"Why did I save it—have you no brains to think, then? Am I the master or the servant of the man who gave me life? Where would I be to-night but for him? Groping in a cell, beating at the walls with my bleeding hands; crying to them for God's sake to kill the madman. That's where I'd be. And where am I now? Why, upon the brink of the wide sea with the whole world for my prison. Free, I tell you, for all that I would do—free for vengeance; free to serve, to walk the old ways. That's what he has given me
"Then you were rescued from Parkhurst?"
His eyes flamed at the thought.
"The Captain came for me. I'd dreamed of it a hundred nights. Awake or asleep I dreamed of the Captain. Dead or alive he would come to me. Red death before me or blood in my eyes, I saw the Captain coming. Then they brought me the letter. I asked no questions. The warder had been well paid, I said. He brought me the letter. That night I climbed the wall by the Governor's house and made my way down to the sea. A boat waited for me; I went aboard the ship. The sentinel who fired his rifle at me will never fire another. I wrung his neck with these hands—I left him stark, and dead upon the hill-side. But the boat put out to sea and we made the great Atlantic—and now the work begins and they shall pay; the uttermost farthing, if the deep runs red with blood."
I shuddered when I heard him. A madman he was; but the temper of his madness passed all comprehension. And this man, I said, had escaped from prison; he was free to work his dreadful will where he could. Such horror of Ice Haven I had not know in the days when Black had ruled—and this was an Osbart I understood for the first time.
But more than my loathing of his talk, of his wild threats and his insane confessions, more than these was the story he had put together so incoherently.
Who was this unknown friend who had rescued him from Farkhurst prison; who was the man he served?
All the wild dreams of my journey since the first day of it were made good in this place and at this table. Here for the first time I knew the truth and trembled when I heard it.
"Tell me," I cried, "for God's sake tell me—is Black alive?"
Well, he looked at me as though I were the madman.
"Is Black alive?"
"I am asking you—is it possible that he lives?"
He laughed wildly—horrid laughter that echoed under the vault of the great room. Then, taking a candle from the table and regardless of the dish they had set before him, he rose and beckoned me to follow him.
We left the dining-room and went a little way down the wide corridor which runs the whole length of the cliff. There are rooms facing the lake at intervals here; and before the door of one of them he paused and lifted the candle aloft. Then he pulled a curtain and showed me what lay beyond. As in the great dining-hall, so here a table had been spread for dinner. There were five men sitting round about it, and for an instant I did not see that they were stone dead. But such was the case; and while one still had a cup in his hand, another held the very knife with which he had been cutting his food. So swiftly had the unseen death overtaken them that one of the younger men might have been still sleeping. The eyes of another were wide open and seemed to be looking at us. I saw that this man was Jo Mitchell, and that he alone among them had known both the pain and the fear of death.
"Well," cried Osbart, and his words echoed terribly in the dark room, "do you ask me the question now, Strong?"
But I had turned away, sick and faint at the spectacle; and worn out and overcome by all I had seen and heard, I tumbled in a dead stupor, and knew no more until the fresh night air brought me to my senses; and I saw that I was being carried out of the galleries to the cabin of a ship.
CHAPTER X
THE AVENGER
There was a small port above my bunk and I could see the green water running over it, as it were a cataract; and by this I judged that the cabin lay deep in the bowels of the ship and must be upon the lowest of its decks.
This was but an early impression; for I lay a long while, hardly conscious of my situation, and my memory clean gone concerning the events in the cavern. Once before had I opened my eyes in such a cabin as this—but that was upon the Nameless Ship and could be no more thought of.
I should tell you that the roof above me was arched as though the cabin had been built in a tunnel. Here in this dome there was a cluster of electric lights, and these showed me the elegant furniture of the place, which could hardly be matched for good taste on any ship afloat. Chiefly of polished Spanish mahogany, there were drawers and cupboards everywhere; a little library of books upon a shelf above the bed and a table for writing upon the opposite side. At my bed's head there stood a dial for calling the servants—as you may see in any modern hotel; and the number of things named upon it could not but set a man wondering.
As to the carpet, that was of skins; a fashion prevalent at Ice Haven and imitated here. I knew that there would be a bath below the rugs with which the floor was covered, and I was not at all surprised to see many of the panels of the woodwork covered with pictures of the French school; for that had been the practice upon the Nameless Ship and would be followed here. For the rest there was a greater elegance, but less space than in my former cabin; and even at the outset I could say both that the new vessel was faster than the old and very much smaller.
Why I had the latter impression I do not know. All my thoughts were vague enough; while my eyes were fascinated by the spectacle of the clear green water running over the thick glass of the porthole, and by the changing hues of it. These had been little varied at the beginning, but by and by there came a swift transition; from the purest greens to the most wonderful vivid colours of the spectrum, wherein one had the chromatic of the rainbow—the purest blues, the brightest yellows, and the deepest shade of purple.
There never was a more beautiful picture than this nor one more amazing. If I had guessed at hazard what it meant, I would have said that the sun shone down through the water; but this account seemed poor enough. It was not until I had a sudden vision of white ice, apparently so near the ship that a man might have touched it with outstretched hand, that I understood.
The boat was running between the bergs which float about Ice Haven—and she was running at so great a speed that her plates trembled visibly. All this, I say, occupied my mind while I lay upon my bed and tried to think about my situation and the events which had led up to it.
Whose ship was I upon, and how had I come there? I could distinctly remember my visit to the great cavern, but the more momentous events of the night were forgotten at the first. When they shaped themselves anew for me, I thought of them as of some dream of my sleep which it were idle to recall. Osbart himself remained in the background as a figure of the shadows which would melt away with the sun. And upon all this were the realities of the cabin and of the green seas flowing by my window. Surely that were true enough and might have spoken to me.
Such a mood will sometimes attend heavy sleep in a strange bed; and it is often followed by intervals of clear thought, when all that we have done and said is remembered to the minutest particular. So it was with me that day. Prom my troubled dreams, I awoke at last to recall the scene at supper, and the secrets of the room, and to hear Osbart telling me that Black still lived. Dwelling upon it I crossed the floor of the room and tried the door of my cabin. To my great wonder it was not locked, and I found myself peering down a narrow corridor brilliantly lit with electric lights. Then I returned to the bed and rang the bell.
Whose ship was I upon, and how had I come there? Was Osbart lying to me when he answered my question; was it the truth, as I had believed it might be, a truth passing all hope and expectation? Did the man who had ruled the high seas during the terrible years, the Master of the Nameless Ship, the enemy of the nations—did he live? Well, that was what I should learn before many hours had passed. And learning it—ah, what then?
Now,