moving about upstairs. The boards creaked over their heads, then they
heard his bedroom door open, and the heavy footsteps began to descend
the stairs.
Mimika shrank behind her brother and both stood motionless, waiting.
They could hear the heavy breathing of Vandermeer, the breathing of a
man roused from a dyspeptic sleep. He came down with an intolerable
precision, making the twelve steps of that short descent seem almost
interminable. At every step Mimika felt the edges of her heart freezing.
At last that ugly rhythm reached the foot of the stairs; and with three
more shuffling steps, as of a gigantic ape, the hairy bulk of Vandermeer
stood in the doorway, facing them across the glittering mound of gems.
The sharp searchlight of the moon made his face corpselike, showing up
the puffy blue pouches under his eyes and picking out the coarse red
hairs of his bushy beard like strands of copper wire. His eyes
protruded, his mouth opened twice without any sound but the soft
smacking of his tongue as he tried to moisten his lips.
"What are you doing here?" he said at last.
"Looking at your Landsturm," said Roy with all the deadly calm of his
nation.
Vandermeer swayed a little on his feet, like a drunken man. Then he
moved forward to the table and blinked at the diamonds and the gold ring
crowning them.
"I don't understand," he said at last.
"You'd better get dressed, Mimika," said Roy. "Our train goes at a
quarter after four." He led her to the door, watched her pathetic little
figure mounting the stairs and turned to Vandermeer again.
Mimika never knew what passed between the two men. When she came out of
her room, ten minutes later, Roy was waiting, fully dressed, at the foot
of the stairs, with his suit case in his hand. She heard the heavy
breathing of Vandermeer in his den; and out of the corner of her eye as
they passed the door she saw that glowing mass on the table, as if a
fragment of the moon had been dropped there.
They walked down the long avenue of palms in silence. In the
waiting-room at the station neither of them spoke till they heard the
long hoot of the approaching train, and the clangor of the bell on the
transcontinental locomotive.
Six months later Mimika and her mother were sitting up for Roy, in their
fourth-floor flat near the offices of the Copley-Willard Publishing
Company, in Philadelphia.
"I wish he didn't have to keep these late hours," said her mother. "I
thought that everything was turning out for the best when you were
married to Julius. I have never been able to understand why you got your
divorce so quickly. It was all kept so quiet, and you and Roy are so
mysterious about it. You've never even told me the real grounds, I'm
sure."
"Yes, I did. It was desertion," said Mimika grimly.
"Does nobody know what became of him? It seems so strange that he should
have gone away and left all the furniture in that house. He had some
lovely things too. I think you might at least have claimed the
furniture."
"Please, mother, don't talk about that or we shall be making the same
mistake again. I expect he's shaved his beard by now."
"Mimika, child, what do you mean? Are you crazy?"
"I think we were both crazy, mother, a year ago."
"Well, I thought it was all for your happiness, my pet," said her
mother, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. "I'm afraid it will be
a long time before you can marry this other young man, that Roy likes so
much. He isn't earning half so good a salary as Roy."
"I don't know that I'm going to marry any one, mother. But listen! I
feel like marrying the first good American that comes to me with a piece
of the original _Mayflower_ in his buttonhole."
And, this time, her mother almost listened.
IV
THE MAN FROM BUFFALO
The patrol boats had been buffeting their way all night against wind and
weather, and before daybreak the long line had lost its order. It was
broken up now into little wandering loops and sections, busily comparing
notes by Morse flashes and wireless. Last evening the _Morning Glory_, a
converted yacht of American ownership, had been working with forty
British trawlers; and her owner, Matthew Hudson, who had obtained
permission to go out with her on this trip, had watched with admiration
the way in which they strung themselves over twenty miles of confused
sea, keeping their exact distances till nightfall. This morning, as he
lurched in gleaming oilskins up and down the monkey house--irreverent
name for his canvas-screened bridge--he could see only three of his
companions--the _Dusty Miller_, the _Christmas Day_ and the _Betsey
Barton_.
They were all having a lively time. They swooped like herring gulls into
the broad troughs of the swell, where the black water looked like liquid
marble with white veins of foam in it. Morning-colored rainbows dripped
from their bows as they rose again through the green sunlit crests. But
the _Morning Glory_ was the brightest and the liveliest of them all. The
seas had been washing her decks all night. Little pools of color shone
in the wet, crumpled oilskins of the crew, and the tarpaulin that
covered the gun in her bow gleamed like a cloak dropped there by the
Angel of the Dawn.
