“Only for reference,” replied the other. “They will be quite safe, and you can have them back when I have reported.”
“And now I’d just like to have a look round. Follow me, please.”
This was a new departure. A command. Blood followed, sick at heart, but cigar still in mouth.
The lieutenant evidently knew all about cable ships.
“Cable tank--how much have you on board?”
“H’m! But you want some spare cable for mending purposes.”
The officer passed on through the square where the forward cable tank was situated, then down to the cable deck.
Here the first thing he spotted was the infernal spar gun.
He smelled round it, and inquired its use.
“I don’t know,” said Blood. “It was on the ship when I joined--some truck left over from the last voyage, I believe.”
This suddenly recalled the inquisitor to something he had forgotten--Blood’s Board of Trade certificates.
Blood produced them, having to go back to his own cabin for them. They told their tale of long unemployment.
The lieutenant was a gentleman, and having glanced them over returned them without comment. Then he left the ship with the log and the papers under his arm, and was rowed back to the _Minerva_.
“We are,” said Blood. “There’s no war; the whole thing was a lying rumour those two guys sucked in over the cable. There was a good chance of war, but it was patched up, and it’s now peace, perfect peace, with us perched on top of it like a pair of blame fools.” He told the whole tale that we know. Then suddenly light broke upon him.
“The _Sea Horse_,” said he. “I see the whole thing now--when we fired those two blighters off the ship and shoved them on the _Spreewald_ it was their interest not to give the show away. We were nose on to the _Spreewald_, so she couldn’t see our name. Shiner and Wolff would be the last men to give their own names, considering what they’d been doing and the latitude they were found in. They’d be sure to pose as innocents taken off some other ship by us. They’d fake up a yarn, and they’d fake up a new name for the old _Penguin_.”
They had gone on to the bridge again and they were talking like this with an eye always upon the _Minerva_, that arbiter of their destinies.
“That’s easy enough to understand,” said Harman. “What gets me is how to understand our position. What the deuce did that scuffy want, cartin’ off the log and the ship’s papers for? Ain’t there no law to protect an innocent vessel bein’ manhandled by a durned British cruiser in times of peace? What’s to become of peaceful tradin’ if such things is allowed? Where’s the rights of neutrals if a monkey on a stick like that blue-an’-gold outrage on the name of a sailor can walk on board you an’ walk off with the log book in his pocket? That’s what I want to know. I’m not a man that wants much in this here world. I only wants justice.”