CHAPTER XXVII.
DR. FABOS BOARDS THE DIAMOND SHIP.
And Learns the Truth There.
Our surmise that the rogues would agree presently among themselves and fall upon us for their common satisfaction was not supported by the facts. We breakfasted at our leisure and smoked a full pipe upon it, still unmolested and apparently unobserved. It may be that they had become accustomed to our presence. For seven days and nights now we had harassed them unceasingly. By messages, by gunshots, by our searchlight, had we pursued that policy of persistence which, we believed, would most surely demoralise and defeat them. And they had been powerless to harm us; helpless before our attack, as I judged from the first that they would be.
They fired no shot at us, and the morning passed in patient waiting. Great as our hopes were—my own too great for any expression—the Diamond Ship had no further message for us, nor did the sea speak. Void from horizon to horizon, the southern ocean fretted to sleep beneath a torrid sun and left us with that sense of isolation from the world and from men which the great sea alone can inspire. Some among us, it may be, had fallen almost to despair when the rogues set to again. This would have been at three bells of the afternoon watch. A gunshot heard faintly across the waters appeared to be the signal for some new attack. I heard the rattling echoes of a volley, and upon that a second and a third. Our glasses showed us a great press of men, engaged almost hand to hand amidships. Then a haze of smoke settled down upon the ship, and for many minutes it hid her completely from our sight.
You may imagine with what beating hearts and almost breathless hopes we watched this second encounter and waited for its issue. Very wisely, Larry would not approach the scene a second time or risk again those perils we had so readily faced before. Whatever harvest we might reap, our garners would be as readily filled afar as by any mad concession to curiosity which should drive us within the danger zone. If the rogues were killing each other, as evidently they were, it could serve us not at all to witness the horrors of that tragedy or seek in some vague way to take part in it. As for its deeper meaning, I had from the first clenched my thoughts against that and refused to take cognisance of it. The knowledge that Joan Fordibras was the prisoner of such a crew, that other decent women might be aboard the Diamond Ship with her—that, I say, had I permitted it once to master me, would have brought me to such a state of frenzy that no sane act afterwards could have atoned for its follies. Earnestly, persistently, I strove to drive the truth away, and to blind my eyes to it. “She is not on the ship,” I would say—or again, “They will not harm her, for she alone stands between them and the gallows.” God knows how much of a pretence it was—and yet, I think, the very effect of will brought salvation to us. A mad attack upon them would have undone all. I realise to-day the good providence which saved me from that.
Now, we had been waiting all this time for the smoke to lift from the hull of the Leviathan, and permit us to see, as far as it might be seen at such a distance, that which happened upon those woeful decks. As for the curtain of the vapour, it was but a spur to the imagination, a terrible cloud interposed between our burning eyes and those scenes of horror and of bloodshed it hid from us. Rifle shots we heard incessantly—now in volleys, again by twos and threes, then once more in a general exchange which seemed to speak of the crisis of battle. Nor might we argue a good omen of the stillness which fell afterwards. For, surely, it could be nothing else than the silence of victory, the final triumph of one faction above the others. This I pointed out to Larry as we lifted our glasses for the twentieth time unavailingly.
“I take it that the men are up against the rogues, Larry. We could wish for nothing better than news of their success.”
“You think so, sir?”
“I trust a seaman before a landshark any day, whatever his ship or nationality. He is more likely to honour a woman, Larry—there will be some measure of honesty in him; and if it is put to the vote, he will haul down that flag the first time he is asked. Why should he not? He has nothing to fear ashore. The rogues keep him afloat. I’d wager a hundred guineas that homesickness began this fight, and will carry it to a conclusion—that is if the seamen win——”
“And if they do not, sir?”
“Then God help the ship, Larry—she will not be afloat a week.”
McShanus interposed to say that they were between the devil and the deep sea, surely. I found him wonderfully serious. It is odd to think how many cheery fellows, who write gaily of life and death in the newspaper, have never seen a gun fired in earnest or looked unflinchingly upon the face of death.
“’Tis a coward I was,” said he, “and not ashamed of it. This very minute I tremble like a woman—though ’tis often of kindness a woman trembles and not of fear. Look yonder at the smoke lifting from off the face of the ship. What lies under it, my friends?—God Almighty, what are those feeling and thinking and suffering now that they are going to their Maker. ’Tis as though I, myself, had been called this instant to remember that I shall be as they—who knows when, who knows how? A cruel torment of a thought—God help me for it.”
Here was a McShanus mood to be laughed off, and that it would have been but for the panorama suddenly disclosed by the soaring smoke which gradually lifted from the face of the hidden ship. Nor was it clear in a twinkling that the seamen (as I supposed would be the case) had obtained the upper hand, and were become the masters of the vessel.
We could see them by our glasses running hither and thither, from the fo’castle to the poop, in and out of the companion hatch; now up, now down, sometimes in single combat with one or other of the vanquished; again slashing in a glut of mad desire at a prostrate figure or an enemy already dead. What weapons they had, I found it quite impossible to say. From time to time, it is true, a pistol was discharged as though it were at some lurking or hidden foe; but in the main, I believe they must just have used common marline-spikes or had gone to it with their clasp-knives in their hands. And their anger, however it had been provoked, defied all words to measure. As beasts to the carcase, so they returned again and again to the bodies of those whom they had destroyed. We espied victors in all the attitudes of bravado and defiance, dancing, leaping, even striking at each other. And this endured so great a while that I began to say the holocaust would go on to the end and hardly a man of them live to tell the tale.
This fearful encounter ceased finally about four o’clock of the afternoon watch. Ironically enough, I heard them strike eight bells just as though it had been upon a ship in good order at sea; and as the sounds came floating over the water to us, I reflected upon the amazing force of habit which governs a sailor even in the most terrible of situations.
