"Let 'em wrangle," he said; "I'll hold the dollars meanwhile. The men will turn on me if I don't. Why, just look at it. They come aboard and find nothing but silver spoons. The report goes in that we are all right, and we steam to Bremerhaven without let or hindrance. It's mighty, man, just mighty; and I'll not be turned from it."
So he had his way. The cruiser fell back at the dark hour before the dawn, and we began to get the ingots of gold into the launch. This was one of Simpson's larger boats, carried by us especially to transport bullion expeditiously--part of the whole affair planned out from the beginning. Willing hands passed up the golden bars--we packed a fortune on the deck, and the men stood round about shivering with greed of the treasure. Let the scheme be mad or sane, I had to go through with it then; and I own up to a better opinion of it as the time went on. Nothing could be easier to a trained seaman than to keep such a course as the captain laid down for us. We had compasses, sextants, and our navigation books. There was not wind enough to shake a judge's wig nor any omen of bad weather. Let us get away under cover of the darkness, and the rest would be child's play. The "if" was a big one. The light might strike upon us at any instant. I went about the deck with my heart in my mouth. Sometimes I covered my eyes with my arm, fearing to find the bright beams upon me. It was all or nothing--an hour's grace or a million sterling on board the British ship.
Well, we lowered the launch with her heavy cargo of ingots--as many of them as we dared to put into her--and getting her away under shelter of the steamer we headed due west toward Ascension Isle. True, there was an ugly red glimmer from our funnel, but the furnace was under a half-deck, and our memory didn't run to lights, be sure of it. I had Sam the nigger with me, together with Nicolson the young engineer, and Peter Barlow for quarter-master; these were the hands named for my crew; and I was not a little astonished when we were well away from the steamer's side to hear the loud voice of Mike the Irishman--a lazy rogue I would gladly have left behind me.
[Illustration: "THE BLINDING LIGHT SWEPT OVER THEM."]
"Why, Mike," cries I, "and how did you get here?"
"Please, your honour, I just dropped in," says he.
"Then, if I had a rope's end, I'd make you drop out again!" says I.
"Aye, but, your honour," says he, "when was the Irishman born that had any liking for the water? Sure, I always loved ye from the first day I clapped these blessed eyes upon ye! 'I'll go aboard to take care of him,' says I, 'for I feel like his own mother's son!'"
There was no time to argue with him. What with getting the launch away neatly, and being mortal afraid to find myself any minute in the path of the cruiser's search-light, I had too much to do to begin with a hullabaloo--and for that matter the situation was not one to set a man against companionship. There we were, the five of us, in a boat not built for ocean seas, running like a good one away from the ship that should have carried us to Europe and our homes. Let the search-light be clapped upon us, and the gold would be aboard the British cruiser within an hour. Or, in another case and a harder one, let the wind blow, and what then? The gold weighed us down as it was, until even gentle seas splashed us as we lifted to them. A hatful of wind would sink us; a shoreman would have known that. I believed that it was the spin of a coin anyway; and just as I was saying it the cruiser showed her light again, and a great white arc fixed itself upon the distant steamer like a mighty river of molten radiance flowing out upon a darkened sea.
"Look at that for a lantern now," says Mike the Irishman, cowering before it. "'Twould see ye home from a waking, and no mistake about it. Just douk your head, sir, if you please. 'Twould be as well not to be on speaking terms with them when next ye meet."
I smiled at his notion that any amount of "douking" would save us from the cruiser's light, but instinctively I crouched down with the others. To me it seemed impossible that any freak of fortune could hide us from the cruiser's observation. There we were in the still sea, a black speck, no doubt, but one that a clever eye on a warship's bridge would never fail to spy out. Our own steamer, the _Oceanus_, was running north as fast as honest engines could drive her. She, too, appeared now to be just a shimmer of dancing lights--the captain showed every lantern he had got to divert the chase from the launch, and here he succeeded only too well.
