THE ATONEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15560, 18 March 1914, Page 11

THE ATONEMENT.

A STORY OP MODERN ADVENTURE. j BY JAMES BLYTH. Author of " A F»»ardous Wooing," etc. COPYKIGHT. CHAPTER XXXV.—(Continued.) •'.Jack! Oh, Jack!" I , heard my darling's voice, and I could have kissed Potin for sheer gratitude. "Thank Cod Yes. Rut, oh, I have been so terrified. I thought that villain would have got me across into Germany." " Is he with you? " I asked. " No. These men were frightened and would not wait for him after he was hit by some bullet from a noiseless gun. But they refused to put me on the ground again !" "Have they insulted you, harmed you?" I cried in a terrible voice, repeating the question in Oerman. " No." she replied. "Is there a light, a searchlight, or a powerful lamp on the dirigible? " I asked. " Yes." said Ruth. " I know there is, I've 6een it." "I onderstand," whispered Potin. "You are tight." I called out in German to the enemy, and bade them light a powerful lamp or searchlight and put themselves in its glare. At-first they protested and began to threaten again. " The bomb falls in five seconds," I cried. "Ruth, can you run away ? " I think 6he understood, for she lied. "Yes." she tried. "Don't mind me." She too spoke m German, and 1 beard the curses of frightened men. " One. two, three," 1 began to count at the top of my voice, and then with a yell a light flared up below, and the wrecked dirigible and about six men showed up black in the powerful illuminant. And, huddled on one side, I saw a bundle of feminine clothing. " Are you tied up, dear'" 1 called out furiously to Ruth. " Yes, at present," was her dry reply. I shouted orders that she was to be set free at once, and that the enemy were to pile arms on the marsh and give their parole to surrender themselves as prisoners on our descent. "And, Ruth," I called out, "keep an eye on them as they pile aims and if you think they are keeping any weapon back give me a call. In the meantime, draw away from them in case 1 have to let the bomb fall."

I could see the excited gestures of the frustrated enemy and hear their hoarse ejaculations. But they dared not interfere with Ruth, and they were afraid of that bomb with an infinite terror. "Alles ist—it is all done!" shouted a red-bearded rascal, whose hairy face rhowed up in the brilliant light. I held my Mauser in one hand and my Web ley and Scott in the other, while I laid the rifle ready for Potin as soon as he should be able to give up his control of the aeroplane. Then, with a volplane, we slid to the marsh within fifty yards of the dirigible. I leapt to the ground and started to run to my darling. "Take care," cried lotin, "zey may not keep ze faith." But there was no attack on me when I ranged up beside Ruth, and caught her m my arms- Sullen and furious the enemy stood together; but, to do them justice, there wad no attempt to break their parole. I think they realised that the game was up and that their best chance was to rely upon our mercy. As I gathered up their weapons I was startled by hearing a rocket behind me. I looked.towards Reedham and saw the fires of a red, white, and blue rocket dissolving in th© darkness. And it had been sent up from the neighbourhood of the House of the Three Skippers. hat could it portend I heard our prisoners whispering among themselves and laughing as though well pleased, despite their wrecked airship and their capture. And again I wondered if the chief would betray his country at command of his backer/in spite of his last words to me. I did not believe it. What were we to do' The prisoners were useless to us. The main thing was to get Ruth back into safety. I called to Potiii and asked him if he could take her with him in the Buzzard back to the marsh farm.

'Id rather go to the House of the Three Skippers, Jack," said Ruth. " I am wanted there. 1 know it. And June will be there."

I thought of Rose, and of the bitterness which was probably in old granny's heart towards the woman who was the successful rival of her beloved great-grand-daughter. Perhaps it was as well that she should go to the House of the Three Skippers now. The chief had told me that that night would see the end of the crisis. It must be over by now. She would find old June and would await my coming. "Very well," I said. "Take her home, Eugene. I'll vry and get there before noon to-morrow, or rather to-day." Ruth flung herself in my arms, and for a moment or two we gave ourselves up to the ecstacy of renewed confidence that our love would win to happiness. Then I went with her and saw her safely seated in the Buzzard. Potin started the engine and the aeroplane shot up. and headed for Reedham.

I turned to the prisoners. "I have no further use for you," I said. "You are at liberty to go where you will. But I will keep these mementos of our acquaintance." I pointed to my pockets, bulging with Mausers.

