more especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. cartoner awaited orders in london, for all the world was dimly aware of something stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look for the unexpected.

it was a cold winter that year, and the baltic closed early. captain cable chartered the minnie in the coasting trade, and after christmas he put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards rotherhithe. his ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened with the brothers of liberty those negotiations which came to such a sudden and untoward end.

paul deulin wrote one piteous letter to cartoner, full of abuse of the cold and wet weather. “if the winter would only set in,” he said, “and dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks almost to the st. petersburg station, on the praga side, life would perhaps be more endurable.”

then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and cartoner wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the bukatys and perhaps a mention of wanda's name. but his letters never reached warsaw, or if they travelled to the banks of the vistula they were absorbed into that playful post-office where little goes in and less comes out.

there were others besides cartoner who were wintering in london who likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.

“history is assuredly at a stand-still,” said an old traveller one evening at the club, as he paused at cartoner's table. “the world must be quiet indeed with you here in london, all the winter, eating your head off.”

“i am waiting,” replied cartoner.

“what for?”

“i do not know,” he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.

later on he returned to his rooms in pall mall. he was a great reader, and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries in a dozen different languages. he was surrounded by newspapers, in a deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. it came in the form of captain cable in his shore-going clothes. the little sailor was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor household without surprise or comment.

cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment, which was refused. captain cable knew that as you progress upward in the social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates, while to decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.

“we've always dealt square by each other, you and i,” said the captain, when he had lighted his cigar. then he fell into a reminiscent humor, and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.

“if it hadn't been for you, them dons would have had me up against the wall and shot me, sure as fate,” he said, bringing his hand down on his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. “that was ten years ago last november, when the minnie had been out of the builder's yard a matter of six months.”

“yes,” said cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind. it seemed that the building of the minnie was not the epoch upon which he reckoned his periods.

“she's in morrison's dry-dock now,” said the captain, who in a certain way was like a young mother. for him all the topics were but a number of by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. “you should go down and see her, mr. cartoner. it's a big dock. you can walk right round her in the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely.”

cartoner said he would. they even arranged a date on which to carry out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the minnie's new boiler. then captain cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan was never carried out after all.

“yes,” he said, “you've a reckoning against me, mr. cartoner. i have never done you a good turn that i know of, and you saved my life, i believe, that time—you and that frenchman who talks so quick, moonseer deulin—that time, over yonder.”

and he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one who never loses his bearings. for there are some people who always know which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their left hand from their right; and others, again, who say—or shout—that all men are created equal.

“i've been done, mr. cartoner—that is what i've come to tell you. me that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. done, hoodwinked, tricked—same as a sunday-school teacher. and i can do you a good turn by telling you about it; and i can do the other man a bad turn, which is what i want to do. besides, it's dirty work. me, that has always kept my hands——”

he looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.

“you'll say that for me, mr. cartoner—you that has known me ten years and more.”

“yes, i'll say that for you,” answered cartoner, with a laugh.

“they did me!” cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand down on the table, “with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said he was a government official from the arsenal come for his government stuff. and it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government official. it was——”

captain cable paused and looked carefully round the room. he even looked up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.

“bombs!” he concluded—“bombs!”

then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be set down here.

“you know me and you know the minnie, mr. cartoner!” continued the angry sailor. “she was specialty built with large hatches for machinery, and—well, guns. she was built to carry explosives, and there's not a man in london will insure her. well, we got into the way of carrying war material. it was only natural, being built for it. but you'll bear me out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean stuff up to now—plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the other. always honest—revolutions and the like, and an open fight. but bombs——”

and here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no place on a polite page.

“there's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them,” he concluded. “that is what i have got to tell you.”

“how do you know?” asked cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.

the captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the other.

“know the johannis bulwark, in hamburg?”

cartoner nodded.

“know the seemannshaus there?”

“yes. the house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the docks.”

