It was the face of Rudolf Stork. It was the same face that Jimmy had
seen on that other occasion when he had been discovered hiding in the
cupboard in Rosencrantz's office--with this difference, Stork had now
grown a beard.
It was a black beard--coal black, and short and crisp--that made the man
look more villainous than ever. Though it hid the cruel wrinkles about
his mouth, it made it seem as if his lower jaw protruded like a
gorilla's. Before, Stork had looked both fierce and cunning; he now
gave one the impression of being akin to a savage beast.
"It's you!" cried Stork, and repeated the words several times as if
unable to believe the evidence of his eyes. "It's you! By thunder,
what's the game?"
"A stowaway," said Jimmy.
"A stowaway!" said the man. "I don't need telling that when I find you
skulking here at dead of night, and the ship two days from port."
"Take me to the captain," said the boy. "I am ready to take the penalty
for what I have done."
"You are?" said Stork. Then he must have remembered something, for
thrusting his tongue into his cheek, he rolled his eyes. "Easy now,"
said he. "These cards must be carefully played. A stowaway!" he cried.
"I'll not believe it."
"I have not denied it," answered Jimmy.
"Because you're something worse," let out the other.
"Worse!"
"Yes, worse. We're on the high seas, where a man can speak his mind
without fear of contradiction; and if I choose to lay a charge who's to
gainsay me? Answer me that."
"I don't understand," said Jimmy Burke.
"Ye don't, and small credit to your wits. Here's me, Rudolf Stork, a
ship's carpenter, and an honest man, who goes into the hold on right and
lawful business. And there what do I find prying among the cargo, like
a muzzled ferret in a ditch, but a brat of a German spy, caught
red-handed at his work."
Stork pointed at the packing-case upon which he had laid his chisel and
hammer.
"But these tools are yours!" cried Jimmy, who now felt his cheeks
burning in indignation.
"Just so," said Stork. "I left them here this morning."
Jimmy gasped. It was not easy to believe that such outrageous perfidy
were possible. Indeed, it took him some little time to realize the full
meaning of the man's words. But the more he thought of it the more
apparent it became that he would find it extremely difficult to prove
his innocence. How was he to convince Captain Crouch of the truth--that
it was Stork himself who was a spy? The captain would laugh in his
face. Such a retort is the common experience of fools. The cry of
"You're another!" is the wit of the gutter-snipe that can never carry
conviction. Jimmy recognized, with a growing sense of alarm, that in
all probability he would shortly find himself in the position of an
accused man who had no evidence to call on his own behalf.
"Do you mean to say," he exclaimed, "that you intend to accuse me of the
very crime of which you yourself are guilty?"
"I'm here," said Stork, quite calmly, "to bandy words with no one. If I
say you're guilty, then guilty you are, unless you can prove
contrariwise. Which isn't likely so far as I can see."
Upon the man's face there was an expression of half-amused contempt. He
had the appearance of being wholly confident and quite unperturbed. A
sort of half-smile played about his lips. This augured ill for Jimmy,
who realized that in Rudolf Stork he had an opponent who was both
without a sense of honour and well practised in the art of deceiving
others.
The man picked up his lantern, which, whilst speaking to Jimmy, he had
set down upon the ground, and then turned to go. It was then that the
boy made a quick movement forward in the direction of the iron ladder
that led to the deck above.
"We'll go together," he cried. "Your story and mine are not likely to
agree."
At that, Stork whipped round with a kind of snarl, and without a word of
warning, and clenching his fist, he dealt the boy a swinging blow in the
face that sent him reeling backward.
Jimmy staggered, stumbled and fell. For a moment he was half dazed. He
could still see--but indistinctly, as if through a gauze screen--the
flare of Stork's lantern which swung up and down, as the ship rolled
from side to side.
By the time the boy had recovered his senses sufficiently to scramble to
his feet he was again in utter darkness. The great boxes and bales of
cargo were only just discernible in the dim light that came through the
opened hatchway above. There, he could see a few stars, appearing at
odd moments, to vanish almost immediately behind the narrow, long-drawn
clouds that streaked a wind-blown sky. He could hear the waves, one
after the other, beating violently against the sides of the ship, the
water washing over the decks and along the scuttles, the rigging
creaking, and the long chain of the steam steering-gear jolting, from
time to time, as the great strain of a heavy sea was brought to bear
upon the rudder. And then four bells rang out; it was two o'clock in
the morning.
