your Japanese pitched me across the cabin yesterday for to show me how they do it in his counthry. Ye have a Scotchman aboard who makes me cross the Equather in a kilt, and two vagabonds from County Cork who tell me the moon is a staymer on the starboard bow. I play piquet with ye all day, and ye win the savings of a lifetime—seven pounds, four shillings, and twopence as I’m a living man. Oh, ’tis a pleasant voyage, sure enough. And for what, Fabos? You’re a magician, could you tell me that?”
“No magician at all, Timothy. Put the same question to me at eight bells to-night, and I may be able to answer you. If I am not very much mistaken, the smoke of it is on yonder horizon now. I will tell you when it is safe to speak—not a minute sooner or later.”
This, perhaps, I said with some warmth of earnestness which he could not mistake. To be candid, it was ridiculous that so small a thing could excite me, and yet excited I was, as I had not been since the first conception of my beliefs came to me on the beach at Palling long months ago. Just a haze of smoke upon the horizon—just the knowledge that some other ship piloted us in our course down the southern shores of Africa. That was all we saw, and yet no man aboard but did not see it with beating heart and nerves high strung.
“What do you make of it, Captain Larry?” I asked that ruddy-faced, unemotional officer, who had come to my side during the talk. “This is no course for tramps, is it? You would not expect to meet a liner so near the shore.”
“Certainly not, sir. If she were a copper ship to Port Nolloth, she wouldn’t be doing ten knots. Yonder boat’s doing fifteen.”
“And her course is due south.”
“Is due south, sir.”
“Would you be surprised to hear that she was putting in to St. Helena Bay?”
“After what you have told me, sir, nothing would surprise me. It’s wonder enough to find any ship here at all, sir.”
I admitted it to be so. There are no more pleasing moments in our lives than those confirming the truth of some great idea which we have deduced from a certain set of circumstances. There, upon the far sea, one of the links of the chain of my conjecture stood revealed. I had been less than human if my heart had not quickened at the spectacle.
“Captain,” I said, “the men understand, I think, that our object is to find out why that ship visits St. Helena Bay, and where she is bound when she quits it? The rest I leave to you—and the engines. If our purpose is discovered, it will be immediately frustrated. I trust to your good sense that nothing of the kind shall happen.”
“Nothing of the kind will happen, sir,” he said quietly; “we are going dead slow already. Mr. Benson has his instructions.”
I listened to the beat of our powerful engines, and, as he said, they were going dead slow. Scarce a haze of smoke loomed above our ugly squat funnel. The men began to talk in low whispers, still watching the black cloud upon the horizon. That we were following a strange ship and did not wish to be discovered had been made known to them all. This in itself was sufficient to whet a seaman’s appetite for adventure; but when, on the top of it, Captain Larry called them immediately to gun drill, then, I say, they braced themselves up as true, handy men with honest work before them.
This drill we had studied together since we left Ushant behind us. It had been in my mind since the day I bought the ship of Yarrow, and stipulated for machine guns fore and aft and a fitted torpedo tube, that the aggressor might, in due time, become the aggrieved. For this I took with me no fewer than five able seamen who had served their time in the Naval Reserve and passed thence with credit. “He who treads upon a snake should wear thick boots.” The old saying had become my watchword, and not forgetting that we set out to spy upon some of the most dangerous and cunning of the world’s criminals, I made ready for that emergency.
The night would tell me the truth. Who could wonder if I waited for the night as a man for the rewards which months of dreaming had promised him?
CHAPTER IX.
THE NIGHT IS NOT SILENT.
The Justification of Dr. Fabos.
I dined with McShanus at eight o’clock that night and played a little piquet with him afterwards. He had now been admitted to my confidence, and knew a good deal of that which I surmised.
“’Tis your opinion, then,” he had said, “that the men on yonder ship are going to receive the diamonds stolen from the mines of Africa? Man, could ye prove it, ’twould be the sensation of the universe.”
