CHAPTER XX.
THE SKIES BETRAY.
A Message Comes from the Diamond Ship.
I shall carry you next to a scene in the Southern Atlantic, to a day in the month following my escape from the Azores. The morning is a brilliant morning of torrid heat and splendid sunshine. The sea about us is a sea gleaming as a sheeted mirror of the purest silver; a vast, still, silent sea, with a cloudless horizon and a breath as of Southern springtime. The yachtWhite Wingsis changed but little since last you saw her at Villa do Porto.
A close observer would mark the mast which carries her apparatus for Marconigrams; she steams very slowly, with a gentle purr of her engines that seems to soothe to sleep. There is a trim sailor on the look-out in her bows, and the second officer paces the bridge with the air of one who has long since ceased to enjoy an active occupation. Down amidships shouts of laughter claim my attention and turn my steps to the spot. The laughter is the laughter of honest seamen. The victim is my friend, McShanus.
He picked himself from the deck, brushed his clothes methodically, and told me that the game had been Ju-Jitsu.
“’Tis the little yellow devil again, and me on my back like a turtle. Says he, ‘The honourable Irishman no puttee Okyada on the floor.’ Says I, ‘Ye wisp of hay, I could knock ye down with my thumb.’ ‘The honourable Irishman try,’ says he. So I just put my hands upon his shoulders and gave him a bit of a push. Sons of Ireland! he dropped to the floor directly I touched him, and where is the relic of Timothy McShanus? Sure, he caught me on the soles of his feet as I fell over him, and shot me twenty yards—me that has the blood of kings in me veins. He grassed me like a rabbit, sir, and there are those who laughed.Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.Let them hear Martial and be hanged to them!”
I comforted Timothy with what words I could, and told him that they were bringing breakfast up to the deck.
“I want a few words with Larry and yourself,” said I, “and hungry men are poor listeners. You have amused the crew, Timothy, and that is something in these days. Be thankful to have played such a noble part and come and eat immediately. There is a capital fish curry—and the loaves are hot from the oven.”
“Faith,” he replied, “if you make me as warm inside as I am out, ’twill be my clothes I am selling to the natives.”
And then he asked almost pitifully.
“’Tis not to say that ye are going back to Europe, Ean, me bhoy?”
“The very thing in my mind, Timothy. I’ll tell you when we have had our ‘parritch.’ We were not born to spend useful careers in the Doldrums. Let us remember it after breakfast.”
They had stretched a friendly awning over the aft deck, and hereunder we took our coffee and such food as a man cared to eat in such a temperature. When breakfast was done and we had lighted the morning cigarette, delicious beyond words under such circumstances, I began to speak very frankly to Timothy and the Captain of our present situation and the impossibility of continuing it further.
“The obstinate man is about to surrender to his friends,” I said. “We have now been running to and fro between Porto Grande and this Styx of an ocean for nearly a month. We have sailed half-way to the Brazils and back, and discovered no more traces of the Diamond Ship than of the barque which Jason steered. When I consented to quit Villa do Porto, I believed that the Jew, Valentine Imroth, would be taken afloat in the vessel we saw when first we returned from South Africa. I still believe it—but what is the good of belief when the ocean guards his secret and no eyes of ours can pry it out? He has escaped us, vanished in a cloud, and left us to gird at ourselves for the precious weeks we have lost. It may be that my deductions were wrong from the first, that he has fled to Paris or to America, and that the Diamond Ship is safely in some harbour where no civilised Government will find her. In that case our patrol is doubly futile. We are giving him time to perfect his plans, while we keep from the authorities that personal account of our investigations to which they are entitled. These conclusions compel me most reluctantly to assent to your wishes and to return. We have failed upon the high seas. Let us now discover what the shore has to tell us.”
They heard me with evident pleasure. Loyal as the men had been all along, these weary weeks of fruitless pursuit could not but tell their tale upon them. When we sailed away from Villa do Porto and raced to the Southern Atlantic, it was in the minds of all of us that we should track down the Jew successfully in as many days as we had now devoted weeks to a futile quest. All the arguments were upon my side. If the unknown vessel harboured Imroth’s rogues, and not them alone, but the fruits of their robberies, then it was plain that she must abide at least for a time in the situation where we had first discovered her. How could her communication with the shore be established otherwise? Relief ships from Europe would be visiting her constantly. She must be provisioned, coaled, and kept aware of what was going on ashore. It seemed impossible to me that she could shift her present cruising ground or make any wide detour until open pursuit compelled her to do so. These reasons had kept me doggedly to my quest of her. But they had failed to satisfy my comrades, and there were other impulses bidding me return.
“It is hard to give it up, doctor,” said Captain Larry when I had done; “but really, I think you are right. If the Government had sent out a ship to help us, the course would have been plain enough. As it is, we can do nothing even if we track them down, and we might lose valuable lives in the endeavour. Get back to Portsmouth and leave it to the Government. That’s my word, and that, I think, is what Mr. McShanus thinks. We have done all we can, and a precious sight more than most would have done.”
“Ay, and ’tis sense the man speaks,” added McShanus. “The last man in the world would I be to cry off while the fox is running; but, Ean, me bhoy, he’s gone to ground as sure as blazes, and what for would ye flog a good horse to death? Here’s a fortune spent in coal, and a sea hot enough to fry haddocks, and divil of a sign as much as of a row-boat. The Captain’s not behind me in knowing of other people who have a claim upon your consideration. Go to Europe and learn of their welfare. There is one who may need ye sorely. And poor talk will it be that you’ll hear then if they tell you of ‘what might have been.’ Go back to Europe, say I, and learn what has become of Joan Fordibras. ’Tis better work than roasting like a heathen nigger on this blazer of an ocean.”
Well, we were agreed finely, as you will see. But the determination, none the less, had its counterpoise of depression which is not difficult to apologise for. It is in the British blood to persist even when failure seems assured and hope has long been abandoned. We had set out to find the Diamond Ship, and we had failed. That she was still afloat upon the Southern Atlantic remained my unalterable conviction. It was even possible that Joan Fordibras was aboard her, and not in Europe at all. A Council of Prudence said, “Return”; a Vanity of Conviction said, “Go on.” I had listened to the voice of the first-named and surrendered to it. My comrades professed their joy in tones becoming a graveyard. The men heard of our determination with hands thrust deep into their pockets and mouths which emitted surly clouds of smoke. Rarely has a homeward-bound ship carried heavier hearts or a crew as silent. We were going to see the white cliffs of England again; but we were leaving the Diamond Ship for others to take. Everyone, professing to be glad, remained conscious of a personal defeat, of a rebuff which should not have been, and would not have been, but for a caprice of Fortune, unlooked for and unmerited.
Upon my own part, there were conflicting hopes and desires which I could have confessed to none. It certainly had been a blow upon my vanity that the Admiralty had sent no ship to my assistance, and that Scotland Yard had been so long bestirring itself. What could their delay mean but incredulity? They doubted my story, or if they did not doubt it, then they were wasting the precious weeks in vain inquiries at the consulates or formal exchange with the Governments. In due season they would act, when the Diamond Ship had made her last voyage, perhaps, and the master criminal stood beyond their reach. Val Imroth, indeed, appeared to me to be the beginning and the end of this great conspiracy. The others were the puppets with which this king of rogues played a game daring beyond all imagination of meaner minds. Let him be caught, and the house of his crimes would be shattered to ruins. He was the Alpha and the Omega, the brain and the soul of it. I concerned myself with no other—even little Joan must stand in peril until he were taken. My sense of duty forbade another course; I dare not turn aside.
Many a night and oft when the glorious Southern sky looked down upon us, and the sea was still, and nothing but the purring voice of the steamer’s engines could be heard, had I, alone upon the aft deck, asked myself of Joan’s fate and of the future which awaited her. Had the rogues discovered her that night I fled from the Valley House, or had she been spirited away before Okyada came to me? Was it a man’s part to have left the island immediately, or should I have lingered on in the hope of seeing her? I know not to this day.
If a man’s love make claim upon sentiment alone and not upon common-sense, then must I be found blameworthy. But if he is to use his brains as much in an affair of the heart as in that of the common things of the day, then was I justified a thousand times. Again and again did reason tell me that the Jew would hold her as a hostage for his own safety; and that no harm would befall her until danger threatened him. Let me come face to face with him, and then I might fear for her. Alas! that reason cannot always be a comforter. There were blacker hours when I depicted her the prey of the ruffians of the island, the victim of her foster-father’s savage anger, alone and defenceless amongst them all, looking for my coming, and crying in her despair because I did not come. These were the blacker hours, I say. Let the long spell of waiting answer for them. They vanished like the mist when the good news came.
We set the yacht upon a northward course, and lived through a morning of angry silence. Disdaining any lunch but a biscuit and a proud cigar, Timothy McShanus fell to reminiscences. I remember he discussed the law of chances, reminding me of the American citizen, who, being asked if he were a lucky man, replied that he once held four aces at a game of poker in Mexico City, and only got one shot in the leg. In a lachrymose mood, Timothy went on to say that he cared little whether he lived or died, but that he would give much to know what they were doing at the Goldsmith Club in London town. I did not answer him, for at that moment Captain Larry came scurrying along the deck, and one look at his face told me that he had news of moment.
“Well, Larry—and now?”
“There is a message, sir.”
“A message?”
“I don’t know what to say, sir. The telegraph instruments are going like one o’clock. I thought you had better know immediately. There’s no one else aboard can read them.”
