Chapter III: Part 3

"Come, then, I will tell you a little story," said Vandermeer; "but you must not mention my name about this one. How did I come to know it? Ah, perhaps by some strange accident I met the only man who could tell the truth about it. Perhaps I was able to do him some small service. In any case that is a different matter. This story must be your own, Roy. It shall come from what you call your creative impulse."

Mimika plumped down on a cushion at her lord's feet to listen. He patted her shoulder affectionately with his big left paw, which showed up in a somewhat startling contrast with its rough skin and long red hairs against that smooth whiteness. With his right hand he filled himself the third glass of rum punch that he had taken that evening. He smacked his lips between two sips.

"Help yourself, Roy," he said, "and take another cigar. Yes, I will tell you. Take a sip, Mimika. That is good, heh? Now I shall need no more sugar.

"Well, Roy, just imagine. This big merchant submarine leaves Hamburg loaded with diamonds! A million dollars' worth of diamonds, all going to the United States, because it is necessary that Germany shall pay some of her bills. There is a crew of only twenty men, because they need them for the U-boats. All of these men are sulky, rebellious. They have been forced to do this work against their will. They were happy on their ships in the Kiel Canal, except that there was always the chance of being picked for submarine duty. When they are lined up for that--ah, it is like waiting to be named for the guillotine, in the Reign of Terror! They have courage, but their hands shake, their lips are blue and their hearts are sick. It is the death sentence. Either this week, or the next, or the next they will be missing. Certainly in eight weeks their places must be filled again. They are just fishes' food. Picture then the choosing of these men. There is your first chapter, heh?

"Now for the second. You must picture the captain. He is the most rebellious of all, for his life has been spared longer than most, but his life on the submarine is a living death. He is a good sailor, yes, in any surface vessel; but in the first place the submarine makes him sick at the stomach--the smells, the bad air, the joggle-joggle of the engine, the lights turned down to save the batteries. All that depresses him; and he has always the thought that, if one little thing goes wrong, he will die like a man buried alive in a big steel coffin, with nineteen others, all fighting for breath. It is a nightmare--the only nightmare that ever frightened him."

Captain Vandermeer certainly had a vivid imagination or else his own creative impulse, aided by frequent draughts of rum punch, was carrying him away; for his bulging blue eyes looked as if they would burst out of their canary-lashed lids.

"Moreover, this captain has been in a fighting submarine that has shocked his nerves. He has grown used to scenes of death. He has come to the surface and seen many scores of men and women drowning, and he has watched them till he minds it no more than drowning flies. But twice he has found himself entangled in a steel net, and escaped by miracle. That is not so pleasant. When it was decided to send him to the United States on a merchant submarine, what was his first thought? What would be yours, Roy, in that position?"

"A bedroom and bath at the hotel Vanderbilt," replied Roy promptly.

"You follow the clue very well, my boy. You have a clever brother, Mimika. The first thought of the captain is this: If I can get safely through the ring of the enemy the rest of the voyage will not be so bad. I shall make most of it on the surface, and I shall have a breathing spell in a great city outside the war. That will make the second chapter, heh? Now what is his next thought, Mimika?"

"Why, listen! If I once got to New York I should want to stay there," replied Mimika, helping herself to a large piece of candy.

"Ah, what a clever sister you have, my dear Roy!" said Vandermeer, and both his red streaked paws descended approvingly on Mimika's white shoulders. "How beautifully we compose this tale together, heh? But he has not yet reached America, and he has a submarine full of diamonds on his hands; also a crew of twenty men; also his orders as an officer in the German Navy.

"Well, let us suppose he has come safely through the ring of the enemy, after several nightmares. He runs on the surface almost always now, and he is losing his bad dreams for a time.

"One night he is on deck looking at the stars and thinking, who knows what thoughts, when the youngest engineer, a nice little fellow, a Bavarian, you might say, with flaxen hair and blue eyes, just as pretty as a girl, comes up to him. His face is as white and smooth as Mimika's shoulders--but there is no powder on it, heh? And his blue eyes are frightened.

"'Captain,' he says, 'I want to warn you. There is a plot among the men to kill you.'

"'To kill me!' the captain says. 'Why should they wish to kill me, Otto?'

"'They've gone crazy about the diamonds. They say they have had enough of this life, and they will never go back to Germany. They mean to take the diamonds and sell them a few at a time in America. Then they will live like princes. They think I'm joining them.'

"'Is there nobody but yourself on my side?' says the captain.

"'Nobody now,' says Otto.

"'Very well. Thank you, my boy. I will see that you are rewarded for this. When are they going to do it?'

"'When we are submerged and nearing the three-mile limit.'

"'Thank you, Otto,' says the captain again.

"And there's your third chapter; and your fourth, too, Roy--a dramatic situation, heh?"

Roy appeared to think so, and on the strength of it he filled Vandermeer's glass again. He was anxious to help the creative impulse.

"What follows?" continued Vandermeer. "In your tales to-day you must have psychology. The captain is a clever man. What would you do in that position, Roy? He cannot fight them all. I will tell you what he does. He is a diplomatist. He shapes his policy, standing there on the deck of the submarine all alone, under the stars.

