Chapter II: Part 2

It was very easy to do this, because, though English editors paid considerable attention to their leading articles, some of them did not care very much what kind of stuff was printed in their literary columns; and they would allow the best of our literature, old and new, and the most representative part of it, to be misrepresented by an anonymous Sinn Feiner in half a dozen journals simultaneously. The editors were patriotic enough, but they didn't think current literature of much importance. He had been able, therefore, to quote extracts from important London journals in the foreign press.

He had been helped, too, by lecturers who drew pensions from the British Government for their literary merits, and told American audiences that the one flag they loathed was the flag of the land that pensioned them. He had reprinted these utterances, together with the innocent bleatings of the intellectuals, and scattered them all over the world in pamphlet form. He had marked passages in their books and sent them to friends. Thousands of columns were devoted to them in the newspapers of foreign countries, while the English press occasionally referred to them in brief paragraphs, announcing to a drugged public at home that the vagaries of these writers were of no importance. He had carried out the program of his country to the letter, and poisoned the intellectual wellsprings.

No grain of poison was too small. He had even written letters to the newspapers in Scotland, which had stimulated the belief of certain zealous Scots that whenever the name of England was used it was intended as a deliberate onslaught upon the Union. There was hardly any destructive force or thought or feeling, good, bad or merely trivial, which he had not turned to the advantage of Germany and the disadvantage of other nations. Then when the war broke out he had redoubled his activities. He was amazed when he thought of the successful lies he had fostered all over the world. He had plotted with Hindus on the coast of California, and provided them with the literature of freedom in the interests of autocracy. He worked for dissension abroad and union in Germany. He was hand-in-glove with the I. W. W. He was idealist, socialist, pacifist, anarchist, futurist, suffragist, nationalist, internationalist and always publicist, all at once, and for one cause only--the cause of Germany.

And this was the gratitude of the--of the--swine! Well, he would teach them a lesson. God in heaven! There was only one thing he could do to save his skin. He would send them an ultimatum! It was their last chance. He shivered to think that it might be his own!

But it was not so easy as he thought it would be to burn all his boats. It cost him two days and two nights of tortuous thinking before he could bring himself to the point. At eleven o'clock on the third night the purser brought the captain a new message, which Mr. Neilsen had just handed in to be despatched by wireless. It ran as follows:

_Continue treatment. Vastly amusing. Uncle Hyacinth's magnificent
constitution stand anything. Apply mustard. Try red pepper._

The group that met to consider this new development included three passengers, whom the captain had invited to share what he called the fun. They were a Miss Depew, an American girl who was going to Europe to do Red Cross work; and a Mr. and Mrs. Pennyfeather, English residents of Buenos Aires, with whom she was traveling. The message, as they interpreted it, ran as follows:

_Unless instructions to sink Hispaniola countermanded, shall inform
captain. No alternative. Most important papers my possession._

"Good!" said Captain Abbey. "'E's beginning to show symptoms of blackmail. I'd send this message on, only we're likely to make a bigger bag by keeping quiet. We'll let 'im 'ave the reply to-morrow morning. What shall we do to 'im next?"

"Shoot him," said Miss Depew with complete calm.

"Oh, I want to 'ave a little fun with 'im first," said Captain Abbey. "I'm afraid you 'aven't got much sense of humor, Miss Depew."

"Do you think so?" she said. She was of the purest Gibson type, and never flickered an innocent eyelash or twisted a corner of her red Cupid's bow of a mouth as she drawled: "I think it would be very humorous indeed to shoot him, now that we know he is a German."

"Well, after 'is trying to leave us without warning 'e deserves to be skinned and stuffed. But we're likely to make much more of it if we keep 'im alive for our entertainment. Besides, 'e's going to be useful on the other side. Now, what do you think of this for a scheme?"

The heads of the conspirators drew closer round the table; and Mr. Neilsen, wandering on deck like a lost spirit, pondered on the tragic ironies of life. The thoughtless laughter that rippled up to him from the captain's cabin filled him with no compassion toward any one but himself. It was merely one more proof that only the Germans took life seriously. All the same, if he could possibly help it, he was not going to let them take his own life.

II

There was no radiogram for Mr. Neilsen on the following day; and he was perplexed by a new problem as he walked feverishly up and down the promenade deck.

Even if he received an assurance that the _Hispaniola_ would be spared, how could he know that he was being told the truth? Necessity, as he knew quite well, was the mother of murder. It was very necessary, indeed, that his mouth should be sealed. Besides, he had more than a suspicion that his use was fulfilled in the eyes of the German Government, and that they would not be sorry if they could conveniently get rid of him. He possessed a lot of perilous knowledge; and he wished heartily that he didn't. He was tasting, in fact, the inevitable hell of the criminal, which is not that other people distrust him, but that he can trust nobody else.

He leaned over the side of the ship and watched the white foam veining the black water.

"Curious, isn't it?" said dapper little Mr. Pennyfeather, who stood near him. "Exactly like liquid marble. Makes you think of that philosophic Johnny--What's-his-name--fellow that said 'everything flows,' don't you know. And it does, too, by Jove! Everything! Including one's income! It's curious, Mr. Neilsen, how quickly we've changed all our ideas about the value of human life, isn't it? By Jove, that's flowing too! The other morning I caught myself saying that there was no news in the paper; and then I realized that I'd overlooked the sudden death of about ten thousand men on the Western Front. Well, we've all got to die some day, and perhaps it's best to do it before we deteriorate too far. Don't you think so?"

