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Title: The mating impulse

Author: Edwin Balmer

Release date: March 24, 2024 [eBook #73249]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith Corporation, 1914

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MATING IMPULSE ***


The Mating Impulse

By Edwin Balmer

Author of “The Peace Advocate,” “Under the Orion,” Etc.

    A comedy of “The Cause”--which almost became a tragedy.
    How an American girl became the most militant of militant
    suffragists and narrowly escaped a chance for a hunger
    strike in an English prison.


It was the day in autumn which, in Scotland and England, opens the
season for red grouse, the great game bird of the northern counties and
the highlands of heather; and at five o’clock in the glorious, clear
afternoon, the Northeastern’s extra train from London, hurrying special
parties of sportsmen to their Scotch shooting boxes, had gained the
wooded hills of Durham and Northumberland.

Peace and tranquillity--almost somnolency--lay over the land. Gentle
slopes of brown grain ripened in the sun; in meadows, red and white
cattle grazed; a few farmers envied the passing sportsmen from gardens
of late lettuce and greens. Beyond and all about were heavy woodlands,
deep green with the sun on oak leaves, burnished with the copper of
beeches and with the ground all dark with the shade of ancient, guarded
trees. A lane through them showed an English gentleman’s home unchanged
in four hundred years; the towers of a Norman cathedral asked no more
favors of the woods than it had eight centuries earlier, when
Northumberland knight and esquire looked to the stone summits from the
road upon which the train now ran. The sparkle of water sometimes shone
as the land lowered to the right. There was the North Sea; and if it
brought to the sportsmen disturbing thoughts of Germany beyond, it
showed them also a British dreadnaught steaming off the coast on watch.

The newspapers brought reports of grouse in unusual numbers; coveys
clouded the moors. As the train ran more silently, the eager yelp of the
bird dogs in the forward vans came to the men in the reserved
compartments. Servants entered to lift tea baskets down from the racks
heavy with guns; they lit spirit lamps and arranged sandwiches. The
English, upon the extra train for Scotland, sighed with deep content.

Andy Farnham, the American in Lord Morton’s party, alone marred the
universal satisfaction. He sat at his window--and the possession of a
forward window seat in a compartment with seven Englishmen proved him a
young man of no mean enterprise--disconsolate, discouraged. He was a
tall, lithe-shouldered gentleman of some twenty-five tanned summers,
with the firm hand of the racing motorist, the enviable poise of a man
who has survived a pair of monoplanes, and with the abiding faith in his
final fortunes which such repeated survival begets. Now, however,
between depths of despondency, he opened the pages of an English
quarterly review and read--in open disregard of his companions in the
compartment--an article by a leading German authority entitled “The
Psychology of the Suffragist Outbreaks.”

Anon, the English disported themselves after their fashion.

“I say, Andrew, dear fellow, perk up! Some one will surely arrest her
for you soon. Monte, how’s this? Suppose the police chaps, who are after
Miss Leigh, catch her; and then Andy, here, finding her, you see, should
get her to marry him--would you call that marriage by capture? Rather
rare, what?”

“Oh, put it in _Punch_,” Andy appealed and let a servant hand him tea.

He was in England, as his world knew, to find Roberta Leigh. She, as all
the world was widely aware, had passed a very, very stirring summer in
Britain burning and laying waste to win votes for women. Yet for more
than a month, Andy had followed her trail vainly. Therefore, he now was
abandoning the search; first, because it had begun to dawn upon him
that, unless Roberta wished him to find her, the results of success in
his search would be decidedly doubtful; and second, for some weeks the
efforts of the London police, aided by the outraged local authorities of
nine shocked shires and counties, had made any purely private pursuit of
Miss Leigh seem superfluous. So, as he proceeded north, he contented
himself with buying the papers to learn what the police were
accomplishing. Between times he read his review.

“Those observers who see in the feminist movement a weakening of the
mating impulse in the woman,” he repeatedly rehearsed one paragraph,
“are grievously mistaken. Indeed, the feminist movement--particularly in
its most violent manifestations on the part of the so-called militant
suffragettes--is only a newer phase of the pseudo defiance of man by
woman which, from the earliest times, has been employed by woman to
attract man.”

He looked up and, carefully putting his finger in the place at the
paragraph, he stared out the car window as the train stopped. It was at
only a little country station where a spur of track ran from the main
line. Passengers were changing to a couple of stubby cars standing on
that spur. Since he personally resolutely had abandoned the search for
Roberta, he did not scrutinize the passengers closely. He merely made
sure that there were only two girls in sight, and that the one, who
might possibly be mistaken for Roberta, was not she; then he drew his
head back within the window. His train started deliberately. He was
glancing down to find his page in the pleasant quarterly review, when a
pile of luggage on the platform appeared. On top of the pile stood a
small, black, oblong, week-end box--half trunk, half hand bag--much
pasted with customs labels and scratched with chalk, but quite definite
and individual of size and shape. Andy saw it, and, with the startled
cry of the incredulous, jumped to his feet, reckless of where the tea
splashed.

“That’s hers. Join you later, if I’m wrong,” he condensed explanation,
farewell, and promise to his hosts; and, as the train was still moving
slowly, and the compartment was private and not locked, he opened the
door and sprang down upon the end of the platform.

The train for Scotland kept on; the passengers for the stubby cars on
the spur were settling themselves in their seats. Swiftly but
thoroughly, Andy searched through each compartment. He was beginning to
think he might have been impulsive in leaving his party when he returned
to the pile of luggage. But there was no possible doubt of the week-end
box. Its owner might not be present; but it was, or at least it had
been, possessed by her for whom he--and the police also--searched.

“Who’s with that?” he demanded of the luggage porter bearing it toward
the train.

“Wot?” the man put it down with resigned reproach. “And now you clime
it, sir?”

Andy assured that, so far from asserting possession, his whole desire
was to discover the owner.

She, it appeared, had proceeded some twenty-four hours previously
through this junction to the ancient and historic town of Stoketon to
which definite designation, the porter fervently prayed, the stubby
train safely and swiftly would convey the box and thereby spare a
hitherto careful and completely competent porter from further blame for
misunderstanding the direction of the index finger of a gentleman much
under the influence of liquor the day before, who appeared to claim the
black box for his own, and was satisfied to take it with him twenty
miles in the wrong direction. Simultaneously with the gentleman’s
sobering up and returning the box, female inquiry had come from
Stoketon. No, nothing more alarming than the loss of luggage had been
heard from Stoketon.

Apparently, Roberta was still there and would remain, as nothing yet had
happened. Possibly the contents of the box were such that she could not
proceed to the business of her visit without it. Andy watched, not
without apprehension, as the porter dumped the box onto the luggage van.
Nothing eventuated; and, as the stubby train was starting, he got into
the nearest passenger compartment.

