"Why, I denies it, then; and what now, matey?"
The big fellow seemed taken all aback at this, and began to lick his lips as cowards will when they are pressed.
"Oh, you denies it, do you? And who the hell may you be, matey?"
Billy took up his glass of beer and answered him over his shoulder:
"Same as you were asking for, and not to be put out by no thin-gutted Yankee whatsoever."
He finished his ale and went to turn away. At the same moment the bully snatched up a wooden stool and aimed such a blow at Billy's head that he would have been a dead man there and then had it gone home. Billy, however, was not so unready as he seemed. He had closed with the big man and tripped him up before you could count two—and then we heard a thud as the fellow's head struck the flags, and for some minutes he lay insensible.
"There," says Billy, who had not turned a hair, "sail that into Chesapeake Bay—by thunder," and he hitched up his breeches and was about to leave the place without more ado, when the little Frenchman, hitherto a silent spectator of the scene, suddenly intervened with a ferocity quite unnatural. No wild cat could have fought with tooth and claw more horribly. I swear he fixed his teeth in poor Billy's arm and almost made them meet, while you could see his hands tearing at the throat as a leopard may tear at the throat of a sheep. Poor Billy would have told no more yarns of what happened to him at "eight bells" but for an ally as fearful as his help was unexpected. He was no other than the third of the strangers, the man hidden from my eyes by the corner of the counter, but now suddenly revealed at the top of the brawl.
Let me try to describe this uncouth figure, for we are to meet him again under circumstances very different. Perhaps not more than four feet in height, he was a hunchback, and had but a single eye—one which shone red enough to have been the eye of Polyphemus if it had been in the middle of his forehead. Ridiculously short in the legs, his arms were as ridiculously long—and, but for its deformity, his face might have been that of a child. But what was the more extraordinary thing was his personal strength, for no sooner had he determined to intervene in his shipmate's quarrel than he lifted Billy Eightbells and the Frenchman in his arms together and just dashed them to the ground as though they had been two dogs fighting. And when this was done, he fell to kicking his own man round and round the room as one would kick a ball for sport, and at every kick he cried, "Land Ho! Land Ho!" for all the world like a man at a masthead who sights a distant shore.
This unexpected turn did much to reassure Tom Benson, who had begun to fear that blood would be shed in his house. Billy Eightbells was soon upon his legs again, laughing at the Frenchman in spite of his hurt; while as for the bully, he had recovered his wits by this time, and roared like a bull at his friend's predicament. For myself, I must confess that the affair seemed just a tavern brawl in which I had no interest whatever; and, contenting myself by telling Nick Venning to keep an eye upon the strangers, I followed our man Billy to the street and soon came up with him.
"Well, Billy," said I, "and so it was not at eight bells this time. Did he hurt you, man? Did he really bite you?"
Billy pulled at the black curl above his forehead as though it had been a bell-rope, and then rolled back his shirt from his brawny arm to show me the place. As sailors will be, he was proud of the little trickle of blood upon the flesh, and pleasured, I am sure, that I should see the full-rigged ship in sail which was tattooed just above the elbow.
"Why, sir," says he, wiping off the blood with his fingers, "I can't deny that I have felt the edge of his teeth, but, to be sure, I wouldn't go for to begrudge him a little cold meat. Tis a way they have in his country, I'm told, and likely for a hungry people who don't think overmuch of the galley fire. Put a bit of a ring about that and a pinch of gunpowder, and it would make a mighty fine picture of a wheel-house, you'll admit. Why, I mind Jim Kerrymore, of the Baltic, who tattooed hisself, aloft and alow, by letting of the skipper's retriever bite him properly and rubbing it in with gunpowder. That was a pretty fancy, same as this here will be when it's cooled a bit."
Billy's yarns always amused me; but I wanted to talk to him about the men, and so I went on with a question.
"Where did they come from, Billy—what wind blew them on this shore?" I asked. He scratched his head first and then shook it sagely.
"As rum a bit of a ship's launch as ever turned an honest sailor into a merman. They must have sailed it round from Falmouth Harbour, though why they came so far to wet their whistles, the Lord only knows, sir."
"Is the boat warped hereabouts, Billy?"
"Right yonder aginst the timber wharf, sir; you can see it if you step through the yard."
I said I would do so, and he led the way, putting questions concerning our own cruise as he went, and mighty anxious, I could see, to learn both the name of our destination (if he could) and the purport of our voyage. These, however, we had kept from the crew, for to speak of treasure is to speak of danger, and it was an early day to think of that.
"So Mr. Stewart comes aboard to-night, sir?" Billy remarked. I said that he did.
"And Miss Mary, axing your pardon, she'll be sailing with us likewise, I am told?"
"Yes, Billy; Miss Mary's coming——"
He nodded his head.
"'Twill likely be a pleasure cruise entirely, then, sir?"
"Yes, I hope it will be that, Billy."
"And plenty of blankets to keep our noses from getting red, sir? That's what the men are saying."
"And right enough, too, Billy. We're going up to Greenland, so red would never match the colour of the shore. Now, show me the boat; or is that it lying there?"
He said that it was, and led me down to the little mole which juts out from the timber yard. Here a boat, in shape like a river skiff, but with plenty of freeboard and high in the bows, had been warped to a post. I perceived in a moment that it was unlike any ship's boat I had seen before, being entirely shaped of steel and apparently collapsible, the sections fitting one within the other. There were no oars in it, nor any sign of the way it had been propelled from Falmouth to Dolphin's Cove, but I observed that the stern was covered in by a light aluminium casing and I had more than a suspicion that electricity was the agent.
This, however, I could not prove, for hardly had I taken up my stand at the mole when I heard a shrill sound of whistling, very familiar to me, and almost immediately upon this a lank and stooping seaman, with as lantern-jawed a face as ever I clapped eyes upon, came across the yard and asked us in broken English what we were about.
And in that instant I knew how falsely I had answered Bill Eightbells, and how full of danger our voyage in the Celsis must be.
CHAPTER II
THE LAST OF THE STRANGERS
If ever I was sure of anything in my life, it was that I had seen the lanky seaman before; though under what circumstances I could not remember.
It may be that I was frightened to recall them, and that I knew from the first that the fellow had been one of Captain Black's servants at Ice Haven. Our courage plays strange tricks with us sometimes, and this may have been one of them. It was better to tell myself that the man was a stranger to me than to re-live scenes of horror which could still haunt me in my sleep. So I put him out of my mind and went back to clean my rifles just as though nothing had happened.
I say that I did this, and yet any one who has ever stood upon the threshold of adventure will know how ill it was done. Turn to this occupation or that as I might, I could not forget that we set out at four bells, and that many months might pass before I should see the white cliffs of England again. Ever before me was a picture of the great white land and of the treasure beckoning me. If I feared, it was not fear of the living,