Theologians are fond of speculative subjects; but I do not remember that any of them have discussed the feelings of Noah and his family when shut up in the ark. What did they talk about when they came together in the evening after feeding the various animals? No doubt they congratulated each other on their escape. No doubt they grumbled occasionally at the limited accommodation of the ark. But were they interested in what was going on outside? Did they guess at the depth of the flood, calculate whether this or that town were submerged, discuss the fate of neighbours and friends, wonder what steps the Government was taking to meet the crisis? They had very little chance of getting accurate information. The ark had only one window, and, if we can trust the artists who illustrate our Bibles, it was a kind of skylight.
The refugees on Salissa—if refugees is the proper word—were in one respect worse off than Noah’s family. They had no skylight. The wireless message sent to the Megalian admiral told them that the Great Powers were at war. After that they got no news at all for more than two months. Thewindows, not this time of heaven, but of hell, were opened. The fountains of the great deep of human ambition, greed and passion were broken up. Lands where men, unguessing, had bought and sold, married and been given in marriage, were submerged, swamped, desolated. Salissa was a good ark, roomier than Noah’s, and with this advantage, that it stayed still instead of tossing about. But not even Noah was so utterly cut off from all news of the catastrophe outside.
During August and September almost anything might have happened. Germans might have ridden through the streets of Paris and London. Russians might have placed their Czar on the throne of the Hapsburgs in Vienna. The English Fleet might have laid Hamburg in ruins and anchored in the Kiel Canal. Men might have died in millions. Civilization itself might have been swept away. But the face of the sun, rising on Salissa day by day, was in no way darkened by horror, or crimsoned with shame. The sea whispered round the island shores, but brought no news of the rushings to and fro of hostile fleets. The winds blew over battle-fields, but they reached Salissa fresh and salt-laden, untainted by the odour of carnage or the choking fumes of cannon firing.
Donovan was probably the only one of the party in the palace who was entirely satisfied with this position. With the help of Smith he had demonstrated the efficacy of pacifist methods, and saved the island from bombardment. In less than a weekhe removed, to his own satisfaction, the scandal of Konrad Karl’s relations with Madame Ypsilante. Then he handed the reins of government to the Queen again and settled down to the business of avoiding exertion and soothing the disorder of his heart.
To Donovan it always seemed a perfectly natural and simple thing that Konrad Karl should marry Madame Ypsilante. But it turned out to be rather difficult to arrange the matter. Madame herself had no particular objection to being married. She was lukewarm and indifferent until she found out that the Queen was looking forward to the wedding as a beautiful finish to a great romance. Madame had a grateful soul and was willing to do much to please the Queen who nursed her and was kind to her while she lay in bed exhausted by her journey. Her contempt for the American miss vanished, as soon as she understood that neither her pearls nor Konrad Karl were to be taken from her. Besides, there is always pleasure to be got out of preparing for a wedding. It was impossible, indeed, to buy clothes on Salissa. But it was not impossible to accept presents from the Queen’s ample wardrobe. A great deal of interesting fitting and altering was done, and in the end Madame had an ample trousseau. The Queen, with the help of Smith, made an immense and splendid wedding cake.
It was Konrad Karl who created difficulties. He said—and Donovan believed him—that he was personally quite willing to marry Madame Ypsilante.He desired to marry her. She was the only woman in the world whom he would marry of his own free will. But he remained incurably terrified of the Emperor. Donovan talked to him about the rights of free citizens. He said that the humblest man had power to choose his wife. Nothing he said had the slightest influence on Konrad Karl.
“But,” the King used to reply, “you do not understand. I am a king.”
“Well,” said Donovan, “according to my notions that’s the same thing, only more so.”
“Ah, no,” said the King. “Ah, damn it, no. A king is not bourgeois, what you call citizen. That is the point. It is because I am a king that the Emperor interferes. If I were a citizen, but——”
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
Gorman tried him along a different line.
“Look here,” he said, “the Emperor has got himself into a nasty mess. He’s in for a big war. He can’t possibly have any time to spare to worry over who you marry.”
“To-day, no,” said the King, “but to-morrow the Emperor wins the war, and then——”
“I wouldn’t be too cocksure of his winning,” said Gorman.
“It is surer than any cock,” said the King. “It was settled long ago. I do not understandReal Politik, but I know that much. The Emperor wins the war. Then he says to me: ‘Konrad, you married her. Good. You are in a fortress for life.’And I am. You do not understand the Emperor, my friend.”