Mr. Neilsen grunted morosely. He hated to be pestered by these gadflies of the steamer. He particularly disliked this little Englishman with the neat gray beard, not only because he was the head of an obnoxious bank in Buenos Aires, but because he would persist in talking to him with a ghoulish geniality about submarine operations and the subject of death. Also, he was one of those hopeless people who had been led by the wholesale slaughter of the war to thoughts of the possibility of a future life. Apparently Mr. Pennyfeather had no philosophy, and his spiritual being was groping for light through those materialistic fogs which brood over the borderlands of science. His wife was even more irritating; for she, too, was groping, chiefly because of the fashion; and they both insisted on talking to Mr. Neilsen about it. They had quite spoiled his breakfast this morning. He did not resent it on spiritual grounds, for he had none; but he did resent it because it reminded him of his mortality, and also because a professional quack does not like to be bothered by amateurs.

Mrs. Pennyfeather approached him now on the other side. She was a faded lady with hair dyed yellow, and tortoise-shell spectacles.

"Have you ever had your halo read, Mr. Neilsen?" she asked with a sickly smile.

"No. I don't believe in id," he said gruffly.

"But surely you believe in the spectrum," she continued with a ghastly inconsequence that almost curdled the logic in his German brain.

"Certainly," he replied, trying hard to be polite.

"And therefore in specters," she cooed ingratiatingly, as if she were talking to a very small child.

"Nod at all! Nod at all!" he exploded somewhat violently, while Mr. Pennyfeather, on the other side, came to his rescue, sagely repudiating the methods of his wife.

"No, no, my dear! I don't think your train of thought is quite correct there. My wife and I are very much interested in recent occult experiments, Mr. Neilsen. We've been wondering whether you wouldn't join us one night, round the ouija board."

"Id is all nonsense to me," said Mr. Neilsen, gesticulating with both arms.

"Quite so; very natural. But we got some very curious results last night," continued Mr. Pennyfeather. "Most extraordinary. The purser was with us, and he thought it would interest you. I wish you would join us."

"I should regard id as gomplete waste of time," said Mr. Neilsen.

"Surely, nothing can be waste of time that increases our knowledge of the bourne from which no traveler returns," replied the lyric lips of Mrs. Pennyfeather.

"To me the methods are ridiculous," said Mr. Neilsen. "All this furniture removal! Ach!"

"Ah," said Mr. Pennyfeather, "you should read What's-his-name. You know the chap, Susan. Fellow that said it's like a shipwrecked man waving a shirt on a stick to attract attention. Of course it's ridiculous! But what else can you do if you haven't any other way of signaling? Why, man alive! You'd use your trousers, wouldn't you, if you hadn't anything else? And the alternative--drowning--remember--drowning beneath what Thingumbob calls 'the unplumbed salt, estranging sea.'"

"Eggscuse me," said Mr. Neilsen; "I have some important business with the captain. I must go."

Mr. Neilsen had been trying hard to make up his mind, despite these irrelevant interruptions. He had received no assurance by wireless, and he had convinced himself that even if he did receive one it would be wiser to inform the captain. But there were many difficulties in the way. He had taken great care never to do anything that might lead to the death penalty--that is to say, among nations less civilized than his own. But there was that affair of the code. It might make things very unpleasant. A dozen other suspicious circumstances would have to be explained away. A dozen times he had hesitated, as he did this morning. He met the captain at the foot of the bridge.

"Ah, Mr. Neilsen," said Captain Abbey with great cordiality, "you're the very man I want to see. We're 'aving a little concert to-night in the first-class dining room on behalf of the wives and children of the British mine sweepers and the auxiliary patrols. You see, though this is a neutral ship, we depend upon them more or less for our safety. I thought it would be pleasant if you--as a neutral--would say just a few words. I understand that they've rescued a good many Swedish crews from torpedoed ships; and whatever view we may take of the war we 'ave to admit that these little boats are doing the work of civilization."

Mr. Neilsen thought he saw an opportunity of ingratiating himself, and he seized it. He could broach the other matter later on. "I vill do my best, captain."

"'Ere is a London newspaper that will tell you all about their work."

Mr. Neilsen retired to his stateroom and studied the newspaper fervently.

The captain took the chair that evening, and he did it very well. He introduced Mr. Neilsen in a few appropriate words; and Mr. Neilsen spoke for nearly five minutes, in English, with impassioned eloquence and a rapidly deteriorating accent.

"Dese liddle batrol boads," he said in his peroration, "how touching to the heart is der vork! Some of us forget ven ve are safe on land how much ve owe to them. But no matter vot your nationality, ven you are on the high seas, surrounded with darkness and dangers, not knowing ven you shall be torpedoed, vot a grade affection you feel then to dese liddle batrol boads! As a citizen of Sweden I speak vot I _know_. The ships of my guntry have suffered much in dis war. The sailors of my guntry have been thrown into the water by thousands through der submarines. But dese liddle batrol boads, they save them from drowning. They give them blankets and hot goffee. They restore them to their veeping mothers."

Mr. Neilsen closed amid tumultuous applause, and when the collection was taken up by Miss Depew his contribution was the largest of the evening.

