Part 13

“Yes. I can do nothing else. ’Twill be a sad voyage, but God knows best. As it all turned out, this king of ours had to die to win his kingdom.”

When the mourners had returned to the _Tarlington_, Captain O’Shea and Johnny Kent went into the chart-room and talked together for some time. At length the simple-hearted chief engineer said with a wistful smile:

“I’m glad we stood by and did what we could for him, ain’t you, Cap’n Mike?”

“You bet I am, Johnny. He was a good man, and I loved him. Here’s to His Majesty, King Osmond of Trinadaro! Even the pair of court officers we kidnapped had come to be fond of him and wished him no harm. There may be trouble waiting for us in London River on account of them and the ship that took out no clearances. But we will face the music. ’Tis not much to do for him that was so good to us.”

“Right you are, Cap’n Mike; but do you suppose we’ll go to jail?”

“No; for the blame will be laid to poor King Osmond, and the law will hold him responsible for the acts of his agents. But we would not mind going to jail for him.”

“Well, anyhow, they can never take his kingdom away from him,” softly quoth Johnny Kent.

THE LINER “ALSATIAN”

Fifteen years ago the crack Atlantic liners were no larger than ten thousand tons. Some of them are still in service, safe and comfortable ships, quite fast enough for the traveller who is not bitten with speed madness. When the _Alsatian_ of the International Line was new she attracted as much attention as one of the monsters of to-day with its length of almost a fifth of a mile and horse-power to stagger the imagination.

As she rode at anchor in the Mersey on a certain sailing day in March, spick-and-span with fresh paint, brasswork sparkling in the sunshine, flags snapping in the breeze, the _Alsatian_ was a handsome picture to greet the passengers who arrived in the special train from London and were transferred on board in the paddle-wheel tender. There were fewer than a hundred of them in the first cabin, for the season of the year was between high tides of travel east and west.

It was a tradition of the International Line that its steamers should sail precisely on the stroke of the hour appointed. More than five minutes’ delay was viewed by the port superintendents in Liverpool and New York as a nautical crime. Therefore when noon came and there was none of the activity of departure, the passengers were curious. A loquacious young man, of the noisy breed which makes the English say unkind things about American tourists, ordered another cocktail of the smoking-room steward and pettishly exclaimed:

“This right-on-the-minute business is all a bluff. The gangway hasn’t been hoisted and the tender is still alongside. This ship is nowhere near ready to start. Slow country--slow people, these Britishers. We can show ’em a few things, bet your life.”

A nervous, thin-faced gentleman who had been fidgeting between the deck and the smoking-room door chimed in to say:

“Confound it, I hate to be behind time! I can’t stand it! What’s the matter with this steamer? Why don’t the officers tell us something?”

Several passengers listened deferentially to this jerky protest. The speaker was immensely, notoriously rich, and, although dyspepsia had played hob with his internal workings, and his temper was chronically on edge, he was an enviable personage in the eyes of many American citizens. Whether he toiled or loafed, his millions were working night and day to earn more millions for him. It could make no essential difference under heaven at what hour the _Alsatian_ should carry him out of Liverpool, for he could not be happy anywhere; but the delay made him acutely miserable.

An old man with kindly, scrutinizing eyes laid down his cigar to comment:

“My dear sir, I crossed the ocean in a sailing-packet some forty-odd years ago, and we anchored in the channel two weeks waiting for a fair wind, and were fifty-seven days to Sandy Hook.”

“Times have changed, thank God!” snapped the great Jenkins P. Chase, of the bankrupt digestion.

“And changed not altogether for the better when it comes to all this fuss and clatter to get somewhere else in a hurry, my friend. It is a national disease,” was the smiling, tolerant reply.

Jenkins P. Chase glanced at his watch, muttered something, and darted on deck as if a bee had stung him.

“Bet you the drinks he’s gone to find the captain and blow him up,” admiringly cried the loquacious young man. “If Jenkins P. Chase gets his dander up he’s liable to buy the ship and the whole blamed line and run it to suit himself. He is the original live-wire. Most wonderful man in the little old United States.”

