“It remains to be seen,” he said, peering out into the rain and spray, “whether that little man will come to us in this.”
“He will come,” said Captain Petersen.
Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things—at the timidity and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad weather, at life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy people who find life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will say that it is easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but experience tells that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes and chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea, and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain Petersen on the back.
“Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we haven’t dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that exceedingly amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why look so gloomy, my friend?”
Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou’wester.
“We are putting our necks within a rope,” he said.
“Not your neck—only mine,” replied Martin. “It is a necktie that one gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so free from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine! The wine runs down a man’s throat none the less pleasantly because there is a loose rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his life—that old man, eh?”
“It is all very well for you,” said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning his gloomy eyes towards his companion. “A prince does not get shot or hanged or sent to the bottom in the high seas.”
“Ah! you think that,” said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. “One can never tell.”
Then he broke into a laugh.
“Come!” he said, “I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come on to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in—that little bulldog of a man.”
“If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,” grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.
“He has only one sense, that man—a sense of infinite fearlessness.”
“He is probably afraid—” Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself laboriously on to the rail.
“Of what?” inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.
“Of a woman.”
And Martin Bukaty’s answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went aloft.
They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer approaching before the wind.
Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the water, and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the beacon on the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till the rounded wet sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale’s back. He disappeared into the haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again astern of the Olaf, a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan of spray. He was crashing into the seas at full speed—a very different kind of sailor to the careful captain of the Olaf. His low decks were clear, and each sea leaped over the bow and washed aft—green and white. As the little steamer came down he suddenly slackened speed, and waved his hand as he stood alone on the high bridge.
Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray that still broke over the bows. The crew of the Olaf, crowding to the rail, looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the height of their dry and steady deck. They watched the men working quickly almost under water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was good. Captain Cable stood swaying on the bridge—a little, square figure in gleaming oilskins—and said no word. He had a picked crew.
He passed ahead of the Olaf and anchored there, paying out cable as if he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name visible, a sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name and port of registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed. Whatever his business was, this seaman knew it well.
No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat, and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity. “He is going to try and get to us!” he said, pessimistically, and went forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat containing Captain Cable and two men came within reach, a rope—cleverly thrown—coiled out into the flying scud and fell across the captain’s face.
A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the Olaf and shook hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince Martin, who held out his hand.
“Glad to see you, Captain Cable,” he said. Cable finished drying the salt water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he shook hands.
“Suppose you thought I wasn’t coming,” he said, suspiciously.
“No, I knew you would.”
“Glad to see me for my own sake?” suggested
