"Of course," I said crustily—and made another mark on the score that I meant to settle with one Gerald Dupuyster if we should ever attain to a time when personal scores could be audited and settled. Then I reminded the professor that he had omitted Mr. Holly Barclay.
"I wish to continue omitting him," was the reply, and the professor's tone was a measure of his disgust. "Let it be sufficient to say that he made his daughter blush for very shame with his puerile accusations. He even went so far as to intimate that Mr. Van Dyck was not telling the truth; that the entire affair was a deep-laid plot designed to involve Miss Madeleine in some way."
"That was to be expected—from Holly Barclay,"I said. "But you are omitting one more: Professor Abner Sanford, Ph. D."
I was relighting my pipe with another of the precious matches, and in the momentary flare the professor's plain-song face revealed itself. There was a half-quizzical smile wrinkling at the corners of the quiet gray eyes.
"Mrs. Sanford and I are Mr. Van Dyck's guests," he qualified. "But, apart from that, I was content to wait and hear what might develop further. As it appears, Mr. Van Dyck has not entirely lost hope. If there were a real mutiny—and, indeed, there seems little doubt of that—Van Dyck still has confidence in the resourcefulness of Goff, the sailing-master. He insists that, sooner or later, theAndromedawill return."
In the little interval of silence that followed I was turning the professor's story over thoughtfully in my mind. There had evidently been no mention made of the gold-burying episode. Van Dyck had dodged it very cleverly, it seemed, letting it be understood that his hope of the yacht's return was based upon the loyalty, in the last resort, of Elijah Goff. It was better that way. So long as the hope had been definitely held out to the others, there was no need of terrifying the women by telling them that if we should be lucky enough to regain our ship it would be by hard knocks and a rather forlorn-hope fight against overwhelming odds as to numbers and arms.
"There is still one vote outstanding, Mr. Preble—your own," said the professor, breaking into my reverie.
"You have already taken that for granted," I returned. "If Bonteck had confided in me beforethe fact—which I assure you he did not—I should certainly have vetoed his plan for a fortnight's picnic on this God-forsaken bit of coral in the middle of nowhere. Yet, as his nearest friend, I can understand, perhaps better than any one else, why he was impelled to do it. Also, I can understand that he had no reason whatever to foresee the remotest possibility of any such tragic turn as things have taken."
"Of course, of course; I think we shall all understand that after we have duly weighed and considered." The professor had locked his fingers over his knees and was regarding me thoughtfully. "Do you know," he went on, quite as if the main problems had been worked out and definitely wiped from the blackboard, "do you know, I am sometimes a little regretful that I didn't learn to smoke tobacco in my younger days? You gentlemen of the pipe and cigar seem to get so much comfort out of it."
"It is never too late to mend—or mar," I told him; and with that we got up to resume our respective sentry beats by which, under the established routine, each of us would return to the camp end of the island by the route over which the other had come.
When we parted it was with the agreement to meet again at the western extremity of the island, and I ventured to call my watchmate's attention to the fact that a lookout's duty was to look out.
"Why, bless me!—of course it is," he laughed. "Now that you mention it, I remember that I wasn't very faithful on the way over here. I'll reform, Mr. Preble, I will, truly." And he went onhis way around the north beach toward the bay of the galleon wreck.
It is probably a rare thing for a crisis in the affairs of a group of nearly a score of people to turn upon so trivial a matter as the tobacco habit. There was still an unburned dottel in my pipe, and I could not think of wasting it. If I had not stopped and felt in my pockets for my one remaining match while the professor was still a trudging shadow on the white sands of the northern beach, the crisis might have come and gone undiscovered by any soul of our eighteen.
For, just as I had found the match and was in the act of striking it, the ghost-like bulk of a ship loomed silently in the starlight a short half-mile to the eastward; a ship headed directly for the island and showing no lights. It was theAndromedaagain.
Puttingthe unlighted match carefully away in my pocket, I made a quick dash down the north beach to overtake the professor.
I told him what I had seen, and he exclaimed, "Dear me—you don't say so!" much as if I had rushed up to assure him that the exact value ofpiin the circle-squaring problem had finally been ascertained. And then, quite placidly: "What do we do next, Mr. Preble?"
I didn't want to tell him that, in all probability, theAndromedamutineers were merely coming back to dig for gold. That was still Van Dyck's personal secret. But it was not difficult to convince him that the yacht's errand was not friendly to us.
"They are creeping up quietly, at the wrong end of the island, and with no lights showing," I pointed out. "Which means that they are not coming to take us off. If you will stay here and keep in touch with them while I run back to camp and give the alarm——"
"Certainly," he agreed. Then: "I'm not to show myself?"
"By no manner of means. Don't let them see you or hear you, but keep them in sight if you can do it without exposing yourself. I shan't be gone any longer than I can help."
It was the better part of a mile down the beach to a point opposite the glade where our camp was pitched, and the night was warm; but I took small thought for either the distance or the heat. At the camp everybody but Van Dyck had turned in; at least, none of the others was in sight. Bonteck was sitting beside the expiring embers of the bit of cooking fire, with his head in his hands and his gaze fixed upon the patch of white ashes with its center spot of red coals.
I came up behind him, touched his shoulder, and hastily whispered the news: "TheAndromedais clawing up to the other end of the island just as she did before—at half speed, and with no lights showing."
"Thank God she is back at last!" he muttered, starting up quickly. "It falls in at the right minute, Dick. I was just saying to myself that I'd go dippy if I couldn't fight somebody or something. Turn out the squad, as quietly as you can."
Moving cautiously so as not to awaken any of the non-combatants, I aroused Grey, Dupuyster and Billy Grisdale and told them what was to the fore. Van Dyck herded us quickly out of the camp circle, and on the beach he groped under the palmettos and uncovered our scanty arsenal; the three pistols and the two knives we had taken from our former captives. If our lately awakened recruits were surprised at the appearance of the weapons they said nothing, nor was there any comment made when, out of the same hiding place, Bonteck drew a half-dozen stout, serviceable clubs and distributed them as he had the more modern weapons.
"Now then, if you are all ready," he said, giving the word. "Set the pace, Dick, and we'll try tokeep up with you." And a moment later we were running silently in single file along the north beach toward the eastern-point lookout where I had posted Sanford.
In making me the pace-setter, Bonteck builded more wisely than he knew—more wisely than any of us knew at the time. Having just completed a mile dash at the best speed I could compass, I was fain to set an easy dog-trot for the return, so we were all comparatively fresh when we reached the scene of action and found the professor.
Our lookout's report was brief and to the point. TheAndromedahad steamed up silently and was lying off the south shore at no great distance from us, and as yet there was no movement aboard; at least, the professor said he hadn't been able to see anything stirring on her decks. But Van Dyck, making a hasty reconnaissance, came back with better information.
