"Boy, they've left nothing but the dinghy. The old ship's done; and it's time you left her."
He looked at me and at Karl. He had meant to die with the ship, I knew; but the old magnetism of my presence held him again in that hour. He followed me slowly, as one in a dream, to the davits aft, and freed the last of the boats, overlooked by the hands in their frenzy and their panic. Then he went to his cabin, and to the rooms below; and I helped him to put a couple of kegs of water in the frail craft, with some biscuit, which we lashed, and a case of wine which he insisted on.
The preparation cost us half-an-hour of time, and when all was ready, the captain went to the engine-room and brought Karl to the top of the ladder; but there the German stayed, nor did threats or entreaties move him.
"He'll die with the ship," said Black, "and I don't know that he isn't wise;" but he held out his hand to the genius of his crime, and after a great grip the two men parted.
For ourselves, we stepped on the frailest craft with which men ever faced the Atlantic, and at that moment the first of the ironclads fired another shell at the nameless ship. It was a crashing shot, but it had come too late to serve justice, or to wreck the ship of mystery; for Karl had let the hydrogen into the cylinders unchecked, and with a mighty rush of flame, and a terrific explosion, the craft of gold gave her "Vale!" And in a cascade of fire, lighting the sea for many miles, and making as day the newly-fallen night, the golden citadel hissed over the water for one moment, then plunged headlong, and was no more.
A fierce fire it was, lighting sea and sky--a mighty holocaust; the roar of a great conflagration; the end of a monstrous dream. And I thought of another fire and another face--the face of Martin Hall, who had seen the finger of Almighty God in his mission; and I said, "His work is done!"
But Black, clinging to the dinghy, wept as a man stricken with a great grief, and he cried so that the coldest heart might have been moved--
I know not whether it was the amazing spectacle of the nameless ship's end, or the sudden coming down of night, that kept attention from our boat when the great vessel had sunk; but those on the ironclads, which were at least two miles from us when we put off, seemed to be unaware that any boat from the ship lived; and, although they steamed for some hours in our vicinity, they saw nothing of us as we lay in the plunging dinghy. When night fell, and with it what breeze that had been blowing, we lost sight of them altogether, and knew for the first time the whole terror of the situation. Black had indeed recovered much of his old calm, and drank long draughts of champagne; but he sat silent, and uttered no word for many hours after the end of that citadel which had given him such great power. As for the little boat, it was a puny protection against the sweeping rollers of the Atlantic, and I doubt not that we had been drowned that very night if a storm of any moment had broken upon us.