Two American girls shared the seats with him--one was the girl who, for
a moment, he had believed might be Roberta when he saw her on the
platform. But these were not of the caste of mind to be among Roberta’s
associates. An adventure was up for discussion between them; it was
nothing more violent or destructive in character than a project to
purchase certain extra items of dress at the price of returning to
America second class or, perhaps, steerage. The girl, something like
Roberta, and about her age of twenty-four, urged this. Andy groped
absently on the seat beside him for his magazine. He had dropped it on
the other train; so he contented himself, as he sat back, with
rehearsing its most encouraging paragraphs.

The shadows of the long English twilight rose from the hills; the smoke
of the evening fires lifted lazily from the chimney pots of a little
town as the train stopped at Stoketon. Andy, stepping out at the
station, stood staring about a moment, looking, listening, as if
expectant. An old castle showed on a hill; in another quarter, a church
from which chimes sounded softly. He looked from one of these to the
other, and then glanced toward a third prominent structure, the nature
of which he could not determine. He seemed expecting some sudden change
in one of them. The moving off of the train recalled him. The girls who
had shared the compartment with him had alighted there, too, and were
instructing the porters where to take their luggage. The men moved off,
leaving Roberta’s black, week-end box on the platform alone.

Andy sat down and watched it; but concern over it had ceased. It was
left on the platform, unclaimed and uncalled for, when the last porter
lit the lamps and placed them on the switches and in the signal
positions. Evidently the stubby train was to return that night; but not
soon. The last porter closed the station and started away.

“Which are the inns to which ladies might go alone?” Andy asked the man.
“Not very timid ladies,” he particularized.

The first three hostelries suggested gave Andy only blanks; but at the
fourth, which he reached when at last the twilight had gone into the
soft autumn night, he studied the register of guests with greater care.
Roberta’s name did not appear; but another name was written by a hand
which, though disguised, could have been hers. He sent up his card to
Miss Constance Everett in room eighteen. She was stopping there, it
appeared, with an English aunt, and she had gone to her room early with
the aunt who had a headache.

Andy looked about as he waited. The place was perfect for the planning
of catastrophe--an ancient inn with dim, paneled walls, ceiling beamed
and smoked by sweet wood fires, a sleepy, unsuspicious guest house,
offering always its old flagon of cherry cordial to greet each visitor,
and holding other traditions unchanged to charm old ladies traveling.

Miss Everett did not respond to the knock on her door; her aunt also
seemed asleep. Did the gentleman, who undoubtedly was a close friend, if
not a connection, wish Miss Everett awakened?

“Please,” Andy requested; but before the servant left the hall, he
recalled caution. “No, do not disturb her; let no one disturb her. Give
me a room, please.”

As he followed his guide, he noted carefully the position of room
eighteen. He went down again, and, denying his need for supper, stepped
out to smoke in the garden.

In the deepest shade of the old oaks, and where roses scented the air,
in a dark angle at the rear of the garden under room eighteen, a rope
hung down from an opened window--a rope knotted and looped for climbing.
He pulled it; it was firmly, expertly secured. Roberta’s business of the
evening--which evidently did not require the contents of the black
box--was on. Andy stood silent in the perfect peace and stillness of the
night, and listened as he had when first he stood at the station; but
now he was certain of immediate happenings. Yet still through the
village of Stoketon, quiet and unsuspecting serenity continued to reign.
Andy walked out to the road. The lights of the little town were
beginning to twinkle one by one; the good people of Stoketon were going
to bed. He snuffed out his cigar and returned to watch beside the rope
in the rear of the garden.

A light figure--a girl’s--leaped over the low palings; standing,
panting, she listened a moment before she came farther. Andy, creeping
back on the soft carpet of the thick turf, hid himself in the blackest
shadow. The girl came on and reached the rope; she put her foot in a
loop, and climbed up a yard or two; then stopped. He thought she had
heard him as he stepped closer; but she had not. She descended to the
ground and stood waiting for something; and a flash--a sudden yellow and
crimson flame of fire--astonished the sky; a second after it, the low
rumble of an explosion thudded the air. Andy, though he had been
expecting it, startled and spun, surprised, trying to place the source
of the flash and sound. But the girl only laughed.

“Roberta!” he hailed her cautiously.

Instinctively she seized the rope and started to climb it; then
recognition of his voice seemed to register.

“Who’s that?”

“Me--Andy.”

“I know now. What do you want?”

He came closer--boldly. “You.”

The beginnings of alarm were breaking out about them; there arose shouts
and calls and frightened cries.

“What was that, Roberta?” he demanded.

“What was what?”

“Was that the cathedral or the castle?”

“Oh,” she laughed. “Neither; the armory.”

“The armory? I see; you mean the big building on--or rather which was on
that hill?” He indicated the direction of the third structure seen from
the station.

She nodded. “It seems to be catching now quite nicely.”

Flames, indeed, were beginning to blaze after the darkness which had
succeeded the first flash of fire; and the whole village, shocked and in
outrage, stirred in tumult.

“Come; let’s go with them and take it all in,” Roberta suggested
mischievously. “Meet me in front in a minute; I’d better go up to my
room and down through the inn. I don’t need your help, thanks.”

She put her foot again in the loops, and climbed easily. Andy satisfied
himself with holding the rope steady. She was almost at her window when
she halted and stood in the loops.

“Foot caught? Can I help you?” he called.

“Hush!” She dropped a step.

Noise from within the inn, which had halted her, now reached Andy. Some
one was knocking at her door--not doubtfully, but with the sharp raps of
demand for admittance; a pause for reply; then men’s voices and men’s
shoulders against the door; it came down with a crash, and the room was
lit by dancing yellow lamps brandished in hand.

Roberta slid swiftly down the rope, and dropped to the grass. Andy
caught her; her light hair was against his lips; he felt her breath, as
she stood against him, gloriously excited, and she lifted her head to
look up to her window. Her tense, slender hands held to him tight; she
let her lithe, active little figure lie inert another moment half held
by him. As she whispered to him, she was exultant in the completeness of
the success of her mission; but her breathing told him that his presence
there added to her triumph; she was glad he had witnessed it. She
admitted that without meaning to.

“It’s never been like this before!”

The memory of the paragraph by the German psychologist further
emboldened him. “Bobs, you--you don’t care a thing about votes for
women!”

“What? Of course I do!” She freed herself indignantly; but returned at
once to him to feel his share in the effect of her adventure. “Listen to
them, Andy; isn’t it great to hear them! They can’t believe that a girl
would do it!”

“Those are only the local gallants.” Andy cautioned as he listened. “The
fellow who’s followed you from London doesn’t seem harassed by doubts.”

“Andy, till you do it yourself, you’ve no possible basis of appreciating
the perfect deliciousness of shocking them so. You couldn’t appreciate
it then; you’d have to be a woman with ten thousand generations of
downtrodden, meek-made women behind you who wanted to smash things and
never dared; you’d----”

“Come away,” Andy begged. “They’ve seen your rope now.”

