CHAPTER XXIV

A MAN OF WAR

The greatest bother about romance in real life is that it generally brings one outside the law--either the written or the unwritten law. The strangest thing about the romance of the _Lorna Doone_ and her crew was the fact that it was only now, clear of land, successful and unpursued, that the law was beginning to trouble them.

The worry came to Martia first, before Hyalos had quite vanished from sight astern.

Her mind rejected the idea that they had done wrong almost as soon as it had formulated it. Hyalos was in the open sea, an absolutely desert island, belonging to Greece in theory but to the sea and to the past in reality. It was surely no more wrong to take marbles from its waters than to take fish or crabs, even though the marbles might be infinitely more valuable. Greece for two thousand years--either through ignorance of these treasures or through the superstitions of the islanders, who considered the place haunted--had never claimed them.

No, in a strictly moral sense they had nothing to worry about in the rescue of these things from the sea, or even in the sale of them. All the same, there was the question of International Law, which is not always moral, and what it might say or do to them in the event of discovery.

She was not alone with this worry. It was infecting the others, too. The lightheartedness with which the expedition had started, and which it had maintained up to the point of success, became dimmed by doubt and the shadow of anxiety.

The weather still held fine and the wind fair, backing into the east of north, and except for now and then a trace of smoke on the far horizon there was no sign of ship or hint of land till the morning when mountain tops, made gigantic by mirage in the western sky, told them that Cerigo was dead ahead.

Cerigo is the island pearl that hangs from the ear of Lacedæmonia; between it and the mainland lie the straits of Cervi.

Sam, having assured himself of his position, and wishing to keep all Greek land at the extremest distance, altered his course more to the south, till the great mountains dwindled on the starboard beam, dwindled and vanished, swallowed by distance, and the sea.

It was at the dinner-table on this day that Martia first spoke openly of what was in her mind, to the relief of the others, for they had all been thinking about the same thing, and blotting it up. They arrived at the same conclusion; there was no use in bothering now that the thing was done and, moreover, there was nothing to bother about in a moral sense.

They had thrashed the matter out, and Sam had even gone so far as to say that there was nothing to bother about in a legal sense, when, through the open skylight, came the voice of Church, who was on the watch.

"Smoke comin' up astern, sir," it said.

Sam jumped from the table, and, followed by the others, came on deck.

For a person who had no fear of pursuit or the law, his movements were singularly active.

When he took the glass, the hull of the ship making the smoke was beginning to show--a dot in the smother.

"It's either a destroyer or a torpedo-boat," said Sam, "or one of those rotten gunboats they've got in some of the navies since the war. They were old submarine-chasers sold off cheap, and mostly oil burners, but I believe there were coal burners, too, and I've heard Greece and Montenegro picked some up."

"It's coming along fast," said Bobby.

It was.

When Church had announced the stranger coming up from behind, the _Santa Margharita_ had suggested herself to their minds, but this was not the _Santa Margharita_. The funnel told them that, also the hull--now clearly to be seen--low of freeboard and destitute of deck-house.

"Anyhow," said Martia, "she can't be bothering about us, even if she is a warship in a hurry."

"I'm only thinking," said Bobby, "that if Visconti turned sour, as the Yankees say, at thinking himself done in, he might, just from viciousness, set the bells ringing."

"There's not only that," said Sam, "there's the probability he'd get a reward. That's to say, if we have engaged on anything illegal, which I refuse to admit. Church, what are we doing?"

"Eight knots, sir," replied Church, who had just hauled in the log.

"The engine wouldn't add much?"

"No, sir; and we're running short of juice."

"We have no spinnaker," said Sam. "Might try a balloon jib, only I'm doubting if it's worth the raising. She's dipping her nose pretty deep already."

Bobby, as he listened, wondered why Sam should be so anxious to crack on if he were sure of the position and of the fact that they had done nothing illegal.

He said nothing, however, but kept his eyes fixed on the stranger, who was growing like a djinn, the wind banking her smoke in the form of a plume.

She was not exactly astern, more to the north of their course, and as this fact became apparent, all nervousness left the watchers.

They were not being pursued. Here was a warship, it was true, but she was not aiming for them. She was most evidently on one of the thousand petty businesses that engage the small navies of the Mediterranean powers, from the chasing of sponge-poachers to the pursuit of contraband.

She came along, lifting the distance over her at a fine rate, till she showed in all her hideous simplicity added to by a touch of rust and neglect.

No, she was not a chaser, but one of the experiments in hideousness that the Mediterranean shipbuilders make now and again in their efforts after speed and battle-worthiness.

Not quite a destroyer, not quite a torpedo-boat, not exactly a gunboat, she slashed along through the blue sea, showing through the glass a plume of foam at her forefoot and two figures in naval uniform beside the steersman on her bleak bridge.

She seemed pursuing her way aloof and absolutely unconscious or contemptuous of the _Lorna Doone's_ existence. It was quite satisfying to watch her in her pride and to feel by contrast the humble insignificance of the _Lorna_.

They would have been content if the ketch had been even more humble and insignificant. They had no false pride at all in that matter now.

Suddenly, and as though she were a blind thing that had only just sighted them, the stranger altered her helm.

In a moment she was coming for them like a hawk.

Next moment a plume of white smoke jetted from her, and blam! the report of a gun hit the sea.

"We're done," said Bobby.

