Max Pemberton

“ Holding on in defiance alike of prudence and responsibility, we drove the yacht into the very shadows of the great unknown ship we had tracked so far. To say that we stood within an ace of destruction would be to treat of our circumstances lightly. A word amiss might have destroyed us so utterly that not a man of us all should have told the tale. There, towering above us, was the great hull of this floating mystery, the massive outline of a vessel built upon the lines of an Atlantic steamer, yet carrying four masts and a funnel so low that one might look twice to detect it at all. ”

“ The pain of fire in any shape has always been my supreme dread, and when the dazzling white light shone upon me from the unspeakable furnaces, and I told myself that these men would shrink from no measure which would blot out every trace of their crime in an instant, then, God knows, I suffered as I believe few have done. Vain to say that such a death must be too horrible to contemplate. The faces of the men about me belied hope. I read no message of pity upon any one of them—nothing but the desire of my life, the criminal blood-lust and the anger of discovery. ”

“ Sitting here in London I can depict that sagging hulk as clearly as if I watched her from the deck of my own yacht. She is drifting there, peopled by devils, a ship of blood and death—drifting God knows where, without hope, or idea, or haven. She may so drift to the Day of Judgment, but man will never discover her. That is my belief. I have no reason for it—I admit freely that it is ridiculous.”
Murray did not quarrel with my point of view, but assuredly he could not help me. No trace of Imroth had been discovered; Fordibras had not been arrested, nor had any news of him come from Santa Maria. ”

“ Yonder in the trough of a black ocean was the unknown ship we had set out to seek. The darkness hid her from us, the sea rose rapidly, the wind had begun to blow half a gale. No longer could there be any thought of firing a gun or declaring an open attack upon us. Each ran for the open and for safety. Our searchlight showed us an empty waste of trembling waters and a black hull breasting the swell in cataracts of foam and spindrift. We doubted if the others would weather the night. Anxiety for our own safety became the dominant factor of our thoughts. ”

“ I promised to run this ship to the Brazils for a thousand guineas, and there’s Imroth’s seal upon it on the table yonder. You may not believe me, but what the story of this business is, how these men came here, or why they have come, I know no better than the Pope of Rome—and that’s the truth, if my life’s the price of it. And yet, sir, that it’s a bad business I’d be a fool to deny. He who touches pitch gets plenty on his fingers. I knew that Val Imroth was a bad lot the first day I saw him—and bad enough are his companions on this ship. Why, good God! ”

“ You cannot help the Jew, but may save yourselves. I’ll tell you something else. If you have any coal to sell, I am a buyer. Now do not finger that pistol of yours, for it might go off, and as sure as God’s in heaven, if it did, this crew would be on the floor of the Atlantic in less than five minutes. Rattle your senses, my man, and speak up. If yonder warship spies us out, she’ll not deal so tenderly with you. What is the Jew to you, and why should you sell your liberty for him? Come, think of it. I am not a patient man, but I will give you time enough not to make a fool of yourself. ”

“ Would the light never fall? Ay, yonder it strikes the sea, and yonder and yonder—compassing the horizon around in a twinkling, a blind glory, a very pharos of the unknown world. And now it falls upon us, and man can look upon the face of man as though he stood beneath the sun of day; and all is stillness and silence, and the unspoken question.
Far away as we were, a roar of triumph could be heard across the sea when the Jew’s ship discovered us, and the great beams of the searchlight rested upon us exultingly. ”

“ One moment I saw him standing at the bulwarks watching the distant searchlight; at the next, there remained but a dreadful something upon the deck from which men turned their eyes in horror and dare not so much as speak about.
You are to imagine with what consternation and dismay this accident fell upon us. For many minutes together no man spoke a word to another. Such a deathly silence came upon the ship that our own act and judgment might have brought this awful disaster, and not the play of capricious change. To say that the men were afraid is to do them less than justice. ”

“ And who would have hailed the Timothy of storm and of tempest when upon the second night of our Northward voyage he dressed himself to dine with me in the exquisite little saloon my builders had designed for the White Wings? The sea had ebbed down by this time to the stillness of a great inland lake. The moonbeams upon the sleeping water shone with an ethereal radiance of light filtered as it were in a mesh of mirrors. Scarce a breath of wind stirred the awnings of the deck or was caught by the gaping cowls. The yacht moved with that odd gliding motion a turbine engine ensures. ”

