The head-waiter of the Carvoitz almost ran to meet Portson and his
guests as they came up the steps from the palm-court where the string
band plays.
“Not seen you since--oh, ever so long,” he began. “_So_ glad to get
your wire. Quite well--eh?”
“Fair to middling, Henri,” Portson shook hands with him. “You’re
looking all right, too. Have you got us our table?”
Henri nodded towards a pink alcove, kept for mixed doubles, which
discreetly commanded the main dining-room’s glitter and blaze.
“Good man!” said Portson. “Now, this is serious, Henri. We put
ourselves unreservedly in your hands. We’re weather-beaten
mariners--though we don’t look it, and we haven’t eaten a Christian
meal in months. Have you thought of all that, Henri, mon ami?”
“The menu, I have compose it myself,” Henri answered with the gravity
of a high priest.
It was more than a year since Portson--of Portson, Peake and Ensell,
Stock and Share Brokers--had drawn Henri’s attention to an apparently
extinct Oil Company which, a little later, erupted profitably; and it
may be that Henri prided himself on paying all debts in full.
The most recent foreign millionaire and the even more recent foreign
actress at a table near the entrance clamoured for his attention while
he convoyed the party to the pink alcove. With his own hands he turned
out some befrilled electrics and lit four pale-rose candles.
“Bridal!” some one murmured. “Quite bridal!”
“_So_ glad you like. There is nothing too good.” Henri slid away,
and the four men sat down. They had the coarse-grained complexions
of men who habitually did themselves well, and an air, too, of
recent, red-eyed dissipation. Maddingham, the eldest, was a thick-set
middle-aged presence, with crisped grizzled hair, of the type that one
associates with Board Meetings. He limped slightly. Tegg, who followed
him, blinking, was neat, small, and sandy, of unmistakable Wavy cut,
but sheepish aspect. Winchmore, the youngest, was more on the lines of
the conventional pre-war “nut,” but his eyes were sunk in his head and
his hands black-nailed and roughened. Portson, their host, with Vandyke
beard and a comfortable little stomach, beamed upon them as they
settled to their oysters.
“_That’s_ what I mean,” said the carrying voice of the foreign actress,
whom Henri had just disabused of the idea that she had been promised
the pink alcove. “They ain’t _alive_ to the war yet. Now, what’s the
matter with those four dubs yonder joining the British Army or--or
_doing_ something?”
“Who’s your friend?” Maddingham asked.
“I’ve forgotten her name for the minute,” Portson replied, “but she’s
the latest thing in imported patriotic piece-goods. She sings ‘Sons of
the Empire, Go Forward!’ at the Palemseum. It makes the aunties weep.”
“That’s Sidney Latter. She’s not half bad,” Tegg reached for the
vinegar. “We ought to see her some night.”
“Yes. We’ve a lot of time for that sort of thing,” Maddingham grunted.
“I’ll take your oysters, Portson, if you don’t want ’em.”
“Cheer up, Papa Maddingham! ’Soon be dead!” Winchmore suggested.
Maddingham glared at him. “If I’d had you with me for _one_ week,
Master Winchmore----”
“Not the least use,” the boy retorted. “I’ve just been made a
full-lootenant. I have indeed. I couldn’t reconcile it with my
conscience to take _Etheldreda_ out any more as a plain sub. She’s too
flat in the floor.”
“Did you get those new washboards of yours fixed?” Tegg cut in.
“Don’t talk shop already,” Portson protested. “This is Vesiga soup. I
don’t know what he’s arranged in the way of drinks.”
“Pol Roger ’04,” said the waiter.
“Sound man, Henri,” said Winchmore. “But,” he eyed the waiter
doubtfully, “I don’t quite like.... What’s your alleged nationality?”
“’Henri’s nephew, monsieur,” the smiling waiter replied, and laid
a gloved hand on the table. It creaked corkily at the wrist.
“Bethisy-sur-Oise,” he explained. “My uncle he buy me _all_ the hand
for Christmas. It is good to hold plates only.”
“Oh! Sorry I spoke,” said Winchmore.
“Monsieur is right. But my uncle is very careful, even with neutrals.”
He poured the champagne.