"They are lowering the electric launch by hand," he announced. Then he outlined the situation for us in a few brittle words. "You all understand, I take it, that they have not come back—secretly, this way—to rescue us. We may ignore their real object for the present and come to the immediate necessities. If we get possession of the yacht, we shall doubtless have to fight for it."
"Just say when and how," Billy Grisdale cut in tersely, trying the strength of his club over his knee.
Van Dyck sketched his plan rapidly, and it was evident that he had worked out the details in advance, basing his conclusions upon what he and I had seen on the night of the storm.
"They will land a party in the launch, and ourfirst move will be to capture every man of that landing party, dead or alive, and without making any noise. So don't use the firearms. If their boat's crew doesn't return within a reasonable time, they'll send again to find out what has become of it. When they do that, we'll repeat, and by eating them up a little at a time—but you get the idea, I'm sure." And to me: "Dick, will you take the command? You are better qualified than any of the rest of us."
"You are doing very well, yourself," I told him. "Show us the way and we'll stay with you."
"All right," he agreed briefly. "I think we all understand that this is likely to be our last chance, so far as the yacht is concerned. There are nine women up at the other end of the island who will, in all human probability, starve to death if we bungle this thing and let theAndromedaget away from us. Keep that in mind when you hit, and hit hard!"
Since the choice of position was one of the few advantages we should have in the coming struggle, we picked our way silently across the point to the wood fringe from which Van Dyck and I had witnessed the earlier landing. Judging from the little we could see in the starlight, the mutineers were making hard work of the job of clearing away the electric launch without the aid of the steam winch. In spite of Mr. Edison's continued and most ingenious efforts to find a substitute for the lead in them, storage batteries are still heavy contrivances; and at the end of it the weighty little tender got away from the men at the davit tackles and dropped into the sea with a resounding slap that might have been heard half-way around the island.
For a minute or two the small boat lay chafing against the side of the yacht, and there was no attempt made to man it; from which we inferred that the mutineers were waiting to ascertain if the crash of the sudden launching had given the alarm. In view of the fact that the invaders had every reason to believe that we were all either dead or dying from starvation by this time, it struck me that they were excessively cautious, and I spoke of this to Van Dyck.
"That is the 'spiggotty' of it," he commented in low tones. "Lequat's name is French, but I'd be willing to bet that he and his backers are of the mongrel breed—dock-rats who will fight only when they're cornered."
"Will they be well armed, do you think?" I asked.
"Heaven knows. Every man that Goff picked up in New York may have been a walking arsenal, for all I know to the contrary. As for the yacht itself, there were only a few sport guns in the cabins, as you saw for yourself."
Whether they were over-cautious, or only prudently careful, the intending invaders waited fully ten minutes, I should say, before making another move. But at last, silhouetting themselves as black shadows against the white paint of theAndromeda'sside, a boat's crew came over the rail, dropping man by man into the launch. We counted the shadowy figures slipping over the yacht's side. As in the yawl's crew, there were seven; a man apiece for us, and one extra, for good measure.
"I'll take that odd man," Billy Grisdale whispered in my ear. "I can't go back to Edie with less than two scalps at my belt, you know."
"Shut up!" I hissed. "They'll hear you, and then you won't get even one."
The launch got under way at once and presently came skimming through the gap in the reef, the narrowness of which had proved the undoing of the yawl on the night of the hurricane. The electrically driven boat made no sound other than the purring murmur of its motor and the soft, ripping sheer of the sharp cutwater as it turned a tiny bow wave. Once within the lagoon, the launch was steered straight for the beach. This time, as it appeared, there was to be no shilly-shallying.
A landing was made within a few yards of our covert. Six of the men got out when the tender's prow slid up on the sand, and the remaining man rummaged under the thwarts and heaved a pick and a shovel ashore. Then a curious thing happened. Without a word uttered, the six men on the sands became suddenly involved in a fierce and mysterious struggle. Twice one of the six broke away, only to be instantly caught and dragged back by the others; and it was not until the brief battle was over, and five of the men were shoving the sixth ahead of them into the wood, that Van Dyck found the answer and passed the word to the rest of us.
"That's Goff, and they're making him show them the way! Come on!"
We followed, and there was no need for any great amount of caution on our part. The men ahead of us were trampling through the jungle undergrowth with little heed for the noise they made, and we were close upon them when they halted in the small open space marked by the lump of coral. Since it was well-nigh pitch dark in the tree-shadowedglade, a light of some sort was a necessity, and one of the men knelt to kindle the wick of a ship's lantern. The sputtering flare of the match illuminated a striking tableau for us. Lequat, hatless, and with a red bandanna bound around his head in true buccaneer fashion, stood aside, leaning upon the bared blade of a huge weapon, half sabre and half machete. Two of the others held Goff pinioned by his arms, and the odd man had the pick and shovel.
Van Dyck held us back until the lantern was fairly alight and the kneeling man was about to rise. Then, at his whispered "Now!" we rushed the silent group.
It is a worn saying that a man knows no more of a battle than that small portion of it which may fall to his share. My share in the sharp struggle which followed was simple enough. Out of the confused tangle of legs and arms and writhing bodies I dragged my man, one of Goff's pinioners whom I had picked out in the brief flare of the lantern-lighting match. That, and a quieting tap from the butt of the big Navy pistol which had fallen to me in the distribution of weapons, was all there was to it. Before I could get in again, the fight was over, and Van Dyck was stooping to put a match to the wick of the ship's lantern which had been kicked aside and had gone out in the scuffling battle.
The scene revealed by the renewed lantern light was not without its element of grim humor. Our victory had been sweepingly complete, and the small open space was strewn with the prone figures of the vanquished. Van Dyck had been thoughtful enough to bring a coil of light tent rope with him from our camp, and Grey and Grisdale were alreadyat work like trained thief-takers binding and gagging the captives. Over in the edge of the glade the professor was trying mercifully to replace the dislocated shoulder of a small man who was groaning and squirming under him, and begging in broken English to be spared; the patient pleading while the amateur surgeon was assuring him blandly that the disabled arm would be pulled out by the roots if he raised his voice above a whisper.
It was Elijah Goff, fully reinstated now as a victim of circumstances like ourselves, who went to the professor's assistance.
"Lemme sit on his head while you yank, Professor," he said with dry humor. "I'm owin' that tarnation little rat suthin' f'r the way he's been keelhaulin' me." And thereupon we saw that the professor's capture was the ex-steward, Lequat, whose formidable weapon the mild-mannered old scholar had actually broken off short at the hilt with the same shrewd bludgeon stroke that had crippled the ex-steward's sword arm.
