With a sigh he surrendered to the flesh’s frailty. An early cabby,

cruising up from Cannon Street station on the off-chance of finding

some one astir in the city, aside from the doves and sparrows, suffered

the surprise of his life when Kirkwood hailed him. His face was blank

with amazement when he reined in, and his eyes bulged when the

prospective fare, on impulse, explained his urgent needs. Happily he

turned out a fair representative of his class, an intelligent and

unfuddled cabby.

“Jump in, sir,” he told Kirkwood cheerfully, as soon as he had

assimilated the latter’s demands. “I knows precisely wotcher wants.

Leave it all to me.”

The admonition was all but superfluous; Kirkwood was unable, for the

time being, to do aught else than resign his fate into another’s

guidance. Once in the cab he slipped insensibly into a nap, and slept

soundly on, as reckless of the cab’s swift pace and continuous jouncing

as of the sunlight glaring full in his tired young face.

He may have slept twenty minutes; he awoke faint with drowsiness,

tingling from head to toe from fatigue, and in distress of a queer

qualm in the pit of his stomach, to find the hansom at rest and the

driver on the step, shaking his fare with kindly determination. “Oh, a’

right,” he assented surlily, and by sheer force of will made himself

climb out to the sidewalk; where, having rubbed his eyes, stretched

enormously and yawned discourteously in the face of the East End, he

was once more himself and a hundred times refreshed into the bargain.

Contentedly he counted three shillings into the cabby’s palm—the fare

named being one-and-six.

“The shilling over and above the tip’s for finding me the waterman and

boat,” he stipulated.

“Right-o. You’ll mind the ’orse a minute, sir?”

Kirkwood nodded. The man touched his hat and disappeared inexplicably.

Kirkwood, needlessly attaching himself to the reins near the animal’s

head, pried his sense of observation open and became alive to the fact

that he stood in a quarter of London as strange to him as had been

Bermondsey Wall.

To this day he can not put a name to it; he surmises that it was

Wapping.

Ramshackle tenements with sharp gable roofs lined either side of the

way. Frowsy women draped themselves over the window-sills. Pallid and

wasted parodies on childhood contested the middle of the street with

great, slow drays, drawn by enormous horses. On the sidewalks twin

streams of masculine humanity flowed without rest, both bound in the

same direction: dock laborers going to their day’s work. Men of every

nationality known to the world (he thought) passed him in his short

five-minute wait by the horse’s head; Britons, brown East Indians,

blacks from Jamaica, swart Italians, Polaks, Russian Jews, wire-drawn

Yankees, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, even a Nubian or two: uniform

in these things only, that their backs were bent with toil, bowed

beyond mending, and their faces stamped with the blurred type-stamp of

the dumb laboring brute. A strangely hideous procession, they shambled

on, for the most part silent, all uncouth and unreal in the clear

morning glow.

The outlander was sensible of some relief when his cabby popped

hurriedly out of the entrance to a tenement, a dull-visaged,

broad-shouldered waterman ambling more slowly after.

“Nevvy of mine, sir,” announced the cabby; “and a fust-ryte waterman;

knows the river like a book, he do.”

The nephew touched his forelock sheepishly.

“Thank you,” said Kirkwood; and, turning to the man, “Your boat?” he

asked with the brevity of weariness.

“This wye, sir.”

At his guide’s heels Kirkwood threaded the crowd and, entering the

tenement, stumbled through a gloomy and unsavory passage, to come out

at last upon a scanty, unrailed veranda overlooking the river. Ten feet

below, perhaps, foul waters purred and eddied round the piles

supporting the rear of the building. On one hand a ladder-like flight

of rickety steps descended to a floating stage to which a heavy rowboat

lay moored. In the latter a second waterman was seated bailing out

bilge with a rusty can.

“’Ere we are, sir,” said the cabman’s nephew, pausing at the head of

the steps. “Now, where’s it to be?”

The American explained tersely that he had a message to deliver a

friend, who had shipped aboard a vessel known as the _Alethea_,

scheduled to sail at floodtide; further than which deponent averred

naught.

The waterman scratched his head. “A ’ard job, sir; not knowin’ wot kind

of a boat she are mykes it ’arder.” He waited hopefully.

“Ten shillings,” volunteered Kirkwood promptly; “ten shillings if you

get me aboard her before she weighs anchor; fifteen if I keep you out

more than an hour, and still you put me aboard. After that we’ll make

other terms.”

The man promptly turned his back to hail his mate. “’Arf a quid, Bob,

if we puts this gent aboard a wessel name o’ _Allytheer_ afore she

syles at turn o’ tide.”

In the boat the man with the bailing can turned up an impassive

countenance. “Coom down,” he clenched the bargain; and set about

shipping the sweeps.

Kirkwood crept down the shaky ladder and deposited himself in the stern

of the boat; the younger boatman settled himself on the midship thwart.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” assented old Bob from the bows. He cast off the painter,

placed one sweep against the edge of the stage, and with a vigorous

thrust pushed off; then took his seat.

Bows swinging down-stream, the boat shot out from the shore.

“How’s the tide?” demanded Kirkwood, his impatience growing.

“On th’ turn, sir,” he was told.

For a long moment broadside to the current, the boat responded to the

sturdy pulling of the port sweeps. Another moment, and it was in full

swing, the watermen bending lustily to their task. Under their

unceasing urge, the broad-beamed, heavy craft, aided by the ebbing

tide, surged more and more rapidly through the water; the banks, grim

and unsightly with their towering, impassive warehouses broken by

toppling wooden tenements, slipped swiftly up-stream. Ship after ship

was passed, sailing vessels in the majority, swinging sluggishly at

anchor, drifting slowly with the river, or made fast to the

goods-stages of the shore; and in keen anxiety lest he should overlook

the right one, Kirkwood searched their bows and sterns for names, which

in more than one case proved hardly legible.

The _Alethea_ was not of their number.

In the course of some ten minutes, the watermen drove the boat sharply

inshore, bringing her up alongside another floating stage, in the

shadow of another tenement.—both so like those from which they had

embarked that Kirkwood would have been unable to distinguish one from

another.

In the bows old Bob lifted up a stentorian voice, summoning one

William.

Recognizing that there was some design in this, the passenger subdued

his disapproval of the delay, and sat quiet.

In answer to the third ear-racking hail, a man, clothed simply in dirty

shirt and disreputable trousers, showed himself in the doorway above,

rubbing the sleep out of a red, bloated countenance with a mighty and

grimy fist.

“’Ello,” he said surlily. “Wot’s th’ row?”

“’Oo,” interrogated old Bob, holding the boat steady by grasping the

stage, “was th’ party wot engyged yer larst night, Bill?”

“Party name o’ _Allytheer_,” growled the drowsy one. “W’y?”

“Party ’ere’s lookin’ for ’im. Where’ll I find this _Allytheer?_”

“Best look sharp ’r yer won’t find ’im,” retorted the one above. “’E

_was_ at anchor off Bow Creek larst night.”

Kirkwood’s heart leaped in hope. “What sort of a vessel was she?” he

asked, half rising in his eagerness.

“Brigantine, sir.”

“_Thank—you!_” replied Kirkwood explosively, resuming his seat with

uncalculated haste as old Bob, deaf to the amenities of social

intercourse in an emergency involving as much as ten-bob, shoved off

again.

And again the boat was flying down in midstream, the leaden waters,

shot with gold of the morning sun, parting sullenly beneath its bows.

The air was still, heavy and tepid; the least exertion brought out

beaded moisture on face and hands. In the east hung a turgid sky, dull

with haze, through which the mounting sun swam like a plaque of brass;

overhead it was clear and cloudless, but besmirched as if the polished

mirror of the heavens had been fouled by the breath of departing night.

On the right, ahead, Greenwich Naval College loomed up, the great

gray-stone buildings beyond the embankment impressively dominating the

scene, in happy relief against the wearisome monotony of the

river-banks; it came abreast; and ebbed into the backwards of the

scene.

The watermen straining at the sweeps, the boat sped into Blackwall

Reach, Bugsby Marshes a splash of lurid green to port, dreary Cubitt

Town and the West India Docks to starboard. Here the river ran thick

with shipping.

“Are we near?” Kirkwood would know; and by way of reply had a grunt of

the younger waterman.

Again, “Will we make it?” he asked.

The identical grunt answered him; he was free to interpret it as he

would; young William—as old Bob named him—had no breath for idle words.

Kirkwood subsided, controlling his impatience to the best of his

ability; the men, he told himself again and again, were earning their

pay, whether or not they gained the goal of his desire.... Their labors

were titanic; on their temples and foreheads the knotted veins stood

out like discolored whip-cord; their faces were the shade of raw beef,

steaming with sweat; their eyes protruded with the strain that set

their jaws like vises; their chests heaved and shrank like bellows;

their backs curved, straightened, and bent again in rhythmic unison as

tiring to the eye as the swinging of a pendulum.

Hugging the marshy shore, they rounded the Blackwall Point. Young

William looked to Kirkwood, caught his eye, and nodded.

“Here?”

Kirkwood rose, balancing himself against the leap and sway of the boat.

“Sumwhere’s ... ’long ... o’ ’ere.”

From right to left his eager glance swept the river’s widening reach.

Vessels were there in abundance, odd, unwieldy, blunt-bowed craft with

huge, rakish, tawny sails; long strings of flat barges, pyramidal

mounds of coal on each, lashed to another and convoyed by panting tugs;

steam cargo boats, battered, worn, rusted sore through their age-old

paint; a steel leviathan of the deep seas, half cargo, half passenger

boat, warping reluctantly into the mouth of the Victoria Dock tidal

basin,—but no brigantine, no sailing vessel of any type.

The young man’s lips checked a cry that was half a sob of bitter

disappointment. He had entered into the spirit of the chase heart and

soul, with an enthusiasm that was strange to him, when he came to look

back upon the time; and to fail, even though failure had been

discounted a hundredfold since the inception of his mad adventure,

seemed hard, very hard.

He sat down suddenly. “She’s gone!” he cried in a hollow gasp.

The boatmen eased upon their oars, and old Bob stood up in the bows,

scanning the river-scape with keen eyes shielded by a level palm. Young

William drooped forward suddenly, head upon knees, and breathed

convulsively. The boat drifted listlessly with the current.

Old Bob panted: “‘Dawn’t—see—nawthin’—o’ ’er.” He resumed his seat.

“There’s no hope, I suppose?”

The elder waterman shook his head. “‘Carn’t sye.... Might be round—nex’

bend—might be—passin’ Purfleet.... ’Point is—me an’ young Wilyum

’ere—carn’t do no more—’n we ’as. We be wore out.”

“Yes,” Kirkwood assented, disconsolate, “You’ve certainly earned your

pay.” Then hope revived; he was very young in heart, you know. “Can’t

you suggest something? I’ve _got_ to catch that ship!”

Old Bob wagged his head in slow negation; young William lifted his.

“There’s a rylewye runs by Woolwich,” he ventured. “Yer might tyke

tryne an’ go to Sheerness, sir. Yer’d be positive o’ passin’ ’er if she

didn’t syle afore ’igh-tide. ’Ire a boat at Sheerness an’ put out an’

look for ’er.”

“How far’s Woolwich?” Kirkwood demanded instantly.

“Mile,” said the elder man. “Tyke yer for five-bob extry.”

“Done!”

Young William dashed the sweat from his eyes, wiped his palms on his

hips, and fitted the sweeps again to the wooden tholes. Old Bob was as

ready. With an inarticulate cry they gave way.

X

DESPERATE MEASURES

Old Bob seemed something inclined toward optimism, when the boat lay

alongside a landing-stage at Woolwich, and Kirkwood had clambered

ashore.

“Yer’ll mebbe myke it,” the waterman told him with a weatherwise survey

of the skies. “Wind’s freshenin’ from the east’rds, an’ that’ll ’old

’er back a bit, sir.”

“Arsk th’ wye to th’ Dorkyard Styshun,” young William volunteered.

“’Tis th’ shortest walk, sir. I ’opes yer catches ’er.... Thanky, sir.”

He caught dextrously the sovereign which Kirkwood, in ungrudging

liberality, spared them of his store of two. The American nodded

acknowledgments and adieux, with a faded smile deprecating his chances

of winning the race, sorely handicapped as he was. He was very, very

tired, and in his heart suspected that he would fail. But, if he did,

he would at least be able to comfort himself that it was not for lack

of trying. He set his teeth on that covenant, in grim determination;

either there was a strain of the bulldog latent in the Kirkwood breed

or else his infatuation gripped him more strongly than he guessed.

