There were four officers in British naval uniform in the cabin, all sitting round a table; and there were five out of the eight German officers, dressed in undress uniforms which had evidently been lent them by the officers of the cruiser. The chap they had called the commodore was among them, and it was pretty plain that they were being well treated. A good cigar each (I recognised the smell) and no hand-cuffs.
I held mine out, so that everyone in the cabin could see them.
“Why these, gentlemen?” I said.
“Shut up!” said the biggest of the two aforesaid muscular bluejackets, speaking as much into my ear as possible.
No one, except the courteous bluejacket, seemed to be even aware that I had spoken, and I decided to wait and see what was going to happen. From the look of the four officers round the table I judged I was in for a solemn time, and that they were simply trying to settle in their minds whether to shoot me with half a dozen rifles or a 6 in. cannon. Disappointing economy, I decide, would precluded the 6 in. method—which should have been a comfort, but wasn’t.
They had no difficulty in proving me guilty, right up to the hilt, for it was plainly and obviously what our leading novelists, in their highly original phraseology, term a case of having been caught red-handed.
However, the German officer, who spoke English, seemed determined that I should have no loophole, and he explained how I had voluntarily agreed to meet them and sell them oil for a personal consideration of one thousand pounds in cash, plus certain letters of a compromising character. He advised a search through the pockets of the clothes I had worn when picked up, and finally he exhibited the two letters which he had refused to give me just before the catastrophe, and handed these over to the four solemn-faced officers as a sort of final tombstone for the grave of poor old Master-Mariner Gault.
“That, gentleman,” said the English-speaking German, “will sure show you that he’s a proper outsider—a proper double-crosser!”
I stared at the man, for it was plain he felt pretty ugly to me. Then I twigged. He’d evidently got some notion into his head that I’d double-crossed him and brought the cruisers down on his track. The man was a plain fool. Good Heavens! I’d more to fear from the cruisers, and more to lose, than ever he had, in spite of his having been taken prisoner. But anyway, it was no use arguing with that sort of a grouch. I could see that. But he made me crazy to get one good fair punch at him, right into his solar plexus. I didn’t give up all hope.
Meanwhile, the officer in charge of the show (a court-martial I believe they called it) was explaining the particulars regarding hour and place, when and where, he meant a number of his men to put daylight through me. In plain English, it appeared plausible that, some morning, daylight and death were to effect an unpleasing conjuction for G. Gault, master-mariner.
This was bad enough in its way, but when he got his beard wagging about my sins, and set out to add insult to arranged injury by pointing out that I was a traitor of so particulary putrid a breed that it would soil the boots of any honest sailor should they adventure to wipe them on me, why, I thought it time to make my little speech—my swan-song, as it were.
Said I, in the little absolute silence that always follows a death sentence:
“Gentlemen, may I ask a question or two?”
They nodded agreement. A condemned man always has special privileges extended to him as soon as he’s safely condemned.
“What is it, Captain Gault?” said the senior officer.
“What are we doing?” I asked, and looked up at the tell-tale compass in the deck above my head.
No one answered; they didn’t know quite how to take a question of that sort at such a time. So I continued:
“I see we’re heading W.S.W. And by the feel of her, and seeing she’s a thirty-knot boat, I should say we’re doing all that; so we ought to be quite sixty knots W.S.W. of the place where you sunk my ship—”
“I cannot listen to all this talk,” the senior officer said quietly. “Have you anything else to say?”
“A lot!” I told him, speaking quietly, too. “Supposing, instead of all this balderdash, and these”—I held up the handcuffs—“you ’bout ship and get back again. We should get there just nicely by daylight. And while we’re going, give orders to have these taken off—”
“Is that all you have to say?” he interrupted, rising, as a signal that I’d exceeded even the privileges of the condemned.
“There are just two things,” I said, and they all paused there about the table, with a sort of deadly, quiet courtesy.
“First of the two is: Am I condemned for this oil ‘trade’ I’ve been into?”
“That expresses it,” replied the senior officer, and waited for me to finish.
“The second is: Can a submarine do anything, except sink to the bottom or rise to the surface, if her accumulators are played out and her fuel tanks empty?”
“What do you mean, Sir?” asked the senior officer, with a sudden new tone in his voice, and I saw that everyone in the cabin was looking at me queerly.
“I mean,” I said, very quietly and very slowly, so as to have the full enjoyment of saying it, “I mean that, as poor old Mac and I pumped salt water solidly for two hours into the tanks of those submarines, they’ll not run far; at least”—I turned to the English-speaking German—”perhaps you will tell us whether German submarines can run their engines on a saltwater diet?”
My word! But I never got further. The whole cabin was in an uproar. The bluejackets had to leave me unsupported while they subdued the English-speaking German. Then, when quiet came again, I began to explain quite a number of things. And long before I had finished, the senior officer himself had unlocked the handcuffs with his own hands.
“You see,” I concluded, “I told poor old Mac the whole of my pickle, and we arranged between us to fix up bypasses to the salt-water pump, and connect these up to the oil-hoppers. When these German officers here drew off their test bucketfuls we gave them good, honest essence. But when we had the pipes into the tanks, we gave them nice, clean, honest enough salt water. And they never guessed. Why should they?
