Alias the Lone Wolf

by Louis Joseph Vance

One fancied something inhumanly derisive in the prolonged hoot which replied.

Rather than languish under the burden of Mr. Phinuit's spirited conversation for the rest of the afternoon, Lanyard imitated Liane's example, and wasted the next hour and a half flat on his bed, with eyes closed but mind very much alive. Now and again he consulted his watch, as one might with an important appointment to keep. At two minutes to four he left his stateroom, and as the first stroke of eight bells rang out--in one of the measured intervals between blasts of the whistle--ending the afternoon watch, he stepped out on deck, and paused for a survey of the weather conditions.

There was no perceptible motion in the air, witnessing that the wind had come in from astern, that is to say approximately from the southeast, and was blowing at about the speed made by the yacht itself. The fog clung about the vessel, Lanyard thought, like dull grey cotton wool. Yet, if the shuddering of her fabric were fair criterion, the pace of the Sybarite was unabated, she was ploughing headlong through that dense obscurity using the utmost power of her engines. From time to time, when the whistle was still, the calls of seamen operating the sounding machine could be heard; but their reports were monotonously uniform, the waters were not yet shoal enough for the lead to find bottom at that pace.

The watch was being changed as Lanyard started forward, with the tail of an eye on the bridge. Mr. Collison relieved Mr. Swain, and the latter came down the companion-ladder just in time to save Lanyard a nasty spill as his feet slipped on planking greasy with globules of fog. There's no telling how bad a fall he might not have suffered had not Mr. Swain been there for him to catch at; and for a moment or two Lanyard was, as Mr. Swain put it with great good-nature, all over him, clinging to the first officer in a most demonstrative manner; and it was with some difficulty that he at length recovered his equilibrium. Then, however, he laid hold of the rail for insurance against further mishaps, thanked Mr. Swain heartily, added his apologies, and the two parted with expressions of mutual esteem.

The incident seemed to have dampened Lanyard's ardour for exercise. He made a rather gingerly way back to the quarterdeck, loafed restlessly in a deck-chair for a little while, then went below once more.

Some time after, supine again upon his bed, he heard Mr. Swain in the saloon querulously interrogating one of the stewards. It appeared that Mr. Swain had unaccountably mislaid his keys, and he wanted to know if the steward had seen anything of them. The steward hadn't, he said; and Lanyard for one knew that he spake sooth, since at that moment the missing keys were resting on the bottom of the sea several miles astern--all but one.

There was no dressing for dinner that night. Liane Delorme, her nerves rasped almost beyond endurance by the relentless fog signal, preferred the seclusion of her stateroom. Lanyard wasn't really sorry; the bosom of a white shirt is calculated to make some impression upon the human retina even on the darkest night; whereas his plain lounge suit of blue serge was sure to prove entirely inconspicuous. So, if he missed the feminine influence at table, he bore up with good fortitude.

And after dinner he segregated himself as usual in his favourite chair near the taffrail. The fog, if anything denser than before, manufactured an early dusk of a peculiarly depressing violet shade. Nevertheless, evenings are long in that season of the year, and to Lanyard it seemed that the twilight would never quite fade out completely, true night would never come.

Long before it did, speed was slackened: the yacht was at last in soundings; the calls of the leadsmen were as monotonous as the whistle blasts, and almost as frequent. Lanyard could have done without both, if the ship could not. He remarked a steadily intensified exacerbation of nerves, and told himself he was growing old and no mistake. He could remember the time when he could have endured a strain of waiting comparable to that which he must suffer now, and have turned never a hair.

How long ago it seemed!...