After our five prisoners were safely trussed up and silenced with primitive gags made of knotted rope, we wasted no more time upon them. The man left with the boat remained to be secured, and his removal from the scene was a bit of routine. He had come ashore to stand by the bow of the beached launch, and apparently he mistook us for his own people returning. Anyway, he made scarcely a show of resistance when we surrounded him, and Billy Grisdale garroted him with the bit of knotted rope which was presently forced between his teeth to keep him quiet while we bound and dragged him back into the wood to the general rendezvous.
The launch's manning thus disposed of, we held a sober council of war, with Goff on the witness stand. The old skipper told his story briefly, and in the main it accorded fairly well with Van Dyck's prefigurings. The mutiny and seizure of the yacht had been real enough, and the conspirators had chosen the moment when the sham uprising was to have been staged; namely, the evening when Edie Van Tromp's cry of "Land-o-o-o!" had announced theAndromeda'sapproach to the island. Goff had been overpowered on the bridge, and the Americans, Haskell, Quinby and the others, had been imprisoned in the engine-room and fire hold, where, so Goff told us, they were still confined. The skipper could not say how many members of the crew proper were in the conspiracy, but those who were not had doubtless been overawed by threats of violence; given the choice between obedience and submission, and walking the plank.
"All I know is it ain't a sailormen's crowd," said the grizzled old Gloucesterman in summing up. "It's mostly cooks and cabin stewards, and that kind of riff-raff, with that fat Frenchman, Bassinette, at the head of 'em. Near as I could figger, they're revolutionaries o' some sort. They got an idee there was big money some'ere's aboard, and I cal'late they've dum near tore the insides out o' the yacht lookin' for it."
"Bassinette, thechef?" Van Dyck queried. "Then this fellow Lequat wasn't the ringleader?"
"No more 'n I be," said Goff. "He's nothin' but an understrapper, carryin' out orders. But he's a navigator—of a sort."
"Where has the yacht been all this time?" It was Grey who wanted to know.
"Been mostly standin' off and on over to the Central American coast, unloadin' a cargo of guns and ammynition that was picked up off the Isle o' Pines," was the calm reply. "When they got through with that, Bassinette told me he was comin' back here to take you folks off. I mistrusted he was lyin' like a whitehead about what he was comin' for, but it looked 's if any chance was better 'n none, so I give him his bearin's, which I suspicion Lequat wa'n't sailorman enough to figger out f'r himself. There was bad weather brewin' when we got here, and they had to cut and run f'r it afore a gale o' wind."
"Did they try to land at all?" Billy Grisdale asked.
"Couldn't prove nothin' by me," said Goff, and I got the idea he was trying to fight off from the question. "They had me locked up in one o' the cabins."
At this, Grey broke in again.
"You say you mistrusted that these fellows were not coming back to take us off, Captain Goff: what were they coming for, then? And what were they planning to do back here in the wood with a pick and shovel just now when we closed in on them?"
I saw Van Dyck's hand shoot out to grip the sailing-master's arm. If it were a warning, the old skipper was quick to act upon it.
"There's an old yarn about a buried gold-mine some'res in these waters," he drawled. "I guess putty near everybody's heard it, fust 'r last. Shouldn't wonder if Bassinette and his crowd think they've got a pointer on it. Maybe they thoughtthat was what we was headin' here for. Wouldn't supprise me a mite."
The explanation was certainly an ingenious one, and it fully proved the justice of Van Dyck's trust in the old fisherman skipper. But the questioner was still unsatisfied. In his proper environment, as I have said, Mr. John Grey figured as an able young lawyer, and when he could forget Annette and his new-found happiness long enough, the lawyer gifts came easily to the front.
"What made them bring you ashore, Captain Goff?" he asked shrewdly.
But Goff proved to be far too old a bird to be caught napping.
"Maybe they was cal'latin' to have me do the diggin'," he returned with a sly chuckle. "Wouldn't put it a mite beyond 'em."
It was Van Dyck who brought the talk back to things present and pressing.
"We know definitely now what we are up against," he said. "How many of the men are in this with Bassinette, Captain 'Lige?"
"They kep' me too close to tell. Maybe half of 'em, 'r maybe more. And another thing—they've got guns and pistols, plenty of 'em."
Some earnest of this we had had in the taking of the prisoners in the glade. They were all armed, but the weapons were for the most part out of date; pistols and knives, one repeating rifle of an old model, a pair of brass knuckles, a wicked looking "life-preserver"—a short leather club, lead-loaded in the striking end. But we found only a scattering score or so of cartridges for the firearms.
These weapons we now shared impartially among ourselves, and when the professor volunteered togo back in the wood and stand guard over the prisoners, Van Dyck suggested that it was time we were making a reconnaissance in force in the enemy's direction, the war council having been held at a point about half-way between the glade and the beach. Nobody could say certainly what move the mutineers on the yacht would make next, and in spite of Goff's assurances to the contrary, Van Dyck was afraid they might take the alarm and run away, abandoning the launch's crew to whatever fate had befallen it.
"Not much danger o' that," Goff insisted; and after Grisdale, Grey and Dupuyster had been posted in the forest fringe with instructions to keep a sharp lookout for renewed activities upon theAndromeda, Van Dyck drew Goff and me aside and went straight to the heart of things.
"Mr. Preble and I were here on the beach that night when the yacht came up and then had to make a run for it, Captain 'Lige," he began. "Didn't you know they sent a boat's crew ashore that night?"
Goff nodded. "Didn't know how much 'r how little you wanted t'other folks to know. Had me locked up in a cabin on the starb'd side and I saw the yawl get off—and saw that it didn't get back. Maybe you can tell me what happened to that boat-load o' scamps?"
Van Dyck told our part in the happenings briefly, and the old Banksman chuckled delightedly.
"Good stroke o' business—catchin' 'em that way when they was all fagged out with swimmin',"—adding vindictively: "only you ought to 've knocked every single one on 'em in the head, when you had 'em. As it was——"
"Yes," said Van Dyck; "as it was?——"
"As it was, we clawed back here just afore day the next mornin', and with the seas putty near rollin' the yacht's rail under, Bassinette made out to get ashore with the gasoline launch when it was just about as much as any man's life was worth to try it. He fetched back five o' the seven men that went ashore in the yawl. You said two of 'em was drowned, didn't you?"
"They were," said I.
"This man Bassinette," Van Dyck broke in. "He is the cook you picked up in New York. Did you know anything about him when you shipped him?"
