II.
Every man on board the Oceanus—sometime a mail-boat to the South African ports—knew that we carried treasure to Europe, but what was the amount of it, or for whom we carried it, our captain, Joey Castle, alone could say. We had been chartered at Sydney for the purpose, being one of the fastest steamers in Southern waters, and we took in the bullion, chiefly in golden ingots, at Lorenzo Marques. Some did say that it was the property of a Dutch bank, which preferred the American flag to the German, for the Oceanus was under American colours, and a handier steamer of her tonnage I never sailed in. Grant you that the crew were a rough lot—niggers and Lascars, Poles and Swedes, with half-a-dozen Christian white men to put currants on your cake. Well, the owners were one of the safest houses in New York, and fat Joey Castle you might have trusted with the Bank of England itself. Not two cents did he care whether he had a hold full of diamonds or of doughnuts.
"I'm going right through, gentlemen," he said to us at dinner the night we sailed, "and if any tin warship threatens me I'll make Europe laugh. Risk! Why, there's twenty times the risk in a roundabout at a fair! Let 'em stop me if they like—I'll put 'em through the goose-step before they've been two minutes aboard, as sure as my name's Joey Castle!"
Well, we didn't think very much about it, but there had been a lot of talk ashore concerning the British Government and how it handled suspicious ships entering or leaving Lorenzo Marques. I myself thought it not unlikely that we should have some trouble. To put it honestly, I didn't take the hook on the end of this Dutch bank line; and I just said to myself that our gold was Government gold, and that if it were found aboard of us all the Stars and Stripes between 'Frisco and Sandy Hook wouldn't be worth a red cent to us. We should have to pay out, and quick about it.
In this view I stood alone, however, and I must say that when we put to sea without let or hindrance, and were steaming next morning due south before a rattling breeze and with a splendid swell under us, I dismissed the subject as readily as the others and considered our port already made. That opinion lasted for ten days. On the eleventh day, at noon, we sighted a British cruiser on our port quarter. Poor old Joey Castle! He didn't say a word about the Stars and Stripes then. His topic concerned the nether regions. You shivered in your boots when he talked to the engineers. I was on the bridge when the nigger Sam cried up his news of the other ship; and while I was spying her through my glass Captain Castle himself came out of the chart-room and asked me what was there.
"Looks like an ugly one, sir," said I; "a cruiser, I should say, of the second class."
He took the glass from my hand—I can see him now, fat and florid, and as plainly anxious at heart as a nervous man could be. I thought then of all his boasts the night we left Lorenzo, and I was really a bit sorry for him.
"Do you think she means mischief, Mr. Lorimer?" he asked, with the glass still to his eye.
I said that he was the best judge of that.
"These dirty Britishers have their finger in every pie," he went on, presently. "Well, we'll make 'em look foolish. What the deuce are they doing in the stokehold? Just let me have a word with Nicolson, will you?"