“I’m beginning to,” said Gorman.
It was Smith who talked over Konrad Karl in the end. I am sure that Donovan would not have approved of his argument. I doubt whether Gorman would have cared to use it. Smith said frankly that a marriage performed by Stephanos the Elder would be no marriage at all outside the Island of Salissa and could be repudiated at any time without the slightest inconvenience.
“You think,” said the King, “that I wish to desert Corinne. But never.”
“Beg pardon, your Majesty,” said Smith. “That wasn’t the idea in my mind. What I was thinking of, your Majesty, was the way the matter might be represented to the Emperor.”
The King saw the point. On the whole he seems to have been pleased when his last difficulty was removed and he was actually able to marry his beloved Corinne.
I do not think they were very happy afterwards. They were, no doubt, well enough suited to each other. But neither of them was suited to a life on Salissa. Monotony preyed on them. They both suffered from a kind of homesickness, an aching hunger for streets, theatres, shops, the rattle of traffic, the glitter of city life at night. They would have been good friends if they had been able to live their proper lives. Even on Salissa King Konrad Karl remained a lover. But they bickered a great dealand sometimes openly quarrelled. Then Madame would retire to her room and sulk for hours or whole days, while the King wandered about the palace and bewailed the cruelty of Corinne.
Gorman too, in his own way, suffered from homesickness and had fits of irritation. He had lived his life in the centre of events, not great events, but such things as intrigues at Westminster, changes of Governments, and amendments, in committees, of Acts of Parliament. He had always known what was going on in the world. He found himself hopelessly shut off from all news of the greatest happenings of his time. He wanted desperately to know what England was doing, whether the French had risen to the occasion. He wanted, above all, to know about Ireland. Was Ireland in the throes of a civil war, or were her children taking their places in the ranks of the Allied Armies? Gorman was unreasonably annoyed by King Konrad Karl’s certainty that the Emperor would win the war and by Donovan’s passive neutrality of sentiment. For Gorman neutrality in any quarrel was no doubt inconceivable. As a younger man he might have been a rebel and given his life in some wild struggle against the power of England; or he might have held the King’s commission and led other Irishmen against a foreign foe. He could never, if a great fight were going on, have been content to stand aside as Donovan did; neither praising nor blaming, neither hoping for victory nor fearing defeat.
Even more difficult to bear was Konrad Karl’sconviction that the Emperor was invincible. It does not appear that the King had any particular wish for a German victory. He would perhaps have preferred to see the Emperor beaten and humiliated. But that seemed to him outside all possibility. The Emperor’s triumph was as inevitable as the changing of the seasons. A man may not wish for winter or the east winds of spring; but he does not soothe himself with hopes that the long days of summer will continue. It seemed to Konrad Karl merely foolish that Gorman should speak as if the issue of the war were in any doubt.
Gorman has often spoken to me about his feelings at this time.
“I could have broken Konrad Karl’s head with pleasure,” he said once. “I had to hold myself tight if I did not mean to fall on him. He was so infernally certain that the Emperor would wipe the floor with us. Us! Isn’t it a queer thing now? Here I am, a man who has been abusing the English all my life, and hating them—I give you my word that I’ve always hated the self-sufficiency and nauseating hypocrisy of the English. There’s nothing I’ve wanted more than to see them damned well thrashed by somebody. And yet the minute anybody comes along to thrash them I’m up on my hind legs, furious, talking about ‘Us’ and ‘We’ and ‘Our’ army just as if I were an Englishman myself.”
Gorman made every effort in his power to get news of some sort. He tried to bribe the islandfishermen to sail over to the mainland in their largest boat. He offered to go with them. It was a voyage which they sometimes made. In fine weather there was no great difficulty about it. But Gorman’s bribes were offered in vain. A curious fear possessed the islanders; the same fear which laid hold of the souls of simple people all over Europe at that time. They were afraid of some vast evil, undefined, unrealized, and their terror kept them close to the shadows of their homes. The most that Gorman could persuade them to do was to take him a few miles out to sea in one of their boats. There he used to stay for an hour or so, for so long as the men with him would consent to remain, going out as often as they would go with him. His hope was that he might see some ship, hail her, and get news from her crew. But no steamer, no fishing boat even, came in sight.
Of all the people on the island, Gorman was the most to be pitied except perhaps the Queen.
