"Ay, ay, sorr"; then, as the signal came, "He sez uz he'll say us at blazes afore he bates a knot."

"Give it him for'ard then, and teach him," roared Black; and the shot that answered his command struck the quivering hull not twenty feet from the windlass, and you could see the splinters carried fifty feet in the air, while the shrieks of terror came over the sea to us, and were piercing then.

"What's he say now?" asked the Captain, cooler than even at the beginning of the work.

"Says as he'll make it warm for ye at New York, and if ye come aboard, it's on yer own head, an' ye swing fer it—he'll not stop till ye disable him."

"The thick-headed vermin," hissed Black; "give him another, amidships this time."

The second shot made us reel and shiver as she left us; but there was no hit, for we rolled much, and saw the shell burst on the far side of the liner. At this, and at the failure of a second attempt, the Captain lost patience, and gave the order—

"Full steam ahead, and clear the machine-guns."

It was almost superb, I admit now, and the excitement of it was then upon me, to feel our great ship quiver at the touch of the bell, and bound forward with waves of foam and spray running from her decks, and each plate on her straining as though the mighty force of the engines below would rend it from its fellows.

I had not before known the limit of her speed, or what she could do when driven as she then was; and the truth amazed me, while it filled me with a strange exultation. For we, who had dallied heretofore behind the other, sped beyond her as an express train passes the droning goods; and coming about, in a great circle, we descended upon her as a goshawk upon the quarry.

The machine-guns upon our decks were already cleared; the men were stripped, ready for the fray, as tigers for their food. Indeed, before I quite understood the purport of the manoeuvre, we were passing the Bellonic at a distance of not more than fifty yards; and at that moment it seemed as if all the furies of hell were let loose upon our decks.

Screaming like wild beasts, the men turned the handles of the Maxim guns; the balls rained upon the defenceless liner as hail upon a sheepfold. I heard fierce curses and dull groans; I saw strong men reel and fall their length as death took them; the breeze bore to me the wailing of women and the sobs of children.

But we had done the foul work in the one passage, for the flag dropped at once upon the liner, and the signal was made to us to come aboard. We had gained a horrid triumph, if such you could call the murders, and it remained but to divide the spoil.

"Lower away the launch, you John!" cried Black, "and take every shilling you can lay hands on. You hear me?—and hang up that skipper for a thin-skinned fool."

"By thunder, I'm yours all along," replied "Roaring John "; and then he sang out, "Hands for the launch!"

"You'd better go as cox," said Osbart to me, "you'll be amused"; and suggested it to Black, who turned upon me a look almost of hate.

"Yes, he shall go," he cried; "if we swing, he shall swing, the preaching lubber! Let him get aboard, or I'll kick him there."

I had loathing at the thought of it, but might as well have put a pistol to my head there and then as to have refused. They bundled me into the launch, and I sat shivering at the prospect of the terrors on the deck; but they would not leave me when they came alongside, and "Roaring John" himself drove me up the ladder which was put out amidships. Seven of us at last stood on the bridge, and were face to face with the captain of the Bellonic, and four of his officers.

I have said that I feared the terrors of that deck, but the reality surpassed the conception.

It was a very babel of sounds, of groans, of weeping. The ship's surgeon himself seemed paralysed before the sight of the carnage around him. You looked along the length of the vessel, and it was as though you looked upon the scene of a bloody battle, for there were dead almost in heaps, and wounded screaming, and streams of blood, and fragments of wreckage as though the ship had been under fire for many hours. But above all this terror, I know of nothing which struck me with such fearful sorrow as the sight of a fair young English girl lying by the door of the great saloon, her arms extended, her nut-brown hair soaked in her own blood, while a man knelt over her, and you could see his tears falling upon her dead face, and his ravings were incoherent and almost those of a maniac. At the sight of us he jumped to his feet, and shrieked "Murderers!" so continuously that the echo of his cry rang in my ears that day and for many days.

Meanwhile another scene was passing on the bridge between the man John and the captain of the Bellonic.

"What do you want aboard of my ship?" cried the latter; and "Roaring John" answered him with a mocking leer:

"We've come aboard to hang you, to begin on!"

The men with the young officer cocked their revolvers at this, and I said in a mad frenzy which would not brook silence—

"You scoundrel, if you touch another soul here I'll shoot you myself!" for I had my revolver on me. "Do you make a business of killing children?" I cried again, and pointed to the dead body of the girl-child.

I don't know who was more surprised, the captain of the Bellonic, listening, or the man John.

"You cub," he cried; "if you talk to me I'll skin you alive!" But I said quickly—

"Gentlemen, these men want every shilling on this ship. Give it them now and save your lives, for you have no alternative. If you give the money up, you have my word that they won't touch you."

"If there's a God above," exclaimed the young captain, "they shall pay for this day's work with their lives. I hand my specie over under this protest; but don't deceive yourselves—half the war-ships in Europe shall follow you within a week."

He turned away, and presently the ruffians with me had lowered money to the value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds into their launch. The third mate seemed then somewhat cowed by my interference, and though he went round the ship and cried "Bail up!" every time he met a passenger, he did not touch one of them. I remained on the bridge a silent spectator of it all; and when at last we put off again, and the launch was full of the jewels and the money, it seemed that I had passed through a hideous dream.

At the time, I shrank from the ruffians in the boat as from men who were savage fiends and a hundred times assassins; and their brutality of speech and threat fell upon ears that would not hear; nor did their pretence of doing me violence then and there move me one jot. I maintained a stubborn indifference, my pistol still in my hand, my teeth shut in the defiance of them, until we reached the great craft, and joined Black upon the gallery. There, the man John explained that I had stood between him and his purpose of hanging the skipper of the Bellonic; indeed, with such warmth and anger, that I thought my end had come upon the spot.

"You barking cub," said Black, more quietly than usual, but none the less to be feared for that, "what d'ye mean by interfering with my men and my orders?"

"To save you from yourself," I answered, looking him full in the face; "you've killed children on that ship, if that's news to you!"

He had a spy-glass in his hand, and he raised it as though to strike me; but I continued to look him full in the face, and he remained swaying his body slightly, his arm still above his head. Then, suddenly it dropped at his side, as though paralysed; and he turned away from me.

"Get to your kennel," said he; "and don't leave it till I fetch you."

I was glad to escape, if only for a few moments, from the danger of it; and I went to my cabin in the upper gallery, but not before the angry shouts of the men convinced me that Black had risked much on my behalf for the second time. Even when my own door was locked upon me, such cries as "You're afeared of him!" "Is he going to boss you, skipper!" and other jeers were audible to me; and the uproar lasted for some time, accompanied at last by the sound of blows, and cries as of men whipped. But no one came to me except the negro who brought my meals; and whatever danger there was of a mutiny was averted, as Dr. Osbart told me later in the day, by the appearance of a second passenger ship on the horizon. The report of the single shot, by which we brought her to, shook me in my berth, where I lay thinking of the horrid scenes of the morning; and for some time I scarce dared look from my window, lest they should be repeated. Only after a long silence did I open the port, and see a majestic vessel, not a hundred yards from us, with our launch at her side; and I could make out the forms of our men walking amongst the passengers and robbing them.

The details of this attack Osbart told me with keen relish when he came in to smoke a cigar with me after my dinner.

"We stripped them without killing a man," said he with hilarious satisfaction, "and took fifty thousand. Black's pleased; for, to tell you the truth, there's an ugly spirit aboard amongst the men, and you upset them altogether this morning. I never saw another who could have said what you said to the skipper and have lived; but you mustn't show on deck for a day or two—they'd murder you to pass time; and, as it is, we've had to post a man at your door, or I doubt if you'd save your skin in here."

"You seem to be making a paying cruise," I said sarcastically.

"Yes; and it's funny, for the sea is swarming with war vermin. Don't you feel the pace we're going now? I expect we're showing our heels to one of them, and shall show them a good many times between this and the first of next month, though Karl below is grumbling about the oil again: you want gallons of it with gas-engines. If we don't pick up the tender to-morrow, it's a bad look-out."

He did not come to me again for three days, but I saw from my port early the following morning that the tender was with us; and I concluded regretfully that the difficulty of the oil was overcome. On the second day after the robbery of the Bellonic, we stopped a third ship; though I saw nothing of it, as all the fighting was on the starboard side, and my cabin was to port; but there was a sharp fight on the third morning with a Cape-bound vessel, and again towards the afternoon with one of the North-German Lloyd boats homeward bound to Bremerhaven: as before, Osbart, coming to my rooms, delighted to give me the details of the captures; and that night he was unusually frivolous.

