"Get a grapnel forward, and look out there," cried Dan, who was in command; and Billy stood ready, while we could hear the swish of the waves against the cutter's bows, and every man instinctively put his hand on his pistol or his knife.
As if to help us, the wind fell away as the schooner came up, and she began to shake her sails; making no way as she headed almost due east. It seemed a fit moment for effort, and Dan had just sung out "Give way," when every man who had gripped an oar let go the handle again and sat with horror writ on his countenance. For, almost with the words of the order, there was the sound as of fierce contest, of the bursting of wood, and the spread of flame; and in that instant the decks of the yacht were ripped up, and sheets of fire rose from them to the rigging above. The light of this mighty flare spread instantly over the sea about her, and far away you could look on the rolling waves, red as waves of fire. A terrible sight it was, and terrible sounds were those of the wood rending with the heat, of the stays snapping and flying, of the hissing of the flame where it met the water. But it was a sight of infinite horror to us, because we knew that one who might yet live was a prisoner of the conflagration—the one passenger, as it seemed then, of the vessel which was doomed.
"Give way," roared Dan again, for the men sat motionless with terror. "Are you going to let him burn? May God have mercy on him, for he needs mercy!"
The words awed them. They shot the long-boat forward; and I stood in her stern to observe, if I could, what passed on the burning decks. And I saw a sight the like to which I pray that I may never see again. Martin Hall stood at the main shrouds, motionless, volumes of flame around him, his figure clear to be viewed by that awful beacon.
"Why doesn't he jump it?" I called aloud. "If he can't swim, he could keep above until we're alongside"; and then I roared "Ahoy!" and every man repeated the cry, calling "Ahoy!" each time he bent to his oar, his voice hoarse with excitement. But Martin Hall never moved, his gaunt figure was motionless—the flames beat upon it, it did not stir; and we drew near enough anon and knew the worst.
"Devils' work, devils' work!" said Dan; "he's lashed there—and he's dead!" But the men still cried "Ahoy!" as they rushed their oars through the water, and were as those mad with fiery drink.
"Easy!" roared Dan. "Easy, for a parcel of stark fools! Would you run alongside her?"
There they lay, for any nearer approach would have been perilous, and even in that place where we were, twenty feet on the windward side, the heat was nigh unbearable. So near were we that I looked close as it might be into the dead face of Martin Hall, and saw that the fiends who had lashed him there had done their work too well. But I hoped in my heart that he had been dead when the end of the ship had begun to come, and that it were no reproach to me that he had perished: for to save his body from that holocaust was work no man might do.
So did we watch the mounting fire, and the last tack of the yacht La France. Saucily she raised her head to a new breeze, shook her great sail of flame in the night, and scattered red light about her. Then she dipped her burning jib as if in salute, and there was darkness.
"Rest to a good ship," said Dan, in melancholy mood; but I said—
"Rest to a friend." I had known the man whose death had come; and when his body went below I hungered for the grip of the hand which was then washed by the Channel waves.
"Give way," I cried to the men, who sat silent in their fear of it, and when they rowed again they cried as before, "Ahoy": so strong and vivid was the picture which the sea had then put out.
As we neared our own ship, Roderick endeavoured to speak to me, but his voice failed, and he took my hand, giving it a great grip. Then we came on board, where Mary waited for us with a white face, and the others stood silent; but we said nothing to them, going below. There I locked myself in my own cabin, and though fatigue lay heavy on me, and my eyes were clouded with the touch of sleep, I took Martin Hall's papers from my locker, and lighted the lamp to read them through.
But not without awe, for they were a message from the dead.
CHAPTER V.
THE WRITING OF MARTIN HALL.
The manuscript, which was sealed on its cover in many places, consisted of several pages of close writing, and of sketches and scraps from newspapers—Italian, French, and English. The sketches I looked at first, and was not a little surprised to see that one of them was the portrait of the man known as "Roaring John," whom I had met at Paris in the strange company; while there was with this a blurred and faint outline of the features of the seaman called "Four-Eyes," who had come to me at the Hôtel Scribe with the bidding to go aboard La France. But what, perhaps, was even more difficult to be understood was the picture of the great hull of what I judged to be a warship, showing her a-building, with the work yet progressing on her decks. The newspaper cuttings I deemed to be in some part an explanation of these sketches, for one of them gave a description of a very noteworthy battleship, constructed for a South American Republic, but in much secrecy; while another hinted that great pains had been taken with the vessel, which was built at a mighty cost, and on so new a plan that the shipwrights refused to give information concerning her until she had been some months at sea to prove her.
All this reading remained enigmatical, of course, and as I could make nothing of it to connect it with the events I have narrated, I went on to the writing, which was fine and small, as the writing of an exact man. And the words upon the head of it were these:—
SOME ACCOUNT OF A NAMELESS WARSHIP,
Of Her Crew, and Her Purpose.
Written for the eyes of Mark Strong, by Martin Hall, sometime his friend.
I put from me the sorrow of the thought which the last three words brought to me, and read therefrom this history, which had these few sentences as its preface:—
"You read these words, Mark Strong, when I am dead; and I would ask you before you go further with them to consider well if you would wish, or have inclination for, a pursuit in which I have lost all that a man can lose, and in which your risk, do you take the work upon you, will be no less than mine was. For if you read what is written here, and have in you that stuff which cannot brook mystery, and is fired when mystery also is danger, I know that you will venture upon this undertaking at the point where death has held my hand; and that by so doing you may reap where I have sown. And with this, think nor act in any haste lest you lay to my charge that which may befall you in the pursuit you are about to begin."
I read on, for the desire to do justice to Martin Hall was strong upon me at the very beginning of it.
From that place the story was in great part autobiographical, but in no sense egotistical. It was, as you shall see, the simple narration of a man sincere in his dreaming, if he did dream; logical in his madness, if he were mad. And this was his story as first I read it:—
"Having well considered the warning which is the superscription of this record, you have determined to continue this narrative, I do not doubt; for I judge you to be a man who, having tasted the succulent dish of curiosity, will not put it away until you have eaten your fill. I will tell you, therefore, such a part of my life as you should know when you come to ask yourself the question, 'Is this man a fool or an imbecile, a crack-brained faddist or the victim of hallucination?' This question should arise at a later stage, and I beg you not to put it until you have read every word that I have written here.
"I was born in Liverpool, thirty-three years ago, and was educated for a very few years at the well-known institute in that city. They taught me there that consciousness of ignorance which is half an education; and being the son of a man who starved on