CHAPTER XXIII.
WE DEFY THE ROGUES.
And Receive an Ultimatum from Them.
It is a human experience, I believe, that men’s faculties often serve them best in moments of grave danger. In my own case, to be sure (but this may be a habit of the mind), I am often mastered by a strange lethargy during the hours of a common day. Events have been no other than a dreamy significance for me. I do not set them in a profitable sequence or take other than a general and an indifferent survey of that which is going on about me. But let a crisis of actual peril arrive and my mind is all awake, its judgment swift, its analysis rarely mistaken. Such a moment came to me upon the deck of theWhite Wingswhen I discovered my little Joan at the taffrail of the Diamond Ship and knew that my errand had not been in vain. Instantly I detected the precise nature of the risk we ran and the causes which contributed to it. The situation, hitherto vague and objectless, became as plain as the simplest sum in a child’s arithmetic book.
“Larry,” I said to the Captain, “they will discover our presence inside ten minutes, and we shall learn how they can shoot. This is too easy a target for my comfort. Let us back out while we have the chance.”
Captain Larry, as intent upon the spectacle of the strange ship as any cabin boy, turned about quickly like a man roused up from a dream.
“I was thinking of it before the relief came alongside,” said he; “the steam blast may give us away any minute, doctor. We lie right under their stern, however, and that is something. So long as they don’t send their limelight whizzing——”
“That is exactly what they are about to do, Captain. They are going to look round for the unknown ship which has been sending them false messages by marconigram. Watch with me and you may follow the story. That is the first chapter of it.”
I pointed to the deck of the great ship, whence the figure of my little Joan had disappeared as mysteriously as it came; and there I showed to Larry a group of men in earnest talk with a newcomer from the steamer which now lay almost alongside the larger vessel. The quick movements, the gestures of this company betrayed the curiosity which the stranger’s words awakened and the astonishment that rightly followed upon it. Imagining myself to be a spy among them, I heard, in imagination, every word of that fateful conversation. “We sent no message.” “You’ve been fooled right enough.” “There’s mischief afloat.” “No, we had no accident—what in thunder are you talking about?—it’s a lie.” So the new hand must be telling the astonished crew. It needed no great prescience to say what would follow after. Even Timothy McShanus arrived at it before I had finished.
“Would that be Colin Ross gone aboard?” he asked me, wheeling about suddenly.
I told him it would hardly be another.
“Then he’ll tell ’em the truth about the cables, or I’m a liar.”
“He will tell them the truth about the cables, and you are not a liar, Timothy. He is doing so at this very moment.”
“Faith, man, they’ll be firing shots at us then.”
“It is possible, Timothy. If you are curious on the point——”
“Curious be d——d. Would ye have me in the sea?”
“In the sea or out, I would have you keep a cool head, Timothy. They are going to fire at us, but that is not to say that they are going to hit us. Our turn comes after. Neither to-day nor to-morrow may see the end of it. I am only beginning with them, Timothy. When I have done, God help some of them, the Jew above the others. Now wait for it and see. Here’s the lantern busy. They are putting the story to the proof, you will observe. Let us hope that their astonishment may not be too much for them.”
So a commonplace chatter went on, and yet the mad intoxication of that interval of suspense had come upon us all as a fever. No man might measure his words, be sure. There we were, sagging in the trough of the seas some three hundred yards, it may be, from the great ship’s guns, our crew muttering in deep whispers, the steam hissing from our valves, the smoke drifting to the north in a dense suffocating cloud. Aware of the few moments of grace possible to us, we had given the word down to Mr. Benson to go full speed astern; and running thus for the half of a mile, we then swung the yacht round and headed due south at all the speed of which we were capable.
Now, indeed, the tense hour of our doubt began. We counted the very minutes until the beams of the monster searchlight should ensnare us once more. Brief exclamations, cheery words of hope flashing from man to man gave passage to that current of human electricity which burned up as a flame. Would the light never fall? Ay, yonder it strikes the sea, and yonder and yonder—compassing the horizon around in a twinkling, a blind glory, a very pharos of the unknown world. And now it falls upon us, and man can look upon the face of man as though he stood beneath the sun of day; and all is stillness and silence, and the unspoken question.
Far away as we were, a roar of triumph could be heard across the sea when the Jew’s ship discovered us, and the great beams of the searchlight rested upon us exultingly. In turn, the smoke from our funnel forbade us any longer to locate the enemy or to form an opinion as to his movements. Certainly, no gunshot followed immediately upon his achievement; and when a little gust of the south wind, veering a point or two, carried the loom from our furnaces away, we espied the two ships drifting as before, and even boats passing from one to the other. From this time, moreover, the darkness failed us somewhat, and a great moon tempered the ocean with its translucent beams of silvery light. Our safety lay in our speed. We burned the precious coal without stint, since our very lives were in the furnace’s keeping.
“What stops them, Larry—what are they waiting for?” I asked him presently. He had deserted the bridge and stood aft with me to watch the distant steamers. McShanus, meanwhile, paced the decks like a lion at the hour of feeding. It was his way of saying that he found the suspense intolerable.
