The Black Bag Part 27

"Impossible. I haven't got it."

In silence the man unshipped the tiller and moved toward the cleats.

"Hold on a minute."

Kirkwood unb.u.t.toned his coat and, freeing the chain from his waistcoat b.u.t.tonholes, removed his watch.... As well abandon them altogether; he had designed to leave them as security for the two pounds, and had delayed stating the terms only for fear lest they be refused. Now, too late as ever, he recognized his error. But surely, he thought, it should be apparent even to that low intelligence that the timepiece alone was worth more than the boat itself.

"Will you take these?" he offered. "Take and keep them--only set me aboard that ship!"

Deliberately the fisherman weighed the watch and chain in his broad, hard palm, eyes narrowing to mere slits in his bronzed mask.

"How much?" he asked slowly.

"Eighty pounds, together; the chain alone cost me twenty."

The shifty, covetous eyes ranged from the treasure in his hand to the threatening east. A puff of wind caught the sail and sent the boom athwartships, like a mighty flail. Both men ducked instinctively, to escape a braining.

"How do I know?" objected the skipper.

"I'm telling you. If you've got eyes, you can see," retorted Kirkwood savagely, seeing that he had erred in telling the truth; the amount he had named was too great to be grasped at once by this crude, cupidous brain.

"How do I know?" the man repeated. Nevertheless he dropped watch and chain into his pocket, then with a meaning grimace extended again his h.o.r.n.y, greedy palm.

"What...?"

"Hand over th' two pound' and we'll go."

"I'll see you d.a.m.ned first!"

A flush of rage blinded the young man. The knowledge that the _Alethea_ was minute by minute slipping beyond his reach seemed to madden him.

White-lipped and ominously quiet he rose from his seat on the combing, as, without answer, the fisherman, crawling out on the overhand, began to haul in the dory.

"Ash.o.r.e ye go," he p.r.o.nounced his ultimatum, motioning Kirkwood to enter the boat.

The American turned, looking for the _Alethea_, or for the vessel that he believed bore that name. She was nearing the light-ship when he found her, and as he looked a squall blurred the air between them, blotting the brigantine out with a smudge of rain. The effect was as if she had vanished, as if she were for ever s.n.a.t.c.hed from his grasp; and with Dorothy aboard her--Heaven alone knew in what need of him!

Mute and blind with despair and wrath, he turned upon the man and caught him by the collar, forcing him out over the lip of the overhang. They were unevenly matched, Kirkwood far the slighter, but strength came to him in the crisis, physical strength and address such as he had not dreamed was at his command. And the surprise of his onslaught proved an ally of unguessed potency. Before he himself knew it he was standing on the overhang and had shifted his hold to seize the fellow about the waist; then, lifting him clear of the deck, and aided by a lurch of the cat-boat, he cast him bodily into the dory. The man, falling, struck his head against one of the thwarts, a glancing blow that stunned him temporarily. Kirkwood himself dropped as if shot, a trailing reef-point slapping his cheek until it stung as the boom thrashed overhead. It was as close a call as he had known; the knowledge sickened him a little.

Without rising he worked the painter loose and cast the dory adrift; then crawled back into the c.o.c.kpit. No pang of compa.s.sion disturbed him as he abandoned the fisherman to the mercy of the sea; though the fellow lay still, uncouthly distorted, in the bottom of the dory, he was in no danger; the wind and waves together would carry the boat ash.o.r.e.... For that matter, the man was even then recovering, struggling to sit up.

Crouching to avoid the boom, Kirkwood went forward to the bows, and, grasping the mooring cable, drew it in, slipping back into the c.o.c.kpit to get a stronger purchase with his feet. It was a struggle; the boat pulled sluggishly against the wind, the cable inching in jealously. And behind him he could hear a voice bellowing inarticulate menaces, and knew that in another moment the fisherman would be at his oars.

Frantically he tugged and tore at the slimy rope, hauling with a will and a prayer. It gave more readily, towards the end, but he seemed to have fought with it for ages when at last the anchor tripped and he got it in.

Immediately he leaped back to the stern, fitted in the tiller, and seizing the mainsheet, drew the boom in till the wind should catch in the canvas.

In the dory the skipper, bending at his oars, was not two yards astern.

He was hard aboard when, the sail filling with a bang, Kirkwood pulled the tiller up; and the cat-boat slid away, a dozen feet separating them in a breath.

A yell of rage boomed down the wind, but he paid no heed. Careless alike of the dangers he had pa.s.sed and those that yawned before him, he trimmed the sheet and stood away on the port tack, heading directly for the Nore Lightship.

XI

OFF THE NORE

Kirkwood's anger cooled apace; at worst it had been a flare of pa.s.sion--incandescent. It was seldom more. His brain clearing, the temperature of his judgment quickly regained its mean, and he saw his chances without distortion, weighed them without exaggeration.

Leaning against the combing, feet braced upon the slippery and treacherous deck, he clung to tiller and mainsheet and peered ahead with anxious eyes, a pucker of daring graven deep between his brows.

A mile to westward, three or more ahead, he could see the brigantine standing close in under the Ess.e.x sh.o.r.e. At times she was invisible; again he could catch merely the glint of her canvas, white against the dark loom of the littoral, toned by a mist of flying spindrift. He strained his eyes, watching for the chance which would take place in the rake of her masts and sails, when she should come about.

