Command Part 28

Perhaps I shall never get back. And n.o.body writes to me. No letters. So, while I am here, you understand?"

He remained bent over her, his head lost in the darkness of the little recess, waiting for a reply which did not come. And he thought, going away to the binnacle again:

"She is right. n.o.body can excuse themselves in a case like this. The only way is to say nothing at all."

He did not go near her for a long while. Then an idea came to him, so simple he wondered he had not thought of it before. He was not making the most of the situation. He glanced back at the helmsman. He was far back, behind the steering wheel, and the faint glow of the binnacle lamp was screened by a canvas hood. Mr. Spokesly bent over the girl again.

"You do not believe me?" he muttered. "You think I am not sincere? You think I would leave you?"

He leaned closer, watching her bright deriding eyes, and she nodded.

"Ah yes," she sighed. "By and by you would go."

"You think because other men do that ... you think...?"

She nodded emphatically.

"... all men alike?" he finished lamely.

"They are!" she said quickly and laid her head against his shoulder for a moment with a faint chuckle of laughter.

"All right," he whispered gravely, "they are, as you say. But when we get ash.o.r.e in Athens, we will get married. Now then...."

His tone was low but triumphant. She could have no reply to that. It swept away all doubts in his own mind: and he thought her mind was like his own, a lumber room of old-fashioned, very dusty conventions and ideals. If he married her she must be convinced of his sincerity. It did not occur to him that women are not interested very much in the sincerity of a man, that he can be as unfaithful as he likes if he fulfills her conception of beauty and power and genius, that a woman like Evanthia might have a different notion of marriage from his own.

And she did not reply. He moved away from her, up-lifted by the mood of the moment. There could be no reply to that save surrender, he thought proudly.

And Evanthia was astonished. She sat there in the darkness, bound upon a journey which would bring her, she believed, to the amiable and faithless creature who had touched her imagination and who embodied for her all the gaiety and elegance of Europe. And this other man, a man of a distant, truculent, and predatory race, a race engaged in the destruction of European civilization as a sacrifice to their own little tribal G.o.d (which was the way Lietherthal had explained it to her) was proposing to marry her. It bereft her of speech because she was busy coordinating in her swift, shrewd mind all the advantages of such a scheme. There was an allurement in it, too. Her imagination was caught by the sudden vision of herself as the chatelaine of a villa. Yes! Her eyes sparkled as she figured it. He came towards her again and, leaning over, buried his face in the clean fresh fragrance of her hair. She remembered that magical moment by the White Tower when he had transcended his destiny and muttered hoa.r.s.ely that he would go to h.e.l.l for her. She put the question to herself with terrible directness--could she hold him? Could she exercise the mysterious power of her s.e.x upon him as upon men of her own race? She closed her eyes and sought blindly for an accession of strength in this crisis of her life. She put her arms up and felt his hand on her face. And then, giving way to an obscure and primitive impulse, she buried her teeth in his wrist. And for a long while they remained there, two undisciplined hearts, voyaging through a perilous darkness together.

CHAPTER XIV

Mr. Spokesly, looking down from the bridge at the up-turned and uncompromising face of Joseph Plouff, frowned.

"What does he say?" he repeated uneasily.

"He says keep the course."

"You gave him the note?"

"No, he didn't open the door. He just said, to keep the course. I said 'You mean, don't alter it, Captinne?' and he said, 'No.'"

Plouff handed up the note Mr. Spokesly had given him, and the puzzled chief officer took it and opened it, as though he had forgotten or was uncertain of its contents. But before he read it afresh, he took a look round. This told him nothing for he was entirely lost in a white fog that rolled and swirled in slow undulating billows athwart the ship's bows. For four hours he had been going through this and the captain had not made his appearance on the bridge. Each time had come up the same message, to keep the course. And at last Mr. Spokesly had written a little note. He had torn a page out of the sc.r.a.p-log and written these words:

TO CAPTAIN RANNIE

SIR,

We have run our distance over this course. Please give bearer your orders. Weather very thick.

R. SPOKESLY. Mate.

And he hadn't even opened the door. It was this singular seclusion which caused Mr. Spokesly so much anxiety. Fog, and the captain not on deck!

Plouff, whose presence was an undeniable comfort for some reason or other, pulled himself up the steep little ladder and stood staring lugubriously into the fog.

"Funny sort of old man, this," muttered the mate.

"He's always the same at sea," said Plouff, still staring.

"What? Leaves it to the mate?"

"Yes. Always."

"But...." Mr. Spokesly looked at the fog, at Plouff, at the binnacle, and then hastily fitted himself into the little wheel-house. He bent over the chart with a ruler and pair of dividers, s.p.a.cing first a pencilled line drawn from Cape Ka.s.sandra to a point a few miles south of Cape Fripeti on the Island of Boze Baba, and then along the scale at the edge of the chart.