"The next evening he orders rum all round, just like this--good rum, from his own little cask, which he keeps for the sake of his stomach. It is a beautiful evening, a sea like oil, and the setting sun makes a road of gold to the shores of America. They are approaching the happy land. The men themselves are more cheerful, and like a good diplomatist he seizes the cheerful moment.

"Not only does he give them rum but he gives them cigars, also from his private box--expensive cigars, just like these.

"'I have a proposition to make,' he says. 'We are all sick of the war, and I myself am more sick of it than anybody.'

"They all stare at him, wondering what he will say next; and the little Bavarian opens his blue eyes like a girl, and stares more than any of them. He thinks perhaps the end of the world will come now.

"'There is nobody here,' says the captain, 'that wishes to return. Why should we return? There is a million dollars in diamonds aboard, enough to make every one of us rich. We are going to the great republic. Good! We will share equally. Every one of us shall have the same amount. I myself, though I am your captain, will take no more than Otto. That will be more than fifty thousand dollars for each one of us.'

"Immediately the last of the clouds vanishes like magic from the crew. There is nothing but smiles all round him, smiles and the smell of rum and good cigars, just like these. They are all good comrades together, shaking hands, except the little Bavarian. He is sitting back behind the gyroscopic compass watching the captain, with big eyes and a solemn face like the infant Saint John.

"And why should they not all be satisfied--except the captain, who is perhaps only pretending to be satisfied? They lose only a twentieth part of their money by including him. On the other hand the captain loses a million dollars, to which these robbers had no more right than you or I."

"I guess the little Bavarian was sorry he spoke," said Roy; and he filled Vandermeer's glass again.

"The little Bavarian was a child, an innocent. He had no will to power, heh? He comes again to the captain late that night, on deck under the stars. His face looks thin and miserable. 'Captain,' he says, 'did you mean your words to those men?'

"'What else could I say, Otto, to save the diamonds, and my life, and perhaps yours? You do not understand diplomacy, Otto.'

"The face of the little Bavarian grows brighter. 'Forgive me, my captain!' he says. 'But I had begun to doubt even you, for a moment. I was thinking of the Fatherland.'

"Now, the captain was much obliged to Otto. His policy was complete in his mind for fooling those robbers, and he would have been glad to save this little Bavarian, who had warned him. But he begins to see an obstacle. He thinks he will put this little fellow to the trial.

"'Come now, Otto,' he says, 'it is very well to think of the Fatherland if you and I could save it. But do you think a few hundred shining pebbles will make any odds? These robbers shall not have them. But supposing we share them, there is nobody in the Fatherland that would be any poorer. They belong to the state, Otto, and if they should be shared with every one in Germany not one man would be a pfennig the better.

"'But see what a difference this would make to you and me! We are in a state of necessity, Otto; and above that state there is no power, as the Chancellor told the Reichstag. Very well, in this case I quote Louis the Fourteenth: "_L'état, c'est moi_!" and Frederick the Great, also. Have I the might to do it, Otto? Very well, then, according to the spokesman of the Fatherland I have also the right.'

"'I do not understand you, my captain,' says this little blue-eyed baby, 'but I know well that you mean to do right.'

"'You shall have not fifty but a hundred thousand dollars' worth for your share, Otto, because you have been faithful,' says the captain; 'but you must not think too many beautiful thoughts till we are safe on shore. I have arranged everything in my mind. Go down and sleep.'

"'For God's sake, captain,' cries this funny little fellow, dropping on his knees, 'tell me what you mean to do!' And the tears begin to roll down his face.

"'It is not safe to trust you yet, Otto. You might talk in your sleep,' says the captain. 'Do as I bid you. We shall see what we shall see.'

"Very well, Roy, there is at least four chapters to be made from that, heh?

"We come now to the crisis. The submarine is nearing the end of her voyage. They begin to see ships and they submerge. The captain has told them, instead of making for New York he is heading for the coast of Maine, where there will be better opportunities of destroying the submarine and landing unobserved. It is about six o'clock in the evening, when he peeks through the periscope. They are within a short distance of the mainland, but they must lie on the bottom till midnight, when it will be safer to go ashore. They are all very happy. Once more he gives them rum all round, just like this, and advises them to sleep, for they will get no sleep after midnight.

"They sleep very soundly, all except the little Bavarian and the captain. Why? Because the captain keeps the medicine chest as well as the diamonds. If he had had something stronger in his medicine chest it would have saved him much trouble and danger.

"While they sleep the captain takes out the diamonds from the strong box and puts them in his inside pockets. Then he examines the batteries. He is an expert engineer. He can make the batteries work when every one else thinks they are dead. Also he can make them die, so that even he can never make them work again. He examines other parts of the machinery--those which enable the submarine to rise to the surface. He will not allow the little Bavarian to watch what he is doing. Then he puts on his life-belt, and looks at the men snoring in their hammocks and on the floor. Some of them are stirring in their sleep. There is no time to lose or he may be interrupted. At last he is ready. The submarine will never rise to the surface again, and the sea will never betray the secret.