"Poor business to-day," he said, throwing himself into a lounge and lighting a cigar; "not an ounce of specie, and no jewellery to mention—and there was no killing, so don't put on that face of yours. Why, my dear boy, it was a perfect farce! I, myself, argued for twenty minutes with an old woman, who sat mewing like a cat on her box, and when I got her off it, thinking she had a thousand in diamonds, it was full of baby linen. And I'll tell you a better thing. An old Dutch Jew threw a two-penny-halfpenny bundle into the sea, and then he was so sick with himself that he went in after it. We hooked him out by the breeches with a boat-hook; but I believe he wished himself dead with the bundle. As for 'Four-Eyes,' he took what he thought was five hundred in notes from a card-player, but they're bad, dear boy, bad—every one of them."

"You don't seem very depressed about it," said I.

"Don't I?" replied he. "Well, things aren't all they should be. The tender we sent to Liverpool came out in a hurry, as they began to watch her, with a mere bucketful of oil aboard. We must get oil from somewhere or we shall all swing as sure as we're doing twenty-eight knots now. That's what I've come to tell you about to-night. The skipper can't stand it any more, and is going to run to England himself, and see what those mighty smart naval people of yours are doing. He'll take you with him, for it would be as good as signing your death-warrant to leave you here. Don't count upon it, though, for we shan't let you out of our sight, and you've got to swear a pretty big oath not to give us away before you set foot on the tender."

I was overjoyed at his saying, but I feared to let him see it, and asked with nonchalance—"How do you pick up this ship again?"

"Oh, we fix a position," he replied, "and they'll keep it every day at mid-day after ten days. Meanwhile we're running north out of the track of the cruisers."

"I can't quite understand why the skipper takes me with him this time," I remarked, endeavouring to draw him, but he answered—

"No more can I; between ourselves, he's been half daft ever since you came aboard. Do you know that the man's more fond of you, in his way, than of any living thing? I know it. I'm the only man on the ship who does know it, and why it is I can't tell you. I didn't think he was capable of a human feeling."

"It's very good of him to waste so much affection on me," said I, meaning to be derisive, but Osbart checked me.

"Don't laugh," he exclaimed; "you owe your life to him alone."



CHAPTER XXIII.

I GO TO LONDON.

It was a week after this conversation that Captain Black, Dr. Osbart, and myself entered the 7.30 train from Ramsgate; leaving in the outer harbour of that still quaint town the screw tender, now disguised, with the man John and eight of the most turbulent among the crew of the nameless ship aboard her. We had come without hindrance through the crowded waters of the Channel; and, styling ourselves a Norwegian whaler in ballast, had gained the difficult harbour without arousing suspicion. At the first, Black had thought to leave me on the steamer; but I, who had an insatiable longing to set foot ashore again, gave him solemn word that I would not seek to quit him, that I would not in any way betray him while the truce lasted, and that I would return, wherever I was, to the tender in the harbour at the end of a week. He concluded the conditions with the simple words, "I'm a big fool, but you can come." The others opened their eyes and tapped their foreheads, for they believed him to be a maniac.

I will not pause to tell you my own thoughts when I set foot on shore again. So great was my amazement at it all that I went some time without collecting myself to see that the invisible hand of God, which had led me all through, was leading me again—even, as I hoped, to the consummation of it. Fearless in this new thought, I sat in the corner of the first-class carriage reserved for us in such a state of exultation and of hope as few men can have known. Before me were the downs of Kent, the open face of an English landscape, the orchard-bound homesteads, the verdurous pasture-land. The hedges were bedecked with their late autumn flowers; the teams and smock-frocked men were going home to the gabled houses, and the warm-lit cottages. There was odour of the harvest yet in the air and the distant chiming of bells from the Gothic tower which rose above the hamlet and the knoll of green. Each little town we passed cast from its windows bright rays upon the tremulous twilight; a great bar of fiery redness cut the lower black of the coming night, showing me in shadow the rising of land towards Chatham and towards London. Yet it was the peace of the scene that came to me with the greatest power; the many tokens of home—above all, the thought "I am in England." I could not help but carry my memory at this time to the last occasion when, with Roderick and Mary, I had come to London in the very hope of getting tidings of this man who now sat with me in a Kent-Coast express. Where were the others then—the girl who had been as a sister to me, and the man as a brother; how far had the fear of my death made sad that childish face which had known such little sadness in its sixteen years of life? It was odd to think that Mary might be then returned to London, and that I, whom perchance she thought dead, was near to her, and yet, in a sense, more cut off from her than in the grave itself. And Black, whom all the Governments were pursuing so lustily, was at my side smoking a great cigar, apparently oblivious to all sense of danger or of hazard. Life has many contrasts, but it never had a stranger than that, I feel sure.

It was after ten o'clock that the ride terminated; and, following Black and Osbart into a closed carriage that awaited us, I was driven from the station. I should say that we drove for fifteen minutes or more, staying at last before a house in a narrow cul-de-sac, where we went upstairs to a suite of rooms reserved for us. After an excellent supper Osbart left us, but Black took me to a double-bedded room, saying that he could not let me out of his sight, and that I must share the sleeping-place with him.

"Boy, if you make one attempt to play me false," said he, "I'll blow your brains out, though you were my own son."

Then he went to bed at once in a morose and foreboding mood, and I followed his example quickly.

On the next morning Black quitted the house at an early hour after breakfast, but he locked the door of the room upon Osbart and myself. "Not," as he said, "because I can't take your word, but because I don't want anyone fooling in here." He returned in the evening, at seven o'clock, and found me as he had left me, reading a later novel of Paul Bourget's; for Osbart had slept all the afternoon, and was always complaining when on shore.

The view from the window upon a balcony of lead and the back windows of near houses was not inviting, and my bond had held me back from all idle thoughts of eluding him. Life in London under such conditions was little preferable to life on the ship, and I had no heart to hear Black's stories of things doing in town; or to examine the many purchases of miniatures and quaint old jewels, which he had laid on the dinner-table.

The day following was Thursday. I shall always remember it, for I regard it as one of the most memorable days in my life. Black went out as usual early in the morning; his object being, as on the preceding day, to find out, if he could, what the Admiralty were doing in view of the robbery of the Bellonic; and Osbart, refusing to get up to breakfast, lay in bed reading the morning papers. We had been left thus about the space of an hour when there came a telegram for the doctor, who read it with a fierce exclamation.

"The Captain wants me urgently," said he, "and there's nothing to do but to leave you here. We are trusting absolutely to you, now; but be quite sure, if you make half a move to betray us, it will be the last you will ever make. I may return here in ten minutes. You must put up with the indignity of being locked in; and, dear boy, don't trouble yourself to look for sympathy in this place, for the man who owns this house is one of us, and, if you call out, you'll get a rap on the head pretty quickly."

He went out jauntily, and I watched him, little thinking that I should never see him again. When he was gone I sat in the great armchair, pulling it to the window, and taking up my book. The sensation of being alone in the centre of London, and unable by my oath to make the slightest attempt to help myself, was most curious; yet with it all I could not but think that I had touched the culminating point, and was near to the ending of it for good or for ill. From the window of my room I could hear the hum of town, the rumbling of 'buses, and the subdued roar of London awake. I could even see people in the houses at the other side of the leads, and it occurred to me, What if I open that casement and call for help? I had given a pledge, it is true; but should a pledge bind under such conditions? The sanctity of an oath is a fine thing for theological subtlety. I had no such subtlety. I knew that the argument in favour of wrong is pleasing to the mental palate; and I put it from me, believing that the breaking of my bond would put me upon the immoral plane of the men to whom it had been given.

I was in the very throes of such a mental struggle when the strange event of the day happened. I chanced to look up from the book I had been trying to read, and I saw a remarkable object upon the leads outside my window. It was the figure of a man with a collapsible neck, a wonderful neck, which expanded appallingly, and again was withdrawn into a narrow and herring-like chest. The fellow might have been thirty years of age; he might have been fifty; there was no hair on his face, no colour in his hollow cheeks; only a nervous movement of the bony-fingers, and that awful craning of the collapsible neck. I saw in a moment that he was looking into my room; and presently, when he had given me innumerable nods and winks, he took a knife from his pocket, and opened the catch, stepping into the chamber with the nimble foot of a goat upon a crag-path. Then he drew a chair up to mine, and, making more signs and inexplicable motions of the eye, he slapped me upon the knee, and said—

"In the name of the law!"

This was uttered with such ridiculous levity that I laughed at him.

"Yes," he went on, unmoved, "I take you by surprise; but business, Mr. Mark Strong," and he became very serious, while his neck went out like a yard-measure and he cast a quick glance round the room.