As I have said, these Germans kept to their word scrupulously. They might have attacked me, and taken their revenge if they had been less honourable. But they grunted a word or two of thanks for their liberty. I left them, standing there bv the wreck of their airship, and what happened to them or how or with her they dispersed, 1 have never learnt. I made the best of my way on to what is still called "The New Road" from Yarmouth to Acle, and stepped briskly along towards the town. I meant to go to Southdown Station and catch the first train from there to St. Olave's. Scoundrel as he was, I could not bear the thought that Stafford might be lying wounded and in agony on the marshland between Belton and the river. If he were dead —well, I should not suffer many qualms of conscience. But I did not like the thought of him lying in anguish conscious of his pain and waiting tor a lonely death.

Ah I crossed South town Bridge I heard a sound of foaming water. I looked up towards Breydon, and, as I live, I saw the Otter coming hissing down the river. As soon us she had passed under the bridge she sank to the lens of her periscope. I followed that little dot of a mark as far a* the light permitted. She was bound out to sea. To do what? I never saw, never heard of her again. CHAPTER XXXVI. COD BLESS HEE. There is little more to tell. So far as my own part in the drama is concerned it practically ended when I had placed Ruth safely alongside Eugene Potin in the Buzzard. But there is still the more important secret to disclose, the secret of that midnight mission which sent the Otter out into the North Sea on a voyage from which she was never to return. On my arrival at the Prettymans' marsh farm I found that Stafford had managed to make himself heard by Tom, and brbeen picked up with a shattered leg from the place where he fell from the dirigible. He was furious with the Germans for deserting him, and had revealed many things to the Prettymans which might have been useful if they had been intelligible to the honest marsh folk, which thev were not, and if thev had been in time to be of any practical value, which also they were not. All my heart was now at the House of the Three Skippers. I did not feel comfortable at the marsh house. Rose was ill, I heard from granny, and the old woman was unjust enough to look at mc with disfavour on that account. J knew that it would not be long before, she saw the unfairness of this. But, at the time, the marsh farm was no pleasant abiding place for

me. There was now nothing to keep me from the House of the Three Skippers. I left directions that Stafford was to be handed over to the men I would send for him, unless he summoned friends of his own, and took an affectionate and hearty farewell of the male members of the Prettyman household. Then I started to walk to the Berney Arms Ferry, so that I might catch a train for Reedham. I had hardly got to the wall, however, when I saw my own cutter, the Dabchick, coming over Burgh Flats, and I guessed that Ruth had sent her for me. She was aboard. Ruth herself was j aboard, and as soon as I was alone with her in the little cabin, with Sam Durrant at the tiller, she threw herself into my arms and burst out weeping. " Read it. oh! read it. Jack!" she cried, holding out a letter to me. It was from her brother, from the chief. In it he wrote that his backer had ordered him to take half a dozen of his, the backer's, nominees aboard the Otter on the previous evening, and to go out with them in search of the German fleet which was convoying transports. The Otter was to torpedo any British warship she encountered, and to act as a vedette, or pilot, scout, or leader, of the German vessels, seeing that they had passed in safe from the mines of Harwich. A rendezvous was given 30 miles out from Aldeburgh, and there the Germans would await her. " I shall take the six nominees aboard," wrote the skipper; " but as prisoners. As soon as they enter the precincts of the brotherhood they will be seized, and bound. Fred and Bob and the best of my men are willing to go with me to our deaths, for there is no chance that we shall ever reach laud again. I shall sink all the German ships I can, and when I am discovered and destroyed, as I am bound to be, I shall take the six nominees with me, together with the gallant watermen who are willing to die for the safety of their beloved country. I have dismissed the other hands and all the women except June. No tell-tale can injure me now. .My last prayer is that you may be rescued by Jack Haakon. I know you love him, Ruth dear; look forward' to many years of happiness for you both, years which I shall not see. Tell Haakon that I liked him from the first, and that if it had not been for Stafford the infamy of the Breydon murders would never have happened. I have no doubt now that Stafford meant to kill me by striking me with the Buzzard's propeller, so that he could have made a bid for the. captaincy and secured you. I cannot write more. I have no time. But I can save England from the peril that menaces her. There will be no German ship to reach Harwich or any other point of our coast. Perhaps this last work of mine, this sacrifice of my beloved Otter, may atone for my sins against the laws of the land. At all events the saccharine smuggling does not lie very heavily upon my conscience. But I loathe myself when I see that I have been used as a dupe from the first by that villain Solano. From the first he meant to have a submarine in British waters at the service of Germany. Thank God. dear Ruth, that I have been able to foil him. I regret most of all that I must take Fred and Bob with me. Without them I could not get clear out to sea. But the gallant fellows understand everything, and are willing to follow me to death. I can hear Fred singing now, something about ' Boney was a warrior.' I shall fire a rocket from the rond just as we go out. It will be our farewell to England and to life. Dear Ruth, it would do no good to write more. Haakon will understand me now. My great regret is that I must go to mv death uncertain if you are rescued from that villain or not. Good-bye, dear Ruth. Good-bye." I held my darling in my arms. There are many people now who have heard how the little Otter brought confusion to the naval force that was expecting her as an ally, how she torpedoed three of the most powerful German battleships, and was at last only destroyed by a torpedo fired at hazard by a cruiser. At least, that is her supposed end. No one really knows what was her fate, beyond the certainty that she and her crew disappeared for ever.

