CHAPTER SIX

The "Excelsior," the graceful vessel that had been steaming on her way, a long streamer of smoke flying backward from the funnel like the scarf of a woman hastening to the tryst, had suffered a change in the course of the night, and was now a sailing ship under full canvas before a fresh north-westerly wind. When the company came on deck, everyone was surprised and delighted at the transformation. Six pairs of eyes were cast up towards the bellying sails. Questions rained upon the crew, who were hard put to it to find satisfactory answers; and if any of the passengers were in a mood to air their knowledge of such matters, they very soon proved themselves ignoramuses who had merely gleaned a little untrustworthy information from books. Scherer, who had made himself so expert in the running of his own machines, and turbines, and lighting, and what not in his industrial undertakings, that he could make a repair when needed with his own hands, felt completely at fault where a sailing yacht was concerned. He got the captain to take him round, to show him this and explain him that, and his scientifically trained mind very quickly grasped the most intricate details of stress and strain, of cordage and canvas and yard.

At the outset, Franklin had accompanied the two on their round, listening to the captain's lesson in sailcraft. But soon he ceased to hear and became absorbed in contemplative reverie, as was his wont when his fellow mortals were experiencing some new sensation. He loved to watch their reactions to hitherto unknown phenomena. So now, he soon saw nothing else but the voyager and the ship-owner into whom Scherer for the nonce was metamorphosed; he envisaged the two personalities as separate entities; the former gesticulating to make himself the better understood, the latter, hands thrust deep into his pockets, putting his mind in motion to grasp the unknown terminology and to memorize it methodically.

Eduard, meanwhile, found himself near the ratlines with Wilhelm at his side. A young fellow was aloft trying to catch a rope that had worked loose and was dangling and swinging in the breeze. But neither from above nor from below could the sailor reach the refractory piece of cordage.

"Try from above," yelled the mate from the deck, "from above."

But the youngster tried in vain.

"Is that Giorgino?" asked the prince.

"How can I tell what the young idiot's name is? I'd like to know where the devil the captain could have found such a booby. He's hard put to it to wash the dishes properly, and now he's suddenly expected to do the work of a sailor!"

The prince, tickled at this summary of the lad's career, laughed, and called up to him:

"Tira quell' altera corda!"

Thereupon Giorgino started pulling on a cord as if in response to the order. But his action proved hopelessly wrong, and the sail was put out of gear. The mate swore and raged. Wilhelm roared with laughter, while the mate glared at him ferociously. Then the young poet, having divested himself of his jacket, began to climb the ratlines. Eduard pulled him back, for he knew that only those with a very steady head could venture up into those swaying, airy altitudes.

Kyril meanwhile had joined the group. He quietly laid aside his coat and, without awaiting the mate's orders, called his instructions up to the boy. He spoke in Italian and Giorgino promptly responded by clambering down to one of the yards while the Russian mounted to replace him. Kyril's longer arm was able to reach the offending bit of rope. He drew it in and attached it where it belonged, adjusted the flapping sail so that soon it was again catching the wind, and then descended from his perch.

The mate had done nothing to hinder him in his operations, for he realized that he had to do with a man who knew what was amiss. He growled his satisfaction, hustled the youngster out of his path, and, before Kyril had stepped down on to the deck, said to the two others:

"Not so bad, not so bad! The young man must have had some seafaring experience!"

Diana, who had just come up, overheard his words and looked inquiringly at the prince and then at the mate. But since neither seemed inclined to enlighten her, Wilhelm constituted himself her informant and pointed slyly up into the rigging. Someone was coming towards her from aloft. It could not be a member of the crew because the clothing was not that of a sailor. But she soon recognized the figure as that of her Russian fellow traveller. She followed the movement of his feet as they sought the rungs of the swaying ladder, was tempted to help him by calling: "to right," or "to left." Then she realized that she was looking at a man accustomed to climbing in the rigging. In silence, the little group followed Kyril's descent.