Yet he suspected something of its power; he knew that this was

altogether an insane proceeding, and that the lure that led him on was

Dorothy Calendar. A strange dull light glowed in his weary eyes, on the

thought of her. He’d go through fire and water in her service. She was

costing him dear, perhaps was to cost him dearer still; and perhaps

there’d be for his guerdon no more than a “Thank you, Mr. Kirkwood!” at

the end of the passage. But that would be no less than his deserts; he

was not to forget that he was interfering unwarrantably; the girl was

in her father’s hands, surely safe enough there—to the casual mind. If

her partnership in her parent’s fortunes were distasteful, she endured

it passively, without complaint.

He decided that it was his duty to remind himself, from time to time,

that his main interest must be in the game itself, in the solution of

the riddle; whatever should befall, he must look for no reward for his

gratuitous and self-appointed part. Indeed he was all but successful in

persuading himself that it was the fascination of adventure alone that

drew him on.

Whatever the lure, it was inexorable; instead of doing as a sensible

person would have done—returning to London for a long rest in his hotel

room, ere striving to retrieve his shattered fortunes—Philip Kirkwood

turned up the village street, intent only to find the railway station

and catch the first available train for Sheerness, were that an early

one or a late.

A hapchance native whom he presently encountered, furnished minute

directions for reaching the Dockyard Station of the Southeastern and

Chatham Rail-way, adding comfortable information to the effect that the

next east-bound train would pass through in ten minutes; if Kirkwood

would mend his pace he could make it easily, with time to spare.

Kirkwood mended his pace accordingly, but, contrary to the prediction,

had no time to spare at all. Even as he stormed the ticket-grating, the

train was thundering in at the platform. Therefore a nervous ticket

agent passed him out a first-class ticket instead of the third-class he

had asked for; and there was no time wherein to have the mistake

rectified. Kirkwood planked down the fare, swore, and sprinted for the

carriages.

The first compartment whose door he jerked violently open, proved to be

occupied, and was, moreover, not a smoking-car. He received a fleeting

impression of a woman’s startled eyes, staring into his own through a

thin mesh of veiling, fell off the running-board, slammed the door, and

hurled himself to-wards the next compartment. Here happier fortune

attended upon his desire; the box-like section was untenanted, and a

notice blown upon the window-glass announced that it was “2nd Class

Smoking.” Kirkwood promptly tumbled in; and when he turned to shut the

door the coaches were moving.

A pipe helped him to bear up while the train was making its two other

stops in the Borough of Woolwich: a circumstance so maddening to a man

in a hurry, that it set Kirkwood’s teeth on edge with sheer impatience,

and made him long fervently for the land of his birth, where they do

things differently—where the Board of Directors of a railway company

doesn’t erect three substantial passenger depôts in the course of a

mile and a half of overgrown village. It consoled him little that none

disputed with him his lonely possession of the compartment, that he

_had_ caught the Sheerness train, or that he was really losing no time;

a sense of deep dejection had settled down upon his consciousness, with

a realization of how completely a fool’s errand was this of his. He

felt foredoomed to failure; he was never to see Dorothy Calendar again;

and his brain seemed numb with disappointment.

Rattling and swaying, the train left the town behind.

Presently he put aside his pipe and stared blankly out at a reeling

landscape, the pleasant, homely, smiling countryside of Kent. A deeper

melancholy tinted his mind: Dorothy Calendar was for ever lost to him.

The trucks drummed it out persistently—he thought, vindictively:

“_Lost!... Lost!... For ever lost!..._”

And he had made—was then making—a damned fool of himself. The trucks

had no need to din _that_ into his thick skull by their ceaseless

iteration; he knew it, would not deny it....

And it was all his own fault. He’d had his chance, Calendar had offered

him it. If only he had closed with the fat adventurer!...

Before his eyes field and coppice, hedge and homestead, stream and

flowing highway, all blurred and ran streakily into one another, like a

highly impressionistic water-color. He could make neither head nor tail

of the flying views, and so far as coherent thought was concerned, he

could not put two ideas together. Without understanding distinctly, he

presently did a more wise and wholesome thing: which was to topple

limply over on the cushions and fall fast asleep.

After a long time he seemed to realize rather hazily that the

carriage-door had been opened to admit somebody. Its smart closing

_bang_ shocked him awake. He sat up, blinking in confusion, hardly

conscious of more, to begin with, than that the train had paused and

was again in full flight. Then, his senses clearing, he became aware

that his solitary companion, just entered, was a woman. She was seated

over across from him, her back to the engine, in an attitude which

somehow suggested a highly nonchalant frame of mind. She laughed, and

immediately her speaking voice was high and sweet in his hearing.

“Really, you know, Mr. Kirkwood, I simply couldn’t contain my

impatience another instant.”

Kirkwood gasped and tried to re-collect his wits.

“Beg pardon—I’ve been asleep,” he said stupidly.

“Yes. I’m sorry to have disturbed you, but, you know, you must make

allowances for a woman’s nerves.”

Beneath his breath the bewildered man said: “The deuce!” and above it,

in a stupefied tone: “Mrs. Hallam!”

She nodded in a not unfriendly fashion, smiling brightly. “Myself, Mr.

Kirkwood! Really, our predestined paths are badly tangled, just now;

aren’t they? Were you surprised to find me in here, with you? Come now,

confess you were!”

He remarked the smooth, girlish freshness of her cheeks, the sense and

humor of her mouth, the veiled gleam of excitement in her eyes of the

changing sea; and saw, as well, that she was dressed for traveling,

sensibly but with an air, and had brought a small hand-bag with her.

“Surprised and delighted,” he replied, recovering, with mendacity so

intentional and obvious that the woman laughed aloud.

“I knew you’d be!... You see, I had the carriage ahead, the one you

didn’t take. I was so disappointed when you flung up to the door and

away again! You didn’t see me hanging half out the window, to watch

where you went, did you? That’s how I discovered that your discourtesy

was unintentional, that you hadn’t recognized me,—by the fact that you

took this compartment, right behind my own.”

She paused invitingly, but Kirkwood, grown wary, contented himself with

picking up his pipe and carefully knocking out the dottle on the

window-ledge.

“I was glad to see _you_,” she affirmed; “but only partly because you

were you, Mr. Kirkwood. The other and major part was because sight of

you confirmed my own secret intuition. You see, I’m quite old enough

and wise enough to question even my own intuitions.”

“A woman wise enough for that is an adult prodigy,” he ventured

cautiously.

“It’s experience and age. I insist upon the age; I the mother of a

grown-up boy! So I deliberately ran after you, changing when we stopped

at Newington. You might’ve escaped me if I had waited until We got to

Queensborough.”

Again she paused in open expectancy. Kirkwood, perplexed, put the pipe

in his pocket, and assumed a factitious look of resignation, regarding

her askance with that whimsical twist of his eyebrows.

“For you are going to Queensborough, aren’t you, Mr. Kirkwood?”

“Queensborough?” he echoed blankly; and, in fact, he was at a loss to

follow her drift. “No, Mrs. Hallam; I’m not bound there.”

Her surprise was apparent; she made no effort to conceal it. “But,” she

faltered, “if not there—”

“’Give you my word, Mrs. Hallam, I have no intention whatever of going

to Queensborough,” Kirkwood protested.

“I don’t understand.” The nervous drumming of a patent-leather covered

toe, visible beneath the hem of her dress, alone betrayed a rising tide

of impatience. “Then my intuition _was_ at fault!”

“In this instance, if it was at all concerned with my insignificant

affairs, yes—most decidedly at fault.”

She shook her head, regarding him with grave suspicion. “I hardly know:

whether to believe you. I think....”

Kirkwood’s countenance displayed an added shade of red. After a moment,

“I mean no discourtesy,” he began stiffly, “but—”

“But you don’t care a farthing whether I believe you or not?”

He caught her laughing eye, and smiled, the flush subsiding.

“Very well, then! Now let us see: Where _are_ you bound?”

Kirkwood looked out of the window.

“I’m convinced it’s a rendezvous...?”

Kirkwood smiled patiently at the landscape.

“Is Dorothy Calendar so very, very beautiful, Mr. Kirkwood?”—with a

trace of malice.

Ostentatiously Kirkwood read the South Eastern and Chatham’s framed

card of warning, posted just above Mrs. Hallam’s head, to all such

incurable lunatics as are possessed of a desire to travel on the

running-boards of railway carriages.

“You are going to meet her, aren’t you?”

He gracefully concealed a yawn.

The woman’s plan of attack took another form. “Last night, when you

told me your story, I believed you.”

He devoted himself to suppressing the temptingly obvious retort, and

succeeded; but though he left it unspoken, the humor of it twitched the

corners of his mouth; and Mrs. Hallam was observant. So that her next

attempt to draw him out was edged with temper.

“I believed you an American but a gentleman; it appears that, if you

ever were the latter, you’ve fallen so low that you willingly cast your

lot with thieves.”

Having exhausted his repertoire of rudenesses, Kirkwood took to

twiddling his thumbs.

“I want to ask you if you think it fair to me or my son, to leave us in

ignorance of the place where you are to meet the thieves who stole

our—my son’s jewels?”

“Mrs. Hallam,” he said soberly, “if I am going to meet Mr. Calendar or

Mr. Mulready, I have no assurance of that fact.”

There was only the briefest of pauses, during which she analyzed this;

then, quickly, “But you hope to?” she snapped.

He felt that the only adequate retort to this would be a shrug of his

shoulders; doubted his ability to carry one off; and again took refuge

in silence.

The woman abandoned a second plan of siege, with a readiness that did

credit to her knowledge of mankind. She thought out the next very

carefully, before opening with a masked battery.

“Mr. Kirkwood, can’t we be friends—this aside?”

“Nothing could please me more, Mrs. Hallam!”

“I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed you—”

“And I, too, have been rude.”

“Last night, when you cut away so suddenly, you prevented my making you

a proposal, a sort of a business proposition....”

“Yes—?”

“To come over to our side—”

“I thought so. That was why I went.”

“Yes; I understood. But this morning, when you’ve had time to think it

over—?”

“I have no choice in the matter, Mrs. Hallam.” The green eyes darkened

ominously. “You mean—I am to understand, then, that you’re against us,

that you prefer to side with swindlers and scoundrels, all because of

a—”

She discovered him eying her with a smile of such inscrutable and

sardonic intelligence, that the words died on her lips, and she

crimsoned, treasonably to herself. For he saw it; and the belief he had

conceived while attending to her tissue of fabrication, earlier that

morning, was strengthened to the point of conviction that, if anything

had been stolen by anybody, Mrs. Hallam and her son owned it as little

as Calendar.

As for the woman, she felt she had steadily lost, rather than gained,

ground; and the flash of anger that had colored her cheeks, lit twin

beacons in her eyes, which she resolutely fought down until they faded

to mere gleams of resentment and determination. But she forgot to

control her lips; and they are the truest indices to a woman’s

character and temperament; and Kirkwood did not overlook the

circumstance that their specious sweetness had vanished, leaving them

straight, set and hard, quite the reverse of attractive.

“So,” she said slowly, after a silent time, “you are not for

Queensborough! The corollary of that _admission_, Mr. Kirkwood, is that

you are for Sheerness.”

“I believe,” he replied wearily, “that there are no other stations on

this line, after Newington.”

“It follows, then, that—that I follow.” And in answer to his perturbed

glance, she added: “Oh, I’ll grant that intuition is sometimes a poor

guide. But if you meet George Calendar, so shall I. Nothing can prevent

that. You can’t hinder me.”

Considerably amused, he chuckled. “Let us talk of other things, Mrs.

Hallam,” he suggested pleasantly. “How is your son?”

At this juncture the brakes began to shriek and grind upon the wheels.

The train slowed; it stopped; and the voice of a guard could be heard

admonishing passengers for Queensborough Pier to alight and take the

branch line. In the noise the woman’s response was drowned, and

Kirkwood was hardly enough concerned for poor Freddie to repeat his

question.

When, after a little, the train pulled out of the junction, neither

found reason to resume the conversation. During the brief balance of

the journey Mrs. Hallam presumably had food for thought; she frowned,

pursed her lips, and with one daintily gloved forefinger followed a

seam of her tailored skirt; while Kirkwood sat watching and wondering

how to rid himself of her, if she proved really as troublesome as she

threatened to be.

Also, he wondered continually what it was all about. Why did Mrs.

Hallam suspect him of designing to meet Calendar at Queensborough? Had

she any tangible ground for believing that Calendar could be found in

Queensborough? Presumably she had, since she was avowedly in pursuit of

that gentleman, and, Kirkwood inferred, had booked for Queensborough.