_When like the morning mist in early day
Rose from the foam the daughter of the sea----_
Matthew Hudson quoted to himself. He was full of poetry this morning
while he waited for his breakfast; and the radiant aspect of the weapon
in the bow reminded him of something else--if the smell of the frying
bacon would not blow his way and distract his mind--something about
"celestial armories." Was it Tennyson or Milton who had written it?
There was a passage about guns in "Paradise Lost." He must look it up.
Like many Americans, Matthew Hudson was quicker to perceive the true
romance of the Old Country than many of its own inhabitants. He had been
particularly interested in the names of the British trawlers. "It's like
seeing Shakespeare's Sonnets or Percy's Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry going out to fight," he had written to his son, who had just left
Princeton to join the Mosquito Fleet; and the youngster had replied with
a sonnet of his own.
Matthew Hudson had carried it about with him and read it to English
statesmen, greatly to their embarrassment--most of them looked as if
they were receiving a proposal of marriage--and he had found a huge
secret joy in their embarrassment, which, as he said, "tickled him to
death." But he murmured the verses to himself now, with paternal pride,
thinking that the boy had really gone to the heart of the matter:
_Out of Old England's inmost heart they go,
A little fleet of ships, whose every name--
Daffodil, Sea Lark, Rose, and Surf, and Snow--
Burns in this blackness like an altar flame._
_Out of her past they sail, three thousand strong--
The people's fleet, that never knew its worth;
And every name is a broken phrase of song
To some remembered loveliness on earth._
_There's Barbara Cowie, Comely Bank and May,
Christened at home, in worlds of dawn and dew.
There's Ruth, and Kindly Light, and Robin Gray,
With Mizpah. May that simple prayer come true!_
_Out of Old England's inmost heart they sail,
A fleet of memories that can never fail._
At this moment the _Morning Glory_ ran into a bank of white mist, which
left him nothing to see from the bridge. The engines were slowed down
and he decided that it was time for breakfast.
The cabin where he breakfasted with the skipper was very little changed,
except that it seemed by contrast a little more palatial than in peace
time. There had been many changes on the exterior of the ship. Her white
and gold had been washed over with service gray, and many beautiful
fittings had been removed to make way for grimmer work. But within there
were still some corners of the yacht that shone like gems in a setting
of lead.
The _Morning Glory_ had been a very beautiful boat. She had been built
for summer cruising among the pine-clad islands off the coast of Maine,
or to carry her master down to the palms of his own little island off
the coast of Florida, where he basked for a month or so among the
ripening oranges, the semitropical blossoms and the cardinal birds,
while Buffalo cleared the worst of the snow from her streets. For
Matthew Hudson was a man of many millions, which he had made in almost
the only country where millions can be made honestly and directly out of
its enormous natural resources.
His own method had been a very simple one, though it required great
organizing ability and a keen eye and brain at the outset. All he had
done was to harness a river at the right place and make it drive a
light-and-power plant. But he had done it on a scale that enabled him,
from this one central station, to drive all the electric trolleys and
light all the lamps in more than a hundred cities. He could supply all
the light and all the power they wanted to cities a hundred miles away
from his plant, and he talked of sending it three hundred miles farther.
Now that the system was established, it worked as easily as the river
flowed; and his power house was a compact little miracle of efficiency.
All that the casual visitor could see was a long, quiet room, in which
it seemed that a dozen clocks were slumbrously ticking. These were the
indicators, from the dials of which the amount of power distributed over
a district as big as England could be read by the two leisurely men on
duty. In the meantime, night and day, the river poured power of another
kind into the treasury of Matthew Hudson.
But his life was as unlike that of the millionaires of fiction as could
be imagined. It reminded one of the room with the slumbrous clocks.
He was, indeed, as his own men described it, preeminently the "man
behind the gun." When the _Morning Glory_ had been accepted by the naval
authorities he had obtained permission to equip her for her own work in
European waters at his own cost, and to make certain experiments in the
equipment.