“Hold a minute,” Maddingham cried. “First toast of obligation: For what
we are going to receive, thank God and the British Navy.”
“Amen!” said the others with a nod towards Lieutenant Tegg, of the
Royal Navy afloat, and, occasionally, of the Admiralty ashore.
“Next! ‘Damnation to all neutrals!’” Maddingham went on.
“Amen! Amen!” they answered between gulps that heralded the sole à
la Colbert. Maddingham picked up the menu. “Suprème of chicken,” he
read loudly. “Filet béarnaise, Woodcock and Richebourg ’74, Pêches
Melba, Croûtes Baron. I couldn’t have improved on it myself; though one
might,” he went on--“one _might_ have substituted quail _en casserole_
for the woodcock.”
“Then there would have been no reason for the Burgundy,” said Tegg with
equal gravity.
“You’re right,” Maddingham replied.
The foreign actress shrugged her shoulders. “What _can_ you do with
people like that?” she said to her companion. “And yet _I_’ve been
singing to ’em for a fortnight.”
“I left it all to Henri,” said Portson.
“My Gord!” the eavesdropping woman whispered. “Get on to that! Ain’t it
typical? They leave everything to Henri in this country.”
“By the way,” Tegg asked Winchmore after the fish, “where did you mount
that one-pounder of yours after all?”
“Midships. _Etheldreda_ won’t carry more weight forward. She’s wet
enough as it is.”
“Why don’t you apply for another craft?” Portson put in. “There’s a
chap at Southampton just now, down with pneumonia and----”
“No, thank you. I know _Etheldreda_. She’s nothing to write home about,
but when she feels well she can shift a bit.”
Maddingham leaned across the table. “If she does more than eleven in a
flat calm,” said he, “I’ll--I’ll give you _Hilarity_.”
“’Wouldn’t be found dead in _Hilarity_,” was Winchmore’s grateful
reply. “You don’t mean to say you’ve taken her into real wet water,
Papa? Where did it happen?”
The other laughed. Maddingham’s red face turned brick colour, and the
veins on the cheekbones showed blue through a blurr of short bristles.
“He’s been convoying neutrals--in a tactful manner,” Tegg chuckled.
Maddingham filled his glass and scowled at Tegg. “Yes,” he said,
“and here’s special damnation to me Lords of the Admiralty. A more
muddle-headed set of brass-bound apes----”
“My! My! My!” Winchmore chirruped soothingly. “It don’t seem to have
done you any good, Papa. Who were you conveyancing?”
Maddingham snapped out a ship’s name and some details of her build.
“Oh, but that chap’s a friend of _mine_!” cried Winchmore. “I ran
across him--the--not so long ago, hugging the Scotch coast--out of his
course, he said, owing to foul weather and a new type of engine--a
Diesel. That’s him, ain’t it--the complete neutral?” He mentioned an
outstanding peculiarity of the ship’s rig.
“Yes,” said Portson. “Did you board him, Winchmore?”
“No. There’d been a bit of a blow the day before and old _Ethel’s_
only dinghy had dropped off the hooks. But he signalled me all his
symptoms. He was as communicative as--as a lady in the Promenade. (Hold
on, Nephew of my Uncle! I’m going to have some more of that Béarnaise
fillet.) His smell attracted me. I chaperoned him for a couple of days.”
“Only two days. _You_ hadn’t anything to complain of,” said Maddingham
wrathfully.
“I didn’t complain. If he chose to hug things, ’twasn’t any of my
business. I’m not a Purity League. ’Didn’t care what he hugged, so long
as I could lie behind him and give him first chop at any mines that
were going. I steered in his wake (I really _can_ steer a bit now,
Portson) and let him stink up the whole of the North Sea. I thought he
might come in useful for bait. No Burgundy, thanks, Nephew of my Uncle.
I’m sticking to the Jolly Roger.”
“Go on, then--before you’re speechless. Was he any use as bait?” Tegg
demanded.
“We never got a fair chance. As I told you, he hugged the coast till
dark, and then he scraped round Gilarra Head and went up the bay nearly
to the beach.”
“’Lights out?” Maddingham asked.
