He said it so softly, almost with such pathos, that I stood there on the spot as a man who has heard the greatest thing he could ever hear in such a place. His son! Had not the lad died at Panama, and was he not buried there? What news could this be—what wild story to dupe him?
"Captain," I said, "you told me when we shared the peril of the ship that your son was dead. Was that false, then?"
He sighed heavily and walked on very slowly, while he looked wistfully across the northern sea as though it would surrender the supreme truth of his terrible life.
"Ah, that's what I'd give my fortune to know," he said very solemnly; and for a spell we walked on in silence. Presently, however, he began to speak with unwonted animation, from a heart bursting with a desire it did not dare wholly to confess. His son! The man would have bared his head to God at last could his son have been given to him.
"My boy died in Panama, they said. I saw his grave there—you know that much, for you heard it on the ship. Well, there are those who say that the grave was empty, a trick for him to escape a man that hunted him and to get south. He worked his way, I'm told, to Lima; thence to Valparaiso, where he's been these ten years or more, rising in the Government service, and now with the revolutionaries against the President. Latterly, he's come to London, and was heard of there a month ago. Should that be true, and I shall know when I reach Paris to-morrow, I'll sail the Zero to Tilbury Docks if it costs the life of every man aboard her. What I fear is the trap they may have set for me. Lord, it must be that—the dead sleep, and what cry of man's shall awaken them?"
I could make no rejoinder to this; but I did not fail to perceive that his face was quite altered in that instant, and that something of nobility and of a deep and true emotion were to be read upon it. This man would have lived and died for the son whom he mourned. All the riches he possessed would have been but as dross before this human treasure he coveted so ardently. And for a son his soul now cried aloud upon that lonely western isle.
"Do you go to Paris alone, Captain?" I asked him presently.
He replied that it was so.
"Fear nothing from the men; they have had their lesson," he said. "If you see ships in the offing, keep to the house and let no man show himself. But they'll not look for me in such a place as this, and I shall be gone before the scent grows warm. When that time comes, I'll speak to you again about your own future, my lad. It's time that you and me sailed different courses, if it can be done with reason. But I'll not deny that the men will take it badly, and we must act with prudence. The Green Island will give them something else than their own skins to think about. I wish to God sometimes that I had sailed my last voyage, and could anchor for the last time in such a cove as this. But my destiny's on the sea; it calls me, sleeping or waking. I shall die on a good ship, my lad—I'd ask for nothing more."
The fresh north wind was blowing on his face while he spoke; it brought warm blood to his pale cheeks and a fire of life into his eyes. He looked across that ocean of which he was the king, and it seemed to me that no earthly power would ever win him from it. Here, upon this verdant island, was all a man might desire: the perfume of sweet flowers, the gold of wide sands, the shade of orchards, the white farmhouse in the hollow. Black cared for these things as a man for a jewel he fingers and passes on. The sea called him ever; it called him now to the son who had risen from the grave.
The Isle Verte is no more than a mile across, and you can see the mainland from the eastern heights. We walked thither over the wide table-land, and then returned to Benoit's farm, where we drank a glass of cider and had a little talk with a fine old woman whose father had served Napoleon. It was still early in the morning when we reached the cove where the Zero lay beneath the waters, and there we found a lugger with three fishermen in charge. By this, it appeared, Black would cross to the mainland; and when his luggage had been put aboard and he had given us his commands we all went up to the headland to see him sail. Not a ship could then be discerned upon any horizon. Northward, southward, out over the great Bay of Biscay, there was naught but the immensity of sea and sky, the blue void, and the fretting waters. And so the great Captain left us, upon a quest which should mean life or death to those who watched him go.
This, I suppose, would have been about eight bells. I remember that the crew began to speak of dinner directly the tiny lugsail had been lost upon the horizon, and that we returned to an al fresco meal upon the grass before the bungalow. Here there was a wide lawn extending almost to the cliff's edge, with a little white paling at the far end of it, and about it well-kept beds all aglow with English roses and the simple flowers Black loved. The wild waters of the Bay of Biscay lay before us; the distant shores of France behind us; and here we got our dinner, served by little Isola with many a jest and many a quip which set the pirates wincing. When it was done, Osbart and I went up to the Captain's room to have a pipe together, and there we talked of the visit to Paris and of what might come after.
I found the Doctor very ill at ease, as might have been expected, and was not at all surprised that the prospect of another voyage to England filled him with dire alarm. He perceived, as I had perceived, that if the Captain's son really were alive, the Zero would go to him whatever the peril. Nor did he hesitate to say that if Black were mad enough to visit London, then, indeed, were all lost.
"The man has this in his character," he said, "that he would sail a thousand miles at the bidding of a grain of sentiment. But for that, my dear Strong, there is not a Government nor a country which would stand against him. He has heard the fool's tale, told, I believe, to trap him, and he becomes as credulous as a woman. Let it be confirmed by the tricksters in Paris, and he will sacrifice everything—ship and men and money—to prove its truth. We shall go to London, and the hangman will be on the quay to meet us. I have foreseen that since the day I first set foot on the Nameless Ship. The rift was in the lute, and some day there would be no more music. Well, that day has come; I am as sure of it as of this pipe I hold in my hand."
"But none the less," said I, "you still believe in Black's genius, Osbart. If he sails to London, he will sail out again. I can see that you are not convinced——"
He would not deny it.
"Black is a man in a million. If it were to any other port I would have some hopes for him. But, man, think of it, to London! Is not that the last act of a madman? To London—where every street lad knows his name; where the police at every corner will point the finger at him! Could any insanity beat that? You must see yourself it will be his last voyage. Ship and men and money! All staked on a trickster's tale, and he child enough to believe it."
"Where did he get the story, Osbart—was it in Paris?"
"He had it first from the captain of the relief, when we took the German liner. The London papers were full of Black's name then, and one of them said that his son had been heard of in Paris. That set Black afire. I thought he would have gone stark mad at the news. When we got to Vares, he was for Paris immediately, and there he heard the talk that a man who called himself Wilfred Black had been staying with some Peruvians at the Victor Hugo hotel, but was supposed then to be either in Berlin or in London. Wilfred was the Christian name of Black's boy, and there you have it. He'll not rest, day or night, until he knows the truth. And when he knows it, he'll take the knowledge to the scaffold with him."
He fell to that tone of half conviction as one who should say—This would be the story of any other man, but I speak of Black, and he is different. I saw that he believed it yet possible for the Captain to visit London and to escape with his life, so transcendent was the man's genius in elusion. At the same time he disbelieved wholly in the possibility of his son being alive—and here I agreed with him.
"It's a common name," I said; "there are many Blacks in England. I knew one at Harrow, who was as fine an all-round athlete as you would wish to meet. It's a thousand to one that this Wilfred Black is no relation whatever. We should try to convince him of that, Osbart."
He looked at me rather in an odd way.
"You would convince him, Strong?"
"Why not, Osbart?"
Again