"There is only one way for him to get out, and it is not a pleasant way. But in his nightmares he has often rehearsed it, and he has always made sure that it could be done before he went to sea. There must always be a way out for one man at least, if not for more. '_L'état, c'est moi!_'

"He beckons to the little Bavarian. 'I have all the diamonds in my pocket,' he says. 'The time is come for you to help me, Otto.'

"Now, Roy, you know what the conning tower of a submarine is like inside? It is like a round chimney, with a lid at the top to keep out the water when you are submerged. You can climb up into this conning tower and steer the ship from it if you wish. There is also another lid at the bottom of the conning tower, which you can close as well. Then if you wish you can flood your chimney with water.

"Now, if a submarine cannot rise to the surface, it is possible for a man to climb into this conning tower. Another man then closes the lid below and floods the tower very slowly. When the water reaches the head of the man in the tower there is just enough pressure for him to push open the lid at the top and shoot up to the surface. The lid at the top can then be closed from the interior of the submarine. The lower lid can be opened slowly, and the water from the tower pours out into the hull. Then, perhaps, another man can climb up into the tower, and the process can be repeated. There is room for only one man at a time.

"The captain tells the little Bavarian that he is going to do this. 'But, my captain, it is very dangerous. You may be drowned. It is not certain that you can open it. The pressure may be too great above.'

"'It is for the Fatherland, Otto,' says the captain; and the little Bavarian salutes, standing at attention, just like a pretty little wax doll.

"'When the men wake, you will be able to follow by the same road,' says the captain, and he climbs up into the conning tower.

"The lower lid is closed. The water begins to creep up round the captain's knees in the darkness. He is horribly frightened. He has a crowbar in his hand to help him to open the upper lid quickly, but he still thinks perhaps it will not open. When the water has reached his waist he begins to push at the upper lid, but it cannot move yet. The weight of the whole sea above is pressing down. He knows it cannot move but he cannot help pushing at it, till the sweat breaks out on him, though the water is like ice. It is worse than he expected, worse than any of his nightmares. The water reaches to his neck. He struggles with all his strength, and still the lid will not move. A prayer comes to his lips. The cold water creeps--creeps over his chin. There is only three inches now between his face and the lid. He holds his head back to keep his nostrils above the water, fighting, fighting always to open the lid. Then the water covers his face. The conning tower is full.

"He holds his breath, gives one last push, and feels the lid opening, opening softly, like the big steel door of a safe in a bank. His crowbar is wedged under the lid, between the hinges, just as he wished. In four seconds he is shooting up, up to the surface, with his chest bursting, like a diver that has seen a shark.

"For a minute he floats there in the darkness, under the stars. Then--perhaps the struggle has been greater even than he knew--he faints. It is fortunate that his life-belt is a good one, for when he recovers he has floated perhaps a long time. He is very cold. He takes a drink of rum from his flask and gets his bearings. He is two miles from the coast. Yes, but he is a clever man. There is one of those little islands, covered with pine trees, just a hundred and fifty yards away. There is also a wooden house on the island; and a landing stage with a dinghy hauled up on the shore.

"The owner of the boat is careful. He has taken his oars to bed with him. But the captain is a clever man. It is a beautiful night. He has plenty of time, and he can paddle with one of the loose boards in the bottom of the dinghy."

"But listen! What became of the little Bavarian?" said Mimika.

"Well, I was not there to see," said Captain Vandermeer, lighting a cigar, "but when the men woke they must all have tried to get out by the same way."

"And they couldn't?" asked Roy. He was watching Vandermeer with a very curious expression--almost as if he were examining an eyewitness.

"The captain was an expert engineer--ah, a magnificent engineer!--as I told you, Roy, and there was a leetle crowbar wedged under what we have been calling the lid of the conning tower."

"Good God, what an idea! You mean they couldn't close the upper lid again?"

"They might think they had closed it." Vandermeer gave a deep guttural chuckle. "Then they would open the lower lid, heh?"

"And then?"

"Why, then the sea would come running into the hull, and they would be drowned."

"Oh, but not the poor little Bavarian!" said Mimika.

"_L'état, c'est moi_," said Vandermeer with a smile.

Roy was looking at him still with the same pensive expression as of a youthful Buddha.

"I suppose he had no difficulty in getting rid of the diamonds," he said.

"Probably not," said Vandermeer. "Perhaps he would keep a few as a reserve--a kind of Landsturm. But he would buy Liberty Bonds, heh?"

"And you mean to say that a man like that is going about in the United States now?" said Mimika.

Vandermeer chuckled again.

"Who knows?" he said. "Perhaps he has come to Southern California. Perhaps he has bought a nice little ranch--a fruit ranch, just like this, heh?--where he shall live a happy and healthy life to the age of a hundred. And now, Mimika, it is getting time for little girls to go to bed."

About two o'clock in the morning Mimika was wakened by a guttural choking cry from her husband. She was so startled that she slipped out of bed and stood staring at him. The moon was flooding the room almost like a searchlight, and Captain Vandermeer lay in the full stream of it. While she watched him he rose slowly to a sitting posture, with his eyes still shut and his hands clenched above his face. He began muttering to himself, in a low voice at first, and then so loudly that it echoed through the house; and the words sounded more like German than Dutch. Then he began fighting for breath, like a man in a nightmare. He tore his pyjama jacket open over the great red hairy chest.