In a rather secluded corner of the smoking-room sat two passengers who had taken no part in the general conversation. One might have suspected that all this fuss over a belated sailing caused them mild amusement. The younger was of a cast of features unmistakably Irish, with the combination of pugnacity and humor so often discernible in men of that blood.

His companion was ruddy and big-bodied, his hair and mustache well frosted by time. Said the latter, after due reflection:

“Hurry has killed a whole lot of people, Cap’n Mike. What’s the matter with these peevish gents, anyhow? The company is givin’ them their board and they’re as comfortable as lords. I don’t care if the steamer lays in port a week.”

“That Jenkins P. Chase is a horrible example, Johnny,” quoth Captain Michael O’Shea. “’Tis his habit to go flyin’ about, and there is no rest for him anywhere. If ye accumulate too much money, you may get that way yourself.”

“I ain’t got a symptom,” said improvident old Johnny Kent. “I’ve learned, for one thing, that it’s poor business to try to hurry the sea. A ship must bide her time and sail when she’s ready.”

“But what ails this one, I wonder?” queried Captain O’Shea. “I mistrust something is wrong. The skipper of her, and a grand man he is, with his gold buttons and all, he went below a while ago, Johnny, and he has not come back.”

They strolled outside, and being seafaring men of wide experience, found significance in trifles which would have meant little or nothing to a landsman. This was no ordinary delay. The whole complex organization of the liner was disturbed.

“There is trouble amongst the crew,” observed O’Shea. Johnny Kent halted near an engine-room skylight and cocked his head to listen.

“The trouble is in this department,” said he.

Presently a tug-boat hastily cast off from the nearest quay and churned her way out to the _Alsatian_. A dozen Liverpool policemen scrambled aboard the liner and vanished between-decks. From the depths below the water-line arose a hubbub of oaths and shouts.

A few minutes later two policemen reappeared dragging between them to the gangway a shock-headed, muscular fellow in blue dungarees. Although he made no resistance, they handled him roughly and he was expeditiously handcuffed to a stanchion on the deck of the tug. Immediately thereafter the sounds of disturbance down below increased in violence, and swarming up ladders and through passageways came a sooty, greasy crowd of stokers, trimmers, and coal-passers.

Scrambling on board the tug, and taking her by storm, they voiced their opinions of the _Alsatian_ and the International Line in language which caused the feminine passengers to clap their hands to their ears and flee from the rail.

A junior officer with whom Captain O’Shea had scraped acquaintance halted to explain, in passing:

“The blackguards went on strike for more pay and recognition of their union. The company patched up the trouble yesterday, but the beggars were stirred up again this morning by the chap the bobbies put the irons on. He persuaded them to kick up a rumpus just before sailing-time.”

“If they have signed articles, ’tis more like a mutiny than a strike,” observed O’Shea.

“They know that right enough,” said the officer, “but they don’t seem to care whether they are jugged for it or not. It’s an incident of the general labor trouble in this port, I presume. The longshoremen’s strike is not settled yet, you know.”

“And what will ye do for a fire-room gang?” O’Shea asked him. “There was near a hundred and fifty of them that quit just now.”

“Hanged if I know,” sighed the officer as he walked away.

The tug was black with the mob of strikers, who were packed wherever they could find standing-room. The police could do nothing with them, and the distracted skipper of the tug decided to make for a quay and get rid of his riotous cargo. The passengers of the _Alsatian_ surmised that sailing-day might be indefinitely postponed and they bombarded the officers with excited demands for information. Captain O’Shea and Johnny Kent, philosophers of sorts, viewed the situation with good-natured composure, and were more interested in the summons to the dining-saloon for luncheon than in the strike of the fire-room gang.

“As long as I get three square meals per day and a dry bunk I ain’t especially uneasy about anything,” remarked Johnny Kent as he fondly scanned the elaborate menu card.

