The City of Bristol was rolling heavily, and Warrisden noticed with surprise that all of the five men gave signs of discomfort. Surely, he thought, they must be used to heavy weather. But, nevertheless, something was wrong; they did not talk. Finally, the captain looked upwards, and brought his hand down upon the table.
“I felt something was wrong,” said he; “the skylight’s open.”
All stared up to the roof.
“So it is.”
“I did that,” Warrisden said humbly.
At once all the faces were turned on him in great curiosity.
“Now why?” asked the captain. “Don’t you like it nice and snug?”
“Yes; oh yes,” Warrisden said hurriedly.
“Well, then!” said the captain; and the steward went on deck and screwed the skylight down.
“After all, it’s only for thirty-six hours,” thought Warrisden, as he subsequently bathed in a pail on deck. But he was wrong; for the Blue Fleet had gone a hundred miles north to the Fisher Bank, and thither the City of Bristol followed it.
The City of Bristol sailed on to the Fisher Bank, and found an empty sea. It hunted the Blue Fleet for half-a-dozen hours, and, as night fell, it came upon a single trawler with a great flare light suspended from its yard.
“They’re getting in their trawl,” said the captain; and he edged up within earshot.
“Where’s the Blue Fleet?” he cried.
“Gone back to the Dogger,” came the answer.
The captain swore, and turned southwards. For four days and nights Warrisden pitched about on the fish-carrier and learned many things, such as the real meaning of tannin in tea, and the innumerable medical uses to which “Friar’s Balsam” can be put. On the morning of the fifth day the City of Bristol steamed into the middle of the fleet, and her engines stopped.
These were the days before the steam-trawler. The sailing-ships were not as yet laid up, two by two, alongside Gorleston quay, and knocked down for a song to any purchaser. Warrisden looked over a grey, savage sea. The air was thick with spindrift. The waves leaped exultingly up from windward and roared away to leeward from under the cutter’s keel in a steep, uprising hill of foam. All about him the sailing-boats headed to the wind, sinking and rising in the furrows, so that Warrisden would just see a brown topsail over the edge of a steep roller like a shark’s fin, and the next instant the dripping hull of the boat flung out upon a breaking crest.
“You will have to look slippy when the punt from the Perseverance comes alongside with her fish,” the captain shouted. “The punt will give you a passage back to the Perseverance, but I don’t think you will be able to return. There’s a no’th-westerly gale blowing up, and the sea is increasing every moment. However, there will be another cutter up to-morrow, and if it’s not too rough you could be put on board of her.”
It took Warrisden a full minute to realise the meaning of the captain’s words. He looked at the tumbling, breaking waves, he listened to the roar of the wind through the rigging.
“The boats won’t come alongside to-day,” he cried.
“Won’t they?” the skipper replied. “Look!”
Certainly some manœuvre was in progress. The trawlers were all forming to windward in a rough semicircle about the cutter. Warrisden could see boat tackle being rigged to the main yards and men standing about the boats capsized on deck. They were actually intending to put their fish on board in the face of the storm.
“You see, with the gale blowing up, they mayn’t get a chance to put their fish on board for three or four days after this,” the captain explained. “Oh, you can take it from me. The No’th Sea is not a Bobby’s job.”
As Warrisden watched, one by one the trawlers dropped their boats, and loaded them with fish-boxes. The boats pushed off, three men to each, with their life-belts about their oil-skins, and came down with the wind towards the fish-carrier. The trawlers bore away, circled round the City of Bristol, and took up their formation to leeward, so that, having discharged their fish, the boats might drop down again with the wind to their respective ships. Warrisden watched the boats, piled up with fish-boxes, coming through the welter of the sea. It seemed some desperate race was being rowed.
“Can you tell me which is the boat from the Perseverance?” he asked.
“I think it’s the fifth,” said the captain.