“that's the place,” said captain cable. “well, one night i was up there, on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all day waiting to be taken on. got into hamburg short-handed. i was picking up a crew. not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. well, i had my reasons. you can pick up good men in hamburg if you go about it the right way. a man comes up to me. remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a voyage when we had machinery from the tyne that was too big for us, and we couldn't get the hatches on. we sailed after nightfall, i recollect, with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning. he remembered it, he said. and he asked me if it was true that i was goin'—well, to the port i was bound for. and i said it was god's truth. then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf. transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. and the bill of lading gone a missing in the post. a long story, all lies, as i ought to have known at the time. he had a man with him—forwarding agent, he called him. this chap couldn't speak english, but he spoke german, and the other man translated as we went along. i couldn't rightly see the other man's face. little, dark man—with a queer, soft voice, like a woman wheedlin'! too d—d innocent, and i ought to have known it. don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, mr. cartoner. got a match?”

for the captain's cigar had gone out. but he felt quite at home, as he always did—this unvarnished gentleman from the sea—and asked for what he wanted.

“well, to make a long yarn short, i took the cases. two of them, size of an orange-box. we were full, so i had them in the state-room alongside of the locker where i lie down and get a bit of sleep when i feel i want it. and they paid me well. it was government stuff, the soft-spoken man said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed. we went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases broke adrift and got smashed. i mended it myself, and had to open it. then i saw that it was explosives. lie number one! it was packed in wadding so as to save a jar. it was too small for shells. besides, no government sends loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. at the moment i did not think much about it. it was heavy weather, and i had a new crew. there were other things to think about. and, i tell you, when i got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came aboard and took the stuff away.”

cartoner's attention was aroused now. there was something in this story, after all. there might be everything in it when the captain told what had brought these past events back to his recollection.

“i'm not going to tell you the port of discharge,” said captain cable, “because in doing that i should run foul of other people who acted square by me, and i'll act square by them. i'll tell you one thing, though, i sighted the scaw light on that voyage. you can have that bit of information—you, that's half a sailor. you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

and he glanced at cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.

“'safternoon,” he continued, “i went to see some people about a little job for the minnie. she'll be out of dock in a fortnight. you will not forget to come down and see her?”

“i should like to see her,” said cartoner. “go on with your story.”

“well, this afternoon i went to see some parties that had a charter to offer me. foreigners—every man jack of them. spoke in german, out of politeness to me. the lord knows what they would have spoken if i hadn't been there. it was bad enough as it was. but it wasn't the lingo that got me; it was the voice. 'where have i heard that voice?' thinks i. and then i remembered. it was at the seemannshaus, at hamburg, one dark night. 'you're a pretty government official,' i says to myself, sitting quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. i wouldn't have taken the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which i have never forgotten, and yet never thought to hear again. but while the parley voo was still going on, up jumps a man—the only man i knew there—name beginning with a k—don't quite remember it. at any rate, up he jumps, and says that that room was no place for me nor yet for him. dare say you know the man, if i could remember his name. sort of thin, dark man, with a way of carrying his head—quarter-deck fashion—as if he was a king or a hooghly pilot. well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had been insulted. but blessed if i knew what it was all about. 'who's that man!' i asks when we were in the street. and the other chap turns and makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a hanging matter. 'that's who that is,' he says.”

cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the soft pile of the table-cloth. captain cable looked at it critically, and after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes for eternity were exceedingly small.

“you are too much for me,” he said, after a pause. “you that deal in politics and the like.”

“and the other man's name is kosmaroff,” said cartoner.

“that's it—a russian,” answered captain cable, rising, and looking at the clock. his movements were energetic and very quick for his years. he carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the outward signs of man and nature.

“it beats me,” he said. “but i've told you all i can—all, perhaps, that you want to hear. for it seems that you are putting two and two together already. i think i've done right. at any rate, i'll stand by it. it makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the minnie's hatches.”

“it makes me uneasy, too,” said cartoner. “wait a minute till i put on another coat. i am going out. we may as well go down together.”

he came back a moment later, having changed his coat. he was attaching the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.

“going to a swarree?” asked cable, as between men of the world.

“i am going to look for a man i want to see to-night, and i think i shall find him, as you say, at a soiree,” answered cartoner, gravely.

out in the street he paused for a moment. a cab was already waiting, having dashed up from the club stand.

“by-the-way,” he said, “i shall not be able to come down and see the minnie this time. i shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow morning.”

“going foreign?” asked the captain.

“yes, i am going abroad again,” answered cartoner, and there was a sudden ring of exultation in his voice. for this was after all, a man of action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit still.