The Four Corners of the World Part 14

The resolution had been taken that instant. He loved the _Boulotte_ better than anything else in the world. For on board of her he was altogether a man. She was fifty-five feet long over all, fourteen feet in beam, twenty-five tons by Thames measurement, and his debt to her was enormous. He had found her in a shed in the Isle of Wight, re-coppered her, given her a new boiler, fixed her up with forced draught, and taken out for himself after a year's hard work a master's certificate. He took her over to Holland, and since her bows worked like a concertina in the heavy seaway between Dover and Dieppe he strengthened them with cross-pieces. He never ceased to tinker with her, he groused at her, and complained of her, and sneered at her, and doted on her in the true sailor's fashion. For some years past life had begun for him in the spring, when he pa.s.sed Portland Bill bound westward for Fowey and Falmouth and the Scillies, and had ended in the late autumn, when he pulled the _Boulotte_ up on the mud of Wootton Creek. Now he turned to her in his distress, and made a most miserable Odyssey. He spent a month in the estuary above Salcombe, steamed across to Havre, went down through the ca.n.a.ls to Ma.r.s.eilles in the autumn of 1914, and sought one of the neutral coasts of the Mediterranean. Here, where men wore b.u.t.tons in their coats inscribed, "Don't speak to me of the war," he fancied that he might escape from the shame of his insufficiency. He came to a pleasant harbour, with a broad avenue of trees behind the quay, and a little ancient town behind the trees.

"I will drop my anchor here," he said, "until the war ends"; and he remained, speaking to no one but his crew, sleeping in his little cabin, and only going on sh.o.r.e to buy his newspapers and take his coffee. And after five weeks the miracle began to happen. He was sitting on his deck one morning reading a local newspaper. At right angles to him half a dozen steamers, moored in a line, with their sterns to the quay and their anchors out forward, were loading with fruit. He looked up from his paper, and his eyes fell upon the nearest ship, which was showing him her starboard broadside. He looked first of all carelessly, then with interest, finally he laid his paper down and walked forward. The boat had received on the lower part of her hull, up to the Plimsoll line, a brilliant fresh coat of red paint. So far, of course, there was nothing unusual, but forward, halfway between her bows and her midships, and again aft on her quarter, she had a broad perpendicular line of the same red paint standing out vividly from the black of her upper plates. Strange called to his engineer, John Shawe, and pointed to the streaks.

"What do you make of them?" he asked.

Shawe shrugged his shoulders.

"Very wasteful it do seem, sir," he said; and to a casual glance it did indeed appear as if the paint had been allowed, through some carelessness on deck, to drip down the side at those two points.

Strange, however, was not satisfied. The bands of scarlet were too regular, too broad. He had himself rowed out in his dinghy past the steamer's bows.

"That will do, Harry," he said. "We can go back."

On the port bows and quarter of the steamer he had seen the same vivid streaks. Strange spoke again to John Shawe.

"Waste isn't the explanation, that's sure. You go about the town a bit, don't you? You know some of the men about the port. You might find out for me--quietly, you know--what you can about that boat"; and the phrase "quietly, you know," made all at once a different man of John Shawe. Strange at this time was really more moved by curiosity than suspicion, but he did use the phrase, and John Shawe, a big, simple, south countryman, who knew his engine and very little else, swelled at once into a being of mystery, full of brow-twisting wisdom and portentously sly.

"I understand, sir," he said in a knowing whisper. "I know my dooty.

It shall be done." He put on his best bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned coat that evening, and went down the three steps of the gangway ladder with a secret air, a sleuth; but he brought back his news nevertheless.

"All those boats, sir, are chartered by a German here named Rehnke."

"But some of them are English. They are flying the red flag," cried Strange in revolt.

"It's G.o.d's truth, sir, and here's more of it. Every one of them's bound for England, consigned to English firms. One's for Manchester, two for Cardiff, one for Liverpool."

"But it's impossible. It's trading with the enemy," Strange exclaimed.

"That don't apply to the enemy in neutral countries, they say. Oh, there's a deal of dirty work going on in England. Will you come on deck?"

Strange nodded. The saloon door opened into the c.o.c.kpit, and the cabin roof was the deck of the after-part of the _Boulotte_. They climbed by a little ladder out of the c.o.c.kpit. It was twelve o'clock on a night of full moon.

"Look, sir," said Shawe.

The English boat had sailed that afternoon. The starboard side of its neighbour was now revealed. Strange looked through his gla.s.ses and he saw. Over the bows of that tramp steamer at midnight a man was suspended on a plank, and he was painting a broad, perpendicular, red streak.

Strange thought over his discovery lying on his back in the saloon.