For awhile she was happy enough. The wedding interested and excited her. The presence of guests in the palace gave her much to think about and do. She was busy with her school. She still found pleasure in roaming over the island with Kalliope, but there came a time when she began to expect the arrival of theIda. She knew how long the voyage to England took. She made calculations of the time required for loading the steamer with her new cargo. She fixed a day, the earliest possible, on which theIdamight reach Salissa again. Thatday passed, and many after it. TheIdawas overdue, long overdue.
The Queen used to ask questions of every one, seeking comfort and assurance. She got little. Konrad Karl’s conviction that the Emperor must be victorious was not cheering. Gorman supposed that theIdamight have been taken over by the Admiralty, or might have been forbidden to sail, or that Captain Wilson might be unwilling to take risks if enemy cruisers were at large on the high seas. Smith coolly discussed the possibility of a blockade of the English coasts by German submarines. Kalliope was the Queen’s only comforter. She had no theories about war or politics, but she had a profound conviction of the certainty of lovers meeting.
“He will come once more,” she said, “sure thing.”
That was the Queen’s conviction too. But it was weary work waiting.
There is a nook, a little hollow, high up on one of the western cliffs of the island where it is possible to sit, sheltered among tall ferns, and gaze out across the sea. There came a time towards the end of September, when the Queen used to climb up there every morning and sit for hours watching for theIda. Kalliope went with her. They erected a little flagstaff. They carried up the blue banner of Salissa. It was the Queen’s plan to signal a welcome to her lover when she saw his ship. Above the nook in which they sat the two girls laid a beacon fire, a great pile of dry wood, dragged upthe cliff with immense toil. The Queen thought of leaping flames and a tall column of smoke which should catch her lover’s eyes and tell him that she was waiting for him. But day after day the calm sea lay shining, vacant. Evening after evening the Queen came sadly home again, a cold fear in her heart, bitter disappointment choking her. Then Kalliope would do her best for her mistress, repeating over and over her comforting phrases.
“He will come once more. Sure thing. Damned sure.”
The strain on the nerves of the party in the palace became more and more severe. During the second week in October it almost reached the breaking point. For four days the sirocco blew across the island. The sky was grey and seemed to press down on sea and land, heavy, unbroken, intolerably near. The wind blew strongly, but with none of the fresh boisterous fierceness of a northern gale. There was a sullen malignity about its force. Out at sea grey-topped waves wrangled and strove together confusedly. They broke in a welter of soiled foam across the reef which lay opposite the mouth of the bay. Within the harbour little waves, like jagged steel blades, rose, hissed at each other spitefully, and perpetually stabbed at the rocky shore.
The close, suffocating heat oppressed men and beasts. The islanders retreated into their cottages and lay, patiently enduring, till the vile wind should pass away. Cattle cowered for shelter under the lee of walls or among the bent, swaying trees. Donovan sat alone in his room in the palace. He sweated continuously though he wore little clothing. He was the victim of many kinds of physical uneasiness, pains which would not quite declare themselves,restless fidgetings of his limbs, vague depression of spirit. Konrad Karl and Madame quarrelled openly and bitterly. His revilings stung her. Her own ill-temper left her raw. She fled to her room and locked herself into it. The King, perversely persistent, went after her. He could be heard scolding her through the closed door at one moment, begging pathetically for admittance at another. Gorman wandered restlessly from room to room. He opened windows, panting for air, and closed them with a curse when the hot blast of the sirocco smote him in the face. Smith, alone of all the party, preserved his self-control. The sweat trickled down his face; but he was alert, attentive, busy, as if the sun shone and the breeze blew fresh across sparkling water.
The Queen found the palace intolerable, worse than the wind outside. Very soon after breakfast she went out. Kalliope, faithful even amid the torment of the sirocco, followed her. They struggled together towards their watch place on the cliff. The wind buffeted them, set their hair floating wildly, struck their eyelids painfully. Their legs were caught and held by tangling petticoats. Sometimes as the path twisted they headed right against the storm. Then bent almost double, they bored their way through dense resisting air. Sometimes, moving slantwise, they were caught by a side blast, and then they walked leaning at a sharp angle against the wind. Or, for a little while, they scudded before it, driven against their wills to swift motion whichwas unbearably exhausting. More than once Kalliope flung herself down and lay flat, panting on the shelterless grass. If she had taken her own way she would have given the struggle up. But the Queen, though she too gasped for breath, would not turn back or rest for more than a few minutes. She was determined to reach the look-out post on the cliff. In the end she got there.
