WALKING SHADOWS
_SEA TALES AND OTHERS_
BY ALFRED NOYES
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1918, by_
Alfred Noyes
_Copyright, 1918, by_
Frederick A. Stokes Company
_All Rights Reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PRELUDE xi
I. THE LIGHT-HOUSE 1
II. UNCLE HYACINTH 28
III. THE CREATIVE IMPULSE 82
IV. THE MAN FROM BUFFALO 117
V. THE _Lusitania_ WAITS 138
VI. THE LOG OF THE _Evening Star_ 151
VII. GOBLIN PEACHES 177
VIII. MAY MARGARET 205
IX. MAROONED 249
X. THE GARDEN ON THE CLIFF 281
XI. THE HAND OF THE MASTER 292
WALKING SHADOWS
_Prelude_
Of those who fought and died
Unreckoned, undescried,
Breaking no hearts but two or three that loved them;
Of multitudes that gave
Their memories to the grave,
And the unrevealing seas of night removed them;
Of those unnumbered hosts
Who smile at all our boasts
And are not blazed on any scroll of glory;
Mere out-posts in the night,
Mere keepers of the light,
Where history stops, let shadows weave a story.
Shadows, but ah, they know
That history's pomp and show
Are shadows of a shadow, gilt and painted.
They see the accepted lie
In robes of state go by.
They see the prophet stoned, the trickster sainted.
And so my shadows turn
To truths that they discern
Beyond the ordered "facts" that fame would cherish.
They walk awhile with dreams,
They follow flying gleams
And lonely lights at sea that pass and perish.
Not tragic all indeed,
Not all without remede
Of clean-edged mirth. Our Rosalie of laughter,
The bayonet of a jest,
May pierce the devil's breast,
And give us room and time for grief, here-after.
So let them weep or smile
Or kneel, or dance awhile,
Fantastic shades, by wandering fires begotten;
Remembrancers of themes
That dawn may mock as dreams.
Then let them sleep, at dawn, with the forgotten.
WALKING SHADOWS
I
THE LIGHT-HOUSE
The position of a light-house keeper, in a sea infested by submarines,
is a peculiar one; but Peter Ramsay, keeper of the _Hatchets' Light_,
had reasons for feeling that his lonely tower, six miles from the
mainland, was the happiest habitation in the world.
At five o'clock, on a gusty October afternoon, of the year 1916, Peter
had just finished his tea and settled down, with a pipe and the last
number of the _British Weekly_, for five minutes' reading, before he
turned to the secret of his happiness again. Precisely at this moment,
the Commander of the U-99, three miles away to the north, after making
sure through his periscope that there were no patrol boats in the
vicinity, rose to the surface, and began to look for the _Hatchets'_.
He, too, had reasons for wishing to get inside the light-house, if only
for half an hour. It was possible only by trickery; but he thought it
might be done under cover of darkness, and he was about to reconnoiter.
When he first emerged, he had some difficulty in descrying his goal
across that confused sea. His eye was guided by a patch of foam, larger
than the ordinary run of white-caps, and glittering in the evening sun
like a black-thorn blossom. As the sky brightened behind it, he saw,
rising upright, like the single slim pistil of those rough white petals,
the faint shaft of the light-house itself.
He stole nearer, till these pretty fancies were swallowed up in the
savagery of the place. It greeted him with a deep muffled roar as of a
hundred sea-lions, and the air grew colder with its thin mists of spray.
The black thorns and white petals became an angry ship-wrecking ring of
ax-headed rocks, furious with surf; and the delicate pistil assumed the
stature of the Nelson Column.
It made his head reel to look up at its firm height from the tossing
conning-tower, as he circled the reef, making his observations. He noted
the narrow door, twenty feet up, in the smooth wall of the shaft. There
was no way of approaching it until the rope-ladder was let down from
within. But, after midnight, when the custodian's wits might be a little
drowsy, he thought his plan might succeed. He noted the pool on the
reef, and the big boulder near the base of the tower. There was only one
thing which he did not see, an unimportant thing in war-time. He did not
see the beauty of that unconscious monument to the struggling spirit of
man.
Its lofty silence and endurance, in their stern contrast with the tumult
below, had touched the imagination of many wanderers on that sea; for it
soared to the same sky as their spires on land, and its beauty was
heightened by the simplicity of its practical purpose. But it made no
more impression on Captain Bernstein than on the sea-gulls that mewed
and swooped around it.
When his observations were completed, the U-99 sheered off and
submerged. She had to lie "doggo," at the bottom of the sea, for the
next few hours; and there were several of her sisters waiting, a mile or
so to the north, on a fine sandy bottom, to compare notes. Two of these
sisters were big submarine mine-layers of a new type. The U-99 settled
down near them, and began exchanging under-water messages at once.
"If you lay your mines properly, and lie as near as possible to the
harbor mouth, you can leave the rest to me. They will come out in a
hurry, and you ought to sink two-thirds of them." This was the final
message from Captain Bernstein; and, shortly after eight o'clock, all
the other submarines moved off, in the direction of the coast. The U-99
remained in her place, till the hour was ripe.
