CHAPTER XXIX.

THE BRIDGE AND AFTERWARDS.

Dr. Fabos Visits Colin Ross.

I was in a situation of grave peril; but it would have been imprudent beyond measure to have admitted it. Possibly the accident of their advantage did not occur to the men, nor had they discovered it. There was no order on the ship, no commander, no person in authority above others. The agony of wounds forbade any consideration of that which should be done or of the methods of doing it. I perceived that the men regarded me in some sense as their good angel, paying me the compliment of trusting me, and obeying my commands as faithfully as if I had been their captain. They could even remember that I had gone fasting, and speak of food and drink.

“Old Valentine knew a good tap when he tasted it, and there’s plenty of the right sort on board,” the American said to me good-naturedly. “You only give a name to it and the corks will be flying like rockets. Ask for what you’re wanting, doctor, and I’ll skin the lubber who doesn’t run to fetch it. The Lord knows what my mates would have done if you hadn’t come among them.”

It was honestly said, and as honestly meant. And yet, willingly as I would have accepted his cordial offer, fear of the consequences held me back. Who would dare to think of drink amid such a crew as this, or to remind men that drink was to be had? I could depict a Saturnalia defying the powers of a Poe to describe, such an orgie as a sane man might dream of in a horrid sleep, should these ruffians broach the casks or be reminded of the spirits which the ship carried.

My immediate anxiety was to divert their thoughts from my own situation, and to lead them to regard me rather as one of themselves than as a stranger. As for the mystery of my little Joan’s disappearance from the ship, the excuses which had been made to me, and the obvious sincerity of them, I knew no more than the dead what these might mean. While at one time I would doubt if she had ever been on the ship at all—plainly as I had thought to see her there—there were other moods in which I could almost believe that these ruffians had killed her, and that she also must be numbered among the victims of the night. This, however, would mark a moment of despair, to be forgotten readily when action called me to some new task. These men had sworn that Joan lived. Why should I question a sincerity which all my observation declared to be genuine?

So thus the matter stood when darkness came down and the fog lay thick about the Diamond Ship. Okyada, my servant, had vanished unaccountably, nor had I heard a single word concerning him since we came on board together. The yacht had disappeared from my ken, and the shrewdest eyes could not detect her situation, or the quickest ears give news of her. In these trying circumstances I welcomed a request from one of the seamen that I would visit Colin Ross, the captain of the vessel, and until lately the representative of Valentine Imroth, aboard her. This man I found lying grievously wounded by a bullet which had entered the left lung and penetrated in such an ugly fashion that his life must be a question of hours. His was not an unpleasant face, nor was his manner in any way repellent. I told him frankly, when he asked me, that he could not live, and he answered with a wan smile that was almost a sob.

“Good God! sir,” he said, “how little any man, who makes a beginning on a crooked road, ever sees the end of it! I was the captain of a Shields collier two years ago, doing well, and calling my home my own. When Mr. Imroth found me out, I would no more have done a shabby thing than have harmed my little baby girl, who’s waiting for me in Newcastle now. Money bought me—I’ll not deny it. I promised to run this ship to the Brazils for a thousand guineas, and there’s Imroth’s seal upon it on the table yonder. You may not believe me, but what the story of this business is, how these men came here, or why they have come, I know no better than the Pope of Rome—and that’s the truth, if my life’s the price of it. And yet, sir, that it’s a bad business I’d be a fool to deny. He who touches pitch gets plenty on his fingers. I knew that Val Imroth was a bad lot the first day I saw him—and bad enough are his companions on this ship. Why, good God! there’d have been murder done every day if it hadn’t been for fear of the man and his words. He puts a palsy on you when you hear his step—his breath’s a flame of hell—this crowd shivered at his look. It’s fear of him that’s kept them quiet since he ran for shore; it’s fear of him which will send them all to the dock in the end; as sure as I lie here telling you so.”

