After that first night the girl kept discreetly to her stateroom. I was relieved; but I thought of her a good deal. I had little else to do. Pacing a drunken deck and smoking, I wove unsatisfactory theories, asking myself what was her need of secrecy, what the item she wanted hidden, what the errand that had made her sail on the vessel a week after the spectacular torpedoing of a sister-ship? Did she know this Van Blarcom or did she merely dread any notice? And above all, who was the man and had he been watching when I tossed that wretched extra across the rail?
I saw something of him, of course, as time went on. Naturally we four bold spirits, the ubiquitous McGuntrie, Van Blarcom, the young reservist Pietro Ricci,—a very good sort of fellow,—and I were herded together beyond escape. Also, a foursome at bridge seemed divinely indicated by our number, and to avert a sheer paralysis of ennui we formed the habit of winning each other’s money at that game.
As we played I studied Van Blarcom, but without results. It was ruffling; I should have absorbed in so much intercourse a fairly definite impression of his personality, profession, and social grade. But he was baffling; reticent, but self-assured, authoritative even, and, in a quiet way, watchful. He smoked a good cigar, mixed a good drink, seemed used to travel, but produced a coarse-grained effect, made grammatical errors, and on the whole was a person from whom, once ashore, I should flee.
At six o’clock on the seventh night out our voyage entered its second lap; all the electric lights were simultaneously extinguished as we entered the danger zone. We made a sketchy toilet by means of tapers, groped like wandering ghosts down a dim corridor, and dined by the faint rays of candles thrust into bottles and placed at intervals along the festive board. I went on deck afterward to find the ship plunging through blackness on forced draft, with port-holes shrouded and with not even a riding-light. If not in Davy Jones’s locker by that time, we should reach Gibraltar the next evening; afterward we should head for Naples, a two days’ trip.
The following morning found our stormy weather over. The sea through which we were speeding had a magic color, the dark, rich, Mediterranean blue. Ascending late, I saw gulls flying round us and seaweed drifting by, and Mr. McGuntrie in a state of nerves, with a life belt about him, walking wildly to and fro.
“Well, Mr. Bayne,” he greeted me, “never again for mine! If I ever see the end of this trip,—if you call it a trip; I call it merry hades,—believe me, I’ll sell something hereafter that I can sell on land. I’m a crackerjack of a salesman, if I do say it myself. Once I got started talking I could get a man down below to buy a hot toddy and a set of flannels—and I wish I’d gone down there and done it before I ever saw this boat.”
Unmoved, I leaned on the railing and watched the blue swells break. McGuntrie took a turn or two. In the ship’s library he had discovered a manual entitled “How to Swim,” and he was now attempting between laments to memorize its salient points.
“The first essay is best made in water of not less than fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and not more than four feet in depth,” he gabbled, and then broke off to gaze at the sea about us, chilly in temperature, and countless fathoms deep. “Oh, what’s the use? What the blue blazes does it matter?” he cried hysterically. “I tell you that U-boat that sank the San Pietro is laying for us. In about an hour you’ll see a periscope bob up out there. Then we’ll send out an S.O.S., and the next thing you know we’ll sink with all on board.”
We had as yet escaped this doom when toward six o’clock we approached Gibraltar, running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have known the reason why.
It was growing dark when I turned to find Van Blarcom at my elbow.