Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  May 23.

  From sunset until eleven o’clock I kept an eye for the patrol-boat. She came over to our side of the bay about 10:45 but did not stay more than a few minutes; and as soon as she had gone well away towards the south side I gave word to haul up the boat, which was lying astern, and to hoist into her, four big cases, that have been snugly out of sight down in the lazarette.

  It was a very dark, quiet night, and just before giving the flashes with the bull’s-eye, I thought I heard somewhere, far away over the water, and vague, the low, dull beat of a petrol-launch.

  I told the men to come up out of the boat, and have a smoke for half an hour. Then I went up on to the bridge with my night-glasses, and had a good look to the Southeast; but, so far as I could see, there was no sign of anything moving out in the bay. Then I examined the water between my ship and the shore; but this was quite clear of any craft.

  I put in a full half hour, listening and watching the bay; but there was not a single thing to make me uneasy, and at last I sent word for the men to lay aft again into the boat.

  I gave the required lamp-flashes; then I went down into the boat, and we pulled out from the ship’s side. I headed her for the dip in the cliffs that marked the beach.

  “Gently, men, gently! No hurry!” I told them.

  All the time, as we moved quietly shorewards, I kept my eyes about me and my ears open; but there was not a thing of any kind to bother me, that I could see or hear; yet all the time I had a vague excitement of expectancy on me, that kept me a little tense, as may be supposed.

  “Easy there. In bow!” I gave the word, as we drew in under the shadow of the cliffs. “Get up in the bows with the boathook, Svensen, and stand by to fend her off.”

  Though I spoke quietly, the words echoed back in a soft, curious echo from the low cliffs.

  “That sounded funny, Sir,” said the Third Mate, who was sitting by me.

  “Only the echo,” I told him; and as I spoke, the boat grounded on the soft sand of the beach, and the men were tumbling out on the instant, pell-mell, to haul her up.

  “Out with the stuff, men,” I said, as I jumped ashore.

  As the last of the four big cases was landed on the sand, the Third Mate touched my arm.

  “Hark, Sir,” he said, quickly. “What was that? ... Look, Sir, what’s that up the beach?”

  I bent forward, and stared. As I did so, there was a sharp command out of the darkness up the beach.

  “Hands up, or we fire!” shouted the voice.

  “Copped, by the Lord!” said the Third Mate, and whirled round instinctively to the boat.

  “Stop that, Mister!” I said. “Do you want to get us all filled with lead? The authorities in this part shoot first and inquire afterwards! Put your hands up, men, all of you. And leave the talking to me.”

  As I spoke, I heard the pom, pom, pom, of petrol engines, and knew it was the sound of the patrol-boat coming full-tilt across the bay to cut off our retreat.

  Then there came from up the beach the flash of several police-lanterns; and as the beams of light circled and rested on us, I could see what a confoundedly absurd spectacle we all looked, every man with his hands reached up so earnestly to the black heavens!

  “Well,” I said, staring, and trying to see the men behind the lanterns, “what the devil’s this mean? Are you a hold-up, or what?”

  Of course, I knew it was bound to be the authorities, right enough; but I wanted badly to blow off at them, or somebody. It was plain there had been a leakage somewhere.

  “Well,” I said again, “what is it? What the deuce is it? I can’t stand here all night!”

  Then, out of the darkness behind the bull’s-eye lantern, stepped the Port Officer, and informed me that I and my men were under arrest for attempting to run a cargo of rifles into the country.

  “Don’t talk rot,” I told him. “Keep your hands still, men,” I said. “Leave this to me.... Don’t you think, Officer, you and I could fix this up, without importing my men or your men into it? Let us take a quiet walk up the shore, while I put a proposition to you.”

  There was a roar of laughter from his own men in the darkness behind the lanterns. But the Port Officer did not laugh.

  “Quit your fooling, Captain Gault,” he said. “You may find yourself in extra trouble over this job, for attempting bribery, if you don’t keep the lid on a bit more. Don’t you get imagining you can bribe me or my men. We’re not bribable.”

  “Go and boil your head,” I advised, as mildly as the sentiment implied admitted. “You annoy me incredibly. You’re troubled with a badly enlarged liver.”

  “See you,” he said, stepping up close to me. “If you don’t drop that sort of talk, you’re going to get a hammering, right here and now.”

  “Not by a puffy child like you,” I said; for it was part of my intention to aggravate him to the limit. And I did this sooner than I expected; for, without a word further, he hit me with the back of his hand across the mouth, while I stood helpless, with my hands above my head. I am, perhaps rather narrow-mindedly, glad to assert that he was not a countryman of mine. At the time it would not have mattered if he had been.

  I just dropped my hands, and hit him as hard and solid as I could, right and left — one flat in the middle of his bread-machinery, and the other equally in the middle of his face — not scientific blows, perhaps; but they were so hearty and soundly-intentioned that he went nearly a dozen paces, spinning on his feet, before he fell.

  My men shouted and dropped their hands, and I leaned quickly towards the Third Mate.

  “There’s going to be a rumpus,” I whispered. “While it’s on, collar one or two of the men, and shove those cases down into the sea. Quick, now! I don’t fancy there’ll be any shooting.”

  I was completely right; for if the Port Officer was no sportsman, his men were splendidly so. Down went their rifles with a crash, and they leaped to meet my men. I fancy there must have been a good many Irishmen among them, from the intoning of their joyous and entirely improper and separate litanies. My men were mostly Scots, and they did very well in the fighting line (as later comparisons showed); but they were less fluent, or perhaps, to be strictly accurate, quite as persistent; but eventually a trifle monotonous!

  How the fighting went on for a bit I could not tell; for every lantern had been put out in the first rush; moreover, I was dealing with the Port Officer in a way that I felt should prove memorable. I’ll admit that he made lusty objections; but I’m nearer fifteen than fourteen stone, and I never did run to fat.

  * * * *

  When at last the lanterns were lit again, I found my men all handcuffed in a row, and looking as if they had thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

  There were twenty of the government men — big, hefty lads they were, too, and not one of them but had to choke a grin when I assisted the Port Officer politely to his feet.

  “Now, Sir,” I said, “perhaps you will kindly explain the whole of this business, and the meaning of your unwarrantable and illegal assault upon my person.”

  The idiot glared at me; but had not a word to say. In any case, a violent loss of teeth does not improve articulation.

  “The cases!” he shouted to his men, in a thick voice.

  “They’ve gone clean away, Sir,” said one of his men, after a brief search.

  He grew frantic.

  “Don’t you tell me that for a yarn, you blind dummies,” he shouted. “Look about! Look about! They’re bound to be near.”

  I smiled; for the Third Mate had done very well indeed. Meanwhile, he and his men searched everywhere, more and more bewildered; until at last one of them spotted the corner of one of the cases sticking up above the water, where the Third Mate and one of the men had sunk them, during the row.

  It took the Officer and his men half an hour to salvage the cases, and every man was wet through by the time they were hauled ashore.

  As the big cases were taken from the sea, the water rushed out of holes
that had been bored in them; and one of the men remarked this to the Port Officer, who snatched a lamp and began to examine the cases.

  “Knock in the top of one of them!” he said, suddenly.

  One of his men brought an axe from up the beach, and in a minute he had the side of one of the boxes laid right open.

  “Empty!” shouted every one of his men, and my Third Mate as well; but the Port Officer said not a word. He seemed stunned for a moment.

  “The — the others!” he said, at last. “Quick!”

  But the other boxes were empty also, as they could tell by lifting them, now that the sea-water had drained out.

  “Perhaps now, Sir, you will take that same little stroll along the beach which I requested awhile ago,” I said. “If you had courteously acceded to my request, all this melodrama might have been omitted.”

  He stared at me, a moment, in a kind of dazed sulkiness.