One final spring brought the Russian on to the deck again. Unabashed, he put order into his clothing, smoothed his trousers, tucked his shirt in, adjusted his belt. Diana watched him, herself unobserved. Not one of his movements escaped her. She had seldom been given an opportunity of observing a man, unaware of feminine scrutiny, attending to his physical comfort. Suddenly the vision of other manly forms she had known rose before her eyes. She saw them on horseback, or swimming, or rowing, or doing gymnastics, as she had seen them in the flesh at music halls or while engaged in sport. Simultaneously the slender body of the major she had once known, passed by; then that of a Pole as shapely as a young god of classical antiquity, to whom she had given her love solely in order to feast her eyes upon his physical beauty. And when the young Russian, pushing the sail aside, suddenly became aware of her observation and raised his cap from his ruffled hair, she said judiciously to herself:

"A very good figure indeed!"

The prince, who had also come forward, said:

"Dr. Sergievitch has it in mind to charter a vessel on his own account."

And Wilhelm, full of awed surprise, added:

"Oh, but surely you could be a captain on your own account, couldn't you?"

"Awfully sorry to be so untidy," apologized Kyril running his fingers through his rumpled hair and putting on his coat which Wilhelm respectfully held out for him. "I did not know that you... Besides, I'm all out of practice."

"How long ago?" asked Diana.

"Eighteen months."

"Regatta?"

"No, escaping."

Kyril answered these questions with a kind of ardent coldness, the tone he invariably assumed when he was asked for what he considered useless information. Eduard felt somewhat abashed, and looked to Diana to help him out of his perplexity. She did not respond at all to his appeal; indeed, it pleased her completely to ignore his presence. The one word "escaping" had gripped her, had touched a chord of sympathy in her heart. And while Wilhelm continued to stare open-mouthed at the amazing stranger, Diana rapidly ran through her mind the possible course of Kyril's life history, about which none of those aboard knew anything other than that Sergievitch had been exiled to Siberia.

"Ah? Then you escaped via Vladivostok?"

"On an American sailing vessel."

"Passport under a false name?"

"Of course. No money."

"Many weeks?"

"A good many."

"As foremast hand? My word!"

Wilhelm's astonishment waxed with every answer. Eduard had ears for Diana's questions alone, his attention was riveted on the manner of her asking. The economy of words between the two, the precision of question and answer, was demonstration enough that the man and the woman had been through experiences of a kindred nature. He was reminded of the curt manner of speech among apaches, artists, craftsmen; and suddenly it was borne in upon him that these two alien beings were intimately bound together by the ties of an adventurous life.

The breakfast gong broke up the group, Kyril walking away with Diana, and Wilhelm with Eduard bringing up the rear.

"Do you think he ever feels giddy?" asked Wilhelm in an awed voice.

"He climbs with great assurance," said Eduard vaguely, not wishing to have his thoughts disturbed.

Prince Eduard, as far as he was able, spent the rest of the day alone. He was trying in vain to recapture the strange and rare simplicity of that morning dialogue; and every time he caught sight of Kyril or of Diana, they seemed to be getting farther and farther away from the spheres he knew.

The Russian, too, was in no mood for any company but his own. He stood in the stern, gazing at the ship's wake, as if he saw therein a symbol of a world that was being left behind. He had been silently and yet mistrustfully drawing nearer to Diana, and now of a sudden a bridge had been thrown from either shore across the abyss which separated them. For just as Eduard's elegance and conversational powers were for ever rubbing him up the wrong way, so this woman's every gesture, so captivating in Eduard's eyes, was repellent and strange to him.

Diana spent the whole morning with Scherer; and the rest of the day, till sunset, she passed by herself. Now she lay in her deck chair, an unread book on her lap, dreaming, forgetful of the flight of time. Kyril found her thus alone, and made up his mind to have a talk with her, a thing he had hitherto been careful to avoid.

"What are you reading?" he asked without preface, for he was genuinely curious to know.

She roused herself at the sound of his rich baritone voice, looked up, and saw him leaning against the rail in the same blue suit he had been wearing in the morning.

