I don’t know who was more surprised, the captain of the Bellonic, listening, or the man John.
“You cub,” he cried; “if you talk to me I’ll skin you alive!” But I said quickly—
“Gentlemen, these men want every shilling on this ship. Give it them now and save your lives, for you have no alternative. If you give the money up, you have my word that they won’t touch you.”
“If there’s a God above,” exclaimed the young captain, “they shall pay for this day’s work with their lives. I hand my specie over under this protest; but don’t deceive yourselves—half the war-ships in Europe shall follow you within a week.”
He turned away, and presently the ruffians with me had lowered money to the value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds into their launch. The third mate seemed then somewhat cowed by my interference, and though he went round the ship and cried “Bail up!” every time he met a passenger, he did not touch one of them. I remained on the bridge a silent spectator of it all; and when at last we put off again, and the launch was full of the jewels and the money, it seemed that I had passed through a hideous dream.
At the time, I shrank from the ruffians in the boat as from men who were savage fiends and a hundred times assassins; and their brutality of speech and threat fell upon ears that would not hear; nor did their pretence of doing me violence then and there move me one jot. I maintained a stubborn indifference, my pistol still in my hand, my teeth shut in the defiance of them, until we reached the great craft, and joined Black upon the gallery. There, the man John explained that I had stood between him and his purpose of hanging the skipper of the Bellonic; indeed, with such warmth and anger, that I thought my end had come upon the spot.
“You barking cub,” said Black, more quietly than usual, but none the less to be feared for that, “what d’ye mean by interfering with my men and my orders?”
“To save you from yourself,” I answered, looking him full in the face; “you’ve killed children on that ship, if that’s news to you!”
He had a spy-glass in his hand, and he raised it as though to strike me; but I continued to look him full in the face, and he remained swaying his body slightly, his arm still above his head. Then, suddenly it dropped at his side, as though paralysed; and he turned away from me.
“Get to your kennel,” said he; “and don’t leave it till I fetch you.”
I was glad to escape, if only for a few moments, from the danger of it; and I went to my cabin in the upper gallery, but not before the angry shouts of the men convinced me that Black had risked much on my behalf for the second time. Even when my own door was locked upon me, such cries as “You’re afeared of him!” “Is he going to boss you, skipper!” and other jeers were audible to me; and the uproar lasted for some time, accompanied at last by the sound of blows, and cries as of men whipped. But no one came to me except the negro who brought my meals; and whatever danger there was of a mutiny was averted, as Dr. Osbart told me later in the day, by the appearance of a second passenger ship on the horizon. The report of the single shot, by which we brought her to, shook me in my berth, where I lay thinking of the horrid scenes of the morning; and for some time I scarce dared look from my window, lest they should be repeated. Only after a long silence did I open the port, and see a majestic vessel, not a hundred yards from us, with our launch at her side; and I could make out the forms of our men walking amongst the passengers and robbing them.
The details of this attack Osbart told me with keen relish when he came in to smoke a cigar with me after my dinner.
“We stripped them without killing a man,” said he with hilarious satisfaction, “and took fifty thousand. Black’s pleased; for, to tell you the truth, there’s an ugly spirit aboard amongst the men, and you upset them altogether this morning. I never saw another who could have said what you said to the skipper and have lived; but you mustn’t show on deck for a day or two—they’d murder you to pass time; and, as it is, we’ve had to post a man at your door, or I doubt if you’d save your skin in here.”
“You seem to be making a paying cruise,” I said sarcastically.
“Yes; and it’s funny, for the sea is swarming with war vermin. Don’t you feel the pace we’re going now? I expect we’re showing our heels to one of them, and shall show them a good many times between this and the first of next month, though Karl below is grumbling about the oil again: you want gallons of it with gas-engines. If we don’t pick up the tender tomorrow, it’s a bad look-out.”
