CHAPTER XXXIII

This time, the sensation amongst the assembled officers of the court is one of genuine consternation. The affair has taken a very serious turn indeed. The mystery of the _Marathon's_ loss is not yet solved, but it promises to have a solution now, and a far more terrible one than could have been deemed possible.

A quick readjustment of ideas and opinions is necessitated by this extraordinary disclosure. The wild-eyed officer with the bandaged head is not out of his mind, after all. The astonishing announcement he has made is not the outcome of a disordered brain but a sober statement of fact. And the two beautiful girls sitting one on each side of Mrs. Shaw are not the unfortunate victims of a brutal outrage upon the high seas, but the agents of a diabolical and successful plot!

All this is extremely disturbing to the mental faculties, which have suddenly to take in and assort these unexpected facts.

It is noticeable that Mrs. Shaw alone does not seem in the least impressed or disturbed. _Her_ opinions or ideas need no re-adjusting, whatever those of other people may require. She betrays no sign of any emotion except that of slight boredom, and does not move an inch except to place her sheltering arms around both girls and draw them a little closer to her.

Not yet is there complete belief in the truth of Norah's words; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the import of them is not yet completely realised; they are too astounding to be credited on the instant.

"Do you really mean," the admiral addressed her, "that you have made to Mr. Stapleton a confession that you and the others of your party were concerned in the loss of the _Marathon_?"

"Yes, I do mean it," the girl answers proudly, "and I am glad!"

"What!" exclaims the admiral, shocked at such bravado, as it appears to him. "_Glad_ that you were engaged in such a wicked plot?"

"No, glad that I made confession to Mr. Stapleton. And glad that it has all come to light now--though for some reasons I am very sorry. And I will tell you all you wish to know--I will indeed. But I would rather that you should ask him."

The admiral falls back in his chair and gasps with more than astonishment. The magnitude of this surprising revelation is simply overwhelming. He is quite unable to find words to express what he feels. He can only continue to act as if this nightmare were real daytime truth, and so he puts to Stapleton the query,

"Would you mind telling us, Mr. Stapleton, just what it was that led to this confession? I cannot believe it yet!"

"I am sorry to say it is only too true, sir I myself could hardly credit it at first, till events forced it upon my belief. The discovery, or rather the confession, was partly due to my chancing to remember some words let fall by Miss Netta Sheridan when on board the _Marathon_--words to which I paid no attention when they were first repeated to me, as they had evidently been spoken under very great nervous strain."

"What words? What sort of words?" the admiral questions. "Perhaps Miss Netta would repeat them herself? I should prefer to hear them at first-hand."

"Oh--oh--oh!" Netta wails; she is incapable of saying more than this, and again buries her head in the bosom of Mrs. Shaw, after the manner of the action popularly ascribed to the ostrich when trouble threatens.

"Poor girl," cries the secretary, in quite an unusually stern voice. "She's--she's ill, sir. She is not in a fit state to be pressed to speak!"

"I will speak for her," calmly says her cousin. "It is perfectly true that we were all three of us in a plot to blow up the ship--but it was I alone who had to do the actual deed. I had the bomb."

"Oh, Norah, Norah," moans the other girl, "must you do this?"

"Was it a statement of this sort you meant when you referred to words let fall by Miss Netta on board the _Marathon_?" asks the admiral of Stapleton.

"Yes, sir, that was it exactly. It appears that she suddenly repented of her part in the affair, and tried to tell the surgeon and another officer about it in order to get them to take the necessary

## action and save the ship."

"Who was that other officer? Was he rescued, or----?"

"No, sir, he was lost with the ship. Neither he nor the surgeon paid any attention to what they considered the girl's ravings, and in fact did not tell me anything about it till much later, and then as it were by way of a joke."

"A _joke_! But you were first lieutenant of the ship; did you treat the matter as a joke yourself?"

"No, sir. Though I thought as they did, that the words were those of a girl who was not responsible for what she was saying. But nevertheless, I caused a search to be made throughout the ship, both on the upper deck and the main deck, I knew that none of the party could have gone further below than that."

"You acted quite rightly. And you found nothing?"

"Nothing, sir. And that, I suppose, is what caused me to forget all about the matter until later."

"And a pity you ever remembered it!" cries Mrs. Shaw, no longer able to contain her indignation. "No, Admiral Darlington, it's no use your telling me to hold my tongue; it's high time that someone possessed of a little common-sense should speak a word. Can't you see for yourself that the surgeon on board the _Marathon_ was quite right? _He_ didn't believe a word of all this poor frightened girl's imaginary story--_he_ put it down to the right cause, their sufferings; and he ought to know, being a doctor, a good deal better than this fool of a nephew of mine who has obviously only begun to believe in the story since he has had this knock on the head which has made him crazy for the time being! To put it plainly, they are all three of them a little unhinged. As for the girls, on the top of all they have been through I suppose they must have somehow or other got to hear about the loss of the _Marathon_--you can't keep these things secret, however much you may try--and, as a result, they have just _dreamt_ this ridiculous story! I'm surprised at your listening to it!"

"Well, Mrs. Shaw, upon my word, I'm more than half inclined to agree with you," mutters the admiral. And the whole of the court, braced by the cold douche of Mrs. Shaw's plain common-sense, begins to think that perhaps it has been a little too ready to give credence to the sensation offered it.

Stapleton himself is to a certain extent impressed by this view of the situation. He forgets, for the moment, the meeting of Dick Baynes and Norah in his presence, and the disclosure of her having been in Glasgow the previous week. Nor can he be blamed for forgetting, after such a shaking-up as he has had in falling over the cliff. He almost begins himself to believe that they have all of them been the victims of hallucination; and there is the opinion of the fleet-surgeon to back up this belief.

"May I ask a question, sir?" It is Norah who is unexpectedly addressing the admiral.

"Certainly you may, my dear Miss Sheridan." The admiral is actuated by very kindly feelings towards the girl whom he regards with more than a little pity--"of course you may. What is it you wish to ask?"

"I would like to ask Mr. Stapleton if he thinks that I was in my right mind at the time I made my confession to him."

It is a terribly difficult position, that in which Stapleton finds himself now. He came here to accuse and denounce this girl it is true; but his accusation has been coldly received and largely discredited--in so far that he himself is half converted to the view that the whole charge is a phantasy of the imagination. And, now, the thought uppermost in his mind is how he may save Norah from the consequences of her own action; for he has made one great discovery since he came into the room--that his love for her is not dead, but stronger than ever.

"What have you to say to this, Stapleton?" says the admiral, noting the silence of the young officer.

"I would rather not answer the question, sir."

"But I am afraid I must insist upon your doing so."

"Yes," Norah adds to the admiral's quiet command, "answer me, please."

"Why do you torture me?" cries the unhappy lover, goaded beyond endurance, "can't you see that you are making me----"

"Answer me!"

"Come, Stapleton," urges the admiral, "we are waiting."

Thus constrained, Stapleton at last makes answer.

"She seemed to me to be entirely in possession of her senses."

"And did you believe what I told you?" continues Norah. She will not spare him.

Again he takes refuge in silence.

"Will you answer her, please?" somewhat impatiently speaks the admiral.

"I could not help believing her."

"Thank you. There is only one more question I want to ask you," the girl continues. "Having heard all that has been said here, what do you now believe to have been the cause of the blowing up of the _Marathon_?"

Instead of replying to her, Stapleton faces the president of the court, and in a clear, steady voice makes a moving appeal for mercy.

"Sir," he cries, "I submit that the questions now put to me are such as I ought not to be called upon to answer, for the reason that they all tend to prejudice the case against these young ladies. I came here to accuse them, true! It was my duty to do so. But it is not my duty to help them to condemn themselves. And there is another thing which must be said--neither of these two girls actually had a hand in depositing the bomb on board. One of them dissociated herself from the attempt at a very early stage, and the other--this lady who has tried so hard to influence this court against herself--not only repented of her share in the plot but really did her utmost to prevent it being carried out."

"What do you mean by that last remark? Explain yourself please," the admiral says.

"She had the bomb concealed in her dress, and according to arrangement, her part in the affair was to place it somewhere in the ship before making her escape with the others. She refused to do so. And when the man of the party tried to seize the bomb from her, she resisted him, in the effort to save the ship from destruction."

"Dear me!" ejaculates the president, "well, well! This is really a most extraordinary state of affairs altogether. What on earth could have induced you," turning to Norah, "to take part in such a terrible business, such a wicked scheme?"

