“Well, to be perfectly candid with you, Jack,” said Murdock, “I shall not be at all sorry to see the Thetis safely away from this and on her way down the river, for I shall not be quite comfortable and easy in my mind until I do. And you will have to be very careful what you are about, my boy; ‘there is no smoke without fire’, and all this fuss and prying about of which I have been telling you means something, you may depend. It would not very greatly surprise me if you discover that you are being followed and watched.”
“We must take our chance of that,” laughed Jack. “Not that I am very greatly afraid. The fact is, Murdock, that you are constitutionally a nervous man, and you have worried yourself into a perfect state of scare over this business. But never mind, your anxiety will soon be over now, for here comes our coal, if I am not mistaken; and I promise you that we will be off the moment that we have taken our last sack on board. But I will run into the office and say good-bye before I go.”
The church clocks were just striking two when, Jack having duly fulfilled his promise to say good-bye to his partner, and to exchange a final word or two with him, the Thetis cast off from the wharf, backed out into the stream, and, swinging round, swept away down the river at the modest rate of fourteen knots, that being her most economical speed, and the pace at which, in order to make her coal last out, it had been decided that she should cross the Atlantic. She sat very deep in the water, and her decks, fore and aft, were packed with coal, in sacks so closely stowed that there was only a narrow gangway left between them from the foot of the ladder abaft the deck-house to the companion, and a similar gangway from the fore end of the bridge deck to the forecastle. If it was necessary for the men to pass to any other part of the ship, such as to the ensign staff, for instance, they had to climb over the sacks. She was particularly well equipped with boats, too: there were a steam pinnace and a whaler in chocks on the starboard side of the deck-house, balanced by the lifeboat and cutter on the other; and she carried no less than four fine, wholesome boats at her davits aft, all nicely covered over with canvas, to protect them from the sun—and also, in one case, to screen from too curious eyes Jack’s submarine, which was snugly stowed away in the largest quarter boat, that craft having had her thwarts removed to make room for the submarine. Twenty-six hours later, namely, at four o’clock on the following afternoon, the Thetis anchored off Boulogne; the steam pinnace was lowered, and Jack, accompanied by four seamen, proceeded into the harbour, landing at the steps near the railway station. From thence it was a very short walk to the hotel to which he was bound; and in a few minutes he was at his destination, enquiring for Monsieur Robinson. “Yes,” he was informed, “Monsieur Robeenson was in, and was expecting a Monsieur Singleton. Possibly Monsieur might be the gentleman in question?” Jack confessed that he was; and, being piloted upstairs, was presently shown into a room where he found Don Hermoso Montijo and his son Carlos obviously waiting for him. As he entered they both sprang to their feet and advanced toward him with outstretched hands.
“Ah, Señor Singleton,” exclaimed Don Hermoso, “punctual to the minute, or, rather”—glancing at his watch—“a few minutes before your time! We duly received your wire in Paris this morning, and came on forthwith. I am delighted to learn that everything has gone so smoothly. Do I understand that you are now ready to sail for Cuba?”
“Certainly, Don Hermoso,” answered Jack; “we can be under way in half an hour from this, if you like; or whenever you please. It is for you to say when you would like to start.”
“Then in that case we may as well be off at once,” said Don Hermoso. “For the first fortnight or three weeks of our tour through Switzerland we were undoubtedly the objects of a great deal of interested attention, but latterly we have not been so acutely conscious of being followed and watched; everything that we did was so perfectly open and frank that I think the persons who had us under surveillance must have become convinced that their suspicions of us were groundless, and consequently they relaxed their attentions. And I believe that we managed to get away from Paris this morning without being followed. If that is the case we have of course managed to throw the watchers off the scent, for the moment at least, and it will no doubt be wise to get away from here before it is picked up again. I hope that you, Señor, have not been subjected to any annoyance of that kind?”
“No,” said Jack laughingly, “I have not, beyond meeting at Cowes with that man who called himself Mackintosh—of which I informed you in one of my letters—I have had little or no cause to believe that I have become an object of suspicion to the Spanish Government. It is true that a race for steam-yachts was got up, a little while before I left the Solent, under circumstances which suggested to me that an attempt was being made to ascertain the best speed of the Thetis; but the attempt might have existed only in my imagination, and if it was otherwise, the plan was defeated, so no harm was done. But my partner has been a good deal worried recently by the incursions of a number of inquisitive strangers, who have obtruded themselves upon him and invaded our works with what he considers very inadequate excuses. His fixed impression is that a whisper was somehow allowed to get abroad that arms, ammunition, and stores were to be shipped from our yard for the use of the Cuban insurgents, and that the inquisitive strangers were neither more nor less than emissaries of the Spanish Government, sent down to investigate into the truth of the matter. They one and all appear to have betrayed a quite remarkable amount of interest in the cases, and one individual at least seems to have pretty broadly hinted his doubts as to the genuineness of the markings on them. Also, our own Government appears to have received a hint of what we were doing, and to have sent a man down to investigate; I am afraid, therefore, that despite all our precautions, we have not wholly succeeded in avoiding suspicion. And if such should be the case it will be a pity, for it will certainly mean trouble for us all later on.”
“The stronger the reason why we should start without further delay,” said Don Hermoso. “Carlos, oblige me by ringing the bell.”
The bell was rung, the bill asked for and paid, the various servants generously tipped, and the little party set out. The Montijos’ luggage had been left in the hall of the hotel: there was nothing therefore but for the four seamen to seize it, shoulder it, and carry it down to the pinnace; and this occupied but a few minutes. A quarter of an hour later the party had gained the deck of the yacht, and the pinnace was once more reposing in her chocks on the bridge deck.
“Get your anchor up, Mr Milsom, if you please,” said Jack, allowing his eyes to stray shoreward as Milsom repeated the order to the mate. As he looked, he became aware of something in the nature of a commotion or disturbance at the end of the pier; and, entering the chart-house, he brought forth a pair of splendid binoculars with which to investigate. Upon applying the glasses to his eyes he saw that there was a little crowd of perhaps fifty people gathered on the pier end, all eagerly listening to a man who was talking and gesticulating with great vehemence as he pointed excitedly toward the yacht. The man appeared to be particularly addressing two gendarmes who were among the crowd, but everybody was clustering close round him and listening, apparently in a state of the greatest excitement, to what he had to say, while occasionally one or another in the crowd would face seaward and shake his fist savagely at the yacht.