My rough exclamation astonished them both. Our Marconi instruments had always been a pleasant source of mystery to the crew, and even the Captain regarded them with some little awe. Hitherto we had hardly made use of them at all, exchanging, I think, but a couple of messages—one with a P. & O. steamer and another with a Union boat. And now they spoke for the third time, not from any ocean-going ship, I felt sure, nor from any station ashore, but a voice from the unknown, pregnant of good or ill, it might be, beyond any power of the imagination to say. Be it said that I went below with an anxiety, an excitement of the news baffling words. Was it possible that this implement of steel and brass, of wire and filings, and the simplest electric batteries, would reveal the truth so long concealed? Even that I dared to hope.
Now, the second officer watched the instrument and his curiosity was natural enough. I caught him when I entered the fore cabin where we had set it up, in the act of trying to send some signal in reply, and arrested him with so rough a hand upon his own that he must have believed me bereft suddenly of my senses.
“Good God!” I cried. “Not a word, man—not a word. This may be life or death to us. Leave it alone—let them speak before we answer.”
“The instrument has been going for five minutes, sir. I know something of the Morse code, but I can’t make head or tail of it. She’s not a P. & O. ship, sir.”
“Neither a P. & O. nor any other letters in our alphabet, my lad. Go down now to Mr. Benson, the engineer, and tell him to give an eye to the batteries and the coherer. I will see to this.”
He left me, and I took my stand before the implement, and watched it as a man watches a human face wherein he may read the story of his fate. A message was being ticked out there, but so faintly, so absolutely inaudible, that no skill of mine could write it down. Far away from us, it might be, some hundreds of miles away, an unknown ship flashed its news over the lonely ocean. What ship, then, and whose were the voices? Fascinated beyond expression, I stood a long hour by the instrument and could hear my own heart beating with the excitement of suspense. Would the unknown never speak plainly? Should I risk a question in answer, sent out from our own lofty mast where all had been prepared for such a seeming miracle as this? And if so, what question? Had the Jew a password upon the high seas of which I was not the possessor. I knew not what to think. One man alone upon the yacht might speak at such an hour—young Harry Avenhill, who, silently, willingly, and in gratitude had worked with our engineers during these long weeks of the vain pursuit.
Harry came up to me from the depths of the engine room, his face a little pallid, but his eyes a clearer, healthier blue than when I had taken him from England and given him that second chance which humanity owes to every lad who sins. He told me frankly that there had been a password in use both in England and France.
“We used to have to write the letter ‘A’ five times running from the bottom, left-hand, to the top right-hand of a slip of paper, sir. That was when we wanted to get into any of our houses in London or Paris or Brussels. If we met a friend in the streets, it was the Romany tongue we spoke—Kushto bokhormero pal, or something of that sort—and when we had said it, one or other asked how old Five A’s was doing. Once I remember the password was ‘Fordibras.’ That was at Blois when we robbed the house of the Count of Sens, who had just bought some of the Empress’s emeralds. I never remember it being used anywhere else but there.”
I smiled, for the Jew’s perspicuity was as evident here as it had been in England and upon the island. The weaker man, Hubert Fordibras, he who by subtle cleverness and canting self-deception tried to believe himself innocent of these crimes, he would be the first prize of the police when detection came. This was obvious—as obvious as the lad’s inability to help me.
“It will not be ‘Fordibras’ upon the high seas, nor will a whole alphabet of ‘A’s’ help us, Harry,” said I, as kindly as I could. “But that’s not your fault, my lad. Had you gone aboard with them, it would have been a different story. There is some password, I am sure, and it is used only for the ships. As it is, I must go wanting it—a hundred thousand pities, if pity is ever any use to anybody.”
“Then you never met one of their sailors, Doctor Fabos?”
“No, I never—Good God! what am I saying? Never met one of their sailors? Harry, what made you ask me that question?”
“You think of everything, sir. I made sure you would have been aboard one of their ships.”
“I have not been aboard one of their ships, but—well, we shall see. Who knows, Harry, but that you were to be the destiny of this? Go up to Captain Larry and tell him that I have news for him and for Mr. Benson. It may not be Europe after all.”
He went away as quietly as he had come and left me to the instruments. That which was in my mind I would share with none. Say that it was an idea which might win or lose all by a word and you will come near to its discovery. My purpose was to send by wireless telegraphy such a message to the Diamond Ship as would lead us to the discovery both of her present situation and her ultimate destination. To do this, I needed a password to the confidence of her commander. That password I believed that I possessed. It had been given to me years gone when a dead sailor had been washed ashore upon Palling beach, and one of the most famous diamonds in Europe had been found upon his body. Judge of my excitement when I sat down to put this idea to the proof. There before me was the instrument still ticking a message I could not decipher. I sat down before our own keyboard and deliberately rapped out the words, “Captain Three Fingers.” Again and again I sent the words speeding across the lonely seas. “Captain Three Fingers”—that, and nothing more. As a spirit winging a human thought it went, to the unknown, over the silent waters, a tremor of the air, a voice of doom, an awful, mysterious power of words pregnant of discovery or wholly impotent in the mocking ether.
