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, but of the dead, which troubled me. The spirit of the dauntless Captain hovered about this new emprise; his image, re-created by my dreams, called me back to the high seas that I might make reparation in his name. For was I not going to the land of silence, to the mighty arctic citadel be had set up above the kingdom of the snows, to recover the treasure he had amassed, and to put to shame those who had sought for it in vain? And were we not to sail with the tide, and would not the new day find us upon the broad of the ocean which Captain Black, the dead pirate, had ruled so terribly in the years of his dominion?
Well, I thought about all this, as you may imagine, while I counted the lagging hours of that sunny afternoon and waited, almost with a child's impatience, for Roderick and his sister Mary. When six o'clock struck, and I heard the wheels of the dogcart which was to take me to the station to meet them, I could have cut capers for very gratitude to the old time-piece in the corner of the room. Better still was the moment which set them down upon the platform at the junction: Roderick yawning, as usual; Mary as radiant as a rose in a Devonshire lane.
We shook hands heartily enough, Roderick with his, "Well, here we are," Mary with a complaint upon his laziness. "He's never opened his eyes since we left Paddington," she said; and I could well believe her. Roderick Stewart would go to sleep upon the block, as I once told him. His answer was that he could not imagine a better thing to do.
It was nearly dark when we reached Dolphin's Cove, and the anchor light of the Celsis welcomed us brightly at the river's mouth. Here and there a candle twinkled in a cottage; but full a half of the meagre population appeared to have gathered about the doors of "The Falmouth Arms," and so I judged that my three friends from the high seas were still in the town.
I had just made up my mind to tell Roderick the whole story at dinner when out he came with a piece of news not less remarkable than my own.
"Did you see to-night's papers?" he asked almost in a whisper, while Mary ran on before us into the hall. I told him not be an ass, for what do we know of "to-night's" papers at such a place as Dolphin's Cove?
"Well," he rejoined quite" coolly, "then you've missed something, my boy. Osbart's