flattered, by the suggestion. He was quite ready to touch the finger
tips of Miss Depew, and try again. She had a small hand. He could not
help remembering the legend that after the Creator had made the rosy
fingers of the first woman the devil had added those tiny, gemlike
nails; but he thought the devil had done his work, in this case, like an
expert jeweler. Mr. Neilsen was always ready to bow before efficiency,
even if its weapons were no more imposing than a manicure set.
The ouija board was quiet for a moment or two. Then the pencil began to
move across the paper. Mr. Neilsen did not understand why. Miss Depew
certainly looked quite blank; and the movement seemed to be independent
of their own consciousness. It was making marks on the paper, and that
was all he expected it to do.
At last Miss Depew withdrew her hand and exclaimed: "It's too
exhausting. Read it, somebody!"
Mr. Pennyfeather picked it up, and laughed.
"Looks to me as if the spirits are a bit erratic to-night. But the
writing's clear enough, in a scrawly kind of way. I'm afraid it's utter
nonsense."
He began to read it aloud:
"Exquisitely amusing! Uncle Hyacinth's little appendix----"
At this moment he was interrupted. Mr. Neilsen had risen to his feet as
if he were being hauled up by an invisible rope attached to his neck.
His movement was so startling that Mrs. Pennyfeather emitted a faint,
mouselike screech. They all stared at him, waiting to see what he would
do next.
But Mr. Neilsen recovered himself with great presence of mind. He drew a
handkerchief from his trousers pocket, as if he had risen only for that
purpose. Then he sat down again.
"Bardon me," he said; "I thought I vas aboud to sneeze. Vat is the rest
of id?"
He sat very still now, but his mouth opened and shut dumbly, like the
mouth of a fish, while Mr. Pennyfeather read the message through to the
end:
"Exquisitely amusing! Uncle Hyacinth's little appendix cut out.
Throat enlarged. Consuming immense quantities pork sausages; also
onions wholesale. Best greetings. Fond love. Kisses."
"I'm afraid they're playing tricks on us to-night," said Mr.
Pennyfeather. "They do sometimes, you know. Or it may be fragments of
two or three messages which have got mixed."
"Hold on, though!" said the captain. "Didn't you send a wireless the
other day, Mr. Neilsen, to somebody by the name of Hyacinth?"
"Well--ha! ha! ha! It was aboud somebody by that name. I suppose I must
have moved my hand ungonsciously. I've been thinking aboud him a great
deal. He's ill, you see."
"How very interestin'," cooed Mrs. Pennyfeather, drawing her chair
closer. "Have you really an uncle named Hyacinth? Such a pretty name for
an elderly gentleman, isn't it? Doesn't the rest of the message mean
anything to you, then, Mr. Neilsen?"
He stared at her, and then he stared at the message, licking his lips.
Then he stared at Captain Abbey and Miss Depew. He could read nothing in
their faces but the most childlike amusement. The thing that chilled his
heart was the phrase about onions. He could not remember the meaning,
but it looked like one of those innocent commercial phrases that had
been embodied in the code. Was it possible that in his agitation he had
unconsciously written this thing down?
He crumpled up the paper and thrust it into his side pocket. Then he
sniggered mirthlessly. Greatly to his relief the captain began talking
to Miss Depew, as if nothing had happened, about the Tower of London;
and he was able to slip away before they brought the subject down to
modern times.
III
Mr. Neilsen may have been a very skeptical person. Perhaps his intellect
was really paralyzed by panic, for the first thing he did on reaching
his stateroom that night was to get out the code and translate the
message of the ouija board. It was impossible that it should mean
anything; but he was impelled by something stronger than his reason. He
broke into a cold sweat when he discovered that it had as definite a
meaning as any of the preceding messages; and though it was not the kind
of thing that would have been sent by wireless he recognized that it was
probably far nearer the truth than any of them. This is how he
translated it:
"Imperative sink _Hispaniola_ after treacherous threat. Wiser
sacrifice life. Otherwise death penalty inevitable. Flight abroad
futile. Enviable position. Fine opportunity hero."
He could not understand how this thing had happened. Was it possible
that in great crises an agitated mind two thousand miles away might
create a corresponding disturbance in another mind which was
concentrated on the same problem? Had he evolved these phrases of the
code out of some subconscious memory and formed them into an
intelligible sentence? Trickery was the only other alternative, and that
was out of the question. All these people were of inferior intellect.
