He might well have said it, for Osbart was as white as a sheet, and his eyes were almost starting from his head. He had but one thought, that Black had betrayed him, and that the Zero was as surely trapped as though the police were already aboard her.
"They'll take you at Dover in the Narrows, " he said, almost with savage calm. Black replied by ringing the bell and telling Sambo to serve supper.
"So be it, Doctor," says he, with a laugh. "At Dover, then, we'll look out for your old friends. Let's pledge them a bumper while we have the time, for to-morrow—why, maybe, to-morrow we die."
And with that he led the way to the saloon, and we followed him, as the Zero rose to the surface, and all the glory of the moonlit sea was revealed to us.
CHAPTER XIV
WE FIGHT BELOW THE SEA
We were now out upon the North Sea, and it was plain that we were going to attempt the passage of the Straits of Dover and so try to reach the open Atlantic.
Beyond this I had not a notion of Black's plans, nor was Osbart any wiser. As for the crew, they were as wild a set of desperadoes as ever trod a ship's deck. North or south, east or west, it did not matter a rap to them, while debauch was their goal. They had cast in their lot with the greatest dare-devil in the world, and nothing else mattered.
This was all very well, but I had already come to believe that Black was not the man he used to be, and that his old-time prudence had gone down with the Nameless Ship he loved so well. Herein Osbart agreed with me, and it was just because the Doctor understood the Captain's new mood better than most of us that he suffered so many panics upon this voyage.
For my own part I did not doubt that Osbart was wise in his forebodings, and that this wild adventure could not long endure. What my own share in it must be, whether good or ill, what the future must bring to me, I cared but little, such was the magnetism of the man and his daring. You, who have never known Captain Black, may not follow me in this; but, had you known him, you would have suffered the spell not less surely, and have found in this amazing contest of one man against the whole world a spectacle so engrossing that no peril by sea or land would have dragged you from it.
Remember that we had no port in all the world open to us; that every warship, to whatever nation she belonged, must seize us if she could, or sink us upon sight if capture were not possible. We carried a great hoard of gold, which would have opened untold delights to every man aboard could we have found a haven ashore.
But that gold was now so much dross to us, of less worth than the weed of the sea or the pebbles of the beach. No merry smacksman in a fishing-boat was as poor as we; the very beggars at the church doors might have despised us.
And yet, I say, Black was not daunted, and the jester's mood still sat lightly upon him. Here in the North Sea, with British warships upon one hand and German upon the other, he played a boy's part and delighted in it. Well do I remember how, that very night, when we had left the Humber, he came suddenly upon a fishing-fleet silhouetted against the azure horizon, and ran the Zero in among them and began his capers there. Such a scene, played in the bright moonlight, had never been known in the North Sea before, and never will be again. Here were we, risen up suddenly from the depths amongst these poor fellows, who surely must have thought we were the devil. And there was Black scattering gold upon their decks by handfuls. The night must be far distant when those fine fellows out of Grimsby will be able to tell of another hour as lucky.
That was a picture which will not readily pass from my mind. I see again the black trawlers, bold and sharp against the starlit sky; the wide waters with the moonbeams rippling upon them; I hear Black's merry laugh as he paced the platform and hailed this ship and that, asking of their welfare, and then flinging his gold upon their decks. Here and there a coin would go flashing into the water, and gleam an instant there; but Black ever had a contempt for money, and I do believe he would have flung diamonds into the sea as readily. When the jest was done, he fell to talking earnestly to Jack-o'-Lantern, who worshipped his very footsteps, and I could see that the pair of them were not a little concerned at the appearance upon the northern horizon of a ship which had the aspect of a cruiser. Black, however, gave no orders, and we continued to lie upon the surface, while the distant vessel gradually drew away to the eastward, and even the Doctor forgot to be afraid.
Osbart had become his old self again after we had left the Humber, and I had quite a long chat with him as we smoked a pipe together Before turning in. There for the first time I heard that Black had a haven in Spain, and that he was making for it upon this very voyage. But for Ned Jolly and the Captain's unswerving loyalty to all who had befriended him, we should never have entered the North Sea at all; but here we were, and God alone knew if we were ever to get out of it.
"They'll trap us at Dover, if it's anywhere," Osbart said. "I told Black so, but what's the use? You might as well try to move Mont Blanc as to alter his course when he's set upon it. If his insanity to-night doesn't bring his ship ashore—why, then nothing will. They've three submarines at Ports-mouth, and the French have half a dozen more at Cherbourg. When I tell him so, he lights a new cigar and offers me a match! Good God! and we might be living like kings ashore if he'd make for South America, as I want him to. There are a dozen cities there which would take such a man, and glad to have him. And what's he say to it—why, that Paris is the only place fit to live in, and that the others are towns for hogs."
I ventured to suggest that if the danger in the English Channel were all he feared it to be, then Black's partiality for the French capital really did not matter. But Osbart would not hear of that—his faith in the great skipper was sound enough at heart and led him to an eternal hope even in the face of inevitable disaster.
"Oh," he said dryly, "he may find a door—he's just the man, even if the devil were on the other side of the wall. You know that as well as I. The ship which takes Black is going to be the Glory Boat, and somebody pulling like Satan at her tiller. All the same, I wish we were out of the Channel; and so do you, my boy, for all your Quaker's face. Why, Strong, you'd no more give him up than sell your own father to the Cherokee Indians. I know it—and so do you."
I evaded the question, as well I might, and we fell to talking of other matters, but chiefly of the great ship with which Black had ruled the seas before the ironclads of the nations hunted him down. Those were amazing days, but Osbart seemed to think that if the Zero once made the ocean, the old kingship would be taken up, and our skipper rule the Atlantic as he had ruled it when first I knew him. And so we were back again at the starting point. Should we be trapped off Dover, or should we not? It was plain that time alone could answer that question, and answered it was dramatically enough, as you shall now learn.
We travelled slowly down the North Sea, standing outside the roads of Yarmouth, and seeing Lowestoft and Southwold but as a cluster of lights upon a far horizon. Margate we passed in the daytime, and I could just discern the cliffs of the North Foreland as we set a course toward the French coast, and so lost the English shore altogether. So far there had seemingly been very little prudence in the manner of our voyage. We kept the Zero on the surface, and the weather being abnormally warm and sunny, the best part of our days were spent upon the platform, where we basked, while the crew lifted their wild chanteys or gambled to an accompaniment of frightful oaths and often of blows.
Black passed his time chiefly in his cabin, where, as Osbart told me, he occupied himself with a wonderful collection of coins he had purchased at Christie's just before he bought the Zero. Sometimes at night, when the hither sea was free of ships, we would have a little