I answered by reminding him of the immense value of the diamonds stolen every year from the mines of Kimberley alone. These, in spite of an astute police and a supervision passing all experience, make their way ultimately to Europe, and are trafficked in by the less scrupulous dealers. How is this to be accounted for? A similar question would ask how is it possible that stolen jewels, to the value of some millions of money or thereabouts, are hidden successfully from the world’s police every year?
“Timothy,” I said, “I have formed the opinion that these jewels are hidden upon the sea. This ship we are following will receive a parcel of stolen diamonds between here and St. Helena Bay. She will carry them to a larger vessel now afloat upon the Atlantic. That greater ship, could you board her, would tell you the story of many a famous robbery, show the contents of many rifled safes, enlighten you as to the whereabouts of many a great jewel now advertised for by the police. I hope that the day will come when I shall step on the deck of that ship, and that you will accompany me, Timothy. One thing I have never doubted—it is my friend’s courage.”
He liked the compliment, and banged the cabin table with his fist to emphasise it.
“I’d cross mountains to go aboard her,” he said, with real feeling. “Don’t think ill of me if I doubt ’tis a mare’s nest ye are afther and that there may be disappointments. Ye said the night would tell us. Blame nobody if the night is silent, Ean, me bhoy.”
“It will not be silent, Timothy. Here is Captain Larry tumbling down the companion to tell us so. He has come to say that there is a message, and that he has heard it. Now listen to him.”
Honest Benjamin Larry, true son of Portsmouth despite his name, came blundering into the cabin as though the ship were afire. I had but to take one look at his bright eyes to know that he was there to justify me, and to say that the night was eloquent.
“Doctor,” he cried, too excited almost to speak at all, “please to go up. There’s something happening.”
We raced up the ladder together—McShanus with an agility that must have spoken of his lost youth. It would have been then about ten o’clock at night—four bells of the first watch, as the seamen have it. The night was intensely dark and void of stars. A long gentle ground swell lifted the yacht lazily and rolled her as though she had been a cradle rocked by a loving hand. I perceived at once that our engines had been stopped and that we carried no lights. The African shore was hardly visible, but the thunder of distant surf said that we still hugged it. The crew themselves were all at the bows. I did not fail to notice that the machine guns were uncovered and the magazine hatch already removed.
It really was wonderful how the good fellows acted in that moment of discovery. Had they been trained upon the decks of a British man-of-war, I could have looked neither for a warmer zeal nor a finer prudence. None spoke aloud or gave tongue to the excitement which possessed him. Quietly making way for me as I came up, the great boatswain, whom they called Balaam, pointed with his fat hand at the scene which engrossed their attention, and waited for my remarks. Others nodded their heads expressively. It was as though to say, “The master is right, after all.” I could have asked no greater compliment.
And what did we see to hold us there engrossed? A low light flashing upon the water, perhaps the third of a mile from our own deck. Other lights from a steamer’s deck plainly answering the signal. A man needed to be no wizard to say that a boat had put out from some harbourage near by, and now exchanged signals with the steamer we had followed all day. But this was very far from being all, for as we stood there one of the ships suddenly turned a search-light upon the boat that came out to her, and we saw the whole picture, as in vivid radiance, cast upon the black screen of the night.
There were two vessels, as we had surmised, and one of them had the shape and the manner of a foreign-built gunboat. The other seemed to be little more than a sea-going launch, speedy and snake-like, and carrying no more than three men. We could plainly see that a rope ladder had been slung out from the apparent gunboat, and that one of the hands from the launch meant to go aboard her. A great cloud of crimson smoke above the funnel of the larger vessel denoted her preparation for a speedy voyage and the brief aspect of her call. Indeed, to be precise, she did not lie-to more than fifteen minutes in all, and the man who had gone aboard her had already descended the ladder and had cast the launch off before she discovered our presence and knew that she was watched.
As a flash of light upon a dark horizon, so it happened. The quivering rays of the great lantern skimming the limpid sea as it were jestingly on the part of the man who guided them, fell for an instant upon our decks and revealed us there as a black shape threatening and undeclared. Instantly signal guns were fired from the shore; the lights were extinguished; the after darkness fell impenetrably and unrelieved save where the crimson flame hovered above the gunboat’s funnel. Then for the first time a voice spoke upon my own yacht. It was that of Captain Larry, and he uttered a truth which was plain to all.