About midnight, she came to the surface again. Everything seemed
propitious. There were no patrols in sight; and, in any case, Captain
Bernstein knew that they seldom came within a mile of the light-house,
for ships gave it a wide berth, and there was not likely to be good
hunting in the neighborhood. This was why the U-boats had found it so
useful as a rendezvous lately.
It was a moonless night; and, as the U-99 stole towards the _Hatchets'_
for the second time, even Captain Bernstein was impressed by the
spectacle before him. Against a sky of scudding cloud and flying stars,
the light-house rose like the scepter of the oldest Sea-god. The mighty
granite shaft was gripped at the base by black knuckles of rock in a
welter of foam. A hundred feet above, the six-foot reflectors of solid
crystal sheathed the summit with fire, and flashed as they revolved
there like the facets of a single burning jewel.
"They could be smashed with a three-inch gun," thought Bernstein, "and
they are very costly. Many thousand pounds of damage could thus be done,
and perhaps many ships endangered." But he concluded, with some regret,
that his other plans were more promising.
* * * * *
It was long past Peter's usual bedtime; but he was trimming his oil
lamp, just now, in his tiny octagonal sitting-room, half-way up the
tower. He had been busy all the evening, with the secret of his
happiness, which was a very queer one indeed. He was trying to write a
book, trying and failing. His papers were scattered all over the worn
red cloth that tried--and failed--to cover his oak table, exactly as
poor Peter's language was trying to clothe his thought. Indeed, there
were many clues to his life and character in that room, which served
many purposes. It had only one window, hardly larger than the
arrow-defying slits of a Norman castle. It was his kitchen, and a
cooking-stove was fitted compactly into a corner. It was his library;
and, facing the window, there was a book-shelf, containing several
tattered volumes by Mark Rutherford; a Bible; the "Impregnable Rock of
Holy Scripture," by Gladstone; the "First Principles" of Herbert
Spencer; and the Essays of Emerson. There was also a small volume, bound
in blue leather, called "The Wonders of the Deep." The leather binding
was protected by a brown paper jacket, for it was a prize, awarded by
the Westport Grammar School, in 1864, to Peter Ramsay, aged fourteen,
for his excellence in orthography. This, of course, was the beginning of
all his dreams; and it was still their sustainment, though the death of
his father, who had been the captain of a small coasting steamer, had
thrown Peter on the world before he was fifteen, and ended his hopes of
the scholarship, which was to have carried him eventually to the
heights.
The bound volumes were buttressed between piles of the _British Weekly_.
The only picture on the wall was a framed oleograph of Gladstone, his
chief hero, though Peter had long ago renounced the theology of the
Impregnable Rock. Whether the great statesman deserved this worship or
not is a matter for historians. The business of this chronicle is to
record the views of Peter, and these were quite clear.
He was restless to-night. It was his sixty-sixth birthday, and it
reminded him that he was behindhand with his great work. Nobody else had
reminded him of it, for he was quite alone in the world. He was
beginning to wonder, almost for the first time, whether he was really
destined to fail. He had begun to look his age at last; but he was a
fine figure of a man still. His white hair and flowing white beard
framed a face of the richest mahogany brown, in which the blood mantled
like wine over the cheek-bones. His deep eyes, of the marine blue, that
belongs only to the folk of the sea, were haunted sometimes by visionary
fires, like those in the eyes of an imaginative child. He might have
posed for the original fisherman of his first name. Of course, he was
regarded as a little eccentric by the dwellers on the coast, whom he had
often amazed by what they called his "innocence." The red nosed landlord
of the _Blue Dolphin_ had often been heard, on Sundays, to say that we
should all do well if we were as innocent as Peter. When he visited the
little town of Westport (which was now a naval base), the urchins in the
street sometimes expressed their view of the matter by waiting until he
was safely out of hearing, and then crowing like cocks.
Nobody knew of Peter Ramsay's secret, or the urchins might not have
waited at all, and even the kindest of his friends would have regarded
him as daft. But the comedy was not without its tragic aspect. Peter
Ramsay may have been cracked, but it was with the peculiar kind of crack
that you get in the everlasting hills, a rift that shows the sky. With
his imperfect equipment and hopeless lack of technique, he was trying to
write down certain truths, for the lack of which the civilized world, at
that moment, was in danger of destruction.
This does not mean that Peter was the sole possessor of those truths. He
was only one among millions of simple and unsophisticated souls, all
over the world, who possessed those truths dumbly, and knew, with
complete certainty, that their intellectual leaders, for the most part,
lacked them, or had lost them in a multitude of details. These dumb
millions were right about certain important matters; and their leaders,
for all their dialectical cleverness, had lost sight of the truth which
has always proceeded _ex ore infantium_. It was the tragedy of the
twentieth century, and it had culminated in the tragedy of philosophical
Germany. There were certain features of modern books, modern paintings,
and modern music, that mopped and mowed like faces through the bars of a
mad-house, clamoring for dishonor and brutality in every department of
life. These things could not be dissociated from the international
tragedy. They were its heralds. Peter Ramsay was one of those obscure
millions who were the most important figures in Armageddon because they,
and they alone, in our modern world, had retained the right to challenge
the sophistries of Germany. They had not needed the war to teach them
the reality of evil; and if they had sinned, they had never for a moment
tried to prove that they did right in sinning.
Peter knew all this, though he would not have said it in so many words.
