“But if she didn’t get the Wellington’s call, and if she isn’t coming back?”
The officer set his lips firmly. “Then I guess we can get the women first into the boats, and keep them adrift until most of them, anyway, are picked up.” He looked to Roberta thankfully. “Since they think the wireless is going again, we can handle them more decently.”
Andy stared out over the dark sea. To the south and astern, the Corinthian, which could have been alongside before now, was racing more than a hundred miles away to pursue a sound ship. He had sent it on that pursuit. Somewhere out ahead—if the German Elbe also had happened to hear his false S. O. S. calls and was responding to them—was the ship which they might meet in time to save the Cumberland’s company. The rockets constantly exploded in the sky to attract it. Slowly, with terrible, heart-dragging counting of the minutes while the fire gained and gained again in spite of all the floods pumped into the hull, the half-hour passed. Still the electricians worked over the wireless apparatus; only the rasping of sandpapered blocks still tricked the passengers that the wireless was working.
“Time’s up!” the second officer shut his watch. “If we’re going to meet the Elbe, we should see her lights now.”
A cry from the point of the deck forward—light—a streaking flame in the sky ahead. The German liner Elbe was in sight! It answered the rockets of the Cumberland. The two ships raced on to each other.
The fast German mail steamer, Elbe—which every one knows was responding to an unexplained false call from the Wellington—took off the passengers from the burning Cumberland; and, as the crew of the Cumberland remained to fight the fire, the Elbe stood by till the Corinthian came back from its useless chase. As the Corinthian was a British ship of an allied line, it stayed with the Cumberland, and finally brought it into port after the fire had gutted the ship and burned out. Accordingly, the Elbe, with the Cumberland’s passengers, reached New York on Saturday afternoon, while the Corinthian was still at sea.
The arrest at New York of Roberta Leigh for her high crimes committed in England therefore was postponed till the Corinthian docked. But this arrest was meant to be only postponed. The British government, thoroughly aroused to the need of decisive and drastic measures for the suppression of the suffragist outrages, were determined to show no quarter. The crown officers waited doggedly for the coming of the Corinthian on Monday.
Wherefore, on Sunday night, Mr. Andrew Farnham called on Miss Roberta Leigh at the quiet country place of one of her classmates up the Hudson.
“Bobs,” he said, when he was alone with her, “the Britishers are in for bitter disappointment when the Corinthian gets to quarantine to-morrow. They’ve been oiling up the thumbscrews in the tower and sharpening the spikes of the Iron Maiden for you. When they find they haven’t got you, our recent acts of evasion will be kindergarten games compared to what may be required to keep you from being extradited. And, to confess the truth, dear, this having all but slaughtered a shipload of people has scared me. I don’t know what I’d find myself doing if they got after you again. So, just to protect me, won’t you marry me now? Come on; let’s become woman and husband!”
Roberta kissed him and laughed. “You didn’t really hurt any one. Everybody got off the Cumberland, and the Corinthian couldn’t have put out the fire even if it had come right away. I didn’t hurt anybody in England; and, as for their precious old property, I told my lawyer this morning to pay what was right for that.”