THE "HUMMING TOP"
"Why _Humming Top_?" asked Madame Gilbert.
It was early in March, and the devastation wrought by the Admiralty in
the yacht's graceful interior had been obliterated by the skilled hands
of White of Cowes. Her upper and main decks had been entirely
refashioned, and nothing remained of her armament except a brass signal
gun forward. At the main mast head waved in the breeze the burgee of the
Royal Thames Yacht Club, and from the inclined jackstaff at her stern
hung the Blue Ensign which it is the privilege of that Club to wear. The
_Humming Top_ lay in the Test above Southampton just where the magazines
of Marchwood front the river. Madame Gilbert leaned upon the bridge
rail, and beside her, as close beside her as Madame would permit, stood
the Baronet of Wigan.
Sir John Toppys had been presented to Madame some weeks earlier, and
between them a friendship had ripened. In due course, when the _Humming
Top_, completed and ready for sea, had been towed to her moorings off
Marchwood, Sir John had pressed Madame to honour the vessel with her
presence. She, not unwilling to inspect the yacht in which she was to
traverse the seas of the wide world, and not unwilling to double-lock
her chains upon the Baronet's proffered neck, had consented to travel
in his company to Southampton on the visit of introduction. Together
they had examined the sleeping quarters on the main deck allotted to
Madame and her maid, and the lady had gratified her host by suggesting
some small alterations. Notebook in hand he hung upon her lips.
"My room is splendid," said she, "and I am so glad that you have given
me a proper spring bed instead of a snuffy bunk. If you will have a
light fitted at the head of my bed, and a bell push so that I can switch
off the light or summon my maid without moving more than my hand, the
room will be just perfect."
"I will give orders at once," declared Sir John Toppys. "You are sure
that there is no further way in which I may meet your wishes?"
"None at present," said Madame. "If I think of anything else, I will let
you know. She is a lovely boat, but why do you call her the _Humming
Top_?"
Sir John Toppys had not succumbed so far to the spells of Madame as to
have wholly lost his earlier suspicion that the Toppys Family and
fortunes were in her eyes objects of derision. She was so frank in her
laughter at their ancestral pretensions, she proclaimed so openly that
she embarked on her voyage to the South Seas as a glorious rag, that in
time he had become disarmed. If she felt as she professed to feel,
surely she would be less open in profession. Still now and then Madame
would shoot out a question which did awaken in the baronet's mind a
feeling that his leg was about to be pulled. Before, therefore,
answering her inquiry he reflected for a moment upon her possible
motive.
Even to him the explanation was rather absurd. "The epithet 'humming'
suggests the whirr of the turbines," muttered he. "There is no hammer,
hammer, hammer, clank, clank, clank, about this yacht. She whirrs, hums,
just like a top."
"Quite so," assented Madame drily. "Nevertheless, I do not think----"
"You are right," put in Toppys hastily--it was better to be frank in
confession. "We should not have chosen this name had we not desired it
to suggest a Family Possession."
"Toppys, pronounced Tops," whispered Madame wickedly. "Plural Tops,
singular Top. Humming Top--the Top that Hums. What extraordinary
worshippers of the Family gods you are. I fully expect to find that
Willatopy is a faithful student of the Family Tree. He probably keeps it
stuck up in his hut."
"God forbid!" cried the Baronet of Wigan.
He was not a Bad Baronet, and certainly not Bold in the presence of
Madame. She, expecting to meet the typical fat-bellied profiteer of the
popular cartoons, had at their first introduction been struck almost
speechless with surprise. This the King of Coal and Iron, the Maker of
Guns and Shells, the Wallower in unholy War Profits! She saw before her
a small thin gentleman, whose careful dress and trimmed white moustache
suggested a military club. When he spoke, Winchester and Oxford spoke.