Jimmy, crossing the hold, reached the iron ladder, and set foot upon the
bottom rung. The very moment he did so the figures of two men appeared
upon the well-deck above, one of whom Jimmy recognized at once as Stork.
"He's in there?" asked a voice.
"Aye, aye, sir," answered Stork. "I found him at work among the cargo
like a half-starved rat."
"Get down," said Captain Crouch, for the other voice was his; "go down
and fish him out."
Stork was not slow to obey the captain's orders; and a moment later the
stowaway found himself upon the deck, standing ankle-deep in running
water, face to face with a man who was not so tall as the boy himself,
and who was clothed in a suit of bright red pyjamas, the trousers of
which were rolled up to his knees, so that the lower part of his legs
was bare.
"Bring him along to my cabin," said Crouch. "I'll not stand talking
here; it's a trifle too cold, I'm thinking, for a man who has spent a
good slice of his life in the equatorial parts."
The captain led the way to the main-deck. As he ran up the
companion-ladder on the starboard side, Jimmy noticed how extremely
agile he was in all his movements. Though at this time of his life
Captain Crouch must have been approaching fifty years of age, he was as
active as a young man; and, indeed, had it not been for his cork foot,
he would have been prepared to back himself in a hundred yards race
against any man of not less than half his years.
On board the "Harlech" the captain's cabin was situated at the forward
end of the main-deck, immediately under the bridge and next to the
chart-room. Here an oil lamp was burning which Crouch turned up so high
that the chimney smoked. He then picked up his pipe, filled it with his
terrible and strange tobacco, and seating himself upon a plush-covered
divan, proceeded to fill the room with smoke.
Stork, holding Jimmy by the sleeve of his coat, in much the same manner
as a policeman takes his charge to the nearest station, led the boy into
the room, and then closed the door.
"Now," said Crouch, "where's your evidence?"
Jimmy interposed. Thrusting forward both hands, in the attitude of one
who begs for mercy, he implored to be allowed to speak. But Crouch, by
describing a series of imaginary circles in the air with the stem of his
pipe, intimated that he desired Jimmy to remain silent.
"One thing at a time," said he, "as my friend, Ned Harden, observed,
when he shot a crocodile with one barrel and a rhino with the other.
That was with an old-fashioned shot-and-ball gun that he got from a
trader at Lokoja, in the days when there weren't above ten white men on
the Upper Niger. I hear the evidence for the prosecution first,
which--to the best of my belief--is in accordance with the law.
Afterwards, my lad, you'll have full opportunity to speak. And now,
then, what's the charge?"
Rudolf Stork told his story with simplicity, and a kind of easy
tolerance, as if he was really a little bored; and though he was
cleverly cross-examined by Captain Crouch, never once did he contradict
his former statements. Had his evidence been given on oath, he would
have perjured himself with no less assurance and without hesitation. His
manner, no less than the directness of his narrative, would have
deceived any jury in the world. And in any case, Captain Crouch--one
who knew more than his fair share of the tricks of rogues and the ways
of evil men--was led to a firm conviction that the boy was really
guilty.
Stork lied his soul away--or what can remain of a soul in a man who has
sunk to such great depths of infamy. He swore that he had been working
in the hold that very morning, and had gone back to fetch his chisel and
hammer. He had found the stowaway in the very act of opening one of the
packing-cases, which he had discovered were filled with new short
service-rifles for the British Army.
Crouch, when he heard this, made a wry face, and looked at Jimmy. He
had not forgotten that Mr. Jason had warned him that he might find
German spies on board; and though there was no direct proof, the
evidence, as given by Rudolf Stork, was very black against the boy. He
had no reason to doubt Stork's word. The man had been engaged at New
York with a good character, and he seemed a capable ship's carpenter,
who understood his work.
"Speak up, my lad," said Crouch--the expression upon whose thin, wizened
face had hardened--"speak up, and say nothing but the truth."
Now, in those who are at all sensitive, indignation is one of the most
deep-seated emotions that exist. Smarting with a sense of injured
innocence, the boy's cheeks were already burning; and now, something
rose in his throat as if to choke him, so that he found it difficult to
speak. When words came, at last, they did so in a flood, and were only
half coherent. Small wonder that Captain Crouch took all this as a sure
sign that the boy was unquestionably guilty!