Outcry from above confirmed him, so she let him guide her out of the
garden and down the road, where they found a hiding place behind a
hedge. They stopped while scared and horrified citizenry passed them.
The armory on the hill was burning now with less flame and more smoke,
rewarding local fire volunteers for their labors; but the clamor in
pursuit of the perpetrators of the outrage increased.

“Are they always so close up on you?” Andy whispered respectfully, as
officers, shouting descriptions of Roberta, stumbled past.

“Not always,” she said modestly.

“What was your plan for the getaway?”

“Through my room, of course--but there’s no use thinking about that now.
They know me now and that I did it.”

Andy listened. “Yes; they seem to feel pretty sure of you, too.”

“Oh, they have before!” she boasted. “But I’m all right. You’d better
leave me now,” she ordered independently. “Awfully glad to have seen
you.” She offered her hand; he put his behind his back, trying to think
what to say. The outcry about them continued.

A group of burghers, not actively in the woman hunt, went past.

“Reedy and ’is wife?” one repeated. “How about them? They was sleepin’
there, you know. Since they was turned from their house, Higgins had let
them there.”

“What’s that?” Roberta suddenly gasped. Her hand, held toward Andy,
quickly clutched him, and clung with the instinctive twinge of
dependence.

“Aye! Reedy? How about Reedy?” another voice lamented.

Roberta barely breathed. “Andy! They are saying that some one was
sleeping in the armory--a man and woman. I was sure no one was there; no
one was supposed to be there. But some one was!”

“They aren’t sure of that; besides, if this Reedy and his wife were
there, you don’t know that they were hurt!” Andy as instantly felt the
instinct to protect and reassure.

“Reedy and ’is wife; no word, eh?” the voice on the road hailed.

“Andy, if I killed them, it was murder! I thought once I heard some one
moving inside; then I said I only imagined it; and I did it! Andy!” She
was only woman now--all woman of the old, clinging, appealing,
precatastrophic kind pleading to man for protection. “You’ve got to find
out and help me! Andy, take me away from here--anywhere, any way!”

“Can you stay here a moment by yourself--very quiet, without being
afraid?” The instant before the question would have been the essence of
lunacy. “Can I leave you--dear?” he ventured now, and she made no
protest.

“I think so.”

He held his arm about her to steady her for a moment; he could feel her
trembling. Then, cautiously creeping out, he joined the others thronging
to witness the smoking ruins of the armory. There men moved, carefully,
searching the ground. Andy attentively listened to their remarks, and
returned to the hiding place behind the hedge. Roberta--if the evidence
of a wet handkerchief balled in her hand meant anything--had spent the
interval crying.

“Cheer up; they’ve not found any evidence of any one being caught in the
armory,” he reported.

“Tell me the truth,” she implored.

“Well, it seems that this old man, Reedy, and his wife sometimes had
been sleeping there; but----”

“Then I did kill them!”

“I really don’t think you did,” he denied. “But if it will keep you a
little more tractable, go on thinking so; for, whether or not you’ve
killed them, from what I’ve heard you’d better get out of here as quick
as you can.”

“I’ll do whatever you say.” She clung to him as the hue and cry again
came close. A recollection of herself the half hour before came to her.
“Andy,” she questioned in awe, “why am I this way now?”

“You’re all right,” he patted her. “Don’t feel ashamed of yourself.
You’ve really smashed up things mighty competently for a girl. But,
Bobs, you can’t expect to learn to smash sincerely or thoroughly all at
once. You’ve got to have a few thousand generations of your sex behind
you who really smashed to be entirely dependable at it. Then you
wouldn’t be so broken up about the idea of perhaps a little
unintentional killing.”

“Don’t!” she begged, and pulled him farther back from the road as two
officers approached, bundling an American girl between them. But Andy,
recognizing the captive in the light of the lanterns, shook Roberta
about sternly.

“Quick! That isn’t one of your people--one who was in this with you?”

“That girl?” Roberta managed. “No.”

“Of course not; they think she’s you. They’ve arrested her for you, do
you hear? Now you stay here, Bobs, till I come back!”

He gained the road again, and followed the men having in custody his
traveling companion of the afternoon whom, when he first saw her, he
himself had mistaken for Roberta. She was somewhat frightened; but, as
they paraded her before the citizenry, it was clear that she was more
proud and pleased with her borrowed prominence. This lasted only a few
moments, however; at the inn, where Roberta had stopped, this girl was
identified as not Roberta, and released with apologies. So, as she was
sinking sorrowfully back to obscurity, Andy approached her.

Fifty very fully occupied minutes later, he rejoined Roberta in her
hiding place.

“Come with me now,” he commanded. “I’m going to take you home. Never
mind about any other clothes. Your things at the inn are in the hands of
the police; your box at the station is now on the way, by that train
which whistled ten minutes ago, to Southampton in the possession of a
Miss Harriet Dale, a somewhat sporting schoolteacher from Ohio, I
believe. Instead of going back steerage--as she was considering--she
returns on the _Corinthian_ to-morrow as you. With a little
encouragement any one might take her for you, as you’ve seen. After the
_Corinthian’s_ at sea, and there’s no stop before New York, she’ll
furnish the encouragement. She will be taken for you; the wireless will
announce the news to the shore; so all other search will cease till the
_Corinthian’s_ in New York, and she again is identified as not you. But
before that time, you and I--on the _Cumberland_, which sails from
Glasgow in just eight hours--will have been safe and at large in the
land of the free for some hours. I’ve figured it all out and arranged
it. If we can stay unsuspected for a day, we’re all right. There’s an
automobile waiting for us outside the town. Come on!”

“You and I? How can we?” Roberta questioned.

“We must elope--or seem to be eloping. I’ve tried to think of something
else, for your sake; but that is the only safe thing. It is the one
subterfuge no one would associate with a suffragette.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

The Royal Mail S. S. _Cumberland_, from Glasgow for New York, steamed
down the Firth of Clyde in a soft, Scottish rain; outside, off the
northern coast of Ireland, there was fog. Showers on that first day at
sea sometimes thinned it to a mist; but throughout the second day the
foghorn of the _Cumberland_ blew its long blast every two minutes; and
from ahead, abeam, and astern answering bellows from steam whistles
warned the passing of other ships lost behind the thick fog curtains and
enforced the need for half speed day and night, and less when vessels
blundered in close.

Then the ships bound westward on the same course, and the passing
vessels, eastbound, spread farther and farther apart, and were separated
by a safer distance; but still on that steamship lane across the North
Atlantic, fog shrouded the sea; as far ahead as the Grand Banks--so
ships sent word by the wireless--the ocean was gray and greasy with fog.
And, in the perverse manner which the elements have when men must count
upon their fairness, the sea and sky were clear during those days and
nights upon the course of steamers for New York out of the English
Channel and steering from the south of Ireland. By the second night,
therefore, the Southampton liner _Corinthian_ had made up half of the
advantage of the _Cumberland’s_ earlier start from the Scottish port. As
the steamship lanes drew closer and closer together in mid-Atlantic, the
two ships came within easy wireless communication.