Sam moistened his lips. He gave orders to the steersman to bring the _Lorna_ up into the wind to wait for the oncomer whose imperious order had just spoken itself. Then he watched, disgusted with the tactics of the other and wondering what on earth would happen in the next five minutes.

He was certain that this was an overhaul.

The newcomer showed a flag at her jack-staff, but it was so dirty that they could not tell whether it was Greek or Roumanian or what. She came sheering along to within a couple of cable-lengths, then rang off her engines and set them full astern, turning the sea into a lather and incidentally, through some mis-shift of the helm, nearly ramming the _Lorna_, whilst Bowler, who had sprung into the main shrouds, told them in the fearlessness of innocence, and frankly to their faces, that they were a pack of sanguinary tailors. In reply to which they dropped a boat.

Next moment a fat little man, all smiles, came on board, leg over rail. He saluted the quarter-deck, swept his hat off to the girl, and addressed himself to Sam, who had stepped forward to receive him.

They spoke in Italian, and Martia could not understand what they were saying.

"He wants to know if we have seen a boat, like our own, manned by Italians and engaged in the contraband business," Sam explained. "He knows we aren't the craft he's hunting for, because of the lady and also because we are English, and also because I have just told him we are a yacht--which he can see plainly."

"Take him down and give him drinks," said Bobby, the weight of mountains suddenly lifted from his mind.

"He also wants to know if we have any sugar to spare," went on Sam. "They have run short, the steward having forgotten it, as they had to leave Ægina in a hurry."

"Plenty," said Martia. So great was her relief that she could have hugged the little fat man. Whilst Sam took him down to the cabin for drinks, she went to the galley where the sugar was stowed in a locker.

Two pounds of lump sugar went overside with the commander of the _Kosmos_--for that was the name of the warship. Caps were waved from the bridge, the engines were set going, and as she drew away a cartridge was rammed in the gun and fired by way of salute.

The _Lorna Doone_, taking the wind again, filled her sails and resumed her course.

"That's a job well over," said Sam. "I don't believe those chaps were hunting for contraband. They ran short of sugar for their coffee, that's all. We've been getting scared over nothing, and I'm not going to bother any more about anything. We're as safe as houses."

"Are we?" said Bobby. "I'm not so sure of that. At least, maybe we are safe enough, but I believe those fellows were after more than sugar. You remember he said he had to leave Ægina in a hurry? Well, Petropolis came from Ægina."

"So he did," said Martia.

"What are you driving at?" asked Sam.

"Just this: Visconti evidently sent an agent to Ægina to get those sponge-fishers to come to Hyalos for the diving. The agent may have talked, and wind of some contraband work has got about. Of course it may be only my fancy, but you see there are three coincidences. First of all Petropolis leaves Ægina on secret business; secondly, the _Kosmos_ clears out of Ægina hurriedly and evidently in chase of something; thirdly, she comes down south to this part of the sea."

"And fourthly," said Martia, "that little man said he was looking for an Italian boat, and the _Santa Margharita_ was Italian."

"You're suggesting that he is hunting for the _Santa Margharita_?" asked Sam.

"Yes."

"Well, how can he? He distinctly said he was looking for a boat like ours."

"If you ask me," said Bobby, "I believe that chap is overhauling everything small that he meets with. If he was going on rumour, he wouldn't know exactly what the _Santa Margharita_ was like. I don't want to be a scaremonger, but we've got to be careful. We're not out of the wood yet, it seems to me."

Bobby was one of those provoking people who keep their cleverness for the wrong moment. His memory was so tricky that, though Visconti's name seemed familiar to him, he could not remember where he had heard it. He was always mislaying things and forgetting where he had left them, and remembering things that he ought never to have forgotten. This brain-wave of his, coming at the moment, served no useful purpose, and only tended to make them uneasy. "We've got to be careful!" How could they be careful? How could they resist an overhaul from any warship that chose to speak to them?

Sam said all this, and said it with considerable vigour. Martia concurred without speaking. Bobby, after a last look at the vanishing smoke of the _Kosmos_, went down below, silenced if not convinced.

Two days and a half took them across the blue Ionian Sea, showing them Ætna and Cape Spartivento ahead of them, lit by the light of an afternoon that seemed to have strayed from the Golden Age.

They ran the Straits of Messina by moonlight, the shore to port all fairy lights and orange groves, and a great _Messagerie_ boat, lit like a ball-room and with a band playing, gave them her wash as she passed to starboard. The air was warm as summer and filled with the scents of Sicily, which pursued them as morning broke on the Tyrrhenian Sea, showing the Lipari Islands far on the port quarter like purple splashes on an ocean of azure.

Fishing-boats with coloured sails; a three-masted schooner, close-hauled and steering for the Straits; a tanker, almost hull down and making towards Naples; every hour now showed ships like these, some far, some near, for now they were in the zone of the populous seas and the desolation of the Greek waters no longer covered them with its cloak.

Sam, in his wisdom, determined to give as wide a berth as possible to the continental seaboard, and steered west till the Sardinian coast showed them its far mountains by day and its sea lights beckoning by night. Then he kept on north-west, raising Corsica till he reached its great long finger-tip, which points almost straight at Genoa.

Beyond this the winds that had followed them so faithfully dropped, and a wind from the Pyrenees took its place, with a lumpy sea, across which, one grey dawn, a winking light showed beneath a cloud which turned with the sunrise into the hills above Genoa.