I came nearer to feeling sorry for the Hun than I had since the war started.
CHAPTER XII
MYSTERY
I
Dusk and a fine driving rain were sweeping up harbour from the sea. The shadows that had gathered in the folds of the hills ashore swiftly overflowed and settled down over the muddy town and wharves, engulfing the straggling dockyard. As night fell, lights glimmered here and there on the hill-side and were obliterated; across the swift-running ebb-tide the irritable chatter of pneumatic riveters drifted in gusts; and in the direction from which the sound came a few shaded arc-lights shone upon the half-discerned ribs of craft on the building slips.
Something beside the night was coming in from the sea: a ship with a heavy list, labouring in with a tug on either side of her and another fretting at the end of the tow. They passed, a mere smear of uncertain outlines, through the outer defences, and a couple of long black shadows that were the escorting destroyers wheeled again to seaward and were blotted from view.
A number of small craft were afloat in the lower reaches of the harbour. A hospital launch, with the Geneva cross visible through the dusk against her white upper-works, lay rolling gently by the berth towards which the tow was heading. Another steam launch circled impatiently round, and in her stern-sheets a group of armed marines stood watching the approaching vessels above the upturned collars of their greatcoats. The steaming-light of the hospital boat glimmered momentarily on the barrels of their rifles.
“’Ullo?” said a sick-berth attendant in the hospital boat, “guard o’ marines—eh?”
The sternsheets-man nodded towards the approaching tow-lights. “Prisoners,” he said sententiously, and was silent, watching the shadowy ship looming towards them out of the murk. The tug on the tow slipped the hawser with a blast on her syren and turned shoreward; the splash of an anchor let go and the rattle of cable followed. The coxswain of the hospital boat, as if awaiting a signal, put out his hand toward the telegraph and rang slow speed ahead. A light appeared at the gangway of the shadowy ship.
One of the tugs alongside had cast off and was backing astern into the darkness: as she cleared the ship’s side a steam-boat, with her bow lights gleaming through the drizzle like red and green jewels, crossed the bows, swept round in a graceful circle, and ran alongside. A rope ladder dropped from the upper deck of the ship, and a figure in oil-skins, which had been standing in the stern-sheets of the steam-boat, caught it as it swayed.