“They’re running due west, sir—to the open sea. It is as you said it would be.”
“And will be afterwards, Captain Larry. Full steam ahead, if you please. We must not lose sight of them again.”
“Whatever it may cost, sir?”
“It will cost nothing, captain.”
To the men I said:
“Fifty pounds apiece, my lads, if you track that steamer to port.”
They answered me with a ringing cheer and were at their places in an instant.White Wingsbegan to race through the water with all the power of the great engines which drove her. I heard a second signal gun fired ashore, but could attach no meaning to it. There was no other light upon our horizon than that of the red loom of flame which betrayed the gunboat’s course. She was our goal—and yet not she alone. The ocean had her secrets to reveal. I did not believe that she could hide them from me now.
“We have the legs of her, Captain Larry?” I asked him presently.
“Undoubtedly, sir.”
“And we will be up with her in half an hour?”
“In a quarter if we hold this speed. Mr. Benson is showing off a bit, you see.”
“Captain Larry,” I said, “they have arms aboard for certain, and I will risk the life of no man who came to serve me in ignorance of this. Let Mr. Benson be a little more discreet. We will keep out of gunshot, if you please.”
“I understand you, sir. And none too early.”
He meant that we were already upon the point of being within gunshot of the pursued, and he rang down for “half-speed” as he spoke. The order was not obeyed a minute too soon. A heavy gun thundered at us presently, and a shell fell impotently into the sea not a furlong from the starboard bow. The effect of this upon my crew was such as words can express with difficulty. It may be that the scene had been unreal to them until this time; a vision of which they could make little. But powder and shot! The poorest intellect of them all understood that, while as for my genial Irishman, he ducked his head like an old woman who believes that a tile is falling.
“Ach, divil take them, Fabos! Am I wounded anywhere?”
“It would be somewhere about the pit of the stomach, Timothy.”
“But ’tis shell they’re firing!”
“I will complain about it, Timothy, when we go aboard.”
He was very white—I forgave him for that. Like the others, he, too, had but little realised what the pursuit of this unknown ship might cost us, and what pages it might write in the story of crime. The crashing sound of a great gun ringing out in the silence of the night brought the truth to his ears as no words could have done.
“Faith, ’tis little stomach I have for it at all.”
“Would you turn back, Timothy?”
“Not for a thousand sovereigns upon the cabin table.”
The men heard him and gave a great cheer. It was answered distantly from the racing gunboat, echoed again by a low sobbing sound as of winds, given back to us by a murmur of the sea, which already fretted as though at the far voice of tempest. A storm had crept upon us unseen. We had no eyes for anything but the black shape of the gunboat.
“There’s water for your soup, sir,” said the quartermaster they called Cain. “Begging your pardon for the liberty, there’s more than a capful of wind coming.”
We scarcely heard him. Captain Larry, more prudent, went down to his cabin to read the glass, and returned with a grave face.
“We shall have wind, sir, without a doubt,” he said to me.
“And what if we do, Larry?”
“Oh, the ship must tell us that.”
“I have no doubt of her. If it were only daylight, Larry——”
“Ah, sir, if our wishes were sovereigns what fairy godmothers we should make.”
“They’ve doused their lights, Larry,” I went on. “The night is their luck. We may lose them yet, but we shall find them again if we cross the Atlantic to do it.”
“May I go with you, if it’s twice round the world and back!”
Loud voices cried “Ay!” to that. The excitement of the night worked strangely upon the nerves of men who, like all sailors, were awestruck in the presence of mystery. Yonder in the trough of a black ocean was the unknown ship we had set out to seek. The darkness hid her from us, the sea rose rapidly, the wind had begun to blow half a gale. No longer could there be any thought of firing a gun or declaring an open attack upon us. Each ran for the open and for safety. Our searchlight showed us an empty waste of trembling waters and a black hull breasting the swell in cataracts of foam and spindrift. We doubted if the others would weather the night. Anxiety for our own safety became the dominant factor of our thoughts.
