The Four Corners of the World Part 16

"Good. Suppose we start at six this evening."

The _Boulotte_ went away to the minute. At eight it began to grow dark, but no steaming light was hoisted on the mast, and no sidelamps betrayed her presence. In the failing light she became one with the sea but for the tiniest wisp of smoke from her chimney, and soon the night hid that. A lantern flashed for a while here and there on the forward deck in the centre of a little group, and then Slingsby came back to Strange at the wheel.

"It's all right," he whispered softly.

Nights at sea! The cool, dark tent of stars, the hiss and tinkle of waves against the boat's side, the dinghy, slung out upon the davits, progressing above the surface of the water, the lamp light from the compa.s.s striking up on the bra.s.swork of the wheel and the face of the steersman; to nights at sea Strange owed all the s.p.a.cious moments of his crippled life. But this night was a sacred thing. He was admitted to the band of the young strong men who serve, like a novice into the communion of a church; and his heart sang within his breast as he kept the _Boulotte_ to her course. At a quarter past eleven he rang the telegraph and put the indicator to "slow." Five minutes later he stopped the engine altogether. Four miles away to the north-eastward a light brightened and faded.

"We are there," he said, and he looked out over an empty sea.

Under Slingsby's orders he steamed slowly round in a circle, ever increasing the circ.u.mference, for an hour, and then the new hand--who, by the way, was a master gunner--crept aft.

"There it is, sir."

A hundred yards from the port bow a dark ma.s.s floated on the sea. The _Boulotte_ slid gently alongside of it. It was a raft made of barrels lashed together.

"We have seen those barrels before, my friend," said Slingsby, his nose wrinkling up in a grin of delight. Before daybreak the work was done. Fifty empty barrels floated loose; there was a layer of heavy oil over the sea and a rank smell in the air.

"Now," said Slingsby, In a whisper, "shall we have any luck, I wonder?"

He went forward. The capstan head had been removed, and in its place sat a neat little automatic gun, which could fling two hundred and seventy three-pound sh.e.l.ls six thousand yards in a minute. For the rest of that night the _Boulotte_ lay motionless without a light showing or a word spoken. And just as the morning came, in the very first unearthly grey of it, a wave broke--a long, placid roller which had no right to break in that smooth, deep sea. Slingsby dipped his hand into the cartridge box and made sure that the band ran free; the gunner stood with one hand on the elevating wheel, the other on the trigger; eight hundred yards away from the _Boulotte_ there was suddenly a wild commotion of the water, and black against the misty grey a conning tower and a long, low body of steel rose into view.

U-whatever-its-number was taken by surprise. The whole affair lasted a few seconds. With his third shot the gunner found the range, and then, planting his sh.e.l.ls with precision in a level line like the perforations of a postage stamp, he ripped the submarine from amidships to its nose. Strange had a vision for a second of a couple of men trying to climb out from the conning tower, and then the nose went up in the air like the snout of some monstrous fish, and the sea gulped it down.

"One of 'em," said Slingsby. "But we won't mention it. Lucky you saw those red streaks, my friend. If a destroyer had come prowling up this coast instead of the harmless little _Boulotte_ there wouldn't have been any raft on the sea or any submarine just here under the sea.

What about breakfast?"

Strange set the boat's course for Ma.r.s.eilles, and the rest of that voyage was remarkable only for a clear ill.u.s.tration of the difference between the amateur and the professional. For whereas Strange could not for the life of him keep still during one minute, Slingsby, stretched at his ease on the saloon sofa, beguiled the time with quotations from the "Bab Ballads" and "Departmental Ditties."

RAYMOND BYATT

RAYMOND BYATT

Dorman Royle was the oddest hero for such an adventure. He followed the profession of a solicitor, and the business he did was like himself, responsible and a trifle heavy. No piratical dashes into the Law Courts in the hope of a great haul were encouraged in his office.