Winchmore nodded. “But I didn’t worry about that. I was under his
stern. As luck ’ud have it, there was a fishing-party in the bay, and
we walked slam into the middle of ’em--a most ungodly collection of
local talent. ’First thing I knew a steam-launch fell aboard us, and a
boy--a nasty little Navy boy, Tegg--wanted to know what I was doing.
I told him, and he cursed me for putting the fish down just as they
were rising. Then the two of us (he was hanging on to my quarter with a
boat-hook) drifted on to a steam trawler and our friend the Neutral and
a ten-oared cutter full of the military, all mixed up. They were subs
from the garrison out for a lark. Uncle Newt explained over the rail
about the weather and his engine-troubles, but they were all so keen to
carry on with their fishing, they didn’t fuss. They told him to clear
off.”
“Was there anything on the move round Gilarra at that time?” Tegg
inquired.
“Oh, they spun me the usual yarns about the water being thick with ’em,
and asked me to help; but I couldn’t stop. The cutter’s stern-sheets
were piled up with mines, like lobster-pots, and from the way the
soldiers handled ’em I thought I’d better get out. So did Uncle Newt.
_He_ didn’t like it a bit. There were a couple of shots fired at
something just as we cleared the Head, and one dropped rather close
to him. (These duck-shoots in the dark are dam’ dangerous y’know.) He
lit up at once--tail-light, head-light, and side-lights. I had no more
trouble with him the rest of the night.”
“But what about the report that you sawed off the steam-launch’s
boat-hook?” Tegg demanded suddenly.
“What! You don’t mean to say that little beast of a snotty reported it?
He was scratchin’ poor old _Ethel’s_ paint to pieces. I never reported
what he said to _me_. And he called me a damned amateur, too. Well!
Well! War’s war. I missed all that fishing-party that time. My orders
were to follow Uncle Newt. So I followed--and poor _Ethel_ without a
dry rag on her.”
Winchmore refilled his glass.
“Well, don’t get poetical,” said Portson. “Let’s have the rest of your
trip.”
“There wasn’t any rest,” Winchmore insisted pathetically. “There was
just good old _Ethel_ with her engines missing like sin, and Uncle
Newt thumping and stinking half a mile ahead of us, and me eating
bread and Worcester sauce. I do when I feel that way. Besides, I
wanted to go back and join the fishing-party. Just before dark I made
out _Cordelia_--that Southampton ketch that old Jarrott fitted with
oil auxiliaries for a family cruiser last summer. She’s a beamy bus,
but she _can_ roll, and she was doing an honest thirty degrees each
way when I overhauled her. I asked Jarrott if he was busy. He said he
wasn’t. But he was. He’s like me and Nelson when there’s any sea on.”
“But Jarrott’s a Quaker. ’Has been for generations. Why does he go to
war?” said Maddingham.
“If it comes to that,” Portson said, “why do any of us?”
“Jarrott’s a mine-sweeper,” Winchmore replied with deep feeling. “The
Quaker religion (I’m not a Quaker, but I’m _much_ more religious than
any of you chaps give me credit for) has decided that mine-sweeping
is lifesaving. Consequently”--he dwelt a little on the word--“the
profession is crowded with Quakers--specially off Scarborough. ’See?
Owin’ to the purity of their lives, they ‘_all_ go to Heaven when they
die--Roll, Jordan, Roll!’”
* * * * *
“Disgustin’,” said the actress audibly as she drew on her gloves.
Winchmore looked at her with delight. “That’s a peach-Melba, too,” he
said.
“And David Jarrott’s a mine-sweeper,” Maddingham mused aloud. “So you
turned our Neutral over to him, Winchmore, did you?”
“Yes, I did. It was the end of my beat--I wish I didn’t feel so
sleepy--and I explained the whole situation to Jarrott, over the
rail. ’Gave him all my silly instructions--those latest ones,
y’know. I told him to do nothing to imperil existing political
relations. I told him to exercise tact. I--I told him that in
my capac’ty as Actin’ Lootenant, you see. Jarrott’s only a
Lootenant-Commander--at fifty-four, too! Yes, I handed my Uncle Newt
over to Jarrott to chaperone, and I went back to my--I can say it
perfectly--pis-ca-to-rial party in the bay. Now I’m going to have
a nap. In ten minutes I shall be on deck again. This is my first
civilised dinner in nine weeks, so I don’t apologise.”