“Larry,” I said. “They would change the watch even if the sea dried up. What’s to be done now? what, in God’s name, can we do? I’d go aboard if it were not criminal to take the risk. That’s not to be thought of—a man would be safer in a lion’s den at present. And yet think of what it must be over there——”
“I’ve been trying not to think of it all along, sir. Whatever’s happened, it’s over now. They’re putting the dead overboard—and, what’s more, launching a boat. I shouldn’t wonder if they came alongside, sir.”
“Alongside us, Larry? That would be something new. Do you really mean it?”
“You must judge for yourself, sir——”
We put up our glasses, Timothy declaring, as usual, that there was a plaster across the end of his (for he never learned to use the telescope), and followed with new interest the movements of the victorious seamen. Certainly, they were putting the dead overboard, and, as Larry had perceived, they had lowered a boat. Possessed, I suppose, of what they thought to be a fine idea (for seamen are gregarious beyond all others), they presently lowered a second boat, and upon this a third. Someone firing a gun to call our attention, they next flagged a message to us, so plainly honest that I caused it to be answered without a moment’s loss of time.
“We want help. Stand by to pick up a boat.”
To this our reply fluttered out, that we would permit their boat to come alongside; and the more to encourage them, we steamed toward the great ship and met them when they were little more than the half of a mile distant from it. There were seven in all, I made out, and a little lad at the tiller, the boat itself being an ordinary lifeboat, painted white, but ill kept and shabby. As to the nationality of its crew, I could detect a huge nigger at the bow oar, and another man of colour amidships, while the rest were mostly dark skinned, and one I took to be an Egyptian. Whoever they were they came towards us with great spirit, as though pleased to be free of the shambles they had quitted and very anxious to deliver some message. In this we encouraged them, lowering a gangway and bidding them send a spokesman aboard—which they did immediately without any parley or suspicion, so that I no longer doubted their honesty or even considered the possibility of a trap.
“Let Bill Evans go up,” was their cry; and, sure enough, up came a ferret-faced, red-whiskered, simple-looking fellow, who answered to this very English designation. Standing in an odd attitude before us, shuffling his feet nervously, and fingering a broad-brimmed felt hat, William Evans certainly expressed himself with difficulty.
“Mates,” he said, “I’d be very obliged to know if you carry a doctor on this ship?”
Larry looked at me, but I made no response. We must hear much, I reflected, before we answered such a question as that.
“Is that your message, sir?” Larry asked a little severely.
Again the man thumbed his hat and continued parrot-like:—
“I’d be obliged to know if you carry a doctor on this ship. That’s first. We’re in a clove-hitch and no mistake. Some’s gone and that’s an end of them. The rest would be thankful for a doctor, and there’s no denying it. Mates, if you’re Christian men, you’ll come aboard and help poor seamen——”
His candour was really remarkable. I thought it quite time to take up his cross-examination myself.
“Come,” I said, “we must know more about it than that. What ship is yonder and who is in command of her? Answer my questions properly, and it is possible that we may help you. There has been a mutiny, and you have the upper hand. Why should we take any part in it?”
He looked up at me, a foxy look, I thought, and stumbled through as strange a narrative as I have ever heard.
“Old Salt-Horse went off in the relief,” he began, and I knew he meant Imroth thereby. “Captain Ross has been first since. He was for lying in this——hair-oil of a sea; we was for going ashore. That’s what the lady wanted, and d——n me, who was to stand agen it? Eight months have me and my mates been floating about this ocean like a flock of —— ducks. Did I ship with Salt-Horse for that? As true as God’s in heaven, I come from London Road, Plymouth, and Bill Evans is my name, same as my father and mother before me. You come aboard and do what you can for us, and we sail the ship to Rio. No harm comes to the young lady, but she stops aboard until we’re ashore, and that’s my last word if I swing for it.”
The man had become bolder as he went on, and now he threw his hat defiantly upon deck and looked at us all as though he had been an ambassador carrying a message to a king. Perchance he but little understood the significance of his words or the surpassing interest with which I heard them. Val Imroth escaped? All well with my little Joan—how could it be otherwise since they asked us aboard! Here were two facts which changed in an instant the whole complexion of our schemes and shattered them to the very base. I no longer thought of plan or prudence or any human consideration at all, but that of carrying Joan Fordibras the tidings of her safety, so far as that safety lay within our power to ensure. I must board the Diamond Ship. At any cost, I must speak with Joan.
“Larry,” I cried, shouting it out so that those in the boat below could hear every word of it—“Larry, I am going to help these men. Stand by for my signal. If there is any treachery, you will know what to do. Show this fellow what we carry—let there be no mistake about it. They sink or swim—no half measure, Larry! So help me Heaven, I will send them to the bottom in less than five minutes if they so much as think a word against me.”
Larry’s answer was to command our own crew to lower the launch and to stand by the guns. Delaying only to call Okyada to my side, I followed the strange ambassador down the gangway stairs and began my voyage to the great unknown.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE STRONG ROOM OF THE OCEAN.
Dr. Fabos Fails to Find Joan Fordibras.
The boat’s crew laid to their oars with a hearty will, directly I gave them the word; and we shot over the still waters almost with the speed of a steamer’s launch. It was a new experience for me to find myself afloat upon the Atlantic in a small boat, and I confess, even in such fair weather, not wholly a pleasant one. The long rollers, alternately lifting us to prodigious heights and plunging us as to a very abyss of the ocean, shut in turn both ships from my view and permitted me but a rare glimpse of them as we rose upon the crest of some rolling wave which seemed about to engulf us utterly. I realised, as all seamen realise from time to time, the meaning of man’s victory over the sea and the splendour of it. And excitement carried me without distress where I would have feared to go upon a common day.
