Part 64

"That saves me, for it is my last." With the word Cadogan threw the empty cigar-case on the table.

Meade picked up the case, a gun-metal one, with Cadogan's monogram in thin, flat silver letters on the side. "You throw that down, Cadogan, as if you wanted to give it away."

"Did it look that way?" Cadogan took it from Meade's extended hand. "I've carried that a good many years." He stood up as he finished speaking, to reach for some matches from the next table. After lighting up he remained standing.

"Clear, settled weather, and a smooth sea." He was gazing reflectively through the weather air-port as he spoke.

"Cadogan"--Meade was speaking--"give us some more of your adventures."

Cadogan drew out his watch, also of gun-metal. "And I've carried that a good many years, too." He spoke as if to himself. He looked at the face. "No, it's too late, Mr. Meade. It's too late to begin now."

"It's never too late. Just think, in your short life you have lived more volumes than I have written. You know more, ten times more, about real life than I do, and I'm sixty. I wonder"--he fanned the smoke from him--"would you mind dying after all you've been through?"

Cadogan was still standing. He set his left foot on the seat of his chair, his left elbow on his knee, and his chin in the heel of his left hand. By extending two long, supple left fingers he could hold his cigar while he blew rings of smoke toward the air-port. He blew them now--once, twice, three times. "I don't know any healthy men who are eager to die, do you?" he said, half smiling, presently.

"Meaning you don't want to go yourself?"

"Just that. And yet, if I had to go, any time now, I don't see where I could have any kick coming. Somewhere, sometime, it had to come. And yet I was wondering, only to-night, queerly enough--" Between the first two fingers and thumb of his right hand he was somersaulting the gun-metal cigar-case against the table-top. Tap--tap--tap--one end, then the other--tap--tap--tap--it went.

While Cadogan paused Meade was making mental notes of him. How wide and powerful the shoulders loomed, how trim the waist, the grace of the long white fingers, the smooth curves of the strong face, all brown below the eyes and all white above! "What a fight you could put up!" thought Meade. "And what a pity if anything should happen to you before you should have had your chance!"

Cadogan ceased somersaulting the cigar-case. "Wouldn't it be queer, now, I was thinking--here I've drawn lots with Death a hundred times--a few more or less--and then to think of him coming along and grabbing a fellow off the deck of an ocean liner!"

"That would be a joke," commented Meade.

"Wouldn't it?" Cadogan carefully knocked his cigar-ashes onto the tray. His eyes and Crupp's met.

With his eyes now focussed on the ash-tray, Cadogan continued: "If I have left anybody worrying, or guessing, I can tell him where there is a collapsible life-boat which will be safe in smooth water."

"There are women still aboard," said Crupp.

"Eh, what's that?" Meade sat straight up.

"Yes"--Cadogan's response was directed to Crupp--"there are many women aboard. But when that life-boat is launched, there is going to be a grand fight to see who will get on it. A half-dozen armed men could hold it for themselves, but not for anybody else--women or men. What do you say, Major? Would you be for that kind of a fight in the event of her sinking?"

Crupp shook his head firmly. "I'd better shoot myself--or any other army or navy officer--than be saved where a ship-load of women went down."

"What do you say, Mr. Vogel?"

Vogel smiled uneasily. "You gentlemen of the sword and pen, how you do try our nerve at times! But in my circle neither do men honor the craven. With many women still aboard, would I get into a boat and leave the ship? Why, no."

"Do you mean, Cadogan"--all was silence when Meade spoke up--"do you mean there is a possibility that this ship will founder?"

Cadogan nodded--twice--slowly.

"But for God's sake, when?"

"See"--he pointed to the deck at their feet--"the slant. Her bow is settling now."

No one spoke, and only Meade moved, and he to interlock his fingers and, pressing his hands together, to rest them on the edge of the table, and lower, for a moment, his head.

Only Cadogan seemed to remember that Lavis was on the transom seat. During all the time that he was speaking and acting, Cadogan knew that Lavis had never ceased to study him.

Cadogan addressed him directly. "The raft?" asked Cadogan. Lavis shook his head indifferently.