Kalliope lay at full length, face downwards, in the little hollow. The Queen sat beside her and looked out to sea. Her hair was blown backwards. Her blouse, its fastenings torn, was blown open at her neck. Her face was flecked with tiny crystals of salt. She breathed in quick short pants. She kept her eyelids open with an effort against the blast.
The welter of grey water, broken everywhere with splashes of lighter grey foam, merged into the misty grey of the low enveloping clouds. The half circle of the horizon seemed very near. She watched the waves rise, rush forward, curl their crests over and break in foam. In one place the foam was whiter, thicker than elsewhere. The waves broke more frequently there. It was as if a patch of very fiercely breaking water moved towards the island. Behind it, before it, and on either side of it the waves tossed and broke. On this one patch they broke more constantly and more wildly. In a little while the Queen got glimpses of a dark mass which rose from the middle of this breaking water. Then she saw, clear above the foam, a short thickmast. She guessed that in the middle of the breaking water, half submerged, washed constantly from stem to stern, there was a boat which made for the shore.
The Queen watched, fascinated. The boat held her course for the island. She reached the corner of the reef outside the bay. She swung round it and was to be seen plainly at last in the sheltered water of the harbour. She was a long low boat, narrow, sharply pointed bow and stern. A turret rose amidships. The smooth rounded slope of her deck was broken only by a hand rail which stretched fore and aft from the turret. The Queen had seen no craft like her, but she knew what she was, a submarine.
The Queen seized Kalliope by the arm and pointed to the boat. It was impossible to talk up there on the cliff in the storm. The two girls struggled to their feet. They started on their way back to the palace. Hand in hand, running, tripping, buffeted, breathless, they reached the bottom of the cliff.
The Queen and Kalliope were the first to see the submarine; but when she rounded the corner of the reef and entered the harbour every one on the island was aware of her arrival. From the houses of the village men came out and stood on the beach staring at the strange craft which moved across their bay. In the palace King Konrad Karl saw her and knew at once what she was. The effect her arrival produced on him was curious. Better than any one else on the island except perhapsSmith, he understood the German war spirit and guessed what the coming of the submarine might mean. Yet he seemed actually pleased to see her. He hurried to find Gorman. All the nervous agitation which had set him quarrelling with his Corinne disappeared. The effects of the horrible dullness and intolerable boredom of the past three months dropped away in an instant. The sirocco no longer afflicted him. He greeted Gorman with smiles. He was once more the irrepressible, cheery, street arab among kings, who had swindled the British public with his Vino Regalis, who defied all conventional decencies in his relations with Madame Ypsilante, who had failed to pay his bills in London and tried to outwit the Emperor over the sale of Salissa.
“Gorman,” he said, “my friend Gorman. Once more we are alive. Many things happen. It is a hand of no trumps doubled and redoubled. Gorman, I palpitate, I thrill. We arrive at the moment of destiny. Behold destiny!”
Gorman, who was looking out of the window, saw the submarine, but did not for the moment recognize destiny. He agreed with the King that her arrival made a desirable break in the monotony that oppressed them. But the situation did not strike him as equal in emotional value to a redoubled hand at bridge. The best he hoped for was some fresh company, a little news from the outside world and possibly a bundle of newspapers.
“Submarine?” he said. “English or German, doyou think? and what do you suppose she wants here?”
“English, pooh! By this time no English ships are left on the sea. It is an under-water boat of the Emperor, and she comes to seek the petrol stored in the cave.”
“Liable to disappointment then,” said Gorman. “That petrol’s gone.”
“I know it,” said the King, “therefore I say ‘Behold destiny.’ But I, Gorman, I laugh at destiny. I mock. I snap the finger and thumb of my hand. So.” He snapped the fingers of both hands with airy defiance. “I am a king. I play a game until the end. I die game-playing. And Corinne will not grieve too much. On Salissa I think Corinne loves less than in Paris. Hurrah, Gorman. Hip, and hip, and hurrah, three times.”
Gorman was not impressed by this rhapsody. He was not yet sufficiently roused from the bad temper and depression induced by the sirocco to appreciate the King’s exalted mood.
“I suppose,” he said, “that Donovan will ask the captain to dinner. I hope to goodness he can talk English. There’s a lot of news I want to hear.”
Donovan, sitting alone in his room, did not see the arrival of the submarine. It was Smith who reported the matter to him.
“Warship of a belligerent nation?” said Donovan.
“Yes, sir; German, sir.”