He pushed his plate away, dropped his chin on his palm and closed his
eyes.
“Lyndnoch and Jarrott’s Bank, established 1793,” said Maddingham half
to himself. “I’ve seen old Jarrott in Cowes week bullied by his skipper
and steward till he had to sneak ashore to sleep. And now he’s out
mine-sweeping with _Cordelia_! What’s happened to his--I shall forget
my own name next--Belfast-built two-hundred tonner?”
“_Goneril_,” said Portson. “He turned her over to the Service in
October. She’s--she was _Culana_.”
“_She_ was _Culana_, was she? My God! I never knew that. Where did it
happen?”
“Off the same old Irish corner I was watching last month. My young
cousin was in her; so was one of the Raikes boys. A whole nest of
mines, laid between patrols.”
“I’ve heard there’s some dirty work going on there now,” Maddingham
half whispered.
“You needn’t tell _me_ that,” Portson returned. “But one gets a little
back now and again.”
“What are you two talking about?” said Tegg, who seemed to be dozing,
too.
“_Culana_,” Portson answered as he lit a cigarette.
“Yes, that was rather a pity. But.... What about this Newt of ours?”
“_I_ took her over from Jarrott next day--off Margate,” said Portson.
“Jarrott wanted to get back to his mine-sweeping.”
“Every man to his taste,” said Maddingham. “That never appealed to me.
Had they detailed you specially to look after the Newt?”
“Me among others,” Portson admitted. “I was going down Channel when I
got my orders, and so I went on with him. Jarrott had been tremendously
interested in his course up to date--specially off the Wash. He’d
charted it very carefully and he said he was going back to find out
what some of the kinks and curves meant. Has he found out, Tegg?”
* * * * *
Tegg thought for a moment. “_Cordelia_ was all right up to six o’clock
yesterday evening,” he said.
“’Glad of that. Then I did what Winchmore did. I lay behind this stout
fellow and saw him well into the open.”
“Did you say anything to him?” Tegg asked.
“Not a thing. He kept moving all the time.”
“’See anything?” Tegg continued.
“No. He didn’t seem to be in demand anywhere in the Channel, and, when
I got him on the edge of soundings I dropped him--as per your esteemed
orders.”
Tegg nodded again and murmured some apology.
“Where did _you_ pick him up, Maddingham?” Portson went on.
Maddingham snorted.
“Well north and west of where you left him heading up the Irish Channel
and stinking like a taxi. I hadn’t had my breakfast. My cook was
seasick; so were four of my hands.”
“I can see that meeting. Did you give him a gun across the bows?” Tegg
asked.
“No, no. Not _that_ time. I signalled him to heave to. He had his
papers ready before I came over the side. You see,” Maddingham said
pleadingly, “I’m new to this business. Perhaps I wasn’t as polite to
him as I should have been if I’d had my breakfast.”
“He deposed that Maddingham came alongside swearing like a bargee,”
said Tegg.
“Not in the least. This is what happened.” Maddingham turned to
Portson. “I asked him where he was bound for and he told me--Antigua.”
“Hi! Wake up, Winchmore. You’re missing something.” Portson nudged
Winchmore, who was slanting sideways in his chair.
“Right! All right! I’m awake,” said Winchmore stickily. “I heard every
word.”
Maddingham went on. “I told him that this wasn’t his way to Antigua----”
“Antigua. Antigua!” Winchmore finished rubbing his eyes. “‘There was a
young bride of Antigua----’”
“Hsh! Hsh!” said Portson and Tegg warningly.
“Why? It’s the proper one. ‘Who said to her spouse, “What a pig you
are!”’”
“Ass!” Maddingham growled and continued: “He told me that he’d been
knocked out of his reckoning by foul weather and engine-trouble, owing
to experimenting with a new type of Diesel engine. He was perfectly
frank about it.”
“So he was with me,” said Winchmore. “Just like a real lady. I hope you
were a real gentleman, Papa.”
