CHAPTER XXXI.

THE END OF THE DIAMOND SHIP.

Dr. Fabos turns his Eyes toward England.

I suppose that I slept a few hours at the dead of night; but certainly I was awake again shortly after the sun had risen, and upon the bridge with Larry, as curious a man as any in the southern hemisphere that morning. Remember in what a situation I had left the Diamond Ship, the problems that remained unsolved upon her decks, the distress of her crew, the trials and judgments that awaited them ashore, the sure death prepared for them upon the high seas. All this the fog had veiled from our reckoning last night; but the day dawned clear and sunny; the curtain had been lifted; the whole picture stood there asking our pity, and in some measure our gratitude. Had we any longer a duty toward the honest men yonder—if honest men there could by any possibility be; or did other claims call us imperiously back to England and our homes, to tell the story where all the world might hear it? These were the questions which Larry and I discussed together, as we stood on the bridge that sunny morning and focussed our glasses upon the distant ship. Should we abandon her or return? Frankly, I knew not where our duty lay. The problem presented possibilities so awful that I shrank from them.

“There are women aboard there, Larry,” I would say.

And he would answer as often:—

“There are men aboard here, sir, with wives and little children waiting for them at home.”

“We could stand by them, Larry,” I put it to him. “If they come to reason, we should do all that is humanly possible for their wounded, and those who are deserving our pity.”

“You cannot stand by them, sir—you have not a pound of coal to waste. Mr. Benson says he will have all his work cut out to get us to the Azores as it is. We shall look pretty if we imitate them and drift about here till Doomsday. And we haven’t any music on board, sir. We must go dancing to our own complaints. Have you thought of that, doctor?”

“God knows,” said I mournfully. “There they are, sickness and fever and death on board—women at the mercy of ruffians, the ship drifting helplessly, the dock waiting for them in any honest port, little chance of making any port at all. What is a seaman to do—where does his simple duty lie? Answer those questions, and I will begin to agree with you. We are men and must play a man’s part. Tell me, I repeat, where our duty lies and we will do it.”

I will do Larry the justice to say that when he had made up his mind upon a given course, he rarely turned from it. His own crew were justly dearer to him than any ship-load of criminals drifting in an unmanageable hulk upon the Atlantic Ocean. And the logic of his case was, I suppose, unanswerable.

“Doctor,” he said, “if your brother lay dying, would you call first upon him or the son of your neighbour who had hurt himself running away from the police? You ask me where our duty lies, and I’ll tell you in a word. It lies to Miss Joan first of all—to see that the shadow of this trouble never falls upon her childish face again. And after that, it is a duty to the brave men who have served you so well, to them and their homes and those who are dear to them. Yonder ship is as well off as we are, and in many ways better. She is now in the track of mail steamers bound to the Argentine, and will quickly fall in with help. If you board her again, they will cut your throat for a certainty, and try to board us when that is done. Leave them to the justice of Almighty God. Their destiny is in other hands. That is wisdom and duty together.”

I knew that he was right, and yet I will confess that I surrendered to his judgment with reluctance. There is an unwritten law of the sea that no sailor in distress shall be deserted, however just or merited his fate may be. We could take the honest fellows from the ship, I would persist, and do all humanly possible for those who were sick. It would be a reproach to me afterwards, I feared, a memory of a day neither altogether glorious nor altogether merciful. As to the great hulk herself, my glass showed her decks clearly, but did not discover any signs of life upon them. Just as I had left her drifting at the mercy of wind and current, so now did she lie sagging in the troughs of the rollers, a piteous spectacle of impotency and despair. The very sails upon her masts were torn and ragged as though long neglected by a seaman’s hand. No smoke issued from her funnel; the boats had been taken up; I could espy no commander upon her bridge nor discern that brisk grouping of the hands upon the fo’castle which bespeaks a voyage. She might have been a phantom ship, a sea vision conjured up by dreamers—and such I could almost believe her.

“At least, Larry,” said I, “we will take another look at her if you please. Miss Joan is sleeping, I imagine. She will know nothing of this, and the men are not to suppose that I am unmindful of what I owe to them. Let us learn, if we can, what is happening over yonder—then we shall turn homewards with lighter hearts. Even our miserly Benson will not tell me that we have not coal enough for such a diversion.”

