XI
OFF THE NORE
Kirkwood's anger cooled apace; at worst it had been a flare ofpassion--incandescent. It was seldom more. His brain clearing, thetemperature of his judgment quickly regained its mean, and he saw hischances without distortion, weighed them without exaggeration.
Leaning against the combing, feet braced upon the slippery and treacherousdeck, he clung to tiller and mainsheet and peered ahead with anxious eyes,a pucker of daring graven deep between his brows.
A mile to westward, three or more ahead, he could see the brigantinestanding close in under the Essex shore. At times she was invisible; againhe could catch merely the glint of her canvas, white against the dark loomof the littoral, toned by a mist of flying spindrift. He strained his eyes,watching for the chance which would take place in the rake of her masts andsails, when she should come about.
For the longer that manoeuver was deferred, the better was his chance ofattaining his object. It was a forlorn hope. But in time the brigantine,to escape Maplin Sands, would be forced to tack and stand out past thelightship, the wind off her port bows. Then their courses would intersect.It remained to be demonstrated whether the cat-boat was speedy enough toarrive at this point of contact in advance of, or simultaneously with, thelarger vessel. Every minute that the putative _Alethea_ put off comingabout brought the cat-boat nearer that goal, but Kirkwood could do no morethan hope and try to trust in the fisherman's implied admission that itcould be done. It was all in the boat and the way she handled.
He watched her anxiously, quick to approve her merits as she displayedthem. He had sailed small craft before--frail center-board cat-boats, handyand swift, built to serve in summer winds and protected waters: never suchan one as this. Yet he liked her.
Deep bosomed she was, with no center-board, dependent on her draught andheavy keel to hold her on the wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed withstout plank and ribbed with seasoned timber, designed to keep afloat inthe wickedest weather brewed by the foul-tempered German Ocean. Withal herlines were fine and clean; for all her beam she was calculated to nosenarrowly into the wind and make a pretty pace as well. A good boat: he hadthe grace to give the credit to his luck.
Her disposition was more fully disclosed as they drew away from the beach.Inshore with shoaling water, the waves had been choppy and spiteful butlacking force of weight. Farther out, as the bottom fell away, the rollersbecame more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas met the cat-boat,from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in the tiny cockpit; whowas nevertheless aware that to a steamer they would be negligible.
His boat breasted them gallantly, toiling sturdily up the steepacclivities, poising breathlessly on foam-crested summits for dizzyinstants, then plunging headlong down the deep green swales; and left aboiling wake behind her,--urging ever onward, hugging the wind in her wispof blood-red sail, and boring into it, pulling at the tiller with themettle of a race-horse slugging at the bit.
Offshore, too, the wind stormed with added strength, or, possibly, hadfreshened. For minutes on end the leeward gunwales would run green, and nowand again the screaming, pelting squalls that scoured the estuary wouldheel her over until the water cascaded in over the lee combing, and therudder, lifted clear, would hang idle until, smitten by some racing billow,the tiller would be all but torn from Kirkwood's hands. Again and againthis happened; and those were times of trembling. But always the cat-boatrighted, shaking the clinging waters from her and swinging her stem intothe wind again; and there would follow an abbreviated breathing spell,during which Kirkwood was at liberty to dash the salt spray from his eyesand search the wind-harried waste for the brigantine. Sometimes he foundher, sometimes not.
Long after he had expected her to, she went about and they began to closein upon each other. He could see that even with shortened canvas she wasstaggering drunkenly under the fierce impacts of the wind. For himself, itwas nip-and-tuck, now, and no man in his normal sense would have risked asixpence on the boat's chance to live until she crossed the brigantine'sbows.
Time out of reckoning he was forced to kneel in the swimming cockpit,steering with one hand, using the bailing-dish with the other, andkeeping his eyes religiously turned to the bellying patch of sail. It washeartbreaking toil; he began reluctantly to concede that it could not lastmuch longer. And if he missed the brigantine he would be lost; mortalstrength was not enough to stand the unending strain upon every bone,muscle and sinew, required to keep the boat upon her course; though fora time it might cope with and solve the problems presented by each new,malignant billow and each furious, howling squall, the end inevitably mustbe failure. To struggle on would be but to postpone the certain end ...save and except the possibility of his gaining the brigantine within theperiod of time strictly and briefly limited by his powers of endurance.