“And now, gentlemen, if you go back there and wait, you’ll be bound to get the five you didn’t sink when they come up to breathe—eh? Anyway, they’re there until the Judgement, unless they can get someone to sell them something stronger than salt water. And that’ll not be easy, if you keep a scout there to watch out.
“Meanwhile, I’d like those two letters—I fancy I’ve earned ’em!”
The Plans of the Reefing
Bi-Plane
Look here, Captain Gault,” said Mr. Harpentwater to me at dinner. “I guess we’d better get down to business about your carting my plans and the model—”
He shut up suddenly as I frowned at him, and turned to the butler who had just entered the dining room.
“That will do, Baynes,” he said. “I’ll ring if I want you.”
“Very well, Sir,” said the butler, and oiled himself out of the room on the queer frictionless joints that butlers seem to sport. We shut the door, and there was a bit of silence. This was in February of 1915—long before you American boys joined forces with us. I’d docked the old Bendanga in Baltimore harbour, and was dining with my old inventor friend, Harpentwater.
“About this model, Captain,” he began again. “What would you consider a fair price to take it and the plans across for me?”
“How big is the model?” I interrupted.
“Goes into a portmanteau, folded,” he explained. “Weighs twenty-four pounds, four ounces.”
“I’ll do the job for a thousand dollars, cash down,” I said, after thinking a moment. “I can take it as personal luggage if it’s as small as that. No need to charge freightage. I’ll lump it down with me, in a taxi.”
“You’ll never reach your ship alive, Captain,” he said, coolly enough. “If it were as simple as all that, I’d never have brought you into the business, but just mailed it across. No,
Sir! I’ll send it down tomorrow sometime between twelve and one; and no one will know how or when it’s going to reach you. It’ll be packed and sealed, along with the plans, in a strong case; and all you’ve got to do is to hand it over to my agents in London. They’ll be responsible that it reaches the War Office.”
“That sounds all right to me,” I told him.
“That’s settled then,” he agreed. “I’ll pay you now and be done.”
He hauled out a wad fit to plug a four-inch shot-hole and peeled off ten hundreds, which he pushed across to me. “I’m eternally obliged to you, Captain,” he said…. “Just one minute.”
He slid noiselessly out of his chair and took four lightning-like strides to the door; caught the knob, and flipped the door open.
“Ah!” he said in a curious voice. “What are you looking for, Baynes?”
“I dropped a cufflink here, Sir,” said Baynes’ voice. “I’m sorry I made a noise looking for it.”
“No noise at all, Baynes,” said Mr. Harpentwater, quietly. “Go upstairs and pack your traps. Come to me in ten minutes, and I’ll pay you up.”
Baynes said nothing, and Mr. Harpentwater came back into the room, closed the door, and returned to the table.
“Listening?” I asked.
“Looked like it,” he said. “Anyway, out he goes. I’ll have no doubtful servants in my house a moment longer than I’ve a use for ’em!”
“Quite so,” I agreed, and finished my coffee.
An hour later, I left the house, and within five minutes of leaving it, I was tackled by a mob of five hooligans down near the front.
At first I thought I was just what they call a “spec”—i.e., a chance pigeon; but as I lammed at the head of the second man (I’d kicked the first in the stomach), I heard one of men at the back call out:
“Maul the guy good, boys; he’ve got a thousand bucks on him right now.”
That made me think suddenly of the butler. I guess Harpentwater had been wise to give him the long throw; but it looked as if I were to lose out on it also, unless I moved lively; for two more men ran out from a side street and joined in against me.
There followed a vigorous fifty seconds. I dodged two slung-shots that would have made holes in my head; and laid out a third man; but I got two nasty bashes from knuckle-dusters; and then I heard one of them sing out:
“Knives, you guys!”
I knew it was time now to stop scrapping, and begin business.
I slid my Colt automatic out of my wainscoat pocket and let drive: crack—crack—crack—crack!
If you’ve ever used an “auto,” you’ll know how they “brrrr” death out mighty easy. Well, there were four downed men right there in front of me inside of three full seconds, each one of ’em shot nice and business-like, not to kill but to hurt a bit. For I saw no use in ending the lives even of that kind of person.
The whole body of ’em left me then, hurriedly; and I came on down to the ship.
Perhaps I ought to explain a few details.
Mr. Harpentwater is the man who invented the American Underswing Sewing Machine and the Apwater Gasoline Engine, as probably you know just as well as I do.
He made, roughly, a million and a half dollars out of the first; and I guess the way things are looking, he’s going to top that figure on the second; for the “Apwater Rotator,” as they call it over here on the hoardings, “leaves the Gnome gnoming!” This is, of course, pure American; but I believe it is quite true that the Apwater gadget is “some” engine.
Well, the Apwater Rotator naturally chucked old Harpentwater’s inventive faculties slam bang into the middle of aeronautics with the consequence that his latest effort is the Harpentwater Reefing Biplane which, briefly, is what the flying people have all been howling about, ever since they started to grow wings, or perhaps, to be more accurate, wing-pains!
