Part 2

Then the ships bound westward on the same course, and the passing vessels, eastbound, spread farther and farther apart, and were separated by a safer distance; but still on that steamship lane across the North Atlantic, fog shrouded the sea; as far ahead as the Grand Banks--so ships sent word by the wireless--the ocean was gray and greasy with fog. And, in the perverse manner which the elements have when men must count upon their fairness, the sea and sky were clear during those days and nights upon the course of steamers for New York out of the English Channel and steering from the south of Ireland. By the second night, therefore, the Southampton liner _Corinthian_ had made up half of the advantage of the _Cumberland’s_ earlier start from the Scottish port. As the steamship lanes drew closer and closer together in mid-Atlantic, the two ships came within easy wireless communication.

So Mr. Andy Farnham read the following on the bulletin board as he came up from breakfast to go on deck on the third day at sea:

NEW BULLETIN FOR FIRST-CABIN PASSENGERS.

As previously announced, wireless communication has been established with R. M. S. _Corinthian_ from Southampton. It will be of interest to know that the officers of the _Corinthian_ definitely have identified the young woman, suspected since sailing of being Roberta Leigh, as being, indeed, the violent American suffragist who is wanted by the English police for criminal participation in the destruction of many public buildings in England, including the government armory at Stoketon. The intelligence has been sent by wireless to England. The crown officers have congratulated the captain of the _Corinthian_ for his valuable service. The knowledge that she had been recognized has not been communicated to Miss Leigh; but she is being held under strict surveillance till she will be handed over to the proper representative of the crown at New York.

The _Corinthian_ has found very favorable weather, and is now commanded to make all possible haste in order that Miss Leigh may be returned to England by the S. S. _Mauretania_, sailing Saturday from New York, and immediately be brought to answer for her crimes before an English court.

The last sentence more than counteracted for Mr. Farnham the pleasure following the perusal of the first paragraph. The bulletin was dated at midnight; now it was after eight o’clock. The blasts from the foghorn proclaimed the persistence of foul weather. He gave his place before the bulletin board to other passengers crowding in eager interest. He went into the writing room, and, after considering for a moment, scribbled curtly:

8:10 a. m.

You may, with caution, partially recover and come on deck.

A.

Sealing this, he inscribed it to Miss Olive Carew at a number in the women’s cabins, and sent it by a stewardess. Then, pulling down his cap, and turning up his collar and lighting a cigar, he stepped out on deck.

He had sensed from the vibration when he was below that the engines were turning over at not even half speed. The fog still shut off everything but two hundred yards of the gray, greasy waves; but it gave enough sight of these to show that the ship’s progress was slow indeed. In the intervals between the deafening blasts of the great steam whistle overhead, the fog signals of another ship sounded, now ahead, now--confusingly--abeam; now ahead again.

He walked forward on the dripping promenade. Though such daylight as there was had been established for two hours, the deck electrics still burned to give light to groups of pallid, ulstered passengers, rug-tucked into their steamer chairs, nibbling biscuit and sipping chicken bouillon for their breakfast. These chatted, with an exciting sense of adventure, of Roberta Leigh; others communicated details of some rescue during the night. As he turned to the opposite side of the ship, Andy saw a crowd about an old and battered seaboat hanging in the _Cumberland’s_ davits, which was clearly not an appendage of the liner. He pushed nearer, and smelled fish, and saw the name _Susan Daw_ in battered paint upon the little boat’s stern.

“That’s what we stopped for early this morning,” volunteered the relief wireless operator, just going off duty for the day.

“I didn’t know we stopped.”

“Yes; a trawler went to pieces out here a couple of days ago. They were blown out here right in the steamer lanes; the crew were in two boats; but no one saw them till we picked this one up. The other boat’s somewhere out there yet; no ship’s reported it. We made a circle, and have been going slower to look for it. I’ve reported picking this up and told about the other; so every other ship coming through here will be on the watch. That shows what wireless does. Those boats drifted right across the steamer lanes for five days, and no one found one, till we happened right across this, because there was no wireless on the trawler to call help.”

“I slept right through the stop, I guess; mine’s an inside cabin,” Andy explained. “How long were we stopped?”

“Pretty long; and we spent some time searching for the other boat.”

Andy waited a moment. “What news from the _Corinthian_?” he asked carelessly.

“She’s about caught up with us now, and is going right on. She’s under special orders to hurry, you know. They certainly mean to do things to that poor suffragette girl, Roberta Leigh. You know----”

Andy was favored with confidential communications picked up by the _Cumberland’s_ wireless. Not to show too great interest, he soon moved away. Roberta, if she was to respond to his instructions, soon would come on deck. Thus far, by keeping strictly to her cabin since he had brought her on shipboard, she had obeyed him; it had been a highly unusual experience.