“Same here,” replied O’Shea. “But that jumpy gentleman, Jenkins P. Chase, must be throwing assorted fits by this time.”

Facing them across the table was a blond, spectacled man with a small, pointed beard, his appearance notably studious and precise. Although he spoke English with cultivated ease and fluency, the ear detected certain shades and intonations to indicate that he was a German by birth. He was affable to his neighbors at table and courteous to the steward who waited on him. Garrulous, sociable Johnny Kent found him companionable, and ventured to inquire:

“Your first trip to America? Business or pleasure?”

“Both. I shall interest myself in studying scientific education in the United States. I am a chemist by profession, and also a lecturer on the subject before the classes of a university. Yes, it is my first voyage to your wonderful country. Tell me, please, have you met the famous Professor Crittenden, of Baltimore?”

Johnny Kent was about to proclaim that as a seafaring man he was not in touch with scientists, but O’Shea, to prevent any such disclosure, kicked him on the shin as a reminder that he was to eschew personalities. It was not discreet to advertise themselves and their affairs in the mixed company of the Atlantic liner. O’Shea was aware that if Johnny Kent should once begin yarning about his adventures it would be like pulling the cork from an overturned jug.

The marine engineer blushed guiltily, bent over to rub his bruised shin, and briefly assured the blond scientist that he had not been lucky enough to meet the distinguished Professor Crittenden, of Baltimore.

“I was only last night reading his masterly paper on ‘The Action of Diazobenzene Sulphonic Acid on Thymine, Uracil, and Cytosine,’” politely returned the other. “It is as brilliant as his discussion of imidechlorides.”

Johnny Kent threw up an arm as if to ward off a blow.

“If one of those words had hit me plumb and square, it would have jolted me out of my chair!” he exclaimed. “I could feel the wind of ’em.”

The studious stranger smiled and apologized for talking shop.

“Those strikers--will the company be able to fill their places?” said he, addressing O’Shea.

“Perhaps a crew can be scraped up ashore. If not, we will have to shift to another steamer. Firemen are an ugly, cross-tempered lot to handle, so I am told.”

“Have you been much on the ocean? Do you know much about ships?”

“I have made a voyage or two as a passenger,” O’Shea assured him. “’Tis a hard life in the stoke-hole of a big steamer, I imagine.”

The scientist returned emphatically:

“I have no sympathy with them; none whatever. Lacking intelligence, fitness, they must labor for those who have earned or won the right to rule them.”

“’Tis your opinion that might makes right?” spoke up O’Shea.

“Always, everywhere!” declared the scientist. “The mind is the man. The founders of your government proclaimed the fallacy that all men are equal, but your strong men know better, and they ride and exploit your masses.”

“It’s the best country God ever made,” cried Johnny Kent with some heat.

“I beg your pardon”; and the chemist bowed. “It was a rudeness for me to speak so.”

As they left the table he gave them his card with a touch of formality, and they discovered that his name was Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz.

Three hours later the passengers were notified that the _Alsatian_ would be ready to sail next morning. It was learned that the company had been able to recruit an unexpectedly large number of unemployed firemen among the boarding-houses and taverns of the Liverpool water-front. They were willing to take the places of the strikers, and it was hoped that the liner could be sent to sea with a fairly complete complement of men. Apparently the strikers had been poorly advised and led, for they were beaten with no great inconvenience to the management of the company.

As soon as the _Alsatian_ had lifted anchor and was steaming out of the Mersey the passengers ceased grumbling, and settled into the comfortable, somnolent routine of a modern transatlantic voyage. A party of poker-players mobilized in the smoking-room. The ladies reclined all in a row in their steamer-chairs on the lee side of the deck, like so many shawl-wrapped mummies. The spoiled American child whanged the life out of the long-suffering piano in the music-room. A few conscientious persons undertook to walk so many miles around the deck each day. There was much random conversation, a spice of flirtation, and a vast deal of eating and sleeping. That hectoring gentleman Jenkins P. Chase spent most of the time in his own rooms, where he was ministered to by his physician, his secretary, and his valet.