The Admiralty had not looked with favor on some of his ideas, which were
by no means suitable for general use in the patrol fleet. But Matthew
Hudson had too many weapons at work against Germany for them to deny
him a sentimental pleasure in his own yacht. He seemed to have some
particular purpose of his own in carrying out his ideas; and so it came
about that the _Morning Glory_ was regarded among her companions as a
mystery-ship.
The two men breakfasted in silence. They were both drowsy, for there had
been a U-boat alarm during the night, which had kept them very much
awake; but Hudson was roused from his reverie over the second rasher by
a loud report, followed by a confused shouting above and the stoppage of
the engines.
"That's not a submarine!" said the skipper. "What the devil is it?" And
the two men rushed on deck.
The mist had lifted a little; and, looming out of it, a few hundred
yards away, there was something that looked, at first glance, like a
great gray reef. For a fraction of a moment Hudson thought they had run
into Heligoland in the mist. At the second glance he knew that the gray,
mist-wreathed monster before him was an armored ship, and the skipper
enlightened him further by saying, in a matter-of-fact voice:
"That settles it--enemy cruiser! We're stopped, broadside on. They've
got a couple of guns trained on us and they're sending a boat. What's
the next move?"
Matthew Hudson's face was a curious study at this moment. It suggested a
leopard endowed with a sense of humor. His mouth twitched at the corners
and his amazingly clear eyes were lit with an almost boyish jubilation.
It was a somewhat fierce jubilation; but it undoubtedly twinkled with
the humor of the New World. Then he asked the skipper a mysterious
question:
"Is it impossible?"
"Impossible! We're in the wrong position; and if we try to get right
they'll blow us to bits. Besides, they'll be aboard in half a minute.
We're drifting a little in the right direction; but it will be too late.
They'll search the ship."
"How long will it take us to drift into the right position?"
"If we go on like this, about four minutes. But it will be all over by
then."
"Look here, Davis; I'll try and detain them on deck. You know Americans
have a reputation for oratory. You'd better go through my room.
And--look here--I'll be the skipper for the time being. I'm afraid
they'll want to take Matthew Hudson prisoner; so I'll be the kind of
American they'll recognize--Commander Jefferson B. Thrash, out of the
best British fiction. You don't happen to have a lasso in your pocket,
do you? I lent mine to ex-President Eliot of Harvard, and he hasn't
returned it. Tell the men there. That's right! I don't want to be
playing the fool in Ruhleben for the next three years."
A few moments later, a step at a time, Davis disappeared into Hudson's
cabin, which lay in the fore part of the ship. Two other men prepared to
slip after him by lounging casually in the companionway, while the men
in front moved a little closer to screen them.
They seized their chance as the German boat stopped, twenty yards away
from the _Morning Glory_, and the officer in command announced through a
megaphone, in very good English, that he was in a great hurry. They were
friends, he said; and there was no need for alarm, so long as the
_Morning Glory_ carried out all instructions. All they wanted was the
confidential chart of the British mine fields, which the _Morning
Glory_, of course, possessed, and all other confidential papers of a
similar kind. If the _Morning Glory_ did not carry out his instructions
in every detail the guns of the cruiser would sink her. He was now
coming aboard to secure the papers.
"I guess that's all right, captain!" bawled Matthew Hudson in an
entirely new voice and the accent that Europe accepts as American, with
about as much reason as America would have for accepting the Lancashire,
Yorkshire and Glasgow dialects, all rolled into one, as English.
The quiet member of the Century Club had disappeared, and the golden,
remote Wild Westerner, almost unknown in America itself, had risen. In
half a minute more the German officer and half a dozen armed sailors
were standing on the deck of the _Morning Glory_.
"So you see England does not completely rule the waves," was the opening
remark of the officer, who had not yet received the full benefit of
Hudson's adopted accent.
"Been finding it stormy in the canal, cap?" drawled Hudson. "Don't blame
it on me, anyway. I'm a good Amurrican--Jefferson B. Thrash, of
Buffalo."
"Is this an American ship? I much regret to find an American ship
fighting her best friends."
"Well, cap, I confess I haven't much use for the British, myself; not
since their press talked about my picture-postcard smile--an
ill-considered phrase, by which they unconsciously meant that, among the
effete aristocracies of Europe, they were not used to seeing good teeth.