Was he, then, running away from Calendar and his daughter to chase a

will-o’-the-wisp of his credulous fancy, off Sheerness shore?

Disturbing reflection. He scowled over it, then considered the other

side of the face. Presuming Mrs. Hallam to have had reasonably

dependable assurance that Calendar would stop in Queensborough, would

she so readily have abandoned her design to catch him there, on the

mere supposition that Kirkwood might be looking for him in Sheerness?

That did not seem likely to one who esteemed Mrs. Hallam’s acumen as

highly as Kirkwood did. He brightened up, forgot that his was a fool’s

errand, and began again to project strategic plans into a problematic

future.

A sudden jolt interrupted this pastime, and the warning screech of the

brakes informed that he had no time to scheme, but had best continue on

the plan of action that had brought him thus far—that is, trust to his

star and accept what should befall without repining.

He rose, opened the door, and holding it so, turned.

“I regret, Mrs. Hallam,” he announced, smiling his crooked smile, “that

a pressing engagement is about to prohibit my ’squiring you through the

ticket-gates. You understand, I’m sure.”

His irrepressible humor proved infectious; and Mrs. Hallam’s spirit ran

as high as his own. She was smiling cheerfully when she, too, rose.

“I also am in some haste,” she averred demurely, gathering up her

hand-bag and umbrella.

A raised platform shot in beside the carriage, and the speed was so

sensibly moderated that the train seemed to be creeping rather than

running. Kirkwood flung the door wide open and lowered himself to the

running-board. The end of the track was in sight and—a man who has been

trained to board San Francisco cable-cars fears to alight from no

moving vehicle. He swung off, got his balance, and ran swiftly down the

platform.

A cry from a bystander caused him to glance over his shoulder; Mrs.

Hallam was then in the act of alighting. As he looked the flurry of

skirts subsided and she fell into stride, pursuing.

Sleepy Sheerness must have been scandalized, that day, and its gossips

have acquired ground for many, an uncharitable surmise.

Kirkwood, however, was so fortunate as to gain the wicket before the

employee there awoke to the situation. Otherwise, such is the temper of

British petty officialdom, he might have detained the fugitive. As it

was, Kirkwood surrendered his ticket and ran out into the street with

his luck still a dominant factor in the race. For, looking back, he saw

that Mrs. Hallam had been held up at the gate, another victim of

British red-tape; her ticket read for Queensborough, she was attempting

to alight one station farther down the line, and while undoubtedly she

was anxious to pay the excess fare, Heaven alone knew when she would

succeed in allaying the suspicions and resentment of the ticket-taker.

“That’s good for ten minutes’ start!” Kirkwood crowed. “And it never

occurred to me—!”

Before the station he found two hacks in waiting, with little to choose

between them; neither was of a type that did not seem to advertise its

pre-Victorian fashioning, and to neither was harnessed an animal that

deserved anything but the epithet of screw. Kirkwood took the nearest

for no other reason than because it was the nearest, and all but

startled the driver off his box by offering double-fare for a brisk

pace and a simple service at the end of the ride. Succinctly he set

forth his wants, jumped into the antiquated four-wheeler, and threw

himself down upon musty, dusty cushions to hug himself over the joke

and bless whatever English board of railway, directors it was that

first ordained that tickets should be taken up at the end instead of

the outset of a journey.

It was promptly made manifest that he had further cause for

gratulation. The cabby, recovering from his amazement, was plying an

indefatigable whip and thereby eliciting a degree of speed from his

superannuated nag, that his fare had by no means hoped for, much less

anticipated. The cab rocked and racketed through Sheerness’ streets at

a pace which is believed to be unprecedented and unrivaled; its

passenger, dashed from side to side, had all he could do to keep from

battering the vehicle to pieces with his head; while it was entirely

out of the question to attempt to determine whether or not he was being

pursued. He enjoyed it all hugely.

In a period of time surprisingly short, he saw, from fleeting glimpses

of the scenery to be obtained through the reeling windows, that they

were threading the outskirts of the town; synchronously, whether by

design or through actual inability to maintain it, the speed was

moderated. And in the course of a few more minutes the cab stopped

definitely.

Kirkwood clambered painfully out, shook himself together and the

bruises out of his bones, and looked fearfully back.

Aside from a slowly settling cloud of dust, the road ran clear as far

as he could see—to the point, in fact, where the town closed in about

it.

He had won; at all events in so much as to win meant eluding the

persevering Mrs. Hallam. But to what end?

Abstractedly he tendered his lonely sovereign to the driver, and

without even looking at it, crammed the heavy weight of change into his

pocket; an oversight which not only won him the awe-struck admiration

of the cabby, but entailed consequences (it may be) he little

apprehended. It was with an absentminded nod that he acquiesced in the

man’s announcement that he might arrange about the boat for him.

Accordingly the cabby disappeared; and Kirkwood continued to stare

about him, eagerly, hopefully.

He stood on the brink of the Thames estuary, there a possible five

miles from shore to shore; from his feet, almost, a broad shingle beach

sloped gently to the water.

On one hand a dilapidated picket-fence enclosed the door-yard of a

fisherman’s cottage, or, better, hovel,—if it need be accurately

described—at the door of which the cabby was knocking.

The morning was now well-advanced. The sun rode high, a sphere of

tarnished flame in a void of silver-gray, its thin cold radiance

striking pallid sparks from the leaping crests of wind-whipped waves.

In the east a wall of vapor, dull and lusterless, had taken body since

the dawn, masking the skies and shutting down upon the sea like some

vast curtain; and out of the heart of this a bitter and vicious wind

played like a sword.

To the north, Shoeburyness loomed vaguely, like a low-drifted bank of

cloud. Off to the right the Nore Lightship danced, a tiny fleck of warm

crimson in a wilderness of slatey-blue waters, plumed with a myriad of

vanishing white-caps.

Up the shelving shore, small, puny wavelets dashed in impotent fury,

and the shingle sang unceasingly its dreary, syncopated monotone. High

and dry, a few dingy boats lay canted wearily upon their broad,

swelling sides,—a couple of dories, apparently in daily use; a small

sloop yacht, dismantled and plainly beyond repair; and an oyster-smack

also out of commission. About them the beach was strewn with a litter

of miscellany,—nets, oars, cork buoys, bits of wreckage and driftwood,

a few fish too long forgotten and (one assumed) responsible in part for

the foreign wealth of the atmosphere.

Some little distance offshore a fishing-boat, catrigged and not more

than twenty-feet over all, swung bobbing at her mooring, keen nose

searching into the wind; at sight of which Kirkwood gave thanks, for

his adventitious guide had served him well, if that boat were to be

hired by any manner of persuasion.

But it was to the farther reaches of the estuary that he gave more

prolonged and most anxious heed, scanning narrowly what shipping was

there to be seen. Far beyond the lightship a liner was riding the waves

with serene contempt, making for the river’s mouth and Tilbury Dock.

Nearer in, a cargo boat was standing out upon the long trail, the white

of riven waters showing clearly against her unclean freeboard. Out to

east a little covey of fishing-smacks, red sails well reefed, were

scudding before the wind like strange affrighted water-fowl, and

bearing down past a heavy-laden river barge. The latter, with tarpaulin

battened snugly down over the cockpit and the seas dashing over her

wash-board until she seemed under water half the time, was forging

stodgily Londonwards, her bargee at the tiller smoking a placid pipe.

But a single sailing vessel of any notable tonnage was in sight; and

when he saw her Kirkwood’s heart became buoyant with hope, and he began

to tremble with nervous eagerness. For he believed her to be the

_Alethea_.

There’s no mistaking a ship brigantine-rigged for any other style of

craft that sails the seas.

From her position when first he saw her, Kirkwood could have fancied

she was tacking out of the mouth of the Medway; but he judged that,

leaving the Thames’ mouth, she had tacked to starboard until well-nigh

within hail of Sheerness. Now, having presumably, gone about, she was

standing out toward the Nore, boring doggedly into the wind. He would

have given a deal for glasses wherewith to read the name upon her bows,

but was sensible of no hampering doubts; nor, had he harbored any,

would they have deterred him. He had set his heart upon the winning of

his venture, had come too far, risked far too much, to suffer anything

now to stay his hand and stand between him and Dorothy Calendar.

Whatever the further risks and hazards, though he should take his life

in his hands to win to her side, he would struggle on. He recked

nothing of personal danger; a less selfish passion ran molten in his

veins, moving him to madness.

Fascinated, he fixed his gaze upon the reeling brigantine, and for a

space it was as if by longing he had projected his spirit to her

slanting deck, and were there, pleading his case with the mistress of

his heart....

Voices approaching brought him back to shore. He turned, resuming his

mask of sanity, the better to confer with the owner of the cottage and

boats—a heavy, keen-eyed fellow, ungracious and truculent of habit, and

chary of his words; as he promptly demonstrated.

“I’ll hire your boat,” Kirkwood told him, “to put me aboard that

brigantine, off to leeward. We ought to start at once.”

The fisherman shifted his quid of tobacco from cheek to cheek, grunted

inarticulately, and swung deliberately on his heel, displaying a bull

neck above a pair of heavy shoulders.

“Dirty weather,” he croaked, facing back from his survey of the eastern

skies before the American found out whether or not he should resent his

insolence.

“How much?” Kirkwood demanded curtly, annoyed.

The man hesitated, scowling blackly at the heeling vessel, momentarily

increasing her distance from shore. Then with a crafty smile, “Two

pound’,” he declared.

The American nodded. “Very well,” he agreed simply. “Get out your

boat.”

The fisherman turned away to shamble noisily over the shingle, huge

booted heels crunching, toward one of the dories. To this he set his

shoulder, shoving it steadily down the beach until only the stern was

dry.

Kirkwood looked back, for the last time, up the road to Sheerness.

Nothing moved upon it. He was rid of Mrs. Hallam, if face to face with

a sterner problem. He had a few pence over ten shillings in his pocket,

and had promised to pay the man four times as much. He would have

agreed to ten times the sum demanded; for the boat he must and would

have. But he had neglected to conclude his bargain, to come to an

understanding as to the method of payment; and he felt more than a

little dubious as to the reception the fisherman would give his

proposition, sound as he, Kirkwood, knew it to be.

In the background the cabby loitered, gnawed by insatiable curiosity.

The fisherman turned, calling over his shoulder: “If ye’d catch yon

vessel, come!”

With one final twinge of doubt—the task of placating this surly dog was

anything but inviting—the American strode to the boat and climbed in,

taking the stern seat. The fisherman shoved off, wading out thigh-deep

in the spiteful waves, then threw himself in over the gunwales and

shipped the oars. Bows swinging offshore, rocking and dancing, the dory

began to forge slowly toward the anchored boat. In their faces the wind

beat gustily, and small, slapping waves, breaking against the sides,

showered them with fine spray....

In time the dory lay alongside the cat-boat, the fisherman with a

gnarled hand grasping the latter’s gunwale to hold the two together.

With some difficulty Kirkwood transhipped himself, landing asprawl in

the cockpit, amid a tangle of cordage slippery with scales. The skipper

followed, with clumsy expertness bringing the dory’s painter with him

and hitching it to a ring-bolt abaft the rudder-head. Then, pausing an

instant to stare into the East with somber eyes, he shipped the tiller

and bent to the halyards. As the sail rattled up, flapping wildly,

Kirkwood marked with relief—for it meant so much time saved—that it was

already close reefed.

But when at least the boom was thrashing overhead and the halyards had

been made fast to their cleats, the fisherman again stood erect,

peering distrustfully at the distant wall of cloud.

Then, in two breaths: “Can’t do it,” he decided; “not at the price.”

“Why?” Kirkwood stared despairingly after the brigantine, that was

already drawn far ahead.

“Danger,” growled the fellow, “—wind.”

At a loss completely, Kirkwood found no words. He dropped his head,

considering.

“Not at the price,” the sullen voice iterated; and he looked up to find

the cunning gaze upon him.

“How much, then?”

“Five poun’ I’ll have—no less, for riskin’ my life this day.”

“Impossible. I haven’t got it.”

In silence the man unshipped the tiller and moved toward the cleats.

“Hold on a minute.”

Kirkwood unbuttoned his coat and, freeing the chain from his waistcoat

buttonholes, removed his watch.... As well abandon them altogether; he

had designed to leave them as security for the two pounds, and had

delayed stating the terms only for fear lest they be refused. Now, too

late as ever, he recognized his error. But surely, he thought, it

should be apparent even to that low intelligence that the timepiece

alone was worth more than the boat itself.

“Will you take these?” he offered. “Take and keep them—only set me

aboard that ship!”