"I was brought up from childhood to hate the English," Norah answers. "My father hated them, and trained me up in his own ideas. At first I made his opinions my own just because they were my father's; but afterwards I came to hold them and believe in them on my own account. You see, my father was killed by the English. And that broke my mother's heart--she died, too. Do you think I had great cause to feel friendship for the nation that brought them both to their death?"

"Poor girl, poor girl!" exclaims the admiral, almost forgetting her complicity in the plot in his sympathy for her troubled life. "Then you say it was just your inherited hatred of England that prompted you to take part in this conspiracy, you and your cousin here?"

"No, sir, not Netta. She was cowed by her brother, and persuaded by myself. You must not blame her, I tell you; in her heart she was against it from the very beginning--only, she was forced into it. Netta is innocent--at any rate in intention; as for myself, I do not want any excuses to be made for me, and I neither ask nor desire any mercy to be shown me."

"You were fully determined, you say, to carry out this wicked plan to the very end?"

"Yes, I really meant to do the deed. I hated all the English."

"And--you hate us still?"

"I--no, not now; God forgive us, I cannot do so now."

"But did you not, then, actually place this bomb in the ship?"

"No, sir, it was taken from me by my cousin, Patrick."

"Then, did he find means to conceal it on board the _Marathon_?"

"I do not know. But I suppose he must have done so, since the ship blew up."

This proves too much for good Mrs. Shaw. She cannot keep silent any longer.

"Oh, I have no patience with any of you!" she exclaims, in superb disregard of officialdom. "Norah, I should like to shake you! I should like to shake all of you! Isn't it enough for you to know that there was a lot of bad gunpowder on board the ship? What other explanation do you want? Nasty dangerous stuff at the best of times, and goodness only knows how dangerous it must be when it has turned sour and gone bad or whatever it is that happens to it. You seem to have forgotten all about that, and here you are listening to a crack-brained fellow and a couple of hysterical girls with a cock-and-bull story of a plot and a bomb! Really, for a lot of grown-up men, I'm ashamed of you all!"

There is something in what she says. Her words are not without their effect upon her listeners. On all sides there is evident by the expression of their faces that they would much prefer to believe in the more rational explanation supplied by the knowledge of the defective ammunition, and that they are not quite certain that they are not making fools of themselves in giving a hearing to this strange story which appears more and more as it goes on to be based on nothing firmer than an over-excited imagination.

"I think, sir," remarks an officer, voicing the opinions of the rest, "that while no doubt this that we have just been told should of course be thoroughly sifted, we certainly ought not to lose sight of the possibilities of the defective cordite; and I cannot refrain from giving my opinion that when we have concluded the examination it is in this that we shall find, so far as we can ever hope to find, the real cause of the _Marathon's_ loss."

A chorus of murmured approval follows the speaker as he ends this direct little speech; and the universal wish is evidently for suppressing the melodramatic story-tellers; nobody really believes in them--their story fails to convince. And in all probability if they can be decently dismissed now, the whole incident will presently be allowed to sink into oblivion.

But there is always, at a public gathering, which the majority are anxious to see ended, some annoying person who is possessed of an equally keen desire to prolong the proceedings.

It is so on this present occasion. Rising in his place, an officer of the court suggests:

"There is one thing which I consider we ought to do at once, without waiting further, in regard to this matter."

All the others cast glances of profound disgust upon this officious busybody. The luncheon hour has long gone by, forgotten in the excitement of the unexpected interlude; and now, if there is more talking to be done that will not brook delay, heaven only knows what hour it will be before anyone is able to get a feed!

"Well, and what is it?" The admiral, unconsciously affected by the same corporeal needs as the others, is just a little short-tempered.

"I think, sir, that we ought to hear the statement of the other witness of the--the three shipwrecked passengers, the man of the party."

They have forgotten Patrick Sheridan! Only this annoying suggestion recalls his existence to the minds of the assembled officers.

"Yes, perhaps you are right," says the admiral, suppressing a sigh. He is very hungry! "I suppose we ought to examine him as well as the others. Perhaps he will be able to account for these--these somewhat improbable theories we have been listening to. Bring him in, and let's get it over!"

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