"Otto!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Otto!" Then with a huge sigh he sank back on the pillows, whispering "I have opened it."

There was a tap on the door. Mimika snatched up a dressing gown, the first garment she could lay her hands on--it happened to be Vandermeer's--wrapped it round her, glided across the room and opened the door. Her brother stood there, also in a dressing gown and bare-footed. Their eyes met without a word. He took her hand, led her outside and closed the door quietly behind them.

"You heard him, Roy?" she whispered.

"Come downstairs," he said. "I want to ask you some questions about this."

They went down to the den at the back of the house, and stood there looking at each other's faces.

"He told us a tale to-night," said Roy at last.

"Yes," said Mimika faintly.

"Do you know what he was calling out in his nightmare?"

"It sounded like German," she said.

"Yes, it was German; and it gave me a good deal more local color than I expected. That was a true story all right, Mimika."

"You mean that he--"

"Yes."

"Oh, but, Roy!"

"That's his dressing gown you're wearing, isn't it?"

"Yes, I picked it up in a hurry."

"There's been too much hurry about everything, I'm afraid. Why the devil did I go to Europe! Here, Mimika, take off that thing and put mine on. I don't like to see you in it. It doesn't suit you, little sister."

She obeyed him, with a small white frightened face; but it was not the white of powder now. Roy thrust his hand into the pocket of Vandermeer's dressing gown. Something jingled. He pulled out a bunch of keys.

"Vandermeer told me I was good at following up a clue. I'm going to follow one now, Mimika," he said. "This is the key of the safe."

He opened the safe, looked hastily at the bundles of papers and then pulled out the chamois leather bag. "Look here, Mimika!" he said and poured a glittering river of diamonds, several hundred of them, on to the table. The moonlight played over them with an uncanny brilliance.

"That's his Landsturm," said Roy; "and that settles it."

He took Mimika's hand, and she made no protest as he withdrew the wedding ring from her finger and added it to the glittering heap on the table.

There was a heavy footstep in the room above. Vandermeer was awake and moving about upstairs. The boards creaked over their heads, then they heard his bedroom door open, and the heavy footsteps began to descend the stairs.

Mimika shrank behind her brother and both stood motionless, waiting. They could hear the heavy breathing of Vandermeer, the breathing of a man roused from a dyspeptic sleep. He came down with an intolerable precision, making the twelve steps of that short descent seem almost interminable. At every step Mimika felt the edges of her heart freezing. At last that ugly rhythm reached the foot of the stairs; and with three more shuffling steps, as of a gigantic ape, the hairy bulk of Vandermeer stood in the doorway, facing them across the glittering mound of gems. The sharp searchlight of the moon made his face corpselike, showing up the puffy blue pouches under his eyes and picking out the coarse red hairs of his bushy beard like strands of copper wire. His eyes protruded, his mouth opened twice without any sound but the soft smacking of his tongue as he tried to moisten his lips.

"What are you doing here?" he said at last.

"Looking at your Landsturm," said Roy with all the deadly calm of his nation.

Vandermeer swayed a little on his feet, like a drunken man. Then he moved forward to the table and blinked at the diamonds and the gold ring crowning them.

"I don't understand," he said at last.

"You'd better get dressed, Mimika," said Roy. "Our train goes at a quarter after four." He led her to the door, watched her pathetic little figure mounting the stairs and turned to Vandermeer again.

Mimika never knew what passed between the two men. When she came out of her room, ten minutes later, Roy was waiting, fully dressed, at the foot of the stairs, with his suit case in his hand. She heard the heavy breathing of Vandermeer in his den; and out of the corner of her eye as they passed the door she saw that glowing mass on the table, as if a fragment of the moon had been dropped there.

They walked down the long avenue of palms in silence. In the waiting-room at the station neither of them spoke till they heard the long hoot of the approaching train, and the clangor of the bell on the transcontinental locomotive.

Six months later Mimika and her mother were sitting up for Roy, in their fourth-floor flat near the offices of the Copley-Willard Publishing Company, in Philadelphia.

"I wish he didn't have to keep these late hours," said her mother. "I thought that everything was turning out for the best when you were married to Julius. I have never been able to understand why you got your divorce so quickly. It was all kept so quiet, and you and Roy are so mysterious about it. You've never even told me the real grounds, I'm sure."

"Yes, I did. It was desertion," said Mimika grimly.

"Does nobody know what became of him? It seems so strange that he should have gone away and left all the furniture in that house. He had some lovely things too. I think you might at least have claimed the furniture."

"Please, mother, don't talk about that or we shall be making the same mistake again. I expect he's shaved his beard by now."

"Mimika, child, what do you mean? Are you crazy?"

"I think we were both crazy, mother, a year ago."

"Well, I thought it was all for your happiness, my pet," said her mother, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. "I'm afraid it will be a long time before you can marry this other young man, that Roy likes so much. He isn't earning half so good a salary as Roy."

"I don't know that I'm going to marry any one, mother. But listen! I feel like marrying the first good American that comes to me with a piece of the original _Mayflower_ in his buttonhole."