Besides, they were in the same peril themselves; and obviously ignorant
of it. His code had never been out of his possession. Yet he felt as if
he had been under the microscope. What did it mean? He felt as if he
were going mad.
He crept into his berth in a dazed and blundering way, like a fly that
has just crawled out of a honey pot. After an hour of feverish tossing
from side to side he sank into a doze, only to dream of the bald-headed
man in Harrods' who wanted to sell him a safety waistcoat, the exact
model of the one that saved Lord Winchelsea. The most hideous series of
nightmares followed. He dreamed that the sides of the ship were
transparent, and that he saw the periscopes of innumerable submarines
foaming alongside through the black water. He could not cry out, though
he was the only soul aboard that saw them, for his mouth seemed to be
fastened with official sealing wax--black sealing wax--stamped with the
German eagle. Then to his horror he saw the quick phosphorescent lines
of a dozen torpedoes darting toward the _Hispaniola_ from all points of
the compass. A moment later there was an explosion that made him leap,
gasping and fighting for breath, out of his berth. But this was not a
dream. It was the most awful explosion he had ever heard, and his room
stank of sulphur. He seized the cork jacket that hung on his wall,
pulled his door open and rushed out, trying to fasten it round him as he
went.
When the steward arrived, with the purser, they had the stateroom to
themselves; and after the former had thrown the remains of the rocket
through the porthole, together with the ingenious contrivance that had
prevented it from doing any real damage under Mr. Neilsen's berth, the
purser helped him with his own hands to carry the brass-bound trunk down
to his office.
"We'll tell him that his room was on fire and we had to throw the
contents overboard. We'll give him another room and a suit of old
clothes for to-morrow. Then we can examine his possessions at leisure.
We've got the code now; but there may be lots of other things in his
pockets. That's right. I hope he doesn't jump overboard in his fright.
It's lucky that we warned these other staterooms. It made a hellish row.
You'd better go and look for him as soon as we get this thing out of the
way."
But it was easier to look for Mr. Neilsen than to find him. The steward
ransacked the ship for three-quarters of an hour, and he began to fear
that the worst had happened. He was peering round anxiously on the boat
deck when he heard an explosive cough somewhere over his head. He looked
up into the rigging as if he expected to find Mr. Neilsen in the
crosstrees; but nobody was to be seen, except the watch in the crow's
nest, dark against the stars.
"Mr. Neilsen!" he called. "Mr. Neilsen!"
"Are you galling me?" a hoarse voice replied. It seemed to come out of
the air, above and behind the steward. He turned with a start, and a
moment later he beheld the head of Mr. Neilsen bristling above the
thwarts of Number Six boat. He had been sitting in the bottom of the
boat to shelter himself from the wind, and some symbolistic Puck had
made him fasten his cork jacket round his pyjamas very firmly, but
upside down, so that he certainly would have been drowned if he had been
thrown into the water.
"It's all right, Mr. Neilsen," said the steward. "The danger is over."
"Are ve torpedoed?" The round-eyed visage with the bristling hair was
looking more and more like Bismarck after a debauch of blood and iron,
and it did not seem inclined to budge.
"No, sir! The shock damaged your room a little, but we must have left
the enemy behind. You had a lucky escape, sir."
"My Gott! I should think so, indeed! The ship is not damaged in any
vay?"
"No, sir. There was a blaze in your room, and I'm afraid they had to
throw all your things overboard. But the purser says he can rig you out
in the morning; and we have another room ready for you."
"Then I vill gum down," said Mr. Neilsen. And he did so. His bare feet
paddled after the steward on the cold wet deck. At the companionway they
met the shadowy figure of the captain.
"I'm afraid you've 'ad an unpleasant upset, Mr. Neilsen," he said.
"Onbleasant! It vos derrible! Derrible! But you see, captain, I vas
correct. And this is only the beginning, aggording to my information. I
hope now you vill take every bre-caution."
"They must have mistaken us for a British ship, Mr. Neilsen, I'm afraid.
I'm having the ship lighted up so that they can't mistake us again. You
see? I've got a searchlight playing on the Argentine flag aloft; and
we've got the name of the ship in illuminated letters three feet high,
all along the hull. They could read it ten miles away. Come and look!"
Mr. Neilsen looked with deepening horror.