I cannot conceal the fact that this interview affected me greatly. Here was a robust British sailor, a man perhaps of thirty-five years of age, brown-haired, blue-eyed, and of an open cast of countenance, about to give up his life and to pass for ever from the love which awaited him in England because a monster had breathed a breath upon him, and had cried in his ears the fables of the gold. Hundreds of men, as innocent as this man, were exiles from wife and children to-day, outcasts, jail-birds, suspects, human derelicts, because of this devilish net which had enmeshed them, of these criminal arms which had embraced them, and this voice of lust which charmed them. Many a man have I seen die—but not as this seaman died, with a child’s name upon his lips, and a child’s image before his eyes. Of what avail to speak at such a moment of the Eternal Hope in the justice of an Almighty and all-Merciful God, or to recite those platitudes in which pious folk take refuge? Colin Ross was thinking of the child who nevermore would call him father, or by him to be called child again.

This, however, is to anticipate the hour. There was much upon which I would gladly have questioned the man; but little that he had the strength to answer me. Just as the seamen had sworn that it was all well with Joan, so did he bear them out with such emphasis as his failing strength could command.

“We were to make the Brazils and take a passage for Miss Joan to London. Her father, General Fordibras, is there, doctor. If harm has come to her, it is since I left the deck. The men worshipped her—there are rogues enough, I grant you, who would have had their say, but I shot the first dead with my own hand, and the men answered for the second, God help him! You’ll find Miss Joan all right, and take her back to her father. For the rest, I can’t advise you, sir. You are safe enough on board here while this trouble is new—but when it’s past, save yourself, for God’s sake; for your life will not be worth a minute’s purchase. Remember what’s at stake if this ship makes port and you are there to give an account of her. Hands and passengers alike will prevent that. No, doctor, get aboard your yacht while you can, and leave these men to their destiny.”

He spoke with much dignity, though it is hardly necessary for me to say that I had travelled already upon such lines of thought as he laid down. When I left him, it was with a promise to see his wife and child in Newcastle, and to give them what comfort I could—but chiefly to keep the story of the darker hour away from them; for, as he said, “they hold my name dear.” He had but a few moments to live then, and that merciful euthanasia which is frequently the hand-maiden of death, as long experience has shown to me, rapidly came upon him and left him but the passing dreams of a sleep which all must know, and from which all must awake.

Now this befell, I suppose, about eleven o’clock that night. There was still much mist when I came upon deck, but it had lifted to the northward, and the atmosphere was everywhere clearing. I had some expectation of spying out the yacht should the breeze strengthen, and yet there was no hour of all that emprise which found me in such a desolation of spirit or so doubtful of the ultimate issue. Why had my friends made no effort to reach me? What kept them? Why did they leave me here at the mercy of these cut-throats, my life as a gossamer which any puff of anger might destroy, my liberty in these ruffians’ keeping? Sober reason would have replied that they could have done nothing else; but this was not the time for reason, and, indeed, I came to call it the darkest hour of them all. Vainly I raged against my own acts and the judgment which had carried me on board the ship. It had been madness to come; it would be madness to let the men know as much. Already I was aware of a disposition to treat me with less respect—it may have been pure imagination, but the idea came into my head, and a brief conversation with the American did nothing to displace it.

“I am going aboard my own yacht,” I said to him—that would have been about the hour of midnight. “I am going aboard my yacht, but I will return at daybreak and see what more I can do. Mr. Ross says that you are heading for the Brazils. That is no affair of mine. The man I want is no longer on the ship. I have no concern with the others nor they with me. Let us put things as straight as we can—and then talk about the shore.”

This should not have been said. It occurred to me almost as I uttered the words that the man had not hitherto thought about the yacht at all; but no sooner had I spoken than he stepped to the gangway and immediately realised the situation.

“Guess your people have gone hay-making, doctor,” he said far from pleasantly. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters much anyway. My mates want you pretty badly, and while they want you, I guess you’ll have to stop. Just step down and take another look at Harry Johnson, will you? He’s raving like a fool-woman in the Doldrums. You can turn in by-and-by—I’ll see what Williams can do for you—though it’s forward you must swing your hammock, and no two opinions about that.”

To this I answered, in a tone as decisive as his own, that my comings and my goings would be ordered by none but myself, and that his friend must await his turn. A long acquaintance with rogues has convinced me that any weakness of civility is lost upon them, and that firmness to the point of brutality is the only weapon. I would have shot this man dead had he given me an impudent answer, and his surprise when he heard me speak was something to see.

