The Black Bag - Louis Joseph Vance (best reads of all time txt) 📗

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“Dirty weather,” he croaked, facing back from his survey of the eastern

skies before the American found out whether or not he should resent his

insolence.

 

“How much?” Kirkwood demanded curtly, annoyed.

 

The man hesitated, scowling blackly at the heeling vessel, momentarily

increasing her distance from shore. Then with a crafty smile, “Two pound’,”

he declared.

 

The American nodded. “Very well,” he agreed simply. “Get out your boat.”

 

The fisherman turned away to shamble noisily over the shingle, huge booted

heels crunching, toward one of the dories. To this he set his shoulder,

shoving it steadily down the beach until only the stern was dry.

 

Kirkwood looked back, for the last time, up the road to Sheerness. Nothing

moved upon it. He was rid of Mrs. Hallam, if face to face with a sterner

problem. He had a few pence over ten shillings in his pocket, and had

promised to pay the man four times as much. He would have agreed to ten

times the sum demanded; for the boat he must and would have. But he had

neglected to conclude his bargain, to come to an understanding as to

the method of payment; and he felt more than a little dubious as to the

reception the fisherman would give his proposition, sound as he, Kirkwood,

knew it to be.

 

In the background the cabby loitered, gnawed by insatiable curiosity.

 

The fisherman turned, calling over his shoulder: “If ye’d catch yon vessel,

come!”

 

With one final twinge of doubt—the task of placating this surly dog was

anything but inviting—the American strode to the boat and climbed in,

taking the stern seat. The fisherman shoved off, wading out thigh-deep in

the spiteful waves, then threw himself in over the gunwales and shipped the

oars. Bows swinging offshore, rocking and dancing, the dory began to forge

slowly toward the anchored boat. In their faces the wind beat gustily, and

small, slapping waves, breaking against the sides, showered them with fine

spray….

 

In time the dory lay alongside the cat-boat, the fisherman with a gnarled

hand grasping the latter’s gunwale to hold the two together. With some

difficulty Kirkwood transhipped himself, landing asprawl in the cockpit,

amid a tangle of cordage slippery with scales. The skipper followed, with

clumsy expertness bringing the dory’s painter with him and hitching it to a

ring-bolt abaft the rudder-head. Then, pausing an instant to stare into the

East with somber eyes, he shipped the tiller and bent to the halyards. As

the sail rattled up, flapping wildly, Kirkwood marked with relief—for it

meant so much time saved—that it was already close reefed.

 

But when at least the boom was thrashing overhead and the halyards had

been made fast to their cleats, the fisherman again stood erect, peering

distrustfully at the distant wall of cloud.

 

Then, in two breaths: “Can’t do it,” he decided; “not at the price.”

 

“Why?” Kirkwood stared despairingly after the brigantine, that was already

drawn far ahead.

 

“Danger,” growled the fellow, “—wind.”

 

At a loss completely, Kirkwood found no words. He dropped his head,

considering.

 

“Not at the price,” the sullen voice iterated; and he looked up to find the

cunning gaze upon him.

 

“How much, then?”

 

“Five poun’ I’ll have—no less, for riskin’ my life this day.”

 

“Impossible. I haven’t got it.”

 

In silence the man unshipped the tiller and moved toward the cleats.

 

“Hold on a minute.”

 

Kirkwood unbuttoned his coat and, freeing the chain from his waistcoat

buttonholes, removed his watch…. As well abandon them altogether; he had

designed to leave them as security for the two pounds, and had delayed

stating the terms only for fear lest they be refused. Now, too late as

ever, he recognized his error. But surely, he thought, it should be

apparent even to that low intelligence that the timepiece alone was worth

more than the boat itself.

 

“Will you take these?” he offered. “Take and keep them—only set me aboard

that ship!”

 

Deliberately the fisherman weighed the watch and chain in his broad, hard

palm, eyes narrowing to mere slits in his bronzed mask.

 

“How much?” he asked slowly.

 

“Eighty pounds, together; the chain alone cost me twenty.”

 

The shifty, covetous eyes ranged from the treasure in his hand to the

threatening east. A puff of wind caught the sail and sent the boom

athwartships, like a mighty flail. Both men ducked instinctively, to escape

a braining.

 

“How do I know?” objected the skipper.

 

“I’m telling you. If you’ve got eyes, you can see,” retorted Kirkwood

savagely, seeing that he had erred in telling the truth; the amount he had

named was too great to be grasped at once by this crude, cupidous brain.

 

“How do I know?” the man repeated. Nevertheless he dropped watch and chain

into his pocket, then with a meaning grimace extended again his horny,

greedy palm.

 

“What…?”

 

“Hand over th’ two pound’ and we’ll go.”

 

“I’ll see you damned first!”

 

A flush of rage blinded the young man. The knowledge that the Alethea

was minute by minute slipping beyond his reach seemed to madden him.

White-lipped and ominously quiet he rose from his seat on the combing, as,

without answer, the fisherman, crawling out on the overhand, began to haul

in the dory.

 

“Ashore ye go,” he pronounced his ultimatum, motioning Kirkwood to enter

the boat.

