The Dark Star

The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red

beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke

from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of

the Volhynia and young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conference

in the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol,

stood outside the locked and bolted door.

Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see through

the shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze of

pearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old-time battleship loomed.

She was probably one of Nelson's ships, now only an apparition; but to

Neeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominating

the water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laid

until the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and the

glory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee heart

he hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never come

upon it.

Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside;

the monstrous city beyond had not awakened.

But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off the Volhynia's port;

Neeland's steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captain

accompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase and

the olive-wood box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey.

"Good luck," said the captain of the Volhynia. "And keep it in your

mind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are at

this moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France.

"Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that they

are certain to communicate with other units; that between you and

Paris are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you,

rob you."

Neeland nodded thoughtfully.

The captain said again: "Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But if

you've given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matter

involves, naturally, a point of honour."

"Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see." He laughed.

"You're thinking, Captain West, that I haven't much discretion

anyway."

"I don't think you have very much," admitted the captain, smiling and

shaking the hand which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one

symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt

should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces

in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may

shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye.

And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious

one and not as a lark."