“German or English,” said Donovan, “it’s thesame thing. This is a neutral State and we haven’t got any quarrel with either party.”
“Yes, sir,” said Smith. “Quite so, sir. But, I beg your pardon. She’s German.”
Donovan thought this over for a minute.
“I appreciate your feelings, Smith,” he said, “and I don’t deny that your situation might be an awkward one if this wasn’t a neutral State. But you’re in the service of the Crown of Salissa now, and I reckon that any attempt to inflict punishment on you would be contrary to international law.”
“I’m sure you know best, sir.”
“That’s as good as to say that your interpretation of international law is superior to mine. It may be. But the matter will have to come before the superior courts before anything’s settled.”
“It’s not that, sir,” said Smith. “I’m not afraid of the law.”
“Oh,” said Donovan, “you’re inclined to think that the German captain may trample on the law?”
“Seeing as how you’ve no guns, sir, he might.”
“Smith,” said Donovan, “just look out of that window and tell me what banner the Queen has flying from the flagpost. Old Glory, isn’t it?”
“The American flag, sir. Yes, sir.”
“Well,” said Donovan, “I guess that’s good.”
Smith appears to have been remarkably cool. Both Donovan and Gorman agree that he showed no sign of fear or excitement. Yet he must have known that he was in serious danger. He had been a member of the German Secret Service. He haddeserted it, revealed its secrets and acted against his employers. He had very good reason to expect to be hanged or shot within the next couple of hours. He cannot, I imagine, have placed much confidence in the protection afforded by the American flag. But he seems to have had a profound belief in Donovan.
When the Queen and Kalliope, wind torn and dishevelled, reached the palace, it was Smith who met them and in answer to her eager questions told the Queen that the submarine was German. He added that the captain would probably come ashore. He asked where the Queen would like to receive him.
“I’m afraid, your Majesty,” he said, “that there may be some trouble. I mean to say that it won’t be quite a friendly visit to your Majesty. He’ll be expecting a supply of petrol, and——”
The Queen gave a little gasp of surprise. Then she burst into a peal of laughter.
“There’s not a drop left,” she said. “He’ll be just mad. I wonder what he’ll say. Do you think he’ll be rude?”
“Quite possibly, your Majesty,” said Smith. “The Germans haven’t got very good manners.”
“We’ll have him in the big hall, Smith. And we’ll all be there. If he’s nice about the petrol and takes it as a joke we’ll ask him to dinner. If he’s rude he can just go back to his old submarine and sulk by himself.”
Smith was quick in making preparations for thereception in the great hall. But the captain of the submarine reached the landing steps before the party in the palace was ready for him. The Queen hurried into the hall and took her seat on a chair which Smith placed for her. Konrad Karl ran to warn his Corinne to stay in her room and keep the door locked. Smith went to summon Donovan. Gorman, eager now and full of curiosity, stood at the door of the hall to watch the landing of the German officer. As the Queen took her seat he turned to her.
“Hullo,” he said, “it’s our old friend von Moll.”
“Thatman!” said the Queen.
“Funny to think of his turning up here again,” said Gorman. “Hope he’ll keep sober this time.”
Von Moll was sober enough at the moment. He stood very erect, very stern, most awe-inspiring while his men landed, six of them, all armed. Then he tramped up the steps. He halted for a minute on the terrace where the flagstaff was. He gave an order. One of his men drew a knife from a sheath and cut the flag halyard. The Stars and Stripes crumpled up and fluttered down the wind.
Gorman turned to the Queen again.
“Your flag’s gone,” he said. “Von Moll appears to be in a bit of a temper.”
Then he stepped out of the hall and went forward down the path. He held out his hand to von Moll.
“How are you?” he said. “Perfectly beastly day, isn’t it? Any news?”
Von Moll marched on, taking no notice whateverof his friendly greeting. Gorman, smiling pleasantly, followed him towards the hall.
“Been in any more naval battles since we last met?” said Gorman. “By the way, was there any fuss when you got home about that man’s teeth?”
Von Moll stalked into the hall. Gorman followed him.
“It’s no use your pretending not to understand English,” he said. “You talked it splendidly last time you were here.”
Von Moll made no pretence at politeness. He did not even salute the Queen. He looked round him with an insolent glare. Konrad Karl hurried through the door at the far end of the hall and took his place at the Queen’s side. He had a lighted cigarette in his hand. It could not be said of him that he was frightened; but he was certainly excited. He fidgeted nervously with his moustache and his eyes were unusually bright. Von Moll watched him for a minute and then spoke.