“No offence, doctor,” he said presently. “I’ll tell Harry you’ll be along presently. Don’t think as we’re not obliged to you for what you’ve done. The boys are ready enough to tell you so. You take your own time, and do what’s best pleasing to you. There’s work enough, God Almighty knows.”

He spat his filthy tobacco juice into the sea, and turning upon his heels went forward to join his companions by the fo’castle. A scene so weird is not within my memory. Depict the grey mists drifting upon the water, the silvery waves in those lakes of radiance the moonbeams could create, the stillness of the ship, the prone forms of men whose sobs and groans marked the intervals of sounds, the lanterns set about the decks, the great mast looming above, the spars and yards, and the monster bulk of the funnel. And this ship, remember, was a house of sanctuary to all the friends of crime who should bow the knee to Valentine Imroth, and come to him with plunder in their hands!

What stories could not its cabins tell! What crimes had been committed—murder and lust and shedding of blood—what awful cries had gone up from its decks, the cries of strong men at the gate of death, of women in their agony! All these phantoms came to me as I paced the quarter-deck and asked, almost as a man in despair, what kept my friends or how long the mists would prevail? I could imagine a day when this mighty idea had first occurred to the Jew’s cunning intellect, and he had acclaimed the possibilities of it. What police, and of what nations, would seek their criminals upon the high seas, or search there for the jewels which the chief rogues of Europe brought to a sanctuary so sure? What mind would have read this riddle aright unless accident had suggested its answer? I claimed nothing for myself; a thousand times an irony would it have been to do so.

Let me escape these decks, and how much further was I upon the road to finality? I could tell a plain tale to the Government, certainly, and could open the doors of this temple of assassins to the world—but who would crush so vast a conspiracy? What unity of international action, what initiative would war upon the greater evils of it, hunting the tigers from their dens or ridding the cities of their allies? All that I had done, all my planning, all my thinking, had left the Jew a free man and sent me a prisoner on the deck of his ship. And God alone could give me freedom, that God in whose immediate Providence I have never ceased to believe!

This was the outcome of my philosophy as I stood by the gangway and watched the shifting mists; here opening a little silvered pathway—as to an arbour of delights; there beating down again in dank clouds of vapour and shutting all the hither scenes from my view. The men had left me alone for the time being, but their absence seemed a greater peril. I could hear a loud argument going on by the fo’castle, and voices raised in persuasion or in anger. The monster ship herself drifted helplessly, as a great stricken beast lurching in agony and seeking only a place to end its woes. Every faculty that I possess told me that I was in great danger. These rogues would come forward presently and put some proposition to me. So I argued, nor did the night give me the lie. Shuffling and hesitating they came, some twenty or more of them, before another hour had passed, all together in a deputation, and as ready, I would swear, to cut me down where I stood as to drink the rum which an obliging purser had served out to them.

The American, I perceived, was to be their chief speaker, and with him was the man called Bill Evans. Advancing by the promenade deck in a body, they seemed to find some little difficulty when it came to expressing themselves in plain English; and had the situation been less dangerous, it would have been ridiculous enough.

“Well, my men,” I cried, being careful to have the first word at them; “what is it, now? Speak up, I shall not eat you.”

“Beg pardon, sir, we wish you to know that Will Rayner has been made captain of this ship, and that he wishes you to go below.”

The man named Evans spoke, and I must say his manner was diverting enough.

“That is very considerate of Mr. William Rayner,” said I, with a laugh. “Will he not step forward—am I not to have the pleasure of seeing him?”

“He’s back there by the capstan, sir. We’re a depytashun, if you please. Will won’t have nobody aft the galley, and that’s his plain words. You’re to go below and to wait until you’re sent for.”

I looked the speaker full in the face and laughed at him contemptuously.

“My men,” I said, calmly addressing them all together, “do you wish to be afloat to-morrow morning, or is this ship and all aboard her to be at the bottom of the Atlantic?”

They were evidently perplexed. The gentleman by the name of Bill Evans continued to speak.

