CHAPTER XXV
The strain on the nerves of the party in the palace became more and more severe. During the second week in October it almost reached the breaking point. For four days the sirocco blew across the island. The sky was grey and seemed to press down on sea and land, heavy, unbroken, intolerably near. The wind blew strongly, but with none of the fresh boisterous fierceness of a northern gale. There was a sullen malignity about its force. Out at sea grey-topped waves wrangled and strove together confusedly. They broke in a welter of soiled foam across the reef which lay opposite the mouth of the bay. Within the harbour little waves, like jagged steel blades, rose, hissed at each other spitefully, and perpetually stabbed at the rocky shore.
The close, suffocating heat oppressed men and beasts. The islanders retreated into their cottages and lay, patiently enduring, till the vile wind should pass away. Cattle cowered for shelter under the lee of walls or among the bent, swaying trees. Donovan sat alone in his room in the palace. He sweated continuously though he wore little clothing. He was the victim of many kinds of physical uneasiness, pains which would not quite declare themselves, restless fidgetings of his limbs, vague depression of spirit. Konrad Karl and Madame quarrelled openly and bitterly. His revilings stung her. Her own ill-temper left her raw. She fled to her room and locked herself into it. The King, perversely persistent, went after her. He could be heard scolding her through the closed door at one moment, begging pathetically for admittance at another. Gorman wandered restlessly from room to room. He opened windows, panting for air, and closed them with a curse when the hot blast of the sirocco smote him in the face. Smith, alone of all the party, preserved his self-control. The sweat trickled down his face; but he was alert, attentive, busy, as if the sun shone and the breeze blew fresh across sparkling water.
The Queen found the palace intolerable, worse than the wind outside. Very soon after breakfast she went out. Kalliope, faithful even amid the torment of the sirocco, followed her. They struggled together towards their watch place on the cliff. The wind buffeted them, set their hair floating wildly, struck their eyelids painfully. Their legs were caught and held by tangling petticoats. Sometimes as the path twisted they headed right against the storm. Then bent almost double, they bored their way through dense resisting air. Sometimes, moving slantwise, they were caught by a side blast, and then they walked leaning at a sharp angle against the wind. Or, for a little while, they scudded before it, driven against their wills to swift motion which was unbearably exhausting. More than once Kalliope flung herself down and lay flat, panting on the shelterless grass. If she had taken her own way she would have given the struggle up. But the Queen, though she too gasped for breath, would not turn back or rest for more than a few minutes. She was determined to reach the look-out post on the cliff. In the end she got there.
Kalliope lay at full length, face downwards, in the little hollow. The Queen sat beside her and looked out to sea. Her hair was blown backwards. Her blouse, its fastenings torn, was blown open at her neck. Her face was flecked with tiny crystals of salt. She breathed in quick short pants. She kept her eyelids open with an effort against the blast.
The welter of grey water, broken everywhere with splashes of lighter grey foam, merged into the misty grey of the low enveloping clouds. The half circle of the horizon seemed very near. She watched the waves rise, rush forward, curl their crests over and break in foam. In one place the foam was whiter, thicker than elsewhere. The waves broke more frequently there. It was as if a patch of very fiercely breaking water moved towards the island. Behind it, before it, and on either side of it the waves tossed and broke. On this one patch they broke more constantly and more wildly. In a little while the Queen got glimpses of a dark mass which rose from the middle of this breaking water. Then she saw, clear above the foam, a short thick mast. She guessed that in the middle of the breaking water, half submerged, washed constantly from stem to stern, there was a boat which made for the shore.
The Queen watched, fascinated. The boat held her course for the island. She reached the corner of the reef outside the bay. She swung round it and was to be seen plainly at last in the sheltered water of the harbour. She was a long low boat, narrow, sharply pointed bow and stern. A turret rose amidships. The smooth rounded slope of her deck was broken only by a hand rail which stretched fore and aft from the turret. The Queen had seen no craft like her, but she knew what she was, a submarine.
The Queen seized Kalliope by the arm and pointed to the boat. It was impossible to talk up there on the cliff in the storm. The two girls struggled to their feet. They started on their way back to the palace. Hand in hand, running, tripping, buffeted, breathless, they reached the bottom of the cliff.
The Queen and Kalliope were the first to see the submarine; but when she rounded the corner of the reef and entered the harbour every one on the island was aware of her arrival. From the houses of the village men came out and stood on the beach staring at the strange craft which moved across their bay. In the palace King Konrad Karl saw her and knew at once what she was. The effect her arrival produced on him was curious. Better than any one else on the island except perhaps Smith, he understood the German war spirit and guessed what the coming of the submarine might mean. Yet he seemed actually pleased to see her. He hurried to find Gorman. All the nervous agitation which had set him quarrelling with his Corinne disappeared. The effects of the horrible dullness and intolerable boredom of the past three months dropped away in an instant. The sirocco no longer afflicted him. He greeted Gorman with smiles. He was once more the irrepressible, cheery, street arab among kings, who had swindled the British public with his Vino Regalis, who defied all conventional decencies in his relations with Madame Ypsilante, who had failed to pay his bills in London and tried to outwit the Emperor over the sale of Salissa.