The boats came down, each one the kernel of a globe of spray. Warrisden watched, admiring how cleverly they chose the little gaps and valleys in the crests of the waves. Each moment he looked to see a boat tossed upwards and overturned; each moment he dreaded that boat would be the fifth. But no boat was overturned. One by one they passed under the stern of the City of Bristol, and came alongside under the shelter of its wall.
The fifth boat ranged up. A man stood up in the stern.
“The Perseverance,” he cried. “Nine boxes.” And as he spoke a great sea leapt up against the windward bow of the cutter. The cutter rolled from it suddenly, her low bulwarks dipped under water on the leeward side, close by the Perseverance boat.
“Shove off!” the man cried, who was standing up; and as he shouted he lurched and fell into the bottom of the boat. The two men in the bows pushed off with their oars; but they were too late. The cutter’s bulwark caught the boat under the keel; it seemed she must be upset, and men and boxes whelmed in the sea, unless a miracle happened. But the miracle did happen. As the fish-cutter righted she scooped on to her deck the boat, with its boxes and its crew. The incident all seemed to happen within the fraction of a second. Not a man upon the fish-cutter had time to throw out a rope. Warrisden saw the cutter’s bulwarks dip, the sailor falling in the boat, and the boat upon the deck of the cutter in so swift a succession that he had not yet realised disaster was inevitable before disaster was avoided.
The sailor rose from the bottom of the boat and stepped on deck, a stalwart, dripping figure.
“From the Perseverance, sir. Nine boxes,” he said, looking up to the captain on the bridge; and Warrisden, leaning by the captain’s side upon the rail, knew the sailor to be Tony Stretton. The accent of the voice would have been enough to assure him; but Warrisden knew the face too.
“This is the man I want,” he said to the captain.
“You must be quick, then,” the captain replied. “Speak to him while the boat is being unloaded.”
Warrisden descended on to the deck.
“Mr. Stretton,” said he.
The sailor swung round quickly. There was a look of annoyance upon his face.
“You are surely making a mistake,” said he, abruptly. “We are not acquainted,” and he turned back to the fish-boxes.
“I’m not making a mistake,” replied Warrisden. “I have come out to the North Sea in order to find you.”
Stretton ceased from his work and stood up. He led the way to the stern of the cutter, where the two men were out of earshot.
“Now,” he said. He stood in front of Warrisden, in his sea-boots and his oilskins, firmly planted, yet swaying to the motion of the ship. There was not merely annoyance in his face, but he had the stubborn and resolute look of a man not lightly to be persuaded. Standing there on the cutter’s deck, backed by the swinging seas, there was even an air of mastery about him which Warrisden had not expected. His attitude seemed, somehow, not quite consistent with his record of failure.
“Now,” said Stretton, “we must be quick. The sea is getting worse each minute, and I have to get back to the Perseverance. You are —— ?”
“Alan Warrisden, a stranger to you.”
“Yes,” Stretton interrupted; “how did you find me out?”
“Chase told me.”
Stretton’s face flushed angrily.
“He had no right to tell you. I wished for these few weeks to be alone. He gave me his word he would tell no one.”
“He had to break his word,” said Warrisden, firmly. “It is necessary that you should come home at once.”
Stretton laughed. War
risden was clinging to a wire stay from the cutter’s mizzen-mast, and even so could hardly keep his feet. He had a sense of coming failure from the very ease with which Stretton stood resting his hands upon his hips, unsupported on the unsteady deck.
“I cannot come,” said Stretton abruptly; and he turned away. As he turned Warrisden shouted — for in that high wind words carried in no other way— “Your father, Sir John Stretton, is dying.”
Stretton stopped. He looked for a time thoughtfully into Warrisden’s face; but there was no change in his expression by which Warrisden could gather whether the argument would prevail or no. And when at last he spoke, it was to say —
“But he has not sent for me.”
It was the weak point in Warrisden’s argument, and Stretton had, in his direct way, come to it at once. Warrisden was silent.
“Well?” asked Stretton. “He has not sent for me?”
“No,” Warrisden admitted; “that is true.”
