The gale had obviously blown itself out. The western sky had cleared, the rain had ceased, the wave-tops were no longer torn in flying spume, there was less violence in the rolling surges in whose trough they wallowed. When, a little after four bells, they were summoned to tea, the sun was setting in a golden splendour that promised a peaceful dawn.
Excited by the prospect of the next day’s work, the two young men forgot their suspicions of Captain Horst, could talk of nothing but their plans for diving despite the after-swell of the gale which would surely still be running. The captain listened to their impatience with the ghost of a grim smile, but volunteered no part in the conversation.
“Do you propose to keep under way all night, Captain Horst?” enquired Jensen.
“No,” he replied. “By my dead reckoning we ought to be in the vicinity of the wreck at about eight bells to-night. I shall anchor then if the glass is still rising. To-morrow we will take an observation and get as close as we can to the position of the Gloucester City—presuming that you have it correctly stated.”
His tone was perfectly indifferent, but Lyngstrand thought suddenly of that chart with the little red crosses—and particularly that cross on their indicated spot, 50° 55´´ N., 9° 14´´ W, with the fatal date of exactly a year ago—20/9/18. Surely it could not be mere coincidence! He thrilled suddenly with a dramatic perception. If—if it were so—if the man so calmly smiling at him had really sent the Gloucester City to the bottom!—and now, on the anniversary of the crime, was coolly proposing to anchor himself as near as might be over her ocean grave, preparatory to disturbing it on the morrow!—No! He ridiculed himself. It was impossible! No man could have the iron will—he glanced straight into the blue eyes of the impassive Horst, read nothing—no man could stand the strain without betraying himself. The murderer brought back to the scene of his crime broke down into confession—and, if he were the murderer of the Gloucester City, Horst was being brought back with ironic inexorability to the site of his assassination, brought back by those subtle, apparently normal, everyday circumstances from which there is no escape.
He wondered to what extent Horst had been informed of the purport of their voyage when the Upsal was chartered. He could not, certainly, have been left in ignorance—but, on the other hand, he could not well refuse to navigate the ship without losing an employment which, however humble, was assuredly to be coveted by a man in his position. A penniless naval officer had poor prospects in Germany. Bah! (he thought to himself in a sudden revulsion) he was accepting Jensen’s unsupported surmises as though they were reality. The thing was impossible! Another glance at the hard but emotionless face opposite him reassured him. He banished his hyper-dramatic idea in a spurn of self-contempt for his too excitable imagination.
Conversation languished. There was no community of thought between the skipper and his passengers, and his presence was a check upon the mutual confidences of the two young men. Meals together were an ordeal escaped from as soon as terminated, and Jensen and Lyngstrand speedily went out on deck again with the murmured allegation that the overhaul of their gear was not yet finished.
They did not come together again until some three hours later, when, her white anchor-light hoisted between her masts, the Upsal was pitching at her cable to the heavy swell which rolled down upon her from the darkness of the night. The two young men had been yarning with the chief engineer in the pleasant warmth of the engine-room, when a glance at the clock reminded them that it was the hour when the steward brought biscuits and cocoa to the charthouse. Light-hearted as boys, their unpleasant thoughts of the captain dissipated by the cheerful talk in which they had been indulging, they scrambled up the iron-runged ladder from the warm, oily depths to the black, damp chill of the outer night.
In this sea-smelling gloom where the wave-tops ran past them with faintly phosphorescent crests, the unwonted stillness of the ship’s engines was suddenly vivid to their consciousness as she eased and tugged at her anchorage.
“Well, here we are!” said Jensen, stopping for a moment to peer around him.