(( I pressed Ruth to me, and T said aloud, " God rest the soul of a gallant gentleman. God forgive me the suspicions I once entertained." And my darling clung to me, and found comfort in my arms. My friends who come to see me at the Hall now will know my wife, and will know Potin, who is experimenting daily on the Buzzard and on a new aeroplane of his own invention. Old June is here, too, and has instilled such a wholesome dread in my housekeeper that she is allowed to do as she likes. She has insisted on the destruction of the two bags of magic. She says that such things are not meant for ordinary life, that she only gave them to us because she foresaw that we were about to undergo extraordinary experiences. Often now, although it is but a year or so ago, I wonder if I really did send a message to Potin, if he really did communicate with me, at a distance of three or four miles, or if the whole thing was sheer hypnotism or imagination. Then Ruth reminds me that the magic brought the Buzzaid and her pilot to my aid, and by it I was enabled to rescue her. Well, well, in the twentieth century it all seems ridiculous. Yet sometimes by night, on the edge of the great lonely marsh, as I sit and hear the voices of the Unseen whispering in the darkness, I feel that the twentieth century can explain the mysteries of women such as June no better than the sixteenth. June is still wonderfully active for her years. But she says_ she is called, and that she will be " lavin' on us in a yare or tew." () She chuckles as she says it, and adds. "But doan't ye be tew sartain as you'll' ha' seed the larse o' me! Yew ax old Granny Prattyman! She know what June can dew!"

We are content to take the old woman's word without conferring with Granny Prettyman. For Ruth and I live in such happiness as I never dreamed of. It is true that as yet we are newly-married people. But I feel confident, and Ruth says the same, that years will only bind us closer together, that the things we went through upon the marsh and in the precincts of the brotherhood have soldered our loves so that thev will never come unsealed.

I do not know if Raymond Pettingiil purposely destroyed the openings to the Roman chamber, the great hall of headquarters, or if a landslip occurred accidentally. But on Ruth's return to the House of the Three Skippers she found Mm way blocked at both ends. The boathouse, timber-yard, and nangar are now desolate. The backer, Solano did not care to put in any claim. Neither Ruth nor I wish to be associated further with the place where we first met, for the joyful recollection of our meeting is overshadowed bv the knowledge of the traffic carried on by the brotherhood and saddened by the knowledge of the tragic end. Rex Stafford was removed from the Prettyman holding by some friends of bis own. I neither know nor care if he recovered from his injury. T often see Spider "Jinnis, often meet the male Prettymans, and chat with them But I steer clear of the farmhouse. Rose had her good points, but I cannot forgive her for betraying Ruth. Indeed, I think more hardly of the girl than when I was with her. Granny knows and resents this, so that I am better away from the farmhouse.

Millbank refused to send in an account when he heard about the end of the Otter. A useful sort of detective to employ !

At the staithe, at the bottom of the grassy rise from the river to the Hall lies the Dabchick. My wife and I often sail upon he,-, although Ruth says that she will have other interests, maternal ones, which will soon prevent her from spending so much time on the river. I love the little cutter. It was through her that I first met the skipper, through her that I first met Ruth. And that I met Ruth and won her I reckon the greatest good of my life. God bless her! [the end.]

[Publication will be commenced in our columns on Saturday next of another new and interesting serial. The story is entitled " A SPLENDID SILENCE," by Alice Maud Meadows. Instalments will appear on Saturdays and Wednesdays.]