Command Part 26

Captain Rannie moved his foot up and down and smiled unpleasantly.

"No hope of that," he muttered.

"Yes!" repeated Mr. Dainopoulos, jumping up to change a five-pound note into excellent Greek drachmas. "Yes! If she wants him to do it, it will be easy enough. You don't know her."

Captain Rannie was heard to say in a low, hurried tone that he didn't want to.

Mr. Dainopoulos grinned, which did not improve his appearance. He waved his fingers at his captain with a gesture indicating his jocular conviction that he did not believe it.

"If I was single ..." he began, and ended with a loud "H--m!" and smiled again.

Captain Rannie flushed dark red with annoyance. It was one of the scourges of his existence that he had to let men imagine he was a terrible fellow with women. _He!_ And he loathed them. He would strangle every one of them if he had the power. Blood-sucking harpies! As he walked the bridge now, keeping a sharp eye upon the buoys of the nets which were coming into view, he recalled the shameful way his generosity had been played upon by those women of his own family. Daughters leagued with mother and aunt against him! But he had paid them out, hadn't he?

Ha-ha! He savoured again, but with a faint flavour of decay, that often-imagined scene when they realized at last that he was gone and gone for good. That was the way to treat them. No nonsense. As for this pa.s.senger in the chief officer's cabin, he hadn't seen her, and he hoped she'd fall overboard in the night, and a good riddance. Good heavens!

Hadn't the master of a s.h.i.+p enough responsibility on a trip like this without loading him down with a creature like that? In any case, she must remain in her cabin. Under no circ.u.mstances could he permit her on deck. To be meeting her on the stairs or promenading--the very thought made him feel faint.

Another thing Mr. Dainopoulos had said:

"A very good thing for him, too. He would make a lot of money--here."

Captain Rannie didn't believe it. He had arrived at a complete and horrifying conviction that Europe was collapsing of its own weight, that the only hope for anybody was to do as he himself was doing--sending all his money to the Anglo Celestial Bank in Hong-Kong to be exchanged for silver dollars. That was the place--China. Down the far reaches of memory he saw the great River, smooth and s.h.i.+ning, stretching away from the long quays of the port. No storms, no pitching or rolling, no rocks, no finding of one's position. And when he stepped ash.o.r.e in spotless yellow pongee silk suit and great sun-helmet, he was somebody. Here, in Europe, he was n.o.body. Out there once more, with plenty of has.h.i.+sh, he could face the future.

He had said:

"She must land on arrival."

"You tell her," said Mr. Dainopoulos, "when you arrive. Put her ash.o.r.e.

He'll take her. You will find plenty of friends, on arrival."

Captain Rannie received this information without ecstasy. He did not go sailing about the world in search of friends. He was very worried. Mr.

Dainopoulos favoured him with another grin.

"Why not take her ash.o.r.e yourself?"

Captain Rannie shrank as if from a blow.

"You're the captain," added Mr. Dainopoulos.

Captain Rannie turned on his chair, his shoulder hunched, as though to ward off an impending calamity.

"Why, I thought you liked a little fun," said Mr. Dainopoulos, surprised.

"Don't speak of it," said Captain Rannie in a stifled voice. "I make a point of never interfering. Never allude.... Purely personal...."

"Well," said his owner, in some perplexity, "please yourself. I daresay you understand what I mean. You'll have a good bit of time, you know, on arrival. You won't have coal, you know, to go very far...."

He had made no reply to this, remaining hunched up on his chair, staring fixedly at the floor. Mr. Dainopoulos had stood up, looking at him for a while.

"You can do it?" he had asked softly. "Remember, the papers you carry will mean big money if you get through."

Still no answer.

"It is easy," went on Mr. Dainopoulos. "You do not change your course, that is all. Keep on. East-southeast."

Captain Rannie was perfectly well aware of all this, but he lacked the superficial fort.i.tude to discuss it. He kept his head averted while his employer was speaking, his long wrist with the slave-bangle hanging over his knee. Change his course! That phrase had two meanings, by Jove! And his course was east to China, as soon as he could collect. He could do it. Talking about it to a man who was making fifty times, a hundred times, more than himself, was horrible to him.

He had got up suddenly and put on his hat, hara.s.sed lest this sort of thing should bring bad luck, for he was superst.i.tious. At the back of his mind lay an uneasy fear lest that girl business should spoil everything. Who could foresee the dangers of having a woman on the s.h.i.+p?

His s.h.i.+p! He, who could not bear to go near them at all, who treated even elderly creatures with brusque discourtesy! It would bring bad luck.

And now at last he was slipping through the nets, bound out upon a voyage of almost dismaying possibilities. It was a voyage of no more than thirty-six hours. Captain Rannie s.h.i.+vered and stood suddenly stock still by the binnacle as he thought of what was to transpire in those thirty-six hours. Could he do it? He was beginning to doubt if he could.

