Four men playing cards outside the door. Certain now that they are Russians. What does it all mean?
It is incomprehensible. There must be at least fifty rubber suits on board with cisterns and everything complete for short-range work with my poison. An officer took me to see them, and one of the men put one on.
“Good?” said the officer, looking at me.
I wouldn’t answer, and a man behind me stuck a bayonet into my back.
“Good now?” snarled the officer.
I nodded. Oh! for a chance to be on equal terms. …
But they are good: far too good. They have taken my rough idea, and improved upon it enormously. A man in one of those suits could bathe in the poison safely. But what do they want them for, on board a ship?
Thank Heavens! I am on shore again. They dragged me up on deck and I thought it was the end. A boat was alongside, and they put me in it. Then some sailors rowed me away. It was dark, and the boom of breakers on rocks grew louder and louder. At last we reached a little cove, and high above me I could see the cliffs. The boat was heaving, and then the man in charge switched on an electric torch. It flashed on the end of a rope ladder dangling in front of us, and swaying perilously as the swell lapped it and then receded. He signed to me to climb up it, and when I hesitated for a moment, he struck me in the face with his boat-hook. So I jumped and caught the ladder, and immediately the boat was rowed away, leaving me hanging precariously. Then a wave dashed me against the cliff, half stunning me, and I started to climb. An ordeal even for a fit man. … Exhausted when I reached the top. I found myself in a cave hewn out of granite. And Helias was waiting for me.
“Your quarters,” he said. “And no monkey tricks.”
But I was too done in to do anything but sleep.
The mystery deepens. This place is too amazing. Today I have been shown the plant in which my poison is to be made. It is a huge tank capable of holding I know not how many tons concealed from view by a wooden building built around it. The building is situated on the top of the cliff and the cliff itself is honeycombed with caves and passages. One in particular leads down from the tank to a kind of living-room, and thence up again to another opening in the cliff similar to the one by which I entered. And from the bottom of the tank there runs a pipe—yards and yards of it coiled in the room. Enough to allow the end to reach the sea. There is a valve in the room by which the flow can be stopped. It must be to supply the vessel below. But why so much? I will not make it: I swear I will not make it, even if they torture me.
Dear God! I didn’t know such things were known to man. Four days—four centuries. Don’t judge me … I tried, but the entrance was guarded.
[In the original this fragment was almost illegible. Poor devil—who would judge him? Certainly not I. Who can even dimly guess the refinements of exquisite torture they brought to bear on him in that lonely Cornish cave? And I like to think that behind that last sentence lies his final desperate attempt to outwit them by hurling himself on to the rocks below. “But the entrance was guarded.”]
It is made. And now that it is made what are they going to do with it? They’ve let me alone since I yielded, but my conscience never leaves me alone. Night and day: night and day it calls me “Coward.” I am a coward. I should have died rather than yield. And yet they could have made it themselves: they said so. They knew the formula. But they thought I’d do it better. If any accident took place I was to be the sufferer.
Should I have ended it all? It would have been so easy. It would be so easy now. One touch: one finger in the tank and everything finished. But surely sooner or later this place must be discovered. I lie and look out over the grey sea, and sometimes on the far horizon there comes the smoke of a passing vessel.
Always far out—too far out. Anyway I have no means of signalling. I’m just a prisoner in a cave. They don’t even give me a light at night. Nothing to do but think and go on thinking, and wonder whether I’m going mad. Is it a dream? Shall I wake up suddenly?
Yesterday I had a strange thought. I must be dead. It was another world, and I was being shown the result of my discovery on earth. Cruelty, death, torture—that was all that the use of such a poison as mine could lead to. It was my punishment. It’s come back to me since—that thought. What was that strange and wonderful play I saw on earth? “Outward Bound.” Rather the same idea: no break—you just go on. Am I dead?
[Undoubtedly to my mind the first time that Robin Gaunt’s reason began to totter. Poor devil—day after day—brooding alone.]
Things are going to happen. There’s a light at sea—signalling. Is it the ship, I wonder? They’re letting down the pipe from the cave above me. It’s flat calm: there is hardly a murmur from the sea below.
At last I know the truth.
