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And some Talk of a Ship that Passed in the Night.

I have it in my mind that it was just upon the stroke of one o’clock of the morning, or two bells in the middle watch, when this amazing message came to me. Larry and the Irishman were asleep at that time, the third officer keeping the bridge and sending down to summon me to the Marconi instrument. Indefatigable as my friends had been in their energies and zeal, there are limits to human endurance which no prudent master ignores; and to their bunks I sent them despite their indignation. For myself, I can never sleep in the hour of crisis or its developments. Physically, I am then incapable of sleep. A sense of fatigue is unknown to me. I seem to be as one apart from the normal life of men, untrammelled by human necessities and unconscious even of mental effort. Perhaps the subsequent collapse is the more absolute when it comes. I have slept for thirty hours upon a question finally answered. The end of my day is the end also of whatever task I have for the time being undertaken.

The men were sleeping, and why should I awake them? Fallin, the young officer, had but little news to report. The Diamond Ship no longer wasted her shells in angry impotence. Her searchlight had ceased to play upon the moonlit waters. Such tidings as came were of a steamer’s masthead light seen for an instant upon our port-bow and then vanishing.

“It’s an unusual course for tramps, sir,” the young officer said, “and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure enough about it at all to wake the Captain. If it were a ship out of Buenos Ayres, she’s keeping more south than usual, but I’ve altered the course for a star before now, and you don’t care to wake up such a seaman as Captain Larry to tell him you’ve done that. His orders to me were to go down and report anything unusual. Well, a glimpse of a ship’s light shouldn’t be unusual, and that’s a fact.”

I agreed with him, though, landsman that I was, I thought I could read the omen better than he. If he had seen the masthead light of a strange steamer, she could be no other than the second of the relief ships the Jew awaited.

Herein lay many and disquieting possibilities. Given coal and stores enough, what was there to prevent the rogues putting in to some South American port, landing there such plunder as they had, and dispersing to the cities wherein their friends would shelter them? I foresaw immediately a complete frustration of my own plans and a conclusion to my task humiliating beyond belief. Not improbably that great hulk of a ship sailed already under the colours of some irresponsible republic. She might, I judged, fly the Venezuelan flag or that of Honduras or Nicaragua. The ports of such governments would be ready enough to give her shelter if backsheesh enough were to hand. And what, then, of all our labours—above all, what, then, of little Joan?

This would be to say that the message still troubled me and that I had by no means come to a resolution upon it. Let it be admitted that it found me a little wanting in courage. If reason, the sober reason of one who has made it his life’s task to read the criminal mind, the principles which guide it and the limits within which it is logical, if reason such as this read the Jew’s ultimatum aright, then might it be derided utterly. The man would dare nothing against Joan Fordibras while an alternative remained to him. She was his last card. Should he harm her, henceforth he must become a fugitive, not from the justice of a state, but from a man’s vengeance. This I plainly perceived—nevertheless, the lonely watches of the night brought me an echo of her child’s voice, a word spoken as it were from a child’s heart; so that I could say that the little Joan, who had turned to me in her trouble, had looked into the very eyes of my soul, that she was a prisoner yonder, alone among them all, a hostage in the hands of ruffians, their first and last hope of ultimate salvation from the gallows and the cell. She suffered—she must suffer the tortures of doubt, of suspense, it might even be of insult. And I, who had spoken such fine words, I could but rage against her persecutors, threaten them idly or write down a message of their contumely. Such was the penalty of the hour of waiting. I wonder not that I found it almost insupportable.

I have written that the third officer made his report of a strange steamer about two bells of the middle watch. Not less curious than he, I paced the bridge with him until dawn, and heard no further tidings. When Larry himself turned out, it was just before the hour of sunrise, and we stood together (McShanus coming up from the saloon with a welcome jorum of steaming coffee) to see the break of day, and to scan the face of the waters for any confirmation of the young officer’s story.

How still it was, how sublime, how wonderful! Unchanging in its awe and mystery, the birth of day, whether it be viewed from the deck of a ship, the summit of a mountain, or even from the heart of a great and sleeping city, must ever remain a spectacle of transcendent beauty and majesty. It is as though the Eternal spoke to the sea and the land from the open gate of heaven itself—a command to live anew for the work of the day upon which the Holy Spirit would breathe.

On the ocean there is that added glory of a vast horizon, of the immeasurable ether and the fading magnitude of the stars. Driven back reluctantly, as the poet has written, Night draws off her armies and the sun chariots speed on. You see them afar, a glow of chill grey light beneath the vault of the stars. Winds moan fretfully; the sails above you sag and shiver; stillness falls upon the waters—a silence as profound as that of man’s deepest homage. For a little while a trance has come upon things inanimate.

Little rills of foam go running to the breasts of the greater waves as cubs to the she-bear for warmth and safety. A battle is waged in the heavens, but the hosts are hidden. The clouds labour, but are riven. An arc of golden iridescence blazons the eastern sky. Day’s outposts march on to victory, and man lifts his hands to invoke their aid.

A daily scene and yet how unchangingly sublime! Standing there upon the bridge with my good friends about me, it seemed that the glory of the morn shone full upon our faces and bade us hope. No longer did the night baffle our weary eyes. We sailed a freshening sea at the splendour of the day, and far away upon the clear horizon we espied the relief ship of which our third officer had spoken.

“No star, sir, after all,” said he, “unless, that is, you would care to call her a lucky star.”