The rest of the entertainment consisted chiefly of music and recitation. Mr. Pennyfeather contributed a song, composed by himself. Typewritten copies of the words were issued to the audience; and a very fat and solemn Spaniard accompanied him with thunderous chords on the piano. Every one joined in the chorus; but Mr. Neilsen did not like the song at all. It was concerned with Mr. Pennyfeather's usual gruesome subject; and he rolled it out in a surprisingly rich barytone with the gusto of a schoolboy:

_If they sink us we shall be
All the nearer to the sea!
That's no hardship to deplore!
We've all been in the sea before._

_Chorus_:

_And then we'll go a-rambling,
A-rambling, a-rambling,
With all the little lobsters
From Frisco to the Nore._

_If we swim it's one more tale,
Round the hearth and over the ale;
When your lass is on your knee,
And love comes laughing from the sea._

_Chorus_:

_And then we'll go a-rambling,
A-rambling, a-rambling,
A-rambling through the roses
That ramble round the door._

_If we drown, our bones and blood
Mingle with the eternal flood.
That's no hardship to deplore!
We've all been in the sea before._

_Chorus_:

_And then we'll go a-rambling,
A-rambling, a-rambling,
The road that Jonah rambled
And twenty thousand more._

"Now," said Mr. Pennyfeather, holding out his hands like the conductor of a revival meeting, "all the ladies, very softly, please."

The solemn Spaniard rolled his great black eyes at the audience, and repeated the refrain _pianissimo_, while the silvery voices caroled:

_With all the little lobsters
From Frisco to the Nore._

"Now, all the gentlemen, please," said Mr. Pennyfeather. The Spaniard's eyes flashed. He rolled thunder from the piano, and Mr. Neilsen found himself bellowing with the rest of the audience:

_The road that Jonah rambled
From Hull to Singapore,
And twenty thousand, thirty thousand,
Forty thousand, fifty thousand,
Sixty thousand, seventy thousand,
Eighty thousand more!_

It was an elaborate conclusion, accompanied by elephantine stampings of Captain Abbey's feet; but Mr. Neilsen retired to his room in a state of great depression. The frivolity of these people, in the face of his countrymen, appalled him.

On the next morning he decided to act, and sent a message to the captain asking for an interview. The captain responded at once, and received him with great cordiality. But the innocence of his countenance almost paralyzed Mr. Neilsen's intellect at the outset, and it was very difficult to approach the subject.

"Do you see this, Mr. Neilsen?" said the captain, holding up a large champagne bottle. "Do you know what I've got in this?"

"Champagne," said Mr. Neilsen with the weary pathos of a logician among idiots.

"No, sir! Guess again."

"Pilsener!"

"No, sir! It's plain sea water. I've just filled it. I'm taking it 'ome to my wife. She takes it for the good of 'er stummick, a small wineglass at a time. She always likes me to fill it for her in mid-Atlantic. She's come to depend on it now, and I wouldn't dare to go 'ome without it. I forgot to fill it once till we were off the coast of Spain. And, would you believe it, Mr. Neilsen, that woman knew! The moment she tasted it she knew it wasn't the right vintage. Well, sir, we shall soon be in the war zone now. But you are not looking very well, Mr. Neilsen. I 'ope you've got a comfortable room."

"I have reason to believe, captain, that there will be an attempt made by the submarines to sink the _Hispaniola_," said Mr. Neilsen abruptly.

"Nonsense, my dear sir! This is a neutral ship and we're sailing to a neutral country, under explicit guarantees from the German Government. They won't sink the _Hispaniola_ for the pleasure of killing her superannuated English captain."

"I have reason to believe they intended to--er--change their bolicy. I was not sure of id till I opened my mail on the boad; but--er--I have a friend in Buenos Aires who vas in glose touch--er--business gonnections--with members of the German legation; he--er--advised me, too late, I had better gancel my bassage. I fear there is no doubt they vill change their bolicy."

"But they couldn't. There ain't any policy! The Argentine Republic is a neutral country. You can't make me believe they'd do a thing like that. It wouldn't be honest, Mr. Neilsen. Of course, it's war-time; but the German Government wants to be honorable, don't it--like any other government?"

"I don'd understand the reasons; but I fear there is no doubt aboud the facts," said Mr. Neilsen.

"Have you got the letter?"

"No; I thought as you do, ad first, and I tore id up."

"Was that why you wanted to get off and go back?" the captain inquired mercilessly.

"I gonfess I vas a liddle alarmed; but I thought perhaps I vas unduly alarmed at the time. I gouldn't trust my own judgment, and I had no ride to make other bassengers nervous."

"That was very thoughtful of you. I trust you will continue to keep this matter to yourself, for I assure you--though I consider the German Government 'opelessly wrong in this war--they wouldn't do a dirty thing like that. They're very anxious to be on good terms with the South American republics, and they'd ruin themselves for ever."

"But my information is they vill sink the ships vithoud leaving any draces."

"What do you mean? Pretend to be friendly, and then--Come, now! That's an awful suggestion to make!"

At these words Mr. Neilsen had a vivid mental picture of his conversation with the bald-headed Englishman in Harrods'.

"Do you mean," the captain continued, waxing eloquent, "do you mean they'd sink the ships and massacre every blessed soul aboard, regardless of their nationality? Of course I'm an Englishman, and I don't love 'em, but that ain't even murder. That's plain beastliness. It couldn't be done by anything that walks on two legs. I tell you what, Mr. Neilsen, you're a bit overwrought and nervous. You want a little recreation. You'd better join the party to-night in my cabin. Mr. and Mrs. Pennyfeather are coming, and a very nice American girl--Miss Depew. We're going to get a wireless message or two from the next world. Ever played with the ouija board? Nor had I till this voyage; but I must say it's interesting. You ought to see it, as a scientific man. I understand you're interested in science, and you know there's no end of scientists--big men too--taking this thing up. You'd better come. Half past eight. Right you are!"

