"Why don"t you praise me?" the woman went on. "Tell me I well earned the _douceur_? Although"--her accents were faintly scoffing--"I never dreamed _you_ would not afterward be able to--" Her words leaped into a new channel. "What can the child want? _Est-ce-qu"elle aime un autre_?
That might explain--"
An expletive smacking more of Montmartre than of the Boulevard Capucines, fell from the n.o.bleman"s lips. He brushed the ash fiercely from his cigar. "It is not so--it won"t explain anything," he returned violently. "Didn"t I once have it from her own lips that, at least, she was not--" He stopped. "_Mon Dieu!_ That contingency--"
Suddenly she again laughed. "Delicious!"
"What?"
"Nothing. My own thoughts. By the way, what has become of the man we picked up from the sail-boat?"
The prince made a gesture. "He"s down below--among the stokers. Why do you ask?"
"It is natural, I suppose, to take a faint interest in a poor fisherman you"ve almost drowned."
"Not I!" Brutally.
"No?" A smile, enigmatical, played around her lips. "How droll!"
"Droll?"
"Heartless, then. But you great n.o.bles are that, a little, eh, _mon ami_?"
He shrugged and returned quickly to that other more interesting subject.
"_Elle va m"epouser!_" he exclaimed violently. "I will stake my life on it. She will; she must!"
"Must!" The woman raised her hand. "You say that to an American girl?"
"We"re not at the finis yet!" An ugly crispness was manifest in his tones. "There are ports and priests a-plenty, and this voyage is apt to be a long one, unless she consents--"
"Charming man!" She spoke almost absently now.
"Haven"t I anything to offer? _Diable_! One would think I was a beggar, not--am I ill-looking, repugnant? Your s.e.x," with a suspicion of a sneer, "have not always found me so. I have given my heart before, you will say! But never as now! For she is a witch, like those that come out of the reeds on the Volga--to steal, alike, the souls of fisherman and prince." He paused; then went on moodily. "I suppose I should have gone--allowed myself to be dismissed as a boy from school. "I have played with you; you have amused me; you no longer do so. Adieu!" So she would have said to me, if not in words, by implication. No, _merci_," he broke off angrily. "_Tant s"en faut_! I, too, shall have something to say--and soon--to-night--!"
He made a swift gesture, threw his cigar into the sea and walked off.
"How tiresome!" But the words fell from the woman"s lips uneasily. She stretched her lithe form and looked up into the night. Then she, too, disappeared. Mr. Heatherbloom stood motionless. She knew who he was and yet she had not revealed his secret to the prince. Because she deemed him but a p.a.w.n, paltry, inconsequential? Because she wished to save the hot-headed n.o.bleman from committing a deed of violence--a crime, even--if he should learn?
The reason mattered little. In Mr. Heatherbloom"s mind his excellency"s last words--all they portended--excluded now consideration of all else.
He gazed uncertainly in the direction the n.o.bleman had gone; suddenly started to follow, stealthily, cautiously, when another person approached. Mr. Heatherbloom would have drawn back, but it was too late--he was seen. His absence from the stokers" quarters had been discovered; after searching for him below and not finding him, the giant foreman had come up here to look around. He was swinging his long arms and muttering angrily when he caught sight of his delinquent helper. The man uttered a low hoa.r.s.e sound that augured ill for Mr. Heatherbloom.
The latter knew what he had to expect--that no mercy would be shown him.
He stepped swiftly backward, at the same time looking about for something with which to defend himself.
CHAPTER XVI
THE DESPOT
Prince Boris, upon leaving Sonia Turgeinov, ascended to the officers"
deck. For some moments he paced the narrow confines between the life-boats, then stepped into the wheel-house.
"How is she headed?"
An officer standing near the man at the helm, answered in French.
"This should bring us to"--the n.o.bleman mentioned a group of islands--"by to-morrow night?"
"Hardly, Excellency."
The prince stared moodily. "Have you sighted any other vessels?"
"One or two sailing-craft that have paid no attention to us. The only boat that seemed interested since we left port was the little naphtha."
The n.o.bleman stood as if he had not heard this last remark. About to move away, he suddenly lifted his head and listened. "What was that?" he said sharply.
"What, your Highness?"
"I thought I heard a sound like a cry."
"I heard nothing, Excellency. No doubt it was but the wind--it is loud here."
"No doubt." A moment the n.o.bleman continued to listen, then his attention relaxed.
"Shall I come to your excellency later for orders?" said the officer as the prince made as if to turn away.
"It will not be necessary. If I have any I can "phone from the cabin--I do not wish to be disturbed," he added and left.
"His excellency seems in rather an odd mood to-night," the officer, gazing after, muttered. "Nothing would surprise me--even if he commanded us to head for the pole next. Eh, Fedor?" The man at the helm made answer, moving the spokes mechanically. Nor" west, or sou" east--it was all one to him.
Prince Boris walked back; before a little cabin that stood out like an afterthought, he again paused.
Click! click! The wireless! His excellency, stepping nearer, peered through a window in upon the operator, a slender young man--French. A message was being received. Who were they that thus dared span s.p.a.ce to reach out toward him? _Ei! ei_! "The devil has long arms." He recalled this saying of the Siberian priests and the mad Cossack answer: "Therefore let us ride fast!" The swaying of the yacht was like the rhythmic motion of his Arab through the long gra.s.s beyond the Dnieper, in that wild land where conventionality and laws were as naught.
He saw the operator now lean forward to write. The apparatus, which had become silent again, spoke; the words came now fast, then slow. Flame of flames! What an instrument that harnessed the sparks, chased destiny itself with them! They crackled like whips. The operator threw down his pen.
"Excellency!" He almost ran into the tall motionless figure. "Pardon! A message--they want to establish communication with the _Nevski_--to learn if we picked up a man from--"
"Have I not told you to receive all messages but to establish communication with no one? _Mon Dieu_! If I thought--"
"Your excellency, can depend upon me," Francois protested. "Did not my father serve your ill.u.s.trious mother, the Princess Alix, all his life at her palace at Biarritz? Did not--"
The prince made a gesture. "I can depend upon you because it is to your advantage to serve me well," he said dryly. "Also, because if you didn"t--" He left the sentence unfinished but Francois understood; in that part of the Czar"s kingdom where the prince came from, life was held cheap. Besides, the lad had heard tales from his father--a garrulous Gascon--of his excellency"s temper--those mad outbursts even when a child. There was a trace of the fierce, or half-insane temperament of the great Ivan in the uncontrollable Strogareff line, so the story went. Francois returned to his instrument; his excellency"s look swept beyond. He heard now only the sound of the sea--restless, in unending tumult. The wind blew colder and he went below.
But not to rest! He was in no mood for that. What then? He hesitated, at war with himself. "Patience! patience!" What fool advice from Sonia Turgeinov! He helped himself liberally from a decanter on a Louis Quinze sideboard in the beautiful _salle a manger_. The soft lights revealed him, and him only, a solitary figure in that luxurious place--master of all he surveyed but not master of his own thoughts. He could order his men, but he could not order that invisible host. They made him their servant. He took a few steps back and forth; then suddenly encountered his own image reflected in a mirror.