Looking back to that unforgotten night, I have often wondered at the folly of calculations which had taken so little thought of Nature and allowed the temper of winds so small a place in all our reckonings. I confess that such an arbiter as storm and tempest never once was in my mind when I planned to search the northern parts of Cape Colony for an unknown ship and to follow that ship to her haven in the open Atlantic. When the gale broke upon us, a swift cyclonic tempest characteristic of the southern ocean and her humour, I perceived my folly and could but laugh sardonically. So near had we been to that day of discovery of which I had dreamed! And now we were but a shell of steel tossed impotently amidst a raging cataract of sounds, swept by a hail of spray, or carried blindly at the beck of winds. The ship we pursued appeared to have been lost altogether in the darkness. It became, for any but a trained sailor, almost a dangerous thing to remain upon the deck of theWhite Wings. The crash of the seas upon our plates was as the tremor of thunder about a house.
So for the hour we had failed. And who would dare to speak with confidence of the morrow?
CHAPTER X.
THE VISION OF THE SHIP.
Dr. Fabos Proposes to Visit the Azores.
I slept a little about midnight, being convinced that the night had written the last word of its story. The storm had not abated. A wild wind blew tempestuously from the south-east, and drove us before it as a leaf before a winter’s blast. Good ship as my yacht proved to be, she was like many turbined steamers, a wet boat in a gale and no friend to the landsman. We shipped heavy seas persistently, and drove our bull’s nose wildly into mountains of seething foam. Even the hardy crew complained of her; while my poor friend Timothy McShanus implored me, for the love of God, to throw him overboard.
“Was it for this I left the home of me fathers?” he asked me pitifully when I entered the cabin where he lay. “Is this the land of milk and honey to which ye would take me? Stop the ship, I tell ye, and put me ashore. Let me die among the naygroes. Kill me with laudanum. Man, I’ll thank ye to have done it. I’ll call ye the best friend that Timothy McShanus ever had.”
Poor fellow! His groans were in my ears when I fell to sleep. His was the voice which reproached me when I awoke. That would have been about three o’clock of the morning, I suppose. Dawn was breaking furtively in an ink-black sky. The swaying of a lamp in the gimbals, the swish of water against the cabin walls told me that the gale had somewhat abated. I asked McShanus if he had waked me, and he answered that the captain had been down to call me to the deck.
“Put Timothy McShanus ashore and let the naygroes devour him,” he said; and then, almost with tears in his eyes, “Man, the last of me has been given up. I’m no more than a hollow drum for sport to bate upon. Bury me where the shamrock grows. Say ’twas the ups and downs that did for this same McShanus.”
I spoke what cheer I could, and went on deck as the captain had asked me. Abel, the quartermaster, stood at the wheel, and all our officers were with Larry upon the bridge. The sea still ran high, but the wind had moderated. I perceived a sky that was black and thunderous to leeward, but clearing in the sun’s path. There were wonderful lights upon the raging waters—beams of gold and grey and green interweaved and superb in their weirdness. The waves ran high, but with less power in their assault; and though a fine rain was falling, the measure of it became less with every minute that passed. These things I observed almost as I stepped from the companion hatch. But it was not until I stood side by side with Captain Larry upon the bridge that I knew why he had summoned me.
He turned as I mounted the ladder, and helped me up with an icy cold hand. The little group there, I thought, seemed awed and afraid to speak. Larry himself merely pointed with his hand to a sailing ship sagging heavily in the swell, perhaps half a mile from our port quarter. The glass which he put into my hand helped me but little, so dense was the spray upon its lens. I could, at the first glance, make little of the spectacle save that the ship had four masts, was of unusual size, and seemed to be standing well up to the gale, although her masts were bare. For the rest, she might have been any ship you like bound from Europe to “down under,” and thence returning by Cape Horn. I told Larry as much, and then looked at the stranger again. Undoubtedly there was something queer about her. Yet what it was a landsman might well have been unable to say.
“Well, Larry, and what do you make of it now?” I asked the captain presently. Had I not known him too well, his answer would have made me doubt his sanity.
“I think she is the ship you are seeking, sir.”
