Роберт Чамберс - The Dark Star

Nobody disturbed him; nobody questioned him; the train officials were civil and incurious, and went calmly about their business with all the traditional stolidity of official John Bull.

Neeland had plenty of leisure to think as he sat there in his heavy chair which vibrated but did not sway very much; and his mind was fully occupied with his reflections, for, so far, he had not had time to catalogue, index, and arrange them in proper order, so rapid and so startling had been the sequence of events since he had left his studio in New York for Paris, via Brookhollow, London, and other points east.

One thing in particular continued to perplex and astonish him: the identity of a member of Parliament, known as Charles Wilson, suddenly revealed as Karl Breslau, an international spy.

The wildest flight of fancy of an irresponsible novelist had never created such a character in penny–dreadful fiction. It remained incomprehensible, almost incredible to Neeland that such a thing could be true.

Also, the young man had plenty of food for reflection, if not for luncheon, in trying to imagine exactly how Golden Beard and Ali Baba, and that strange, illogical young girl, Ilse Dumont, had escaped from the Volhynia .

Probably, in the darkness, the fishing boat which they expected had signalled in some way or other. No doubt the precious trio had taken to the water in their life–jackets and had been picked up even before armed sailors on the Volhynia descended to their empty state–rooms and took possession of what luggage could be discovered, and of the three bombs with their charred wicks still soaking on the sopping bed.

And now the affair had finally ended, Neeland believed, in spite of Captain West's warnings. For how could three industrious conspirators in a fishing smack off the Lizard do him any further damage?

If they had managed to relay information concerning him to their friends ashore by some set of preconcerted signals, possibly the regular steamer train to and out of London might be watched.

Thinking of this, it presently occurred to Neeland that friends in France, also, might be stirred up in time to offer him their marked attentions. This, no doubt, was what Captain West meant; and Neeland considered the possibility as the flying train whirled him toward the Channel.

He asked if he might smoke, and was informed that he might; and he lighted a cigarette and stretched out on his chair, a little hungry from lack of luncheon, a trifle tired from lack of sleep, but, in virtue of his vigorous and youthful years, comfortable, contented, and happy.

Never, he admitted, had he had such a good time in all his life, despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill and alertness and perspicacity, had saved his neck.

No, he could not congratulate himself on his cleverness and wisdom; sheer accident had saved his skin—and once the complex and unaccountable vagary of a feminine mind had saved him from annihilation so utter that it slightly sickened him to remember his position in Ilse Dumont's stateroom as she lifted her pistol and coolly made good her boast as a dead–shot. But he forced himself to take it lightly.

"Good Lord!" he thought to himself. "Was ever a man in such a hellish position, except in melodrama? And what a movie that would have made! And what a shot that girl proved herself to be! Certainly she could have killed me there at Brookhollow! She could have riddled me before I ducked, even with that nickel–plated affair about which I was ass enough to taunt her!"

Lying in his chair, cheek on arm, he continued to ponder on what had happened, until the monotonous vibration no longer interfered with his inclination for a nap. On the contrary, the slight, rhythmic jolting soothed him and gradually induced slumber; and he slept there on the rushing train, his feet crossed and resting on the olive–wood box.

A hand on his arm aroused him; the sea wind blowing through the open doors of the mail–van dashed in his face like a splash of cool water as he sat up and looked around him.

As he descended from the van an officer of the freight packet greeted him by name; a sailor piled his luggage on a barrow; and Neeland walked through the vista of covered docks to the pier.

There was a lively wind whipping that notoriously bad–mannered streak of water known as the English Channel. Possibly, had it been christened the French Channel its manners might have been more polite. But there was now nothing visible about it to justify its sentimental pseudonym of Silver Streak.

It was a dirty colour, ominous of ill–temper beyond the great breakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and made white and ghastly faces from the open sea.

But Neeland, dining from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to the use of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inland lubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had stranded him. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away—as far as it seems to the Parisian. And only when chance business takes him to the Battery does a New Yorker realise the nearness of the ocean to that vast volume of ceaseless dissonance called New York.

Neeland ate cold meat and bread and cheese, and washed it down with bitters.

He was nearly asleep on his sofa when the packet cast off.

He was sound asleep when, somewhere in the raging darkness of the Channel, he was hurled from the sofa against the bunk opposite—into which he presently crawled and lay, still half asleep, mechanically rubbing a maltreated shin.

Twice more the bad–mannered British Channel was violently rude to him; each time he crawled back to stick like a limpet in the depths of his bunk.

Except when the Channel was too discourteous, he slept as a sea bird sleeps afloat, tossing outside thundering combers which batter basalt rocks.

Even in his deep, refreshing sea sleep, the subtle sense of exhilaration—of well–being—which contact with the sea always brought to him, possessed him. And, deep within him, the drop of Irish seethed and purred as a kettle purrs through the watches of the night over a banked but steady fire.

Over the drenched sea wall gulls whirled and eddied above the spouting spray; the grey breakwater was smothered under exploding combers; quai , docks, white–washed lighthouse, swept with spindrift, appeared and disappeared through the stormy obscurity as the tender from the Channel packet fought its way shoreward with Neeland's luggage lashed in the cabin, and Neeland himself sticking to the deck like a fly to a frantic mustang, enchanted with the whole business.

For the sea, at last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home–made raft on the waters of Neeland's mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze. Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on the Channel during the night.

There was only one other passenger aboard—a tall, lean, immaculately dressed man with a ghastly pallor, a fox face, and ratty eyes, who looked like an American and who had been dreadfully sick. Not caring for his appearance, Neeland did not speak to him. Besides, he was having too good a time to pay attention to anybody or anything except the sea.

A sailor had lent Neeland some oilskins and a sou'–wester; and he hated to put them off—hated the calmer waters inside the basin where the tender now lay rocking; longed for the gale and the heavy seas again, sorry the crossing was ended.

He cast a last glance of regret at the white fury raging beyond the breakwater as he disembarked among a crowd of porters, gendarmes , soldiers, and assorted officials; then, following his porter to the customs, he prepared to submit to the unvarying indignities incident to luggage examination in France.