So Mr. Andy Farnham read the following on the bulletin board as he came
up from breakfast to go on deck on the third day at sea:


                 NEW BULLETIN FOR FIRST-CABIN PASSENGERS.

As previously announced, wireless communication has been established
with R. M. S. _Corinthian_ from Southampton. It will be of interest to
know that the officers of the _Corinthian_ definitely have identified
the young woman, suspected since sailing of being Roberta Leigh, as
being, indeed, the violent American suffragist who is wanted by the
English police for criminal participation in the destruction of many
public buildings in England, including the government armory at
Stoketon. The intelligence has been sent by wireless to England. The
crown officers have congratulated the captain of the _Corinthian_ for
his valuable service. The knowledge that she had been recognized has not
been communicated to Miss Leigh; but she is being held under strict
surveillance till she will be handed over to the proper representative
of the crown at New York.

The _Corinthian_ has found very favorable weather, and is now commanded
to make all possible haste in order that Miss Leigh may be returned to
England by the S. S. _Mauretania_, sailing Saturday from New York, and
immediately be brought to answer for her crimes before an English court.


The last sentence more than counteracted for Mr. Farnham the pleasure
following the perusal of the first paragraph. The bulletin was dated at
midnight; now it was after eight o’clock. The blasts from the foghorn
proclaimed the persistence of foul weather. He gave his place before the
bulletin board to other passengers crowding in eager interest. He went
into the writing room, and, after considering for a moment, scribbled
curtly:


                                                   8:10 a. m.

You may, with caution, partially recover and come on deck.

                                                           A. 


Sealing this, he inscribed it to Miss Olive Carew at a number in the
women’s cabins, and sent it by a stewardess. Then, pulling down his cap,
and turning up his collar and lighting a cigar, he stepped out on deck.

He had sensed from the vibration when he was below that the engines were
turning over at not even half speed. The fog still shut off everything
but two hundred yards of the gray, greasy waves; but it gave enough
sight of these to show that the ship’s progress was slow indeed. In the
intervals between the deafening blasts of the great steam whistle
overhead, the fog signals of another ship sounded, now ahead,
now--confusingly--abeam; now ahead again.

He walked forward on the dripping promenade. Though such daylight as
there was had been established for two hours, the deck electrics still
burned to give light to groups of pallid, ulstered passengers,
rug-tucked into their steamer chairs, nibbling biscuit and sipping
chicken bouillon for their breakfast. These chatted, with an exciting
sense of adventure, of Roberta Leigh; others communicated details of
some rescue during the night. As he turned to the opposite side of the
ship, Andy saw a crowd about an old and battered seaboat hanging in the
_Cumberland’s_ davits, which was clearly not an appendage of the liner.
He pushed nearer, and smelled fish, and saw the name _Susan Daw_ in
battered paint upon the little boat’s stern.

“That’s what we stopped for early this morning,” volunteered the relief
wireless operator, just going off duty for the day.

“I didn’t know we stopped.”

“Yes; a trawler went to pieces out here a couple of days ago. They were
blown out here right in the steamer lanes; the crew were in two boats;
but no one saw them till we picked this one up. The other boat’s
somewhere out there yet; no ship’s reported it. We made a circle, and
have been going slower to look for it. I’ve reported picking this up and
told about the other; so every other ship coming through here will be on
the watch. That shows what wireless does. Those boats drifted right
across the steamer lanes for five days, and no one found one, till we
happened right across this, because there was no wireless on the trawler
to call help.”

“I slept right through the stop, I guess; mine’s an inside cabin,” Andy
explained. “How long were we stopped?”

“Pretty long; and we spent some time searching for the other boat.”

Andy waited a moment. “What news from the _Corinthian_?” he asked
carelessly.

“She’s about caught up with us now, and is going right on. She’s under
special orders to hurry, you know. They certainly mean to do things to
that poor suffragette girl, Roberta Leigh. You know----”

Andy was favored with confidential communications picked up by the
_Cumberland’s_ wireless. Not to show too great interest, he soon moved
away. Roberta, if she was to respond to his instructions, soon would
come on deck. Thus far, by keeping strictly to her cabin since he had
brought her on shipboard, she had obeyed him; it had been a highly
unusual experience.

Since she was six and he seven, and their parents had built big country
places in Connecticut side by side, he and Roberta had been opponents,
rivals, defiers of the daring of each other. As children they had
secretly risked their necks on the same dangerous horses, jumped from
the same high windows, climbed the same trees. What she lacked in
strength, she made up for a time in superior lightness and agility; then
slowly but surely the handicap of her skirts, which had to be let down,
told against her. No further refinement of skill in her short strokes at
golf made up his increasing advantage in the long drives; and she was
confined still to tennis when he broke in at polo. Then motor racing and
flying came to him; her only sufficient retort was taking to
suffragettism as committed in England. He was more than half aware that
it was his spring exploits with his last wrecked monoplane which had
hurried her to England; but, till he had happened across those pleasing
paragraphs in the quarterly review, he had not dared to think that she
had acted in different spirit toward him than after he first greeted her
over the garden gate:

“Hello! What’s your name? Bobs? Huh! Girl tryin’ to make out you’re a
boy!”

“What if I am a girl? Bet anything I can stump _you_!”

Was it just possible that, as his lost and lamented quarterly review
claimed, her last acts had been in only false defiance of him--“the
pseudo defiance of man by woman which, from the earliest times, has been
employed by woman to attract man.”

He had believed that he had followed her to England with no feeling more
akin to love than when, long before, he used to swim out after her to
bring her back when she struck too far from the shore, and when she, not
needing his help, swam easily back, teasing him. But this time she had
needed his help; and since the incredible, unique, delicious moments of
her clinging and appealing to him and his feeling her soft and weak and
dependent in his arms, he was certain of very different sensations
toward her. For those few moments, at least, she was changed toward him;
then had followed their precipitate flight to Glasgow and their days of
separation while she kept to her cabin on the ship. Had the change
endured with her? He paced anxiously, impatiently, up and down awaiting
her appearance.

A laugh of amusement, gently raillerous, brought him about. Roberta lay
in a steamer chair, reclining comfortably in the Scotch plaid ulster he
had bought for her at Glasgow, and with her wavy brown hair caught up
under the tam-o’-shanter also there purchased by him. Her cheeks, in
contrast with the pallid people in the distant chairs, were ruddy, and
her laughing lips full and red.

“You’re a convincing-looking invalid for having been confined to your
cabin since we left Scotland,” he greeted her instinctively in their
old, accustomed manner, to which she had returned. He dropped into one
of the empty chairs near her. “I suppose you were dressed when you got
my note?”

“What note?”

“Why, my line ten minutes ago telling you that you could come on deck
now.”

“Thank you! I went to breakfast at seven in the main saloon--about half
an hour before you were up, I fancy. I tramped about a while, and have
been here since.”

“I see. So you heard that my substitute for you has been really
identified as you on board the _Corinthian_?”