In his book, he was trying to meet the main onset of all those
destructive forces. He had realized that the modern world had no faith,
since the creeds had gone into the melting pot; and he was trying to
write down, plainly, for plain men, exactly what he believed.
He turned over the red-lined pages of the big leather-bound ledger, half
diary, half commonplace book, in which, for the last forty years, he had
made his notes. It was a queer medley, beginning with passages written
in his youth, that recalled many of his old struggles. There was one, in
particular, that always reminded him of a school friend named Herbert
Potts, who had eventually won the coveted scholarship. They used to go
for walks together, over the hills, and talk about science and religion.
"So you don't believe there is any future life," Peter had said to him
one day.
"Not for the individual," replied Herbert Potts, adjusting his glasses,
with a singularly intellectual expression.
"But if there is none for the individual, it means the end of all we are
fighting for, because the race will come to an end, eventually," said
Peter. "Why, think, Potts, think, it means that all your progress drops
over a precipice at last. It means that instead of the Figure of Love,
we must substitute the Figure of Death, stretching out his arms and
saying to the whole human race, 'Come unto _Me_! Suffer little children
to come unto _Me_!'"
"I am afraid all the evidence points that way," said Potts, and as he
had just passed the London matriculation examination, the words rang
like a death-knell in Peter's foolish heart. He remembered how the words
had recurred to him in his dreams that night, and how he awoke in the
gray dawn to find that his pillow was wet with tears.
There were many other memories in his book, memories of the long
struggle, the wrestling with the angel, and at last the music of that
loftier certainty which he longed to impart.
A little after midnight, he threw aside the hopeless chaos of the
manuscript, into which he had been trying to distil the essence of his
scrap-book. He rose and went upstairs to his bedroom on the next floor.
It was a little smaller than his sitting-room, and contained a camp-bed,
a wash-stand, with a cracked blue jug and basin, and a chest of
drawers. Over the head of the bed was a photogravure reproduction of
_The Light of the World_; and on the wall, facing it, an illuminated
prayer: _Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord_! Under this,
affixed to the wall, was the telephone which connected the _Hatchets'_
with the Naval Station on the coast, by an under-sea wire.
But in spite of this modern invention, Peter Ramsay had quietly gone
back through the centuries. He looked as if he were talking to a very
great distance indeed, a distance so great that it became an immediate
presence. (Do not mathematicians declare that if you could throw a stone
into infinity, it would return to your hand?) He was kneeling down by
the bed, clasping his hands, lifting his face, closing his eyes, and
moving his lips, exactly like a child at his prayers.
It is an odd fact, and doubtless it would have fortified the great
ironic intellects of our day (though seventy feet in this unfathomable
universe may hardly be reckoned as depth) to know that in the darkness
of the reef outside, seventy feet below, four shadowy figures had just
landed from a collapsible boat, belonging to the U-99. Three of them
were now hauling it out of reach of the waves. The fourth was Captain
Bernstein. He stood, fingering his revolver, and looking up at the two
lighted windows.
Concerning these things, Peter received no enlightenment; but he rose
from his knees with a glowing countenance, and hurried down to his work
again.
"I'll begin at the beginning," he muttered.
He took a clean sheet of paper and headed it: _Chapter I_. Under this,
he wrote the first four words of the Bible: "_In the beginning, God_."
Then he crossed them out, and wrote again: "_First Principles_," as a
better means of approach to the moderns.
He consulted his ledger, and decided that a certain paragraph, written
long ago, must take the first place in his book. He wrote it down just
as it stood.
"We have forgotten the first principles of straight thinking--the
axioms. We have forgotten that the whole is greater than the part. Hence
comes much fallacy among modern writers, even great ones, like that
pessimist who has said that man, the creature, possesses more nobility
than that from which he came.
"One thing must be acknowledged as _known_, even by agnostics,--namely,
that if we have experienced here on earth the grandeurs of the soul of
Beethoven and Shakespeare, there must be at the heart of things, before
ever this earth was born, something infinitely greater. It is infinitely
greater because it is the Producer--not the Product.
"There are some who say that this is only putting the mystery back a
stage. This is not a true statement. The mystery is that there should be
anything in existence at all. The moment you have a grain of sand in
existence, the impossible has happened, and the miracle of the things
that we see around us can only be referred to some primal miracle,
greater than all, because it contained all their possibilities within
itself.
"Beyond this, we are all agnostics. But our reason, building on what we
see around us, carries us thus far. Modern thinkers have reversed this
process. They begin with man as the summit, and explain him by something
less. This again they explain by something less; and slowly whittle away
all the visible universe till they arrive at the smallest possible
residuum. There is no more tragic spectacle in this age than that of
the philosophers who, like Herbert Spencer, having reduced the whole
universe to a nebula, try to bridge the gulf between this nebula and
nothingness. The great intellect of Spencer grovels below the mental
capacity of a child of ten as he makes this absurd attempt, announcing
that perhaps the primal nebula might be conceived as thinning itself out
until nothingness were reached. It is the agnostics who evade the issue.
For there are certain things here and now which we must accept. We know
that Love and Thought are greater than the dust to which we consign
them. There is only one choice before us. Either there is nothing behind
these things, or else there is everything behind them. If we say that
there is nothing behind them, all our human struggle goes for nothing.
