The Black Bag

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"What name did you say?" Kirkwood inquired.

"This ship? The _Allytheer_; registered from Liverpool; bound from London
to Hantwerp, in cargo. Anythink else?"

Kirkwood shook his head, turning to scan the seascape with a gloomy
gaze. As he did so, and remarked how close upon the Sheppey headland the
brigantine had drawn, the order was given to go about. For the moment he
was left alone, wretchedly wet, shivering, wan and shrunken visibly with
the knowledge that he had dared greatly for nothing. But for the necessity
of keeping up before Stryker and his crew, the young man felt that he could
gladly have broken down and wept for sheer vexation and disappointment.

Smartly the brigantine luffed and wore about, heeling deep as she spun away
on the starboard tack.

Kirkwood staggered round the skylight to the windward rail. From this
position, looking forward, he could see that they were heading for the open
sea, Foulness low over the port quarter, naught before them but a brawling
waste of leaden-green and dirty white. Far out one of the sidewheel boats
of the Queensborough-Antwerp line was heading directly into the wind and
making heavy weather of it.

Some little while later, Stryker again approached him, perhaps swayed by an
unaccustomed impulse of compassion; which, however, he artfully concealed.
Blandly ironic, returning to his impersonation of the shopkeeper, "Nothink
else we can show you, sir?" he inquired.

"I presume you couldn't put me ashore?" Kirkwood replied ingenuously.

In supreme disgust the captain showed him his back. "'Ere, you!" he called
to one of the crew. "Tyke this awye--tyke 'im below and put 'im to bed;
give 'im a drink and dry 'is clo's. Mebbe 'e'll be better when 'e wykes up.
'E don't talk sense now, that's sure. If you arsk me, I sye 'e's balmy and
no 'ope for 'im."

XII

PICARESQUE PASSAGES

Contradictory to the hopeful prognosis of Captain Stryker, his unaccredited
passenger was not "better" when, after a period of oblivious rest
indefinite in duration, he awoke. His subsequent assumption of listless
resignation, of pacific acquiescence in the dictates of his destiny, was
purely deceptive--thin ice of despair over profound depths of exasperated
rebellion.

Blank darkness enveloped him when first he opened eyes to wonder. Then
gradually as he stared, piecing together unassorted memories and striving
to quicken drowsy wits, he became aware of a glimmer that waxed and waned,
a bar of pale bluish light striking across the gloom above his couch; and
by dint of puzzling divined that this had access by a port. Turning his
head upon a stiff and unyielding pillow, he could discern a streak of
saffron light lining the sill of a doorway, near by his side. The one
phenomenon taken with the other confirmed a theretofore somewhat hazy
impression that his dreams were dignified by a foundation of fact; that, in
brief, he was occupying a cabin-bunk aboard the good ship _Alethea_.

Overhead, on the deck, a heavy thumping of hurrying feet awoke him to
keener perceptiveness.

Judging from the incessant rolling and pitching of the brigantine, the
crashing thunder of seas upon her sides, the eldrich shrieking of the gale,
as well as from the chorused groans and plaints of each individual bolt
and timber in the frail fabric that housed his fortunes, the wind had
strengthened materially during his hours of forgetfulness--however many the
latter might have been.

He believed, however, that he had slept long, deeply and exhaustively. He
felt now a little emaciated mentally and somewhat absent-bodied--so he put
it to himself. A numb languor, not unpleasant, held him passively supine,
the while he gave himself over to speculative thought.

A wild night, certainly; probably, by that time, the little vessel was in
the middle of the North Sea ... _bound for Antwerp_!

"Oh-h," said Kirkwood vindictively, "_hell_!"

So he was bound for Antwerp! The first color of resentment ebbing from his
thoughts left him rather interested than excited by the prospect. He found
that he was neither pleased nor displeased. He presumed that it would be
no more difficult to raise money on personal belongings in Antwerp than
anywhere else; it has been observed that the first flower of civilization
is the rum-blossom, the next, the conventionalized fleur-de-lis of the
money-lender. There would be pawnshops, then, in Antwerp; and Kirkwood was
confident that the sale or pledge of his signet-ring, scarf-pin, match-box
and cigar-case, would provide him with money enough for a return to London,
by third-class, at the worst. There ... well, all events were on the knees
of the gods; he'd squirm out of his troubles, somehow. As for the other
matter, the Calendar affair, he presumed he was well rid of it,--with a
sigh of regret. It had been a most enticing mystery, you know; and the
woman in the case was extraordinary, to say the least.

