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.