Goff shook his head. "Somethin' kind o' queer about that big lummux," he averred. "If I didn't know better, I'd 'most be willin' to go into court and swear he isn't the man I shipped in New York. Looks as much like him as two peas, but that's all. If we'd been anywheres to get rid o' him and pick up his double——"
"Wait," I interposed. "We laid up for a day at Gracias á Dios with a disabled propeller shaft. Didn't some of the men have shore leave that day?"
"By gravy, I b'lieve you've hit it, Mr. Preble!" Goff exclaimed. "It was after we left Gracias that I took to noticin' that Bassinette seemed sort o' different, somehow; didn't grin same as he used to when I'd stick my head into his galley. And he was consider'ble thick with a bunch o' them outlandishmen we picked up in New York ha'bor. Look 's if we'd all ought to be bored f'r the hollow-horn, Mr. Van Dyck!"
It was beginning to look that way to me, too,but Van Dyck didn't push the inquiry any further.
"We can let that part of it rest for the present," he said, and at his suggestion we joined the other three in the ambush at the beach edge.
Up to this time there had been no further sign of life on board the yacht. Though there were no premonitory symptoms of a storm brewing, the night was oppressively warm and there was hardly a breath of air stirring. Nevertheless, there is always some little movement in the sea, and during the interval which had elapsed since the launch party had left her, theAndromedahad drifted a bit nearer in and was now fairly opposite the narrow reef inlet, and not more than a short cable's length outside of it.
"If we could only contrive some means of making them come to anchor," Van Dyck muttered. "A bit of breeze would turn the trick, but there is no promise of that."
"He'd be too foxy to anchor, even if 'twas blowin' half a gale," was Goff's reply to this. "What I say is to take the launch and board him. There's six of us, and we've got the tools, such as they are. I cal'late if we could fight our way to the engine-room hatch and let Haskell and his gang out——"
"I am afraid to risk the boarding," Van Dyck admitted. "Not for ourselves, but for the women who will be left if we shouldn't succeed. There are good glasses on board, and those fellows probably know how to use them. If it were only a little darker, so that we might stand some chance of getting out to them before they could recognize us—but they'd be sure to, and put steam to the yacht."
I guess the suspense was getting on our nerves.I am sure it was on mine. The very silence was oppressive, and it seemed as if the lapping of the little waves on the sands and the rise and fall of the gentle swell on the reef were hushed. Then, too, the white yacht in the near offing grew more and more like a ghost ship as we strained our eyes watching her for some sign of life. It was Dupuyster who broke the spell.
"I say, Bonteck, old dear, don't you know, I'm the only original human fish, when it comes to swimmin'," he whispered. "Toss me the sharpest knife in the lot, and I'll toddle out there and anchor theAndromedafor you—dashed if I don't."
Of course, there was a low-toned chorus of protest. Sharks occasionally came into the lagoon, as we all knew, and since ships usually have a following of them in tropical waters, there would certainly be one or more of the man-eaters in the deeper water beyond the reef. Also, admitting that a swimmer could reach theAndromedawithout having a leg or an arm bitten off on the way, there were mechanical difficulties to be overcome. The anchors were catted at the bows of the yacht, with the slack of the cables taken in, and the anchor flukes themselves triced up in heavy hempen slings in man-o'-war style. It would be a man's job to cut the slings with anything short of a sharp axe.
Our arguments nugatory were hurried but thorough. If Dupuyster should live to reach the yacht and climb aboard, he would certainly be discovered from the bridge before he could cut the lashings to free an anchor. And, admitting that the thing could be done, what would be gained? What was to prevent the mutineers from throwingthe steam winch into gear and heaving the anchor up again?
While we were expostulating, Jerry—not the carefully Anglicized clubman we had known, but a most surprisingly red-blooded reincarnation of him—was calmly preparing to get himself shark-bitten.
"I say, by Jove, you chappies had better hedge on some of those bets you're making," he drawled. "If Uncle Jimmie were here, he'd take you, don't you know. Find me that knife, and a couple of the biggest pistol cartridges. That's all I want."
Provided with his simple armament, Jerry, stripped to the buff, and with the knife and the cartridges secured in an impromptu belt made of his discarded undershirt, wormed his way down to the beach and took the water under the bilge of the stranded launch as silently as a fish. When he came up from the long dive we could trace him by the faint phosphorescence showing now and then in the ripples of his wake.
It was a horrible strain, watching him as he worked his way across the lagoon to the inlet through the reef. Every instant we were expecting to see the disturbance which would mark the lunge and back-roll of an attacking man-eater, and I could not help wondering which of the two women, Conetta or Beatrice Van Tromp, would reproach us the more bitterly for letting him go to his death.
We lost trace of him after his faintly luminous trail disappeared at the gap in the reef. Just then the windless calm was broken by a mere breath of air stirring out of the southeast, and theAndromeda, still a dead hulk swinging gently to the slow heaveand dip of the scarcely perceptible swell, was now drifting landward by more than the measured inchings; she had decreased her earliest distance by considerably more than half. It could be only a matter of minutes before whoever was in command would have to give her sternway with the engines to keep her from going on the reef, in which case Dupuyster would have taken his life in his hand for nothing. A half-dozen backward turns of the big twin screws would take the yacht out of his reach, and would probably take her out of soundings so that a dropped anchor would find no bottom.
Van Dyck whispered all this to me while we were holding our breath and making our eyes water in the effort to get another glimpse of the swimmer's trail.
"He'll never make it—never in this world!" Van Dyck concluded in the stifled whisper. "We were criminal fools for letting him try it. It's sheer suicide, and we all knew it!"
"I have forgiven him," I said grimly.
"Forgiven him? For what?"
"For playing fast and loose with Conetta. He has asked her, you know, and she has said 'Yes.' And in spite of that, he has been making open love to Beatrice Van Tromp ever since we were put ashore here."
"Don't make a damned jealous idiot of yourself!" was the hot retort. "If you weren't bat-blind in both eyes——"
The interruption was the thunderous racket we had by this time given up all hope of hearing. With a mighty splash and a deafening clamor from the paying-out cable, theAndromeda'sstarboard anchorlet go, and from the shortness of the uproar we knew that it had taken ground upon the outer ledges of the reef. Following the rattling clamor, we heard the pad-pad of running men, and were able to guess that the slack discipline of the mutineers had been responsible for a deserted forward deck. There was a barked-out order in a foreign tongue from the bridge, a hissing of steam, and the power capstan was promptly set in motion to break the anchor out of its hold.
At the second or third turn of the capstan something happened; a snapping explosion up forward, and a prolonged hammering and grinding, as if the steam hoisting machinery were patiently and painstakingly wrecking itself. In the midst of this new turmoil we saw a slender white figure shoot over the yacht's bow in a headlong dive, and heard the crackling spatter of a pistol fusillade opened upon the diver from the bridge.
