An hour later, having taken our mails on board, we dropped down the Tyne bound for Norway.
I learned from Captain Jackson that Humber had signed on some months before, and had made a number of trips across the North Sea. He had been in the habit of travelling to London each time the vessel reached Newcastle, and at length this fact had aroused Captain Jackson’s suspicions, and he had made up his mind that this trip should be Humber’s last. It was, indeed, but the end came in a manner which not even Captain Jackson’s keen wits had anticipated.
In the meantime I knew that Aubert, a splendid linguist, who could play many parts, from that of an idler in Paris to a worker in a munition factory, was somewhere below in the engine-room, certainly not very far from Humber, and assuredly very much on the alert.
An hour after we left the Tyne mouth I was standing with some of the passengers on deck, watching some winking signals as our convoy appeared out of the misty twilight. Of what the convoy consisted I could not quite discern, but the Captain, before he ascended to his bridge, had said: “Our friends will pick us up presently, and they will see us safely across and look out for submarines.”
The night passed without incident, and the next day proved grey and windy. Ever and anon one of our patrolling airships paid us a visit, while three other ships, forming our convoy, stood by, with their deadly guns ever ready to talk in deadly earnest with any submarine that might venture to show her periscope.
At ten o’clock that night I was on deck watching a series of strange flashes of light showing in the eastern sky, when a sailor approached, and informed me that the Captain wanted to see me in his cabin. I went at once.
“Look here, Mr Sant!” the bluff old seaman exclaimed as soon as I had closed the door, which he locked. “I’ve been rummaging the ship. Does this interest you?” And he brought out from the drawer in his table a bottle of medicine. It had apparently been recently bought from a chemist, for it was wrapped up in the usual paper, which was still quite clean and fresh, and sealed in the usual way. “This was found by your French friend concealed in Humber’s trunk. Your man would be up here, only he is watching the fellow below, and as he is supposed to be on duty his absence might rouse suspicions.”
As Captain Jackson ended he handed me the bottle.
“It does interest me, indeed,” I said. “If Humber were ill enough to need medicine—and he certainly does not look it—he would hardly have brought this all the way from London without opening it.” And I thought of the bottle wrapped in white paper which, on an earlier visit to London, Humber had received from Blind Heinrich at Waterloo.
“I’ll have a look at it, anyhow,” I said.