I was about to see my little Joan again. Unless this man had lied to me, so much must be beyond question. I should find her on the great ship and take her, at last and finally, from this hive of ruffians into which the accidents of life had cast her from her very childhood. Much as she had suffered, it remained my hope that her own courage and the circumstances of her presence upon the ship had saved her from that nameless evil which might otherwise have been her fate. Imroth had kept the child from harm—that I firmly believed; and Imroth having fled, the terror of his name might still be powerful to save her. Herein lay the supreme consolation as our voyage drew to its end, and every rolling crest showed us more clearly the immense hull, standing up from the water like a very Castle Impregnable. I was the bearer of a message to Joan Fordibras, and she should be the first there to whom the story of succour must be told. There could be no purpose dearer to me or one I embarked upon so gladly.
The sun had been upon the point of setting when I quitted the yacht, and a chill of evening fell with an aftermath of drifting mist as the men drove the long-boat up to the ship. My first impression, for I had never before viewed a big steamer from a small boat on the open sea, was one of a vast towering immensity rising sheer above me as the wall of a fortress or the black precipice of a mountain. The ladder itself, by which I must gain the deck, swung fragile as a thread from a boom amidships—no steam came from the ship’s valves, although the bilge was flowing freely. I could detect no sound of movement or human activity; nothing but the appearance of three or four pale anxious faces at the gangway above allowed me to say that the ship had a crew at all. These men, however, waited for my coming with an expectancy which was almost pathetic, and scarcely had I climbed the ladder than they surrounded me immediately with such piteous entreaty to come to their comrades’ aid that my own imperious question sounded abrupt almost to the point of harshness.
“You have a lady upon this ship—where is she?”
“She has gone, sir.”
“Gone! good God, how can she be gone?”
“We knew what you would ask, and sent down to her cabin a quarter of an hour ago, sir. She was not there. Mr. Colin Ross, him that commands for Mr. Imroth, he says he knows nothing of it. It’s true as heaven, sir—the lady’s come to no harm by us, nor would have done if she had been aboard here twenty years. There wasn’t a man that wouldn’t have given his life for her. We don’t know where she is, sir, and that’s gospel truth.”
Imagine the scene. I stood upon the open deck of the strangest steamer I have yet set foot upon—a steamer so splendidly fitted and furnished, as one glance told me, that no Atlantic liner, whatever company floated her, could have claimed a greater elegance. The bridge above me had the neatness, the shining brass, the white ladders of a man-of-warsman. The guns were polished to the last possibility. Every cabin into which I looked appeared to boast the luxury and equipment of a state saloon on a Cunard or a White Star boat. I perceived an immense dining hall aft, and a companion-way not unsuited to a ten thousand ton steamer. There were boats abundantly, safety rafts—the usual equipment of an ocean-going vessel, and yet, in the strongest contrast, something which differentiated this ship from any other I had ever visited, and placed her at once in a category apart. This was nothing more nor less than a screen of solid steel bars, ten feet high, perhaps, and defended by forbidding spikes, sharp as swords and impossible to fend, a screen cutting the vessel into two clear divisions, and obviously the Jew’s protection against all others who sailed with him. I judged at once that the men lived forward of this screen; Imroth and his chosen company aft. A wicket gate, just large enough to admit the body of a man, permitted communication between the divisions; but the steelwork itself appeared to be carried cunningly over the bulwarks in a manner that must have rendered absolutely the aft cabins secure not only against the seamen collectively, but against any spy among them who had the fancy to watch the Jew in his less suspicious moments.
This wicket-gate, be it said, stood open when I climbed to the main deck, and the men now passed to and fro at their will. The most horrible aspect of the picture did not immediately present itself to my notice. I was some minutes aboard before my eyes discerned the huddled figures of men, some propped in bent attitudes against the bulwarks, some already dead, a few crying horribly in the agony of mutilation. As the scene unfolded itself, the woe of it became more terrible to witness. There were sailors of many nationalities here, chiefly, I perceived, from South European and Mediterranean ports, Turks in their native dress, sturdy Greeks, Tunisians, seamen from Algiers and the Adriatic. Of those who crowded about me unwounded, two were Americans, one a nigger, a third a little Frenchman, who gabbled to the point of delirium. The appeal, however, was common to all.
“Help our friends, doctor—save them for God’s sake. We have no doctor on board. Herr Klein sailed with Mr. Imroth. We can do nothing for ourselves.”
The woe of it appalled me. I knew neither what to answer them nor how best to help them. Many a day had passed since I practised my own profession. And to be called upon as a surgeon upon a battlefield!
“Have you stores?” I asked. “Is there a surgery on board?”
They shouted an affirmative all together. Half-a-dozen among them were ready to lead me below. Hesitating an instant to give my command to Okyada, I went with them as they desired.
“Miss Joan is on the ship,” I said to the faithful fellow. “Find her and take her to the yacht.”
Okyada looked up at me with one swift, almost wistful glance, and disappeared immediately from my sight. The burly American, who posed as my guide, pushing his comrades aside, led me through the wicket gate, and we descended the great companion-way. It would be impossible adequately to describe the luxury and the splendour of this part of the ship even as one brief scrutiny revealed it. The very lamps appeared to be of solid silver. The panelling was of the rarest woods, teak and old Spanish mahogany and satin wood. I caught a glimpse of the great dining saloon, and beheld walls covered by pictures of undoubted mark and quality—chiefly of the French and Spanish schools. We passed by a boudoir furnished with such elegance that Paris alone could have commanded its ensemble. There was a card room not unlike that of a great London club, with little tables and electric lamps upon them, and even discarded packs scattered in angry disorder upon the blue Persian carpet which covered a parquet floor. Crossing this room and leaving it by a door toward the centre of the ship, I found myself immediately in a broad corridor lighted from above, and the walls of this appeared to be of steel. Had I been in doubt as to the meaning of it, the American’s candour would have settled the matter without question.