And so Mr. Neilsen was ushered out into despair for the rest of the day, and booked for an unpleasant evening. He had accepted the captain's invitation as a matter of policy; for he thought he might be able to talk further with him, and it was not always easy to secure an opportunity. In fact, when he thought things over he was inclined to feel more amiably toward the Pennyfeathers, who had put the idea of psychical research into the captain's head.

Promptly at half past eight, therefore, he joined the little party in the captain's cabin. Miss Depew looked more Gibsonish than ever, and she smiled at him bewitchingly; with a smile as hard and brilliant as diamonds. Mrs. Pennyfeather looked like a large artificial chrysanthemum; and she examined his black tie and dinner jacket with the wickedly observant eye of a cockatoo. Three times in the first five minutes she made his hand travel over his shirt front to find out which stud had broken loose. They had driven him nearly mad in his stateroom that evening, and he had turned his trunk inside out in the process of dressing, to find some socks.

Moreover, he had left his door unlocked. He was growing reckless. Perhaps the high sentiments of every one on board had made him trustful. If he had seen the purser exploring the room and poking under his berth he might have felt uneasy, for that was what the purser was doing at this moment. Mr. Neilsen might have been even more mystified if he had seen the strange objects which the purser had laid, for the moment, on his pillow. One of them looked singularly like a rocket, of the kind which ships use for signaling purposes. But Mr. Neilsen could not see; and so he was only worried by the people round him.

Captain Abbey seemed to have washed his face in the sunset. He was larger and more like a marine Weller than ever in his best blue and gilt. And Mr. Pennyfeather was just dapper little Mr. Pennyfeather, with his beard freshly brushed.

"You've never been in London, Miss Depew?" said Captain Abbey reproachfully, while the Pennyfeathers prepared the ouija board. "Ah, but you ought to see the Thames at Westminster Bridge! No doubt the Amazon and the Mississippi, considered as rivers, are all right in their way. They're ten times bigger than our smoky old river at 'ome. But the Thames is more than a river, Miss Depew. The Thames is liquid 'istory!"

As soon as the ouija board was ready they began their experiment. Mr. Neilsen thought he had never known anything more sickeningly illustrative of the inferiority of all intellects to the German. He tried the ouija board with Mrs. Pennyfeather, and the accursed thing scrawled one insane syllable.

It looked like "cows," but Miss Depew decided that it was "crows." Then Mrs. Pennyfeather tried it with Captain Abbey; and they got nothing at all, except an occasional giggle from the lady to the effect that she didn't think the captain could be making his mind a blank. Then Mr. Pennyfeather tried it with Miss Depew--with no result but the obvious delight of that sprightly middle-aged gentleman at touching her polished finger tips, and the long uneven line that was driven across the paper by the ardor of his pressure. Finally Miss Depew--subduing the glint of her smile slightly, a change as from diamonds to rubies, but hard and clear-cut as ever--declared, on the strength of Mr. Neilsen's first attempt, that he seemed to be the most sensitive of the party, and she would like to try it with him.

Strangely enough Mr. Neilsen felt a little mollified, even a little flattered, by the suggestion. He was quite ready to touch the finger tips of Miss Depew, and try again. She had a small hand. He could not help remembering the legend that after the Creator had made the rosy fingers of the first woman the devil had added those tiny, gemlike nails; but he thought the devil had done his work, in this case, like an expert jeweler. Mr. Neilsen was always ready to bow before efficiency, even if its weapons were no more imposing than a manicure set.

The ouija board was quiet for a moment or two. Then the pencil began to move across the paper. Mr. Neilsen did not understand why. Miss Depew certainly looked quite blank; and the movement seemed to be independent of their own consciousness. It was making marks on the paper, and that was all he expected it to do.

At last Miss Depew withdrew her hand and exclaimed: "It's too exhausting. Read it, somebody!"

Mr. Pennyfeather picked it up, and laughed.

"Looks to me as if the spirits are a bit erratic to-night. But the writing's clear enough, in a scrawly kind of way. I'm afraid it's utter nonsense."

He began to read it aloud:

"Exquisitely amusing! Uncle Hyacinth's little appendix----"

At this moment he was interrupted. Mr. Neilsen had risen to his feet as if he were being hauled up by an invisible rope attached to his neck. His movement was so startling that Mrs. Pennyfeather emitted a faint, mouselike screech. They all stared at him, waiting to see what he would do next.

But Mr. Neilsen recovered himself with great presence of mind. He drew a handkerchief from his trousers pocket, as if he had risen only for that purpose. Then he sat down again.

"Bardon me," he said; "I thought I vas aboud to sneeze. Vat is the rest of id?"

He sat very still now, but his mouth opened and shut dumbly, like the mouth of a fish, while Mr. Pennyfeather read the message through to the end:

"Exquisitely amusing! Uncle Hyacinth's little appendix cut out.
Throat enlarged. Consuming immense quantities pork sausages; also
onions wholesale. Best greetings. Fond love. Kisses."

"I'm afraid they're playing tricks on us to-night," said Mr. Pennyfeather. "They do sometimes, you know. Or it may be fragments of two or three messages which have got mixed."

