A TRIP ON THE SOUND
"Good morning, Dad," said Nitocris, as she entered the sitting-room
about half an hour before breakfast the next morning. "What is your
opinion of the European situation now?"
"Good morning, Niti; what is yours?" asked her father, looking at her
with grave eyes and smiling lips.
"As it was yesterday, only rather more so. In his present incarnation,
Prince Oscar Oscarovitch is, I should think, about as black-hearted a
scoundrel as ever polluted the air that honest people breathe."
"I entirely agree with you. And now, believing that, do you still
propose to trust yourself to his tender mercies on board his own yacht,
surrounded, as you will be, by men who, no doubt, are his absolute
slaves?"
"_I_ trust myself to his tender mercies, Dad?" she replied, drawing
herself up and throwing her head back a little; "you seem to have got
hold of the thing by the wrong end, as Brenda would say. That is only
what it will look like. The reality will be that he will blindly trust
himself to _my_ mercies--and I can assure you that he will find them
anything but tender. No, dear, we shall accept His Highness's invitation
to lunch, and then his offer of the hospitality of the yacht for the
trip, which, by the way, I fancy will be more to the eastward than to
the northward----"
"You mean, I suppose, Trelitz and Viborg?"
"Not Trelitz, I think, but Viborg almost certainly. That will be the end
of the abduction as far as I can see from our present plane of
existence."
"Really, Niti--well, well. Of course, I know that you will be perfectly
safe: but what would our good friends on this plane, as you put it, the
Van Huysmans, for instance, think if they could hear you talking so
calmly to your own father about getting yourself abducted by a man whom
you justly think to be one of the most unscrupulous scoundrels on earth!
And, by the way, what is to become of me in the carrying out of this
little scheme of yours? I hope you don't expect me to connive at the
abduction of my own daughter. I have a certain amount of reputation to
lose, you know."
"Oh, if His Highness is the clever villain that we know him to be, I
think we may safely trust him to arrange for your temporary
disappearance from the scene. And whatever he does it will be easy for
you to play the part of the passive victim for the time being. He can't
injure or kill you, for if it came to extremities you have the means of
giving his people such a fright as would probably drive them out of
their senses, just as I could if their master got troublesome. Really,
from a certain point of view, the adventure will have a decidedly
humorous aspect."
"With a very considerable leaven of tragedy."
"Yes, the tragedy will be a logical sequence of the comedy--and, as I
said last night, it will be tragedy. And now suppose we go to breakfast.
I have been up nearly two hours helping Jenny with the packing, and this
lovely air has given me a raging appetite. There's a little more to do
yet, and we shall have His Highness here before long to ask for our
decision and take us off to the yacht."
Here she was quite right, for she had hardly left her father to his
after-breakfast pipe and gone upstairs to help her maid, than
Oscarovitch came into the smoking-room.
"Good morning, Professor Marmion! I need not ask you if you have had a
good night. You look the very picture of a man who has slept the sleep
of the just. And Miss Marmion?"
"Thanks, Your Highness, I think we have both managed to spend the night
to good purpose. The air here is glorious just now. I always think that
sound, dreamless sleep is the best sign that a place is doing you good."
"Oh, undoubtedly, though for some reason or other I did not sleep very
well last night. Something had disagreed with me, I suppose. I seemed to
have a sense of being pursued to the uttermost ends of the earth and
back again by some relentless foe who simply would not allow me to take
a moment's rest. But I didn't come to talk about the stuff that dreams
are made of. I came to ask whether my cruise is to be a lonely one, or
whether I am to have the very great pleasure of your company."
Franklin Marmion, for perhaps the first time in his life, felt
distinctly murderous towards a fellow-creature as he looked at this
splendid specimen of physical humanity, knowing so well the real man who
was hiding behind that fascinating exterior; but he managed to answer
pleasantly enough:
"We have talked the matter over, Prince, and we have come to the
conclusion that your very kind invitation is really too good to be
refused. We know that we are incurring a debt that we shall not be able
to pay, but we are trusting to your generosity to let us off."
"On the contrary, my dear Professor," said Oscarovitch, without the
slightest attempt to conceal the pleasure that the acceptation gave him,
"it is yourself and Miss Marmion who have made me your debtor. In fact,
if you had not found yourselves able to come, I should have run the
_Grashna_ back to Cowes, gone up to London, plunged into a maelström of
dissipation, and probably ended by losing a great deal of money at Ascot
and Goodwood. Ah, Miss Marmion, good morning! How well the air of
Copenhagen seems to agree with you! The Professor has just gladdened my
soul by telling me that you have decided to take pity on my loneliness."