"But dis is madness!" he gurgled. "The _Hispaniola_ is marked, I tell
you, marked, for gomplete destruction!"
The captain shook his head with a smile of skepticism that withered Mr.
Neilsen's last hope.
"Very vell, then I should brefer an inside cabin this time."
"Yes. You don't get so much fresh air, of course; but I think it's
better on the 'ole. If we're torpedoed we shall all go down together.
But you're safer from gunfire in an inside room."
The unhappy figure in pyjamas followed the steward without another word.
The captain watched him with a curious expression on his broad red face.
He was not an unkindly man; and if this German in the cork jacket had
not been so ready to let everybody else aboard drown he might have felt
the sympathy for him that most people feel toward the fat cowardice of
Falstaff. But he thought of the women and children, and his heart
hardened.
As soon as Mr. Neilsen had gone below, the lights were turned off, and
the ship went on her way like a shadow. The captain proceeded to send
out some wireless messages of his own. In less than an hour he received
an answer, and almost immediately the ship's course was changed.
It was a strange accident that nobody on board seemed to have any
clothes that would fit Mr. Neilsen on the following day. He appeared at
lunch in a very old suit, which the dapper little Mr. Pennyfeather had
worn out in the bank. Mr. Neilsen was now a perfect illustration of the
schooldays of Prince Blood and Iron, at some period when that awful
effigy had outgrown his father's pocket and burst most of his buttons.
But his face was so haggard and gray that even the women pitied him. At
four o'clock in the afternoon the captain asked him to come up to the
bridge, and began to put him out of his misery.
"Mr. Neilsen," he said, "I'm afraid you've had a very anxious voyage;
and, though it's very unusual, I think in the circumstances it's only
fair to put you on another ship if you prefer it. You'll 'ave your
chance this evening. Do you see those little smudges of smoke out
yonder? Those are some British patrol boats; and if you wish I'm sure I
can get them to take you off and land you in Plymouth. There's a statue
of Sir Francis Drake on Plymouth 'Oe. You ought to see it. What d'you
think?"
Mr. Neilsen stared at him. Two big tears of gratitude rolled down his
cheeks.
"I shall be most grateful," he murmured.
"They're wonderful little beggars, those patrol boats," the captain
continued. "Always on the side of the angels, as you said so feelingly
at the concert. They're the police of the seas. They guide and guard us
all, neutrals as well. They sweep up the mines. They warn us. They pilot
us. They pick us up when we're drowning; and, as you said, they give us
'ot coffee; in fact, these little patrol boats are doing the work of
civilization. Probably you don't like the British very much in Sweden,
but--"
"I have no national brejudices," Mr. Neilsen said hastily. "I shall
indeed be most grateful."
"Very well, then," said the captain; "we'll let 'em know."
At half past six, two of the patrol boats were alongside. They were the
_Auld Robin Gray_ and the _Ruth_; and they seemed to be in high feather
over some recent success.
Mr. Neilsen was mystified again when he came on deck, for he could have
sworn that he saw something uncommonly like his brass-bound trunk
disappearing into the hold of the _Auld Robin Gray_. He was puzzled also
by the tail end of the lively conversation that was taking place between
Miss Depew and the absurdly young naval officer, with the lisp, who was
in command of the patrols.
"Oh, no! I'm afraid we don't uth the dungeonth in the Tower," said that
slender youth, while Miss Depew, entirely feminine and smiling like a
morning glory now, noted all the details of his peaked cap and the gold
stripes on his sleeve. "We put them in country houtheth and feed them
like fighting cockth, and give them flower gardenth to walk in."
He turned to Captain Abbey joyously, and lisped over Mr. Neilsen's head:
"That wath a corking metthage of yourth, captain. I believe we got three
of them right in the courth you would have been taking to-day. You'll
hear from the Admiralty about thith, you know. It wath magnifithent!
Good-bye!"
He saluted smartly, and taking Mr. Neilsen tightly by the arm helped
him down to the deck of the _Ruth_.
"Good-by and good luck!" called Captain Abbey.
He beamed over the bulwarks of the _Hispaniola_ like a large red harvest
moon through the thin mist that began to drift between them.
"Good-by, Mr. Neilsen!" called Mr. and Mrs. Pennyfeather, waving
frantically.
"Good-by, Herr Krauss!" said Miss Depew; and the dainty malice in her
voice pierced Mr. Neilsen like a Röntgen ray.