An hour passed, and found me still alone. There had been no response to my message, no further agitation of the receiver whose message baffled me. Faithful to my wish, neither Larry nor McShanus had interrupted me. I could hear as a distant sound the murmur of gentle seas beating upon our bows. The purr of our engines was as that of a living, sentient entity, awake to the intervals of action. My fingers had grown weary of repeating those idle words. I sat back in my chair in a bitterness of spirit foreign to me, and reflected upon the fatuity of impulse and the mockery of all human deduction. If there were a password to the deck of the Diamond Ship, I lacked it. My hasty conclusions had met with their just fate. The men aboard the distant vessel had taken alarm and signalled to me no more. What would it profit them to continue this vain employment? Answer, that obstinacy prompted me. Doggedly, persistently, reason would repeat that I was right. The words were the only words. I could imagine no others. In mockery almost I changed my key, and to prove myself right, a hundred times I tapped out the word “Fordibras” upon the ready instrument. Once, twice, thrice—thus it went speeding into the aerial wastes, losing itself under the blue heavens, a delusion upon a delusion, the mocking jest of a man who had no resource but jest. And how are wonder and the sport of chance to be expressed when I say that the word was answered, immediately, clearly, beyond all question—in a message from the Diamond Ship and from those who commanded her.
I sat as one transfixed, my hands trembling with excitement, my ears intent as though open to the story of a miracle. Plain as the talk of a friend at my side came that memorable answer, “How is old Five A’s doing?” Leaping to the lad Harry’s story, I answered them in the Romany tongue—the first, perhaps, that any student of crime should begin to learn. And now it became no longer a question of the word. Their anxiety mastered them. They were telling me their secrets across the waste—those secrets I would have paid half my fortune to learn.
“We lie at 90° 15′ by 35° 15′ 15″. Where are you?”
I flashed back a false reply, two degrees northward of our true situation. Quick as the instrument would transmit the words, I added this intelligence:
“Every port watched. Fabos in Paris; white ensign off St. Michael’s; station safe; wait coming.”
Their reply was the impatient question:
“Are you Ross or Sycamore?”
I took it to mean that there were two ships for which they waited, and that the captains thereof were named respectively Ross and Sycamore. At a hazard, I chose the first name, and waited for them to go on. Never in all this world did the flashing voice of electricity mean so much to mortal man.
“We are short of coal and water,” the tidings went. “Hurry, for God’s sake, or we are driven into Rio.”
To this, my hands hot with the fever of discovery, I rejoined:
“Rio known—keep the seas; we reach you to-morrow.”
And then for a long while there was silence. I imagined that unknown crew debating my words as though they had been a message of their salvation. A relief ship was coming out to them. They were saved from the perils of the shore and that more terrible peril of thirst. When the machine next ticked out its unconscious confession, it was to bid me hasten, for God’s sake.
“I am Valentine Imroth. What has kept you ashore?”
“The police and Fabos.”
“Then Fordibras is a traitor!”
“You have his daughter with you?”
“Is that known in Europe?”
“It is suspected.”
“By the mouth of Fabos. He has received my message. Has Sycamore sailed?”
“He is two days behind me.”
“What coal has he aboard?”
I sat back from the instrument and answered not a word. Be it said that, directly I had already convinced myself that this mysterious unknown Diamond Ship was in reality a vessel hauled to, as it were, permanently in mid-Atlantic, the corollary of attended steamers needed no demonstration. Regularly from Europe or America, I imagined, tenders of considerable size set out to water, provision, and to coal the great receiving hulk wherein the Jew hid his booty and harboured his outcasts. There would be a great going to and fro of rascals, of course, relief crews, and a very system of changing duties. But the great ship would never make the shore unless driven thereto by ultimate necessity; and the very fact of those equatorial latitudes being chosen for her cruising ground, latitudes of profound calm and void of winds, contributed to the probability of my surmise. So much was plain—but the moment the arch-rogue asked me what coal the tender carried, then instantly I realised my peril and quitted the instrument abruptly. Of the tender I knew nothing. A false word might undo all that accident had done for me so nobly. I had wisdom enough to draw back from it.
“They will set it down either to prudence or a bad receiver,” I said to myself as I quitted the cabin, in a greater state of mental agitation than I had known since I sailed from England. “It could not be better. Let them flash what news they will, I have their story, and to-morrow Europe shall have it too.”
Larry was on the quarter-deck when I went aft and Timothy McShanus stood at his side. I was astonished to hear that it was already six o’clock and to see the sun setting. Together, my best of friends remarked on the pallor of my face, and asked me what, in heaven’s name, had kept me so long in the cabin.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “the Diamond Ship is some hundred odd miles from us as we lie, and Joan Fordibras and the Jew are aboard her. Captain Larry, will you give the necessary orders? and, Timothy, for God’s sake, send me up a whisky-and-soda and the longest cigar on the yacht. I am going to think, man—I am going to think.”
