Chapter LIX: The Siren

“Don’t hurt the girl!” Harvey’s voice came from the deck outside. “Hurry it, you awkward swabs!”

“Got him, Captain!” gasped somebody, and Bill, bleeding and bruised, was hauled out on to the deck.

One of Hale’s ears was covered with a dressing. Bill’s shot had not gone so wide as he had feared.

“Take him up to the chart-house, where I can see him,” stormed Hale. “You Yankee swine, I’ll teach you to play monkey tricks with me! Up with him!”

Bill was dragged up to the bridge and flung into the empty chart-house.

“Tie his hands,” said Hale. “And, young lady, if you give me any trouble, you’ll be sorry sooner than you expect. You’ll be sorry enough, anyway,” he grinned, and leered into her face. “You’re one of the best pieces I’ve seen for a long time, and old Harvey ain’t so old that he can’t appreciate a pretty wench when he sees one!”

Where was Clive? Almost as if Bill had spoken his thoughts aloud, Hale answered him.

“There’s your pal,” he said, and pointed to the inner room, where the captain had had his quarters.

He dragged open the door and they had a momentary vision of Clive Lowbridge, lying on a bed, trussed from head to foot, and his face distorted with anger. Another second and the door was closed.

“You people are going to be useful to me--all of you,” chuckled Harvey, and, pouring out half a glass of raw whisky, drank it down with gusto. “If you’ve got any idea that them naval men are going to help you, get it out of your nuts! There ain’t anything in heaven or hell that can pull you through _this_ trouble, believe me!”

Soon after he swaggered out on the deck to consult the watch, and when he came back he was accompanied by three men, who carried bulging pillow-cases, which they emptied on the table. Bill looked in amazement. There were ropes of pearls, diamonds, brooches, magnificent wristlets, and mixed with these, bundle upon bundle of American currency, thick wads of French francs, and a miscellaneous collection of gold.

“I guess we’ve lost the money that was on the _Thomas Inland_,” he said, “but there’s lashings on this ship to keep us all in luxury.”

He opened the captain’s safe and thrust in the jewellery. The money he stuffed away in one of the pillow-slips.

“And I can tell you this,” he said, addressing Bill, “that there is another half a million that we got out of the post, and, what’s more, only three-quarters of the Treasury money went on board the _Inland_. There’s enough left to make this worth while when we scupper you, and leave you for these Navy men to pick up.”

There came at this second a dramatic interruption. An oil-covered man dashed into the cabin, his face streaked blackly.

“What is it, Snell?” asked Hale sharply.

“Captain, the juice has gone----”

Hale clapped his hand over the engineer’s mouth and thrust him outside, pulling the door closed behind him.

“They’re running short of oil,” said Stone in an exultant whisper. “That means that he’ll be forced to stop!”

Bill shook his head.

“They have I don’t know how many hundreds of tons in the cargo,” he said. “The purser told me yesterday. He wondered who was shipping heavy oil to the United States, and suggested it was a lunatic. It is only a question of hours before they’ll tap enough to carry them clear of pursuit.”

“But where can they go now?” asked the girl. “Didn’t you tell me that the little ship was intended as a sort of lifeboat for them?”

Bill was silent. This fact had not occurred to him. The capture of the _Thomas Inland_ changed the situation, and Hale’s plans must undergo a radical transformation. He could no longer abandon the ship in the Arctic Sea; he must make some port, and make it under the escort of warships. His alternative was to reach some inhabited coastline and take to the boats in the night, trusting to reach land with his loot. Thinking the matter over, Bill decided this was the course that Hale would take, and that the signal for his leaving the ship would also be the signal for the destruction of the superfluous members of his party.

The fog was thinning, but the vessel still went dead slow. An hour later, they emerged into a sea which to Harvey Hale’s mind, was beautifully free from warships. The _Escorial_ was now moving north-west. Hale believed that it was possible that, by circumnavigating the fog-bank, he could shake off his pursuers and lead them along enough to make the Canadian coast. His main plan was to fall in with some small trading vessel, and, on the excuse that he needed assistance, to board the smaller ship, take possession, and leaving the _Escorial_ to its fate, make his getaway. That he contemplated without a qualm the destruction of three thousand lives was an incredible fact. The rope had been spun that would hang him; he had no illusions as to the outcome of the adventure if he faced an Old Bailey jury. No excuse he could offer, no proof that he acted under the instructions of others, would rescue him from that quick trap in Pentonville Prison where pirates are hanged, since Execution Dock is no longer a fashionable place for the dispatch of seafaring miscreants.

For the time being he grasped at the straw of deliverance which his luck offered to him. With Stone and the reporter as hostages, he might yet avoid a conflict which could not fail to end unhappily for himself. Wholesale death bulked very small by the side of his own imminent peril.

When Hale returned to his prisoners he was in high spirits, inclined even to take a good-humoured view of Bill’s bad shooting. And, as usual, his elation was expressed in a very favourable view of his own extraordinary qualities.

