Reachingthe camp under the palms we found a "state of affairs," as Conetta phrased it. The small fire had been kindled—not for any needed warmth, to be sure, but solely for the heartening effect of it, I imagined—and the women were huddled about it in various attitudes of more or less hysterical suspense, for which there was undeniably sufficient excuse, heaven knows.
There were sobs and gaspings of relief when we came in with our original number undiminished; and I let the others answer the inevitable outburst of eager and anxious questions and drew Conetta out of the fire circle to tell her briefly what had transpired, and what we had failed to do.
"And those horrid men are actually on the island with us now—at this very moment?" she breathed, the slate-blue eyes dilating. "What are they here for? What are they doing?"
"They have come to get the boat-load that we captured; the six that Goff brought ashore," I evaded, still trying to keep Bonteck's foolish secret intact.
"Then they will go away again?"
"That is one comfort; and very soon, I should say."
"But I don't understand. If they are not goingto take us in theAndromeda, why have they come back to the island?"
I hated to go on prevaricating to her, but until Bonteck should give me leave, I was not at liberty to tell her the whole truth.
"Suppose we give them the credit of being at least partly human," I suggested. "Possibly they couldn't find it in their hearts to let us stay here and famish slowly. You mustn't forget that they've promised to leave us the long-boat and some eatables."
I could see well enough that she wasn't satisfied with that answer. She was far too clear-headed to take any such niggardly part for the whole.
"You're not making it very plausible," she said. "How far is it to where we're going in the long-boat?"
"Oh, it's quite some little distance," I replied, as easily as I could. "But with the sea as calm as it is now——"
"It may not stay calm," she broke in; and then: "You say Captain Elijah was with you. Where is he now?"
"He—er—he had to let himself be taken again, you know. The pirates insisted upon that. They have no real navigator in their outfit. That is probably the reason why they didn't put him ashore with us in the beginning."
"Then Bonteck was right? Captain Elijah wasn't one of them?"
"No, indeed. I'm frank to say I did him an injustice. He was overpowered and made a prisoner, along with Haskell and Quinby and the other Americans."
"But why did that first six that you had the fight with bring the captain ashore with them?"
Again I had to evade. "Goff didn't tell us that."
She was silent for a moment. Then I got it hot and heavy.
"Dick Preble, do you mean to stand there with a face like a Hindoo idol and tell me that six of you made a bargain with that wretched French cook to give old Uncle Elijah up?"
"It was Goff's own proposal," I hastened to say, "and he insisted upon it—wouldn't have it any other way. Let us hope that he knew what he was doing—that he has some plan that may turn out better for us than a voyage in the long-boat." Then I switched forcibly, endeavoring to drag the talk away from the vicinity of Bonteck's secret. Thus far it had been kept hidden through all the various vicissitudes, and I didn't intend to be the first to betray it. "Goff's play was heroic, and all that, but not a bit more so than Jerry Dupuyster's swim out to the yacht. I'm taking back all the insulting things I've been saying about that young man, Conetta, dear. In spite of the frills and the idleness and the English apings, he is a man, a grown man, and altogether worthy of a good woman's love and respect. Now I've said it and I feel better."
She looked up quickly, with that pert little cocking of her head that I had always loved.
"Worthy ofmylove and respect, do you mean?"
I bowed. "Yes; that is what I mean."
"And you want me to marry him?" It was a dreadful thing for her to ask at such a time and in such a place, with the others almost withinarm's-reach. But they were all talking at once, and nobody was paying much attention to anybody else.
"You are promised," I reminded her; "and if you can forgive him for chasing around after another woman——"
"Hush!" she commanded, with a sudden retreat into the arms of discreetness. "They will hear you and say things about you—behind your back. What are we to do now—just lie down and go calmly to sleep, forgetting all about these horrid pirates at the other end of our island? I can't quite see us doing that. Can you?"
It was just here that Bonteck cut in, saving me the necessity of answering.
"When you are quite through making Dick jump the hurdles for you," he said to Conetta; and then he explained. We were not to take the mutineers wholly at their word regarding the implied promise not to molest us. The six of us who had been on the firing front were to do picket duty while the others tried to get a little sleep. The professor and Billy were to take the north beach, Jerry Dupuyster and Grey the south, and Bonteck and I were to vibrate between the two beaches, keeping in touch with the shoreward couples on either hand, thus maintaining a guard line all across the island.
It was not until after this rather elaborate picketing plan had been put in train, and Van Dyck and I were cautiously feeling our way toward the agreed-upon frontier half-way down the island, that I ventured to find fault.
"I don't know why you should make six of us unhappy when one or two would be enough," Icomplained. "You know well enough that our fat cook is asking nothing but to be let alone until he can make off with the loot. He's not going to trouble us any more."
His reply was a cryptic generality.
"I am hoping we are not entirely through with the fat cook, yet, Dick; in fact, I'm almost certain we're not."
"What's gnawing at you now?" I asked sourly.
"Just a suggestion," he answered half-absently, I thought. "We have something at our end of the island that is much more valuable—and desirable—than anything the pirates will find where they are digging now."
The way in which he said it, as much as the thing itself, made my blood run cold.
"The women, you mean?"
"It's only a suggestion," he hastened to say; "a suggestion based upon a name. Let's forget it, if we can."
We had groped our way for another hundred yards before I said: "It's a beautiful muddle! They won't findyourgold—the whereabouts of which seems to be a lot more mythical than any of the old Spanish sea tales—and theywillfind the tidy little fortune we turned up for Madeleine."
"Of course; they'll be sure to find that," he agreed, still speaking half-absently.
"You talk as if you didn't care," I snapped. "Is Madeleine's dilemma any less sharp pointed now than it was when you cooked up this romantic scheme of yours for helping her?"
"You shouldn't hit a man when he's down, Dick," he replied soberly. "You know how I was planning to play the god-in-the-car to thislittle bunch of people, and what a chaotic, heart-breaking mess I've made of it. With all sorts of horrors staring us in the face, you can't blame me if I go batty now and then. You'd do it yourself if you were staggering under my load. I'm to blame for all this, Dick; I, and nobody else."
It doesn't do any particular good to rub salt into a wound—even a foolish wound. So I contented myself with asking a sort of routine question:
"Does Madeleine know how she is being robbed?"
"She does. I was obliged to tell her that much."
"How did she take it?"
"Like the angel that she is, Dick. She says the gold doesn't belong to her, any more than it does to anybody else who might dig it up; and that, anyway, it doesn't matter when there are so many more important things at stake."
"She is quite right about that," I agreed. "With a chancy voyage in an open boat ahead of us——"
"We'll never make that voyage, Dick," he said solemnly. "I think you know that as well as I do."
"Why won't we?"
"Because we are never going to be given the chance. You are not confiding enough to believe that this fat devil is going to keep his promise, to us, are you?"
