The Cruise of the Thetis Part 3

"Good-morning, Singleton!--Morning, Price!" he exclaimed as he approached the two. "Well, Jack," he continued, "so you arrived up to time, eh? And by the look of the boat I should say that you've got the stuff on board; is that so? Ah! that's all right; I am precious glad to hear it, I can tell you, for to have those cases acc.u.mulating here day after day has been a source of great anxiety to me."

"Sorry!" remarked Jack cheerfully. "But why should they worry you, old chap? Everything is securely packed in air-tight, zinc-lined cases, so that there was really no very serious cause for anxiety or fear, even of an explosion. Such a thing could not possibly happen except by the downright deliberate act of some evil--disposed individual; and I don't think--"

"Precisely," interrupted Murdock; "that was just what was worrying me-- at least, it was one of the things that was worrying me. Not on account of our own people, mind you; I believe them to be loyal and trustworthy to a man. But I cannot help thinking that some hint of your expedition must have leaked out, for we have never had so many strangers about the place since I have been in the business as we have had during the last fortnight, while those cases have been arriving. We have simply been overwhelmed with business enquiries of every description--enquiries as to our facilities for the execution of repairs; enquiries as to the quickest time in which we could build and deliver new s.h.i.+ps; enquiries respecting new engines and machinery of every conceivable kind, not one of which will probably come to anything. And the thing that troubled me most was that every one of these people wanted to be shown over the place from end to end, in order that they might judge for themselves, as they explained, whether our works were sufficiently extensive and up-to- date to enable us to execute the particular kind of work that they wanted done: and every mother's son of them gravitated, sooner or later, to the spot where those precious cases of yours were stacked, and seemed profoundly interested in them; while one chap, who was undoubtedly a foreigner, had the impudence to insinuate that the marks and addresses on the cases, indicating that they were sugar machinery for Mauritius, were bogus! I sent him to the rightabout pretty quickly, I can tell you. Why, what the d.i.c.kens are you laughing at, man? It is no laughing matter, I give you my word!"

For Jack had burst into a fit of hearty laughter at Murdock's righteous indignation.

"No, no; of course not, old chap," answered Jack, manfully struggling to suppress his mirth; "awfully annoying it must have been, I'm sure.

Well, is that all?"

"No," answered Murdock indignantly, "it is not; nor is it the worst.

Only the day before yesterday we had a man poking about here who said he was from the Admiralty. He wanted nothing in particular for the moment, he said, but was simply making a tour of the princ.i.p.al s.h.i.+pyards of the country, with the view of ascertaining what were the facilities of each for the execution of Admiralty work. He, too, was vastly interested in those precious cases of yours, so much so, indeed, that I should not have been at all surprised if he had asked to have the whole lot of them opened! Oh, yes! of course I know he could not have gone to such a length as that without a.s.signing some good and sufficient reason; but I tell you, Jack, that we are playing a dangerous game, and I will not be a party to a repet.i.tion of it. A pretty mess we should be in if the British Government were to discover that we are aiding and abetting insurgents in arms against the authority of a friendly Power! Why, it would mean nothing short of ruin--absolute ruin--to us!"

"Yes, you are quite right, old chap, it would," agreed Jack soberly; "and if Senor Montijo wants to s.h.i.+p any more stuff after this, it must not be through this yard. But it is all aboard and out of sight now, and we leave for--um--Mauritius, shall we say?--this afternoon; so there is no need for you to worry any further about it."

"Well, to be perfectly candid with you, Jack," said Murdock, "I shall not be at all sorry to see the _Thetis_ safely away from this and on her way down the river, for I shall not be quite comfortable and easy in my mind until I do. And you will have to be very careful what you are about, my boy; 'there is no smoke without fire', and all this fuss and prying about of which I have been telling you means something, you may depend. It would not very greatly surprise me if you discover that you are being followed and watched."

"We must take our chance of that," laughed Jack. "Not that I am very greatly afraid. The fact is, Murdock, that you are const.i.tutionally a nervous man, and you have worried yourself into a perfect state of scare over this business. But never mind, your anxiety will soon be over now, for here comes our coal, if I am not mistaken; and I promise you that we will be off the moment that we have taken our last sack on board. But I will run into the office and say good-bye before I go."

The church clocks were just striking two when, Jack having duly fulfilled his promise to say good-bye to his partner, and to exchange a final word or two with him, the _Thetis_ cast off from the wharf, backed out into the stream, and, swinging round, swept away down the river at the modest rate of fourteen knots, that being her most economical speed, and the pace at which, in order to make her coal last out, it had been decided that she should cross the Atlantic. She sat very deep in the water, and her decks, fore and aft, were packed with coal, in sacks so closely stowed that there was only a narrow gangway left between them from the foot of the ladder abaft the deck-house to the companion, and a similar gangway from the fore end of the bridge deck to the forecastle.