Long since he had become numb with cold from incessant drenchings oficy spray, that piled in over the windward counter, keeping the bottomankle-deep regardless of his laborious but intermittent efforts with thebailing dish. And the two, brigantine and cockle-shell, were drawingtogether with appalling deliberation.
A dozen times he was on the point of surrender, as often plucked up hope;as the minutes wore on and he kept above water, he began to believe that ifhe could stick it out his judgment and seamanship would be justified ...though human ingenuity backed by generosity could by no means contriveadequate excuse for his foolhardiness.
But that was aside, something irreparable. Wan and grim, he fought it out.
But that his voice stuck in his parched throat, he could have shouted inhis elation, when eventually he gained the point of intersection an eighthof a mile ahead of the brigantine and got sight of her windward freeboardas, most slowly, the cat-boat forged across her course.
For all that, the moment of his actual triumph was not yet; he had still tocarry off successfully a scheme that for sheer audacity of conception andcontempt for danger, transcended all that had gone before.
Holding the cat-boat on for a time, he brought her about handsomely alittle way beyond the brigantine's course, and hung in the eye of the wind,the leach flapping and tightening with reports like rifle-shots, andthe water sloshing about his calves--bailing-dish now altogether out ofmind--while he watched the oncoming vessel, his eyes glistening withanticipation.
She was footing it smartly, the brigantine--lying down to it and snoringinto the wind. Beneath her stem waves broke in snow-white showers, whiterthan the canvas of her bulging jib--broke and, gnashing their teeth inimpotent fury, swirled and eddied down her sleek dark flanks. Bobbing,courtesying, she plunged onward, shortening the interval with mighty,leaping bounds. On her bows, with each instant, the golden letters of hername grew larger and more legible until--_Alethea_!--he could read it plainbeyond dispute.
Joy welled in his heart. He forgot all that he had undergone in theprospect of what he proposed still to do in the name of the only woman theworld held for him. Unquestioning he had come thus far in her service;unquestioning, by her side, he was prepared to go still farther, though allhumanity should single her out with accusing fingers....
They were watching him, aboard the brigantine; he could see a line of headsabove her windward rail. Perhaps _she_ was of their number. He wavedan audacious hand. Some one replied, a great shout shattering itselfunintelligibly against the gale. He neither understood nor attempted toreply; his every faculty was concentrated on the supreme moment now athand.
Calculating the instant to a nicety, he paid off the sheet and pulled upthe tiller. The cat-boat pivoted on her heel; with a crack her sail flappedfull and rigid; then, with the untempered might of the wind behind her, sheshot like an arrow under the brigantine's bows, so close that the bowspritof the latter first threatened to impale the sail, next, the bows plunging,crashed down a bare two feet behind the cat-boat's stern.
Working in a frenzy of haste, Kirkwood jammed the tiller hard alee,bringing the cat about, and, trimming the mainsheet as best he might, foundhimself racing unde
r the brigantine's leeward quarter,--water pouring ingenerously over the cat's.
Luffing, he edged nearer, handling his craft as though intending to ram thelarger vessel, foot by foot shortening the little interval. When itwas four feet, he would risk the jump; he crawled out on the overhang,crouching on his toes, one hand light upon the tiller, the other touchingthe deck, ready ... ready....
Abruptly the _Alethea_ shut off the wind; the sail flattened and the catdropped back. In a second the distance had doubled. In anguish Kirkwooduttered an exceeding bitter cry. Already he was falling far off hercounter....
A shout reached him. He was dimly conscious of a dark object hurtlingthrough the air. Into the cockpit, splashing, something dropped--a coil ofrope. He fell forward upon it, into water eighteen inches deep; and for thefirst time realized that, but for that line, he had gone to his drowning inanother minute. The cat was sinking.
As he scrambled to his feet, clutching the life-line, a heavy wave washedover the water-logged craft and left it all but submerged; and a smart tugon the rope added point to the advice which, reaching his ears in a bellowlike a bull's, penetrated the panic of his wits.
"Jump! _Jump, you fool_!"