“I don’t think we shall have to wait long, sir,” Larry rejoined presently. “You see, they would hardly be ready to fire their guns, and not overmuch discipline among them, I suppose. If they hit us, it will be something by way of an accident.”
“And yet one that might happen, Larry. Well, here it comes, anyway. And a wicked bad shot I must say.”
It was odd that they should have fired at the very moment I replied to him; yet such was the fact and such the coincidence. Scarcely had I uttered the words when a monstrous yellow flame leaped out over the bows of the Diamond Ship (which now had put about to chase us), and spreading itself abroad upon the waters left a heavy cloud of black smoke very baffling to their gunners. As for the shell, I know not to this day where it fell. We heard neither explosion nor splash; saw no spume or spray upon the hither sea, and were, not a man of us, a penny the worse for their endeavour. A second attempt achieved no better result. True, we detected the shell this time, for it fell plump into the sea, near the fifth part of a mile from our starboard quarter; but the wretched shooting, the long interval between the shots and the speed at which we travelled, inspired confidence anew, and so surely that my men began to cheer the gunners ironically, and even to flash a signal to them across the sea.
“It’s as I thought, Larry,” said I, “they carry a gun and have no more idea how to use it than a lady in charge of a boarding school. The Jew has been living as near to a fool’s paradise as such a man is ever likely to get to paradise at all. I think we need waste no more coal. Let us lie to and take our chances. The risk is too small to think about.”
“Yon man would never hit cocoanuts at a fair,” chimed in McShanus, who had come up. “What will ye be flying over the ocean for? Is it coal we have to steam to China and back? Sure, the docthor is wise entirely, and be hanged to them. We lie here as safe as a babe in a mother’s lap.”
We laughed at his earnestness, but the order was rung down nevertheless, and presently the yacht lay rolling to the swell and we could hear the stokers drawing a furnace below. Who is justly to blame for the accident which followed I do not dare to tell myself. Sometimes I have charged myself with it and complained bitterly of the opinions I had ventured. I can only tell you that the yacht had scarcely been slowed down when the rogues’ ship fired at us again, and the shot, crossing our forward decks at an angle of some fifty-five degrees, struck a fine young seaman of the name of Holland and almost annihilated him before our very eyes. The tragedy had a greater significance because of the very mirth with which we had but a moment before regarded the Jew’s gunners and their performance. Death stood there upon the heels of laughter; a cry in the night was the answer to an honest man’s defiance and my own bravado. As for poor Holland, the shot took him about the middle and cut him absolutely in two. He could have suffered no pain—so instantaneously was he hurled into eternity. One moment I saw him standing at the bulwarks watching the distant searchlight; at the next, there remained but a dreadful something upon the deck from which men turned their eyes in horror and dare not so much as speak about.
You are to imagine with what consternation and dismay this accident fell upon us. For many minutes together no man spoke a word to another. Such a deathly silence came upon the ship that our own act and judgment might have brought this awful disaster, and not the play of capricious change. To say that the men were afraid is to do them less than justice. In war time, it is the earliest casualties which affright the troops and send the blood from the bravest faces. Our good fellows had gone into this adventure with me thinking that they understood its risks, but in reality understanding them not at all. The truth appalled them, drove challenge from their lips and laughter from their eyes. They were new men thereafter, British seamen, handy-men who worked silently, methodically, stubbornly as such fellows ever will when duty calls them. Had I suggested that we should return immediately to Europe they would have broken into open mutiny on the spot. Henceforth no word of mine need advocate my work or ask of them true comradeship. I knew that they would follow me to the ends of the earth if thereby they might avenge their shipmate.
“Larry,” I said, “the blame of that is upon me. God forgive my rashness. I feel as though my folly had cost me the life of one of my own sons.”
“Sir,” was his answer, “you had no more to do with it than the King himself. I will not hear such talk. The chances are the same for all of us. It might have been yourself, sir.”
McShanus was no less insistent.
“’Tis to do our duty we are here,” he said. “If there is a man among us who is ashamed of his duty, let us be ashamed of him.”
I did not answer them. The seamen, awakened from their trance, ran to the help of a comrade long past all human help. Far away over the waters, the Diamond Ship still fired her impotent shells at us. Their very impotency convinced me how surely an accident had killed poor Holland. I said that it had been the will of God, indeed, that one should perish on the altar of our justice, and his life to be the first sacrifice to be asked of us. In my own cabin, alone and bitterly distressed, a greater depression fell upon me so that I could ask myself why I had been chosen for the part at all or how it befell that of the thousands who had been robbed of Valentine Imroth, the Jew, I, alone, must set out to discover him. Vain, indeed, did triumph appear now. We had defied the rogues and they had answered us—not with a final answer, truly, but with that hush and awe of death which is never so terrible as upon the lonely waste of the great silent ocean.
Nor was the hour to pass without further news of them. Impotent at the guns, they fell to words, rapped out by our receiver so plainly that a very child of telegraphy could have read them.
“The message of Valentine Imroth to the Englishman, Fabos.—I take up your challenge. Joan Fordibras shall pay your debt in full.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
DAWN.
And some Talk of a Ship that Passed in the Night.