“Then I will not come.”
“But though he has not sent for you, it is very certain that he wishes for your return,” Warrisden urged. “Every night since you have been away the candles have been lighted in your dressing-room and your clothes laid out, in the hope that on one evening you will walk in at the door. On the very first night, the night of the day on which you went, that was done. It was done by Sir John Stretton’s orders, and by his orders it has always since been done.”
Just for a moment Warrisden thought that his argument would prevail. Stretton’s face softened; then came a smile which was almost wistful about his lips, his eyes had a kindlier look. And the kindlier look remained. Kindliness, too, was the first tone audible in his voice as he replied; but the reply itself yielded nothing.
“He has not sent for me.”
He looked curiously at Warrisden, as if for the first time he became aware of him as a man acting from motives, not a mere instrument of persuasion.
“After all, who did send you?” he asked. “My wife?”
“No.”
“Who then?”
“Miss Pamela Mardale.”
Stretton was startled by the name. It was really the strongest argument Warrisden had in his armoury. Only he was not aware of its strength.
“Oh,” said Stretton, doubtfully; “so Miss Mardale sent you!”
He thought of that morning in the Row; of Pamela’s words— “I still give the same advice. Do not leave your wife.” He recalled the promise she had given, although it was seldom long absent from his thoughts. It might be that she sent this message in fulfilment of that promise. It might be that, for some unknown reason, he was now needed at his wife’s side. But he had no thought of distrust; he had great faith in Millicent. She despised him, yes; but he did not distrust her. And, again, it might be that Pamela was merely sending him this news thinking he would wish to hear of it in time. After all, Pamela was his friend. He looked out on the wild sea. Already the boats were heading back through the foam, each to its trawler.
“One must take one’s risks,” he said. “So much I have learnt here in the North Sea. Look!” and he pointed to the boats. “Those boats are taking theirs. Yes; whether it’s lacing your topsail or taking in a reef, one must take one’s risks. I will not come.”
He went back to the middle of the ship. The punt of the Perseverance was already launched, the two fishermen waiting in it. As it rose on a swell, Stretton climbed over the bulwarks and dropped into the stern.
“Good-bye,” he said. “I have signed on for eight weeks, and only four have passed. I cannot run away and leave the ship short-handed. Thank you for coming; but one must take one’s risks.”
The boat was pushed off and headed towards the Perseverance. The waves had increased, the crests toppled down the green slopes in foam. Slowly the boat was rowed down to the trawler, the men now stopping and backing water, now dashing on. Warrisden saw them reach the ship’s side and climb on board, and he saw the boat slung upwards and brought in on to the deck. Then the screw of the City of Bristol struck the water again. Lurching through the heavy seas, she steamed southwards. In a few minutes the Blue Fleet was lost to sight.
CHAPTER XII
TONY’S INSPIRATION
WARRISDEN HAD FAILED. This was the account of his mission which he had to give to Pamela Mardale; and he gave it without excuses. He landed at Billingsgate Wharf at eleven o’clock on the second day after the sails of the Blue Fleet had dropped out of sight behind the screen of breaking waves. That afternoon he travelled down to the village of the three poplars. It was night when he stepped out of the train on to the platform of the little station. One can imagine what bitter and humiliating thoughts occupied his mind. Away on the crest of the hill the lights of the village shone brightly through the clear night air, just as the lights of Margate had shone across the bay when the steam-cutter had sprung like a thing alive to the lift of the sea beneath her bows. Then all the breeze had whispered promises; now the high hopes were fallen. “Do not fail!” Pamela had cried, with a veritable passion, hating failure as an indignity, he could hear the words in the very accent of her voice. Once she had suffered failure, but it was not to be endured again. That was what she had meant; and he had failed. He drove along that straight road which he had traversed with Pamela at his side; he slept under the roof of the inn where Pamela had claimed his help. The help had been fruitless, and the next morning he rode down the hill and along the load with the white wood rails— “the new road” — to tell her so. The sun was bright; there was a sparkle of spring in the air; on the black leafless boughs birds sang. He looked back to the three poplars pointing to the sky from the tiny garden on the crest of the hill. Quetta — yes! But it seemed there was to be no Seistan.