In an instant of coherence he saw that the brigantine was luffing; none theless much of the line had already been paid out, and there was no reckoningwhen the end would be reached. Without time to make it fast, he hitched ittwice round his waist and chest, once round an arm, and, grasping it abovehis head to ease its constriction when the tug should come, leaped on thecombing and overboard. A green roaring avalanche swept down upon him andthe luckless cat-boat, overwhelming both simultaneously.
The agony that was his during the next few minutes can by no means beexaggerated. With such crises the human mind is not fitted adequatelyto cope; it retains no record of the supreme moment beyond a vague andincoherent impression of poignant, soul-racking suffering. Kirkwoodunderwent a prolonged interval of semi-sentience, his mind dominatedand oppressed by a deathly fear of drowning and a deadening sense ofsuffocation, with attendant tortures as of being broken on the wheel--limbrending from limb; of compression of his ribs that threatened momentarilyto crush in his chest; of a world a-welter with dim swirling greenhalf-lights alternating with flashes of blinding white; of thunderings inhis ears like salvoes from a thousand cannon....
And his senses were blotted out in blackness....
Then he was breathing once more, the keen clean air stabbing his lungs, thewhile he swam unsupported in an ethereal void of brilliance. His mouthwas full of something that burned, a liquid hot, acrid, and stinging. Hegulped, swallowed, slobbered, choked, coughed, attempted to sit up, wasaware that he was the focal center of a ring of glaring, burning eyes, likeeyes of ravening beasts; and fainted.
His next conscious impression was of standing up, supported by friendlyarms on either side, while somebody was asking him if he could walk a stepor two.
He lifted his head and let it fall in token of assent, mumbling a yes; andlooked round him with eyes wherein the light of intelligence burned moreclear with every second. By degrees he catalogued and comprehended hisweirdly altered circumstances and surroundings.
He was partly seated, partly held up, on the edge of the cabin sky-light,an object of interest to some half-dozen men, seafaring fellows all, bytheir habit, clustered round between him and the windward rail. Of theirnumber one stood directly before him, dwarfing his companions as much byhis air of command as by his uncommon height: tall, thin-faced and sallow,with hollow weather-worn cheeks, a mouth like a crooked gash from ear toear, and eyes like dying coals, with which he looked the rescued up anddown in one grim, semi-humorous, semi-speculative glance. In hands bothhuge and red he fondled tenderly a squat brandy flask whose contents hadapparently been employed as a first aid to the drowning.
As Kirkwood's gaze encountered his, the man smiled sourly, jerking his headto one side with a singularly derisive air.
"Hi, matey!" he blustered. "'Ow goes it now? Feelin' 'appier, eigh?"
"Hi, matey!" he blustered. "'Ow goes it now?"]
"Some, thank you ... more like a drowned rat." Kirkwood eyed himsheepishly. "I suppose you're the man who threw me that line? I'll have towait till my head clears up before I can thank you properly."
"Don't mention it." He of the lantern jaws stowed the bottle away withjealous care in one of his immense coat pockets, and seized Kirkwood'shand in a grasp that made the young man wince. "You're syfe enough now.My nyme's Stryker, Capt'n Wilyum Stryker.... Wot's the row? Lookin' for afriend?" he demanded suddenly, as Kirkwood's attention wandered.
For the memory of the errand that had brought him into the hands of CaptainWilliam Stryker had come to the young man very suddenly; and his eager eyeswere swiftly roving not along the decks but the wide world besides, forsight or sign of his heart's desire.
After luffing to pick him up, the brigantine had been again pulled off onthe port tack. The fury of the gale seemed rather to have waxed than waned,and the _Alethea_ was bending low under the relentless fury of its blasts,driving hard, with leeward channels awash. Under her port counter, a mileaway, the crimson light-ship wallowed in a riot of breaking combers.Sheerness lay abeam, five miles or more. Ahead the northeast headlandof the Isle of Sheppey was bulking large and near. The cat-boat hadvanished....
More important still, no one aboard the brigantine resembled in theremotest degree either of the Calendars, father or daughter, or evenMulready, the black-avised.
"I sye, 're you lookin' for some one you know?"
"Yes--your passengers. I presume they're below--?"
"Passengers!"
A hush fell upon the group, during which Kirkwood sought Stryker's eye inpitiful pleading; and Stryker looked round him blankly.