Deliberately the fisherman weighed the watch and chain in his broad,

hard palm, eyes narrowing to mere slits in his bronzed mask.

“How much?” he asked slowly.

“Eighty pounds, together; the chain alone cost me twenty.”

The shifty, covetous eyes ranged from the treasure in his hand to the

threatening east. A puff of wind caught the sail and sent the boom

athwartships, like a mighty flail. Both men ducked instinctively, to

escape a braining.

“How do I know?” objected the skipper.

“I’m telling you. If you’ve got eyes, you can see,” retorted Kirkwood

savagely, seeing that he had erred in telling the truth; the amount he

had named was too great to be grasped at once by this crude, cupidous

brain.

“How do I know?” the man repeated. Nevertheless he dropped watch and

chain into his pocket, then with a meaning grimace extended again his

horny, greedy palm.

“What...?”

“Hand over th’ two pound’ and we’ll go.”

“I’ll see you damned first!”

A flush of rage blinded the young man. The knowledge that the _Alethea_

was minute by minute slipping beyond his reach seemed to madden him.

White-lipped and ominously quiet he rose from his seat on the combing,

as, without answer, the fisherman, crawling out on the overhand, began

to haul in the dory.

“Ashore ye go,” he pronounced his ultimatum, motioning Kirkwood to

enter the boat.

The American turned, looking for the _Alethea_, or for the vessel that

he believed bore that name. She was nearing the light-ship when he

found her, and as he looked a squall blurred the air between them,

blotting the brigantine out with a smudge of rain. The effect was as if

she had vanished, as if she were for ever snatched from his grasp; and

with Dorothy aboard her—Heaven alone knew in what need of him!

Mute and blind with despair and wrath, he turned upon the man and

caught him by the collar, forcing him out over the lip of the overhang.

They were unevenly matched, Kirkwood far the slighter, but strength

came to him in the crisis, physical strength and address such as he had

not dreamed was at his command. And the surprise of his onslaught

proved an ally of unguessed potency. Before he himself knew it he was

standing on the overhang and had shifted his hold to seize the fellow

about the waist; then, lifting him clear of the deck, and aided by a

lurch of the cat-boat, he cast him bodily into the dory. The man,

falling, struck his head against one of the thwarts, a glancing blow

that stunned him temporarily. Kirkwood himself dropped as if shot, a

trailing reef-point slapping his cheek until it stung as the boom

thrashed overhead. It was as close a call as he had known; the

knowledge sickened him a little.

Without rising he worked the painter loose and cast the dory adrift;

then crawled back into the cockpit. No pang of compassion disturbed him

as he abandoned the fisherman to the mercy of the sea; though the

fellow lay still, uncouthly distorted, in the bottom of the dory, he

was in no danger; the wind and waves together would carry the boat

ashore.... For that matter, the man was even then recovering,

struggling to sit up.

Crouching to avoid the boom, Kirkwood went forward to the bows, and,

grasping the mooring cable, drew it in, slipping back into the cockpit

to get a stronger purchase with his feet. It was a struggle; the boat

pulled sluggishly against the wind, the cable inching in jealously. And

behind him he could hear a voice bellowing inarticulate menaces, and

knew that in another moment the fisherman would be at his oars.

Frantically he tugged and tore at the slimy rope, hauling with a will

and a prayer. It gave more readily, towards the end, but he seemed to

have fought with it for ages when at last the anchor tripped and he got

it in.

Immediately he leaped back to the stern, fitted in the tiller, and

seizing the mainsheet, drew the boom in till the wind should catch in

the canvas. In the dory the skipper, bending at his oars, was not two

yards astern.

He was hard aboard when, the sail filling with a bang, Kirkwood pulled

the tiller up; and the cat-boat slid away, a dozen feet separating them

in a breath.

A yell of rage boomed down the wind, but he paid no heed. Careless

alike of the dangers he had passed and those that yawned before him, he

trimmed the sheet and stood away on the port tack, heading directly for

the Nore Lightship.

XI

OFF THE NORE

Kirkwood’s anger cooled apace; at worst it had been a flare of

passion—incandescent. It was seldom more. His brain clearing, the

temperature of his judgment quickly regained its mean, and he saw his

chances without distortion, weighed them without exaggeration.

Leaning against the combing, feet braced upon the slippery and

treacherous deck, he clung to tiller and mainsheet and peered ahead

with anxious eyes, a pucker of daring graven deep between his brows.

A mile to westward, three or more ahead, he could see the brigantine

standing close in under the Essex shore. At times she was invisible;

again he could catch merely the glint of her canvas, white against the

dark loom of the littoral, toned by a mist of flying spindrift. He

strained his eyes, watching for the chance which would take place in

the rake of her masts and sails, when she should come about.

For the longer that manoeuver was deferred, the better was his chance

of attaining his object. It was a forlorn hope. But in time the

brigantine, to escape Maplin Sands, would be forced to tack and stand

out past the lightship, the wind off her port bows. Then their courses

would intersect. It remained to be demonstrated whether the cat-boat

was speedy enough to arrive at this point of contact in advance of, or

simultaneously with, the larger vessel. Every minute that the putative

_Alethea_ put off coming about brought the cat-boat nearer that goal,

but Kirkwood could do no more than hope and try to trust in the

fisherman’s implied admission that it could be done. It was all in the

boat and the way she handled.

He watched her anxiously, quick to approve her merits as she displayed

them. He had sailed small craft before—frail center-board cat-boats,

handy and swift, built to serve in summer winds and protected waters:

never such an one as this. Yet he liked her.

Deep bosomed she was, with no center-board, dependent on her draught

and heavy keel to hold her on the wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed

with stout plank and ribbed with seasoned timber, designed to keep

afloat in the wickedest weather brewed by the foul-tempered German

Ocean. Withal her lines were fine and clean; for all her beam she was

calculated to nose narrowly into the wind and make a pretty pace as

well. A good boat: he had the grace to give the credit to his luck.

Her disposition was more fully disclosed as they drew away from the

beach. Inshore with shoaling water, the waves had been choppy and

spiteful but lacking force of weight. Farther out, as the bottom fell

away, the rollers became more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas

met the cat-boat, from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in

the tiny cockpit; who was nevertheless aware that to a steamer they

would be negligible.

His boat breasted them gallantly, toiling sturdily up the steep

acclivities, poising breathlessly on foam-crested summits for dizzy

instants, then plunging headlong down the deep green swales; and left a

boiling wake behind her,—urging ever onward, hugging the wind in her

wisp of blood-red sail, and boring into it, pulling at the tiller with

the mettle of a race-horse slugging at the bit.

Offshore, too, the wind stormed with added strength, or, possibly, had

freshened. For minutes on end the leeward gunwales would run green, and

now and again the screaming, pelting squalls that scoured the estuary

would heel her over until the water cascaded in over the lee combing,

and the rudder, lifted clear, would hang idle until, smitten by some

racing billow, the tiller would be all but torn from Kirkwood’s hands.

Again and again this happened; and those were times of trembling. But

always the cat-boat righted, shaking the clinging waters from her and

swinging her stem into the wind again; and there would follow an

abbreviated breathing spell, during which Kirkwood was at liberty to

dash the salt spray from his eyes and search the wind-harried waste for

the brigantine. Sometimes he found her, sometimes not.

Long after he had expected her to, she went about and they began to

close in upon each other. He could see that even with shortened canvas

she was staggering drunkenly under the fierce impacts of the wind. For

himself, it was nip-and-tuck, now, and no man in his normal sense would

have risked a sixpence on the boat’s chance to live until she crossed

the brigantine’s bows.

Time out of reckoning he was forced to kneel in the swimming cockpit,

steering with one hand, using the bailing-dish with the other, and

keeping his eyes religiously turned to the bellying patch of sail. It

was heartbreaking toil; he began reluctantly to concede that it could

not last much longer. And if he missed the brigantine he would be lost;

mortal strength was not enough to stand the unending strain upon every

bone, muscle and sinew, required to keep the boat upon her course;

though for a time it might cope with and solve the problems presented

by each new, malignant billow and each furious, howling squall, the end

inevitably must be failure. To struggle on would be but to postpone the

certain end ... save and except the possibility of his gaining the

brigantine within the period of time strictly and briefly limited by

his powers of endurance.

Long since he had become numb with cold from incessant drenchings of

icy spray, that piled in over the windward counter, keeping the bottom

ankle-deep regardless of his laborious but intermittent efforts with

the bailing dish. And the two, brigantine and cockle-shell, were

drawing together with appalling deliberation.

A dozen times he was on the point of surrender, as often plucked up

hope; as the minutes wore on and he kept above water, he began to

believe that if he could stick it out his judgment and seamanship would

be justified ... though human ingenuity backed by generosity could by

no means contrive adequate excuse for his foolhardiness.

But that was aside, something irreparable. Wan and grim, he fought it

out.

But that his voice stuck in his parched throat, he could have shouted

in his elation, when eventually he gained the point of intersection an

eighth of a mile ahead of the brigantine and got sight of her windward

freeboard as, most slowly, the cat-boat forged across her course.

For all that, the moment of his actual triumph was not yet; he had

still to carry off successfully a scheme that for sheer audacity of

conception and contempt for danger, transcended all that had gone

before.

Holding the cat-boat on for a time, he brought her about handsomely a

little way beyond the brigantine’s course, and hung in the eye of the

wind, the leach flapping and tightening with reports like rifle-shots,

and the water sloshing about his calves—bailing-dish now altogether out

of mind—while he watched the oncoming vessel, his eyes glistening with

anticipation.

She was footing it smartly, the brigantine—lying down to it and snoring

into the wind. Beneath her stem waves broke in snow-white showers,

whiter than the canvas of her bulging jib—broke and, gnashing their

teeth in impotent fury, swirled and eddied down her sleek dark flanks.

Bobbing, courtesying, she plunged onward, shortening the interval with

mighty, leaping bounds. On her bows, with each instant, the golden

letters of her name grew larger and more legible until—_Alethea_!—he

could read it plain beyond dispute.

Joy welled in his heart. He forgot all that he had undergone in the

prospect of what he proposed still to do in the name of the only woman

the world held for him. Unquestioning he had come thus far in her

service; unquestioning, by her side, he was prepared to go still

farther, though all humanity should single her out with accusing

fingers....

They were watching him, aboard the brigantine; he could see a line of

heads above her windward rail. Perhaps _she_ was of their number. He

waved an audacious hand. Some one replied, a great shout shattering

itself unintelligibly against the gale. He neither understood nor

attempted to reply; his every faculty was concentrated on the supreme

moment now at hand.

Calculating the instant to a nicety, he paid off the sheet and pulled

up the tiller. The cat-boat pivoted on her heel; with a crack her sail

flapped full and rigid; then, with the untempered might of the wind

behind her, she shot like an arrow under the brigantine’s bows, so

close that the bowsprit of the latter first threatened to impale the

sail, next, the bows plunging, crashed down a bare two feet behind the

cat-boat’s stern.

Working in a frenzy of haste, Kirkwood jammed the tiller hard alee,

bringing the cat about, and, trimming the mainsheet as best he might,

found himself racing under the brigantine’s leeward quarter,—water

pouring in generously over the cat’s.

Luffing, he edged nearer, handling his craft as though intending to ram

the larger vessel, foot by foot shortening the little interval. When it

was four feet, he would risk the jump; he crawled out on the overhang,

crouching on his toes, one hand light upon the tiller, the other

touching the deck, ready ... ready....

Abruptly the _Alethea_ shut off the wind; the sail flattened and the

cat dropped back. In a second the distance had doubled. In anguish

Kirkwood uttered an exceeding bitter cry. Already he was falling far

off her counter....

A shout reached him. He was dimly conscious of a dark object hurtling

through the air. Into the cockpit, splashing, something dropped—a coil

of rope. He fell forward upon it, into water eighteen inches deep; and

for the first time realized that, but for that line, he had gone to his

drowning in another minute. The cat was sinking.

As he scrambled to his feet, clutching the life-line, a heavy wave

washed over the water-logged craft and left it all but submerged; and a

smart tug on the rope added point to the advice which, reaching his

ears in a bellow like a bull’s, penetrated the panic of his wits.

“Jump! _Jump, you fool_!”

In an instant of coherence he saw that the brigantine was luffing; none

the less much of the line had already been paid out, and there was no

reckoning when the end would be reached. Without time to make it fast,

he hitched it twice round his waist and chest, once round an arm, and,

grasping it above his head to ease its constriction when the tug should

come, leaped on the combing and overboard. A green roaring avalanche

swept down upon him and the luckless cat-boat, overwhelming both

simultaneously.