"See what's on the log, Bos', will you?" he called.

This was serious. Within a few minutes the course ought to be altered to due south. The usual four knots of the _Kalkis_ had been exceeded owing to the smoothness of the sea, which accounted for their arrival at this position before six o'clock, when the captain would once more take charge. Another thing was that from now on they would be on the course of warships pa.s.sing south from the great base at Mudros, the land-locked harbour of Lemnos. The bosun came up again and reported thirty miles from noon. Well, the log was about ten per cent. fast, so a note said in the night order book. It was five-thirty now, which gave them twenty-seven miles from noon or nearly five knots. That brought them due south of Fripeti.

Mr. Spokesly looked at Plouff, who was looking at the fog with an expression of extreme disillusion on his round face. And again at the chart. There was nothing more to be extracted from either Plouff or the chart. The pencilled line which indicated their course ended abruptly.

Where, then, were they bound? Keep on the course, the captain said. Mr.

Spokesly laid the parallel ruler against the line and produced it clear across the chart. He stood up with a sharp intake of breath and regarded the impa.s.sive Plouff, who looked down at the chart with respectful curiosity.

"Say, Bos'," he began. "This is a funny business."

"What's a funny business?" demanded Plouff, looking round, as though expecting to see something of an extremely comical nature being performed. The pause gave Mr. Spokesly time to reflect. He cleared his throat.

"The Old Man staying down there. He ought to ... but then he says keep...."

"'Hold her on the course,' were his words," said Plouff obstinately, adding, "Hasn't she got a clear road?"

"Yes ..." muttered the mate jerkily, "road's clear ... humph!" he stared at the chart. "Oh, well! By George, I wish this d.a.m.n fog would clear away."

"What's the matter with the fog?" said Plouff. "We're safe in the fog, ain't we? You can bet them _unterseeboats_ 'll keep in under the islands this weather. Too much chance o' gettin' stove in," he added sympathetically. The mate did not reply for a moment. He was very uneasy. He studied the chart. Indeed, he could not get away from that pencilled line running right into the Gulf of Smyrna. And Phyros was south of Khios. He was tired and sleepy. Eight hours was a long while to stay on the bridge. He would be glad when they got in. _Got in where?_ He stared again at the chart. And the Old Man locked in his room. Always did that, eh?

"Go away, Bos'," he said, suddenly. "You got to be about to-night, you know. We'll be anchoring...."

He forgot what he was saying, staring hard at the chart. Plouff slipped down into the fog and clattered away forward.

But Mr. Spokesly was not unhappy. There was an unfamiliar yet desirable quality about this life. The sharp flavour of it made one forget both the ethical and economic aspects of one's existence. At the back of his mind was a boyish desire to show that girl what he was made of. And when they got to Athens he would----Athens! The word sent him back to the chart. Keep on the course. He was sailing across a wide ocean and the old familiar landmarks were hull down behind the fog. There was something symbolic in that fog. It was as though he had indeed left the world of his youth behind, the world of warm English hearts, of cantankerous affections and dislikes, of fine consciences and delicate social distinctions, and was pa.s.sing through a confusing and impalpable region of vaporous uncertainty to an unknown country. He was not unhappy. The future might be anything, from silken dalliance behind green jalousies in some oriental villa with a fountain making soft music, which is the food of love, to a sudden detonation, red spurts of savage flame, and a grave in a cold sea. He went out and looked at the compa.s.s. And at the fog. Now that Plouff was gone down he felt lonely.

He stamped on the deck to call the steward. The captain would have to be called. If he did not come, he, the mate, would go down and inform him that the course would be changed without him. That would be the only way. He had never had a commander like this, nor a voyage like this, for that matter. He paused suddenly in his thoughts and looked down, pinching his lower lip between finger and thumb. He had an idea. To achieve anything, one had to be eternally prepared for just such unexpected predicaments. Here he was, with an invisible commander and an invisible horizon. And down in a cabin below him was Evanthia Solaris, a distinct and formidable problem. He was going to marry her. He saw his destiny, almost for the first time in his life, as a ball which he could take in his hand and throw. And the direction and distance depended entirely upon his own strength, his own skill, his own fort.i.tude. He was going to marry her. And he saw another thing for the first time--that marriage was of no significance in itself for a man. What he is, brain and sinew, character and desire, is all that counts. He saw this because he had left the old life behind beyond the fog. Back there, marriage was a contrivance for the hamstringing and debasing of men, a mere device for the legal comfort and security of women who were too lazy or incompetent or too undesirable to secure it for themselves. Ahead he had a strange premonition that he was going to have a novel experience.

He was.

He was aroused by the helmsman reaching out and striking four soft blows on the little bronze bell hanging by the awning-spar over the binnacle.

Six o'clock. And the young Jew, in a huge ap.r.o.n and a high astrakhan cap he had picked up somewhere, came slowly up the bridge ladder.