Command Part 30

"Why do you look so sad?" she demanded. "_Mon Dieu!_ To-morrow at Ismir.

What happiness!"

"For you," he added in a low voice.

"And for you," she twittered in his ear and patting his hand. "I see the plan of Monsieur Dainopoulos now. We shall have good fortune."

There was a faint tap at the door.

"Supper, Madama," said the young Jew, making a low bow, and they went up.

Mr. Spokesly, sitting on the engineer's settee an hour later and discussing the matter cautiously with that person, was not so sure of the good fortune.

"What can we do?" he asked, and the engineer, who was of a peaceful disposition and perfectly satisfied so long as he got his pay, said:

"You can't do nothing in this fog. He's the captain."

"We may hit something," said Mr. Spokesly, who was talking more for comfort than for enlightenment.

"Why, yes, we may do that. Do it anywhere, come to that. Where do you think we are now, Mister Mate?"

"I don't know, I tell you. He says to me, 'I'll attend to the course,'

and he may have put her round. But I've got a notion he's carrying out his orders. I see now why I got six months' pay. Did you?"

"No, I got a note on the captain, same as usual," said Mr. Ca.s.sar.

"What do you think they will do with us?" pursued Mr. Spokesly.

"I don't know, Mister Mate. There's always plenty o' work everywhere,"

was the equable reply.

"Is that all you think of?"

"I got a big family in Cospicua," said the engineer, standing up. "I can't afford to be out of a job. I think I'll go and eat, Mister Mate.

Perhaps the fog will lift a bit and we can see what the course is."

They went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge-deck, and stood staring into the damp, palpable darkness. The absence of all artificial light, the silence, the tangible vapour concealing the surface of the sea, and possibly, too, the over-hanging uncertainty of their destination, combined to fill them with a vague dull sense of impending peril. They were on the starboard side, abaft the lifeboat. They could not see the bridge clearly, and the forecastle was swallowed up in the blank opacity of the mist. It was a situation in which both care and recklessness were of equal futility. The imagination balked and turned back on itself before the contemplation of such limitless possibilities.

And it was while they were standing there in taciturn apprehension that they suddenly sprang into an extraordinary animation of mind and body at the sound and vibration of a loud crash forward. The _Kalkis_ heeled over to port from the pressure of some invisible weight and Mr. Spokesly started to run towards the bridge.

"They're sh.e.l.lin' her!" he bawled. "Stand by! Look out! What's that?"

He stood still for a moment, his hands raised to balance himself against the returning roll of the s.h.i.+p as she recovered. And in that moment, out of the fog, above him and over the rail, came an immense gray vertical wall of sharp steel rus.h.i.+ng up to him and past into oblivion with a grinding splintering roar. There were cries, the dim glow of an opened door high up, the sough of pouring waters in the darkness, a shadowy phantom and a swirl of propellers, and she was gone.

And there was an absolute silence on the _Kalkis_ more dreadful to Mr.

Spokesly than the panic of the mob of Asiatics on the _Tanganyika_. He tried to think. Mr. Ca.s.sar had disappeared. They had been in collision with a man-of-war, he felt certain of that. There was no mistaking the high cleaving flare of those gray bows as they fled past. And she must have struck the _Kalkis_ forward as well as amids.h.i.+ps. A glancing blow.

Yet there was silence. He strode forward and climbed the ladder to the bridge.

"Are you there, sir?" he called.

There was no answer. He went up to the man at the wheel, who was turning the spokes of the wheel rapidly.

"Where is the Captain?" he demanded harshly.

"He's over there," said the man confidentially, nodding towards the other side of the bridge. "What was that, sir? Explosions?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Spokesly angrily. "Ask the captain," and he went down again and descended the ladder to the fore-deck.

He fell over something here in the dark, something rough and with jagged edges. He felt it with his hands and discovered that it was one of the heavy cast-iron bollards which were mounted on either side of the forecastle head. Mr. Spokesly began to realize that he was confronting a problem which he would have to handle alone. He stepped over the ma.s.s of metal, which had been flung fifty feet, and immediately tripped upon a swaying, jagged surface that tore his clothes and cut his hands. He said to himself, "The deck is torn up. I must have a light." There was no sound from forward and he wondered miserably if any of them had been hurt. He climbed to the bridge again to get a hurricane lamp that he knew was in the chart room. While he was striking a match to light it he was once more aware of the fact that the engines were still going. So he hadn't stopped or anything. The captain's form was dimly discernible against the canvas dodger, extraordinarily huge and rotund. Mr.

Spokesly's anger broke out in a harsh yell.

"Hi, Captain! Do you know your forecastle's carried away? Or perhaps you don't care."

"I won't be spoken to in that manner," came the lisping, toothless voice from the darkness. "Go forward and report on the damage. I should think it wouldn't be necessary to tell an experienced officer his duty...."

Mr. Spokesly, swinging the hurricane lamp in his hand, laid his other hand upon Captain Rannie's shoulder.

