"Well," he said at last, "I would have thought London your only chance of seeing your friends again."
I had not thought of it, and it took me all aback. If Black dared all and went to London, might not that be the hour of my deliverance? The hope fired me as a fever. I had not a word to say.
"Confess," he ran on, "you would not have him go to London. This fine moralist, who told the world the story of the great pirate, he would not save himself at such a price! Confess it, Strong! There lies in your heart the hope that Black will never go to London."
I would not deny it, and we left it at that. None the less, the hours which followed were alive with anxiety and doubt, and we spent most of them at the cliff's head looking across the bay for ships or turning our eyes to distant France, as though some miracle would bring the Captain back to us already. The men, for their part, behaved like boys at a fête. The grass, the flowers, the golden sands made a very Eldorado for them, and they played children's games or rolled in the fresh seas or went hand in hand about the island, garlanded with blossoms. Thus five days passed, but toward sundown upon the sixth we espied the lugger crossing the strait; and, going down to the beach altogether, we welcomed the Captain ashore, and gave him a rousing cheer as he came among us.
His manner was grave, I thought, and when I would have spoken to him, he, to my great astonishment, thrust me aside with such a word of displeasure as I had never heard from him before. A sure instinct led me to perceive that all was changed, both his affection for me and his desire to save me from the men; and I knew that his son lived, and that we were to go to London.
To London—to the scaffold. It could not end otherwise. As he would have given his life for me, so now would he give it for that son whom he believed to be risen from the dead.
CHAPTER XXV
I AM ALONE ON THE SHIP
We put to sea at four bells in the first watch, the Captain alone in the conning-tower, and Osbart and I together upon the platform. The night had fallen black dark, with heavy clouds rolling up from north-by-west, and a spatter of rain, which fell chill and cold upon the face. We pitched heavily as we left the cove, and, anon, the danger-bell rang thrice, and we knew that the Zero was going down for shelter. So we turned from the darkness to the warmth and and light of Osbart's cabin—and there he told me more of the voyage and of its purport.
"There's news of a Wilfred Black staying at a Strand hotel," he said, with some excitement. "The Captain's obsessed by the belief that the man is his son, and will go to London to make sure. Talk to him of the danger, and he'll ram a pistol down your throat. It's in his head to do the wildest thing he ever did—and it will be done, sure enough. As for you, Strong, my boy, look out for yourself. I won't say that he'll do you a mischief willingly—that would not be just to him; but this report has put another idol before him, and the old one is forgotten. Let him find the story false, and you'll be on the pedestal again. But if it's true, God help you."
"Meaning," I said, "that he will resent the very weakness which saved my life at the beginning, when they caught me on the Nameless Ship? Well, that's human nature, Osbart, and it's no good my quarrelling with it. If I have no friend on the ship——"
"No friend!" and this was said with real feeling. "Why, man, I'd go through fire and water for you, and so would Jack-o'-Lantern. Don't speak of wanting a friend while I'm aboard "
It was new to me that the Doctor should hold me in this affection; and, while I turned with loathing from the crimes he had committed, I could not forget that a madman's brain impelled him, and that, when wholly sane, no more aimable companion existed. So, in a measure, his loyalty won upon my gratitude, as I did not fear to tell him.
"If it comes to that," said I, "there never was a moment since first I set foot on Black's ship when my life was not in peril. It may be that familiarity has bred contempt, Osbart. All said and done, it is you and the others who sail with him who have most to fear. What hope can there be for you in London? What chance can take the Zero safely up the Thames, even with Black at her helm? It's a thousand to one against you, Osbart. And if you fail—well, you're imaginative enough to know what comes after."
He did not deny it.
"A man who would sail with Black signs on with a halter about his neck," he said; "I've never hidden that from myself, fair weather or foul. We take the sweet and the bitter, and one's not to be had without the other. Sooner or later we shall all come to it, the grave ashore or the leaden jacket afloat. And, if we do, what odds? Would you die as I must die, or with your mouth full of cant and your heart a-hunger for what was never yours? I've tasted the good salt sea on the southern briner and I've tasted it on the northern. There's been hell in the heavens above me, and hell in the surge below; and I've lived through it, and come back to the old haven, and sat with the same good fellows, and numbered the bottles like shingle on the beach. What's death to me and to the others? What's it to old Thunder, who lies in the ice on Greenland's shore? Just the long, long sleep, and the sky gone black, and the heaven wanting her stars. That's death, my boy; whether you find it in London or on the high seas, that's my notion of it——"
He laughed aloud, but his laugh was hollow, and there were drops of sweat on his brow. When I asked him what the hands would make of it, he tried to pull himself together and to answer with like bravado.
"The hands, they'd follow Black to the gate of hell! Ask them, and hear for yourself. London will be just a gaming ground to them—wine and song, theatre and hall, money to spend, and sights to see. Speak of the police, and you may was well talk of a Punch and Judy show. If you told them death lay beyond the bridge, they'd turn a quid and ask you to trot him out. Oh, don't you worry about the hands!"
"And yet," I said, "not one of them but may swing upon a rope before another month has run."
He affected to make light of it, but the agony of mind was not to be hidden from me, while his staring eyes gazed into vacancy as though a vision of death were there. Another word and he would have been in a frenzy of madness, which would have betrayed all to the men from whom the secret was still hidden. So it lay upon me to turn his thoughts, and I spoke of other things and chiefly of Paris and of his visit there. When this was done, and we had supped together in the saloon, we went to our beds, and I lay long meditating this surprising turn and all that it might mean to me.
We were going to London, and the incredible boast would be made credible in my own city and among my own people. Out of the whorl of death and crime and darkness we were to pass to this supreme challenge, this surpassing mockery. In days fewer than the fingers of the hands could number, Black must stand face to face with that Justice he had defied, and answer to the nations. All else gave place in my mind to this inevitable truth. The great Captain was going to the death which sentiment had prepared for him. Nothing surely could save him from that now. The Zero was making her last voyage, and all aboard her were surely doomed.
I could not sleep, so heavily did these thoughts press upon me. And yet I will declare that any estimate of my own salvation lay far from my reckoning. What would become of me in the hour of crisis I hardly cared to ask. Black had told me that my friends were at Leith, and my heart had leaped at the tidings. Roderick, I had said, would move heaven and earth to come at me, and yet he would not forget the story of the Nameless Ship nor believe that it was otherwise than well with me. London must stand for the city of my salvation or the city of my death. There seemed to me no middle course. Either Black would persuade them or his men would kill me.
Despite the danger of the voyage and the mad bravado of it, Black brought the Zero up directly the gale had abated; and when I went out to the platform on the following morning I found her carrying a number, such as British submarines display, and flying the white ensign with all the effrontery imaginable.
That such a disguise would be successful I could not doubt. Little was then known of submarines by the captains of merchantmen, and such as we passed would surely say that this was