“King Konrad Karl,” he said, “you will consider yourself under arrest and be prepared to follow me on board.”
The King gave a little twist to his moustache.
“By whose authority do you give these orders?” he said.
“The Emperor’s.”
Von Moll clicked his heels together and saluted as he spoke. King Konrad Karl shrugged his shoulders. Gorman, determined not to be ignored this time, took von Moll by the arm.
“I say, von Moll,” he said. “After the frightfully impressive way you said that, we ought to have some sort of demonstration. Let’s drink the old boy’s health and say ‘Hoch!’ or whatever the proper thing is. I’m sure you must want a drink, and those swashbucklers of yours”—he looked round at von Moll’s six men—“could hold hands and sing ‘Deutschland über Alles.’ It would cheer us all up.”
The Queen looked at von Moll in amazement. Then she glanced at Konrad Karl. While Gorman was speaking she made up her mind to assert herself.
“You forget,” she said, “that King Konrad Karl is my guest, and so are you while you are in my house.”
Donovan, still in his shirt sleeves, looking very tired and hot, slouched into the hall while the Queen spoke. Smith followed him. The Queen, nervous and half frightened in spite of her brave words, turned to him.
“Oh, father,” she said, “I am glad you’ve come.”
Donovan nodded to von Moll.
“Sit right down,” he said, “there’s a chair behind you. You’ll stay for luncheon, won’t you?”
He sat down himself as he spoke and took a cigar out of his case.
“Smith,” he said, “cocktails.”
“Yes, sir,” said Smith.
Von Moll turned to the men behind him and pointed to Smith.
“Arrest that man,” he said.
Two of the sailors stepped forward and crossed the hall towards Smith.
“Say,” said Donovan, “is this a rehearsal for a cinema? and when do you reckon to have the camera operating?”
“That man,” said von Moll, pointing to Smith, “is a deserter from the service of the Emperor and a spy. He pays the penalty.”
Donovan deliberately cut the end off his cigar and struck a match. Then he looked up at von Moll.
“Seems to me,” he said, “that there’s some kind of misunderstanding. I’m not blaming you, Captain, not at all. But this is a neutral State, and according to international law you can’t butt in and arrest citizens without applying for an extradition order in the regular way.”
“You talk like a fool,” said von Moll. “This is war.”
He gave a fresh order to his men.
“Take him,” he said. “Shoot him on the steps outside.”
Donovan struck a fresh match and lit his cigar. He puffed at it slowly.
“It pains me some,” he said, “to go contrary to my life-long principles. I’m a humanitarian by conviction and I’m opposed to capital punishment. It seems to me that the taking of human life is not justified, and that the advance of civilization,especially in the great republic of which I am a citizen——”
“He is a spy,” said von Moll, “and he dies.”
“You’re hasty, Captain,” said Donovan. “I don’t blame you, but you’re hasty and you haven’t quite tumbled to my meaning. When I spoke of my humanitarian principles I wasn’t thinking of what would happen to Smith. You may shoot him, Captain, and I shall deplore it. But that won’t outrage my convictions any. For I shan’t be responsible, that execution being your affair and not mine. What I was thinking of was how I’d feel when I saw you and every damned one of your pirates hanging at the end of ropes over the edges of the various fancy balconies and other trimmings which adorn this palace. It will be going clean against my principles to arrange that kind of obituary dangle for you, Captain. I may have some trouble soothing my conscience afterwards. But I expect that can be managed. You may call me inconsistent and you may be right. But I’m not a hide-bound doctrinnaire. There are circumstances under which the loftier emanations of humanitarian principle kind of flicker out. The shooting of Smith is a circumstance of that sort. Your treatment of the American flag is another.”
Gorman tells me that he suspected Donovan of attempting a gigantic bluff. He admired the way he did it, but he did not think he could possibly succeed. Donovan did not, so far as Gorman could see, hold in his hand a single card worth puttingdown on the table. Smith stood, cool and apparently uninterested, between the two sailors who had arrested him. Konrad Karl was lighting and throwing away cigarette after cigarette. The Queen had grown pale at the mention of the shooting of Smith; but she kept her eyes fixed on her father. She did not understand what he was doing, but she had great confidence in him. Von Moll stared at Donovan with an insolent sneer.
“You threaten,” he said, “you think that your American Republic——Pah! what is America? You have no army. Your navy is no good. What can you do?”
