THE TERRIBLE NIGHT.
The echo of the cheer which rose up from the decks of the
_Esmeralda_ yet lingered upon the sea when the Russian answer to it
was forthcoming. Even as the crew of the little yacht said that the
danger was done with, and that an open sea now lay before them, a
voice out of the darkness gave them the lie. So swift was it to come,
so surprising, that the men stood mute and wondering and helpless. It
was as though the avenger had risen from the depths before them--a
phantom ship conjured up by the powers of ill to reckon with them.
They thought themselves without consort in the heart of the Gulf, and
while the thought was still with them the strange ship appeared. Her
light shone full upon them from a point not two hundred yards distant.
They could count the men upon her decks; could see the figure of her
commander outstanding on the bridge; could follow the delicate contour
of the great hull which now towered above them.
The strange ship lay motionless, for she had been awaiting the signal
of the _Peter Veliky_, and so stood toward the centre of the Gulf that
she might command the channel. It is possible that the _Esmeralda_
would have slipped by her in the dark but for the cheer of victory
raised so foolishly. That triumphant cry was as the gun of a sentinel
to those on board the Russian ship. Her lantern blazed out; voices of
warning were raised on her decks; men roared to one another that the
quarry had run into the snare, that the hunt was done. The beams of
the great light fell upon the yacht and upon her crew, and the cheer
froze on the lips of those who had raised it. Her men were powerless
to think or act. The ultimate terror of defeat was upon them.
A man wearing the uniform of a naval lieutenant stood in the bows of
the cruiser and was the first to hail the _Esmeralda_. His voice was
like the roar of a bull; the wind carried his words so that none of
them were lost. Already Reuben had shut off steam mechanically, so
that the two ships lay rolling to the swell like swimmers who seek
breath after the travail of a race. But no one gave answer to the hail
of the lieutenant. Stupor possessed the crew of the yacht. The blow
had been so swift to come; the shadow of the prison lay already upon
the men.
“What ship?” roared the lieutenant, putting the question for the third
time.
“She’s the _Kremi_, of Helsingfors,” said Reuben, who was again the
first to reckon up the danger.
“An old ship,” said John Hook in a giant’s whisper. “She might catch a
hearse--leastwise I’d venture on it.”
“Nine knots in the books, John.”
“To hell with the books! She carries her guns forward.”
“Then they cannot fire at us as we pass them,” exclaimed the girl
excitedly.
Old John added to the wealth of the sea by a mouthful of tobacco
juice.
“You’ve hit it on the head, miss!” cried he. “If we drift past ’em
they want five minutes to get her about, and where shall we be in five
minutes, mates?”
Reuben ceased to grin. Paul could not take his eyes off the cruiser.
They had drifted so close to her that they could see the faces of
those who trod the great decks above them. There was not a man on
board the _Esmeralda_ whose heart did not beat high, not one who did
not tell himself that this was the hour of reckoning.
“C’est fini!” Paul exclaimed, drawing the girl into his embrace. “This
is our to-morrow, little Marian. But I have done my best, God knows.”
She kissed his lips and that was her answer.
Many men had come together to the port-bow of the _Kremi_, and they
stood gaping at the stranger and at her crew. The lieutenant who had
first cried out, asking “What ship?” gave the order that a gangway
should be lowered; he did not doubt that it was the intention of the
pursued to surrender without further effort. But those on board the
_Esmeralda_ were of one mind and purpose again. The grin broadened
upon the face of Reuben; old John lighted his pipe with the
deliberation of a man at his own fireside. Silently he waited while
the crew of the _Kremi_ flocked to the gangway, encouraged by the
shrill, fife-like voice of a commander who plumed himself already upon
his victory. Child’s work, the Russian thought, to grapple with the
impudent and perky cockle-shell which had defied so vain-gloriously
the might of his country. He gave the order triumphantly. He came to
the very edge of the bridge to watch the irons slipped upon the hands
of Zassulic the spy and of the woman who had tempted him. When the
_Esmeralda_ did not stop at the gangway, but drifted on, he thought
for the moment that it was clumsy seamanship; but when, with dramatic
suddenness, she began to go full steam ahead, his anger was not to be
controlled.
“Stand by to clear the guns!” he roared. “Are you going to lose her?
Great God! she will cheat us yet!”
