“I am so weak!” he murmured, “so weak! I am famished!”
Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half fainting, in his arms. The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the boat that rode alongside. He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort held him towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail. Thus they got him on board and carried him to the cabin. They passed through it to that which was grandly called the captain’s stateroom. They laid him on the locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff, supporting himself against the bulkhead, watched them in silence.
The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff’s face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the inevitable decanter, yellow with age and rust.
“Here,” he said, “drink that. Eat a bit o’ biscuit. You’re done.”
Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner’s face, with a hundred unasked questions in them.
“How did it happen?” asked Cartoner, at length.
“They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not me. He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the night before last. He died before the morning.”
“Tut! tut!” muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of pity. “There was the makings of a man in him,” he said—“the makings of a man!”
And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common as to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for a moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship’s biscuit offered to him in the lid of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
“I’ll take him out to sea and bury him there,” said Cable, at length, “if so be as that’s agreeable to you. There’s many a good man buried at sea, and when my time comes I’ll ask for no better berth.”
“That is the only thing to be done,” said Cartoner.
Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
“Yes,” he said, “that will do. He will lay quiet enough there.”
And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath the sea with this last of the Bukatys.
Captain Cable was the first to move. He turned and glanced at the clock.
“I’ll turn the hands out,” he said, “and we’ll get to sea on the ebb. But I’ll have to send ashore for a pilot.”
“No,” answered Kosmaroff, rising and finishing his wine, “you need not do that. I can take you out to sea.”
The captain nodded curtly and went on deck, leaving Kosmaroff and Cartoner alone in the cabin in the silent presence of the man who had been the friend of both.
“Will you answer me a question?” asked Kosmaroff, suddenly.
“If I can,” was the reply, economical of words.
“Where were you on the ?”
Cartoner reflected for a moment, and then replied:
“In St. Petersburg.”
“Then I do not understand you,” said Kosmaroff. “I don’t understand how we failed. For you know we have failed, I suppose?”
“I know nothing,” answered Cartoner. “But I conclude you have failed, since you are here—and he is there.”
And he pointed towards Martin.
“Thanks to you.”
“No, I had nothing to do with it,” said Cartoner.
“You cannot expect me to believe that.”
“I do not care,” replied the English diplomat, gently, “whether you believe it or not.”
Kosmaroff moved towards the door. He carefully avoided passing near Cartoner, as if too close a proximity might make him forget himself.
“I will tell you one thing,” he said, in a hard, low voice. “It will not do for you to show your face in Poland. Don’t ever forget that I will take any chance I get to kill you! There is not room for you and me in Poland!”
“If I am sent there I shall go,” replied Cartoner. And there crept to one side of Kosmaroff’s face that slow smile which seemed to give him pain.
“I believe you will.”
Then he went to the door. For Captain Cable could be heard on deck giving his orders, and already the winches were at work. But the Pole paused on the threshold and looked back. Then he came into the cabin again with his hand in the pocket of his threadbare workman’s jacket.
“Look here,” he said, bringing out a folded envelope and laying it on the cabin-table between them. “A dead man’s wish. Get that to Miss Cahere. There is no message.”
Cartoner took up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
“I shall not see her, but I will see that she gets it,” he said.
The dawn was in the sky before the Minnie swept out past the pier-head light of Neufahrwasser. It was almost daylight when she slowed down in the bay to drop her pilot. Kosmaroff’s boat was towing astern, jumping and straining in the wash of the screw. They hauled it up under the quarter, and in the dim light of coming day Cable and Cartoner drew near to the Pole, who had just quitted the wheel.
The three men stood together for a moment in silence. There was much to be said. There was a multitude of questions to be asked and answered. But none of the three had the intention of doing either one or the other.
“If you want a passage home,” said Cable, gruffly, “cut your boat adrift. You’re welcome.”
“Thank you,” was the answer. “I am going back to Poland to try again.”
He turned to Cartoner, and peered in the half-light into the face of the only man he had had dealings with who had not been afraid of him. “Perhaps we shall meet again soon,” he said, “in Poland.”
“Not yet,” replied Cartoner. “I am under orders for Madrid.”
Kosmaroff stood by the rail for a moment, looking down into his boat. Then he turned suddenly to Cartoner, and made him a short,
