“Because we must not let him catch us here,” urged Olga in some agitation.
“And why not, pray?”
The Russian looked at her in astonishment. “But surely you heard him tell us to go back to the other side. You heard him call us idiots, Miss Clinton?”
And Ruth Clinton suffered herself to be hurried incontinently around the corner of the deck building.
“Once, in Moscow, I saw a Grand Duke confront a mob of students who had gathered in the street near his house. They were armed and they had come to destroy this man himself. There were hundreds of them. He walked straight toward them, his head erect, his shoulders squared, and when they stopped he spoke to them as if they were dogs. When he had finished, he turned his back upon them and walked away. They might have filled him with bullets,—but they did not fire a shot. At the corner he entered his carriage and disappeared. And then what did he do? He fainted, that Grand Duke, he did. Fainted like a stupid, silly young girl. But while he was standing before zat—-that mob of terrorists he was the strongest man in Russia. Nevertheless, he was afraid of them. You have therefore the curious spectacle to perceive, Miss Clinton, of one man being afraid of hundreds, and of hundreds of men at the same time being afraid of one. Man, he is a queer animal, eh?”
It was not long before the doubts and fears of all on board the Doraine gave way to a strange, unnatural state of exhilaration. It represented joy without happiness, relief without security, exultation without conviction,—for, after all, there still remained unanswered the question that robbed every sensation of its thrill. While they were singing the hymns of thanksgiving in the saloon that night, and listening to the fervent prayers; while they ate, drank and were merry, their thoughts were not of the day but of the morrow. What of the morrow? In the eyes of every one who laughed and sang dwelt the unchanging shadow of anxiety; on every face was stamped an expression that spoke more plainly than words the doubts and misgivings that constituted the background of their jubilation. They had escaped the sea, but would they ever escape the land? Had God, in answer to their complaints and prayers, directed them to a land from which the hand of man would never rescue them? Were they isolated here in the untraversed southern seas, cast upon an island unknown to the rest of the world? Or were they, on the other hand, within reach of human agencies by which the world might be made acquainted with their plight?
Uppermost in every mind was the sickening recollection, however, that for days they had ranged the sea without sighting a single craft. They were far from the travelled lanes, they were out of the worth-while world. Hope rested solely on the possibility that the hills and forests hid from view the houses and wharves of a desolate little sea-town set up by the far-reaching people of the British Isles.
The story of Percival's achievement was not long in going the rounds. It went through the customary process of elaboration. By the time it reached his ears,—through the instrumentality of Mr. Morris Shine, the motion picture magnate,—it had assumed sufficient magnitude to draw from that enterprising gentleman a bona fide offer of quite a large sum for the film rights in case Mr. Percival would agree to re-enact the thrilling scene later on. In fact, Mr. Shine, having recovered his astuteness and his courage simultaneously, was already working at the preliminary details of the most “stupendous” picture ever conceived by man. His deepest lament now was that he had neglected to bring a good camera man down from New York, so that on the day of the explosion he could have “got” the people actually jumping overboard, and drowning in plain sight—(although he did not see them because of the trouble he was having to get a seat in one of the life-boats),—and the wounded scattered over the decks, the fire, the devastation, the departure and return of the boats, the storm and all that followed, including himself in certain judiciously preserved scenes, and the whole production could have been made at practically no cost at all. There never had been such an opportunity, complained Mr. Shine the moment he felt absolutely certain that the opportunity was a thing of the past.
“No wonder he got away with it,” said Mr. Landover to a group of rejuvenated satellites. “He is hand in glove with them, that fellow is. I wouldn't trust him around the corner. Why, it's perfectly plain to anybody with a grain of intelligence that he's the leader of that gang of anarchists. All he had to do was to speak to them,—in their own language, mind you,—and back they slunk to their quarters. They obeyed him because he is their chosen leader, and that's all there is to this—What say, Fitts?”
Mr. Fitts, who was not a satellite but a very irritating Christian gentleman, cleared his throat and said: