The Sea Wolves/Chapter 3

one bell in the first dog—the day being Wednesday, and the month July—the steam yacht Semiramis rounded the South Foreland, and dropped anchor among a fleet of wind-bound vessels which lay off the white town of Deal. She had taken a pilot from the Solent, for her skipper, Roger Burke, a huge man from San Francisco, knew nothing of English waters, and the main part of the crew was made up of niggers and of lascars. She had for mate a slim, quiet man, named Parker; and her chief engineer was a Frenchman, whom she had picked up during a long cruise in the Pacific. Yet she had been built in the Thames for the American, Jake Kenner; and in the matter of speed, or, indeed, of design, she had few equals among pleasure boats. I have heard it said that she was one of the first yachts to be equipped with a tubular boiler and with twin screws; but her owner had gone to Thorneycroft's to buy one of the fastest vessels floating, and the firm had built for him a craft with all the rakish beauty of a cruiser combined with the speed and hull of a torpedo-catcher.

Not that she was by any means an enormous yacht, judging her by later-day standards. Her comparatively large engines allowed but restricted accommodation aft; and while her whole length was nearly two hundred feet, much of it was given to boilers and bunkers, and little to solid comfort. Yet she was a ship-shape-looking craft, with a crew of twenty men; and those on board had the satisfaction of knowing that she could hold her own with most things afloat if the need were that she should show her heels. Unhappily, I have nothing but a photograph of her to use in this account, for she was a wreck within a few weeks of the date when I first see her in my mind in the Downs; and of her idle, easygoing crew but few lived to carry the remembrance of her.

The anchor being over, and the yacht riding easily upon a glassy sea, Roger Burke, the captain, came down from the spotlessly white bridge, and descended the companion to the gray-and-gold saloon. He found Hal Fisher there, lying his length upon the velvet sofa, and absorbed in a heroic, if antique, story which dealt with the corsairs of Barbary. The lad looked up eagerly at his coming, and asked unnecessarily: "Was that the anchor I heard them letting go?"

"Why, for sure; did you think it was the shooters or the coal?"

"Surly brute!" muttered the boy, as the colossal form of the skipper disappeared through the door which led to the private cabin; and he remembered that at last they must have come to the Downs. He had been following so closely the sufferings of five hundred Christians who had worked under the lashings of the Moors that the whole business of bringing-to had escaped him. Yet he had longed for a sight of the white cliffs of England with that intense nostalgie which young travellers suffer. For three months he had not seen a wooded lane nor a really green field; for three months—and this was the sorer trial—he had not looked upon the one man who was as brother, father, indeed, the whole world of mankind, to him. In the earlier days letters had been frequent; they had received them at Alexandria, at Cairo, and at Gibraltar, where for a few weeks prior to her voyage northward the yacht had been lying. But the Prince no longer wrote, as once he had written in that terrible hand of his, boyish letters, full of gossip and good wishes; stunted and withered messages, half promises, hints at business of exceeding importance—of such had been his communications at the end of it, until Hal began to ask himself with no little dread: Is he tiring of me? Can I be of no more use to him? Has not the time come for us to take different roads in life?

He was not the one to suffer any mere charity. The moment he was sure that Arnold Messenger had wearied of him he would make his own way, he declared. There were intervals when he was almost angry with the Prince for leaving him on Kenner's yacht. How came it that he could not be in London with him? Of what sort were those affairs which could be manipulated by one who spelled "believe" without an "i," and put three "p's" in "proper"? The mystery was more than the lad's seventeen years of worldly knowledge could solve. He could only conclude with a heavy heart that the grip of evil fortune had clutched him once more, and that the road of life ahead of him lay through dark paths.

All this contributed to an inveterate longing to set foot in England. Had he but known what infinite perils awaited him on the shores of his own country his doubts and fears would have been of another mood. But suspicion was as far away from him as the poles, both at that time and until the more part of the evil was written. Indeed, when he came on deck to observe the white buildings and the conventional pier of Deal, with the hills and dales of lovely Kent, all fair and green in the ripe fulness [sic] of a generous summer, what gloominess he had passed from him, and gave place to an overwhelming gladness, because he knew that soon he would hear his one friend's voice again, and feel the grip of a hand which had done so much for him.