“ How might I draw from the shadows a man fearing the light; one for whom the police of five nations were supposed to be seeking—a man who would as soon come to England, you might say, as venture into the jaws of hell? Let the circumstance answer me. I had a letter from the Jew himself three days after Murray assured me that all the talent of Europe could not discover him. Twenty-four hours later one of the fastest steam launches on the River Thames carried me from London Bridge to a house which should give all or deny me all before another dawn had broken. ”

“ For you must understand that we had talked but in enigmas hitherto, both at Dieppe and at the Villa San Jorge, where I went upon landing from my yacht. Now, it fell upon me to speak to her as to one who must share my secrets and be the confidante of them. Cost me what it might, let there be a great love for her growing in my heart, I resolved that not one word of it should be uttered at Santa Maria. So much I owed both to myself and her. There were subjects enough, God knows, upon which a man might be eloquent. ”

“ Fabos of London come into his own at last, you see. Fool, in your turn, did you think that you dealt with a child? The woman is in gaol, I say. My money has put her there—I alone can set her free—I alone, Valentine Imroth. Listen to that and beg her freedom on your knees—you devil amongst men; kneel to me or she shall pay the uttermost farthing. Now will you hear me, or shall I go? Your wife, Lisette, the little French brunette from Marseilles—did I not tell you at Santa Maria that I had the honour of her acquaintance? Fool to forget it—fool! for by her you shall pay. ”

“ In a lighter moment, I could say that it had once been a second-class cruiser, and now stood for a witness to an age which added raking masts to its warships and eyed askance the supremacy of steam. The Jew, it might be, had purchased his ship from a Government that had no further use for it. He had gone to Chili or the Argentine—a second thought said to Italy, for this vessel had more than a smack of Italian design and practice as we knew it in the last days of canvas and the first of steel. ”

“ I could see them in the death-grip, here wrestling as athletes upon a stage; there fighting upon their hands and knees, as savages who cut and slash at the face and head and heart in insurpassable lust of blood and life. But beyond this, the greater terror was to know that the ship sheltered Joan Fordibras, and that she must be the witness to this debauch. ”

“ Depict the grey mists drifting upon the water, the silvery waves in those lakes of radiance the moonbeams could create, the stillness of the ship, the prone forms of men whose sobs and groans marked the intervals of sounds, the lanterns set about the decks, the great mast looming above, the spars and yards, and the monster bulk of the funnel. And this ship, remember, was a house of sanctuary to all the friends of crime who should bow the knee to Valentine Imroth, and come to him with plunder in their hands! ”

“ I observed immediately that the harbour of Villa do Porto lay hidden from my view by the Eastern cliff of the valley. The Atlantic showed me but two patches of blue-green water, one almost to the south-west, and a second, of greater extent, to the north. Except for these glimpses of the ocean, I had no view of the world without the valley—not so much as that of a roof or spire or even of the smoke of a human habitation. Whoever had chosen this site for his châlet of the hills had chosen it where man could not pry upon him nor even ships at sea become acquainted with his movements. ”

“ Would the unknown never speak plainly? Should I risk a question in answer, sent out from our own lofty mast where all had been prepared for such a seeming miracle as this? And if so, what question? Had the Jew a password upon the high seas of which I was not the possessor. I knew not what to think. One man alone upon the yacht might speak at such an hour—young Harry Avenhill, who, silently, willingly, and in gratitude had worked with our engineers during these long weeks of the vain pursuit. ”

“ Let us put it out of our thoughts. Who knows, if we have the mind, that we cannot build another?”
This I said that she might read into it a deeper meaning of my confidence, but the words were vain. White and frightened and terribly afraid, she looked at me for an instant as though I were in some way a consenting party to this evil conspiracy; then as quickly repented of her look, and declared her woman’s heart.
“I cannot believe it,” she cried; “I am so helpless. Tell me, Dr. Fabos, what shall I do—in God’s name, what shall I do?” ”

“ The yacht White Wings is changed but little since last you saw her at Villa do Porto.
A close observer would mark the mast which carries her apparatus for Marconigrams; she steams very slowly, with a gentle purr of her engines that seems to soothe to sleep. There is a trim sailor on the look-out in her bows, and the second officer paces the bridge with the air of one who has long since ceased to enjoy an active occupation. Down amidships shouts of laughter claim my attention and turn my steps to the spot. The laughter is the laughter of honest seamen. ”

“ The clouds labour, but are riven. An arc of golden iridescence blazons the eastern sky. Day’s outposts march on to victory, and man lifts his hands to invoke their aid.
A daily scene and yet how unchangingly sublime! Standing there upon the bridge with my good friends about me, it seemed that the glory of the morn shone full upon our faces and bade us hope. No longer did the night baffle our weary eyes. We sailed a freshening sea at the splendour of the day, and far away upon the clear horizon we espied the relief ship of which our third officer had spoken. ”