“Me and my mates, beggin’ your pardon, sir—we don’t fall in with that. You’re fair marooned, and that’s the end of it. Will says as he means well by you, but while you’re on this ship, you’ll obey him and nobody else. Humbly representin’ it, sir, we’ll have to see that you do as Will says?——”

I took a pistol from my pocket, and deliberately cocked it. This was touch and go for my very life. Had I shot one of those men, I knew that it would all be over in an instant, and that they would either bow the knee to me or murder me on the spot.

“Now, see here,” said I. “My yacht’s lying out yonder not a biscuit toss from this deck. If you give me so much as another word of impudence, I’ll send you and every ruffian aboard here to blazes as sure as this is a revolver, and there are cartridges in it. Go and tell Mr. Will Rayner what I say, for, by heaven above me, I will go myself and fetch him, if you do not.”

I have said that the moment was critical beyond any through which I have lived, and a truer word could not be spoken. There we stood, the angry seamen upon one side, myself upon the other, each party knowing that the issue was for good and all, and yet neither willing to bring the instant of it upon us. As for these wretched fellows, I do not believe that they would have lifted a hand against me had it not been for the American who incited them. He was the ringleader despite the newly-made captain, and his mock authority. And he was the dangerous man with whom I had to deal.

“I guess your yacht may be where you say she is,” he remarked with a drawl; “but she’s got to hustle if she wants to come up with us this summer weather. Don’t you be too free with that pistol, sir, or some of us will have to take it from you. You’re in a clove-hitch, and had better keep a civil tongue in your head or maybe we’ll cut it out and see what it’s made of. Now just you come along o’ me and don’t make no trouble about it. Will Rayner ain’t a goin’ to eat you, and you ain’t a goin’ to eat him, so step up brisk, doctor, and let’s see you march.”

This impudent harangue was hailed by a salvo of applause. The fellow himself took two steps toward me and laid a hand upon my shoulder. He had scarce touched me with his fingers when I struck him full in the face, and he rolled headlong into the scuppers. The same instant saw me leaping for my very life up the ladder to the bridge deck and clutching there at the rope which opened the steamer’s siren. Good God! What an instant of suspense! Were the fires below damped down, or was there steam in the boiler? One tremendous pull upon the rope had no answer for me at all. Again and again I jerked the cord back as though very desperation would sound the alarm which should summon my friends and, at the same time, save me from this rabble. The men below watched me aghast, their curiosity overpowering them, their mouths agape, so that when the siren’s blast went echoing over the still sea at last, you could have heard a footfall on the decks, or caught the meaning of a whispered message.

The men were dumbfounded, I say, and without idea. This I have ever observed to be a habit among seamen when the news of any great disaster comes upon them or they are taken unawares in an instant of emergency. No clown could look more childish then, or any Master Boldface laugh as foolishly. There they were in a group below me, some with their hands thrust deep into their pockets, some smoking idly, some looking into the faces of their neighbours as though a glance would answer the riddle of the night. And while they stood, the siren roared a blast of defiance, again and again, as the voice of a Minotaur of the deep, warning and terrifying, and not to be resisted. Had I doubted the vigilance of my good comrades upon the yacht, I could have doubted it no longer. White Wings answered my signal almost instantly in a higher note of defiance, in a shrill assent to that wild roll-call, the orator mechanical of honest friendship. And, while she answered, her siren seemed to put a reproach upon me, saying, “The yacht is here—all is well—why have you doubted us?”

A deep silence fell upon the Diamond Ship when this signal came reverberating over the waters. None of the amazed seamen spoke a word or made a movement for many minutes. I had already put my pistol into my pocket and taken a cigarette from my case. If I wished the men to believe that the hour of crisis had passed, I was under no delusion at all myself. For remember that I had gone up to the bridge and stood there during this supreme instant of danger; and that, if I would regain the deck of the yacht, I must descend the ladder, down through these serried ranks of men; must pass them as one who was going from them to the house of an avenger, to his comrades who would judge the story and help him to decide upon the punishment. The rogues’ very salvation depended upon my captivity; I was their hostage, and by me would reprieve come if reprieve were to be hoped for at all. This I perceived long before it had dawned upon the witless rabble; but it occurred even to them at last, and crowding about the ladder’s foot they told me bluntly that they were aware of it.