"Hold on, though!" said the captain. "Didn't you send a wireless the other day, Mr. Neilsen, to somebody by the name of Hyacinth?"

"Well--ha! ha! ha! It was aboud somebody by that name. I suppose I must have moved my hand ungonsciously. I've been thinking aboud him a great deal. He's ill, you see."

"How very interestin'," cooed Mrs. Pennyfeather, drawing her chair closer. "Have you really an uncle named Hyacinth? Such a pretty name for an elderly gentleman, isn't it? Doesn't the rest of the message mean anything to you, then, Mr. Neilsen?"

He stared at her, and then he stared at the message, licking his lips. Then he stared at Captain Abbey and Miss Depew. He could read nothing in their faces but the most childlike amusement. The thing that chilled his heart was the phrase about onions. He could not remember the meaning, but it looked like one of those innocent commercial phrases that had been embodied in the code. Was it possible that in his agitation he had unconsciously written this thing down?

He crumpled up the paper and thrust it into his side pocket. Then he sniggered mirthlessly. Greatly to his relief the captain began talking to Miss Depew, as if nothing had happened, about the Tower of London; and he was able to slip away before they brought the subject down to modern times.

III

Mr. Neilsen may have been a very skeptical person. Perhaps his intellect was really paralyzed by panic, for the first thing he did on reaching his stateroom that night was to get out the code and translate the message of the ouija board. It was impossible that it should mean anything; but he was impelled by something stronger than his reason. He broke into a cold sweat when he discovered that it had as definite a meaning as any of the preceding messages; and though it was not the kind of thing that would have been sent by wireless he recognized that it was probably far nearer the truth than any of them. This is how he translated it:

"Imperative sink _Hispaniola_ after treacherous threat. Wiser
sacrifice life. Otherwise death penalty inevitable. Flight abroad
futile. Enviable position. Fine opportunity hero."

He could not understand how this thing had happened. Was it possible that in great crises an agitated mind two thousand miles away might create a corresponding disturbance in another mind which was concentrated on the same problem? Had he evolved these phrases of the code out of some subconscious memory and formed them into an intelligible sentence? Trickery was the only other alternative, and that was out of the question. All these people were of inferior intellect. Besides, they were in the same peril themselves; and obviously ignorant of it. His code had never been out of his possession. Yet he felt as if he had been under the microscope. What did it mean? He felt as if he were going mad.

He crept into his berth in a dazed and blundering way, like a fly that has just crawled out of a honey pot. After an hour of feverish tossing from side to side he sank into a doze, only to dream of the bald-headed man in Harrods' who wanted to sell him a safety waistcoat, the exact model of the one that saved Lord Winchelsea. The most hideous series of nightmares followed. He dreamed that the sides of the ship were transparent, and that he saw the periscopes of innumerable submarines foaming alongside through the black water. He could not cry out, though he was the only soul aboard that saw them, for his mouth seemed to be fastened with official sealing wax--black sealing wax--stamped with the German eagle. Then to his horror he saw the quick phosphorescent lines of a dozen torpedoes darting toward the _Hispaniola_ from all points of the compass. A moment later there was an explosion that made him leap, gasping and fighting for breath, out of his berth. But this was not a dream. It was the most awful explosion he had ever heard, and his room stank of sulphur. He seized the cork jacket that hung on his wall, pulled his door open and rushed out, trying to fasten it round him as he went.

When the steward arrived, with the purser, they had the stateroom to themselves; and after the former had thrown the remains of the rocket through the porthole, together with the ingenious contrivance that had prevented it from doing any real damage under Mr. Neilsen's berth, the purser helped him with his own hands to carry the brass-bound trunk down to his office.

"We'll tell him that his room was on fire and we had to throw the contents overboard. We'll give him another room and a suit of old clothes for to-morrow. Then we can examine his possessions at leisure. We've got the code now; but there may be lots of other things in his pockets. That's right. I hope he doesn't jump overboard in his fright. It's lucky that we warned these other staterooms. It made a hellish row. You'd better go and look for him as soon as we get this thing out of the way."

But it was easier to look for Mr. Neilsen than to find him. The steward ransacked the ship for three-quarters of an hour, and he began to fear that the worst had happened. He was peering round anxiously on the boat deck when he heard an explosive cough somewhere over his head. He looked up into the rigging as if he expected to find Mr. Neilsen in the crosstrees; but nobody was to be seen, except the watch in the crow's nest, dark against the stars.

"Mr. Neilsen!" he called. "Mr. Neilsen!"

"Are you galling me?" a hoarse voice replied. It seemed to come out of the air, above and behind the steward. He turned with a start, and a moment later he beheld the head of Mr. Neilsen bristling above the thwarts of Number Six boat. He had been sitting in the bottom of the boat to shelter himself from the wind, and some symbolistic Puck had made him fasten his cork jacket round his pyjamas very firmly, but upside down, so that he certainly would have been drowned if he had been thrown into the water.

"It's all right, Mr. Neilsen," said the steward. "The danger is over."

"Are ve torpedoed?" The round-eyed visage with the bristling hair was looking more and more like Bismarck after a debauch of blood and iron, and it did not seem inclined to budge.

"No, sir! The shock damaged your room a little, but we must have left the enemy behind. You had a lucky escape, sir."

"My Gott! I should think so, indeed! The ship is not damaged in any vay?"

"No, sir. There was a blaze in your room, and I'm afraid they had to throw all your things overboard. But the purser says he can rig you out in the morning; and we have another room ready for you."

