And set to work we did that very afternoon, the plan pursued being to make out a list of all the vessels lying off the neighbourhood, and to ascertain the owners, and whether there was any one else on board. The task was not difficult, as Quickly seemed to know the name and history of almost every craft afloat, but the result was disappointing, for not all our inquiries could discover any one answering to Mullen’s description, or indeed any one whose presence was not satisfactorily accounted for.
Even the Nore lightship, which lies several miles out to sea, was not forgotten, for the very first idea which occurred to me in connection with Southend and Mullen was, what a snug and out-of-the-world hiding-place the vessel would make, were it possible to obtain shelter there.
Had there been only one man in charge, it was not inconceivable that he might—like the jailer who assisted the head centre, James Stephen, to escape from Dublin jail in 1865—have been a secret sympathizer with the conspirators, or at all events in their pay, and that a fugitive who could offer a sufficiently tempting bribe might succeed in obtaining shelter and the promise of silence.
I found on inquiry, however, that there was quite a crew on board, and that the lightship is frequently visited by the Trinity House boats, so the chance of any one being concealed there was out of the question. But though I dismissed the lightship from my consideration, I could not help asking myself if there might not be some similar place in the neighbourhood of Southend to which the objection which rendered the Nore lightship impossible as a hiding place would not apply, and even as I did so the thought of the dynamite hulks off Canvey Island occurred to me.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DYNAMITE HULK
No one who has not visited Canvey would believe that so lonely and out-of-the-world a spot could exist within thirty miles of London. Just as we sometimes find, within half-a-dozen paces of a great central city thoroughfare, where the black and pursuing streams of passengers who throng its pavements never cease to flow, and the roar of traffic is never still, some silent and unsuspected alley or court into which no stranger turns aside, and where any sound but that of a slinking footstep is seldom heard,—so, bordering the great world-thoroughfare of the Thames, is to be found a spot where life seems stagnant, and where scarcely one of the thousands who pass within a stone’s throw has ever set foot.
Where the Thames swings round within sight of the sea, there lies, well out of the sweep of the current, a pear-shaped island, some six miles long and three miles broad, which is known as Canvey.
Three hundred years ago it was practically uninhabitable, for at high tide the marshes were flooded by the sea, and it was not until 1623 that James I. invited a Dutchman named Joas Croppenburg and his friends to settle there, offering them a third for themselves if they could reclaim the island from the sea. This offer the enterprising Dutchman accepted, and immediately set to work to build a sea-wall, which so effectually protects the low-lying marsh-land, that, standing inside it, one seems to be at a lower level than the water, and can see only the topmost spars and sails of the apparently bodiless barges and boats which glide ghost-like by.
But the most noticeable features in the scenery of Canvey are the evil-looking dynamite hulks which lie scowling on the water like huge black and red-barred coffins. Upwards of a dozen of these nests of devilry are moored off the island, and they are the first objects to catch the eye as one looks out from the sea wall.
In view of the fact that the position of Canvey in regard to one of the greatest water highways in the world is like that of a house which lies only a few yards back from a main road, one wonders at first that such a locality should have been selected as the storage place of so vast a quantity of a deadly explosive. That it was so selected only after the matter had received the most careful and serious consideration of the authorities is certain; and though very nearly the whole of the shipping which enters the Thames must necessarily pass almost within hail of the island, the spot is so remote and out of the world that it is doubtful if any safer or securer place could have been found.