“Guess it’s your turn,” said the American, venturing a step upward but no more. His manner had become sheepish, I observed, and he spoke with less truculence.

“My turn, as you say, sir,” I rejoined with what composure I could. “I am now going aboard my yacht, and there I will decide what is to be done with you. That will depend upon your behaviour, I advise you to remember as much.”

I lit my cigarette and waited for him to go on. White Wings was evidently quite near to us now—I could hear the throb of her turbines; her siren hooted repeatedly. The night was mine but for an accident. And yet, heaven knows, it appeared to me then that an accident must befall me unless a miracle intervened.

“That’s your yacht right enough,” the Yankee went on immediately. “And so far as it’s her, we’re in a clove-hitch ourselves. The question is, who’s to put you aboard her, and what shall we be about when he’s doing of it? Now, see here, as between man and man—you give us your solemn affidavit not to do anything against this ship’s crew and you’re free to come and go as you choose. That’s my first condition—the second is as you sign the paper Will Rayner has drawed up and abide by its terms. Do as much as that and your friends shan’t be more willing to help you. But if you don’t do it—why, then, look out for yourself, for, by the Lord above me, you ain’t got ten minutes to live.”

He came another step up the ladder, cheered, as it seemed, by his own eloquence. As for the men, they opened their lips for the first time since my yacht had answered me, and their hoarse roar of defiance, uttered in that unpleasant timbre to which the sea attunes the human voice, backed the threat and made it their own. Had it been left to me in circumstances less dangerous, I might have given them my word to let me go free, and signed the paper their leader spoke about; but just in the same measure that they threatened me, so did my anger against them rise—and stepping briskly to the topmost rung of the ladder, I answered them in a sentence that even their dull intellects could understand.

“Not a word or a line, by God! That is my answer, sir. You may take it or leave it; but if you leave it, some of you shall as certainly hang for this night’s work as this is a pistol I hold in my hand. Now stand back, for I am coming down amongst you. Yonder, you see, is the boat I am expecting.”

Lifting my hand, I pointed with dramatic intent to the port quarter of the ship. The sea was void upon that quarter—what need to tell it? But my eyes had already detected the black outline of a ship’s boat upon the starboard bow, and my very life depended upon the ruse which should divert the men’s attention from it. Never shall I doubt the ruffians would have made an end of it there and then, and have murdered me as they had murdered the criminals upon the ship, if the argument had been carried but another sentence. I had seen knives unsheathed at my words, had heard the promptings of rogue to rogue, that low muttering of the human beast who has scented prey, and whose nostrils are distended by the lust of it. Let the talk run on, and they would be up the ladder and upon me, cost what it might—up and on me, and their knives at my throat. This I understood when I pointed to the port quarter and sent them gaping there in a body—as children who are not content to hear, but with their own eyes would see.

My freedom, nay, my life depended upon the ruse. Such a fact was clear above all others. It had been no lie when I said that my friends were coming to me. Athwart the great ship, not fifty yards from the starboard bow, lay the long boat which had been sent out to me. I took one last look at the huddled forms below me, debated the possibilities in one of those swift mental surveys to which long habit has trained me, and staking all upon the venture, risking every peril both of the men and the sea, I leaped boldly from the bridge and left the issue to the God of my destinies.

So the tragic hour began for me, and such were its circumstances! The rushing waters booming as a dirge in my ears, my clothes dragging me down as a burden insupportable; darkness and the dread sea all about me; a black sky meeting my vision as I rose gasping to the surface—no knowledge now of where the boat lay or in what direction to strike out; no certainty that my friends had seen me or were alive to my situation—nothing but silence and the long rollers carrying me, and far away a distant shouting, an echo of pistol shots, a rejoinder of strong voices and then a silence, so deep, so profound that the very wavelets were as cataracts beating at my brain. This, surely, was the moment when a man might have told himself that he was cast out utterly from man and the world, a true derelict of the vast ocean, a voice crying in a monstrous silence, a sacrifice to wind and wave and the gaping sea. The deepest dungeon ashore could not have inflicted a wound of desolation so terrible.