And, this time, her mother almost listened.

IV

THE MAN FROM BUFFALO

The patrol boats had been buffeting their way all night against wind and weather, and before daybreak the long line had lost its order. It was broken up now into little wandering loops and sections, busily comparing notes by Morse flashes and wireless. Last evening the _Morning Glory_, a converted yacht of American ownership, had been working with forty British trawlers; and her owner, Matthew Hudson, who had obtained permission to go out with her on this trip, had watched with admiration the way in which they strung themselves over twenty miles of confused sea, keeping their exact distances till nightfall. This morning, as he lurched in gleaming oilskins up and down the monkey house--irreverent name for his canvas-screened bridge--he could see only three of his companions--the _Dusty Miller_, the _Christmas Day_ and the _Betsey Barton_.

They were all having a lively time. They swooped like herring gulls into the broad troughs of the swell, where the black water looked like liquid marble with white veins of foam in it. Morning-colored rainbows dripped from their bows as they rose again through the green sunlit crests. But the _Morning Glory_ was the brightest and the liveliest of them all. The seas had been washing her decks all night. Little pools of color shone in the wet, crumpled oilskins of the crew, and the tarpaulin that covered the gun in her bow gleamed like a cloak dropped there by the Angel of the Dawn.

_When like the morning mist in early day
Rose from the foam the daughter of the sea----_

Matthew Hudson quoted to himself. He was full of poetry this morning while he waited for his breakfast; and the radiant aspect of the weapon in the bow reminded him of something else--if the smell of the frying bacon would not blow his way and distract his mind--something about "celestial armories." Was it Tennyson or Milton who had written it? There was a passage about guns in "Paradise Lost." He must look it up.

Like many Americans, Matthew Hudson was quicker to perceive the true romance of the Old Country than many of its own inhabitants. He had been particularly interested in the names of the British trawlers. "It's like seeing Shakespeare's Sonnets or Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry going out to fight," he had written to his son, who had just left Princeton to join the Mosquito Fleet; and the youngster had replied with a sonnet of his own.

Matthew Hudson had carried it about with him and read it to English statesmen, greatly to their embarrassment--most of them looked as if they were receiving a proposal of marriage--and he had found a huge secret joy in their embarrassment, which, as he said, "tickled him to death." But he murmured the verses to himself now, with paternal pride, thinking that the boy had really gone to the heart of the matter:

_Out of Old England's inmost heart they go,
A little fleet of ships, whose every name--
Daffodil, Sea Lark, Rose, and Surf, and Snow--
Burns in this blackness like an altar flame._

_Out of her past they sail, three thousand strong--
The people's fleet, that never knew its worth;
And every name is a broken phrase of song
To some remembered loveliness on earth._

_There's Barbara Cowie, Comely Bank and May,
Christened at home, in worlds of dawn and dew.
There's Ruth, and Kindly Light, and Robin Gray,
With Mizpah. May that simple prayer come true!_

_Out of Old England's inmost heart they sail,
A fleet of memories that can never fail._

At this moment the _Morning Glory_ ran into a bank of white mist, which left him nothing to see from the bridge. The engines were slowed down and he decided that it was time for breakfast.

The cabin where he breakfasted with the skipper was very little changed, except that it seemed by contrast a little more palatial than in peace time. There had been many changes on the exterior of the ship. Her white and gold had been washed over with service gray, and many beautiful fittings had been removed to make way for grimmer work. But within there were still some corners of the yacht that shone like gems in a setting of lead.

The _Morning Glory_ had been a very beautiful boat. She had been built for summer cruising among the pine-clad islands off the coast of Maine, or to carry her master down to the palms of his own little island off the coast of Florida, where he basked for a month or so among the ripening oranges, the semitropical blossoms and the cardinal birds, while Buffalo cleared the worst of the snow from her streets. For Matthew Hudson was a man of many millions, which he had made in almost the only country where millions can be made honestly and directly out of its enormous natural resources.

His own method had been a very simple one, though it required great organizing ability and a keen eye and brain at the outset. All he had done was to harness a river at the right place and make it drive a light-and-power plant. But he had done it on a scale that enabled him, from this one central station, to drive all the electric trolleys and light all the lamps in more than a hundred cities. He could supply all the light and all the power they wanted to cities a hundred miles away from his plant, and he talked of sending it three hundred miles farther.

Now that the system was established, it worked as easily as the river flowed; and his power house was a compact little miracle of efficiency. All that the casual visitor could see was a long, quiet room, in which it seemed that a dozen clocks were slumbrously ticking. These were the indicators, from the dials of which the amount of power distributed over a district as big as England could be read by the two leisurely men on duty. In the meantime, night and day, the river poured power of another kind into the treasury of Matthew Hudson.

But his life was as unlike that of the millionaires of fiction as could be imagined. It reminded one of the room with the slumbrous clocks.

He was, indeed, as his own men described it, preeminently the "man behind the gun." When the _Morning Glory_ had been accepted by the naval authorities he had obtained permission to equip her for her own work in European waters at his own cost, and to make certain experiments in the equipment.

