Driven by twin propellers, the _Sea Spume_ raced westward, bearing
happy souls released from the suspense of the past month. Caruth had
found a wife; Professor Shishkin, a daughter; Marie, a father and a
husband; and freed from the long strain of service to the cause, she
had learned for the first time how heavy the burden had been.
With them were Bristow and Olga. The reporter’s assignment to the
Russian capital was nearly up, and as it was madness for Olga to remain
longer in the same city with Baron Demidroff and the pretended Princess
Napraxine, he had decided to sail with Caruth.
They were all going back to America, to the western world, and they
were all happy at the thought. They would find complications awaiting
them, they knew. Olga, reported by the papers to have been identified
as the Princess Napraxine and to have married Demidroff, must keep away
from her old home and her old friends. Shishkin, though he had gained
one daughter without losing the other, must pass as childless in the
evening of his life. Caruth would have to satisfy the curious as to his
somewhat remarkable performances in Russia and Russian waters. And he
would have to raise that million dollars.
One and all they had agreed to shield Florence, both for her sake and
for theirs. To betray her was to risk drawing down upon themselves
nihilist vengeance for the failure of the expedition--a failure that
would assuredly be charged to her substitution for Olga. Besides, in
that critical moment at the Embassy they had all tacitly agreed to keep
silence in regard to her identity.
None of them were quite certain as to the part she had played, as
to whether she had been a traitor, a double traitor, or only a spy.
Anyhow, as Caruth put it: “All’s well that ends well. I’m not heaving
any stones. I’m living in a tolerable imitation of a glass house
myself.”
So, bearing happy souls, the yacht sped westward into the night.
* * * * *
Running before the wind, the sloop bearing the Wilkins brothers and
their golden plunder fled eastward. Until the sun set, it had beat to
the west, toward the far-off land of promise, but as soon as darkness
hid it from sight of the land, it had turned toward St. Petersburg, and
for half a dozen hours had churned heavily onward.
Heavily laden, deep in the water, requiring constant bailing even in
that smooth, sheltered sea, it made slow progress. Pursuers such as
must be questing the gulf for it would surely find it as soon as day
dawned. Let the rising sun once gleam on its sails and the game would
be lost.
To Bill Wilkins, seated at the tiller, managing the boat with a
consummate skill whose constant exercise alone kept it afloat, the game
seemed lost long before the dawn. In vain through the night he had
strained his eyes for the signal lights by which the steamer _Haakon_
was to signify her presence and readiness to ship the gold. Either she
had passed unseen or her captain’s heart had failed him. In any case
dependence was no longer to be placed on her.
What other hope remained? None that Bill Wilkins could see. The
eastward course, while it probably deluded the pursuers and gave the
sloop a little longer lease on freedom, led to no safety. Every mile
took the fugitives nearer to a Russian prison. Yet any course but an
eastern one was but to throw themselves into the arms of the pursuers
or to plunge inevitably to the bottom the moment the stronger waves of
the Baltic were encountered. To Bill, it seemed that they were rats
in a trap, waiting till the captors came to take them out. If he had
been alone, he would long ago have surrendered, hoping to win pardon by
giving up the gold.
But he soon found that it was useless to talk of terms to his brother.
A mere hint in that direction aroused in the plainsman a cold fury
before which the weaker man shrank.
“I didn’t mean nothing, Tom,” he hastened to declare.
The plainsman’s eyes flashed. “I hope you didn’t,” he roared. “I hope
there ain’t no cowards or quitters in our family. I’ve staked on this
here play, and I’m going to see it through. If I can’t get away with
this gold, nobody shall. Understand that, Bill Wilkins.”
“I understand, Tom.”
“Besides, I ain’t certain sure we’re done for yet. We’ve missed the
_Haakon_, but she ain’t the only boat on the sea. If we can find a
ship--any old ship--before dawn, we’ve got a chance.”
“How so?”
“How so? Great Lord! Ain’t you got no receptions at all, Bill Wilkins?
Ain’t we got money enough to buy anything if we can once get a chance
to show it? You think any captain breathin’ would refuse a million
dollars in gold to take us aboard. And once aboard, who’d catch us?
Russia can’t search every ship going out of the Baltic.”
A spark of hope sprang up in Bill’s bosom--but only a spark. “I don’t
know where all the ships are,” he muttered. “There’d ought to be plenty
all about. This here gulf is usually just crawling with ships. But
there ain’t none passing to-night--and the dawn’s breaking.”
* * * * *
Captain Wilson stood on the bridge of the yacht, peering into the
darkness. All night he had kept watch, unwilling to leave his post on
deck as long as Russian waters lapped around the vessel committed to
his care. When, with eight bells in the morning watch, there came a
lightening of the sky, he turned to the first officer.