He had no reasonable objection to offer to this—and, to be plain, our very course must carry us in some such direction. We had stood by the ship all night, and she lay now upon our port-bow, distant, perhaps, two miles from us on a spirited sea which tumbled before a fresh westerly wind that would be half a gale presently. As we drew nearer, the pictures, which a good telescope had revealed to me, were not belied. I could now make out a few hands at the fo’castle hatch; there was a solitary figure by the taffrail, and two or three more about the main deck. Nowhere, however, did any evidences of activity appear. Had I not seen the afflicted with my own eyes, dressed their wounds and heard their woful complaints, it would have been impossible to credit the burden of human anguish which that vast derelict must carry. That such a ship could now do us any mischief seemed beyond all belief incredible. None the less, the fact must be recorded that we were still some half a mile from her when she fired a gun at us, and a shell fell idly into the sea not a hundred yards from our foremast. Nor was this all, for a second report immediately rang out from her decks, and a great flame of fire leapt up above them, though no shell followed after, nor could the quickest eye detect the path of any shot.

“Larry,” I said, “that is what I have been expecting all along. The breach of one of their guns is blown out. I wonder how many lives it has cost?”

“But you are not going on board to see, sir?”

“Indeed, no. Their shot has answered all my questions. It is homeward bound now, Larry—full speed ahead as soon as you will—and God help any innocent man if there be such over yonder.”

His rejoinder was the bell ringing out loudly in our engine-room below. To the quartermaster he cried in a captain’s sharp voice: “One point starboard,” and was answered, “One point starboard it is.” I perceived that we had altered our course almost imperceptibly, and were now steering almost direct to the north-east, which must bring us to the islands of the Azores, and the coal we needed so sorely. If there were any regrets, one man alone suffered them and remained silent. It had been so much my own emprise from the beginning; I had hoped so much, dared so much, feared so much, because of it, that this silent flight from the scene, this abandonment of the quest, this abject submission to our necessity could be accounted no less than a personal humiliation which must remain with me whatever the subsequent achievement.

I had set out to drag the Jew to justice. A voice ironical reminded me that Valentine Imroth was free and ashore, that he mocked my knowledge, and might yet outwit a sullen police. The great house of crime he had erected must be pulled down for a season; but who would say that it would not be rebuilt upon a foundation of human credulity more sure, and to be relied upon, than any he had yet discovered? I had not brought this arch-villain to justice; I knew nothing of the confederates he had upon the high seas, of the ships which befriended him, it may be of other refuges as safe and unnamed as this vast hulk now sinking below the horizon and disappearing from my view. And what was this but failure, failure as complete as any in the history of the police I had derided—a failure which no circumstances could atone, no explanations justify? Such were my reflections—such the thoughts that came to me as the great ship faded from my vision, downward to the nether world where the voices of the lost should welcome her, and the spirits of the damned give her greeting.

Long I stood there, my eyes upon the horizon, my vision enchained by the void as though a voice must come to me from the unknown and say “This is the truth; this is the hour.” We were alone on the waste of waters now: a brave ship running homeward to the cities and the cottages of England; a ship that carried stout hearts and merry men; upon whose decks the prattle of little children might in fancy be heard, their childish forms uplifted, their young lips kissed. From all this joy I stood apart. What had home to give, what were the shores of England to me if I might not find there the love and confidence of my little Joan?

Not as a child but as a woman had she spoken last night when she said—“Tell me the story of my life and I shall have the right to listen to you.” There could be no rest for me, no thought of man’s love for her until the record proved her not the daughter of General Fordibras, but his victim. I had been conscious of this from the beginning, but the inevitability of it recurred to me now when the great ship had disappeared from my ken, and all my hopes seemed to sink with her. To win Joan’s love I must snatch her secret from a rogue’s keeping, carry it triumphantly to her, and so write it that all the world might read. God alone knew how such a task as this might be accomplished. I wonder not that its very magnitude appalled me.

And so the new day waxed old, and found me still alone, my eyes upon the void; my heart heavy with the burden I must carry. The great sea had spoken and I had heard her voice and bowed to the destiny of her judgments. Let the land now answer me—that land for which my friends yearned as exiles, who have heard a call from home and answered it with tears of gladness because their faces are toward the light.