The memory of Dorothy Calendar made him sigh again, this time more
violently: a sigh that was own brother to (or at any rate descended in
a direct line from) the furnace sigh of the lover described by, the
melancholy Jaques. And he sat up, bumped his head, groped round until his
hand fell upon a doorknob, opened the door, and looked out into the blowsy
emptiness of the ship's cabin proper, whose gloomy confines were made
visible only by the rays of a dingy and smoky lamp swinging violently in
gimbals from a deck-beam.

Kirkwood's clothing, now rough-dried and warped wretchedly out of shape,
had been thrown carelessly on a transom near the door. He got up, collected
them, and returning to his berth, dressed at leisure, thinking heavily,
disgruntled--in a humor as evil as the after-taste of bad brandy in his
mouth.

When dressed he went out into the cabin, closing the door upon his berth,
and for lack of anything better to do, seated himself on the thwartships
transom, against the forward bulkhead, behind the table. Above his head a
chronometer ticked steadily and loudly, and, being consulted, told him that
the time of day was twenty minutes to four; which meant that he had slept
away some eighteen or twenty hours. That was a solid spell of a rest,
when he came to think of it, even allowing that he had been unusually and
pardonably fatigued when conducted to his berth. He felt stronger now, and
bright enough--and enormously hungry into the bargain.

Abstractedly, heedless of the fact that his tobacco would be water-soaked
and ruined, he fumbled in his pockets for pipe and pouch, thinking to
soothe the pangs of hunger against breakfast-time; which was probably two
hours and a quarter ahead. But his pockets were empty--every one of them.
He assimilated this discovery in patience and cast an eye about the room,
to locate, if possible, the missing property. But naught of his was
visible. So he rose and began a more painstaking search.

The cabin was at once tiny, low-ceiled, and depressingly gloomy. Its
furniture consisted entirely in a chair or two, supplementing the transoms
and lockers as resting-places, and a center-table covered with a cloth of
turkey-red, whose original aggressiveness had been darkly moderated by
libations of liquids, principally black coffee, and burnt offerings of
grease and tobacco-ash. Aside from the companion-way to the deck, four
doors opened into the room, two probably giving upon the captain's and the
mate's quarters, the others on pseudo state-rooms--one of which he had just
vacated--closets large enough to contain a small bunk and naught beside.
The bulkheads and partitions were badly broken out with a rash of pictures
from illustrated papers, mostly offensive. Kirkwood was interested to read
a half-column clipping from a New York yellow journal, descriptive of the
antics of a drunken British sailor who had somehow found his way to the
bar-room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel; the paragraph exploiting the fact that
it had required four policemen in addition to the corps of porters to
subdue him, was strongly underscored in red ink; and the news-story wound
up with the information that in police court the man had given his name as
William Stranger and cheerfully had paid a fine of ten dollars, alleging
his entertainment to have been cheap at the price.

While Kirkwood was employed in perusing this illuminating anecdote, eight
bells sounded, and, from the commotion overhead, the watch changed. A
little later the companion-way door slammed open and shut, and Captain
Stryker--or Stranger; whichever you please--fell down, rather than
descended, the steps.

Without attention to the American he rolled into the mate's room and roused
that personage. Kirkwood heard that the name of the second-in-command was
'Obbs, as well as that he occupied the starboard state-room aft. After a
brief exchange of comment and instruction, Mr. 'Obbs appeared in the shape
of a walking pillar of oil-skins capped by a sou'wester, and went on deck;
Stryker, following him out of the state-room, shed his own oilers in a
clammy heap upon the floor, opened a locker from which he brought forth a
bottle and a dirty glass, and, turning toward the table, for the first time
became sensible of Kirkwood's presence.

"Ow, there you are, eigh, little bright-eyes!" he exclaimed with surprised
animation.

"Good morning, Captain Stryker," said Kirkwood, rising. "I want to tell
you--"

But Stryker waved one great red paw impatiently, with the effect of
sweeping aside and casting into the discard Kirkwood's intended speech of
thanks; nor would he hear him further.

"Did you 'ave a nice little nap?" he interrupted. "Come up bright and
smilin', eigh? Now I guess"--the emphasis made it clear that the captain
believed himself to be employing an Americanism; and so successful was he
in his own esteem that he could not resist the temptation to improve upon
the imitation--"Na-ow I guess yeou're abaout right ready, ben't ye, to hev
a drink, sonny?"

"No, thank you," said Kirkwood, smiling tolerantly. "I've got any amount of
appetite..."

"'Ave you, now?" Stryker dropped his mimicry and glanced at the clock.
"Breakfast," he announced, "will be served in the myne dinin' saloon at
eyght a. m. Passingers is requested not to be lyte at tyble."