This a Baronet of Wigan! Madame rubbed her eyes. Further acquaintance
revealed the explanation. John Toppys possessed the caste marks of his
long line; he had been educated as the Toppyses--though in extremest
poverty--had always been educated. He, almost alone in the records of
his House, had taken to common business and shone in it. He was no
higgler, he could not have run a draper's shop, but when representing a
big firm doing big things in a big way he found that doors would open to
the pukka sahib John Toppys which would remain obstinately closed to
plebeian rivals. John Toppys had built his fortune on the secure basis
of the essential snobbishness of the English people. To his firm he had
been invaluable--for he knew how to use the _entrée_ which was his by
right of blood--he had brought to them business of the best. And when
later on he became the senior partner, and the chief partaker in the
profits, the war cloud burst and wealth showered upon him. In his
position it would have required extraordinarily perverse skill not to
have made money in car loads. Successive Governments did their utmost to
stuff him, and his like, full of wealth. Thus, Sir John Toppys became a
War Profiteer--almost against his own will--but though a Profiteer on a
superlative scale, he remained a pukka sahib. Madame liked him.
"Now that I have seen the _Humming Top_," said Madame, "I know that I am
blessed among women. At no cost to myself--though at very much to you,
Sir John Toppys--I am going to have the time of my life. From May to
September in the Torres Straits the climate is divine. A day temperature
between 75 and 85, no rain, a perpetual trade wind from the cool
south-east, nights in which one may sleep comfortably and days in which
one may revel in the tropical winter. It must be like Khartoum without
the dust and with the sea thrown in. I shall swim in the sun and devour
bananas in the shade. I shall hunt dugong and turtle, and fish in the
tumbled waters of the Great Barrier. You will observe from my local
colour that I have been studying the subject. I have. For me this
preposterous enterprise will be full of joy; for you it will be full of
expense and will end in exasperation. Why not back out while there is
yet time? Surely you are not like that thick-headed Roger Gatepath. You
do not suppose that anything, except a pleasant holiday for Madame
Gilbert, will spring from this cruise of mine?"
"The expense to me is nothing," said the Baronet. "I am smothered in
ill-gotten wealth. And if some of my money can give you pleasure, it is
well spent, Madame. I would do more than write cheques to give you
pleasure. And as for your enterprise, is it destined to be empty of
result? I think more highly of your resource than that. Dawson says that
there is nothing which you dare not do if your interest be stimulated."
He saw the angry flush spring out on Madame's forehead. "You mistake my
meaning, Madame. It was not the stimulus of money that I had in mind. It
was the overwhelming impulse of your artistic genius. When you confront
a problem, however bleakly impossible it may be, you never fail of
solution. Dawson says so. You have not concerned yourself with our
family affairs because of any interest in our troubles. You laugh at
them. It is because no man or woman alive, except Madame Gilbert, could
resolve a skein so hopelessly entangled."
"I see no solution. Sir John. And though I sail at your expense, I am
not on your side. I am free to help or to hinder, at my pleasure."
"We are all at Madame Gilbert's pleasure," said Toppys, smiling. "We
know, you and I, that Roger Gatepath is two parts flunkey, one quarter
fool, and the other quarter unscrupulous lawyer. He cares for nothing
except for the connections and profits of his firm. He would lick the
new Lord Topsham's tawny feet if he did not fear to lose some handfuls
from my golden pile. I do not value the Barony at a rush for myself, but
there is in my blood a centuries-old reverence for my Family. Rather
than that coloured brat yonder should be recognised as the Head of my
House, I would strangle him with my own hands. If you can save us from
that horror, Madame, there is nothing which is in my power to grant that
I would not lay at your feet."
"Absurd as it may seem, Sir John, I have a conscience. Madame Gilbert is
not for sale."
"No. I should not value you if you were. And believe me I rate you very
highly. You will go out in this yacht to the Torres Straits, and you
will follow your conscience. Maybe you will bring back the Twenty-Eighth
Baron in your train and set him yourself upon his seat. There is no
contract between us; you are free to do even this. Be just to me,
Madame. I have offered you nothing except a free passage; I have never
sought to bribe you. In my heart I knew that it would be useless.
Whatever may be the end, Madame, I shall always cherish these weeks of
our friendship."