“I asked him what he’d got. He didn’t object. He had some fifty
thousand gallon of oil for his new Diesel engine, and the rest was
coal. He said he needed the oil to get to Antigua with, he was taking
the coal as ballast, and he was coming back, so he told me, with
coconuts. When he’d quite finished, I said: ‘What sort of damned idiot
do you take me for?’ He said: ‘I haven’t decided yet!’ Then I said he’d
better come into port with me, and we’d arrive at a decision. He said
that his papers were in perfect order and that my instructions--mine,
please!--were not to imperil political relations. I hadn’t received
these asinine instructions, so I took the liberty of contradicting
him--perfectly politely, as I told them at the Inquiry afterward.
He was a small-boned man with a grey beard, in a glengarry, and he
picked his teeth a lot. He said: ‘The last time I met you, Mister
Maddingham, you were going to Carlsbad, and you told me all about your
blood-pressures in the wagon-lit before we tossed for upper berth.
Don’t you think you are a little old to buccaneer about the sea this
way?’ I couldn’t recall his face--he must have been some fellow that
I’d travelled with some time or other. I told him I wasn’t doing
this for amusement--it was business. Then I ordered him into port.
He said: ‘S’pose I don’t go?’ I said: ‘Then I’ll sink you.’ Isn’t it
extraordinary how natural it all seems after a few weeks? If any one
had told me when I commissioned _Hilarity_ last summer what I’d be
doing this spring I’d--I’d ... God! It _is_ mad, isn’t it?”
“Quite,” said Portson. “But not bad fun.”
“Not at all, but that’s what makes it all the madder. Well, he didn’t
argue any more. He warned me I’d be hauled over the coals for what I’d
done, and I warned him to keep two cables ahead of me and not to yaw.”
“Jaw?” said Winchmore, sleepily.
“No. Yaw,” Maddingham snarled. “Not to look as if he even wanted to
yaw. I warned him that, if he did, I’d loose off into him, end-on. But
I was absolutely polite about it. ’Give you my word, Tegg.”
“I believe you. Oh, I believe you,” Tegg replied.
“Well, so I took him into port--and that was where I first ran across
our Master Tegg. He represented the Admiralty on that beach.”
The small blinking man nodded. “The Admiralty had that honour,” he said
graciously.
Maddingham turned to the others angrily. “I’d been rather patting
myself on the back for what I’d done, you know. Instead of which, they
held a court-martial----”
“_We_ called it an Inquiry,” Tegg interjected.
“_You_ weren’t in the dock. They held a court-martial on me to find
out how often I’d sworn at the poor injured Neutral, and whether I’d
given him hot-water bottles and tucked him up at night. It’s all very
fine to laugh, but they treated me like a pickpocket. There were two
fat-headed civilian judges and that blackguard Tegg in the conspiracy.
A cursed lawyer defended my Neutral and he made fun of _me_. He dragged
in everything the Neutral had told him about my blood-pressures on the
Carlsbad trip. And that’s what you get for trying to serve your country
in your old age!” Maddingham emptied and refilled his glass.
“We _did_ give you rather a grilling,” said Tegg placidly. “It’s the
national sense of fair play.”
“I could have stood it all if it hadn’t been for the Neutral. We dined
at the same hotel while this court-martial was going on, and he used
to come over to my table and sympathise with me! He told me that I was
fighting for his ideals and the uplift of democracy, but I must respect
the Law of Nations!”
“And we respected ’em,” said Tegg. “His papers were perfectly correct;
the Court discharged him. We had to consider existing political
relations. I _told_ Maddingham so at the hotel and he----”
Again Maddingham turned to the others. “I couldn’t make up my mind
about Tegg at the Inquiry,” he explained. “He had the air of a decent
sailor-man, but he talked like a poisonous politician.”
“I was,” Tegg returned. “I had been ordered to change into that rig. So
I changed.”
Maddingham ran one fat square hand through his crisped hair and looked
up under his eyebrows like a shy child, while the others lay back and
laughed.
“I suppose I ought to have been on to the joke,” he stammered, “but I’d
blacked myself all over for the part of Lootenant-Commander R.N.V.R. in
time of war, and I’d given up thinking as a banker. If it had been put
before me as a business proposition I might have done better.”
“I thought you were playing up to me and the judges all the time,” said
Tegg. “I never dreamed you took it seriously.”