Depositing the bottle on the said table, the captain searched until he
found another glass for Kirkwood, and sat down.

"Do you good," he insinuated, pushing the bottle gently over.

"No, thank you," reiterated Kirkwood shortly, a little annoyed.

Stryker seized his own glass, poured out a strong man's dose of the
fiery concoction, gulped it down, and sighed. Then, with a glance at the
American's woebegone countenance (Kirkwood was contemplating a four-hour
wait for breakfast, and, consequently, looking as if he had lost his last
friend), the captain bent over, placing both hands palm down before him and
wagging his head earnestly.

"Please," he implored,--"Please don't let me hinterrupt;" and filled his
pipe, pretending a pensive detachment from his company.

The fumes of burning shag sharpened the tooth of desire. Kirkwood stood it
as long as he could, then surrendered with an: "If you've got any more of
that tobacco, Captain, I'd be glad of a pipe."

An intensely contemplative expression crept into the captain's small blue
eyes.

"I only got one other pyper of this 'ere 'baccy," he announced at length,
"and I carn't get no more till I gets 'ome. I simply couldn't part with it
hunder 'arf a quid."

Kirkwood settled back with a hopeless lift of his shoulders. Abstractedly
Stryker puffed the smoke his way until he could endure the deprivation no
longer.

"I had about ten shillings in my pocket when I came aboard, captain,
and ... a few other articles."

"Ow, yes; so you 'ad, now you mention it."

Stryker rose, ambled into his room, and returned with Kirkwood's
possessions and a fresh paper of shag. While the young man was hastily
filling, lighting, and inhaling the first strangling but delectable whiff,
the captain solemnly counted into his own palm all the loose change except
three large pennies. The latter he shoved over to Kirkwood in company with
a miscellaneous assortment of articles, which the American picked up piece
by piece and began to bestow about his clothing. When through, he sat back,
troubled and disgusted. Stryker met his regard blandly.

"Anything I can do?" he inquired, in suave concern.

"Why ... there _was_ a black pearl scarfpin--"

"W'y, don't you remember? You gave that to me, 'count of me 'avin syved yer
life. 'Twas me throwed you that line, you know."

"Oh," commented Kirkwood briefly. The pin had been among the most valuable
and cherished of his belongings.

"Yes," nodded the captain in reminiscence. "You don't remember? Likely
'twas the brandy singing in yer 'ead. You pushes it into my 'ands,--almost
weepin', you was,--and sez, sez you, 'Stryker,' you sez, 'tyke this in
triflin' toking of my gratichood; I wouldn't hinsult you,' you sez, 'by
hofferin' you money, but this I can insist on yer acceptin', and no
refusal,' says you."

"Oh," repeated Kirkwood.

"If I for a ninstant thought you wasn't sober when you done it.... But no;
you're a gent if there ever was one, and I'm not the man to offend you."

"Oh, indeed."

The captain let the implication pass, perhaps on the consideration that he
could afford to ignore it; and said no more. The pause held for several
minutes, Kirkwood having fallen into a mood of grave distraction. Finally
Captain Stryker thoughtfully measured out a second drink, limited only by
the capacity of the tumbler, engulfed it noisily, and got up.

"Guess I'll be turnin' in," he volunteered affably, yawning and stretching.

"I was about to ask you to do me a service...." began Kirkwood.

"Yes?"--with the rising inflection of mockery.

Kirkwood quietly produced his cigar-case, a gold match-box, gold card-case,
and slipped a signet ring from his finger. "Will you buy these?" he asked.
"Or will you lend me five pounds and hold them as security?"

Stryker examined the collection with exaggerated interest strongly
tinctured with mistrust. "I'll buy 'em," he offered eventually, looking up.

"That's kind of you--"

"Ow, they ain't much use to me, but Bill Stryker's allus willin' to
accommodate a friend.... Four quid, you said?"

"Five...."

"They ain't wuth over four to me."

"Very well; make it four," Kirkwood assented contemptuously.

The captain swept the articles into one capacious fist, pivoted on one heel
at the peril of his neck, and lumbered unsteadily off to his room. Pausing
at the door he turned back in inquiry.

"I sye, 'ow did you come to get the impression there was a party named
Almanack aboard this wessel?"

"Calendar--"

"'Ave it yer own wye," Stryker conceded gracefully.

"There isn't, is there?"

"You 'eard me."

"Then," said Kirkwood sweetly, "I'm sure you wouldn't be interested."

The captain pondered this at leisure. "You seemed pretty keen abaht seein'
'im," he remarked conclusively.