The Admiralty had not looked with favor on some of his ideas, which were by no means suitable for general use in the patrol fleet. But Matthew Hudson had too many weapons at work against Germany for them to deny him a sentimental pleasure in his own yacht. He seemed to have some particular purpose of his own in carrying out his ideas; and so it came about that the _Morning Glory_ was regarded among her companions as a mystery-ship.

The two men breakfasted in silence. They were both drowsy, for there had been a U-boat alarm during the night, which had kept them very much awake; but Hudson was roused from his reverie over the second rasher by a loud report, followed by a confused shouting above and the stoppage of the engines.

"That's not a submarine!" said the skipper. "What the devil is it?" And the two men rushed on deck.

The mist had lifted a little; and, looming out of it, a few hundred yards away, there was something that looked, at first glance, like a great gray reef. For a fraction of a moment Hudson thought they had run into Heligoland in the mist. At the second glance he knew that the gray, mist-wreathed monster before him was an armored ship, and the skipper enlightened him further by saying, in a matter-of-fact voice:

"That settles it--enemy cruiser! We're stopped, broadside on. They've got a couple of guns trained on us and they're sending a boat. What's the next move?"

Matthew Hudson's face was a curious study at this moment. It suggested a leopard endowed with a sense of humor. His mouth twitched at the corners and his amazingly clear eyes were lit with an almost boyish jubilation. It was a somewhat fierce jubilation; but it undoubtedly twinkled with the humor of the New World. Then he asked the skipper a mysterious question:

"Is it impossible?"

"Impossible! We're in the wrong position; and if we try to get right they'll blow us to bits. Besides, they'll be aboard in half a minute. We're drifting a little in the right direction; but it will be too late. They'll search the ship."

"How long will it take us to drift into the right position?"

"If we go on like this, about four minutes. But it will be all over by then."

"Look here, Davis; I'll try and detain them on deck. You know Americans have a reputation for oratory. You'd better go through my room. And--look here--I'll be the skipper for the time being. I'm afraid they'll want to take Matthew Hudson prisoner; so I'll be the kind of American they'll recognize--Commander Jefferson B. Thrash, out of the best British fiction. You don't happen to have a lasso in your pocket, do you? I lent mine to ex-President Eliot of Harvard, and he hasn't returned it. Tell the men there. That's right! I don't want to be playing the fool in Ruhleben for the next three years."

A few moments later, a step at a time, Davis disappeared into Hudson's cabin, which lay in the fore part of the ship. Two other men prepared to slip after him by lounging casually in the companionway, while the men in front moved a little closer to screen them.

They seized their chance as the German boat stopped, twenty yards away from the _Morning Glory_, and the officer in command announced through a megaphone, in very good English, that he was in a great hurry. They were friends, he said; and there was no need for alarm, so long as the _Morning Glory_ carried out all instructions. All they wanted was the confidential chart of the British mine fields, which the _Morning Glory_, of course, possessed, and all other confidential papers of a similar kind. If the _Morning Glory_ did not carry out his instructions in every detail the guns of the cruiser would sink her. He was now coming aboard to secure the papers.

"I guess that's all right, captain!" bawled Matthew Hudson in an entirely new voice and the accent that Europe accepts as American, with about as much reason as America would have for accepting the Lancashire, Yorkshire and Glasgow dialects, all rolled into one, as English.

The quiet member of the Century Club had disappeared, and the golden, remote Wild Westerner, almost unknown in America itself, had risen. In half a minute more the German officer and half a dozen armed sailors were standing on the deck of the _Morning Glory_.

"So you see England does not completely rule the waves," was the opening remark of the officer, who had not yet received the full benefit of Hudson's adopted accent.

"Been finding it stormy in the canal, cap?" drawled Hudson. "Don't blame it on me, anyway. I'm a good Amurrican--Jefferson B. Thrash, of Buffalo."

"Is this an American ship? I much regret to find an American ship fighting her best friends."

"Well, cap, I confess I haven't much use for the British, myself; not since their press talked about my picture-postcard smile--an ill-considered phrase, by which they unconsciously meant that, among the effete aristocracies of Europe, they were not used to seeing good teeth. They lack humor, sir. To regard good teeth as abnormal shows a lack of humor on the part of the British press.

"However, as George Bernard Shaw says, President Wilson has put it up to the German people in this way: 'Become a republic and we'll let up on you. Go on Kaisering and we'll smash you!'"

"I am in a great hurry," the German officer replied. "I must ask you at once for your confidential papers."

"That's all right, admiral!" said Hudson. "I've sent a man down below to get them out of my steamer trunk. They'll be here right away."

He looked reflectively at the guns of the destroyer and added ingratiatingly:

"Of course I disapprove of George Bernard Shaw's vulgarizing the language of diplomacy in that way. I would rather interpret President Wilson's message as saying to the German people, in courteous phrase: 'Emerge from twelfth-century despotism into twentieth-century democracy. Send the imperial liar who misrules you to join Nick Romanoff on his ranch. Give the furniture-stealing Crown Prince a long term in any Sing Sing you like to choose; and we will again buy dyestuffs and toys of you, and sell you our beans and bacon.'"