"As a Toppys you are not a little ridiculous," said Madame. "But as a
man you are white all through."
She held out her hand to him there on the bridge of the _Humming Top_,
and Toppys, stooping, kissed her fingers. "Thank you," said he, simply.
Although Madame had made a sketchy inspection of the yacht in the
company of Sir John Toppys, she learned very little of its fascinating
merits until she came aboard in act to sail. The crew were already at
their quarters when Madame was ceremoniously received on board by
Captain Ching the skipper, and the Chief Engineer, Ewing. She had
already given orders--Sir John Toppys had assigned to her his full
powers and prerogatives as owner--she had already given orders that the
chief officers should mess with her in the pretty little saloon on the
upper deck, aft of which was a snug "Owner's Room"--equipped with
writing-table and bookcases--which she reserved for her own private
occupation. Whenever their duties permitted of social relaxation, Madame
had determined that the Captain and Chief Engineer should be her
intimate companions. It was no new experience for Madame to be the one
woman in a company of men--her maid did not count--and she who had the
free outlook and high courage of a man, enjoyed the privileges of a
double sex. In repose she was a woman; in action a man.
Toppys had chosen his officers with judgment. The skipper, R.N.R., a man
of Devon, sprang from the salt stock which had roamed uncharted seas
with Drake and Cook. The Chief Engineer, a man of Glasgow, was of that
hybrid race of deep water mechanicians which had come into existence
with Bell and Wood's _Comet_, and for a hundred years had bent the
powers of the land to the service of the sea. In the ancestry of sea
craft engineers are of mushroom stock, and in comparison with the
unbroken line of Plymouth Chings the Glasgow Ewing was little better
than an upstart, an expert in tin-pot mysteries. Nevertheless the sailor
Ching respected the engine-room accomplishments of Ewing, and Ewing, who
could not have safely navigated a railway steamer from Portsmouth
Harbour to Ryde Pier, freely acknowledged that in the above deck
business Ching was his master. Each expert was supreme in his own
department, and where in the world can one find better navigators than
in Plymouth, or better marine engineers than in Glasgow City?
They cast off in the late afternoon of March 15th, and in the evening
were running out towards the Needles, the rapid whirr of the geared
turbines scarcely conveying a flicker of vibration to the long slender
hull. The yacht, on bridge and down in the engine-room, was in charge of
the junior ranks, and both Ching and Ewing sat at dinner with Madame in
the bright saloon.
"Hark to yon turbines," said Ewing. "Did ye ever hear the like? Just a
wee whisper down below and a bit quiver along the decks. Yet they are
pushing the boat along at eleven good knots."
"Eleven point four," corrected Ching. "What could you hammer out, Ewing,
in case of necessity?"
"We never hammer," replied the Chief with dignity. "We just spin a wee
bit faster when more boilers are fired and the steam pressure is
raised. I could push her up to seventeen without a weep from the joints
of the Babcock boilers. But it would be wicked war-r-k with fuel oil at
150 shillings the ton. At an easy eleven knots we are just burning
money; at a forced seventeen it would be a ghastly conflagration."
"I don't understand machinery," said Madame, "though I can run a
five-ton motor lorry with any man born. What is all this talk of oil? I
thought that steam yachts burned coal and yet I haven't seen a sign of
coal dust in the vessel. My sitting-room and my cabin, like this saloon
here, are warmed by electric radiators, and when I was down below, one
might have eaten off the spickspan decks. Are we a motor yacht and no
steamer at all?"
