At about ten o'clock in the morning of the day the "Harlech" sailed,
whilst Jimmy Burke lay in hiding in the hold among the packing-cases and
boxes of cargo, Captain Crouch was ushered into the offices of Jason,
Stileman and May.
Now, those who know nothing of Captain Crouch are unacquainted with one
of the most singular personalities it were possible to imagine. He knew
the world as few men know it, from Yokohama to Valparaiso, from Hudson
Bay to Hobart. Indeed, his strange and varied experiences would fill a
book, which could certainly never be published at less than a guinea
net.
As a boy, he had sold newspapers in the crowded streets of London. From
that he had risen to command a merchant ship. He had been shipwrecked
time and again. He had been shot in the right eye with a poisoned
arrow, somewhere at the back-of-beyond on the West Coast of Africa,
which is called "The White Man's Grave." He had had a foot bitten off
by a shark in the Bay of Fernando Po. And yet, in spite of his cork
foot and his glass eye, he was more than a match for most men. Though he
was not much more than five feet four in height, he was as wiry as a
ferret, and as quick in all his movements. He feared no man, and was a
rifle and revolver shot who seldom missed his mark. He had a threefold
reputation: he was one of the most intrepid explorers in the world; he
had shot tigers in the Sunderbunds and rogue-elephants in the forests of
the Congo. As a master mariner, he had sailed the seven seas for the
greater part of his life, was a skilful navigator, and one who could
keep his head in an emergency.
Such a man was Crouch. Those who have read of his doings elsewhere know
that, on a former occasion, he penetrated to the reaches of the Hidden
River, in the unexplored valley of the Kasai, and there unearthed both a
modern slave-trader and a ruby mine. It was also Captain Crouch who
ventured into the trackless region of the Aruwimi, in search of Edward
Harden, the lost explorer, of whom nothing had been heard for four
years; and how he succeeded in his quest, and all the adventures that
befell him, have been written of elsewhere.
In fact, Crouch was a man to whom adventure was as the very breath of
his nostrils; the spirit of adventure flowed in the blood of his veins.
He sought perilous enterprises because his idea of life was danger,
because he understood that in this world the main duty of man was to
accomplish. And Crouch accomplished much. He was one of the pioneers
of civilization, one of those who go before the flag that trade is said
to follow. He was as much out of his element in a comfortable armchair
before a winter's fireside, as a backwoodsman in a boudoir. He belonged
to the life of the open air, of the free and rolling sea. Indeed, it may
even be said that his little, shrunk and wizened figure was a kind of
stormy petrel: his very presence was a certain signal that danger and
adventure were at hand.
And thus, it is hardly likely, on the face of things, that at the
outbreak of the Great War such a man would remain idle for long. Even
had he not sought employment of his own free will, there were those who
knew of him by reputation, who were only too eager to enlist his
services.
He had been found in London, at the Explorers' Club in Bond Street,
which is a great place of a winter's evening, where you may hear tales
which are as wonderful as they are true. He had been asked to leave at
once for New York, on a certain dangerous mission. He had been given
five minutes in which to make up his mind; and that was exactly four
minutes and fifty-nine seconds longer than he required.
He arrived in New York in a sailor's jacket, with brass buttons which
would have been none the worse for a polish. He wore a flaming red tie,
and gum boots such as seamen wear when the decks are running with salt
water and the funnels white with foam. His face was as wrinkled as a
date, the colour of tan, beaten for years by sun and wind and rain. His
nose was large, and hooked like an eagle's. He had a small moustache,
and beneath his underlip a little imperial beard, which he was wont to
tug whenever he was vexed or deep in thought. As he entered the
spacious offices of Jason, Stileman and May, he carried in his right
hand a seaman's kit-bag, and in the other, a small mahogany box about
six inches long.
He was greeted by Peggy Wade.
"Captain Crouch?" she asked.
"Miss," said he, "the same."
"Mr. Jason is expecting you," said Peggy. "Will you be so good as to
wait?"
Crouch regarded Peggy. The girl--whose own custom it was to look people
straight in the face--found the penetrating and unflinching stare of
Captain Crouch a somewhat trying ordeal.
"You're a well-spoken lass," said he, at last, "and well looking, too.
Come, stay there a bit," he added, seeing that Peggy made as if to go;
"stay there a bit, my girl. I'll polish up the glass eye, and have a
better look at you."
And at that, to Peggy's horror and consternation, Crouch slipped out his
glass eye, threw it up in the air and caught it, as though it had been a
marble, and then proceeded to polish it violently on the shiny sleeve of
his coat.
That done, he put it back again in the socket, and looked at Peggy even
harder than before.
"Seems fair," said he. "You're a lass after my own heart; neat, trim
and ship-shape. I've half a mind to adopt you."
Peggy could not restrain a smile.