"We'll hang the last living man of them if they got him!" Van Dyck declared vindictively, when the velvety silence of the tropical night had settled down again, and we had looked earnestly but in vain for some sign of the diver from the yacht's bows. Then he turned to Grey: "Jack, you'd better drop out and run back to camp. It is hardly possible that the women are sleeping through all this war noise. You'll know what to say. Tell them to keep together and to make no noise. They're out of the danger zone, and we'll make it our business to try to prevent the scrapping from drifting down to that end of the island. Don't say anything about Jerry. We won't give him up until we have to. That's all; but hurry back.We'll probably be needing you by the time you've made the round trip."
Grey slipped off silently, doubling the sandspit point of the island in order to have the unmenaced north beach for his speedway. After he was gone there was a terrible wait for the four of us left crouching in the shadow of the palms. For what seemed like an age there was no sign of our forlorn-hope swimmer. As nearly as we could judge from the noises on board the yacht, the mutineers were trying to repair the disabled capstan. Apparently it didn't suit them to be tied by the leg and unable to run away.
"Let me have that old rifle, Billy," said Van Dyck; this after the capstan noises had been located. Lying flat, Bonteck aimed as well as he could in the uncertain light, and we distinctly heard the clang of the bullet as it penetrated the metal bulwarks of the yacht's stem. The single shot did the business, and we heard no more hammerings at the crippled machinery.
Beyond this, we waited again while the minutes dragged on, leaden-winged, slowly but surely extinguishing the hope that Dupuyster had escaped. But, after hope was quite dead in the four hearts of us, and a hot thirst for vengeance was beginning to take its place, we saw Jerry in our own edge of the lagoon, swimming slowly and rolling from side to side with his stroke, like a man utterly spent.
I think all four of us dashed wildly into the shallows to drag him out and rush him to cover in the jungle edge. He was gasping for breath, and even in the poor light we could see a long red splash on one thigh; a cut from which the blood was still oozing. Van Dyck stripped his own shirt to bandagethe wound, and the reincarnated one protested manfully.
"Bally lot of trouble you're takin' over a scratch," he gurgled. "Bleedin' will stop of its own accord when it gets ready. But if any gentleman should—er—happen to have a drop of cognac about him——"
Grisdale hadn't, and I hadn't, and I was pretty sure Van Dyck hadn't. But at a three-handed chorus of "Sorry, old man," Elijah Goff, the one dyed-in-the-wool teetotaller of theAndromeda'scompany, produced a pocket flask, and Dupuyster took a single swallow from it; swallowed, choked a bit over whatever fiery liquor it was, and then told us his story while we were giving him a rough-handed rub-down and helping him into his clothes.
"No, the swim wasn't anything, but I had a perishin' lot of trouble climbin' aboard the old tub. After that, it was easy; all I had to do was to cut a lot of the rope things you told me about and stand clear, what?"
"But the capstan?" Billy Grisdale wanted to know. "How the dickens did you contrive to put that out of commission?"
"Dynamited it, old dear; stuck the two bally pistol cartridges into the cogwheels, don't you know, and hoped they'd do their bit when the wheels began to turn. If you'll believe me, the shop was fairly dizzy with bits of iron and things when they put the steam on. I didn't wait to see the third act. His Jaglets was waitin' for me, and I took a header to get a fair start of him, don't you see."
"A shark!" gasped Billy.
"You've named him. The perishin' beggar hadfollowed me all the way out to the yacht and couldn't quite make up his mind to try it on. But comin' back he got his nerve screwed up, by Jove. It was under the edge of the reef, and when he turned for the snap I stuck the bloomin' knife into him and left it there."
"But—but he bit you in the leg!" said Billy, and I knew he was swelling up like the frog in the fable with a huge access of hero-worship.
"Chuck it, Billy," said the shark fighter good-naturedly, and for once in a way the British accent was lacking. "Let's say that I scratched the leg climbin' over the reef. It'll sound better."
Just then Grey came back, having cut across the island from the north beach by way of the glade where the prisoners had been left. His report was reassuring. The women, and two of the men, the major and Holly Barclay, had been awakened by the firing, but there was no panic—proof positive that we had finally vanquished the greater part of the civilized conventions. Ingerson was still asleep, and Grey suspected that he had found the last of the brandy bottles, the one which Van Dyck had been jealously hoarding against an emergency. Grey admitted that he had lied freely to the non-combatants, particularly in assuring his wife and Conetta, Madeleine and Beatrice Van Tromp and Edie, that none of us was taking any chance of getting hurt. He had repeated Van Dyck's instructions, and they had promised not to scatter, and to stay under cover—such cover as the wood afforded. Finishing up, Grey spoke of the professor and his guard-mounting over the six pirates.
"He has the lantern between his knees, and I found him dissecting some leaves he had pickedup, and poring over that little pocket Botany of his," he chuckled. "He didn't see me at all until I came up and said 'Scat!' to him."
This part of the report was rather disconcerting. With the professor engrossed in his favorite study, anything might happen in the way of a jail delivery, and I said as much.
"Go and see about it, Dick," was Van Dyck's order, and I was about to obey when Billy Grisdale gripped my arm and pointed toward the yacht. On the deck of theAndromeda, where everything had been quiet since the firing of the shot which had driven the capstan repairers from their job, a dimly defined group of toilers were hoisting some heavy object to the roof of the raised deck house. I couldn't make out what they were doing, but Bonteck's eyes were better than mine.
"Duck and scatter!" he commanded sharply. "It's the little signal gun, and they're training it on us!"
We had dodged and run nimbly to right and left before the little brass signal piece belched fire and sent a volley of nondescript missiles hurtling into the scrub palmettos under which we had been crouching. What the desperate chief cook of theAndromedahoped to accomplish by this haphazard bombardment of the jungle which, so far as he knew, sheltered a half-dozen of his own men as well as whatever enemy he thought he was firing at, was a mystery unexplained until after our scattered force was reassembled safely out of range.
But we were made to understand quickly enough. Under cover of the cannon fire, the electric launch slid out from its landing place upon the placid waters of the lagoon, cut a swift half-circle andheaded for the open sea and the yacht. While we were watching and waiting, some one of the mutineers had emulated Dupuyster's daring example, and had swum ashore to steal the launch, thus putting an end to any notion we may have had of fighting the little war to a conclusion on theAndromeda'sdeck.