“Nice of her to go through with it,” Roberta granted; “but I hadn’t
heard anything except that I hadn’t hurt that Reedy man and his wife at
all. They’ve both been found safe; so I only did what I had meant to
do.”

“You merely burned down the armory, you mean?”

“Yes--just property; so I saw no reason for keeping cooped up in that
stuffy cabin any longer.”

Andy angered. “What’s the game, Roberta?”

“Game?” in surprise.

“You’d better go down and read a few of the last bulletins--or, still
better, talk to the wireless operator and learn the more confidential
preparations for your reception and entertainment upon your return to
England--if you suppose that the British government is so relieved to
find that you didn’t burn Reedy and spouse that it’s going to give you a
vote of thanks for merely blowing up government property. I told you
that you might come on deck, if you took care not to attract too much
attention, because no one will be suspecting you while the _Corinthian_
is still at sea. Our friend, the sporty schoolteacher, seems to have
come through with an impersonation which had convinced the officers of
the _Corinthian_; but she can’t fool the reception committee at New
York. Your face and figure, my dear girl, are easily the most familiar
in all the U. S. A. this week. You must know how the newspapers hate to
give space to a girl like you who’s been such a quiet little body all
summer. I’ll bet there haven’t been more than an average of eight
different pictures of you in all poses run in each edition this week.
Reporters may meet the _Corinthian_ on the high seas, but I feel that
probably no one will board the boat before it picks up its pilot; then
two tugs from the less enterprising papers and four from the
moving-picture concerns will greet our friend, your doubtful double, at
quarantine. They’ll know before they’ve taken a thousand feet of film of
her that she isn’t you. Then even the English will guess where you are.
If the _Corinthian_ could only run out of gasoline, or blow a tire or
crack a cylinder, and let us get in first, all right for us; but if the
_Corinthian_ goes on in ahead of us, you--dear girl--are elected to be
the example to be made to discourage any more of this foreign-legion
stuff in the ranks of the British suffragettes. The home secretary seems
to feel that you are most eminently qualified to serve as a stopper for
more of our sweet girl graduates crossing over and spending their senior
vacations at pillage and arson. Rough of them, undoubtedly; but if the
_Cumberland_ comes in second, it’s forcibly fed from a funnel for the
rest of your natural youth, my dear.”

“Why,” Roberta returned resignedly, “do you repeat the if so many times?
Isn’t the _Cumberland_ now sure to come in second?”

“The _Corinthian’s_ caught up with us now. They’re a little faster than
this ship ordinarily, and at present they’re under emphatic orders to
make as fast a passage as possible. Even if I should give away our hand
by offering to pay our captain for extra coal he’d burn to beat the
_Corinthian_ in, this ship couldn’t do it.”

“Exactly,” Roberta accepted. “So why pretend that I think I’m escaping?
And why say ‘our’ hand? It was entirely your idea that this ship was
sure to get in before the _Corinthian_--not mine.”

Andy fumed helplessly. He idly watched men working on the woodwork
beside the wireless cabin. Before painting, they were sandpapering a
strip, rasping coarse sandpaper, tacked on blocks, over the patch to be
painted. The harsh, grating sound came with a short rasp, then longer,
then shorter. Roberta looked about.

“I thought that was the wireless for a minute,” she said.

“Sounds like it.”

People passed, glancing at them curiously. “I’d better ask you,” Roberta
said, “what are our relations supposed to be since we’ve been on board?
Your communication by note, evidently meant to be enigmatic if it fell
into false hands, was enigmatic.”

“There appeared to be a choice of two explanations only, considering the
way we piled on board at the last minute at once and demanded widely
separated cabins. Either we must be married and part at the gangplank,
or else, according to original scenario, we were eloping, with papa’s
pursuit so close that we hadn’t had time to drop in on the minister. I
choose the latter.”

“With the result?”

Andy confessed: “That yesterday the captain--most romantic of
Scots--blushingly put forward his qualifications as legal wedlocker on
the high seas.”

“Ah!”

“So I told him the seas were too high for you; you’d got seasick and
changed your mind.”

Roberta looked away. “I told you if I stayed in my cabin, it must be on
account of something else--even neuralgia. You know that I never get
seasick; I hate people who get seasick.”

She rose suddenly and walked away. He thought for an instant that she
had used a different tone--not quite the same tone which had surprised
him at Stoketon when she gave herself to his protection, but at least
something like that tone. But, as he watched her walk away, he knew he
must have imagined it. Her air of complete disregard of him had never
piqued him more. He jumped up and caught step with her.

“Kindly do not assume that the _Corinthian_ is certain to beat us in!”

“How are you going to prevent it?” she questioned practically.

He did not tell her, for the sufficient reason that he did not know; but
that it must be done he now was certain; and there was little time to
lose to learn the way to do it. He let her leave him and go within
without protest. He paced round and round the deck.

“Fog’s thinning.” His friend, the relief wireless operator, stopped
beside him at the rail.

Indeed, it was fog no longer; the cessation of the blasts of the siren
overhead admitted it; only mist remained, and it was a swiftly melting
mist which blew with the breeze and vanished under the noon high sun.
The horizon showed sharp, clear, as the pale blue of the sunny sky met
the deep green of the sea in a line all about the circle of sight. One
blotch only broke it--a spot of smoke on the very horizon edge, a spot
which was quite abreast the _Cumberland_, and slowly, very slowly, but
quite surely, was creeping ahead.

The operator went into the wireless station and returned.

“That’s the smoke of the _Corinthian_. She’s brought her good weather
with her; and she’s going right on to put that girl aboard the
_Mauretania_ to take her back to jail in England. Say, do you know, I’d
like to do something for that girl? They’re laying to give her
altogether too much. Looking at it some ways, she’s all right. I got a
sister in the suffrage cause myself.”

Andy looked swiftly about, and sized up the operator more carefully.
“Why didn’t you say so before?” he demanded.

The operator moved nearer and spoke cautiously: “I wasn’t sure till
to-day why it was you was so interested in what was coming in.”

“So you feel sure now, do you?”

“Can’t say that,” the operator said conservatively. “But I’ve got a
noodle, even if everything isn’t as clear as it might be in it just now.
But don’t worry; nobody else is wise, and I ain’t said nothing.”

“On account of your sister?”

The operator looked at Andy’s hands, which were in his pockets.
“Partly,” he said.

“Is it better for you to come to my cabin, or safer for me to go to
yours?” Andy inquired. “Not that I’ve got a proposition yet; but--well,
two heads are better than one.”

The conference below decks, though of no short duration, brought to Andy
little definite encouragement. During all the latter part of the
afternoon, which remained clear and bright though the wind now was
rising, he paced the deck thoughtful, alone. The smoke on the southern
horizon which marked the position of the _Corinthian_ crept steadily
farther ahead.

Above the setting sun spread a flaming and crimson sky; and out from
under it the smoke and then the hull of a steamer appeared. It was
eastbound to England, and between the paths of the _Cumberland_ and
_Corinthian_. Twilight failed over the ocean before it met the
_Cumberland_; its smoke smudge was lost in the blackness of night, its
spars vanished save for a swaying masthead light, and its decks became
lines of electric lights backed by the glow of cabin windows where
passengers were dressing for dinner.