I have it in my mind that it was just upon the stroke of one o’clock of the morning, or two bells in the middle watch, when this amazing message came to me. Larry and the Irishman were asleep at that time, the third officer keeping the bridge and sending down to summon me to the Marconi instrument. Indefatigable as my friends had been in their energies and zeal, there are limits to human endurance which no prudent master ignores; and to their bunks I sent them despite their indignation. For myself, I can never sleep in the hour of crisis or its developments. Physically, I am then incapable of sleep. A sense of fatigue is unknown to me. I seem to be as one apart from the normal life of men, untrammelled by human necessities and unconscious even of mental effort. Perhaps the subsequent collapse is the more absolute when it comes. I have slept for thirty hours upon a question finally answered. The end of my day is the end also of whatever task I have for the time being undertaken.
The men were sleeping, and why should I awake them? Fallin, the young officer, had but little news to report. The Diamond Ship no longer wasted her shells in angry impotence. Her searchlight had ceased to play upon the moonlit waters. Such tidings as came were of a steamer’s masthead light seen for an instant upon our port-bow and then vanishing.
“It’s an unusual course for tramps, sir,” the young officer said, “and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure enough about it at all to wake the Captain. If it were a ship out of Buenos Ayres, she’s keeping more south than usual, but I’ve altered the course for a star before now, and you don’t care to wake up such a seaman as Captain Larry to tell him you’ve done that. His orders to me were to go down and report anything unusual. Well, a glimpse of a ship’s light shouldn’t be unusual, and that’s a fact.”
I agreed with him, though, landsman that I was, I thought I could read the omen better than he. If he had seen the masthead light of a strange steamer, she could be no other than the second of the relief ships the Jew awaited.
Herein lay many and disquieting possibilities. Given coal and stores enough, what was there to prevent the rogues putting in to some South American port, landing there such plunder as they had, and dispersing to the cities wherein their friends would shelter them? I foresaw immediately a complete frustration of my own plans and a conclusion to my task humiliating beyond belief. Not improbably that great hulk of a ship sailed already under the colours of some irresponsible republic. She might, I judged, fly the Venezuelan flag or that of Honduras or Nicaragua. The ports of such governments would be ready enough to give her shelter if backsheesh enough were to hand. And what, then, of all our labours—above all, what, then, of little Joan?
This would be to say that the message still troubled me and that I had by no means come to a resolution upon it. Let it be admitted that it found me a little wanting in courage. If reason, the sober reason of one who has made it his life’s task to read the criminal mind, the principles which guide it and the limits within which it is logical, if reason such as this read the Jew’s ultimatum aright, then might it be derided utterly. The man would dare nothing against Joan Fordibras while an alternative remained to him. She was his last card. Should he harm her, henceforth he must become a fugitive, not from the justice of a state, but from a man’s vengeance. This I plainly perceived—nevertheless, the lonely watches of the night brought me an echo of her child’s voice, a word spoken as it were from a child’s heart; so that I could say that the little Joan, who had turned to me in her trouble, had looked into the very eyes of my soul, that she was a prisoner yonder, alone among them all, a hostage in the hands of ruffians, their first and last hope of ultimate salvation from the gallows and the cell. She suffered—she must suffer the tortures of doubt, of suspense, it might even be of insult. And I, who had spoken such fine words, I could but rage against her persecutors, threaten them idly or write down a message of their contumely. Such was the penalty of the hour of waiting. I wonder not that I found it almost insupportable.
I have written that the third officer made his report of a strange steamer about two bells of the middle watch. Not less curious than he, I paced the bridge with him until dawn, and heard no further tidings. When Larry himself turned out, it was just before the hour of sunrise, and we stood together (McShanus coming up from the saloon with a welcome jorum of steaming coffee) to see the break of day, and to scan the face of the waters for any confirmation of the young officer’s story.
How still it was, how sublime, how wonderful! Unchanging in its awe and mystery, the birth of day, whether it be viewed from the deck of a ship, the summit of a mountain, or even from the heart of a great and sleeping city, must ever remain a spectacle of transcendent beauty and majesty. It is as though the Eternal spoke to the sea and the land from the open gate of heaven itself—a command to live anew for the work of the day upon which the Holy Spirit would breathe.
On the ocean there is that added glory of a vast horizon, of the immeasurable ether and the fading magnitude of the stars. Driven back reluctantly, as the poet has written, Night draws off her armies and the sun chariots speed on. You see them afar, a glow of chill grey light beneath the vault of the stars. Winds moan fretfully; the sails above you sag and shiver; stillness falls upon the waters—a silence as profound as that of man’s deepest homage. For a little while a trance has come upon things inanimate.
Little rills of foam go running to the breasts of the greater waves as cubs to the she-bear for warmth and safety. A battle is waged in the heavens, but the hosts are hidden. The clouds labour, but are riven. An arc of golden iridescence blazons the eastern sky. Day’s outposts march on to victory, and man lifts his hands to invoke their aid.
A daily scene and yet how unchangingly sublime! Standing there upon the bridge with my good friends about me, it seemed that the glory of the morn shone full upon our faces and bade us hope. No longer did the night baffle our weary eyes. We sailed a freshening sea at the splendour of the day, and far away upon the clear horizon we espied the relief ship of which our third officer had spoken.
