“That’s what I thought. I was on the bridge, rabid with sciatica, going round and round like a circus-horse in about three acres of water, and wondering when I’d hit something. Ridiculous position. Sherrin saw it. He saved me. He said it was an ideal place for submarine attacks, and we’d better begin to repel ’em at once. As I said, I couldn’t leave the wheel, so Sherrin fought the ship—both quick-firers and the maxims. He tipped ’em well down into the sea or well up at the Ricks as we went round and round. We made rather a row; and the row the gulls made when we woke ’em was absolutely terrifying. ’Give you my word!”
“And then?” said Winchmore.
“I kept on running in circles through this ghastly din. I took one sheer over towards his stern—I thought I’d cut it too fine, but we missed it by inches. Then I heard his capstan busy, and in another three minutes his anchor was up. He didn’t wait to stow. He hustled out as he was—bulb or no bulb. He passed within ten feet of us (I was waiting to fall in behind him) and he shouted over the rail: ‘You think you’ve got patriotism. All you’ve got is uric acid and rotten spite!’ I expect he was a little bored. I waited till we had cleared Harry Shoals before I went below, and then I slept till 9 A. M. He was heading north this time, and after I’d had breakfast and a smoke I ran alongside and asked him where he was bound for now. He was wrapped in a comforter, evidently suffering from a bad cold. I couldn’t quite catch what he said, but I let him croak for a few minutes and fell back. At 9 P. M. he turned round and headed south (I was getting to know the Irish Channel by then) and I followed. There was no particular sea on. It was a little chilly, but as he didn’t hug the coast I hadn’t to take the wheel. I stayed below most of the night and let Sherrin suffer. Well, Mr. Newt kept up this game all the next day, dodging up and down the Irish Channel. And it was infernally dull. He threw up the sponge off Cloone Harbour. That was on Friday morning. He signalled: ‘Developed defects in engine-room. Antigua trip abandoned.’ Then he ran into Cloone and tied up at Brady’s Wharf. You know you can’t repair a dinghy at Cloone! I followed, of course, and berthed behind him. After lunch I thought I’d pay him a call. I wanted to look at his engines. I don’t understand Diesels, but Hyslop, my engineer, said they must have gone round ’em with a hammer, for they were pretty badly smashed up. Besides that they had offered all their oil to the Admiralty agent there, and it was being shifted to a tug when I went aboard him. So I’d done my job. I was just going back to Hilarity when his steward said he’d like to see me. He was lying in his cabin breathing pretty loud—wrapped up in rugs and his eyes sticking out like a rabbit’s. He offered me drinks. I couldn’t accept ’em, of course. Then he said: ‘Well, Mr. Maddingham, I’m all in.’ I said I was glad to hear it. Then he told me he was seriously ill with a sudden attack of bronchial pneumonia, and he asked me to run him across to England to see his doctor in town. I said, of course, that was out of the question, Hilarity being a man-of-war in commission. He couldn’t see it. He asked what had that to do with it? He thought this war was some sort of joke, and I had to repeat it all over again. He seemed rather afraid of dying (it’s no game for a middle-aged man, of course) and he hoisted himself up on one elbow and began calling me a murderer. I explained to him—perfectly politely—that I wasn’t in this job for fun. It was business. My orders were to see that he went to Antigua, and now that he wasn’t going to Antigua, and had sold his oil to us, that finished it as far as I was concerned. (Wasn’t that perfectly correct?) He said: ‘But that finishes me, too. I can’t get any doctor in this God-forsaken hole. I made sure you’d treat me properly as soon as I surrendered.’ I said there wasn’t any question of surrender. If he’d been a wounded belligerent, I might have taken him aboard, though I certainly shouldn’t have gone a yard out of my course to land him anywhere; but as it was, he was a neutral—altogether outside the game. You see my point? I tried awfully hard to make him understand it. He went on about his affairs all being at loose ends. He was a rich man—a million and a quarter, he said—and he wanted to redraft his will before he died. I told him a good many people were in his position just now—only they weren’t rich. He changed his tack then and appealed to me on the grounds of our common humanity. ‘Why, if you leave me now, Mr. Maddingham,’ he said, ‘you condemn me to death, just as surely as if you hanged me.’”
“This is interesting,” Portson murmured. “I never imagined you in this light before, Maddingham.”
“I was surprised at myself—’give you my word. But I was perfectly polite. I said to him: ‘Try to be reasonable, sir. If you had got rid of your oil where it was wanted, you’d have condemned lots of people to death just as surely as if you’d drowned ’em.’ ‘Ah, but I didn’t,’ he said. ‘That ought to count in my favour.’ ‘That was no thanks to you,’ I said. ‘You weren’t given the chance. This is war, sir. If you make up your mind to that, you’ll see that the rest follows.’ ‘I didn’t imagine you’d take it as seriously as all that,’ he said—and he said it quite seriously, too. ‘Show a little consideration. Your side’s bound to win anyway.’ I said: ‘Look here! I’m a middle-aged man, and I don’t suppose my conscience is any clearer than yours in many respects, but this is business. I can do nothing for you.’”
“You got that a bit mixed, I think,” said Tegg critically.
“He saw what I was driving at,” Maddingham replied, “and he was the only one that mattered for the moment. ‘Then I’m a dead man, Mr. Maddingham,’ he said. ‘That’s your business,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon.’ And I went out.”
“And?” said Winchmore, after some silence.
“He died. I saw his flag half-masted next morning.”
There was another silence. Henri looked in at the alcove and smiled. Maddingham beckoned to him.