Since she was six and he seven, and their parents had built big country places in Connecticut side by side, he and Roberta had been opponents, rivals, defiers of the daring of each other. As children they had secretly risked their necks on the same dangerous horses, jumped from the same high windows, climbed the same trees. What she lacked in strength, she made up for a time in superior lightness and agility; then slowly but surely the handicap of her skirts, which had to be let down, told against her. No further refinement of skill in her short strokes at golf made up his increasing advantage in the long drives; and she was confined still to tennis when he broke in at polo. Then motor racing and flying came to him; her only sufficient retort was taking to suffragettism as committed in England. He was more than half aware that it was his spring exploits with his last wrecked monoplane which had hurried her to England; but, till he had happened across those pleasing paragraphs in the quarterly review, he had not dared to think that she had acted in different spirit toward him than after he first greeted her over the garden gate:

“Hello! What’s your name? Bobs? Huh! Girl tryin’ to make out you’re a boy!”

“What if I am a girl? Bet anything I can stump _you_!”

Was it just possible that, as his lost and lamented quarterly review claimed, her last acts had been in only false defiance of him--“the pseudo defiance of man by woman which, from the earliest times, has been employed by woman to attract man.”

He had believed that he had followed her to England with no feeling more akin to love than when, long before, he used to swim out after her to bring her back when she struck too far from the shore, and when she, not needing his help, swam easily back, teasing him. But this time she had needed his help; and since the incredible, unique, delicious moments of her clinging and appealing to him and his feeling her soft and weak and dependent in his arms, he was certain of very different sensations toward her. For those few moments, at least, she was changed toward him; then had followed their precipitate flight to Glasgow and their days of separation while she kept to her cabin on the ship. Had the change endured with her? He paced anxiously, impatiently, up and down awaiting her appearance.

A laugh of amusement, gently raillerous, brought him about. Roberta lay in a steamer chair, reclining comfortably in the Scotch plaid ulster he had bought for her at Glasgow, and with her wavy brown hair caught up under the tam-o’-shanter also there purchased by him. Her cheeks, in contrast with the pallid people in the distant chairs, were ruddy, and her laughing lips full and red.

“You’re a convincing-looking invalid for having been confined to your cabin since we left Scotland,” he greeted her instinctively in their old, accustomed manner, to which she had returned. He dropped into one of the empty chairs near her. “I suppose you were dressed when you got my note?”

“What note?”

“Why, my line ten minutes ago telling you that you could come on deck now.”

“Thank you! I went to breakfast at seven in the main saloon--about half an hour before you were up, I fancy. I tramped about a while, and have been here since.”

“I see. So you heard that my substitute for you has been really identified as you on board the _Corinthian_?”

“Nice of her to go through with it,” Roberta granted; “but I hadn’t heard anything except that I hadn’t hurt that Reedy man and his wife at all. They’ve both been found safe; so I only did what I had meant to do.”

“You merely burned down the armory, you mean?”

“Yes--just property; so I saw no reason for keeping cooped up in that stuffy cabin any longer.”

Andy angered. “What’s the game, Roberta?”

“Game?” in surprise.

“You’d better go down and read a few of the last bulletins--or, still better, talk to the wireless operator and learn the more confidential preparations for your reception and entertainment upon your return to England--if you suppose that the British government is so relieved to find that you didn’t burn Reedy and spouse that it’s going to give you a vote of thanks for merely blowing up government property. I told you that you might come on deck, if you took care not to attract too much attention, because no one will be suspecting you while the _Corinthian_ is still at sea. Our friend, the sporty schoolteacher, seems to have come through with an impersonation which had convinced the officers of the _Corinthian_; but she can’t fool the reception committee at New York. Your face and figure, my dear girl, are easily the most familiar in all the U. S. A. this week. You must know how the newspapers hate to give space to a girl like you who’s been such a quiet little body all summer. I’ll bet there haven’t been more than an average of eight different pictures of you in all poses run in each edition this week. Reporters may meet the _Corinthian_ on the high seas, but I feel that probably no one will board the boat before it picks up its pilot; then two tugs from the less enterprising papers and four from the moving-picture concerns will greet our friend, your doubtful double, at quarantine. They’ll know before they’ve taken a thousand feet of film of her that she isn’t you. Then even the English will guess where you are. If the _Corinthian_ could only run out of gasoline, or blow a tire or crack a cylinder, and let us get in first, all right for us; but if the _Corinthian_ goes on in ahead of us, you--dear girl--are elected to be the example to be made to discourage any more of this foreign-legion stuff in the ranks of the British suffragettes. The home secretary seems to feel that you are most eminently qualified to serve as a stopper for more of our sweet girl graduates crossing over and spending their senior vacations at pillage and arson. Rough of them, undoubtedly; but if the _Cumberland_ comes in second, it’s forcibly fed from a funnel for the rest of your natural youth, my dear.”