"Business," he said, when he had satisfied himself that we were alone, "and in two words. In the first place I have wired to your friend, Mr. Roderick Stewart, and I expect him from Portsmouth in a couple of hours; in the second, your other friend, the doctor, is under lock and key, on the trifling charge of murder in the Midlands, to begin with. When we have Captain Black, the little party will be complete."

I looked at him, voiceless from the surprise of it. The magical neck was absorbed in the chest again, and he went on—

"I needn't tell you who I am; but there's my card. We have six men in the street outside, and another half dozen watching the leads here. You will be sensible enough to follow my instructions absolutely. Black, we know, leaves the country to-night in his steamer—yesterday at Ramsgate; to-day we do not know where. The probability is that he will come to fetch you at seven o'clock—I have frightened it all out of the people down-stairs—if he does, you will go with him. Otherwise, he's pretty sure to send someone for you, and, as you at the moment are our sole link between that unmitigated scoundrel and his arrest, I ask you to risk one step more, and return at any rate as far as the coast, that we may follow him for the last time. You'll do that for us?"

I looked at his card, whereon was the inscription, "Detective-Inspector King, Scotland Yard"; and I said at once—

"I shall not only go to the coast, but to his tender, for I've given my word. What you may do in the meantime is not my affair; but——"

"Yes," he said eagerly, craning his neck again, "'for God's sake keep your eye on me,' that's what you were going to say. Well, we shall do it. We owe it to you that we've got any clue to the man, and you're not likely to lose anything from the Government by what you've done."

"I suppose he's made a sensation?" I asked, in simplicity, and he looked as a man who has yesterday's news.

"Sensation! There's been no such stir since the French war. There isn't another subject talked of in any house in Europe—but, read that; and whatever you do, don't make a sign until we give you the cue. It's not safe for me to stay here; he may return any minute. I wish you luck of it; and it's ten thousand in my pocket, any way!"

Detective-Inspector King went as he had come, craning his neck and passing noiselessly over the leads; but he left me a newspaper, wherein there was column after column concerning the robbery of the Bellonic, and a dish worthy of all journalistic sensation-mongering. I read this with avidity; with sharp appetite for the extraordinary hope which had come so curiously into my life. At last, the police were on the trail of Captain Black; yet I saw at once that, lacking my help, he would elude them. It was strange that, after all, I, who had seemed to fail so hopelessly in my enterprise, should at last bring this giant in crime to justice. For, if he had not burdened himself with me, he would then have left in the tender, and, once on the nameless ship, would have defied the world. But now they watched him; and from the solitude of my imprisonment I seemed to be lifted in a moment to a joyous state of expectation and excitement.

It was then about three o'clock in the afternoon. I heard the hour from a neighbouring church; and I recalled the detective's words, "I have telegraphed for your friend, Roderick." If his anticipations were correct, I should see the one man I had the greatest love for within an hour. Yet, on recollection, I would have had it otherwise. If once I looked on Mary's face again, I knew that the task would be almost beyond my strength; and as it happened, it was well I had not this burden to bear in the last hours of the great struggle. For four o'clock struck, and five, and no one came; and it was half-past six when at last a man unlocked the door of my room and entered. He was one of Black's negroes.

"Sar will come quick," said he, "and leave his luggage. The master waits."

He gave me no time for any explanations, but took me by the arm, and, passing from the house by a back door, he went some way down a narrow street, and turned into Piccadilly. There a cab waited for us, and we drove away, but not before one, who stood on the pavement, had made a slight signal to me, and called another cab.

In him I recognised Detective-Inspector King, and I knew that we were followed.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SHADOW ON THE SEA.

We drove rapidly, passing the Criterion, so into the Strand, and along the Thames Embankment. Thence, we went through Queen Victoria Street, past the Mansion House, and to Fenchurch Street Station, where we took a train for Tilbury.

The journey was accomplished in something under an hour; and when we alighted and got upon the bank of the river, I saw a steam-launch with the man John in the bows of her. I thought it strange that there was no sign of any watchers at this place; but I entered the launch without a word, and we started immediately, going at a great pace towards Sheerness; and reached the Nore after some buffet with the seas in the open. At this point we sighted the tender, and went aboard her, while they hauled up the launch, when we made full speed towards the North Foreland.

It was then quite dark, with a stiff breeze blowing right abaft. The night, a moonless and very black one, favoured us altogether for the run which, I did not doubt, we had to make against some Government vessel that would follow us. But I found to my surprise that the men on the ship knew nothing of the dangerous position in which they were, and worked with a calm disregard to the blackness of the night, and to the hazard of the moment. Black I did not meet, for they put me into a cabin aft, of which I was the sole occupant; and, being ordered by the man John, who was half-drunk and very threatening, to get below, I turned in shortly after coming aboard, and lay down to reckon with the strange probabilities of the hour.

One thing was very evident. Black had made a colossal mistake, from his point of view, in setting foot in England; but the crowning blunder of his life was that fatal act of folly by which he had sought to shield me from the men. How long the Government had been watching for him, or for tidings of me, I could not tell, but it must have been since Roderick had reached New York, and had told all he knew of the ship of mystery and of her owner.

Now the object of letting Black reach his vessel again was as clear as daylight; it was not so much the man as his ship which they wished to take, and, by following him to the Atlantic, they were giving him rope to hang himself.

But were we followed? I had seen nothing to lead me to that conclusion as I came down the Thames; and now, favoured by an intensely dark night, we promised, if nothing should intervene, to gain the Atlantic in two days, and to be aboard that strange citadel which was our stronghold against the nations.

This thought troubled me very much, so much that sleep was out of the question, and I went above again, undeterred by the probability of a difference with the men. The night was somewhat clearer when I reached the poop, and I could make out the fine flood of light that came from the North Foreland; while it was evident that we had taken the outer passage and should pass on the French side of the Goodwins. There were no men aft as I took my stand by the second wheel, but I heard the bawl of the watch forward, and a man who wore oilskins was pacing the bridge. I was able, therefore, to get a good notion of all things about us; and when the moon showed later, the Channel seemed full of ships. Away towards the Foreland I made out a fleet of French luggers standing in close to shore; there were two or three colliers returning to the Thames on our port-bow, and some English smacks lying-to right ahead of us, the moon showing them brightly in a lake of light, their men busy at the nets, or huddled at the tiller as the smacks rolled to a choppy sea. But there was no sign of any war-ship pursuing; no indication whatever that the tender, then steaming at thirteen knots towards Dover, was watched or observed by any living being.

I had just satisfied myself of this, and had become depressed accordingly, when I heard a step behind me. I turned round quickly, to find that the man John had come up to the poop. He was in his oilskins, for there was some sea shipped for'ard, and he greeted me with a savage ferocity which was meant to be pleasant.

"Keeping a watch on your own hook, my fine gentleman, eh?" said he; "and after my orders for you to be abed—that's pretty discipline, I reckon."

I made no sort of answer, but turned my back on him, and continued to watch the twinkling lights of Deal. This appeared to irritate him, for he put his hand on my shoulder roughly, and hissed savagely—

"Oh, I guess; you've got your fine coat, ain't you, and your pretty airs! Darn me if I don't take you down a peg, skipper or no skipper!"

His great hand was almost on my throat, and he shook me with fearful grip, so that I hit him with my right hand just below his heart, and bent him double like a reed. His terrible gasps for breath were so alarming that I thought at first he would never recover his wind; but when he did he drew his knife, and raised his arm to take aim at my throat. It is probable that my life had been ended there and then had not another watched the scene and suddenly clutched the extended wrist. Captain Black had come to us with noiseless step; and he gave me then my first knowledge of his prodigious physical strength, for he held John's arm as in a vice, and, giving the ruffian's wrist a peculiar turn, he sent the knife flying in the air, and it stuck quivering in the deck twenty feet from where we stood.

"You long-jawed bully, what d'ye mean by that?" cried the skipper, white with anger; and then he twisted the fellow's arm until I thought he would have broken it. Nor did he let him go until he had kicked him the length of the poop, and tumbled him, torn and bleeding, upon the main hatch below.

"Lay your finger on the boy again, and I'll give you six dozen," he said quietly; and then he came to my side, and he stood for a long while leaning on the bulwarks and gazing over towards the receding shore. He spoke to me at last, but in a more gentle tone than I had ever heard from him—indeed, there was almost kindliness in his voice.

"Do you make out anything of a big ship yonder?" he asked, pointing almost abaft.

"I see nothing but the hull of a collier?" said I.

"Then it's my sight that's plaguing me again," and he continued to look as though he had some great purpose in satisfying himself, while from the fo'castle there came shouts of laughter and singing. When he heard this he spoke again, but almost to himself.

"Shout away, you scum," he muttered; "shout while you can. It'll be a different tune to-morrow."

I was leaning then on the bulwarks almost at his side, and presently he addressed himself directly to me, and earnestly.