He said to the helmsman:

"Keep her south and three points east," and went into the little chart room.

The aegean Sea is a sea only in name. It could be more accurately described as a land-locked archipelago. Emerging from any of the gulfs of the mainland, gulfs which are nearly always narrow and reentrant angles with walls of barren and desolate promontories, one can proceed no more than a few hours' steaming on any course without raising yet more promontories and the hulls of innumerable islands. Closed to the southward by the long bulk of Crete lying squarely east and west like a breakwater, it presents its own individual problems to the navigator, the politician, and the naval commander. The last named, indeed, was finding it anything but a joke. The very configuration of the coastline, which rendered a sally from the Dardanelles a feat of extraordinary folly and temerity, made it a unique hiding place for the small craft who slipped out of Volo and emerged from the Trikari Channel after dark.

Submarines, coming round from Pola, could run into rocky inlets in the evening and would find immense stocks of oil, in cans, cached under savage rocks up the ravines of almost uninhabited islets of ravis.h.i.+ng beauty. Gentlemen in Athens, in a hurry to reach Constantinople, took aeroplanes; but there was another way, across the aegean Sea, in small sailing s.h.i.+ps which were frequently blown out of their course at night and would take refuge in Kaloni, whence it was easy to reach the mainland of Asia Minor. And this business--for it was a business--was so profitable, and the s.h.i.+ps of war so few in proportion to the area, that it went on gaily enough "under our noses" as one person said in disgust.

Not quite that; but the problem did not grow any simpler when there was yet another neutral government--with s.h.i.+ps--at Saloniki, a government that might be almost hysterically sympathetic to the cause of freedom and justice but which might also be imposed upon by conscienceless and unscrupulous merchants already in collusion with other unscrupulous people in Constantinople. This was the situation when the _Kalkis_ turned the great headland of Karaburun and headed south-southeast on the journey from which she never returned. Captain Rannie, staring at the chart on which he had pencilled the greater part of her course, southeast from Cape Ka.s.sandra, bearing away from the great three-p.r.o.nged extremity of the Chalcidice peninsula, was aware that she would not return, but he found himself flinching from the inevitable moment, drawing nearer and nearer when he must face success or failure. When he asked himself, echoing Mr. Dainopoulos, could he do it? He was not sure that he could.

From this reverie he was roused by Mr. Spokesly appearing on the bridge.

For a moment he was almost betrayed into a feeling of relief at the approach of a companion. He opened his mouth to speak and Mr. Spokesly, standing by the door, stopped to listen. But nothing came. Captain Rannie knew the secret power of always letting the other man do the talking on a s.h.i.+p. He said nothing. He crushed down the sudden craving to confide in Mr. Spokesly. He wanted--just for a moment--to call him in, shut the door, and whisper, with his hand on Mr. Spokesly's shoulder, "My boy, we are not going to Phyros at all. We are going to...."

No, he stopped in time. Why, he might stop the engines, blow the whistle, run the s.h.i.+p ash.o.r.e! He stepped out beside Mr. Spokesly who was looking down at the compa.s.s, and wrote some figures on the slate that hung in view of the helmsman.

"That's the course."

"All right, sir."

"Call me at midnight if necessary. I'll relieve you at two o'clock. Time enough to change the course then."

"All right, sir."

Captain Rannie gave a rapid glance round at the diverging sh.o.r.es as they opened out into the Gulf, and turned away abruptly. Mr. Spokesly heard him descending, heard him unlock his door with a series of complicated clicks and rattles, heard him slam and relock it, and finally the vigorous jingle of curtain rings as he drew the curtain across.

Mr. Spokesly struck a match and lit the binnacle lamp, a tiny affair which shone inward upon the vibrating surface of the card. He did not attempt to walk up and down. His moods never demanded that of him.

Perhaps it would be better to say his nature did not demand it. He was feeling much better than he had been all day. He had been nervous about Evanthia's safety in that room. Had had to make some bullying remarks to the steward about trying to get in where he had no business. To the puzzled creature's stammering explanations he had replied with more bullying: "Keep out. Don't come down here at all until I say you can."

The steward had come to the conclusion that in addition to a crazy skipper whose room smelt of has.h.i.+sh and florida water, they now had a crazy mate who had something in his room he was ashamed of.

And yet Mr. Spokesly need have had no fear. Evanthia lay in her bunk all day. She knew perfectly well that she must remain within that room as one dead until the s.h.i.+p got outside. So she lay there, her eyes half closed, listening to the sounds of men and machinery, the sunlight screened by the yellow curtain tacked over the little round window, hour after hour all day, with a stoicism that had in it something oriental.