  “Meanwhile,” I added, “you may as well give orders for my men to be released. I don’t fancy it will pay you to keep them longer in that condition; for, as things are, you stand the chances of getting into serious trouble for your action tonight, in assaulting and arresting a body of law-abiding men, who have come ashore for no other object at all than to have a quiet evening’s ‘gam’ on the beach, with a bit of a bonfire made out of these old cases we’ve brought ashore, and towards which you seem to have exhibited extraordinary covetousness.”

  “Oh, stow it!” he muttered, wearily. “I’ll come with you, and hear what you’ve got to say.”

  He beckoned to his sub.

  “Unlock them!” he ordered, and turned and followed me twenty or thirty yards up the beach.

  “Now,” he said, “be quick with what you wanted to tell me!”

  “You’ve already learned, by ocular proof, as I might say, the major portion of it,” I told him. “There are, however, one or two details to add. In the first place, I happened to receive information from a friend that old Mr. Jelloyne was ‘one of yours,’ so I outlined to him just such a little outing as tonight’s, only with rifles in those cases instead of air.

  “He courteously performed his share of my little plot by detailing my talk to you! I then shifted my ship over to this side, and when all was ready I went ashore and gave information, per telephone, to your office that the S.S. John L. Sullivan would make certain signals this evening to inform certain confederates ashore that her Captain would land a consignment of contraband of war secretly tonight.

  “I explained exactly what these signals would be, and when you grew too gratefully insistent for the name of the ‘man on the ‘phone’, I told you it was someone who would see you personally, at the right moment, and define his reward. This is, if you will allow me to say so, the right moment.

  “There are just one or two minor details unexplained. My men were not in this plot at all. The Third, however, was fooled in exactly the same way that you were; for I told him secretly that there was contraband in the cases. He must have thought it mighty light contraband!

  “By the way, don’t you think the painting of the boat was a splendid little touch on my part to lend actuality to my, shall I call it, practical joke?

  “In many ways, this joke is almost the best part of tonight’s work. You see, it was so essential to draw all official attention away from our old berth in the bay; for, some days ago, Mr. Officer, we broke (not quite by accident) a couple of slings, and there fell over the ship’s side four cases of rifles, labelled sewing machines.

  “These cases had been previously roped together, in couples, to facilitate a grapple finding them, and were picked up tonight (as a lantern signal informed me some fifteen minutes ago) by friends of mine ashore, while you and the patrol-launch have been attending my little burlesque here.

  “Don’t you think, now, it was all distinctly neat? And I stand to clear quite a thousand on the job.

  “Shall we go back now? You see, dear man, there have been no witnesses to this little talk; so you can prove nothing, and certainly nothing to your credit, while I can prove a great deal that is not to yours. Shall we call the game even?

  “By the way, I can confidently recommend to you a raw beef-steak for black eyes....”

  THE GERMAN SPY

  S.S. Galatea, July 22.

  “There’s one thing about taking charge of a tramp steamer,” I said yesterday to Mr. MacWhirr, the Chief Engineer, “one does get some variety; and if the pay is rather watery, there are little ways of making ends meet!”

  This was when I was explaining what I wanted him to do.

  I am drawing just seventeen-ten a month in this boiler, and that’s a rise on the last Skipper, who was getting only fourteen-ten; but I stuck at that!

  I told Mr. Johnson, our owner, it wouldn’t pay my washing, tobacco, and wine bills. He laughed at the joke, as he thought it; but there’s more truth in it than he could ever understand.

  The little commissioned piece of work I was talking over with MacWhirr comes off tonight. I am just jotting this down, while I have a quiet smoke, before getting busy.

  We shall be off Toulon at 10:30. La Seyne comes after that, and I reckon to be off Sanary before 11:30. That’s the place where I’ve got the £500 commission. There’s a German ashore there, one of those spies, I suppose; and he’s got plans that I’m to buy from him for the tidy sum of £2,000, in English bank-notes. And how I do hate the spy brand, that haven’t even the decency to spy for their own Fatherland; but do the dirty work of any confounded country that’ll pay them a good figure.