As Andy stood at the rail watching the other vessel pass, Roberta
stopped at his side. “You look quite desperate in your planning for me,”
she rallied. “Tell me, what is the present program, per your
arrangement? Am I to do a dive with you and swim for that boat, and
double back to England?”

The relief wireless operator, halting, excused Andy from reply. “That’s
the _Wellington_--an old hooker, and slow, but still popular. First,
second, and steerage always full. Economical’s the word with her. Every
ship’s supposed to have two men for the wireless, since the _Titanic_;
but they manage most of the time--as this trip--with one. They’d wake up
their man to get help if anything happened to them; but from about ten
p. m. to say five a. m., another ship in trouble would have a great time
calling them.”

Andy gazed long at the ship, the great idea dawning. “Excuse us,” he
said to Roberta. “My friend,” he announced to the operator, “something
tells me that you and I need only go again into executive session to get
immediate results.”

Roberta, watching for him to come into the dining saloon, waited in vain
till the stewards ceased to serve. Likewise, after going to her chair on
deck, she looked for him without result. There now was a good sea
running--nothing to trouble a large ship, but quite enough to send most
of the passengers below. The wind, blowing down from the Arctic Sea, was
quite cold and damp, though the air still was clear. Roberta rose, with
her coat buttoned about her, and tramped the tipping, wind-swept decks.

The salt spray was flying; she felt its sting on her face, tasted it on
her lips. She went to the forward rail and clung to it as the
_Cumberland_ rolled and rose and dipped and rolled again as it bore
steadily into the darkness ahead. It had become so late that the
stewards had turned out all the deck lights except the single yellow
glows over the companionways; and these now were dimmer and failing,
incrusted with salt. And no light or sign of any other ship showed about
all the black horizon. The _Corinthian_ never had been near enough for
her lights to show at night; the _Wellington_ long had been lost in the
purple darkness astern. The skies clouded over; no glint came down from
the stars. The _Cumberland_ rolled on to America alone, only the
wireless--the rasp of which could be heard from the cabin--told where
they were to other ships. Roberta drew in deep breaths of delight at the
desolateness of the ocean, the openness and freedom of the wide water.
Suddenly, with a recollection, she shuddered.

“What is it?” Andy’s voice surprised her. She felt his strong fingers
steadying her arm.

“I don’t want to be taken back to England to jail!” she confessed to him
before she could prevent herself. “I believed I didn’t mind; I thought
it would be part of the fun. But tonight”--she hesitated as to how to
express it--“feel that wind, breathe it! It’s all open, all free! I want
to feel it like that whenever I’d like to. I don’t want to be locked
up!”

“I don’t want you to, either.” His grasp on her tightened. “And you’re
not going to be. No one’s going to take you back to jail in England or
anywhere else. We’re going to be landed without any one troubling us,
just as I planned. Then you can go anywhere you want to.”

“How are we going to get ashore before the _Corinthian_ docks?”

He laughed confidently. “I will get you!”

“But how?” she repeated, with concern.

“Don’t worry. You’ll wake up as far ahead of the _Corinthian_ as I ever
meant you to be.”

“I’m not thinking about myself. What are you planning to do?
Nothing--dangerous, Andy! You know how nearly I hurt people.”

“No, no,” he reassured. “Nothing dangerous; something quite safe,
serene, secure, Bobs. Merely----”

“What?”

“Expensive. That wireless operator is not so completely carried away by
sympathy for you and suffrage for his sister as he seemed.”

“What did you say?”

“I’ll tell you to-morrow. I want to do it first; and it’s getting along
toward time. So you go in now; good night.”

“Good night,” she said. He had commanded; she had not meant to obey; but
now, when she found herself doing it, she did not deter.

“Bobs!” he caught her gently.

“What?”

“A kiss, dear!”

“A kiss?”

He took it before arguing further. “That’s all right,” he justified, as
he took another. “No one’s about, Bobs! You kissed me that second time!”

“I did the first time, too!”

“Like that? Of course; but how could you have expected me to believe
anything more than I was kissing you?”

“Andy!” She was held tight in his arms. “What do you and I mean?”

“I don’t know except that we mean it together.”

“What?”

“To get married, I guess; don’t we?”

“We must.”

The ship’s bell struck fluidly; in a moment there was some sort of
confusion and calling--apparently on account of changing watches--and
men came by. Andy put Roberta reluctantly away.

“You must go in now. No; you can’t help, dear. You might only hinder. Of
course, I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I can.”

She stopped only for one more meeting of their lips, and then, no longer
wondering at her obedience, she disappeared down the nearest
companionway. Andy moved in an ecstasy down the deck; if he had had
doubts before of what he was about to do, they were unfelt in this
incredible delight. He loved little Bobs; she loved him; they could be
married if he carried through what already he had planned. He was
reckless to, oblivious of the confusion on deck except as it threatened
his plans. Then most of the men moving about and running back and forth
from the bridge vanished below; they left the decks almost deserted, and
gave him his opportunity to act. He crept up to the wireless cabin. The
rasp of the current in sending a communication came to him clearly. He
waited tensely till it ceased; then he opened the door and entered the
cabin, swiftly shutting the door behind him and locking it. The relief
wireless operator was alone within, seated before his instruments.

“All right?” Andy demanded of him.

“The _Corinthian’s_ in easy communication, of course--a little ahead of
us, and twenty or thirty miles to the south.”

“She’s also within communication radius of the _Wellington_?”

“Sure; the _Wellington’s_ now about a hundred miles east of us. If we
sent out a call as if it came from the _Wellington_, the _Corinthian_
couldn’t tell whether it came from us or the _Wellington_.”

“Good! And the _Wellington_ wouldn’t know we were impersonating them?
The _Wellington’s_ operator has gone to bed now?”

“He certainly isn’t at his station.”

“Now’s the time, then. Quick, man. The S. O. S.! Send it! We’re the
_Wellington_, in trouble. This ship is now the _Wellington_, a hundred
miles east of us; and you’re sending out the S. O. S. call as the
_Wellington’s_ sinking!”

The operator shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Can’t! Why not?”

“I’ve been thinking it over.”

“Well?”

“We can’t call ‘Wolf!’ on the ocean. The wireless must always bring a
ship to a ship in distress; no captain must doubt it a minute.”

“Once won’t do any harm,” Andy argued recklessly. “We’ll merely put the
_Corinthian_ back a hundred miles, and maybe bring back some other ship
which gets the call. And think of the excitement we’ll give the
passengers on the _Corinthian_ till they find the _Wellington_ isn’t
sinking.”

“Yes; and when they find it out?”

