The Dark Star

by Robert W. Chambers

  CHAPTER XXIII

  ON HIS WAY

  The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-redbeams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smokefrom tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain ofthe _Volhynia_ and young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conferencein the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol,stood outside the locked and bolted door.

  Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see throughthe shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze ofpearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old-time battleship loomed.She was probably one of Nelson's ships, now only an apparition; but toNeeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominatingthe water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laiduntil the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and theglory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee hearthe hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never comeupon it.

  Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside;the monstrous city beyond had not awakened.

  But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off the _Volhynia's_ port;Neeland's steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captainaccompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase andthe olive-wood box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey.

  "Good luck," said the captain of the _Volhynia_. "And keep it in yourmind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are atthis moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France.

  "Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that theyare certain to communicate with other units; that between you andParis are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you,rob you."

  Neeland nodded thoughtfully.

  The captain said again:

  "Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But ifyou've given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matterinvolves, naturally, a point of honour."

  "Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see." He laughed."You're thinking, Captain West, that I haven't much discretionanyway."

  "I don't think you have very much," admitted the captain, smiling andshaking the hand which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely onesymptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attemptshould actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to piecesin my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion mayshatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye.And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly seriousone and not as a lark."

  They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered theboat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent tothe oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to agolden vapour.

  It was within a few boat-lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland,turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, sawthe most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the BritishEmpire assuming sovereignty.

  For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleetwas taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, movingmajestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents ofsmoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blindingsmother of mist and sun and the fawning cut-water hurrying too, asthough even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seawardin the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by aman-made Kiel.

  And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until hearrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across thealmost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamertrain, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded,sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news-venders holding upstrips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters:

  THE BRITISH FLEET SAILS

  SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

  CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED

  MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU, INTERNATIONAL SPY

  And he noticed knots of people pausing to buy the latest editions ofthe papers offered.

  But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that--glimpsesof stately grey buildings and green trees; of monuments and palaceswhere soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in thecity; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads,disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everythingwith calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry inbrilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between ironrailings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroadstation, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, becausehe was to travel by a fast goods train under telegraphed authority ofthe British Government.

  And that is about all that Neeland saw of the mightiest city in theworld on the eve of the greatest conflict among the human races thatthe earth has ever witnessed, or ever shall, D. V.

  The flying goods train that took him to the Channel port whence afreight packet was departing, offered him the luxury of a leatherpadded armchair in a sealed and grated mail van.

  Nobody disturbed him; nobody questioned him; the train officials werecivil and incurious, and went calmly about their business with all thetraditional stolidity of official John Bull.

  Neeland had plenty of leisure to think as he sat there in his heavychair which vibrated but did not sway very much; and his mind wasfully occupied with his reflections, for, so far, he had not had timeto catalogue, index, and arrange them in proper order, so rapid and sostartling had been the sequence of events since he had left his studioin New York for Paris, via Brookhollow, London, and other pointseast.

  One thing in particular continued to perplex and astonish him: theidentity of a member of Parliament, known as Charles Wilson, suddenlyrevealed as Karl Breslau, an international spy.

  The wildest flight of fancy of an irresponsible novelist had nevercreated such a character in penny-dreadful fiction. It remainedincomprehensible, almost incredible to Neeland that such a thing couldbe true.

  Also, the young man had plenty of food for reflection, if not forluncheon, in trying to imagine exactly how Golden Beard and Ali Baba,and that strange, illogical young girl, Ilse Dumont, had escaped fromthe _Volhynia_.

  Probably, in the darkness, the fishing boat which they expected hadsignalled in some way or other. No doubt the precious trio had takento the water in their life-jackets and had been picked up even beforearmed sailors on the _Volhynia_ descended to their empty state-roomsand took possession of what luggage could be discovered, and of thethree bombs with their charred wicks still soaking on the soppingbed.

  And now the affair had finally ended, Neeland believed, in spite ofCaptain West's warnings. For how could three industrious conspiratorsin a fishing smack off the Lizard do him any further damage?

  If they had managed to relay information concerning him to theirfriends ashore by some set of preconcerted signals, possibly theregular steamer train to and out of London might be watched.

  Thinking of this, it presently occurred to Neeland that friends inFrance, also, might be stirred up in time to offer him their markedattentions. This, no doubt, was what Captain West meant; and Neelandconsidered the possibility as the flying train whirled him toward theChannel.

  He asked if he might smoke, and was informed that he might; and helighted a cigarette and stretched out on his chair, a little hungryfrom lack of luncheon, a trifle tired from lack of sleep, but, invirtue of his vigorous and youthful years, comfortable, contented, andhappy.

  Never, he admitted, had he had such a good time in all his life,despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill andalertness and perspicacity, had saved his neck.

  No, he could not congratulate himself on his cleverness and wisdom;sheer accident had saved his skin--and once the complex andunaccountable vagary of a feminin
e mind had saved him fromannihilation so utter that it slightly sickened him to remember hisposition in Ilse Dumont's stateroom as she lifted her pistol andcoolly made good her boast as a dead-shot. But he forced himself totake it lightly.

  "Good Lord!" he thought to himself. "Was ever a man in such a hellishposition, except in melodrama? And _what_ a movie that would havemade! And what a shot that girl proved herself to be! Certainly shecould have killed me there at Brookhollow! She could have riddled mebefore I ducked, even with that nickel-plated affair about which I wasass enough to taunt her!"

  Lying in his chair, cheek on arm, he continued to ponder on what hadhappened, until the monotonous vibration no longer interfered with hisinclination for a nap. On the contrary, the slight, rhythmic joltingsoothed him and gradually induced slumber; and he slept there on therushing train, his feet crossed and resting on the olive-wood box.

  * * * * *

  A hand on his arm aroused him; the sea wind blowing through the opendoors of the mail-van dashed in his face like a splash of cool wateras he sat up and looked around him.

  As he descended from the van an officer of the freight packet greetedhim by name; a sailor piled his luggage on a barrow; and Neelandwalked through the vista of covered docks to the pier.

  There was a lively wind whipping that notoriously bad-mannered streakof water known as the English Channel. Possibly, had it beenchristened the French Channel its manners might have been more polite.But there was now nothing visible about it to justify its sentimentalpseudonym of Silver Streak.

  It was a dirty colour, ominous of ill-temper beyond the greatbreakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and madewhite and ghastly faces from the open sea.

  But Neeland, dining from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to theuse of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inlandlubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had strandedhim. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away--as far as it seemsto the Parisian. And only when chance business takes him to theBattery does a New Yorker realise the nearness of the ocean to thatvast volume of ceaseless dissonance called New York.

  * * * * *

  Neeland ate cold meat and bread and cheese, and washed it down withbitters.

  He was nearly asleep on his sofa when the packet cast off.

  He was sound asleep when, somewhere in the raging darkness of theChannel, he was hurled from the sofa against the bunk opposite--intowhich he presently crawled and lay, still half asleep, mechanicallyrubbing a maltreated shin.

  Twice more the bad-mannered British Channel was violently rude to him;each time he crawled back to stick like a limpet in the depths of hisbunk.

  Except when the Channel was too discourteous, he slept as a sea birdsleeps afloat, tossing outside thundering combers which batter basaltrocks.

  Even in his deep, refreshing sea sleep, the subtle sense ofexhilaration--of well-being--which contact with the sea always broughtto him, possessed him. And, deep within him, the drop of Irish seethedand purred as a kettle purrs through the watches of the night over abanked but steady fire.