In this mood he stood upon the poop of the Semiramis when Roger Burke, the skipper, went to the private cabin where Kenner sat. The two men were soon occupied in earnest conversation, the American having a long letter in cipher before him, as well as a telegram, with which he was more immediately concerned.

"Burke," said he, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, "this cablegram says: 'Stop in the Downs until I come.' Now what does he mean by that? Here's the cipher—you can read it as well as I can—putting it plain that we were to be ready for the job by the eleventh of the month, and this is the tenth. What's the delay, and why?—unless he wants to fly the danger signal, and this is his flag."

The great skipper shook his head, and leaned back on the sofa mystified.

"It's a job ez big ez oceans," said he, "and it's one chance in five hundred that he gets the leg of them. Don't you see that they may be on top of him long afore he's weathered London? By thunder! there ain't a man of us in it what hasn't got a rope round his gullet bought and paid for now, at the beginning of it—not a man of us!"

Kenner was not convinced.

"You don't know the Prince," said he; "it's got to be a fire-and-blazes police to go one better than him, any way."

"I ain't contradictin' that," remarked Burke; "he may be as thick in grit as an out-West man, but he's a poor notion of showing it. What's he want this kid aboard for? Let me ask. Is this a game of base-ball, or is it a job for men?"

"That's his business," replied Kenner, "and I guess it'll come out square when there's settling times. The question I've got to ask now is: Where's he laying for?—and when's the money going over?"

"That's it," said Burke, with a shrug; "and how many's got to share when the candy's split?"

Kenner had an answer upon his lips, but it stayed there, as a great sound of hailing was heard above and footsteps thudded upon the deck. In another moment the cabin-door opened, and Arnold Messenger entered. Though three months had passed since the American had seen him, his face was mobile and impassive as of yore, his manner as confident and easy, his self-possession as remarkable. He had a suit of blue serge upon him that had come from a fine tailor, his brown boots shone like reflectors, his linen had an exquisite whiteness. And as he entered the cabin the others greeted him with a word of intense satisfaction, and waited for him to speak, since the whole fortune of the enterprise hung upon his words.

"Kenner," said he, shutting the door behind him, and bolting it, "what I've got to tell must be told by the clock. I'll be wanting to reach London by the 6.55 out of the town."

"You've half-an-hour," said Kenner laconically. "Burke'll keep the gig out."

"That will suit me perfectly," replied the Prince, settling himself with provoking slowness at the table, upon which he laid some paper; "and if you'll get me ink, we shall save talk."

Burke went to a cupboard at the request; but Kenner could not longer tolerate the mystery.

"Prince," said he, "out with it; is the money going, or do you throw the cards?"

"The money is going to-morrow night," answered Messenger, without moving a muscle of his face, "and the tug Admiral takes it from Tilbury to Flushing."

"Did you happen to know—that is, do you learn the amount?" asked the American, with a husky voice.

"One million sterling!" answered the Prince, his face as placid as marble, and his nerves as steady as steel wires.

"By gosh!" said the American.

Messenger permitted to them a moment's silence in which to digest his words, and then continued with somewhat more satisfying detail—

"Kenner, there's been work to do since we parted, more than three months ago, which I never booked in my calculations the day this thing came to us at Monaco—you remember when. But that you've learned of in my letters, and this is not the time to go into it. The first thing I've to ask you now is this: Have you got a man aboard here that you can't trust in the job, and if so, when are you going to send him ashore?"

Kenner did not answer the question himself, but turned to the skipper, Burke, who sat upon the edge of the bunk nursing his chin in his hand.

"Burke," said he, "that's your affair, I guess. What you don't know about them ain't worth the knowing."

The skipper raised his head at the appeal, and answered quietly :

"If I thought ez any of 'em was that way, I'd put bullets in 'em now, if you was to swing me afore two bells."

"That's all I wanted to hear," replied Messenger, "and in that matter I've no sort of doubt. The next thing to ask you is: How much are we going to tell them safely, and when are they to be told?"

"You've got to tell 'em a good deal, I reckon," said the skipper instantly—"a good deal, barrin' what your cargo's worth; the knowledge of that's between us three"

"And the skipper of the tug," interposed Messenger; "a man among a thousand, he is—Kess Robinson by name, and as obstinate as a mule. I had to promise him twenty thousand pounds and a couple of thousand per man for his crew"

"Are they all swore to it?" asked Burke sharply.

