Part 11 (1/2)
But of the activity of her human crew we had speedily further sign; for, almost as I answered, there was some belching of flame from her turret, and this time the sh.e.l.l, hurtling through the air with that hissing song which every gunner knows so well, crashed full upon the fore-part of the great liner, and we heard the shout of terror which rose from those upon her decks. The men appeared at the signal-mast of the pursuer, and rapidly made signals in the common code.
”Skipper, do you see that?--they're signalling,” I cried out. ”Get your gla.s.s up and take a sight”; but he had already done so.
”It's the signal to lie to, and wait a boat,” he said; ”there's someone going aboard.”
The fulfilment of the reading was instant. While yet we had not realised that the onward rush of the two boats was stayed the foam fell away from their bows; and they rode the seas superbly, sitting the long swells with a beautiful ease. But there was activity on the deck of the nameless s.h.i.+p, the men were at the davits on the starboard side swinging off a launch, which dropped presently into the sea with a crew of some half-a-dozen men. For ourselves, we were now quite close up to them, but so busily were they occupied that I believed we had escaped all notice. Yet I got my gla.s.s full upon the man who walked the bridge; and I knew him.
He was the man I had met in the Rue Joubert at Paris, the one styled Captain Black by my friend Hall.
The last link in the long chain was welded then. The whole truth of that weird doc.u.ment, so fantastical, so seemingly wild, so fearful, was made manifest; the dead man's words were vindicated, his every deduction was unanswerable. There on the great Atlantic waste, I had lived to see one of those terrible pictures which he had conceived in his long dreaming; and through all the excitement, above all the noise, I thought that I heard his voice, and the grim ”Ahoys!” of my own seamen on the night he died.
This strange recognition was unknown to Roderick, who had never seen Captain Black, nor had any notion of his appearance. But he waited for some remark from me; yet, fearing to be heard, I only looked at him, and in that look he read all.
”Mark,” he said, ”it's time to go; we'll be the next when that s.h.i.+p's at the bottom.”
”My G.o.d!” I answered, ”he can't do such a thing as that. If I thought so, I would stand by here at the risk of a thousand lives----”
”That's wild talk. What can we do? He would s.h.i.+ver us up with one of his machine guns--and, besides, we have Mary on board.”
Indeed, she stood by us as we spoke, very pale and quiet, looking where the two s.h.i.+ps lay motionless, the boat from the one now at the very side of the black steamer, whose name, the _Ocean King_, we could plainly read. She had, unnoticed by us, seen the work of the last sh.e.l.l, which splintered the groaning vessel, and made her reel upon the water, and Mary's instinct told her that we stood where danger was.
”Don't you think you're better below, Mary?” asked Roderick; but she had her old answer--
”Not until you go; and why should I make any difference? I overheard what you said. Am I to stand between you and those men's lives?”
She clung to my arm as she spoke, and her boldness gave us new courage.
”I am for standing by to the end,” said I; ”if we save one soul, it's an English work to do, anyway.”
Roderick looked at Mary, and then he turned to the skipper--
”Do you wish to go on the other tack now?” he asked; but the skipper was himself again.
”Gentlemen,” he said, ”it's your yacht, and these are your men; if you care to keep them afloat, keep them. If it's your fancy to do the other thing, why, do it. It's a matter of indifference to me.”
His words were heard by all the hands, and from that time there was something of a clamour amongst them; but I stepped forward to have out what was in my mind, and they heard me quietly.
”Men,” I said, ”there's ugly work over there, work which I make nothing of; but it's clear that an English s.h.i.+p is running from a foreigner, and may want help. Shall we leave her, or shall we stand by?”
They gave a great shout at this, and the skipper touched the bell, which stopped the engines. We lay then quite near both to the pursued and the pursuer, and there was no longer any doubt that we had been seen.
Gla.s.ses were turned upon us from the decks of the yellow s.h.i.+p, and from the p.o.o.p of the _Ocean King_, whose men were still busy with the signal flags, and this time, as we made out, in a direct request to us that we should stand by.
I doubt not that the excitement and the danger of the position alone nerved us to this work of amazing foolhardiness, which was so like to have ended in our complete undoing; and, as I watched the captain of the steamer parleying with the men in the launch below him, I could but ask--What next? when will our turn be?
But the scene was destined to end in a way altogether different from what we had antic.i.p.ated.
While a tall man with fair hair--my gla.s.s gave me the impression that he was the fellow known as ”Roaring John”--stood in the bows of the launch, and appeared to be gesticulating wildly to the skipper of the _Ocean King_, the nameless s.h.i.+p set up of a sudden a great shrieking with her deck whistle, which she blew three times with terrific power; and at the third sound of it the launch, which had been holding to the side of the steamer, let go, running rapidly back to the armed vessel, where it was taken aboard again.