The agony that was his during the next few minutes can by no means be

exaggerated. With such crises the human mind is not fitted adequately

to cope; it retains no record of the supreme moment beyond a vague and

incoherent impression of poignant, soul-racking suffering. Kirkwood

underwent a prolonged interval of semi-sentience, his mind dominated

and oppressed by a deathly fear of drowning and a deadening sense of

suffocation, with attendant tortures as of being broken on the

wheel—limb rending from limb; of compression of his ribs that

threatened momentarily to crush in his chest; of a world a-welter with

dim swirling green half-lights alternating with flashes of blinding

white; of thunderings in his ears like salvoes from a thousand

cannon....

And his senses were blotted out in blackness....

Then he was breathing once more, the keen clean air stabbing his lungs,

the while he swam unsupported in an ethereal void of brilliance. His

mouth was full of something that burned, a liquid hot, acrid, and

stinging. He gulped, swallowed, slobbered, choked, coughed, attempted

to sit up, was aware that he was the focal center of a ring of glaring,

burning eyes, like eyes of ravening beasts; and fainted.

His next conscious impression was of standing up, supported by friendly

arms on either side, while somebody was asking him if he could walk a

step or two.

He lifted his head and let it fall in token of assent, mumbling a yes;

and looked round him with eyes wherein the light of intelligence burned

more clear with every second. By degrees he catalogued and comprehended

his weirdly altered circumstances and surroundings.

He was partly seated, partly held up, on the edge of the cabin

sky-light, an object of interest to some half-dozen men, seafaring

fellows all, by their habit, clustered round between him and the

windward rail. Of their number one stood directly before him, dwarfing

his companions as much by his air of command as by his uncommon height:

tall, thin-faced and sallow, with hollow weather-worn cheeks, a mouth

like a crooked gash from ear to ear, and eyes like dying coals, with

which he looked the rescued up and down in one grim, semi-humorous,

semi-speculative glance. In hands both huge and red he fondled tenderly

a squat brandy flask whose contents had apparently been employed as a

first aid to the drowning.

As Kirkwood’s gaze encountered his, the man smiled sourly, jerking his

head to one side with a singularly derisive air.

“Hi, matey!” he blustered. “’Ow goes it now? Feelin’ ’appier, eigh?”

[Illustration: “Hi, matey!” he blustered. “’Ow goes it now?”]

“Some, thank you ... more like a drowned rat.” Kirkwood eyed him

sheepishly. “I suppose you’re the man who threw me that line? I’ll have

to wait till my head clears up before I can thank you properly.”

“Don’t mention it.” He of the lantern jaws stowed the bottle away with

jealous care in one of his immense coat pockets, and seized Kirkwood’s

hand in a grasp that made the young man wince. “You’re syfe enough now.

My nyme’s Stryker, Capt’n Wilyum Stryker.... Wot’s the row? Lookin’ for

a friend?” he demanded suddenly, as Kirkwood’s attention wandered.

For the memory of the errand that had brought him into the hands of

Captain William Stryker had come to the young man very suddenly; and

his eager eyes were swiftly roving not along the decks but the wide

world besides, for sight or sign of his heart’s desire.

After luffing to pick him up, the brigantine had been again pulled off

on the port tack. The fury of the gale seemed rather to have waxed than

waned, and the _Alethea_ was bending low under the relentless fury of

its blasts, driving hard, with leeward channels awash. Under her port

counter, a mile away, the crimson light-ship wallowed in a riot of

breaking combers. Sheerness lay abeam, five miles or more. Ahead the

northeast headland of the Isle of Sheppey was bulking large and near.

The cat-boat had vanished....

More important still, no one aboard the brigantine resembled in the

remotest degree either of the Calendars, father or daughter, or even

Mulready, the black-avised.

“I sye, ’re you lookin’ for some one you know?”

“Yes—your passengers. I presume they’re below—?”

“Passengers!”

A hush fell upon the group, during which Kirkwood sought Stryker’s eye

in pitiful pleading; and Stryker looked round him blankly.

“Where’s Miss Calendar?” the young man demanded sharply. “I must see

her at once!”

The keen and deep-set eyes of the skipper clouded as they returned to

Kirkwood’s perturbed countenance. “Wot’re you talking about?” he

demanded brusquely.

“I must see Miss Calendar, or Calendar himself, or Mulready.” Kirkwood

paused, and, getting no reply, grew restive under Stryker’s inscrutable

regard.

“That’s why I came aboard,” he amended, blind to the absurdity of the

statement; “to see—er—Calendar.”

“Well ... I’m damned!”

Stryker managed to infuse into his tone a deal of suspicious contempt.

“Why?” insisted Kirkwood, nettled but still uncomprehending.

“D’you mean to tell me you came off from—wherever in ’ell you did come

from—intendin’ to board this wessel and find a party nymed Calendar?”

“Certainly I did. Why—?”

“Well!” cried Mr. Stryker, rubbing his hands together with an air

oppressively obsequious, “I’m sorry to _hin_-form you you’ve come to

the wrong shop, sir; we don’t stock no Calendars. We’re in the ’ardware

line, we are. You might try next door, or I dessay you’ll find what you

want at the stytioner’s, round the corner.”

A giggle from his audience stimulated him. “If,” he continued acidly,

“I’d a-guessed you was such a damn’ fool, blimmy if I wouldn’t’ve let

you drownd!”

Staggered, Kirkwood bore his sarcastic truculence without resentment.

“Calendar,” he stammered, trying to explain, “Calendar _said_—”

“I carn’t ’elp wot Calendar said. Mebbe ’e _did_ myke an engygement

with you, an’ you’ve gone and went an’ forgot the dyte. Mebbe it’s

larst year’s calendar you’re thinkin’ of. You Johnny” (to a lout of a

boy in the group of seamen), “you run an’ fetch this gentleman

Whitaker’s for Nineteen-six. Look sharp, now!”

“But—!” With an effort Kirkwood mustered up a show of dignity. “Am I to

understand,” he said, as calmly as he could, “that you deny knowing

George B. Calendar and his daughter Dorothy and—”

“I don’t ’ave to. Listen to me, young man.” For the time the fellow

discarded his clumsy facetiousness. “I’m Wilyum Stryker, Capt’n

Stryker, marster and ’arf-owner of this wessel, and wot I says ’ere is

law. We don’t carry no passengers. D’ye understand me?”—aggressively.

“There ain’t no pusson nymed Calendar aboard the _Allytheer_, an’ never

was, an’ never will be!”

“What name did you say?” Kirkwood inquired.

“This ship? The _Allytheer_; registered from Liverpool; bound from

London to Hantwerp, in cargo. Anythink else?”

Kirkwood shook his head, turning to scan the seascape with a gloomy

gaze. As he did so, and remarked how close upon the Sheppey headland

the brigantine had drawn, the order was given to go about. For the

moment he was left alone, wretchedly wet, shivering, wan and shrunken

visibly with the knowledge that he had dared greatly for nothing. But

for the necessity of keeping up before Stryker and his crew, the young

man felt that he could gladly have broken down and wept for sheer

vexation and disappointment.

Smartly the brigantine luffed and wore about, heeling deep as she spun

away on the starboard tack.

Kirkwood staggered round the skylight to the windward rail. From this

position, looking forward, he could see that they were heading for the

open sea, Foulness low over the port quarter, naught before them but a

brawling waste of leaden-green and dirty white. Far out one of the

sidewheel boats of the Queensborough-Antwerp line was heading directly

into the wind and making heavy weather of it.

Some little while later, Stryker again approached him, perhaps swayed

by an unaccustomed impulse of compassion; which, however, he artfully

concealed. Blandly ironic, returning to his impersonation of the

shopkeeper, “Nothink else we can show you, sir?” he inquired.

“I presume you couldn’t put me ashore?” Kirkwood replied ingenuously.

In supreme disgust the captain showed him his back. “’Ere, you!” he

called to one of the crew. “Tyke this awye—tyke ’im below and put ’im

to bed; give ’im a drink and dry ’is clo’s. Mebbe ’e’ll be better when

’e wykes up. ’E don’t talk sense now, that’s sure. If you arsk me, I

sye ’e’s balmy and no ’ope for ’im.”

XII

PICARESQUE PASSAGES

Contradictory to the hopeful prognosis of Captain Stryker, his

unaccredited passenger was not “better” when, after a period of

oblivious rest indefinite in duration, he awoke. His subsequent

assumption of listless resignation, of pacific acquiescence in the

dictates of his destiny, was purely deceptive—thin ice of despair over

profound depths of exasperated rebellion.

Blank darkness enveloped him when first he opened eyes to wonder. Then

gradually as he stared, piecing together unassorted memories and

striving to quicken drowsy wits, he became aware of a glimmer that

waxed and waned, a bar of pale bluish light striking across the gloom

above his couch; and by dint of puzzling divined that this had access

by a port. Turning his head upon a stiff and unyielding pillow, he

could discern a streak of saffron light lining the sill of a doorway,

near by his side. The one phenomenon taken with the other confirmed a

theretofore somewhat hazy impression that his dreams were dignified by

a foundation of fact; that, in brief, he was occupying a cabin-bunk

aboard the good ship _Alethea_.

Overhead, on the deck, a heavy thumping of hurrying feet awoke him to

keener perceptiveness.

Judging from the incessant rolling and pitching of the brigantine, the

crashing thunder of seas upon her sides, the eldrich shrieking of the

gale, as well as from the chorused groans and plaints of each

individual bolt and timber in the frail fabric that housed his

fortunes, the wind had strengthened materially during his hours of

forgetfulness—however many the latter might have been.

He believed, however, that he had slept long, deeply and exhaustively.

He felt now a little emaciated mentally and somewhat absent-bodied—so

he put it to himself. A numb languor, not unpleasant, held him

passively supine, the while he gave himself over to speculative

thought.

A wild night, certainly; probably, by that time, the little vessel was

in the middle of the North Sea ... _bound for Antwerp_!

“Oh-h,” said Kirkwood vindictively, “_hell_!”

So he was bound for Antwerp! The first color of resentment ebbing from

his thoughts left him rather interested than excited by the prospect.

He found that he was neither pleased nor displeased. He presumed that

it would be no more difficult to raise money on personal belongings in

Antwerp than anywhere else; it has been observed that the first flower

of civilization is the rum-blossom, the next, the conventionalized

fleur-de-lis of the money-lender. There would be pawnshops, then, in

Antwerp; and Kirkwood was confident that the sale or pledge of his

signet-ring, scarf-pin, match-box and cigar-case, would provide him

with money enough for a return to London, by third-class, at the worst.

There ... well, all events were on the knees of the gods; he’d squirm

out of his troubles, somehow. As for the other matter, the Calendar

affair, he presumed he was well rid of it,—with a sigh of regret. It

had been a most enticing mystery, you know; and the woman in the case

was extraordinary, to say the least.

The memory of Dorothy Calendar made him sigh again, this time more

violently: a sigh that was own brother to (or at any rate descended in

a direct line from) the furnace sigh of the lover described by, the

melancholy Jaques. And he sat up, bumped his head, groped round until

his hand fell upon a doorknob, opened the door, and looked out into the

blowsy emptiness of the ship’s cabin proper, whose gloomy confines were

made visible only by the rays of a dingy and smoky lamp swinging

violently in gimbals from a deck-beam.

Kirkwood’s clothing, now rough-dried and warped wretchedly out of

shape, had been thrown carelessly on a transom near the door. He got

up, collected them, and returning to his berth, dressed at leisure,

thinking heavily, disgruntled—in a humor as evil as the after-taste of

bad brandy in his mouth.

When dressed he went out into the cabin, closing the door upon his

berth, and for lack of anything better to do, seated himself on the

thwartships transom, against the forward bulkhead, behind the table.

Above his head a chronometer ticked steadily and loudly, and, being

consulted, told him that the time of day was twenty minutes to four;

which meant that he had slept away some eighteen or twenty hours. That

was a solid spell of a rest, when he came to think of it, even allowing

that he had been unusually and pardonably fatigued when conducted to

his berth. He felt stronger now, and bright enough—and enormously

hungry into the bargain.

Abstractedly, heedless of the fact that his tobacco would be

water-soaked and ruined, he fumbled in his pockets for pipe and pouch,

thinking to soothe the pangs of hunger against breakfast-time; which

was probably two hours and a quarter ahead. But his pockets were

empty—every one of them. He assimilated this discovery in patience and

cast an eye about the room, to locate, if possible, the missing

property. But naught of his was visible. So he rose and began a more

painstaking search.