"But, good heavens—you're keeping our promise to him, aren't you?" I burst out.
"To the letter—exactly and precisely to the letter," was his calm reply. "You heard what the Frenchman asked, and what I agreed to. He made three conditions; we were to go back to our camp; he was to be permitted to land in peace; and Goff was to be given up. We have kept faithin all three particulars. But he isn't meaning to keep faith with us at all."
"You mean that he won't leave us the boat?" I gasped.
"Not on your life. Goff told me we couldn't put the slightest dependence in anything he might say; and if I had been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt over Goff's warning, his own boasting would have turned the scale against him. Did you remark what he said, just as he was leaving?—about Santa Cruz and the liberator?"
I don't know why the fat man's boast hadn't made the proper impression upon me when he shrilled it out at us, or why I had failed to recall the name he had given as that of a Nicaraguan bandit whose cruelty and rapacity had long been a byword in the Central American republics. There must have been a blind spot in my memory at the moment, for the name and ill fame of Gustave the Fat were known even in distant Venezuela.
"That fiend!" I choked. And then: "You never shipped Gustave Le Gros in New York as cook on theAndromeda!"
"Oh, no. We shipped the real Bassinette, doubtless. Where and how the change was made—unless our repair stop at Gracias á Dios gave them their chance—I don't know."
"Wait a minute," said I. "Isn't it occurring to you now that the Gracias á Dios stop might have been prearranged? Haskell couldn't account for that propeller shaft running dry, and neither could I, after I had examined it. It had every appearance of having been tampered with; sand or some other abrasive put into it. If such a thingwere done, and timed so that we'd have to put in at Gracias——"
"Sure!" he replied. "And the gold—my gold—was probably the main-spring of the whole plot. The secret of it must have leaked out some way in New York, and it was handed on to this bandit bunch; with Lequat to trail us, first to Havana, and afterwards to New Orleans. But that's all ancient history now. Our original job is still before us, and that is not to let them get away with the yacht and leave us as we were."
We had reached the appointed picket line, and short detours to right and left put us in touch with Dupuyster and Grey on the south beach and Sanford and Billy Grisdale on the north. Grey had scouted ahead a little way, and he told us that the long-boat and the disabled electric launch were lying at the beach at the place which had been our late battle-ground, with two men guarding them. And Grisdale and the professor had a similar report to make concerning the mutineers' vigilance. Billy had also made a forward reconnaissance, and he had seen two sentries pacing back and forth on the sands in the little indentation which we had named "Spaniards' Bay."
Van Dyck made no comment until after we had gone back to our mid-island post in the wood. Then he said abruptly: "How long do you think it will take them to dig up those gold bars and carry them down to the boat, Dick?"
"Why, I don't know; with the number of men they've probably got on the job it oughtn't to take more than half an hour or so," I returned.
"Thirty minutes; it's short—frightfully short," he said, as if he were thinking aloud. Then;"It's this suspense that takes the heart out of a man."
It seemed a little odd that he should lament the shortness of the time in one breath, and in the next give the impression that he wished it were shorter.
"What difference does their speed or slowness make to us?" I asked.
"It is just a chance—just the rawest of all chances," he went on, ignoring my query. "I suppose I ought not to have let it hang upon such a weak thread; but there was no choice—no choice at all."
"If you would describe the thread I might be able to come a little nearer guessing what you are talking about," I retorted.
"Goff has a plan of some sort, but he couldn't take the time to go into details. As I've told you, he warned me that no dependence whatever could be placed upon the Frenchman's promise to leave the long-boat and the provisions. He advised me to accept the terms as they stood, and to make a show of keeping our part of them—as we have. Past that, we were to get in touch again, holding ourselves in readiness for whatever might happen."
"And you don't know what is going to happen?"
"No more than you do. You know how secretive Goff is, and, as I say, our time was short. I can't, for the life of me, see what Goff can possibly do to help out. I don't need to tell you the real reason why Le Gros insisted upon our surrendering him. He is the one man besides myself who knows, or is supposed to know, where my gold bars are buried, and Le Gros meant to make him point out the spot—has probably done so beforethis time. What Goff hoped to gain by putting himself into their hands, I don't know, but we may be sure that he has some scheme in his clever old head. He told me to watch the beaches, both of them, and to be ready to bunch our fighting half-dozen at any point, and at any minute."
"Well, we're here and we're ready," I said, and the words were scarcely out of my mouth before Grey came over from the southern beach, groping his way blindly in the thicker darkness of the palm shadows.
"Van Dyck—Preble!" he called cautiously, and then he stumbled fairly into our arms. "Something doing," he told us hurriedly. "One of the boats—the smaller one—is adrift and moving down this way. It doesn't seem to have anybody in it."
"But I thought you said a few minutes ago that there were two men guarding the boats," I struck in.
"There were, but they've gone somewhere. Jerry and I supposed they were sitting down in the tree shadows where we couldn't see them, but I guess they must have gone up into the woods with the others. If they were still on the beach they wouldn't let that launch drift away without trying to catch it."
"That drifting boat is probably our cue," said Bonteck, instantly alert. Then to me: "Hurry over to the other shore and get Sanford and Billy, Dick—quick! Strike straight across the island with them, and work your way along the south beach until you find us!"
I established contact with the professor and Billy without any difficulty and transmitted Van Dyck's order. Billy wanted to know what goodthe disabled electric launch would do us, even if it should drift ashore at some point where we could capture it, but I couldn't tell him that.
"That's a future," I said. "Our job just now is to obey orders. Come on."
Together the three of us plunged into the wood on a direct line across the island, and in a very few minutes we found Van Dyck, Grey and Jerry Dupuyster crouching in the shadows of the tree fringe on the south shore. Far up the white line of the beach we could see the dark bulk of the long-boat at rest, and in the nearer distance was the electric launch, still drifting down the lagoon toward us.
"What's your guess, Dick?" said Van Dyck, as we came up. "There isn't a particle of current in that lagoon—you know there isn't."
There wasn't, as we had proved many times, and yet the drifting boat was moving steadily in our direction. It was Billy Grisdale's eyes—the youngest pair of the half-dozen—that solved the mystery.
"There's somebody in the boat—paddling," he declared. "Look steadily and you'll see his arm reaching over the side. He's lying down or kneeling so that you can't see anything but the arm."
In a short time we could all see the propelling arm making its rhythmic swing over the side of the boat, and while we looked, the man in the boat sat up and went at his task in more vigorous fashion, beaching the boat presently in a small cove within a stone's throw of our crouching place.
"It's Goff," said Van Dyck, when the paddlerstepped out of the launch, and we made a rush for him.