“Old Five’s strong box,” said he. “That’s where he keeps what isn’t good to eat. I guess the best of the stuff’s landed by this time. It went off in Colin Ross’s ship. You might buy yourself a gold brick out of what’s left and not be much poorer. We share and share in that now. There used to be a guard down here night and day when old Isaac was aboard. I guess you scared him pretty badly. He ran for the Brazils the day after we sighted you——”
I asked him but one question in turn.
“Was General Fordibras on board with the man you speak of?”
“Not this trip. I heard tell he’d gone to Europe. He’s too easy for this job. Three-Fingers never could look a Sheffield knife in the face. I guess his daughter’s got all the courage.”
We had passed another door of steel as he spoke and descended a short flight of stairs to a second corridor, about which were cabins of a commoner order. Here the surgery of the ship had been located—a well fitted, thoroughly modern apartment, recently tenanted, it seemed, by a doctor who knew what the hospitals of Europe were doing. A quick search discovered the antiseptics, the wool, the liniment and the lancets, without which so little could be done for the wounded men above. There was nothing missing for the practice of a modern art.
It would be a work of supererogation to tell you of the long hours which followed immediately upon my assumption of therôleof ship’s doctor. I passed through them as one passes through a dreamland of restless thoughts. There were no fewer than thirty-one wounded men upon the steamer; and, of these, seven belonged to the fo’castle party, twenty-four to the saloons. The latter chained my interests in spite of their condition, for there were Englishmen among them, and faces that the stories of recent crimes had made familiar to me. One lad, slashed heavily across the forehead by a clasp knife, had been mentioned, I remembered, in connection with the famous forgeries upon the Bank of England some five years ago. I recognised the Italian jewel thief, Detucchi, the German forger, Urich, the young Belgian, Monterry, supposed to be serving a sentence of penal servitude for life for his attack upon King Leopold. Happily, few of these men had been wounded by rifle bullets. Those whom the guns had killed fell upon the instant and their bodies were already in the sea. My patients were the victims of cuts, fearful gashes in some cases, and difficult fractures in others. Two died while I tried to help them. It was a woeful task, and I trust that I may never be called to its fellow.
The honest men, happily, for so I called the sailors of the ship, had suffered considerably less. I found them profoundly grateful for such services as I could render them; nor did the American hesitate to tell me frankly the story of the mutiny.
“We were making for Rio, but Mr. Ross stood out,” he said. “A relief’s expected, and I guess there are some law-sick folk on board her. He treated us like dirt, and began to talk of rafting. Do you know what rafting is, doctor—no, well, it’s putting living men overboard on a raft as big as a deal board and wishing ’em good luck while they go. Don’t try it while you can sail saloon. Colin Ross fell sick of a fever and is down below raving now. We got the arms by tickling the mate’s whiskers and promising him Ross’s berth. That was the first and the last of it. We shot ’em down like sheep, and now we’re going ashore to spend our money—those that live, though they’re like to be few enough.”
Here was a truth beyond all question. I stood on the deck of a veritable plague ship. A wail of death rose unceasingly. Night had come down, and a thick white mist enveloped the ocean all about us. The yacht was nowhere to be seen. Of all the hours of that great endeavour, this, to me, was the most terrible, alike in its menace and its suggestion.
For I said that the yacht might lose me in the fog and leave me, the prisoner of these desperate men, and their hostage against the justice which awaited them.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE BRIDGE AND AFTERWARDS.
Dr. Fabos Visits Colin Ross.
I was in a situation of grave peril; but it would have been imprudent beyond measure to have admitted it. Possibly the accident of their advantage did not occur to the men, nor had they discovered it. There was no order on the ship, no commander, no person in authority above others. The agony of wounds forbade any consideration of that which should be done or of the methods of doing it. I perceived that the men regarded me in some sense as their good angel, paying me the compliment of trusting me, and obeying my commands as faithfully as if I had been their captain. They could even remember that I had gone fasting, and speak of food and drink.
“Old Valentine knew a good tap when he tasted it, and there’s plenty of the right sort on board,” the American said to me good-naturedly. “You only give a name to it and the corks will be flying like rockets. Ask for what you’re wanting, doctor, and I’ll skin the lubber who doesn’t run to fetch it. The Lord knows what my mates would have done if you hadn’t come among them.”
It was honestly said, and as honestly meant. And yet, willingly as I would have accepted his cordial offer, fear of the consequences held me back. Who would dare to think of drink amid such a crew as this, or to remind men that drink was to be had? I could depict a Saturnalia defying the powers of a Poe to describe, such an orgie as a sane man might dream of in a horrid sleep, should these ruffians broach the casks or be reminded of the spirits which the ship carried.
My immediate anxiety was to divert their thoughts from my own situation, and to lead them to regard me rather as one of themselves than as a stranger. As for the mystery of my little Joan’s disappearance from the ship, the excuses which had been made to me, and the obvious sincerity of them, I knew no more than the dead what these might mean. While at one time I would doubt if she had ever been on the ship at all—plainly as I had thought to see her there—there were other moods in which I could almost believe that these ruffians had killed her, and that she also must be numbered among the victims of the night. This, however, would mark a moment of despair, to be forgotten readily when action called me to some new task. These men had sworn that Joan lived. Why should I question a sincerity which all my observation declared to be genuine?