"We had a narrow shave to-night. It's put me out to leave the doctor, for he was the best of them—one of the only men that I could reckon on. If it hadn't been for him and the Irishman, this lot would have swung long ago—maybe they'll swing now. The hounds have got the scent; and, God knows, they will follow it! It's lucky for some of them that I had twenty pairs of eyes open for me in London, and knew the Government's game in time to get this tender out of Ramsgate; but you mark me, boy, there's trouble coming, and thick. I've gone out without a gallon of oil again, and by-and-by we're going to run for our necks, every man of us."

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

"What makes me think that?—why, my senses. They'll follow us from some port here, as sure as the wind's rising; maybe they'll let us get aboard the ship, and then that'll be the beginning of it. But if we only hold out with the oil, then let 'em take care of themselves——"

"And if not?"

He shrugged his shoulders and was silent; but anon he asked again what I thought of a long, rakish-looking steamer lying some miles away on the starboard quarter, and when I had satisfied him he said—

"Come downstairs and get some wine into you, boy"; and I went below to his small and not very elegant cabin, where he put champagne and glasses on the table.

"Let's drink against the thirst we'll have to-morrow," cried he, getting quite jovial, and pouring the Pommery down his throat as though it had been beer. "This is an occasion such as we shan't often know—the old ship against Europe, and one man against the lot of them! Why, lad, if it wasn't for the thought of the oil, I'd get up and dance. The lubbers could no more lay a finger on me, given fair fight, than they could touch the moon. You see, it's just the oil that Karl's feared all along; drive by gas, and you want twenty times the grease in your cylinders that you'll ever need in a steam-ship. If there hadn't been that break-up north, we'd never have been in this hole; but that's one of the risks of a game like this, and I'll play my hand out."

He went on to talk of many other things, but as he did not speak of his own past, or of the ship, I began to nod with sleep; and presently I found him covering me up with a rug and turning out the lamp. I was dead worn-out then, and must have slept twelve hours at the least, for it was afternoon when I awoke, and the sun streamed in through the skylight upon a table whereon dinner was set. But Black was not in the cabin, and I went above to him on the bridge, which he paced with a restless step and a betraying haste. There was no land then to be seen; but the clear play of sparkling waves shone away to the horizon over a tumbling sea, upon which were a few ships. Upon one of these he constantly turned his glass; she was a long screw steamer, showing two funnels and three masts, away some miles on the port quarter, and I saw at once that from this ship the Captain got all his fear.

"Do you make her out?" he said in a big whisper directly I came up to him, and then, hushing me, he added—"Keep your tongue still, and say nothing. That's a British cruiser in passenger paint. She's come out from Southampton."

This was about the very best bit of news he could have given me; but I did not let him see that I thought so, for I had eyes only for the ship in our wake. She was a long boat of the Northumberland class; but there was nothing whatever about her to betray her disguise, since she had all the look of an Orient, or a P. and O. liner, and was too far away from us to permit a reading of her flag. The men evidently had not seen her, or took no notice of her if they had; but John upon the bridge followed the movements of Black with curiosity, and once or twice turned his own glass on the black hull just visible above the horizon. He had forgotten the episode of the previous night—when, undoubtedly, he was full of drink—and was almost as troubled as the skipper.

"What's he up to?" he asked me in a whisper, as Black kept turning his glass towards the hull of the other ship. "Did he get any liquor in him last night? I never saw him this way before."

And again, after a pause—

"Have you got any eyes for that ship? What's he fixing her like that for? She's no more than an Orient boat by her jib, and if she lays on her course we'll make it warm for her outside."

Black heard his last words, and turned round upon him savagely—

"Yes," he said, "it'll be warm enough out there for them as lives as well as for the dead. Ring down for more firing; what's the lubber at?—he's not giving her thirteen knots."

By-and-by all the crew began to observe Black's anxiety and to crowd to the starboard side; but he told them nothing, although he never left the bridge, and cursed fiercely whenever the speed of the tender slacked at all. It was somewhat perplexing to me to observe that, while the great ship was undoubtedly following us, she did not gain a yard upon us. During the whole of that long afternoon, and through the watches of that early night, when I remained upon the bridge with Black, we kept our relative distances; but, do all we could, the other would not be shaken off; and when, after a few hours' sleep, I came on deck at the dawn of the second day, she was still on our quarter, following like the vulture follows the living man whose hours are numbered.

"There's no humbug about her game," cried Black, whose face was lined with the furrows of anxiety and pale with long watching; "she means to take us on the open sea, and she's welcome to the course. If I don't riddle her like a sieve, stretch me!"

This strange pursuit lasted three days and into the third night; when I was awakened from a snatch of sleep by the firing of a gun above my head. I dressed hurriedly and got on deck, where my eyes were almost blinded by a great volume of light which spread over the sea from a point some two miles away on our starboard bow. We had been in the Atlantic then for twenty-four hours, and I did not doubt for a moment that we had reached the nameless ship. Had there been any uncertainty, the wild joy of the men would have banished it. From windlass to wheel our decks presented a scene of wild excitement. Above all the shouting, the raucous laughter, and the threats against the cruiser—whose lights showed then less than a mile away—I heard the voice of Black, singing: "Hands, stand by to lower boats!" and the yelping of "Roaring John." It seemed at that moment that we should gain the impregnable citadel without suffering one shot, and while I should have been happier if the attack had been upon the tender, and my chances of gaining the Government ship thus more sure, I was in a measure carried away by the excitement of the position, and I verily believe that I cheered with the others.

At that moment the cruiser showed her teeth. Suddenly there was a rush of flame from her bows, and a shell hissed above us—the first sign of her attempt to stop us joining our own ship. The poor shooting excited only the derision of the men, who set up their wild "halloas!" at it; and again, when a second shot struck the aft mast and shivered it, they were provoked to boisterous merriment. But we could make no reply, and those on the nameless ship could not fire, for we lay right between them and the other.

"Hands, lower boats!" yelled Black at this moment, and then, leaving no more than ten or fifteen men in the steamer, he led the way to the launch.

We were now no more than a quarter of a mile from safety, but the run was full of peril, and, as the launch stood out, the nameless ship of a sudden shut off her light, if possible to shield us in the dark. But the pursuer instantly flooded us with her own arc, and, following it with quick shots, she hit the jolly-boat at the third. Of the eight men there, only two rose when the hull had disappeared.

"Fire away, by thunder!" cried Black, shaking his fist, and mad with passion; "and get your hands in: you'll want all the bark you've got just now."

But we had hauled the men aboard as he spoke, and, though two shells foamed in the sea and wetted us to the skin in the passage, we were at the ladder of the nameless ship without other harm, and with fierce shouts the men gained the decks.

For them it was a glorious moment. They had weathered the perils of a city, and stood where they could best face the crisis of the pursuit. It was a spectacle to move the most stolid apathy: the sight of a couple of hundred demoniacal figures lighted by the great white wave of light from the enemy's ship, their faces upturned as they waited Black's orders, their hands flourishing knives and cutlasses, their hunger for the contest betrayed in every gesture. I stood upon the gallery high above the seas, and looked down upon the motley company, or along the space of the hazy arc to the other vessel, and I asked myself again and again, What if we shall win—what if this desperate adventurer shall again outwit those who have coped with him, and hold his mastery of the sea?

Nor did it seem so improbable that he would. Those upon the Government cruiser betrayed their uneasiness every moment by casting the beams of their searchlight on every point of the horizon; but their signal was unanswered, no assuring rays shone out in the distant blackness of the night. We two were alone upon the Atlantic, there to fight the duel of the nations; and I confess that in the unparalleled excitement of the moment I rejoiced that it was so; I hoped, even, that the nameless ship would carry the hour, so much had she fascinated me, so astounding were her achievements.

This truly was the critical moment in Black's career. He stepped on the bridge to find Karl wringing his hands, and "Four-Eyes" was no less uneasy.

"Faith, sorr," said he, as soon as we had come aboard, "it's bad times intoirely if ye've no oil—we've been working two engines for three days, and we'll be sore put to ut to kape the third going, if ye can't mend us."

Karl emphasised the words with stamps and tears and frantic gesticulation—not lost upon Black, who advanced to the front of the bridge, and called for silence in a voice that would have split a berg. A deathlike stillness succeeded; you could hear the wash of the waves and the moaning of the wind: two hundred upturned faces shone ghastly white under the spreading beams which the cruiser's lantern cast upon them.

"Boys," cried Black, "yonder's a Government ship. You know me, that I don't run after war-scum every day, for that's not my business. But we're short of oil, and the cylinders are heating. If we don't get it in twenty-four hours, there'll be devil's work, and we shan't do it. Boys, it's swing or take that ship and the oil aboard her—which'll you have?"