He had started early, fearing that there might be a meet that day; and he had acted wisely, for in the hall there were one or two men lounging by the fire in scarlet, and Pamela was wearing her riding-habit when she received him. He was shown into a little room which opened on to the garden behind the house, and thither Pamela came.
“You are alone!” she said.
“Yes; Stretton would not come.”
“None the less, I am very grateful.”
She smiled as she spoke, and sat down, with her eyes upon him, waiting for his story. The disappointment was visible upon his face, but not upon hers. Pamela’s indeed, was to him at this moment rather inscrutable. It was not indifferent, however. He recognised that, and was, in a way, consoled. It had been his fear that at the first word she would dismiss the subject, and turn her back on it for good. On the contrary, she was interested, attentive.
“You found him, then?” she asked.
“Yes. You would like to hear what passed?”
“Of course.”
“Even though I failed?”
She looked at him with some surprise at his insistence.
“Yes, yes,” she said, a little impatiently.
“We were nearly three days longer in reaching the Blue Fleet than we anticipated,” he began. “Stretton came on board the fish-cutter — —” And Pamela interrupted him —
“Why were you nearly three days longer? Tell me about your own journey out to the fleet from the beginning.”
She was, in fact, as much interested in her messenger as in the errand upon which she had sent him. Warrisden began to see that his journey after all was not entirely a defeat. The alliance to which they had set their hands up there in the village on the hill was bearing its fruit. It had set them in a new relationship to each other, and in a closer intimacy.
He told the story of his voyage, making light of his hardships on the steam-cutter. She, on the other hand, made much of them.
“To quote your captain,” she remarked, with a smile, “it was not a Bobby’s job.”
Warrisden laughed, and told her of Stretton’s arrival in the punt of the Perseverance. He described the way in which he had come on board; he related the conversation which had passed between them at the stern of the
cutter.
“He hadn’t the look of a man who had failed,” Warrisden continued. “He stood there on the swinging deck with his legs firmly planted apart, as easily as if he were standing on a stone pavement. I, on the other hand, was clinging desperately to a stay. He stood there, with the seas swinging up behind him, and stubbornly refused to come.”
“You told him of his father’s illness?” asked Pamela.
“He replied that his father had not sent for him.”
“You spoke of the candles lit every night?”
“His answer was the same. His father had not sent for him. Besides, he had his time to serve. He had signed on for eight weeks. There was only one moment when I thought that there was a chance I might persuade him; and, indeed, my persuasions had really nothing to do with it at all. It was just the mention of your name.”
“My name?” asked Pamela, in surprise.
“Yes. In answer to a question of his I told him that I had been sent out by you, and for a moment he faltered.”
Pamela nodded her head in comprehension.
“I understand; but he refused in the end?”
“Yes. He said, ‘One must take one’s risks.’”
Pamela repeated the sentence softly to herself; and Warrisden crossed over to her side. His voice took a gentler note, and one still more serious than that which he had used.
“Do you know what I think?” he asked. “You sent me out with a message to Stretton. I think that he has sent me back with a message for you— ‘One must take one’s risks.’ He said that he had learned that in the North Sea. He pointed to the little boats carrying the fish-boxes to the steamer through the heavy, breaking seas. Each man in each of the boats was taking his risks. ‘Whether it’s lacing your topsail or taking in a reef,’ he said, ‘one must take one’s risks.’”
Pamela was silent for awhile after he had spoken. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, and her face most serious. Then she looked up at her companion with a very friendly smile; but she did not answer him at all. And when she spoke, she spoke words which utterly surprised him. All the time since the ketches had disappeared behind the waves he had been plagued with the thought of the distress which defeat would cause her; and here she was saying —
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 402