"Good morning, Prince!" she replied, putting her hand for a moment in
the one he held out. "Yes, we are coming, if you will have us. In fact,
I have just finished packing."
"Ah, excellent! Well now, since that is happily arranged, it would be a
pity to waste any of this lovely morning. The Sound is like a streak of
blue sky fallen from heaven. My gig is down at the jetty, and I have a
couple of my men here who will convoy your baggage down. If it is
packed, as you say, you need not trouble about it. You will find
everything safe on board."
"Thank you, Prince," said the Professor. "Then I will go and settle up
at the office while Niti puts her hat on. I will have the things sent
down, and we may as well walk to the jetty. It will do me good after
that big breakfast. Jenny had better get into a cab and go down with the
luggage."
When they reached the promenade along the Sound shore Oscarovitch
pointed to a beautifully-shaped, three-masted, two-funnelled white yacht
lying about five hundred yards out, and said:
"That is the _Grashna_, Miss Marmion. I hope you like the look of her."
"She is beautiful!" exclaimed Nitocris, recognising at once the vessel
which had met the Russian destroyer on the early morning of the 7th.
"She almost looks as if she could fly."
"So she can in a sense," laughed the Prince. "Come now, here is the gig.
We will get on board, and you shall see her go through her paces."
Neither she nor her father were strangers to yachts, but when they
mounted the bridge of the _Grashna_ and looked over her from stem to
stern, they had to admit that they had never seen anything quite so
daintily splendid. They had chosen their rooms, and Jenny was below
unpacking. Although, of course, he had a captain on board, the Prince
often sailed the yacht himself when he had guests on board. He had a
genuine love for the beautiful craft, and he took an almost boyish
delight in showing what she could do. She was a twelve-hundred-ton,
triple-screw, turbine-driven boat, and, thanks to the space-economy of
the new system, her builders had been able to stow away fifteen thousand
horse-power in her engine-room, and this when fully developed gave a
speed in smooth water of thirty-five knots or a little over forty
statute miles an hour.
The anchor was up almost as soon as they got on to the bridge, and
Oscarovitch moved the pointer of the telegraph to "Ahead slow." The
quartermaster in the oval wheel-house behind him moved the little wheel
a few spokes to starboard, her mellow whistle tooted, and she glided in
an outward curve through the other yachts and shipping, and gained the
open water.
"Now," he said, turning to Nitocris, "we can begin to move. It is
roughly thirty English miles to Elsinore. If you have never done any
fast travelling at sea and would like to do some now, I can get you
there in about three-quarters of an hour."
"What!" exclaimed the Professor, "thirty miles in forty-five minutes by
sea! That is over forty miles an hour. A wonderful speed."
"Yes," he replied, almost tenderly; "but my beautiful _Grashna_ is a
wonderful craft--at least, I think you will say so when you see what she
can do. Now, if you will take advice, you and Miss Marmion will go into
shelter, for it will begin to blow soon."
Behind the wheel-house was an observation room, as it would be called in
the States, running nearly the whole length of the bridge, and fronted
with thick plate glass. They went in, and Oscarovitch turned the pointer
to half-speed. There was no increase in vibration, but the shore began
to slip away behind them faster and faster, and the northern suburbs of
Copenhagen rose ahead and fell astern as though they were part of a
swiftly moving panorama. Then the pointer went down to full speed, and
the Prince, after a word to the quartermaster, joined them in the
bridge-house and closed the door.
"You will need all your eyes to see much of the shore now," he said; "I
have given her her wings."
Nitocris felt a shudder in the carpeted floor. Looking ahead she saw the
bow lift slightly. Then a smooth, green swathe of water curled up on
either side. She looked aft, and saw a broad torrent of froth, foaming
like a furious, rapid stream away from the stern. The houses and trees
on the shore seemed to run into each other, and slide out of sight
almost before the eye could rest upon them. The water alongside was
merely a blue-green blur. Nitocris involuntarily held her breath as
though she had been out on deck.
"It is wonderful, Prince!" she said, almost in a whisper. "That alleged
express from Hamburg was nothing to this: and yet how steadily she moves
in spite of the speed. I should have thought that it would have nearly
shaken us to jelly."