Captain O’Shea and Johnny Kent enjoyed the luxury of such a voyage as this. There was no responsibility to burden them on the bridge or in the engine-room. No one guessed that they were uncommonly capable mariners, accustomed to command. Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz seemed to find their company congenial, and tried to make them talk about themselves. His curiosity was politely dissembled, but O’Shea took note of it and built up an elaborate fiction to the effect that he was a pavement contractor in New York with friends at Tammany Hall, while Johnny Kent found genuine satisfaction in posing as a retired farmer from the State of Maine. It occurred to O’Shea to remark to his comrade as they were undressing in their room on the second night at sea:

“The chemical professor suspects we are not what we seem. And he is anxious to fathom us.”

“Oh, pooh! He’s one of them high and lofty thinkers that wouldn’t bother his head about ignorant, every-day cusses like us,” sleepily replied Johnny Kent as he kicked off his shoes.

“You fool yourself,” and O’Shea spoke with decision. “He is full of big words and things that I do not pretend to understand at all, but he is not wrapped up in them entirely, like most of the professors and such. There is a pair of keen eyes behind those gold-rimmed spectacles of his, Johnny, and he is not missing anything that goes on.”

“I take notice that he ain’t overlookin’ that handsome school-teacher that’s been studyin’ abroad for a year. His eyes are sharp enough to sight her whenever she comes on deck. And she ain’t hostile to him, either.”

“I grant ye that, you sentimental old pirate,” said O’Shea, “but I am not a match-maker, and ’tis no concern of mine. What I am wondering is whether the man is really a university professor bent on ‘investigating the scientific education of the United States.’”

“You’re welcome to sit up and hatch mysteries by yourself,” grumbled the other. “I want to go to sleep. What’s the clew to all this, Cap’n Mike? What makes you so darned suspicious?”

“’Tis no more than a hunch, Johnny. I’m Irish, and my people feel things in the air. We don’t have to be told. This Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz does not ring true. There is a flaw in him somewhere.”

“Well, we’re sort of travellers in disguise ourselves, ain’t we, Cap’n Mike? I feel plumb full of false pretences. The pot calls the kettle black. How about that?”

“’Tis our own business,” snapped O’Shea.

“So is his,” briefly concluded Johnny Kent as he crawled into the bunk. No more than five minutes later he was snoring with the rhythm and volume of a whistling buoy in a swinging sea. O’Shea lay awake for some time, trying to fit his uneasy surmises together, or to toss them aside as so much rubbish. He had not heard the banshee cry, but a vague conjecture had fastened itself in his mind that something was fated to go wrong with this voyage of the _Alsatian_. And without tangible cause or reason, he found this foreboding interwoven with the presence on board of the affable, mild-mannered, studious Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz.

Sailormen are notably superstitious, and O’Shea had been schooled to beware of cross-eyed Finns in the forecastle and black cats in the cabin. But surely no tradition of the sea held it an ill omen to have on board a blond scientist with gold-rimmed spectacles and a well-cut beard who was seeking information among the technical schools and universities of the United States.

“He has it in his head that Johnny Kent and I are seafarin’ men by trade, and he wants to make sure of it for some reason of his own,” reflected O’Shea. “It has strained me imagination to lie to him and get away with it. As for Johnny, he would rather talk farming than anything else in the world, so he will pass for a genuine hayseed in any company.”

They were deprived of the pleasant society of Professor Vonderholtz next day, for he boldly monopolized the school-teacher, Miss Jenness, who seemed not in the least bored by his assiduous attentions. Elderly ladies watched them with open interest, and diagnosed it as one of those swift and absorbing steamship romances.

For three days out of Liverpool the _Alsatian_ moved uneventfully over the face of the waters. The weather was bright, the sea smooth. The scratch crew of firemen toiled faithfully in the torrid caverns far below, and the mighty engines throbbed unceasingly to whirl the twin screws that pushed the foaming miles astern. On the bridge the captain and his officers went cheerfully about their tasks, thankful for clear skies and a good day’s run.