"I'll speak the truth, sir," poor Jimmy blurted out. "I know for a fact
that it is this man, and not myself, who is a German spy. He is in the
pay of the Prussian Secret Service, and was engaged in New York by a
certain Baron von Essling, as he himself knows quite well. As for me, I
came on board this ship as a stowaway, because I wanted to go to
England. I wished to serve my country."
Crouch sprang suddenly to his feet.
"Enough of this!" he roared. "Do I look like a man who would swallow a
yarn like that? My word, they're not over-squeamish when they take on a
boy like you to do their dirty work. I've heard tell of women spies,
but I never guessed they would employ mere children for the game."
"Sir," cried Jimmy, "I swear, I speak the truth."
"I'll hear no more!" Crouch almost shouted. "You know well enough that
the penalty for a spy in time of war is death. I'm not quite certain
whether I should be acting according to the law, if I strung you up to
the yard-arm like a dead crow in a cornfield. And then, there's the
cat-o'-nine-tails. Maybe, you've heard of that? If you had proved to
be no more than a simple stowaway, I should have had a sort of kindred
feeling; for, I ran away to sea myself, and so did Dawes, and many
another sailor who's worth the salt he eats. When I was a boy, the
'cat' was not unheard of; but, nowadays, I doubt if I'd be within my
rights in using it upon the likes of you."
It was then, at last, that poor Jimmy Burke broke down. He could
suppress neither the sobs that were surging in his breast nor the tears
that he felt rushing to his eyes. Falling into a chair that stood
vacant at his elbow, he buried his face in his hands.
For a full minute his shoulders shook and trembled; and when he looked
up, his face was all streamed and marked with tears. He saw that
Crouch's lips were pressed tight together; there was an expression of
settled and immovable resolution upon the face of the little captain.
But, the bitterest blow of all was that Rudolf Stork was laughing, his
white teeth visible in the blackness of his beard.
"I'm innocent!" let out the boy.
"You can prove that in Court," said Crouch. "The very moment we are
tied up in Portsmouth Harbour, I hand you over to the police. You shall
have a fair trial, with a proper judge in a wig and all the rest of it;
and if you're not a dead man at the end of it, this here foot's not
cork."
By way of illustration of this last remark, Crouch thrust forward his
cork foot which--as was quite apparent--was fastened to his bare leg by
means of several straps.
"And as for the voyage," he added, "you'll work on board this ship like
a galley-slave. For every knot of your journey to the Solent, you shall
pay in honest labour. You can polish brasses, swab decks, wash paint,
and peel potatoes, and do ought else that you can lay a hand to.
Moreover, you'll report yourself every hour, from eight bells in the
morning to the end of the second dog-watch, to the officer on the
bridge. You'll sleep in the forecastle, and under observation. I'll
not trust you out of sight. You say you're an Englishman, perhaps you
may be; if so, the more disgrace to England. But, it's my belief you're
a Yankee, English born, who has sold his immortal soul to the German
Empire. There's many such in the States; in my thinking, they are all
Germans--every mother's son of them; and I tell you frankly, I abominate
them all without discrimination. And so, my lad, you've heard my mind,
and you know what I think of you and those you serve. One last word of
advice: as long as you're on board this ship, steer clear of me. I'm
not a man who jumps rashly to conclusions, but I've sized you up
according to the lights you show; and it's not probable I'll change my
mind. And now," he added, turning to Stork, "take him to the fo'c'sle."
Side by side, without a word, Stork and Jimmy crossed the forward
well-deck. Jimmy walked as in a dream. During the last hour so many
things had happened that he found it difficult to realize that he had,
indeed, been found guilty of being a German spy. In this world are
traps and opportunities for tripping us all, in the most unexpected
places.
For the rest of that night, poor Jimmy lay sleepless, heartbroken and
disconsolate, upon a hard forecastle bunk. Things had not happened as
he had either hoped or feared. He was in the very depths of despair. He
had acted rashly, he knew, in endeavouring to leave America as a
stowaway on board a merchant ship. But he had acted with the best of
motives, from a fitting sense of patriotism. He had dreamed of the
Great War, or as much of it as he had been able to imagine from the
pictures he had seen in the illustrated papers. He had dreamed of
flying Uhlans, captured trenches, charging hussars and cuirassiers--and
now, he had been threatened with the "cat." Assuredly, there are
pitfalls for us all!