The cabin was at once tiny, low-ceiled, and depressingly gloomy. Its

furniture consisted entirely in a chair or two, supplementing the

transoms and lockers as resting-places, and a center-table covered with

a cloth of turkey-red, whose original aggressiveness had been darkly

moderated by libations of liquids, principally black coffee, and burnt

offerings of grease and tobacco-ash. Aside from the companion-way to

the deck, four doors opened into the room, two probably giving upon the

captain’s and the mate’s quarters, the others on pseudo state-rooms—one

of which he had just vacated—closets large enough to contain a small

bunk and naught beside. The bulkheads and partitions were badly broken

out with a rash of pictures from illustrated papers, mostly offensive.

Kirkwood was interested to read a half-column clipping from a New York

yellow journal, descriptive of the antics of a drunken British sailor

who had somehow found his way to the bar-room of the Fifth Avenue

Hotel; the paragraph exploiting the fact that it had required four

policemen in addition to the corps of porters to subdue him, was

strongly underscored in red ink; and the news-story wound up with the

information that in police court the man had given his name as William

Stranger and cheerfully had paid a fine of ten dollars, alleging his

entertainment to have been cheap at the price.

While Kirkwood was employed in perusing this illuminating anecdote,

eight bells sounded, and, from the commotion overhead, the watch

changed. A little later the companion-way door slammed open and shut,

and Captain Stryker—or Stranger; whichever you please—fell down, rather

than descended, the steps.

Without attention to the American he rolled into the mate’s room and

roused that personage. Kirkwood heard that the name of the

second-in-command was ’Obbs, as well as that he occupied the starboard

state-room aft. After a brief exchange of comment and instruction, Mr.

’Obbs appeared in the shape of a walking pillar of oil-skins capped by

a sou’wester, and went on deck; Stryker, following him out of the

state-room, shed his own oilers in a clammy heap upon the floor, opened

a locker from which he brought forth a bottle and a dirty glass, and,

turning toward the table, for the first time became sensible of

Kirkwood’s presence.

“Ow, there you are, eigh, little bright-eyes!” he exclaimed with

surprised animation.

“Good morning, Captain Stryker,” said Kirkwood, rising. “I want to tell

you—”

But Stryker waved one great red paw impatiently, with the effect of

sweeping aside and casting into the discard Kirkwood’s intended speech

of thanks; nor would he hear him further.

“Did you ’ave a nice little nap?” he interrupted. “Come up bright and

smilin’, eigh? Now I guess”—the emphasis made it clear that the captain

believed himself to be employing an Americanism; and so successful was

he in his own esteem that he could not resist the temptation to improve

upon the imitation—“Na-ow I guess yeou’re abaout right ready, ben’t ye,

to hev a drink, sonny?”

“No, thank you,” said Kirkwood, smiling tolerantly. “I’ve got any

amount of appetite...”

“’Ave you, now?” Stryker dropped his mimicry and glanced at the clock.

“Breakfast,” he announced, “will be served in the myne dinin’ saloon at

eyght a. m. Passingers is requested not to be lyte at tyble.”

Depositing the bottle on the said table, the captain searched until he

found another glass for Kirkwood, and sat down.

“Do you good,” he insinuated, pushing the bottle gently over.

“No, thank you,” reiterated Kirkwood shortly, a little annoyed.

Stryker seized his own glass, poured out a strong man’s dose of the

fiery concoction, gulped it down, and sighed. Then, with a glance at

the American’s woebegone countenance (Kirkwood was contemplating a

four-hour wait for breakfast, and, consequently, looking as if he had

lost his last friend), the captain bent over, placing both hands palm

down before him and wagging his head earnestly.

“Please,” he implored,—“Please don’t let me hinterrupt;” and filled his

pipe, pretending a pensive detachment from his company.

The fumes of burning shag sharpened the tooth of desire. Kirkwood stood

it as long as he could, then surrendered with an: “If you’ve got any

more of that tobacco, Captain, I’d be glad of a pipe.”

An intensely contemplative expression crept into the captain’s small

blue eyes.

“I only got one other pyper of this ’ere ’baccy,” he announced at

length, “and I carn’t get no more till I gets ’ome. I simply couldn’t

part with it hunder ’arf a quid.”

Kirkwood settled back with a hopeless lift of his shoulders.

Abstractedly Stryker puffed the smoke his way until he could endure the

deprivation no longer.

“I had about ten shillings in my pocket when I came aboard, captain,

and ... a few other articles.”

“Ow, yes; so you ’ad, now you mention it.”

Stryker rose, ambled into his room, and returned with Kirkwood’s

possessions and a fresh paper of shag. While the young man was hastily

filling, lighting, and inhaling the first strangling but delectable

whiff, the captain solemnly counted into his own palm all the loose

change except three large pennies. The latter he shoved over to

Kirkwood in company with a miscellaneous assortment of articles, which

the American picked up piece by piece and began to bestow about his

clothing. When through, he sat back, troubled and disgusted. Stryker

met his regard blandly.

“Anything I can do?” he inquired, in suave concern.

“Why ... there _was_ a black pearl scarfpin—”

“W’y, don’t you remember? You gave that to me, ’count of me ’avin syved

yer life. ’Twas me throwed you that line, you know.”

“Oh,” commented Kirkwood briefly. The pin had been among the most

valuable and cherished of his belongings.

“Yes,” nodded the captain in reminiscence. “You don’t remember? Likely

’twas the brandy singing in yer ’ead. You pushes it into my

’ands,—almost weepin’, you was,—and sez, sez you, ‘Stryker,’ you sez,

‘tyke this in triflin’ toking of my gratichood; I wouldn’t hinsult

you,’ you sez, ‘by hofferin’ you money, but this I can insist on yer

acceptin’, and no refusal,’ says you.”

“Oh,” repeated Kirkwood.

“If I for a ninstant thought you wasn’t sober when you done it.... But

no; you’re a gent if there ever was one, and I’m not the man to offend

you.”

“Oh, indeed.”

The captain let the implication pass, perhaps on the consideration that

he could afford to ignore it; and said no more. The pause held for

several minutes, Kirkwood having fallen into a mood of grave

distraction. Finally Captain Stryker thoughtfully measured out a second

drink, limited only by the capacity of the tumbler, engulfed it

noisily, and got up.

“Guess I’ll be turnin’ in,” he volunteered affably, yawning and

stretching.

“I was about to ask you to do me a service....” began Kirkwood.

“Yes?”—with the rising inflection of mockery.

Kirkwood quietly produced his cigar-case, a gold match-box, gold

card-case, and slipped a signet ring from his finger. “Will you buy

these?” he asked. “Or will you lend me five pounds and hold them as

security?”

Stryker examined the collection with exaggerated interest strongly

tinctured with mistrust. “I’ll buy ’em,” he offered eventually, looking

up.

“That’s kind of you—”

“Ow, they ain’t much use to me, but Bill Stryker’s allus willin’ to

accommodate a friend.... Four quid, you said?”

“Five....”

“They ain’t wuth over four to me.”

“Very well; make it four,” Kirkwood assented contemptuously.

The captain swept the articles into one capacious fist, pivoted on one

heel at the peril of his neck, and lumbered unsteadily off to his room.

Pausing at the door he turned back in inquiry.

“I sye, ’ow did you come to get the impression there was a party named

Almanack aboard this wessel?”

“Calendar—”

“’Ave it yer own wye,” Stryker conceded gracefully.

“There isn’t, is there?”

“You ’eard me.”

“Then,” said Kirkwood sweetly, “I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested.”

The captain pondered this at leisure. “You seemed pretty keen abaht

seein’ ’im,” he remarked conclusively.

“I was.”

“Seems to me I did ’ear the nyme sumw’eres afore.” The captain appeared

to wrestle with an obdurate memory. “Ow!” he triumphed. “I know. ’E was

a chap up Manchester wye. Keeper in a loonatic asylum, ’e was. ’That

yer party?”

“No,” said Kirkwood wearily.

“I didn’t know but mebbe ’twas. Excuse me. ’Thought as ’ow mebbe you’d

escyped from ’is tender care, but, findin’ the world cold, chynged yer

mind and wanted to gow back.”

Without waiting for a reply he lurched into his room and banged the

door to. Kirkwood, divided between amusement and irritation, heard him

stumbling about for some time; and then a hush fell, grateful enough

while it lasted; which was not long. For no sooner did the captain

sleep than a penetrating snore added itself unto the cacophony of waves

and wind and tortured ship.

Kirkwood, comforted at first by the blessed tobacco, lapsed insensibly

into dreary meditations. Coming after the swift movement and sustained

excitement of the eighteen hours preceding his long sleep, the monotony

of shipboard confinement seemed irksome to a maddening degree. There

was absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there

were books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr.

Stranger’s Manhattan night’s entertainment the walls were devoid of

reading matter; and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion

weariful enough when not purely revolting.

Wherefore Mr. Kirkwood stretched himself out on the transom and smoked

and reviewed his adventures in detail and seriatim, and was by turns

indignant, sore, anxious on his own account as well as on Dorothy’s,

and out of all patience with himself. Mystified he remained throughout,

and the edge of his curiosity held as keen as ever, you may believe.

Consistently the affair presented itself to his fancy in the guise of a

puzzle-picture, which, though you study it never so diligently, remains

incomprehensible, until by chance you view it from an unexpected angle,

when it reveals itself intelligibly. It had not yet been his good

fortune to see it from the right viewpoint. To hold the metaphor, he

walked endless circles round it, patiently seeking, but ever failing to

find the proper perspective.... Each incident, however insignificant,

in connection with it, he handled over and over, examining its every

facet, bright or dull, as an expert might inspect a clever imitation of

a diamond; and like a perfect imitation it defied analysis.

Of one or two things he was convinced; for one, that Stryker was a liar

worthy of classification with Calendar and Mrs. Hallam. Kirkwood had

not only the testimony of his sense to assure him that the ship’s name,

_Alethea_ (not a common one, by the bye), had been mentioned by both

Calendar and Mulready during their altercation on Bermondsey Old

Stairs, but he had the confirmatory testimony of the sleepy waterman,

William, who had directed Old Bob and Young William to the anchorage

off Bow Creek. That there should have been two vessels of the same

unusual name at one and the same time in the Port of London, was a

coincidence too preposterous altogether to find place in his

calculations.

His second impregnable conclusion was that those whom he sought had

boarded the _Alethea_, but had left her before she tripped her anchor.

That they were not stowed away aboard her seemed unquestionable. The

brigantine was hardly large enough for the presence of three persons

aboard her to be long kept a secret from an inquisitive fourth,—unless,

indeed, they lay in hiding in the hold; for which, once the ship got

under way, there could be scant excuse. And Kirkwood did not believe

himself a person of sufficient importance in Calendar’s eyes, to make

that worthy endure the discomforts of a’tween-decks imprisonment

throughout the voyage, even to escape recognition.

With every second, then, he was traveling farther from her to whose aid

he had rushed, impelled by motives so hot-headed, so innately,

chivalric, so unthinkingly gallant, so exceptionally idiotic!

Idiot! Kirkwood groaned with despair of his inability to fathom the

abyss of his self-contempt. There seemed to be positively no excuse for

_him_. Stryker had befriended him indeed, had he permitted him to

drown. Yet he had acted for the best, as he saw it. The fault lay in

himself: an admirable fault, that of harboring and nurturing generous

and compassionate instincts. But, of course, Kirkwood couldn’t see it

that way.

“What else could I do?” he defended himself against the indictment of

common sense. “I couldn’t leave her to the mercies of that set of

rogues!... And Heaven knows I was given every reason to believe she

would be aboard this ship! Why, she herself told me that she was

sailing ...!”

Heaven knew, too, that this folly of his had cost him a pretty penny,

first and last. His watch was gone beyond recovery, his homeward

passage forfeited; he no longer harbored illusions as to the steamship

company presenting him with another berth in lieu of that called for by

that water-soaked slip of paper then in his pocket—courtesy of Stryker.

He had sold for a pittance, a tithe of its value, his personal jewelry,

and had spent every penny he could call his own. With the money Stryker

was to give him he would be able to get back to London and his

third-rate hostelry, but not with enough over to pay that one week’s

room-rent, or ...

“Oh, the devil!” he groaned, head in hands.

The future loomed wrapped in unspeakable darkness, lightened by no

least ray of hope. It had been bad enough to lose a comfortable living

through a gigantic convulsion of Nature; but to think that he had lost

all else through his own egregious folly, to find himself reduced to

the kennels—!

