Jocelyn stepped softly up the stairs and drew a little breath of relief as they reached the promenade deck without meeting any one. Both seemed to feel the desire for fresh air, and they stepped outside for a moment. There were tears in Katharine’s eyes.
“Of course,” she said, a little timidly, “I don’t understand this at all, but it is terribly tragic. Do you think that he would have lived if he had not undertaken the journey?”
“It was absolutely impossible,” her companion assured her. “He was a dying man from the moment the operation was finished.”
“Will he be buried at sea?”
“I think not. He was exceedingly anxious to be buried at his home near Chester. It isn’t a pleasant thing to talk about,” Jocelyn went on, “but they brought his coffin on board with him. It’s lying in the companionway now, covered over with a rug.”
She shivered.
“It’s a horrible day altogether,” she declared, looking out into the seemingly endless banks of mist.
“Entirely my opinion, Miss Beverley,” a voice said in her ear. “I find it most depressing — and unhealthy. And listen. — Do you hear that?”
They all listened intently. Again they could hear the hooting of a steamer in the distance.
“Between ourselves,” Crawshay went on confidentially, “the captain seems to me rather worried. That steamer has been following us for hours. She is evidently waiting for the fog to lift, to see who we are.”
“How does she know about us?” Katharine asked. “We haven’t blown our hooter once.”
“We don’t need to,” was the fractious reply. “That’s where we are being over-careful. She can hear our engines distinctly.”
“Who does the captain think she is, then?”
Crawshay’s voice was dropped to a mysterious pitch, but though he leaned towards the girl, his eyes were fixed upon her companion.
“He doesn’t go as far as to express a definite opinion, but he thinks that it might be that German raider — the Blucher, isn’t it? She can steal about quite safely in the fog, and she can tell by the beat of the engines whether she is near a man-of-war or not.”
Not a muscle of Jocelyn’s face twitched, but there was a momentary gleam in his eyes of which Crawshay took swift note. He glanced aft to where the two seamen were standing by the side of their guns.
“If it really is the German raider,” he remarked, “they might as well fire off a popgun as that thing. She is supposed to be armed with four six-inch guns and two torpedo tubes.”
Crawshay nodded.
“So I told the captain. We might have a go at a submarine, but the raider would sink us in two minutes if we tried to tackle her. What a beastly voyage this is!” he went on, in a depressed tone. “I can’t get over the fact that I risked my life to get on board, too.”
Jocelyn Thew, with a little word of excuse, had swung around and disappeared. Katharine looked at her companion curiously.
“Do you believe that it really is the raider, Mr. Crawshay?” she enquired.
He hesitated. In Jocelyn’s absence his manner seemed to undergo some subtle change, his tone to become crisper and less querulous.
“We had some reason to hope,” he said cautiously, “that she was on a different course. It is just possible, however, that in changing it she might have struck this bank of fog and preferred to hang about for a time.”
“What will happen if she finds us?”
“That depends entirely upon circumstances.”
“I have an idea,” Katharine continued, “that you know more about this matter than you feel inclined to divulge.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted. “Nowadays, every one has to learn discretion.”
“Is it necessary with me?” “It is necessary with any friend of Mr. Jocelyn Thew,” he told her didactically.
“What a suspicious person you are!” she exclaimed, a little scornfully. “You are just like all your countrymen. You get hold of an idea and nothing can shake it. Mr. Jocelyn Thew, I dare say, possesses a past. I know for a fact that he has been engaged in all sorts of adventures during his life. But — at your instigation, I suppose — they have already searched his person, his stateroom, and every article of luggage he has. After that, why not leave him alone?”
“Because he is an extremely clever person.”
“Then you are not satisfied yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Am I, may I ask, under suspicion?” she enquired, with faint sarcasm.
“I should not like to say,” he replied glibly, “that you were altogether free from it.”
She laughed heartily.
“I should not worry about the army if I were you,” she advised. “I am quite sure that secret-service work is the natural outlet for your talents.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he confided, “if headquarters didn’t insist upon my taking it up permanently. It will depend a little, of course, upon what success I have during this voyage.”
She laughed in his face and turned away.
“I will tell you what I find so interesting about you, Mr. Crawshay,” she said. “You must be either very much cleverer than you seem, or very much more foolish. You keep me continually guessing as to which it is.”
.
CHAPTER XIII
Towards six o’clock that evening, without any apparent change in the situation, Captain Jones descended from the bridge and signalled to Crawshay, whom he passed on the deck, to follow him into his room. The great ship was still going at full speed through a sea which was as smooth as glass.
“Getting out of it, aren’t we?” Crawshay enquired.
The captain nodded. His hair and beard were soaked with moisture, and there were beads of wet all over his face. Otherwise he seemed little the worse for his long vigil. In his eyes, however, was a new anxiety.
“Another five miles,” he confided, “should see us in clear weather.”
“Steamer’s still following us, isn’t she?”
“Sticking to us like a leech,” was the terse reply. “She is not out of any American port. She must have just picked us up. She isn’t any ordinary cargo steamer, either, or she couldn’t make the speed.”
“I’ve worked it out by your chart,” Crawshay declared, “and it might very well be the Blucher. I don’t think I made the altered course wide enough, and she might very well have been hanging about a bit when she struck the fog and heard our engines.”
The captain lit a pipe. “I am not in the habit, as you may imagine, of discussing the conduct of my ship with any one, Mr. Crawshay,” he said, “but you come to me with very absolute credentials, and it’s rather a comfort to have some one standing by with whom one can share the responsibility. You see my couple of guns? They are about as useful as catapults against the Blucher, whereas, on the other hand, she could sink us easily with a couple of volleys.”
“Just so,” Crawshay agreed. “What about speed, Captain?”
“If our reports are trustworthy, we might be able to squeeze out one more knot than she can do,” was the doubtful reply, “but, you see, she’ll follow us out of this last bank of fog practically within rifle range. I’ve altered my course three or four times so as to get a start, but she hangs on like grim death. That’s what makes me so sure that it’s the Blucher.”
“Want my advice?” Crawshay asked.
“That’s the idea,” the captain acquiesced.
“Stoke her up, then, and drive full speed ahead. Take no notice of any signals. Make for home with the last ounce you can squeeze out of her.”
“That’s all very well,” Captain Jones observed, “but there will be at least half an hour during which we shall be within effective range. She might sink us a dozen times over.”