He did not come to me again for three days, but I saw from my port early the following morning that the tender was with us; and I concluded regretfully that the difficulty of the oil was overcome. On the second day after the robbery of the Bellonic, we stopped a third ship; though I saw nothing of it, as all the fighting was on the starboard side, and my cabin was to port; but there was a sharp fight on the third morning with a Cape-bound vessel, and again towards the afternoon with one of the North-German Lloyd boats homeward bound to Bremerhaven: as before, Osbart, coming to my rooms, delighted to give me the details of the captures; and that night he was unusually frivolous.
“Poor business today,” he said, throwing himself into a lounge and lighting a cigar; “not an ounce of specie, and no jewellery to mention—and there was no killing, so don’t put on that face of yours. Why, my dear boy, it was a perfect farce! I, myself, argued for twenty minutes with an old woman, who sat mewing like a cat on her box, and when I got her off it, thinking she had a thousand in diamonds, it was full of baby linen. And I’ll tell you a better thing. An old Dutch Jew threw a two-penny-halfpenny bundle into the sea, and then he was so sick with himself that he went in after it. We hooked him out by the breeches with a boat-hook; but I believe he wished himself dead with the bundle. As for ‘Four-Eyes,’ he took what he thought was five hundred in notes from a card-player, but they’re bad, dear boy, bad—every one of them.”
“You don’t seem very depressed about it,” said I.
“Don’t I?” replied he. “Well, things aren’t all they should be. The tender we sent to Liverpool came out in a hurry, as they began to watch her, with a mere bucketful of oil aboard. We must get oil from somewhere or we shall all swing as sure as we’re doing twenty-eight knots now. That’s what I’ve come to tell you about tonight. The skipper can’t stand it any more, and is going to run to England himself, and see what those mighty smart naval people of yours are doing. He’ll take you with him, for it would be as good as signing your death-warrant to leave you here. Don’t count upon it, though, for we shan’t let you out of our sight, and you’ve got to swear a pretty big oath not to give us away before you set foot on the tender.”
I was overjoyed at his saying, but I feared to let him see it, and asked with nonchalance—”How do you pick up this ship again?”
“Oh, we fix a position,” he replied, “and they’ll keep it every day at mid-day after ten days. Meanwhile we’re running north out of the track of the cruisers.”
“I can’t quite understand why the skipper takes me with him this time,” I remarked, endeavouring to draw him, but he answered—
“No more can I; between ourselves, he’s been half daft ever since you came aboard. Do you know that the man’s more fond of you, in his way, than of any living thing? I know it. I’m the only man on the ship who does know it, and why it is I can’t tell you. I didn’t think he was capable of a human feeling.”
“It’s very good of him to waste so much affection on me,” said I, meaning to be derisive, but Osbart checked me.
“Don’t laugh,” he exclaimed; “you owe your life to him alone.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
I GO TO LONDON.
It was a week after this conversation that Captain Black, Dr. Osbart, and myself entered the 7.30 train from Ramsgate; leaving in the outer harbour of that still quaint town the screw tender, now disguised, with the man John and eight of the most turbulent among the crew of the nameless ship aboard her. We had come without hindrance through the cr
owded waters of the Channel; and, styling ourselves a Norwegian whaler in ballast, had gained the difficult harbour without arousing suspicion. At the first, Black had thought to leave me on the steamer; but I, who had an insatiable longing to set foot ashore again, gave him solemn word that I would not seek to quit him, that I would not in any way betray him while the truce lasted, and that I would return, wherever I was, to the tender in the harbour at the end of a week. He concluded the conditions with the simple words, “I’m a big fool, but you can come.” The others opened their eyes and tapped their foreheads, for they believed him to be a maniac.