“No star, sir, after all,” said he, “unless, that is, you would care to call her a lucky star.”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE THRASHER AND THE WHALE.
We Determine to Harass the Diamond Ship.
The steamer, driving on rapidly to the westward, showed her hull very plainly when a quarter of an hour had passed, and was immediately named by Cain, the quartermaster, who was at the wheel, for a collier he had seen some months back at Cardiff.
“She flew the Brazilian flag, sir, and carried a Russian skipper what had a picture nose,” said he cheerily enough. “I remember the boys said that someone tattoed a bit of a circus scene on his figure-head when he was took in drink at Rio last trip. I’d have knowed the ship anywheres by that doll’s house abaft the funnel. Leastwise, if there ain’t two of ’em, she’s the same.”
His logic was commendable and we questioned him.
“Had she any arms, Cain?”
“Nothing that I see, sir, saving the shovels.”
“And you didn’t know where she was bound to?”
“They gave it out as Rio, sir. I had a bit of a tumble-to with a Portuguese steward of theirs, and I gave him Port Arthur for himself. ‘You come to Rio,’ says he, ‘and I’ll d——n well pull your nose.’ It seemed to me a long way to go for the job, sir, and that I could get it done cheaper at home. I never see him again, and next day the ship sailed.”
We laughed at his manner of telling it, but the news proved acceptable enough. I had already come to a determination, and this I communicated immediately to Larry.
“We must stop them,” I said; “if we are to save Joan Fordibras; that steamer must not put her cargo on the deck of the Diamond Ship. The risk is small enough, Captain. I think that a signal will do it—if not a signal, then a gunshot anyway. Let us put it to the proof. The success or failure will mean more than any of you imagine.”
He obeyed me without question, and we steamed straight for the tramp, steering such a course that we overtook her on the port-quarter, and so were difficult to come at by any forward gun, should she carry one. My own impression was that she did not. Her safety from inquisitional officers in port would be better assured by the normal practice of ocean-going cargo-boats. I believed that the quartermaster had told us the truth, and upon that supposition I acted.
“Signal to her to bring to, Larry,” I said, and he assented immediately.
It was pretty to see our flags fluttering upon the breeze of morning, and to watch the commotion upon the deck of the tramp. We knew that she had sighted us almost as soon as we set our engines going. The far horizon disclosed no trace of the Diamond Ship. We two appeared alone in all that vista of the rolling waters.
Now, the ship answered by demanding our name and our business. We could make out the figures of two or three men upon her bridge; but the crew appeared an unusually small one and the aft decks were completely deserted. To their signal we replied immediately: (1.) That Imroth, the Jew, was flying from British warships; (2.) That their own safety depended upon their immediate submission.
Not the whole truth, perhaps, and yet as I hoped truth enough. It had been in my mind all along that the Government would send at least a patrol to the seas I had named. I could not believe that, after my revelations, ports would not be watched. So I signalled this message and waited, with not a little expectation, for an answer. To my astonishment, their Captain’s reply was to ask me to go aboard—meaning, of course, the master of the yacht.
“Come with me, Timothy,” said I to McShanus. “Don’t talk about pistols, men. Larry will stand by for danger. We could sink them in five minutes if we had the mind—it’s as safe as Rotten Row.”
“No safe place at all for a man who is susceptible to woman’s beauty. Go aboard, Ean, me bhoy, I’ll take your word for it when I come back.”
We put out a gangway and lowered the lifeboat from the starboard davits. The collier, lying some two hundred paces from our bows, let down a pilot’s ladder for me, and I caught it as it fell, and climbed to her decks. Far down below me now, the portly Timothy asked me if I thought he was a bird. I left him, full of strange oaths, in the boat, and presented myself immediately to the captain of the steamer.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
He shook his head and said “Nitchevo” emphatically.
A phrase in German, however, obtained an immediate answer. I perceived him to be a coarsely built man of some fifty years of age, his nose scarred roughly by a seaman’s needle, as the quartermaster Cain had told me, and his manner as threatening and full of bluster as his master the Jew could have wished.
“What’s your business with me?” he asked—while his clumsy fingers fondled a revolver he carried in his breeches pocket.
“To keep your neck out of the noose,” said I, without any preface whatever. “Your game is up and Val Imroth taken. That’s what brought me here.”
He spat on the deck and called a mate to him—another Russian no more beautiful than he. For a few moments they conversed together in a dialect I could make nothing of. It was plain that while my story astounded them beyond measure, they were by no means ready to believe it. And so they fell to bluff, which would not have deceived a child.
“What’s this man to me?” the Captain asked; “am I his servant?”
“Undoubtedly, since you carry coal to his ship.”
“Suppose I tell you to go to h—ll and mind your own business?”
“In that case, you might arrive at the destination before me. I am going to give you ten minutes. If you are not steaming eastward at the end of that time, I promise you that I will most certainly send you to the bottom. Reflect upon it calmly. You cannot help the Jew, but may save yourselves. I’ll tell you something else. If you have any coal to sell, I am a buyer. Now do not finger that pistol of yours, for it might go off, and as sure as God’s in heaven, if it did, this crew would be on the floor of the Atlantic in less than five minutes. Rattle your senses, my man, and speak up. If yonder warship spies us out, she’ll not deal so tenderly with you. What is the Jew to you, and why should you sell your liberty for him? Come, think of it. I am not a patient man, but I will give you time enough not to make a fool of yourself.”
