The Vultures | Page 9

"We have a cargo--a greater part of it weight, though there is some measurement--a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters. There is nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you understand. What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is lost."
The banker paused for breath.
"I understand," said Captain Cable. "It's the same with me and my ship. There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual risks. It's neck or nothing with me."
And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this respect, nothing.
"I understand right enough," he added, with an affable nod to the three foreigners.
"You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet in the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the /Olaf/, Captain Petersen--sitting by your side."
Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.
"Thought you was a seafaring man," he said. And Captain Petersen replied that he was "Vair pleased."
"The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable."
"I don't deny," replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain Petersen out of the corner of his eye, "that I have been there before."
"You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port--just a sawmill, at the head of a fjord--where I shall have a cargo of timber waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading, captain?"
"To-morrow," replied the captain. "Ship's lying in the river now, and if these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a--"
"No, I do not think we shall have time for that!" put in the banker, hastily. "And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle your meeting-place. You have your charts?"
By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years he had been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain sections of the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the overhanging trees.
"Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much," he said, apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.
The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing the action, looked at him sharply.
"Seafaring man?" he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in his voice.
"Not by profession, only for fun."
"Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet found out where the fun comes in!"
"This gentleman," explained the banker, "his Ex--Mr.--" He paused, and looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.
"Mr. Martin."
"Mr. Martin will be on board the /Olaf/ when you meet Captain Petersen in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that Captain Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language. The two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain Peterson undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your crew, my fren'?"
"My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and precious little of that," replied Captain Cable.
He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.
"There's one thing--I'm a plain-spoken man myself--what is there for us two--us seafaring men?"
"There is five hundred pounds for each of you," replied the white- haired gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.
Captain Cable nodded is grizzled head over the chart.
"I like to deal with a gentleman," he said, gruffly.
"And so do I," replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.
Captain Cable grunted audibly.

III
A SPECIALTY
A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind. Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the breeze--Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of wet and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.
There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill is visible.