There was no doubt about their answer—there could be none. In one way it was almost as if the cruiser herself gave reply, for there was the roar of a great gun when Black had finished speaking, and a shot hissed from above our poop and burst in the seas beyond us. A mighty shout followed, but was converted instantly into a cry of warning, as the forward hands sang out—

"Look out aft—the torpedo!" and other hands took up the cry, yelling "The torpedo! The torpedo!"

The tiny line of foam was just visible for a second in the way of the light; but, the moment the cruiser had shot it from her tube, she extinguished her arc, leaving us to light the waters with our own. There was no difficulty whatever in following the line of the deadly message, and for a moment every heart, I doubt not, almost stood still.

"Full speed astern!" roared Black, forgetting himself, but instantly ringing the bell, and the nameless ship moved backwards, faster and yet faster. But the black death-bearer followed her, as a shark follows a death-ship; we seemed even to have backed into its course—it came on as though to strike us full amidships.

The excitement was almost more than I could bear; I turned away, waiting for the tremendous concussion; I heard awful curses from the men, the cowardly shouting of "Roaring John," the blasphemies of "Dick the Ranter." I knew that Black alone was calm; and at the last I fixed my eyes upon him when the head of the torpedo's foam was not thirty yards away from us. In that supreme moment the power of the man rose to a great height. He grasped the situation with the calmness of one thinking in bed; and waiting motionless for some seconds, which were seconds almost of agony to the rest of us, he cried of a sudden—

"Hard a-starboard!" and the helm went over with a run.

The movement was altogether superb. The great ship swung round with a majestic sweep, and as we waited breathlessly, the torpedo passed right under our bow, missing the ram by a hair's-breadth. The reaction was nigh intolerable; the men waited for some seconds silent as the voice-less; then their cheers rang away over the seas in a great volume of sound, which must have re-echoed down in the caverns of the Atlantic.

"You, Dick," ordered Black, "return the lubbers that, or I'll whip you;" and Dick, who had got his wits back, replied—

"Skipper, if I dinna dive into their internals, gie me sax dozen."

"Hands to quarters," continued the skipper; "let no man show himself till I call, then him as doesn't fight for all he's worth, let him prepare to swing."

With this there fell a great busyness, the men going, some to the turrets, some to the magazines below.

Black had not noticed me during the episode of the torpedo, but he turned round now, and, seeing that I stood near him, he beckoned me into the conning-tower with him. It was a chamber lined with steel with a small glass for the look-out, and electric knobs which allowed communication with the engine-rooms, the wheel, the turrets, and the magazines. From that pinnacle of metal you could navigate the ship, and there Black fought the battle of that night and of the days following. And as I stood at his side I learned from his running comments much of the course of the fight.

"Boy," he said, "what I'm worth I'm going to show this night; and, as your eyes are younger than mine, I'm going to borrow the loan of them. That hen-coop yonder with the Government flag on her isn't far from company, you may be pretty sure. She's help near, and from that help I'm going to cut her off, and quick. Take your stand here by me, and watch the seas while I manage the light."

He had his hand upon a little tap which enabled him to throw the arc upon every point of the horizon, and, as the light travelled, he asked me—

"Do you make out anything? Is there more of 'em at her heels?"

"Nothing that I can see; she seems alone."

"Then God help her, though we're only running two engines. Now watch the shot."

The focus was then upon the cruiser, whose own light kept playing upon the horizon as though searching for a convoy she awaited. But when the conning-tower shook with the thunder of our fore gun, the other reeled, and her arc light went out with a great flash.

"That's a hit," I exclaimed with ridiculous want of control; "I believe you've hit her abaft the funnel. Yes, I can see the list on her; you've hit her clean."

His face never moved at the intelligence, but he rang the order "Hard to port!" and we weathered round, showing our aft turret to the enemy, whose bark for the moment was stilled.

"Watch again," said Black, as he rang to the turret chamber, and the aft gun roared; but I could not see that the shot struck, and I told him so.

"I'll give that parson a dozen if he does that again," he remarked, unmoved by the crash of a shot which struck us right under our turret. Then he took a cigar and spoke between his teeth when he had lighted it—

"There's twelve inches of steel there," he said with a laugh; "let 'em knock on it and welcome. Don't you smoke?—I always do; it keeps my head clear."

Two more shots, one right above the engine-room and the second at the ram, answered his levity.

"Come on, you devils!" he blurted out with glee. "Come in and dance, by thunder, while I play ye the tune! Now hearken to it."

We came up again, and fired at the cruiser, hitting her right under the funnel, and a second time near her fore gun, so that you could see her reel and shiver even under the rays of the search-light. Nor did she answer our firing, but rolled to the swell apparently out of action. All this I could see, and I answered the skipper's hurried and anxious questions as every fresh movement was visible.

"What's she doing, eh?" he asked. "Did that stop her? Is she coaling up, or does she signal? Lord, if I had the oil I'd sweep the sea from New York to Queenstown. What is it, boy?—why don't you answer me?"

"You don't give me time; but I can see now. She's coaling up, and there are men forward working with oars."

"Do you say that?" he said, pushing me away from the glass. "Do you say that she's coaling? By thunder, you're right! We'll have her oil yet; and then let them as come after me look to themselves!"

As he said the last word he stepped from the conning-tower on to the bridge, and I followed him.

There, at the distance of a third of a mile away on the starboard bow, was the crippled cruiser, helpless by her look; and our light fell full upon her, showing men in great activity upon her decks, and others running forward as though there were danger also in the fo'castle. The night around us was very dark, and the huge, heaving swell shone black as pitch in mountains and cavities below the gallery. We two were alone there upon the ocean, finishing that terrible duel—if, indeed, the end had not come, as I thought from the silence of the other.

"Skipper, are you going aboard her now?" asked the man "Roaring John," who came to us on the bridge. "She's done by her looks, and you'll get no oil if ye delay. Karl there, he ain't as comfortable as if he were in his bed."

The little German was very far from it. He was almost desperate when minute by minute his stock of oil grew less; and he ran from one to the other, as though we had grease in our pockets, and could give it to him.

Black took due notice, but did not lose his calm. His cigar was now glowing red, and he took it often from his mouth, looking at the lighted end of it as a man does who is thinking quickly.

"You're quite sure she's done, John?" he asked, turning to the big man.

"She's done, I guess, or why don't she spit? If she's got another kick in her, send me to the devil!"

The words had scarce left his lips when the cruiser's aft guns thundered out almost together, and one shell passed through the very centre of our group. It cut the man John in half as he might have been cut by a sword, and his blood and flesh splashed us, while the other half of him stood up like a bust upon the deck, and during one horrible moment his arms moved wildly, and there was a horrid quivering of the muscles of his face. The second shot struck the roof of the turret obliquely, and glanced from it into the sea. The destruction seemed to move Black no more than a rain shower. He simply cried: "All hands to cover; I'm going to give 'em a taste of the machine-guns;" and we re-entered the conning-tower. Then, as we began to move again, I swept the horizon with our light; but this time, far away over the black waste of water, the signal was answered.

"Number two!" said Black quite calmly, when I told him, "and this time a battle-ship. Well, boy, if we don't take that oil yonder in ten minutes you may say your prayers."



CHAPTER XXV.

THE DUMB MAN SPEAKS.

He put up the helm as he spoke, and brought our head round so that we were in a position to have rammed the cruiser had we chosen. This was not Black's object. He desired first to cripple her completely, then to finish her with the Maxim guns.

"Now, let's see what that Scotsman's worth," he cried, as he laid down his cigar, and spoke through one of the tubes. Almost with his words the tower shook with the thunder, the twenty-nine ton gun in the fore turret belched forth flame, and the hissing shell struck the steamer over her very magazine. We waited for a response, but none came. She had received the shot, as it proved, right on her great gun; and the weapon lay shivered and useless, cast quite free from its carriage, while dead men were around it in heaps.

"Dick's earned his dinner," said Black, taking up his cigar again, as he rang twice, and the men rushed to the small guns, and prepared to get them into action. "We'll give 'em a little hail this time, for they haven't the cover we have. If we don't get aboard before the other comes up, they get the trick."

The nameless ship bounded forward into the night as he spoke, and, soon coming up with the helm a-starboard, she was not fifty yards away from her long opponent when the deadly steel storm began its havoc. For our part, the men had cover of a sort in the fore-top, and there were steel screens round the deck-guns; but when the cruiser replied with her own small arms many fell; and groans, and shrieks, and curses rose, and were audible even to us in the tower. Never have I known anything akin to that terrible episode when bullets rang upon our decks in hundreds, and the dead and the living in the other ship lay huddled together, in a seething, struggling, moaning mass. For she had little cover, being a cruiser, and we had opened fire upon her before such of her men as could be spared had got below.