So Care found him again in those weary hours,—came and sat by his side,

slipping a grisly hand in his and tightening its grip until he could

have cried out with the torment of it; the while whispering insidiously

subtile, evil things in his ear. And he had not even Hope to comfort

him; at any previous stage he had been able to distil a sort of

bitter-sweet satisfaction from the thought that he was suffering for

the love of his life. But now—now Dorothy was lost, gone like the

glamour of Romance in the searching light of day.

Stryker, emerging from his room for breakfast, found the passenger with

a hostile look in his eye and a jaw set in ugly fashion. His eyes, too,

were the abiding-place of smoldering devils; and the captain,

recognizing them, considerately forbore to stir them up with any

untimely pleasantries. To be sure, he was autocrat in his own ship, and

Kirkwood’s standing aboard was _nil_; but then there was just enough

yellow in the complexion of Stryker’s soul to incline him to sidestep

trouble whenever feasible. And besides, he entertained dark suspicions

of his guest—suspicions he scarce dared voice even to his inmost heart.

The morning meal, therefore, passed off in constrained silence. The

captain ate voraciously and vociferously, pushed back his chair, and

went on deck to relieve the mate. The latter, a stunted little Cockney

with a wizened countenance and a mind as foul as his tongue, got small

change of his attempts to engage the passenger in conversation on

topics that he considered fit for discussion. After the sixth or eighth

snubbing he rose in dudgeon, discharged a poisonous bit of insolence,

and retired to his berth, leaving Kirkwood to finish his breakfast in

peace; which the latter did literally, to the last visible scrap of

food and the ultimate drop of coffee, poor as both were in quality.

To the tune of a moderating wind, the morning wearied away. Kirkwood

went on deck once, for distraction from the intolerable monotony of it

all, got a sound drenching of spray, with a glimpse of a dark line on

the eastern horizon, which he understood to be the low littoral of

Holland, and was glad to dodge below once more and dry himself.

He had the pleasure of the mate’s company at dinner, the captain

remaining on deck until Hobbs had finished and gone up to relieve him;

and by that time Kirkwood likewise was through.

Stryker blew down with a blustery show of cheer. “Well, well, my little

man!” (It happened that he topped Kirkwood’s stature by at least five

inches.) “Enj’yin’ yer sea trip?”

“About as much as you’d expect,” snapped Kirkwood.

“Ow?” The captain began to shovel food into his face. (The author

regrets he has at his command no more delicate expression that is

literal and illustrative.) Kirkwood watched him, fascinated with

suspense; it seemed impossible that the man could continue so to employ

his knife without cutting his throat from the inside. But years of such

manipulation had made him expert, and his guest, keenly disappointed,

at length ceased to hope.

Between gobbles Stryker eyed him furtively.

“’Treat you all right?” he demanded abruptly.

Kirkwood started out of a brown study. “What? Who? Why, I suppose I

ought to be—indeed, I _am_ grateful,” he asserted. “Certainly you saved

my life, and—”

“Ow, I don’t mean that.” Stryker gathered the imputation into his paw

and flung it disdainfully to the four winds of Heaven. “Bless yer ’art,

you’re welcome; I wouldn’t let no dorg drownd, ’f I could ’elp it. No,”

he declared, “nor a loonatic, neither.”

He thrust his plate away and shifted sidewise in his chair. “I ’uz just

wonderin’,” he pursued, picking his teeth meditatively with a

pen-knife, “’ow they feeds you in them _as_-ylums. ’Avin’ never been

inside one, myself, it’s on’y natural I’d be cur’us.... There was one

of them institootions near where I was borned—Birming’am, that is. I

used to see the loonies playin’ in the grounds. I remember _just_ as

well!... One of ’em and me struck up quite an acquaintance—”

“Naturally he’d take to you on sight.”

“Ow? Strynge ’ow _we_ ’it it off, eigh?... You myke me think of ’im.

Young chap, ’e was, the livin’ spi’t-’n-himage of you. It don’t happen,

does it, you’re the same man?”

“Oh, go to the devil!”

“Naughty!” said the captain serenely, wagging a reproving forefinger.

“Bad, naughty word. You’ll be sorry when you find out wot it means....

Only ’e was allus plannin’ to run awye and drownd ’is-self.”...

He wore the joke threadbare, even to his own taste, and in the end got

heavily to his feet, starting for the companionway. “Land you this

arternoon,” he remarked casually, “come three o’clock or thereabahts.

Per’aps later. I don’t know, though, as I ’ad ought to let you loose.”

Kirkwood made no answer. Chuckling, Stryker went on deck.

In the course of an hour the American followed him.

Wind and sea alike had gone down wonderfully since daybreak—a

circumstance undoubtedly in great part due to the fact that they had

won in under the lee of the mainland and were traversing shallower

waters. On either hand, like mist upon the horizon, lay a streak of

gray, a shade darker than the gray of the waters. The _Alethea_ was

within the wide jaws of the Western Scheldt. As for the wind, it had

shifted several points to the northwards; the brigantine had it abeam

and was lying down to it and racing to port with slanting deck and

singing cordage.

Kirkwood approached the captain, who, acting as his own pilot, was

standing by the wheel and barking sharp orders to the helmsman.

“Have you a Bradshaw on board?” asked the young man.

“Steady!” This to the man at the wheel; then to Kirkwood: “Wot’s that,

me lud?”

Kirkwood repeated his question. Stryker eyed him suspiciously for a

thought.

“Wot d’you want it for?”

“I want to see when I can get a boat back to England.”

“Hmm.... Yes, you’ll find a Bradshaw in the port-locker, near the

for’ard bulk’ead. Run along now and pl’y—and mind you don’t go tearin’

out the pyges to myke pyper boatses to go sylin’ in.”

Kirkwood went below. Like its adjacent rooms, the cabin was untenanted;

the watch was the mate’s, and Stryker a martinet. Kirkwood found the

designated locker and, opening it, saw first to his hand the familiar

bulky red volume with its red garter. Taking it out he carried it to a

chair near the companionway, for a better reading light: the skylight

being still battened down.

The strap removed, the book opened easily, as if by force of habit, at

the precise table he had wished to consult; some previous client had

left a marker between the pages,—and not an ordinary book-mark, by any

manner of means. Kirkwood gave utterance to a little gasp of amazement,

and instinctively glanced up at the companionway, to see if he were

observed.

He was not, but for safety’s sake he moved farther back into the cabin

and out of the range of vision of any one on deck; a precaution which

was almost immediately justified by the clumping of heavy feet upon the

steps as Stryker descended in pursuit of the ever-essential drink.

“’Find it?” he demanded, staring blindly—with eyes not yet focused to

the change from light to gloom—at the young man, who was sitting with

the guide open on his knees, a tightly clenched fist resting on the

transom at either side of him.

In reply he received a monosyllabic affirmative; Kirkwood did not look

up.

“You must be a howl,” commented the captain, making for the seductive

locker.

“A—what?”

“A howl, readin’ that fine print there in the dark. W’y don’t you go

over to the light?... I’ll ’ave to ’ave them shutters tyken off the

winders.” This was Stryker’s amiable figure of speech, frequently

employed to indicate the coverings of the skylight.

“I’m all right.” Kirkwood went on studying the book.

Stryker swigged off his rum and wiped his lips with the back of a red

paw, hesitating a moment to watch his guest.

“Mykes it seem more ’ome-like for you, I expect,” he observed.

“What do you mean?”

“W’y, Bradshaw’s first-cousin to a halmanack, ain’t ’e? Can’t get one,

take t’other—next best thing. Sorry I didn’t think of it sooner; like

my passengers to feel comfy.... Now don’t you go trapsein’ off to gay

Paree and squanderin’ wot money you got left. You ’ear?”

“By the way, Captain!” Kirkwood looked up at this, but Stryker was

already half-way up the companion.

Cautiously the American opened his right fist and held to the light

that which had been concealed, close wadded in his grasp,—a square of

sheer linen edged with lace, crumpled but spotless, and diffusing in

the unwholesome den a faint, intangible fragrance, the veriest wraith

of that elusive perfume which he would never again inhale without

instantly recalling that night ride through London in the intimacy of a

cab.

He closed his eyes and saw her again, as clearly as though she stood

before him,—hair of gold massed above the forehead of snow, curling in

adorable tendrils at the nape of her neck, lips like scarlet splashed

upon the immaculate whiteness of her skin, head poised audaciously in

its spirited, youthful allure, dark eyes smiling the least trace sadly

beneath the level brows.

Unquestionably the handkerchief was hers; if proof other than the

assurance of his heart were requisite, he had it in the initial

delicately embroidered in one corner: a D, for Dorothy!... He looked

again, to make sure; then hastily folded up the treasure-trove and

slipped it into a breast pocket of his coat.

No; I am not sure that it was not the left-hand pocket.

Quivering with excitement he bent again over the book and studied it

intently. After all, he had not been wrong! He could assert now,

without fear of refutation, that Stryker had lied.

Some one had wielded an industrious pencil on the page. It was, taken

as a whole, fruitful of clues. Its very heading was illuminating:

LONDON to VLISSINGEN (FLUSHING) AND BREDA;

which happened to be the quickest and most direct route between London

and Antwerp. Beneath it, in the second column from the right, the

pencil had put a check-mark against:

QUEENSBOROUGH ... DEP ... 11a10.

And now he saw it clearly—dolt that he had been not to have divined it

ere this! The _Alethea_ had run in to Queensborough, landing her

passengers there, that they might make connection with the eleven-ten

morning boat for Flushing,—the very side-wheel steamer, doubtless,

which he had noticed beating out in the teeth of the gale just after

the brigantine had picked him up. Had he not received the passing

impression that the _Alethea_, when first he caught sight of her, might

have been coming out of the Medway, on whose eastern shore is situate

Queensborough Pier? Had not Mrs. Hallam, going upon he knew not what

information or belief, been bound for Queensborough, with design there

to intercept the fugitives?

Kirkwood chuckled to recall how, all unwittingly, he had been the means

of diverting from her chosen course that acute and resourceful lady;

then again turned his attention to the tables.

A third check had been placed against the train for Amsterdam scheduled

to leave Antwerp at 6:32 p. m. Momentarily his heart misgave him, when

he saw this, in fear lest Calendar and Dorothy should have gone on from

Antwerp the previous evening; but then he rallied, discovering that the

boat-train from Flushing did not arrive at Antwerp till after ten at

night; and there was no later train thence for Amsterdam. Were the

latter truly their purposed destination, they would have stayed

overnight and be leaving that very evening on the 6:32. On the other

hand, why should they wait for the latest train, rather than proceed by

the first available in the morning? Why but because Calendar and

Mulready were to wait for Stryker to join them on the _Alethea_?

Very well, then; if the wind held and Stryker knew his business, there

would be another passenger on that train, in addition to the Calendar

party.

Making mental note of the fact that the boat-train for Flushing and

London was scheduled to leave Antwerp daily at 8:21 p. m., Kirkwood

rustled the leaves to find out whether or not other tours had been

planned, found evidences of none, and carefully restored the guide to

the locker, lest inadvertently the captain should pick it up and see

what Kirkwood had seen.

An hour later he went on deck. The skies had blown clear and the

brigantine was well in land-bound waters and still footing a rattling

pace. The river-banks had narrowed until, beyond the dikes to right and

left, the country-side stretched wide and flat, a plain of living green

embroidered with winding roads and quaint Old-World hamlets whose red

roofs shone like dull fire between the dark green foliage of dwarfed

firs.

Down with the Scheldt’s gray shimmering flood were drifting little

companies of barges, sturdy and snug both fore and aft, tough tanned

sails burning in the afternoon sunlight. A long string of canal-boats,

potted plants flowering saucily in their neatly curtained windows,

proprietors expansively smoking on deck, in the bosoms of their very

large families, was being mothered up-stream by two funny, clucking

tugs. Behind the brigantine a travel-worn Atlantic liner was scolding

itself hoarse about the right of way. Outward bound, empty cattle

boats, rough and rusty, were swaggering down to the sea, with the

careless, independent thumbs-in-armholes air of so many navvies off the

job.

And then lifting suddenly above the level far-off sky-line, there

appeared a very miracle of beauty; the delicate tracery of the great

Cathedral’s spire of frozen lace, glowing like a thing of spun gold,

set against the sapphire velvet of the horizon.

Antwerp was in sight.

A troublesome care stirring in his mind, Kirkwood looked round the

deck; but Stryker was very busy, entirely too preoccupied with the

handling of his ship to be interrupted with impunity. Besides, there

was plenty of time.

More slowly now, the wind falling, the brigantine crept up the river,

her crew alert with sheets and halyards as the devious windings of the

stream rendered it necessary to trim the canvas at varying angles to

catch the wind.