“There isn’t another man in the world,” he boasted, “who could have slipped that crowd of sleuths. Did you see what I did, Holbrook? Turned ninety degrees across their path? And mind you, even if that skipper hadn’t had the sense to pull up, I’d have got away with it. Yes, sir, you could search the world for Harvey Hale’s opposite number, and you’d have to admit that he doesn’t live!”

He pinched Bill’s neck suggestively.

“That’s a good throat for cutting, young fellow. By God, it’s going to be cut, unless you’re lucky!”

Suddenly he broke into a fit of laughter.

“All you boys and girls ought to be together,” he said mockingly, and, unlocking the door of the captain’s suite, he invited them into the room where Clive Lowbridge lay, inert and helpless.

“Good looking fellow, ain’t he? I’ll tell the world he is! Member of the aristocracy, too!” he gibed. “You can sit here and keep him company, but I’ll cut the throat of anybody who attempts to unlash him! Maybe I won’t be so rough with you”--he was ogling Betty--“because you’re going to be my sweetie!”

He went out through the chart-house, laughing as at a good joke. Harvey Hale had found a new interest in life. Betty crossed to the bed and laid her cool hand on the prisoner’s forehead.

“Are you very badly hurt, Clive?” she asked anxiously.

He shook his head.

“No, I’m uncomfortable, and I doubt if it would be wise to loosen me--yet. Have you a knife, Holbrook?”

Bill shook his head, and exposed his manacled hands.

“He treated me very decently at first, until after he had murdered poor Laffin,” Clive went on. “It was when I protested against that awful crime that he had me tied up and put in here. I suppose he’s shaken off the warships?”

“For the time being,” said Bill, by nature an optimist.

“I don’t think it matters very much whether he has shaken them off or not,” said Clive. “This devil will not think twice about blowing up the ship. He says he will burn it to the water’s edge, and I believe he will.”

Bill was examining his bonds.

“I could loose them for you,” he said.

Clive hesitated.

“I don’t wish you to take any additional risks, but I’d hate to stop you doing it!”

Bill had an unusual knowledge of knots and hitches, and at the end of ten minutes’ work he had left Clive’s bonds to all appearance very much as they were when he had started on them, but with a difference.

“You can practically shake yourself free when you feel like it,” he said.

He left Stone talking to the prisoner, and walked across to where Betty was sitting.

“Are you dreadfully frightened?” he asked in a low voice.

She shook her head.

“No, I’m not very frightened. Billy, I have a plan--I wonder if I could get on to the bridge?”

“Why?” he asked, and then his eyes fell on her bag, which was still in her hand, and Bill uttered an exclamation.

“Didn’t they take it away from you?” he asked.

“No. Will you have it? I don’t think I could possibly use it.”

She opened the bag and put the little Browning into his hand. Bill was still wearing his steward’s uniform, though he had stripped the moustache from his lip at the first opportunity. He thrust the pistol between his shirt and trousers, and covered the hilt with the bottom of his brass-buttoned waistcoat. His own bonds were not easily got rid of. The handcuffs were too small to allow him to slip his hands free, but there was sufficient play to make the Browning a very practical assistant if the worst came to the worst.

“I’m not a bit frightened, only I am surprised at myself,” she went on. “Somehow, this blustering, murdering bully of a man isn’t half as terrifying as the doctor. Billy, I can’t be sorry he’s dead. I know it’s unnatural and unwomanly, but he was the real shadow over my life, and all others seem so insignificant by comparison.”

Turning her head, she saw Clive’s eyes fixed upon hers.

“What are you conspirators discussing?” he asked, and, without waiting to hear her reply: “I hope they haven’t hurt poor old Benson. There’s a good servant lost to somebody. Yet if he knew I was going to be executed by these brutes, he would have no other thought than as to the most suitable costume for the occasion!”

They had run into the fog again; the speed of the ship had been reduced, and through the portholes that looked out on to the bridge, Bill could see the whiteness swirling over the ship’s side.

“Hale won’t like this,” he said. “There’s a chance that he’ll blunder into the warships.”

Apparently the captain was not greatly concerned, for he appeared soon after.

“Come out and see the pretty fog, young lady,” he mocked. “You and me have got to get acquainted!”

He took her arm in his and led her through a doorway. Bill, following her, saw that she went willingly, and remembered that she had expressed a wish to go to the bridge. Looking over his shoulder, Hale saw him.

“I don’t want you!” he bellowed.

“I’m interested in the pretty fog, too,” said Bill coolly.

For a moment the man drew back as though he were going to strike him, but evidently Hale detected some humour in his remark, and, without another word, he took the girl’s arm again and they walked out on to the broad bridge.

“What is that, Captain Hale?” Her voice was surprisingly sweet and gentle. She pointed to one of the brass telegraphs, and he explained its function.

“And that is the compass?”

Bill could only listen, aghast, to the change in her tone.

“That is the compass, young lady, by which we’ll get away from the boys in blue.”

“And what is that?” She pointed to a loosely hanging line.

“That’s the siren--we call that a foghorn. And----”

Suddenly she thrust him back and, leaping up, caught the line and held on to it. A terrific, thundering shriek of sound broke the stillness.