I took up the glass without a word, and focussed it upon the deck of the sailing ship. Not a living soul could be discerned there. It might have been a derelict buffeted at hazard about the great Atlantic waste. And yet the vessel appeared to hold a steady course. Behind it my quick eye detected a wake of water such as is left by the propeller of a steamer. There were black objects at the bows which, in sober reason, might have been given the shape of machine guns. These things I was almost afraid to admit aloud. The idea that came to me had been purchased at a heavy price. I felt that I could share it with none.
“She is a sailing ship, Larry,” I said, “and yet not a sailing ship.”
“Far from it, sir. Yon’s no sailing ship.”
“You are thinking that she is fitted with auxiliary steam?”
“I am thinking that she has enough arms on board to serve a cruiser of the line. Machine guns fore and aft and big stuff amidships. The masts are all blarney, sir, or I’m a Dutchman. That vessel’s heavily engined, and we may thank God we’re the fastest yacht afloat. If there were less sea running they would have fired at us already.”
“You mean it, Larry?”
“As true as there’s blue sky above, sir, yonder ship will sink us if we stand by. I’m telling you what I see with an old sailor’s eyes. Ten minutes ago, we came on her suddenly out of the mists. She had fifty men on her poop then, and one dead man she put overboard. The sound of a gun they were firing called my attention to her. I saw a group of hands on the quarter-deck, and one shot down in cold blood. They put him overboard and then discovered us. What happens then? The men go out of sight like so many spiders to their webs. The ship is navigated, heaven knows how. She keeps by us, and wants to know our business. I signal to them and no man answers. What shall I make of that, sir?”
I answered him without a moment’s hesitation.
“You will make full speed ahead, Larry—now, this instant, let the yacht do what she can.”
He rang the order down to the engineers, andWhite Wingsbegan to race as a human thing over the great seas which swept upward toward the equator. The words were not spoken a moment too soon. Even as the bells rang out, a shell came hurtling after us from the great gun Larry’s clever eyes had discerned upon the deck of the unknown vessel. It fell far ahead of us—a reckless, unmeaning threat, and yet one which Fate ironically might have turned to our destruction. A second and a third followed it. We stood as though spell-bound, the spindrift half blinding us, the monster seas surging upon our decks in cataracts of clear water. Would they hit us, or should we be lost in the curtain of the storm? I claim no better courage in that moment of the ordeal than the good fellows who closed about me were so ready to display. We raced from death together, and numbered the minutes which stood between us and our salvation. No thought or deed of our own could help us. The good yacht alone would answer for our lives.
Now, this strange pursuit lasted, I suppose, a full ten minutes. That it came to a premature end must be set down to the immense speed of which theWhite Wingswas capable, and the force of the gale which still raged about us. We had, indeed, now caught the tail end of the hurricane, the outer edge of the storm cycle; and immediately it enveloped us, a darkness as of intensest night came down upon the waters. Turbulent waves, foaming and angry at their crests, deeply hollowed and black below, rolled northward in monster seas of towering grandeur, each threatening us with the menace of disaster, but passing impotently as we rose at its approach and were hurled onward to the depths. The sound of the rushing wind became terrible to hear. Unseen armies of the ether clashed and thundered above our heads. The rain of the spindrift cut our faces as with a whip. We held a course with difficulty, and must instantly have been lost to the view of those upon the pursuing ship.
A full hour elapsed, I suppose, before the storm spent itself. Swiftly as it had come upon us, so swiftly it passed, leaving an aftermath of glorious sunshine and sweet, clear air, and a sea deliciously green and fresh. Not a trace of any other ship could we now espy upon the horizon. We steamed the hither ocean alone, and the memory of the night was as that of a vision moribund, of sights and sounds of sleep to be mocked and forgotten at the dawn. So reason would have had it, but reason is rarely a sailor’s friend. If my men had made nothing of the unknown ships, of the shell they had fired, and the deeper mysteries they spoke of, none the less I knew that the fo’castle would resound presently with the talk of it, and that even my officers would recount that strange experience by many a fireside yet unbuilt. For myself, my duty had become plain to me. Until I had set foot upon the deck of the Diamond Ship (for this I called her henceforth) I had no place ashore, nor must think of my leisure at all. A man apart, I did not shrink from that lonely vigil. The mystery of it beckoned me, the excitement challenged my intellect to such a combat as the mind must love. I would go on to the end, and no man should turn me from my purpose.