"Let 'em digest that!" cried Black, as he watched the havoc, and puffed away with serene calmness amidst the stress of it all; "let 'em swallow lead, the vultures. I'd sink 'em with one shot if it wasn't for their oil; but they ain't alone!"

It was true. I, who had not ceased to watch that distant light which marked another warship on the horizon, knew that a second light had shone out as a star away over the sea; and now, when I looked again at his words, I saw a third light, but I had no courage to tell him of it. Indeed, we were being surrounded, and the danger was the greater for every minute of delay. The cruiser, although she suffered so grievously from the storm of lead which we rained upon her, had not hurled down her flag, and still replied to our fire, but more feebly. And the search-lights of the distant ships were clearer to my view every moment, so that I watched them alone at the last; and Black saw them, and took a sight from the glass. Then for the first time his cigar fell from his lips, and he muttered an exclamation which might have been one of fear.

"Boy," he said, "you should have told me of this. I see three lights, and that means a fleet of the devils to come. Well, I'll risk it, as I've risked it before. If I can stop 'em now with a shot, the game's ours; if she sinks, they trump us."

He gave a long order in careful words down through the tube to the turret; and, coming up to position, we fired at the cruiser for the last time, hitting her low down in the very centre of her engine-room. A great volume of steam gushed up from her deck, with clouds of smoke and fire; and as all shooting from her small arms ceased, we went out to the gallery, and the boats were cast free. A minute after, the ensign of the other was lowered, and we had beaten her.

"You, 'Four-Eyes,' take the launch, and get her oil," Black sang out at the sight; "you'll have five hands, that's all you want. Go sharp, if you'd save your skins!"

I stood on the gallery, and watched the passage of the small boat, which was at the side of the maimed cruiser almost in a moment. There was no longer any resistance to our men, for the hands of the other ship had too much work of their own to do. I saw some running quickly to the aft boats, while some were bearing wounded from below, and others stood beneath the bridge taking orders from a very young officer, who had no colleagues in the work. Not that there was any confusion, only that awful crying of strong men in their agony, of the dying who feel death's hand upon them, of the wounded who had pain which was hardly to be endured. For a long time it seemed as though no one heard the hail of "Four-Eyes" to be taken aboard; and when at last we watched him get on deck, he met with no resistance, but did as he would. Under the spreading rays of our great arc you could follow the whole scene as though by day—the hurrying crowd of seamen, the work at the boat, the fear and terror of it all. And you could see at the last a sight which to Black had more import than anything else in that picture of distress and desolation.

The great ship began to heel right over. Her stern came high out of the water, so that her screws were visible. She dipped her foc's'le clean under the breaking sea; and so she rode during some terrible minutes. Her own men now cast off their boats anyhow, leaving the wounded, who cursed, or implored, or prayed, or shrieked; but "Four-Eyes" did not come, and Black raved, looking away where the search-lights of the other ships now showed their rapid approach. To this extraordinary man it was the great cast of life. If the cruiser went down and his men got no oil, we should infallibly be taken by the warships then coming upon us; and I wonder not that in that moment he lost something of his old calm, pacing the bridge with nervous steps, and alternately cursing or imploring the men who could not hear.

"Why don't they come?" he asked desperately. "The lazy, loitering snails! What are they doing there? Do you see her heeling? She can't weather that list another five minutes. Dick! for God's sake signal to them—the creeping vermin! Ahoy, there! Do you hear me? You aboard, are you looking to live to-morrow, or will you lay a hundred fathoms under—look, boys! Do you see them lights? They're warships, three of 'em! We've got to show 'em our heels, and we can't—we've no oil, not a gallon! And they're taking their ease like fine gentlemen aboard there—the guzzling swine—but I'll stir 'em! You Dick, fire a shot at 'em!"

Dick had just answered him, saying, "Ay, Captain, I'll gie him a wee bit o' iron in his gizzard," when his further words were broken on his lips, for our hands appeared at the ladder of the doomed steamer, and they tumbled into the launch anyhow, flying madly from her side as she plunged to a huge sea, and with one mighty roll went headlong under the surface of the Atlantic. At that moment day broke, and, as the silver light of the dawn spread over the dark of the sea, we saw three ironclads approaching us at all their speed, and then not three miles distant from us. But the launch was at our side, and as Black leant over, and the new light lit up his bloodshot eyes and haggard face, he asked, with hoarseness in his voice—

"Have ye got the oil?"

"Not a drop!" replied the cox.

The strong man reared himself straight up, and he turned to Karl, at his side. In that moment he was really great, and I shall never forget the nonchalance with which he drew another cigar from his case and lighted it. The two men, who had found their calm as the danger thickened, were in perfect accord; and, as one descended the ladder to the engine-room with slow steps, the other went again to the tower, where I followed him.

"Boy," he said, "I've often wondered how this old ship would break up; now we'll see, but she's going to bite some of 'em yet, if she can't last."

"Are you going to run for it?" I asked.

"Run for it, with two engines, yes; but it's a poor business. And we'll have to fight! Well, who knows? There's luck at sea as well as on shore. If I run, they'll catch me in ten miles; but we'll all do what we can. Now smoke and have a brandy-and-soda. You may not get another."

The drink I took, but his calm I could not share. If the nameless ship were trapped at last I had freedom; but of what sort? The freedom of a bloody fight, the lottery of life, the remote possibility that, the ship being taken, I should get to the shelter of the war-vessels. The man soon undeceived me on both points.

"If we're out-manoeuvred and crippled in what's coming," said he, "I have given Karl my orders. This ship I've built and loved like a child isn't going to knuckle under to any man living. She's going to sink, lad, and we're all going to blazes with her! What's the odds? A man must die! Let him die on his own dunghill, say I, and a fig for the reckoning! We shall last out as long as we can, and then we'll let the cylinders fill with hydrogen, and blow her up. But you're not smoking."

The threat, so jaunty yet so terrible, was almost like a sentence of death to me. I looked from the glass of the tower, and saw the foremost ironclad but two miles away from us, and the others were sweeping round to cut us off if we attempted flight. In the old days, with the nameless ship at the zenith of her power, we should have laughed at their best efforts—have flown from them as a bird from a trap. But we lay with but two engines working, and a speed of sixteen knots at the best. Nor did we know from minute to minute when another engine would break down.

At the beginning of this flight we almost held our own, shaping a curious course, which, if pursued, would have brought us ultimately to the Irish coast again. For some hours during the morning I thought that we gained slightly, and those following evidently felt that it would be a waste of shell to fire at us, for they were silent: only great volumes of smoke came from the funnels of the battleships, and we knew that their efforts to get greater speed were prodigious.

We ran in this state all the morning, our men silent and brooding; Black smoked cigar after cigar with a dogged assumption of indifference; the German came to us often with his desperate gestures and his woe-begone face. It was well on in the afternoon before the position changed in any way, and I had gone down with the Captain to the lower saloon to make the pretence of lunching. There we sat—"Four-Eyes" with us—a miserable trio, cracking jokes, and expressing desperate hopes; sending up the nigger every other moment to learn how the ironclad lay, and much comforted when at the fifth coming he said—

"You gain, sar, plenty sar; you run right away, sar."

"We do?" cried Black, who jumped from his seat and ran up the companion-way to confirm the tale, and he shouted down to us, "Crack another bottle, if it's the last, and give it to the nigger; we're leaving them!"

His elation was contagious. "Four-Eyes" awoke from his lethargy, and drank a pint of the wine at a draught. The nigger put out a glass with a satisfied leer. The Captain took a bottle and laid his hand on the cork. But there it stayed, for at that moment there came a horrible sound of grating and tearing from the engine-room, and it was succeeded by a moment of dead and chilling silence.

"The second engine's gone," said a man above, quite calmly, and we knew the worst, and went on deck again.

We found the crew sullen and muttering, but Friedrich, the engineer's eldest son, sat at the top of the engine-room ladder, and tears rolled down his face. The great ship still trembled under the shock of the breakdown and was not showing ten knots. The foremost ironclad crept up minute by minute; and before we had realised the whole extent of the mishap, she was within gunshot of us; but her colleagues were some miles away, she outpacing them all through it.

"Bedad, she signals to us to let her come aboard," said "Four-Eyes," who watched her intently.

"Answer that we'll see her in chips first," said Black, and he called for Karl and made signs to him.

"If so be as ye don't come to, he'll be about to fire upon ye," cried "Four-Eyes," again, who stood at the flag-line, and this time Black thought before he answered—

"Then parley with 'em; we'll come alongside and hear their jaw."