They were brazen words, upon my life. When I pointed westward to a loom of smoke upon the horizon scarcely bigger than a man’s hand—when I did this, and spoke in the same breath of a warship, then, surely, the ingenuity of suggestion could go no further. As for the rascally Russian, I saw that he was struck all of a heap. His eyes had already told him that the yacht,White Wings, carried machine guns and a torpedo tube. Perhaps he argued that even if he raced for it, we could sink him before the Diamond Ship so much as sighted him—and this was to assume that a haze of smoke upon the horizon indicated the presence of the Jew’s vessel, and not of a British warship. In either case he found himself between the devil and the deep sea; and, be sure, I lost no minute of a precious opportunity.
“The game is up,” I resumed, “and your friend, the Jew, is about to pay the price of it. If you wish to contribute your share, go on and join the fun. I don’t suppose the police care much about such riff-raff as you have on board here. Get them back to Cardiff and let them find new ships. You are thinking of the money—well, if you can fill my bunkers yonder, I will pay a long price for the stuff you carry—down on your table in English sovereigns.”
At this he regarded me very curiously. A dull head is often obstinate in suspicion. The fellow perceived his advantage and would have pressed it.
“Oh,” said he, “then you are short of coal?”
“We are short of coal,” I rejoined, my frankness astounding him. “The others have none to spare, and if we buy none of you, we must run to Porto Grande. In that case you will carry this cargo back to Europe, and be arrested when you step ashore. I shall see to that, my man, when I touch at the islands. The police will be waiting for you, and you will get nothing—paid down and counted out. Better take my money—and ten pounds apiece for your crew—not to mention a little deal between us, which you may not find unsatisfactory.”
In such a manner we wrangled and argle-bargled for the best part of an hour. Providentially, the Diamond Ship, whose smoke had at one time been visible, stood upon a westerly course, and disappeared from our ken as we talked. I found the Russian to be a low-witted, covetous fellow, not greatly to be overawed by threats, but exceedingly susceptible to the substantial facts of money. In the end, I bought what coal we could carry from him at a price which I would cheerfully have doubled. And, indeed, I do think that it was one of the best day’s work I ever did in all my life. To cut off the Jew’s patrol, to fill our own bunkers with his precious steam coal, carried at such risk from Cardiff; to send the tramp steamer back again whence she came—even the matter-of-fact Larry could find no word to fit it. As for my poor friend Timothy, his emotions were altogether too much for him.
“Docther,” said he, “I doubt your salvation, and that’s the truth of it. Say that we are going back to dine on the Jew’s ship and I’ll believe ye entirely. ’Twould not be more wonderful than that which these poor old eyes are showing me.”
I told him not to make a fool of himself, but to serve his turn as sentinel while we brought the yacht alongside the collier, and took in coal from her. Treachery might yet be planned against us, though I doubted it. We posted an armed guard upon the bridge, and stripped our forward guns of their covers—the swell ran kindly and the sea was like a mirror. Hardly believing their own eyes but obeying me nevertheless, our good fellows set to work like niggers, and filled our bunkers with the precious stuff. It had been at seven bells of the morning watch when they began; it was three of the afternoon before they had done. The coal shoots with which the tramp was provided to fill the Jew’s bunkers now filled our own admirably. I paid the Russian Captain honestly, and sent him at all speed to the eastward when the business was done.
“Return as you came, and keep your mouth shut,” I said: “I will answer for you to the police should the need arise. It will be your own fault if it does.”
He thanked me with some civility, and I could see that he now considered himself a very fortunate fellow. To be frank, I had dismissed him utterly from my mind half-an-hour after he cast off; and the excitement of the deal having passed, I called to our steward to bring me tea to the cabin, and there we held a council, vital beyond any in its significance and its earnestness. For now we must decide, instantly and finally, what steps must be taken to save my little Joan from the devils of the Diamond Ship. How were we, the crew of a puny yacht, to bring that great hive of ruffians to book? What course dare we risk? What hope had we of any assistance from the British or other Governments? This is what we discussed when we had lighted our cigars and the tea was poured out. And this is much how the talk went:
(Myself.)—“We must first consider the threat. I believe that they are capable both of torturing and of killing Joan Fordibras if they are driven to it. But they will only do so in an extremity. She is their hostage. The moment that they harm her, they have done all that they can against us. If she be subject to insult meanwhile—well, they will have to deal with one of singular courage and resource. It is a callous argument, but that much we must ignore. My own idea is to lead them to the belief that we are watching them. Let us play the part of a thrasher to the whale—hang on to them, day and night, track them to their port, and cable news to Europe when we can. If they run for South America, we shall fall in with ships bound to Rio and Monte Video. The mails to the Argentine have the Marconi instrument. We can hardly fail to catch one of them. I would sooner burn this yacht than turn back now. If you, my friends, are of another opinion, do not be afraid to tell me so. We have lost one poor fellow and may lose others. It is for the men, and for them firstly, to say how far we shall go and what risks we shall take.”