So thus the matter stood when darkness came down and the fog lay thick about the Diamond Ship. Okyada, my servant, had vanished unaccountably, nor had I heard a single word concerning him since we came on board together. The yacht had disappeared from my ken, and the shrewdest eyes could not detect her situation, or the quickest ears give news of her. In these trying circumstances I welcomed a request from one of the seamen that I would visit Colin Ross, the captain of the vessel, and until lately the representative of Valentine Imroth, aboard her. This man I found lying grievously wounded by a bullet which had entered the left lung and penetrated in such an ugly fashion that his life must be a question of hours. His was not an unpleasant face, nor was his manner in any way repellent. I told him frankly, when he asked me, that he could not live, and he answered with a wan smile that was almost a sob.
“Good God! sir,” he said, “how little any man, who makes a beginning on a crooked road, ever sees the end of it! I was the captain of a Shields collier two years ago, doing well, and calling my home my own. When Mr. Imroth found me out, I would no more have done a shabby thing than have harmed my little baby girl, who’s waiting for me in Newcastle now. Money bought me—I’ll not deny it. I promised to run this ship to the Brazils for a thousand guineas, and there’s Imroth’s seal upon it on the table yonder. You may not believe me, but what the story of this business is, how these men came here, or why they have come, I know no better than the Pope of Rome—and that’s the truth, if my life’s the price of it. And yet, sir, that it’s a bad business I’d be a fool to deny. He who touches pitch gets plenty on his fingers. I knew that Val Imroth was a bad lot the first day I saw him—and bad enough are his companions on this ship. Why, good God! there’d have been murder done every day if it hadn’t been for fear of the man and his words. He puts a palsy on you when you hear his step—his breath’s a flame of hell—this crowd shivered at his look. It’s fear of him that’s kept them quiet since he ran for shore; it’s fear of him which will send them all to the dock in the end; as sure as I lie here telling you so.”
I cannot conceal the fact that this interview affected me greatly. Here was a robust British sailor, a man perhaps of thirty-five years of age, brown-haired, blue-eyed, and of an open cast of countenance, about to give up his life and to pass for ever from the love which awaited him in England because a monster had breathed a breath upon him, and had cried in his ears the fables of the gold. Hundreds of men, as innocent as this man, were exiles from wife and children to-day, outcasts, jail-birds, suspects, human derelicts, because of this devilish net which had enmeshed them, of these criminal arms which had embraced them, and this voice of lust which charmed them. Many a man have I seen die—but not as this seaman died, with a child’s name upon his lips, and a child’s image before his eyes. Of what avail to speak at such a moment of the Eternal Hope in the justice of an Almighty and all-Merciful God, or to recite those platitudes in which pious folk take refuge? Colin Ross was thinking of the child who nevermore would call him father, or by him to be called child again.
This, however, is to anticipate the hour. There was much upon which I would gladly have questioned the man; but little that he had the strength to answer me. Just as the seamen had sworn that it was all well with Joan, so did he bear them out with such emphasis as his failing strength could command.
“We were to make the Brazils and take a passage for Miss Joan to London. Her father, General Fordibras, is there, doctor. If harm has come to her, it is since I left the deck. The men worshipped her—there are rogues enough, I grant you, who would have had their say, but I shot the first dead with my own hand, and the men answered for the second, God help him! You’ll find Miss Joan all right, and take her back to her father. For the rest, I can’t advise you, sir. You are safe enough on board here while this trouble is new—but when it’s past, save yourself, for God’s sake; for your life will not be worth a minute’s purchase. Remember what’s at stake if this ship makes port and you are there to give an account of her. Hands and passengers alike will prevent that. No, doctor, get aboard your yacht while you can, and leave these men to their destiny.”
He spoke with much dignity, though it is hardly necessary for me to say that I had travelled already upon such lines of thought as he laid down. When I left him, it was with a promise to see his wife and child in Newcastle, and to give them what comfort I could—but chiefly to keep the story of the darker hour away from them; for, as he said, “they hold my name dear.” He had but a few moments to live then, and that merciful euthanasia which is frequently the hand-maiden of death, as long experience has shown to me, rapidly came upon him and left him but the passing dreams of a sleep which all must know, and from which all must awake.
Now this befell, I suppose, about eleven o’clock that night. There was still much mist when I came upon deck, but it had lifted to the northward, and the atmosphere was everywhere clearing. I had some expectation of spying out the yacht should the breeze strengthen, and yet there was no hour of all that emprise which found me in such a desolation of spirit or so doubtful of the ultimate issue. Why had my friends made no effort to reach me? What kept them? Why did they leave me here at the mercy of these cut-throats, my life as a gossamer which any puff of anger might destroy, my liberty in these ruffians’ keeping? Sober reason would have replied that they could have done nothing else; but this was not the time for reason, and, indeed, I came to call it the darkest hour of them all. Vainly I raged against my own acts and the judgment which had carried me on board the ship. It had been madness to come; it would be madness to let the men know as much. Already I was aware of a disposition to treat me with less respect—it may have been pure imagination, but the idea came into my head, and a brief conversation with the American did nothing to displace it.
“I am going aboard my own yacht,” I said to him—that would have been about the hour of midnight. “I am going aboard my yacht, but I will return at daybreak and see what more I can do. Mr. Ross says that you are heading for the Brazils. That is no affair of mine. The man I want is no longer on the ship. I have no concern with the others nor they with me. Let us put things as straight as we can—and then talk about the shore.”
This should not have been said. It occurred to me almost as I uttered the words that the man had not hitherto thought about the yacht at all; but no sooner had I spoken than he stepped to the gangway and immediately realised the situation.