Though it was all Lombard Street to a china orange that the cruiser marked us, she held on obstinately after the bigger game. Perhaps she believed that it was all a sham and that we had put off to make a fool of her. I never learned; but I could scarcely believe my eyes when the blinding light swept over them and still nothing happened. Were they all daft aboard her? It was really incredible.
"The admiral's having his hair cut, I suppose," said Barlow the quarter-master, who watched the affair with me from a seat aft. "He's telling 'em to keep it short in the neck, sir--some day a dog will be leading him at the end of a string. Well, I don't make no complaint about that."
"Better not, my man," said I, "if you wish to see the _Oceanus_ again."
"Oh, as to that, we're well enough off here, sir," he said, turning away his eyes from me; "though if we never saw Captain Castle again, I reckon we'd have meat and drink for the rest of our lives."
I looked at him sharply; he coughed and glanced down at the compass. This was the first time I quite understood how well the hands were acquainted with the cargo and its owners. The danger of the knowledge could not be hidden from me. Even the nigger Sam, with his blinking green eyes, ate up every word of our talk and smacked his lips over it.
"You buy barrel of rum and no mistake, sar," he chimed in, unasked. "You change your Sunday shirt on Monday and blarm the expense. We all very rich gentlemen, surely."
I turned it with a laugh, though I was well aware of the reservation behind it. Happily, but for a bottle of brandy of my own, there was no drink on the launch. I had a revolver in my pistol-pocket, and I said that at the worst, which was then but a suspicion, I could keep both the nigger and Peter in order. Mike the Irishman might go any way; but Nicolson, the young engineer, could certainly be counted upon. To him I said a word when two of the hands had been ordered to turn in. His answer was reassuring, but more ambiguous than I liked.
"Oh," he said, "anything to help the Dutchmen. They'll miss this odd lot if we lose it--and, of course, we're all honest, Lorimer. Don't you be uneasy. I've no fancy for gilded firesides myself; besides," he added, "if we took our oaths that we had to jettison it, who'd believe us? Better go straight under the circumstances."
I replied that there were no circumstances possible to make common rogues of us, and his cheery assent did much to deceive me. Counting upon him entirely, I let the launch simply drift while he lay down for a couple of hours' sleep, and afterwards I wrapped myself up in a blanket and managed to get some rest. When I awoke it was broad daylight. An immensely round sun fired the placid water with sheets of crimson splendour; the air came heavy from the Equator; a burning, intolerable day seemed before us. Restless and anxious already to be sure of our bearings, that the _Oceanus_ might find us at noon, I bustled up almost as soon as I was awake; but the first thing I saw took my breath away, and I just stood like a man in a wonder-world to watch it. There amidships, in the well where the money was stored, Sam the nigger, Mike the Irishman, and Nicolson the engineer were grouped about a box of golden ingots, and so transported with the sight of them that they scarcely heard me. One by one they had laid out those shimmering yellow bars, each a fortune to such men; and they watched the sunlight glittering upon them, and caressed them with gentle hands and feasted their eyes upon them. When I appeared, no man budged from his place or seemed in any way abashed. Evidently they were all agreed upon a purpose, and this Nicolson made known to me.
"Yes," he said, coolly; "we're counting up the dollars, old chap--divide on shore, you know--fair and square. Come, don't look blue. The Dutchman won't miss them, and old Joey's made his own bargain. We can rig up a tale between us and buy the crowd at Ascension--good joke, isn't it, Lorimer?"
"Why, yes," said I; "but, as my port's not Ascension, I don't quite see the point of it. Come, Nicolson, don't be a fool. Just put that lid on and help me to go over the chart. We mustn't keep the captain waiting--you know what he is."
Very lazily, I thought, he put the lid on the box of ingots, and, laughing at the others, he came aft with me. When I took up the chart to make a dead reckoning by the help of his own calculations during my watch off, he laughed again in his peculiar way. "It's all right," he said; "due west for Ascension, as you wished."