  I’ve my own idea what the plans are, and I shall keep an eye skinned for them, too.

  I’m to get the German aboard and land him safe in Spain. I’m to meet him (his name is Herr Fromach) on the Point Issol at 12:30, exactly. If he is not there I am to wait half an hour. If he has not turned up then, I am free to come away, as it may be presumed (from what I can understand) that Herr Fromach will by then have been captured, and will be probably inspecting the inside of some kind of French lock-up. I expect he’ll get a private leathering, too, from the men who catch him; for I understand it is generally known ashore that the plans have been stolen by this same Herr, and feeling is running high among the Frenchmen; and there are search parties loose on all the mountains round Sanary, for they’ve got word he’s hiding somewhere about there.

  If I don’t get him tonight, he’ll almost certainly be caught; but I’ve given my word to do my best; and £500 isn’t to be sniffed at!

  There will be some risk attached, as people don’t offer five-hundred-pound commis-sions merely for the trouble of embarking a casual passenger aboard a cargo tramp!

  * * * *

  I had a wireless tonight from a “mutual friend” ashore. (I have fitted up a two-hundred-mile-radius installation aboard here at my own expense.) He warned me, as a friend, that the search is getting so hot and close I had better drop the whole business and not come ashore at all; for there has been a leakage somewhere, and the authorities know that Herr Fromach is to attempt an escape from Sanary Bay tonight.

  All this was, of course, in cypher, and I replied, in cypher, that I had promised to be on the Point Issol, near the Old Mill, from 12:30 midnight to one o’clock, and that nothing short of a gun-boat would stop me from being there. I nearly told him that seventeen-ten a month was badly needed supplementing, or else I should have to go unlaundried; but I thought it better not to muddle him; for it might prove a puzzling point of view to French minds.

  He wirelessed me again, remonstrating; but I told him that Herr Fromach, acting upon instructions, had previously left the Bandol arrondissement (or district), where he had been hiding while the Sanary district was being searched, and had passed into the Sanary district, before the route de Bandol was closed, by the search parties.

  All this I received by wireless yesterday, from another “mutual friend.” And I made it clear that now the news had leaked out that Herr Fromach was certainly in the Sanary arrondissement, he must be got off
tonight, or he would inevitably be captured, probably before morning. I explained that we might pretend to have a break-down in the engine-room, and this would account for our hanging about, off Sanary, if any official inquiry should be made. I had to repeat this, twice, before the strength of my reasoning was fully appreciated; and after that, I suggested that perhaps it would be safer to stop “sending” until I had either got my man away, or failed. I asked him first, though, about the landing on the point, and the position of the mill.

  He replied that the Point Issol came down into the Mediterranean on the western side of the Sanary Bay (which, of course, I knew from the chart!), and that it “concluded” (which amused me) in a long, low snout of black rock, which could be boarded, as the night was calm, right at the point end, with a little scrambling. The mill, he told me, lay right up on the brow of the point.

  He went on to remind me (as if I did not know!) that there was practically no tide in the Mediterranean, as along the shores of “Angleterre,” and so I need make no “mathematics” of this — in which I agreed with him!

  After climbing upon the Point, I must go up the “snout” until I came among the trees, and here I would find a central road, which would lead me right down into Sanary. The rest, he must leave to me; but if I gave any “vocal” signal, he would advise the croaking of a bull-frog, which is sufficiently common not to attract undue attention.

  I replied that Herr Fromach had already arranged with me, to answer the howl of a dog, three times repeated, for dogs, I understand, are plentiful among the farms on the land side, and so this kind of signal will not be noticeable.

  * * * *

  July 23.

  We arrived off Sanary last night, at 11:15, and I went below into the engine-room to interview Mister MacWhirr.

  “Have you arranged that breakdown, Mac?” I asked him.

  “Is it Mister MacWhirr you’re askin’, or plain MacTullarg, the greaser, ow’r yonder?” he questioned. That’s just the way of him, and we understand each other very well.