Callingthis bold cutting-out of the electric launch the close of the first bout, we were obliged to admit that the enemy had taken a hard fall out of us at the finish. As matters now stood, the advantage was with the mutineers. To be sure, we had six of their men, including their first mate and navigator, safely laid by the heels; and Jerry Dupuyster's plucky adventure had tied up the yacht, temporarily, at least. But without a boat we could not press the fighting, and the six hostages were more likely to prove a burden than a forfeit with which to bargain. Bassinette, or whoever it was who was commanding the mutineers, would know that he was dealing with men who would neither starve nor slay their prisoners; though he should have known, and doubtless did know, that we ourselves were by this time in dire straits for food. And as to the tethering anchor chain, they would surely be a witless lot aboard of theAndromedaif they should not remember that they could compel Haskell and his mechanician assistants to cut the cable.
It soon developed, however, that the amateur pirates were not thinking of running away. Shortly after the electric launch had whisked to safety under the stern of the yacht, it appeared again with anew crew to man it. At first we thought the militant chief cook was going to attempt a sortie and a rescue of the prisoners, but he had a better scheme than that, as we were presently to learn. Keeping outside of the enclosing reef, he sent the launch slowly westward, holding it far enough out to be beyond pistol range, but paralleling the reef as if seeking for another inlet. Elijah Goff hazarded a guess at his intention.
"You folks 've got a camp o' some sort, hain't ye?" he asked; and when Van Dyck gave the expected affirmative: "I guess maybe he's spyin' 'round to find that camp. He cal'lates that'll be your weak spot, if you've got one."
That was enough to set us swiftly in motion, of course, and by hastening we kept abreast of the launch all the way along the south side of the island, though with no little difficulty, since, under the fair certainty that the boat's crew had firearms, we dared not show ourselves on the beach. At the western end of the island Grey cut across to carry word to the women, while the rest of us fought with the jungle and so kept the launch in sight all the way around the point.
Doubling the western reef ledge, the reconnoitering boat party proceeded to pass the northern shore of the island in review; and again we kept the pace, watching each inlet through the reef narrowly as the launch approached it, and hoping, rather than fearing, that the mutineers would turn in and attempt a landing and so bring matters to a crisis. It was grueling work keeping abreast of the motor-driven tender, and by the time we had made the complete circuit of the island, we werewringing wet with perspiration, and spent with running.
It was not until after a second circuit of the island was begun, with the launch still dribbling along outside of the reef, that we came to the full knowledge of what the mutineer chief was doing. He assumed that we would be following him and keeping him in sight, and he meant to run us to death; in other words, to keep us running until we could run no more. He doubtless knew, or guessed, that our camp was at the opposite end of the island from the treasure plantation, and that we couldn't guard both at the same time.
The second lap of the Marathon was a sheer fight for life, or, rather, for the breath to sustain life. If we could have kept to the beach without drawing the fire of the launch it would not have been so bad, but a single attempt to do this brought a flash and crack from the sea, and we had to dive to cover again. By the time we reached the camp end of the island this second time, Grey was reeling and tripping like a drunken man, and Van Dyck ordered him out of the running ranks.
"Stay by the women!" was the gasped-out command, and thereupon we lost Grey.
The completion of the second lap practically finished the five of us who were still in the race. When we came in sight of theAndromedawe were staggering and stumbling and caroming helplessly against the trees and other obstacles. Unless we should be given a breathing space we all knew that the game was up, so far as we were concerned; but happily the breath-catching interval was given us. Reaching the inlet opposite the yacht, the mutineers steered the motor-driven tender boldlythrough it and headed for the island beach. The chief was evidently taking it for granted that he had worn us out and left us behind, and was making a quick dash to gain possession of the island.
Van Dyck kept his head, in spite of the maddening fatigue that was fairly killing every man of us.
"Down!" he panted hoarsely. "Get ready and hold your fire until you can see their faces—then let 'em have it!"
At the most, we wouldn't have had to wait more than a minute or so; but Billy Grisdale was too young and too excited to wait. While the launch was still so far out as to make a shot a mere guess hazard in the starlight, Billy pulled the trigger of the pistol which had fallen to him in the distribution of the captured weapons, and the mischief was done. Of course, we all banged away at the crack of Billy's pistol, but there was every reason to believe that the volley went wide of the mark. In a twinkling the tender's motor was reversed, and there was a wild scramble aboard of her to get the emergency oars out to help her around. In the thick of it Van Dyck took a long-distance chance with the old-model rifle. There was a shrill scream and a flash of blue-and-green electric fire from the boat's motor to follow the shot, and the power went off. Goff's chuckle was like the creaking of a rusty door-hinge.
"I cal'late they won't run the legs off'n us any more withthatpush boat," he said; and since the launch's crew paddled hurriedly out to theAndromedawith the motor still dead, the prophecy seemed to be in the way of fulfilling itself.
Shortly after the last man had disappeared overthe yacht's rail, the empty launch, apparently towed from the deck above, also disappeared around the stern of theAndromeda, by which we inferred that the mutineers had some notion of trying to repair it, or at least of determining to what extent its motor was crippled. Pending another move, we waited again, and were glad enough of a chance to lie quiet and have a breathing spell.
While we were resting, Grey came up, pluckily refusing to be left out of the forefront of things. As before, he had skirted the northern beach and had crossed through the treasure glade to come up behind us as we lay watching the yacht. Sanford, he reported, was still holding the lantern upon the pages of his Botany book, and was only mildly curious to know what all the running and racing and shooting portended.
At "Camp Hurricane," as Edie Van Tromp had named our storm-driven refuge, there was plenty of excitement, and quite naturally a good bit of alarm. Of the three men who might be said to be posing as "home guards," only one, Major Terwilliger, Grey told us, had offered to join the fighting force. Barclay was again playing sick, and Ingerson was sleeping, log-like, through it all.
"I took it upon myself to turn the major down," said Grey. "He is too old to keep the pace we've been setting, so I told him to stay by the women, and left my pistol with him to chirk him up a bit. But I doubt if he'd put up much of a fight, for all his military title."
"Ow, I say, old dear; you're off, there," Jerry put in quickly. "Uncle Jimmie will fight like a dashed old billy goat if he's pushed to it, don'tyou know!" And we were obliged to take Jerry's word for it.
After the disappearance of the electric launch around the stern of theAndromedathere were no sounds for a time; nothing that would enable us to guess what the mutineers' next move would be. But later there came a creaking of tackles, and the clanking of a steam winch—one of the smaller winches operating the boat falls.
"Taking the tender aboard for repairs," I suggested; but Van Dyck said they were more likely lowering the long-boat, which was also motor-driven with a small gasoline engine for its propelling power.
"How about it, Captain 'Lige?" he queried; and the sailing-master confirmed the guess, saying:
"That's about the way of it. That con-dummed Frenchman is layin' off to give us another chance to play ring-around-the-rosy with him."
Billy Grisdale had kept quiet for five full minutes, which was little less than miraculous.
