"Oh, by-the-bye, when we get aboard Kenner's yacht, you'll find young Fisher there. He knows nothing of this, of course, and we must make a tale before we meet him. He'll take any story you give him, as you know."
Capel looked up sharply at the intelligence, and asked—
"Is that all right? Don't you think there's a risk?"
The question was not answered, for the cab drove off at some pace down Lombard Street, and Messenger made his way quickly to the Tilbury and Southend Railway. At half-past seven he reached the dock station; five minutes later he was on board the tug Admiral. He found her aft deck untenanted save by a great retriever dog, who had curled himself up near the trigger-hook; but three seamen in oilskins were working at the moorings, and the skipper, Kess Bobinson, a little bullet-headed, red-haired man, who wore a kind of leather jerkin and a peaked cap, stood by them, swearing many strange oaths in many tongues. So occupied was he with his verbal fireworks that Messenger's coming escaped him for a moment. And when he did see him, he proved that he was in a very poor humour.
"You've come aboard, have you?" said he; "and time, too, time, too!"
"What's wrong?" asked the Prince. "You don't seem exactly in a fête-and-gala temper. Is any thing amiss?"
"Amiss enough," replied the fellow gruffly. "This cursed warping's fouled, for one thing, and there's another—but I'll tell you aft."
In the small cabin or state-room which serves the skipper's needs on a deep-sea tug they sat down to have the few words possible before the final act in their laboriously built drama began. Robinson closed the cabin-door carefully after them, and went on to speak at once, while he helped himself to an elaborate potation from a bottle of Hollands gin.
"Fact is," said he, "this chap, our mate, Mike Brennan by name, doesn't go as easy to it as I should like. Not exactly that he scents we out, but he wants to know a long sight too much. He's ashore, and I'm looking for two of our new hands to soak him. If he comes aboard sober, there's wind to blow afore morning, as sure as we're sitting here,"
"What about the others?" asked Messenger.
"There's six of 'em answering to their names, and three new. I booked 'em in the docks yesterday, and they're our sort. Then there's three old hands fit to work with me right through it, and the mate. But it's a swinging job, guvner!"
The Prince lighted a big cigar and lay back on the cushions to think. He could not disguise from himself the fact that he had then embarked upon the greatest venture of his adventurous life, and even at the ultimate moment he could scarce believe that success could attend such a mighty coup. Yet he knew that he had given long nights to the framing of his plan; and if he alone had borne the responsibility, no second thought of its result would have come to him. But the burden was shared by many—it was impossible otherwise that the enterprise could have been set afoot—and the great coup once accomplished, the danger from babblers' tongues was indisputable. He knew well enough that success, full and unchecked, meant years of banishment to all of them; and while each man embarked had a stake big enough to make him hold his tongue, it was more than possible that failure might come—and then!
These reflections passed through his mind quickly as he heard Kess Robinson's tale; but whatever were his own qualms, he did not show them. Rather he maintained a bantering humour as he answered:
"Pooh, man! where's the trouble come in? This isn't the time to wear your heart on your sleeve. You're going to act now; and that reminds me—you've got a Colt on you?"
"Not me," said the skipper; "fire-irons ain't much in my line, and I don't see as we'll be wanting them."
"But this mate—what is to be done with him?"
"What the time and this handspike tell me."
More he did not say, for a seaman entered with the intelligence that the others had come; and the two men went on deck together with expectant haste. The tide was now full and the rain had ceased—a glorious night following upon the tempest. From the docks of Tilbury the masts of many ships were pointed with fire, and the great red globe of the sun sent crimson light upon the swirling waters of the river and the roofs of the unpicturesque town. Full in this red light, upon the edge-of the quay, stood Sydney Capel and his fellow, Arthur Conyers, guardians of a load of large well-bound kegs and sealed cases in which the colossal treasure lay. In ten minutes the bullion had been stowed in the aft cabin ; and when the clerks had shouted: "All right!" to those ashore, the tug passed from the docks and steamed quickly up the river—Kess Robinson upon the bridge; a band named George White at the wheel; the mate, Mike Brennan, fuddled and sleeping in his berth in the fo'castle.
The money had been stowed, as I have written, in the cabin aft; but a few words as to the form of this golden cargo will not come amiss to those who know little of the way in which our great financial houses ship bullion to the Continent. There are many methods. Sometimes the gold takes the shape of ingots, weighing two hundred ounces each; sometimes it is sent in sovereigns, packed in iron-bound cases. A million sovereigns weigh a little more than ten tons. Upon this occasion it had been sent, the larger part in ingots, which were in kegs, the smaller part in sovereigns, which were in the iron-bound chests. Both cheats and kegs were stacked in the one cabin of the tug, and it was upon a chest that Sydney Capel, wearing a light travelling coat and cap, sat at the moment the tug passed Gravesend, and began to enter the broader reaches of the river. His fellow-worker, Arthur Conyers—who invariably accompanied him on these occasions—had managed to accommodate himself upon the edge of the captain's bunk; while Messenger, who was talking with expressive animation, leaned upon the table beneath the lantern. Looking at the group as a mere spectator, you would have been hard put to imagine it as other than a group of contented idlers, anticipating in the laziness of sea life a pleasure trip to Flushing. Nor elsewhere on the tug was there the slightest indication of the holocaust so shortly to be offered. The forward lookout chanted his observations with ample briskness; the bullet-headed skipper paced the bridge with a perpetual motion which warranted vigilance; the funnel emitted a dull haze of smoke which would have been a cloud of blackness but for the good Welsh coal. There was not even an episode until the dark fell, and the Chapman light, shining with a great glow for two minutes to leave a void of darkness for one, gave promise of the more open sea at the river's mouth; and of the beginning of that long night of hazard and of death.
As the Admiral came opposite to Sheerness, Messenger passed up the companion with a quick look at Capel, and joined the skipper on the bridge.
"Well," he said, "do you make out anything of Kenner's ship?"
"I'm not saying I do," muttered the skipper.
the Prince bit his lip.
"Kenner never was quick," said he. "Light a flare."
""'YE'RE BUSY UP THERE, BEDAD'"
He had more to say, but it remained upon his lips, for when he looked to the deck below, he saw the mate, Mike Brennan, standing there, his eyes winking in the powerful rays of the flare, but a strange curiosity holding him stiff as he glanced from the men upon the bridge to the distant signal, and again from the signal to the men upon the bridge.
The mate was as yet half-sober, but a glimmer of crazy intelligence lighted up his brain, and he stammered out with reckless simplicity—
"Ye're busy up there, bedad!"
This was his remark, and he went to his cabin again with a pretence of stupor and of sullenness which for a moment turned the others from all suspicion of him. For