"Why should they be—now?" answered Messenger. "Do we want them ladling it all over the town? But they're well chosen; and if there's to be trouble among them, it will come from the mate, Mike Brennan, a big honest fool, that I've talked to for a month, and made no more impression on than if he'd been cast-iron ballast."

"How many of 'em is to come aboard here?" asked Kenner somewhat anxiously. "You see, whatever they have, our lot's got to have the same, if they're going right along smooth with it."

"I've thought of that," replied Messenger; "put down fifty thousand for the men together, and there needn't be a whisper; but you'll get all the arms you have aft, and if they've any pride forward, we'll have to begin the shooting!"

"That's as plain as dough-nuts!" cried Burke, snapping his fingers; "and it rests for us to know what our instructions is—you're mighty quiet about them."

"I am going to write them," said Messenger, taking up the pen and a big sheet of foolscap, and speaking with an easy air of command, as one inheriting it; "I am going to make it so plain that a child of seven could follow it. In the first place, you will weigh the moment I am gone, and get into Sheerness for as much coal as you can carry, stacking decks as well as bunkers. You will lie at the river's mouth until to-morrow night—it may be until ten, it may be until eleven. The money will leave Bishopsgate Street somewhere about seven o'clock, and will be carried in a special train from Fen church Street to Tilbury, where it will be put, in charge of Sydney Capel and Arthur Conyers, the head clerk of the house, upon the tag Admiral, I shall be already upon the tug, which will weigh at once and proceed up river. At Sheerness we shall show a flare, when you, being ready to put out, will follow us as closely as common sense dictates until we stand well in the North Sea, and clear of ships. We shall shape a course full N.E. to be out of the track of steamers, and when we are ready for you, which will not be until we have passed Hull—we shall send up a couple of rockets, and you will answer and make fast alongside, while we come over and bring the money. After that, as I said to you three months ago, it's a question of sea-legs."

The American listened to the clear enunciation of ideas with a close attention and admiration for the man whose brain could generate such a plausible hypothesis. There were yet, however, links missing from the chain as he saw it, and his first question was in a degree proof of his own shrewdness:

"These clerks, or whatever you call 'em," said he—"who's going to lay them out?"

"That depends on themselves, or on one of them, at any rate," answered Messenger, continuing to write. "You've read from my letters that Capel is in with us to his armpits. I bought him for a quarter share—as between you and me, Kenner—a month ago. He owes a matter of fifty thousand in London, and can't draw back—I've seen to that. He flew at the job almost before I'd opened my lips, and I'd trust him to the end of it. The other's a mere dummy, a numskull, who'll either cave in at the first show of fight or go under for his pains. It's the mate, as I said before, that's like to trouble us; the rest's a mere pleasure cruise."

And the destination?" asked the American.

"Montevideo first, and the blessed shades of the Argentine or Urugaay after."

He wrote out fully the directions he had given, marking the hours most plainly in uncouth if legible capitals, the others waiting for him patiently, though their excitement was palpitating and visible. When he had concluded the whole with a fine flourish, he looked at his watch, and said that he had ten minutes, a reflection which drew from the American the desire to "crack a bottle for luck."

"Which you'll need badly," muttered Burke. "I've no fancy for work begun on Fridays."

Messenger listened to him, a mocking sneer upon his lips.

"Burke," said he, "I've had fine accounts of you; and you're in for the biggest venture of your life. Are you going to play the old woman now?"

"By thunder! that's sense to the kernel," added Kenner. "We're afloat, and Heaven knows when we'll see the shore again"

"That depends on us all," said Messenger, rising; "but if any man shows false, let him look to himself."

With this he went on deck, to find the gig waiting, and Fisher leaning moodily upon the taffrail. For a moment he made as though to step into the boat without any notice of the lad; but a sudden impulse arrested him, and he took the boy's hand quickly, and spoke to him in a low voice.

"Hal," said he, "I've much to say to you, but this isn't the time. I shall be aboard here again in three days, and then I'll count upon you."

He was gone almost with his words; and while Fisher was yet thinking of them, the Semiramis had weighed anchor, and was standing in toward the river's mouth.