"Look you here, Captain. You won't be spoken to in that manner? You'll be spoken to as I want from now on. Do you get that? From now on. I'm going forward to report damage. And when I find out if the s.h.i.+p's sinking, I'll not trouble to tell you, you double-crossing old blatherskite you!" And he gave the captain a thrust that sent him flying into the pent-house at the end, where he remained invisible but audible, referring with vivacity to the fact that he had been "attacked."

"I'll attack you again when I come back," muttered his chief officer as he went down the ladder.

And the lamp showed him, in spite of the fog, what had happened. The fore-deck was a ma.s.s of ripped and twisted plates, splintered doors, and fragments of the interiors of cabins looked strangely small and tawdry out on the harsh deck. A settee-cus.h.i.+on, all burst and impaled upon a piece of angle iron, impeded him. "Won't be spoken to that fas.h.i.+on!" he muttered, holding up the lamp and peering into the murk. "Good Lord! The forecastle's carried away." He stumbled nearer. There was no ladder on this side any more. The high sharp prow had struck a glancing blow just abaft the anchor and sliced away the whole starboard side of the forecastle. Standing where the door of the bosun's room had been, Mr.

Spokesly lowered his lamp and saw the black water rus.h.i.+ng past between the torn deck-beams. And Mr. Spokesly had it borne in upon him that not only was Plouff vanished, but his cabin was gone. There was scarcely anything of it left save some splintered parts of the settee and the inner bulkhead, on which a gaudy calendar from a seaman's outfitter fluttered in the night breeze against the blue-white paint.

Mr. Spokesly's heart was daunted by the desolation of that brutally revealed interior. It daunted him because he could imagine, with painful particularity, the scene in that little cabin a few moments before. He had looked in at the door a day or two since, and seen Plouff, a large calabash pipe like a cornucopia in his mouth, propped up in his bed-place, reading a very large book with marbled covers which turned out to be the bound volume of a thirty-year-old magazine picked up for a few pence in some port. He could see him thus engaged a few moments ago.

Mr. Spokesly gave a sort of half-sob, half-giggle. "My G.o.d, he isn't here at all! He's been carried away, cabin and bunk and everything.

Smashed and drowned. Well!"

He felt he couldn't stop there any more. It was worse than finding Plouff's mangled body in the ruins. To have been wiped out like that without a chance to explain a single word to any one was tragic for Plouff. Mr. Spokesly gave a shout.

"Anybody down there?" There was no answer. He found himself wondering what the captain's comment would be upon Plouff's sudden departure for parts unknown. He tried to convince himself that there was no reason for supposing him to be dead. He saw him sitting up in his bunk in the sea, still clasping the large book and smoking the trumpet-shaped pipe, and indulging in a querulous explanation of his unusual behaviour. Which would not be his fault for once, Mr. Spokesly reflected. No doubt, however, Captain Rannie would log him for deserting the s.h.i.+p. Mr.

Spokesly went aft and looked at the boat near which he had been standing when the collision happened. It was hanging by the after davit, a mere bunch of smashed sticks. Trailing in the water and making a soft swis.h.i.+ng sound were the bow plates and bulwarks which had been peeled from the forepart of the _Kalkis_ by the sharp prow of the stranger. And yet she seemed to have suffered nothing below the water-line. Mr.

Spokesly, who knew Plouff kept the sounding rod in his cabin, wondered how he was going to sound the wells. He thought of the engineer, stepped over to the port side to reach the after ladder, and pulled himself up short to avoid falling over a huddled group gathered alongside the engine-room hatch.

"What's the matter?" he stammered, astonished. He saw the steward, a coat hastily put on over his ap.r.o.n, Amos, whose glittering and protuberant eyes were less certain than ever of his future fortune, and Evanthia. She was not afraid. She was angry. She darted at Mr. Spokesly and broke into a torrent of invective against the two wretched beings who wanted to get into the boat and couldn't untie the ropes.

"Pigs, dogs, carrion!" she shrilled at them in Greek, and then to Mr.

Spokesly she said,

"The s.h.i.+p. Is it finished?"

"No. s.h.i.+p's all right. Why don't you go down?"

"_Mon Dieu!_ Why? He asks why! Did you hear the noise? The bed is broken. The window, the lamp, _Brr-pp_!" She clapped her hands together.

"Why? Go and see," and she turned away from him to rage once more at the two terrified creatures who had been unable to carry out her imperious orders. These had been to set her afloat in the lifeboat instantly; and willingly would they have done it, and gone in with her themselves; but alas, they had been unable to let the villainous boat drop into the water.

Mr. Spokesly was genuinely alarmed at this news. He left them precipitately and ran down the cabin stairs to find out if the s.h.i.+p was making water.

There was no need. The _Kalkis_, on rebounding from the terrific impact on her forecastle, had heeled over to starboard, the side of the s.h.i.+p had been buckled and crushed along the line of the deck, and the concussion had knocked the lamp out of its gimbals and it was rolling on the floor. He picked it up and relit it. He hurried out again to find the engineer. His training was urging him to get the wells sounded.

Moreover, the filling of the forepeak through the smashed chain-locker had put the s.h.i.+p down by the head a little. She might be all right, but on the other hand....