“The dawn’s breaking, Jackson,” he said, “and I think I’ll turn in.
We’ve got through the night safe and that’s more’n I expected.”
“What did you think was due to happen, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I felt something brooding. My mother was Scotch and
had second sight, and I can generally tell when something’s due to
come off. But I guess I missed it this time. There comes the sun, and
nothing’s doing.”
“Sail O!” The forward lookout had hailed.
“Where away?”
“Dead ahead, sir.”
Captain Wilson lifted his glasses and stared forward across the
brightening water. After a moment he turned to his companion.
“Can you make her out?” he asked, in a curious tone.
“Only a fishing boat, I should judge, sir.”
“Yes, but behind her and abeam. Don’t you see----”
“By the Lord! One, two, three, four steamers, all heading for her.
What’s it mean?”
“It means--the something that was due to happen. Send for Mr. Caruth at
once. Unless I miss my guess that boat carries Wilkins and his gold!”
* * * * *
As the sun came, Wilkins notched the sloop’s bowsprit into it. “There’s
the sun,” he remarked grimly.
Tom stood up, releasing the handle of the pump, and peered forward
under his hand.
“And there comes a steamer,” he exulted.
Bill had been staring around the horizon. “Yes, ---- ----her!” he
cried. “There she comes--too late. Look yonder.”
Tom looked, and counted just as the yacht’s officer had done. “One!
Two! Three! Four! By God! They’re right after us! All right”--grimly.
“We’ll give ’em a run for their money.”
But Bill groaned. “Wot’s the use,” he whined. “It’ll only make things
worse. We ain’t got a chance.” He rose, his nerveless hand dropped away
from the tiller, and the sloop yawed sharply to port.
“You d----n cur!” Tom’s voice rang out. “You d----n cur! Grab that
thing again quick, or, by God, you won’t live to go to no jail!” His
revolver emphasized the words.
Between the two terrors, Bill deferred to the nearer. Once more his
hand closed on the tiller, and the sloop, recovering headway, swept
onward.
“Straight for the steamer,” Tom ordered.
Bill laughed harshly. “A h----l of a lot of help she’ll be to us!” he
cried. “You darned fool, don’t you see it’s the _Sea Spume_?”
“What?” Tom spun round. “So much the better!” he cried. “We won’t need
to waste no time explaining. And she’ll save us even if we lose the
gold. That’s the kind of soft-headed fool that man Caruth is.”
The yacht was very near now--so near Tom Wilkins could distinctly hear
the sound of her engine-room bells signalling “stop.” The Russian boats
were also near. Wilkins looked at them, then at the yacht, then thrust
his pistols back into his belt.
“They won’t shoot,” he declared. “We’re too valuable to shoot. And I
guess you’re right. We can’t whip a whole fleet, but we’ll spoil their
game, all the same.” He paused and glanced at the yacht. “Run across
her bows,” he ordered, “and float down alongside.”
Little margin was there, but the sloop took what there was and swept
across just ahead of the yacht’s sharp prow.
As she scraped aft, screened for a moment from the sight of the
Russians, Wilkins caught his brother’s arms, and hoisted the slighter
man upward toward the yacht’s shrouds. “Grab hold! Quick!” he directed.
As Bill scrambled upward, the plainsman sprang upon the further gunwale
of the sloop and leaned far outward. Borne down by his weight, the
overloaded boat careened; a green wave curled in over her side; and
quietly and soberly she went down beneath his feet.
As he felt her go down, Tom turned to the yacht, and waved his hand.
“Heave us a rope, Mr. Caruth,” he called. “I can’t swim!”
Caruth did not hesitate. He had read the plainsman’s purpose and had
given orders accordingly. In less than a minute Tom Wilkins, dripping
but unhurt, stood on the deck beside his brother Bill, while aft, in
the water churned into foam by the screws of the yacht, a white sail
fluttered for a moment; then was gone.
Caruth looked at the spot where the sloop had disappeared; then at the
plainsman; then at the hurrying Russians. “That was a child’s trick,
Wilkins,” he said severely. “The water isn’t fifty feet deep here, and
Demidroff can fish the gold up easy. Meanwhile, you’ve put us all in a
hole.”
“Not much I ain’t. Look!”
Caruth looked again. The yacht was drawing rapidly away, and the
Russians were making no effort to follow her. Clustered around the spot
where the sloop sank, they seemed to be throwing out buoys to mark the
spot.
And the yacht swept westward.