The old skipper had little enough to say for himself, save that he had improved a chance to slip away from the mutineers in the darkness, and had stolen the launch with the idea of getting it into our hands. Questioned by Grey as to how he had been able to get away with the boat without giving the alarm, the sailing-master gave such an evasive reply that I was set to wondering if he hadn't slain the two boat guards out of hand. But as to that, he was too full of his plan for our rescue to go into the particulars of his own adventure.
Briefly, the plan he had evolved turned upon his success in securing one of the boats. For obvious reasons he had picked upon the launch, which the mutineers had towed ashore—probably because there were men left on theAndromedawhom they were afraid to trust and they wished to keep in their own hands all means of communication between the yacht and the island.
"Couldn't start the long-boat without that pop-engine makin' a racket that'd wake the dead," he explained; "and, besides, she's up on the sand till it'll take half a dozen men to shove her off. And the way they're out o' their heads, I cal'lated they wouldn't miss the launch—not first off, anyways."
"I suppose they've all gone crazy digging for the Spanish gold," Bonteck said, meaning, as I made sure, to give the captain a lead upon which he was at liberty to enlarge in the hearing of the rest of us.
"'Crazy' ain't a big enough word f'r it. You'dthink the whole kit and b'ilin' of 'em was just out of a 'sylum. That's how it comes they hain't missed me yet. But we'll have to talk sort o' middlin' fast, I guess. When they do miss me, I shouldn't wonder a mite if there'd be blood on the moon. Now you've got a boat, what you goin' to do, Mr. Van Dyck?"
With a boat, even a disabled one, in our hands we were once more upon a fighting basis. Goff had quickly confirmed Bonteck's assumption that Le Gros hadn't the smallest idea of keeping his word to us about the turning over of the long-boat, so we were justified in declaring war again if we chose. Bonteck's first proposal was to load our fighting squad into the launch, in which we could paddle our way through the nearest reef gap and around to theAndromeda, on the chance of taking the yacht by a surprise attack with Haskell and his engine-room and stoke-hold contingent to help us if we could contrive to liberate them.
To this expedient Goff raised a very pertinent objection, which was immediately sustained by all. While we should be fighting to gain possession of the yacht, the women would be left practically undefended on the island—hostages whom Le Gros would immediately seize, and for the restoring of whom—not to mention any worse thing that he might do—he could exact any price he might ask us to pay.
"No, that won't do," said Goff, when we were brought up standing by the insurmountable objection; "lemme get in with my notion. There's three oars in the launch, and a piece of another. By crowdin' the folks up a mite, you can get 'em all in at one load. S'pose you do it, and paddleround outside o' the reef and board the yacht, the whole kit and caboodle of ye. There won't be much fightin' to do. That pirate's got most of his bullies ashore with him. That's why he towed the launch—didn't want to leave it behind f'r the shaky ones to get hold of."
Van Dyck drew a long breath.
"That will do, if we're given time. But we shan't have time, Captain 'Lige. Long before we can paddle this dead weight of a tender down to the other end of the island, get our people aboard, and paddle back to the yacht with a load that will put us fairly down to the gunwales, it will be too late. The yacht will be gone."
"Meanin' that these scamps'll get through with their job and beat you to it?" said the old Gloucesterman. "I been figgerin' that it's my job to see that they don't. While you're doin' your little do, I'll tack back to that place up in the woods and see if I can't keep 'em busy at the diggin' f'r a while longer. If you folks can make your turn and get things quieted down on the'Meda, all you got to do then is to slip that anchor cable quick as you can and put to sea. You're a navigator, Mr. Van Dyck, and you can take her anywhere that I could."
"And leave you behind in the hands of these scoundrels who would burn you at the stake in revenge?" Bonteck exclaimed; a protest that was echoed instantly by every man of us. But the brave old skipper wouldn't listen.
"There has come a time more 'n once afore this when it was a ch'ice between one life and a-many," he said, in his clipped New Englanddrawl. "You folks go ahead and do your part, and I'll do mine."
And before we could stop him he was gone.
Beingthus committed by Goff's capture of the electric launch to what promised to be the most chanceful of all the hazards of that strenuous night, we lost no time in setting about it. With all the good will in the world, the old skipper might not be able to do much for us in the way of delaying the return of the mutineers to theAndromeda, and it said itself that our one slender hope of success lay in capturing the yacht while it was, in a certain measure, undefended.
Luckily, the launch's painter was long enough to serve as a tow line, and with five of us towing, and Billy Grisdale steering against the shoreward drag with an oar, we soon had the launch out of the danger zone. Once fairly out of sight of the long-boat and the beach of peril, we ran like flying fugitives, as jealous of the flitting moments as a miser of his gold. To save the utmost number of these precious moments, Van Dyck and Jerry Dupuyster dropped out of the towing rank after we were well down toward the western end of the island and cut across through the wood to arouse the camp, leaving four of us to take the launch around to the point at which the embarkation could be most quickly made.
Having but a comparatively short distance togo after Van Dyck and Jerry left us, we arrived first at the agreed rendezvous, and I went aboard the launch to try to determine how we were going to handle and propel it with eighteen people crowded into its narrow limits. As Goff had said, there were three good oars, and the broken halves of another; but rowing from the thwarts, with the jammed lading we should have, was clearly out of the question. And the alternative—two or three of us standing up to use the oars as paddles—seemed to be quite as clearly impracticable. If the launch would suffice to float eighteen of us, trimming it as carefully as we could and sitting as tight as the shipwrecked sailors in the old song, we could hardly ask more of it.
"Small room for so many of us, Mr. Preble—is that what is troubling you?" asked the professor, standing by while Grey and Billy Grisdale ran up to the camp in the glade to hasten the laggards.
"Little space, and still less tonnage," I said. "I'm doubtful if she will float all of us at once."
"Those useless storage batteries," he pointed out; "they are quite heavy, aren't they? Can't we lighten the boat by taking them out?"
It was a good thought, and I set about acting upon it. But the batteries were built in snugly, and without a wrecking tool of some sort they could not be dislodged. There was a locker under the stern sheets, and rummaging in this for tools, I came upon a leather-cased object which proved to be far more serviceable than any wrecking crow-bar. It was an electric flashlight, and a touch of the switch showed that its batteries were alive and in working order.
"Let's have a look at this driving mechanismbefore we jettison it," I said; and the professor held the light while I looked to see what Van Dyck's disabling rifle shot had done to the motor.
To my great joy I found that the bullet had not short-circuited the motor, as we supposed; it had merely smashed the switch of the controlling rheostat. Working rapidly while Sanford held the flashlight, I was able to make a temporary repair that would enable us to utilize the motor, and I was giving the propeller shaft a few trial turns when Van Dyck and Jerry, and Grey and Billy came down to the beach with the hastily gathered ship's company; sixteen of them and the bull pup—for which latter Billy had been shrewd enough to make Edie Van Tromp sponsor and special pleader.