“Guess your people have gone hay-making, doctor,” he said far from pleasantly. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters much anyway. My mates want you pretty badly, and while they want you, I guess you’ll have to stop. Just step down and take another look at Harry Johnson, will you? He’s raving like a fool-woman in the Doldrums. You can turn in by-and-by—I’ll see what Williams can do for you—though it’s forward you must swing your hammock, and no two opinions about that.”
To this I answered, in a tone as decisive as his own, that my comings and my goings would be ordered by none but myself, and that his friend must await his turn. A long acquaintance with rogues has convinced me that any weakness of civility is lost upon them, and that firmness to the point of brutality is the only weapon. I would have shot this man dead had he given me an impudent answer, and his surprise when he heard me speak was something to see.
“No offence, doctor,” he said presently. “I’ll tell Harry you’ll be along presently. Don’t think as we’re not obliged to you for what you’ve done. The boys are ready enough to tell you so. You take your own time, and do what’s best pleasing to you. There’s work enough, God Almighty knows.”
He spat his filthy tobacco juice into the sea, and turning upon his heels went forward to join his companions by the fo’castle. A scene so weird is not within my memory. Depict the grey mists drifting upon the water, the silvery waves in those lakes of radiance the moonbeams could create, the stillness of the ship, the prone forms of men whose sobs and groans marked the intervals of sounds, the lanterns set about the decks, the great mast looming above, the spars and yards, and the monster bulk of the funnel. And this ship, remember, was a house of sanctuary to all the friends of crime who should bow the knee to Valentine Imroth, and come to him with plunder in their hands!
What stories could not its cabins tell! What crimes had been committed—murder and lust and shedding of blood—what awful cries had gone up from its decks, the cries of strong men at the gate of death, of women in their agony! All these phantoms came to me as I paced the quarter-deck and asked, almost as a man in despair, what kept my friends or how long the mists would prevail? I could imagine a day when this mighty idea had first occurred to the Jew’s cunning intellect, and he had acclaimed the possibilities of it. What police, and of what nations, would seek their criminals upon the high seas, or search there for the jewels which the chief rogues of Europe brought to a sanctuary so sure? What mind would have read this riddle aright unless accident had suggested its answer? I claimed nothing for myself; a thousand times an irony would it have been to do so.
Let me escape these decks, and how much further was I upon the road to finality? I could tell a plain tale to the Government, certainly, and could open the doors of this temple of assassins to the world—but who would crush so vast a conspiracy? What unity of international action, what initiative would war upon the greater evils of it, hunting the tigers from their dens or ridding the cities of their allies? All that I had done, all my planning, all my thinking, had left the Jew a free man and sent me a prisoner on the deck of his ship. And God alone could give me freedom, that God in whose immediate Providence I have never ceased to believe!
This was the outcome of my philosophy as I stood by the gangway and watched the shifting mists; here opening a little silvered pathway—as to an arbour of delights; there beating down again in dank clouds of vapour and shutting all the hither scenes from my view. The men had left me alone for the time being, but their absence seemed a greater peril. I could hear a loud argument going on by the fo’castle, and voices raised in persuasion or in anger. The monster ship herself drifted helplessly, as a great stricken beast lurching in agony and seeking only a place to end its woes. Every faculty that I possess told me that I was in great danger. These rogues would come forward presently and put some proposition to me. So I argued, nor did the night give me the lie. Shuffling and hesitating they came, some twenty or more of them, before another hour had passed, all together in a deputation, and as ready, I would swear, to cut me down where I stood as to drink the rum which an obliging purser had served out to them.
The American, I perceived, was to be their chief speaker, and with him was the man called Bill Evans. Advancing by the promenade deck in a body, they seemed to find some little difficulty when it came to expressing themselves in plain English; and had the situation been less dangerous, it would have been ridiculous enough.
“Well, my men,” I cried, being careful to have the first word at them; “what is it, now? Speak up, I shall not eat you.”
“Beg pardon, sir, we wish you to know that Will Rayner has been made captain of this ship, and that he wishes you to go below.”
The man named Evans spoke, and I must say his manner was diverting enough.
“That is very considerate of Mr. William Rayner,” said I, with a laugh. “Will he not step forward—am I not to have the pleasure of seeing him?”
“He’s back there by the capstan, sir. We’re a depytashun, if you please. Will won’t have nobody aft the galley, and that’s his plain words. You’re to go below and to wait until you’re sent for.”
I looked the speaker full in the face and laughed at him contemptuously.
“My men,” I said, calmly addressing them all together, “do you wish to be afloat to-morrow morning, or is this ship and all aboard her to be at the bottom of the Atlantic?”
They were evidently perplexed. The gentleman by the name of Bill Evans continued to speak.
“Me and my mates, beggin’ your pardon, sir—we don’t fall in with that. You’re fair marooned, and that’s the end of it. Will says as he means well by you, but while you’re on this ship, you’ll obey him and nobody else. Humbly representin’ it, sir, we’ll have to see that you do as Will says——”
I took a pistol from my pocket, and deliberately cocked it. This was touch and go for my very life. Had I shot one of those men, I knew that it would all be over in an instant, and that they would either bow the knee to me or murder me on the spot.
“Now, see here,” said I. “My yacht’s lying out yonder not a biscuit toss from this deck. If you give me so much as another word of impudence, I’ll send you and every ruffian aboard here to blazes as sure as this is a revolver, and there are cartridges in it. Go and tell Mr. Will Rayner what I say, for, by heaven above me, I will go myself and fetch him, if you do not.”
I have said that the moment was critical beyond any through which I have lived, and a truer word could not be spoken. There we stood, the angry seamen upon one side, myself upon the other, each party knowing that the issue was for good and all, and yet neither willing to bring the instant of it upon us. As for these wretched fellows, I do not believe that they would have lifted a hand against me had it not been for the American who incited them. He was the ringleader despite the newly-made captain, and his mock authority. And he was the dangerous man with whom I had to deal.
