It was a trait in Simon Brant's warped temperament to rejoice in the infliction of pain, mental and physical. His brutal answer was designed to create a distress that he could gloat over. But it missed its mark.

Violet received it, outwardly at least, with cold disdain.

"Thank you," she said, betraying no emotion save by a little catch in her breath. "I think that I am now fully informed on all necessary points; and I shall be obliged if you will leave me. One moment, please.

Is this the apartment I am to occupy? Where is the sleeping accommodation?"

Brant, who had hoped for the luxury of seeing a woman in tears, had begun to open the door, but at her bidding he turned, and the chagrin in his horrible face changed to a grudging admiration which made it infinitely more horrible. The pose of the superb figure, the disgusted scorn in the coolly appraising eyes, the level tones of the musical voice, all reduced him to a temporary servility that would have been unbearingly nauseous to a weaker character, capable of a personal interest in the vile instrument of her persecution. But Violet Maynard, having grasped the main facts, was able to regard Captain Simon Brant from an entirely detached point of view.

"I will send the stewardess to you, miss," he said quite humbly. "She has been selected on purpose to be of service to you during the voyage, and if you have any cause of complaint do not fail to let me know."

He was gone at last, and if the devil ever gets his tail between his legs his disciple followed his master's example in the going. But Brant's subdued mood only lasted till he had shut the saloon door. He went storming up on to the bridge, and vented some of his spleen on Cheeseman for being half a point off his course. "We must keep out of the regular steamer tracks," he growled in conclusion. "There's nothing at sea fast enough to catch us, but the less we're sighted the better for us afterwards."

"That wench that we shipped at Weymouth has been worrying to know when we shall be off Plymouth," said the mate.

"Oh, has she?" sneered Brant. "Go and tell her to attend the lady in the saloon, and if she asks again you can box her ears."

In the meanwhile Violet had sunk down on to one of the couches in the saloon. Though she had thoroughly taken in the meaning of all that Brant had said to her, it was too soon to feel the full force of the blow that had fallen. So stunning had been the shock that she would have to recover from the shock before she would be able to contemplate the prospect ahead in a proper sense of proportion. For the present her thoughts were chiefly busy with her lover, and with the news of him that had enabled her to confound Brant with such stoical calm.

For the fact stood out above all others that Leslie was as much a dupe as she was herself in the train of circ.u.mstances that had ended in their being fellow-captives on the steamer. His desperate effort to obtain control of the launch proved that. He had risked his life to prevent her coming on board, instead of, as she had been falsely led to believe, leaving the unmanly message which had lured her into the trap. Brant had referred to him as a turncoat, but her heart kept telling her that if he had ever been a.s.sociated in the conspiracy he had been hoodwinked into it--just as, later, Nugent had hoodwinked him into acting as the unconscious decoy for her final undoing.

Suddenly her reverie was interrupted by the opening and shutting of the saloon door. Looking up, she saw a tall girl in rusty black advancing towards her, her plain and somewhat bold face showing traces of recent storm.

"You are my female gaoler?" said Violet, rising. On such a ship engaged on such an errand she had not expected a congenial attendant, but the dogged firmness in this young woman's square jaw seemed to foreshadow that present harsh treatment would be added to the terrors of the future. Violet knew enough of human nature to be aware that the same att.i.tude which would quell the loose tongue of a man like Brant would only goad a bully of her own s.e.x to grosser indignities.

The reply which she received came, therefore, as a welcome surprise.

"No, madam, I am not your gaoler, but I will be your friend if you will let me be," said Miss Jimpson, her clenched lips relaxing into a rea.s.suring smile that changed her into a kindly woman with all the magic of a transformation scene. "I was trapped on to this villainous ship only this morning--same as you were to-night. I'm just as keen to get off it as you can be."

CHAPTER XXV

THE LAST CHANCE FAILS

The daughter of the millionaire and the draper's a.s.sistant stood eyeing each other for twenty seconds in growing mutual approval, and then the hearty ring of Miss Nettle Jimpson's rather powerful voice prevailed.

Their hands met in a grasp that at once testified to true comradeship and to sympathy for the other's plight. Violet would have drawn the other down on to the couch beside her, but Miss Jimpson, with a glance at the door, resisted the friendly invitation.

"Better not," she said in her matter-of-fact way. "One of those beasts might take it into his head to come in at any minute, and it won't do for them to think that we're going to be thick together. I've just given one of them a smack in the face that will last him quite a while, but it wasn't exactly judicious. They know I'm not fond of them, but my cue isn't open rebellion till I'm driven to it."