Now, our course had been Northward during these exciting hours; but as the day wore on, we set it full N.N.W. Captain Larry alone upon the ship knew my determination to sail from the African coast to Santa Maria in the Azores. I gave him no reason, nor did he ask one. He understood that my purpose was worthy of him and the yacht, and obeyed me unquestioningly. As for the men, they had been engaged for a service which they knew to have some measure of risk in it. A scale of pay beyond anything expected from the master of a yacht tempered their criticism and rewarded their fidelity. This I will say for them, that they were seamen, brave beyond the common, from the burly boatswain Balaam to the beef-faced cabin boy we had christened Nimbles. If they called my ship “a police boat,” I did not resent the term. I think that they had come to have some affection and respect for me; and I would have wagered my fortune upon their loyalty. To such men it mattered little whether our head lay to the North or to the South. The mystery held their interest; they admitted that they had never known brighter days at sea.
There remained my poor Timothy McShanus. Good soul, how his heart warmed to the sunshine! And who would have hailed the Timothy of storm and of tempest when upon the second night of our Northward voyage he dressed himself to dine with me in the exquisite little saloon my builders had designed for theWhite Wings? The sea had ebbed down by this time to the stillness of a great inland lake. The moonbeams upon the sleeping water shone with an ethereal radiance of light filtered as it were in a mesh of mirrors. Scarce a breath of wind stirred the awnings of the deck or was caught by the gaping cowls. The yacht moved with that odd gliding motion a turbine engine ensures. We appeared to be running over the unctuous swell as a car upon well-laid rails. The sounds of the night were of steam hissing and valves at a suction and shafts swiftly revolving. The decks trembled at the voice of speed; the movement of the vessel was that of a living, breathing entity, pitted against the majesty of spaces and conquering them.
Be sure that Timothy McShanus came in to dinner on such a night as this. He had found his sea-legs and his appetite, and soup, fish, and bird disappeared like one o’clock. To watch him drink ’89 Bollinger from a Venetian tumbler might have inspired even the gods to thirst. Groomed to the last hair upon a time-worn scalp, Timothy would have served well for the model of an Englishman of the ’sixties as Paris used to see him.
“By the holy soul of Christopher Columbus, ’tis a rare seaman I am,” he said, as we went up above to take our coffee and cigars under the shelter of the awning. “Ask me to point out the terrestrial paradise, and the yachtWhite Wingswill I name to ye. Ah, don’t talk to me of yesterday. ’Twas a bit of the touch of neuralgia I had, and keeping to me bed for security.”
“You wanted them to throw you overboard, Timothy.”
“The divil I did—and phwat for, if not to lighten the ship in the storm? ’Tis a Jonah I would be, and three days in the belly of the whale. Man, ’twould make a taytotaler of Bacchus himself.”
He lighted a cigar of prodigious length, and fell for a while to practical observations upon the sea and sky and the ship which were of interest to none but himself. By-and-bye they would appear in the columns of theDaily Shuffler. I begged of him to be less Dantesque and more practical, and presently, becoming quite serious, he spoke of the Diamond Ship.
“Phwat the blazes does it all mean, Ean me bhoy? A ship in such a hurry that she fires a shot at ye for looking at her. Larry has told me the story, and, by me sowl, ’tis astonishing. When I return to London next month——”
“You are contemplating a return then, Timothy?”
“Faith, would ye have so much ganius buried in the Doldrums?”
“We shall have to pick up a liner and put you aboard,” said I.
He set his cup down with a bang and looked at me as though I had done him an injury.
“’Tis to the British Isles ye are bound. Would ye deny it?”
“I do deny it, Timothy. We are bound to the Island of Santa Maria in the Azores.”
“For phwat the divil——”
But this masterly sentence he never finished. I could see that he was thinking deeply. Presently he settled himself in his chair and began to talk almost as one communing with himself.