(Larry.)—“The men are of one mind, sir. Don’t think more about them. Poor Holland’s death has settled it. They would go through fire to be up with yonder ruffians. Of course, I see how you are fixed. We could sink their hulk with a torpedo and make no bones about it. But that’s not to be thought of. Just stand by and tease them, say I, and as near out of gunshot as may be.”
(McShanus.)—“The docther says the lady must put up with their insults, but ye can see the blood going and coming from his cheeks while he says it. I honour him for it. We want to get the girl off the ship, and not to lose the Jew in the doing of it. ’Tis an employment for a Japanese wizard, faith. Here’s yon rogue running for a South American port, and when he’s ashore, he’ll make monkey faces at ye. Tell yourselves that, and cry out against the Governments. It’s all ye can do that I can see.”
(Myself.)—“I am far from sure of it, Timothy, but prophecy is of little help to us. We must follow these people and let them know that we are following them. Impudence has stopped one of their fleet and may stop another. I am going to see how far it helps me with the Jew himself.”
More I said to the same end, but there would be no purpose in repeating it. Let it be sufficient that we decided ultimately upon a plan of pursuit which would keep these people aware of our presence by night and day, and provoke them to every attack which it lay in their power to make upon us. The rest was beyond us. We could but face the issue calmly, accepting that which was decreed both for ourselves and for her whose safety we so ardently desired.
CHAPTER XXVI.
SEVEN DAYS LATER.
The Rogues Fall Out.
There is much of which my log might speak to tell the history of the seven days which followed upon our resolution. We had pledged ourselves to harass the Diamond Ship by night and day, and bravely had we done so. Incessantly now the messages passed from our deck to hers by way of her flags and instruments. Threats, defiance, insult—to these we became accustomed. A torture of suspense had been superseded by a dull submission to necessity. Joan Fordibras was a prisoner, and we could not lift a hand to save her. I did not trust myself to think what she had suffered or what those hours of alternating hope and suspense must have meant to her. No light came to me of the sunniest day. I could but wait and watch.
All this time we lay drifting some two or three miles, I suppose, from the great vessel which harboured the Jew and his company. Sometimes, when the night was moonless, we ran up boldly and spied the huge ship out, defying her untrained gunners and learning what we would of that which passed upon her decks. There was a cabin aft, I remember, which I named as Joan’s; and I would place her therein and depict her in my mind sheltered there from the Jew’s anger and the insults of his fellows. How changed she must be from the Joan I had seen upon the beach at Dieppe, the laughing little Thalia of the sandy shore—the Joan who had plied me with such earnest questions, looked up at me with eyes so full of doubt and the desire to believe! Nor could I hope to be in any sense the figure of her childish romance. She might not even know thatWhite Wingsfollowed her at all—possibly they kept her too close a prisoner to learn anything, which the guns did not tell her, of our pursuit and its consequences. Such must be my supposition as I watched the yellow light glowing in her cabin windows and said that Joan was awake and weary for my coming.
That which perplexed us chiefly was the evident indecision of those who commanded the great ship. At first we thought that they were steering her for a South American port; but after running for twenty-four hours almost due westward, they lay to once more and drifted, without apparent aim, whithersoever the tide of the South Atlantic would take them. What their purpose was I could but hazard by conjecture. Possibly they waited for another patrol from Europe—it may even be that refugees were upon the high seas, and that Imroth did not dare to desert them. I could but guess his reasons, I say, and guess-work helped me but little. The nameless ship guarded her secrets too close that I should hope to be the master of them.
Now, thus six days had passed, and I will take you to the morning of the seventh, when chancing to be on the poop at a very early hour, Balaam, our Scotch bo’sun, called my attention to the distant ship, and to something which was passing on her decks.
“There’s nae a pill for the parritch the morn,” said he in his dry fashion; “yon body’s fired no gun, sir, since yesterday noon. May be ’tis pure joy of heart. I’m not knowing rightly, but it’s sufficiently remarkable as you must be thinking.”
This was new, surely, and I gratified the good fellow by admitting as much.
“It looks as though she was running a bit short of ammunition, Balaam,” I said. “Has there been anything else you have noticed?”
“Naething in particular, sir. She’s fired a pop-gun or two, but, may be, she’s over merry the morn. You can hear them for yourself. Bide here a moment, and I’ll show you.”
He took his stand by the taffrail and pointed with a tarry hand at the distant ship. Day had broken propitiously with a fleece of cloud high in the heavens, and a simmer of splendid sunlight upon the chattering waters. The Diamond Ship, herself, lay distant perhaps a couple of miles from us. She had sails set to prevent her rolling, but not a vestige of smoke escaped her funnels, nor was there any indication of her being under steam. When I spied out her decks through my powerful glass, I perceived that they were crowded with men.
“Why,” I said, “they are fighting among themselves.”
“Ay, such kittle-cattle would likely take to that employment.”
“And the guns which they fired—why, it’s providential, man. Go and call Captain Larry at once.”