So Miss Jimpson remained standing while at Violet's request she recounted the story of her enforced enlistment, and of all that had happened on the _Cobra_ since. She waxed humorous at her own expense over the inducement held out by Brant to pacify her--that she was to act as companion to a lady pa.s.senger; and she described her subsequent surmise that she was to a.s.sist at an elopement. Again she went on to relate how Leslie Chermside had shattered that latest theory, first in words and secondly by wild dismay on hearing Violet's voice in the launch alongside.

"I knew then that he might be your sweetheart, but that he certainly wasn't on board the _Cobra_ to run away with you," said Nettle simply.

"He was like a crazy creature in his wish to stop you from coming aboard. He expected to be killed in the attempt, and he begged me to stand by you if he failed to get the better of the men in the launch."

Violet's eyes were moist with unshed tears. "You have been frank with me, and I will be frank with you," she said. "Mr. Chermside is my lover, and the people who are employing Brant in this cruel business induced him by a series of lying tricks to fly on the steamer from a charge of murder. They hoped, as has happened, that I should follow to dissuade him."

"The charge is trumped up, of course?" said Nettle, and it was rather an a.s.sertion than a question.

"He might have some difficulty in disproving it, the train was laid with such fiendish ingenuity," answered Violet gravely.

"That is rough luck. Then if he escaped from the ship to land he would be arrested and have to stand his trial?" And there was that in Miss Jimpson's voice that suggested that she was weighing chances with some definite idea at the back of her active brain.

"I am afraid so, but his arrest would be infinitely preferable to the fate destined for him if he does not escape," replied Violet. There was a little eager note of inquiry in her voice, for she had been quick to grasp the hesitation in her new friend's tone.

But, ignoring the challenge, Miss Jimpson refused to be drawn at present. "Tell me," she said--"that is if you care to--why Brant has been bribed to do this dirty work, and where the ship is bound for."

Wisely abstaining from forcing her ally's hand, Violet disclosed in such halting sentences as her pride would permit the object of the cunning intrigue that had centred round her. Nettle Jimpson's fearless eyes grew rounder and rounder as she listened to the crop of mischief sown by the Maharajah of Sindkhote 5,000 miles away to ripen in a quiet English village. And not being the direct object of the villainous outrage, she appreciated more fully than Violet was yet able to the ghastly tragedy looming ahead at the end of the _Cobra's_ voyage.

"There's one chance," she said when the story of the Eastern Prince's pa.s.sion, aided by a western rascal's guile, came to an end. "Only a little one, but still a chance. On condition that I didn't play the giddy goat over being kidnapped Brant promised to put into Plymouth on the way down channel, so that I could send a letter ash.o.r.e for my young man. He's a petty officer on the destroyer _Snipe_."

"The _Snipe_!" repeated Violet. The name struck her at once as familiar, and a moment later she remembered why. It had been ever on the impertinent lips of Enid Mallory as that of the diminutive warship commanded by her own particular naval hero, Reggie Beauchamp.

"Yes," said Nettle, "the _Snipe_ is attached to the torpedo flotilla there. If I could communicate your position to Ned he'd tell his commander, and something would surely be done to stop this steamer before she reaches her destination. It's a far cry to India, and the authorities would set the cables to work. It would go hard with us if the _Cobra_ wasn't snapped up by a man-of-war somewhere betwixt this and there."

Violet shook her head. "That promise was made to be broken," she smiled sadly. "I fear Brant would never incur such a risk as that."

"If he doesn't this is going to be a hot ship," rejoined Nettle with spirit. "But you are very likely right," she added after a pause. "When I asked the mate Cheeseman when we should be off Plymouth he tried to box my ears--by the captain's orders, he said. That was why I smacked his face."

Suddenly Violet rose and began pacing the saloon. "Oh, but I have been selfishly thinking of myself!" she cried. "I heard that brute say that Leslie--Mr. Chermside--was only stunned and that he was coming to, but for all that he may be badly injured and in pain. Can you find out for me, you dear kind girl? Not if it will entail insult or ill-treatment for you, though."

"I'll chance that," replied Nettle firmly. "They carried him down on to the lower deck somewhere, and I'll go and see. But I am forgetting my duties. I was to show you your sleeping cabin. It's next door to this."

Violet waved her away. "As if I could sleep," she protested with a petulance which she instantly regretted.