I will not pause to tell you my own thoughts when I set foot on shore again. So great was my amazement at it all that I went some time without collecting myself to see that the invisible hand of God, which had led me all through, was leading me again—even, as I hoped, to the consummation of it. Fearless in this new thought, I sat in the corner of the first-class carriage reserved for us in such a state of exultation and of hope as few men can have known. Before me were the downs of Kent, the open face of an English landscape, the orchard-bound homesteads, the verdurous pasture-land. The hedges were bedecked with their late autumn flowers; the teams and smock-frocked men were going home to the gabled houses, and the warm-lit cottages. There was odour of the harvest yet in the air and the distant chiming of bells from the Gothic tower which rose above the hamlet and the knoll of green. Each little town we passed cast from its windows bright rays upon the tremulous twilight; a great bar of fiery redness cut the lower black of the coming night, showing me in shadow the rising of land towards Chatham and towards London. Yet it was the peace of the scene that came to me with the greatest power; the many tokens of home—above all, the thought “I am in England.” I could not help but carry my memory at this time to the last occasion when, with Roderick and Mary, I had come to London in the very hope of getting tidings of this man who now sat with me in a Kent-Coast express. Where were the others then—the girl who had been as a sister to me, and the man as a brother; how far had the fear of my death made sad that childish face which had known such little sadness in its sixteen years of life? It was odd to think that Mary might be then returned to London, and that I, whom perchance she thought dead, was near to her, and yet, in a sense, more cut off from her than in the grave itself. And Black, whom all the Governments were pursuing so lustily, was at my side smoking a great cigar, apparently oblivious to all sense of danger or of hazard. Life has many contrasts, but it never had a stranger than that, I feel sure.
It was after ten o’clock that the ride terminated; and, following Black and Osbart into a closed carriage that awaited us, I was driven from the station. I should say that we drove for fifteen minutes or more, staying at last before a house in a narrow cul-de-sac, where we went upstairs to a suite of rooms reserved for us. After an excellent supper Osbart left us, but Black took me to a double-bedded room, saying that he could not let me out of his sight, and that I must share the sleeping-place with him.
“Boy, if you make one attempt to play me false,” said he, “I’ll blow your brains out, though you were my own son.”
Then he went to bed at once in a morose and foreboding mood, and I followed his example quickly.
On the next morning Black quitted the house at an early hour after breakfast, but he locked the door of the room upon Osbart and myself. “Not,” as he said, “because I can’t take your word, but because I don’t want anyone fooling in here.” He returned in the evening, at seven o’clock, and found me as he had left me, reading a later novel of Paul Bourget’s; for Osbart had slept all the afternoon, and was always complaining when on shore.
The view from the window upon a balcony of lead and the back windows of near houses was not inviting, and my bond had held me back from all idle thoughts of eluding him. Life in London under such conditions was little preferable to life on the ship, and I had no heart to hear Black’s stories of things doing in town; or to examine the many purchases of miniatures and quaint old jewels, which he had laid on the dinner-table.
The day following was Thursday. I shall always remember it, for I regard it as one of the most memorable days in my life. Black went out as usual early in the morning; his object being, as on the preceding day, to find out, if he could, what the Admiralty were doing in view of the robbery of the Bellonic; and Osbart, refusing to get up to breakfast, lay in bed reading the morning papers. We had been left thus about the space of an hour when there came a telegram for the doctor, who read it with a fierce exclamation.
“The Captain wants me urgently,” said he, “and there’s nothing to do but to leave you here. We are trusting absolutely to you, now; but be quite sure, if you make half a move to betray us, it will be the last you will ever make. I may return here in ten minutes. You must put up with the indignity of being locked in; and, dear boy, don’t trouble yourself to look for sympathy in this place, for the man who owns this house is one of us, and, if you call out, you’ll get a rap on the head pretty quickly.”
He went out jauntily, and I watched him, little thinking that I should never see him again. When he was gone I sat in the great armchair, pulling it to the window, and taking up my book. The sensation of being alone in the centre of London, and unable by my oath to make the slightest attempt to help myself, was most curious; yet with it all I could not but think that I had touched the culminating point, and was near to the ending of it for good or for ill. From the window of my room I could hear the hum of town, the rumbling of ’buses, and the subdued roar of London awake. I could even see people in the houses at the other side of the leads, and it occurred to me, What if I open that casement and call for help? I had given a pledge, it is true; but should a pledge bind under such conditions? The sanctity of an oath is a fine thing for theological subtlety. I had no such subtlety. I knew that the argument in favour of wrong is pleasing to the mental palate; and I put it from me, believing that the breaking of my bond would put me upon the immoral plane of the men to whom it had been given.
