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The Dark Star, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 23. On His Way |
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_ CHAPTER XXIII. ON HIS WAY The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of the _Volhynia_ and young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conference in the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol, stood outside the locked and bolted door. Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see through the shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze of pearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old-time battleship loomed. She was probably one of Nelson's ships, now only an apparition; but to Neeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominating the water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laid until the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and the glory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee heart he hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never come upon it. Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside; the monstrous city beyond had not awakened. But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off the _Volhynia's_ port; Neeland's steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captain accompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase and the olive-wood box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey. "Good luck," said the captain of the _Volhynia_. "And keep it in your mind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are at this moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France. "Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that they are certain to communicate with other units; that between you and Paris are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you, rob you." Neeland nodded thoughtfully. The captain said again: "Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But if you've given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matter involves, naturally, a point of honour." "Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see." He laughed. "You're thinking, Captain West, that I haven't much discretion anyway." "I don't think you have very much," admitted the captain, smiling and shaking the hand which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye. And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious one and not as a lark." They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered the boat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent to the oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to a golden vapour. It was within a few boat-lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland, turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, saw the most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the British Empire assuming sovereignty. For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleet was taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, moving majestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents of smoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blinding smother of mist and sun and the fawning cut-water hurrying too, as though even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seaward in the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by a man-made Kiel. And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until he arrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across the almost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamer train, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded, sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news-venders holding up strips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters: SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU,
But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that--glimpses of stately grey buildings and green trees; of monuments and palaces where soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in the city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads, disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everything with calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry in brilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between iron railings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroad station, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, because he was to travel by a fast goods train under telegraphed authority of the British Government. And that is about all that Neeland saw of the mightiest city in the world on the eve of the greatest conflict among the human races that the earth has ever witnessed, or ever shall, D. V. The flying goods train that took him to the Channel port whence a freight packet was departing, offered him the luxury of a leather padded armchair in a sealed and grated mail van. Nobody disturbed him; nobody questioned him; the train officials were civil and incurious, and went calmly about their business with all the traditional stolidity of official John Bull. Neeland had plenty of leisure to think as he sat there in his heavy chair which vibrated but did not sway very much; and his mind was fully occupied with his reflections, for, so far, he had not had time to catalogue, index, and arrange them in proper order, so rapid and so startling had been the sequence of events since he had left his studio in New York for Paris, via Brookhollow, London, and other points east. One thing in particular continued to perplex and astonish him: the identity of a member of Parliament, known as Charles Wilson, suddenly revealed as Karl Breslau, an international spy. The wildest flight of fancy of an irresponsible novelist had never created such a character in penny-dreadful fiction. It remained incomprehensible, almost incredible to Neeland that such a thing could be true. Also, the young man had plenty of food for reflection, if not for luncheon, in trying to imagine exactly how Golden Beard and Ali Baba, and that strange, illogical young girl, Ilse Dumont, had escaped from the _Volhynia_. Probably, in the darkness, the fishing boat which they expected had signalled in some way or other. No doubt the precious trio had taken to the water in their life-jackets and had been picked up even before armed sailors on the _Volhynia_ descended to their empty state-rooms and took possession of what luggage could be discovered, and of the three bombs with their charred wicks still soaking on the sopping bed. And now the affair had finally ended, Neeland believed, in spite of Captain West's warnings. For how could three industrious conspirators in a fishing smack off the Lizard do him any further damage? If they had managed to relay information concerning him to their friends ashore by some set of preconcerted signals, possibly the regular steamer train to and out of London might be watched. Thinking of this, it presently occurred to Neeland that friends in France, also, might be stirred up in time to offer him their marked attentions. This, no doubt, was what Captain West meant; and Neeland considered the possibility as the flying train whirled him toward the Channel. He asked if he might smoke, and was informed that he might; and he lighted a cigarette and stretched out on his chair, a little hungry from lack of luncheon, a trifle tired from lack of sleep, but, in virtue of his vigorous and youthful years, comfortable, contented, and happy. Never, he admitted, had he had such a good time in all his life, despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill and alertness and perspicacity, had saved his neck. No, he could not congratulate himself on his cleverness and wisdom; sheer accident had saved his skin--and once the complex and unaccountable vagary of a feminine mind had saved him from annihilation so utter that it slightly sickened him to remember his position in Ilse Dumont's stateroom as she lifted her pistol and coolly made good her boast as a dead-shot. But he forced himself to take it lightly. "Good Lord!" he thought to himself. "Was ever a man in such a hellish position, except in melodrama? And _what_ a movie that would have made! And what a shot that girl proved herself to be! Certainly she could have killed me there at Brookhollow! She could have riddled me before I ducked, even with that nickel-plated affair about which I was ass enough to taunt her!" Lying in his chair, cheek on arm, he continued to ponder on what had happened, until the monotonous vibration no longer interfered with his inclination for a nap. On the contrary, the slight, rhythmic jolting soothed him and gradually induced slumber; and he slept there on the rushing train, his feet crossed and resting on the olive-wood box. * * * * * A hand on his arm aroused him; the sea wind blowing through the open doors of the mail-van dashed in his face like a splash of cool water as he sat up and looked around him. As he descended from the van an officer of the freight packet greeted him by name; a sailor piled his luggage on a barrow; and Neeland walked through the vista of covered docks to the pier. There was a lively wind whipping that notoriously bad-mannered streak of water known as the English Channel. Possibly, had it been christened the French Channel its manners might have been more polite. But there was now nothing visible about it to justify its sentimental pseudonym of Silver Streak. It was a dirty colour, ominous of ill-temper beyond the great breakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and made white and ghastly faces from the open sea. But Neeland, dining from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to the use of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inland lubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had stranded him. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away--as far as it seems to the Parisian. And only when chance business takes him to the Battery does a New Yorker realise the nearness of the ocean to that vast volume of ceaseless dissonance called New York. * * * * * Neeland ate cold meat and bread and cheese, and washed it down with bitters. He was nearly asleep on his sofa when the packet cast off. He was sound asleep when, somewhere in the raging darkness of the Channel, he was hurled from the sofa against the bunk opposite--into which he presently crawled and lay, still half asleep, mechanically rubbing a maltreated shin. Twice more the bad-mannered British Channel was violently rude to him; each time he crawled back to stick like a limpet in the depths of his bunk. Except when the Channel was too discourteous, he slept as a sea bird sleeps afloat, tossing outside thundering combers which batter basalt rocks. Even in his deep, refreshing sea sleep, the subtle sense of exhilaration--of well-being--which contact with the sea always brought to him, possessed him. And, deep within him, the drop of Irish seethed and purred as a kettle purrs through the watches of the night over a banked but steady fire. _ |
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