It was after midnight, and the _Alsatian_ was in mid-ocean, when a few of the first-cabin passengers heard what sounded to their drowsy ears like several pistol shots. There are many noises aboard a steamship that are unfamiliar to the landsman. Excepting Captain O’Shea and Johnny Kent, such of the passengers as had been awakened paid so little heed to the sounds that they soon went to sleep again.

The two seafarers slumbered lightly, as is the habit of men used to turning out to stand watch. And they were not likely to mistake the report of a revolver for any sound to be expected in the routine of things on shipboard. O’Shea leaned over from the upper berth and asked in low tones:

“Are ye awake, Johnny?”

“Sure I am. Did you hear the rumpus?”

“Yes. At first I thought I was dreaming we were aboard the old _Fearless_ with Jiminez, the big black nigger from Venezuela, taking pot shots at me. What did ye make of it? It sounded like pretty lively gun-play to me.”

“It wasn’t no ordinary sailors’ fracas,” hoarsely whispered Johnny Kent. “Several of those shots was fired for’ard, and others came from below, about amidships. We heard ’em through the bulkheads.”

“And there was some running to and fro on deck,” said O’Shea, “by men with no shoes on. I heard their bare feet slapping the planks over me head.”

“We haven’t been boarded by pirates, and, anyhow, pirates are out of date in the Atlantic trade, Cap’n Mike. The ship hasn’t stopped. It would have waked me in a jiffy if her engines had quit poundin’ along, even for a minute.”

“I thought I heard yells, faint and far away, from men in trouble, but ’tis all quiet now, Johnny.”

“Too darn quiet. The vessel has slowed down a trifle, by six or eight revolutions, but she’s joggin’ along all serene. Shall we take a turn on deck and look around?”

They moved quietly into the long passageway which led to the main saloon staircase. Ascending this, they crossed the large lounging-hall to the nearest exit to the promenade deck. As was customary, the heavy storm-door had been closed for the night. It was never locked in good weather, however, and O’Shea turned the brass knob to thrust it open. The door withstood his effort, and he put his shoulder against it in vain.

“’Tis fastened on the outside,” he muttered to Johnny Kent. “We are cooped up, and for what?”

“Try the door on the starboard side of the hall,” suggested the engineer. “Maybe this one got jammed accidental.”

They crossed the hall and hammered against the other door with no better success. The situation disturbed them. They gazed at each other in silence. O’Shea went to one of the bull’s-eye windows and peered outside. The steamer was snoring steadily through the quiet sea, and he could discern the crests of the waves as they broke, flashed white, and slid past. The electric lights on deck had been extinguished, but presently a figure passed rapidly and was visible for an instant in the shaft of light from one of the saloon passageways. O’Shea had a glimpse of the blue uniform and gilt braid of a ship’s officer.

“I wish I could ask him a question or two,” said O’Shea. “Let us try to break out somewhere else. Now that we seem to be locked in, I am obstinate enough to keep on trying.”

They made a tour of the halls, bulkhead passages, and alleys, seeking every place of egress from the first-class quarters. Every door had been closed and fastened from the other side. A steward was supposed to be on watch to answer the electric bells in the state-rooms, but he could not be found. There was no one to interview, no way of gaining information.

The cabin superstructure and partition walls were of steel. The brass-bound ports or windows were too small for a grown man to wriggle through. The passengers were as effectually confined within their own part of the ship as if they had been locked in a penitentiary. There was no means of communicating with the ship’s officers.

It seemed useless to awaken the other passengers and inform them of this singular discovery. There would be nothing but confusion, futile argument, and excitement.

“Maybe the skipper decided to lock us in every night,” hopefully suggested Johnny Kent. “If some addle-headed gent with a habit of walkin’ in his sleep should prance overboard, the company might be liable for heavy damages.”

“Nonsense! There are strange doings aboard this fine, elegant steamer,” sharply returned O’Shea. “’Tis too big for me. We will roll into our bunks till morning. I will lose me sleep for no man.”