“Yes, it always does one good to see a man,” answered Prince Martin.
“They tell me you’re a prince.”
“That is all.”
The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.
“Makings of a man as well, perhaps,” he said, doubtfully. Then he turned to cast an eye over the Olaf.
“Tin-kettle of a thing!” he observed, after a pause.
“My little cargo won’t be much in her great hold. Hatches are too small. Now, I’m all hatch. Can’t open up in this weather. We can turn to and get our running tackle bent. It’ll moderate before the evening, and if it does we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes’ be ready to work all night?”
“I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is.”
The captain gave a gruff laugh.
“Dammy, you’re the right sort!” he muttered, looking aloft at the rigging with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the privilege of the British sailor.
Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on board in the afternoon to bend the running tackle “shipshape and Bristol fashion,” and refused to remain on board the Olaf for luncheon.
“We’ve got a bit of steak,” he said, conclusively, and clambered over the side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of fried onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the small steamer to the large one.
The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon—men who, as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or a musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.
There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after dark, and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost noiselessly under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable’s crew worked quickly and quietly, and by nine o’clock that work was begun which was to throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty, Prince Martin, Captain Petersen, and several others.
Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably lightened, and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through the day the transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights were slung out of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the dark hold of the other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the second night the creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after daylight the three men who had superintended the work without resting took a cup of coffee together in the cabin of the Olaf.
“Likely as not,” said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, “we three’ll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I’ve never seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if they did see me.”
“We can never tell,” said Martin, optimistically.
“Of course,” the captain went on, “I can hold me tongue. That’s agreed—we all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely to pay for a word or two. Often enough I’ve read things in the newspaper that I could put a different name to. And that little ship of mine has had a hand in some queer political pies.”
“Yes,” answered Martin, with his gay laugh, “and kept it clean all the same.”
“That’s as may be. And now I’ll say goodbye. I’ll be calling on your father for my money in three days’ time—barrin’ fogs. And I’ll tell him I left you well. Goodbye, Petersen; you’re a handy man. Tell him he’s a handy man in his own langwidge, and I’ll take it kindly.”
Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great sea-boots.
Half an hour later the Olaf was alone on that shallow sea, which seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits a room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.
IV
Two of a Trade
“His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard,” a witty Frenchwoman had once said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin alone could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French have a trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as the hollow ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for a moment in a deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.
The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear it—Reginald Cartoner, a listener, not a talker—and made that man Paul Deulin’s friend for the rest of his life. As there is point de culte sans mystère, so also there can be no lasting friendship without reserve. And although these two men had met in many parts of the world—although they had in common more languages than may be counted on the fingers—they knew but little of each other.
If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring to conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole harvest of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other hand, this is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will discover the roots of the flowers soon enough.
Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic, they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity, to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of the new