For the longer that manoeuver was deferred, the better was his chance of attaining his object. It was a forlorn hope. But in time the brigantine, to escape Maplin Sands, would be forced to tack and stand out past the lightship, the wind off her port bows. Then their courses would intersect.

It remained to be demonstrated whether the cat-boat was speedy enough to arrive at this point of contact in advance of, or simultaneously with, the larger vessel. Every minute that the putative _Alethea_ put off coming about brought the cat-boat nearer that goal, but Kirkwood could do no more than hope and try to trust in the fisherman's implied admission that it could be done. It was all in the boat and the way she handled.

He watched her anxiously, quick to approve her merits as she displayed them. He had sailed small craft before--frail center-board cat-boats, handy and swift, built to serve in summer winds and protected waters: never such an one as this. Yet he liked her.

Deep bosomed she was, with no center-board, dependent on her draught and heavy keel to hold her on the wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed with stout plank and ribbed with seasoned timber, designed to keep afloat in the wickedest weather brewed by the foul-tempered German Ocean. Withal her lines were fine and clean; for all her beam she was calculated to nose narrowly into the wind and make a pretty pace as well. A good boat: he had the grace to give the credit to his luck.

Her disposition was more fully disclosed as they drew away from the beach.

Insh.o.r.e with shoaling water, the waves had been choppy and spiteful but lacking force of weight. Farther out, as the bottom fell away, the rollers became more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas met the cat-boat, from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in the tiny c.o.c.kpit; who was nevertheless aware that to a steamer they would be negligible.

His boat breasted them gallantly, toiling st.u.r.dily up the steep acclivities, poising breathlessly on foam-crested summits for dizzy instants, then plunging headlong down the deep green swales; and left a boiling wake behind her,--urging ever onward, hugging the wind in her wisp of blood-red sail, and boring into it, pulling at the tiller with the mettle of a race-horse slugging at the bit.

Offsh.o.r.e, too, the wind stormed with added strength, or, possibly, had freshened. For minutes on end the leeward gunwales would run green, and now and again the screaming, pelting squalls that scoured the estuary would heel her over until the water cascaded in over the lee combing, and the rudder, lifted clear, would hang idle until, smitten by some racing billow, the tiller would be all but torn from Kirkwood's hands. Again and again this happened; and those were times of trembling. But always the cat-boat righted, shaking the clinging waters from her and swinging her stem into the wind again; and there would follow an abbreviated breathing spell, during which Kirkwood was at liberty to dash the salt spray from his eyes and search the wind-harried waste for the brigantine. Sometimes he found her, sometimes not.

Long after he had expected her to, she went about and they began to close in upon each other. He could see that even with shortened canvas she was staggering drunkenly under the fierce impacts of the wind. For himself, it was nip-and-tuck, now, and no man in his normal sense would have risked a sixpence on the boat's chance to live until she crossed the brigantine's bows.

Time out of reckoning he was forced to kneel in the swimming c.o.c.kpit, steering with one hand, using the bailing-dish with the other, and keeping his eyes religiously turned to the bellying patch of sail. It was heartbreaking toil; he began reluctantly to concede that it could not last much longer. And if he missed the brigantine he would be lost; mortal strength was not enough to stand the unending strain upon every bone, muscle and sinew, required to keep the boat upon her course; though for a time it might cope with and solve the problems presented by each new, malignant billow and each furious, howling squall, the end inevitably must be failure. To struggle on would be but to postpone the certain end ...

save and except the possibility of his gaining the brigantine within the period of time strictly and briefly limited by his powers of endurance.

Long since he had become numb with cold from incessant drenchings of icy spray, that piled in over the windward counter, keeping the bottom ankle-deep regardless of his laborious but intermittent efforts with the bailing dish. And the two, brigantine and c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l, were drawing together with appalling deliberation.

A dozen times he was on the point of surrender, as often plucked up hope; as the minutes wore on and he kept above water, he began to believe that if he could stick it out his judgment and seamanship would be justified ...

though human ingenuity backed by generosity could by no means contrive adequate excuse for his foolhardiness.

But that was aside, something irreparable. Wan and grim, he fought it out.

But that his voice stuck in his parched throat, he could have shouted in his elation, when eventually he gained the point of intersection an eighth of a mile ahead of the brigantine and got sight of her windward freeboard as, most slowly, the cat-boat forged across her course.

For all that, the moment of his actual triumph was not yet; he had still to carry off successfully a scheme that for sheer audacity of conception and contempt for danger, transcended all that had gone before.

Holding the cat-boat on for a time, he brought her about handsomely a little way beyond the brigantine's course, and hung in the eye of the wind, the leach flapping and tightening with reports like rifle-shots, and the water sloshing about his calves--bailing-dish now altogether out of mind--while he watched the oncoming vessel, his eyes glistening with antic.i.p.ation.

She was footing it smartly, the brigantine--lying down to it and snoring into the wind. Beneath her stem waves broke in snow-white showers, whiter than the canvas of her bulging jib--broke and, gnashing their teeth in impotent fury, swirled and eddied down her sleek dark flanks. Bobbing, courtesying, she plunged onward, shortening the interval with mighty, leaping bounds. On her bows, with each instant, the golden letters of her name grew larger and more legible until--_Alethea_!--he could read it plain beyond dispute.