“Well, I’ve been trained to look on the law as serious. I’ve had to pay
for some of it in my time, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tegg. “We were obliged to let that oily beggar
go--for reasons, but, as I told Maddingham, the night the award was
given, _his_ duty was to see that he was properly directed to Antigua.”
“Naturally,” Portson observed. “That being the Neutral’s declared
destination. And what did Maddingham do? Shut up, Maddingham!”
Said Tegg, with downcast eyes: “Maddingham took my hand and squeezed
it; he looked lovingly into my eyes (he _did_!); he turned plum-colour,
and he said: ‘I will’--just like a bridegroom at the altar. It makes me
feel shy to think of it even now. I didn’t see him after that till the
evening when _Hilarity_ was pulling out of the Basin, and Maddingham
was cursing the tug-master.”
“I was in a hurry,” said Maddingham. “I wanted to get to the Narrows
and wait for my Neutral there. I dropped down to Biller and Grove’s
yard that tide (they’ve done all my work for years) and I jammed
_Hilarity_ into the creek behind their slip, so the Newt didn’t spot me
when he came down the river. Then I pulled out and followed him over
the Bar. He stood nor-west at once. I let him go till we were well out
of sight of land. Then I overhauled him, gave him a gun across the bows
and ran alongside. I’d just had my lunch, and I wasn’t going to lose my
temper _this_ time. I said: ‘Excuse me, but I understand you are bound
for Antigua?’ He was, he said, and as he seemed a little nervous about
my falling aboard him in that swell, I gave _Hilarity_ another sheer
in--she’s as handy as a launch--and I said: ‘May I suggest that this is
not the course for Antigua?’ By that time he had his fenders overside,
and all hands yelling at me to keep away. I snatched _Hilarity_ out
and began edging in again. He said: ‘I’m trying a sample of inferior
oil that I have my doubts about. If it works all right I shall lay my
course for Antigua, but it will take some time to test the stuff and
adjust the engines to it.’ I said: ‘Very good, let me know if I can be
of any service,’ and I offered him _Hilarity_ again once or twice--he
didn’t want her--and then I dropped behind and let him go on. Wasn’t
that proper, Portson?”
Portson nodded. “I know that game of yours with _Hilarity_,” he said.
“How the deuce do you do it? My nerve always goes at close quarters in
any sea.”
“It’s only a little trick of steering,” Maddingham replied with a
simper of vanity. “You can almost shave with her when she feels like
it. I had to do it again that same evening, to establish a moral
ascendancy. He wasn’t showing any lights, and I nearly tripped over
him. He was a scared Neutral for three minutes, but I got a little
of my own back for that damned court-martial. _But_ I was perfectly
polite. I apologised profusely. I didn’t even ask him to show his
lights.”
“But did he?” said Winchmore.
“He did--every one; and a flare now and then,” Maddingham replied. “He
held north all that night, with a falling barometer and a rising wind
and all the other filthy things. Gad, how I hated him! Next morning
we got it, good and tight from the nor-nor-west out of the Atlantic,
off Carso Head. He dodged into a squall, and then he went about. We
weren’t a mile behind, but it was as thick as a wall. When it cleared,
and I couldn’t see him ahead of me, I went about too, and followed the
rain. I picked him up five miles down wind, legging it for all he was
worth to the south’ard--nine knots, I should think. _Hilarity_ doesn’t
like a following sea. We got pooped a bit, but by noon we’d struggled
back to where we ought to have been--two cables astern of him. Then
he began to signal, but his flags being end-on to us, of course, we
had to creep up on his beam--well abeam--to read ’em. _That_ didn’t
restore his morale either. He made out he’d been compelled to put back
by stress of weather before completing his oil tests. I made back I was
sorry to hear it, but would be greatly interested in the results. Then
I turned in (I’d been up all night) and my lootenant took on. He was
a widower (by the way) of the name of Sherrin, aged forty-seven. He’d
run a girls’ school at Weston-super-Mare after he’d left the Service in
’ninety-five, and he believed the English were the Lost Tribes.”
“What about the Germans?” said Portson.