They lack humor, sir. To regard good teeth as abnormal shows a lack of
humor on the part of the British press.
"However, as George Bernard Shaw says, President Wilson has put it up to
the German people in this way: 'Become a republic and we'll let up on
you. Go on Kaisering and we'll smash you!'"
"I am in a great hurry," the German officer replied. "I must ask you at
once for your confidential papers."
"That's all right, admiral!" said Hudson. "I've sent a man down below to
get them out of my steamer trunk. They'll be here right away."
He looked reflectively at the guns of the destroyer and added
ingratiatingly:
"Of course I disapprove of George Bernard Shaw's vulgarizing the
language of diplomacy in that way. I would rather interpret President
Wilson's message as saying to the German people, in courteous phrase:
'Emerge from twelfth-century despotism into twentieth-century democracy.
Send the imperial liar who misrules you to join Nick Romanoff on his
ranch. Give the furniture-stealing Crown Prince a long term in any Sing
Sing you like to choose; and we will again buy dyestuffs and toys of
you, and sell you our beans and bacon.'"
"Are you aware that you endanger your life by this language? Do you see
those guns?"
Matthew Hudson looked at the guns and spat over the side of the ship
meditatively. Then he looked the questioner squarely in the eye. He had
taken the measure of his man and he only needed three and a half minutes
more. Any question that could be raised was clear gain; and the cruiser
would probably not use her guns while members of the German crew were
aboard the _Morning Glory_.
"Yes," he said; "and you'd better not use your guns till you get those
confidential papers, for there's not a chance that you'll find them
without my help. They're worth having, and I've no objection to handing
them over, though I don't lay much store by your promise not to shoot
afterward. When you've got them, how am I to know that you won't shoot,
anyway, and--what's the latest language of your diplomacy?--'leave no
traces'? By cripes, there's no mushy sentiment about your officials! No,
sir! Leave no traces!--and they said it about neutrals, remember! Leave
no traces! That's virile! That's red-blooded stuff! The effete
humanitarianism of our democracy, sir, would call that murder. In
England they would call it bloody murder! I don't agree. I think that
war is war. Of course it's awkward for non-combatants--"
"With regard to the crews, it has been announced in Germany that they
would be saved and kept prisoners in the submarines. Your man is taking
too long to find your papers. I can allow you only one minute more."
"He'll be right back, captain, with all the confidential goods you want.
But, say, between one sailorman and another, that story about planning
to hide crews and passengers aboard the submarines must have been meant
for our Middle West. Last time I was on a submarine I had to sleep
behind the cookstove; and then the commander had to sit up all night.
It's the right stuff for the prairies, though. Ever hear of our senator,
cap, who wanted to know why the women and kids on the _Lusitania_
weren't put into the water-tight compartments? They cussed the Cunard
Company from hell to breakfast out Kalamazoo way for that scandalous
oversight. Wonder what's keeping that son of a gun!"
At this moment the son of a gun announced from the companionway that he
was unable to find the confidential papers.
"I can wait no longer. The ship must be searched by my own men," said
the German peremptorily. "Are the papers in your cabin?"
"Sure! But I can save you a lot of time, captain. I'll lead you right to
them."
The _Morning Glory_ had drifted round till her nose was now pointing
towards that of the cruiser. In a minute or two more she would be
pointing directly amidships if the drifting continued. Matthew Hudson
took a long, affectionate look at the guns and the guns' crews that kept
watch over his behavior from the gray monster ahead; then he led the way
below to his cabin.
The Hamburg-Amerika Line had many a less imposing room than this, the
only part of the yacht that retained all its old aspect. It ran the
whole breadth of the ship and had two portholes on each side. There was
a brass bedstead, with a telephone beside it and an electric reading
lamp. There were half a dozen other electric bulbs overhead.
"I don't sleep very well, cap; so I decided to keep this bit of sinful
splendor for my own use. Bathroom, you see." He opened a tiny door near
the bed and showed the compact room, with its white bath-tub let into
the floor. This was too much for the German officer.
"Where do you keep your confidential papers?" he bellowed, leveling a
revolver at the maddeningly complacent American, while three of his men
closed up behind him, ready for action.
