How still it was, how sublime, how wonderful! Unchanging in its awe and mystery, the birth of day, whether it be viewed from the deck of a ship, the summit of a mountain, or even from the heart of a great and sleeping city, must ever remain a spectacle of transcendent beauty and majesty. It is as though the Eternal spoke to the sea and the land from the open gate of heaven itself—a command to live anew for the work of the day upon which the Holy Spirit would breathe.
On the ocean there is that added glory of a vast horizon, of the immeasurable ether and the fading magnitude of the stars. Driven back reluctantly, as the poet has written, Night draws off her armies and the sun chariots speed on. You see them afar, a glow of chill grey light beneath the vault of the stars. Winds moan fretfully; the sails above you sag and shiver; stillness falls upon the waters—a silence as profound as that of man’s deepest homage. For a little while a trance has come upon things inanimate.
Little rills of foam go running to the breasts of the greater waves as cubs to the she-bear for warmth and safety. A battle is waged in the heavens, but the hosts are hidden. The clouds labour, but are riven. An arc of golden iridescence blazons the eastern sky. Day’s outposts march on to victory, and man lifts his hands to invoke their aid.
A daily scene and yet how unchangingly sublime! Standing there upon the bridge with my good friends about me, it seemed that the glory of the morn shone full upon our faces and bade us hope. No longer did the night baffle our weary eyes. We sailed a freshening sea at the splendour of the day, and far away upon the clear horizon we espied the relief ship of which our third officer had spoken.
“No star, sir, after all,” said he, “unless, that is, you would care to call her a lucky star.”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE THRASHER AND THE WHALE.
We Determine to Harass the Diamond Ship.
The steamer, driving on rapidly to the westward, showed her hull very plainly when a quarter of an hour had passed, and was immediately named by Cain, the quartermaster, who was at the wheel, for a collier he had seen some months back at Cardiff.
“She flew the Brazilian flag, sir, and carried a Russian skipper what had a picture nose,” said he cheerily enough. “I remember the boys said that someone tattoed a bit of a circus scene on his figure-head when he was took in drink at Rio last trip. I’d have knowed the ship anywheres by that doll’s house abaft the funnel. Leastwise, if there ain’t two of ’em, she’s the same.”
His logic was commendable and we questioned him.
“Had she any arms, Cain?”
“Nothing that I see, sir, saving the shovels.”
“And you didn’t know where she was bound to?”
“They gave it out as Rio, sir. I had a bit of a tumble-to with a Portuguese steward of theirs, and I gave him Port Arthur for himself. ‘You come to Rio,’ says he, ‘and I’ll d——n well pull your nose.’ It seemed to me a long way to go for the job, sir, and that I could get it done cheaper at home. I never see him again, and next day the ship sailed.”
We laughed at his manner of telling it, but the news proved acceptable enough. I had already come to a determination, and this I communicated immediately to Larry.
“We must stop them,” I said; “if we are to save Joan Fordibras; that steamer must not put her cargo on the deck of the Diamond Ship. The risk is small enough, Captain. I think that a signal will do it—if not a signal, then a gunshot anyway. Let us put it to the proof. The success or failure will mean more than any of you imagine.”
He obeyed me without question, and we steamed straight for the tramp, steering such a course that we overtook her on the port-quarter, and so were difficult to come at by any forward gun, should she carry one. My own impression was that she did not. Her safety from inquisitional officers in port would be better assured by the normal practice of ocean-going cargo-boats. I believed that the quartermaster had told us the truth, and upon that supposition I acted.
“Signal to her to bring to, Larry,” I said, and he assented immediately.
It was pretty to see our flags fluttering upon the breeze of morning, and to watch the commotion upon the deck of the tramp. We knew that she had sighted us almost as soon as we set our engines going. The far horizon disclosed no trace of the Diamond Ship. We two appeared alone in all that vista of the rolling waters.
Now, the ship answered by demanding our name and our business. We could make out the figures of two or three men upon her bridge; but the crew appeared an unusually small one and the aft decks were completely deserted. To their signal we replied immediately: (1.) That Imroth, the Jew, was flying from British warships; (2.) That their own safety depended upon their immediate submission.
Not the whole truth, perhaps, and yet as I hoped truth enough. It had been in my mind all along that the Government would send at least a patrol to the seas I had named. I could not believe that, after my revelations, ports would not be watched. So I signalled this message and waited, with not a little expectation, for an answer. To my astonishment, their Captain’s reply was to ask me to go aboard—meaning, of course, the master of the yacht.
“Come with me, Timothy,” said I to McShanus. “Don’t talk about pistols, men. Larry will stand by for danger. We could sink them in five minutes if we had the mind—it’s as safe as Rotten Row.”
“No safe place at all for a man who is susceptible to woman’s beauty. Go aboard, Ean, me bhoy, I’ll take your word for it when I come back.”
We put out a gangway and lowered the lifeboat from the starboard davits. The collier, lying some two hundred paces from our bows, let down a pilot’s ladder for me, and I caught it as it fell, and climbed to her decks. Far down below me now, the portly Timothy asked me if I thought he was a bird. I left him, full of strange oaths, in the boat, and presented myself immediately to the captain of the steamer.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
He shook his head and said “Nitchevo” emphatically.
A phrase in German, however, obtained an immediate answer. I perceived him to be a coarsely built man of some fifty years of age, his nose scarred roughly by a seaman’s needle, as the quartermaster Cain had told me, and his manner as threatening and full of bluster as his master the Jew could have wished.
“What’s your business with me?” he asked—while his clumsy fingers fondled a revolver he carried in his breeches pocket.
“To keep your neck out of the noose,” said I, without any preface whatever. “Your game is up and Val Imroth taken. That’s what brought me here.”
He spat on the deck and called a mate to him—another Russian no more beautiful than he. For a few moments they conversed together in a dialect I could make nothing of. It was plain that while my story astounded them beyond measure, they were by no means ready to believe it. And so they fell to bluff, which would not have deceived a child.
“What’s this man to me?” the Captain asked; “am I his servant?”
“Undoubtedly, since you carry coal to his ship.”
“Suppose I tell you to go to h—ll and mind your own business?”
“In that case, you might arrive at the destination before me. I am going to give you ten minutes. If you are not steaming eastward at the end of that time, I promise you that I will most certainly send you to the bottom. Reflect