Briefly, in simple phrasing, the trouble with all existing flying-planes is that if you want a fast plane, you’ve got to cut your supporting surfaces down to the “limit.” This means that the machine so treated can’t leave old terra firma except at a very high rate of speed. Equally, it must land, when it returns, also at a high speed; and landing at a high speed means all sorts of breakages, both to man and machine, unless the God of Luck offers himself continually as a sort of buffer between man and outraged natural laws. So much for fast planes.
And if you feel that life is more valuable to you than speed, and that you prefer to leave earth slowly and return with equal deliberation, you must use large and liberal planes. And large and liberal planes means that speed for you is practically non est…. And in war, speed is, after stability, the most desirable of all things.
There you have the whole secret at the back of Harpentwater’s action in sending for me to discuss taking the plans and the model of his plane across to England; for that hypenated gentleman known as the German-American exists in large quantities on this side of the pond. Further, he has a genius for amalgamating and organizing himself into societies for the furtherence, not of American interests, mind you, but of “dear old Germany.”
The remainder is easy to comprehend. Harpentwater’s Reefing Bi-plane combines the stability of the machine with large planes, with all its landing advantages, plus the speed of the machine suffering from abridged planes. In other words, the most timid of aviators can go aloft with a Harpentwater Reefing Bi-plane from any old ploughed field he happens to have a fancy for. He can also descend gently and precisely onto a field similarly unfitted for aeronautical purposes. And further, while in the air, he can touch speeds that are apt to cause a serious wastage of the enemy’s high velocity shells; not to mention uncounted shiploads of steel and nickel, in the shape of rifle-bullets.
And this combination of qualities is achieved (in part, at least) by Mr. Harpentwater’s cunning invention, by means of which, as soon as his Reefing Bi-plane has safely mounted into the air, the pilot can, by means of a beautiful worm and wheel piece of mechanism, reduce the planes to something scandalously approaching the vanishing point—the exact degree of vanishment being determined by the engine-speed, and screw-pitch by means of a harnessed governor.
Then, when the aviator wishes to descend, he reverses his worm and wheel gadget, and his planes grow again, as his engine speed and screw-pitch lessen, until, at last, under full plane surface, he floats, soft as the proverbial thistle-down, to rest upon the aforementioned ploughed field, or other aviatory abomination.
There you have the details (at least as many as I’m going to give you) of the Harpentwater Reefing Bi-plane. And even a long-honest Englishman may begin to understand, even though he condemns, something of the lust of possession which had seized upon a very appreciable section of German-Americans.
Now, when you take into account that these gentlemen occupied the old U.S.A. in their millions, and that they were, as I’ve already said, banded together to help the “old country” (meaning the Fatherland) to the limit, you will realize what old inventor Harpentwater was up against. For certain representatives of these consistently hyphenated millions had called upon him and made him what I must describe as a very handsome offer, if only it had been a little—well, a little, shall I say, less Germanic in tone and spirit. In brief, if he would sell them the secret of the Reefing Bi-plane, they would pay him, cash down, the sum of one million dollars, provided he kept the secret of the invention for six months from that date, from the other allies. After which they were willing that he should take out and negotiate his patents in the usual way, or do anything else he felt drawn to.
A very handsome offer I should have called it, as I’ve said, had it not as I’ve already hinted, been made it, a fashion just a little too Germanic to suit the stomach of a completely free-born and typically and wholesomely self-assertive, non-hyphenated American Citizen. In short then, to insure as they fatuously thought, Mr. Harpentwater’s swift and unhesitating acceptance of their offer, these misguided, hyphenated gentlemen suggested pleasantly but unmista
kably that if he (Mr. Harpentwater) did not close speedily with their very generous offer, they might withdraw it, and invoke the hushed aid of some of their confreres in official positions. To put it even more shortly, they threatened him, even while offering him so much loose cash, with the alternative that if he refused, some of their countrymen in the Foreign Mails Department, would see to it in any case that if he tried to offer the Reefing Bi-plane to the British, French or Russian Governments, they would certainly intercept the plans and the model en route.
Naturally, Harpentwater “blew up,” violently; and, as I had gathered from him, they “blew out.” I can believe it! I should not imagine Harpentwater a pleasant man to threaten. And, of course, they couldn’t get the plans out of him now, even with a pair of American dentists’ forceps.
However, equally, he’s no fool. He sent for his secretary and procured much interesting information and many fathoms of official statistics, and was eventually very solidly satisfied that the hyphenated folk could make good their threat; for his investigations, and the investigations of his secretary, made it quite unpleasantly clear to him that the “hyphenated citizen” occupied in a quite extraordinary number, official positions varying from the blushing (perhaps this is not an exact description!) police forces of the States, to the more lucrative heights (or depths) of the “political posts.”
He saw plainly that if he attempted to mail anything of a confidential nature to Europe, it would not long remain confidential. And then, being an inventor, he invented a plan to evade the enemy; but fortunately, he tested it first. He sent his butler, as an old servant, down to the shipping office to book a passage to England.
A boat was sailing that very day, and he ordered the butler to take a couple of portmanteaux aboard and put them in his berth.
Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 48