"Say," he broke in, "I've been hearing something like a file or a saw going out there on the yacht ever since the scrimmage was called off. Listen!"
We did listen, and the sound was unmistakable. Van Dyck clicked the lever of the repeating rifle and sent a shot whistling over theAndromeda'sbow. There was a clatter as of hastily dropped tools and the filing noise ceased.
"It'll begin again, just as soon as he's toled us away from here," Goff predicted. "He's got to gnaw himself loose from that anchor, and he knows it."
Van Dyck took the hint.
"We are going to keep as much as we've got," he declared. And then to Grey: "How well do you shoot, Jack?"
"Couldn't hit the side of a barn, not even if it were painted white," confessed the rising young lawyer.
It was at this conjuncture that Jerry Dupuyster surprised us again.
"Me for the bally old pot-shotting. I'm fairly good at the birds, don't you know. Took the blue ribbon over the field at Lord Erpin'am's last fall—what? Give me the gun, and say when and where."
Bonteck passed the rifle over to the reincarnated club idler.
"You heard what Goff said. That infernal French sea cook will begin to run us again as soon as he gets the long-boat over the side. When that happens, you stay here and keep your ear out for that anchor-chain filing. If it begins again, aim a little high and invite them to quit."
"I'm on," said Dupuyster. "But I'm dashed if I know why you want me to hold high on the perishers."
"For the simple reason that they may be forcing Haskell or Quinby to do the work, and we don't want to kill any of our friends," was Bonteck's explanation.
While he was speaking we heard the first broken sputterings of the long-boat's gasoline engine, and a little later the boat itself slid out like a white shadow past theAndromeda'sstem, and a third circumnavigation of the island was begun. Van Dyck stood up, tightened his belt and groaned. "We're in for another ride on the merry-go-round!" he lamented. "Fall in, you fellows."
We fell in, and the word was well-chosen. Lying by for the half-hour or so after doing the double Marathon had stiffened every weary leg muscle. Cursing the mutineers for the lack, or seeming lack, of originality which was leading them to repeat an expedient that had failed, we ran on, taking to the beach now, and risking a volley from the long-boat for the sake of having a better running track.
So running, and keeping cannily abreast of the white shadow in the offing, we had covered possibly half of the distance to the western end of the island when the crack of a rifle from the rear, followed instantly by a scattering fusillade, halted us abruptly.
The rifle was replying spitefully to the fusillade as Van Dyck, who had been leading the race, wheeled, spread his arms and herded us into the back track.
"They've played it on us!" he yelled. "There's only one man in that long-boat, and the others are trying to put something over on Jerry!"
They were; and the trick had almost succeeded when we reached the strip of beach that Dupuyster was defending. The crippled electric launch, propelled by oars, and carrying possibly a dozen men, was half-way across the lagoon, heading straight for the beach, and coming on regardless of Jerry's rifle. Above the din of battle we could hear the shrill, squeaky voice of the fat cook encouraging his men. "Pull on ze oar,mes braves! Sacré tonnerre!eet is but wan man dat shoot ze gon!"
But when we came up there were five more to shoot, and instant and utter demoralization fellupon the attacking force. Shrieks of surrender in half a dozen different languages rent the still night air, and in a mad endeavor to turn the boat an oar was lost overboard.
If our situation had not been so critically desperate, there was enough of the comic-opera element in the frantic attempt to retreat to have brought down the house. As it was, Van Dyck stopped the firing and shouted to the mutineers to come ashore and surrender. Some of the men were evidently sick of their bargain and wanted to quit, but the squeaky cries of the chief robber dominated the tumult, and under a renewal of our bombardment the launch was got around and headed back to the yacht with much splashing and hard swearing. Also, when the goal of safety was reached, we could make out dimly that the accommodation ladder was let down, and that two or three members of the boat's crew had to be helped aboard.
A few minutes after this, we had audible proof of the correctness of Van Dyck's guess about the long-boat and the ingenious ruse to draw us off. The gasoline craft was coming back, as we could determine by the increasing loudness of its exhaust. Following its return to the yacht we were given another little breathing spell, and John Grey's quality of professional curiosity had an opportunity to show itself again.
"I can't understand for the life of me why these fellows should come back here and fight us so desperately for a chance to get ashore," he protested. "You can't make me believe that they're doing it on the strength of a silly yarn that is three hundred years old."
"What do you think about it, Captain 'Lige?" said Bonteck, ungenerously handing the tangle over to Goff.
"I wouldn't put it a mite apast 'em," was the skipper's guarded reply. "There was a good deal o' talk among the men about buried gold-mines and such on the way down from New Orleans. I ain't no gre't hand at the foreign lingoes, myself, but I picked up a word or two here and there."
"I don't more than half believe it, just the same," Grey persisted. "I tell you, these fellows are not fighting for the bare chance of proving or disproving that old story about theSanta Lucia'sburied treasure. They've got inside information of some sort, and I'll bet on it."
"Maybe they have," said Goff, in a tone which said plainly that the matter was one not worth worrying about.
Grey got upon his feet.
"We have six of these pirates back here in the woods: why can't we make them talk and tell us what they are trying to do?"
At this, Van Dyck took a hand.
"They would lie about it, as a matter of course," he interjected. "Besides, their particular object doesn't make any vital difference to us. They are here, and our present business is to see to it that they don't get away again—with the yacht."
Grey sat down again, grumbling.
"I don't see that we are getting ahead very fast," he complained. "What in Sam Hill do you suppose they're waiting for now?"
The answer to Grey's impatient query was at that moment coming around theAndromeda'sstern. It was the disabled electric launch againthis time with only one man in it, and he was sculling it with an oar over the stern, slowly working his way toward the gap in the reef. When it came a bit nearer we could see that the loom of a broken oar had been rigged as a mast in the bow, with a white flag of some sort dangling from it.
"A parley," I said; and Goff grunted acquiescence. But Jerry Dupuyster worked the lever of his rifle to reload.
"Don't shoot, Jerry," Bonteck cautioned in low tones; whereat the emancipated idler chuckled.
"Couldn't if I wanted to, by Jove; the bally cartridges are all gone, what?"
The huge lump of a man in the stern of the launch stopped sculling when he was within easy calling distance of the shore, and the boat lost way.
"Ahoy ze island!" he hailed, in a voice ridiculously out of proportion to his barrel-girthed bigness.
"Get to work with that oar and come ashore!" was Van Dyck's brusque command, to which he added: "We've got you covered."
"Non, non!it ees ze flag of ze truce!" shrilled the voice. And then the fat cook handed out an argument that was much more binding: "Ve haf ze enchineers in ze hold shut up, and eef you shoot wiz ze gon, zey will be keel!"
"Talk it out, then," said Van Dyck. "What do you want?"
