We were in for it now, as you may suppose, and our hearts beating finely, as young hearts ever will when there are pursuers and pursued. What business we had to be out there in the open at such a time of night, why we took upon our shoulders duties which the police of Falmouth and of Cherbourg might have performed so much better, I make no pretence to say. Let it stand that the good launch went racing through the ugly seas as though she understood the game, and that we stood aft as the skipper commanded, and cried the news from man to man with voices that rose or fell to exultation or despair.
We were gaining; we were losing; they would escape in the darkness; the moonlight would undo them. And so it went on until our prospects became apparent beyond all doubt, and we knew that another half-hour of it would bring us up with the men and answer the question for good and all.
"We'll run alongside and make fast, gentlemen," said the skipper at this time. "If Mr. Mark will be good enough to cover the scoundrels with the gun, I will answer for the rest. You others get what shelter you can. There's been one murder done, and there'll be another if we ask for it. Now, steady there with that wheel, and one point starboard when I give the word."
The watch answered "Ay, Ay," and the hands, very ready to profit by the warning, began to stow themselves with what wit they could. My own place was just abaft the funnel, where I had good shelter of a kind, and could answer for the man with the gun as the skipper wished. Roderick squatted by me, while the Captain himself, disdaining to take any cover whatever, stood near by and waited silently. And this was how the affair was going, every man high-strung, the strange launch some half a mile away on the starboard bow, the moon a little clouded over, the swell much abated, our hopes of a capture running wild—this, I say, is how the affair was going when the strange thing happened, and both the men and the boat were gone from our sight in a twinkling, as though the sea herself had opened and swallowed them up.
It began, I should tell you, with a shrill siren, blown by no steamer that we could see, and so awesome and mysterious that even the hands were cowed by it. For myself, I had but to hear it to be set all a shudder with my memories; just as I had been upon that unforgotten night at Ice Haven when Black had murdered his prisoners and filled anew the desolate land with desolation. Now, as then, the siren echoed as a very death cry across the waste of waters; now, as then, it seemed to speak of human suffering and human cruelty in a voice that almost chilled the heart. And I must hear it and be afraid to utter a word lest just ridicule overtook me. For how could the dead speak; and was not the Name-less Ship but rusted iron at the bottom of the ocean?
Well, all listened to this strange signal, and one or two passed the remark that there was something uncommon queer about it. As for the skipper, I saw him peering about as though his eyes had deceived him, and presently he said, "Would they have a siren aboard, do you think?" But I told him they had not, for I had seen the launch that morning and was quite sure there was no such thing aboard her. We were still debating it when the watch cried, "Fog on the starboard bow"; and, sure enough, the sea, which had been free even of a wraith of mist five minutes ago, was now covered by a black pall that might very well have been the smoke of a burning ship. Such a thing I had never heard of, nor any man on board.
"Is she afire?" the skipper asked. I rejoined that the strange launch stood a cable's length from the place, and that the smoke did not come from any funnel of hers. In truth, I do believe he knew as much himself when he put the question.
"I've been at sea thirty years, man and boy," he ran on, "and never did I see a thing like that. Why, she's running into it, gentlemen, slap into it, upon my word."
It was true enough. The launch ran straight for the mysterious bank of fog, and presently was lost to sight. We ourselves, holding upon a course two points to the south of theirs, now eased our engines, and presently went right about to avoid the fog-bank if we could; but hardly had we brought up the launch when the greatest wonder of the night befell. As in a twinkling the fog lifted, until hardly a hand's breadth of cloud rested upon the sea. Where previously a look-out could not have seen a quarter of a mile ahead of him, he could now espy the Lizard light if he had the eyes. But, stranger still, with the fog had gone the launch and its crew. Not a sign of them anywhere; no shape upon the clear and fretting waters; no witness to any derelict of the night; nothing but the rolling wave-caps and the far horizon and the distant lights of that shore we had left so expectantly.
I have related the circumstances, and I shall add little to that relation. It would be idle here to speak of the stupefaction which overtook our crew; of the senseless theories they propounded; either of that or their fears. Seamen are a superstitious folk, and if ever a belief in the supernatural had a justification, it was upon that night when we stood off Falmouth Harbour and knew that the launch had escaped us. Even Captain York, the imperturbable, fell to a silence I could not misunderstand. My own thoughts, my faith, my wondering awe, I would not have disclosed to any man.
And yet I will bear witness in this place that some glimmer of the truth had come to me, and that the siren from the deep spoke, not of the living, but of the dead. Even as I had heard the voice of Captain Black over the wastes of Ice Haven, so did I hear it again, as it were, from the very sea wherein he had found a grave.
CHAPTER III
THE MAD DOCTOR IS HEARD OF AGAIN
We made a rapid passage to Greenland and first sighted the grim shores of that ice-bound land on the fifteenth day after leaving the Irish coast. Whatever had been the significance of the events at Dolphin's Cove, they were forgotten so soon as we steamed upon the open sea, and not a man of us did not dream of treasure the whole day long.
I used to laugh sometimes at the eagerness of our fellows and the wild talk with which they amused themselves. Verily you would have said that the riches of the fables were already poured into their laps. Even so shrewd a rogue as old Dan—Mary's favourite—could speak of the day when he would drive his "kerridge and pair" on Plymouth Hoe! The others dreamed idle dreams of trim houses by the seashore, and gardens fair with flowers, and a "blessed doing of nothing"—as Billy Eightbells tersely put it.
Of course, the men knew the object of our voyage by this time, and it had put heart into them. I think they cared little for stories of other adventures on the same track; nor did they believe that I, myself who had sailed with Captain Black, would have gone at all if there were any doubts of the issue. "Mr. Mark, he knows summat," they would say. But just what I did know they had yet to find out.
We, ourselves, talked of it often in the cabin when Mary was not there; and we read and re-read the letter which the mad Doctor Osbart wrote me from Parkhurst Prison. I had received this extraordinary document some four months before we set sail from England, and immediately upon reading it I knew that Roderick and I would go to Greenland whatever the consequences.
Perhaps you will say that it was a madman's tale and that we were foolish to believe in it. But I thought it otherwise. Notwithstanding the high-flown language in which it was couched, its wild sentiment and grotesque exaggeration, I read in it the words of a man hungering for freedom; and sometimes I think that I could have pitied Osbart.
I shall set down this letter here that every one may know just what the Doctor wrote, and understand the purport of a voyage which has been so much misunderstood.
And, first, it was a letter which had been posted to me from the prison at Parkhurst, in the Isle of Wight, by what agency I do not know to this day. Dated oddly, "In the Year of the Adventure X," this alone should have stamped it as the effusion of a madman's brain. If I alone read truth between the lines, remember that I alone of all on the Celsis had lived with Black upon his ship, had known and feared, and, in a way, had loved him.
The Prison, Parkhurst,
"The Third Day of January, "In the Year of the Adventure X.
"My dear Strong:—Sincere good