“Oh, they’d been misled by Austria, who was the Beast with Horns in
Revelations. Otherwise he was rather a dull dog. He set the tops’ls
in his watch. _Hilarity_ won’t steer under any canvas, so we rather
sported round our friend that afternoon, I believe. When I came up
after dinner, she was biting his behind, first one side, then the
other. Let’s see--that would be about thirty miles east-sou-east of
Harry Island. We were running as near as nothing south. The wind
had dropped, and there was a useful cross-rip coming up from the
south-east. I took the wheel and, the way I nursed him from starboard,
he had to take the sea over his port bow. I had my sciatica on
me--buccaneering’s no game for a middle-aged man--but I gave that
fellow sprudel! By Jove; I washed him out! He stood it as long as he
could, and then he made a bolt for Harry Island. I had to ride in his
pocket most of the way there because I didn’t know that coast. We
had charts, but Sherrin never understood ’em, and I couldn’t leave
the wheel. So we rubbed along together, and about midnight this Newt
dodged in over the tail of Harry Shoals and anchored, if you please,
in the lee of the Double Ricks. It was dead calm there, except for the
swell, but there wasn’t much room to manœuvre in, and _I_ wasn’t going
to anchor. It looked too like a submarine rendezvous. But first, I
came alongside and asked him what his trouble was. He told me he had
overheated his something-or-other bulb. I’ve never been shipmates with
Diesel engines, but I took his word for it, and I said I ’ud stand by
till it cooled. Then he told me to go to hell.”
“If you were inside the Double Ricks in the dark, you were practically
there,” said Portson.
“That’s what _I_ thought. I was on the bridge, rabid with sciatica,
going round and round like a circus-horse in about three acres of
water, and wondering when I’d hit something. Ridiculous position.
Sherrin saw it. He saved me. He said it was an ideal place for
submarine attacks, and we’d better begin to repel ’em at once. As I
said, I couldn’t leave the wheel, so Sherrin fought the ship--both
quick-firers and the maxims. He tipped ’em well down into the sea or
well up at the Ricks as we went round and round. We made rather a row;
and the row the gulls made when we woke ’em was absolutely terrifying.
’Give you my word!”
“And then?” said Winchmore.
“I kept on running in circles through this ghastly din. I took one
sheer over towards his stern--I thought I’d cut it too fine, but we
missed it by inches. Then I heard his capstan busy, and in another
three minutes his anchor was up. He didn’t wait to stow. He hustled
out as he was--bulb or no bulb. He passed within ten feet of us (I
was waiting to fall in behind him) and he shouted over the rail: ‘You
think you’ve got patriotism. All you’ve got is uric acid and rotten
spite!’ I expect he was a little bored. I waited till we had cleared
Harry Shoals before I went below, and then I slept till 9 A. M. He was
heading north this time, and after I’d had breakfast and a smoke I ran
alongside and asked him where he was bound for now. He was wrapped in a
comforter, evidently suffering from a bad cold. I couldn’t quite catch
what he said, but I let him croak for a few minutes and fell back. At
9 P. M. he turned round and headed south (I was getting to know the
Irish Channel by then) and I followed. There was no particular sea
on. It was a little chilly, but as he didn’t hug the coast I hadn’t
to take the wheel. I stayed below most of the night and let Sherrin
suffer. Well, Mr. Newt kept up this game all the next day, dodging up
and down the Irish Channel. And it was infernally dull. He threw up the
sponge off Cloone Harbour. That was on Friday morning. He signalled:
‘Developed defects in engine-room. Antigua trip abandoned.’ Then he ran
into Cloone and tied up at Brady’s Wharf. You know you can’t repair
a dinghy at Cloone! I followed, of course, and berthed behind him.
