CHAPTER XXII.

THE CRIMSON ROCKET.

Joan Fordibras is Discovered on the Diamond Ship.

You are to imagine a still sea and a great four-masted sailing ship drifting upon it at the hazard of a summer breeze. The night is intensely dark, and the sky gives veins of mackerel cloud upon a field of slaty blue. Far away, a ring of silver iridescence, low down upon an open horizon, suggests that great inverted bowl within which all ships are ever prisoned from the first day of their sailing to the last. The monster vessel herself is brilliantly lighted from stem to stern. Faintly over the water there comes to us a sound of bibulous song and hilarity. My quick ear catches the note of a piccolo, and upon that of a man’s voice singing not untunefully. I say that there is no discipline whatever upon such a deck; no thought of danger, no fear of discovery. The pillar of light has become a halting mockery. Much is to be dared, much to be won upon such a night.

“Consider”—and this I put to Captain Larry—“they have guns, but who has trained their gunners? Let them fall to artillery practice, and it is two to one they blow up the ship. Even one of Percy Scott’s miracles would make no certainty of such a yacht as this on such a night. We ought to risk it, Captain—we ought to risk it for a woman’s sake.”

Larry was a brave enough man, but, like all his race, a very prudent one.

“If you wish it, sir. But there are the men to think of. Don’t forget the wives and children at home, sir.”

“Did the men so put it, Larry?”

“Bless you, no, sir, they’d swim aboard there if I gave the word.”

I reflected upon it a little while, and it seemed to me that Larry must be right. Accustomed to work alone and to be the arbiter of all risks, I had for the instant forgotten my responsibilities toward those who served me so well. By no necessity to be named, by no duty to humanity or to myself, could I ask these honest fellows to go further with me. Even where we lay, a lucky shot might destroy us. Half a dozen times in as many minutes my heart was in my mouth as the great beam of light marked another point in the heavens or momentarily disappeared. Let them cast its effulgent beams again upon the waste of waters, and assuredly were we discovered. Not alone in the reflection, I could read it also upon the set faces of my friends. A telepathic sense of danger held us mutually entranced. The villains over yonder had made an end of their music. Instinct said that they would search the seas again, and so unmask us.

It is futile, in my opinion, for any writer to attempt to describe the particular sensations, either of exhilaration or of terror, which come to him in moments of great peril. Should he set down the truth, he is named either a boaster or a liar; if he would evade the truth, his story can be but commonplace. To a close friend I would say that when the looked-for event happened, when the rogues at last turned their searchlight upon the waves again, I had no thought at all of the consequences of discovery, but only a fascinating curiosity of the eyes which followed the beam wonderingly, and stood amazed when it passed over us. Vast, monstrous, blazing, the fearful eye of light focussed itself upon us for a terrible instant, and then swept the whole circle of the seas with its blinding beams. Twice, thrice, it went thus, hearts standing still almost as it approached us, leaping again as it passed onward. Then, as surprisingly, it remained fixed upon the further side of the Diamond Ship, and in the same instant, far away to north-west, a crimson rocket cleaved the black darkness of the night, and a shower of gold-red balls burst hoveringly above the desert waters.

“What do you make of that, Larry?”

“Not a signal from any common ship, sir. We don’t use that kind of rocket.”

“’Tis the fourth of July, bedad, or the Crystal Palace that’s flying!” cried Timothy.

“Larry,” said I, “that’s one of their patrols. I rather fancy a man of the name of Colin Ross is aboard her. If so, the Jew is to receive some shocks.”

“I wish to heaven they came by way of a seaman’s arm, sir. Yes, it’s as you say. Yon is a steamer, and here goes the answering rocket.”

He pointed to the sky above the Diamond Ship, ablaze with a spray of vivid green radiance, the answering signal to the distant ship. The nature of our own escape now became quite clear to me. The look-outs over yonder had espied the lights of the relief steamer and had used the searchlight to signal her. The great arcs, the circling beams, were but those preliminary movements with which every operator tries the lantern he is about to use. No eye had followed their aureole, I made sure. We had escaped observation simply because every man aboard yonder vessel had been looking at the incoming steamer, bearing from Europe news which might be of such moment.

“Larry,” I said, jumping at the idea of it; “it’s now or never. Let her go while they are at the parley. I’ll stake my life on it there is no look-out to starboard. Let’s have a look at them when they least expect us.”

“Do you mean to say, sir, that you’ll risk it?”

“There is no risk, Larry—if you don’t delay.”

“I do believe you are right, sir. Here’s for it, anyway, and luck go with us.”