"Then I vill gum down," said Mr. Neilsen. And he did so. His bare feet paddled after the steward on the cold wet deck. At the companionway they met the shadowy figure of the captain.

"I'm afraid you've 'ad an unpleasant upset, Mr. Neilsen," he said.

"Onbleasant! It vos derrible! Derrible! But you see, captain, I vas correct. And this is only the beginning, aggording to my information. I hope now you vill take every bre-caution."

"They must have mistaken us for a British ship, Mr. Neilsen, I'm afraid. I'm having the ship lighted up so that they can't mistake us again. You see? I've got a searchlight playing on the Argentine flag aloft; and we've got the name of the ship in illuminated letters three feet high, all along the hull. They could read it ten miles away. Come and look!"

Mr. Neilsen looked with deepening horror.

"But dis is madness!" he gurgled. "The _Hispaniola_ is marked, I tell you, marked, for gomplete destruction!"

The captain shook his head with a smile of skepticism that withered Mr. Neilsen's last hope.

"Very vell, then I should brefer an inside cabin this time."

"Yes. You don't get so much fresh air, of course; but I think it's better on the 'ole. If we're torpedoed we shall all go down together. But you're safer from gunfire in an inside room."

The unhappy figure in pyjamas followed the steward without another word. The captain watched him with a curious expression on his broad red face. He was not an unkindly man; and if this German in the cork jacket had not been so ready to let everybody else aboard drown he might have felt the sympathy for him that most people feel toward the fat cowardice of Falstaff. But he thought of the women and children, and his heart hardened.

As soon as Mr. Neilsen had gone below, the lights were turned off, and the ship went on her way like a shadow. The captain proceeded to send out some wireless messages of his own. In less than an hour he received an answer, and almost immediately the ship's course was changed.

It was a strange accident that nobody on board seemed to have any clothes that would fit Mr. Neilsen on the following day. He appeared at lunch in a very old suit, which the dapper little Mr. Pennyfeather had worn out in the bank. Mr. Neilsen was now a perfect illustration of the schooldays of Prince Blood and Iron, at some period when that awful effigy had outgrown his father's pocket and burst most of his buttons. But his face was so haggard and gray that even the women pitied him. At four o'clock in the afternoon the captain asked him to come up to the bridge, and began to put him out of his misery.

"Mr. Neilsen," he said, "I'm afraid you've had a very anxious voyage; and, though it's very unusual, I think in the circumstances it's only fair to put you on another ship if you prefer it. You'll 'ave your chance this evening. Do you see those little smudges of smoke out yonder? Those are some British patrol boats; and if you wish I'm sure I can get them to take you off and land you in Plymouth. There's a statue of Sir Francis Drake on Plymouth 'Oe. You ought to see it. What d'you think?"

Mr. Neilsen stared at him. Two big tears of gratitude rolled down his cheeks.

"I shall be most grateful," he murmured.

"They're wonderful little beggars, those patrol boats," the captain continued. "Always on the side of the angels, as you said so feelingly at the concert. They're the police of the seas. They guide and guard us all, neutrals as well. They sweep up the mines. They warn us. They pilot us. They pick us up when we're drowning; and, as you said, they give us 'ot coffee; in fact, these little patrol boats are doing the work of civilization. Probably you don't like the British very much in Sweden, but--"

"I have no national brejudices," Mr. Neilsen said hastily. "I shall indeed be most grateful."

"Very well, then," said the captain; "we'll let 'em know."

At half past six, two of the patrol boats were alongside. They were the _Auld Robin Gray_ and the _Ruth_; and they seemed to be in high feather over some recent success.

Mr. Neilsen was mystified again when he came on deck, for he could have sworn that he saw something uncommonly like his brass-bound trunk disappearing into the hold of the _Auld Robin Gray_. He was puzzled also by the tail end of the lively conversation that was taking place between Miss Depew and the absurdly young naval officer, with the lisp, who was in command of the patrols.

"Oh, no! I'm afraid we don't uth the dungeonth in the Tower," said that slender youth, while Miss Depew, entirely feminine and smiling like a morning glory now, noted all the details of his peaked cap and the gold stripes on his sleeve. "We put them in country houtheth and feed them like fighting cockth, and give them flower gardenth to walk in."

He turned to Captain Abbey joyously, and lisped over Mr. Neilsen's head:

"That wath a corking metthage of yourth, captain. I believe we got three of them right in the courth you would have been taking to-day. You'll hear from the Admiralty about thith, you know. It wath magnifithent! Good-bye!"

He saluted smartly, and taking Mr. Neilsen tightly by the arm helped him down to the deck of the _Ruth_.

"Good-by and good luck!" called Captain Abbey.

He beamed over the bulwarks of the _Hispaniola_ like a large red harvest moon through the thin mist that began to drift between them.

"Good-by, Mr. Neilsen!" called Mr. and Mrs. Pennyfeather, waving frantically.

"Good-by, Herr Krauss!" said Miss Depew; and the dainty malice in her voice pierced Mr. Neilsen like a Röntgen ray.

But he recovered quickly, for he was of an elastic disposition. He was already looking forward to the home comforts which he knew would be supplied by these idiotic British for the duration of the war.

The young officer smiled and saluted Miss Depew again. He was a very ladylike young man, Mr. Neilsen had thought, and an obvious example of the degeneracy of England. But Mr. Neilsen's plump arm was still bruised by the steely grip with which that lean young hand had helped him aboard, so his conclusions were mixed.