If it was necessary for the men to pa.s.s to any other part of the s.h.i.+p, such as to the ensign staff, for instance, they had to climb over the sacks. She was particularly well equipped with boats, too: there were a steam pinnace and a whaler in chocks on the starboard side of the deck- house, balanced by the lifeboat and cutter on the other; and she carried no less than four fine, wholesome boats at her davits aft, all nicely covered over with canvas, to protect them from the sun--and also, in one case, to screen from too curious eyes Jack's submarine, which was snugly stowed away in the largest quarter boat, that craft having had her thwarts removed to make room for the submarine. Twenty-six hours later, namely, at four o'clock on the following afternoon, the _Thetis_ anch.o.r.ed off Boulogne; the steam pinnace was lowered, and Jack, accompanied by four seamen, proceeded into the harbour, landing at the steps near the railway station. From thence it was a very short walk to the hotel to which he was bound; and in a few minutes he was at his destination, enquiring for Monsieur Robinson. "Yes," he was informed, "Monsieur Robeenson was in, and was expecting a Monsieur Singleton.

Possibly Monsieur might be the gentleman in question?" Jack confessed that he was; and, being piloted upstairs, was presently shown into a room where he found Don Hermoso Montijo and his son Carlos obviously waiting for him. As he entered they both sprang to their feet and advanced toward him with outstretched hands.

"Ah, Senor Singleton," exclaimed Don Hermoso, "punctual to the minute, or, rather"--glancing at his watch--"a few minutes before your time! We duly received your wire in Paris this morning, and came on forthwith. I am delighted to learn that everything has gone so smoothly. Do I understand that you are now ready to sail for Cuba?"

"Certainly, Don Hermoso," answered Jack; "we can be under way in half an hour from this, if you like; or whenever you please. It is for you to say when you would like to start."

"Then in that case we may as well be off at once," said Don Hermoso.

"For the first fortnight or three weeks of our tour through Switzerland we were undoubtedly the objects of a great deal of interested attention, but latterly we have not been so acutely conscious of being followed and watched; everything that we did was so perfectly open and frank that I think the persons who had us under surveillance must have become convinced that their suspicions of us were groundless, and consequently they relaxed their attentions. And I believe that we managed to get away from Paris this morning without being followed. If that is the case we have of course managed to throw the watchers off the scent, for the moment at least, and it will no doubt be wise to get away from here before it is picked up again. I hope that you, Senor, have not been subjected to any annoyance of that kind?"

"No," said Jack laughingly, "I have not, beyond meeting at Cowes with that man who called himself Mackintosh--of which I informed you in one of my letters--I have had little or no cause to believe that I have become an object of suspicion to the Spanish Government. It is true that a race for steam-yachts was got up, a little while before I left the Solent, under circ.u.mstances which suggested to me that an attempt was being made to ascertain the best speed of the _Thetis_; but the attempt might have existed only in my imagination, and if it was otherwise, the plan was defeated, so no harm was done. But my partner has been a good deal worried recently by the incursions of a number of inquisitive strangers, who have obtruded themselves upon him and invaded our works with what he considers very inadequate excuses. His fixed impression is that a whisper was somehow allowed to get abroad that arms, ammunition, and stores were to be s.h.i.+pped from our yard for the use of the Cuban insurgents, and that the inquisitive strangers were neither more nor less than emissaries of the Spanish Government, sent down to investigate into the truth of the matter. They one and all appear to have betrayed a quite remarkable amount of interest in the cases, and one individual at least seems to have pretty broadly hinted his doubts as to the genuineness of the markings on them. Also, our own Government appears to have received a hint of what we were doing, and to have sent a man down to investigate; I am afraid, therefore, that despite all our precautions, we have not wholly succeeded in avoiding suspicion. And if such should be the case it will be a pity, for it will certainly mean trouble for us all later on."

"The stronger the reason why we should start without further delay,"

said Don Hermoso. "Carlos, oblige me by ringing the bell."

The bell was rung, the bill asked for and paid, the various servants generously tipped, and the little party set out. The Montijos' luggage had been left in the hall of the hotel: there was nothing therefore but for the four seamen to seize it, shoulder it, and carry it down to the pinnace; and this occupied but a few minutes. A quarter of an hour later the party had gained the deck of the yacht, and the pinnace was once more reposing in her chocks on the bridge deck.

"Get your anchor up, Mr Milsom, if you please," said Jack, allowing his eyes to stray sh.o.r.eward as Milsom repeated the order to the mate. As he looked, he became aware of something in the nature of a commotion or disturbance at the end of the pier; and, entering the chart-house, he brought forth a pair of splendid binoculars with which to investigate.