“I guess your yacht may be where you say she is,” he remarked with a drawl; “but she’s got to hustle if she wants to come up with us this summer weather. Don’t you be too free with that pistol, sir, or some of us will have to take it from you. You’re in a clove-hitch, and had better keep a civil tongue in your head or maybe we’ll cut it out and see what it’s made of. Now just you come along o’ me and don’t make no trouble about it. Will Rayner ain’t a goin’ to eat you, and you ain’t a goin’ to eat him, so step up brisk, doctor, and let’s see you march.”
This impudent harangue was hailed by a salvo of applause. The fellow himself took two steps toward me and laid a hand upon my shoulder. He had scarce touched me with his fingers when I struck him full in the face, and he rolled headlong into the scuppers. The same instant saw me leaping for my very life up the ladder to the bridge deck and clutching there at the rope which opened the steamer’s siren. Good God! What an instant of suspense! Were the fires below damped down, or was there steam in the boiler? One tremendous pull upon the rope had no answer for me at all. Again and again I jerked the cord back as though very desperation would sound the alarm which should summon my friends and, at the same time, save me from this rabble. The men below watched me aghast, their curiosity overpowering them, their mouths agape, so that when the siren’s blast went echoing over the still sea at last, you could have heard a footfall on the decks, or caught the meaning of a whispered message.
The men were dumbfounded, I say, and without idea. This I have ever observed to be a habit among seamen when the news of any great disaster comes upon them or they are taken unawares in an instant of emergency. No clown could look more childish then, or any Master Boldface laugh as foolishly. There they were in a group below me, some with their hands thrust deep into their pockets, some smoking idly, some looking into the faces of their neighbours as though a glance would answer the riddle of the night. And while they stood, the siren roared a blast of defiance, again and again, as the voice of a Minotaur of the deep, warning and terrifying, and not to be resisted. Had I doubted the vigilance of my good comrades upon the yacht, I could have doubted it no longer.White Wingsanswered my signal almost instantly in a higher note of defiance, in a shrill assent to that wild roll-call, the orator mechanical of honest friendship. And, while she answered, her siren seemed to put a reproach upon me, saying, “The yacht is here—all is well—why have you doubted us?”
A deep silence fell upon the Diamond Ship when this signal came reverberating over the waters. None of the amazed seamen spoke a word or made a movement for many minutes. I had already put my pistol into my pocket and taken a cigarette from my case. If I wished the men to believe that the hour of crisis had passed, I was under no delusion at all myself. For remember that I had gone up to the bridge and stood there during this supreme instant of danger; and that, if I would regain the deck of the yacht, I must descend the ladder, down through these serried ranks of men; must pass them as one who was going from them to the house of an avenger, to his comrades who would judge the story and help him to decide upon the punishment. The rogues’ very salvation depended upon my captivity; I was their hostage, and by me would reprieve come if reprieve were to be hoped for at all. This I perceived long before it had dawned upon the witless rabble; but it occurred even to them at last, and crowding about the ladder’s foot they told me bluntly that they were aware of it.
“Guess it’s your turn,” said the American, venturing a step upward but no more. His manner had become sheepish, I observed, and he spoke with less truculence.
“My turn, as you say, sir,” I rejoined with what composure I could. “I am now going aboard my yacht, and there I will decide what is to be done with you. That will depend upon your behaviour, I advise you to remember as much.”
I lit my cigarette and waited for him to go on.White Wingswas evidently quite near to us now—I could hear the throb of her turbines; her siren hooted repeatedly. The night was mine but for an accident. And yet, heaven knows, it appeared to me then that an accident must befall me unless a miracle intervened.
“That’s your yacht right enough,” the Yankee went on immediately. “And so far as it’s her, we’re in a clove-hitch ourselves. The question is, who’s to put you aboard her, and what shall we be about when he’s doing of it? Now, see here, as between man and man—you give us your solemn affidavit not to do anything against this ship’s crew and you’re free to come and go as you choose. That’s my first condition—the second is as you sign the paper Will Rayner has drawed up and abide by its terms. Do as much as that and your friends shan’t be more willing to help you. But if you don’t do it—why, then, look out for yourself, for, by the Lord above me, you ain’t got ten minutes to live.”
He came another step up the ladder, cheered, as it seemed, by his own eloquence. As for the men, they opened their lips for the first time since my yacht had answered me, and their hoarse roar of defiance, uttered in that unpleasant timbre to which the sea attunes the human voice, backed the threat and made it their own. Had it been left to me in circumstances less dangerous, I might have given them my word to let me go free, and signed the paper their leader spoke about; but just in the same measure that they threatened me, so did my anger against them rise—and stepping briskly to the topmost rung of the ladder, I answered them in a sentence that even their dull intellects could understand.
“Not a word or a line, by God! That is my answer, sir. You may take it or leave it; but if you leave it, some of you shall as certainly hang for this night’s work as this is a pistol I hold in my hand. Now stand back, for I am coming down amongst you. Yonder, you see, is the boat I am expecting.”
Lifting my hand, I pointed with dramatic intent to the port quarter of the ship. The sea was void upon that quarter—what need to tell it? But my eyes had already detected the black outline of a ship’s boat upon the starboard bow, and my very life depended upon the ruse which should divert the men’s attention from it. Never shall I doubt the ruffians would have made an end of it there and then, and have murdered me as they had murdered the criminals upon the ship, if the argument had been carried but another sentence. I had seen knives unsheathed at my words, had heard the promptings of rogue to rogue, that low muttering of the human beast who has scented prey, and whose nostrils are distended by the lust of it. Let the talk run on, and they would be up the ladder and upon me, cost what it might—up and on me, and their knives at my throat. This I understood when I pointed to the port quarter and sent them gaping there in a body—as children who are not content to hear, but with their own eyes would see.