As I had feared we should be, the eighteen of us and the dog were a frightful overload for the small launch, this though Van Dyck had made the fugitives leave every ounce of dead-weight behind in the camp. In addition, there was honest terror to make the hurried embarkation almost a panic. We had no assurance that the mutineer-pirates would take our quiescence for granted; we knew they wouldn't if the loss of the launch should be discovered. Every instant I was half expecting to see the fat bandit and his mongrel crew burst out of the shadowy wood to charge down upon us. In which event, there would be a bloody massacre; it could hardly be less.
Fortunately, the attack did not materialize. In feverish haste we packed the small boat, with beseechings to all and sundry to sit close and sit tight, and even Ingerson, roused only a few minutes earlier from his brutish sleep, helped as he could,planting himself stolidly at the launch's gunwale and lending a hand like a man ashamed. When we were ready to put to sea, and I had shoved off and climbed in cautiously over the stern of the heavily laden boat, it became quickly apparent that the rehabilitation of the motor was the only thing that made the venture even tentatively possible. With the crowding there would have been no slightest chance of using the oars in any manner whatsoever.
I am quite sure that the memory of that perilous boat voyage across the lagoon, out through the nearest break in the reef and along the seaward edge of the barrier coral to the point at which we had our first sight of theAndromedalying a bulking gray shadow in the light of a gibbous moon which was just rising, will stand out clear-cut for every soul of our little ship's company long after all other pictures have grown dim.
Happily for us, the sea was as quiet as an inland lake; the open water hardly less than that of the sheltered lagoon. In passing through the gap in the reef the launch shipped a few bucketfuls, and for the moment I thought we must founder—as we should have if any one of us had stirred or grown panicky. But upon giving the silent little motor a bit more current we weathered the passage, and out beyond, where the gentle swell lifted and subsided evenly, we rode dry again.
It was after we had passed the miniature surf line and were creeping eastward at the best speed I dared give the launch that I whispered to Bonteck, who was crouching with me over the motor controls.
"How much have you told the others?" I asked.
"Nothing more than that we were going aboardthe yacht, and that there might be an attempt made to drive us off."
"You could scarcely have said less. Is Goff still holding the treasure hunters, do you think?"
"Something is holding them. We'd be hearing from them if there wasn't."
"If we're lucky enough to reach the yacht without being seen and fired upon, how are we going to get aboard—with this crowd?"
"The accommodation ladder is down."
"I know. But it's on the starboard side—toward the shore. We can't rush it, not if there is any sort of defense—with the moon rising."
"Don't throw chocks under the wheels!" he bit out. "It isn't a thing to be speculated upon; it's a thing to be done!"
Somehow, I felt better after he said that. This was the old Bonteck—the Bonteck I knew best—coming to the front again, with the indomitable spirit that had once made him a leader who never knew when he was beaten—or rather a leader who refused to be beaten. Like all the rest of us, he, too, had suffered his sea-change and was the better and bigger man for it.
Why we were not seen from the deck of the yacht long before we could come within striking distance was a circumstance for which we could not at the moment account. As I have said, the night was crystal clear; clearer, if possible, than at that earlier hour when theAndromedahad come creeping up out of the east. Besides, the shrunken moon was now something more than a hand's-breadth above the horizon, and while its light was pale, it was enough to cast long shadows of the motionless vessel far out toward us. Yet therewas no stir on the yacht's decks, and no alarm raised as our deeply laden boat stole along the outer edge of the coral reef, giving the rocks only so much margin as would serve to keep the low gunwales out of the back wash of the slight swell breaking over the barrier.
As we drew nearer, with the motor running as silently as a murmur of bat's wings, we saw the reason for our temporary immunity from discovery. The treasure diggers were returning to the island beach with their spoil, or rather they were coming and going in a double procession, like an endless chain of roustabouts loading a Mississippi River steamboat, and, quite naturally, all eyes on board the yacht would be turned in that direction. A fire had been kindled on the beach to give light for the loading of the gold bars into the long-boat, and its red glow made boat and men and the backgrounding jungle stand out with sharp distinctness. Conetta, squeezed in next to Van Dyck, leaned over to whisper: "Are we back in the days of the old buccaneers? Have we been only dreaming that we were living in the twentieth century?"
"What you are seeing is no dream," said Bonteck. "It's the real thing, and you'll probably never look upon its like again." Then to me: "A little more speed if she'll take it, Dick. They are rushing that boat-loading business, and what we do will have to be done swiftly or we'll be too late."
I gave the boat's motor another notch of the electric throttle, and the bat's-wing murmur increased to a low humming. As if drawn by invisible hands the laden launch approached the yacht's bow on the seaward side. The need forhaste was pricking me as sharply as it was Van Dyck, but prudent care came first. As matters stood, we were as helpless as a packed pleasure boat. One armed man at the yacht's rail could have held us off, encumbered as we were. Until we could have room in which to spread out a bit we were like a lot of shackled prisoners. So, when the yacht's bulk came between us and the fire-lighted scene on the beach, I switched the power off and let the launch drift by slow inchings until Dupuyster, crouching in the bow, was fending with his hands to keep us from bumping against the side of theAndromeda.
So far so good. We had made contact, as the modern militarists say, but what the next move should be, I couldn't imagine. Above, and overhanging us, since our point of contact was under the flaring out-sheer of the yacht's bow, stretched the smooth white wall of theAndromeda'sbody plating, with the bulwarks and rail far beyond the reach of the tallest of us. True, the accommodation ladder had been let down on the starboard side, and was probably still down; but with the moon rising, and the light of the beach fire playing full upon that side of the yacht, it would be simply inviting defeat to try for that.
Fortunately for us, we had an inspired leader, and he knew exactly what he meant to do. Amidships on our side of the yacht the davit falls by which the long-boat had been lowered were still hanging as they had been left when the boat was put overside. Van Dyck passed a whispered word to Dupuyster to hand the launch along toward these hanging tackles, and I held my breath. Quite possibly six of us—counting Ingerson as oneof the half-dozen—were young enough and agile enough to climb the tackles one at a time, but I couldn't see the barest chance of carrying out any such manoeuver as that with the overloaded launch for a take-off.
"What's the notion?" I asked Van Dyck. "We can't board by way of those boat tackles. We shall swamp the launch, as sure as fate!"
"Wait," he whispered back. "You've forgotten the coaling port."
His reminder was entirely justified. But if I had remembered the two square openings, one on either side of the ship, through which the bunkers were filled, I should have dismissed their possibilities at once. The rawest landsman in our company would know that these openings would be closed from the inside—closed and gasketed and bolted to make them water-tight.
"But how——" I began; but Van Dyck interrupted quickly. We were nearing the hanging tackles and he whispered his commands hurriedly. "Here is the port," he said, pointing out the joint lines of the coal opening. "Hand the launch back to it after I'm gone." And, as the boat falls came within reach: "Catch the tackle and steady her, and be ready to trim ship when I take my weight out."