It was about an hour past noon when there had come a smart thump on the door. She had got out and listened and the sharp whisper outside had rea.s.sured her. And when she had slipped the bolt and opened the door a few inches, Mr. Spokesly had thrust a gla.s.s of wine and a tin box of biscuits upon the wash-stand and pulled the door shut. And she had got back into the bunk and lay munching, and smiling, and sometimes kissing the emerald ring on her finger, the ring which was sailing out once more into the darkness. And as the day wore on, she peeped out and saw the tug go away with its empty lighter, heard the ominous thutter and thump of a gasolene launch under her, and heard the arrival of strangers who entered the cabin overhead. And then the clink of a gla.s.s.

Her reflections, as she lay in that bunk, her eyes half closed, were of that primitive yet sagacious order which it seems impossible to transfer to any authentic record. Her contact with reality was so immediate and instinctive that to a modern and sophisticated masculine intellect like Mr. Spokesly, or Mr. Dainopoulos even, she appeared crafty and deep. As when she locked the door. She had not imagined Mr. Spokesly returning.

The whole complex network of emotions which he had predicated in her, modesty, fear, panic, and coquetry, had not even entered her head. She had formidable weapons, and behind these she remained busy with her own affairs. So, too, when she had given everything she might possibly inherit to her benefactress, she saw instantly the immediate and future advantages of such a course. She could always come back, when the detestable French had gone away home, and live with her friend again.

She knew that old Boris better than he knew himself. She knew that he would do anything for his wife. Also she knew him for one of those men who stood highest in her own esteem--men who made money. For men who did not make money, who were preoccupied mainly with women, or books, or even politics, she had no use. She did not like Mr. Dainopoulos personally because he saw through her chief weakness, which was a species of theatricality. She had a trick of imagining herself one of the heroines of the cinemas she had seen; and this, since she could not read and was unable to correct her sharp visual impressions by the great traditions of art, appeared to be no more than a feminine whim. It was more than that. It was herself she was expressing at these moments of mummery. She had those emotions which are most easily depicted by grandiose gestures and sudden animal movements. It was her language, the language in which she could think with ease and celerity, compared with which the coordinated sounds which were called words were no more to her than the metal tokens called money. So there was nothing extraordinary in her quick grasp of the situation which demanded a mouse-like seclusion for a while. She lay still, even when footsteps clattering down the ladder were obliterated by the spluttering whoop of the whistle. And then came a novel and all-embracing sense of change, a mysterious and minute vibration which becomes apparent to a person situated well forward in a vessel beginning to move under her own power.

Ah! the _machine a vapeur_, the _vapore_, the fire, the agitation behind. For perhaps a single second her quick flame-like mind played about the incomprehensible enigmas of mechanism. She, for whom unknown men in distant countries were to scheme and toil, that they might send her yachts and automobiles, music-machines and costly fabrics, jewels and intricate contrivances for her comfort and pleasure, had the conceptions of a domestic animal concerning the origins of their virtues. For her the effortless flight of a high-powered car ascending a mountain road was as natural and spontaneous as the vulture hanging motionless above her or the leaf flying before her in an autumn wind.

Her gracile mentality made no distinction in these things, and the problems of cost never tarnished the s.h.i.+ning mirror of her content. Upon her had never intruded those mean and unlovely preoccupations which distract the victim of western civilization from the elementary joys and sorrows. She had always been fed and cared for and she had no shadow of doubt upon her mind that nourishment and care would ever cease. Her notion of evil was clear and sharp. It implied, not vague economic forces, but individual personalities whom she called enemies. Any one announcing himself as an enemy would be met in a primitive way. She would back into a corner, spitting and biting. If she had a weapon, and she always had, she would use it with cool precision. She lay in her bunk now without a care in the world because she possessed the power of animating men to bear those cares for her. She could inspire pa.s.sion and she could evoke admiration and remorse.

She saw the sun going down, saw him disappear as into a glowing brazier among the mountains, and the coming of darkness. Evanthia hated darkness. One of the whims she indulged in later days was the craving for a shadowless blaze of light. She moved in her bed place and turning on her elbow stared at the door, listening. Someone came down the stairs. A door was unlocked, slammed, and locked again. She became rigid. Her eyes glowed. Who was that? She got up and sought for matches to light the lamp. But she had left it burning the night before and the oil was exhausted. And her watch had stopped. She put on her black dress and did her hair as well as she could before the dark reflection in the mirror. She had very little of that self-consciousness which reveals itself in a fanatical absorption in minute attentions to one's appearance. She was, so to speak, always cleared for action, for love or war. She twisted her dark tresses in a knot, thrust a great tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb into them, unlocked the door and went out.

It was thus she came up the stairs into the lighted saloon and encountered the steward, who was laying the table for supper. He was leaning over the table setting out knives and forks. He looked over his shoulder and saw a face of extraordinary loveliness and pallor, with dark purple rings under the amber eyes, coming up out of the gloom of the stairway. He dropped the things in his hands with a clatter and whirled round upon her, his jaw hanging, his hands clutching the table.

"Sh-h!" she said, coming up into the room and advancing upon him with her finger to her lips. "Who are you?" she added in Greek.