I am not habitually to be moved to any great display of mental exhilaration; but I confess that this amazing scene robbed me altogether of my self-possession. The surprise of it, the unlooked-for development, the vast possibilities of a mutiny amongst the Jew’s men had, it is true, suggested themselves to me in one or other of those dreams of achievement with which we all combat the duller facts of life; but that such a hope should be on the verge of realisation, that I should, with my own eyes, witness the beginning of the fulfilment of it, and hear the guns which justified my dreaming—that, I say, appeared to me the most wonderful thing that had happened since our voyage began.
“Larry,” I said, when he came up from the cabin—McShanus upon his heels, “they are shooting each other, Larry. I hope that the news distresses you——.”
He did not reply immediately, but focussing his glass, he directed it upon the distant ship. Timothy, in his turn, took his stand beside me, and clapping his hand upon my shoulder, answered for the Captain.
“I wish ’em honourable wakes. Did ye think of this docther?”
“Not as a probability.”
“And what would happen to Joan Fordibras if they quarrelled amongst themselves?”
“I dare not think of it, Timothy—she would be in her cabin. Why do you make me think of it? Are not the circumstances eloquent enough?”
He cringed away from me—excellent fellow that he was, and I knew that he blamed his own indiscretion—and spoke no further word for many minutes. All hands on the yacht had now come up to see a spectacle at once so terrible and unlooked for. Upon my part, I stood by the taffrail to watch the puffs of heavy white smoke and try to depict the tragedy then consummated on the decks of the Diamond Ship. What a scene of horror and bloodshed it must be! I could readily imagine that there had been two parties, and that they had come first to words and then to the arbitrament of deeds. Some of the Jew’s men, I said, had been for running to a South American port, others had been for standing by such of their comrades as Sycamore’s relief might bring. They fell to hot talk upon it, I might suppose, and then to blows. And now we could hear the crack of their rifles and could see the smoke of them soaring upwards amid the taut white sails even to the truck of the mainmast. What sights and sounds that curtain of the vapour must hide from us! And who shall wonder if the situation provoked us to a rashness without precedent. We had temptation enough, surely.
“Larry,” I said, “I am going to see what is happening yonder. Let Mr. Benson know that we shall want all the steam he can give us. There is no risk to anyone. Please let the men understand as much.”
“You are going up to the ship, sir?”
“Within a biscuit toss, and nearer perhaps——”
“It’s staking much, sir.”
“So little, Larry, that we’ll have our breakfasts while we watch them. Even Mr. McShanus, you observe, is not disturbed. I believe that he imagines himself in a theatre——”
But Timothy McShanus answered this for himself.
“Indade and I do,” said he, “and no more disturbed than a man at a hanging. Set a dish of parritch before me and ye shall see. Faith, should I weep tears because one thief is cutting another thief’s throat? Divil a tear at all.”
We laughed at this splendid earnestness, while Larry went up to the bridge, and Timothy himself came up to me and spoke a more serious word.
“Ye are easier in your mind,” he said, scanning my face closely. “’Tis good to see it, Ean, me bhoy. Ye don’t think Miss Joan will suffer—now, do ye?”
“She will suffer, but only in her fears, Timothy. The danger comes later, when this is over. I do not think of it because I hope to share it with her.”
“Good God, ye are not going on board, man?”
“I am going on board, Timothy—that is, if my judgment leads me to believe it possible. I’ll tell you in half-an-hour’s time.”
He was too amazed to reply to me, and for many minutes he stood there, plucking at his iron-grey whiskers and whistling softly. The yacht stood by this time within half-a-mile of the great ship, and every furlong she made set the fascinating picture before us in clearer focus. That our approach would be observed or any notice taken of us, I never for one moment believed. Whatever cause of quarrel set those wolves at each other’s throats, they fought, it was plain, with the desperation of maniacs.
Taking my stand upon our forward bridge I could clearly discern a group of men defending the fo’castle, and another in ambush behind the superstructure amidships. A powerful glass disclosed the prone figures of such as had already fallen; while the intervals, when a restless breeze carried the haze of smoke to the eastward, permitted a fuller view of the spectacle revolting in its detail.
The villains were evidently enraged beyond all measure. I could see them in the death-grip, here wrestling as athletes upon a stage; there fighting upon their hands and knees, as savages who cut and slash at the face and head and heart in insurpassable lust of blood and life. But beyond this, the greater terror was to know that the ship sheltered Joan Fordibras, and that she must be the witness to this debauch. What could it mean to such a one to suffer that? Again I say that I had no courage to think of it. Our own situation forbade such thoughts. We were running right up as though to ram the leviathan before us, and the very voices of the combatants could now be distinguished by us; while the sunlight showed us the shimmer of the knives, the reeling figures, and the death agonies of our enemies. Had we been of the mind, we could have sent them to the bottom with a torpedo from our tube, and no man among us been a penny the worse for our temerity. But to such a vengeance as that we had no call; nor did we so much as contemplate it while Joan remained their hostage. It was sufficient to watch them as we would; to wait and hope for the first fruits of a tragedy so providential.