We abandon even the axioms of our reason, and we are doubly traitors to
the divine light that lives in every man. If we say that there is
everything behind the universe, each of us has his own private door into
that divine reality, the door of his own heart."
At this moment three of the shadowy figures on the reef below were
ensconcing themselves behind a boulder of rock, close to the base of
the tower, and the fourth figure was groping about on the reef,
collecting a handful of stones.
"I have heard men say," Peter continued, "that they cannot believe in a
God who would permit all the suffering on this earth, or else he must be
a limited God who cannot help himself.
"This is another question involving the freedom of the will. How long
would a world hold together if we could all depend on a miracle to help
us at every turn, or even to save the innocent from the consequences of
our guilt? Those who ask the question usually assume that our sufferings
here are the end of all. The fact that the opposite assumption accords
better with our sense of justice is surely no reason for denying it,
especially when it follows from the answer given in the first paragraph.
These men, asking for miraculous proof of omnipotence, to save the world
from suffering, are asking for nothing less than the abolition of law in
the universe; and it is only in law that freedom can be found. The
rising of the sun cannot be timed to suit each individual; but this is
what modern thinkers demand. They say that an all-powerful God could do
even this. When they have settled between themselves exactly what they
wish, doubtless the Almighty could answer their prayer. Till then, it is
better to say 'Thy law is a lantern unto my feet.'"
At this moment a stone came through the little window behind Peter. The
glass scattered itself in splinters all over his red tablecloth. He
leapt to his feet, blew the lamp out, and went to the window. He could
see nothing in the darkness at first; but as he stood and listened, he
thought he heard a voice in the pauses of the wind, crying for help.
Instantly, he hurried out and down the winding stair to the narrow door.
He shot back the great bolts, and opened it. He stood there fifteen feet
above the rocks, framed in the opening, his white hair and beard blowing
about him, as he peered to right and left.
"Come down and help us, for God's sake!" the voice cried again.
And as Peter's eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw a dark
figure crawling laboriously over the reef to the foot of the tower,
where it fell as if in a faint. Peter's only thought was that a fishing
boat had foundered. He dropped the rope ladder at once and descended.
He stooped over the fallen man. In the same flash of time, he recognized
that this was an enemy seaman, and three more shadowy figures leapt from
their hiding-place behind a boulder of rock and gripped him.
"There is no cause for fear," said their leader, rising to his feet.
"Our boat has foundered; but we shall die of cold if we stay out here.
You must take us into the light-house."
Peter regarded them curiously, saying nothing. The leader went up the
ladder, and beckoned to the others, who ordered Peter to go next, and
then followed him.
"I regret that it was necessary to smash your window," said Captain
Bernstein, as the queer group gathered round the lamp in Peter's living
room. "But we might have died out there on a night like this, before you
could have heard us shouting. We shall not harm you, although there are
four of us. We are in danger ourselves. My friends and I are sick of
this work; and, if we are sure of good treatment, we are prepared to
help the British with all the information in our possession."
"How did you escape from the submarine?" said Peter.
"We were alone on deck," replied Bernstein, "and we took our chance of
swimming for the _Hatchets'_."
Peter surveyed the four drenched figures thoughtfully. One of them was
not realistic enough to satisfy him. There were several obviously dry
patches about the shoulders.
"There's a pool on the reef," said Peter at last to this man. "Did you
find it too cold?"
A change came over Bernstein's face at once.
"There's no time to be wasted," he said. "If you want to help your
country, go to your telephone and give this message to the naval base,
exactly as I tell it to you. You must say you have just sighted three
submarines, two hundred yards due north of the _Hatchets'_ light. You
must say that you have sighted them yourself, because they would not
take our word for it; and you must not say anything about our being here
at present. If you depart from these instructions, you will be shot
instantly. Now, then, go to your telephone and speak."
Peter gathered up his beloved leather-bound book from the table, and
held it under his arm. It was his most precious possession, and the
protective act was quite unconscious. Then, for the second time that
night, he went into his bedroom, followed by the four Germans. He was
white and shaking. He could not understand what these men were after,
and the message they proposed seemed to be useful to his own side. After
all, the only kind of message that he could send would be something very
like it. He might as well deliver it, since these crazy autocrats had
decided that it must be given thus, and not otherwise.
He laid the precious book down on the bed, turned to the telephone, and
lifted the receiver to his ear. As he did so, the cold muzzle of a
revolver pressed against his right temple. The first buzzings of the
telephone resolved themselves into a voice from the coast of England,
asking what he wanted. Then, it seemed as if a new light were thrown
upon the character of the words he was about to speak. He knew
instinctively that, if he spoke them, he would be working for the enemy.
In the same instant, he saw exactly what he must do.
"This is Peter Ramsay speaking," he said, "from the _Hatchets' Light_. I
have just sighted three submarines due north of the _Hatchets'_."
He paused. Then, with a rush, he said:
"Trap! Germans in light-house, forcing me to say this!"
The hand of one of his captors struck down the hook of the receiver. In
the same instant, the shot rang out, and Peter Ramsay dropped sidelong,
a mere bundle of old clothes and white hair, dabbled with blood.
The German at the telephone replaced the receiver on the hook which he
was still holding down.