"I'm not reading at all," she answered, closing the volume. "It's a collection of Swinburne's poems, poems of the sea among others. But today the sea is not as Swinburne saw it, so I have not been reading them."

"Does Herr Scherer like such things, too?"

She smiled.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because you work with him, help him in his journalistic work. What do you do it for, Fräulein de Wassilko?"

To Diana it was as if a sluice-gate had been opened in her heart, and the waters were rushing down into a huge basin, flooding over, and filling a second. Her name falling naked and cold from these Russian lips, here, in the midst of a southern sea, was a summons to her, warning her to steel herself, to buckle on her armour for the encounter. She sat up very straight as she answered:

"Because I have to earn my living, Dr. Sergievitch."

"For the sake of money?"

"Is that anything to be ashamed of?"

"A poor sort of aim in life!"

"But suppose it is only a means?"

"Then I should ask you to what end."

Diana became more reserved, and, used to make what capital she could out of those who questioned her by countering their questions with questions of her own, she inquired:

"Are means and end one and the same thing to you?"

His mouth twitched. He raised his voice, saying almost angrily:

"Always."

Then in a quieter tone he added:

"I serve an idea, and live by the party which serves the same idea."

She was taken aback by the precision and clarity of his words. Still, not wishing him to think she agreed with what he said, she asked:

"Has it always been so?"

"This ten years past."

"No other thought but the revolution?"

"And its consequences. Revolution is no more than a means."

She gazed up at him in silence. "Yes," she thought, "he has fine features still. Soon fanaticism will set its mark upon his face." Her fingers closed on her book and it made her feel that it at least portrayed a better world. She rose to her feet as she said softly:

"May you live to see your hopes fulfilled!"

"That's of no consequence," he cried, stepping up nearer to her. "Maybe it is only our children's children who are destined to see that future day."

The slightly ambiguous tone in which he had, all unawares, pronounced the word "our," offended Diana anew. She stepped back a pace and said:

"At any rate you want someone of your own blood to see that day."

Her eyes challenged his, and suddenly he saw nothing but the woman in her, standing as he had seen her once before, on the night she had posed as Atalanta. Thoughts chased one another through his brain as he asked:

"Why don't you, too, serve an idea?"

"You mean your own ideas, I suppose?"

"There does not appear to be any sense in your present activities. You don't seem to me to wish either to seduce or to shine or to climb or to bear children as other beautiful women do."

He spoke so coldly that any suggestion of flattery was excluded from his words. Her answer was as cool and collected:

"And do you recognize no other aims in life?"

He was silent, and she turned away, leaning over the rail and gazing down at the sea, now glowing in the evening splendour. "And he sees nothing of all this," thought Diana, "or, if he does, he despises it."

She straightened, and walked away towards her cabin; as she went, the sound of flapping sail and swaying ropes smote on her ears. Looking up into the ordered wilderness of shroud and canvas and masts she asked irrelevantly:

"Was it a fishing boat in which you escaped?"

"An old tub of a thing."

"Carrying a lot of canvas?"

"Aye."

"Bad crossing?"

"March."

"And before that--how did you get through Siberia?"

"Reindeer sledge."

"Is it true that they can go twenty-four hours in the traces without feeding?"

"Twenty hours, and sometimes even more. At every halt they snuggle down close to one another and lick snow. On arrival at a settlement, a native will lead them to a place where Iceland moss grows. Then they'll dig themselves in and eat their fill."

They had reached the companion ladder as he spoke. He was about to say something more, when a tall figure emerged from below and started to climb the steps. It was the prince, who had already changed for the evening.

"They look like two conspirators," he thought as he looked up and saw the pair silhouetted against the sky.

"He looks like a prince," thought Kyril, a feeling of hostility leaping up within him as Eduard's white shirtfront gleamed from the darkness below.

"Hello! Dressed already?" cried Diana as if suddenly aroused from sleep.

"On board H.M.S. 'Excelsior,' supper is served at seven--no frills."

"And we were in Siberia," laughed Diana, disappearing into her cabin.