Mechanically I grasped the ropes as we drifted up to them, and with the cat-like agility of a practiced sailor, Van Dyck lifted himself gently out of our cockleshell and went up the dangling tackle to disappear silently over the yacht's rail. His purpose was evident enough now. He was going to try to get below and open the fuel port for us.
Passing the word along to Dupuyster to handthe launch back to the coaling port, I helped as I could with the blade of the broken oar. Motionless presently under the outline of the square opening, we entered upon a period of breathless suspense. Being on the seaward side of things, we could not see how the long-boat loading was progressing, but every moment I was expecting to hear the pop-pop of the gasoline motor which would tell us that the gold robbers were putting off for the yacht.
We could easily visualize the obstacles Bonteck would have to overcome in trying to reach the other side of the bunker port. He must make his way undiscovered to the engine-room hatch—which might or might not be guarded—get into communication with the imprisoned engineers and firemen and direct them to open the port for us. Past that, it was entirely within the possibilities that certain tons of coal might have to be moved before the port could be opened—an undertaking which would devour still more time, and which could hardly be carried out without giving the alarm to whatever ship's guard the fat pirate had left on board.
Knowing all this, we waited in nerve-racking trepidation, hardly daring to breathe. Once, while we hugged the side of the yacht and held the launch immovable, there were footsteps on the deck above us. Hearing the faint click of a pistol, I knew that Grey or Dupuyster or Billy Grisdale was preparing for the worst, and I was in an agony of apprehension lest one of them should fire before this last-resort measure became actually necessary. But the footsteps died away, and nothing happened.
All through this most trying wait, during whichwe could hear plainly the noises on shore, the shouts and cries, the crackling of the fire, and the men plunging through the bushes and dumping their burdens into the long-boat, the fortitude of the women huddled in our frail craft was heroic. There was never a whisper or a murmur, that I could hear. Only once, Conetta, whose place in the launch, now that Bonteck was gone, was next to mine, reached over and put a cold little hand in mine.
It was Jerry Dupuyster who gave us the first word of encouragement. At the risk of losing his balance and going overboard he had laid an ear against theAndromeda'sside plating. "They're working on it," was the whispered word that came back to us in the breathless suspense; and a little later the coaling port began to open by cautious inchings to show us a widening breach in the yacht's side.
It may easily say itself that there were thrillings and breath-catchings a-many to go with that desperate midnight unloading of the crowded launch through the bunker opening in theAndromeda'sside. The coal port was fully man-head high above the water line, and we had no anchorage save our finger holds upon the edge of the opening. How we managed it I hardly know. The women had to be lifted and passed up one by one, and I remember that it took two of us, Ingerson and myself, to get Mrs. Van Tromp hoisted up to the rescuing hands thrust out of the opening. I don't suppose she weighed much above two hundred pounds—no great weight for two able-bodied men to handle—but our insecure footing easily added another two hundred to the effort. While welabored, the increasing shore clamor told us that our time was growing critically short, and in the fiercer spurt of haste that ensued we came within an ace of swamping our frail foothold.
"Quick!" said Bonteck, leaning far out to give me a hand when I was the last man left in the launch. But I had another thing in mind.
"Elijah Goff has set a good example and I'm going to follow it," I whispered hurriedly. "There is a chance that I can get this pushboat back to the beach before the Frenchman finds out that it is gone. If I succeed, you can take him unawares when he comes off to the yacht and have the advantage of a complete surprise. I'll be with you when the clock strikes—if I don't get killed too soon." And I shoved off before he could reach down and grab me, as he tried to do.
With the silent electric drive turning at its slowest speed, I edged the launch seaward, and after a little distance was gained, gave the propeller its full power. In our many patrollings of the beach I had marked an opening through the barrier reef at the extreme eastern end of the island, and through this passage I presently drove the launch, heading it down the lagoon toward the pirates' landing place.
Hugging the shore, I made the approach as cautiously as might be. Everything favored the undertaking. The bonfire had been built a few yards down-beach from the long-boat, and its blaze served to make objects less easily discernible in the wan moonlight outside of the ruddy zone of firelight. The treasure diggers were carrying the last of the precious cargo down from the wood, and Le Gros himself was directing its loading withmany gesticulations and a babblement of shrill oaths. Slowly the launch drifted up to the stern of the long-boat and I crawled forward and made the painter fast. The thing was done.
It was done none too soon. There was barely time for me to flatten myself in the bow of the launch before the mutineers began to crowd into the bigger boat. I had only time to make sure that Goff was not among them before the popping engine set up its clamor, and the fat chief flung himself down beside the tiller, so near that I could have reached up and touched him.
"Shove off, then,mes braves!" he yelled; and in some confusion we got away and headed for the yacht, the long-boat towing the presumably empty electric launch.
Taking it as a matter of course that Van Dyck and the others, with the help of Haskell and the liberated prisoners, had by this time gained possession of theAndromeda, I had an exceedingly bad half-minute when, as the long-boat lost way at the foot of the accommodation ladder, Le Gros got up, stumbled forward, and climbed the ladder to the yacht's deck, unopposed, and, taking his place at the rail, began to screech out his orders to the boat's crew. What had happened during my brief absence? Had somebody discovered the presence of our boarding party and clapped the hatch down upon it before Van Dyck could lead it out of the bunker hold? It looked very much that way.
Meanwhile, my own situation had suddenly become embarrassing, not to say perilous. I had confidently expected to see the fat villain surrounded and overpowered the moment he set foot on theyacht's deck. Since nothing of the kind had taken place, I knew it could be only a few minutes at the farthest before I should be discovered and either summarily knocked on the head or thrown to the sharks—or both. Yet there was nothing to be done, or if there were, it didn't occur to me, though, as the dullest imagination would prefigure, I was trying mighty hard to make it occur.
While I crouched and cowered in the bottom of the launch, endeavoring to make myself look as much as possible like a heap of cast-off clothes, the unloading of the gold bars was begun, with the fat fiend leaning over the yacht's rail to shrill curses at his men. This time there was no roustabout procession.Sacré-ing and swearing like a man possessed, Le Gros got his crew strung out in a long line leading from the accommodation grating up the ladder and forward to some point on the yacht's fore-deck, and along this line the gold ingots were passed from hand to hand. Judging from the internal thunderings that began when the mounting stream of heavy chunks of metal got fairly in motion, I gathered that the fore-hold was to be made to serve as the pirates' strong-room. And still our attacking party, if we had one, made no move.
I was sweating like a patient in the hot room of a Turkish bath when the last of the apparently interminable string of gold bars went up the ladder and the fat bandit gave the order which proved his calculated perfidy, and, incidentally, let me know that my time was come.