"I don't know," she said, "that I ever exactly wished to be adopted."
Crouch looked thoroughly amazed.
"Why, my girl," said he, quite slowly, shaking his head in a doleful
manner, "you've no right notion what kind of man I am. I could tell you
stories that would make that curly hair of yours stand right up on end,
like the bristles on the neck of a pig. And maybe, some day, p'raps,
you'd learn to love me--like a father."
To speak the truth, Peggy was by now a little frightened. In all of her
somewhat limited experience, she had never come across such an
extraordinary and eccentric individual. She knew nothing then of
Crouch's iron will and dauntless courage; she knew nothing of his deeds
upon the Congo or Aruwimi. She had more than a suspicion that the
little sea-captain was not quite right in the head.
"I think," she said, "I had better tell Mr. Jason you are here."
"No haste," said Crouch. "My cargo won't be aboard till daybreak
to-morrow morning, and I reckon all he has got to say to me won't take
above ten minutes."
None the less, Peggy thought it advisable to announce the little
sea-captain's arrival to Mr. Jason, Junior, the New York agent, and a
nephew of the senior partner of the firm. Mr. Jason, who just then was
busy at the telephone, replied that he would see Captain Crouch in a
minute, and Peggy returned to the waiting-room.
The following incident--though of little value in itself--goes a long
way to prove that Captain Crouch was both an observant man upon whom
little or nothing was lost, whose single eye was as good as most men's
two, and one who was by no means devoid of sentiment and consideration
for others.
"My lass," said he, the moment Peggy entered, "a halved sixpence is a
lover's token. Who gave it you?"
At first, Peggy was inclined to resent this blunt allusion, which she
regarded as a little too personal. Only the night before, she had bade
farewell to Jimmy, and even then tears were not so far from her eyes.
She had hung her half of the lucky sixpence around her neck on a little
chain; and she saw no reason why she should confide her innermost
feelings to Captain Crouch, who, after all, was a stranger.
Now, this--as we have said--to the everlasting credit of the little,
wizened captain: somewhere beneath his hardened visage, his rough
manners and his almost violent way of talking, there was a heart as soft
as a woman's. He saw, at once, that Peggy's feelings had been hurt,
that he had touched a tender chord, and he did his best to make amends.
When he spoke again, it was in a voice quite different, much softer and
full of sympathy.
"I've no wish, my lass," said he, "to pry into your secrets. I only
asked, because I took a kind of fancy to you, the moment I saw you; and
that, as a general rule, is not my way with women. I'm a single man.
I've never married for two reasons: first, no one wanted to marry me;
second, I never wanted to. I can only remember two women in my life
with whom--as I might say--I was ever on speaking terms. One was my
landlady in Pimlico, who thought she knew more about cooking than I did;
and the other was an old negress, black as a lump of charcoal, who did
my washing at Sierra Leone. She weighed seventeen stone, and was about
as broad as an oil-tank steamer in the Bosphorus. So if I've hurt your
feelings, miss, you must forgive a rough sea-faring man, who has had his
port-light put out by a poisoned arrow, and who doesn't know any
better."
And at that, he held out a hand so eagerly and frankly that Peggy could
not refrain from taking it.
She experienced then, for the first time, what manner of a man was
Captain Crouch--if a shake of the hand counts for anything, as it is
generally thought to do. Indeed, he gripped her hand so tightly that
she was obliged to wince; and noticing that, he forthwith apologized, by
telling her once again that he was an old sea-dog more used to
marling-spikes than lassies.
"I'm sorry," said Peggy, "I was so foolish as to think you too
inquisitive."
"Say no more," said Crouch.
"But, I will," she took him up. "There's no reason why you shouldn't
know, for this sixpence once belonged to a sailor."
"I know the breed," said Crouch, "and just because he was a sailor, I
guarantee he never kept it long."
Peggy laughed aloud, and shook her head.
"He kept it many years," she answered, "for this lucky sixpence once
saved his life. You can see for yourself," she went on, "it is dented
and covered with lead from a bullet. It belonged to an Admiral, whose
name was 'Swiftsure Burke.'"
Captain Crouch drove the fist of one hand into the palm of the other.
"Known throughout the Navy," he exclaimed, "and to every right-thinking
sailor that ever sailed the ocean who takes a pride in the job! Admiral
'Swiftsure Burke' of Sebastopol. Lass, you've got a jewel in that lucky
sixpence that I wouldn't exchange for a diamond as big as a monkey-nut.
Stick to it, and you'll come to no harm. It's what, in a manner of
speaking, you might call a talisman. It'll protect you from fire,
shipwreck, sudden death and the Income Tax. You're in luck's way, my
girl."
Now Captain Crouch was a man who knew that God alone could give good
fortune, or permit evil to fall upon one, but he had all a sailor's
superstition and belief in omens and talismans, and was quite sincere in
what he said to Peggy.