* * * * *
Six months later, five of the chief participants in the contest for the
_Orkney’s_ gold were gathered at a home dinner given by the Caruths to
mark their departure from the apartment in the Chimneystack Building
to the splendid new house Caruth had bought for his bride. Until then,
Marie had insisted on remaining in the rooms where she had first met
her husband.
Inevitably, as always when these five met, the talk turned on the
trip of the _Sea Spume_ and those connected with the quest for the
_Orkney’s_ gold.
Caruth opened the subject. Said he:
“I got a letter from Colorado from the Wilkinses to-day. They’ve
struck a gold mine that Tom Wilkins says is going to make them all rich
if they can get the money to develop it. He offers to sell me a share
on easy terms. He certainly has more assurance than anybody I ever
knew.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” It was Bristow who spoke. “He was within his
rights, you know, in that matter of the _Orkney_. Irrespective of his
part in sinking the _Orkney_, Bill Wilkins saved that gold from the
abandoned wreck, and thereby got a perfect title to about nine-tenths
of it by the laws of pretty nearly every country in the world. Russia
had no right to take it from him, and he would have had a good claim
against her at the end if Tom Wilkins hadn’t wrecked and abandoned it
again. That gave the second salvors their claim and wiped out his.”
Caruth growled. “He’d have had a hard time making good,” he observed.
“Demidroff didn’t fish that gold up from the bottom of the gulf to
surrender it to the Wilkinses.”
“Oh, no! I’m only discussing the legal rights of the matter, and Tom
Wilkins’s part in it. If Bill Wilkins owned the gold--as he did--he
had a right to take any partners in he liked. Oh, yes, the Wilkinses
were within their legal rights all the time, though that isn’t exactly
a recommendation for going in with them on a gold mine. There are too
many legal robberies connected with that class of property to suit me.”
“I’m afraid there is too much law in this country,” chimed in Marie.
“Just as there is too little in Russia. But what have you heard of the
progress of the suit of the Princess Napraxine against Count Strogoff,
Mr. Bristow?”
Bristow glanced quickly at his wife. “The Princess really seems about
to win,” he declared, “though the case is still in the courts. Our
man there writes me that he understands the Czar is convinced that
the claim is valid, and has received the ‘Princess’ officially at
his court. That means that everything’s over except the shouting. I
don’t know; sometimes I wonder if I did right in letting Olga give up
everything!”
But Olga smiled. “Not for me,” she declared, as she had declared in
Baron Demidroff’s presence six months before. “Not for me. I told Baron
Demidroff the truth. My tastes are simple, and I am quite content
without the millions and the rank.”
“And in any event you are right.” It was Marie who spoke. “I have
tested that mode of life, and I know. There is nothing in its glitter
and pomp to balance home--home such as I never had and never could have
had in Russia’s splendid barbarism. No, no, Mr. Bristow! If Olga had
hesitated, it would have been your duty to tear her away from it by
force. The world has nothing to offer that is better than America and
American husbands.”
“Yes, you are quite right!” The Professor smiled benignantly on his two
daughters. “You are quite right, both of you! Money and rank! What are
they? Nothing! Nothing to freedom and the chance for a man to be a man!
Besides,” he added shrewdly, “I suspect those estates will not be so
very large after all. If Strogoff has not plundered them, he is not the
man he is reputed to be.”
The bell at the door of the apartment rang, and a moment later a
servant brought an evening paper to Caruth.
“The janitor brought this up, sir,” he explained. “He says as how
there’s something in it he thinks you’ll like to see, sir.”
Caruth took the paper and glanced down its columns. Then he uttered an
exclamation.
“Good Lord!” he cried. “Listen to this dispatch from St. Petersburg:
“A tragic sequel to the suit of the Princess Yves Napraxine against
Count Strogoff for the possession of her ancestral estates took place
here to-day. Both the Princess and her husband, Baron Demidroff,
for fifteen years chief at the dreaded third section of the Russian
police, were instantly killed this morning by a bomb thrown by a man
who was mortally wounded by the guard as he tried to flee. Before
he died, he confessed that he had acted at the instigation of Count
Strogoff. Officers were at once sent to arrest the Count, but he
had learned somehow that his complicity was known and blew out his
brains as they came in at the door. The estates of the Princess,
whose romantic story has become well known to the world in the past
year, will now revert to the Crown. It is rumored that they have been
shamelessly plundered, and instead of being at colossal value are
really almost worthless.”
Caruth dropped the paper. “There’s more of it,” he finished, “but
that’s the substance.”
Olga clasped her hands. “Oh, Joe, Joe!” she cried. “It might have been
you and me! It might have been you and me!”