"I was."

"Seems to me I did 'ear the nyme sumw'eres afore." The captain appeared to
wrestle with an obdurate memory. "Ow!" he triumphed. "I know. 'E was a chap
up Manchester wye. Keeper in a loonatic asylum, 'e was. 'That yer party?"

"No," said Kirkwood wearily.

"I didn't know but mebbe 'twas. Excuse me. 'Thought as 'ow mebbe you'd
escyped from 'is tender care, but, findin' the world cold, chynged yer mind
and wanted to gow back."

Without waiting for a reply he lurched into his room and banged the door
to. Kirkwood, divided between amusement and irritation, heard him stumbling
about for some time; and then a hush fell, grateful enough while it lasted;
which was not long. For no sooner did the captain sleep than a penetrating
snore added itself unto the cacophony of waves and wind and tortured ship.

Kirkwood, comforted at first by the blessed tobacco, lapsed insensibly
into dreary meditations. Coming after the swift movement and sustained
excitement of the eighteen hours preceding his long sleep, the monotony
of shipboard confinement seemed irksome to a maddening degree. There was
absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there were
books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr. Stranger's
Manhattan night's entertainment the walls were devoid of reading matter;
and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion weariful enough when
not purely revolting.

Wherefore Mr. Kirkwood stretched himself out on the transom and smoked and
reviewed his adventures in detail and seriatim, and was by turns indignant,
sore, anxious on his own account as well as on Dorothy's, and out of all
patience with himself. Mystified he remained throughout, and the edge of
his curiosity held as keen as ever, you may believe.

Consistently the affair presented itself to his fancy in the guise of a
puzzle-picture, which, though you study it never so diligently, remains
incomprehensible, until by chance you view it from an unexpected angle,
when it reveals itself intelligibly. It had not yet been his good fortune
to see it from the right viewpoint. To hold the metaphor, he walked endless
circles round it, patiently seeking, but ever failing to find the proper
perspective.... Each incident, however insignificant, in connection with
it, he handled over and over, examining its every facet, bright or dull, as
an expert might inspect a clever imitation of a diamond; and like a perfect
imitation it defied analysis.

Of one or two things he was convinced; for one, that Stryker was a liar
worthy of classification with Calendar and Mrs. Hallam. Kirkwood had
not only the testimony of his sense to assure him that the ship's name,
_Alethea_ (not a common one, by the bye), had been mentioned by both
Calendar and Mulready during their altercation on Bermondsey Old Stairs,
but he had the confirmatory testimony of the sleepy waterman, William, who
had directed Old Bob and Young William to the anchorage off Bow Creek. That
there should have been two vessels of the same unusual name at one and
the same time in the Port of London, was a coincidence too preposterous
altogether to find place in his calculations.

His second impregnable conclusion was that those whom he sought had boarded
the _Alethea_, but had left her before she tripped her anchor. That they
were not stowed away aboard her seemed unquestionable. The brigantine was
hardly large enough for the presence of three persons aboard her to be long
kept a secret from an inquisitive fourth,--unless, indeed, they lay in
hiding in the hold; for which, once the ship got under way, there could be
scant excuse. And Kirkwood did not believe himself a person of sufficient
importance in Calendar's eyes, to make that worthy endure the discomforts
of a'tween-decks imprisonment throughout the voyage, even to escape
recognition.

With every second, then, he was traveling farther from her to whose aid he
had rushed, impelled by motives so hot-headed, so innately, chivalric, so
unthinkingly gallant, so exceptionally idiotic!

Idiot! Kirkwood groaned with despair of his inability to fathom the abyss
of his self-contempt. There seemed to be positively no excuse for _him_.
Stryker had befriended him indeed, had he permitted him to drown. Yet
he had acted for the best, as he saw it. The fault lay in himself: an
admirable fault, that of harboring and nurturing generous and compassionate
instincts. But, of course, Kirkwood couldn't see it that way.

"What else could I do?" he defended himself against the indictment
of common sense. "I couldn't leave her to the mercies of that set of
rogues!... And Heaven knows I was given every reason to believe she would
be aboard this ship! Why, she herself told me that she was sailing ...!"

Heaven knew, too, that this folly of his had cost him a pretty penny,
first and last. His watch was gone beyond recovery, his homeward passage
forfeited; he no longer harbored illusions as to the steamship company
presenting him with another berth in lieu of that called for by that
water-soaked slip of paper then in his pocket--courtesy of Stryker. He had
sold for a pittance, a tithe of its value, his personal jewelry, and had
spent every penny he could call his own. With the money Stryker was to give
him he would be able to get back to London and his third-rate hostelry, but
not with enough over to pay that one week's room-rent, or ...