"Crazy old fool," muttered Bernstein. He was staring at the red-lined
scrap-book on the bed. It lay open at a page describing in Peter's big
sprawling hand, an open-air service among some Welsh miners which he had
once witnessed, a memorial service on the day of Gladstone's funeral. He
had been greatly impressed by their choral singing of what was supposed
to be Gladstone's favorite hymn, and it ended with a quotation:
"_While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eyelids close in death,
When I soar through tracts unknown,
See Thee on Thy Judgment Throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me.
Let me hide myself in Thee._"
The murderer stooped and laid the revolver near the right hand of the
dead man. One of his men touched him on the elbow as he did it, and
pointed to Peter's own old-fashioned revolver on the little shelf beside
the bed. Captain Bernstein nodded and smiled. The idea was a good one,
and he put Peter's own revolver in his stiffening fingers. He had just
succeeded in making it look quite a realistic suicide, when the
telephone bell rang sharply, making him start upright, as if a hand were
laid upon his shoulder. He took the receiver again and listened.
"Can't hear," he said, trying to imitate Peter's gruff voice. "No--I
dropped the telephone on the floor--no--it was a mistake--no--I said
three submarines--two hundred yards due north of the _Hatchets'
Light_--all right, sir."
He hung the receiver up again, and looked at the others.
"We may succeed yet," he said. "Come quickly."
A minute later they were standing on the lee of the reef. Bernstein
blew a whistle thrice. It was answered from the darkness by another,
shrill as the cry of a sea-gull; and in five minutes more, the four men
and the collapsible boat were aboard their submarine. It submerged at
once, and went due south at twelve knots an hour below the unrevealing
seas.
* * * * *
Commander Pickering, the officer on duty at the naval base, was not sure
whether it was worth while paying any attention to the message from the
old man at the _Hatchets'_. He went to the window and looked at the
starry flash of the light-house in the distance.
"Old Peter probably sighted a school of porpoises. They frightened him
into a fit," he said.
The two men of the naval reserve who were waiting for orders, watched
him like schoolboys expecting a holiday; but he could not make up his
mind. He left the window and studied the big chart on the wall, where
the movements of a dozen submarines were marked in red ink from point to
point as the daily reports came in, till the final red star announced
their destruction. He chewed his lip as he pondered. There was a fleet
of submarine destroyers in Westport Harbor at this moment, but they had
only just come in from a long spell, and he was loath to turn them out
on a wild-goose chase.
"Confound the old idiot," he muttered again. "He can't even talk
straight. Wanted to say that he had seen submarines, and starts
jabbering about Germans in the light-house. Ring him up again, Dawkins,
and find out whether he is drunk or talking in his sleep."
Dawkins went to the telephone. For five minutes, he alternately growled
into the mouth-piece and moved the hook up and down.
"Don't get any answer at all, sir."
"That's queer. He can't be asleep yet after that beautiful
conversation."
Commander Pickering went to the window again with his night-glasses.
"Damned if there isn't a light in both his rooms, and it's getting on
for two o'clock in the morning. There's something rum happening. We'll
take a sporting chance on it, and make a regular sweep of the bay. I'll
go out to the _Hatchets'_ myself on the _Silver King_. I think the old
boy is dotty, and I suppose the Admiral will have my scalp for it
to-morrow; but there's just one chance in a hundred thousand that Mr.
Peter Ramsay did spot a squadron of U-boats. If so, we may as well
strafe them properly."
He went to the telephone himself this time, and began issuing orders all
over the base. His final sentence was an after-thought, an echo and an
elaboration of the queer warning he had received from the _Hatchets'_.
"Don't go straight out. Make a sweep round by the south. There may be a
trap; and you may as well let the dirigibles go ahead of you and do some
scouting."
* * * * *
"It often happens with these chaps," said Commander Pickering to
Dawkins, as they stood in Peter's bedroom an hour before dawn. "It's the
lonely life that does it. They ought always to have a couple of men in
these places; and, if it hadn't been for the war, of course, there would
have been two men at the _Hatchets'_. Look here, at all this stuff. The
poor chap had religious mania or something. See what he has written on
these scraps of paper, twenty or thirty times over, every blessed text
he could find about lanterns and lights, and it's all mixed up with bits
from Herbert Spencer on the Unknowable."
"It was well known all over Westport," said Dawkins, "that old Peter had
a screw loose about religion, but he seemed such a reliable old boy. You
don't think he could have seen anything to set him off like, sir? It
seems funny that the door was left open like that."
"Lord knows what he may have been playing at before he did this. We'd
better go upstairs, and have a look at the light."
The two men plodded up the steep winding stair, poking into every corner
on their way up, till they emerged on the little railed platform under
the great crystal moons of the lantern. The glare blinded them.
"Turn those lights off," said Commander Pickering.
Dawkins ducked into the tower and obeyed.
Half a dozen patrol boats, each with its tiny black gun, at bow and
stern, were cruising to and fro over rough seas, that looked from that
height very much like the wrinkles on poor old Peter's gray face.
Another sailor hauled himself to the platform, breathing hard from the
ascent, and saluted.
"A telephone message for you, sir," he said. "There's been a lot of
mines discovered off the point. We should have run straight into them,
if we had neglected your warning and steered a straight course out."