"That is the turbines, dear," said her father, who was already wondering
whether Oscarovitch was doing this just to show how hopeless any pursuit
of such a vessel would be. "They are a marvellous means of applying
steam power. Lieutenant Parsons is robbing the sea of one, at least, of
its worst terrors."
"Yes," added the Prince, "we are travelling a little over forty miles an
hour; and if you got that speed out of reciprocating engines you would
scarcely be able to lie on the deck without holding on to something, yet
here we are as comfortable as though we were standing in a
drawing-room."
"You have given us a new experience to begin with," said Nitocris,
thinking how nice it would be to take her wedding trip with Merrill in
such a craft as this. "Why, look at the two shores coming together,
Dad!"
"No, excuse me," said Oscarovitch, "we are only about half-way to the
Gate of the Baltic yet. That land on the right is the island of Hvreen.
When we have passed that you will soon see the heights of Elsinore and
Helsingborg rising ahead. There are only about two and a half miles
between Denmark and Sweden there."
"Oh yes, of course. I am forgetting my geography," laughed Nitocris, as
the low, wooded patch of land came rushing towards them as though it
were adrift on a fast-flowing stream. "Goodness, what a speed!"
"A very wonderful craft, Prince," added the Professor, as the island
drifted past; "she quite inclines me towards a breach of the tenth
commandment. Now that you have given us this taste of the delights of
speed, I think that if I were a millionaire, I should try to build one
to beat her."
"Exactly," laughed Oscarovitch. "It is marvellous this fascination of
speed. Your poet, Henley, touched the pulse of the times when he wrote
those splendid lines of his. But surely, Professor, _you_ would not have
very much difficulty in leaving all far behind. A man to whom
mathematical impossibilities are as easy as an addition sum ought to be
able to realise the dream of the ages and solve the problem of aerial
navigation."
He looked him straight in the eyes as he said this. He fully believed in
the possibility of human flight, given the transcendent genius who could
work out the equation of weight and power. Perhaps that genius might be
with him now in the bridge-house. His vivid imagination was already
picturing the lovely girl at his side crowned Empress of the Russias and
the East, and himself in command of an aerial navy, beneath whose
assault the armies and navies and fortresses of the rest of the world
would be as so many toys to play with and destroy.
"If I could do that, and I do not think it would be so very difficult
after all," said Franklin Marmion, returning his glance, "I would not
do it. It would put too much power in the hands of a few men, and we
have enough of that already. The owner of a fleet of aerial warships
would be above all human law. He could terrorise the earth, and make
mankind his slaves. Life would become unendurable under such conditions.
Commercialism, which only means slavery plus the liberty to starve, is
bad enough, but it is at least possible. The other would be impossible.
There is no man quite honest enough to be trusted with such a power as
that. I have worked the thing out, and it is perfectly feasible, but I
burnt my designs and calculations."
"What!" exclaimed Oscarovitch, flushing in spite of his effort to keep
the blood back from his face. "You have solved the problem, and won't
make use of the greatest invention of all the ages! Surely, Professor,
that is a little quixotic, is it not?"
"Who am I that I should bring a curse upon humanity, Prince?" he
answered gravely. "Do you not kill each other fast enough now? No, the
world is not fit for such a development yet. My results will remain my
own until Tom Hood's ideal of good government has been realised."
"And what was that, Dad?" asked Nitocris, who had a double reason for
being interested in the conversation. "If I ever knew it, I have
forgotten it."
"Despotism, Niti--and an angel from heaven for the despot," he replied,
with another look into the Prince's eyes which brought him to the
conclusion that the sooner his presence on board the _Grashna_ was
dispensed with the better for his plans. There was a sense of quiet
mastery in Franklin Marmion's manner which made him uneasy.
"Ah! there is the famous fortress, is it not? the home of Hamlet and
Ophelia and the Ghost!" she exclaimed, pointing ahead to where a
grey-blue mass was rising out of the water. "Do you believe in ghosts,
Prince?" she added suddenly, flashing a glance at him which seemed to
pierce his brain like a ray of unearthly light.
"Ghosts? No, Miss Marmion. I'm afraid I am too hopelessly materialistic
for that. I never saw or heard of an authentic ghost, and I do not
propose to believe until I see."