“Why,” Roberta returned resignedly, “do you repeat the if so many times? Isn’t the _Cumberland_ now sure to come in second?”

“The _Corinthian’s_ caught up with us now. They’re a little faster than this ship ordinarily, and at present they’re under emphatic orders to make as fast a passage as possible. Even if I should give away our hand by offering to pay our captain for extra coal he’d burn to beat the _Corinthian_ in, this ship couldn’t do it.”

“Exactly,” Roberta accepted. “So why pretend that I think I’m escaping? And why say ‘our’ hand? It was entirely your idea that this ship was sure to get in before the _Corinthian_--not mine.”

Andy fumed helplessly. He idly watched men working on the woodwork beside the wireless cabin. Before painting, they were sandpapering a strip, rasping coarse sandpaper, tacked on blocks, over the patch to be painted. The harsh, grating sound came with a short rasp, then longer, then shorter. Roberta looked about.

“I thought that was the wireless for a minute,” she said.

“Sounds like it.”

People passed, glancing at them curiously. “I’d better ask you,” Roberta said, “what are our relations supposed to be since we’ve been on board? Your communication by note, evidently meant to be enigmatic if it fell into false hands, was enigmatic.”

“There appeared to be a choice of two explanations only, considering the way we piled on board at the last minute at once and demanded widely separated cabins. Either we must be married and part at the gangplank, or else, according to original scenario, we were eloping, with papa’s pursuit so close that we hadn’t had time to drop in on the minister. I choose the latter.”

“With the result?”

Andy confessed: “That yesterday the captain--most romantic of Scots--blushingly put forward his qualifications as legal wedlocker on the high seas.”

“Ah!”

“So I told him the seas were too high for you; you’d got seasick and changed your mind.”

Roberta looked away. “I told you if I stayed in my cabin, it must be on account of something else--even neuralgia. You know that I never get seasick; I hate people who get seasick.”

She rose suddenly and walked away. He thought for an instant that she had used a different tone--not quite the same tone which had surprised him at Stoketon when she gave herself to his protection, but at least something like that tone. But, as he watched her walk away, he knew he must have imagined it. Her air of complete disregard of him had never piqued him more. He jumped up and caught step with her.

“Kindly do not assume that the _Corinthian_ is certain to beat us in!”

“How are you going to prevent it?” she questioned practically.

He did not tell her, for the sufficient reason that he did not know; but that it must be done he now was certain; and there was little time to lose to learn the way to do it. He let her leave him and go within without protest. He paced round and round the deck.

“Fog’s thinning.” His friend, the relief wireless operator, stopped beside him at the rail.

Indeed, it was fog no longer; the cessation of the blasts of the siren overhead admitted it; only mist remained, and it was a swiftly melting mist which blew with the breeze and vanished under the noon high sun. The horizon showed sharp, clear, as the pale blue of the sunny sky met the deep green of the sea in a line all about the circle of sight. One blotch only broke it--a spot of smoke on the very horizon edge, a spot which was quite abreast the _Cumberland_, and slowly, very slowly, but quite surely, was creeping ahead.

The operator went into the wireless station and returned.

“That’s the smoke of the _Corinthian_. She’s brought her good weather with her; and she’s going right on to put that girl aboard the _Mauretania_ to take her back to jail in England. Say, do you know, I’d like to do something for that girl? They’re laying to give her altogether too much. Looking at it some ways, she’s all right. I got a sister in the suffrage cause myself.”

Andy looked swiftly about, and sized up the operator more carefully. “Why didn’t you say so before?” he demanded.

The operator moved nearer and spoke cautiously: “I wasn’t sure till to-day why it was you was so interested in what was coming in.”

“So you feel sure now, do you?”

“Can’t say that,” the operator said conservatively. “But I’ve got a noodle, even if everything isn’t as clear as it might be in it just now. But don’t worry; nobody else is wise, and I ain’t said nothing.”

“On account of your sister?”

The operator looked at Andy’s hands, which were in his pockets. “Partly,” he said.

“Is it better for you to come to my cabin, or safer for me to go to yours?” Andy inquired. “Not that I’ve got a proposition yet; but--well, two heads are better than one.”

The conference below decks, though of no short duration, brought to Andy little definite encouragement. During all the latter part of the afternoon, which remained clear and bright though the wind now was rising, he paced the deck thoughtful, alone. The smoke on the southern horizon which marked the position of the _Corinthian_ crept steadily farther ahead.