Commander Pickering looked at Dawkins in silence. Far away to eastward,
the dawn was breaking, red as blood, through a low fringe of ragged gray
clouds. In a few moments the crystal moons of the _Hatchets' Light_ were
afire with it, and breaking it up into the colors of the rainbow round
the black figures of the three men.
"We'll have to apologize to Peter," said Dawkins at last.
"It was a very lucky coincidence," said Commander Pickering; and he led
the way downstairs at a smart pace to Peter's room again.
"There's no doubt that he shot himself," he said. "Look at all this. The
man was stark mad. See what he has written on the title-page, under his
own name: '_Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my
Church_.'"
II
UNCLE HYACINTH
On a bright morning, early in the year 1917, Herr Sigismund Krauss,
secret agent for the German Government, stopped at the entrance of
Harrods' Stores, looked at himself in one of the big mirrors, thought
that he really did look a little like Bismarck, and adjusted his tie. To
relieve the tension, let it be added that this scene was not enacted in
London, but in the big branch of Harrods' that had recently been opened
in Buenos Aires.
Nevertheless, it was because it looked so very much like the London
branch that it had rasped the nerves of Herr Krauss. He was in a very
nervous condition, owing to the state of his digestive system, and he
was easily irritated. He had been annoyed in the first place because the
German houses in Buenos Aires were unable to sell him several things
which he thought necessary for the voyage he was about to take across
the Atlantic. He had been almost angry when the bald-headed Englishman
who had waited on him in Harrods' advised him to buy a safety waistcoat.
All that he needed for his safety was the fraudulent Swedish passport,
made out in the name of Erik Neilsen, which he carried in his breast
pocket.
"I am an American citizen," he said, complicating matters still further.
"I am sailing to Barcelona on an Argentine ship, vich the Germans are
pledged nod to sink."
"This is the exact model of the waistcoat that saved the life of Lord
Winchelsea," said the Englishman. "I advise you to procure one. You
never know what those damned Germans will do."
Here was a chance of raising a little feeling against the United States,
and Herr Krauss never lost an opportunity. He pretended to be even more
angry than he really was.
"That is a most ungalled-for suggestion to a citizen of a neutral
guntry," he snorted. "I shall report id to the authorities."
These mixed emotions had disarranged his tie. But he had obtained all
that he wanted, and when he emerged into the street the magic of the
blue sky and the brilliance of the sunlight on the stream of motor cars
and gay dresses cheered him greatly. After all, it was not at all like
London; and there were still places where a good German might speak his
mind, if he did not insist too much on his allegiance.
He was in a great hurry, for his ship, the _Hispaniola_, sailed that
afternoon. When he reached his hotel he had only just time enough to
pack his hand luggage and drive down to the docks. His trunk had gone
down in advance. It was very important, indeed, that he should not miss
the boat. There was trouble pending, which might lead to his arrest if
he remained in Argentina for another week; and there was urgent--and
profitable--work for him to do in Europe.
In his cab on the way to the docks he examined the three letters which
had been waiting for him at the hotel. Two of them were requests for a
settlement of certain bills. "They can wait," he murmured to himself
euphemistically, "till after the war."
The third letter ran thus:
_Dear Erik: Bon voyage! Most amusing news. Operation successful.
Uncle Hyacinth's appetite splendid. Six meals daily._
_Yours affectionately,_
_Bolo._
This was the most annoying thing of all. Herr Krauss knew nothing about
any operation. He knew even less about Uncle Hyacinth; and in order to
interpret the message he would require the code--Number Six, as
indicated by the last word but two, and the code was locked up in his
big brass-bound steamer trunk. It was not likely to be anything that
required immediate attention. He had received a number of code messages
lately which did not even call for a reply. It was merely irritating.
When he reached the docks he found that his trunk was buried under a
mountain of other baggage on the lower deck of the _Hispaniola_, and
that he would not be able to get at it before they sailed. He had just
ten minutes to dash ashore and ring up the German legation on the
telephone. He wasted nearly all of them in getting the right change to
slip into the machine. A most exasperating conversation followed.
"I wish to speak to the German minister."
"He is away for the week-end. This is his secretary."
"This is Sigismund Krauss speaking."
"Oh, yes."
"I have received a message about Uncle Hyacinth."
"I can't hear."
"Uncle Hyacinth's appetite!" This was bellowed.
"Oh, yes." The voice was very cautious and polite.
"I want to know if it's important."
"Whose appetite did you say?"
"Uncle Hyacinth's!" This was like Hindenburg himself thundering.
There seemed to be some sort of consultation at the other end of the
wire. Then the reply came very clearly:
"I'm sorry, but we cannot talk over the telephone. I can't hear anything
you say. Please put your question in writing."
It was an obvious lie for any one to say he could not hear the
tremendous voice in which Herr Krauss had made his touching inquiry; but
he fully understood the need for caution. He had tapped too many wires
himself to blame his colleagues for timidity. He had only a minute to
burst out of the telephone booth and regain the deck, before the
gang-planks were hoisted in and the ship began to slide away to the open
sea.
He was more than annoyed, he was disgusted, to find that half the people
on board were talking English. Two or three of them, including the
captain, were actually British subjects; while the purser, a few of the
stewards and several passengers were citizens of the United States.