There was a leer of positive devilry on his face as he said this, and he beckoned me into the conning-tower, when he closed the tower and bade me watch. Those on the battle-ship made quite sure of us now, for they steamed on and came within three hundred yards of us. Black watched them as a beast watches the unsuspecting prey. He stood, his face knit in savage lines, his hand upon the bell. I looked from the glass, and saw that no man was visible upon our decks, that our engines had ceased to move. We were motionless. Then in a second the bells rang out. There was again that frightful grating and tearing in the engine-room. The nameless ship came round to her helm with a mighty sweep: she foamed and plunged in the seas; she turned her ram straight at the other; and, groaning as a great stricken wounded beast, she roared onward to the voyage of death. I knew then the fearful truth: Black meant to sink the cruiser with his ram. I shall never forget that moment of terror, that grinding of heated steel, that plunge into the seas. Holding with all my strength to the seat of the tower, I waited for the crash, and in the suspense hours seemed to pass. At last, there was under the sea a mighty clap as of submarine thunder. Dashed headlong from my post, I lay bruised and wounded upon the floor of steel. The roof above me rocked; the walls shook and were bent; my ears rang with the deafening roar in them; seas of foam mounted before the glass; shrieks and the sound of awful rending and tearing drowned other shouts of men going to their death. And through all was the hysterical yelling of Black, his cursing, his defiance, his elation.

"Come and see," he roared, dragging me by the collar to the gallery; "come and see. They sink, the lubbers! They go to blazes every one of them. Look at their faces, the crawling scum. Ha! ha! Die, you vermin! as you meant me to die; fill your skins with water, you sharks! I spit on you! Boys, do you hear them crying to you? Music, fine music! Who'll dance when the devil plays? Dance, you lazy blacklegs; dance on nothing! Ha, ha!"

No man has ever looked on a more awful sight. We had struck the battleship low amidships—we had crashed through the thinnest coat of her steel. She had heeled right over from the shock, so that the guns had cast free from the carriages, and the sea had filled her. Thus for one terrible minute she lay, her men crowding upon her starboard side, or jumping into the sea, or making desperate attempts to get her boats free; and then, with a heavy lurch, she rolled beneath the waves; and there were left but thirty or forty struggling souls, who battled for their lives with the great rollers of the Atlantic. Of these a few reached the side of our ship and were shot there as they clung to the ladder; a few swam strongly in the desperate hope that the brutes about me would relent, and sank at last with piercing and piteous cries upon their lips; others died quickly, calling upon God as they went to their rest.

For ourselves we lay, our bows split with the shock, our engine-room in fearful disorder, our men drunk with ferocity and with despair. The other warships were yet some distance away; but they opened fire upon us at hazard, and, of the first three shells which fell, two cut our decks; and sent clouds of splinters, of wood, and of human flesh flying in the smoke-laden air. At the fifth shot, a gigantic crash resounded from below, and the stokers rushed above with the news that the fore stoke-hold had three feet of water in it. The hands received the news with a deep groan; then with curses and recriminations. They bellowed like bulls at Black; they refused all orders. He shot down man after man, while I crouched for safety in the tower; and they became but fiercer. Our end was evidently near; and, knowing this, they fell upon the liquor, and were worse than fiends. Anon they turned upon the captain and myself, and fired volleys upon the conning-tower; or, in their terrible frenzy, they pitched themselves into the sea, or raved with drunken songs, and vented their vengeance upon the Irishman, "Four-Eyes," chasing him wildly, and stabbing him with many cuts, so that he dropped dying at our door, with no more reproach than the simple words—

"God help me! but had I died in me own counthry I would have known more pace."

Through all this our one engine worked; and so slowly did the great ironclad draw upon us that the end of it all came before they could reach us. Suddenly the men rushed to the boats and cast them loose. Fighting with the dash of madmen, they crowded the launch, they swarmed the jolly-boat and the life-boat. Even the engineer's son felt the touch of contagion, and joined the melee. We watched their insane efforts as boat after boat put away and was swamped, leaving the devilish men to drown as the worthier fellows had drowned before them; and amongst the last to die was "Dick the Ranter," who went down with blasphemies gurgling upon his lips. When six o'clock came, Black and Karl and myself were alone upon the great ship; and in the stillness which followed there came another weird and wild and soul-stirring shriek—the cry of the dumb engineer, who found speech in the great catastrophe. Then Black pulled me by the arm and said—

"Boy, they've left nothing but the dinghy. The old ship's done; and it's time you left her."

"And you?" I asked.

He looked at me and at Karl. He had meant to die with the ship, I knew; but the old magnetism of my presence held him again in that hour. He followed me slowly, as one in a dream, to the davits aft, and freed the last of the boats, overlooked by the hands in their frenzy and their panic. Then he went to his cabin, and to the rooms below; and I helped him to put a couple of kegs of water in the frail craft, with some biscuit, which we lashed, and a case of wine which he insisted on.

The preparation cost us half-an-hour of time, and when all was ready, the captain went to the engine-room and brought Karl to the top of the ladder; but there the German stayed, nor did threats or entreaties move him.

"He'll die with the ship," said Black, "and I don't know that he isn't wise;" but he held out his hand to the genius of his crime, and after a great grip the two men parted.

For ourselves, we stepped on the frailest craft with which men ever faced the Atlantic, and at that moment the first of the ironclads fired another shell at the nameless ship. It was a crashing shot, but it had come too late to serve justice, or to wreck the ship of mystery; for Karl had let the hydrogen into the cylinders unchecked, and with a mighty rush of flame, and a terrific explosion, the craft of gold gave her "Vale!" And in a cascade of fire, lighting the sea for many miles, and making as day the newly-fallen night, the golden citadel hissed over the water for one moment, then plunged headlong, and was no more.

A fierce fire it was, lighting sea and sky—a mighty holocaust; the roar of a great conflagration; the end of a monstrous dream. And I thought of another fire and another face—the face of Martin Hall, who had seen the finger of Almighty God in his mission; and I said, "His work is done!"

But Black, clinging to the dinghy, wept as a man stricken with a great grief, and he cried so that the coldest heart might have been moved—

"My ship, my ship! Oh God, my ship!"



CHAPTER XXVI.

A PAGE IN BLACK'S LIFE.

I know not whether it was the amazing spectacle of the nameless ship's end, or the sudden coming down of night, that kept attention from our boat when the great vessel had sunk; but those on the ironclads, which were at least two miles from us when we put off, seemed to be unaware that any boat from the ship lived; and, although they steamed for some hours in our vicinity, they saw nothing of us as we lay in the plunging dinghy. When night fell, and with it what breeze that had been blowing, we lost sight of them altogether, and knew for the first time the whole terror of the situation. Black had indeed recovered much of his old calm, and drank long draughts of champagne; but he sat silent, and uttered no word for many hours after the end of that citadel which had given him such great power. As for the little boat, it was a puny protection against the sweeping rollers of the Atlantic, and I doubt not that we had been drowned that very night if a storm of any moment had broken upon us.

About midnight a thunderstorm got up from the south, and the sea, rising somewhat with it, wetted us to the skin. The lightning, terribly vivid and incessant, lighted up the whole sea again and again, showing each the other's face, the face of a worn and fatigue-stricken man. And the rain and the sea beat on us until we shivered, cowering, and were numbed; our hands stiffened with the salt upon them, so that we could scarce get the warming liquor to our lips. Yet Black held to his silence, moaning at rare intervals as he had moaned when the great ship sank. It was not until the sun rose over the long swell that we slept for an hour or more; and after sleep we were both calmer, looking for ships with much expectation, and that longing which the derelict only may know. The Captain was then very quiet, and he gazed often at me with the expression I had seen on his face when he saved me from his men.

"Boy," he said, "look well at the sun, lest you never look at it again."

"I am looking," I replied; "it is life to me."

"If," he continued, very thoughtful, "you, who have years with you, should live when I go under, you'll take this belt I'm wearing off me; it'll help you ashore. If it happen that I live with you, it'll help both of us."

"We're in the track of steamers," said I; "there's no reason to look at it that way yet. Please God, we'll be seen."

"That's your way, and the right one," he answered; "but I'm not a man like that, and my heart's gone with my ship: we shall never see her like again."

"You built her?" I said questioningly.

"Yes," he responded. "I built her when I put my hand against the world, and, if it happened to me to go through it again, I'd do the same."

"What did you go through?" I asked, as he passed me the biscuits and the cup with liquor in it, and as he sat up in the raft I saw that the man had death written on his face.

But at that time he told me nothing in answer to my question; and sat for many hours motionless, his glassy eyes fixed upon the bottom of the boat. In the afternoon, however, he suddenly sat up, and took up his thread as if he had broken it but a minute before.