"Ve make ze proposal—w'at you call ze proposition. It ees zat you vill all go to ze ozzer end of zis island,immédiatement. W'en you do zat, ve leave you ze long-boat to go 'way, w'erever you like to go. W'at you do wiz Lequat and hees mens?"
"Lequat and his men are where you won't find them in a hurry," was Bonteck's answer. "As to your demand that we go away and let you steal the yacht again, there's nothing doing."
"Sacré bleu!It ees ze—w'at you call heem?—ze ooltimatum. W'en ees come daylight, ve put ze leetle cannon on ze long boat and keel all—oui!"
At this savage pronouncement we held a whispered consultation, the fat pirate sitting back in the stern sheets of the launch and calmly lighting a cigarette. Could we, dare we, take the risk of a daylight bombardment, even though the single piece of artillery were only the yacht's little brass muzzle-loading signal piece, with such iron scraps as the mutineers might be able to find or manufacture for the missiles? It was a dubious question. Though our island was nearly if not quite a mile in length, its greatest width did not exceed four or five hundred yards, and the little gun would easily put it under a cross-fire from either side.
"Have they powder?" I asked of Goff.
"Tain't likely they haven't—with them a-handlin' all that war stuff from the Isle o' Pines."
"But nothing that would answer for grape-shot?"
"Pots and kittles in the galley, and a hammer to smash 'em with," said the old Gloucesterman. "That's good enough, I cal'late."
"Speak up, all of you," said Van Dyck. "Shall I try to drive a bargain with him for the long-boat? If he gives us enough gasoline, we might be able to make Willemstadt, on the island of Curaçao—with fair weather and a smooth sea. That is the nearest inhabited land, but it is something over a hundred-and-fifty-mile run."
Grey was the first to "speak up."
"I have more at stake than any of you," he said, thereby showing that the married lover may be stone blind to all things extraneous to his own particular and private little Eden. "Just the same, I say, fight it out."
"Here, too," echoed Billy Grisdale; and Jerry Dupuyster also came up promptly in his carefully acquired accent: "Ow, I say! we cawn't knuckle down to a lot of bally cooks and sailormen, what?"
"And you, Preble?" queried Van Dyck, turning to me.
I refused to vote, merely saying: "You know I'm with you, either way."
It was Goff's turn, but instead of taking it, he leaned over to whisper hoarsely: "Make him talk some, Mr. Van Dyck; tell him to work his proposition off ag'in, and say it slow. That boat's a-driftin' in, and if it comes a leetle mite nearer——"
Van Dyck stood up and called to the maker of ultimatums.
"State your proposal again, and let us have it in detail. Will you leave a supply of gasoline in the long-boat? Will you give us provisions, and a compass and sextant?"
The fatchefflung his cigarette away and we heard the little hiss of the spark as the water quenched it.
"Ze proposal ees zis: zat you take your fran's and go back to ze ladees. Again I h-ask you w'at you done wiz Monsieur Lequat and hees men?"
"They are here."
"Bien!You vill all go back to ze camp and ze ladees. You vill leave ze prisonaire;aussi, youwill leave ze Captain Goff wiz ze rope tie on hees hand and on hees feets. To-morrow you come back on zis place, and you vill find ze longboat wiz ze gasoline, ze provisionments,etze compassetze sextant, to make ze voyage to La Guaira, to Curaçao, to anyw'ere you like to gone.Voila!dat ees all."
Again we took hasty counsel among ourselves, and whatever design Goff had been nursing in asking Van Dyck to prolong the parley was frustrated by another turn of the launch's drift. The boat was now edging farther out from the beach. One and all we were for refusing the detailed terms point blank, if for no other reason than that we were required to leave one of our number bound and at the mercy of the mutineers; one and all, I say, but Goff himself said nothing.
"We can't consider the proposal in its entirety for a minute," said John Grey, voicing the sentiments of at least five of us. But now Goff cut in.
"You're my owner, Mr. Van Dyck: if I could have a little over-haulin' of things with you——"
Van Dyck promptly went aside with the skipper. They didn't go so far but what we could hear their voices—though not the words—and Goff seemed to be doing all the talking, and to be doing it very earnestly. But when they came back, as they did very shortly, it was Bonteck who told us the outcome.
"Captain Goff has explained to me that the mutineers are obliged to make the terms include his surrender. Lequat is only a rule-of-thumb navigator, and if they don't have Goff they are likely to make a mess of themselves and of the yacht. For the sake of those whom we must considerfirst of all—the women—he is willing to take his chance again as a prisoner. If I thought there was any doubt about this fat devil carrying out his threat to bombard the island, I'd say 'No,' and fight for it. But we must remember that he can hardly fail to get some of us with the gun, or, if he shouldn't do that, he can keep us away from our water supply until we all die of thirst."
Grey raised the only question that seemed to be worth considering.
"We shall have only this scoundrel's word for it that the long-boat and provisions will be left for us," he objected.
Van Dyck put the suggestion aside hastily; rather too hastily, I fancied.
"We are obliged to take some chances, of course. Goff, here, will insist upon the fulfilment of the treaty terms. If they are not fulfilled to the letter, he will put theAndromedaon the reef and take the consequences." Then he called once more to the man in the boat: "One word with you before we close this deal. This is piracy on the high seas. I suppose you know what that means when you are caught—as you will be, sooner or later?"
We could see a big arm waving in airy bravado.
"Eet is not'ing, Monsieur Van Dyck. I blow it away—pouf!In Santa Cruz you vill h-ask ze gr-r-eat liberador w'at he shall tell you about 'Gustave Le Gros.' W'en you shall h-ask heem zat, you shall know it ees not'ing."
"All right," Bonteck returned. "We'll fall back and leave the prisoners. Captain Goff will be with them, and he will surrender when you come ashore. But he will not be bound, and he will be armed, so you can govern yourself accordingly."
The fat man waved an arm again and took up his sculling oar, raising no objection to the single modification of the ultimatum—that relating to the way Goff should be left. We waited until we saw the disabled launch creep out through the gash in the reef. Then we fell back upon the professor, who was still reading quietly by the miserable light of the ship's lantern.
In a few words we explained the new situation, and the mild-eyed rider of an engrossing hobby got up and carefully dusted his trousers.
"You gentlemen were on the ground, and you doubtless knew what was best to be done," he said in gentle resignation. "Shall we go back to the ladies?"
We left Elijah Goff to watch over the trussed-up figures in the little open glade and set out upon our retreat, taking the northern beach for our route. Just before we came opposite the camp at the farther end of the island, we heard the renewed sputterings and poppings of the gasoline engine in the long-boat. The amateur pirates were landing, this time without let or hindrance.