It was late that evening and the shore lights had all died away over the
pitch-black water when the brass-bound trunk belonging to Mr. Neilsen,
as we must call him henceforward, was carried into his stateroom by two
grunting stewards. The mysterious letter could be of no use to the
Fatherland now, and he certainly did not expect it to be important from
a selfish point of view. Also, he was hungry, and he did not hurry over
his dinner in order to decode it. It was only his curiosity that
impelled him to do so before he turned in; but a kind of petrefaction
overspread his well-fed countenance as the significance of the message
dawned upon him. He sat on a suitcase in his somewhat cramped quarters
and translated it methodically, looking up the meaning of each word in
the code, like a very unpleasant schoolboy with a dictionary. He was
nothing if not efficient, and he wrote it all down in pencil on a sheet
of note-paper, in two parallel columns, thus:
_Bon voyage_ _U-boats_
_Most_ _Instructed_
_Amusing_ _Sink_
_News_ _Argentine_
_Operation_ _Ships_
_Successful_ _Destruction_
_Uncle Hyacinth's_ _Hispaniola_
_Appetite_ _Essential_
_Splendid_ _Cancel_
_Six_ _Code number_
_Meals_ _Passage_
_Daily_ _Immediately_
Perhaps to make sure that his eyes did not deceive him Mr. Neilsen wrote
the translation out again mechanically, in its proper form, at the foot
of the page, thus:
_U-boats instructed sink Argentine ships. Destruction Hispaniola
essential. Cancel passage immediately._
It seemed to have exactly the same meaning. It was ghastly. He knew
exactly what that word "destruction" meant as applied to the
_Hispaniola_. He had been present at a secret meeting only a month ago,
at which it was definitely decided that it would be inadvisable to carry
out a certain amiable plan of sinking the Argentine ships without
leaving any traces, while an appearance of friendship was maintained
with the Argentine Government. Evidently this policy had suddenly been
reversed. There would be a concentration of half a dozen U-boats, a
swarm of them probably, for the express purpose of sinking the
_Hispaniola_, just as they had concentrated on the _Lusitania_; but in
this case there would be no survivors at all. The ship's boats would be
destroyed by gunfire, with all their occupants, because it was necessary
that there should be no evidence of what had happened; and necessity
knows no law. There was no chance of their failing. They would not dare
to fail; and he himself had organized the system by which the most
precise information with regard to sailings was conveyed to the German
Admiralty.
He crushed all the papers into his breast pocket and hurried up on deck.
It was horribly dark. At the smoking-room door he met one of the ship's
officers.
"Tell me," said Mr. Neilsen, "is there any possibility of our--of our
meeting a ship--er--bound the other way?"
The officer stared at him, wondering whether Mr. Neilsen was drunk or
seasick.
"Certainly," he said; "but it's not likely for some days on this
course."
"Will it be possible for me to be taken off and return? I have found
among my mail an important letter. A friend is very ill."
"I'm afraid it's quite impossible. In the first place we are not likely
to meet anything but cattle ships till we are in European waters."
"Oh, but in this case, even a cattle ship--" said Mr. Neilsen with great
feeling.
"It is impossible, I am afraid, in any case. It is absolutely against
the rules; and in war-time, of course, they are more strict than ever."
"Even if I were to pay?"
"Time is not for sale in this war, unfortunately. It's _verboten_," said
the officer with a smile; and that of course Mr. Neilsen understood at
once.
He was naturally an excitable man, and his inability to obtain his wish
made him feel that he would give all his worldly possessions at this
moment for a berth in the dirtiest cattle boat that ever tramped the
seas, if only it were going in the opposite direction.
He returned to his stateroom almost panic-stricken. He sat down on the
suitcase and held his head between his hands while he tried to think. He
was a slippery creature and his fellow countrymen had often admired his
"slimness" in former crises; but it was difficult to discover a cranny
big enough for a cockroach here, unless he made a clean breast of it to
the captain. In that case he would be incriminated with all the
belligerents and most of the neutrals. There would be no place in the
world where he could hide his head, except perhaps Mexico. He would
probably be penniless as well.
At this point in his cogitations there was a knock on the door, which
startled him like a pistol shot. He opened it a cautious inch or
two--for his papers were all over his berth--and a steward handed him a
telegram.
"This was waiting for you at the purser's office, sir," he said. "The
mail has only just been sorted. If you wish to reply by wireless you can
do so up to midnight." The man was smiling as if he knew the contents.
There had been some jesting, in fact, about this telegram at the office.
A gleam of hope shot through Mr. Neilsen's chaotic brain as he opened
the envelope with trembling fingers. Perhaps it contained reassuring
news. His face fell. It simply repeated the former sickening message
about Uncle Hyacinth. But the steward had reminded him of one last
resource.
"Yes," he said, trying hard to be calm; "I shall want to send a reply."
"Here is a form, sir. You'll find the regulations printed on the back."
Mr. Neilsen closed the door and sank, gasping, on to the suitcase to
examine the form. The regulations stated that no message would be
accepted in code. This did not worry him at first, as he thought he
could concoct an apparently straightforward and harmless message with
the elaborate vocabulary of his Number Six. But the code had not been
intended for agonizing moments like these. It abounded in commercial
phrases, medical terms and domestic greetings; and though there were a
number of alternative words and synonyms it was not so easy as he had
expected to make a coherent message which should be apparently a reply
to the telegram he had received. After half an hour of seeking for the
_mot juste_ which would have melted the heart of a Flaubert, he arrived
at the purser's office with wild eyes and handed in the yellow form.