"I went through much," said he, gazing over the mirror-like surface of the trackless water-desert, "as boy and man. I lived a life which was hell; God knows it."

I did not press him to tell me more, for in truth I shivered so and was so numbed that even my curiosity to know of this life of crime and of mystery was not so paramount as to banish that other thought: Shall we live when the sun sinks this night? But he found relief in his talk, and, as the liquor warmed him, he continued faster than before—

"I was a stepson, boy; bound to a brute with not as much conscience as a big dog, and no more human nature in him than a wild bull. My mother died three months after he took her, and I'm not going to speak about her, God help me; but if I had the man under my hands that treated her so, I'd crush his skull like I crush this biscuit. Well, that ain't my tale; you ask me what I went through, and I'm trying to tell you. Have you ever wanted a meal? No, I reckon not; and you can't get it in your mind to know what living on bones and bits for more than a couple of years means, can you, as I lived down in my home at Glasgow, and often since out West and at Colorado? I'd come out from Scotland as a bit of a lad not turned thirteen, and I sailed aboard the Savannah City to Montreal, and then to Rio, and in Japan waters; and for three years, until I deserted at 'Frisco, no devilry that human fiends could think of was unknown to me. But they made a sailor of me; and full-rigged ship or steamer I'd navigate with the best of 'em. After that, I went aboard a brig plying between 'Frisco and Yokohama, and there I picked up much, leaving her after two years to get across to Europe, and do the ocean trade with the Jackson line between Southampton and Buenos Ayres. It was in that city I met my wife. I married her in Mendoza; for she came of rich folk, who spat on me, and was only a bit of a girl who'd never wanted a comfort on this earth until that time, and who starved with me then and for years. My God! my whole body burns when I think of it—that bit of a creature who'd never known the lack of a gratification and who was dragged down to every degradation by my curse."

I looked at him in surprise, and he answered me instinctively.

"Yes, by my curse. Maybe you don't know what it was, for I've held it under a bit since she died, but I was a drunkard then—a maniac when I had the liquor on me, a devil from whom all men fled. Not that there isn't work for any man in that country—work, and well paid—but I had the fever on me, and—well, we sank very low. How I lived I can't tell you; but after a couple of years of it I worked a passage to New York, and there my son was born. When he grew up he was the very image of you. That's why I gave you your life when you came on my ship."

The words were spoken in that gentle voice he could command sometimes, and, as he uttered them, he took my hand and gave it a great grip. I understood then that curious look he had given me at our first meeting; his partisanship for me against the men; and that last great risk which had brought the end of it all, if it had not brought death to both of us. Somewhere down in that human well of crime and ferocity there was a spring of purer water. I had set it free when I brought old memories to him, and I owed it to him that amazing chance that I lived through the frenzies of Ice-haven.

"Yes," said Black, observing my surprise, and passing me the liquor which he compelled me to drink; "my boy was your height, and your build, and he had your eyes. What's more, he had your grit, and there was no cooler hand living. Not that he owed much to me, for I was mad drunk half his life; and, when sober, I lived as often as not in prison for what I had done in liquor. It was when he was nearly twenty that the change came; for he began to bring home money, do you see? and what with his work and the way he talked to me, I set myself to get the craving under; and I was a new man in one year, and in two my brain came back to me, and I made the discovery that I was not born a fool. You may reckon I worshipped the lad! God knows, he and his mother did for me more than man or woman ever did for a breathing body. And when my wits came back to me, and I thought what I might have done, and what I had done, and that my boy had borne it all only to drag me to my reason at last, I could have ended it there and then. Maybe I should have done it if a new turn hadn't come in my life's road. It was when I was at my lowest, and we were sore put to it to get food in New York, that I was taken up by a man who was going to Michigan seeking copper. My lad was then working with a Mike Leveston in the city—a land-agent for the up-country work, and the owner of a line of small brigs running between Boston and the Bahamas; but times had gone bad with him, and the boy, who had been getting good money, found himself with no more than enough to keep him, let alone his mother. Well, I thought the thing out, and, as my partner had some capital and agreed to let me have ten dollars a week any way, I made an agreement with Leveston that he should allow the wife and the boy enough to live on for six months, and I set out for the State where the copper find was beginning to attract notice, and in a year I was a made man. We found the ore as thick as clay, and, under the excitement of it, I kept my head, and the drink craze never touched me. When the money came in, I made Leveston my New York agent, and sent him enough to set up the woman who'd stood by me all through in more luxury than she'd known since she married me. For awhile her letters told me of her new life, and I kept them under my shirt as I would have kept leaves of gold. In the spring, I sent the agent twenty thousand dollars for her; and I got his acknowledgment, saying she'd gone down to Charleston to see about the boy's work there, and I should hear from her on her return.

"I think this was about eighteen months after I left New York, and from that time my wife ceased to write to me, and I heard nothing more from the lad. We'd been doing such work in the mine that we had enough money to pay our way for life, and we hoped to make an almighty pile before many years had gone; but I couldn't bear not hearing from them as I worked for, and in the fall of the year I went back to New York—under protest from my partner, who could do nothing without me—and I never rested until I reached my house in Fifty-Fourth Street. I found it shut up, the furniture gone, not a sign of living being in it; and when I went to make inquiries amongst my neighbours, they told me what came to this. My wife had died of starvation—nothing less, boy, for the devil I'd sent the money to had doled out to her and the lad a few dollars for the first year, but had cut and run when the big sums reached him; and he took the boy with him on the pretence of a job in the Southern city. My son, you see, had turned naturally to architect's work, and was induced by this long-toothed vulture to quit New York, because they heard from the mine that I was dead—that I died, as Leveston had told them, of small-pox—and left not a shilling for them. God! if only I could bring him to life to clutch his cursed throat again!"

"But what became of your son?" I asked, as he ceased speaking, and we lay riding gently over the long rollers, with a great flood of sunlight making the sea as a sheet of beaten gold, touched with diamond points where the spray broke. Then he went on with it; but you could see some awful emotion moving him, and he kept plying himself with drink, which made his words the fiercer.

"What became of the boy?" he repeated after me. "Why, he went south in the hope of sending money to his mother; and directly he reached Charleston, Leveston shipped him on a brig, knowing that I must hear of his doings in a month or more. He sent the lad to Panama, and there he died, one of the first to be stricken in the fever land. They buried him in the country, as the Lord is my witness. Then I came home—rich, my trunks stuffed with notes, able, if I cared, to buy up half the land-agents in New York City; and the money I'd got seemed to turn black in my hands when I found that those it was made for needed it no more. Not as I knew then of the lad's death—that I was to hear of later; but, free from the drink, I had loved the woman who was gone; and I was a madman for days and weeks. When I got my head again I changed as I don't believe any man ever changed before; there was something in my mind which I could not cope with. I can't lay it down any clearer than this: it was a hatred of all men that took possession of me—a fierce desire to make mankind pay for the wrongs I had suffered. I gave myself up to the drink again, but not as I did when they named me a drunkard. This time I was the master of it; I used it for my purpose; I fed my thoughts of vengeance on it; and, while my partner was sending me more than a thousand pounds a week from Michigan, I remained in New York with the double purpose in my head—to get my boy back to me, and to crush the life out of the man who had left my wife to die.

"All the news I could get at that time was this: the boy had left Charleston, ostensibly for the Bahamas, three months before I reached New York City; but nothing more had been heard of him or the ship. I put the best detectives in the city on Leveston's trail, raining the money into their pockets to keep them to the work; and they got it out of some of Leveston's seamen in Savannah that he had gone a long cruise in one of his barques to Rio, and even farther south. This news was like red-hot iron to my head. I knew that I couldn't touch the man by law, except for the robbery of the bit of money, and that I didn't care a brass button about. What I meant to have was his life, and I swore that no man should take it but me. Then I went into every low haunt in New York. I searched the drinking dens of the Bowery; I made friends with all the thieves, picked up the loafers, and the starving. The parson who's gone I found running a gambling hell in New Jersey; the man 'Four-Eyes' I took from a crimp at Boston; John we got later on at Rio, where we bought him from the police. I had as fine a crew of scoundrels in a month as ever cursed in a fo'castle; and I shipped them all on the screw-steamer, Rossa, which I bought for six thousand pounds from the Rossa Company. She was just on six hundred tons, an iron boat built for the meat trade; but we knocked her about quick enough, setting three machine-guns for'ard, and fifty Winchester rifles among her stores. We put out from Sandy Hook, it must be nearly six years ago; and we steamed straight ahead for Rio, where we got tidings of Leveston's barque. She had sailed for Buenos Ayres, but they looked for her return within the month, and we left again next day, cruising near shore as far as Desterro, where luck was with us.