Part 2

Then there came a heavy thud from just above us, and I saw Jenkins, the wireless man, pitch forward on his face half in and half out of his cabin door. He lay there sprawling, while another of the parsons proceeded to wreck his instruments with the iron bar which he had used to stun the operator. Just then, with a squawk of terror like an anguished hen, Mrs. Armstrong rose to her feet, and with her pink parasol in one hand and her rug in the other fled toward the bow of the ship. She looked so irresistibly funny--this large, hysterical woman--that I couldn’t help it, I laughed. And even the two determined-looking parsons smiled, though not for long.

“Go below,” said one of them to Miss Armstrong. “Remain in your cabin. And you”--he turned to me--“go aft where the others are.”

“You infernal scoundrel!” I shouted. “What are you playing at?”

“Don’t argue, or I’ll blow out your brains,” he said quietly. “And get a move on.”

I found the two Americans and the colored gentleman standing in a bunch with a few of the deck hands, and every one seemed equally dazed. One of the so-called parsons stood near with a revolver in each hand, but it was really an unnecessary precaution; we were none of us in a position to do anything. And suddenly one of the Americans gripped my arm.

“Gee! Look at the two guns on that yacht.”

* * * * *

Sure enough, mounted fore and aft, and trained directly on us were two guns that looked to me to be of about three-inch calibre, and behind each of them stood two men.

“What’s the game anyway?” he went on excitedly, as two boats shot away from the yacht. For the first time I noticed that the engines had stopped and that we were lying motionless on the calm, oily sea. But my principal thoughts were centered on Jim. Where was he? What was he doing? Had these blackguards done away with him, or was he lying up somewhere--hidden away? And even if he was, what could he do? Those two guns had an unpleasant appearance.

A bunch of armed men came pouring over the side of the ship, and then disappeared below, only to come up again in a few minutes carrying a number of wooden boxes, which they lowered into the boats alongside. They worked with the efficiency of well-trained sailors, and I found myself cursing aloud. For I knew what was inside those boxes, and was so utterly helpless to do anything. And yet I couldn’t help feeling a sort of unwilling admiration; the thing was so perfectly organized. It might have been a well-rehearsed drill, instead of a unique and gigantic piece of piracy.

I stepped back a few paces and looked up at the bridge. The skipper and his three officers were there--covered by another of the parsons. And the fifth member of the party was the Reverend Samuel Longfellow. He was smiling gently to himself, and as the last of the boxes was lowered over the side, he came to the edge of the bridge and addressed us.

“We are now going to leave you,” he remarked suavely. “You are all unarmed, and I wish to give you a word of advice. Should either of the gunners on my yacht see any one move, however innocent the reason, before we are on board, he or both of them will open fire. So do not be tempted to have a shot at me, Captain Kelly, because it will be the last shot you ever have. You will now join your crew, if you please.”

* * * * *

In silence the skipper and his officers came down from the bridge, and the speaker followed them. For a moment or two he stood facing us with an ironical smile on his face.

“Your brother in the church thanks you for your little gift to his offertory box,” he remarked. Then he turned to one of the other parsons beside him. “Is it set?” he asked briefly.

“Yea,” said the other. “We’d better hurry. What about that woman up there?”

“Confound the woman!” answered the Reverend Samuel. “A pleasant journey, Captain Kelly.”

He stepped down the gangway into the second boat, and was pulled away toward the yacht. And, feeling almost sick with rage, I glanced at the skipper beside me. Poor devil! What he must be feeling, I hardly dared to think. To be held up on the High Seas and robbed of specie and pearls the first time he was carrying them was cruel luck. And I was prepared to see anything on his face, save what I did see. For he was staring at the bow of the ship, with a fierce blaring excitement in his eyes, and instinctively I looked too, though every one else was staring at the yacht.

And then for the first time I remembered Mrs. Armstrong. She was cowering down with her hands over her ears--the picture of abject terror. But now curiosity overcame her fright, and she knelt there, staring at the yacht. Her pink parasol was clutched in her hands; and tragic though the situation was, I could not help smiling involuntarily. Anyway, she would have something to talk about when she got home.

A mocking shout from the yacht made me look away again. The scoundrel who called himself the Reverend Samuel Longfellow was standing beside the boxes of gold and pearls which had been stacked on the deck. He was waving his hand and bowing ironically, with the six other blackguards beside him, when the last amazing development took place.

Literally before our eyes they vanished in a great sheet of flame. I had a momentary glimpse of the yacht apparently splitting in two, and then the roar of a gigantic explosion nearly deafened me.

