The Black Bag Part 28

Joy welled in his heart. He forgot all that he had undergone in the prospect of what he proposed still to do in the name of the only woman the world held for him. Unquestioning he had come thus far in her service; unquestioning, by her side, he was prepared to go still farther, though all humanity should single her out with accusing fingers....

They were watching him, aboard the brigantine; he could see a line of heads above her windward rail. Perhaps _she_ was of their number. He waved an audacious hand. Some one replied, a great shout shattering itself unintelligibly against the gale. He neither understood nor attempted to reply; his every faculty was concentrated on the supreme moment now at hand.

Calculating the instant to a nicety, he paid off the sheet and pulled up the tiller. The cat-boat pivoted on her heel; with a crack her sail flapped full and rigid; then, with the untempered might of the wind behind her, she shot like an arrow under the brigantine's bows, so close that the bowsprit of the latter first threatened to impale the sail, next, the bows plunging, crashed down a bare two feet behind the cat-boat's stern.

Working in a frenzy of haste, Kirkwood jammed the tiller hard alee, bringing the cat about, and, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the mainsheet as best he might, found himself racing under the brigantine's leeward quarter,--water pouring in generously over the cat's.

Luffing, he edged nearer, handling his craft as though intending to ram the larger vessel, foot by foot shortening the little interval. When it was four feet, he would risk the jump; he crawled out on the overhang, crouching on his toes, one hand light upon the tiller, the other touching the deck, ready ... ready....

Abruptly the _Alethea_ shut off the wind; the sail flattened and the cat dropped back. In a second the distance had doubled. In anguish Kirkwood uttered an exceeding bitter cry. Already he was falling far off her counter....

A shout reached him. He was dimly conscious of a dark object hurtling through the air. Into the c.o.c.kpit, splashing, something dropped--a coil of rope. He fell forward upon it, into water eighteen inches deep; and for the first time realized that, but for that line, he had gone to his drowning in another minute. The cat was sinking.

As he scrambled to his feet, clutching the life-line, a heavy wave washed over the water-logged craft and left it all but submerged; and a smart tug on the rope added point to the advice which, reaching his ears in a bellow like a bull's, penetrated the panic of his wits.

"Jump! _Jump, you fool_!"

In an instant of coherence he saw that the brigantine was luffing; none the less much of the line had already been paid out, and there was no reckoning when the end would be reached. Without time to make it fast, he hitched it twice round his waist and chest, once round an arm, and, grasping it above his head to ease its constriction when the tug should come, leaped on the combing and overboard. A green roaring avalanche swept down upon him and the luckless cat-boat, overwhelming both simultaneously.

The agony that was his during the next few minutes can by no means be exaggerated. With such crises the human mind is not fitted adequately to cope; it retains no record of the supreme moment beyond a vague and incoherent impression of poignant, soul-racking suffering. Kirkwood underwent a prolonged interval of semi-sentience, his mind dominated and oppressed by a deathly fear of drowning and a deadening sense of suffocation, with attendant tortures as of being broken on the wheel--limb rending from limb; of compression of his ribs that threatened momentarily to crush in his chest; of a world a-welter with dim swirling green half-lights alternating with flashes of blinding white; of thunderings in his ears like salvoes from a thousand cannon....

And his senses were blotted out in blackness....

Then he was breathing once more, the keen clean air stabbing his lungs, the while he swam unsupported in an ethereal void of brilliance. His mouth was full of something that burned, a liquid hot, acrid, and stinging. He gulped, swallowed, s...o...b..red, choked, coughed, attempted to sit up, was aware that he was the focal center of a ring of glaring, burning eyes, like eyes of ravening beasts; and fainted.

His next conscious impression was of standing up, supported by friendly arms on either side, while somebody was asking him if he could walk a step or two.

He lifted his head and let it fall in token of a.s.sent, mumbling a yes; and looked round him with eyes wherein the light of intelligence burned more clear with every second. By degrees he catalogued and comprehended his weirdly altered circ.u.mstances and surroundings.

He was partly seated, partly held up, on the edge of the cabin sky-light, an object of interest to some half-dozen men, seafaring fellows all, by their habit, cl.u.s.tered round between him and the windward rail. Of their number one stood directly before him, dwarfing his companions as much by his air of command as by his uncommon height: tall, thin-faced and sallow, with hollow weather-worn cheeks, a mouth like a crooked gash from ear to ear, and eyes like dying coals, with which he looked the rescued up and down in one grim, semi-humorous, semi-speculative glance. In hands both huge and red he fondled tenderly a squat brandy flask whose contents had apparently been employed as a first aid to the drowning.

As Kirkwood's gaze encountered his, the man smiled sourly, jerking his head to one side with a singularly derisive air.

"Hi, matey!" he bl.u.s.tered. "'Ow goes it now? Feelin' 'appier, eigh?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Hi, matey!" he bl.u.s.tered. "'Ow goes it now?"]

