Command Part 29

"Captain," said Mr. Spokesly, making a number of motions to signify knocking at a door and calling somebody out. "Savvy?"

The frightened creature, who was quite unable to comprehend the extraordinary phenomenon of the fog on the sea, and who regarded Mr.

Spokesly, moreover, as a species of demi-G.o.d, raised his remarkable face as though in supplication, and backed down again. It was evident to him that his employer had consigned him to some distant place of torment from which he could never return. Yet even in his timid heart there was hope. Already he had given his allegiance to that beautiful and haughty creature whose cabin it was his trembling joy and pride to put in order.

His ears were alert at all times to catch the sharp clapping sound of her hands when she needed him, and then he flew below. She would speak to him in his native tongue, which was Spanish, and ravish his soul with words he could understand, instead of the terrifying gutturals of those powerful Franks who walked to and fro on the top of the tower above them and gave incomprehensible commands.

"Fear not," she a.s.sured him. "When the ship reaches the port, thou shalt go with me as my servant. The lieutenant shall give thee money as wages when he is my husband."

"Merciful Madama, what port? Whither do we go? Is it beyond the clouds?"

"Ah," she retorted, leaning back on the cushions of the settee, and blowing cigarette-smoke from her beautiful lips. "I would like to know that myself. Beyond the clouds? You mean this fog. Yes, far beyond the clouds. Did you not hear anything at all in the Rue Voulgaroktono?"

"Nothing, Madama, except that once I heard Senor Dainopoulos tell Senor Malleotis that they, someone, had reached Aidin."

"Aiee?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Evanthia, sitting up and fixing her burning amber eyes on the frightened and hypnotized creature. "And didst thou hear nothing else? Aidin! Tchk!"

"I do not know, Madama," he quavered. "Unless there is a port called Bairakli."

Evanthia showed her teeth in a brilliant smile and patted the youth's arm.

"My servant you shall be," she chuckled. "No, there is no port called Bairakli, but it is near to a city you and I will find good. Shalt live at Bairakli, Amos! Tck--tck! What a fool I was. Oh! Caro! _Oh mein lieber Mann!_" And she sang sweetly a few notes of a song.

The young man stared at her in stupefaction.

"Go," she said, pushing him with a characteristic gesture, at once brusque and charming. "You need have no fear. Your fortune is made."

A few minutes past six Captain Rannie climbed the bridge ladder and examined the compa.s.s without addressing his chief officer, bending over it with an exaggerated solicitude. Apparently satisfied, he went into the chart room and immediately pushed the ruler from its significant position, pointing into the interior of Asia Minor. There was an indefinable nervous bounce about him which indicated a highly exalted state of mind. He seemed, Mr. Spokesly imagined, to be a.s.suming truculence to cover timidity. He probably knew that his insistence on keeping the course had aroused conjecture, and the ruler, lying as it did on the chart, confirmed the idea. Yet he did not speak. Funking, Mr.

Spokesly decided, obstinately remaining close to the dodger and staring straight ahead--towards Asia Minor. If the Old Man thought he was going to get away with it ... he cleared his throat and remarked:

"About time to change the course for Phyros, sir?"

And to his surprise Mr. Spokesly, in the midst of his highly complex cogitations, found himself listening to a jaunty and characteristic monologue which touched upon--among other things--the one rule which Captain Rannie insisted was the _sine qua non_ of a good officer, that he should accept the commander's orders without comments. Otherwise, how could discipline be maintained? As to the course, he, Captain Rannie, would attend to that immediately. And while he appreciated it, of course, there was no real need for Mr. Spokesly to remain on the bridge after he had been relieved.

Mr. Spokesly, still looking ahead, wanted to say sarcastically, "Is that so?" but he was tongue-tied, dumfounded. Here was a man, apparently of straw, who was jauntily inviting him to clear out and mind his own business. He pulled himself together.

"Unless we pick up a Mudros escort somewhere round here," he muttered, turning away.

Captain Rannie came out of the chart room from which his lean and cadaverous head had been projecting to deliver his homily on obeying orders, and looked all round at the white walls of fog. It was as though he were contemplating some novel but highly convenient dispensation of Providence which he was prepared to accept as one of the minor hardships of life. All consciousness of Mr. Spokesly's presence seemed to have vanished from his mind. He spoke to the helmsman, walked to port and looked down at the water, looked aft and aloft, and resumed his stroll.

And Mr. Spokesly, craftily placed at a disadvantage, turned suddenly and clattered down the ladder.

"Well," he thought to himself, pausing on the deck below and still holding to the hand-rail, "he can't keep it up for ever. And I can't do anything in this fog. He's going to pile her up."