"Br-ring dose boat to ze davit and 'oist dem aboard!" he commanded; and then, as if this final order had been the signal for which it had beenwaiting, pandemonium broke loose on theAndromeda'sfore-deck. A confused clamor of shots, yells, curses and bludgeon blows rose upon the midnight air, and, hasten as I might and did, the battle was as good as fought and won before I could clamber over the long-boat and dart up the ladder and hurl myself into it.
Upon reaching the deck I saw that I might have spared myself a large share of the anxieties if I had had a little more confidence in Van Dyck's gift of leadership. Like a good general he had been merely waiting for the propitious moment. He had posted his force, which included, besides the engineers and firemen, a good handful of the Provincetown Portuguese who had yielded only to force of numbers when the mutineers took the yacht, at various points of advantage, and choosing the instant when, with its job completed, the long-boat's crew was hurrying forward to man the hand winch and get the anchor up, the yacht's searchlight was turned on and the rush was made. When I got in, theAndromeda'sfore-deck was—well, not exactly a shambles, perhaps, but something resembling a bull-ring after the banderilleros and picadores and chulos have been tossed hither and yon and butted and horned into cowering submission, with Van Dyck just tackling the fat chief in a whirlwind grapple that brought assailed and assailant to the deck with a crash that was like the fall of a house.
"What have you done with Captain Goff?" bellowed the victor in the grapple, with his knee in the fat one's stomach; and from the gurgling sounds that issued we gathered that the stout-heartedold Gloucesterman had been made to pay a bitter penalty for his loyalty to us.
"'Ee is mak' us to deeg wiz ze peek-axe in ze wr-rong places!" gasped the fat bandit in extenuation.
Van Dyck got up and turned Le Gros over to Haskell and two of the Portuguese, who proceeded to tie him and truss him like an enormous fowl.
Bonteck wheeled upon me.
"Dick, take a couple of our men in the launch and go after the old skipper. If they've killed him, I'm going to be judge, jury and sheriff for this fat devil and every man who stood in with him!" he raged. And I went quickly, taking two of Haskell's men to help.
Fortunately for Le Gros and his accomplices, upon whom I am sure Van Dyck would have wreaked a swift and terrible vengeance, Goff was not dead. So far from it, when we reached the inland glade, where the forgotten ship's lantern still spread its little circle of yellow light, we found the old man on his knees in one of the numerous shallow holes dug by the gold-seekers, clawing the earth with his bare hands like a crazy old marmot. He had been brutally mishandled and was covered with blood, but when we laid hold of him and dragged him out of his burrow, he fought us madly to get back.
"Mr. Van Dyck's gold—it's gone, slick and clean!" he croaked. "I cal'late I've got to find it afore I c'n go aboard."
My two helpers took his mutterings for the ravings of a man who had been beaten and left for dead—as they were in good part—and among us we pacified him and got him down to the launch.Van Dyck was at the foot of the accommodation ladder when we reached the yacht, so I had a chance to give him a cautionary word.
"Keep the old man quiet until he comes to himself," I warned. "If you don't, he'll publish your little gold-bar plot to the whole ship's company," and I briefed the pathetic little scene we had broken in upon when we found Goff.
"Plucky old duffer!" said Bonteck warmly, when Quinby and his mate had half led and half carried Goff up the ladder. "I've been telling you all along that he was the right sort. But come aboard. We're going to hold a drumhead court-martial and try these amateur pirates right here and now."
"You don't need me for that," I objected. "Let me have a couple of the Portuguese sailormen and I'll take the long-boat and go around to our abandoned camp for the dunnage we left behind."
"Oh, damn the dunnage—let it go!" he broke out impatiently; but he changed his tune when I reminded him that since the abandoned luggage was made up chiefly of the women's steamer trunks, it would be wise for us to salvage it if only in the interests of peace and quietness.
"All right; go to it," he yielded; and after I had picked my crew of two, I took the long-boat and set about the salvaging.
It was a short horse, soon curried. The gasoline boat was fairly speedy, and the run down the lagoon was quickly made. With two huskies to do the porterage, little time was lost in stripping the camp of everything that was worth carrying away, and well within the hour we were back at theAndromeda'saccommodation ladder. Waiting onlylong enough to see the trunks going overside in a whip tackle that had been rigged for the purpose, I went aboard and found that the sea court had been in session, that the yacht's anchor was catted, and that the stage was set for the final act in the drama of the night of alarms.
"We were waiting for you—or rather for that long-boat," said Van Dyck, after I had climbed to the bridge from which he was directing the luggage bestowal.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"Wait and you will see," he replied; and then he told me the findings of the drumhead court. The mutineers, with Le Gros for their leader, were members of a Central American revolutionary junta which had its headquarters in New York. At first, the intention had been to capture theAndromedaand use her as a means of transportation for arms and ammunition, and, as Goff had told us, one cargo of the munitions had already been carried and landed. But the secret of Van Dyck's buried gold—which, as it appeared, was no secret at all so far as Lequat and the bandit chief were concerned—had brought them back to the island.
"Goff says they made no bones about telling him that they were killing time in the ammunition shipment, with the cold-blooded purpose of letting us starve in the interval," Van Dyck said in conclusion. "It was not Le Gros's intention to give us any provisions at all when we were marooned, but Goff, who was shrewd enough not to make any resistance when he found it would be useless, overpersuaded him."
"How could he do that?"
"Very easily. He told Le Gros about my sillyplot, and showed him how, if that plot were carried out exactly as it had been planned, the secret of the real mutiny could be kept indefinitely. He argued, quite plausibly, as you will see, that in due course of time I would be obliged to confess my plot, in which case, even if we should chance to be rescued by some passing ship, the onus would still rest upon me."
I laughed. "The old skipper is something of a plotter himself, and we all owe him a lot more than we can ever pay. What are you going to do to these pirates?"
"I gave Gustave his choice; to be landed, with his fellow bandits, at the nearest port of call where his country has a consul, or to be set ashore here on the island."
"Good Lord!" I ejaculated. "Surely it didn't take him long to decide against the excellent chance of starving to death in this horrible death trap!"
Van Dyck's smile was grim.
"No; the deciding part of it didn't take him long." He led me to the starboard bridge-end and pointed to the accommodation ladder, where the mutineers, in single file, and each man carrying his allotment of provisions in a sack, were descending to take their places in the long-boat—this under an armed guard with Haskell and Quinby in command.
"They know the tender mercies of their countrymen," Bonteck went on, "and they elected, very promptly, to take the chance they made us take, rather than to be turned over to the authorities. The name of the island fits, after all; it is still 'Pirates' Hope,' you see. Just the same, I'll drop a word somewhere to have them picked upafter they've served their time for stealing my yacht."