But he recovered quickly, for he was of an elastic disposition. He was
already looking forward to the home comforts which he knew would be
supplied by these idiotic British for the duration of the war.
The young officer smiled and saluted Miss Depew again. He was a very
ladylike young man, Mr. Neilsen had thought, and an obvious example of
the degeneracy of England. But Mr. Neilsen's plump arm was still bruised
by the steely grip with which that lean young hand had helped him
aboard, so his conclusions were mixed.
The engines of the _Ruth_ were thumping now, and the _Hispaniola_ was
melting away over the smooth gray swell. They watched her for a minute
or two, till she became spectral in the distance. Then the youthful
representative of the British Admiralty turned, like a thoughtful host,
to his prisoner.
"Would you like thum tea?" he lisped sympathetically. "Your Uncle
Hyathinth mutht have given you an awfully anxiouth time."
Herr Krauss grunted inarticulately. He was looking like a very happy
little Bismarck.
III
THE CREATIVE IMPULSE
Undoubtedly Captain Julius Vandermeer had made a pile of money. A Dutch
sea-captain who had been the chief owner of his vessel in the first two
years of the war was a lucky dog. A couple of voyages might bring him
more than he could hope to make in half a century of peace. If he were
lucky enough to make forty or fifty successful voyages across the
Atlantic he could do exactly what Captain Vandermeer had done--retire
from the sea, invest his money, look for a handsome young wife, and
expect the remainder of his years to mellow round him like an orchard,
dropping all the most pleasant fruits of life at his feet. Best of all,
despite the gray streaks in his bushy red beard, he was only half-way
through the forties, and he knew how to enjoy himself.
He sat on the veranda of his white bungalow under the foothills of the
Sierra Madre, puffing at his big meerschaum pipe and explaining these
things to the lady whom he had just married.
"Long ago I settled it in my mind, Mimika," he said, "if ever I came to
be rich there should only be one country in the world for me, and that
should be Southern California. Look at it!"
He waved the stem of his pipe at the broad slopes below. As far as the
eye could see, from the petals that dropped over the dainty little
electric car before the porch, to the distant horizon, they were one
gorgeous pattern of fruit trees in blossom. Masses of white and pink
bloom surged like foam against the veranda; and the soft wind blowing
across that odorous wilderness was like the whisper of wings at sunset
in Eden. Behind the windows of the dining room a Chinese manservant
glided to and fro like a blue shadow.
"Man lives by contrast, Mimika," Vandermeer continued. "For a quarter of
a century salt water was all my world. Now I have chosen seas of peach
blossom; and no danger of shipwreck, heh? Ah, but it smells fine,
Mimika--fine! When I saw my fortune coming I asked a friend in New York
what was the place out of all the world where a man might live most
happily, most healthily, in the most beautiful climate, to the age of
ninety or even to the age of a hundred, enjoying himself also. 'Southern
California,' he said. At once I knew that my friend was right. I
remembered San Diego when I was a boy, and the roses tumbling at my feet
on Christmas Day. I remembered the women, Mimika; and the cantaloupe
melons, cut in halves, with the ice melting in their lovely yellow
hearts; and as soon as the money was in the bank I took the train to the
City of the Angels. Los Angeles--what a name, heh? In three weeks I had
found my ranch with its beautiful bungalow, waiting like a palace for
its queen. In six months I had found the queen, Mimika, heh?"
Mimika rose from her rocking-chair, remarking, "Now listen, Julius!"
This did not mean that she had anything of great importance to say. But
she had a trick, which Vandermeer found fascinating, of prefacing most
of her remarks with the command to listen. "Listen, Julius! You won't
come down with me to meet Roy?" she said.
"No, Mimika, no. The little sister will have much to tell her brother
when she sees him for the first time after--how long has he been in
Europe? Two years? And she will have to tell him all about her
honeymoon, heh?" He pinched her ear playfully as she stooped to kiss
him.
"I guess Roy will open his eyes when he sees my electric," she said.
She went down to the car in a skipping walk, while Captain Vandermeer
surveyed her with the eye of one who has found a prize. She was wearing
a Panama hat, a sweater of emerald green, and a very short yellow skirt
that fluttered round her yellow silk stockings like the petals of a
California poppy. This was not altogether out of keeping with the blaze
of the landscape; but her high-heeled white shoes prevented her from
walking gracefully; and this was really a pity, for she could dance like
a wave of the sea if she chose. Sadder still, her nose was as white with
powder as if she had dipped it into a bag of meal and her lips looked as
if she had been eating damson jam. This was more pathetic than comic,
because in its natural state her face was pretty as a wild flower.