I was there within a cable’s length of those who would have given their very lives for me, and yet as far away from them as though I had stood at the foot of Mount Terror and cried to the skies for my salvation. Not a sound, not a whisper of life did the wind bear to me. A strong swimmer, I lay deep in the water, the spindrift cold upon my face, the ripples of the crests soaking my hair, the blue-black sky for my zenith. And how far had those minutes carried me from humanity and all human interests!

Calmly, as a man in a reverie of the mind could, I recounted this adventure from the beginning, and wondered why I had set out upon it at all. What was it to me that these rogues pitted their wits against their brother rogues ashore? Who had made me the judge of crime and its servants, or permitted me to say that one man was a thief and another man honest? The great ocean laughed at such laws and their makers. Might and majesty and the throne of winds—were not they a kingdom stupendous in its grandeur and unsurpassable in its magnitude? No sense of danger, indeed, went with me to the waters. I heard their dulcet voice and answered them—I saw the figures I had known and loved, and no sense of regret attended the vision. An unquenchable fire of confidence burned in my brain. I believed that I should see little Joan again, though the waters engulfed me utterly.

Let me claim no merit for a mental attitude so unusual. I have known many men who have been taken from the water almost upon the point of death, and in no case does fear seem to have been a part of their experience. Certainly, in one or two instances, they have spoken of great pain in the lungs, but their chief recollection has been a supreme content and of a profound sense of rest as though the peace and loneliness of the deep had communicated itself to their souls and robbed them in an instant of that burden of life of which all, with whatever courage they may bear it, are sensible. Speaking again for myself, I do not think it is a misrepresentation to say that I had no overmastering desire to be saved from the peril which had overtaken me. Not a morbid man, or one who is insensible to the privileges and duties of our common destiny, I will confess that a certain ironical view of human things came to me as the good tide carried me, and the surf bathed my face. All the littleness of the everyday existence, its petty bickerings, its trumpery ambitions, were so much sport for the rolling waves about me, so much silvery laughter for the surging swell and the cradle of the billows. And if this mood changed at all—as I know that ultimately it did change—the new spirit breathed human love as its chief desire, the simplest of the human affections, the depth, the truth and the nobility of them.

I saw then that there is nothing permanent in life but love, nothing to be so surely desired, no human quality so precious as that habit of loving. And passing from the more general admission, my own story must present itself to me again, and bid me ask why I had left Joan Fordibras at all when I found her at Dieppe; why I had accepted the challenge there thrown down to me when I might have taken her in my arms and written the golden page in our lives once and for ever? This reflection could move me instantly to a great pathos of regret, and inspire in me a mad striving after some shore of my safety when I could say, “I have not done well; the blame is mine.” And from this time I thought but of Joan alone; saw her face looking down to me from the skies above, and heard but the plaintive music of her voice. No words may tell the sudden distress of this—there is no measure of human speech which shall convey to another the depth of that human anguish of loss a man may suffer on the threshold of death. It is the supremest trial of all, a very agony of the soul defying all expression.

I have been at some pains to set down these impressions closely, for they stood to me for the bitter reckoning I must pay for the quest of Valentine Imroth and the ship he had commanded. Cast out there upon the black ocean, I had been a fool to believe that I merited any particular mercy of the Almighty which would repair my mistakes or pass by my imprudence. That I had escaped into the sea at all now seemed the greater wonder. I could depict the instant of fierce exclamation which had followed upon my plunge, the roar of voices, the loud report of vain pistols. These I had heard with my own ears, and it should have come to me that my own fellows had heard them also. Little good reasoning, however, may be looked for from a man cast down from a high deck into the Atlantic Ocean, and there left to battle with the surges in the shadows of the night. How long it was before the end came I shall never know. I recollect that I had the sense not to swim but merely to keep afloat as near as might be to the scene of my rashness. The intervening moments, as I say, brought me from a state of content to one of despair, and from that again almost to a state of insensibility—and I know only that a great rough hand took me from the sea at last, that white faces bent over me, and that, kindliest of them all, was the face of Joan Fordibras—my little Joan of the Valley House—who stooped and kissed my lips, and with a young girl’s tears expressed the welcome by her heart unspoken.

And so love was the Avenger after all—love set above the kingdoms of Death as love shall ever be.