The anchor, broken out by the hand capstan, was apeak, and the blowers were roaring in theAndromeda'stall funnels when the long-boat returned, to be quickly hoisted to its chocks on the roof of the deck-house. Van Dyck had the wheel, and at his signal to the engine-room the big propellers began to thrash in the backward motion and the yacht drew away from her late anchorage. I stood by until the miniature liner was set upon her course and was leaving the island astern. Then I took the wheel forcibly out of Bonteck's hands.
"You've had it harder than any of us, and I couldn't go to sleep if my life depended upon it," I told him. "If you'll give me the course, I'll take the first trick and you can relieve me after you've had your forty winks."
He protested generously, of course, but yielded at last when he found me obstinate. After he left me, I signaled the engine-room for full speed ahead and a few minutes later turned the wheel over to one of our Portuguese loyalists whom Van Dyck had sent up to act as my steersman. Freed thus from the mechanical duty, I took time for a backward look. The white ribbon of beach, with its dot of fire surrounded by a huddle of motionless figures, had disappeared, and the island itself was becoming a mere blot dimly outlined in the pale moonlight. It was like the waving of the magic wand in an extravaganza. By a few score revolutions of theAndromeda'stwin screws we had been whisked out of the age of romance and daring-do to be set down once more among the common-places—and conventions—of the twentieth Christian century.
Dawnwas just breaking over a sea that was like a caldron of half-cooled molten metal for its colorings when Van Dyck came to take his turn on theAndromeda'sbridge, and he rated me soundly for not having called him earlier.
"It is one thing to be generous, and quite another to be a self-immolating ass," was one of the compliments he handed me. Then: "By a streak of luck, one of our Portuguese fishermen turns out to be a passable cook. Get below and you'll find breakfast of a sort waiting for you in the saloon. Fill up, and then go to bed and sleep until you've caught up with the procession."
Being by this time in a receptive mood on both counts, I obeyed the double injunction literally, and ten seconds after rolling, full-stomached, into the comfortable bunk in the stateroom which had been mine before the age of romance took us in hand, I was dead to the world and so continued while the clock-hands made a complete revolution, with some hour or so added thereto.
When I awoke it was pitch dark in the little stateroom cabin, and somebody was knocking at the door. It proved to be Fernando, the new cook, and he was telling me in broken English that he had my dinner on a tray, by which I was made tounderstand that I had slept past the regular dinner hour.
Turning out for a bath, a shave, and the first change of clothing that had been vouchsafed me in many a long day, I ate the hand-in dinner with the ravenous appetite of the half-famished, and fared forth. Stepping into the brightly lighted saloon, it was hard to realize that Pirates' Hope and all that it stood for in the lives of eighteen of us had ever existed.
If the mutineers had left any traces of their short reign in our dining saloon they had all been carefully expunged. At one of the sections of the divisible dining-table Mrs. Van Tromp, Aunt Mehitable, Madeleine Barclay's father and Ingerson were playing bridge. Through the open door of the smoking-room opposite I could see Major Terwilliger lounging at ease in the deepest wicker chair, with a glass and a bottle and the ingredients for mixing his favorite after-dinner beverage on the card table at his elbow. At another section of the divisible dining-table the professor and his wife were at work classifying a lot of leaves and roots gathered on the island.
Down the companion stair came the tinkle-tinkle of Billy Grisdale's mandolin to tell me that the younger members of the ship's company had already slipped back into the aforetime habit of whiling away the evenings under the after-deck awning. I smiled as I went forward to look for Van Dyck, and the smile wasn't as cynical as it might have been on the other side of the island avatar. The prompt rebound to the normal and the conventional was merely an example of human nature at its most resilient—and best.
Van Dyck was on the bridge, or, more strictly speaking, in the little chart room, pricking out the yacht's course with a pair of dividers, and one of the Provincetown loyalists was at the wheel.
"You, Dick?" Bonteck said, when I drifted in and took the stool across from him. "Had a good nap?"
"If I haven't, it wasn't your fault," I returned. "Whereabouts are we by this time?"
"Off the Venezuelan coast, and only a few hours run from La Guaira. It's the majority vote of the ship's company that we ought not to be cheated out of the best part of our winter cruise, and we'll put in at La Guaira and take a run up to Caracas while Goff is refitting the yacht and laying in stores. I hope that falls in with your notion."
I let my vote stand over until I could ask about Goff.
"Uncle Elijah isn't out of commission, then?"
"Uncle Elijah is made of better stuff than most of us younger fry. He'll be up and around in a day or so; wanted to get up to-day and take over his job, but I wouldn't let him. But how about you? Will the La Guaira stop fit in with your longings?"
"Admirably. There is a revived copper mining prospect about to be exploited near Aroa, and with your kind permission I'll quit you at La Guaira and run over to Tucacas. There's a railway from that port to Aroa, and I heard, while I was waiting for you in New Orleans, that there might be an opening for an American engineer."
"Um," he grunted, without looking up, "so you're planning to desert, are you?"
"If you call it desertion, yes. I know when I've had enough, Bonteck."
"I don't think you do," he said with a queer grimace. "But let that stand over for a minute or so. Don't you want to be brought up to date in the treasure-trove adventure? I should think you would."
"If there is anything remaining that I haven't seen and felt and tasted," I returned.
"There is," he chuckled. "As the older novelists would remark, the half has not been told. Item Number One is a small problem in arithmetic. You helped me dig up Madeleine's ransom, and you counted the pieces, didn't you?"
"I did."
"You'd be willing to go into court and swear that there were forty of the gold bars; no more and no less; wouldn't you?"
"I should."
"And we dug them all out—all there were in that particular spot, didn't we?"
"I thought we did."
"Good. So did I. Yet the fact remains that there are eighty-three gold bars safely stowed away in the yacht's fore-hold; forty of one kind and forty-three of another. How do you account for that?"
I laughed. "It simply means that Le Gros was more thorough than we were. He found your planting, as well as that of theSanta Lucia'screw."
"He did. But the double find was due to Goff's effort to gain time for us, rather than to the fat bandit's thoroughness. When we left Goff waiting for his recapture, the first thing he did was to heave the chunk of coral out of the wayso that there wouldn't be any landmark. Then, when Le Gros and his men came, Goff pointed out first one place and then another, until he had them digging all over the glade. That is why they beat him so savagely; and it was after he was knocked out that they stumbled upon both hoards."
"Both in the same place?" I asked.
"Goff says they were not. He was just coming back to consciousness when they were starting to carry the stuff down to the beach. There were two heaps of it. In his battered condition Goff didn't realize the truth; he merely thought he was seeing double. Afterward, so he says, he got a crazy notion in his head that the pirates hadn't found my gold at all, and that it was up to him to find it. That was what he was trying to do when you went after him."
"I know," I said; "Are there any more knots in the tangle?"