Nettle, with a large-hearted tolerance for her companion's over-wrought condition, nodded and went out on to the upper deck. The steamer was gliding through the calm water at half-speed, having reached the fishing grounds of the Brixham trawlers off Berry Head. The st.u.r.dy little craft were cl.u.s.tered thick as ants on either beam. It was necessary to thread a cautious track through them if an untimely collision was not to furnish a clue to Violet's disappearance as soon as it was discovered in the morning. Nugent's "sealed orders" had been explicit on this head, and Simon Brant was not the man to risk punishment and the loss of his huge reward for lack of attention to detail.

"The inference at Ottermouth when Miss Maynard is missed will be that she has voluntarily accompanied Chermside on his flight," these instructions run. "On the whole it will serve our purpose as well as another, but it is imperative that the direction of this flight be unknown. I have Mr. Maynard's confidence, and I shall do my best to foster the idea that Chermside, whom he will of course regard as a free agent, will be likely to make for America, blinding pursuit by taking an eastern course up channel, and then a northerly one round the Scottish coast into the Atlantic. In reality you will run down channel to the westward, and in doing so you must therefore avoid undue speed or anything that may draw attention to your vessel as the one in which the 'elopement' has been carried out."

Nettle Jimpson, knowing nothing about the reason, was nevertheless annoyed at the slow speed, because it would delay the "one chance" at Plymouth to which she had pinned her faith. But realizing that the delay was beyond her control, she devoted herself to the matter in hand.

Casting an upward glance at the bridge, where the quartermaster at the wheel and several other figures were dimly visible against the starlit sky, she skulked along in the shadows of the deck superstructure till she came to the companion stairs leading down to the main deck. It was but a short distance from the door of the saloon and she met no one, though both from the stern and the forecastle gruff whisperings told her that it was a wakeful ship. Stealing down the stairs, she reached the main deck unmolested, and looked about her. Evidently it was here that the officers and the engineers were berthed. Open cabin doors yielded glimpses of oilskin coats and tarpaulin hats, while a well-scrubbed table in the centre of the open s.p.a.ce was spread with the remains of a meal that had been partaken of by half a dozen people.

But of the prisoner, or of any closed door behind which he could be confined, there was no sign. She continued to explore, and at the forward end of the deck found an open hatchway with a flight of almost perpendicular wooden steps running down into the pitch darkness of the lower deck. Undaunted by the steepness of the ladder and the absence of light, she descended into the abyss, where the smell of paint and cordage told her that she was near the ship's storeroom. Realizing at once that down here her eyes were useless for the quest, she raised her voice and called----

"Where are you, Mr. Chermside?"

Nothing but silence followed, and emboldened by the fact that none of the _Cobra's_ ruffian crew seemed to be on the lower deck, she called louder still, and this time she got an answer--an inarticulate utterance, half-sigh and half-groan, from out of the inky blackness.

Picking her way towards it, her groping hands encountered the blank s.p.a.ce of an open door.

"Mr. Chermside, are you in there?" she asked, excitement rather than fear of being overheard causing her to drop her voice to a whisper.

Again that curious sound but no informing reply, and Nettle crept into the cabin. She had penetrated but a few feet when she stumbled over something, and, stooping down, she felt a soft substance which her sense of touch informed her was the body of a man. The next instant she gave vent to a cry of horror when her searching hands came into contact with a steel chain which her busy fingers quickly traced to a metal circlet grasping a man's leg.

"Mr. Chermside!" she scarcely breathed. "Give me water," came the faint response from the unseen.

Nettle Jimpson's presence of mind, which had never really left her, rea.s.serted itself in full force. "Shan't be a moment," she said, and whisking out of the cabin, retraced her steps as best she could to the ladder, climbed to the main-deck, and seized a jug of water from the table where the ship's officers had supped. She looked around for a portable lamp or candle, but this deck, like the rest of the vessel, was electrically lit, and she had abandoned the hope of providing herself with a light, when she espied a box of wax matches among a heap of tobacco ashes on a plate.

A minute later she was down on the lower deck again, holding the jug to Leslie's parched lips, and by the tiny flare of one of the matches examining the dungeon which Brant's malevolent spite had devised for his prisoner. Leslie was lying on a plank bench, securely chained from the ankles to an iron ring firmly set in the stanchion over his head. His face was covered with blood, and he was white with the loss of it, though he revived fast when he had drained the water. By the time Nettle had lit her third match she had a.s.sured herself that his injuries were not dangerous, though she was equally convinced that to release him from his cruel durance was beyond her powers.