"Some, thank you ... more like a drowned rat." Kirkwood eyed him sheepishly. "I suppose you're the man who threw me that line? I'll have to wait till my head clears up before I can thank you properly."

"Don't mention it." He of the lantern jaws stowed the bottle away with jealous care in one of his immense coat pockets, and seized Kirkwood's hand in a grasp that made the young man wince. "You're syfe enough now.

My nyme's Stryker, Capt'n Wilyum Stryker.... Wot's the row? Lookin' for a friend?" he demanded suddenly, as Kirkwood's attention wandered.

For the memory of the errand that had brought him into the hands of Captain William Stryker had come to the young man very suddenly; and his eager eyes were swiftly roving not along the decks but the wide world besides, for sight or sign of his heart's desire.

After luffing to pick him up, the brigantine had been again pulled off on the port tack. The fury of the gale seemed rather to have waxed than waned, and the _Alethea_ was bending low under the relentless fury of its blasts, driving hard, with leeward channels awash. Under her port counter, a mile away, the crimson light-ship wallowed in a riot of breaking combers.

Sheerness lay abeam, five miles or more. Ahead the northeast headland of the Isle of Sheppey was bulking large and near. The cat-boat had vanished....

More important still, no one aboard the brigantine resembled in the remotest degree either of the Calendars, father or daughter, or even Mulready, the black-avised.

"I sye, 're you lookin' for some one you know?"

"Yes--your pa.s.sengers. I presume they're below--?"

"Pa.s.sengers!"

A hush fell upon the group, during which Kirkwood sought Stryker's eye in pitiful pleading; and Stryker looked round him blankly.

"Where's Miss Calendar?" the young man demanded sharply. "I must see her at once!"

The keen and deep-set eyes of the skipper clouded as they returned to Kirkwood's perturbed countenance. "Wot're you talking about?" he demanded brusquely.

"I must see Miss Calendar, or Calendar himself, or Mulready." Kirkwood paused, and, getting no reply, grew restive under Stryker's inscrutable regard.

"That's why I came aboard," he amended, blind to the absurdity of the statement; "to see--er--Calendar."

"Well ... I'm d.a.m.ned!"

Stryker managed to infuse into his tone a deal of suspicious contempt.

"Why?" insisted Kirkwood, nettled but still uncomprehending.

"D'you mean to tell me you came off from--wherever in 'ell you did come from--intendin' to board this wessel and find a party nymed Calendar?"

"Certainly I did. Why--?"

"Well!" cried Mr. Stryker, rubbing his hands together with an air oppressively obsequious, "I'm sorry to _hin_-form you you've come to the wrong shop, sir; we don't stock no Calendars. We're in the 'ardware line, we are. You might try next door, or I dessay you'll find what you want at the stytioner's, round the corner."

A giggle from his audience stimulated him. "If," he continued acidly, "I'd a-guessed you was such a d.a.m.n' fool, blimmy if I wouldn't've let you drownd!"

Staggered, Kirkwood bore his sarcastic truculence without resentment.

"Calendar," he stammered, trying to explain, "Calendar _said_--"

"I carn't 'elp wot Calendar said. Mebbe 'e _did_ myke an engygement with you, an' you've gone and went an' forgot the dyte. Mebbe it's larst year's calendar you're thinkin' of. You Johnny" (to a lout of a boy in the group of seamen), "you run an' fetch this gentleman Whitaker's for Nineteen-six.

Look sharp, now!"

"But--!" With an effort Kirkwood mustered up a show of dignity. "Am I to understand," he said, as calmly as he could, "that you deny knowing George B. Calendar and his daughter Dorothy and--"

"I don't 'ave to. Listen to me, young man." For the time the fellow discarded his clumsy facetiousness. "I'm Wilyum Stryker, Capt'n Stryker, marster and 'arf-owner of this wessel, and wot I says 'ere is law. We don't carry no pa.s.sengers. D'ye understand me?"--aggressively. "There ain't no pusson nymed Calendar aboard the _Allytheer_, an' never was, an' never will be!"

"What name did you say?" Kirkwood inquired.

"This ship? The _Allytheer_; registered from Liverpool; bound from London to Hantwerp, in cargo. Anythink else?"

Kirkwood shook his head, turning to scan the seascape with a gloomy gaze. As he did so, and remarked how close upon the Sheppey headland the brigantine had drawn, the order was given to go about. For the moment he was left alone, wretchedly wet, shivering, wan and shrunken visibly with the knowledge that he had dared greatly for nothing. But for the necessity of keeping up before Stryker and his crew, the young man felt that he could gladly have broken down and wept for sheer vexation and disappointment.

Smartly the brigantine luffed and wore about, heeling deep as she spun away on the starboard tack.

Kirkwood staggered round the skylight to the windward rail. From this position, looking forward, he could see that they were heading for the open sea, Foulness low over the port quarter, naught before them but a brawling waste of leaden-green and dirty white. Far out one of the sidewheel boats of the Queensborough-Antwerp line was heading directly into the wind and making heavy weather of it.