He foamed and raged like a madman, for the yacht shot into the
darkness as a shell from a great gun. The terrible moment of waiting
was past. Inch by inch the little ship had drifted, carrying men whose
hearts quivered with excitement but whose spirit was unbroken. The
terror of waiting was upon them no more. They had been within a boat’s
length of the ladder when John cried “Let her go!” Then all the
courage of their despair fired them. As a horse champing at his bit,
so was the _Esmeralda_ sagging there in the trough of the sea. The
rush of steam into her cylinders was the touch of the spur she asked.
She bounded forward into the heart of the breakers, and a cloud of
spray hid her from the enemy’s sight.
“Below, below for your lives!” roared old John; “they’re manning the
machine-guns!”
“We cannot leave you here!” cried Paul, ashamed for the moment that it
was not a fellow-countryman who spoke.
[Illustration: “SHE BOUNDED FORWARD INTO THE HEART OF THE BREAKERS”]
“Then you stand to your death!” cried John Hook. “There ain’t a gun in
Roosher which I care a d---- for!--the Lord be my witness. Down there,
sir, as you vally your life!”
The rattle of musketry and a sputter of bullets on the near sea cut
short his honest bravado. Paul, needing no other argument, dragged
Marian into the shelter of the scantling. The yacht, yawing in her
course that she might avoid the hail of bullets, appeared to rush into
the very bowels of the seas. Onward she flew, the foam frothing at her
bows, the spray reeking upon her funnel, a great wake of quivering
water behind her. Bullets struck her decks and sent chips of wood
flying as though an adze cleaved them; the search-light followed her
path as the light upon a stage follows the step of the dancer. Every
minute was an eternity of suspense. The hearts of the men seemed to
stand still. When at last the guns ceased there were tears upon the
faces of the crew, but they were tears of joy.
“Down under again, by the Lord!” roared old John, who rolled with
excitement. “Down under again, and the young lady thought of it. Glory
be to God who made me an Englishman this night!”
He shook his fist defiantly at the distant light, for he knew that the
hour of deliverance was at hand. The lumbering _Kremi_, which ventured
rarely from her moorings in Helsingfors, was marked in the books as a
ship which could steam at nine knots, but that was a fiction beloved
of officials. Put to it now in the heavy swell of a fresh night, she
strained and groaned like a derelict of the deep; she lurched over the
seas, she smothered herself in them. The yacht ran from her as a hare
from a bull. She fired her great gun again and again, but the shells
found no other billet than the thundering breakers. When thirty
minutes had passed she abandoned the pursuit and headed once more for
the harbour she quitted so rarely. But first she shot a rocket high
into the darkness and was answered by other rockets, blue and flaming
on the far horizon. And at this sight old John ceased to laugh, and
foreboding fell again upon the crew of the _Esmeralda_.
“You saw that, Reuben?” cried John Hook, pointing upward with his bony
finger.
“I saw it, John.”
“Then there ain’t no need for me to speak.”
“Speak or silent, it don’t make no difference.”
“If I’ve eyes in my head, that’s the Baltic Fleet coming up the Gulf.”
“It is so, John.”
“The Baltic Fleet!” exclaimed Paul. “Then God help us! We shall never
run by there.”
“You speak gospel truth, sir.”
The master of the _Esmeralda_ paced the deck again in all the agony of
uncertainty prolonged. He had persuaded Marian to lie down in her
cabin so soon as the _Kremi_ ceased to fire; there she slept and
dreamed of England. But for him there was no sleep. These recurring
difficulties were to him as a sign from God rebuking his work. It had
seemed so simple when he planned it at Kronstadt--the quick rush in
the darkness, the friendship of surprise, the possibility of escape
before the news was known. But now the truth would not be hidden. The
flaming rockets spoke of a girdle put about him by the avenger. He
realised what a task was that which a man set himself when he sought
to pit his cunning against the might of Russia. His enemies would
crush him as they would crush a worm. They would drag him from the
woman whose lips he had kissed, whose love was all that remained to
him in life.
“You think there is no hope for us, Reuben?” he asked, suddenly
stopping in his walk and facing the silent group.
“No hope out yonder, sir--leastways not to-night.”
“You have no plan in your mind?”
“None--unless you should run north, sir. There are always the
islands.”
“I had not thought of them,” said Paul.
“I thought of them from the first,” continued Reuben. “There are a
hundred creeks which might hide us until the hunt is over. And we’ve
the land behind us, sir, if it should come to the worst.”
“Then to the islands let it be, and God help us if they know that we
are still in the Gulf.”
“Ay, ay, to that,” said old John; and so the little ship went about,
and heading straight for the coast of Finland, she began to race anew.
But the hearts of the men were heavy. It was as though they turned her
towards the gates of that prison which their minds had built for them
during the hours of the terrible night.