Upon applying the gla.s.ses to his eyes he saw that there was a little crowd of perhaps fifty people gathered on the pier end, all eagerly listening to a man who was talking and gesticulating with great vehemence as he pointed excitedly toward the yacht. The man appeared to be particularly addressing two gendarmes who were among the crowd, but everybody was cl.u.s.tering close round him and listening, apparently in a state of the greatest excitement, to what he had to say, while occasionally one or another in the crowd would face seaward and shake his fist savagely at the yacht.

"Come here a moment, Carlos," called Jack. "I want you to look through these gla.s.ses at the mob gathered yonder on the pier end, and especially at the excited individual in their midst, and tell me whether you remember having ever seen him before."

Young Montijo took the gla.s.ses from Jack, looked intently through them for a full minute, and then turned to Singleton, saying:

"Why, yes, of course I do. He is the chap that the Pater and I were constantly meeting, wherever we went, while we were in Switzerland. We met him so repeatedly that at length we could not avoid the conviction that he was d.o.g.g.i.ng our footsteps. On board the steamers, in the trains, even when out driving, it was continually the same; we did not seem able to get away from him. He never took the slightest notice of us, but that only made us suspect him all the more, because in the case of other people, after we had encountered them a few times, many of them bowed to us, some even entered into conversation with us; but although that fellow stopped at the same hotels as we used, and generally contrived to sit at the same table with us, he never allowed himself to show, by so much as a momentary glance, that he had ever seen us before.

Oh, yes"--as he again applied the gla.s.ses to his eyes--"that is the same man; I could swear to him among a thousand. And what is he after now? Upon my word it looks very much as though he intended to follow us on board here! See, there are two men bringing a boat along toward the steps at the end of the pier, and--yes--by Jove, that is what he means to do! And he is bringing the gendarmes with him! Now what mischief can he possibly be up to? The Pater and I have done nothing--"

"Let me have a look," interrupted Jack, almost s.n.a.t.c.hing the binoculars out of his friend's hand, and putting them up to his eyes.

"Ay," he said, "you are right, Carlos, undoubtedly. There he goes down the steps, with the policemen at his heels. Yes; now they get into the boat and seat themselves. Yes, he is pointing out the yacht to the boatmen, and now they are shoving off and heading this way!--Mr Milsom," he broke off suddenly, "what is the best news with regard to that anchor of ours?"

"Forecastle there!" shouted Milsom; "how are you coming on with your anchor?"

"The cable's almost up and down, sir," answered Perkins, the chief mate, who was standing by the knight-heads and hanging on by the forestay as he leaned over to watch the cable. "We shall break out in about a couple of minutes."

"And it will take that boat ten minutes, at least, to get alongside, even if they keep up their present pace," remarked Jack. "We will get a move on the s.h.i.+p, Phil, as soon as the anchor is out of the ground; I don't very much like the look of those gendarmes in that boat."

"No; nor do I," answered Milsom. "Quartermaster, tend the wheel!"

"But surely they cannot do anything!" exclaimed Carlos. "What could they do?"

"Well," said Jack, "I have heard, before now, of people being arrested upon false charges, either for the purpose of obtaining possession and getting a sight of their private papers; or with the object of detaining them until it became too late for them to accomplish a certain undertaking; or until some other and more serious charge could be trumped up against them, and the necessary witnesses found and coached to procure their conviction. It would be rather a bad thing for Cuba, for instance, if, at this particular juncture in its affairs, your father were clapped in prison and kept there for a couple of years."

"Well, yes, I suppose it would," agreed Carlos.

"Anchor's aweigh, sir!" reported Perkins, at this moment, as the steam windla.s.s, after slowing down until it nearly stopped, suddenly started to clank at racing speed.

"Very good," answered Milsom. "Up with it as fast as you please."

Then, with a casual glance at the approaching boat, which was by this time within about a quarter of a mile of the yacht, he laid his hand upon the engine-room telegraph and signalled: "Quarter speed ahead!"

CHAPTER FOUR.

CIRc.u.mVENTING THE ENEMY.

"Whither away now, Mr Singleton? Down channel, I suppose?" enquired Milsom, when the yacht began to forge ahead.

"I think not," said Jack. "In view of the fact that there is somebody in that boat who appears to be willing to adopt very energetic measures to get hold of Senor Montijo--or the yacht--it will perhaps be a wise step for us to run a few miles up channel, instead of down, until we get out of sight of any inquisitive eyes which may possibly be watching us: so please shape a course up through the Straits for an hour or two--say two hours; then we can seize a favourable opportunity to turn round and run down channel, hugging the English sh.o.r.e fairly close. But your question reminds me that the time has arrived when we ought to decide for what port we are to make, in order that you may work out your Great Circle courses. What think you, Don Hermoso?" he continued, in Spanish.

"Have you any definite idea as to the precise spot which it would be best for us to make for?"

