"Come up on the bridge," the skipper advised. "Got a revolver handy?"
I showed him my loaded weapon.
"Right! I ain"t much afraid of the j.a.ps, but we may have trouble with some of that all-sorts crew I"ve got below."
By and by the white plumes became bigger. All at once a ship lying dark on the water, scarcely a mile away on the weather-bow, spat out a long ribbon of light like an ant-eater"s tongue, and we found ourselves standing in a glare of light as if we were actors in the middle of a stage.
There was a howl from below, and a mixed body of Lascars, headed by one of the Germans, rushed toward the helm.
"Back, you milk-drinking swabs!" the skipper roared. "As I"m a living man, the first one of you that lays a hand on the wheel, I"ll fire into the crowd.
"Hark ye here!" their commander said with rough eloquence. "In the first place, it don"t follow that because you can see a flashlight the chap at t"other end can see you. Second place, no ship that does see us is going to sink us without giving us a round of blank first, by way of notice to heave to. Third place, if we do get a notice, I"m going to stop this ship. And, fourth place, you"ve got five seconds to decide whether you"d rather be taken into Yokohama by a prize crew of j.a.ps, or be shot where you stand by me and this gentleman."
The crew turned tail. Before five seconds had elapsed, not a head was to be seen above decks, except that of the man at the helm, who happened to be a Dane, to be first mate, and to be more than three-parts drunk.
Needless to say the warning shot was not fired.
We steamed steadily on through the fleet, every vessel of which was probably by this time aware of our presence. The search-lights flashed and fell all around us, but not once did we have to face again that blinking glare which tells the blockade runner that the game is up.
But there was another peril in store on which we had not reckoned.
The sea all around Port Arthur had been strewn with Russian mines!
Unconscious of what was coming, we steamed gaily past the last outlying torpedo-boat of Admiral Togo"s squadron.
"Through!" cried my friend the skipper, pointing with a grin of delight at the Port Arthur lights as they came into view around the edge of a dark cliff.
And even as he looked and pointed, there was a terrific wave, a rush, a flare and a report, and I felt myself lifted off my feet into mid-air.
I fancy I must have been unconscious for a second or two while in the air, for the splash of the sea as I struck it in falling seemed to wake me up like a cold douche.
My first movement, on coming to the surface again, was to put my hand to my neck to make sure of the safety of the precious locket which had been placed there by my dear little countrywoman.
My second was to strike out for a big spar which I saw floating amid a ma.s.s of tangled cordage and splinters a few yards in front of me.
Strange as it may seem, only when my arms were resting safely on the spar, and I had time to look about me and take stock of the situation, did I realize the extreme peril I had been in.
Most dangers and disasters are worse to read about than to go through. Had any one warned me beforehand that I was going to be blown up by a mine, I should probably have felt the keenest dread, and conjured up all sorts of horrors. As it was, the whole adventure was over in a twinkling, and by the greatest good luck I had escaped without a scratch.
By this time the forts at the entrance to Port Arthur, attracted, no doubt, by the noise of the explosion, were busily searching the spot with their lights.
The effect was truly magnificent.
From the blackness of the heights surrounding the famous basin, fiery sword after fiery sword seemed to leap forth and stab the sea. The wondrous blades of light met and crossed one another as if some great archangels were doing battle for the key of Asia.
The whole sea was lit up with a brightness greater than that of the sun. Every floating piece of wreckage, every rope, every nail stood out with unnatural clearness. I was obliged to close my eyes, and protect them with my dripping hand.
Presently I heard a hail from behind me. I turned my head, and to my delight saw the brave skipper of the lost ship swimming toward me.
In another dozen strokes he was alongside and clinging with me to the same piece of wood, which he said was the main gaff.
He was rather badly gashed about the head, but not enough to threaten serious consequences. So far as we could ascertain, the whole of the crew had perished.
I confess that their fate did not cost me any very great pang, after the first natural shock of horror had pa.s.sed. They owed their death to their own lack of courage, which had caused them to take refuge in the lowest part of the ship, where the full force of the explosion came. The captain and I, thanks to our position on the bridge, had escaped with a comparatively mild shaking.
The steersman would have escaped also, in all probability, had he been sober.
In a very short time after the captain had joined me, our eyes were gladdened by the sight of a launch issuing from the fort to our a.s.sistance.
The officer in charge had thoughtfully provided blankets and a flask of wine. Thus comforted, I was not long in fully recovering my strength, and by the time the launch had set us on sh.o.r.e my comrade in misfortune was also able to walk without difficulty.
The lieutenant who had picked us up showed the greatest consideration on learning that we had been blown up in an attempt to run a cargo of coal for the benefit of the Russian fleet. On landing we were taken before Admiral Makharoff, the brave man whom fate had marked out to perish two months later by a closely similar catastrophe.
The story which I told to the Admiral was very nearly true, though of course I suppressed the incidents which had taken place in Tokio.
I said that I had been charged to deliver a private communication from the Czar to the Mikado, sent in the hope of averting war, that I had arrived too late, and that, having to make my way back to Petersburg, I had meant to do a stroke of business on the way on behalf of his excellency.
My inspector"s uniform, which I had resumed on leaving Yokohama, confirmed my words, and Admiral Makharoff, after thanking me on behalf of the navy for my zeal, dismissed me with a present of a thousand rubles, and a permit to travel inland from Port Arthur.
Needless to say I did not forget to say good-by to my brave Englishman, to whom I handed over the Russian Admiral"s reward, thus doubling the amount I had promised him for his plucky stand against the mutineers.
I have hurried over these transactions, interesting as they were, in order to come to the great struggle which lay before me in the capital of Russia.
CHAPTER XV
THE ADVISER OF NICHOLAS II
By the second week in March I was back in Petersburg.
On the long journey across Asia, I had had time to mature my plans, with the advantage of knowing that the real enemy I had to fight was neither M. Petrovitch nor the witching Princess Y----, but the Power which was using them both as its tools.
It was a frightful thing to know that two mighty peoples, the j.a.panese and Russians, neither of which really wished to fight each other, had been locked in strife in order to promote the sinister and tortuous policy of Germany.
So far, the German Kaiser had accomplished one-half of his program.
The second, and more important, step would be to bring about a collision between the Russians and the English.
Thus the situation resolved itself into an underground duel between Wilhelm II. and myself, a duel in which the whole future history of the world, and possibly the very existence of the British Empire, hung in the balance.
And the arbiter was the melancholy young man who wandered through the vast apartments of his palace at Tsarskoe-Selo like some distracted ghost, wishing that any lot in life had been bestowed on him rather than that of autocrat of half Europe and Asia.
It was to Nicholas that I first repaired, on my return, to report the result of my mission.
I obtained a private audience without difficulty, and found his majesty busily engaged in going through some papers relating to the affairs of the Navy.
"So they have not killed you, like poor Menken," he said with a mixture of sympathy and sadness.