Chapter XIV: The Terrible Night

The echo of the cheer which rose up from the decks of the _Esmeralda_ yet lingered upon the sea when the Russian answer to it was forthcoming. Even as the crew of the little yacht said that the danger was done with, and that an open sea now lay before them, a voice out of the darkness gave them the lie. So swift was it to come, so surprising, that the men stood mute and wondering and helpless. It was as though the avenger had risen from the depths before them--a phantom ship conjured up by the powers of ill to reckon with them. They thought themselves without consort in the heart of the Gulf, and while the thought was still with them the strange ship appeared. Her light shone full upon them from a point not two hundred yards distant. They could count the men upon her decks; could see the figure of her commander outstanding on the bridge; could follow the delicate contour of the great hull which now towered above them.

The strange ship lay motionless, for she had been awaiting the signal of the _Peter Veliky_, and so stood toward the centre of the Gulf that she might command the channel. It is possible that the _Esmeralda_ would have slipped by her in the dark but for the cheer of victory raised so foolishly. That triumphant cry was as the gun of a sentinel to those on board the Russian ship. Her lantern blazed out; voices of warning were raised on her decks; men roared to one another that the quarry had run into the snare, that the hunt was done. The beams of the great light fell upon the yacht and upon her crew, and the cheer froze on the lips of those who had raised it. Her men were powerless to think or act. The ultimate terror of defeat was upon them.

A man wearing the uniform of a naval lieutenant stood in the bows of the cruiser and was the first to hail the _Esmeralda_. His voice was like the roar of a bull; the wind carried his words so that none of them were lost. Already Reuben had shut off steam mechanically, so that the two ships lay rolling to the swell like swimmers who seek breath after the travail of a race. But no one gave answer to the hail of the lieutenant. Stupor possessed the crew of the yacht. The blow had been so swift to come; the shadow of the prison lay already upon the men.

“What ship?” roared the lieutenant, putting the question for the third time.

“She’s the _Kremi_, of Helsingfors,” said Reuben, who was again the first to reckon up the danger.

“An old ship,” said John Hook in a giant’s whisper. “She might catch a hearse--leastwise I’d venture on it.”

“Nine knots in the books, John.”

“To hell with the books! She carries her guns forward.”

“Then they cannot fire at us as we pass them,” exclaimed the girl excitedly.

Old John added to the wealth of the sea by a mouthful of tobacco juice.

“You’ve hit it on the head, miss!” cried he. “If we drift past ’em they want five minutes to get her about, and where shall we be in five minutes, mates?”

Reuben ceased to grin. Paul could not take his eyes off the cruiser. They had drifted so close to her that they could see the faces of those who trod the great decks above them. There was not a man on board the _Esmeralda_ whose heart did not beat high, not one who did not tell himself that this was the hour of reckoning.

“C’est fini!” Paul exclaimed, drawing the girl into his embrace. “This is our to-morrow, little Marian. But I have done my best, God knows.”

She kissed his lips and that was her answer.

Many men had come together to the port-bow of the _Kremi_, and they stood gaping at the stranger and at her crew. The lieutenant who had first cried out, asking “What ship?” gave the order that a gangway should be lowered; he did not doubt that it was the intention of the pursued to surrender without further effort. But those on board the _Esmeralda_ were of one mind and purpose again. The grin broadened upon the face of Reuben; old John lighted his pipe with the deliberation of a man at his own fireside. Silently he waited while the crew of the _Kremi_ flocked to the gangway, encouraged by the shrill, fife-like voice of a commander who plumed himself already upon his victory. Child’s work, the Russian thought, to grapple with the impudent and perky cockle-shell which had defied so vain-gloriously the might of his country. He gave the order triumphantly. He came to the very edge of the bridge to watch the irons slipped upon the hands of Zassulic the spy and of the woman who had tempted him. When the _Esmeralda_ did not stop at the gangway, but drifted on, he thought for the moment that it was clumsy seamanship; but when, with dramatic suddenness, she began to go full steam ahead, his anger was not to be controlled.

“Stand by to clear the guns!” he roared. “Are you going to lose her? Great God! she will cheat us yet!”