After lunch I thought I’d pay him a call. I wanted to look at his
engines. I don’t understand Diesels, but Hyslop, my engineer, said
they must have gone round ’em with a hammer, for they were pretty
badly smashed up. Besides that they had offered all their oil to the
Admiralty agent there, and it was being shifted to a tug when I went
aboard him. So I’d done my job. I was just going back to _Hilarity_
when his steward said he’d like to see me. He was lying in his cabin
breathing pretty loud--wrapped up in rugs and his eyes sticking out
like a rabbit’s. He offered me drinks. I couldn’t accept ’em, of
course. Then he said: ‘Well, Mr. Maddingham, I’m all in.’ I said I was
glad to hear it. Then he told me he was seriously ill with a sudden
attack of bronchial pneumonia, and he asked me to run him across to
England to see his doctor in town. I said, of course, that was out of
the question, _Hilarity_ being a man-of-war in commission. He couldn’t
see it. He asked what had that to do with it? He thought this war was
some sort of joke, and I had to repeat it all over again. He seemed
rather afraid of dying (it’s no game for a middle-aged man, of course)
and he hoisted himself up on one elbow and began calling me a murderer.
I explained to him--perfectly politely--that I wasn’t in this job for
fun. It was business. My orders were to see that he went to Antigua,
and now that he wasn’t going to Antigua, and had sold his oil to us,
that finished it as far as I was concerned. (Wasn’t that perfectly
correct?) He said: ‘But that finishes me, too. I can’t get any doctor
in this God-forsaken hole. I made sure you’d treat me properly as soon
as I surrendered.’ I said there wasn’t any question of surrender. If
he’d been a wounded belligerent, I might have taken him aboard, though
I certainly shouldn’t have gone a yard out of my course to land him
anywhere; but as it was, he was a neutral--altogether outside the
game. You see my point? I tried awfully hard to make him understand it.
He went on about his affairs all being at loose ends. He was a rich
man--a million and a quarter, he said--and he wanted to redraft his
will before he died. I told him a good many people were in his position
just now--only they weren’t rich. He changed his tack then and appealed
to me on the grounds of our common humanity. ‘Why, if you leave me now,
Mr. Maddingham,’ he said, ‘you condemn me to death, just as surely as
if you hanged me.’”
“This _is_ interesting,” Portson murmured. “I never imagined you in
this light before, Maddingham.”
“I was surprised at myself--’give you my word. But I was perfectly
polite. I said to him: ‘Try to be reasonable, sir. If you had got rid
of your oil where it was wanted, you’d have condemned lots of people to
death just as surely as if you’d drowned ’em.’ ‘Ah, but I didn’t,’ he
said. ‘That ought to count in my favour.’ ‘That was no thanks to you,’
I said. ‘You weren’t given the chance. This is war, sir. If you make up
your mind to that, you’ll see that the rest follows.’ ‘I didn’t imagine
you’d take it as seriously as all that,’ he said--and he said it quite
seriously, too. ‘Show a little consideration. Your side’s bound to win
anyway.’ I said: ‘Look here! I’m a middle-aged man, and I don’t suppose
my conscience is any clearer than yours in many respects, but this is
business. I can do nothing for you.’”
“You got that a bit mixed, I think,” said Tegg critically.
“_He_ saw what I was driving at,” Maddingham replied, “and he was
the only one that mattered for the moment. ‘Then I’m a dead man,
Mr. Maddingham,’ he said. ‘That’s _your_ business,’ I said. ‘Good
afternoon.’ And I went out.”
“And?” said Winchmore, after some silence.
“He died. I saw his flag half-masted next morning.”
There was another silence. Henri looked in at the alcove and smiled.
Maddingham beckoned to him.
“But why didn’t you lend him a hand to settle his private affairs?”
said Portson.
“Because I wasn’t acting in my private capacity. I’d been on the bridge
for three nights and--” Maddingham pulled out his watch--“this time
to-morrow I shall be there again--confound it! Has my car come, Henri?”
“Yes, Sare Francis. I am sorry.” They all complimented Henri on the
dinner, and when the compliments were paid he expressed himself still
their debtor. So did the nephew.
“Are you coming with me, Portson?” said Maddingham as he rose heavily.
“No. I’m for Southampton, worse luck! My car ought to be here, too.”
“I’m for Euston and the frigid calculating North,” said Winchmore with
a shudder. “One common taxi, please, Henri.”
Tegg smiled. “I’m supposed to sleep in just now, but if you don’t mind,
I’d like to come with you as far as Gravesend, Maddingham.”
“Delighted. There’s a glass all round left still,” said Maddingham.
“Here’s luck! The usual, I suppose? ‘Damnation to all neutrals!’”