The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red
beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke
from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of
the Volhynia and young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conference
in the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol,
stood outside the locked and bolted door.
Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see through
the shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze of
pearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old-time battleship loomed.
She was probably one of Nelson's ships, now only an apparition; but to
Neeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominating
the water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laid
until the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and the
glory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee heart
he hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never come
upon it.
Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside;
the monstrous city beyond had not awakened.
But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off the Volhynia's port;
Neeland's steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captain
accompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase and
the olive-wood box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey.
"Good luck," said the captain of the Volhynia. "And keep it in your
mind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are at
this moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France.
"Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that they
are certain to communicate with other units; that between you and
Paris are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you,
rob you."
Neeland nodded thoughtfully.
The captain said again: "Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But if
you've given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matter
involves, naturally, a point of honour."
"Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see." He laughed.
"You're thinking, Captain West, that I haven't much discretion
anyway."
"I don't think you have very much," admitted the captain, smiling and
shaking the hand which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one
symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt
should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces
in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may
shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye.
And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious
one and not as a lark."