Above the setting sun spread a flaming and crimson sky; and out from under it the smoke and then the hull of a steamer appeared. It was eastbound to England, and between the paths of the _Cumberland_ and _Corinthian_. Twilight failed over the ocean before it met the _Cumberland_; its smoke smudge was lost in the blackness of night, its spars vanished save for a swaying masthead light, and its decks became lines of electric lights backed by the glow of cabin windows where passengers were dressing for dinner.

As Andy stood at the rail watching the other vessel pass, Roberta stopped at his side. “You look quite desperate in your planning for me,” she rallied. “Tell me, what is the present program, per your arrangement? Am I to do a dive with you and swim for that boat, and double back to England?”

The relief wireless operator, halting, excused Andy from reply. “That’s the _Wellington_--an old hooker, and slow, but still popular. First, second, and steerage always full. Economical’s the word with her. Every ship’s supposed to have two men for the wireless, since the _Titanic_; but they manage most of the time--as this trip--with one. They’d wake up their man to get help if anything happened to them; but from about ten p. m. to say five a. m., another ship in trouble would have a great time calling them.”

Andy gazed long at the ship, the great idea dawning. “Excuse us,” he said to Roberta. “My friend,” he announced to the operator, “something tells me that you and I need only go again into executive session to get immediate results.”

Roberta, watching for him to come into the dining saloon, waited in vain till the stewards ceased to serve. Likewise, after going to her chair on deck, she looked for him without result. There now was a good sea running--nothing to trouble a large ship, but quite enough to send most of the passengers below. The wind, blowing down from the Arctic Sea, was quite cold and damp, though the air still was clear. Roberta rose, with her coat buttoned about her, and tramped the tipping, wind-swept decks.

The salt spray was flying; she felt its sting on her face, tasted it on her lips. She went to the forward rail and clung to it as the _Cumberland_ rolled and rose and dipped and rolled again as it bore steadily into the darkness ahead. It had become so late that the stewards had turned out all the deck lights except the single yellow glows over the companionways; and these now were dimmer and failing, incrusted with salt. And no light or sign of any other ship showed about all the black horizon. The _Corinthian_ never had been near enough for her lights to show at night; the _Wellington_ long had been lost in the purple darkness astern. The skies clouded over; no glint came down from the stars. The _Cumberland_ rolled on to America alone, only the wireless--the rasp of which could be heard from the cabin--told where they were to other ships. Roberta drew in deep breaths of delight at the desolateness of the ocean, the openness and freedom of the wide water. Suddenly, with a recollection, she shuddered.

“What is it?” Andy’s voice surprised her. She felt his strong fingers steadying her arm.

“I don’t want to be taken back to England to jail!” she confessed to him before she could prevent herself. “I believed I didn’t mind; I thought it would be part of the fun. But tonight”--she hesitated as to how to express it--“feel that wind, breathe it! It’s all open, all free! I want to feel it like that whenever I’d like to. I don’t want to be locked up!”

“I don’t want you to, either.” His grasp on her tightened. “And you’re not going to be. No one’s going to take you back to jail in England or anywhere else. We’re going to be landed without any one troubling us, just as I planned. Then you can go anywhere you want to.”

“How are we going to get ashore before the _Corinthian_ docks?”

He laughed confidently. “I will get you!”

“But how?” she repeated, with concern.

“Don’t worry. You’ll wake up as far ahead of the _Corinthian_ as I ever meant you to be.”

“I’m not thinking about myself. What are you planning to do? Nothing--dangerous, Andy! You know how nearly I hurt people.”

“No, no,” he reassured. “Nothing dangerous; something quite safe, serene, secure, Bobs. Merely----”

“What?”

“Expensive. That wireless operator is not so completely carried away by sympathy for you and suffrage for his sister as he seemed.”

“What did you say?”

“I’ll tell you to-morrow. I want to do it first; and it’s getting along toward time. So you go in now; good night.”

“Good night,” she said. He had commanded; she had not meant to obey; but now, when she found herself doing it, she did not deter.

“Bobs!” he caught her gently.

“What?”

“A kiss, dear!”

“A kiss?”

He took it before arguing further. “That’s all right,” he justified, as he took another. “No one’s about, Bobs! You kissed me that second time!”

“I did the first time, too!”

“Like that? Of course; but how could you have expected me to believe anything more than I was kissing you?”

“Andy!” She was held tight in his arms. “What do you and I mean?”

“I don’t know except that we mean it together.”

“What?”

“To get married, I guess; don’t we?”

“We must.”

The ship’s bell struck fluidly; in a moment there was some sort of confusion and calling--apparently on account of changing watches--and men came by. Andy put Roberta reluctantly away.

“You must go in now. No; you can’t help, dear. You might only hinder. Of course, I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I can.”