Distinguishing marks on a row of ships chartered by a German--there was just one explanation for them! Strange did not even whisper it to John Shawe, but he went ash.o.r.e the next morning and called upon the British Consul.

His card was taken into a room where two men were speaking. At once the conversation stopped, and it was not resumed. There was not a whisper, nor the sound of any movement. Strange had a picture in his mind of two men with their heads together staring at his card and exchanging an unspoken question. Then the clerk appeared again.

"Mr. Taylor will see you with pleasure," he said.

As Strange entered the room a slim, elderly, indifferent gentleman, seated at a knee-hole table, gazed vaguely at him through his spectacles and offered him a chair.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Strange?" he asked, and since Strange hesitated, he turned towards his companion.

"This is Major Slingsby," said the Consul. "He will not be in your way."

Major Slingsby, a square, short, rubicund man of forty, with the face of a faun, bowed, and, without moving from his chair, seemed, nevertheless, to remove himself completely from the room.

"Not at all," said Strange. He had not an idea that he was in the presence of the two shrewdest men in those parts. To him they were just a couple of languid people whom it was his duty to arouse, and he told his story as vividly as he could.

"And what do you deduce from these mysterious signs?" asked the Consul.

Strange's answer was prompt.

"German submarines in the Mediterranean."

"Oh! And why not the Channel?" asked Mr. Taylor. "These steamers are on their way there."

To that question there was no reply. Strange rose. "I thought that I ought to tell you what I had noticed," he said stiffly.

"Thank you, yes. And I am very grateful," replied Taylor.

Major Slingsby, however, followed Strange out of the room.

"Will you lunch with me?" he asked, and the question sent the blood rushing into Strange's face. He swung between his instinct to hide his head from any man who was doing service and his craving to converse with a fellow-countryman. The craving won.

"I shall be very pleased," he stammered.

"Right. It is half-past twelve now. Shall we say one at the Cafe de Rome?"

As they sat against the wall by the window of the cafe Slingsby talked of ordinary matters, which any one of those in the chairs outside upon the pavement might overhear and be none the wiser. But he talked sagely, neither parading mysteries nor pretending disclosures. He let the mere facts of companionship and nationality work, and before luncheon was over Strange was won by them. He longed to confide, to justify himself before a fellow-citizen of his miserable inertness.

Over the coffee, indeed, he would have begun, but Slingsby saw the torrent of confession coming.

"Do you often lunch here?" he said quickly. "I do whenever I happen to be in the town. Sit in this window for an hour and you will see all the town paraded before you like a show, its big men and little men, its plots and its intrigues. There, for instance," and he nodded towards a large, stout person with a blonde moustache, "is Rehnke--yes, that's your man. Take a good look at him."

Strange looked at the German hard. He looked also towards a youth who had been sitting for the last hour over a cup of coffee and a newspaper outside the window. Slingsby interpreted the look.

"He's all right. He's trying to listen, of course. Most foreigners do, whether they understand your language or not. And he doesn't--not a word of it. I have been watching him. However, we may as well go, for I would very much like you to show me your little boat."

Strange, eager and enthusiastic, jumped up from the table.

"Rather," he cried. "She's not big, of course, but she can keep the sea, especially since I strengthened her bows."

"Oh, you have done that, have you?" said Slingsby, as he paid the bill. "That's interesting."

They crossed the boulevard to the quay and went on board the _Boulotte_. Every inch of bra.s.s on her, from the stanchions round the deck to the engine-room telegraph, flashed, and she was varnished and white and trim like a lady fresh from her maid.

"What can you do with your forced draught?" asked Slingsby.

"Thirteen," replied Strange proudly. "With a good wind astern fourteen. Once I went out past the Needles buoy----" and off he went in a glowing account of a pa.s.sage to Cherbourg at the end of a stormy September. Slingsby never once interrupted him. He followed meekly from the rudder to the bow, where he examined with some attention the famous struts and cross-pieces.

"You have got a wireless, I see," he said, looking up to the aerial, which, slackened and disconnected, dangled from the masthead.

"Yes. But it's a small affair. However, I can hear four hundred miles if the night's still. I can only send seventy."

Slingsby nodded, and the two men returned to the saloon. There, at last, over a whisky and soda. Strange was encouraged to unload his soul. The torture of the August nights on the Berkshire Downs above the Thames Valley, the intolerable sense of uselessness; the feeling that he wore a brand of shame upon his forehead for all men to see, and the poignancy of the remorse which had shrivelled him when a wounded soldier from Ypres or Le Cateau limped past him in the street; all tumbled from his lips in abrupt, half-finished sentences.