"Just one. When I went below last night to turn in, Billy Grisdale was waiting for me with tears in his eyes; said he'd lost all his hopes of heaven, and begged me to turn back to the island and let him have men enough to go ashore and dig some more in the gold plantation—that we were leaving Edie's dowry behind. I asked him what he meant, and he told me. He and Edie had been the first to take fire when I told the old story of the Spanish treasure ship, and they had gone about looking for landmarks and digging haphazard in one place and another."
"And, of course, they stumbled upon the chunk of coral, rolled it away, and dug under it," I filled in, recalling instantly what Billy had said to meabout buried treasure and the ownership thereof on the night of Ingerson's attempted suicide.
"You've said it. Naturally, it was my planting that they uncovered—not the Spaniards', but never having so much as heard of my earlier visit to the island, there was nothing to make them suspect that it was not theSanta Luciahoard that they had unearthed. Their first impulse was to run back to camp and shout the good news; but the cannier second thought prevailed. They reburied the stuff in the hole they had made, marked the place as well as they could—but not with the chunk of coral they had rolled aside,—and came away and left it, meaning to part with their secret only when a rescue ship should come along."
"What did you tell Billy?"
He grinned. "I took him into the fore-hold and showed him the pile of gold bars. As you would imagine, he was paralyzed when he counted and found there were eighty-three of them. 'There were forty-three—I'm sure there were only forty-three,' he kept saying over and over."
"Wait a minute," I interposed; "you are going too fast for me. Are you asking me to believe that it was only by chance that they rolled the piece of coral over to the exact spot where, we may suppose, it originally stood—marking the place of theSanta Luciaburial?"
"Chance and nothing else—excepting, perhaps, it may have rolled more easily that way than any other. It was Goff and I who moved it in the first place, you remember, when we took it to mark our gold grave."
"Now we may come back to Billy," I said. "What more did you tell him?"
"What could I tell him, save to hint that the Spaniards might have split their treasure and buried it in two places?—that, and to josh him a bit for having stopped too soon in his digging venture?"
"Then you told him that the remaining forty pieces belong to Madeleine?"
"I did; I have told them all. She found it, and it is hers. More than that, I have taken Jack Grey into my confidence in the matter of Barclay's shortage in his guardian accounts, and he will see to it that the Vancourt trust fund is made whole again."
"But, see here," I protested; "that isyourquarter million that Billy and Edie are making off with!"
He laughed boyishly.
"I'm robbed," he declared; "Held up and cleaned out in the house of my friends. I couldn't claim the stuff if I wanted to—without giving the whole snap away. But I don't mean to claim it. It is going to be put right where it will do the most good, Dick—which it wasn't going to be, if my romantic plot had worked out as it was planned. If Madeleine had foundmymoney, I should never have been able to look her straight in the eyes again—never in this world. You know I shouldn't. That was the weak detail I told you about. But what she did find is her own, her very own, you see; and mine goes to the two kiddies. Billy's father couldn't stake him, neither now nor two or three years hence, when these two babies will take things into their own hands and get married, money or no money. And with another of her girls due to marry a poor man, Mrs. Van Tromp would be in despair."
"Another of her girls—you mean Beatrice?" I asked, dry-lipped.
"Sure thing. Jerry's a pauper; or if he isn't quite that now, he will be when Major Terwilliger's last will and testament is read."
"But Conetta!" I gasped. "He is promised to her, Bonteck."
"Is he?" he said; and that is all he did say.
"Isn't he?" I demanded.
"How should I know? You'd better go and ask him or her—or both of them."
For a flitting instant I found myself desperate enough to do that very thing; but I, too, had suffered my sea change. Curiously enough the hotheaded impulse died within me before I could rise from my seat on the three-legged stool.
"Well, why don't you?" Van Dyck inquired satirically, meaning, I supposed, why didn't I go and make a fool of myself to the two people in question. Then: "What has come over you, Richard? Have you lost all of that fiery impetuosity that used to make you the worry of your friends, and put the fear of God into your enemies?"
It wasn't worth while to answer the gibe. I had other and better things to think of just then. Mellowing things.
"I know now why you dragged me in on this winter cruise, Bonteck," I said, humbly enough. "In the goodness of your heart you thought Conetta and I might be able to bridge the three-year gap and come together again. It was a kindly thought, and I shall always remember it. It wasn't your fault that the chance came too late. Don't you want me to take your trick here and let you go down to the others? True, Ingerson was atthe bridge table when I came through, but he may not stay there."
"Ingerson is out of it," he said shortly. "He leaves us at La Guaira, to take the regular steamer for Havana and home."
"Nevertheless, my offer holds good. Give me the course and I'll relieve you."
"Later on, perhaps; the night is yet young. Just now, you'll be wanting to get Conetta and Jerry together so you can fire that question of yours at them. Better toddle along and have it over with, while the thing is fresh in your mind."
I turned to go, but at the door of the chart-room I paused to give him his due.
"You are a kindly sort of villain, after all, Bonteck," I said. "But how about the little experiment in the humanities that was at the bottom of all these things that have happened to us? Did it turn out as you expected it would? Are we worse than you feared—or better than you hoped?"
"Neither, Dick," he returned quite soberly. "We are all pretty much the same, I guess; brothers and sisters under the skin; just men and women 'of like passions'. I think I've known it as well as I needed to, all along, but it suited my humor to pose as a—a——"
"As a pragmatic ass," I snorted, helping him out. "Whenever you are tempted to bray again——"
"I'll just think back a few lines and remember this little Caribbean slip-up," he laughed. "But don't let me keep you. I know you are perishing to go and stick pins into poor old Jerry and Conetta."
That final remark of his was as far as possible from the truth; so far, indeed, that, upon leaving the bridge, I descended to the main deck by way of theforward ladder for the express purpose of keeping out of the way of the group under the awning on the after-deck lounge.
Since theAndromedawas now quite short-handed, the forward deck was deserted by all save a single man at the bow. I crossed to the port rail and stood for a time looking out upon the starlit sea and listening to the sibilant song of the yacht's sharp cutwater as it sheared its way through the gently heaving seas.
I had not been talking merely for effect in telling Bonteck that I should leave the yacht at La Guaira. On all accounts it seemed only the just and decent thing to do. Now that I came to think of it soberly, it seemed quite possible that my presence in the yacht party might have been the provoking cause of Jerry Dupuyster's disloyalty, or apparent disloyalty, to Conetta. He knew that we had once been engaged, and while there had been no more than fellow-passenger intimacy on the cruise, we had been together more or less on the island.
Though it was removed by the better part of the length of the ship, the tinny tinkle of Billy's mandolin was still audible, and presently there were voices joining in a rollicking college song; John Grey's clear tenor, Alicia Van Tromp's rich contralto, and even the professor's bass. It seemed incredible that the reaction from our late privations could have swept us all so swiftly back to the ordinary and the commonplace; and yet the fact remained: a fact demonstrating beyond all question the irresistible impulse in the normal human being to revert quickly to the usual and the accustomed.