He rang down the order to the engine-room, and we raced straight ahead, not a man uttering a sound, not a light showing aboard us. Holding on in defiance alike of prudence and responsibility, we drove the yacht into the very shadows of the great unknown ship we had tracked so far. To say that we stood within an ace of destruction would be to treat of our circumstances lightly. A word amiss might have destroyed us so utterly that not a man of us all should have told the tale. There, towering above us, was the great hull of this floating mystery, the massive outline of a vessel built upon the lines of an Atlantic steamer, yet carrying four masts and a funnel so low that one might look twice to detect it at all. Flashing lights from stem to stern, we could almost count the men upon the decks of this phantom of the high seas—men wearing all varieties of dress: some the garb of fashion, some that of ordinary workmen, a few in the uniform of sailors. And what a hive of activity those decks appeared to be! How the fellows were running to and fro—changing their positions every moment, taking their stands now in the shrouds, now high upon the fo’castle—an agitated, expectant throng, turning, as it were, but one face to the steamer which came to relieve them and by which news of their safety or their danger might come. Their very interest, however, became our confidence. Taking my place with the forward look-out, I conned every feature of the great ship, and impressed the facts of it upon my memory. No thought of peril troubled me now.

I scanned the decks, I say, as quietly as one surveys a ship that must be docked; noted the black shapes of the veiled guns, the wretched haphazard armament amidships, the unsuitability of the great hull to the purposes now indicated, the seeming absence of all order and method and even of leadership upon its decks. This monstrous floating haven of crime and horror—no sailor had chosen it for its present purpose, I made sure. In a lighter moment, I could say that it had once been a second-class cruiser, and now stood for a witness to an age which added raking masts to its warships and eyed askance the supremacy of steam. The Jew, it might be, had purchased his ship from a Government that had no further use for it. He had gone to Chili or the Argentine—a second thought said to Italy, for this vessel had more than a smack of Italian design and practice as we knew it in the last days of canvas and the first of steel. And he had bought this relic at his own price, had maintained its engines, added new masts for disguise, and so adapted it to that master scheme whose aims rose so far above this evidence of realisation. All this, I say, my swift survey showed to me. But the supreme question it did not answer. There were women to be discerned upon the deck of the ship, but not the figure of Joan Fordibras. Of her the night had no news to give me.

We lay at this time, I suppose, some two hundred yards from the great ship, a little astern of her and ready, need it be said, to bound away into the darkness should the need arise. Our daring is neither to be set down to courage nor foolhardiness. It was plain that every man on board Valentine Imroth’s sanctuary had eyes but for the approaching steamer, ears but for the news she would carry. Absolutely convinced of our safety, we watched the spectacle with that air of assurance and self-content which any secret agent of a good cause may assume at the moment of his triumph. My own doubt and trouble could hardly be shared by the honest fellows about me; or, if it were shared, then had they the good taste to make light of it. Indeed, they were upon the point of persuading me that, if it were Joan Fordibras I had come out to seek, then the sooner I got me back to Europe the better.

“There’s no Joan upon yonder ship,” said old Timothy in a big whisper. “I’d as soon look to find the Queen of Sheba there.”

“Indeed, sir,” added Larry, kindly, “I do think Mr. McShanus is right. They’d never take a lady among that riff-raff. I don’t see how it would serve them, anyway. We must credit General Fordibras with some feelings if the other has none. He’s taken Miss Joan to Europe, be sure of it.”

I could make no answer, for my reasoned opinion had that obstinate dogmatism which must attend the logical idea, if logic be of any worth at all. It were better, I thought, not to discuss it, and, for that matter, there were events enough to take a man’s mind from the graver doubts. The relief steamer had by now drawn so near to the other that loud cheers were raised between them, boats put off in haste from the Diamond Ship, and boats from the newcomer. We heard greetings exchanged—in French, in German, in Italian. Instantly, too, there began a great business of making ready to unload a cargo out there in mid-Atlantic. I perceived that the two ships were to be caught together by grapplings, and so held while the affair of discharging was done. Of what the patrol’s cargo might be, I could only surmise. She would bring the invaluable coal, of course—else could not the water be distilled aboard the Rogue—coal and food and news, and, it might be, new ruffians who had escaped the justice of Europe or Africa. This, I say was a surmise. The immediate test of it my eyes carried no further, for chancing to look again at hazard toward the greater vessel, I detected a solitary figure at the taffrail, and instantly recognised my little Joan, standing apart from all that ruffian crew, and looking wistfully toward that very place where White Wings lay in ambush of the waters.

And then I knew that I had done well to dare this voyage, and that, cost what it might in blood or treasure, I would save this child from the Jew and that which he had prepared for her.