So I turned upon my heel and left him. The men’s cheers resounded through the ship as I entered my cabin. Ah! the brave fellows. Toward what harbour had they turned the yacht’s head so resolutely? Might it not be to a haven of death, to a grave in that placid ocean upon which we now raced as though Eldorado lay beyond our dim horizon?
I knew not, indeed. For upon me also the fever of pursuit had again laid its burning hand, and though death stood at our helm, no voice of life might call me back.
CHAPTER XXI.
A PILLAR OF LIGHT.
“White Wings” Dares a Venture.
Merry, our little cockney cook—the aproned humbug pretends to be a Frenchman—swore that night by the shade of Carême that if ever he made aragoût à la truffe à Perigordagain for a master who dined off whisky-and-soda and a cigar, “’e ’oped he would be ’ung on a pot-’ook.” I solaced the good fellow by ordering supper at eleven o’clock, and inviting both Larry and Benson, our engineer, to my table. Needless to say that we had but one topic of conversation. Hardly were the glasses filled when I began to put my laconic questions, and wrote upon the slip of note at my side the answers to them.
“For how many days have you coal, Mr. Benson?”
“That depends how far and how fast you steam, sir.”
“Suppose that we are lying drifting here in these calms. There is no great consumption of coal then?”
“No, sir; but if you wish steam kept up against a run, that empties your bunkers.”
“It will depend upon what the other people can do, Benson. They may be in the same position as we are. If our friends at home believe our story, I don’t suppose there will be much coal going for Val Imroth or any of his company. Of course, he may have other resources. He would not rely upon relief ships from Europe altogether. The American governments are not likely to concern themselves overmuch in the matter. Their newspapers will make as much of the matter as the police will make little. Incredulity we must expect. If we are believed anywhere, it will be by the men who lose hundreds of thousands of pounds every year in South Africa. That’s the keynote to this mystery. The Jew may have a hundred agents stealing diamonds for him at Kimberley, he hides the men and the booty on this great moored ship until the danger has passed. A hint to those pleasant people, the magnates of Park Lane, will supply money enough for any purpose. I doubt their sense, however. They will leave the protection of their so-called interests to other people, as they have always done. We really need not consider them in the matter.”
“’Tis yourself and the young lady ye have to think of—no others,” interrupted Timothy. “Phwat the divil is Park Lane to you or to me or to any decent man? Do we care whether their diamonds are safe or stolen? Not a tinker’s curse, me bhoy. If ye hunt the Jew down, ’tis for your vanity’s sake and not for the good of humanity at all. Faith, I’d be a fool to tell ye ’tis not so. Ye want the glory of this, and ye want the girl on top of the glory. Let’s be plain with each other, and we’ll get on the faster.”
“Timothy,” I said, “you are a philosopher. We won’t quarrel about it. The glory of it is nothing to you, and if it were in your power, you’d return to Europe by the first steamer willing to carry you there. Let us agree to that.”
“Be d——d to it. I agree to nothing of the sort.”
“Ah, then here is Madame Vanity sheltered also in another human bosom. Say no more. If I am serious, it is to tell you that vanity has been less to me in all this time than the safety of Joan Fordibras and her freedom. Of that, I account myself the guardian. She is on board the Diamond Ship—reflect among what a company of villains, thieves, and assassins. Captain, Timothy, I have not the courage to tell myself what may befall her. Perhaps it would be better if she did not live to speak of it. You know what it may be. You must try to help me where my judgment fails.”
“To the last man on the ship,” said Captain Larry very solemnly.
Timothy did not reply. Emotional, as all Irishmen are, he heard me in a silence which spoke very eloquently of his affection. For my own part, I am no lover of a public sentiment. My friends understood what Joan’s safety meant to me, and that was sufficient.
“We should sight the ship after eight bells,” said I, diverting the subject abruptly, “and then our task begins. I am hoping to outwit them and to force a surrender by sheer bluff. Very possibly it will fail. We may even lose the yacht in the venture. I can promise nothing save this—that while I live I will hunt the Jew, afloat or ashore. Let us drink to that, gentlemen, a bumper. It may be the last occasion we shall find for some days to come.”
We filled our glasses and drank the toast. A willing steward carried my orders for a double dose of grog for the men, and an echo of the chantey they lifted came down to us as we sat. It was now nearly midnight, and yet no one thought of bed. An excitement which forbade words kept us there, talking of commonplace affairs. When the second officer informed me, exactly at eight bells, that the telegraph was working again and very clearly, I heard him almost with indifference. For the moment it might be dangerous to send any message across the waste of waters. There could be no further talk exchanged between the Jew and myself until I had definitely declared myself.
“They would shift their position, Captain. We must hold them to it and track them down. You think that we should sight them at two bells in the middle watch. I’ll step down and hear what they have to say, but unless it is vital I shall not answer them.”
I found the instrument tapping sharply as the second officer had said. The words spelled out “Colin Ross,” the name of the officer upon one of their relief ships, as they had already informed me. Repeated again and again, it gave me in the end an idea I was quick to act upon. They must think the relief steamer broken down, I said. Such should be the first card I had to play.