The engines of the _Ruth_ were thumping now, and the _Hispaniola_ was melting away over the smooth gray swell. They watched her for a minute or two, till she became spectral in the distance. Then the youthful representative of the British Admiralty turned, like a thoughtful host, to his prisoner.

"Would you like thum tea?" he lisped sympathetically. "Your Uncle Hyathinth mutht have given you an awfully anxiouth time."

Herr Krauss grunted inarticulately. He was looking like a very happy little Bismarck.

III

THE CREATIVE IMPULSE

Undoubtedly Captain Julius Vandermeer had made a pile of money. A Dutch sea-captain who had been the chief owner of his vessel in the first two years of the war was a lucky dog. A couple of voyages might bring him more than he could hope to make in half a century of peace. If he were lucky enough to make forty or fifty successful voyages across the Atlantic he could do exactly what Captain Vandermeer had done--retire from the sea, invest his money, look for a handsome young wife, and expect the remainder of his years to mellow round him like an orchard, dropping all the most pleasant fruits of life at his feet. Best of all, despite the gray streaks in his bushy red beard, he was only half-way through the forties, and he knew how to enjoy himself.

He sat on the veranda of his white bungalow under the foothills of the Sierra Madre, puffing at his big meerschaum pipe and explaining these things to the lady whom he had just married.

"Long ago I settled it in my mind, Mimika," he said, "if ever I came to be rich there should only be one country in the world for me, and that should be Southern California. Look at it!"

He waved the stem of his pipe at the broad slopes below. As far as the eye could see, from the petals that dropped over the dainty little electric car before the porch, to the distant horizon, they were one gorgeous pattern of fruit trees in blossom. Masses of white and pink bloom surged like foam against the veranda; and the soft wind blowing across that odorous wilderness was like the whisper of wings at sunset in Eden. Behind the windows of the dining room a Chinese manservant glided to and fro like a blue shadow.

"Man lives by contrast, Mimika," Vandermeer continued. "For a quarter of a century salt water was all my world. Now I have chosen seas of peach blossom; and no danger of shipwreck, heh? Ah, but it smells fine, Mimika--fine! When I saw my fortune coming I asked a friend in New York what was the place out of all the world where a man might live most happily, most healthily, in the most beautiful climate, to the age of ninety or even to the age of a hundred, enjoying himself also. 'Southern California,' he said. At once I knew that my friend was right. I remembered San Diego when I was a boy, and the roses tumbling at my feet on Christmas Day. I remembered the women, Mimika; and the cantaloupe melons, cut in halves, with the ice melting in their lovely yellow hearts; and as soon as the money was in the bank I took the train to the City of the Angels. Los Angeles--what a name, heh? In three weeks I had found my ranch with its beautiful bungalow, waiting like a palace for its queen. In six months I had found the queen, Mimika, heh?"

Mimika rose from her rocking-chair, remarking, "Now listen, Julius!" This did not mean that she had anything of great importance to say. But she had a trick, which Vandermeer found fascinating, of prefacing most of her remarks with the command to listen. "Listen, Julius! You won't come down with me to meet Roy?" she said.

"No, Mimika, no. The little sister will have much to tell her brother when she sees him for the first time after--how long has he been in Europe? Two years? And she will have to tell him all about her honeymoon, heh?" He pinched her ear playfully as she stooped to kiss him.

"I guess Roy will open his eyes when he sees my electric," she said.

She went down to the car in a skipping walk, while Captain Vandermeer surveyed her with the eye of one who has found a prize. She was wearing a Panama hat, a sweater of emerald green, and a very short yellow skirt that fluttered round her yellow silk stockings like the petals of a California poppy. This was not altogether out of keeping with the blaze of the landscape; but her high-heeled white shoes prevented her from walking gracefully; and this was really a pity, for she could dance like a wave of the sea if she chose. Sadder still, her nose was as white with powder as if she had dipped it into a bag of meal and her lips looked as if she had been eating damson jam. This was more pathetic than comic, because in its natural state her face was pretty as a wild flower.

Captain Vandermeer sat blowing rings of blue smoke for a minute or two longer. Then he entered the bungalow and went to a room at the back of the house which he had reserved as his own den. It was a very bare room at present, chiefly furnished by the bright new safe which he now proceeded to unlock.

He drew out a bundle of papers and examined them with loving care. There were American railroad bonds to the value of fifty thousand dollars; some Liberty Loan Bonds to the value of fifty thousand more; twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of Anglo-French bonds; and the same amount of the City of Paris, risky enough if the Germans were going to break through, but he did not think they were, and they yielded more than ten per cent. It was very wonderful, he thought, and he replaced them like a man saying good night to his child. Then he drew out a chamois-leather bag and poured the glittering contents into his left palm. He was a very wise man in his generation.

"You never know," he muttered--"you never know what will happen, in these days, to bonds. These are perhaps the best investment of all. These are the reserves of my little army. It was a good idea to keep them. Besides, you can put them in your pocket and go where you wish at a moment's notice. It is not possible always to get money at once for bonds."

His face glowed with satisfaction as he put the bag in the safe and locked it.

