Part 23 (1/2)
”Have the poor devils below had anything to eat?”
”No orders, sir,” replied the steward.
”Oh, well, give them something--something hot. It may be their last meal,” then turning, he met the gaze of the Prince, demanded roughly another cup of tea, and explained:
”Three of the crew took too much vodka in St. Petersburg yesterday.”
The Prince nodded carelessly, as if he believed, and offered his open cigarette case to the Captain, who shook his head.
”I smoke a pipe,” he growled.
The Captain rose with his lighted pipe, and together they went up on deck again. The Prince saw nothing more of the tall sentinel who had been his guard the night before, so without asking permission he took it for granted that his movements, now they were in the open sea, were unrestricted, therefore he walked up and down the deck smoking cigarettes. At the stroke of a bell the Captain mounted the bridge and the mate came down.
Suddenly out of the thickness ahead loomed up a great black British freighter making for St. Petersburg, as the Prince supposed. The two steamers, big and little, were so close that each was compelled to sheer off a bit; then the Captain turned on the bridge and seemed for a moment uncertain what to do with his prisoner. A number of men were leaning over the bulwarks of the British s.h.i.+p, and it would have been quite possible for the person on one boat to give a message to those on the other. The Prince, understanding the Captain's quandary, looked up at him and smiled, but made no attempt to take advantage of his predicament. Some one on board the English s.h.i.+p shouted and fluttered a handkerchief, whereupon the Prince waved his cigarette in the air, and the big boat disappeared in the thickness of the east.
Lermontoff walked the deck, thinking very seriously about his situation, and wondering where they intended to take him. If he were to be put in prison, it must be in some place of detention on the coast of Finland, which seemed strange, because he understood that the fortresses there were already filled with dissatisfied inhabitants of that disaffected land. His first impression had been that banishment was intended, and he had expected to be landed at some Swedish or German port, but a chance remark made by the Captain at breakfast inclined him to believe that there were other prisoners on board not quite so favorably treated as himself. But why should he be sent out of Russia proper, or even removed from St. Petersburg, which, he was well aware, suffered from no lack of gaols. The continued voyage of the steamer through an open sea again aroused the hope that Stockholm was the objective point. If they landed him there it merely meant a little temporary inconvenience, and, once ash.o.r.e, he hoped to concoct a telegram so apparently innocent that it would win through to his friend, and give Drummond at least the knowledge of his abiding-place. The thought of Drummond aroused all his old fear that the Englishman was to be the real victim, and this enforced voyage was merely a convenient method of getting himself out of the way.
After lunch a dismal drizzle set in that presently increased to a steady downpour, which drove Lermontoff to his cabin, and that room being unprovided with either window or electric light, the Prince struck a match to one of the candles newly placed on the washstand. He pushed the electric b.u.t.ton summoning the steward, and, giving him some money, asked if there was such a thing as a piece of stone on board, carried as ballast, or for any other reason. The steward said he would inquire, and finally returned with a sharpening stone used for the knives in the galley. Bolting his door, Lermontoff began an experiment, and at once forgot he was a prisoner. He filled the wash-basin with water, and opening one of the gla.s.s-stoppered bottles, took out with the point of his knife a most minute portion of the substance within, which he dissolved in the water with no apparent effect. Standing the whetstone up on end, he filled the gla.s.s syringe, and directed a fine, vaporous spray against the stone. It dissolved before his eyes as a sand castle on the sh.o.r.e dissolves at the touch of an incoming tide.
”By St. Peter of Russia!” he cried, ”I've got it at last! I must write to Katherine about this.”
Summoning the steward again to take away this fluid, and bring him another pailful of fresh water, Lermontoff endeavored to extract some information from the deferential young man.
”Have you ever been in Stockholm?”
”No, Excellency.”
”Or in any of the German ports?”
”No, Excellency.”
”Do you know where we are making for now?”
”No, Excellency.”
”Nor when we shall reach our destination?”
”No, Excellency.”
”You have some prisoners aboard?”
”Three drunken sailors, Excellency.”
”Yes, that's what the Captain said. But if it meant death for a sailor to be drunk, the commerce of the world would speedily stop.”
”This is a government steamer, Excellency, and if a sailor here disobeys orders he is guilty of mutiny. On a merchant vessel they would merely put him in irons.”
”I see. Now do you want to earn a few gold pieces?”
”Excellency has been very generous to me already,” was the non-committal reply of the steward, whose eyes nevertheless twinkled at the mention of gold.