We had come to no agreement upon the nature of our approach or upon the limits which prudence should set to it. I left it to Larry’s wise head, and I could have done no better. A splendid seaman, he proved himself that day to be also a master of tactics which kept our yacht astern of the big ship, and crept up to her upon such an angle that risk of detection—at least until the fight should be over—need hardly be considered. Not until we were within a cable’s length of their poop did he bringWhite Wingsto—and there we lay, rolling to a gentle swell, half the hands on deck, some on the riggings, the officers with Timothy and myself on the bridge; as amazed a company as sailed the Atlantic that day.
I have told you that the contending parties upon the deck of the rogue had taken their stands respectively at the fo’castle, and by the superstructure amidships. This seemed to point to the conclusion that the seamen of the ship had mutinied upon their officers; and Larry I found to be of my opinion.
“The hands have turned it up, and the dead-weight is going under,” said he, with an indifference to the suffering we witnessed that I had hardly looked for—“I shouldn’t wonder if you are responsible, sir. A thieves’ crew is for fair weather. Let a cloud come up as big as a man’s hand and they’ll run for port though Davy Jones takes the tiller. They’ve had enough of it—any man could see that with half an eye. And heaven help the Jew if he hauls his flag down.”
“You mean, Larry, that we have got on their nerves, and they can’t stand us any more. I shouldn’t wonder. They think we have support behind, and are waiting for a Government ship. That must be it—but if so, what do they want Imroth to do? Is it to run to port? They would hardly expect to land without trouble.”
“Men like that never know what they want, doctor. Did you ever see a Malay run amok? Well, I’ve been round the corner of a plantation hut when a yellow devil was taken with the idea that the exercise was good for him, and mighty quick I skipped, to be sure. That man wanted nothing in particular. It was an Eastern way of tearing up newspapers and smashing the crockery. Those fellows yonder don’t know what’s the matter with them, and they are going to cut up the Jew to see. I wish ’em luck, but I’d sooner be aboard here than eating macaroons on their deck, and that’s the truth of it. Ask Mr. McShanus what he thinks. Perhaps he’d like to put off in a small boat——?”
I looked at Timothy, and saw that he was as white as the planks on which he stood. Viewed from afar, the spectacle had been one of fire and smoke and imagined fury. But proximity made of it a picture of savage bloodshed, revolting in its fury and gruesome in its detail.
One incident stands out in my mind, horrible beyond others, yet an example of many the day was to show me. I recollect that just as we brought the yacht to, a man tried to creep out of the big cabin amidships, which plainly sheltered many of the Jew’s party on the Diamond Ship. The seamen by the fo’castle spied him immediately, and one of them fired a pistol at him—it was evident that the bullet struck him in the shoulder, for he clapped his hand there quickly, and then trying to run to his comrades, he fell heavily upon deck. Now began a scene such as I hope never again to witness. The wounded man lay upon the deck, hidden from our sight, of course, but plainly the object of a violent combat.
On the one side were his friends making frantic efforts to drag him to safety; on the other, the frenzied seamen shooting blindly at the place where they believed him to lie, and so at once preventing his escape and the approach of his companions. Baffled in their desire to kill him out of hand—for the corner of the cabin amidships prevented that—they, nevertheless, so frightened him that he lay cowed like a wounded bird, and thus afraid to rise to his feet or to make any effort to save himself, one of the hands from the fo’castle crept round the superstructure presently and deliberately cast a grappling anchor over the poor fellow’s body.
In an instant now the sailors had their victim. How the anchor had caught him, whether by the flesh or by his clothes, my position upon the bridge forbade me to see; but I could clearly perceive the hands pulling upon the rope and hear the ferocious exultation which such success provoked. Yard by yard they dragged the man to his doom. A quick imagination could depict him clinging madly to the combing of the forward hatch, clutching at the capstan and the windlass, contesting every inch of that terrible journey at whose end a score of unclasped knives awaited him. For myself, I turned my eyes away when the moment came and shut my ears to the dying man’s cry as it rang out, in fearful dread of death, over the hushed waters. They had killed him now, and while their shouts of triumph still echoed in the still air, they flung the body overboard, and it sank immediately from our sight. Such was their vengeance, such the punishment for what wrong, inflicted or imaginary, we knew not, nor cared to ask.
A great silence fell during the after moments of this tragedy—as though awe of it had compelled a mutual truce between the combatants. I do not know precisely at what moment Larry gave the order, but certain it is that the yacht began to steam slowly away from the ship when the dead man’s body fell into the sea; and having made a wide detour, we raced at some speed presently almost due south, as though pursuit of us had already begun. This was a course I could not protest against. Let the rogues agree, and our position were precarious indeed. Larry had perceived as much, and wisely stood away from them.
“They’ll be kissing each other if they spy us out,” said he. “I don’t believe they’ve any shell for the big guns, doctor, but they could do a power of mischief with the monkeys on the tops. We are as well off in the gallery as the stalls, especially in between times. Let us stand by where we shan’t amuse them so much.”
The wisdom of it forbade reply. We had pushed rashness to the last extremity, and had come to no hurt. The truce over yonder was unmistakable. When a steward reminded me that none of us had taken any breakfast. I heard him patiently.
“Bring it to the deck,” I rejoined.
And so four silent men—for Mr. Benson had joined us—sat about the table beneath the aft awning, and each, fearing to express the great hope which animated him, sipped his coffee methodically, and spoke of commonplace things.