He foamed and raged like a madman, for the yacht shot into the darkness as a shell from a great gun. The terrible moment of waiting was past. Inch by inch the little ship had drifted, carrying men whose hearts quivered with excitement but whose spirit was unbroken. The terror of waiting was upon them no more. They had been within a boat’s length of the ladder when John cried “Let her go!” Then all the courage of their despair fired them. As a horse champing at his bit, so was the _Esmeralda_ sagging there in the trough of the sea. The rush of steam into her cylinders was the touch of the spur she asked. She bounded forward into the heart of the breakers, and a cloud of spray hid her from the enemy’s sight.

“Below, below for your lives!” roared old John; “they’re manning the machine-guns!”

“We cannot leave you here!” cried Paul, ashamed for the moment that it was not a fellow-countryman who spoke.

“Then you stand to your death!” cried John Hook. “There ain’t a gun in Roosher which I care a d---- for!--the Lord be my witness. Down there, sir, as you vally your life!”

The rattle of musketry and a sputter of bullets on the near sea cut short his honest bravado. Paul, needing no other argument, dragged Marian into the shelter of the scantling. The yacht, yawing in her course that she might avoid the hail of bullets, appeared to rush into the very bowels of the seas. Onward she flew, the foam frothing at her bows, the spray reeking upon her funnel, a great wake of quivering water behind her. Bullets struck her decks and sent chips of wood flying as though an adze cleaved them; the search-light followed her path as the light upon a stage follows the step of the dancer. Every minute was an eternity of suspense. The hearts of the men seemed to stand still. When at last the guns ceased there were tears upon the faces of the crew, but they were tears of joy.

“Down under again, by the Lord!” roared old John, who rolled with excitement. “Down under again, and the young lady thought of it. Glory be to God who made me an Englishman this night!”

He shook his fist defiantly at the distant light, for he knew that the hour of deliverance was at hand. The lumbering _Kremi_, which ventured rarely from her moorings in Helsingfors, was marked in the books as a ship which could steam at nine knots, but that was a fiction beloved of officials. Put to it now in the heavy swell of a fresh night, she strained and groaned like a derelict of the deep; she lurched over the seas, she smothered herself in them. The yacht ran from her as a hare from a bull. She fired her great gun again and again, but the shells found no other billet than the thundering breakers. When thirty minutes had passed she abandoned the pursuit and headed once more for the harbour she quitted so rarely. But first she shot a rocket high into the darkness and was answered by other rockets, blue and flaming on the far horizon. And at this sight old John ceased to laugh, and foreboding fell again upon the crew of the _Esmeralda_.

“You saw that, Reuben?” cried John Hook, pointing upward with his bony finger.

“I saw it, John.”

“Then there ain’t no need for me to speak.”

“Speak or silent, it don’t make no difference.”

“If I’ve eyes in my head, that’s the Baltic Fleet coming up the Gulf.”

“It is so, John.”

“The Baltic Fleet!” exclaimed Paul. “Then God help us! We shall never run by there.”

“You speak gospel truth, sir.”

The master of the _Esmeralda_ paced the deck again in all the agony of uncertainty prolonged. He had persuaded Marian to lie down in her cabin so soon as the _Kremi_ ceased to fire; there she slept and dreamed of England. But for him there was no sleep. These recurring difficulties were to him as a sign from God rebuking his work. It had seemed so simple when he planned it at Kronstadt--the quick rush in the darkness, the friendship of surprise, the possibility of escape before the news was known. But now the truth would not be hidden. The flaming rockets spoke of a girdle put about him by the avenger. He realised what a task was that which a man set himself when he sought to pit his cunning against the might of Russia. His enemies would crush him as they would crush a worm. They would drag him from the woman whose lips he had kissed, whose love was all that remained to him in life.

“You think there is no hope for us, Reuben?” he asked, suddenly stopping in his walk and facing the silent group.

“No hope out yonder, sir--leastways not to-night.”

“You have no plan in your mind?”

“None--unless you should run north, sir. There are always the islands.”

“I had not thought of them,” said Paul.

“I thought of them from the first,” continued Reuben. “There are a hundred creeks which might hide us until the hunt is over. And we’ve the land behind us, sir, if it should come to the worst.”

“Then to the islands let it be, and God help us if they know that we are still in the Gulf.”

“Ay, ay, to that,” said old John; and so the little ship went about, and heading straight for the coast of Finland, she began to race anew. But the hearts of the men were heavy. It was as though they turned her towards the gates of that prison which their minds had built for them during the hours of the terrible night.