“Fordibras,” I signalled, and again “Fordibras,” and then upon it the simple words, “propeller shaft broken—all hands at work—repaired to-morrow—cable eight bells.”
I say that I repeated the message, as one almost invariably is called upon to do when the instrument is wireless and no receivers have been tuned to a scheme. A little to my astonishment, there was no reply whatever. As I had ceased to speak to the Diamond Ship yesterday, so she had ceased to speak to me to-night. A renewal of the call earned no better reward. I fell to the conclusion that the news had been so astounding that the man who received it went headlong to the captain of the vessel, and that an answer would be returned anon. So half an hour passed and found me still waiting. It must have been nearly one o’clock by this time. I recollect that it was seventeen minutes past one precisely when our forward “look-out” discerned the lights of the Diamond Ship upon a far horizon, and Captain Larry burst in upon me with his splendid news. Now, surely, had I no further need of messages. You may judge how I followed him to the deck to feed my eyes upon the spectacle.
“Have you just seen her, Larry?”
“This very instant, doctor. I could not have fallen down the stairs quicker.”
“Does McShanus know?”
“He’s shaking all over—like a man with an ague. I sent him to the cabin for brandy.”
“It could be no other ship, Larry?”
“How could it be, sir? This is no course for anywhere. She’s what we’re after, right enough.”
“Does she lie far off, Larry?”
“I can’t say, sir. You shall judge for yourself.”
I went up upon the bridge with him for a better view, and immediately discerned the spectacle which had so excited him. Many miles away, as I judged, upon our port-bow, a light flashed out brilliantly above a sleeping ocean; a blinking, hovering, mad-cap light, now turning its glowing face to a fleecy sky, now making lakes of golden fire upon the glassy water, now revolving as in some mighty omnivorous circle which should embrace all things near and far and reveal their presence to watching eyes. Plainly directed by a skilful hand, I said that a trained officer worked the lantern as they work it on board a man-of-war; but as though to deny that the unknown ship was a man-of-war, the monster searchlight began anon to answer as though to a dancing, drunken measure of some hand that wearied of duty and made a jest of it. Not for one minute would this have been permitted upon the deck of a battleship. I could doubt no longer that Captain Larry spoke the truth.
“We are carrying no lights ourselves, Larry?” I exclaimed presently, and added apologetically, “that goes without saying.”
“It goes without saying, doctor. I ordered lights out at eight bells.”
“We shall show a haze of red light above our funnels?”
“Not with those guards to port Mr. Benson has fitted up.”
“Do you think we dare run up to her, Larry?”
“There would be little risk when they get tired of their fireworks, doctor.”
“We’ll do it, Larry. Don’t forget Joan Fordibras is aboard there. I would give much for one spoken word that she could understand.”
He nodded significantly, and as he rang down his orders to the engine-room I perceived that McShanus had come up from the saloon. He did not speak to me, as he told me afterwards, being under the ridiculous apprehension, which comes to men in danger, that any speech above a whisper is a peril. The men themselves were all grouped about the fo’castle like children for a stage-play to be given on the water. We carried no lights. From stem to stern of the ship not so much as a single electric lamp broke in upon the darkness. The clash of our engines remained the only sound. I turned to Timothy and astonished him by my greeting.
“A steady hand now, is it that, Timothy?”
“Take a grip of it yourself, me bhoy.”
“It certainly is not the cold hand of the poets. Would it help with the machine guns if need be, Timothy?”
“Whist!—could it not! Are ye not speaking over-loud, doctor, me bhoy?”
“Oh, come, you think they can hear us five miles away, Timothy. Shout if you like, old boy. I hope to God there will be silence enough by-and-by. We are going to have a look at them, Timothy. ’Tis to learn the colour of their coats, as you would say.”
“Ye are not going within shot of their guns?”
“Timothy,” I said, speaking in that low tone he had desired. “I am going to learn how it fares with Joan Fordibras.”
“Ah, bad cess to it, when a woman holds the lantern—there goes Jack the Giant-killer. ’Twill help her to be sunk, Ean.”
“I do not think they will sink us, Timothy.”
“God be good to me. I’m no better than a coward this night. What was it I said?”
“That you were quite of my opinion, Timothy.”
We laughed together, and then fell to silence. Fitfully now in the dark heavens there could be seen the glimmer of the searchlight’s open lantern. The sea about us was a sea of night, very black and awesome and still. We were a thing of darkness, rushing onward with spinning bows and throbbing turbines and furnaces at a white heat—a stealthy enemy creeping upon our prey through the immense shadows which darkened the face of the resting waters. No man aboard disguised from himself the risk we were taking. Let the Diamond Ship catch us in the path of her mighty beam of radiant light, and we were instantly discovered. A single shell from her modern guns would destroy us utterly. There could be no greater triumph for the Jew than that. We alone carried the whole story of his secret. What, then, would he not give to destroy us?