"Oh, the devil!" he groaned, head in hands.

The future loomed wrapped in unspeakable darkness, lightened by no least
ray of hope. It had been bad enough to lose a comfortable living through
a gigantic convulsion of Nature; but to think that he had lost all else
through his own egregious folly, to find himself reduced to the kennels--!

So Care found him again in those weary hours,--came and sat by his side,
slipping a grisly hand in his and tightening its grip until he could have
cried out with the torment of it; the while whispering insidiously subtile,
evil things in his ear. And he had not even Hope to comfort him; at
any previous stage he had been able to distil a sort of bitter-sweet
satisfaction from the thought that he was suffering for the love of his
life. But now--now Dorothy was lost, gone like the glamour of Romance in
the searching light of day.

Stryker, emerging from his room for breakfast, found the passenger with a
hostile look in his eye and a jaw set in ugly fashion. His eyes, too, were
the abiding-place of smoldering devils; and the captain, recognizing them,
considerately forbore to stir them up with any untimely pleasantries. To be
sure, he was autocrat in his own ship, and Kirkwood's standing aboard was
_nil_; but then there was just enough yellow in the complexion of Stryker's
soul to incline him to sidestep trouble whenever feasible. And besides, he
entertained dark suspicions of his guest--suspicions he scarce dared voice
even to his inmost heart.

The morning meal, therefore, passed off in constrained silence. The captain
ate voraciously and vociferously, pushed back his chair, and went on deck
to relieve the mate. The latter, a stunted little Cockney with a wizened
countenance and a mind as foul as his tongue, got small change of his
attempts to engage the passenger in conversation on topics that he
considered fit for discussion. After the sixth or eighth snubbing he rose
in dudgeon, discharged a poisonous bit of insolence, and retired to his
berth, leaving Kirkwood to finish his breakfast in peace; which the latter
did literally, to the last visible scrap of food and the ultimate drop of
coffee, poor as both were in quality.

To the tune of a moderating wind, the morning wearied away. Kirkwood went
on deck once, for distraction from the intolerable monotony of it all, got
a sound drenching of spray, with a glimpse of a dark line on the eastern
horizon, which he understood to be the low littoral of Holland, and was
glad to dodge below once more and dry himself.

He had the pleasure of the mate's company at dinner, the captain remaining
on deck until Hobbs had finished and gone up to relieve him; and by that
time Kirkwood likewise was through.

Stryker blew down with a blustery show of cheer. "Well, well, my little
man!" (It happened that he topped Kirkwood's stature by at least five
inches.) "Enj'yin' yer sea trip?"

"About as much as you'd expect," snapped Kirkwood.

"Ow?" The captain began to shovel food into his face. (The author regrets
he has at his command no more delicate expression that is literal and
illustrative.) Kirkwood watched him, fascinated with suspense; it seemed
impossible that the man could continue so to employ his knife without
cutting his throat from the inside. But years of such manipulation had made
him expert, and his guest, keenly disappointed, at length ceased to hope.

Between gobbles Stryker eyed him furtively.

"'Treat you all right?" he demanded abruptly.

Kirkwood started out of a brown study. "What? Who? Why, I suppose I ought
to be--indeed, I _am_ grateful," he asserted. "Certainly you saved my life,
and--"

"Ow, I don't mean that." Stryker gathered the imputation into his paw and
flung it disdainfully to the four winds of Heaven. "Bless yer 'art, you're
welcome; I wouldn't let no dorg drownd, 'f I could 'elp it. No," he
declared, "nor a loonatic, neither."

He thrust his plate away and shifted sidewise in his chair. "I 'uz just
wonderin'," he pursued, picking his teeth meditatively with a pen-knife,
"'ow they feeds you in them _as_-ylums. 'Avin' never been inside one,
myself, it's on'y natural I'd be cur'us.... There was one of them
institootions near where I was borned--Birming'am, that is. I used to see
the loonies playin' in the grounds. I remember _just_ as well!... One of
'em and me struck up quite an acquaintance--"

"Naturally he'd take to you on sight."

"Ow? Strynge 'ow _we_ 'it it off, eigh?... You myke me think of 'im. Young
chap, 'e was, the livin' spi't-'n-himage of you. It don't happen, does it,
you're the same man?"

"Oh, go to the devil!"

"Naughty!" said the captain serenely, wagging a reproving forefinger. "Bad,
naughty word. You'll be sorry when you find out wot it means.... Only 'e
was allus plannin' to run awye and drownd 'is-self."...

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