It was then that the door of the inner office was thrown open, and Mr.
Jason, Junior, entered the room. He was a man who could not have been
more than thirty-four years of age, clean-shaven and a little
prematurely bald. He was immaculately dressed, a small orchid in his
buttonhole and a pair of exceedingly shiny patent leather boots making
him look as if he had just come out of a bandbox.
"Captain Crouch," said he, coming forward, and holding out a hand, "I'm
delighted to see you. I have a very important matter to discuss. Miss
Wade," he added, turning to Peggy, "if any one else calls, you will say
I am engaged."
At that, he conducted Captain Crouch into his office, and was careful to
close the door.
Crouch seated himself in a comfortable chair. As for Mr. Jason, he
walked backwards and forwards from the hearthrug to the writing-desk,
with the restless activity of a man who has something on his mind.
"Captain Crouch," he repeated, speaking abruptly, "I can scarcely
exaggerate the extremely perilous nature of the task I have undertaken.
I sent for you, because I know no other man to whom I would care to
entrust so great a responsibility."
Crouch yawned, and thrusting a hand into one of his coat pockets,
produced a tobacco-pouch, made of snake-skin, and about as large as a
letter-case.
"Mr. Jason," said he, "with your permission, I'll light a pipe. Maybe,
you've no objection to Bull's Eye Shag. There's some people that don't
hold with it, but I don't suppose that would apply to you."
Now, Mr. Jason knew Crouch's tobacco of old, and he knew that it was
powerful and pungent enough to fumigate anything from an isolation
hospital to a greenhouse. It was a brand of tobacco--if the truth be
told--for which there was no great demand, since he who smoked it
required the digestive organs of an ostrich. Its aroma would cling to a
bare room for days. The path of Captain Crouch through this populous
and sinful world was strewn with dead flies, wasps and beetles which had
been poisoned by the fumes of his tobacco.
Accordingly, Mr. Jason--though he gave Crouch full permission to light
his pipe--took the double precaution of opening the window and lighting
one of his strongest cigars. Then, still pacing the room, he fired at
the little sea-captain a series of questions in a quick, nervous voice.
"When will the 'Harlech' be loaded?"
"To-night, sir. Soon after nine."
"With what kind of cargo?"
"You should know that as well as I," said Crouch. "There's a few tons
of oats, a certain amount of machinery, and several cases of rifles."
"Ah," said Mr. Jason.
"I said so," said the other, looking hard at the agent, whose conduct
was rather strange. Mr. Jason repeated over and over again, as if to
himself, the one word "rifles," and was then silent for more than a
minute, puffing vigorously at his cigar.
"I suppose you've heard," said he, at last, "that several German
cruisers and commerce destroyers are abroad on the Atlantic?"
"I've heard tell of it," said Crouch, quite unmoved.
"Exactly. There is the 'Kronprinz Wilhelm' and the 'Koenigsberg,' and
moreover, the 'Karlsruhe' and the 'Dresden.' Also--as, perhaps, you
know--the English Channel and the Irish Sea are said to be swarming with
enemy submarines, sent out from Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. You realize all
that, of course?"
"Seems fair," said Crouch. "I'm ready to take my chance."
"You'll take a greater chance than you think," said Mr. Jason.
"How so, sir?"
"The fact is," said the agent, drawing nearer to the captain, and
speaking in a voice that was little above a whisper; "the fact is, that
although the cases are not marked, there is some reason to suppose that
German agents in New York suspect that the 'Harlech' has a cargo of
small-arms for the British Government."
Crouch whistled softly to himself.
"You mean," said he, "there's a chance that the secret has leaked out.
This place teems with spies."
"I can say no more," said Mr. Jason, "than that we suspect; but, these
times, we can be sure of nothing. It is quite possible that the German
commerce destroyers may be warned, and you will be run down in
mid-ocean. There may even be spies on board."
"If I find one," said Crouch, "I'll know how to deal with him."
"That's not the point," said the other. "Are you willing to take the
risk?"
Captain Crouch got to his feet, carefully knocked out his pipe in the
fire-grate, and then thrust his peaked sailor's cap on to the side of
his head.
"Why not?" said he, at last.
Mr. Jason smiled.
"I thought you wouldn't hesitate."
"Why not?" repeated Crouch. "If those are my orders, I'll do my best to
carry them out, and I'll sight the Needles and take on a pilot in the
Solent, if a sound knowledge of navigation and steam coal can do it."
Mr. Jason held out a hand.
"I'm glad I sent for you," said he. "You will start to-night?"
"We'll be under way," said Crouch, "before eleven, at the latest."
"Then, good-bye--and the best of fortune."
A few minutes later, Captain Crouch, who had just taken an almost
affectionate farewell of Peggy Wade, was stumping on his cork foot along
the Fifth Avenue as if he owned New York.