ON HIS WAY
The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red
beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke
from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of
the _Volhynia_ and young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conference
in the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol,
stood outside the locked and bolted door.
Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see through
the shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze of
pearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old-time battleship loomed.
She was probably one of Nelson's ships, now only an apparition; but to
Neeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominating
the water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laid
until the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and the
glory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee heart
he hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never come
upon it.
Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside;
the monstrous city beyond had not awakened.
But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off the _Volhynia's_ port;
Neeland's steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captain
accompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase and
the olive-wood box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey.
"Good luck," said the captain of the _Volhynia_. "And keep it in your
mind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are at
this moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France.
"Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that they
are certain to communicate with other units; that between you and
Paris are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you,
rob you."
Neeland nodded thoughtfully.
The captain said again:
"Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But if
you've given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matter
involves, naturally, a point of honour."
"Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see." He laughed.
"You're thinking, Captain West, that I haven't much discretion
anyway."
"I don't think you have very much," admitted the captain, smiling and
shaking the hand which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one
symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt
should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces
in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may
shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye.
And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious
one and not as a lark."
They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered the
boat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent to
the oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to a
golden vapour.
It was within a few boat-lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland,
turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, saw
the most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the British
Empire assuming sovereignty.
For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleet
was taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, moving
majestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents of
smoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blinding
smother of mist and sun and the fawning cut-water hurrying too, as
though even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seaward
in the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by a
man-made Kiel.
And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until he
arrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across the
almost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamer
train, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded,
sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news-venders holding up
strips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters:
THE BRITISH FLEET SAILS
SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED
MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU,
INTERNATIONAL SPY
And he noticed knots of people pausing to buy the latest editions of
the papers offered.
But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that--glimpses
of stately grey buildings and green trees; of monuments and palaces
where soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in the
city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads,
disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everything
with calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry in
brilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between iron
railings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroad
station, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, because
he was to travel by a fast goods train under telegraphed authority of
the British Government.
And that is about all that Neeland saw of the mightiest city in the
world on the eve of the greatest conflict among the human races that
the earth has ever witnessed, or ever shall, D. V.
The flying goods train that took him to the Channel port whence a
freight packet was departing, offered him the luxury of a leather
padded armchair in a sealed and grated mail van.
Nobody disturbed him; nobody questioned him; the train officials were
civil and incurious, and went calmly about their business with all the
traditional stolidity of official John Bull.
Neeland had plenty of leisure to think as he sat there in his heavy
chair which vibrated but did not sway very much; and his mind was
fully occupied with his reflections, for, so far, he had not had time
to catalogue, index, and arrange them in proper order, so rapid and so
startling had been the sequence of events since he had left his studio
in New York for Paris, via Brookhollow, London, and other points
east.
One thing in particular continued to perplex and astonish him: the
identity of a member of Parliament, known as Charles Wilson, suddenly
revealed as Karl Breslau, an international spy.
The wildest flight of fancy of an irresponsible novelist had never
created such a character in penny-dreadful fiction. It remained
incomprehensible, almost incredible to Neeland that such a thing could
be true.
Also, the young man had plenty of food for reflection, if not for
luncheon, in trying to imagine exactly how Golden Beard and Ali Baba,
and that strange, illogical young girl, Ilse Dumont, had escaped from
the _Volhynia_.
Probably, in the darkness, the fishing boat which they expected had
signalled in some way or other. No doubt the precious trio had taken
to the water in their life-jackets and had been picked up even before
armed sailors on the _Volhynia_ descended to their empty state-rooms
and took possession of what luggage could be discovered, and of the
three bombs with their charred wicks still soaking on the sopping
bed.
And now the affair had finally ended, Neeland believed, in spite of
Captain West's warnings. For how could three industrious conspirators
in a fishing smack off the Lizard do him any further damage?
If they had managed to relay information concerning him to their
friends ashore by some set of preconcerted signals, possibly the
regular steamer train to and out of London might be watched.
Thinking of this, it presently occurred to Neeland that friends in
France, also, might be stirred up in time to offer him their marked
attentions. This, no doubt, was what Captain West meant; and Neeland
considered the possibility as the flying train whirled him toward the
Channel.
He asked if he might smoke, and was informed that he might; and he
lighted a cigarette and stretched out on his chair, a little hungry
from lack of luncheon, a trifle tired from lack of sleep, but, in
virtue of his vigorous and youthful years, comfortable, contented, and
happy.
Never, he admitted, had he had such a good time in all his life,
despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill and
alertness and perspicacity, had saved his neck.
No, he could not congratulate himself on his cleverness and wisdom;
sheer accident had saved his skin--and once the complex and
unaccountable vagary of a feminine mind had saved him from
annihilation so utter that it slightly sickened him to remember his
position in Ilse Dumont's stateroom as she lifted her pistol and
coolly made good her boast as a dead-shot. But he forced himself to
take it lightly.
"Good Lord!" he thought to himself. "Was ever a man in such a hellish
position, except in melodrama? And _what_ a movie that would have
made! And what a shot that girl proved herself to be! Certainly she
could have killed me there at Brookhollow! She could have riddled me
before I ducked, even with that nickel-plated affair about which I was
ass enough to taunt her!"
Lying in his chair, cheek on arm, he continued to ponder on what had
happened, until the monotonous vibration no longer interfered with his
inclination for a nap. On the contrary, the slight, rhythmic jolting
soothed him and gradually induced slumber; and he slept there on the
rushing train, his feet crossed and resting on the olive-wood box.
* * * * *
A hand on his arm aroused him; the sea wind blowing through the open
doors of the mail-van dashed in his face like a splash of cool water
as he sat up and looked around him.
As he descended from the van an officer of the freight packet greeted
him by name; a sailor piled his luggage on a barrow; and Neeland
walked through the vista of covered docks to the pier.
There was a lively wind whipping that notoriously bad-mannered streak
of water known as the English Channel. Possibly, had it been
christened the French Channel its manners might have been more polite.
But there was now nothing visible about it to justify its sentimental
pseudonym of Silver Streak.
It was a dirty colour, ominous of ill-temper beyond the great
breakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and made
white and ghastly faces from the open sea.
But Neeland, dining from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to the
use of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inland
lubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had stranded
him. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away--as far as it seems
to the Parisian. And only when chance business takes him to the
Battery does a New Yorker realise the nearness of the ocean to that
vast volume of ceaseless dissonance called New York.
* * * * *
Neeland ate cold meat and bread and cheese, and washed it down with
bitters.
He was nearly asleep on his sofa when the packet cast off.
He was sound asleep when, somewhere in the raging darkness of the
Channel, he was hurled from the sofa against the bunk opposite--into
which he presently crawled and lay, still half asleep, mechanically
rubbing a maltreated shin.
Twice more the bad-mannered British Channel was violently rude to him;
each time he crawled back to stick like a limpet in the depths of his
bunk.
Except when the Channel was too discourteous, he slept as a sea bird
sleeps afloat, tossing outside thundering combers which batter basalt
rocks.
Even in his deep, refreshing sea sleep, the subtle sense of
exhilaration--of well-being--which contact with the sea always brought
to him, possessed him. And, deep within him, the drop of Irish seethed
and purred as a kettle purrs through the watches of the night over a
banked but steady fire.