“You’re taking me up wrong again,” said Donovan. “I’m not reckoning on America just now. The hanging will be done by the crew of the English ship that I’m expecting to see in this harbour. Not to-day, maybe, or to-morrow, but some time before the end of this darned war.”
King Konrad Karl threw away another cigarette.
“Alas and damn!” he said, “by this time there are no longer any English ships.”
Gorman was watching von Moll closely. At the mention of an English ship the man’s eyes flickered suddenly. For an instant his face changed. A shadow of uneasiness appeared on it. But this passed at once, and the look of insolence took its place. Donovan was also watching.
“There may be one or two left,” he said. “I don’t say the one that turns up here will be a first-class battle cruiser; but I guess the men on her willbe up to the little job of hanging you, Captain. And they’ll come. Sure. And you’ll be here, just waiting for them.”
“I shall be gone,” said von Moll. “Not that I fear your English ship. But to-morrow I go, and before I go, to-day—I shoot the spy.”
“You misapprehend the situation,” said Donovan. “As a warship of a belligerent Power entering a neutral harbour you are liable——”
Von Moll laughed aloud.
“You intern me,” he said.
“Well,” drawled Donovan, “I do. Say, Captain, you didn’t drop in here just for the pleasure of shooting Smith and carrying off the King. Those weren’t your main purposes. I’m not an observant man, but I did happen to notice as I left my room that your ship was shifting her anchorage a bit. Now I wouldn’t say that it’s particularly healthy, with a wind like this blowing, for a ship to lie right under those cliffs, slap up against the mouth of a cave. I give you credit, Captain, for knowing your trade as a sailor, and I don’t think that you’d put your ship there unless you wanted something out of that cave, and wanted it pretty bad. What’s more, Captain, you want it in a hurry. Now I may be wrong, but it’s my opinion that what you expect to find there is petrol. That so?”
It was plain—so plain that even King Konrad Karl saw it—that von Moll was disturbed. His confidence was not what it had been earlier inthe interview. Donovan went on, speaking with irritating deliberation.
“Now when I said that you were interned in the harbour of this neutral State, Captain, I wasn’t counting on your respect for international law. I wouldn’t risk a dollar on that. What I meant was this. The petrol’s not there. Your darned tanks are empty. I’m not defending the action on economic grounds. It was waste. But that petrol is gone. We ran it off.”
“You have not dared,” said von Moll. “You could not dare——No one but a madman would touch the Emperor’s war stores.”
“I hope,” said Gorman, “that the poor old Emperor won’t have a fit when he hears about it.”
“You may be able to run that ship a mile or two,” said Donovan. “But I reckon you’ll not go far. You were dependent on that petrol? Come now, Captain, own up.”
What von Moll intended to do next I do not know. Gorman is of opinion that he might very well have shot the whole party. He was white with passion.
Donovan rose from his chair, stuck his cigar in a corner of his mouth, and crossed the hall towards the door.
“While you’re sizing up the situation,” he said to von Moll, “I’ll just see if I can’t find that flag that you cut down. It would gratify me to have it flying again. You’d better come with me, Smith.I’m not inclined for climbing poles in this storm. I have to consider my heart.”
Smith stepped forward and followed him. It is interesting to notice that the sailors who guarded him made no attempt to stop him. It is unlikely that they understood English well enough to know what Donovan said to von Moll. But they were somehow aware that their captain’s authority was failing.
At the door of the hall Donovan stopped and turned to von Moll.
“Things seem to be happening,” he said, “right up to expectation, only more so. I own I didn’t look for that British ship quite so soon.”
He stood in the doorway and pointed out to sea. Gorman hurried across the hall, passed Donovan and went out. The Queen left her chair and ran to her father’s side. Konrad Karl followed her. Von Moll looked round him, astonished, slightly dazed. Then he, too, went out, pushing his way past Donovan.
Outside the reef, plunging and rolling heavily, was a small steamer. She was stumpy, high bowed, low waisted, with a short black funnel. Her bridge and single deck-house were disproportionately high. She was shabby and rusty. She looked insignificant. She was swept frequently with showers of white spray. On her bow and on her funnel could be seen the white letters and numbers which proclaimed her proper business. She was a trawler. In peacetimes she cast nets for fish in the North Sea. Now she flew the white ensign and on her fore-deck, above the high blunt bows, she carried a gun.
