FullReads

“‘To sneak out unnoticed,’ answered the commanding officer.

“‘Then why didn’t he? He might have done it, you know. Not exactly unnoticed, perhaps. I don’t suppose he could have slipped his cable without making some noise. Still, in a minute or so he would have been lost to view–clean gone before we had made him out fairly. Yet he didn’t.’

“They looked at each other. The commanding officer shook his head. Such suspicions as the one which had entered his head are not defended easily. He did not even state it openly. The boarding officer finished his report. The cargo of the ship was of a harmless and useful character. She was bound to an English port. Papers and everything in perfect order. Nothing suspicious to be detected anywhere.

“Then passing to the men, he reported the crew on deck as the usual lot. Engineers of the well-known type, and very full of their achievement in repairing the engines. The mate surly. The master rather a fine specimen of a Northman, civil enough, but appeared to have been drinking. Seemed to be recover-ing from a regular bout of it.

“‘I told him I couldn’t give him permission to proceed. He said he wouldn’t dare to move his ship her own length out in such weather as this, permission or no permission. I left a man on board, though.’

“‘Quite right.’

“The commanding officer, after communing with his suspicions for a time, called his second aside.

“‘What if she were the very ship which had been feeding some infernal submarine or other?’ he said in an undertone.

“The other started. Then, with conviction:

“‘She would get off scot-free. You couldn’t prove it, sir.’

“‘I want to look into it myself.’

“‘From the report we’ve heard I am afraid you couldn’t even make a case for reasonable suspicion, sir.’

“‘I’ll go on board all the same.’

“He had made up his mind. Curiosity is the great motive power of hatred and love. What did he expect to find? He could not have told anybody–not even himself.

“What he really expected to find there was the atmosphere, the atmosphere of gratuitous treachery, which in his view nothing could excuse; for he thought that even a passion of unrighteousness for its own sake could not excuse that. But could he detect it? Sniff it? Taste it? Receive some mysterious communication which would turn his invincible suspicions into a certitude strong enough to provoke action with all its risks?

“The master met him on the after-deck, looming up in the fog amongst the blurred shapes of the usual snip’s fittings. He was a robust Northman, bearded, and in the force of his age. A round leather cap fitted his head closely. His hands were rammed deep into the pockets of his short leather jacket. He kept them there while lie explained that at sea he lived in the chart-room, and led the way there, striding carelessly. Just before reaching the door under the bridge he staggered a little, recovered himself, flung it open, and stood aside, leaning his shoulder as if involuntarily against the side of the house, and staring vaguely into the fog-filled space. But he followed the commanding officer at once, flung the door to, snapped on the electric light, and hastened to thrust his hands back into his pockets, as though afraid of being seized by them either in friendship or in hostility.

“The place was stuffy and hot. The usual chart-rack overhead was full, and the chart on the table was kept unrolled by an empty cup standing on a saucer half-full of some spilt dark liquid. A slightly nibbled biscuit reposed on the chronometer-case. There were two settees, and one of them had been made up into a bed with a pillow and some blankets, which were now very much tumbled. The Northman let himself fall on it, his hands still in his pockets.

“‘Well, here I am,’ he said, with a curious air of being surprised at the sound of his own voice.