Slowly, too, in the shadow of that Mechlin spire, the horizon grew

rough and elevated, taking shape in the serrated profile of a thousand

gables and a hundred towers and cross-crowned steeples.

Once or twice, more and more annoyed as the time of their association

seemed to grow more brief, Kirkwood approached the captain; but Stryker

continued to be exhaustively absorbed in the performance of his duties.

Up past the dockyards, where spidery masts stood in dense groves about

painted funnels, and men swarmed over huge wharves like ants over a

crust of bread; up and round the final, great sweeping bend of the

river, the _Alethea_ made her sober way, ever with greater slowness;

until at length, in the rose glow of a flawless evening, her windlass

began to clank like a mad thing and her anchor bit the riverbed, near

the left bank, between old Forts Isabelle and Tête de Flandre, frowned

upon from the right by the grim pile of the age-old Steen castle.

And again Kirkwood sought Stryker, his carking query ready on his lips.

But the captain impatiently waved him aside.

“Don’t you bother me now, me lud juke! Wyte until I gets done with the

custom hofficer.”

Kirkwood acceded, perforce; and bided his time with what tolerance he

could muster.

A pluttering customs launch bustled up to the _Alethea’s_ side,

discharged a fussy inspector on the brigantine’s deck, and panted

impatiently until he, the examination concluded without delay, was

again aboard.

Stryker, smirking benignly and massaging his lips with the back of his

hand, followed the official on deck, nodded to Kirkwood an intimation

that he was prepared to accord him an audience, and strolled forward to

the waist. The American, mastering his resentment, meekly followed; one

can not well afford to be haughty when one is asking favors.

Advancing to the rail, the captain whistled in one of the river-boats;

then, while the waterman waited, faced his passenger.

“Now, yer r’yal ’ighness, wot can I do for you afore you goes ashore?”

“I think you must have forgotten,” said Kirkwood quietly. “I hate to

trouble you, but—there’s that matter of four pounds.”

Stryker’s face was expressive only of mystified vacuity. “Four quid? I

dunno _as_ I know just wot you means.”

“You agreed to advance me four pounds on those things of mine....”

“Ow-w!” Illumination overspread the hollow-jowled countenance. Stryker

smiled cheerfully. “Garn with you!” he chuckled. “You will ’ave yer

little joke, won’t you now? I declare I never see a loony with such

affecsh’nit, pl’yful wyes!”

Kirkwood’s eyes narrowed. “Stryker,” he said steadily, “give me the

four pounds and let’s have no more nonsense; or else hand over my

things at once.”

“Daffy,” Stryker told vacancy, with conviction. “Lor’ luv me if I sees

’ow he ever ’ad sense enough to escype. W’y, yer majesty!” and he

bowed, ironic. “I ’_ave_ given you yer quid.”

“Just about as much as I gave you that pearl pin,” retorted Kirkwood

hotly. “What the devil do you mean—”

“W’y, yer ludship, four pounds jus pyes yer passyge; I thought you

understood.”

“My passage! But I can come across by steamer for thirty shillings,

first-class—”

“Aw, but them steamers! Tricky, they is, and unsyfe ... No, yer gryce,

the W. Stryker Packet Line Lim’ted, London to Antwerp, charges four

pounds per passyge and no reduction for return fare.”

Stunned by his effrontery, Kirkwood stared in silence.

“Any complynts,” continued the captain, looking over Kirkwood’s head,

“must be lyde afore the Board of Directors in writin’ not more’n thirty

dyes arfter—”

“You damned scoundrel!” interpolated Kirkwood thoughtfully.

Stryker’s mouth closed with a snap; his features froze in a cast of

wrath; cold rage glinted in his small blue eyes. “W’y,” he bellowed,

“you bloomin’ loonatic, d’ye think you can sye that to Bill Stryker on

’is own wessel!”

He hesitated a moment, then launched a heavy fist at Kirkwood’s face.

Unsurprised, the young man side-stepped, caught the hard, bony wrist as

the captain lurched by, following his wasted blow, and with a dexterous

twist laid him flat on his back, with a sounding thump upon the deck.

And as the infuriated scamp rose—which he did with a bound that placed

him on his feet and in defensive posture; as though the deck had been a

spring-board—Kirkwood leaped back, seized a capstan-bar, and faced him

with a challenge.

“Stand clear, Stryker!” he warned the man tensely, himself livid with

rage. “If you move a step closer I swear I’ll knock the head off your

shoulders! Not another inch, you contemptible whelp, or I’ll brain

you!... That’s better,” he continued as the captain, caving, dropped

his fists and moved uneasily back. “Now give that boatman money for

taking me ashore. Yes, I’m going—and if we ever meet again, take the

other side of the way, Stryker!”

Without response, a grim smile wreathing his thin, hard lips, Stryker

thrust one hand into his pocket, and withdrawing a coin, tossed it to

the waiting waterman. Whereupon Kirkwood backed warily to the rail,

abandoned the capstan-bar and dropped over the side.

Nodding to the boatman, “The Steen landing—quickly,” he said in French.

Stryker, recovering, advanced to the rail and waved him a derisive _bon

voyage_.

“By-by, yer hexcellency. I ’opes it may soon be my pleasure to meet you

again. You’ve been a real privilege to know; I’ve henjoyed yer comp’ny

somethin’ immense. Don’t know as I ever met such a rippin’, Ay Number

One, all-round, entertynin’ ass, afore!”

He fumbled nervously about his clothing, brought to light a rag of

cotton, much the worse for service, and ostentatiously wiped from the

corner of each eye tears of grief at parting. Then, as the boat swung

toward the farther shore, Kirkwood’s back was to the brigantine, and he

was little tempted to turn and invite fresh shafts of ridicule.

Rapidly, as he was ferried across the busy Scheldt, the white blaze of

his passion cooled; but the biting irony of his estate ate, corrosive,

into his soul. Hollow-eyed he glared vacantly into space, pale lips

unmoving, his features wasted with despair.

They came to the landing-stage and swung broad-side on. Mechanically

the American got up and disembarked. As heedless of time and place he

moved up the Quai to the gangway and so gained the esplanade; where

pausing he thrust a trembling hand into his trouser pocket.

The hand reappeared, displaying in its outspread palm three big, round,

brown, British pennies. Staring down at them, Kirkwood’s lips moved.

“Bed rock!” he whispered huskily.

XIII

A PRIMER OF PROGRESSIVE CRIME

Without warning or presage the still evening air was smitten and made

softly musical by the pealing of a distant chime, calling vespers to

its brothers in Antwerp’s hundred belfries; and one by one, far and

near, the responses broke out, until it seemed as if the world must be

vibrant with silver and brazen melody; until at the last the great

bells in the Cathedral spire stirred and grumbled drowsily, then woke

to such ringing resonance as dwarfed all the rest and made it seem as

nothing.

Like the beating of a mighty heart heard through the rushing clamor of

the pulses, a single deep-throated bell boomed solemnly six heavy,

rumbling strokes.

Six o’clock! Kirkwood roused out of his dour brooding. The Amsterdam

express would leave at 6:32, and he knew not from what station.

Striding swiftly across the promenade, he entered a small tobacco shop

and made inquiry of the proprietress. His command of French was

tolerable; he experienced no difficulty in comprehending the good

woman’s instructions.

Trains for Amsterdam, she said, left from the Gare Centrale, a mile or

so across the city. M’sieur had plenty of time, and to spare. There was

the tram line, if m’sieur did not care to take a fiacre. If he would go

by way of the Vielle Bourse he would discover the tram cars of the Rue

Kipdorp. M’sieur was most welcome....

Monsieur departed with the more haste since he was unable to repay this

courtesy with the most trifling purchase; such slight matters annoyed

Kirkwood intensely. Perhaps it was well for him that he had the long

walk to help him work off the fit of nervous exasperation into which he

was plunged every time his thoughts harked back to that jovial

black-guard, Stryker.... He was quite calm when, after a brisk walk of

some fifteen minutes, he reached the station.

A public clock reassured him with the information that he had the

quarter of an hour’s leeway; it was only seventeen minutes past

eighteen o’clock (Belgian railway time, always confusing). Inquiring

his way to the Amsterdam train, which was already waiting at the

platform, he paced its length, peering brazenly in at the coach

windows, now warm with hope, now shivering with disappointment,

realizing as he could not but realize that, all else aside, his only

chance of rehabilitation lay in meeting Calendar. But in none of the

coaches or carriages did he discover any one even remotely resembling

the fat adventurer, his daughter, or Mulready.

Satisfied that they had not yet boarded the train, he stood aside,

tortured with forebodings, while anxiously scrutinizing each individual

of the throng of intending travelers.... Perhaps they had been

delayed—by the _Alethea’s_ lateness in making port very likely; perhaps

they purposed taking not this but a later train; perhaps they had

already left the city by an earlier, or had returned to England.

On time, the bell clanged its warning; the guards bawled theirs; doors

were hastily opened and slammed; the trucks began to groan, couplings

jolting as the engine chafed in constraint. The train and Kirkwood

moved simultaneously out of opposite ends of the station, the one to

rattle and hammer round the eastern boundaries of the city and

straighten out at top speed on the northern route for the Belgian line,

the other to stroll moodily away, idle hands in empty pockets, bound

aimlessly anywhere—it didn’t matter!

Nothing whatever mattered in the smallest degree. Ere now the outlook

had been dark; but this he felt to be the absolute nadir of his

misfortunes. Presently—after a while—as soon as he could bring himself

to it—he would ask the way and go to the American Consulate. But just

now, low as the tide of chance had ebbed, leaving him stranded on the

flats of vagabondage, low as showed the measure of his self-esteem, he

could not tolerate the prospect of begging for assistance—help which

would in all likelihood be refused, since his story was quite too

preposterous to gain credence in official ears that daily are filled

with the lamentations of those whose motives do not bear investigation.

And if he chose to eliminate the strange chain of events which had

landed him in Antwerp, to base his plea solely on the fact that he was

a victim of the San Francisco disaster ... he himself was able to

smile, if sourly, anticipating the incredulous consular smile with

which he would be shown the door.

No; that he would reserve as a last resort. True, he had already come

to the Jumping-off Place; to the Court of the Last Resort alone could

he now appeal. But ... not yet; after a while he could make his

petition, after he had made a familiar of the thought that he must

armor himself with callous indifference to rebuff, to say naught of the

waves of burning shame that would overwhelm him when he came to the

point of asking charity.

He found himself, neither knowing nor caring how he had won thither, in

the Place Verte, the vast venerable pile of the Cathedral rising on his

right, hotels and quaint Old-World dwellings with peaked roofs and

gables and dormer windows, inclosing the other sides of the square. The

chimes (he could hear none but those of the Cathedral) were heralding

the hour of seven. Listless and preoccupied in contemplation of his

wretched case he wandered purposelessly half round the square, then

dropped into a bench on its outskirts.

It was some time later that he noticed, with a casual, indifferent eye,

a porter running out of the Hôtel de Flandre, directly opposite, and

calling a fiacre in to the carriage block.

As languidly he watched a woman, very becomingly dressed, follow the

porter down to the curb.

The fiacre swung in, and the woman dismissed the porter before entering

the vehicle; a proceeding so unusual that it fixed the onlooker’s

interest. He sat rigid with attention; the woman seemed to be giving

explicit and lengthy directions to the driver, who nodded and

gesticulated his comprehension.

The woman was Mrs. Hallam.

The first blush of recognition passed, leaving Kirkwood without any

amazement. It was an easy matter to account for her being where she

was. Thrown off the scent by Kirkwood at Sheerness, the previous

morning, she had missed the day boat, the same which had ferried over

those whom she pursued. Returning from Sheerness to Queensborough,

however, she had taken the night boat for Flushing and Antwerp,—and not

without her plan, who was not a woman to waste her strength aimlessly;

Kirkwood believed that she had had from the first a very definite

campaign in view. In that campaign Queensborough Pier had been the

first strategic move; the journey to Antwerp, apparently, the second;

and the American was impressed that he was witnessing the inception of

the third decided step.... The conclusion of this process of reasoning

was inevitable: Madam would bear watching.

Thus was a magical transformation brought about. Instantaneously

lassitude and vain repinings were replaced by hopefulness and energy.

In a twinkling the young man was on his feet, every nerve a-thrill with

excitement.

Mrs. Hallam, blissfully ignorant of this surveillance over her

movements, took her place in the fiacre. The driver clucked to his

horse, cracked his whip, and started off at a slow trot: a pace which

Kirkwood imitated, keeping himself at a discreet distance to the rear

of the cab, but prepared to break into a run whenever it should prove

necessary.