"Coal," said Ewing, "belongs to the carboniferous epoch. This is the
Twentieth Century and the Age of Oil. The _Humming Top_ is an oil-fired
steamship and years before her time. Didn't you know that she was built
by Denny's of Dumbarr-r-ton regarr-r-dless of expense? Her original
triple-expansion reciprocating engines, driving twin screws, were put on
the scrap heap in 1913, the year before the war, and high-speed turbines
put in. Their incredible speed of revolution is reduced down to the
propeller shafts by helical spur gearing. There were vairy few
destroyers in the King's service in 1913 which wouldn't have squirmed
with jealousy at the sight of our engine-room. At the same time, Madame,
our ancient Scotch boilers with their coal fire-boxes were ripped out,
and water-tube boilers, oil fired, installed in place of them. We don't
shovel heavy dirty coal, Madame; we simply squirt atomised oil upon the
glowing fires. And when we want to replenish our bunkers we don't run
under the coal tips and smother our clean decks with filthy black dust;
we just connect up with the tanks ashore, and press the switch of an
electric pump. You could refill our bunkers yourself, Madame, without
soiling your dainty fingers. And with our geared turbines and our oil
fuel we have a radius of action which is scarce believable."
"This is most interesting," said Madame. "Though I don't understand
machinery, I love it tremendously. And I am nothing if not up-to-date."
"You are up-to-date in the _Humming Top_; you couldn't be up-to-dater in
the _Hood_. We are a small craft, only a thousand tons yacht
measurement, but at this moment we have 155 tons of oil in our side
bunkers, and a resairve of 75 tons more in our double bottom in case of
emairgency. At this easy toddle of eleven knots we can run seven
thousand miles, more than half-way over the big bulge of the world,
without replenishment. Which is an advantage, Madame, that later on you
will greatly appreciate. If we were coal fired we should need to go
under those dirty wagon tips every two thousand miles or thereby. We can
steam from here to Panama, or from Panama to Auckland without anxiety
about our bunkers--always provided that Captain Ching doesn't get
impatient and doesn't try to shove us along at more than eleven knots.
If we steam fast there will be a terrible waste, and a great reduction
in our radius."
"I shan't hurry," said the Skipper, "though Sir John told me to obey
Madame's orders about speed. If he don't mind paying for forced draught,
it is no business of mine to spare his pocket."
"Sir John may be rich as Pierpont Morgan," declared the Scot. "But I
don't waste good Asiatic oil for anybody's wealth--not at 150 shillings
the ton. Oil once burnt doesn't grow again, and posterity will starve
for our lustful rapeedity. The cost of this trip is just awful. And for
pleasure, too. I am a judeecious, reflective man. Here we are in an
empty ship idling across the world when we could have stuffed the yacht
full of high-priced cargo at any damn freights we chose to extort.
Ching, my commercial conscience racks me like a raging blister. A cabin
load each of drugs or dyestuffs would have made our fortunes in South
America, yet here we are with half a dozen cabins empty. The wickedness
of it scares me. The _Humming Top_ will come to no good when owners fly
like yon in the face of the bountiful freights of a kindly Providence.
If I may say so without irreverence, we are sacrileegiously biffing the
Providential eye."
Captain Ching laughed. He was willing to venture freight on private
account when granted an opportunity. But this was a private yachting
cruise and orders were orders. If Sir John chose to burn money to please
Madame Gilbert--for that is how the long sea trip presented itself to
his mind--well, he had plenty to burn, and Madame was well worth
pleasing. He, as skipper, was handsomely paid for his job, and that was
enough for him. So was Ewing very well paid. But the lost opportunities
of plundering South American Dagoes which slid unregarded past the
easy-going Devonian just exasperated the Scot from Glasgow.
"Please explain," put in Madame. "How can we gratify the bountiful
Providence who is displeased with the _Humming Top_? I am always
careful, when I can, to range Providence on my side."
The Engineer explained. He pointed out that here was a yacht with half
her cabins empty and stowage spaces unoccupied beneath their very feet.
Here also was a world bereft of shipping and every scrap of space afloat
worth almost as much as habitable houses ashore. It would do no one any
harm, least of all Sir John Toppys, the Owner, if by judicious private
trading Ching and Ewing could accumulate a pile of wealth. "Of course
Sir John would get his share--and you too, Madame," explained Ewing,
anxiously.