Clients as regular in their morals as in their payments alone sought his trustworthy and prosaic advice. Dorman Royle, in a word, was the last man you would think ever to feel the hair lifting upon his scalp or his heart sinking down into a fathomless pit of terror. Yet to him, nevertheless, these sensations happened. It may be that he was specially chosen just because of his unflighty qualities; that, at all events, became his own conviction. Certainly those qualities stood him in good stead. This, however, is surmise. The facts are beyond all dispute.

In June, Royle called upon his friend Henry Groome, and explained that he wanted Groome's country house for the summer.

"But it's very lonely," said Groome.

"I don't mind that," replied Dorman Royle, and his face beamed with the smile at once proud and sheepish and a little fatuous which has only meant one thing since the beginning of the world.

"You are going to be married!" said Groome.

"How in the world did you guess?" asked Royle; but it must be supposed that there had been some little note of regret or jealousy in his friend's voice, for the smile died away, and he nodded his head in comprehension.

"Yes, old man. That's the way of it. It's the snapping of the old ties--not a doubt. I shall meet you from time to time at the club in the afternoon, and you will dine with us whenever you care to. But we shall not talk very intimately any more of matters which concern us.

We shall be just a trifle on our guard against each other. A woman means that--yes. However, I do what I can. I borrow your house for my honeymoon."

Groome heard the speech with surprise. He had not expected to be understood with so much accuracy. He seemed to be looking at a new man--a stranger, almost certainly no longer his friend, but a man who had put friendship behind him and had reached out and grasped a treasure which had transfigured all his world.

"And whom are you going to marry?" Groome asked; and the answer surprised him still more.

"Ina Fayle."

"Ina--you don't mean----?"

"Yes, I do," said Royle, and the note of his voice was a challenge.

But Groome did not take it up. Ina Fayle, of course, he knew by sight and by reputation, as who in London at that time did not? She was a young actress who had not been content to be beautiful.

"Yes, she's a worker," suddenly said Royle. "She has had to work since she was sixteen, and what she is, sheer industry has made her. Now she is going to give up all her success."

Groome wondered for a moment how in the world she could bring herself to do it. A girl of twenty-three, she had gained already so much success that she must find the world a very pleasant place. She had the joy of doing superbly the work she loved, and a reward besides, tremendous because so immediate, in the adoration of the public, in the great salary after she had been poor, and while she was young enough to enjoy every penny of it. Groome was still wondering when once more Royle broke in upon him.

"Yes. It's the sort of renunciation which is much more surprising in a girl than it would be in a man. For the art of the stage is of much the same stuff as a woman's natural life, isn't it? I mean that beauty, grace, the trick of wearing clothes, the power of swift response to another's moods, play the same large part in both. But, you see, she has character, as well as gifts--that's the explanation."

Royle looked at his watch.

"Come and see her, will you?"

"Now?"

"Yes. I promised that I would bring you round," and as he got up from his chair he added: "Oh, by the way, as to your house, I ought to have told you. Ina has a dog--a black spaniel--do you mind?"

"Not a bit," said Groome, and he put on his hat.

The two men walked northwards, Royle at once extremely shy and inordinately proud. They crossed the Marylebone Road into Regent's Park.

"That's her house," said Royle, "the one at the end of the terrace."

Ina Fayle lived with a companion; she was not quite so tall as Groome, who had only seen her upon the stage, expected her to be. He had thought to find a woman a trifle cadaverous and sallow. But she had the clear eyes and complexion of a child, and her wealth of fair, shining hair spoke of a resplendent health. She came across the room and took Groome into a window.

"You know Dorman very well, don't you? I want to show you something I have bought for him. Oh, it's nothing--but do you think he will like it?"

She was simple and direct in her manner, with more of the comrade than the woman. She showed Groome a gold cigarette-case.

"Of course it will do. But you have already made him a better wedding-gift than that," said Groome.

"I?" Her forehead puckered in a frown. "What gift?"

"A very remarkable gift of insight, which he never had before."