"Are you aware that you endanger your life by this language? Do you see those guns?"

Matthew Hudson looked at the guns and spat over the side of the ship meditatively. Then he looked the questioner squarely in the eye. He had taken the measure of his man and he only needed three and a half minutes more. Any question that could be raised was clear gain; and the cruiser would probably not use her guns while members of the German crew were aboard the _Morning Glory_.

"Yes," he said; "and you'd better not use your guns till you get those confidential papers, for there's not a chance that you'll find them without my help. They're worth having, and I've no objection to handing them over, though I don't lay much store by your promise not to shoot afterward. When you've got them, how am I to know that you won't shoot, anyway, and--what's the latest language of your diplomacy?--'leave no traces'? By cripes, there's no mushy sentiment about your officials! No, sir! Leave no traces!--and they said it about neutrals, remember! Leave no traces! That's virile! That's red-blooded stuff! The effete humanitarianism of our democracy, sir, would call that murder. In England they would call it bloody murder! I don't agree. I think that war is war. Of course it's awkward for non-combatants--"

"With regard to the crews, it has been announced in Germany that they would be saved and kept prisoners in the submarines. Your man is taking too long to find your papers. I can allow you only one minute more."

"He'll be right back, captain, with all the confidential goods you want. But, say, between one sailorman and another, that story about planning to hide crews and passengers aboard the submarines must have been meant for our Middle West. Last time I was on a submarine I had to sleep behind the cookstove; and then the commander had to sit up all night. It's the right stuff for the prairies, though. Ever hear of our senator, cap, who wanted to know why the women and kids on the _Lusitania_ weren't put into the water-tight compartments? They cussed the Cunard Company from hell to breakfast out Kalamazoo way for that scandalous oversight. Wonder what's keeping that son of a gun!"

At this moment the son of a gun announced from the companionway that he was unable to find the confidential papers.

"I can wait no longer. The ship must be searched by my own men," said the German peremptorily. "Are the papers in your cabin?"

"Sure! But I can save you a lot of time, captain. I'll lead you right to them."

The _Morning Glory_ had drifted round till her nose was now pointing towards that of the cruiser. In a minute or two more she would be pointing directly amidships if the drifting continued. Matthew Hudson took a long, affectionate look at the guns and the guns' crews that kept watch over his behavior from the gray monster ahead; then he led the way below to his cabin.

The Hamburg-Amerika Line had many a less imposing room than this, the only part of the yacht that retained all its old aspect. It ran the whole breadth of the ship and had two portholes on each side. There was a brass bedstead, with a telephone beside it and an electric reading lamp. There were half a dozen other electric bulbs overhead.

"I don't sleep very well, cap; so I decided to keep this bit of sinful splendor for my own use. Bathroom, you see." He opened a tiny door near the bed and showed the compact room, with its white bath-tub let into the floor. This was too much for the German officer.

"Where do you keep your confidential papers?" he bellowed, leveling a revolver at the maddeningly complacent American, while three of his men closed up behind him, ready for action.

"Better not shoot, admiral, for you won't find them without my help; and I'm going to hand you the goods in half a minute. I can't quite remember where I put them. There's some confidential stuff in here, I think."

He unlocked a drawer and pulled out a bundle of papers. A small white object dropped from the bundle and lay on the floor between him and the German. It was a baby's shoe. Hudson nodded at it as he looked through the papers.

"Got any kids, cap? That came from Queenstown. Ah, this looks like your chart. No. Came from Queenstown, I say. It was a little girl belonging to a friend of mine in the City of Brotherly Love. Lots of 'em on the _Lusitania_, you know. We collect souvenirs in America, and I asked him for this as a keepsake when I came on this gunning expedition. He kept the other for himself. She was a pretty little thing. Only six! Used to call me Uncle Jack."

He stole a look through the porthole and drew another document from the drawer.

"Ah! Now I remember. Here's the stuff you want--some of it, anyhow. Tied round with yaller ribbon. Take it, cap. I wish I hadn't seen that little shoe; but you've got the drop on me this time and I suppose it's my duty to save the lives of the men. There's a good bit of information there about the mine fields."

The German hurriedly examined the papers, while Hudson hummed to himself as he stared through the porthole:

_Around her little neck she wore a yaller ribbon;
She wore it in December and the merry month of May.
And when, oh, when they asked her why in hell she wore it,
She said she loved a sailor, a sailor, a sailor;
But he was wrecked and drownded in Mississippi Bay._

"This is very good," said the German, "and very useful. I think we shall not require more of you; though it will be necessary to destroy your ship and make you prisoners."

"Why, certainly! I didn't suppose you could keep your contract in war-time. You can't leave traces of a deal like this. But while you're about it, you may as well have all the confidential stuff."

"Good! Good!" said the German, strutting toward him. "So there's more to come! I am glad you see the advantage in being too proud to fight, my friend, eh?"

Matthew Hudson's eye twinkled. His slouch began to slip away from him like a loose coat, leaving once more the quiet upstanding member of the Century Club.