“He takes me from London, me that is an orphan and has buried three wives. He puts me on the sea and shows me a wild man’s country. Ach, ’tis a wonderful man, me friend Fabos, and none like unto him. As a lamb to the shearing do I thread in his footsteps.”
“Rather an old sheep, Timothy, is it not?”
He brushed the objection aside, and apostrophising the stars in that grandiose style he had learned from ancient melodrama, he exclaimed:
“Woman eternal, the crimes that are committed in your name.”
“Do you mean to say——”
“I mean to say that ye are going to the Azores to see her.”
“Joan Fordibras?”
“No other. Joan Fordibras. The little divil of a shepherdess in the red dress. Ye are going to see her. Deny it not. Ye are risking much to see her—your duty which bought ye this ship, the knowledge ye have learned out of Africa, the story ye would tell to the British Government. Ye are losing these because of the shepherdess. I’ll deny it, Ean Fabos, when ye tell me it is not true.”
“Then deny it now, Timothy. I am going to the Azores because I believe that a house there can finish the story which the sea has begun. That is the whole truth of it. There are men afloat in a ship, Timothy, who hide some of the world’s greatest criminals and their plunder from the police of all cities. That is what I had supposed, and this voyage has gratified my supposition. I am going to the Azores to meet some of these men face to face——”
“And Joan Fordibras?”
“I hope from my heart that I shall never see her again.”
“Ye hope nothing of the kind, man. ’Tis lurking in yer heart the thought that ye will see and save her. I honour ye for it. I would not turn ye from your purpose for a fortune upon the table, poor divil of a man that I am. Go where ye will, Ean Fabos, there’s one that will go with ye to the world’s end and back again and say that friendship sent him.”
“Then I am not to put you on a liner, Timothy?”
“May that same ship rot on verdurous reefs.”
“But you are risking your life, man.”
He stood up and flicked the ash of his cigar into the sea.
“Yon is life,” he said, “a little red light in the houses of our pleasure, and then the ashes on the waters. Ean, me bhoy, I go with you to Santa Maria——”
We smoked awhile in silence. Presently he asked me how I came to think of the Azores at all, and why I expected to find Joan Fordibras upon the island of Santa Maria.
“Did she speak of it at Dieppe, by any chance?” he asked me.
“Not a word,” said I.
“General Fordibras would have let it slip?”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“Then, how the blazes——?”
“Timothy,” I said, “when we dined with Joan Fordibras at Dieppe, her chaperone, the elderly but engaging Miss Aston, carried a letter in her hand.”
“Indade, and she did.”
“I saw the stamp upon it, Timothy.”
He raised his eyes to heaven.
“God save all wicked men from Ean Fabos,” he exclaimed.
But I had only told him the truth, and but for that letter the lady carried, the high seas might yet embosom the secret of the Diamond Ship.
CHAPTER XI.
DEAD MAN’S RAFT.
The Voyage to the Azores and an Episode.
So the desire of every man on board theWhite Wingsbecame that of making the port of Santa Maria without the loss of a single day. When our prudent Captain insisted that we must call at Porto Grande to coal, I believe that we regarded him as guilty of an offence against our earnestness. The fever of the quest had infected the very firemen in the stoke-hold. My men spent the sunny days peering Northward as though the sea would disclose to them sights and sounds beyond all belief wonderful. They would have burned their beds if by such an act the course had been held.
For my own part, while the zeal flattered me, there were hours of great despondency and, upon that, of silent doubt which no optimism of others could atone for. Reflect how ill-matched were the links in the chain I had forged and how little to be relied upon. A dead man upon a lonely shore; a woman wearing my stolen pearls in a London ball-room; the just belief that diamonds smuggled from the mines of South Africa were hidden upon the high seas; the discovery of a great ship, drifting like a phantom derelict in the waste of the South Atlantic Ocean! This was the record. If I judged that the island of Santa Maria could add to it, the belief was purely supposititious. I went there as a man goes to an address which may help him in a quest. He may find the house empty or tenanted, hostile or friendly; but, in any case, he is wise to go and to answer the question for himself, for no other can take the full measure of that responsibility.