 

The American turned, looking for the Alethea, or for the vessel that he

believed bore that name. She was nearing the lightship when he found

her, and as he looked a squall blurred the air between them, blotting

the brigantine out with a smudge of rain. The effect was as if she had

vanished, as if she were for ever snatched from his grasp; and with Dorothy

aboard her—Heaven alone knew in what need of him!

 

Mute and blind with despair and wrath, he turned upon the man and caught

him by the collar, forcing him out over the lip of the overhang. They were

unevenly matched, Kirkwood far the slighter, but strength came to him in

the crisis, physical strength and address such as he had not dreamed was at

his command. And the surprise of his onslaught proved an ally of unguessed

potency. Before he himself knew it he was standing on the overhang and had

shifted his hold to seize the fellow about the waist; then, lifting him

clear of the deck, and aided by a lurch of the cat-boat, he cast him

bodily into the dory. The man, falling, struck his head against one of the

thwarts, a glancing blow that stunned him temporarily. Kirkwood himself

dropped as if shot, a trailing reef-point slapping his cheek until it stung

as the boom thrashed overhead. It was as close a call as he had known; the

knowledge sickened him a little.

 

Without rising he worked the painter loose and cast the dory adrift; then

crawled back into the cockpit. No pang of compassion disturbed him as he

abandoned the fisherman to the mercy of the sea; though the fellow lay

still, uncouthly distorted, in the bottom of the dory, he was in no danger;

the wind and waves together would carry the boat ashore…. For that

matter, the man was even then recovering, struggling to sit up.

 

Crouching to avoid the boom, Kirkwood went forward to the bows, and,

grasping the mooring cable, drew it in, slipping back into the cockpit to

get a stronger purchase with his feet. It was a struggle; the boat pulled

sluggishly against the wind, the cable inching in jealously. And behind

him he could hear a voice bellowing inarticulate menaces, and knew that in

another moment the fisherman would be at his oars.

 

Frantically he tugged and tore at the slimy rope, hauling with a will and a

prayer. It gave more readily, towards the end, but he seemed to have fought

with it for ages when at last the anchor tripped and he got it in.

 

Immediately he leaped back to the stern, fitted in the tiller, and seizing

the mainsheet, drew the boom in till the wind should catch in the canvas.

In the dory the skipper, bending at his oars, was not two yards astern.

 

He was hard aboard when, the sail filling with a bang, Kirkwood pulled the

tiller up; and the cat-boat slid away, a dozen feet separating them in a

breath.

 

A yell of rage boomed down the wind, but he paid no heed. Careless alike of

the dangers he had passed and those that yawned before him, he trimmed

the sheet and stood away on the port tack, heading directly for the Nore

Lightship.

XI OFF THE NORE

Kirkwood’s anger cooled apace; at worst it had been a flare of

passion—incandescent. It was seldom more. His brain clearing, the

temperature of his judgment quickly regained its mean, and he saw his

chances without distortion, weighed them without exaggeration.

 

Leaning against the combing, feet braced upon the slippery and treacherous

deck, he clung to tiller and mainsheet and peered ahead with anxious eyes,

a pucker of daring graven deep between his brows.

 

A mile to westward, three or more ahead, he could see the brigantine

standing close in under the Essex shore. At times she was invisible; again

he could catch merely the glint of her canvas, white against the dark loom

of the littoral, toned by a mist of flying spindrift. He strained his eyes,

watching for the chance which would take place in the rake of her masts and

sails, when she should come about.

 

For the longer that manoeuver was deferred, the better was his chance of

attaining his object. It was a forlorn hope. But in time the brigantine,

to escape Maplin Sands, would be forced to tack and stand out past the

lightship, the wind off her port bows. Then their courses would intersect.

It remained to be demonstrated whether the cat-boat was speedy enough to

arrive at this point of contact in advance of, or simultaneously with, the

larger vessel. Every minute that the putative Alethea put off coming

about brought the cat-boat nearer that goal, but Kirkwood could do no more

than hope and try to trust in the fisherman’s implied admission that it

could be done. It was all in the boat and the way she handled.

 

He watched her anxiously, quick to approve her merits as she displayed

them. He had sailed small craft before—frail center-board cat-boats, handy

and swift, built to serve in summer winds and protected waters: never such

an one as this. Yet he liked her.

 

Deep bosomed she was, with no center-board, dependent on her draught and

heavy keel to hold her on the wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed with

stout plank and ribbed with seasoned timber, designed to keep afloat in

the wickedest weather brewed by the foul-tempered German Ocean. Withal her

lines were fine and clean; for all her beam she was calculated to nose

narrowly into the wind and make a pretty pace as well. A good boat: he had

the grace to give the credit to his luck.

 

Her disposition was more fully disclosed as they drew away from the beach.

Inshore with shoaling water, the waves had been choppy and spiteful but

lacking force of weight. Farther out, as the bottom fell away, the rollers

became more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas met the cat-boat,

from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in the tiny cockpit; who

was nevertheless aware that to a steamer they would be negligible.

 

His boat breasted them gallantly, toiling sturdily up the steep

acclivities, poising breathlessly on foam-crested summits for dizzy

instants, then plunging headlong down the deep green