"Of course," he said, "you would make that mistake. The British made it. They forgot that it was said about Mexico, at a time when you wanted us to be kept busy down there. There are times, also, when for diplomatic reasons it is necessary to talk." He had resumed his natural voice. "When you are getting ready, for instance. This is where we keep the real stuff."

He crossed the cabin; and the German watched him closely with a puzzled expression, covering him with his revolver.

"No treachery!" he said. "What does this mean? You are not the man you were pretending to be."

Hudson laughed, and tossed him a little scrap of bunting, which he had been holding crumpled up in his hand.

"Ever seen that flag before?" he said.

The German stared at it, his eyes growing round with amazement.

"The Kaiser's flag has flown on this yacht at the Kiel Regatta many a time," said Hudson. "His Majesty used to come and lunch with me. I don't advise you to shoot me. He might remember some of my cigars. He gave me that flag himself. Of course I shan't use it again--not till it's been sprinkled with holy water. But I thought you might like a brief exhibition of shirt-sleeve navalism, as I suppose you'd call it.

"Most Europeans like us to live up to their ideas of us. The British do. Ever hear of Senator Martin? Whenever he's in London and goes to see his friends in the House of Commons, he wears a sombrero and a red cowboy shirt. He says they expect it and like it. He wouldn't care to do it in New York. As a fact, you know, we invented the electric telegraph and the submarine, and a lot of little things that you fellows have been stealing from us. Do you hear that?"

There were two sharp clicks in the bows, followed by a faint sound like the whirring of an electric fan under water; and Hudson pulled open the door that led into the fore part of the ship.

"_Gott! Gott!_" cried the German, and his men echoed it inarticulately; for there, in the semidarkness of the bows of the _Morning Glory_, they saw the dim shapes of seamen crouching beside two gleaming torpedo tubes. The torpedoes had just been discharged.

"You're too late to save your ship," said Matthew Hudson. "If you want to save your own skins you'd better keep still and listen for a moment."

Then came a concussion that rocked the _Morning Glory_ like a child's cradle and sent her German visitors lurching and sprawling round the brass bedstead. When they recovered they found a dozen revolvers gleaming in front of their noses.

"Before we say anything more about this," said Hudson, "let's go on deck and look.

"Do you mind giving me that little shoe at your feet there?"

The officer turned a shade whiter than the shoe.

Then, stooping, he picked it up and handed it to Hudson, who thrust it into his breast pocket.

"Thank you!" he said. "Now if you will all leave your guns on this bed we'll go on deck and see the traces."

When they reached the deck there was something that looked like an enormous drowning cockroach trying to crawl out of the water four hundred yards away. Round it there seemed to be a mass of drowning flies.

"It's not a pleasant sight, is it?" said Hudson. "But it's good to know they were all fighting men, ready to kill or be killed. No women and children among them! The _Lusitania_ must have looked much worse."

"My brother is on board! Are you not trying to save them?" gasped the officer.

Hudson took out the little shoe again and looked at it. Then he turned to the German boat's crew, where they huddled, sick with fear, amidships.

"Take your boat and pick up as many as you can," he said.

"It is not safe--not till she sinks," a guttural voice replied.

Almost on the word the cruiser went down with a rush. The sleek waters and the white mists closed above her, while the _Morning Glory_ rocked again like a child's cradle.

"That is true," said Matthew Hudson to the shivering figure beside him. "And we've got as many as we can handle on the ship. If we took more of you aboard, according to the laws laid down in your text-books, you'd cut our throats and call us idiotic Yankees for trusting you.

"Please don't weep. We sent out a call a minute ago for the _Betsey Barton_ and the _Dusty Miller_ and the _Christmas Day_. I'm not an effete humanitarian myself; but the men on these trawlers aren't bad sorts. I hope they'll pick up your brother."

V

THE _LUSITANIA_ WAITS

On a stormy winter's night three skippers--averaging three score years and five--were discussing the news, around a roaring fire, in the parlor of the White Horse Inn. Five years ago they had retired, each on a snug nest-egg. They were looking forward to a mellow old age in port and a long succession of evenings at the White Horse, where they gathered to debate the politics of their district. The war had given them new topics; but Captain John Kendrick--who had become a parish councilor and sometimes carried bulky blue documents in his breast-pocket, displaying the edges with careful pride--still kept the local pot a-boiling. He was mainly successful on Saturday nights, when the _Gazette_, their weekly newspaper, appeared. It was edited by a Scot named Macpherson, who had learned his job on the _Arbroath Free Press_.

"Macpherson will never be on the council now," said Captain Kendrick. "There's a rumor that he's a freethinker. He says that Christianity has been proved a failure by the war."

"Well, these chaps of ours now," said Captain Davidson, "out at sea on a night like this, trying to kill Germans. It's necessary, I know, because the Germans would kill our own folks if we gave 'em a chance. But don't it prove that there's no use for Christianity? In modern civilization, I mean."

"Macpherson's no freethinker," said Captain Morgan, who was a friend of the editor, and inclined on the strength of it to occupy the intellectual chair at the White Horse. "Macpherson says we'll have to try again after the war, or it will be blood and iron all round."

"He's upset by the war," said Captain Davidson, "and he's taken to writing poytry in his paper. He'd best be careful or he'll lose his circulation."