So we crept on, mile by mile. Every eye aboard theWhite Wingswatched that resting searchlight as though it had been endowed with telepathic powers and would of itself warn the rogue’s crew. I don’t think we believed for an instant in the good fortune which followed us. It seemed incredible that they should not keep a better look-out—and yet the fact so stands. The resting beam of light in the sky was our goal. We drew upon it moment by moment as to some gate of destiny which should tell a story fruitful beyond any we had heard. And still the Diamond Ship did not awake.
I heard Captain Larry give an order down the tube, and realised that the yacht had come to a stand. We were then but half a mile from the great vessel herself, and could in reason dare to draw no nearer. The rest lay with the whim of the night. We knew not, could not imagine the strange fortune which awaited us.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CRIMSON ROCKET.
Joan Fordibras is Discovered on the Diamond Ship.
You are to imagine a still sea and a great four-masted sailing ship drifting upon it at the hazard of a summer breeze. The night is intensely dark, and the sky gives veins of mackerel cloud upon a field of slaty blue. Far away, a ring of silver iridescence, low down upon an open horizon, suggests that great inverted bowl within which all ships are ever prisoned from the first day of their sailing to the last. The monster vessel herself is brilliantly lighted from stem to stern. Faintly over the water there comes to us a sound of bibulous song and hilarity. My quick ear catches the note of a piccolo, and upon that of a man’s voice singing not untunefully. I say that there is no discipline whatever upon such a deck; no thought of danger, no fear of discovery. The pillar of light has become a halting mockery. Much is to be dared, much to be won upon such a night.
“Consider”—and this I put to Captain Larry—“they have guns, but who has trained their gunners? Let them fall to artillery practice, and it is two to one they blow up the ship. Even one of Percy Scott’s miracles would make no certainty of such a yacht as this on such a night. We ought to risk it, Captain—we ought to risk it for a woman’s sake.”
Larry was a brave enough man, but, like all his race, a very prudent one.
“If you wish it, sir. But there are the men to think of. Don’t forget the wives and children at home, sir.”
“Did the men so put it, Larry?”
“Bless you, no, sir, they’d swim aboard there if I gave the word.”
I reflected upon it a little while, and it seemed to me that Larry must be right. Accustomed to work alone and to be the arbiter of all risks, I had for the instant forgotten my responsibilities toward those who served me so well. By no necessity to be named, by no duty to humanity or to myself, could I ask these honest fellows to go further with me. Even where we lay, a lucky shot might destroy us. Half a dozen times in as many minutes my heart was in my mouth as the great beam of light marked another point in the heavens or momentarily disappeared. Let them cast its effulgent beams again upon the waste of waters, and assuredly were we discovered. Not alone in the reflection, I could read it also upon the set faces of my friends. A telepathic sense of danger held us mutually entranced. The villains over yonder had made an end of their music. Instinct said that they would search the seas again, and so unmask us.
It is futile, in my opinion, for any writer to attempt to describe the particular sensations, either of exhilaration or of terror, which come to him in moments of great peril. Should he set down the truth, he is named either a boaster or a liar; if he would evade the truth, his story can be but commonplace. To a close friend I would say that when the looked-for event happened, when the rogues at last turned their searchlight upon the waves again, I had no thought at all of the consequences of discovery, but only a fascinating curiosity of the eyes which followed the beam wonderingly, and stood amazed when it passed over us. Vast, monstrous, blazing, the fearful eye of light focussed itself upon us for a terrible instant, and then swept the whole circle of the seas with its blinding beams. Twice, thrice, it went thus, hearts standing still almost as it approached us, leaping again as it passed onward. Then, as surprisingly, it remained fixed upon the further side of the Diamond Ship, and in the same instant, far away to north-west, a crimson rocket cleaved the black darkness of the night, and a shower of gold-red balls burst hoveringly above the desert waters.
“What do you make of that, Larry?”
“Not a signal from any common ship, sir. We don’t use that kind of rocket.”
“’Tis the fourth of July, bedad, or the Crystal Palace that’s flying!” cried Timothy.
“Larry,” said I, “that’s one of their patrols. I rather fancy a man of the name of Colin Ross is aboard her. If so, the Jew is to receive some shocks.”
“I wish to heaven they came by way of a seaman’s arm, sir. Yes, it’s as you say. Yon is a steamer, and here goes the answering rocket.”
He pointed to the sky above the Diamond Ship, ablaze with a spray of vivid green radiance, the answering signal to the distant ship. The nature of our own escape now became quite clear to me. The look-outs over yonder had espied the lights of the relief steamer and had used the searchlight to signal her. The great arcs, the circling beams, were but those preliminary movements with which every operator tries the lantern he is about to use. No eye had followed their aureole, I made sure. We had escaped observation simply because every man aboard yonder vessel had been looking at the incoming steamer, bearing from Europe news which might be of such moment.
“Larry,” I said, jumping at the idea of it; “it’s now or never. Let her go while they are at the parley. I’ll stake my life on it there is no look-out to starboard. Let’s have a look at them when they least expect us.”