“No one can ever find that you did it,” Andy returned impatiently.
“We’ve gone all over this, man. No one can tell where a wireless message
comes from. The _Corinthian_ will think it comes from the _Wellington_.
The _Wellington_ won’t know we’ve called since the operator’s in bed.
The _Corinthian_ will call her, of course, and when there’s no answer
that makes sure the _Wellington’s_ in trouble. If the _Corinthian_ calls
us to go back to help the _Wellington_, too, we don’t get the call; our
installation’s out of order for a few hours. Nothing could be simpler
than that.”

“Still, it’s too much risk for five hundred.”

“Oh, all right. I expected a raise. A thousand for you, then.”

“No.”

“Two.”

“Not enough.”

“Three.”

“It might be found out here. The S. O. S. call is distinctive. You can
hear the sending outside. If it is, I’m fired, and don’t get another
job.”

“All right; four, then.”

The operator looked at Andy keenly. “How much higher will you go?” he
asked frankly.

“Highbinder!” Andy accused him, and snatched pencil and pad. “S. O. S.
_Wellington_ sinking. S. O. S.,” he scribbled.

“Five thousand for four words; cash down!” He drew money from his
pocket. “Five more if you’re caught and fired. My word for that. That’s
all I had left on my letter of credit when I cashed it at Glasgow; but
you know there’s more where this came from.”

The operator held his hand over his key and listened nervously. “Can
they know about this now?” he asked. There seemed, indeed, to be already
a movement on the bridge as if the officers had heard the scheme or
suspected something. But Andy did not sense this, or was reckless of it.
He pushed his money halfway across the table.

“I pay as you send. Ah, that’s it! S. O. S. That’s the stuff; there’s a
thousand. Is that _Wellington_ you’re spelling? Right; there’s a
thousand more. ‘Sinking.’ Now ‘S. O. S.’ Four thousand and a fifth for
the repeat to clinch it! Sent? Good! Put it away; put it away. They’re
coming now!”

Indeed, the alarm, vague before, had become definite and loud. Men
hammered on the locked door to the right of the wireless cabin and cried
for entrance; and all about the noise of disturbance and haste
increased.

“I told you they could hear it!” the operator gasped. He was bent over
his table, his receivers to his ears, listening to the result of his
message.

“You haven’t done any harm,” Andy steadied him. “And look here! Now
you’ve done it, you’ve got to stand by what you did! You can’t take back
all that!” He pulled the operator away from his instruments as the
beating on the door threatened the panels. “If you want excuse for not
taking it back, just don’t get that fixed for a few hours!” He seized a
stool, and raised it to break some of the connections of the wireless
apparatus. The wireless operator, opposing him in fright, tripped him,
and Andy fell, his full weight crashing the heavy stool into the
condensers and coils before him. The operator pressed down his key as he
bent over the wreck in horror.

There came a yellow splutter, a loud crash of the powerful current, a
blinding blue flash; then the smell of insulation burned, metal fused.
And the door on the right to the deck burst open. Already Andy had
unlocked the door on the other side; he pushed the wireless operator
before him, and himself stumbled out upon the dark and slippery deck,
where the spray from the sea flew in their faces.

The operator disappeared; Andy, left alone, slowly understood that some
general alarm, which could not have been caused by his act in the
wireless station, was spreading through the ship. Passengers, unsteady
and in panic, were appearing on deck; and now the air was not salt with
the smack of the sea; some strange, subtle, sickening scent changed it;
and there came the cry in wild fright:

“Fire! Fire below! The ship’s on fire!”

Men, women, and children, half dressed, or with overcoats over night
robes, rushed out from crowded companionways. Sailors and stewards and
stewardesses attempted to control these; there was no fire, they said;
or it was not serious; it was now being put out. But more passengers in
night robes overwhelmed them. Andy stood, dazed, as they crushed toward
the wireless station and clamored:

“Fire! The ship’s on fire! Call help! Call the _Corinthian_. We’re
burning up!”

The touch of some one, quite calm and controlled, made him look about.
Roberta was beside him, still dressed as she had been; she had not gone
to bed; she had heard the first reports of the fire.

“There was an accident in the stores. Oil got afire and scattered. It
seems to be beyond control. Get people to dress. The stewards and ones
like you and I can bring out their clothes. Of course, we’ve called help
by wireless. The _Corinthian_ can’t be more than thirty miles away.”

“We can’t call it; it can’t come! It’s been called on an S. O. S. call
to the _Wellington_!”

“What’s happened to the _Wellington_?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why is the _Corinthian_ going to it?”

Andy told her.

“They must have our wireless repaired now,” she said, as they moved
forward with the other passengers. “You couldn’t have broken it badly.”

But panic and terror of the passengers increased as they neared the
wireless station. “There is no immediate danger. Everybody dress
warmly!” Stewards and sailors attempted to command.

“What’s the matter with the wireless?” the cries about the cabin
announced the silence of the instruments.

“What ship is coming to us? Why don’t we hear the wireless?”

In response a second officer showed himself at the door of the silent
cabin. “The _Corinthian_ is close to us!” he shouted. “Keep calm. She
must soon come up!”

“When did you get her?” the shouts returned. “What’s the matter with the
wireless? Can’t you call the _Corinthian_? Can’t you call any ship?”

“We’ve called the _Corinthian_; she’s coming now!” the officer lied
loudly; but the people in panic sensed the lie.

“The wireless isn’t working! They haven’t called any ship! They can’t
use it! It’s not working!”

The crazed crowds stumbling from the companionways heard and shouted it
back over the ship. Denial of the danger below no longer was possible;
the flames below were beginning to be felt; smoke seeped through the
whole ship and hovered, a hot, steaming cloud, over the holds where the
stores were blazing. Stewards and some of the men of the first cabin
still moved about, attempting to quiet and reassure; but the seamen, in
the details defined in the orders to abandon ship, were freeing the
lifeboats, putting food and water in them; and officers directed with
revolvers strapped over their uniforms and cartridges in the boxes on
their belts.

The thud of pumps throwing sea water on the flames confused the
vibrations of the screws; still, the shaking of the ship told that the
engines were being forced their fastest.

Yet the sea about the _Cumberland_ remained black and desolate. Rockets
streaked into the sky from the _Cumberland’s_ forecastle, signaling
desperately that the ship was in dire danger, confessing that the
wireless had failed.

“They can’t work the wireless!” Women screamed and swooned in the crush
about the lifeboats. “They’ll put us in boats, and we’ll drift till we
die. There’s no ship called to us!”

Andy, blocking the crush off from Roberta, was borne with her against
the side of the cabins. He smelled fresh paint, and felt the greasiness
of it on his hands. They were where the painters had been working. He
lost Roberta from beside him; she had stooped, and was feeling for
something at their feet. She straightened, and he saw in her hands two
bits of board--the blocks with sandpaper tacked to them which the
painter had used and left there.

“Get me nearer the wireless cabin,” she directed.

Not understanding, but obeying, he worked a way for her. He got past one
of the sailors on guard outside the cabin. An officer appeared; Roberta
spoke to him; he motioned her in curtly, and Andy followed.

