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 wishes to an old comrade of the adventurous days, the only one that I know to be living.
"Of all Black's crew, of all that gallant company, we, my dear fellow, remain to dance before Pilate if Pilate has a taste for our pirouetting.
"A bonny New Year to you, then, breathed out of this hell which chains me. Go free upon the decks of good ships and wet your Parthian locks at the fountains of the spindrift, as I would do but for the carrion which pick my bones in this house of skeletons.
"What forbids? Do you not read, and has the 'ice blink near and white' no meaning for you? Man, I would credit you with less than the soul of a dog if Black has not beckoned you northward and the great dead ghosts do not call you.
"What forbids? I repeat. Iron doors against which your hands may beat until they are fleshless? Men of the devils' eyes who hold you down until the blood surges in your brain and the walls turn black before you? Nothing of the kind. Then, fear of the Yanks who go to seek Black's treasure—our treasure—is it that, Mark Strong? Shame upon you that you let me write the words. I would sooner be a hundred fathoms down, branded and blind, at the heart of the blackest rock of Satan than men should write as much of me.
"Here am I 'fettered bar to wrist all for red iniquity,' as helpess as any lamb at the butcher's block, and but one man living of all Black's crew to whom I may turn.
"Is he comrade or craven? Will he leave me here in the marrow of hell or fetch me out to see the wide heaven and the great white world of silence? He can do it, for by money it can be done.
"The treasure lies in the chamber of the dead. Go where dead men's fingers point and their gibes ring in your ears. Turn the crescent of the tomb and delve amid its winding sheets. Then shall Cortina comb the hair of Fair-star and the jewels fall into her lap.
"Black estimated it at three millions sterling. He was little given to overtalk, as you know well. There's enough there, anyway, to set you and me aboard the great Golden Bug and carry us down to the cities of the fountain. Go, then—not to-morrow, but to-day, and return to fetch me, as Black would have done. In his name, go—cannot you hear him crying from the sea and calling you?
"You will go, Strong, and the gates of this living hell will open before me, and I shall stand a