Chapter 2

“That'll do,” said the masterful sailor. And pointing a thick finger towards the banker, added, “Now, mister,” and sat back in his chair.

“It is a very simple matter,” explained the banker, in a thick, suave voice. “We have a cargo--a greater part of it weight, though there is some measurement--a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters. There is nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you understand. What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is lost.”

The banker paused for breath.

“I understand,” said Captain Cable. “It's the same with me and my ship. There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual risks. It's neck or nothing with me.”

And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this respect, nothing.

“I understand right enough,” he added, with an affable nod to the three foreigners.

“You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet in the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the _Olaf_, Captain Petersen--sitting by your side.”

Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.

“Thought you was a seafaring man,” he said. And Captain Petersen replied that he was “Vair pleased.”

“The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable.”

“I don't deny,” replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain Petersen out of the corner of his eye, “that I have been there before.”

“You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port--just a sawmill, at the head of a fjord--where I shall have a cargo of timber waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading, captain?”

“To-morrow,” replied the captain. “Ship's lying in the river now, and if these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a--”

“No, I do not think we shall have time for that!” put in the banker, hastily. “And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle your meeting-place. You have your charts?”

By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years he had been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain sections of the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the overhanging trees.

“Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much,” he said, apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.

The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing the action, looked at him sharply.

“Seafaring man?” he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in his voice.

“Not by profession, only for fun.”

“Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet found out where the fun comes in!”

“This gentleman,” explained the banker, “his Ex--Mr.--” He paused, and looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.

“Mr. Martin.”

“Mr. Martin will be on board the _Olaf_ when you meet Captain Petersen in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that Captain Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language. The two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain Peterson undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your crew, my fren'?”

“My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and precious little of that,” replied Captain Cable.

He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.

“There's one thing--I'm a plain-spoken man myself--what is there for us two--us seafaring men?”

“There is five hundred pounds for each of you,” replied the white-haired gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.

Captain Cable nodded his grizzled head over the chart.

“I like to deal with a gentleman,” he said, gruffly.

“And so do I,” replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.

Captain Cable grunted audibly.

III

A SPECIALTY

A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind. Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the breeze--Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of wet and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.

There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is probably an entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank. This is one of the waste-places of the world--a place left clean on sailors' charts; no one passes that way. These banks are as deadly as many rocks which have earned for themselves a dreaded name in maritime story. For they never relinquish anything that touches them. They are soft and gentle in their embrace; they slowly suck in the ship that comes within their grasp. Their story is a long, grim tale of disaster. Their treasure is vast and stored beneath a weight, half sand, half water, which must ever baffle the ingenuity of man. Fog, the sailors' deadliest foe, has its home on these waters, rising on the low-lying lands and creeping out to sea, where it blows to and fro for weeks and weeks together. When all the world is blue and sunny, fog-banks lie like a sheet of cotton-wool on these coasts.

“Barrin' fogs--always barrin' fogs!” Captain Cable had said as his last word on leaving the Signal House. “If ye wait a month, never move in a fog in these waters, or ye'll move straight to Davy Jones!”

And chance favored him, for a gale of wind came instead of a fog, one of those May gales that sweep down from the northwest without warning or reason.

At sunset the _Olaf_ had crept cautiously in from the west--a high-prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with her name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working like a clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life, he who moves slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence and a little dash would avoid. He who moves slowly is the prey of every current.

Captain Petersen steamed in behind the beacon. He sighted the windmill very carefully, very correctly, very cautiously. He described a half-circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then he steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he rang the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped dead, its bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The _Olaf_ was anchored at the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below the horizon now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near, turning its winking, wondering eye round the waste of waters.

Here the _Olaf_ rode out the gale that raged all through the night, and in the morning there was no peace, for it still rained and the northwest wind still blew hard. There was no depth of water, however, to make a sea big enough to affect large vessels. The _Olaf_ rode easily enough, and only pitched her nose into the yellow sea from time to time, throwing a cloud of spray over the length of her decks, like a bird at its bath.

Soon after daylight the Prince Martin Bukaty came on deck, gay and lively in his borrowed oilskins. His blue eyes laughed in the shadow of the black sou'wester tied down over his eyes, his slight form was lost in the ample folds of Captain Petersen's best oilskin coat.

“It remains to be seen,” he said, peering out into the rain and spray, “whether that little man will come to us in this.”

“He will come,” said Captain Petersen.

Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things--at the timidity and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad weather, at life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy people who find life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will say that it is easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but experience tells that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes and chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea, and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain Petersen on the back.

“Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we haven't dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that exceedingly amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why look so gloomy, my friend?”

Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.

“We are putting our necks within a rope,” he said.

“Not your neck--only mine,” replied Martin. “It is a necktie that one gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so free from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine! The wine runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because there is a loose rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his life--that old man, eh?”

“It is all very well for you,” said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning his gloomy eyes towards his companion. “A prince does not get shot or hanged or sent to the bottom in the high seas.”

“Ah! you think that,” said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. “One can never tell.”

Then he broke into a laugh.

“Come!” he said, “I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come on to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in--that little bulldog of a man.”

“If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,” grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.

“He has only one sense, that man--a sense of infinite fearlessness.”

“He is probably afraid--” Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself laboriously on to the rail.

“Of what?” inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.

“Of a woman.”

And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went aloft.

They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer approaching before the wind.

Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the water, and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the beacon on the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till the rounded wet sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He disappeared into the haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again astern of the _Olaf_, a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan of spray. He was crashing into the seas at full speed--a very different kind of sailor to the careful captain of the _Olaf_. His low decks were clear, and each sea leaped over the bow and washed aft--green and white. As the little steamer came down he suddenly slackened speed, and waved his hand as he stood alone on the high bridge.

Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray that still broke over the bows. The crew of the _Olaf_, crowding to the rail, looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the height of their dry and steady deck. They watched the men working quickly almost under water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was good. Captain Cable stood swaying on the bridge--a little, square figure in gleaming oilskins--and said no word. He had a picked crew.

He passed ahead of the _Olaf_ and anchored there, paying out cable as if he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name visible, a sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name and port of registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed. Whatever his business was, this seaman knew it well.

No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat, and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity. “He is going to try and get to us!” he said, pessimistically, and went forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat containing Captain Cable and two men came within reach, a rope--cleverly thrown--coiled out into the flying scud and fell across the captain's face.

A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the _Olaf_ and shook hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince Martin, who held out his hand.

“Glad to see you, Captain Cable,” he said. Cable finished drying the salt water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he shook hands.

“Suppose you thought I wasn't coming,” he said, suspiciously.

“No, I knew you would.”

“Glad to see me for my own sake?” suggested the captain, grimly smiling.

“Yes, it always does one good to see a man,” answered Prince Martin.

“They tell me you're a prince.”

“That is all.”

The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.

“Makings of a man as well, perhaps,” he said, doubtfully. Then he turned to cast an eye over the _Olaf_.

“Tin-kettle of a thing!” he observed, after a pause.

“My little cargo won't be much in her great hold. Hatches are too small. Now, I'm all hatch. Can't open up in this weather. We can turn to and get our running tackle bent. It'll moderate before the evening, and if it does we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes' be ready to work all night?”

“I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is.”

The captain gave a gruff laugh.

“Dammy, you're the right sort!” he muttered, looking aloft at the rigging with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the privilege of the British sailor.

Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on board in the afternoon to bend the running tackle “ship-shape and Bristol fashion,” and refused to remain on board the _Olaf_ for luncheon.

“We've got a bit of steak,” he said, conclusively, and clambered over the side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of fried onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the small steamer to the large one.

The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon--men who, as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or a musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.

There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after dark, and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost noiselessly under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable's crew worked quickly and quietly, and by nine o'clock that work was begun which was to throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty, Prince Martin, Captain Petersen, and several others.

Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably lightened, and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through the day the transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights were slung out of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the dark hold of the other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the second night the creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after daylight the three men who had superintended the work without resting took a cup of coffee together in the cabin of the _Olaf_.

“Likely as not,” said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, “we three'll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I've never seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if they did see me.”

“We can never tell,” said Martin, optimistically.

“Of course,” the captain went on, “I can hold me tongue. That's agreed--we all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely to pay for a word or two. Often enough I've read things in the newspaper that I could put a different name to. And that little ship of mine has had a hand in some queer political pies.”

“Yes,” answered Martin, with his gay laugh, “and kept it clean all the same.”

“That's as may be. And now I'll say good-bye. I'll be calling on your father for my money in three days' time--barrin' fogs. And I'll tell him I left you well. Good-bye, Petersen; you're a handy man. Tell him he's a handy man in his own langwidge, and I'll take it kindly.”

Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great sea-boots.

Half an hour later the _Olaf_ was alone on that shallow sea, which seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits a room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.

IV

TWO OF A TRADE

“His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard,” a witty Frenchwoman had once said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin alone could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French have a trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as the hollow ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for a moment in a deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.

The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear it--Reginald Cartoner, a listener, not a talker--and made that man Paul Deulin's friend for the rest of his life. As there is _point de culte sans mystere_, so also there can be no lasting friendship without reserve. And although these two men had met in many parts of the world--although they had in common more languages than may be counted on the fingers--they knew but little of each other.

If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring to conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole harvest of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other hand, this is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will discover the roots of the flowers soon enough.

Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic, they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity, to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of the new presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted in his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner) represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which is the language of diplomacy, and means war.

For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and it was their business to be found where the carcass is.

“The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be in one place at a time,” Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that place where their services were urgently needed.

“If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are.” Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready, imperturbable smile.

Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin, during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured their own thoughts.

Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.

“I always cross the road,” he said, “when I see Cartoner on the other side. If I did not, he would go past.”

This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that direction. Like many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air. Like all Frenchmen, he loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall, avoiding a man here and there. For we all have friends whom we are content to see pass by on the other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover, such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability.

Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune, or the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall, spare form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm possession of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner of a great land-owner. He shook hands in silence, then turned and walked with Cartoner.

“I permit myself a question,” he said. “When did you return from Cuba?”

“I landed at Liverpool last night.”

Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and down. Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be buried behind those smiling eyes.

“I am in London, as you see,” said Deulin, as if he had been asked a question. “I am awaiting orders. Something is brewing somewhere, one may suppose. Your return to London seems to confirm such a suspicion. Let us hope we may have another little . . . errand together--eh?”

As he spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman who walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to look curiously at the two men.

“You are dressed in your best clothes,” said Deulin, after a pause; “you are going to pay calls.”

“I am going to call on one of my old chiefs.”