* * * * *

On the way up to the ranch from the railway station Mimika had been chattering hard to her brother; but he noticed certain changes in her appearance with a feeling akin to remorse. He was not at all sure that she was really happy, despite her apparent enthusiasm over what she called the generosity of Julius. He wished that his mother had delayed things till he had returned from Europe; and he could not help wondering how far his failure to send home more than two-thirds of his own scanty income as a newspaper correspondent had contributed to the haste of this marriage. He had not been able to learn much about it. His mother was a vague widow, who, like so many widows, regarded marriage with a kind of ghostly detachment and a more than maidenly innocence. She was devoted to Mimika, but quite ready, he feared, to sacrifice Mimika to himself.

Roy himself had not had too easy a time in the last few years. He was one of those not uncommon Americans who combine an extraordinary knowledge of the world with the unworldliness and sometimes the gullibility of an Eastern sage. He knew more about the cathedrals of England than almost any Englishman; more about the châteaux of France than most Frenchmen. He could have dictated an encyclopedia of useful knowledge about Italy and Egypt. He had been a war correspondent in four quarters of the globe, and he had acquired a sense of the larger movements in politics that gave his opinions an unusual interest. He flew over the big guns of international affairs like a man in an air-plane; and, though his European hearers might not always like his signals, they usually felt that he was looking beyond their horizon. But his ambition was to do creative work, and he had not yet succeeded. He marveled how some other men, without expending a tithe of his energy, had produced a shelf of books while he was still taking his notes. He never seemed to have the time for creation, and whenever he approached any original work he gravitated toward the method of the newspaper correspondent. He wondered sometimes whether this was due to a lack of what he called the 'creative impulse.' One of the things to which he had been looking forward on this visit was the opportunity that it would give him of obtaining some first-hand material from a real live sea-captain. Yet he was not sure whether he would ever be able to transmute it into an original book.

His boyish smile was in somewhat pathetic contrast with his gold-spectacled, and curiously dreamy, yet overstrained eyes, which sometimes gave his face in repose the expression of a youthful Buddha. His frequent abrupt changes between a violently active life and an almost completely sedentary one had not been good for him physically, and he was subject to fits of depression, relieved by fits of extreme optimism.

If only Mimika were happy he thought he might feel very optimistic about the material that Vandermeer could give him for the book he was contemplating. Indeed already he could not help sharing a little in her enthusiasm over her 'electric.'

"And listen, Roy, we've got a marble swimming pool in the garden, all surrounded with heliotropes," she concluded, almost breathless, as they rolled up the long aisle of palms and pepper trees.

"Is that so?" said Roy. "And you love him, Mimika?"

"He's a dear," said Mimika. "And of course--" She was going to add that Captain Vandermeer would do a great deal for Roy; but she had misgivings, and checked herself.

She had almost broached the subject to her lord this morning, and had checked herself then, too, feeling instinctively that Vandermeer had grown rich too recently for him to help any one but himself just at present.

The introduction of brother to husband went off very well indeed. Vandermeer was so hearty, and held Roy's hand so affectionately, that when they were getting ready for dinner Mimika ventured to approach the subject again.

"And listen, Julius, you'll be able to help Roy just a little, too, won't you?" she said, putting her hands up to her hair before the mirror in her bedroom.

"What do you mean, Mimika, by help?" Vandermeer's voice rolled in a very unsatisfactory way from the adjoining room.

"Oh, of course there's only one kind of help Roy would accept," she replied hastily. "He's going to write something about the sea, and he thinks you might give him some hints."

"Why, certainly, Mimika. They say there's a book in every man's life." The voice was thoroughly hearty again now. "In mine I should say there would be a hundred books. I will tell him some splendid things."

Even more jovial was the mood of Julius Vandermeer that evening after dinner; and he expanded his rosy views of the future to his brother-in-law over their cigars and a steaming rum punch flavored with lemon, which was his own invention for coping with the cold of a California night. He called it his "smudge pot."

"And now, Roy," he said at last, "I hope your own affairs go well. It is a great thing, the gift of expression. I wish I had it. Ah, what books I could write! The things I have seen, things you will never see in print!"

"That's precisely what I want to discuss with you, Julius. I have just signed a contract with the Copley-Willard Publishing Company to write them a serial dealing with the heroism of the merchant marine in war-time. I don't mind confessing that I told them a little about you--said you had no end of crackajack material I could use. The result was the best contract I've yet made with any publisher; so I owe that to you. The Star News Company was very well satisfied with my record as a correspondent; but I bungled the contract with them. If I can put this thing through it means that I shan't be a poor relation much longer. Now if you can only give me a good subject and put me wise on the seamanship and help me to get the local color, the rest will be as easy as falling off a log. You must have had a good many experiences, for instance, with the submarines, when you were crossing the Atlantic twice a month."

"Experiences--why, yes, many experiences; but my good fortune comes--well--from my good fortune. I am like the happy nation. I have not had much history for these two years. But I have seen things--oh, yes, I have seen things--that were like what you call clues--clues to many strange tales."

"That's precisely what I want--a rattling good clue!"

"Well now, let me think. There were some interesting things about those big merchant submarines that the Germans sent at one time across the Atlantic."

"Like the _Deutschland_, you mean?"

"Yes; and there were others, never mentioned in the newspapers. One or two of them disappeared. Perhaps the British destroyed them. Nobody knows. But it was reported that one of them was carrying a million dollars' worth of diamonds to the United States. Think of that, Roy! A submarine full of diamonds! Doesn't that kindle your imagination?"

"Gee! I should say it would!" remarked Mimika, putting down the highly colored magazine in which she had been studying the latest New York fashions.

"Depends what happened to it," said Roy.