"Please leave me out," cried Madame, greatly to the relief of Ewing, to
whom an Owner's idle share gave pain sufficient, "I stand in with Sir
John. Is there any real reason, Captain Ching, why Mr. Ewing should not
do what he proposes? Would Sir John object?" It had occurred to Madame
that the _Humming Top_ as a trader would be accepted in the South Seas
without comment, whereas a private yacht, cruising at large upon an
unexplained purpose, might excite curiosity the most unwelcome.
"Not at all, I think," said Ching. "My orders are to take you to the
Torres Straits and to place myself and the yacht unreservedly at your
disposal. Sir John was most positive. I have among the ship's papers
written instructions directing me to obey any orders from you which are
consistent with the laws of British shipping. Sir John has very complete
confidence in your judgment, Madame."
"The more reason why I should not strain my temporary authority," said
Madame. "Still in this matter of private trading I do not hold that Sir
John could reasonably take objection. We do no injury to him nor to the
yacht, and you, his officers, will perhaps benefit. You have my
permission to go ahead."
"Madame Gilbert," said Ewing solemnly, "you are the maist sensible
wumman it has ever been my fortune to encounter. Not excepting Mrs.
Ewing. I may add," he went on with enthusiasm, "that if I were not a man
happily married to a gude Scots leddy I would throw my hairt into your
bonnie lap."
"This is very sudden," said Madame. "For all you know I may be married
myself."
"No matter," cried the Engineer. "If you, a foreign leddy, are so ripe
with sense now what would you become with a gude Scotsman beside ye? You
and I together would scrape the jewels off the airth. Meantime, with
your permission, we will get busy. I take it that the yacht will call at
Plymouth and maybe stay two three days whiles I communicate with my
friends in Glasgow."
"If you are going to load the _Humming Top_ with valuable stores, Mr.
Ewing, you will need a lot of ready money."
Ewing grinned. "We Scots folk are cautious, vairy cautious. Especially
when we deal with one another."
"Perhaps you need the more caution then," suggested Madame, smiling.
"Maybe aye, maybe no. We don't push in our fingers farther than we can
draw the hand back. But in these days it is scarcely possible to make a
mistake. If we load up with opium, cocaine, and other immoral dopes for
the Dagoes we can't go wrong. They will pay any money, and my friends in
Glasgow will do the needful on credit. They will ask a percentage, I
don't deny that, but there will be a margin. Ching, my son, are you game
for dope smuggling round Valparaiso and Lima way?"
"We must have creditable stores for the manifest," said Ching, "but I
don't suppose the Dago Customs will peer closely at a private yacht. And
a few honest dollars will blind their eyes I reckon. The Law is not
obtrusive on the West Coast, Ewing. But go easy with contraband. We
mustn't get Madame here into trouble."
"Don't worry about me," said Madame cheerfully. "I already feel like a
buccaneer. A bit of smuggling will give zest to a voyage which threatens
to be tedious. So let us stop in Plymouth for so long as Mr. Ewing
requires for his nefarious operations."
"I never thought to see the day," declared Ewing, beaming upon her,
"when my gude wife in Paisley would seem to be a sore encumbrance. And
after Plymouth could we not touch at Bordeaux? French wines are always
good mairchandise on the West Coast, and the profits thereof would
seduce old Pussyfoot himself."
"I clearly see," said Madame, smiling, "that when the _Humming Top_
leaves Europe for her long trail to the Panama Canal she will be laden
to her utmost capacity. We shall burn a power of oil to knock out even
eleven knots then."
"It will be worth it," cried Ewing, smacking his lips. "Even with fuel
oil at one hundred and fifty shillings the ton, there will still be a
margin. If we are loaded rail under with profitable stores I won't
grudge a cask or two of Sir John Toppys' oil. We play fair, Madame. The
Owner gets his share, a full honest share."
"For rank buccaneers and smugglers," observed Madame contemplatively,
"we seem to be indifferently honest. Go ahead, my good but disreputable
friends. And if you should require any cash I am in this thing with you
up to my fair neck."
"Madame," declared Ewing gloomily, "you make the recollection of my gude
wife fair burdensome to me, fair burdensome. We should ha' made a bonny
pair of pirates, you and I."