“Do you mean to say, sir, that you’ll risk it?”
“There is no risk, Larry—if you don’t delay.”
“I do believe you are right, sir. Here’s for it, anyway, and luck go with us.”
He rang down the order to the engine-room, and we raced straight ahead, not a man uttering a sound, not a light showing aboard us. Holding on in defiance alike of prudence and responsibility, we drove the yacht into the very shadows of the great unknown ship we had tracked so far. To say that we stood within an ace of destruction would be to treat of our circumstances lightly. A word amiss might have destroyed us so utterly that not a man of us all should have told the tale. There, towering above us, was the great hull of this floating mystery, the massive outline of a vessel built upon the lines of an Atlantic steamer, yet carrying four masts and a funnel so low that one might look twice to detect it at all. Flashing lights from stem to stern, we could almost count the men upon the decks of this phantom of the high seas—men wearing all varieties of dress: some the garb of fashion, some that of ordinary workmen, a few in the uniform of sailors. And what a hive of activity those decks appeared to be! How the fellows were running to and fro—changing their positions every moment, taking their stands now in the shrouds, now high upon the fo’castle—an agitated, expectant throng, turning, as it were, but one face to the steamer which came to relieve them and by which news of their safety or their danger might come. Their very interest, however, became our confidence. Taking my place with the forward look-out, I conned every feature of the great ship, and impressed the facts of it upon my memory. No thought of peril troubled me now.
I scanned the decks, I say, as quietly as one surveys a ship that must be docked; noted the black shapes of the veiled guns, the wretched haphazard armament amidships, the unsuitability of the great hull to the purposes now indicated, the seeming absence of all order and method and even of leadership upon its decks. This monstrous floating haven of crime and horror—no sailor had chosen it for its present purpose, I made sure. In a lighter moment, I could say that it had once been a second-class cruiser, and now stood for a witness to an age which added raking masts to its warships and eyed askance the supremacy of steam. The Jew, it might be, had purchased his ship from a Government that had no further use for it. He had gone to Chili or the Argentine—a second thought said to Italy, for this vessel had more than a smack of Italian design and practice as we knew it in the last days of canvas and the first of steel. And he had bought this relic at his own price, had maintained its engines, added new masts for disguise, and so adapted it to that master scheme whose aims rose so far above this evidence of realisation. All this, I say, my swift survey showed to me. But the supreme question it did not answer. There were women to be discerned upon the deck of the ship, but not the figure of Joan Fordibras. Of her the night had no news to give me.
We lay at this time, I suppose, some two hundred yards from the great ship, a little astern of her and ready, need it be said, to bound away into the darkness should the need arise. Our daring is neither to be set down to courage nor foolhardiness. It was plain that every man on board Valentine Imroth’s sanctuary had eyes but for the approaching steamer, ears but for the news she would carry. Absolutely convinced of our safety, we watched the spectacle with that air of assurance and self-content which any secret agent of a good cause may assume at the moment of his triumph. My own doubt and trouble could hardly be shared by the honest fellows about me; or, if it were shared, then had they the good taste to make light of it. Indeed, they were upon the point of persuading me that, if it were Joan Fordibras I had come out to seek, then the sooner I got me back to Europe the better.
“There’s no Joan upon yonder ship,” said old Timothy in a big whisper. “I’d as soon look to find the Queen of Sheba there.”
“Indeed, sir,” added Larry, kindly, “I do think Mr. McShanus is right. They’d never take a lady among that riff-raff. I don’t see how it would serve them, anyway. We must credit General Fordibras with some feelings if the other has none. He’s taken Miss Joan to Europe, be sure of it.”
I could make no answer, for my reasoned opinion had that obstinate dogmatism which must attend the logical idea, if logic be of any worth at all. It were better, I thought, not to discuss it, and, for that matter, there were events enough to take a man’s mind from the graver doubts. The relief steamer had by now drawn so near to the other that loud cheers were raised between them, boats put off in haste from the Diamond Ship, and boats from the newcomer. We heard greetings exchanged—in French, in German, in Italian. Instantly, too, there began a great business of making ready to unload a cargo out there in mid-Atlantic. I perceived that the two ships were to be caught together by grapplings, and so held while the affair of discharging was done. Of what the patrol’s cargo might be, I could only surmise. She would bring the invaluable coal, of course—else could not the water be distilled aboard the Rogue—coal and food and news, and, it might be, new ruffians who had escaped the justice of Europe or Africa. This, I say was a surmise. The immediate test of it my eyes carried no further, for chancing to look again at hazard toward the greater vessel, I detected a solitary figure at the taffrail, and instantly recognised my little Joan, standing apart from all that ruffian crew, and looking wistfully toward that very place whereWhite Wingslay in ambush of the waters.
And then I knew that I had done well to dare this voyage, and that, cost what it might in blood or treasure, I would save this child from the Jew and that which he had prepared for her.