So thus the matter stood when darkness came down and the fog lay thick about the Diamond Ship. Okyada, my servant, had vanished unaccountably, nor had I heard a single word concerning him since we came on board together. The yacht had disappeared from my ken, and the shrewdest eyes could not detect her situation, or the quickest ears give news of her. In these trying circumstances I welcomed a request from one of the seamen that I would visit Colin Ross, the captain of the vessel, and until lately the representative of Valentine Imroth, aboard her. This man I found lying grievously wounded by a bullet which had entered the left lung and penetrated in such an ugly fashion that his life must be a question of hours. His was not an unpleasant face, nor was his manner in any way repellent. I told him frankly, when he asked me, that he could not live, and he answered with a wan smile that was almost a sob.
“Good God! sir,” he said, “how little any man, who makes a beginning on a crooked road, ever sees the end of it! I was the captain of a Shields collier two years ago, doing well, and calling my home my own. When Mr. Imroth found me out, I would no more have done a shabby thing than have harmed my little baby girl, who’s waiting for me in Newcastle now. Money bought me—I’ll not deny it. I promised to run this ship to the Brazils for a thousand guineas, and there’s Imroth’s seal upon it on the table yonder. You may not believe me, but what the story of this business is, how these men came here, or why they have come, I know no better than the Pope of Rome—and that’s the truth, if my life’s the price of it. And yet, sir, that it’s a bad business I’d be a fool to deny. He who touches pitch gets plenty on his fingers. I knew that Val Imroth was a bad lot the first day I saw him—and bad enough are his companions on this ship. Why, good God! there’d have been murder done every day if it hadn’t been for fear of the man and his words. He puts a palsy on you when you hear his step—his breath’s a flame of hell—this crowd shivered at his look. It’s fear of him that’s kept them quiet since he ran for shore; it’s fear of him which will send them all to the dock in the end; as sure as I lie here telling you so.”
I cannot conceal the fact that this interview affected me greatly. Here was a robust British sailor, a man perhaps of thirty-five years of age, brown-haired, blue-eyed, and of an open cast of countenance, about to give up his life and to pass for ever from the love which awaited him in England because a monster had breathed a breath upon him, and had cried in his ears the fables of the gold. Hundreds of men, as innocent as this man, were exiles from wife and children to-day, outcasts, jail-birds, suspects, human derelicts, because of this devilish net which had enmeshed them, of these criminal arms which had embraced them, and this voice of lust which charmed them. Many a man have I seen die—but not as this seaman died, with a child’s name upon his lips, and a child’s image before his eyes. Of what avail to speak at such a moment of the Eternal Hope in the justice of an Almighty and all-Merciful God, or to recite those platitudes in which pious folk take refuge? Colin Ross was thinking of the child who nevermore would call him father, or by him to be called child again.
This, however, is to anticipate the hour. There was much upon which I would gladly have questioned the man; but little that he had the strength to answer me. Just as the seamen had sworn that it was all well with Joan, so did he bear them out with such emphasis as his failing strength could command.
“We were to make the Brazils and take a passage for Miss Joan to London. Her father, General Fordibras, is there, doctor. If harm has come to her, it is since I left the deck. The men worshipped her—there are rogues enough, I grant you, who would have had their say, but I shot the first dead with my own hand, and the men answered for the second, God help him! You’ll find Miss Joan all right, and take her back to her father. For the rest, I can’t advise you, sir. You are safe enough on board here while this trouble is new—but when it’s past, save yourself, for God’s sake; for your life will not be worth a minute’s purchase. Remember what’s at stake if this ship makes port and you are there to give an account of her. Hands and passengers alike will prevent that. No, doctor, get aboard your yacht while you can, and leave these men to their destiny.”
He spoke with much dignity, though it is hardly necessary for me to say that I had travelled already upon such lines of thought as he laid down. When I left him, it was with a promise to see his wife and child in Newcastle, and to give them what comfort I could—but chiefly to keep the story of the darker hour away from them; for, as he said, “they hold my name dear.” He had but a few moments to live then, and that merciful euthanasia which is frequently the hand-maiden of death, as long experience has shown to me, rapidly came upon him and left him but the passing dreams of a sleep which all must know, and from which all must awake.
Now this befell, I suppose, about eleven o’clock that night. There was still much mist when I came upon deck, but it had lifted to the northward, and the atmosphere was everywhere clearing. I had some expectation of spying out the yacht should the breeze strengthen, and yet there was no hour of all that emprise which found me in such a desolation of spirit or so doubtful of the ultimate issue. Why had my friends made no effort to reach me? What kept them? Why did they leave me here at the mercy of these cut-throats, my life as a gossamer which any puff of anger might destroy, my liberty in these ruffians’ keeping? Sober reason would have replied that they could have done nothing else; but this was not the time for reason, and, indeed, I came to call it the darkest hour of them all. Vainly I raged against my own acts and the judgment which had carried me on board the ship. It had been madness to come; it would be madness to let the men know as much. Already I was aware of a disposition to treat me with less respect—it may have been pure imagination, but the idea came into my head, and a brief conversation with the American did nothing to displace it.
“I am going aboard my own yacht,” I said to him—that would have been about the hour of midnight. “I am going aboard my yacht, but I will return at daybreak and see what more I can do. Mr. Ross says that you are heading for the Brazils. That is no affair of mine. The man I want is no longer on the ship. I have no concern with the others nor they with me. Let us put things as straight as we can—and then talk about the shore.”
This should not have been said. It occurred to me almost as I uttered the words that the man had not hitherto thought about the yacht at all; but no sooner had I spoken than he stepped to the gangway and immediately realised the situation.
“Guess your people have gone hay-making, doctor,” he said far from pleasantly. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters much anyway. My mates want you pretty badly, and while they want you, I guess you’ll have to stop. Just step down and take another look at Harry Johnson, will you? He’s raving like a fool-woman in the Doldrums. You can turn in by-and-by—I’ll see what Williams can do for you—though it’s forward you must swing your hammock, and no two opinions about that.”
To this I answered, in a tone as decisive as his own, that my comings and my goings would be ordered by none but myself, and that his friend must await his turn. A long acquaintance with rogues has convinced me that any weakness of civility is lost upon them, and that firmness to the point of brutality is the only weapon. I would have shot this man dead had he given me an impudent answer, and his surprise when he heard me speak was something to see.
“No offence, doctor,” he said presently. “I’ll tell Harry you’ll be along presently. Don’t think as we’re not obliged to you for what you’ve done. The boys are ready enough to tell you so. You take your own time, and do what’s best pleasing to you. There’s work enough, God Almighty knows.”
He spat his filthy tobacco juice into the sea, and turning upon his heels went forward to join his companions