But as he went into the saloon he could not help asking himself, "What for?" What gain had Captain Rannie or Mr. Dainopoulos in view when they ran a valuable cargo on the rocky sh.o.r.es of Lesbos or Anatolia? The word "ran" stuck in his mind. "Running a cargo" in war-time, eh? One didn't run cargoes on the rocks, in war-time. He stared so fixedly at Amos, who was laying the table, that in spite of Evanthia's a.s.surance of future good fortune, the poor creature trembled and grew pale. Mr. Spokesly understood neither Greek nor Spanish, or he might have derived some enlightenment from a conversation with the young Jew. He frowned and went on down to his cabin. He wanted sympathy in his anxiety. And it was part of his Victorian and obsolete mental equipment to expect sympathy from a woman.

She was standing before the little mirror, setting the immense tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb into her hair at the desired angle, and she gave herself a final searching scrutiny, as she turned away, before flashing a dazzling smile at him.

"What is the matter?" she asked in her precise English, seeing the worried expression on his face. He sat down on the settee, and she seated herself close beside him, smiling with such ravishing abandon that he forgot the reason for his concern.

"If I can only get you ash.o.r.e," he muttered, holding her to him and kissing her hair.

"Where?" she whispered, watching him with her bright amber eyes.

"That's just it," he said. "I don't know where."

She put her finger to her lips.

"I know," she said.

He put his hands on her shoulders and held her away a little, staring at her.

"You!" he breathed incredulously. "You?"

She nodded, her eyes kindling.

"Here," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "You must be straight with me, dear. Tell me what you know. The captain, he's very funny to-day."

"Ismir!" she called into his ear in a ringing tone. "Beautiful, beautiful Ismir!"

"What's that you're talking about?" he demanded doubtfully. "I don't understand."

"No? Soon you will understand, when we reach Ismir."

"I've never heard of it," he declared. "But I can tell you, if the Old Man don't alter the course, we're going straight into Smyrna."

"Ah, yes," she sighed. "I remember now. You call it that. We call it Ismir, Turkish place. When I was little, little girl, we arrive there, my fazzer and my muzzer. Oh, beautiful! The grand hotels, the _bains_, the _plage_, the _quais_, the mountains, the _cafes-chantant_. _Aiee!_ And Bairakli! I will show you. I was little, thirteen years old." She laughed, a soft throaty chuckle, on his shoulder, at some reminiscence.

"Ismir! _Oh mein lieber Mann!_"

She intoxicated him with her bewildering moods, with her trick of recalling to his memory his early dreams of beautiful women, those bright shadows of unseen enchantresses which had tortured and stimulated his boyish thoughts. But he could not refrain from returning to the serious problem of how she knew so accurately the intentions of his commander.

"The captain tell you?" he asked expectantly. Her brow grew dark and a blankness like a film came over her eyes.

"I do not like your _capitaine_," she muttered. "He is like an old woman. Look at his face. And the silver ring on his wrist. Like an old vulture, his head between his shoulders. Look at him. He never lifts his eyes. Do not speak of him. But hear me now. When we reach Ismir, we will have a house, you and me, eh?"

He stared at her, entranced, yet preoccupied with the overwhelming difficulties of his situation.

"Oh, _mon cher_, you do not know how beautiful it is. The most beautiful city in the world."

"But how did you know? Why didn't you tell me? Did Mrs. Dainopoulos tell you?"

"Ssh! Madame Dainopoulos is an angel. She like you an' me very much. But Monsieur Dainopoulos, he say to me, if I want to see my friends in Pera, by and by there is a ship. You understand? An' then, here on the ship, I hear somesing. Oh, tell me, _mon cher_, what time we arrive at Ismir?"

He was hardly listening to her, so busy were his thoughts with the vista opening out before him. He was vaguely conscious that he was pa.s.sing through a crisis, that Fate had suddenly laid all her cards on the table and was watching him, with bright amber eyes, waiting for him to make out what those cards portended. Here, she seemed to say, is everything you have ever dreamed of, adventure, romance, and the long-imagined pleasures of love.

"To-night?" she persisted, lying back in his arms. And watching him, sensing his uncertainty, her gaze hardened, she sat up away from him, waiting for him to speak, as though she were fate indeed. Always she gave him that impression of hair-trigger readiness to fight, to rip and tear and give no quarter. As he looked at her now, turning over his dire predicament the while, he noticed the truculent solidity of her jaw, the indomitable courage and steadiness of her gaze.

"Wait," he muttered, putting up his hand and then holding it to his brow. "I must think. I don't know when we arrive. To-morrow, perhaps."