"I wish to send this by Marconi wireless," he said.
The purser tapped each word with his pencil as he read it over:
_Splendid. Most--amusing. Use--heaps--butter. Congratulate--Uncle
Hyacinth._
_Love._
_Erik._
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the purser, "but we can only accept
messages _en clair_."
"It is as clear as I can make it," said Mr. Neilsen; and he was telling
the truth. "It is the answer to the telegram which was handed to me on
board."
"It looks a little unusual, sir."
"It is gonnected with an unusual operation," said Mr. Neilsen, who was
getting thoroughly rattled, "and goncerns the diet of the batient."
"I see," said the purser. "Well, I'll take your word for it, sir, and
tell the operator."
At this moment the steward, who had entered Mr. Neilsen's stateroom
during his absence, was laying out that gentleman's pyjamas on his
berth. He shook them out in order to fold them properly; and in doing so
he shook a round ball of paper on to the floor. He unrolled it and
discovered two parallel columns of words, which gave a new meaning to
the telegram. He put it in his pocket, looked carefully round the room,
took all the torn scraps out of the wastepaper basket and put those also
in his pocket. Then he went out, just in time to avoid meeting Mr.
Neilsen, and trotted by another companionway to the purser's office.
Ten minutes later a consultation was held in the captain's cabin. The
two messages and the scraps of paper were spread out on the table, while
the purser took another large, clean sheet, on which he jotted down as
many of the words as could be deciphered, together with their
equivalents, in two parallel columns, almost as neat as those of Mr.
Neilsen himself. When he had finished there was a very nice little
vocabulary--though it was only a small part of the code; and in a very
short time they were staring in amazement at the full translation of the
messages concerning Uncle Hyacinth. Then they proceeded to business.
Captain Abbey was an Englishman who had commanded many ships in many
parts of the world. He had worked his way up from before the mast, and
in moments of emotion he was still inclined to be reckless with his
aitches. He was very large and red-faced, and looked as the elder Weller
might have looked if he had taken to the sea in youth. Captain Abbey was
not a vindictive man; but the _Hispaniola_ was the finest ship he had
yet commanded, and the opportunity had come to him as a result of the
war and the general dearth of neutral skippers who were ready to take
risks. He was not anxious to lose the ship on his first voyage, and his
face grew redder and redder as he sat reading the messages on the table.
"What's the translation of '_onions_'?" he said.
"I think it means '_abroad_,' according to this column," said the
purser.
"Put it down. Now, what does '_tonsils_' mean?"
"_Tonsils? Tonsils?_ Oh, yes; here we are. It means '_von Tirpitz_.'"
"The devil it does," said Captain Abbey.
"And what does '_meat_' mean?"
"'_German_,' I think."
"And '_colossal_'?"
"I had it here a moment ago. Ah, '_colossal_' means _twenty_."
"Just like 'em," said the captain. "Here's _appendix_! I suppose they
find these medical terms useful. How do you translate that?"
"_Appendix?_ H'm; let me see. Appendix means _false_."
"'E deserves to 'ave it cut out with a blunt saw, blast 'is eyes. And
what d'you make of this message 'e's just 'anded in?"
"As far as I can make it out this is the translation: 'Cancel
instructions sink; message too late; aboard _Hispaniola_.'"
"And the lily-livered little skunk wanted to get orf and save his own
'ide! But 'e was quite ready to let the rest of us go to 'ell! There are
twenty women and four children aboard, too; and we're guaranteed by the
German Government! It would serve 'im right if we made 'im walk the
plank, like they used to do. But drowning's too good for 'im. If we put
'im in irons 'e'll know we're on the watch, and that'll ease 'is mind
too much. I know what to do with 'im when we get 'im on the other side.
But in the meantime we'll give that little bit of sauerkraut a taste of
'is own medicine. 'Ere's the idea: We've got enough of the code to work
it. We'll give him another radiogram to take to bed with 'im to-night.
'Ow's this? Steward, get me one of them yellow telegraph forms and one
of the proper envelopes. We'll fix it all up in good shape. And, look
'ere, steward; not a word about this to any one, you understand?"
The steward departed on his errand. Captain Abbey took another sheet of
paper and laboriously, with tongue outthrust, constructed a sentence,
consulting the purser's two columns from time to time, and occasionally
chuckling as he altered or added a word.
The purser slapped his thighs with delight as he followed the work over
the captain's shoulder; and when the form arrived he wrote out the
captain's composition in a very large, clear hand, with the fervor of a
man announcing good news. Then he licked the flap of the yellow
envelope, closed it, addressed it and handed it to the steward.
"Give this wireless message to Mr. Neilsen in half an hour. Tell him it
has just arrived. If there is any reply to-night he must send it before
twelve o'clock."
"I 'ope that will make 'im sit up and think," said Captain Abbey. "I'll
consider what steps I'd better take to save the ship; and then I shall
probably 'ave a wireless or two of my own to send elsewhere."