“I wish to heaven they came by way of a seaman’s arm, sir. Yes, it’s as you say. Yon is a steamer, and here goes the answering rocket.”
He pointed to the sky above the Diamond Ship, ablaze with a spray of vivid green radiance, the answering signal to the distant ship. The nature of our own escape now became quite clear to me. The look-outs over yonder had espied the lights of the relief steamer and had used the searchlight to signal her. The great arcs, the circling beams, were but those preliminary movements with which every operator tries the lantern he is about to use. No eye had followed their aureole, I made sure. We had escaped observation simply because every man aboard yonder vessel had been looking at the incoming steamer, bearing from Europe news which might be of such moment.
“Larry,” I said, jumping at the idea of it; “it’s now or never. Let her go while they are at the parley. I’ll stake my life on it there is no look-out to starboard. Let’s have a look at them when they least expect us.”
“Do you mean to say, sir, that you’ll risk it?”
“There is no risk, Larry—if you don’t delay.”
“I do believe you are right, sir. Here’s for it, anyway, and luck go with us.”
He rang down the order to the engine-room, and we raced straight ahead, not a man uttering a sound, not a light showing aboard us. Holding on in defiance alike of prudence and responsibility, we drove the yacht into the very shadows of the great unknown ship we had tracked so far. To say that we stood within an ace of destruction would be to treat of our circumstances lightly. A word amiss might have destroyed us so utterly that not a man of us all should have told the tale. There, towering above us, was the great hull of this floating mystery, the massive outline of a vessel built upon the lines of an Atlantic steamer, yet carrying four masts and a funnel so low that one might look twice to detect it at all. Flashing lights from stem to stern, we could almost count the men upon the decks of this phantom of the high seas—men wearing all varieties of dress: some the garb of fashion, some that of ordinary workmen, a few in the uniform of sailors. And what a hive of activity those decks appeared to be! How the fellows were running to and fro—changing their positions every moment, taking their stands now in the shrouds, now high upon the fo’castle—an agitated, expectant throng, turning, as it were, but one face to the steamer which came to relieve them and by which news of their safety or their danger might come. Their very interest, however, became our confidence. Taking my place with the forward look-out, I conned every feature of the great ship, and impressed the facts of it upon my memory. No thought of peril troubled me now.
I scanned the decks, I say, as quietly as one surveys a ship that must be docked; noted the black shapes of the veiled guns, the wretched haphazard armament amidships, the unsuitability of the great hull to the purposes now indicated, the seeming absence of all order and method and even of leadership upon its decks. This monstrous floating haven of crime and horror—no sailor had chosen it for its present purpose, I made sure. In a lighter moment, I could say that it had once been a second-class cruiser, and now stood for a witness to an age which added raking masts to its warships and eyed askance the supremacy of steam. The Jew, it might be, had purchased his ship from a Government that had no further use for it. He had gone to Chili or the Argentine—a second thought said to Italy, for this vessel had more than a smack of Italian design and practice as we knew it in the last days of canvas and the first of steel. And he had bought this relic at his own price, had maintained its engines, added new masts for disguise, and so adapted it to that master scheme whose aims rose so far above this evidence of realisation. All this, I say, my swift survey showed to me. But the supreme question it did not answer. There were women to be discerned upon the deck of the ship, but not the figure of Joan Fordibras. Of her the night had no news to give me.
We lay at this time, I suppose, some two hundred yards from the great ship, a little astern of her and ready, need it be said, to bound away into the darkness should the need arise. Our daring is neither to be set down to courage nor foolhardiness. It was plain that every man on board Valentine Imroth’s sanctuary had eyes but for the approaching steamer, ears but for the news she would carry. Absolutely convinced of our safety, we watched the spectacle with that air of assurance and self-content which any secret agent of a good cause may assume at the moment of his triumph. My own doubt and trouble could hardly be shared by the honest fellows about me; or, if it were shared, then had they the good taste to make light of it. Indeed, they were upon the point of persuading me that, if it were Joan Fordibras I had come out to seek, then the sooner I got me back to Europe the better.
“There’s no Joan upon yonder ship,” said old Timothy in a big whisper. “I’d as soon look to find the Queen of Sheba there.”