“Get under cover!” yelled the skipper, and there was a general stampede, as bits of metal and wood began falling into the sea all around us. Then there came another smaller explosion as the sea rushed into the yacht’s engine room, a great column of water shot up, and when it subsided the yacht had disappeared.

“What in heaven’s name happened?” said one of the Americans dazedly. “What made her blow up like that?”

I said nothing; I felt too dazed myself. And unconsciously I looked toward the bow: Mrs. Armstrong had disappeared.

* * * * *

The skipper sent away a boat, but it was useless.

There was a mass of floating wreckage, but no trace of any survivor, and after a while the search was given up. Just one of those unexplained mysteries which in this case could only be accounted for as Divine retribution.

So, at any rate, Mrs. Armstrong said to me when I met her on deck half an hour afterward.

“Dreadful! Terrible!” she cried. “How more than thankful I am that I didn’t see it.”

“You didn’t see it?” I said, staring at her. “But surely----”

And then I heard Jim’s voice behind me.

“Mrs. Armstrong, I have a dreadful confession to make. Mrs. Armstrong, Dick, was good enough to lend me some clothes this morning, so that we could have a rag when crossing the line--and I’ve gone and dropped her parasol overboard.”

I admit it; I wasn’t bright.

“We’re nowhere near the line,” I remarked, but fortunately the good lady paid no attention.

“What does it matter, Mr. Maitland?” she cried. “To think of anything of that sort in face of this awful tragedy! Though I must confess I think it served the villains right.”

She walked away like an agitated hen, and Jim smiled grimly.

“Poor old soul,” he said, “let’s hope she never finds out what I really wanted her clothes for.”

“So it was you up in the bow,” I remarked.

He nodded. “Didn’t you guess? Dick, I feel I’ve treated you rather scurvily. Let’s go and have a drink and I’ll put you wise. I saw Kelly that night,” he began, when we were comfortably settled, “and at first he laughed as I thought he would. Then after a while he didn’t laugh quite so much, and later still he stopped laughing altogether. Finally I made a suggestion. If these men were what they said they were, the two big chests below, which common report had it were filled with Bibles, would prove their case. I suggested, therefore, that we examine these two chests. They would never know, and it would settle the matter. He took a bit of persuading, but finally we went below to where the passengers’ luggage is stored. There were the two cases, and there and then we opened one. It was packed--not with Bibles--but with nitroglycerin.”

Jim paused and took a drink, then lit a cigarette thoughtfully.

“I don’t think that I have ever seen a man in quite such a dreadful rage as Kelly was,” he went on gravely. “There was a clockwork mechanism which could be started by turning a screw on the outside of each box, and the whole diabolical plan was as clear as daylight. There was enough stuff there to sink a fleet of battleships, and when they had cleared off in the yacht with the gold we should suddenly have split in two and gone down with every soul on board. There would have been no one left to tell the tale, and these cold-blooded murderers would have got clean away. That was the little plot.”

He smiled grimly.

“I had no small difficulty in preventing James from putting the whole bunch in irons on the spot, but finally I got him to agree to a plan of mine. We changed the cargo around--he and I. Their chests containing nitroglycerin we filled with gold; and the specie boxes we filled with nitroglycerin and some lead and iron as a make-weight. And then we let the plan proceed. We banked on a holdup and the wrecking of the wireless. We thought they’d send over a boatload of armed men, and transfer the stuff to the yacht--and in fact they did. Further, we banked on the fact that they wouldn’t fool around with a fat, hysterical old woman, or a man in the throes of fever. Good girl--that Miss Armstrong; she kept her mother below all the morning in great style. And that, I think, is all,” he ended, with a quizzical glance at me.

“But it isn’t!” I cried. “What made that stuff blow up, if it had been taken out of the boxes with the clockwork mechanism?”

“Well, old Dick,” said Jim, “it may be that the Reverend Samuel kicked one of the boxes a trifle hard in his jubilation. Or perhaps he dropped his Corona inadvertently. Or maybe something hit one of those boxes very hard like a bullet from a gun. Come down to my cabin,” he added, suddenly.

I followed him and he shut the door. On the bed was lying Mrs. Armstrong’s pink parasol. The muzzle of an Express rifle stuck out through a hole that had been split in the silk near the ferrule; the stock was hidden by the material. Jim took it out and cleaned it carefully. Then he looked at the parasol and smiled.

“Beyond repair, old man. And since I told the old dear I had dropped her gamp overboard--well--”

He rolled it up slowly and threw it far out through the porthole, then stood for a moment watching it drift.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October 1923 issue of McClure’s Magazine.]