We were delayed awhile at Porto Grande waiting for coal, and after that, sparing our engines as much as possible, we set a drowsy course almost due North, and upon the third day we were within fifty miles of that island of our hopes—Santa Maria in the Azores. I am not likely to forget either the occasion or the circumstance of it. The month was November, the hour eleven o’clock in the forenoon watch, the morning that of Saturday, the nineteenth day of the month. Despite the season of the year, a warm sun shone down upon us almost with tropic heat. Captain Larry was in his cabin preparing for the mid-day observation; the quartermaster Cain was at the wheel; Balaam, the boatswain, sat against the bulwarks amidships, knitting a scarf for his throat; my virile friend, McShanus, had gone below to “soak in the cold water,” as he put it. My own occupation was that of reading for the third time that very beautiful book—Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee,” and I was wondering anew at the master knowledge of Nature it displayed when the second officer sent down word from the bridge that he would like to speak with me. Understanding that he did not wish to call the Captain from the cabin, I went up immediately and discovered him not a little excited about a black object drifting with the wind at a distance, it may be, of a third of a mile from the ship. This he pointed out to me, and handing me the glass, he asked me what I made of it.
“It’s a raft, Andrews,” I said—for that was the second officer’s name—“a raft, and there are men upon it.”
“Exactly as I thought, sir. It is a raft, and there are men upon it—but not living men, I fear. I have been watching it for a good ten minutes, and I am sure of what I say. Yon poor fellows will never sail a ship again.”
I lifted the glass again and spied out the raft with a new interest. Clearly, it was not a safety raft such as is carried by most steamships nowadays; indeed, it appeared to be a very rude structure made of rough planks lashed together at hazard. So far as I could count them, there were seven bodies made fast by ropes to this uncouth structure, but the seas broke over them continually, and I waited some moments before I observed that the clothes of the men were but rags, and that two of the poor fellows at least were almost entirely immersed and must have been drowned as we looked at them, if their deaths had not occurred long weeks ago.
“That’s a fearful thing, Andrews,” I exclaimed, returning him the glass. “Of course, we shall go and see what we can do.”
“I have already altered the course two points, sir,” he said.
“Will you send a boat, do you think?”
“Ah, sir, that’s for you to say. If you think it wise that the men should know, remembering what a sailor is, then a boat by all means.”
“That is to be considered. If these poor fellows are really dead——”
“They have been dead many weeks, sir. What’s more, no shipwreck put them in that position.”
“Good God! Do you mean to say that they have been murdered!”
“Ah, that’s not for me to decide, Dr. Fabos. Look at the way they are lashed aboard there. Did their own hands do that? I’ll wager all I’ve got against it. They were tied up like that and then sent adrift. It’s plain enough without the glass, and the glass makes it sure.”
Be it said that we were steaming some fifteen knots an hour by this time, and had come almost within a biscuit toss of the raft. The foreward look-out had been warned to say nothing, and Abel, the quartermaster, took his cue from the officer of the watch. So it came about that we passed by the dreadful spectacle and remained as a crew almost ignorant of it. Indeed, knowing how easily seamen are depressed, I was thankful that it should have been so. The poor fellows upon the raft must have been dead for some weeks. Two of them were little more than human skeletons. The others were washed by every wave that broke over the hellish contrivance of ropes and planks to which they had been tied. I doubted no longer my officer’s supposition, horrible as it was to believe. Neither peril of the sea nor accident of destiny had sent those men to a death unnameable. I knew that they had been foully murdered, and that he who had thus dealt with them was the man I had set out to seek.
“We cannot help them, Andrews,” I exclaimed. “Let us keep our secret. The day may not be distant when the man shall share it with me. It would be something to have lived for—even to avenge that!”
Hardly could he answer me. Terror of the voyage, and upon terror a fierce delight, had rapidly become the guiding impulses of my crew. They would have sailed with me to the world’s end now, and made no complaint. It remained for me, I said, not to betray them, even for the sake of a woman worthy of a man’s love.