"Better not shoot, admiral, for you won't find them without my help; and
I'm going to hand you the goods in half a minute. I can't quite remember
where I put them. There's some confidential stuff in here, I think."
He unlocked a drawer and pulled out a bundle of papers. A small white
object dropped from the bundle and lay on the floor between him and the
German. It was a baby's shoe. Hudson nodded at it as he looked through
the papers.
"Got any kids, cap? That came from Queenstown. Ah, this looks like your
chart. No. Came from Queenstown, I say. It was a little girl belonging
to a friend of mine in the City of Brotherly Love. Lots of 'em on the
_Lusitania_, you know. We collect souvenirs in America, and I asked him
for this as a keepsake when I came on this gunning expedition. He kept
the other for himself. She was a pretty little thing. Only six! Used to
call me Uncle Jack."
He stole a look through the porthole and drew another document from the
drawer.
"Ah! Now I remember. Here's the stuff you want--some of it, anyhow. Tied
round with yaller ribbon. Take it, cap. I wish I hadn't seen that little
shoe; but you've got the drop on me this time and I suppose it's my duty
to save the lives of the men. There's a good bit of information there
about the mine fields."
The German hurriedly examined the papers, while Hudson hummed to himself
as he stared through the porthole:
_Around her little neck she wore a yaller ribbon;
She wore it in December and the merry month of May.
And when, oh, when they asked her why in hell she wore it,
She said she loved a sailor, a sailor, a sailor;
But he was wrecked and drownded in Mississippi Bay._
"This is very good," said the German, "and very useful. I think we shall
not require more of you; though it will be necessary to destroy your
ship and make you prisoners."
"Why, certainly! I didn't suppose you could keep your contract in
war-time. You can't leave traces of a deal like this. But while you're
about it, you may as well have all the confidential stuff."
"Good! Good!" said the German, strutting toward him. "So there's more to
come! I am glad you see the advantage in being too proud to fight, my
friend, eh?"
Matthew Hudson's eye twinkled. His slouch began to slip away from him
like a loose coat, leaving once more the quiet upstanding member of the
Century Club.
"Of course," he said, "you would make that mistake. The British made it.
They forgot that it was said about Mexico, at a time when you wanted us
to be kept busy down there. There are times, also, when for diplomatic
reasons it is necessary to talk." He had resumed his natural voice.
"When you are getting ready, for instance. This is where we keep the
real stuff."
He crossed the cabin; and the German watched him closely with a puzzled
expression, covering him with his revolver.
"No treachery!" he said. "What does this mean? You are not the man you
were pretending to be."
Hudson laughed, and tossed him a little scrap of bunting, which he had
been holding crumpled up in his hand.
"Ever seen that flag before?" he said.
The German stared at it, his eyes growing round with amazement.
"The Kaiser's flag has flown on this yacht at the Kiel Regatta many a
time," said Hudson. "His Majesty used to come and lunch with me. I don't
advise you to shoot me. He might remember some of my cigars. He gave me
that flag himself. Of course I shan't use it again--not till it's been
sprinkled with holy water. But I thought you might like a brief
exhibition of shirt-sleeve navalism, as I suppose you'd call it.
"Most Europeans like us to live up to their ideas of us. The British do.
Ever hear of Senator Martin? Whenever he's in London and goes to see his
friends in the House of Commons, he wears a sombrero and a red cowboy
shirt. He says they expect it and like it. He wouldn't care to do it in
New York. As a fact, you know, we invented the electric telegraph and
the submarine, and a lot of little things that you fellows have been
stealing from us. Do you hear that?"
There were two sharp clicks in the bows, followed by a faint sound like
the whirring of an electric fan under water; and Hudson pulled open the
door that led into the fore part of the ship.
"_Gott! Gott!_" cried the German, and his men echoed it inarticulately;
for there, in the semidarkness of the bows of the _Morning Glory_, they
saw the dim shapes of seamen crouching beside two gleaming torpedo
tubes. The torpedoes had just been discharged.
"You're too late to save your ship," said Matthew Hudson. "If you want
to save your own skins you'd better keep still and listen for a moment."
Then came a concussion that rocked the _Morning Glory_ like a child's
cradle and sent her German visitors lurching and sprawling round the
brass bedstead. When they recovered they found a dozen revolvers
gleaming in front of their noses.