Captain Vandermeer sat blowing rings of blue smoke for a minute or two
longer. Then he entered the bungalow and went to a room at the back of
the house which he had reserved as his own den. It was a very bare room
at present, chiefly furnished by the bright new safe which he now
proceeded to unlock.
He drew out a bundle of papers and examined them with loving care. There
were American railroad bonds to the value of fifty thousand dollars;
some Liberty Loan Bonds to the value of fifty thousand more; twenty-five
thousand dollars' worth of Anglo-French bonds; and the same amount of
the City of Paris, risky enough if the Germans were going to break
through, but he did not think they were, and they yielded more than ten
per cent. It was very wonderful, he thought, and he replaced them like a
man saying good night to his child. Then he drew out a chamois-leather
bag and poured the glittering contents into his left palm. He was a very
wise man in his generation.
"You never know," he muttered--"you never know what will happen, in
these days, to bonds. These are perhaps the best investment of all.
These are the reserves of my little army. It was a good idea to keep
them. Besides, you can put them in your pocket and go where you wish at
a moment's notice. It is not possible always to get money at once for
bonds."
His face glowed with satisfaction as he put the bag in the safe and
locked it.
* * * * *
On the way up to the ranch from the railway station Mimika had been
chattering hard to her brother; but he noticed certain changes in her
appearance with a feeling akin to remorse. He was not at all sure that
she was really happy, despite her apparent enthusiasm over what she
called the generosity of Julius. He wished that his mother had delayed
things till he had returned from Europe; and he could not help wondering
how far his failure to send home more than two-thirds of his own scanty
income as a newspaper correspondent had contributed to the haste of this
marriage. He had not been able to learn much about it. His mother was a
vague widow, who, like so many widows, regarded marriage with a kind of
ghostly detachment and a more than maidenly innocence. She was devoted
to Mimika, but quite ready, he feared, to sacrifice Mimika to himself.
Roy himself had not had too easy a time in the last few years. He was
one of those not uncommon Americans who combine an extraordinary
knowledge of the world with the unworldliness and sometimes the
gullibility of an Eastern sage. He knew more about the cathedrals of
England than almost any Englishman; more about the châteaux of France
than most Frenchmen. He could have dictated an encyclopedia of useful
knowledge about Italy and Egypt. He had been a war correspondent in four
quarters of the globe, and he had acquired a sense of the larger
movements in politics that gave his opinions an unusual interest. He
flew over the big guns of international affairs like a man in an
air-plane; and, though his European hearers might not always like his
signals, they usually felt that he was looking beyond their horizon. But
his ambition was to do creative work, and he had not yet succeeded. He
marveled how some other men, without expending a tithe of his energy,
had produced a shelf of books while he was still taking his notes. He
never seemed to have the time for creation, and whenever he approached
any original work he gravitated toward the method of the newspaper
correspondent. He wondered sometimes whether this was due to a lack of
what he called the 'creative impulse.' One of the things to which he had
been looking forward on this visit was the opportunity that it would
give him of obtaining some first-hand material from a real live
sea-captain. Yet he was not sure whether he would ever be able to
transmute it into an original book.
His boyish smile was in somewhat pathetic contrast with his
gold-spectacled, and curiously dreamy, yet overstrained eyes, which
sometimes gave his face in repose the expression of a youthful Buddha.
His frequent abrupt changes between a violently active life and an
almost completely sedentary one had not been good for him physically,
and he was subject to fits of depression, relieved by fits of extreme
optimism.
If only Mimika were happy he thought he might feel very optimistic about
the material that Vandermeer could give him for the book he was
contemplating. Indeed already he could not help sharing a little in her
enthusiasm over her 'electric.'
"And listen, Roy, we've got a marble swimming pool in the garden, all
surrounded with heliotropes," she concluded, almost breathless, as they
rolled up the long aisle of palms and pepper trees.
"Is that so?" said Roy. "And you love him, Mimika?"
"He's a dear," said Mimika. "And of course--" She was going to add that
Captain Vandermeer would do a great deal for Roy; but she had
misgivings, and checked herself.