“ There had been no response to my message, no further agitation of the receiver whose message baffled me. Faithful to my wish, neither Larry nor McShanus had interrupted me. I could hear as a distant sound the murmur of gentle seas beating upon our bows. The purr of our engines was as that of a living, sentient entity, awake to the intervals of action. My fingers had grown weary of repeating those idle words. I sat back in my chair in a bitterness of spirit foreign to me, and reflected upon the fatuity of impulse and the mockery of all human deduction. ”

“ Look at the room in which I live. Consider my circumstance, my fortune, my riches, the clothes upon my back, the servants who wait upon me! Money, no—but to see the great men humbled—to strike at their fortunes, at their hearts; ah, that is something the poor old Jew would die for!
“Here to-night my reward begins. The great Dr. Fabos comes to me upon his knees to beg me the gift of a woman’s heart. How many have so come since I was this doctor’s age—a young man, spurned by his people, a fool, living honestly, a worshipper in temples made by man? ”

“ Should he harm her, henceforth he must become a fugitive, not from the justice of a state, but from a man’s vengeance. This I plainly perceived—nevertheless, the lonely watches of the night brought me an echo of her child’s voice, a word spoken as it were from a child’s heart; so that I could say that the little Joan, who had turned to me in her trouble, had looked into the very eyes of my soul, that she was a prisoner yonder, alone among them all, a hostage in the hands of ruffians, their first and last hope of ultimate salvation from the gallows and the cell. ”

“ I cannot tell you when first it was that some suspicion of the existence of this great republic of thieves and assassins first came to me. Years ago, I asked myself if it were not possible. There has been no great jewel robbery for a decade past which has not found me more zealous than the police themselves in study of its methods and judgment of its men. I can tell you the weight and size almost of every great jewel stolen, either in Europe or America, during the past five years. I know the life history of the men who are paying the penalty for some of those crimes. ”

“ It is odd to think how many cheery fellows, who write gaily of life and death in the newspaper, have never seen a gun fired in earnest or looked unflinchingly upon the face of death.
“’Tis a coward I was,” said he, “and not ashamed of it. This very minute I tremble like a woman—though ’tis often of kindness a woman trembles and not of fear. Look yonder at the smoke lifting from off the face of the ship. ”

“ There is nothing more remarkable in the story of crime than the senile mistakes of some of its masters—men, shrewd to the point of wonder in all other affairs, but betraying their mental aberration in some one act at which even the very ignorant might smile. So it was with this sham story of the valley and the pretended accident which kept me from the ship. Every day, with a punctuality as amusing as the tale was plausible, the old negro and the servants below apologised for the accident which alone, they declared, prevented my return to the ship. ”

“ If I wished the men to believe that the hour of crisis had passed, I was under no delusion at all myself. For remember that I had gone up to the bridge and stood there during this supreme instant of danger; and that, if I would regain the deck of the yacht, I must descend the ladder, down through these serried ranks of men; must pass them as one who was going from them to the house of an avenger, to his comrades who would judge the story and help him to decide upon the punishment. The rogues’ very salvation depended upon my captivity ”

“ There are no more pleasing moments in our lives than those confirming the truth of some great idea which we have deduced from a certain set of circumstances. There, upon the far sea, one of the links of the chain of my conjecture stood revealed. I had been less than human if my heart had not quickened at the spectacle.
“Captain,” I said, “the men understand, I think, that our object is to find out why that ship visits St. Helena Bay, and where she is bound when she quits it? The rest I leave to you—and the engines. If our purpose is discovered, it will be immediately frustrated. ”

“ I can only tell you that the yacht had scarcely been slowed down when the rogues’ ship fired at us again, and the shot, crossing our forward decks at an angle of some fifty-five degrees, struck a fine young seaman of the name of Holland and almost annihilated him before our very eyes. The tragedy had a greater significance because of the very mirth with which we had but a moment before regarded the Jew’s gunners and their performance. Death stood there upon the heels of laughter; a cry in the night was the answer to an honest man’s defiance and my own bravado. ”

“ It lies to Miss Joan first of all—to see that the shadow of this trouble never falls upon her childish face again. And after that, it is a duty to the brave men who have served you so well, to them and their homes and those who are dear to them. Yonder ship is as well off as we are, and in many ways better. She is now in the track of mail steamers bound to the Argentine, and will quickly fall in with help. If you board her again, they will cut your throat for a certainty, and try to board us when that is done. Leave them to the justice of Almighty God. Their destiny is in other hands. ”