My freedom, nay, my life depended upon the ruse. Such a fact was clear above all others. It had been no lie when I said that my friends were coming to me. Athwart the great ship, not fifty yards from the starboard bow, lay the long boat which had been sent out to me. I took one last look at the huddled forms below me, debated the possibilities in one of those swift mental surveys to which long habit has trained me, and staking all upon the venture, risking every peril both of the men and the sea, I leaped boldly from the bridge and left the issue to the God of my destinies.
So the tragic hour began for me, and such were its circumstances! The rushing waters booming as a dirge in my ears, my clothes dragging me down as a burden insupportable; darkness and the dread sea all about me; a black sky meeting my vision as I rose gasping to the surface—no knowledge now of where the boat lay or in what direction to strike out; no certainty that my friends had seen me or were alive to my situation—nothing but silence and the long rollers carrying me, and far away a distant shouting, an echo of pistol shots, a rejoinder of strong voices and then a silence, so deep, so profound that the very wavelets were as cataracts beating at my brain. This, surely, was the moment when a man might have told himself that he was cast out utterly from man and the world, a true derelict of the vast ocean, a voice crying in a monstrous silence, a sacrifice to wind and wave and the gaping sea. The deepest dungeon ashore could not have inflicted a wound of desolation so terrible.
I was there within a cable’s length of those who would have given their very lives for me, and yet as far away from them as though I had stood at the foot of Mount Terror and cried to the skies for my salvation. Not a sound, not a whisper of life did the wind bear to me. A strong swimmer, I lay deep in the water, the spindrift cold upon my face, the ripples of the crests soaking my hair, the blue-black sky for my zenith. And how far had those minutes carried me from humanity and all human interests!
Calmly, as a man in a reverie of the mind could, I recounted this adventure from the beginning, and wondered why I had set out upon it at all. What was it to me that these rogues pitted their wits against their brother rogues ashore? Who had made me the judge of crime and its servants, or permitted me to say that one man was a thief and another man honest? The great ocean laughed at such laws and their makers. Might and majesty and the throne of winds—were not they a kingdom stupendous in its grandeur and unsurpassable in its magnitude? No sense of danger, indeed, went with me to the waters. I heard their dulcet voice and answered them—I saw the figures I had known and loved, and no sense of regret attended the vision. An unquenchable fire of confidence burned in my brain. I believed that I should see little Joan again, though the waters engulfed me utterly.
Let me claim no merit for a mental attitude so unusual. I have known many men who have been taken from the water almost upon the point of death, and in no case does fear seem to have been a part of their experience. Certainly, in one or two instances, they have spoken of great pain in the lungs, but their chief recollection has been a supreme content and of a profound sense of rest as though the peace and loneliness of the deep had communicated itself to their souls and robbed them in an instant of that burden of life of which all, with whatever courage they may bear it, are sensible. Speaking again for myself, I do not think it is a misrepresentation to say that I had no overmastering desire to be saved from the peril which had overtaken me. Not a morbid man, or one who is insensible to the privileges and duties of our common destiny, I will confess that a certain ironical view of human things came to me as the good tide carried me, and the surf bathed my face. All the littleness of the everyday existence, its petty bickerings, its trumpery ambitions, were so much sport for the rolling waves about me, so much silvery laughter for the surging swell and the cradle of the billows. And if this mood changed at all—as I know that ultimately it did change—the new spirit breathed human love as its chief desire, the simplest of the human affections, the depth, the truth and the nobility of them.
I saw then that there is nothing permanent in life but love, nothing to be so surely desired, no human quality so precious as that habit of loving. And passing from the more general admission, my own story must present itself to me again, and bid me ask why I had left Joan Fordibras at all when I found her at Dieppe; why I had accepted the challenge there thrown down to me when I might have taken her in my arms and written the golden page in our lives once and for ever? This reflection could move me instantly to a great pathos of regret, and inspire in me a mad striving after some shore of my safety when I could say, “I have not done well; the blame is mine.” And from this time I thought but of Joan alone; saw her face looking down to me from the skies above, and heard but the plaintive music of her voice. No words may tell the sudden distress of this—there is no measure of human speech which shall convey to another the depth of that human anguish of loss a man may suffer on the threshold of death. It is the supremest trial of all, a very agony of the soul defying all expression.
I have been at some pains to set down these impressions closely, for they stood to me for the bitter reckoning I must pay for the quest of Valentine Imroth and the ship he had commanded. Cast out there upon the black ocean, I had been a fool to believe that I merited any particular mercy of the Almighty which would repair my mistakes or pass by my imprudence. That I had escaped into the sea at all now seemed the greater wonder. I could depict the instant of fierce exclamation which had followed upon my plunge, the roar of voices, the loud report of vain pistols. These I had heard with my own ears, and it should have come to me that my own fellows had heard them also. Little good reasoning, however, may be looked for from a man cast down from a high deck into the Atlantic Ocean, and there left to battle with the surges in the shadows of the night. How long it was before the end came I shall never know. I recollect that I had the sense not to swim but merely to keep afloat as near as might be to the scene of my rashness. The intervening moments, as I say, brought me from a state of content to one of despair, and from that again almost to a state of insensibility—and I know only that a great rough hand took me from the sea at last, that white faces bent over me, and that, kindliest of them all, was the face of Joan Fordibras—my little Joan of the Valley House—who stooped and kissed my lips, and with a young girl’s tears expressed the welcome by her heart unspoken.
And so love was the Avenger after all—love set above the kingdoms of Death as love shall ever be.