"Really, Senor, that is a detail that I have not yet seriously considered," answered Don Hermoso. "My idea was to get into communication with the Junta as soon as we reach the other side, and learn from them what spot would be the most suitable at which to make the attempt to land our consignment. What think you, Captain Milsom?"

"Where has this Junta of yours established itself?" asked Milsom, also taking up the conversation in Spanish, of which he had a serviceable knowledge. "Would it be possible to get a cable message into their hands from this side without the risk of it being intercepted by the Spaniards?"

"Oh, yes; quite easily!" answered Don Hermoso. "They have established their headquarters in New York, and I could cable to them in cipher, if necessary."

"Then," said Milsom, "if I may be permitted, I would suggest that, since we are now running up channel, it would be a good plan for you to land at Dover, and cable to the Junta the information that you have actually started; that you have some reason to suspect that we have not altogether escaped the suspicion of the Spanish authorities, and that consequently the yacht may be watched for, and perhaps followed when we arrive in Cuban waters; and that it would therefore be a very great convenience if, when we get across, we could find a communication awaiting us--say at Key West--giving us the latest information upon the situation generally, and advice as to the most desirable spot at which to attempt the landing of our cargo."

"A most excellent suggestion!" exclaimed Don Hermoso. "Come, gentlemen, let us enter the chart-house and draft the message at once, after which I will transcribe it into cipher in readiness to dispatch it upon our arrival at Dover."

With the exercise of considerable thought and ingenuity a concise rendering of the points suggested by Milsom was at length drafted: and, upon the arrival of the yacht off Dover, Don Hermoso and Singleton went ash.o.r.e in the steam pinnace and dispatched the message to New York; after which the yacht's bows were turned southward again until she had rounded Beachy Head, when Milsom set the course at west by south for the Lizard, from which headland he intended to take his final "departure".

It was just nine o'clock in the evening when the _Thetis_ rounded Beachy Head; and at noon next day she was abreast of the Lizard and two miles distant from it.

"A splendid 'departure'!" exclaimed Milsom enthusiastically, when he had taken a careful bearing of the headland. "I now know the s.h.i.+p's position at noon to-day almost to a foot; and I was anxious to make a really good departure, for I have worked out a very elaborate and complete system of Great Circle courses from the Lizard to the north- west end of the Little Bahama Bank, which is a spot that must be hit off very accurately if one would avoid disaster. Thence I shall run down the Florida Strait to Key West, the course which I intend to steer being the shortest possible distance to that spot. And we must not run a mile farther than is necessary, Jack, for Macintyre tells me that it will take him all his time to make his coal last out."

As it happened, there was no cause for apprehension as to the coal lasting out, for when the _Thetis_ was two days out from the Lizard she fell in with a fresh easterly wind which enabled her to use her sails to such great advantage that she saved a full day in the run across, steaming in through the East Channel and dropping her anchor in four fathoms of water within half a mile of the town of Key West a few minutes before six o'clock in the evening of her eleventh day out from the Lizard. There were several American men-o'-war of various descriptions, ranging from battles.h.i.+ps to torpedo boats, lying at anchor in the roadstead, as well as two cruisers, three gunboats, and a torpedo boat flying the Spanish flag; and Singleton noticed, with mingled concern and amus.e.m.e.nt, that, as the little _Thetis_ swept past the Spanish vessels at close quarters, with the blue burgee and ensign of the "Royal Thames" gaily fluttering from masthead and ensign staff, the yacht was an object of the keenest interest to the officers who were promenading the navigating bridges. A boat from the custom-house, with the health officer of the port in her, came off to the yacht almost as soon as her anchor was down: but as the _Thetis_ had a clean bill of health there was no difficulty about getting pratique, and the party might have landed forthwith had they so pleased; they deemed it wise, however, to exercise a certain measure of restraint, by abstaining from landing until the next morning. But although the port authorities were perfectly polite, Singleton thought--or was it only a case of a guilty conscience?--that the custom-house officer betrayed even more than ordinary Yankee curiosity as to the reasons which had prompted Jack to select West Indian waters as the spot in which to pursue his quest of renewed health; and there seemed to be a very marked disposition on the part of the man to indulge in hints and innuendoes suggesting that he was perfectly aware of the existence of a certain something "under the rose", until Singleton at length put a stop to it by asking him, point- blank, what it was at which he was hinting. And when he at length went down the side to return to the sh.o.r.e, he left a subordinate on board the yacht. The Montijos were very wroth at this act of the customs authorities, which they rather wished Jack to resent as an act of discourtesy on the part of the American Government; but Milsom promptly interposed, explaining matters, while Jack laughed heartily, declaring that there was not the slightest need to worry, since they had nothing in the shape of contraband or otherwise that they wished to land at Key West.