The chief operator and the relief man were working feverishly over the
wreck of the wireless apparatus; they stopped and tested their tangle of
connections and coils, looked to each other, and tore out their own
repairs. Outside the rockets again roared into the air; cries of terror
increased. Roberta, crouching inside the wireless cabin out of sight
from the deck, struck her sandpapered blocks together; a harsh, grating
rasp resulted. The second officer half opened the door to the deck so it
could be better heard, and himself seized the blocks.

“Rasp!” the sound grated, like the rough crackle of the current of the
wireless in order. “Ras-sp!” A few of the passengers heard it; they
cried to others, and more made it out.

“The wireless is working! We’re getting help!”

Rockets still shot into the sky; but now, instead of increasing the
panic, these aided to control it. The wireless was working and bringing
ships to help the _Cumberland_; the rockets were rising to show the
_Cumberland’s_ position as the rescue ships raced up.

In the wireless cabin, the second officer handed the blocks to another
and nodded to him to keep them going.

“Some one ran in here half crazy just after the fire broke out, and did
that.” He motioned Andy toward the wrecked apparatus. “A strange thing;
the _Wellington_, a hundred miles east, just then was in trouble, too,
and calling for help. Our man here heard the _Corinthian_ respond, and
say she was starting back. He was going to respond for us, when that was
done, and our own trouble came.”

“Now where are we going?” Andy asked anxiously.

“There was no use in trying to catch the _Corinthian_--she’s faster than
we, and would be going her best on an S. O. S. call. Our only chance of
getting help soon is from the _Elbe_--the German ship ahead. She was
about sixty miles ahead of us, bound for New York. We are assuming that
she also must have got the S. O. S. call from the _Wellington_--though
our man heard only the _Corinthian_ respond. So we’re steering to run
across the _Elbe_ if she’s coming back to the _Wellington_. If she is,
we should see her lights now in half an hour.”

“But if she didn’t get the _Wellington’s_ call, and if she isn’t coming
back?”

The officer set his lips firmly. “Then I guess we can get the women
first into the boats, and keep them adrift until most of them, anyway,
are picked up.” He looked to Roberta thankfully. “Since they think the
wireless is going again, we can handle them more decently.”

Andy stared out over the dark sea. To the south and astern, the
_Corinthian_, which could have been alongside before now, was racing
more than a hundred miles away to pursue a sound ship. He had sent it on
that pursuit. Somewhere out ahead--if the German _Elbe_ also had
happened to hear his false S. O. S. calls and was responding to
them--was the ship which they might meet in time to save the
_Cumberland’s_ company. The rockets constantly exploded in the sky to
attract it. Slowly, with terrible, heart-dragging counting of the
minutes while the fire gained and gained again in spite of all the
floods pumped into the hull, the half-hour passed. Still the
electricians worked over the wireless apparatus; only the rasping of
sandpapered blocks still tricked the passengers that the wireless was
working.

“Time’s up!” the second officer shut his watch. “If we’re going to meet
the _Elbe_, we should see her lights now.”

A cry from the point of the deck forward--light--a streaking flame in
the sky ahead. The German liner _Elbe_ was in sight! It answered the
rockets of the _Cumberland_. The two ships raced on to each other.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The fast German mail steamer, _Elbe_--which every one knows was
responding to an unexplained false call from the _Wellington_--took off
the passengers from the burning _Cumberland_; and, as the crew of the
_Cumberland_ remained to fight the fire, the _Elbe_ stood by till the
_Corinthian_ came back from its useless chase. As the _Corinthian_ was a
British ship of an allied line, it stayed with the _Cumberland_, and
finally brought it into port after the fire had gutted the ship and
burned out. Accordingly, the _Elbe_, with the _Cumberland’s_ passengers,
reached New York on Saturday afternoon, while the _Corinthian_ was still
at sea.

The arrest at New York of Roberta Leigh for her high crimes committed in
England therefore was postponed till the _Corinthian_ docked. But this
arrest was meant to be only postponed. The British government,
thoroughly aroused to the need of decisive and drastic measures for the
suppression of the suffragist outrages, were determined to show no
quarter. The crown officers waited doggedly for the coming of the
_Corinthian_ on Monday.

Wherefore, on Sunday night, Mr. Andrew Farnham called on Miss Roberta
Leigh at the quiet country place of one of her classmates up the Hudson.

“Bobs,” he said, when he was alone with her, “the Britishers are in for
bitter disappointment when the _Corinthian_ gets to quarantine
to-morrow. They’ve been oiling up the thumbscrews in the tower and
sharpening the spikes of the Iron Maiden for you. When they find they
haven’t got you, our recent acts of evasion will be kindergarten games
compared to what may be required to keep you from being extradited. And,
to confess the truth, dear, this having all but slaughtered a shipload
of people has scared me. I don’t know what I’d find myself doing if they
got after you again. So, just to protect me, won’t you marry me now?
Come on; let’s become woman and husband!”

Roberta kissed him and laughed. “You didn’t really hurt any one.
Everybody got off the _Cumberland_, and the _Corinthian_ couldn’t have
put out the fire even if it had come right away. I didn’t hurt anybody
in England; and, as for their precious old property, I told my lawyer
this morning to pay what was right for that.”

“You did that? Why?”

“I didn’t do those things for votes for women I’d never seen. I--I did
them because you made me so mad, and I wanted to show you I didn’t care
a thing about you.”

“Why?”

“Because I did--and thought you didn’t really care for me.”

“But now?”

“I know.”

“Then give me another kiss, Bobs. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you
over the garden gate and you dared me. Why did you do that?”

“Because I knew I was going to love you, I guess, and tried to deny it.”

He held her close a long time, and their kisses no longer could be
counted. “Dear, what a dangerous thing is the mating impulse!”

“Yes; if you try to deny it.”

“Then we’re stopping that right now, aren’t we?”

“Right now!”

Wherefore upon the passenger list of the steamer for Brazil which sailed
from New York next morning appeared the names of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew
Farnham in the royal suite. By wireless, as they sailed out to sea, they
heard of the horror of the British government at finding that the girl
on the _Corinthian_ was not Roberta Leigh, and that the very militant
suffragette again had escaped.

But, in equal sense of outrage, the suffragist leaders in England
received the news that Roberta Leigh had paid for all damage done by her
in the name of the suffrage cause.

“We have long suspected,” the chief starver for the suffrage cause was
quoted in the newspapers, “the sincerity of the suffragist support from
the young women of America. Miss Leigh has proved by this weak
reparation that her acts here were performed without sense of
conviction. It is such as she who seem to justify, to the thoughtless,
the charge that there is nothing new in principle in our attitude toward
men. Her traitorous repairing of damage which we supposed was done in
good faith will certainly cause us to be more certain of the sincerity
and conviction of other recruits in our ranks before intrusting them
with important acts of destruction. The rumored marriage of Miss Leigh
is, under the circumstances, perfectly comprehensible, and only a final
evidence of her defection.”


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 15, 1914 issue
of The Popular Magazine.]





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