"We have a ghost at 'The Wilderness,'--the wraith of a poor young lady
who killed herself after some royal blackguard had abused his own
hospitality. She often comes to visit me in my study," said the
Professor, as though he were relating the most ordinary occurrence.
"Ah," smiled the Prince, "that is very interesting: but, of course, it
would be in the power of a man like yourself to have experiences which
are denied to ordinary mortals. Still, granted all that, I confess that
I have often wondered whether or not I should be frightened if I really
did see a ghost."
"Yes, I wonder?" murmured Nitocris, with a great deal more meaning than
he had any idea of just then.
All three felt that the conversation was getting a little difficult, and
they were not sorry when the rapid rising of the rock of Elsinore made
it necessary for Oscarovitch to go out to the engine telegraph.
"His Highness doesn't believe in ghosts now," whispered Nitocris to her
father, when the door shut behind him, "but I think he will before very
long. I wonder what he is really going to do? I've half a mind to----"
"No, no, Niti," he said quickly; "keep this side of the Border till you
really have to cross it. What on earth, literally, would happen if he
came back and found me standing here alone?"
"Oh, of course I didn't mean it," she smiled. "It would be very poor
sport to spoil both the comedy and the tragedy before the curtain goes
up. I wonder if the drama will begin to-night? I shouldn't be
surprised."
"Nor I," said the Professor, a trifle grimly. "I didn't at all like his
looks when I was talking about the flying machine. The brute looked as
if he were quite capable of locking me up and starving or torturing me
until I gave him the secret. My word, I should like to see him try! I'd
have him grovelling at my feet in five minutes."
The door opened and Oscarovitch came in. He took off the cap which had
been pulled tight over his eyes, and said:
"Well, we have arrived! Almost exactly forty-five minutes. There is
Elsinore, there is Kronborg, King Frederick's sixteenth-century castle,
and there is Marienlyst, which is to Copenhagen what Brighton is to
London, only, I must say, in a much more refined sense. Now what is
your pleasure, Miss Marmion? We have still nearly two hours before
lunch, so, if you would like an hour's stroll ashore, the gig will be
ready in a couple of minutes."
"Thank you, Prince," she said with a rewarding smile. "Dad, what do you
think? It all looks very beautiful under this sun and sky."
"Which, of course, means that you want to go ashore, Niti," said her
father. "For my own part, I certainly should like a little walk on new
ground. I have never been here before."
"Then, of course we will go," said Oscarovitch, opening the door and
going to the telegraph.
The yacht came to a standstill in a few minutes, and the gig was waiting
at the foot of the gangway ladder. They spent a very pleasant hour
ashore, and what they saw, you may read of in your Murray and Baedeker,
wherefore there is no need to set it down here. When they came aboard
again, lunch was almost ready, and the steward presented his master and
the Professor with quite exceptional cocktails in the smoking-room. Then
they went and had a wash, and the mellow gong sounded.
I am not very fond of those descriptions in stories which read like
extracts from an upholsterer's price-list, nor yet those accounts of
meals that, after all, are only menus writ large, so it may suffice to
say that the saloon of the _Grashna_ was an arrangement of sandal-wood
panels, framed in thin silver filigree, and hung with exquisite little
masterpieces in water-colour, and black and white, and crayon, mostly
sea-scapes, with here and there a beautiful head with living eyes which
followed you everywhere; that the rich yellow of the panels was enhanced
by _portières_ and curtains of deep golden-bronze silk, and that the
domed ceiling was of pale, sky-blue enamel spangled with the
constellations of the northern heavens, which at night lit up the whole
saloon with a soft electric radiance. As for the lunch, it was as nearly
perfect as the best-paid chef afloat could make it, after his master had
asked him as a personal favour to do so.
They ran back quietly to Copenhagen at twenty knots, and Oscarovitch and
the Professor went ashore to send off a few telegrams, leaving Nitocris,
for her own reasons, to make herself at home on the yacht. They returned
in time to dress for dinner and enjoy a stroll on the broad upper deck,
and watch the sunset over the town and the quickly-increasing sparkle of
the myriad lights on shore and sea. When they came up after dinner,
these lights were only represented by a luminous haze glimmering under
the stars to the northward. The _Grashna_ was heading nearly due south
at an easy speed towards the Baltic Islands.
Something told both Nitocris and her father that the decisive hour would
come soon, and they were both prepared for its advent.