There were men handling the gun amid a smother of spray and the swirl of water round their legs. The deck on which they stood was the worst of all possible gun platforms. In the course of each few minutes it was set at a dozen angles as the little steamer plunged and rolled. But the men fired. Their shot went wide of the submarine which lay in the harbour, and spluttered against the side of the cliff. The trawler staggered on towards the end of the reef. Out of the welter of grey water to windward came another trawler, then a third appeared and a fourth.
Gorman edged up close to von Moll and caught him by the elbow.
“I say, von Moll,” he said, “it’s jolly lucky for you that you didn’t have time to shoot Smith. That ship of yours is a goner, you know. It’ll be a jolly sight pleasanter for you to be a prisoner of war than to be dangling about on the end of a rope in this beastly wind. And Donovan would have seen to it that you did swing if you’d shot Smith. There’s nobody so vindictive as your humanitarian pacifist, once you get him roused.”
The first of the little fleet of trawlers swung round the end of the reef into the sheltered water of the bay. She fired again. Her deck was steady. The target was an easy one. One shell and thenanother hit the submarine, ripped her thin hull, burst in her vitals.
Half an hour later Maurice Phillips landed on the palace steps.
Von Moll, though courteously invited, refused to dine with the Queen that night. Gorman, I think, was sorry for this. He was curious to see how a German naval officer behaves as a prisoner of war. The rest of the party felt that, for once, von Moll had shown good taste. His presence would have interfered with the general cheerfulness.
Donovan tried hard to induce Smith to sit at table, taking his proper position as Head of the Intelligence Department of the State. But the party was a large one. Besides Phillips, who sat next the Queen, the commanders of the three other trawlers dined in the palace. King Konrad Karl appeared decorated with all the stars, badges and ribbons which had fallen to him while he sat on the throne of Megalia. Madame Corinne wore the finest of the dresses she had acquired from the Queen, and was in high good humour, though a little vexed that her pearls were in the keeping of a banker in Paris. Smith felt that on such an occasion the dinner should be properly served, and he dared not leave it to the native servants. After dinner he consented to sit at the foot of the table with a glass of wine in front of him.
Konrad Karl, bubbling with excitement, proposed the Queen’s health in a speech full of mangled English idioms. Then he presented the Star of the Megalian Order of the Pink Vulture to Phillips. He took it from his own breast and pinned it on to Phillips’ coat with a perfect shower of complimentary phrases. It was not quite clear whether the decoration was meant as a reward for sinking the submarine or for winning the affection of the Queen. Donovan made a speech, a long speech, in which he explained exactly why it was impossible to remain a consistent pacifist in a world which contained Germans. Phillips was dragged to his feet by Gorman. Goaded by the derisive shouts of his three fellow officers he gave a short account of himself.
“There’s nothing much to tell,” he said. “The whole thing was rather a fluke. I was called up at the beginning of the war. R.N.R., you know. They gave me command of a trawler, a perfectly beastly kind of boat. Been hunting the submarines ever since. Infernal dull job. Heard this fellow was mouching around but couldn’t find him. Guessed he’d want supplies sooner or later. Remembered that cave and made a bee line for Salissa. Never so pleased in my life as when I caught sight of him. But there was such a sea running that we couldn’t shoot for nuts. Had to wait till we got inside. Sunk him then. That’s all there is to tell.”
That, of course, is not all. There is a lot more to tell. What flag flies over Salissa now? Who governs the island? The Emperor knows. Bland-Potterton knows and often tells his friends in confidence. I know. Donovan knows. So does Smith. But we cannot make our knowledge public. Gorman tried, by means of a carefully worded question, to induce the Prime Minister to make a statement in the House of Commons about Salissa. He was told that it was contrary to the public interest that any information should be given. In the face of that it is, of course, impossible for me to write anything. What happened to King Konrad Karl and Madame? Again, I must not give an answer. The censors have decided, quite rightly, that the movements of royal personages are not to be published. Does Smith still act as Donovan’s valet, and if so where? It is plain that nothing should be said on this subject. Smith was and may still be the head of the Intelligence Department of Salissa. Information about his doings would be particularly valuable to the enemy.
But I may say that a marriage took place between Lieutenant-Commander Maurice Phillips, R.N.R., and a lady described as “Daisy, daughter of William Peter Donovan, Esq.” A bishop officiated. No mention was made in the announcement of the rank and title she held, and perhaps still holds.
1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters’ errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author’s words and intent.
2. The original of this e-text did not have a Table of Contents; one has been added for the reader’s convenience.