"Where's Miss Calendar?" the young man demanded sharply. "I must see her atonce!"
The keen and deep-set eyes of the skipper clouded as they returned toKirkwood's perturbed countenance. "Wot're you talking about?" he demandedbrusquely.
"I must see Miss Calendar, or Calendar himself, or Mulready." Kirkwoodpaused, and, getting no reply, grew restive under Stryker's inscrutableregard.
"That's why I came aboard," he amended, blind to the absurdity of thestatement; "to see--er--Calendar."
"Well ... I'm damned!"
Stryker managed to infuse into his tone a deal of suspicious contempt.
"Why?" insisted Kirkwood, nettled but still uncomprehending.
"D'you mean to tell me you came off from--wherever in 'ell you did comefrom--intendin' to board this wessel and find a party nymed Calendar?"
"Certainly I did. Why--?"
"Well!" cried Mr. Stryker, rubbing his hands together with an airoppressively obsequious, "I'm sorry to _hin_-form you you've come to thewrong shop, sir; we don't stock no Calendars. We're in the 'ardware line,we are. You might try next door, or I dessay you'll find what you want atthe stytioner's, round the corner."
A giggle from his audience stimulated him. "If," he continued acidly,"I'd a-guessed you was such a damn' fool, blimmy if I wouldn't've let youdrownd!"
Staggered, Kirkwood bore his sarcastic truculence without resentment.
"Calendar," he stammered, trying to explain, "Calendar _said_--"
"I carn't 'elp wot Calendar said. Mebbe 'e _did_ myke an engygement withyou, an' you've gone and went an' forgot the dyte. Mebbe it's larst year'scalendar you're thinkin' of. You Johnny" (to a lout of a boy in the groupof seamen), "you run an' fetch this gentleman Whitaker's for Nineteen-six.Look sharp, now!"
"But--!" With an effort Kirkwood mustered up a show of dignity. "Am I tounderstand," he said, as calmly as he could, "that you deny knowing GeorgeB. Calendar and his daughter Dorothy and--"
"I don't 'ave to. Listen to me, young man." For the time the fellowdiscarded his clumsy facetiousness. "I'm Wilyum Stryker, Capt'n Stryker,marster and 'arf-owner of this wessel, and wot I says 'ere is law. We don'tcarry no passengers. D'ye understand me?"--aggressively. "There ain't nopusson nymed Cal
endar aboard the _Allytheer_, an' never was, an' never willbe!"
"What name did you say?" Kirkwood inquired.
"This ship? The _Allytheer_; registered from Liverpool; bound from Londonto Hantwerp, in cargo. Anythink else?"
Kirkwood shook his head, turning to scan the seascape with a gloomygaze. As he did so, and remarked how close upon the Sheppey headland thebrigantine had drawn, the order was given to go about. For the moment hewas left alone, wretchedly wet, shivering, wan and shrunken visibly withthe knowledge that he had dared greatly for nothing. But for the necessityof keeping up before Stryker and his crew, the young man felt that he couldgladly have broken down and wept for sheer vexation and disappointment.
Smartly the brigantine luffed and wore about, heeling deep as she spun awayon the starboard tack.
Kirkwood staggered round the skylight to the windward rail. From thisposition, looking forward, he could see that they were heading for the opensea, Foulness low over the port quarter, naught before them but a brawlingwaste of leaden-green and dirty white. Far out one of the sidewheel boatsof the Queensborough-Antwerp line was heading directly into the wind andmaking heavy weather of it.
Some little while later, Stryker again approached him, perhaps swayed by anunaccustomed impulse of compassion; which, however, he artfully concealed.Blandly ironic, returning to his impersonation of the shopkeeper, "Nothinkelse we can show you, sir?" he inquired.
"I presume you couldn't put me ashore?" Kirkwood replied ingenuously.
In supreme disgust the captain showed him his back. "'Ere, you!" he calledto one of the crew. "Tyke this awye--tyke 'im below and put 'im to bed;give 'im a drink and dry 'is clo's. Mebbe 'e'll be better when 'e wykes up.'E don't talk sense now, that's sure. If you arsk me, I sye 'e's balmy andno 'ope for 'im."
The Black Bag Page 11