I was in the very throes of such a mental struggle when the strange event of the day happened. I chanced to look up from the book I had been trying to read, and I saw a remarkable object upon the leads outside my window. It was the figure of a man with a collapsible neck, a wonderful neck, which expanded appallingly, and again was withdrawn into a narrow and herring-like chest. The fellow might have been thirty years of age; he might have been fifty; there was no hair on his face, no colour in his hollow cheeks; only a nervous movement of the bony-fingers, and that awful craning of the collapsible neck. I saw in a moment that he was looking into my room; and presently, when he had given me innumerable nods and winks, he took a knife from his pocket, and opened the catch, stepping into the chamber with the nimble foot of a goat upon a crag-path. Then he drew a chair up to mine, and, making more signs and inexplicable motions of the eye, he slapped me upon the knee, and said—
“In the name of the law!”
This was uttered with such ridiculous levity that I laughed at him.
“Yes,” he went on, unmoved, “I take you by surprise; but business, Mr. Mark Strong,” and he became very serious, while his neck went out like a yard-measure and he cast a quick glance round the room.
“Business,” he said, when he had satisfied himself that we were alone, “and in two words. In the first place I have wired to your friend, Mr. Roderick Stewart, and I expect him from Portsmouth in a couple of hours; in the second, your other friend, the doctor, is under lock and key, on the trifling charge of murder in the Midlands, to begin with. When we have Captain Black, the little party will be complete.”
I looked at him, voiceless from the surprise of it. The magical neck was absorbed in the chest again, and he went on—
“I needn’t tell you who I am; but there’s my card. We have six men in the street outside, and another half dozen watching the leads here. You will be sensible enough to follow my instructions absolutely. Black, we know, leaves the country tonight in his steamer—ye
sterday at Ramsgate; today we do not know where. The probability is that he will come to fetch you at seven o’clock—I have frightened it all out of the people down-stairs—if he does, you will go with him. Otherwise, he’s pretty sure to send someone for you, and, as you at the moment are our sole link between that unmitigated scoundrel and his arrest, I ask you to risk one step more, and return at any rate as far as the coast, that we may follow him for the last time. You’ll do that for us?”
I looked at his card, whereon was the inscription, “Detective-Inspector King, Scotland Yard”; and I said at once—
“I shall not only go to the coast, but to his tender, for I’ve given my word. What you may do in the meantime is not my affair; but——”
“Yes,” he said eagerly, craning his neck again, “‘for God’s sake keep your eye on me,’ that’s what you were going to say. Well, we shall do it. We owe it to you that we’ve got any clue to the man, and you’re not likely to lose anything from the Government by what you’ve done.”
“I suppose he’s made a sensation?” I asked, in simplicity, and he looked as a man who has yesterday’s news.
“Sensation! There’s been no such stir since the French war. There isn’t another subject talked of in any house in Europe—but, read that; and whatever you do, don’t make a sign until we give you the cue. It’s not safe for me to stay here; he may return any minute. I wish you luck of it; and it’s ten thousand in my pocket, any way!”
Detective-Inspector King went as he had come, craning his neck and passing noiselessly over the leads; but he left me a newspaper, wherein there was column after column concerning the robbery of the Bellonic, and a dish worthy of all journalistic sensation-mongering. I read this with avidity; with sharp appetite for the extraordinary hope which had come so curiously into my life. At last, the police were on the trail of Captain Black; yet I saw at once that, lacking my help, he would elude them. It was strange that, after all, I, who had seemed to fail so hopelessly in my enterprise, should at last bring this giant in crime to justice. For, if he had not burdened himself with me, he would then have left in the tender, and, once on the nameless ship, would have defied the world. But now they watched him; and from the solitude of my imprisonment I seemed to be lifted in a moment to a joyous state of expectation and excitement.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 235